Simon Marshall
About
About
Who is he?
Simon Marshall is an experienced teacher and teacher trainer. He has delivered CELTA and Delta courses in various institutions such as International House, British Council, Pilgrims, and York St. John’s University, where he currently designs and delivers CELTA courses. He also has considerable experience in designing and teaching methodology and language improvement courses for teachers of English. He has a strong record in academic management.
Professional life
Simon has been working as a language teacher and teacher trainer for more than 30 years. He has taught and trained in more than thirty countries, published numerous articles on teaching methodology, and has extensive experience of presenting at international conferences.
Interests
He is particularly interested in the principled application of humanistic approaches in language teaching. In fact, he has actively worked to make CELTA more humanistic by focusing on the inclusion of language learners in the appraisal of pre-service trainee teachers. Furthermore, he has conducted research on the descriptors used on the course and has made the case that these need to be updated in such a way that they are more understandable to trainees.
Simon Marshall
Recommended books
On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy
Carl Rogers
This book helped me begin to understand what is meant by “person centredness.”
The Common Sense of Teaching Foreign Languages
Caleb Gattegno
The Silent Way was very much central to the work of Adrian Underhill, Director of Education at International House Hastings, where I started my ELT career in earnest in 1979. This book elaborates Gattegno’s intention “to subordinate teaching to learning.”
Teaching Languages: A Way and Ways
Earl W. Stevick
One of the seminal books on Humanistic Teaching that I encountered early in my teaching career.
Once Upon a Time: Using Stories in the Language Classroom
Mario RinvolucrI, John Morgan
A stunning collection in every way. It helped bring my teaching to life.
Quartet
Françoise Grellet, Alan Maley, Wim Welsing
The first coursebook I used that showed me there was life after both structural and functional syllabuses.
Place in HLT
Simon Marshall is a fervent supporter of Humanistic Language Teaching and he tries to spread his passion through his work as a teacher trainer. He believes in fostering a spirit of community by forming vocational teams. This is reflected in the central role he gives to direct human encounters inside the classroom, believing that they will never be replicated by technology.
As for the role of teachers, Simon underlines the importance of building bridges inside classrooms. In times of confusion, he stresses how crucial it is to come together as a community, forge bonds, and foster understanding and empathy. Furthermore, he believes in empowering students so that they can be their true selves inside the classroom.
When considering the characteristics of a Humanist classroom, Simon makes a point of the word BRIDGE, since this is, for him, the acronym that stands for the key elements needed inside every classroom: Bonding, Reciprocity, Inquiry, Distinctiveness, Genuineness, and Empathy.
