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 […]
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 […]
Our students love certain words because they are familiar to them. However, when working within the register of academic English, they begin learning that some of these words are less appropriate because they are too informal or vague. Words like good, bad, nice, stuff, and thing often pop […]
