Teacher Discussion Forums

Hey all! I don't think, Twelve, that you are being petty at all, though I wouldn't worry about the "h" thing too much, as Lorikeet points out, it's often lost among the other consonants and vowels around it. I ask my Spanish students to consider it mute unless I ask for the aspiration that is usuall...

Hey Metal and the rest of you all! Not one nor the other is more important. My conscience requires me to take individual learning capacities into account on a minute to minute basis. My way of teaching has developed through the observation of how my students learn, how they want to learn and what I ...

Hey all.

Here is the "Interpretative ESL" thread that might be useful to those looking for ways to include communicative work in their classes. Enjoy the debate!

peace,
revel.

Hello all! I will bring my series of thoughts on this subject to the top again, it gets lost in the data base, since there isn't anything significant to add to it, though it is certainly not out of date. The thread is called "Interpretative ESL". I don't consider anything used in class as possibly b...

Hey all! "The students appear much less overtly concerned about acclimating and more concerned with learning English." this from metal's last posting is my experience as well. Students can ask me about general cultural aspects, but those aspects usually come up in relation to some work we are doing ...

Hey all. I personally believe (which means that I am not stating any TRUTH) that comprehension comes basically from recognition. If the language isn't somewhere in your mental bank, you won't recognize it and thus won't comprehend it. And so, I don't understand what my Irish boss or English workmate...

Hey all. In a language academy, the answer is easy, simply prohibit teachers from teaching culture. In two hours a week there is hardly time for students to assimilate the grammar of the week, and teaching culture might be anectdotal but certainly shouldn't be the main focus. A couple of years ago a...

Hello all. Today I gave my kids their new English book (finally, someone forgot to order them until last week) and I stuck a mailing lable on the cover of each of their books, being careful to stick it covering the word "British" in the subtitle (original "British English"). I don't doubt that the b...

Hey all! Well, just did a googlesearch on ESL, CSL (Chinese) and SSL (Spanish), only ESL has the meaning of X-language (in this case, English) as a second language (27,000,000 hits). The other two there wasn't a page on language with those letters as a search clue. I think there is probably a group ...

Hey all! We are kind of arrogant, we ESL teachers! I certainly think the student tries to get everything he/she can out of his/her ESL teacher. I think that sometimes being an ESL teacher goes to our heads, we become heady with the power that teaching English represents in this American dominated wo...

Hey all. If "go to sleep" is an idiomatic expression that means the regular loss of waking consciousness, for example what most of us do when we lay our heads on the pillow, then "She is going to sleep" seems to me to be the present continuous, that is, she is presently in the process of entering fi...

Hey all!

Wasn't it George W Bush who complained that the French don't have a word for "entrepeneur"?

peace,
revel.

Hey guys and gals. Just a quick note. The technical problems seemed to solve themselves, though not without the blame being thrown about from the organizers of the course to my boss, finally everyone left it in my hands, saying "It's your problem, solve it, and quickly, or you will be left behind." ...

Hey Lorikeet! Well, everything started out just fine, we had a first class, all of us together, in which the "platform" was explained and we did a "get to know you" exercise. We all left the class highly motivated to get started on the real study activity, which is using an internet platform to lear...

Hey all! Are you surprized to find me over here after so much silence? Today I began a special course in being a tutor on-line. For those who don't remember or just don't know me, I live in the north of Spain. This is a course offered by the State Employment Office. If anyone is interested in hearin...