
The other day, my ELT business and mindset coach, Rachael Roberts asked me the question ‘What movement do you want to start …or have started already?’
It really helped me crystallize my ‘ELT mission’, which is to
• improve the quality of SKILLS teaching in ELT
• …by raising awareness of what SUB-SKILLS are,
• …and HOW to go about TEACHING them,
• …instead of just TESTING them
• …e.g. by only asking our learners comprehension check questions.
Rachael also asked me to think about why my movement’ is important, which prompted me to articulate that improving the level of skills teaching in ELT matters dearly to me, because I want to participate in raising communicative & humanistic ELT standards worldwide.
I also believe that by becoming better at teaching skills we help our industry at large stay up to date with the world (i.e. tech, education, the global job market, etc.).
The third question on the call was ‘Where do you want to guide people’ or ‘What do you want them to become?’, which made me envision a world with
• more authentic ELT teaching, where lessons are generally more communicative, fun, and ‘HUMANIZED’ at the same time,
• where both learner and teacher ENJOY the lessons
(–as I believe you can’t have one without the other),
• and where lessons are super EFFECTIVE too,
• following the assumption that people WANT to be MEANINGFULLY CHALLENGED and constantly occupied while learning new things,
• which happens when we ask them to do things in the language classroom that really MIMIC what they’ll use the language for in real life as well.
The last question was why I am ‘the right person to lead this movements’, which made me realize that I’m happy to ‘spearhead’ skills, as
• I’m obsessed with PRACTICALITY in general,
• as well as always trying to be mindful of WHAT I want to learn (…teach) anything FOR;
• I’m results oriented, and like to start anything by defining the GOAL FIRST,
• then REVERSE ENGINEER the SKILLS route to achieving it; and
• …I happen to also have the right qualifications and experience to actually take this cause on.
What’s YOUR ‘ELT mission?’ And what CPD ‘tools’ will you need to be able to ‘spearhead’ it?
#ieltsteacher, #IELTSTeacherTrainer, #IELTSTeacherTraining, #ELTskillsteacher
#CPD