I have yet to be dissuaded from the opinion that the energy, money and time spent on distinctions between "mentoring" and "coaching" is entirely wasted.

Tolkien was wrong about exam papers. The best kind is one where a student does exactly what the task requires to exactly the required standard, no more, no less. Easy to mark and the student passes.

This is the kind of thing you get when you ask educational organisations to behave like businesses. Lost opportunities for young people. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Looked through this to see if there was anything about SMART targets. Noted that while there is a small amount of stuff about goal setting, esp. around behvavioural, activity focussed goals the SMART framework is entirely absent. educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-ev...

Just put a long text through Word 2016. I'd forgotten how much of a pain in the bum prescriptivist it was, insisting that I use only "that" with a defining relative clause and advising me to avoid a split infinitive. (And what a ridiculous example sentence it uses...)

Reflecting on the post 16 white paper, here's a blog post I wrote in 2017 about the ongoing disregard for adults in the general discourse around education. We've really not moved on much, have we? samuelshep.wordpress.com/2017/06/19/a...

A question I've been pulling over for decades. samuelshep.wordpress.com/2025/10/06/w...

I need to remember this quote

Thinking about formative assessment and what it looks like in ESOL (and why it's so hard to pin it into little boxes! wp.me/pZQ5N-2Td

I always think about planning at this time of year. wp.me/sZQ5N-cells

I felt that something needed explaining after the plenary at #natecla25 today, so I wrote a blog post about it. #bemoresquirrel samuelshep.wordpress.com/2025/06/28/b...

Travelling down to Birmingham, sadly missing out in day one of #NATECLA but will be there tomorrow, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and without a ridiculously early start

Lunch outside today. Love community teaching.

Minimal pair of the day...

She's not wrong. Academic writing can be (and often is) the pits to read. And I don't care how important or insightful your research is, if you write about it in an unreadable way, you might as well lock it in a box at the bottom of the ocean.

A little self indulgence based on something I may or may not include in my amendments, reflecting on why I write stuff down, and why it's so much easier than the grind of writing a plan. wp.me/pZQ5N-2Qa

Stopped off in Ely on my way home from the LSRN conference and found a hill.

Good lord. Travelling to Kings Lynn through Cambridgeshire and I'd forgotten just how flat this part of the world is. It's like God took Oxfordshire and ironed it.

Listening to this. Kind of.

Just hitting the road for the @LSRNetwork National Conference in Kings Lynn. Excited for the event, of course, but also because it's only the third time I've ever ventured east of the M1.

Controversially today, I left students in first language pairs and let them talk in those languages while planning and writing a text together. Talk is work in the ESOL classroom but sometimes the work needs to be something else.

I am notorious at work for being overly sympathetic, i.e. crap, when it comes to chasing attendance and punctuality. But I have a new class which, after three weeks, is challenging even my usually very laissez faire position. Trust me, this is bad.

Another reason to never fly again. I just worked it out and those seat dimensions would be crippling for me. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

A fairly sensible response to the question but at the same time, I wonder if the author's wife wrote to the Polish equivalent of the Telegraph about her son not being able to speak to her family? www.telegraph.co.uk/family/paren...

It's spring. So obviously time for the last member of our family to emerge from the winter gloom. (For anyone concerned by the size: it's temporary housing, and she'll be out and about around the house soon, as well as getting a nice new big house next week.)

I am slowly gathering various efl teaching "ideas" books published in the 80s and 90s, like the Pilgrims resource books for teachers. They are bloody marvellous. I assume they stopped being published c.1999 because these sorts of ideas collections moved online, which is fine, to a point 1/2

This afternoon's accompaniment to the amendments #phdlife

Been mulling this one over for years. Finally got a shape for it today. wp.me/pZQ5N-2Pw

I come to ESOL for the students and the satisfaction, I stay for the grammar.

Viva preparation assistance?

Busy writing "schemes of learning" for the rest of the academic year. Internally cursing because it's all for show and the course I'll actually teach will, by April if not earlier, end up radically different to the one I'm trying to squeeze into a spreadsheet.

Checking every work communication channel every ten minutes at the moment. Possibilities are: 1. a full snow day; 2. a "misery by bus" day; 3. a "metaphysical despair by car" day; or 4. a "f-ck it I'll cycle and take my chances" day. Preferences: 1, 4, 2. But not 3. It's rarely that bad....

Some people have Wham, some have Slade, and some may even have public Enemy, but for me it's The Waitresses. #bestChristmassong

First blog post I've shared here, thinking about how emergent language works with beginner ESOL students. samuelshep.wordpress.com/2024/12/07/e...

A great example of how no one can find actual uses for LLMs that aren't scams for grifts. Quite literally the LAST thing publishing needs is MORE manuscripts, especially low quality and unedited AI regurgitations. This isn't a problem being solved. www.thebookseller.com/news/new-pub...

This would be a nice thing to catch on properly here. It has a bit: I only wear "proper" shoes when I'm in college and that's only if I remember to change them. amp.theguardian.com/fashion/2024...

I love ESOL students and teaching them but the "hopeful negotiation" you get when you say "I'm sorry but that class day/time/location/level/etc. is 100% not possible" drives me insane.

I had an interview yesterday for an internal post I am absolutely qualified to do. I've spent the last 12 hours listing all the things I didn't mention, and all the things I should have said instead of what I did say. I have no idea how I did.

In the unlikely event of a snow day tomorrow, my instructions for students are as follows: "Do whatever makes you happy today, and be ready to come back and tell me about it. I'll set work online and be available at the beginning and end of each lesson time if you need to check in." 1/2

In the process of shifting across here, but apologies if I'm a bit less post for the time being...

Crisp!