Image courtesy of Phil Roeder
This is the final instalment of my first #444ELT project. To find out more about the project and to read the other three posts, here they are:
In this final week, I explored the concept of extensive reading. I have used extensive reading in my classes in the past, so I wanted to find out what the research says on the topic. Here is what I found. Continue reading Reading
Image courtesy of Jenny Kaczorowski
Welcome to week three of my #444ELT project! If you are interested in reading the summary from the first two weeks, here they are:
For week three, I focused on peer-review/assessment/commenting as my subject of study. I have found the use of a topic each week to be really helpful in comparing what is happening and getting a bigger picture on the subject. I think this week was even more so than in previous weeks. I hope it is helpful. Oh, and since we are on the subject of peer-commenting, feel free to leave your own. đ Continue reading Commenting
Image courtesy of Sean Winters
This is week two of my #444ELT personal challenge. Here is a link to week one.
This week I spent time digging through articles on the use of portfolios in the classroom. This is something I already do and have done for a while, but I wanted to see what others were doing and to see if there was anything I could do better. I learned a great deal this week and I may keep on reading about portfolios as I feel there is some real value to it beyond what I am doing at the moment.
I invite all comments, suggestions, and even criticisms. Share below in the comments section or on Twitter.
Image courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society
The summer after I turned thirteen, my parents encouraged me to get a summer job. I had no idea how to get a job, so I wandered down to the local student summer employment office for some advice. During my meeting with the job counsellor, I was asked if I would be interested in working at the courthouse for a few days doing some landscaping. I was so excited. My first job! Of course I accepted, so she told me to report to the landscaping office at the courthouse the following morning. Being thirteen, I didnât take any notes, so I completely forgot the name of the person I was supposed to meet at 8:00 AM. Oh well, I would figure it out.
I wasnât much of a morning person at that time, but that morning I was up and ready to go. I was so proud to have a job and I looked forward to getting paid for my own work, not some errand I had done for someone I knew. I jumped on my bike and rode off to the courthouse in search of the mystery person I had already forgotten. Upon arriving at the back parking lot, I locked up my bike and headed into the first door I could find. After some wandering around some back hallways, someone in an office came out and asked me if I was Jason. “Nope, Nathan,â I replied. âIâm sure it is just a typo,â he mumbled as he ushered me into his office. âYou’re smaller than I expected,â he chuckled. I didnât laugh. Continue reading Helping
Image courtesy of Taryn
A few days ago, I posted this âchallengeâ on Twitter:
Project #444ELT:Â Helping ELT professionals connect with ELT research
I decided to choose a theme for each week. This weekâs theme revolves around vocabulary learning/acquisition and the use of intentional and incidental means. Each study is different in many ways, but the common thread shows amazing continuity in the results with some solid applications for the language classroom.
So, without further delay, here is my first entry: Week one of #444ELT Continue reading Building
Image courtesy of Nicholas A. Tonelli
One of the unique things about becoming a teenager in the Canadian province of Alberta is you can get your learner’s driving permit on your fourteenth birthday, and that is exactly what I did. Just as with most young people, the opportunity to move behind the wheel is a thrill and one that you can’t wait to do on you own. In order to obtain your learner’s permit, all you have to do is to pass the written part of the exam. I remember the first time behind the wheel. My dad took me to a remote parking lot in a empty city park and had me start and start in first gear (I learned to drive on a manual transmission car). I loved it, but I desperately wanted to get out on the road. That opportunity came weeks later and only around some residential streets. Then the big day came. My parents and I were going to be driving to another city about 3 hours away and my dad was going to let me drive the whole way. The day was overcast, but clear and the start of the journey was fairly uneventful. Slowly, my dad nodded off in the front seat while my mom clung tightly to the door handle in the back seat. Then it happened: construction. I had no idea what to do. There were people holding signs, orange cones all over the place, trucks moving in and out of traffic, and to make matters worse, gravel and rough roads. Meanwhile, my dad continued his afternoon nap. Eventually we made it through and on to our destination. Once we pulled over and stopped, I realized that my hands were cramping as I had been clinging so tightly to the steering wheel that my knuckles had turned pure white. I could hardly take my hands off of the wheel.
I learned a lot from that experience, but in hindsight, it would have been better for me to have read a bit more on the subject and possibly even practised it a bit in on a smaller scale. Also, it would have been nice to have someone with more experience guiding me along the way, pointing out potential problems along the way (sorry dad, I know you were tired and it all worked out in the end). This is what it was like for me as I was handed over my TESL certificate back in 1995. It was like someone had handed me my driver’s license without the process of a learner’s permit. Sure, I had had a practicum with an experienced trainer, but it was fairly short and couldn’t possibly have prepared me for what was to come next. Over the years, I have grown a great deal with a long way still to go. I thought I would share some of my thoughts about how I have learned to become a better teacher for my students.
So, you have your TESL certificate in hand, what’s next? To me, you are like a young tree that has been planted in the ground. Here are some things that can help you grow.
Image courtesy of Steven Mileham
I hate shopping. If I was to describe my experience as a shopper, for clothes especially, it would best be summed up in one word: survival. I am not one to go from shop to shop to find the best deal. As a result, Iâm not terribly picky. If the clothes generally fit and they donât clash too badly, Iâll get them. Therefore, my closet is a terrible mishmash of things that donât necessarily go together, but I try to make it work. This shirt is blue, these pants have blue in them, and this tie is greyish-blue so they must go together. I have gotten pretty good at finding combinations that âworkâ and I just grab those âsetsâ in the morning. No wasting time checking to see if something else might work better. Itâs âgood enoughâ.
I sometimes wonder if we are like that with words. We grab stock phrases and throw them together as collocation âsetsâ. They are âgood enoughâ for what we need to accomplish. We rarely stop to think about what we are saying and how it may be interpreted. It often takes someone bold enough to speak up to help us better understand the consequences of our words. Continue reading Choosing
Image courtesy of CameliaTWU
One year. On May 17, 2013, I started this blog as a way of creating a separate space for me to reflect on what I was doing, learning, and thinking about as an ELT instructor and educator. What I didn’t expect was that anyone would actually read it. Seventy(!) posts later, here I am wondering what it is I have accomplished over this time. Did I really learn anything? Did I actually help anyone else along the way? Is it what I expected it would be or has it evolved into something different? Am I better for having taken the time to write these posts or could my time have been better served elsewhere? Lastly, if I was to close the virtual door on this site, would anyone actually care? Would I care? So many questions. Continue reading Reviewing
Image courtesy of Kate Mereand-SinhaThis post is in response to Anne Hendlerâs blog post challenge to share one thing that happened today and post it with #OneThing on Twitter. I decided to write it as a short story instead, something Iâve never really done before. Thought it seemed appropriate. Donât worry, I wonât give up my day job to become a writer any time soon!
With the sun straining to appear through the blanket of grey, I shoved my hands in my pockets and started my way towards the college. âAt least it isnât raining,â I muttered to myself. Iâm not really a morning person, but as Iâve gotten older, Iâve started to get used to the morning commute. I was careful to walk around a small snail creeping along on the sidewalk when I almost stepped into the line of car climbing out of the underground parkade. âThanks for stopping!â I thought as he squealed his tires, launching himself over the curb and onto the road. The driver leans on his horn as he swerves around a truck backing into an a building parking lot. âPatience, please!â I growl. Oi. And Iâve hardly gone fifty paces. I begin to wonder what this day has in store for me. Continue reading Waiting
Image courtesy of Nick Page
Have you ever had one of those days where a certain topic keeps coming up over and over again in completely different situations? Yesterday was like that for me. The completely random topic? Critical pedagogy. Not sure why, but Iâm not complaining. This is a topic that I have really started to sink my teeth into, even if I am still working out all that it encompasses and how it plays out in my language classroom.
For those not entirely sure about what critical pedagogy is, here is a really, really simplified (perhaps oversimplified?) version. In the beginning, there was Paulo Freire, a philosopher and educator from Brazil who wrote this amazing, albeit somewhat dense, book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. By the sounds of the title, I am sure you can probably start to guess where this is going. Freire believed that education should allow those who find themselves oppressed and cut off politically to gain a voice and be given the tools and space to transform their situation. Freire also fought against the traditional dispensing of knowledge by the teacher, instead giving the students the means to direct and create their own learning especially through social interaction. Basically, critical pedagogy levels the playing field by stripping away the hierarchical structure so prevalent in education. Students take what they learn in the classroom and transform their world outside of the classroom. There is so much more than that, so if you would like to understand it better, go here.
Okay, before anyone starts blasting me for missing important components of critical pedagogy, the purpose of this post isnât to be a treatise on all things critical, but I simply want to provide a foundation to explain what I have been thinking about. In this case, three different things arose from the conversations and texts I read. Continue reading Changing
ELT Reflections 