(This posting includes a handout LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST which you are welcome to use with your students.) * For background information about these articles and for suggestions for how to use them with your students, see  • Introducing “Short, High-Interest Readings”  Also, I’ll be adding more of these articles in the ..read more

(This posting includes a handout LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST which you are welcome to use with your students.) * For background information about these articles and for suggestions for how to use them with your students, see  • Introducing “Short, High-Interest Readings”  Also, I’ll be adding more of these articles in the ..read more

I discuss this posting about prepositions in this short video: Grammar Aspect with Most Mistakes: Prepositions According to Brain Briefs by Bob Duke and cognitive scientist Art Markman, “… adults who learn a new language make more mistakes with prepositions than with just about any other aspect of speech.” Most ESL teachers have probably been asked ..read more

“David, Please report to the Director’s office as soon as your class finishes.  He needs to talk to you.”  A program assistant handed me a note with those sentences on it.  Gulp! In the early 1980s, my wife and I, without much thought, accepted teaching positions on the Greek island of Lesbos.  It was a Greek island, so what could possible go wrong? It was a prep school that high school students attended in the late afternoons/evenings after high school to study English.  Shortly after arriving, we met one of the teachers whom we were replacing.  He told us that ..read more

(This posting includes a handout LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST which you are welcome to use with your students.) * For background information about these articles and for suggestions for how to use them with your students, see  • Introducing “Short, High-Interest Readings”  Also, I’ll be adding more of these articles in the right-hand column: ESL Reading> Short, High Interest Articles for Extensive Readings Here is the sixth article. You can download the article for your students by clicking on the link at the end. Also included are three optional exercises: True-False Questions ..read more

For an extended discussion of this topic with links to some YouTube videos and downloadable exercises, see Four Part Series: Why, How And When to Teach ESL Integrated- and Discrete-Skills Courses.  This post may sound like I am contradicting a previous post, “Integrated vs Discrete Skills ESL Courses: Advantages of Discrete Skills”   Despite my support for segregated skills in general, an integrated skills course with higher-level students who are more homogeneous in ability can be effective and practical. For an integrated skills 1 course to be effective and engaging to the st ..read more

(This posting includes a handout LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST which you are welcome to use with your students.) * For background information about these articles and for suggestions for how to use them with your students, see  • Introducing “Short, High-Interest Readings” (#1 “For More Happiness, Keep Your Good News Secret for a While.”)  Also, I’ll be adding more of these articles in the right-hand column: Categories > Reading > Short-high interest Readings. Here is the fifth article. You can download the article for your students by clicking on the link at the end. Also incl ..read more

This posting includes sample lessons of a Writing Workshop that give students a lot of autonomy.* This posting is an update of my February 1, 2019 post:  Most Important Motivator of Students: How You Can Do It Since posting this back in 2019, I’ve heard from teachers who decided to try out a Writing Workshop with their ESL Writing classes even though they were skeptical at first. Their hesitation seemed to be doubtful that their students would actually be productive without more direct teacher control. However, they reported that their initial skepticism was quickly dispelled after seein ..read more

It was early in my teaching career, and I had recently started teaching for the first time in Asia. My students were a total pleasure to work with. But I wondered what they were looking for in me, their teacher. The director of our program seemed like a thoughtful Asian man, so I believed that he could give me some insights. I wasn’t disappointed. What he told me seemed so simple, but the more I thought about it throughout my teaching career, the more impactful it became. Also, when I reflected back on the characteristics of my favorite teachers in the past, his insight was spot on. Here is w ..read more

In the documentary, Becoming, about Michele Obama, Michele is asked about feeling invisible. Her description made me think more about how many of our ESL/International students probably feel invisible in classes, on campus and in society, and how we can help them. My personal experiences with feeling invisible are quite trivial compared to what some of our students experience, but a recent episodes gave me a bit of a taste of how it feels. I was talking to a colleague (we’ll say his name was Ben) outside the library when a young woman whom I didn’t know walked up to us with a smile on her fac ..read more