Students rely on models to help them communicate accurately and effectively. How often do you see a student’s thesis statement modeled after one in the textbook? Words are swapped out, but the pattern of the sentence essentially remains the same. Swapping is a useful learning strategy, and one […]
Making tests that push our students enough but not too far can feel like one of the biggest challenges for teachers. Tests that are too easy may lead to a false assessment of proficiency. Those that are too hard can be discouraging to students, and challenging for teachers to grade. What we want […]
Below is a slideshow of one of the presentations we gave at Baltimore TESOL, “Thinking Outside the Paragraph,” where we outline three key principles that inform our teaching of academic writing at lower levels and helped formulate the pedagogy behind our new writing series, Trio Writing, by Oxford University Press. Beginning […]
We had a wonderful time at Baltimore TESOL this year! Below is a copy of the presentation we gave about the Spiraling Lesson Plan, the pedagogy that forms the basis of our new writing series by Oxford University Press, Trio Writing.
Meeting the demands of writing with language learning is an uphill climb, so one nice thing we can do for second language writers is reduce their cognitive load. A sentence builder box does this by providing relevant vocabulary in a structure that is salient to a task. Students use […]
How is language learning like a roller coaster? Diane Larsen-Freeman (2008) notes that language learning is a complex, dynamic system. According to Freeman, language learning is constantly in motion. Like the loops of a roller coaster, students are taken on a journey in which language is learned and […]
Language tends to spiral like nature. As planets spiral around the sun, so the sun spirals around the galaxy. On earth, hurricanes spiral, picking up objects and pulling them into whirling winds. Vocabulary and grammar spiral as well, around the language learner. It is a dynamic system where chunks […]
On Thursday, October 1, we will be presenting an OUP webinar titled Spiraling Into Control: Meeting the needs of beginning writers. This practice-oriented webinar draws on some of our biggest influences, including Eli Hinkle, Ken Hyland, and Diane Larsen-Freeman, who provide possible answers for one of the biggest questions in second language […]
Students love games. A little competition can often bring out the best in them. A Grammar Throwdown is a very simple yet effective game you can bring to any class to reinforce the grammar your students are studying or need to review. The concept comes from the television […]
When students are writing to prompts, they have language needs that grammar textbooks may not cover. These are often due to translation or a writer trying to compensate for lack of vocabulary, as in the following example from an intermediate student’s paper: Playing too much computer games can […]
English Endeavors 