Sponge Chats – Teacher Training with Borja Uruñuela

This blog post is part of the Sponge Chats video series.

A short time ago, I had the pleasure to sit down with trainer, manager, school owner, and author, Borja Uruñuela for the first Sponge Chat. For those of you that don’t know Borja, he is one of the owners of St. James, one of the most well-known language academies in Spain, as well as a prominent figure within ACEIA and TESOL, having been teaching and training for well over twenty-five years. I’ve seen Borja present at various ACEIA conferences many times, and every time I had the ‘that-was-a-great-session’ feeling. Because of this, I felt he was the perfect person to kick off the new video series.

In our talk, which can be seen here on the Sponge ELT YouTube channel or listen to in the podcast below, we spoke about many things from starting out as a non-native teacher and moving into teacher training, to tips on how to become a teacher trainer. A massive thank you to Borja for taking the time to sit down with me – it was insightful, rewarding, and I can’t wait to catch up again!

Check it out and let me know what you think!

If you don’t feel like watching the Sponge Chat, feel free to listen to the podcast on Spotify!

Sponge Chats – Perspectives on TBLT with Daniel O. Jackson – SPONGE ELT

In this Sponge Chat, I had the pleasure to sit down with Daniel O. Jackson so discuss his views on TBLT. We spoke about the 'what' of TBLT, the role of implicit and explicit learning, teacher noticing and many other good things. 00:00 Introduction 02:30 Hi Daniel! 05:30 Sponge Chats 06:00 Who is Daniel? 11:15 Daniel's PhD journey 17:30 Where did Daniel's interest in TBLT start? 27:00 What is TBLT? 35:00 TBLT and needs analyses 42:00 Implicit learning 53:30 Teacher's role in TBLT and Teacher noticing 01:06:00 TBLT and critical pedagogy 01:15:00 Advice to teacher educators 01:18:00 Daniel's recommended reading

1. Sponge Chats – Perspectives on TBLT with Daniel O. Jackson 01:23:26
2. Sponge Chats – Perspectives on Assessment with Fatime Losonci 59:31
3. Sponge Chats – Materials writing and OtterELT with Laura Broadbent and Billie Jago 01:09:14
4. Sponge Chats – Perspectives on TBLT with TBLT expert Martin East 51:10
5. Perspectives on money management and investing for ELT professionals with Nicola Prentis (The Chilled Investor) 45:28