Five things I’ve learned about organizing an online lesson My first priority in transitioning my four community college ESOL courses to online was not to go crazy! The second was to create community. Without personal human connection, I felt I would lose learners who are isolated at […]
Humor’s a funny thing. It’s an unconscious, unfakable, universal form of communication all humans share, no matter what culture they’re from or language they speak. Yet, perhaps counterintuitively, humor emerges less from the crack of one-liners than it does from the uncertainty that emerges from shared experiences and […]
via TESOL 2019 Highlights: The Grammar(s) We Should Teach
A couple of years ago, we wrote about kinesthetic grammar, and to our surprise, it became our most popular post by far. Intrigued, we did a bit of research and confirmed our theory. The body plays a role, not only in communication but also memory, recall, and even cognitive […]
Today is a happy day! Colin and I are on our way back to China. We’ll be presenting at the SETRA conference in Beijing next week, and we are absolutely delighted for the opportunity to talk about some of the things we’ve been working on in the past […]
Poor Emilio! He seemed like such a confident student, but when he had to give a talk in front of the class, he ran to the bathroom and was sick. Emilio’s case might be extreme, but according to the psychologist, Michelle Lynsky, public speaking is one of the […]
As a teacher, it’s sometimes difficult to investigate students’ progress in a productive (holistic) way. Simulations can help by providing a culturally familiar scaffolding that can guide a fluency experience. They are also a lot of fun! While the talk show simulation described below can be done outside […]
In 2018, an Atlantic Monthly article featured a writer’s experience with Duolingo, the language app that uses gaming principles to attract learners to their lessons. The stickiness of the app seems to work. The article stated that Duolingo has 27.5 million active monthly users, and it is not […]
When people have a conversation, they do not just exchange information. Rather, they negotiate a relationship, and the social skills involved are called pragmatics. To be good at pragmatics is to be good at the art of sending and receiving implicit messages and intentions. This can be done […]
Click here for presentation handout: Hidden Grammar Handout TESOL 19 There’s more to grammar than discrete rules about verb tenses, articles, and modals. When we channel Diane Larsen’s Freeman’s view of language as a complex, adaptive system, we can start to see grammar as any system of organization, […]
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