TESOL Chicago is coming, and that’s usually a time when people are thinking about course books. With this in mind, we are reposting a reflection on the TRIO series. After using it with real students, we’ve discovered some interesting results, especially when it […]
Computer games can provide an interesting insight into reading. The appeal of online games at least partly lies in the software that allows them to precisely level ability. In League of Legends, for example, there are multiple ranks. Players must advance through the ranks to reach platinum or […]
Irving is an older student who has the confidence of a former car salesman. I could hear him from across the room as I gave feedback to a different group. He seemed to enjoy the role of a parent trying to get his child to eat vegetables, and […]
Not long ago, I was subbing for a reading class. They were using Read This 3, which starts with a text about ice hotels. The students were to have read it before class, but they hadn’t, and I was on the spot. Having just spent several hours with […]
Why do English learners still travel to physical classrooms? After all, they can get plenty of information, practice grammar drills and even listen to graded lectures online. Perhaps the answer lies in something that computers cannot provide: a safe space to learn and practice conversation. Conversation is actually […]
Last year, Stanford professor and AI researcher Andrew Ng told Harvard Business Review that if a typical person can do a mental task with less than one second of thought, it can probably be automated by using artificial intelligence. With this in mind, perhaps we should be thankful […]
While traveling for a sabbatical, Alice has had a chance to talk to students and teachers at various language programs across the U.S. This post was inspired by an encounter she had with a student at a community college program in the northeast. Riata suddenly had hives. The […]
Yesterday, I went on a beautiful fall walk with a friend who happens to be a personal trainer. I told her I like to jog slowly. She scolded me and said I needed to push myself. It is not enough to just jog around the track, she said. […]
Along with our newest feature, downloadable, graded texts, we’ve been doing some research on extensive reading, and it turns out that in many programs, fluency reading is an ESOL underdog. It’s quite valuable, but we do not do enough of it. To start, much research supports the notion […]
If reading exists on a continuum, then intensive reading occupies the end where students work heavily on reading skills. Intensive lessons generally include much frontloading in the form of vocabulary work and schema building. Next, while students read, they work on additional skills such as scanning for the […]
