Asimov deconstructed
What Is Intelligence, Anyway? by Isaac Asimov What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a […]
For teachers only: Vocabulary
Yesterday I ran a workshop for English teachers at VW in Wolfsburg who are having trouble adapting the coursebook they are using for their mixed level courses. Before they get started on the given tasks, they have to pre-teach the more challenging vocabulary. The coursebook comes with great texts that can be exploited, along with […]
For teachers only: One to one
In a workshop that I’ve given for Cornelsen (and will be giving again on Friday) to promote a book on one-to-one teaching, I invite English teachers to formulate questions. Teachers at MELTA asked these questions last Saturday, and I’ve sorted them into three groups: 1. My role as the teacher vis a vis the student […]
Teacher training
My dear friend and mentor Elena Gallo organized a series of workshops for college teachers called kommUNIkation a few years ago at the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität Fach- und Fremdsprachenprogramm. I learned there that you need to be clear about your expectations of a course in order to really get something out of it, including thinking about your […]
Ethics for online self-study materials
Ruminations on a rainy day, accompanied by a glorious symphony of seagulls: Is it ethical to build “forced choice” multiple choice questions that trick students into making errors in the name of trouble-shooting? What kind of listening and reading comprehension questions are enlightening, and which ones just reduce a learner to a maker of mistakes? […]
Making questions
Helmut and I are using some of my teaching materials here so he can improve his English. We’ve never spoken English with each other, because I’m an English teacher and there’s always this slight feeling of hierarchy in a teacher-student relationship, which doesn’t do a marriage any good. But here we are, and he wants […]
Clara Boone, pioneer
When I was a child in the late 60s, a family friend, a descendent of Daniel Boone, came round one day for tea. Clara Boone was a teacher at a public school in DC. The local public schools were deteriorating in those days, kids were really tough, and the teachers were struggling to adapt. We […]
