Atomic Habits

Last year Tim Warre, creator of the fantastic site FreeEnglishLessonPlans.com (it has lots of materials for exam prep courses and higher levels) joined me on the podcast to discuss Atomic Habits by James Clear.

During our chat we discussed a range of topics including:

• important insights from the linguist Paul Nation (see my vlogpost on this – ignore my crazy pandemic hairstyle!) on the importance of devoting large amounts of time to reviewing previously studied material
• Paul Nation’s useful guide for English learners (available in multiples languages!) What do you need to know to learn a foreign language?
• the application of ideas on habit formation from Atomic Habits to language learning

Then this past May, about a year after our conversation Tim gave an incredibly practical talk at ELT Innovate here in Barcelona entitled Atomic Classroom Habits. He sets out some of the key behaviours of effective language learners. But before looking at Tim’s slides, I recommend watching this first video clip in which James Clear gives the example of how the British cycling team applied the principle of the aggregation of marginal gains.

What small tweaks could you make to your language teaching/coaching programme to yield similarly impressive improvements? Read through Tim’s slides. Do you agree with his suggestions?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYgmB3lkaCc 

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