How Does Gav Teach English Through Conversation? Vocabulary, Grammar & Drilling Techniques – S01E32

How can you teach English through natural conversation while still developing grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation?In this episode of How to English TEFL Podcast, Gav turns a casual conversation with Em into a live demonstration of his conversation-led teaching style. Instead of simply following a worksheet or fixed list of questions, he listens carefully, asks follow-up questions, encourages longer answers and uses the conversation itself to generate language work.Gav draws on more than 20 years of English-teaching experience, including one-to-one lessons, Business English, exam preparation and general English with learners of different ages and levels. He has taught in Europe and Asia, both in classrooms and online, and explains how years of working with real learners have shaped his flexible, conversation-led approach.Gav and Em explore how teachers can feed new vocabulary into conversation naturally, use synonyms and rephrasing without making learners feel everything they say is wrong, and help students retrieve language they already know. Gav also explains why he sometimes keeps a thesaurus nearby when teaching online and why unfamiliar expressions should be checked rather than automatically corrected.They look at how grammar can emerge naturally too. Carefully chosen questions can repeatedly expose learners to the same structure without turning the lesson into a traditional grammar exercise. Em then becomes Gav’s student for an intensive demonstration combining grammar drilling, pronunciation, contractions, connected speech and repetition with the question “How long have you been...?”It’s energetic, materials-light and highly focused — although Em discovers that being one of Gav’s students can be exhausting!The episode also asks: does a lesson need to look like a traditional lesson for learning to happen? Drawing on his experience teaching adults, professionals and one-to-one learners, Gav explains how conversation-led teaching can still be combined with worksheets, coursebooks and structured activities when learners need extra support.Whether you teach one-to-one lessons, Business English, adults or conversation classes, this episode offers practical ideas grounded in extensive teaching experience for turning almost any student answer into useful grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation practice.☕ Support the podcast: https://ko-fi.com/howtoenglishpod🌍 Free TEFL resources: https://www.howtoenglishpod.com/References:Thesaurus: https://thesaurus.com/The Direct Method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk6HS8RlD98Andy the English teacher: https://www.instagram.com/parlourlanguageroom/English File — Christina Latham-Koenig, Clive Oxenden, Paul Seligson, Oxford University Press.Timestamps00:00 – Welcome to How to English01:00 – Em’s online and face-to-face teaching03:00 – Working from home and “home office”05:00 – Returning to companies and changing routines08:00 – Greetings, handshakes and changing classroom habits11:00 – What face-to-face teaching gives us13:00 – Eye contact and reading body language16:00 – Gav reveals his teaching demonstration17:00 – Follow-up questions and longer answers18:00 – Should unfamiliar expressions be corrected?19:00 – Synonyms and activating known vocabulary20:00 – Feeding better vocabulary into conversation21:00 – The danger of rephrasing everything22:00 – Using questions to practise grammar repeatedly23:00 – Why one-to-one conversation lessons feel intense24:00 – Do students realise they are learning?25:00 – When to use worksheets and coursebooks26:00 – Adapting conversation-led teaching for groups27:00 – Intensive grammar and pronunciation practice28:00 – Practising “How long have you been...?”29:00 – Connected speech, contractions and drilling30:00 – Why intensive drilling needs concentration31:00 – Materials-free grammar practice32:00 – Turning “I did nothing” into conversation33:00 – The listener question that inspired the episode