Well, due to various factors, particularly the cost of bringing items from home and the illegality of working online in Bali while on a retirement visa, my plans for living on the island went for a nosedive.
After a further period back home, I returned to Taiwan at the end of June.
It seems likely that I will shortly commence work with the Taoyuan English Village program, at least until the end of the year when it is due to end. After that, let's see.

I do have some exciting news to share with you about what's happening from mid-March onward.

I've accepted an online English language teaching position with EF English Live. The job will be based in Bali, Indonesia. After an initial period of training in systems, procedures, etc. and a month of online work based in the English First office in Denpasar, I should be authorised by them to work from home, which I'm planning I will make in Ubud. The position's focus will be mostly conversational English, either individually or in small groups, via the Internet.

If you know Bali, you will be aware that Ubud is its art, dance, music and cultural heart. It's also famous for its rice terraces and expansive views, not to mention the book and film "Eat, Pray, Love" which has made it a tourist draw-card.

After sorting through my health issues, I'm anticipating that my new home will be more stress-free. I've been there twice already and have a reasonably good idea of what I might expect. Amongst other things, I'm hoping for some massages, meditation, yoga, and to learn some Indonesian language. I might also see if I can learn to play Balinese music - perhaps gamelan.

Once I'm settled and have some more experience, I'll be ready to post some updates to this site.

In September, 2016 a brand new, fun English learning book hit Amazon. It's called "Have Fun Talking: 101 Informal Conversations in English".

My role was as editor & contributor to the book, the e-book (on Kindle), and as the creator of the related website http://www.havefuntalking.com. The publication contains dialogues dealing with a wide variety of life situations including Chinese translations of each conversation, as well as exercises to expand knowledge and vocabulary. It includes jokes on each page, idioms, and words of wisdom to promote thinking skills. The dialogues are also available on audio and CD formats.

That’s right, jokes! HUNDREDS of jokes! And why not? The name is HAVE FUN TALKING!, and we want you to have hundreds of laughs while you learn. There are jokes about cats, dogs, cars, banks, luggage, cheese, fish, teachers, monkeys, chickens, phones, motorcycles, airports, railroads and artists. You name it, we have probably included a joke about it.

What do you call an alligator in a vest? An investigator.

The e-Book version of “Have Fun Talking” is now available for purchase on Amazon!!!  It features all of the same content as the actual book, but has a few extras.
You can make notes of anything you’d like to remember or practice.
You can build a set of your own flashcards for any vocabulary you would like to recall.
Our testing has shown that the e-Book will work on a wide variety of devices, including:
– Windows PC’s
– Apple computers
– iPads
– Android tablets
– iPhones
– Android phones
So, you can take the e-book with you everywhere and spend any spare moments dipping into the dialogues and exercises, or just enjoying the jokes.

More recently, all 101 Have Fun Talking conversations are now available to purchase and download in .mp3 audio format. Each conversation is numbered and listed in the table of contents, so you can easily find the ones you are interested in studying. Listen to native English speakers while reading along in the book or e-book, practice your pronunciation with them, or just listen for fun. Whatever you decide, these audio files will be a great addition to your English language learning.

Please check out the website and have a look inside the books on Amazon at http://amzn.to/2k3MKge.

​(That's me on the right, by the way.)

Hi everyone.
I know it's been quite a while since I posted. A major part of the reason have been health issues.
I had two operations in the first half of 2016 while in Taiwan, and I'm almost through chemotherapy treatment back home in Australia, where I've been since August.
As a result of this, I have not been teaching since then, and so have not had much to add to my resources pages, etc.
However, I've used the time to re-bond with my family, think about my future directions, and to learn more about the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen Buddhist monk who began the Plum Village tradition.
Finally, I have some exciting news to share in the next two posts about a publication and my next teaching assignment.
In the meantime, I thank you for coming here and following my site, and I hope you enjoy a wonderful year ahead.

On May 3rd, Jason Renshaw posted about this topic on LinkedIn, and very forcefully he reminded me that when we look at these two learning modes in terms of one being better and one being inferior, we are ignoring the reality of what is happening in the online world.

His article can be read here: 
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facing-up-face-versus-online-false-dichotomy-jason-renshaw

As a result, I replied with these thoughts:

Excellent points Jason. I particularly like the photos of all those faces interacting in real time via their computers. For too long online learning has been viewed as inferior, even to the point of some countries refusing to recognise qualifications earned through online training for employment purposes. It's almost as if the exams, research reports, essays, presentations, and conference papers produced in the context of online learning are less worthy than ones produced in a traditional classroom. I think it partly stems from the misunderstanding that less teacher input means less learner competency. The other fallacy that has persisted is that students in purely online classes receive less individual attention than their in-class colleagues. My experience of physical classes is that students often receive minimal amounts of personal attention in preference to group or whole-of-class activities, simply as a result of greater teacher-talk time or the larger number of students present at the time. From an institutional perspective, one of my previous university employers strongly believed that the teaching workload in an online course would be significantly less than in a traditional setting, thus mostly being useful as a cost-saving measure. I am certainly not arguing that every program can be effectively delivered online. For example, those requiring the exercise of personal skills, such as music performance or medical procedures, are least amenable to online completion, but even these could be offered in a blended model. I suppose ultimately it will be the demands of students for more convenient and more flexible ways of learning that will lead to the movement of educational models into more online approaches.

I hope that more thoughtful discussion will proceed in the future within both existing educational institutions as well as those emerging more recently.

I was looking through Pinterest earlier today and came across a few that focussed on the order of adjectives in English. While looking through the various items, it occurred to me that there might be an acronym that students could use to help them remember the order.

After further thought I decided to put together an infographic which shows the acronym, what each item means, and an example of a sentence using all of the items. Admittedly the sentence is somewhat unwieldy and I leave the final noun up to you to choose.

You will find the infographic under the "Learn - Teaching Ideas" tab. I hope it will be useful to you and your learners. 

After an absence of some years, I have recently re-discovered my performance in Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 on SoundCloud.

I originally wrote a post about it in 2013 along these lines:

A complete recording of Claudio Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 - was performed live by a double choir and orchestra around the balconies of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. My role was chamber organ continuo, which meant I played in almost all of the movements. The organ was tuned to 'meantone' temperament, and all performers used period instruments. I was very proud of being able to support such musical forces working entirely from a figured bass score throughout. Personally, it was the culmination of my three years there.

So, naturally I am thrilled to be able to share the complete performance with you again. As I also mentioned in 2013, there is a short video of one of the movements, featuring a younger me complete with moustache, under my 2013 blog post.

Please enjoy this live performance.under "My Recordings".

I've finally managed to update my blog to include further resources I've created during my time in Myanmar. 

Most importantly I've added widgets on my Teach - Teaching Ideas page which link to three of my Pinterest boards currently containing 384 pins. I will be adding additional items to them over time and these will be accessible to you via the widget.

I also came across 20 interactive games that can be played directly on my Learn - Play page and which were developed by Gynzy. If you access the following page on their site, you will be able to access another 30 games in the subject areas of Social Studies, Mathematics, and Science. They are equally at home on interactive whiteboards, so may also be used in the classroom. There are also other other resources on their blog. Please look here for more: http://www.gynzy.com/teachers/publishers/.