Episode 33: Scott Thornbury

Feb 14, 2021

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Scott Thornbury joins Leo, Mike, and Andrew in studio.

Scott has taught and trained in Egypt, UK, Spain, and in his native New Zealand. Until recently he taught an online MA TESOL program for The New School in New York. His writing credits include several award-winning books for teachers on language and methodology. He is also the series editor for the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers, and a trustee of the Hands Up Project, which promotes drama activities in English for children in under-resourced regions of the Arab world. At present, he is working for the Mosaik Foundation, training teachers of refugees in the Middle East in how to integrate communicative activities into their online classes.

We delve into Scott's career journey, and he discusses:

his career beginnings
his early influences and the "mother goose approach"
a paradigm shift away from drills and accuracy to a fluency-based, communicative approach
views on teacher development
his writing process and how nothing on the page in front of you is alright when there's a lot behind you
Dogme and Leo Van Lier's influence on him

For more on Scott Thornbury:

His website is www.scottthornbury.com

He tweets at @thornburyscott

His highly acclaimed blog https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/

Mosaik Foundation

Hands Up Project

For more information on this episode, see our blog post about it.

Podcast Creation:

This episode was created with support from Thinkific & Podbean. If you're looking to launch a course or start a podcast, we highly recommend them - and use them ourselves.

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