Luis Otávio Barros, Autor em RichmondShare Blog | High quality content and interaction in the ELT world

Luis Otávio Barros

Reading tasks: 3 pitfalls to avoid

4 de outubro de 2016

Most of us like to use authentic, non-coursebook, hot-off-the-press texts in class from time to time. This entails not only choosing interesting, level-appropriate material, but also devising tasks that will enable students to get as much out of the text as possible. Writing good comprehension questions is trickier than meets the eye, though. Here are three pitfalls to...Read More

Skills

reading tasks

2 kinds of noticing tasks

12 de agosto de 2016

by Luis Otávio Barros

1. Why is noticing even a buzzword, anyway? Noticing in language learning is perhaps ELT’s most user-friendly buzzword. To have a vague understanding of what it is, you don’t need to delve into the works of Rod Ellis, Peter Skehan or even Richard Schmidt, whose 1990 study essentially put the term on the map. Perhaps...Read More

Grammar, Language Acquisition

grammar, Identities, Second-language acquisition

10 tips to help you give feedback on writing

10 de novembro de 2014

by Luis Otávio Barros

There have been a lot of pendulum swings in our profession since the early 90s, but the teaching of writing seems to be a bit of an exception. Compared to, for example, the sibling rivalry between PPP vs. task-based learning, the half-hearted nod of approval translation’s finally starting to get or, say, the recent comeback...Read More

Classroom Management, Skills

feedback, teaching writing

The hazy line between lexis and grammar

11 de agosto de 2014

by Luis Otávio Barros

This post is a short account of two lessons I taught in 2002 which helped me to make sense of something I’d read about in the late 90s, but couldn’t get my head around. Not until then anyway. If you’ve been following me for some time, you know that I’m a big believer in experiential...Read More

Classroom Experiences, Grammar, Language Acquisition, Vocabulary

grammar, lexical approach, lexis, teaching chunks

Feel vs. know

11 de junho de 2014

by Luis Otávio Barros

For the past six months I’ve been teaching a close friend of mine once a week, on a one-to-one basis. He’s what most people would refer to as an elementary learner, but in many important ways he’s anything but your typical A2. And that’s partly because he’s highly intuitive. The more I teach him, the...Read More

Grammar, Language Acquisition

implicit knowledge, linguistic intuition

Life Beyond Gap-fill?

10 de abril de 2014

by Luis Otávio Barros

In the 70s and early 80s, when functional syllabuses and communicative language teaching gained prominence in ELT, our profession was a relatively gap-fill-free zone. For controlled and semi-controlled practice, students were usually asked to engage in A-B exchanges, role-plays or any other activity types that included some degree of choice, information / context gap, personalization...Read More

Grammar, Language Acquisition

teaching grammar

4 tips to help you teach advanced students

10 de março de 2014

by Luis Otávio Barros

I don’t think I have ever taught or observed an advanced lesson that went seriously wrong. I mean cringe-worthy wrong. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, advanced students have been in the game long enough and know enough English to ensure that most of our lessons run – at worst – relatively smoothly....Read More

Classroom Management, Language Acquisition, Teacher Development

teaching advanced students

What’s wrong with delayed feedback?

10 de fevereiro de 2014

by Luis Otávio Barros

A few things, I believe. But first things first: What is delayed feedback? Basically it’s oral correction at the end of an activity rather than shortly after the mistake was made. Delayed feedback enables you to correct students without interrupting them, which is often a very sensible thing to do, of course. There are times,...Read More

Classroom Management

correcting students, delayed feedback, oral correction, oral feedback

Teacher Talking Time – not so simple!

10 de janeiro de 2014

by Luis Otávio Barros

When we teach language for and through communication, it’s our job to ensure that there is as much student – student interaction as realistically possible. This means that teacher talking time (TTT) should be kept to an absolute minimum, right? Well, right and wrong. There’s more to TTT than meets the eye. Students’ interlanguage will...Read More

Teacher Development

echoing, recasting, teacher development, teacher talk, teacher talking time, TTT