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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · 3d

A question I've been pulling over for decades. samuelshep.wordpress.com/2025/10/06/w...

On most, if not all, teacher training courses, there’s a chunk of the lesson plan form dedicated to the “rationale” behind the lesson, or even the stage of the lesson. Sometimes i…

samuelshep.wordpress.com

Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · 15d

I need to remember this quote

Carlton Reid @carltonreid.com · 17d

My reply: “I don't do rage bait.”

My reasoning: “Arguing with idiots is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, the bird is going to shit on the board and strut around like it won anyway.” Quote by Shannon L. Alder

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Sep 9

Thinking about formative assessment and what it looks like in ESOL (and why it's so hard to pin it into little boxes! wp.me/pZQ5N-2Td

Formative.

In my last post, I reflected on the planning processes and the limitations that formal documentation can sometimes place on that process. Since then I’ve been mulling it over a bit more, and …

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Aug 25

I always think about planning at this time of year. wp.me/sZQ5N-cells

Cells

As a warm up to going back into work next week, I started to revisit some of the books I’d read for my PhD. Not the research methods ones, obviously, or the heavy duty theory & philosophy…

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Jun 28

I felt that something needed explaining after the plenary at #natecla25 today, so I wrote a blog post about it. #bemoresquirrel samuelshep.wordpress.com/2025/06/28/b...

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Jun 27

Travelling down to Birmingham, sadly missing out in day one of #NATECLA but will be there tomorrow, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and without a ridiculously early start

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · May 6

Lunch outside today. Love community teaching.

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · May 6

Minimal pair of the day...

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Apr 10

She's not wrong. Academic writing can be (and often is) the pits to read. And I don't care how important or insightful your research is, if you write about it in an unreadable way, you might as well lock it in a box at the bottom of the ocean.

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Apr 8

A little self indulgence based on something I may or may not include in my amendments, reflecting on why I write stuff down, and why it's so much easier than the grind of writing a plan. wp.me/pZQ5N-2Qa

Writing as an act of research

I’m writing amendments to my thesis at the moment, a process which swings from deeply frustrating to immensely enjoyable on an almost day to day basis. One of things I have noticed, as I refl…

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Apr 4

Stopped off in Ely on my way home from the LSRN conference and found a hill.

Ely cathedral on what passes for a hill.

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Apr 3

Good lord. Travelling to Kings Lynn through Cambridgeshire and I'd forgotten just how flat this part of the world is. It's like God took Oxfordshire and ironed it.

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Apr 3

Listening to this. Kind of.

Beastie boys track listing showing No Sleep til Brooklyn as No Sleep til Kings Lynn.

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Apr 3

Just hitting the road for the @LSRNetwork National Conference in Kings Lynn. Excited for the event, of course, but also because it's only the third time I've ever ventured east of the M1.

Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Mar 27

Controversially today, I left students in first language pairs and let them talk in those languages while planning and writing a text together. Talk is work in the ESOL classroom but sometimes the work needs to be something else.

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Mar 19

I am notorious at work for being overly sympathetic, i.e. crap, when it comes to chasing attendance and punctuality. But I have a new class which, after three weeks, is challenging even my usually very laissez faire position. Trust me, this is bad.

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Mar 19

Another reason to never fly again. I just worked it out and those seat dimensions would be crippling for me. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

The incredible shrinking airlines: can anyone actually be comfortable in a 17-inch seat?

There are many good reasons to quit flying – primarily, of course, the climate crisis. And the lack of legroom suggests airlines are actually trying to squeeze us out ...

www.theguardian.com

Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Mar 16

A fairly sensible response to the question but at the same time, I wonder if the author's wife wrote to the Polish equivalent of the Telegraph about her son not being able to speak to her family? www.telegraph.co.uk/family/paren...

Dear Richard Madeley: ‘I’m scared my bilingual son will lose the ability to speak English’

We’re moving to Poland for a few years and I’m worried it will impact my four-year-old’s language skills

www.telegraph.co.uk

Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Mar 15

It's spring. So obviously time for the last member of our family to emerge from the winter gloom. (For anyone concerned by the size: it's temporary housing, and she'll be out and about around the house soon, as well as getting a nice new big house next week.)

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Feb 23

But also there's a lot of blame to be placed at the door of the post 2000 massive surge for technologised resource based teaching, driven by text book publishers and writers, helped by the "plug 'em in and churn 'em out" school of ELT teacher training.

Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Feb 23

I am slowly gathering various efl teaching "ideas" books published in the 80s and 90s, like the Pilgrims resource books for teachers. They are bloody marvellous. I assume they stopped being published c.1999 because these sorts of ideas collections moved online, which is fine, to a point 1/2

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Feb 23

This afternoon's accompaniment to the amendments #phdlife

Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Feb 17

If he'd sat down with someone from ELT they could have come up with something useful, rather than the straw man guff he wrote here. There are things to be learned from his theories, I think, but I'm deeply disinclined to engage.

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Feb 16

I've been digging through the vinyls today too. Slightly less classy, however with this slice of cheese from 1990. (Some good cheese, some musical equivalent of Tesco Value Cheddar.)

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Sam Shepherd @samshep.bsky.social · Feb 16

Been mulling this one over for years. Finally got a shape for it today. wp.me/pZQ5N-2Pw

Immersion: THAT article by Sweller.

I’ve had the pleasure of revisiting the work of Mike Long, in particular the excellent Second Language Acquisition and Task Based Language Teaching. It’s been fascinating going back int…

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