Scott Thornbury - Seven things beginning with M | TeachingEnglish

In this talk, Scott Thornbury looks at some of the basic principles of learning and education.

In November 2016, British Council Armenia hosted their fourth teacher development event with Scott Thornbury as a guest speaker. This talk 'Seven things beginning with M' looks at teaching in a post-method era.

Seven Things beginning with M

A truism that no single method is going to meet the needs of all teachers and all learners, either locally or globally. Hence, we now operate in what is called the post-method era. Yet methods formerly provided teachers with a certain sense of security, a role which perhaps coursebooks now fulfil. This security is illusory, though, if it is not grounded in some basic principles of learning and education, principles that I will attempt to identify, and which (I will argue) constitute a blueprint for a coherent approach to language teaching.

Link to the recording of this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raMaoADLqcM

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Alphabetical coherent approach

This approach seems to me for now the best approach and is better than the constructivist approach because the latter is somewhat vague.This coherent approach is very suitable like a creative teacher like me. For example, B stands for boldness and brevity. Brevity is the soul of wit. Be precise in whatever you say or speak. We need boldness to speak the truth. I am bold and I say English is not the greatest language but it is the most popular language. All languages are equally great and English is just a language like any other language. The language of the powerful becomes the popular language. I am bold enough to say that nobody can hamper the popularity of English even if you do not like it. So bear with me for my boldness and brevity even if I sound somewhat boorish. I do not think what others think of me because I am truly bold. This is a true statement to show that how coherent approach can be used to teach English without an English text. Whatever is spoken by the teacher becomes the text for the taught. I am bold enough to say that this method will succeed only when the teachers are bold, creative and belief in the approach. Hats off to Scot and my unstinting support to the British council for enhancing teaching Skills among English teachers.and Popularising the latest English methods and thoughts across the Globe. Bravo!

ALPHABETICAL METHOD.

I call it Alphabetical method too.A means ability, Unless you have it you can not achieve anything.An able man has the ability to awaken anybody because of his ability and alacrity.An average man can never achieve it.

BLUE PRINT FOR COHERENT APPROACH

As Rightly pointed by scot Thornbury, no method is perfect as no book is complete.A teacher has to be so creative as to make the English class room lively.I am making use of his creative use of the ENGLISH ALPHABET for expanding the subject because we go forward in the journey of English teaching from a letter to words, words to sentences to paras, paras to stories, stories to novels, biographies., autobiographies.Whatever we write in English or any other language consists of only 26 letters. What a great scholar Scot is! he is really a genius of teaching English. It is high time all the English teachers in the world followed him and became the creative teachers themselves.I am going to become one because , I think, his blue print for coherent approach will revolutionize the process of English teaching across the globe. Let us all salute Scot Thornbury for his creativity and genius