50% off our CPD courses for podcast listeners - click here and use the code "TTT" Does the grammar that is normally taught match the evidence corpus linguistics shows? Dr. Graham Burton helps us dissect the big beasts of English grammar. Dr. Graham Burton is assistant professor at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Italy). His main research interests are applications of corpus linguistics to language teaching, materials development, pedagogic grammar, academic writing and multilingualism. He ...
Jul 10, 2025•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 110
Want to move away from 1:1 and build your teaching business? Book a free 1:1 with us to see if we can help. "Don't teach at the students. Teach off them." Scott Thornbury becomes our first repeat guest and helps us dissect this and more. Scott Thornbury is a teacher, teacher trainer, and award-winning author in English language education. He has taught and trained teachers around the world, including on the MA TESOL program at The New School in New York, and is widely recognized for his contribu...
Jun 19, 2025•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 111
Want to monetize your skills as a teacher? Book a free 1:1 with us to see if we can help. Learner autonomy is something that happens INSIDE the classroom, not out of it. Teachers can't sit back and wait for their students to become autonomous. This is part of what the esteemed Dr. David Little shared with us in our conversation. David Little is Fellow Emeritus at Trinity College Dublin and a leading scholar in learner autonomy, linguistic diversity, and the application of the CEFR in language ed...
May 02, 2025•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 109
Want to monetize your skills as a teacher? Book a free 1:1 with us to see if we can help. "It's such social injustice to expect people to use English like native English speakers, whichever country they're in." We dive into this and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) with Jennifer Jenkins. Jennifer Jenkins is a British linguist and academic. She was Chair Professor of Global Englishes at the University of Southampton until her retirement in 2019. She is a leading figure in the study of English as ...
Mar 30, 2025•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 108
Book a complimentary meeting with us to help grow your business. Learners can think a native teacher is a vaccine against poor pronunciation. Equally, native teachers can be misinformed in thinking that students should just follow them. We dive into pronunciation, intelligibility, and teacher effects on learner performance with the great John Levis. John is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Technology at Iowa State University. He is founding editor of the Journal of Second Language Pronunciat...
Feb 28, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 107
Book a free 1:1 to strategize your goals for your teaching business . Native speaker or non-native speaker? Monolingual or plurilingual? Why do we have a binary bias in modern society? These are some of the questions we tackled with Dr. Angelica Galante. Dr. Angelica Galante is an Associate Professor in Second Language Education and Applied Linguistics, and William Dawson Scholar at McGill University. As the Director of the Plurilingual Lab, Dr. Galante conducts studies with language learners, t...
Jan 29, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 106
Book a free 1:1 to strategize your goals for your teaching business . Escaping precarity in ELT? Join our free support group here. Why do some teachers thrive as entrepreneurs while others struggle? We dissect this question. Many teachers want to earn more, teach online, and gain more clients - but struggle to implement a sustainable strategy. We go over seven "Cs" to help. In this episode, we dive into the "seven Cs of success for teacher entrepreneurship" and discuss: confidence as a skill rat...
Jan 04, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 105
Book a free 1:1 to strategize your teaching business goals. Black Friday 2024: 50% off CPD (click here). Escaping precarity in ELT? Join our free support group here. If you use vocabulary and grammar tests, you don't teach communicatively. Audrey Rousse-Malpat tells us why. Audrey Rousse-Malpat is an assistant professor in second language acquisition at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She is also an entrepreneur and leads a teacher training company called Project Frans specializi...
Nov 28, 2024•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 104
Book a free 1:1 to strategize your teaching business goals. Escaping precarity in ELT? Join our free support group here. Education is designed around focusing on the learner first and the teacher as a medium to support the learner. Sarah Mercer tells us why this leads to unhealthy teachers. Sarah Mercer is a Professor of foreign language teaching at the University of Graz, Austria. Her research interests include all aspects of the psychology surrounding the foreign language learning experience. ...
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 103
Book a free 1:1 to strategize your teaching business goals. Escaping precarity in ELT? Join our free support group here. ELT is full of disasters , including the destruction of the communicative approach . Dr. Enrica Piccardo tells us why. Dr. Piccardo is a Professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her research spans language teaching approaches/curricula, multi/plurilingualism, creativity and complexity in l...
Sep 25, 2024•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 102
Book a free 1:1 to strategize your teaching business goals. Escaping precarity in ELT? Join our free support group here. What do toad venom, the 5 stages of grief, and precarity all have in common? Andrew, Leo, and Mike explain. Sustainability in the ELT industry as a teacher is pretty simple: 1. It is precarious 2. We all need to earn more money 3. It's unlikely to do that by having just one job. In this episode, we discuss strategies to earn more by creating your own offer. Specifically, we di...
Aug 24, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 101
Escaping precarity in ELT? Join our free support group here. Want to move faster? Book a free 1:1 to strategize your teaching business. ELT provides the wrong input: language as it should be spoken not as it is spoken . This is wrong and Sheila Thorn gives us another way. Sheila Thorn is a teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer whose niche focuses on teaching listening. She founded The Listening Business in 1998 and is the author of countless seminal books that have moved our industry for...
Jul 31, 2024•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 100
Join our free support group for teachers building their business. Grammar instruction or grammar learning? We dive into this with today's guests. Tania Ionin is a Professor of Linguistics and Director of Graduate Studies in Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her areas of expertise include second language acquisition and experimental semantics, with a focus on the nominal domain. Silvina Montrul is Marjorie Roberts Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Professor in t...
Jun 18, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 99
Join our free support group for teachers building their business. So many teachers focus on teaching when they should focus on something else. In this episode, we dive into this with the great Bill VanPatten. Bill VanPatten is an award-winning scholar and teacher with an international reputation in the fields of second language acquisition and second language teaching. He is a requested speaker at conferences and meetings and over the course of his career he has given over 500 keynote speeches, ...
Apr 26, 2024•2 hr 3 min•Ep. 98
Join our free support group for teachers building their business. So many teachers feel they can't teach pronunciation if their speech doesn't sound a certain way. Listen to this episode to discover why that isn't true. Robin Walker and Gemma Archer are pronunciation specialists who co-authored " Teaching English Pronunciation for a Global World, " which aims to encourage pronunciation instruction from a lingua franca and intelligibility perspective. We chat with Robin & Gemma about: intelli...
Mar 29, 2024•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 97
Find your niche & get 5 new clients. Start here. Many teachers are wary of using a task-based approach. Learn how to overcome that and start using it in your business or classrooms. Lara Bryfonski is an applied linguist and assistant professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on task-based language teaching and she is the Project Director of STARTALK-TASK, an NSA-funded task-based training program for critical language teachers. She recently co-authored the book ...
Feb 16, 2024•1 hr 48 min•Ep. 96
Our 5in30 community helps you get 5 new clients in 30 days. Start here. Donna M. Brinton is a methodologist, trainer, author, and distinguished figure in applied linguistics. A key aspect of Donna's work is her advocacy for Content-Based Instruction (CBI). Over her five decades in the field, she has authored and co-authored many books, including the famed "Apple Book." In this conversation, Donna expounds on: her beginnings as a teacher & her struggles with methodology why she decided to foc...
Jan 13, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 95
Our 5in30 helps you get 5 new clients in 30 days. Start here. Leo, Mike, and Andrew grab some nog, get in the holiday spirit, and chat about authenticity - Merriam-Webster's word of the year for 2023. We delve into what the word means to us and how we and anyone building a business can bring as much authenticity as possible into 2024. Specifically, we dive into: LYE's beginnings our process and struggles with niching down why the response "teachers will love that" to our first offer was a bad an...
Dec 20, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 94
We help teachers start their own online business for free. Click here to join in. Cecilia Nobre is a Ph.D. student in Applied Linguistics at Warwick, has been an EFL teacher for over 20 years, and is a trainer on DipTESOL, CertTESOL, and Celta trainer. She has co-authored the book "Using Video to Support Teacher Reflection and Development in ELT" with Steve Mann and Laura Baecher. Her research interests lie in the areas of teacher development, video reflection, and reflective practice. In this e...
Nov 28, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 93
We help teachers start their own business for free. Click here to join in. Geoff Jordan is a teacher, trainer, academic, and author. Geoff has a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition, has worked at ESADE, Barcelona for 28 years, and recently co-authored a book with the late Mike Long called " ELT Now and How It Could Be." His main academic interests are: theories of SLA, psycholinguistics, teaching practice and computational linguistics. Specifically, Geoff touches on: his beginnings in the ELT i...
Oct 24, 2023•1 hr 49 min•Ep. 92
See our free CPD and business growth guides for teachers. Click here. Paul Nation is an Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Victoria and a renowned author and scholar in our industry. He joins us for a discussion on learning, putting research into practice, and - of course - the four strands 27 years later. Paul touches specifically on: his vocabulary niche the birth of the four strands how it's a basis for course construction, not lesson design how he learned Greek on...
Sep 10, 2023•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 91
Want to get your first 5 clients in the next 30 days? Click here. Deep in the Dogme Days of Summer, Mike, Leo, and Andrew get into part 2 of their series. Here, we delve into: using Dogme in the scope of outcome-based instruction challenges implementing reactive teaching in different contexts obstacles in moving from a structured approach to teaching to one of transference using the "so you can" framework to get to the heart of your client's desired transformation handling student objections to ...
Aug 17, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 90
Click here to join our free teacherpreneur support community to grow together. Andrew, Mike, and Leo sit down and ponder Dogme....as a new approach? It certainly has experienced a resurgence since the pandemic and we are curious why that is. We also dive into: the role of the teacher the shift away from planning & towards reacting what authentic communication actually means how teachers can model lifelong learning habits using Dogme in your business and using the less is more philosophy As a...
Jul 21, 2023•53 min•Ep. 89
Click here to join our free teacherpreneur support community to grow together. Dylan was born just outside London and has been working in the ELT sector for nearly 25 years. About 12 years ago, he discovered Dogme, or as he prefers to call it “Teaching Unplugged”, and this led to his interest in deep-end learning approaches like TBLT and language coaching. When he trains teachers, he makes sure they learn how to move away from the coursebook and deal with emergent language. In this episode, he s...
Jun 21, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 88
Click here to grow with other teacherpreneurs in our free support community. And click here to check out The Chilled Investor to make your money work for you. Nicola has been in ELT for over 20 years as a teacher, materials writer, and entrepreneur. She's written many coursebooks and over 200 pages of the British Council learning English website. More recently, she helps language teachers take control of their finances. Her interest in investing came about almost by accident when she began looki...
May 07, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 87
Click here to grow with other teacherpreneurs in our free support community. Ken has been in ELT since 1995. A teacher, trainer, and author, he has written or co-written over 20 books, including the recently published Connections 3 coursebooks with Pearson. In this episode, he dives into the lexical approach, why it never caught on and how teachers can use it in their teaching. Specifically, we dive into: how ELT has evolved why Michael Lewis was "pissed" Dogme ELT & its place how teachers c...
Apr 18, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 86
Click here to grow with other teacherpreneurs in our free support community. Leo, Mike and Andrew return to the studio to discuss the most common challenges teacherpreneurs face. They get into the three hats that a teacherpreneur needs and how to build up each one. Specifically, they talk about: balancing the teacher, creator, and entrepreneur in you teaching being the only profession where we feel guilty about earning more money why a lack of goal clarity means you won't move forward perfection...
Feb 20, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 85
Click here to grow with other teacherpreneurs in our free support community. Leo, Mike, and Andrew hop in the studio to record their annual year-end audit. Here, they reflect on the lessons they learned in 2022. They run through specific lessons that drive success, failure, and resilience. Specific lessons they touch on are: 1. It always takes longer than we think it's going to take 2. Behind mountains are more mountains 3. Knowing what success looks like 4. Starting small 5. Getting over the ca...
Dec 17, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 84
Grow with other teacherpreneurs in our free support community. Danny Norrington Davies and Richard Chinn have done extensive research on emergent language and have co-authored "Working with emergent language." Danny has over 25 years in the industry and is currently a CELTA and DELTA tutor. His first book "Teaching Grammar: From Rules to Reasons" was a best-seller. Richard has trained teachers all over the world and currently does pre-service and in-service training courses at IH London. He is a...
Nov 16, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 83
Join our free teacherpreneur community. Katarina Mentzelopoulos is an ESRC-funded Ph.D. student at the University of Nottingham, UK. Her research interests include language learning motivation, exceptional language learning, multilingualism and learner identity. She recently co-authored two books with the late Zoltán Dörnyei: Stories from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency (50% discount code STORIES50 until 30/11) Lessons from Exceptional Language Learners Who...
Oct 17, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 82
