Feed the grammar guru
My favorite quote so far at IATEFL: “Do not teach things that are wrong.” That’s Dave Willis. And as he proves in this talk held before a room full of English teachers, it’s easier said than done. We often enough do teach total malarkey, namely as soon as we teach prescriptive grammar rules that don’t […]
Let down
The “professional development” event I was looking forward to has just been cancelled. Such a let down. The trainers needed 15 paying participants. Just 15! MELTA has about 300 members, and non-members were also invited, yet 275 Euros for three days was too much for them. Isn’t that sad? Why won’t freelance English teachers invest […]
Paedagogical tinkering
Tessa Woodward used a beautiful phrase in her plenary talk at IATEFL, “paedagogical tinkering“. What a great phrase! I’m a tinkerer myself (and have blogged about tinkering, too.) But what strikes me about this: She put “tinkering” in the context, not of fooling around and trying stuff out, willy-nilly, but of proper professional development, of […]
Pigeon: Impossible
Pigeon Impossible, the silent animated film by Lucas Martell released on 9 November that took 4 years to make, passed the 1 million views mark on YouTube after less than 2 weeks online. The film is set in the neighborhood of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., where two of my nieces and I […]
Crying in my coffee
Writing can be a lonely and frustrating business. Writing for online learners of English as I do is particularly tricky: I don’t get much feedback from my readers. As my employers are very busy, asking them to review and edit my work is not always possible. But that means that any errors I make and […]
Question: When does remixing become second-hand living?
http://annehodgson.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/remix.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadGermany has been rocked by scandal this past week, as Helene Hegemann, the 17-year old writer of an astonishing novel called Axolotl Roadkill, has been shown up by Munich blogger Deef Pirmasens (Gefühlskonserve) to have lifted whole passages of her book from the writings of one Airen, a blogger […]
The Google “search stories”
Google has a series of charming ads on YouTube called “Search stories” that are just perfect for English lessons. This one was broadcast on Sunday during the Superbowl. I’m going to play a few of the series in my classes tomorrow and have groups develop the profiles and tell the stories of the people doing […]
