Conference
Ooops! The First Agen Workshop
The workshop was a big success! I had so much fun and met such wonderful people and was so busy keeping everything on track, that I never got around to writing up the adventure as it happened.
Judith Dubois
Conference
Martin’s report on The First Agen Workshop
One of the participants at the 2013 TPRS workshop, Martin A., wrote up his impressions.
Articles from the Net
A Teacher Bares Her Heart
Maria Cochrane published this moving declaration of love in the Foreign Language Association of Virginia’s journal. I was struck by how closely my own experience resembles hers.
Classroom Management
Too Many Mistakes? Too Little Input!
Students who are learning English make many mistakes, of course. But one of the most difficult things for them to master is the difference between countable and uncountable nouns and when to use much or many. Even advanced students have problems choosing the right words.
Conference
Impressions From Strasbourg 2013
TESOL France held their annual Spring Day in Strasbourg on June 1st. I arrived Friday night in a downpour which continued most of the next day. In spite of the weather, our hosts, Lillian Stirling and Jane Ryder, president of TESOL Strasbourg, were warm, smiling, helpful and gracious throughout.
Classroom Management
What Happened to Bill Gates?
As I explained, my Friday afternoon class is writing a novel. We now have four characters, Vincent Team, Johnny Spider, Jackson Sixteen and James Blonde.
Classroom Strategies
Corrections Are No Longer Drudgery
I have spent literally years of my life seated on a hard wooden bench in the kitchen correcting papers hour after hour. Whole weekends while the sun was shining and the dog needed walking and the horse needed riding.
Classroom Management
TPRS and Project Based Learning
There are four boys in my Friday afternoon class. We began working together last November and they, their parents and I are very pleased with their progress. We’ve done lots of stories and read stories created by other groups.
Comprehensible Input
In a Nutshell
Why don’t they know their irregular verbs? Why do they always drop the -s on third person singular verbs? Why do they confuse “his” and “her”? Why do they never use the vocabulary that they regurgitated for a test?
Classroom Management
When Are Mistakes Not Mistakes?
Basically, one thing that I have learned from horse riding is that it’s much more effective to teach a horse how to do something right than to spend time teaching it not to do something wrong. Pointing out mistakes is teaching students not to do something wrong. Giving them correct models is teaching them to do it right.