ESOL Essex – Hadcock

 A rich seam of learning

A new rich seam of learning has opened up for my ESOL classes in the form of Phonology for Listening’s ideas for the teaching of listening. And it’s not just a dusting, it’s a veritable gold mine and ready to be plundered.

Reinvigoration

It has reinvigorated my teaching with its exciting ideas, mastery of detail and clear suggestions of how to teach. My classes love these exercises, with students usually making the comment that it is vital to do them but that they are difficult. One Entry 1 student, Aitor, said simply: “It is my life.” What he meant was that he needed to learn from these exercises in order to live and work in England.

Honest with complexities

What could be better than a grammar for listening that is honest as it confronts the complexities of fast speech without shying away from explaining the  distortions  created by first language speakers? And we tutors have to help our students disentangle this chaos and there is no other guide than this book.

Jane Hadcock has also written a four-page review plus description of a lesson here. It is very gratifying that an ESOL teacher has picked up on the ideas, and implemented them so well.