Working with Emergent Language: Ideas and activities for developing your reactive skills in class (Teaching English)

Emerging language (EL) is any unplanned language item that arises naturally during lessons that the teacher then chooses to focus on for clarification or modification. Working with Emergent Language highlights the importance of EL and makes the argument that focusing on it is an essential part of learning a language and therefore a skill that every language teacher should possess or work to develop. However, working with EL is thought to be a very difficult skill to master, and as a result is rarely covered on training courses or in teacher development products. This book seeks to close this gap by making the reader more aware of what EL is and how they can learn to work with it more effectively and confidently through awareness raising, practice, and reflective tasks.

Danny Norrington-Davies is a teacher, teacher educator and international speaker at International House London. Along with emergent language, his interests in ELT are creativity, classroom interaction, grammar teaching and materials development. His first book, Teaching Grammar: From Rules to Reasons, was published by Pavilion Publishing and Media in 2016. Richard Chinn is an experienced teacher, teacher educator and international speaker based in the UK. He works at International House London, where he trains teachers on initial and in-service teacher development courses; he is also a teaching associate at King’ s College London, where he works on MA and BA courses. His main professional interests are in classroom interaction, teacher education and teacher development.