Welcome to Mindful Monday, where we bridge the gap between Second Language Acquisition research and the practical realities of both your classroom and your business. Each week, Leo and I share research-backed insights to help you sharpen your classroom teaching while building the freedom to work on your own terms.
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In partnership with: E-Solutions for ELT
You tailor your teaching to your students.
Your tech should be tailored to you.
E-solutions by Renata Kucharska for ELT helps teachers build an online system that works for them by building practical websites, course platforms, landing pages and automations designed around the real needs of their ELT businesses.
Tech should make your business simpler, not more complicated.
Fall is in full swing here in Toronto, and the leaves are starting to take great shape. It’s a beautiful time of year (if we ignore all the pumpkin spice 😂).
In this week’s Mindful Monday, you’ll see:
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Second Language Research Forum: Oct 1-4 in Montreal
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Our New Website is live
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We interviewed the legend Rod Ellis
Hope you enjoy this week’s edition.
🎙️ Second Language Research Forum: Oct 1 – 4
SLFR Conference: October 1-4, 2006
Hosted by the University of Montreal
*$50 off for all readers with the code “TTTPOD” by clicking here.
Big news!
The Second Language Research Forum (SLRF) is an annual conference that brings together second language researchers and teachers from all over the world!
This year’s conference is hosted by the University of Montreal in collaboration with the Montreal Institute for Second Language Acquisition (MonISLA), and will take place in Montreal, Quebec, from October 1-4, 2026.
There is something for everyone at SLRF 2026, but especially for language teachers with an interest in TBLT. Come see presentations by Lara Bryfonski, Matt Coss, Claudia Fernandez – all Teacher Talking Time podcast guests! – and so many more!
Check out the full program here: https://www.monisla.ca/en/slrf2026-program
We are also proud to collaborate directly with the conference organizers to bring teacher-oriented conference talks closer to you. We were thrilled to host Dr. Matt Coss (University of Alabama) and Dr. Lara Bryfonski (Georgetown University) recently to talk about task-based language teaching and practical sessions at SLRF.
They also emphasized: come out, introduce yourself, and talk about teaching! They love interacting with teachers and learning from our experience.
Here’s an excerpt from our session together:
Listeners of the Teacher Talking Time podcast get $50 off their registration at SLRF 2026 with the code “TTTPOD”!
🎙️ Our New Website is live!
We’ve been working in the background on a few things, one of which is giving our website a refresh. We’re very pleased to say that the new site is live!
As every business evolves over time, we wanted to give a bit of a change to a few things we’re focusing on going forward. The first and foremost being our Teacher Talking Time podcast.
You can see the website at the same URL as the old one: learnyourenglish.com
As with everything creative, it’s not a finished product, but it’s a wonderful update and we’re happy to show you what it looks like so far.
Please check it out and familiarize yourself with what’s there.
Many thanks to the incredible Danilo Reis for his awesome work on our site.
🎙️ TBLT a rebellious approach?
As you may know, I interviewed Leo recently for the podcast and we talked about many things that we hadn’t really discussed over our ten+-year friendship.
One of those was Leo’s rebelliousness to traditional materials and teaching approaches and how TBLT falls into that.
Is task-based language teaching rebellious by nature? Does it attract those with a rebellious streak?
I asked the question; Leo gave his answer here:
If you haven’t watched the full episode, check it out here.
That’s all for this edition. Talk next week,
Leo and Andrew
Want to grab a coffee and strategize the next step of your business?
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What we do at Learn YOUR English
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