7 Deadly Sins of Great Teachers

Learning Disability or just Language?

Teacher Struggles - Some inspiration

Teachers selling their knowledge – A Parable
There is a discussion within the online teaching community world wide because of THIS recent N.Y. Times article about teachers selling their lesson plans/materials and making $$$. May the Best Teacher Win is a great response and correctly suggests we are asking the wrong questions. If interested further – read all the varying viewpoints on [...]

Inspiration for English Language Learners
A PERFECT TOEFL SCORE. I read about this in today’s newspaper. Although, I’m firmly against the hysteria that involves TOEFL and TOEIC test taking in Korea (English ability should be judged functionally and face to face) – this story really hit the right tone. So I made a karaoke to share and allow teachers to inspire [...]

In Praise of Backpacking English Teachers
I think backpacking English teachers get a bad rap. Truly they do. And especially from the more “senior” and “accomplished/established” members of our profession – ELT (English Language Teaching). Why so? I have only praise for this unseasoned, fertile, fecund and procreant soil of our profession. So I sing their praises and I’ll tell you [...]

My top 10 sites for Language teaching/learning – 2009
Jane Hart, bless her heart, runs a nice collection of THE TOP 10 TOOLS LISTS OF LEARNING PROFESSIONS. Check them out and lots of diverse entries. Here’s her own top 25. I’m too late to participate but find my list for last year HERE. Here is my list for this year. The major thread/theme that runs [...]

Who’s Speaking? Guess the Accent.
This game, Guess Who’s Speaking, I designed using the Speech Archives and stock photos. It could be a good listening activity for students (it provides repetition) and also a way to discuss stereotypes. Basically, you first guess who might be speaking (these aren’t the real people but it is fun to think about this and gets [...]