Keeping Up With ELT Research: Quick Strategies For Busy Teachers

Great teaching and lifelong learning go hand in hand. For ELT primary teachers, the continuous process of building your knowledge and skills is all about learning with and for your younger learners—and for yourselves. Admittedly, the time somewhere between classroom routines and lesson design can be limited, but it’s important to remember that professional growth doesn’t have to require hours of spare time. Thanks to technology, a spark of interest and a few free minutes here and there can go a long way.

Previous blogs have introduced the benefits of podcasts as a popular way for busy teachers to stay connected with ELT research and classroom practice. If you haven’t read it already, “4 Ways Podcasts Will Power Up Your PD” by Ixchell Reyes and Sarah Hodge is a fantastic resource with a list of ELT-related podcasts recommended.

In this blog, I introduce two more alternative ways to stay updated with research: visual infographics and summaries of academic papers. Similar to podcasts, these approaches are not meant to replace reading books and articles or attending workshops and conferences, but rather offer additional flexible, time-friendly options that fit into a busy schedule. They can help keep our own professional development (PD) moving forward, even when time is tight.

Visualizing With Infographics

Infographics are one-page documents that provide a concise overview of a topic through visually representing information or data using graphics. These documents can be created digitally or by hand, making them a flexible tool for both presenting and exploring ideas.

With just a few spare moments, you can access websites and online communities dedicated to sharing visual infographics related to EFL research and practice.

One example would include TESOLGraphics, a platform that publishes weekly one-page infographics summarizing secondary research categorized based on topics of interest (see image left: TESOLGraphics, n.d.; www.tesolgraphics.com/technology, CC BY NC ND). Some topics include ELT methodologies, assessment, grammar instruction, and individual learner experiences.  Each infographic is designed using bright colors with speech bubbles to organize information according to four reflective questions:

• • What can I learn from this secondary research?
  • What evidence is summarized?
  • What does it find?
  • How can I use the findings in my teaching?

This format gives a quick overview of the research paper before you decide whether you’d like to read the full paper now or later; the original research study is linked via QR code on each infographic.

If you decide to create your own infographics while reading, these guiding questions can help shape your thinking. They’re broad enough to be applied in a range of teaching contexts, including primary education. You can design your infographics in any way that works for you—digitally or by hand, with simple sketches or more creative layouts. Just try to keep ideas for drawings clear and simple to maintain momentum.

Alongside PD for teachers, this approach can also be adapted into a classroom activity to support reading comprehension and critical thinking. It supports the idea of building open conversations about reading in the classroom—a topic discussed earlier in this blog—to build better reading communities for younger learners. We can model the process with our own learning and share regular updates with our students to encourage them to explore their own approaches and keep track of their learning or reading habits.   

Summaries of Papers

If you want to look for more ELT-related research, there are also databases that make it easier to find peer-reviewed publications focusing on younger learners. OASIS (Open Accessible Summaries in Language Studies) offers user-friendly navigation to find you language-related research. New studies are regularly added from peer-review journals, such as Foreign Language Annals, Language Learning, TESOL Quarterly, and The Modern Language Journal, which all require their authors to write summaries of their work. There are also additional journals that provide the option for authors of accepted papers to write a summary of their work within a timeframe, too. Additionally, OASIS is building a multilingual database to increase accessibility across different languages.

The platform presents short summaries in nontechnical language as downloadable pdfs for a wider audience, following a consistent structure (Marsen et al., 2018). Each summary is strictly limited to one page, with the following subheadings:

• • What this research is about and why it is important
  • What the researchers did
  • What the researchers found
  • Things to consider

If you would like to find recent studies related to younger learners, try typing in keywords such as “primary” or “young learners”. From this starting search, you can then find multiple studies with the targeted age group. To narrow your search further, use the filter function to sort results by relevance, publication date, journal, and many other filters.

If you are interested in recent studies related to a skill or research area, you can enter in the relevant keywords. However, be aware that search results may include a wide range of participant types and ages from adults, parents, and teachers to younger learners. Currently, there isn’t an age filter option, but this may be added as the database continues to grow as more research summaries become available.     

When all is said and done, small, consistent steps can lead to meaningful growth. These are just two of the many ways to bring creativity and practicality into your routine—whether you’re just getting started or looking to continue your research on areas that interest you. Whenever you have 5–10 minutes to spare, try one of these approaches, and remember: The goal is to make lifelong learning a natural part of your own PD.  

Happy Teaching and Learning!

References
Marsden, E., Alferink, I., Andringa, S., Bolibaugh, C., Collins, L, Jackson, C., Kasprowicz, R., O'Reilly, D., & Plonsky, L. (2018). Open Accessible Summaries in Language Studies (OASIS) [Database]. Available at https://www.oasis-database.org

TESOL Graphics. (n.d.). The impact of mobile application features on children's language and literacy: A systematic review [infographic]. https://www.tesolgraphics.com/technology. CC BY NC ND