Sponge Chats – Teacher Training with Khanh-Duc Kuttig

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

A short time ago I had the pleasure to sit down with teacher, teacher training and TESOL Teacher of the Year award recipient, Khanh-Duc Kuttig. Khanh-Duc was kind enough to give up her time to share some insights into her career path, from teacher to trainer. We also looked at some important differences between ‘training’ and ‘developing’, and we also touched on ‘native speakerism’, working in universities, being part of ELTA-Rhine and IATEFL TTEdSIG, and potential issues with qualifications and career paths in ELT.

Firstly, for those that don’t know Khanh-Duc, she is hilarious. We had a great time off camera just getting the video started. But apart from this, she is also very, very knowledgeable about her craft and it was great to be able to hear about her experiences in ELT, especially with regard to teacher training. If you would like to see more of Khanh-Duc, she has an upcoming workshop on the applications of the CEFR on the 10th of November 2021 which you can attend for free. Or, alternatively, you can come see both her and myself (and many other lovely people including Teresa Bestwick and Harry Waters) at TESOL France 2021!

As usual, we also looked at some book recommendations. Here are Khanh-Duc’s:

• Diane Larsen-Freeman – From Grammar to Grammaring
• Tessa Woodward – Thinking in the EFL class

Make sure you check out the Sponge Chat on YouTube and Spotify, and if you do like it please remember to give it a like, subscribe and comment. I will reply when I can 🙂

Lara Bryfonski – What we know about the importance of corrective feedback / Focus-on-Form – SPONGE ELT – Bridge the Gap

If you're a true fan of Sponge ELT and Sponge Chats, you'll have seen Lara's name before! She recently co-authored a book with Alison Mackey called the Art and Science of Language Teaching, and she has been on before to talk about task-based language teaching from the teacher education side of things. In short, she was the right person to ask about what we know about corrective feedback and how we should be going about it in our classrooms. You can find more about Lara on her site here, and whole list of things she's been involved in here.

1. Lara Bryfonski – What we know about the importance of corrective feedback / Focus-on-Form 33:57
2. Bridge the Gap – Martin Bloomfield: What do we know about Dyslexia in language education? 01:02:19
3. Bridge the Gap – Geoff Jordan: What do we know about explicit and implicit knowledge and why is it important? 01:00:13
4. Bridge the Gap – Masatoshi Sato: What is the research practice gap? 47:49
5. Sponge Chats – Perspectives on Business Mindset with Rachael Roberts 44:59