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Pride & Prejudice & Plurilingualism
It’s easy to talk about motivation as if it lives entirely inside learners, but this recent study, published in the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, reminds us that emotions are social too. Pride, in particular, turns out to be far more than a fleeting feeling – it’s a powerful signal of identity, belonging &…
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Native Speakerism: When “Sounding Right” Outweighs Being Right
Sometimes a study pops up on your screen that feels uncomfortably familiar. This one does exactly that, because it holds up a mirror to a belief many in ELT quietly know is still shaping classrooms, hiring & professional identity: the idea that “nativeness” signals better teaching. The study The researchers used a sequential explanatory design…
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Thinking Out Loud… Literally: What Multilingual Minds Reveal
Every now & then I read a study that nudges me to rethink how I see a particular group of learners. In this instance it’s what we assume about multilingual learners’ “ability” versus their opportunity to show it. The study left me wondering what our assessments are measuring exactly. The study, published in Frontiers in…
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Trust Me, I’m a Teacher
Whatever you teach & however you teach it, trust plays a large part in how people perceive your lessons. Not just the trust you intend to communicate, but the trust others believe you’re giving them. That difference—between expectation & perception—turns out to be far more consequential than we often assume. A recent study in Frontiers…
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Whose English Counts? Rethinking Power & Practice in EAP
One might assume that of all the flavours of ELT, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) would be the most attuned to inclusivity — especially given that it so often involves learners relocating to an English‑speaking context to study. Yet the research suggests the picture is far less straightforward. A new systematic review by Bakogiannis &…
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Bottom‑up by default: the non‑native brain at work
Sometimes you come across research that feels oddly familiar: you read it & think, yes, this is exactly what my learners describe when they say “I can hear every sound but still don’t understand”. This study, published in Frontiers, digs into that experience using EEG to compare how native & non‑native listeners process speech when…
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