ESL etc.

I recently attended a webinar by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. The webinar introduced some new teaching materials aimed at helping students understand how they could take productive actions related to climate change. I like this approach, as I’ve found in my own teaching that simply teaching about problems can […]

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This is a great (and quick) activity to highlight how privilege works, and how it can be largely invisible to those who enjoy it. The short version: Students are instructed to ball up a sheet of paper. Next, the teacher puts the recycling bin in the front of the classroom, and tells them that, in […]

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As Black Friday approaches, I thought I’d share this collection of activities that Krista presented last year at a BART event. For those looking for still more ideas, here is a post from 2012 on teaching about Black Friday / Buy Nothing Day, and here is one from 2007. Target audience: EAP students, high intermediate […]

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I first posted about the New Internationalist Easier English Wiki about a year and a half ago. Since then, they’ve added a lot of great materials to their site. The New Internationalist is a magazine focused on promoting global justice and, through their easier English wiki, they make articles more accessible to English language learners […]

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This transcript of a speech given by journalist Chris Hedges offers a very powerful look at our current state of affairs. The introduction of the article draws parallels between our self-destructive path and the novel Moby Dick, which opens the door to using this article as part of a unit on literature, as well as […]

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The #GlobalPOV Project is an initiative by the Blum Center at the University of California, Berkeley that addresses poverty and inequality through innovative digital media. Their videos are extremely visual, and are thus a good way to communicate complex ideas to English language learners. As an example, “Can Experts Solve Poverty?” would be a great […]

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This session is the first of two offered this year by the TESOL Environmental Responsibility Forum. If you’re a TESOL member and you would like to join the forum, please email me your name and member ID and I’ll add you to our list. In this session, eight presenters shared activities for bringing the environment […]

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Michael Sam, a University of Missouri student who is expected to be drafted in the NFL, recently came out. Public reaction has been mixed, with some NFL personnel saying that they wouldn’t be comfortable having a gay player in the locker room. This video, featuring Dallas sportscaster Dale Hansen, offers a powerful response to these […]

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This Valentine’s Day activity from Teaching Tolerance provides insight into Valentine’s Day’s roots as a holiday of resistance. It also highlights the injustices that can occur during this holiday — “moments of exclusion and ostracism, assumptions of a heterosexual norm” — and draws a parallel between the ban on gay marriage and the ban on […]

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IATEFL’s Global Issues Special Interest Group just added a great new feature to their website: eLesson Inspirations. These inspirations take of the form of video clips, each accompanied by several ideas for how they could be used in a class. Five videos have been posted, and they will add new ones every Saturday. One that […]

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