farewell to 2022

Is your memory jar filled with ligts?

Nevermore 2022

ZOZZ ☄ seemed to be the darkest year of all. However I managed to recover from the fear, pain and depression, somewhere in October. And I believe in better future for my family and for this country.

The last event - getting the keys of the appartment - gives even more joy and hope 🎈

I sum it up because it has become a tradition to look back and summarise achievements, improvements, best cases to put into a "memory jar".

I haven't got any memory jars of course. Social media used to play this role for me. Still haven't recovered completely so sign up again.

I remember last year publication where I compared Rus/Eng traditions. English people seem to have a tradition of writing New Year resolutions (or promises and future plans) whereas Russians tryto look back and recall the positive moments of the year. Since the year was black (I wanted to erase everything, the memories, the hopes, my identity and my relations) -  today I will not look back any more, I'll choose the English scenario instead and look into the future.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

English goals

❄I just want to learn English, to grow as a speaker and a communicator

❄I also want to give more English to my children. I have a daughter who is my best student ever and I have a son who is still reluctant to learn English.

❄I want to teach English, to have more students and to enjoy the process of giving English to someone else, of growing professionally too.

Parenting goals

❄ I want to give more freedom to my daughter to let her become more independent: starting from stereet crossing experience and making coices to giving her some pocket money and ending with listening to what kind of person she wants to be and to teach her to speak for herself.

❄ I want to teach my son to play by the rules, to communicate with people. He is clever and very creative (if not genious 😅) in some ways, especially when playing on his own, but is he a good teamplyer? What's the right age to begin to worry about it? He is only five and he wants to posess me completely when we are on the football pitch and there should be no more players, no sister 😓. He only wants to be a goalkeeper and meet my attack. 

Moving into our new flat

❄ I want to manage our interior fitout project and not to break up while moving in the new apartment. It includes the idea of finding out what I really need in my house, the way it should be done but at the same time it would require a lot of compromise with the way my husband sees it, and with our limited budget too.

Keep it up, Kira!

Reflective journal

Старт занятий: 11.10.2022

2 ч. в неделю

За два с лишним месяца занятий моя ученица Кира (8 лет)

✍ Наверное, нужно упомянуть, что у Киры ДЦП, пусть её опыт вдохновит кого-то еще 🌸

В связи с таким диагнозом обучение четкости произношения на очень второстепенном плане. А мелкая моторика - письмо - просто игнорируем. Немного раскрашивает, проходит лабиринты, может наклеивать фрагменты - есть чем разнообразить занятия ☺ любит играть в мемори с карточками и просто обожает playdoh! Подарила ей спиннер - все в дело!

✍ Теперь о языковых навыках. Кира равномерно усваивает задачи разного уровня:

1) Общение на английском:

+ тут нужна не только лексика (запоминает она хорошо), 

+ мне нравится её готовность к коммуникации на неродном языке, реакция, а по рассказам мамы, она несет английский в массы, разговаривает с дедушкой, логопедом и не только! ❤

Каждое занятие мы начинаем со "Small talk" (могу пометить, как "усвоенное"):

✔ Hello! How are you? I am good, great etc.

✔ How old are you? - I am 8.

✔ Do you like (cats) Yes, I do/No, I don't.

✔ Do you like the weather today? - Yes, I do./No, I don't

✔ Is it sunny/windy...? - It is/it is not.

2) Лексика.

▪ Местоимения I, you, it

▪ Цифры знает, но мне нужно чаще применять их. (revise)

▪ Цвета - хорошо знает.

▪ Части тела: head, hand, leg, arm, neck.

▪ Животных хорошо запоминает (cat, dog, pig, cow, bat, fox, hippo...)

▪ Действия (сложнее, как учить, так и тестировать): 

▪ Go, read, play, sit, open, shut, run, make a ball, roll (a ball), catch, squash, look.

▪ Прилагательные - антонимы:

good - bad

big - small

cold - hot

hard - soft

fast - slow

loud - quiet

thick - thin

long - short

3) Грамматика.  

▪ To be: I am, you are, it is.

I am sitting on the floor.

▪ Article "a": I am a girl / a snowman /a gingerbread man...

▪ Вопросы/ответы. Может спросить о предпочтениях: Do you like bananas?

Кира произносит полные ответы: Yes, I do./No, I don't.

What is it? Is it long or short?

▪ отдeльного внимания требуют структура и порядок слов повеств/вопросит/отриц

It is a cat. Is it black? It is not red.

▪ модальный глагол can:

Can you guess? (угадаешь?)

You can't catch me!

Can you put two apples up on top?

4) Чтение. Учим алфавит - с акцентом на фонетический : æ, b, k, d, e, f, dʒ...

C-V-C words: cat, leg, dog, pig, big, fat, can...

Tricky 3-letter words: car, egg, old

4 letter words: gold, flag, star, stop lamp, frog, drop

Sight words: Go, go, Do, do, it, is, I, am, to, no, on, in

Использованный материал (книги, песенки, стихи):

▪ Open-shut them (by Super Simple Songs)

▪ rhyme:

One and two, and three, and four.

I am sitting on the floor.

I am playing with a car

And a pretty little star.

(you are playing with a cat & hat)

▪ Symbols of Haloween: 🎃 pumpkin, witch's hat, bat, black cat, ghost, trick or treat bag.

▪ Green Eggs And Ham (by Dr. Seuss)

▪ Ten apples up on top (by Dr.Seuss)

▪ S-A-N-T-A is his name-o 🎅🎄🔔

▪ Letter to Santa✍💌

▪ I am a little snowman look at me ❄☃❄(by Super Simple Songs to the tune "I am a little teapot")

▪ I am a little cookie 🍪

Look at me 

Here are my buttons

One-two-three

These are my eyes and this is my nose

I jumped out the oven

Where it was hot!

(my adaptation for the gingerbread man story)

▪ Gingerbreadman fairytale - и даже наша версия для

театра теней!

🍀🍀🍀

Мне очень нравится заниматься с Кирой, я вижу её любовь и её старание, то как хорошо она встречает все активити, (или почти все - вопрос к тому насколько хорошо я вижу её уровень навыков).

🍀 Первоначально обучение чтению не было приоритетной целью, но к концу первого месяца занятий я уже сделала акцент на навыках чтения. Это долгий путь и пусть Кира начнет его проходить сразу, ведь эти навыки будут основой, дадут зрительную опору, чтобы слова не улетучивались.

На этом фото Кира вполне справляется с активити:

Sort out the presents by the vowel:

Elf Sam gets the boxes with cvc: man, cat, bag, etc.

Elf Tim gets the boxes with cvc: pig, lip, bin, etc.

Elf Tom gets the boxes with cvc: fox, mop, etc.

Планы на ближайшиe 2 месяца:

1) Small talk, more on weather: sunny, rainy, snowy, windy

New question words: How's the weather? 

2) Лексика: погода + одежда, weather

Put it on, take it off (+части тела)

3) Грамматика: 

Местоимениe you + are

Вопросы: What, who, where

Where is it? - here it is on the floor

предлоги in, on

I have got

Rhyme: My teddy bear has two eyes... (Super Simple Songs ❤)

4) Чтение: 

Буква Uu, звук /ʌ/

Up - down

Cut, nut, bus, fun, sun, mug, cup

Sight words: put, he, we, are

Letter W: we, wow, wind, window, winter

Letter Rr: rat, red, ring, 

"Naughty" Rr: car, star, far, are, floor, four, for..

Переход от одиночных слов к словосочетаниям (in the box, on the table, go to bed, put it on, fat cat on a mat)

 

Книжки:

Easy Phonics by Usborn

Hop on Pop by Dr.Seuss

Grren Eggs and Ham py Dr.Seuss

travelling lesson #1

Lesson breakdown

Aim: Lexic + geography: Greece

Coursebook: Go Getter 3, Unit 3 p.34

Travel

Stage: warming up, eliciting some lexic

Look at the picture and describe what they have on their minds.

Tasya went on, she could describe every picture in those bubbles using her language - surprisingly she managed to put it in her own words - using not a single word from the book! Wow! It was an utterly different language. 

I stopped for a moment. Do I even have to teach her anything? She can express her ideas no problem. Is it a big deal if she says this:

"to spend a night in a tent" - instead of "to go camping"

or "to eat in a restaurant" instead of "to try some local food", 

or: "to ride a bike" instead of "to go cycling" 

or : "to listen to a guide" instead of "to go on a guidd tour" etc.

(Eliciting the target language)

However I listened to her carefully and took the notes. And then I said: There are so many ways to put ideas into the words, let's see if you can make the word combinations for the following verbs:

Stay - Where do people stayon holidays?

stay in the hotel

Visit - What do they visit?

Visit museums, galleries, places of interest

Do - What do people do on holidays? 

do watersports, new kinds of sports like horse riding, surfing, paragliding..

Go - Where do they go?

go sightseeing, hiking, swimming

Read - What do they read?

read books and magazines, guidebooks

Compound nouns: watersports, sightseeing, guidebook (mark the roots)

Stage: Practicing

Role-play a dialogue as if we've just met at the swimming pool area. I asked these questions:

What's your name? Where are you from?

The weather is nice, isn't it? 

How long have you been staying here? Where are you staying? Have you already seen anything special/ visited any places? Have you tried something new? What would you recommend to do?

Stage: Geography

Find Grece, Crete on Google maps.

Let's read a page from a guidebook:

What does this island look like?

What is its shape? Let's say it's like a long fish, shall we?

Does it sretche out from North to South? - No.

Then which way does it stretch?

From the left to the right? Let's say "from East to West". 

What country does it belong? (immediate testing :) - Greece! Right. What is the flag of Greece? - Blue and white, stripy, with a little cross on the top left corner.

Stage: Practicing target language

Take a look at the pictures and describe what you see:

To go on a boat trip, sightseeing, watersports

try local food

Would you like to try some of these octopuses?

no? They are deliscious! I love sea food.

to go on a guided tour, to explore the city

Stage: having fun :)

Let's imagine you are on the skype with your granny but your microphone is dead, you probably dropped it ito the water, so your gran can not hear you and you gonna mime, show what activities you've already had.

(I did my best not to give the right answer right away, just for fun, just to make her play more, show better, more carefully)

Ex 4. (not matching - GUESSing! Open-ended task! Your version. I've covered the part of the exercise with the picture of the castle - in order to make the ex. OPEN-ENDED (freer practice).

Homework

Write to your friend about Anapa. How it is a good place for a holiday?

This is how she performed her writing task (with lots of spelling mistakes - but she is never short of words - which is good! It took her not more than 5 minutes to compose this, isn't she good?

Shopping #2

You're so HOTS I want to role-play with you. 

The more I teach Tasya the more I think what a bright student I am dealing with. I would love to be wise enough to always encourage her frolics and sence of humour and not to push hard enough to perform well in close ended tests.

Recently I've discovered that she may somehow fail to find opposites to simple words (such as heavy/light, strong/weak, etc.) which worrield me for a wile. But at the same day she showed herself as a pretty good communicator and a story teller. Testing is tricky. Don't fall into its trap. I've analysed that Tasya prefers the  tasks that engage Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) more than those of the Lower ones (LOTS) (according to Bloom's taxonomy, check it out).

Taya can be very creative and comes up with very nice ideas for another word of the day comic strip. She loves to role-play any life situations very emotionally applying all her artistry and charm. She is my dream student! 

And on top of that she has just become an independent reader. She has her bed time stories in English and I think I should do some research on how to provide her with more authentic literature. (Today she read Pippi Longstockings on her own, I could hardly believe it, my dear).

LESSON BREAKDOWN

Duration: 60 min.

Course book: Go Getter 3rd, SB  P. 23, Audio 35, 36, 37

Topic: Shopping 

Aim: Lexic

Stage: Warm up

Roleplay game. We used our toy shop set 'A vegetable stall' with some plastic goods, basket, scales, cash desk and money. Taya loved this game because now she knew how to say this everyday language:

How can I help you?

It is our special offer.

Here is your change and the receipt.

Would you like to pay in cash or by card?

*In terms of common usage it's often shortened to just "cash or card", so you'll probably most often hear "You can pay with cash or card" in shops. Sometimes a cashier will just look at a customer and ask "cash or card?" as the whole sentence.

Stage: new lexic with a focus on spelling 

Guess what's the phrase:

* to stand in a queue (the word 'queue' sounds the same with the letter 'Q')

Taya's got sense of humour! See what the word 'queue' should look like - written in red letters below the picture:

it says: Qyghery

She must have known the word ought to be tricky: it takes more letters to write it than sounds to pronunce! And since those letters are silent why should she care what those letters are? There might be silent friends "ght" whatever! :D

3 words to memorize: queue, receipt, cashier

Focus on pronunciation and spelling, silent letters.

We role-played the situation:

A husband is in a que, calling her wife on the phone, who is still roaming around the store:

- What might be keeping you, honey?

- I've been looking for my favourite squash caviar, darling. Now I've got it, but where can I find you?

- I am standing in a queue, catch up soon!

- Sure!

- I don't want to keep the cashier waiting too long.

- I'm coming! Which queue are you in?

- The cashier number 5.

- Right, I can see you now.

Audio 1_35

(A litlle of TPR) Listen and jump up when you hear the new words:

• Queue, 

• cashier, 

• special offer, 

• receipt, 

• change

Picture p.22

Ex. 2,3,4

ex. 6 and 7

Stage: home task - make the word of the day comic strip

Isn't it adorable? ❤

Shopping #1

Lesson plan. 

Duration: 60 min.

Course book: Go Getter 3rd, SB  P. 24, Audio 38, 39, 40

Topic: Shopping 

Aim: Lexic

Stage: Warm up

Snow ball game:

In my shopping bag there is a carton of cream.

In my shopping bag there is a carton of cream and a can of corn.

In my shopping bag there isa carton of cream, a can of corn and a jar of jam. 

(I used beautiful alliteration here! Can you make the list longer by adding up one item at a time and starting over each time?)

Stage: Lead-in

Word map for shopping:

• Shopping bag, basket, list, trolley, center…

• To do shopping, to go shopping

• Who usually does shopping in your family?

What is shopping?

Tasya believed shopping was about buying some clothes. I explained that we do everyday shopping when we want to bring some milk and bread home.

Stage: Pre-listening - pics

Tasya performed this task amazingly! She said: There must be something with her bag, that made her worry, because she frowned her face. And on the second picture I can see the boys are surprized. There must be something wrong with the delivery, it is not what they had expected.

Listening.

The audio story about Harry and George was funny. 

Stage: post-listening ex.2, reading the prices, matching

Lexic: 

Remember the opposites:

Size: (Big/small) 

Weight: (light/heavy)

Price: (cheap/expensive)

Design: (nice/beautiful/ugly)

I've noticed how hard she gets through this type of task: words don't come easy. She can not say what's the opposite to 'hard'. It took a while till she said 'easy', and I accepted that. But she tried to think of another meaning of 'hard' (as hard as stone) and then she could not come up with any ideas at all, till I said: "is it the word 'soft' that you are trying to call to mind?"

It keeps me thinking - was the sask tiresome? How can she fail with this "Lower Order Thinking Skills" and perform brilliantly with "Higher Order Thinking Skills" anyway?

Comparatives: 

Big-bigger-the biggest

Bad-worse-the worst

Expensive-more expesive-the most expensive

I reminded her the episode from "Frozen" where two sisters see each other for the first time on the ceremony of coronation.

Elsa: You're beautiful!

Anna: You're beautifullER. Oh, no! sorry, I didn't mean 'FOOLER' but 'more beautiful'.

Tasya knew it quite well, the comparatives for short and long words okay, still I believe it was worth paying attention to. Done ✔

****

But Tasya fell off her chair because she could not sit still without putting her feet above her head and prop them against the wall. She pushed the wall too hard so it made her chair topple over LOL :D

 Shall I set the rules for her to remember how to sit, how to behave and show respect - or probably add some TPR activities...

However, we went on with the task and listened to the second part of the audio (it made her relax a bit and forget the chair accident)

****

The boys ordered a toy bag by mistake. 

Inferred meaning:

Granny: Do you like my new bag?

Boys: Yes, it's a good, big bag.

New listening episode: 

https://www.esl-lab.com/easy/shopping-centers/

The story is so sweet! It is about a 6-7 year old girl trying to buy a present for her daddy using some money from her piggy bank.

Target words: wallet, purse, piggy bank

Did you like the dialogue?

What title would you give to it?

Did you hear the jingling coins? What does it say? (money from a piggy bank) isn't it sweet?

She has been collecting it for days and days by helping her mom around the house.

What would you do if you were a shop assistant?

Stage: Post-listening

Do the quiz (on the same webpage)

Done ✔

Tasya learned to read the prices, numerals like $34.99

Target phrase: Let's say it went on sale.

****

60 min Lesson is over.

Tasya gets the "Hometask" which she goes on doing immediately ♥ My girl!

Production Task: Make a dialogue.

She did! A cartoon! Good job! I made a video of her reading it. Watch here

Proper learning for Taya

Here we get to "proper" learning (grammar drilling) with my daughter. She has been infected with this grammar anxiety and she asked me to give her a lesson about The Past Simple Tense. 

Do you think I grasped the chance to follow the PPP principle? Presentation-Practice-Production) What was the point? She has been using the Past Simple since she learned how to speak. I asked her to take a look at the pictures in the phone and choose one, to tell what was it, what happened then. - Successfully done!

Here is the game, the "FUN spot" they call it in this students' book.

How not to make it boring? - Personalization is the answer. More learner-centeredness.

I chose the event to speak about - her Birthday party, which we held a month ago. 

I asked her all sorts of questions just to make her disagree, to make her deny what I was saying. It worked perfectly! And I think that's because she had an emotion behind each statement. Because every point was important: 

♦ she still remembered how we were had been seeking for the recipes of cakes but finally decided to buy one from the baker's.

♦ she invited her best friends who were 3 girls (not 6 boys)

♦ we themed the party as "The Super Heroes School" (not Harry Potter or anything else)

♦ she had a costume of the Lady Cat, not the Ladybug

♦ we prepared a quest on our own

♦ we didn't cook anything but decided to order delivery (which actually failed and I had to send one of the mums to fetch it)

♦ we didn't have piniata this time (it was made for the halloween party earlier in October)

 So you see I had lots of ideas how to ask really provocative questions which made her deny every point and she had to give the right answer each time. We enjoyed this activity a lot!

💜 my final question sounded like that: No-one liked your Birthday party, because it was boring, wasn't it?

💚 it made her frown - she took it too seriously, forgetting for a moment that it was just a game, to make her use the proper form of Past Simple! - I had to give her a clue: Go on, Tasya, you've got to disprove it! Which she did.

💛 Actually, it was not boring, everyone liked it so much, they wish they could come again and play! 

Reflective journal

Though it was controlled, not really open-answered (there could be some options to produce her own statements, but still, she had to follow my clues)

Go Getter 3 SB - is a nice book with great ideas, with guarranteed exellent lesson plans. But still I find more grounds to design my own tasks. Recently I've watched a couple of seminars on the youtube which proves how a good lesson should work. Teaching unplugged by Scott Thornbury or  The Features of TBL lesson by Rod Ellis left me thinking that no matter how good the course books are there is nothing like free practice, student-designed tasks and real communicative situations. I think I am trying to fulfill it instinctively, as a communicator, not teacher.

What's more, I am still thinking about the ways to play this game with a group of students. Ex 10 is good for consolidating some travel vocabulary from the Unit. But what if I made a follow up task just to make my students speak more about the things they want? The instructions would be as follows:

You know, I think it's too boring to practice negative and positive forms of The Past Simple. I want you to practice something else. Being a good communicator (some extra-linguistic skills). Work in pairs. Look at each other. Think of each other's lives: hobbies, families, the way he/she looks, what likes to wear, to do, the choices he/she makes. 

Try to remember anything you already know about him/her. Values matter. And make a question with some false information. In the end we will see how well you know each other and if you've discovered anything new.

(Here is some dangerous ground: Students should respect each other, not remind any cases to put a person into shame, no bullying! Think of the corporative culture in this specific group).

▪ Did you cut your hair short two years ago? (if it's a girl who really loves her long hair and would never dare to cut it short) 

▫ Did you grow your hair long down to shoulder length two years back? (if it is a boy who would never do it)

▪ Did you have a pet spider  (if you know the person is afraid of spiders)

▪ Did you have some coke for lunch? (If you know the person is focused on his health)

▪ Did you make a tattoo which represents a scull (if you know he/she has something else, e.g. a flower and vice versa)

▪ Did your brother graduated from school last year? (if you know he's got a brother who is only three years old).

The last but not least is PEER ASSESSMENT part of the task. Students should vote for the most interesting, funny, provocative question. Whatever they like in this activity: learning something new about their classmates, becomming a better communicators, showing respect to other person's values.

***

Пожалуй, в вышесказанном есть спорные моменты, если не сказать заблуждения. Однако, оставлю это, как этап моего профессионального развития.

Teach lexically. 20 ideas by Hugh Dellar.

Hugh Dellar

And his 20 things in 20 years in 20 minutes

Very thought-provoking points.

(it is my script from the youtube conference clip here)

1. Falling into a me-shaped hole

So, are you still teaching? (the implication is that one yay you'll grow up and get a proper job) :)

Being ME is not a complete disadvantage. The positive advantage: freedom, space for creativity, opportunity to meet amazing people, the space which allows you to recreate the world in the classroom in the way you believe it ought to be.

 We (teachers) have all fallen into our own me-shaped holes.

2. Trouble trouble before trouble troubles you. Bring your conflict resolution mechanism into the classroom.

3. Kicking the grammar habit

Grammar anxiety - a contagious disease - don't infect your students with it. Don't spend many fruitless hours for recognizing the difference between:

The phone was ringing while I had a bath.

The phone was ringing while I was having a bath.

The phone rang while I had a bath.

The phone rang while I was having a bath.

Move on from pondering anxiously over bizarre grammatical sentences that none of us ever gonna use.

4. The way I was taught to teach grammar crippled my understanding of grammar. The big lie is that grammar is somehow at the heart what a language is.

5. There really is no need for needs analysis - most students don't know what they need and most students will tell you that they need more grammar.

What students really need is:

✔A repeated exposure to most frequent words in context;

✔A better understanding of how those most frequent words work with other words and how they work with grammar;

✔An advice on how the best to go about learning all this stuff;

✔To listen to and read a wide range of graded texts;

✔A chance to discuss their opinions and ideas, need to be listened to;

✔To be reformulated, to be scaffolded, to be shown better ways of how to do what they want to do.

6. Resistance is futile - but still widespread!

The stronger the resistance the less is learning. Our job is to smooth this lurching this uphill journey towards submission to a kind of unintelligible logic and submission to a different way of framing the world through language. Oil this waters with more noticing, more smiling and saying, Yes I know it's different, crazy English! - that's why I am here (it keeps me in the job)

7. Input is more important than output. The fear of teacher talking time - to be an output focused teacher.

Students don't actually learn by chatting with each other using the language they already came into the class with. We learn language from language! We need a huge amount of input! The input is far more crucial in the classroom than the output is. 

8. There is nothing as practical as good theory.

Insatiable thirst for recipes. The feeding which we get at any teaching conferences: I have to get something to come away with that I could do in my classroom. The method is wrongly overvalued over language knowledge and language awareness.  

Any innovation is ultimately pointless if we follow basic simple principles of what we do on a day-to-day basis:

➡Ensure Ss meet useful language,

➡Help them to grasp it;

➡Help them to notice aspect of it;

➡Get them to practice it;

➡Get them to revise it;

➡Repeat 🔃

9. The vast majority of mistakes really aren't to do with grammar. There is a wider range of linguistic problems:

Meanings have been semi-digested but the students don't have the sense of the context;

Meanings have been expressed but clumsily;

Ss are bringing over the ways of expressing their ideas from L1

10. The main point of focusing on pronunciation is focusing on the ability to hear and to understand spoken language.

Drilling chunks like: It was a bit of a nightmare!

"the jungle of spoken language" a book by Richard Coldwell "Phonology for listening".

11. We've been in thrall to the cults of Learning Styles, NLP & Multiple Intelligences for far too long.

12. A lesson is not a course.

A course needs to be tightly woven. It needs balance of input, balance of more social language, more academic, more professional language, a balance of light and shade, activity and task time balance, in-built recycling of language - none of these happens without a conscious thought, without planning in advance of delivery of a course. Create an umbrella or a thread which weaves through the lessons. There needs to be a theoretical and conceptual framework which facilitates this kind of interweaving.

13. The group is more important than the individual. Individual is ultimately secondary to the collective. The dynamic of the group is much more crucial than individuals in it. where all of the members value each other equally and they all realise that their own development and progress is tied into that of the other person. Our job is to emphasize the commonality over difference and our failure to do this results in a kind of catastrophic teacher failure on occasion.

14. Phrasal verbs continue to be incredibly badly taught!

15. Skills based lessons are a total waste of time! The skills do not exist outside the language and outside the context. They're nontransferable, they're non context independent. Use the text as a vehicle to the new language and as a prompt to further discussion.

16. We are not the world. 63% of the world does not yet have access to the internet.

17. Teaching technologically means ever more work in future! 

Retro futurists' idea that We were taught - that technology would liberate us in future into a life of massively increased leisure time. We vanish for days down online rabbit holes trying to work. Turned out to be a bit of a lie. We are bombarded usually by strange numbers: 17 apps that your learners must use! 39 ways to using youtube clip!

18. We need more Michaels. Make time to read properly, read books. These four authors are a good place to start. 

Strangely, the ones who have impacted upon me the most all just happened to have been called Michael.

The Names:

Michael Swan Practical English Usage

Michael McCarthy Spoken Grammar

Michael Lewis and his book: The Lexical approach. The book's main principles are that language consists of grammaticalised lexis not lexicalised grammar.

Michael Hoey and his theory: Lexical Priming (Collocation and Colligation)

19. Teaching is not art or science, it's a craft. It requires a level of artistry and a level of wisdom and a level of skill which is acquired by repeating the same tasks over and over again.

20. Times are getting tougher than tough.