ESL etc.

I just came across The Epoch Times, a New York-based newspaper with an emphasis on China. I found it while reading about an environmentalist who was arrested last year. Because this newspaper is critical of the Communist Party, it is blocked in China. Thus, to read it, I need to use a circumventor. I’m currently [...]

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mp3 This week, I talk about the K12 Online Conference, primarily giving some of my thoughts on the pre-conference keynote. Keynote speaker David Warlick talks about how Web 2.0-type technology is changing how we should approach our students, and I reflect on how this applies to language teaching. I also make some comments about the [...]

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mp3 I start by talking about how last week’s headline activity ended up going differently than I’d planned. I discuss some of the difficulties of looking critically at current events here in China and also talk about some of the uncomfortable issues that came up. In doing so, I refer to this article from Beijing [...]

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I included Beijing Newspeak on my recently added China information page. It is a fantastic blog written by a “language polisher” for the Xinhua News Agency, the official voice of the Chinese Communist Party. He writes well, and offers keen insight into the inner-workings of China’s government-controlled media. For example, check out this recent post [...]

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TEFL China – A collection of three listservs dedicated to teaching English in China. One focuses on teaching, one on jobs and one on life in general. TESL-L – The main list has over 30,000 subscribers. There are also sublists dedicated to CALL, IEPs, jobs, young learners and ESP. Archives of each list are also [...]

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mp3 I begin with a discussion activity that I came up with after seeing this clip of students tormenting their teacher in Beijing. After having students share what they knew about this, I had them go through a set of discussion questions (below). I found this news story via the Hao Hao Report, a cool [...]

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mp3 I begin by briefly discussing Kira’s Earth Day activity, which I finally put online. (sorry!) I next discuss a couple of discussion activities that I used this past week dealing with advertising and money. These include two sets of discussion questions (see below) and having students create their own ads. These topics were popular [...]

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