Teacher Discussion Forums

Kazuko, I recommend registering for the Korea forum and posting your questions there. This area of ESL Cafe is quite slow.

You can also of course post to the international section, but the Korean forum is much busier. Good luck.

José, thanks for the post. I have known others from South America who have done just that: taught English back in their home countries while on break from school. I applaud you for trying to learn more about topics in SLA as you have indicated. Brown has some good books out. Principles of Language L...

Thanks to all for the thoughtful posts... In Korea I realized that most of the students I had, and the students other teachers had, really didn't know what they needed to do to study language. The teachers either didn't realize it, or allowed the students to be completely dependent on them. This bot...

hehe, thanks fluffyhamster. Sorry about the "her" thing....I thought it was a reliable guess I'm a male by the way, just in case anyone assumes otherwise. Thanks for the welcome...

Makes me wish I could type 70 wpm, instead of my current 35-40 poking. I like your suggestion though. Similar to the previous idea, you can also use video. Or if you use a tape recorder as previously suggested, you can at least have them listen to themselves. You can also have them do the work of ty...

Forget about the three and four types of conditionals. They are merely a sub-set of possible collocations. Good explanation Stephen, and a nice analysis. yayangimutdeh, fluffyhamster referred you to what was ungrammatical in your original two examples. I just wanted to say... I was just going to sa...

I think it's agreed upon that: We all make these mistakes. Some of us always proofread to correct ourselves, and some of us don't (fluffyhamster proofread her post, and I often do the same). And some of us (or some native speakers) may have trouble proofreading effectively. This has to do with the c...

Thanks to everyone for your insight. I never thought of teaching 80 students in one class as being a good idea to take on, but Sally Olsen definitely made it seem doable... I still believe that it is valuable for a teacher to devote all of his/her time to 10 students at a time, but Sally Olsen has r...

It is encouraging to see that at least two teachers who frequent this forum are aware of this topic, and aware of how to incorporate some strategies-based instruction into their lessons. Thanks for your replies :) Two questions: What city or country are you teaching in if I may ask? And do other tea...

Nevertheless, even an ENS can't always point out what's wrong with a given mistake, even if he or she can often tell a student what they should say instead. Very true. I agree with that, and it's clear that grammar knowledge is helpful in that way. Fluffy hamster, if one is organizing the syllabus,...

I wonder what you mean by "a good level of grammatical knowledge/awareness," although I assume that "awareness" can mean any educated native speaker (I did say "educated"). Helpful? Definitely. Necessary? Not so sure, but definitely necessary in certain classes. I personally believe that knowledge o...

Okay. I know what the research says. And I know what teachers do in their classrooms. But I'm curious as to how many of you know about this area of SLA research. Feel free to comment on anything you know about it, any way you incorporate it in your classrooms, and any questions you may have about it...

This seems to happen pretty much every time you get 2-3 EFL teachers together anywhere. And while people may claim it's just part of "learning about English so they can explain to students" I can't help feeling that it also a means of identity-building, e.g. "I can talk grammar therefore I am an EF...

Instead of answering your question, I'd rather point you in the right direction. For a dissertation, you need to get your points from other research articles (not this forum). You will have to pull what others say from journal articles, and cite them accordingly.

Good luck

First of all, look up the text Making it Happen:... (I forgot the full title sorry) written by Patricia Amato. This is an excellent resource for educators, and answers many of the questions you will have. The main idea is to promote learner interest and autonomy through a participatory classroom, wi...