In this podcast I talk about what I’ve been doing for the past several months. I talk a bit about my time at Dancing Rabbit, a community based around environmental sustainability with a website full of photos and articles. I also talk about two online jobs, as a tutor for TalkBean.com and as a rater for the iBt TOEFL exam.

I next talk about my new job as the Technology Coordinator for the English Language Institute at the University of South Florida. Check out the new website I’ve been working on.

Finally, I talk about a low-prep job interview discussion activity that I recently did. We began by brainstorming questions as a class, going over vocab and grammar as needed. I also taught some terms related to benefits, and also told students about certain topics (age, marital status) which were illegal to broach in America. I then had students do interviews in pairs, and wrapped up with a class discussion about “difficult” questions — What is your biggest weakness? Why did you leave your last job? etc.

The last thing I mention is a new planner made for teachers interested in social justice.

If you have any questions, or other low-prep activities that work well with all sorts of classes, please let me know.

In this podcast I talk about how I’m doing debates with my classes. I broke it into three main parts:

• finding a group and choosing a topic
• brainstorming pros and cons
• presenting the debate

I also talk briefly about a photograph based activity that I’m planning to do where my students will take each other on virtual tours. At the end, I mention National Novel Writing Month.

I start by introducing a roleplay in which students were asked to imagine what they would do if their boss pressured them to do something illegal or dishonest. As an example, I told them a story about a student at another university who worked as a tour guide over the summer. His boss asked him to tell customers that the river they were visiting was clean and safe to drink from, despite the fact that it wasn’t. The guide did as he was told, even though he refused to drink the water himself.

Next, I talk briefly about how I handled a textbook dialog about Tiananmen Square.

I then discuss several textbooks that I have used bring global issues and activism into my English classes.

	In the Global Classroom is a great book full of activities that could be used with language learners. The activities cover the whole variety of language skills are a wide range of issues.
For writing classes, Reading, Writing, and Rising Up has some great ideas, mainly using poetry and personal essays. It has a lot of student writing in it, which could be really engaging for English learners. Here is a review I wrote of it as part of my MA degree.
	Rethinking Globalization is another interesting book from Rethinking Schools. It is full of readings and other activities introducing some of the difficulties associated with globalization. I really like the materials, but a lot of the readings are probably too difficult for most language learners.
The Future of the Earth is a neat way to give students a quick overview of a wide variety of issues. It is a coffee table book of aerial photographs showing natural disasters, war, pollution and other global issues. Each photo is accompanied by a few paragraphs of information on the issue, including some interesting statistics.
	I also briefly mention two ESL-specific global issues books: Global Issues (RBT) and Linking Language and the Environment The former is a short book with a collection of handouts and activities, while the latter is an interesting book for teachers interested in bringing environmental language activities into their classroom.

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 state of education in China in light of the points mentioned in the keynote speech.

This week I discuss four global issues video games: Stop Disasters, What Would You Do?, Food Force, and Darfur is Dying. I reviewed Stop Disasters a few days ago and plan to review the others in more detail soon.

In the meantime, here’s a brief rundown:

Stop Disasters – Students attempt to protect a village from one of five natural disasters. Includes a lot of reading and good vocabulary words. Could be used for group discussions as part of a unit on natural disasters or climate change. Made by the UN. The website also features teaching materials on each of the natural disasters.

What Would You Do? – Students make relationship choices that either increase or decrease their characters risk of getting AIDS/HIV. In addition to teaching about AIDS prevention, this game also includes tips on decision making. Again, this game focuses on reading. Made by UNICEF.

Food Force – A game dealing with world hunger and food aid. In my opinion, it features too much arcade play and not enough integrated content. The educational content is mostly presented in cut scenes which can be skipped with a mouseclick. One positive thing is that there is a lot of listening in this game, and the voices included feature a variety of accents. Made by the UN.

Darfur is Dying – A lousy game made by MTV. The game play is awkward and dull, and there seems to be little if any educational value. Please let me know if I’m missing something.

I also mention EFL Classroom 2.0, the Ning network I recently joined. I finish with a reminder that National Novel Writing Month is coming up fast.

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 Newspeak about food safety in China.

I next describe my upcoming lesson based on giving advice. It follows the pattern I’ve been using this semester of reading, writing, discussion, listening, discussion, roleplay and review. I put the listening and second discussion activities below.

Finally, I briefly outline the introduction to sentence-level intonation that I recently gave my students.

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Advice Activity

I read the following list of travel advice aloud to my class and asked them to tell each item back to me. I answered vocabulary questions, and then had them discuss why each of these pieces of advice would be given. In addition, I asked students to discuss whether they agreed with each pieces of advice and if they had any advice to add. We then talked about the reasons behind each piece of advice as a class. Finally, I asked my students to practice giving each piece of advice and explaining the reason behind it to their partner.

1. travel on a private tour (age gap between younger/active travelers and less active/older travelers)
2. wash your hands with soap at every opportunity, and carry disinfectant
3. drink and brush only with bottled water
4. bring binoculars, sunhat, sunscreen, small packs of toilet paper
5. research the destinations before you go (there won’t be any English brochures, maps, or street signs)
6. bring a mask (air pollution)
7. beware of shopping excursions which are not listed on your itinerary (might end up racing through thousand year old art and architectural treasures to spend hours in stores)
8. bring lots of one dollar bills (tips)
9. on the train try to get a seat in the middle of the cabin (away from the toilet, loud banging door, and cigarette smoke)

Please feel free to email me or post in the comments if you have any questions or suggestions.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, here is the feed: feeds.feedburner.com/ESLetc

I start right off talking about my teaching. I discuss how last week’s classes went, and then I describe what I’m doing this week. I explain the headline activity (see below) and talk about how my new approach focuses more on doing a variety of tasks than covering a lot of content. Check out my lesson plan for a bit more information.

I finish off by mentioning two great blogs, Beijing Newspeak and No Impact Man.

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The Headline Activity

Begin by reading the headlines to the class. Read each one two or three times, then ask a student to tell them back to you. After writing it on the board, ask students if they have any vocabulary questions. Ask someone to tell you what the story is about. Finally, ask the students what you need to change to make the headlines into grammatically correct sentences. You can give them hints by placing carats where words are missing.

Here are the headlines I used:
China says toys in latest recall safe
China shuts 1,000 factories near polluted lake
China: Foreign investment up 12.8 pct.
China Sees Rise in Industrial Output
Toppling the Great Firewall of China
China’s terracotta army invades Britain
Taiwan military shows strength amid fresh tension with China

Afterwards, I had students do a brief discussion activity, followed by a news-related roleplay, both of which are outlined in my lesson plan.

Please feel free to email me or post in the comments if you have any questions or suggestions.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, here is the feed: feeds.feedburner.com/ESLetc

First, I answer a listener’s request for ideas on getting larger classes to speak. Specifically, I talk about a pronunciation activity, pair/groupwork and roleplays.

Next, I talk about week two of my sophomore English for Tourism conversation classes. I’m trying to improve students acquisition of vocabulary and sentence patterns by covering the same content in a variety of different ways. This week, students read, wrote and did a variety of speaking and discussion activities based around the task of introducing China to a foreign tourist. Please check out my lesson plan if you’d like. The sample answers to “What’s China like?” that I read aloud are in there as well.

I then briefly mention the fact that I have split the blog feed into three pieces.

Finally, I recommend Grammar Girl’s podcast which offers clear explanations of common grammatical problems.

Please post in the comments, email me if you have any questions or want to share some ideas of your own.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, here is the feed: feeds.feedburner.com/ESLetc

I spend most of this podcast talking about my plans for the first day of class. Feel free to look at my notes if you’d like.

I briefly mention roleplays, which I talked about at length in podcast #2.

I then mention a couple of new email lists:
Larry Ferlazzo offers a subscription to his blog. He posts new ESL / social studies links every day, and also offers a monthly top ten.

I also mention TEFL China and TESL-L, but I haven’t found these as useful.

Please post in the comments or email me if you have any questions or want to share some ideas of your own.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, here is the feed: feeds.feedburner.com/ESLetc

This week, I begin by talking about some of my plans for the upcoming semester. While doing so, I refer to this earlier podcast about planning a project based course.

I also talk about the new features on the website, including the blog, the collection of article excerpts and the page of China links.

I mention the 4 email lists that I currently subscribe to. The two that I’ve subscribed to for the longest are KOTESOL’s global issues group and IATEFL’s global issues group. Another list that I recently found is World 727 (which I wrote about here). To join, simply send an email to Professor Merry Merryfield at merryfield.1@osu.edu. She also oversees TeachGlobalEd.net, a wonderful website with tons and tons of global education resources, organized both by region and by issue. The newest list I’ve joined is GlobalEdNews from the Peace Corps.

I then talk a bit about the activity I made recently based on 21 Lies I Will Tell My Children.

Please post in the comments or email meif you have any questions or want to share some ideas of your own.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, here is the feed: feeds.feedburner.com/ESLetc