Dr. Curtis Kelly – Featured Speaker @ KOTESOL 2026
Featured Session
How Neuroscience Shows Us That Tasks Are Mandatory, Not Optional
Can one learn a language by just knowing things about it, such as words, expressions, grammar rules, register, and so on? According to neuroscience, we cannot. Neuroscientist David Badre says,
Knowledge and action are distinct things to some degree. So, knowing is not enough. You have to be able to bridge from what you want to do to how you behave. And that gap is not trivial. It’s not easy. You actually need a class of functions in the brain to bridge it. And that’s what cognitive control is all about. (Campbell, 2021)
In other words, from the brain’s perspective, it is a massive task to take something we know and turn it into goals and actions (Badre, 2025). Knowing is only half of what EFL learning is. The other half is doing, something we might acknowledge in the classroom but grossly undervalue. Instead, let us start seeing tasks – tools to elicit doing – as mandatory rather than optional and consider approaches that maximize both halves of ELT learning: knowing and doing!
Invited Second Session
Putting Neuroscience to Work in Methods and Materials
In studying brain sciences for the last twenty years, I have made some interesting discoveries, many of which support our intuitions about motivation, engagement, and learning. Nonetheless, we need to know how to exploit these discoveries to improve our teaching. How do we take advantage of findings from brain sciences to foster language learning, such as life stage theories, brain development, the social brain, myelination, and emotion as a factor of learning? We will look at some key principles and consider methods and materials to incorporate them. Hopefully, you make your own as well. (And forgive me if I slip in comments about my newly published TBLT textbook, although not available here, The Snoop Detective School. It uses fun as a factor of learning.)
Biosketch
Speaker and writer, Curtis Kelly (EdD), professor emeritus of Kansai University in Japan, has spent most of his life developing learner-centered materials for “3L” students: students with low ability, low confidence, and low motivation. He has written over 36 books, including Active Skills for Communication (Cengage), Writing from Within (Cambridge), and Significant Scribbles (Longman). Dr. Kelly is most proud of his newly released and totally fun TBLT textbook, The Snoop Detective School: Interactive Tasks for English Learners. He is also a brain nerd, who founded the JALT BRAIN SIG; produces the monthly magazine MindBrainEd Think Tanks, which connects brain sciences to language teaching; and teaches two online courses on the Neuroscience of Language Learning. He lives in the US and often presents at KOTESOL.
Web Links
MindBrainEd Think Tanks (Free monthly magazine).
“I Deal Drugs,” Tongue-in-cheek pecha kucha at KOTESOL 2013,
The Fascinating Way the Brain Saves Time. The English Connection, Autumn 2025. (See also other articles in the column The Brain Connection.)
The Funny Thing About Humor. MindBrainEd Think Tanks, Dec 2025.
Learning Cosmos Interview (2025).
Lost in Citations Interview: Lawyers and Priestesses in the World of Tests (2024).
Keeping What Matters: What We Can Learn from the Neuroscience of Learning. Cambridge University Press Global Educator Webinar.
Recent / Most Significant Works
The Snoop Detective School: Interactive Tasks for English Learners, 2024, Abax.
The Neuroscience of Language Teaching 2: Explorations (online course), iTDi.
The Neuroscience of Language Teaching 1: Fundamentals (online course), iTDi.
Writing from Within 1 & 2, Cambridge University Press.
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