Advancing Learning Podcast
With your co-hosts Will Rixon and Harry Waters, the Advancing Learning Podcast is a place for conversation, debate, idea-sharing and merry-making, all in the name of Advancing Learning in the wonderful world of ELT.
It accompanies the wider Advancing Learning Academic Programme from Macmillan Education, where you'll find a whole range of teacher training webinars, blog articles, resources and more at www.macmillanenglish.com/alap.
Episodes
27 episodes
S02 E10 Using Plays to Explore Language and Emotion
Jody Medland joins Will to share his unique experience using manucripts from plays to allow students to explore them linguistically and also the motivations behind the lines, and therefore, the emotions their character is feeling.Listen ...
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Season 2
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Episode 10
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27:53
S02 E09 Mindfulness and Its Journey to the Classroom
Mindful learning and mindful practices are gradually becoming a staple of an effective and efficient learning environment. Why has it become so important? Where did it's journey to education start? And why should all teachers be awa...
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26:40
S02 E08 The Autonomous Teenager: Key Ingredients
What does it take for a teenager to be in control of their learning? Is it the subject matter? The pedagogy behind the content? Or is it a simple matter of having a good relationship with the teacher?Karolina Kotorowicz-Jasińska proposes...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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26:10
S02 E07 Results are in!: Teen Emotions Survey Roundtable
Alicja Gałązka picks apart your responses to questions we posed to you in a recent survey aiming to find out more about your experience of teenagers' emotions when they reach teenagehood and how they manifest during learning.What are the...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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30:30
S02 E06 Making Learning Meaningful to Engage Your Learners
Monica Rodriguez Salvo joins Will and Harry to delve deep into making learning as relevant as possible to make the absolute best of the time you have with your learners.They discuss if you tap into a student's agency and the things they ...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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27:06
S02 E05 Learning Grammar in L1 vs. L2
Anna Parr-Modrzejewska joins Harry and Will in an episode that digs deep into how grammar is taught in a whole variety of circumstances, from L1 to L2, from implicit to explicit instruction, and from younger to more mature learners.What...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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31:47
S02 E04 What's the Point of Assessment?
Pere Cortiella Ibàñez and Will Rixon pull apart the true purpose of assessment why it's regarded in the way it is by all its players: the teacher, the student, the parent, the institution and the government.What is the true purpose of a...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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30:23
S02 E03 Good results should reflect good learning
The third episode of the Advancing Learning Pod brings Claudia Rey into the fray (rhyming intended). Claudia sets Harry and Will on the straight and narrow with what's important when preparing learners for exams.I'll give you a clue...i...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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28:56
S02 E02 Inclusivity, We All Matter
Do you feel your classroom is inclusive? To what extent? What does 'inclusive' mean to you?Sarah Hillyard joins Will and Harry to discuss the multitude of meanings of 'inclusion' and how this might be achieved in the English language le...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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27:00
S02 E01 Curiosity, Classrooms and Beavers
To kick-off the second season of Macmillan Education's Advancing Learning Podcast, Will and Harry are joined by the Eltonix pair, Sea Steele and Sarah Smith to discuss what curiosity is, how brains work when they're curious and how it ca...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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28:40
S01 E16 SDGs: An Infinite Classroom Resource
Harry is joined by Marcela Villan to explore a whole range of classroom ideas that you can use to help your learners to explore the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals in class.Bookmark this session to keep these ideas in your...
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Season 1
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Episode 16
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29:24
S01E15 Instagram, Tik-tok & Short-form Content
Claire Bowes, with more than 1.5 million followers across her Instagram and Tik-tok profiles, Englii, joins Will and...
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Season 1
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Episode 15
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31:17
S01 E14 Proactively Diminishing Bullying Part 2
For the second part of this conversation with the wonderful Donna Lee Fields, she probes Harry and Will on their own reactions to certain behaviour in the classroom.The 3 of them look at 2 scenarios and how might a teacher label them in...
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Season 1
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Episode 14
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31:58
S01 E13 Becoming an ELT Author
Ethan Mansur, author of the recently published Ready For C2 joins Harry and Will on the metaphoric sofa, to discuss how he got into authoring (and others might do so) from being a teacher and teacher trainer. Hear from 3 diff...
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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26:41
S01 E12 Pronunciation: Get Out of Your Head
Harry and Will are joined by Adrian Underhill, a true icon of pronunciation and a lifelong advocate for supporting our language learners with the relevant knowledge and skills to develop their own pronunciation.The conversation begins w...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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28:45
S01 E11 To C2 or not to C2
Elspeth Pollock (teacher training, assessment and exams extraordinaire) joins Will and Harry for a brilliant discussion about C2 proficiency. They look at the student that has ambitions to achieve a C2 level on paper, and also what it takes to ...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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31:43
S01 E10 Beyond the Classroom: Face-to-face Vs Online CPD
In this second part to the 'Beyond the Classroom' episodes, Harry and Will delve in the wheres, whys and hows of teaching and learning, focusing on the comparisons between face-to-face vs. online teacher training.What do you think? Does...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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26:54
S01 E09 Beyond the Classroom: Expanding Horizons in ELT
From their relatively unique perspectives within the wild world of ELT, Harry and Will discuss the life of a teacher outside the day-to-day of the language learning classroom.This episode looks at some ways teachers might explore to div...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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30:05
S01 E08 Proactively Diminishing Bullying Part 1
In this standout episode with Harry and Will, we are joined by Donna Lee Fields to get her eye-opening perspective on reinforcing your students positively.This episode looks at so-called 'bullying', and specifically 3 scenarios and how ...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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36:08
S01 E07 Learning to Love Learning
This episode takes us right back to the origins of learning, with our special guests from Eltonix.com, Sea Steel and Sarah Smith.How can a teacher make the best of those natural urges we all had when we first tried to understand the wor...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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32:52
S01E06 What is Grammar's Role in the ELT Classroom?
With special guest David Spencer joining Harry and Will, listen as they dive into the role of grammar in a classroom of 2023, and if indeed, there is a wrong or right way of approaching grammar instruction.Flipped grammar classroom vide...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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30:31
S01E05 Representation is More Than a Photo
Is every household the same throughout the world? Does everyone look more or less the same? Do we all think in the same way, roughly? Of course not!In this very special episode, Harry Waters is joined by Tamires Gama, who shares her inc...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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30:36
S01E04 Teen Perspective: English Skills for Life
How many ways are there to learn a language? Will and Harry are joined by two inspirational guests, Evita and Jan, both of whom have reached a stage in their learning journey where they can confidently and competently tell us all about it. Have...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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28:48
S01E03 Can Creativity be Learned, or is it Innate?
Of course, there is a pretty obvious answer to this question, but the real question is HOW is creativity learned and, therefore, taught? This episode explores the various ways that teachers could help their learners explore creativity in and ou...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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31:55
S01E02 Smartphones in the classroom. Yey or Ney?
Talk about 'splitting the room'...depending on the teacher, one might think that smartphones can provide some really helpful learning opportunities, where another might ban them in the classroom altogether. Join Harry and Will as they pull this...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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30:04