Exploring

March 26, 2014Uncategorizedcoursebooks, efl, elt, esl, esol, learning, reflecting, teaching, tefl, tesl, tesolnathanghall

Image courtesy of Danie van der Merwe

Teaching is a strange career choice. Think about it. For almost the entirety of your young life, your goal is to get out of school. You finally graduate from high school and you willingly choose to endure anywhere from 2-8 more years of formal education just so you can go back to the classroom. Why? What drives a person to return when they have the opportunity to run away and be free? I was never the best student and I certainly had my fair share of difficulties with bullies (I was almost always one of the smallest students and I certainly wasn’t one of the “cool kids”). My parents were both teachers and I swore I would never become a teacher. I saw the amount of extra time they had to put into their job at home and on holidays (anyone who says teachers have a free ride during the summer needs to have their head examined) and I thought, “Who would want to do this job?”

Well, here I am in my ninth consecutive year as an English language instructor and I still love my job. I love the fact that I get to meet so many amazing people, students and colleagues, and I selfishly enjoy it when someone leaves my class feeling they have grown in their language ability. Was it only because of me? Of course not, but I do hope that I was able to help in some way.

Continue reading Exploring →

Considering

March 3, 2014Uncategorizedcopying, curriculum, efl, elt, esl, esol, lesson planning, materials, philosophy of language education, reflection, reflective teaching, tefl, tesl, tesolnathanghall

Image courtesy of Keith Kissel

I have a feeling this is going to be a rather short post, but this thought has been taking up space in my brain for too long and needs to get out. I also have a feeling that this isn’t going to be as clear as it seems to be in my head at the moment. Here goes nothing.

I think we have become lazy when it comes to preparing lessons. Okay, that is a bit harsh, but I think there is at least an element of truth to that. When I became an English language instructor back in [date as been removed to protect the age of the writer], we didn’t have the internet; we had to make our lessons from scratch! Actually, that isn’t entirely true, we did have a shelf full of books with some lesson ideas and photocopiable activities (thanks, Jill Hadfield!). I remember spending hours planning, prepping, cutting, glueing, copying, stapling, etc., just to get ready for the next day (I even used stencils and clipart!). I wouldn’t say that my lessons were anything fabulous (actually, I shudder in horror at some of the things that I did), but I did attempt to tailor my lessons to the group I was teaching.

My fear at the moment is that we have become so reliant on the what and not on the why. Continue reading Considering →

Studying

February 19, 2014UncategorizedCoursera, Dornyei, eap, efl, elt, English for Academic Purposes, esl, esol, ma tesol, MOOC, online learning, research, statistics, tesl, tesolnathanghall

Image courtesy of Ted Major

I finally caved into all of the MOOC hype and signed up for a course, although my reasons are purely selfish. To be honest, I’m not doing it because it is ‘cool’ or I am interested in the inner workings of a more social style of learning. Nope. I am doing it for the information. Last night, I watched a great workshop on YouTube given by Zoltan Dornyei on designing and analyzing data from questionnaires. It got me interested again in statistics, even though I dreaded the course during my MA TESOL program, and I felt compelled to find out more. Why? Well, it is just plain interesting. I am not one for just taking things at face value very often. I want to know why and how things occur. I have been reading a lot of journal articles lately and I find my eyes starting to glaze over when reading the data charts and various terms used to explain them. As my dad would often say, I know enough to hurt myself, in this case when it comes to stats. On top of all of that, I want to know more about the use of statistics for when I start to get into research myself.

To make a long story a little less boring, I ended up looking at free MOOCs and decided on a data analysis course from Duke University through Coursera. Despite my lack of time and a little bit of apprehension, I signed up knowing that I wouldn’t lose any money in the deal and should end up learning at least SOMETHING in the process. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to sign up and get started when the sheer enormity of the task started to hit me. There are readings and videos, assignments and exams. When am I going to get this all done? Well, I might as well continue forward was my oh so enthusiastic cry. Continue reading Studying →

Rebuking

February 12, 2014Uncategorizedcoaching, elt, esl, growth, guiding, judging, professional development, teaching, tefl, tesl, tesolnathanghall

Image courtesy of J. E. Theriot

Okay, time for a confession. Despite what anyone might think, I’m not perfect (actually, anyone would be crazy to think that). I make plenty of mistakes on my own and I shouldn’t be digging around in anyone’s life. That being said, I felt it necessary to take some time to discuss a concern I have about how we are treating one another as professionals and simply as human beings. I’ve seen an alarming trend of being overly negative when responding to others online and even face to face. The media and entertainment certainly aren’t helping things either. It seems to me that we have lost a genuine respect for one another as fellow human beings. From internet trolls to late night talk shows, social media to general conversations, it seems that it has become acceptable, maybe even ‘cool’, to mock others or become highly critical of others who don’t think or do things the same way as we do. Even those who are calling on others to be more accepting of others become dismissive and negative towards those who might not feel the same way on certain issues. Do we have to agree with them? No, but we don’t need to be so insensitive and nasty.

Since this is a teaching blog and not meant to be a platform of more general topics, I want to bring this a little closer to home and focus on how we treat other teaching professionals who believe or think differently than we do. Continue reading Rebuking →

Acquiring

February 10, 2014Uncategorizedacquisition, efl, elt, esl, lexicon, listening, POLE, praxis, process, product, pronunciation, reading, speaking, tefl, tesl, tesol, vocabulary, writingnathanghall

Image courtesy of Premshree Pillai

I really enjoy being a language teacher, but I make a terrible language learner. When I was younger, I barely scraped by in my French lessons, but when we moved to another province in Canada when I was in grade nine, I found out how far behind I was in regards to the other students. One of the biggest things I noticed was how small my personal lexicon was compared to my classmates. Sure my grammar was bad, but since I didn’t have the words to put together meaningful sentences, no one really noticed.

Fast forward a number of years to when I had moved to Lithuania and was taking Lithuanian language lessons while working as an English language instructor. There was this initial rush of learning as my vocabulary grew while taking lessons and living my day-to-day life shopping, working, and socializing with others. My confidence grew as did my vocabulary, but it was somewhere around the six month mark that I started to notice a levelling off in my lexical growth. I decided I needed to take action, so I bought myself a set of CDs that promised to help me learn a pile of new words. I transferred the audio files to my iPod and listened intently as I walked to and from work each day. It was at that time that something hit me. The words I had learned in my first six months were sticking in my brain much better than the ones I learned while walking. At first I thought it was the fact I wasn’t seeing the words, so I wrote them out to look at as I walked. That didn’t really help. “Okay,” I thought, “what else could it be?” Then it hit me — context. That is what I was missing. Continue reading Acquiring →

Healing

January 28, 2014Uncategorizedefl, elt, esl, esol, language teaching, ma tesol, mental health, PD, tesolnathanghall

In support of the Bell Let’s Talk day today, I wanted to share a few of my thoughts and concerns in regards to what the English language education community is doing, or should be doing, to support both the teachers and their learners dealing with mental health issues. Continue reading Healing →

Collaborating

January 27, 2014Uncategorizedcollaborate, cooperate, efl, esl, esol, teaching, tefl, tesl, tesolnathanghall

Image courtesy of jphilipg

For those who don’t know, I grew up in a small town in northern Canada. Until my early teens, we didn’t have much of a shopping centre other than the Coop Mall which had a grocery store, a hardware store, and a clothing store all of which were part of The Cooperative. I had no idea what that meant until much later in my life. You can understand then why I found it amusing that my television idol at the time, The Friendly Giant, talked about cooperation. I had no idea why he would be discussing groceries on TV. Weird.

Much (much) later in life, I found myself in a very collaborative MA TESOL program working through the differences between cooperating with others and collaborating with others. It seems so simple on the surface, but the nuances of working through material with two or three other people certainly helped refine my definitions of those two terms.

For the sake of this post, I will oversimplify my understanding of what these two terms mean. I will use the building of house to illustrate my point. Continue reading Collaborating →

Testing

January 21, 2014Uncategorizedcurriculum, efl, elt, esl, esol, exams, goals, language testing, objectives, tefl, tesl, tesol, testingnathanghall

Image courtesy of Jack Hynes

I’m back! For those that actually read my blog, I apologize for the long hiatus. In keeping with the spirit of this blog and my single word titles, I give you my one word excuses: testing, marking, moving, celebrating, moving, searching, moving, buying, interviewing, accepting, learning, teaching, preparing, sleeping. There, does that help?

There have been a few things floating around in my mind lately (but only a few), most of them related to assessment. My current frustration is with ‘teaching to the test’, often associated with washback (not to be mistaken for backwash which is just gross). I am getting ahead of myself. Let me back track a bit. Continue reading Testing →

Controlling

December 19, 2013ELT Research Blog Carnivalblog carnival, efl, elt, elt research, esl, esol, learner autonomy, reflection, reflective teaching, tefl, tesl, tesolnathanghall

Image courtesy of Gary Cycles

Note: This post is my submission for the 2nd ELT Research Blog Carnival. The subject of this carnival is on learner autonomy and is hosted by Lizzie Pinard. If you are interested in knowing more about writing one yourself, please visit her website for more information.

For those who don’t know me, this isn’t the only blog I have. I also have an education technology site that was not really intended to be a education technology blog. Instead, it was meant to be a place where I could post things about language learning and teaching, but somehow evolved into a how-to type of site for those who are new to using technology in the classroom. As a result, I felt that I needed a place strictly for reflecting on what I was learning and doing as a language instructor. Hence, the need for this blog.

Reflection has always been the cornerstone of this site, but not just on what is happening in my day to day life as a teacher. It is also a place where I can share things I am learning about from what I am reading in areas of language education. In fact, my first post was on the integration of education technology and the work of Earl Stevick. Since my time in the MA TESOL program at Trinity Western University, I have been intrigued by the work of Dr. Stevick and his focus on the learner. This leads me to the research article I have chosen for this particular ELT Research Blog Carnival on learner autonomy. Continue reading Controlling →

Creating

November 28, 2013Uncategorizedassessment, content, efl, elt, eportfolio, esl, formative, self access, students, summative, tefl, tesl, tesolnathanghall

Image courtesy of Lorraine Santana

One of the things I love about Twitter is the online chats that occur based on areas of interest. This is a great way for anyone to have a say, regardless of class, position, or status. While I would love to participate more, time restraints and scheduling conflicts make it impossible for me to participate in the chats that I would love to take part in. As a result, I try to follow up by reading the tweets after the fact and the posted summaries as well.

Yesterday, I got to work in the morning and quickly read over the #ELTchat transcript and was pleasantly surprised to see a topic discussed that is close to my heart, that is student-generated content. Even this past weekend, I was discussing this very area of interest with other teachers during my session at the BC TEAL regional conference. While yesterday’s chat discussion predictably centred around the creation of content, I was mystified to find that little was mentioned about why this content is created and for what purpose. On top of that, not much at all was said about the use of student-generated content by other students as listening or reading material. The result of reading over that transcript has prompted me to take a deeper look at what student-generated material is and what is its ultimate purpose. Continue reading Creating →

ELT Reflections

Musings of a teacher always in training