Teacher Discussion Forums

First thing you should know is that I have never had to teach a doctor or nurse how to diagnose anything--they learn this in medical school. I am teaching only English. I actually tutor doctors who work in university settings, and I mostly tutor doctors for communicating with professional colleagues...

How should I know? English, after all, is such a static, finite and boring language that only limits its speakers. Down William, down! Emotional involvement! Such a shame! Humans should interbreed with Vulcans soon or their passions will be the death of them. (And, yes, F. Scott, I am sinning by lau...

Your examples are not germane to the sarcastic dimissal. Both of your examples were simply your failure to understand what was expected of you. This is a fairly common occurence in employment for people new to their field. Hopefully it didn't happen a third time. However, the incidents you describe ...

Yes, all these jobs are for organizations that do business in English. In the international aid community and foreign diplomacy and legal communities in Brussels and in metals trading the international language is English. How outrageous to require people who will be dealing with materials written i...

I mentioned Steinbeck in general in my earlier posts. Many of his books would be good, although Of Mice and Men might be a difficult theme for some. I will look at some of the Orson Scott Card. Thanks for mentioning him. All Quiet on the Western Front is translated into English. I generally only use...

A couple of methods I might try: first use a tape recorder. Record your student reading a passage, then record yourself reading the same passage. Or record a conversation with your student one day, then go home and record the corrected conversation and return it to your student for listening and pra...

What I'm saying is that if one person were a Tax Official and the other a Tax Officer, I would guess the Tax Official to be of higher rank. So, yes. I am guessing that many, but not all, "Tax Officials" are "Tax Officers," and not all are "Principal Tax Officers." What we're actually talking about, ...

The article lists "Principal Tax Officer" as the man's official title. "Tax official" is not capitalized, and is therefore merely a general label for any and all Tax Officers. As you are questioning their interchangeability in this article, and they are not used in this article in the way you indica...

Thanks for the link. What an awesome website for ESL/ESP! Heck, it's an awesome website period! KS

I am trying to move away from classics to more modern reading for my students. Many of the students seem bored when reading books written long ago, but when we read more recent books, they are more interested. I think recently written books also teach spoken English and modern culture better. I hav...

I am glad you excluded nonwhite and female monolingual Anglophones, because I, personally, don't find brown monolingual Anglophones, like the mixed race neoNazi recently in the news, near as offensive as white monolingual anglophones. I also have no problem with female monolingual anglophones, like ...

I read the BBC article and it says, "Mammoths went through six sets of teeth as they got older and they increased in size as the animals aged." Has it changed since you first quoted the article? If so you probably viewed the sins of an editor, not a science writer. Here's a plausible scenario of the...

I loved your idea of the 'little notebook' so much that I tried it with my students. I gave a group of them 'little notebooks' with tiny pens tied to them for Christmas presents. They love using them! Every class starts with the introduction of new vocabulary. Students look up their words, then pres...

Strider, Excellent point. I also use seminars at local universities. I subscribe via e-mail to departmental seminar announcements. When one will be in our area that is interesting to the scientists I am tutoring, I get the journal article and we use that for discussion. When I tutor, we work on how ...

I went to Amazon and did a search for 'English for scientist' and came up with some titles. Try it. I tutor scientists and engineers and don't use a book specifically for ESL for scientists. Scientists are so highly specialized that any textbook would not contain the specific material they need and ...