Leo Selivan

Leo Selivan

Sundays with BELTA Webinar Series 2018-2019

Fill in the gap: Rethinking gap-fills

Leo Selivan

5 May 2019

Description:

Gap-fill exercises, in which learners have to fill in the blanks with missing words, are often criticized for promoting only receptive knowledge of vocabulary. Grammar gap-fills, on the contrary, tend to require learners to produce the correct form (e.g. put the verb in the correct tense), bypassing the crucial recognition stage of grammar learning. In addition, both vocabulary and grammar gap fills have been criticized for being unauthentic, mechanical and boring. In this webinar, we will discover how, with a bit of imagination, we can put a 'spark' into gap-fill exercises and make them more effective tools for practising new and old vocabulary and grammar

Leo's Bio:

Leo Selivan has been involved in ELT for 15 years in various roles: teacher, examiner, teacher trainer, senior teacher, materials writer, e-moderator. He considers himself fortunate in three respects: (1) starting his ELT career with the British Council; (2) having Penny Ur as his Master's thesis supervisor; (3) getting to work with Scott Thornbury on his book Lexical Grammar, which saw the light in 2018 (Cambridge University Press). His other professional writing credits include articles in Modern English Teacher, EFL Magazine, The Guardian Education, Humanising Language Teaching as well as his own aptly-named blog Leoxicon (http://leoxicon.blogspot.com).