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 […]
My Brightest Diamond
Shara Worden, aka My Brightest Diamond, is my soundtrack today. Her introspective mood, soaring voice and melodies and gritty guitar are right up my alley (= exactly what I like.) She comes from opera and still records chamber music. In this interview she talks about how very different it is to write and to perform, […]
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 […]
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I’ve been away from the US for so long that I’ve got a few blind spots regarding US popular culture. But I’m working on it! One of the things I truly regret missing are some of the better TV series, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (March 1997 until May 2003). Just the snippets of teen […]
Blog carneval: No blog is an island
Well, you know, I never really meant to become a blogger. It was all a bit of an accident. You see, I used to keep up individual course (b)logs to post homework and materials. Then one day I decided to get help (wouldn’t be anywhere without help) to build Beautiful Islands, my Moodle site, with […]
