"When one teaches, two learn"
One thing that I’m very convinced of, is the notion that us teachers are “motivators”. It is our job to motivate our students, to lead our students towards becoming self directed learners, learning for themselves, intrinsically. Oh sure, we have to do all the regular...
Learning a second language isn’t easy. There is a lot that can get in the way. It isn’t as automatic or sure as we’d suppose. Depending on the person, there can be some high barriers to learning another language. I’m teaching a unit on this...
As a teacher trainer, there is one “theoretical” thing I really want all new teachers to believe and understand. It is the difference between “knowing” a language and “doing” a language. Further, the implications that suggests for our classroom practices. In general speak, we use...
Do teachers kill creativity? What is the harm that a “teacher” does, just by being a teacher? Do we indeed stunt student achievement, growth and “thought” by our mere presence as a model and person to look up to and copy/become? Like Ken Robinson’s story...
Web 2.0 and English Language Learning A New Model or A New Muddle? “ In the electronic age, we wear all mankind as our skin” – Marshall McLuhan (this article is one of a series on my blog – highlighting how educators can publish and...
Anyone whose read a little of my stuff (and fluff too), throughout the years knows with a capital “K” that I’m an ardent supporter of education being free of influence and especially profit. Be that a school where our young go each day or be...
There are many ways to master a language. There is NO magic really, just desire and intrinsic motivation. I came across an article in today’s paper that said some very important things on this topic and I’d like to share it. Most important to me...
It isn’t easy learning a language. I’ve learned 3 of them and had success in 3 completely different ways! I’m going to work on a fourth and probably will stumble along with a 4th method. What this means is “to each his own”. We have...
If you look at one constant in education (over 100s of years), we see one very clear trend — the blurring of the lines between teacher / student. Technology is only speeding up this process and it is especially true for English Language Teaching. We...
I’m not much of a soccer player anymore, had my day and that’s that. However, I’ve always admired the success and uniqueness of Guus Hiddink – the coach who propelled Korea to the World Cup semi finals. He coaches like we should teach (and I...
This is a question that faces many classroom teachers. Is the “slower” student who just can’t seem to acquire English suffering from a learning disability (LD)? Or is this student just going at their own pace or in need of more English input and maybe...
One thing I’ve become convinced of as a teacher, is the fact that WE can be our own worst enemy. Meaning, somehow our own experiences, our 1,000s of hours in the classroom observing teachers, have conditioned us to “be teachers” and that this gets in...
I’ve been engrossed of late with how I might use voice recognition technology in the language classroom. I might test drive it this semester — I’ll walk around the classroom “wired” and as I speak, all the students will see it come up in script...
I’ve blogged about this previously but now want to provide for those who haven’t seen it, my full thoughts about the “future of learning”. Presently, schools don’t get it and that’s why so so so so much learning is actually not school based! Yeah, think...
If there is one piece of valuable advice that could fit almost ALL teachers – it would be to “S L O W D O W N!” One area of course is in terms of speaking speed. Teachers need to let students process language and...
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