ESL etc.

mp3 In this week’s podcast, I talk about oral English week, a special week at my college where students have English classes all day long. I talk about the methods that are being used, and the exams that are being given. In doing so, I try to shed a little light on what it is […]

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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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mp3 This week, I talk about an activity that I’ve used a few times that teaches students about the concept of boycotting and asks them to do a bit of Internet research on the topic. I currently do a version of it that doesn’t require handouts, but the handouts that I used in the past […]

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mp3 First, I talk about a great (and low-prep) discussion activity that Kira came up with. Update: A version of this activity appears in The Non-Stop Discussion Workbook. (thanks Elizabeth) Next, I introduce an individual action project that I did with students in my global issues classes. I briefly mention this activity on the distribution […]

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mp3 First, I talk about an anti-plagiarism activity that Kira came up with. She split her class into two groups, and prepared a paragraph. Two students from each group were asked to pass the paragraph on to their classmates. One group did this by summarizing the meaning of the paragraph, the other by memorizing the […]

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mp3 I talk about some of the problems I’m having motivating my students and some of my ideas for improving this next semester. I also discuss my students’ final projects and plagiarism. Miniature Earth is the short video I mention about world wealth and population. I’m planning to use it in conjunction with this activity […]

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mp3 I continue talking about the project we undertook to make an English program more environmentally responsible. This week, I focus on the activities we designed. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or want to share some ideas of your own. Here is an article I co-wrote about the project.

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mp3 I discuss a project we undertook last year to make an intensive English program (the Hawaii English Language Program more environmentally friendly. In this podcast, I introduce the project, then discuss the student orientation we created and the changes we made in terms of food purchasing. Here is an article I co-wrote about the […]

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mp3 I discuss some of the problems I’m having with homework in my large, college-level English classes. I also introduce a bunch of different homework assignments and ESL activities that I’ve used in the past. This handout introduces several of them in a brief way. Please feel free to email me if you have any […]

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