From building rapport to time management and differentiation, varying student interactions can completely transform a language classroom. Leveraging interaction patterns—deciding who interacts with whom—is perhaps the most under-sung tool at a teacher’s disposal to successfully manage the EFL classroom. What are Interaction Patterns? The first thing that comes to many teachers’ minds when they think of interaction patterns is pair work, hence the famous acronym TPS, for “thin

This clip is from a CELTA input session on text-based language presentations, and it was recorded during our July 2025 face-to-face course in Casablanca, Morocco. This particular segment shows me first clarifying the pronunciation of the target language, and then explaining the theory underpinning the techniques I used. For many teachers, clarifying pronunciation--i.e., teaching students how to pronounce language--is one of the trickiest, and often mysterious aspects of langu

Teacher Trainers Part 1: Continued Development for Development Continuers The first time I taught without any materials it was unplanned. For that matter, most of the times I taught without materials, during the first several years of my career, it was unplanned. It was basically because I’d forgotten (the materials at home, to plan the lesson, or some combination of both). Has this happened to you before? There’s a brand of teacher that this never happens to—and another bran