Innovation Among EFL Teachers

by Glenn Standish

This article is one of two that looks at the results of the survey “Innovative EFL Teachers” that was distributed via social media in the summer of 2025. Teachers from around the world and working both inside and outside the International House network offered examples of their innovative practices and the obstacles they face when looking to innovate in the EFL classroom. Christopher Walker and Glenn Standish worked on the design and analysis of the survey, and wish to thank the respondents for kindly sharing their ideas.

The British Council recently released a report into how the world of ELT had changed in the last decade. While it made for interesting reading, I sometimes struggled to see how much of it related to the work that real teachers do in ELT, and what kinds of innovation teachers have been bringing into their classrooms in the last year or so.

This article will take the responses to the “Innovative EFL Teachers” survey and offer a more grounded look at innovation in our industry.

Some General Remarks

The first thing that I noticed when I started investigating innovation in ELT is that the ELT world is not like other worlds. Take computer programming, for example. If you were to ask about innovative practices here, you would be met with a bunch of unfamiliar jargon. Nobody would be talking about finding new uses for COBOL, or COmmon Business Oriented Language, a programming code popular in the days of the punchcard, but that has no place in modern computing.

ELT is not like that. Some of what I heard was not innovative in the wider scheme of things – indeed, some of the innovative practices I was told about could have been a hundred years old! ELT, like teaching more generally, is a place where innovation and recycling are easily confused – and, having listened to what my interlocutors have told me, I’m rather glad of it. It suggests that there will always be a place for teachers who have only just entered the industry, for whom everything seems like an innovation – provided it works, and it does justice to the students they teach.

AI and Technology

It will surprise approximately no-one that AI has been a major source of innovation in the last year. The IH Journal has carried many articles on the use of AI in class, and some respondents mentioned using the techniques addressed in the mini special feature at the heart of Issue 53. On a personal note, I was quite satisfied to hear that my opening plenary, Online Resources Using AI and Beyond, had provided many teachers with the jumping-off point they needed for their own innovation.

Though not an innovation of its own, it is interesting to hear that some teachers are finally beginning to tire of applications like Kahoot! and Blooket. While appealing and student-friendly, these platforms might not be quite the teaching tools we thought they were. Some teachers said that, having noticed that it was the same students always on the podium in their Kahoot!s, and the same students always struggling to score points, they began to wonder if teaching objectives were being met. Perhaps this will lead to more judicious use of the technology in the future.

I like to hear that AI use is not simply for flash-bang effect – it can be a great scaffolding tool as well. One respondent reported on using AI to generate short texts that used target language, and then had the AI read the text aloud so that the students could read and listen to what was up on the screen (or the teacher could use the material as a listening resource).

Another clever and relatively subtle use of AI is giving live feedback on student-generated content. When the teacher seeks to add sophistication to the work a student produces, they do so in their own way – in other words, it can feel like the teacher is trying to produce a series of miniature versions of themselves in class. By using generative AI to offer feedback or add sophistication to a student-created text, it is possible to bring a wider range of ‘voices’ into play, simply by asking the AI to roleplay a different character each time it produces a text. This, too, adds an interactive element to the process, as the student can suggest what kind of ‘writer’ it wants the AI to be.

Putting the Student First

I wouldn’t call this an innovation as much as just really good practice, but some of the respondents to the survey were keen to stress how much they had doubled-down on making their lessons as student-centered as possible.

I was particularly taken by what one respondent said: “I make time to connect with my students personally, showing genuine interest in their hobbies and preferences. I intentionally remember and refer back to the things they’ve shared with me, which helps build trust and engagement. I begin some lessons with a special of the day, a creative question written like a menu item. This could be a riddle, a thought-provoking topic, or a question that sparks curiosity and conversation.” This is something that is impressed upon teachers from the CELTA onwards, but the practice can easily fall by the wayside. It is the intention at the heart of this practice that makes this idea so impactful.

Another respondent spoke about using WhatsApp for communicating with their students: “In every class, we create a WhatsApp group for our class to facilitate communication, remind students of important dates, especially students who were absent … etc. However, I love sharing English songs, movie trailers, TikToks, articles, and posts pertaining to topics we’ve been discussing in class. Authentic real-life material, not material designed for the English classroom. Some ss really engage with what I share. It motivates, inspires, and educates them.” I don’t think that this would work with every class, especially those involving anyone under 18, but I think that making it feel like the act of learning – and of being involved in an English-speaking community – makes it worth looking into ways of doing this safely and securely with as many groups as possible. WhatsApp might not be the best platform for this, however, as it requires the group admin – presumably the teacher – to both collect and share a lot of private telephone numbers, which would be highly inappropriate, if not in contravention of data privacy laws, for students under eighteen years of age.

Innovative Techniques

The Celta is built around the ideas of PPP – Present, Practice, Produce – and TTT – Test, Teach, Test. It also looks at a few other ways to approach teaching, but for many new teachers, PPP is enough to survive that difficult first year, and if it works for the first year, many stick with it for the long haul. Therefore, we can consider any move away from traditional methods to be, in a sense, innovative, as in this response: “I’ve tried to steer away from traditional frameworks such as PPP or TTT and use more multimodal approaches to teaching. I’ve tried to implement more integrative modes in combination, such as visual and linguistic, gestural and spatial, and so on.” While I’m not perfectly clear on what integrative modes means to the respondent, I do appreciate the willingness to experiment with method – especially if the experiment means that the students learn more, or learn better, from that particular teacher.

Sometimes innovation takes the form of a more subtle change to teaching practice, as in this case: “In my EFL classroom, I adapted the traditional Think-Pair-Share model by adding an Engage phase — a structured element where students actively listen, paraphrase, and ask clarifying questions after peers share. This innovation had a substantial impact: it significantly boosted my students’ willingness to communicate and collaborate, leading to far richer, more thoughtful discussions. The addition of Engage helped scaffold active listening and critical thinking, moving dialogue beyond surface-level exchanges. I explored this approach through an Action Research study, which showed marked improvements in both participation quality and students’ confidence when speaking English.” This demonstrates that there are deep thinkers out there, and that Action Research does indeed have a place in the ELT industry – something that I think demonstrates that the ELT industry is both robust and in a healthy state. After all, despite its many uses, the one thing AI will never do is engage in Action Research of its own accord.

Conclusion

I’m not sure that this investigation into innovative practices among EFL teachers led to the kind of findings I expected – but I’m not discouraged by that, given the optimistic and student-centered things I’ve heard along the way.

Is the EFL classroom a place of great innovation? It all depends on your perspective. There are only so many ‘new’ things that we can try; for me, it is more encouraging to hear about teachers trying out things that were new for them, or in other words, that were subjectively new. Trying out something fresh, something you haven’t tried before, is the clearest sign I know of a healthy career, and is the best protection against complacency that I can think of.

In short – teachers, keep on doing your thing, and innovate whenever and wherever you can!

Author Biography