Aside from receiving feedback from my final assignment, my first year in the University of Manchester Educational Technology and TESOL MA program is now complete. I was excited, frustrated, inspired, deflated, elated, and stressed out throughout the year. Right now, I feel weird. There’s nothing hanging over my head, nothing left to write. This must be how my students recently felt. In fact, I think in more ways than this, I am my students.
On May 5, I finally had the opportunity to lead a full session about Academic Reading Circles face to face to teachers, at the TESL Toronto Spring 2012 Conference (#toscon12) and it was exciting to start the ball rolling.Read More »#toscon12 session
Thank you to participants at my workshop Ideas for multilevels at the TESL North York/York Region conference today. I’ve embedded the slides using Issuu below, so… Read More »TESL North York/York Region
This weekend brings everyone 5th Virtual Round Table Web Conference. You should check it out. There, I’ve discussed #EAPchat during its opening Symposium. On Sunday, I’ll be talking about using blogs for intensive and extensive reading practice and yep, Ghandi and the Occupy Wall Street movement are part of it.Read More »Blogs for intensive and extensive reading
On the first day, language learners go in, sit in a theatre-style tiered classroom altogether, unclear about what it will be like to study a content university course. It’s their first time to do so. They fear that they will understand little. And they’re right. They expect that writing downthe slide points will be enough. And they’re wrong. Learning how to engage with the lecture content means survival. How to do this is what we, as instructors, need to help learners figure out.Read More »The disconnect between students and content lectures
A valid buzz surrounds the importance of teaching students to think critically when reading, looking at visual media or listening to arguments. Many international 1st-year university students are products of a believe-what-you’re-told, there-is-a-right-answer educational system. As a result, questioning does not come naturally. And so, I want to devote a couple posts to ways I try to instigate this new ability.Read More »A step towards critical thinking
The second #EAPchat took place on Twitter on Monday, March 5 revolving around the question: Is the Academic Word List (or other lists) relevant for EAP programs? Mura Nava (@muranava) kindly summarised the chat here, with minor additions made by myself.Read More »The relevance of the AWL
Yes, I was supposed to present my three-minutes this morning at the #TeachMeet International, but because of technical difficulties in logging in, I decided to go back to bed instead of fooling around with it any longer. I promised to record my presentation on The Highlighter Role of Academic Reading Circles (ARC) in lieu. Here we are (though I doubt I squished it into 3 minutes).Read More »The highlighter role