DO TELL - Todd's Extensive Listening Lessons

Now, practice listening to the grammar in a longer talk.

Hi. In this lesson, we are going to look at how English lessons have changed over the last twenty-five years. So, I started teaching twenty-five years ago, in 1994, and a lot has changed since then.

First, we used to use tape-cassette players a lot. So, the books used to come with a tape-cassette, and we would play the tape-cassette in class. And, usually, only the teachers had access to the tape-cassette 'cause they were kind of expensive. These days books come with CDs, but I don't even think we use CDs anymore. Now, most of the listening is done online.

Also, before, textbooks used to focus on grammar more. We used to study grammar a lot in class. These days, it seems like there is a bigger emphasis on reading and also a bigger emphasis on vocabulary. We still do some grammar, but I think we used to do it a lot more than we do now.

There's some things we didn't do. We didn't used to focus on pronunciation very much, and I think these days we focus a little bit more on pronunciation. Also, we used to do mor writing in class, and we used to assign more homework. I don't think we give so much homework these days, and I don't think we assign so many writing assignments as we used to back, you know, in the nineties. Although, maybe, that just depends on the teacher.

Also, I think, in the past, the students used to be older. So, we used to have a lot of students that were adults. And these days, often, the students at language schools are much younger, and there's a bigger emphasis on teaching kids. Maybe it's because, before, people used to have to go to a language school - they would have to drive there and it was not easy to get to - but, these days, I think it's easier to get to language schools because there's more of them, and there's a bigger emphasis on teaching children.

But that's it, that's some of the big changes. I think classroom...classrooms are still the same, pretty much. Now we have smartboards. We used to have, you know, blackboards with chalk. Or sometimes you would have whiteboards. But a lot of things are still kind of the same. I just think the materials have changed, what we focus on in class has changed, and maybe the demographics of the learners in class have changed a bit too.