I realise it has been some time since my last post, but I would like to make up for that by offering 10 new resources that both students and teachers will find very useful. These are items I have created and used with real students in real classrooms, so I can be confident in sharing them with you.
Just go to my Home page and you will see them listed under "Updates".
Please enjoy them. Greg.

I'm pleased to announce a new page on 'Teacher Greg's Education Home'.

The motivation for it came from my desire to engage the many colleagues with whom I work, in a conversation about ELICOS (English Language Intensive Course of Study) and EAP (English for Academic Purposes) programs and how they operate at my institution. Like many workplaces, the pressures of just keeping on top of the teaching have meant that opportunities for genuine discussion, sharing and reflection have become rare, formal meetings have become ineffectual, and inefficiencies have naturally arisen as a result.

'TESOL forums' will be a chance to recover lost ground, to re-ignite the discussion, and to move forward in more practical ways. It will take some effort to 'sell' the idea and overcome the hesitation of others, but I'm taking the first steps while hoping this will lead them to continue the conversation.

Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history. -Joan Wallach Scott
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. -Maria Robinson

Are you looking for some useful resources for teaching elementary school EFL/ESL students?
Perhaps you want to know how to use Interactive Whiteboards or just need some resources for them?

Well, I have what you need - and FREE!

On the "Teach" link go to "Teaching Help" and you will find what you need. Select a tag that sounds like what you need and you'll be taken to my Pinboard weblinks page with over 2,500 pages categorised appropriately.


 

Principled Possibilities - Ideas for Teaching is a unique publication representing the summation of four years of graduate study, and my own experiences, discoveries, experiments and successes over eight years of teaching throughout Asia and the Pacific. Uniquely the book includes: - a wide selection of academic papers, conference and training presentations, and curriculum and planning documents, - links to websites and other resources for exploring the topics further and contacting the author, - ideas ranging from working with absolute young beginners to adult and upper-intermediate level students, - discussions of current challenges and controversies in teaching, - approaches to online and computer-assisted learning, and - suggestions in the field of English language teaching.  


Here is the full introduction to give you some more details:My transition from office work to education was a late one, and came about more by accident than design.

Having successfully trained as a classical musician, I realised that performance opportunities would be limited at my age, so it seemed that music education would be the most logical progression. Having successfully trained as a teacher, I discovered that music teaching opportunities would also be scarce, apart from those occasionally arising in outback Australia.

At the suggestion of a friend I decided to dip my toes into the field of English language teaching by working at a winter camp in Shanghai, China. It was the joy of that experience which sparked my desire to work and travel further.

Several training courses later I began my new career, at first in Australia with children and later with adults from Europe, South America and Asia. From there I have experienced life in the Sultanate of Brunei, Malaysia, South Korea and Taiwan, where I am presently located.

While there is much material available in the field of EFL (English as a Foreign Language), I feel that my own experiences, discoveries, experiments, successes and failures over the last eight years in a variety of settings, with children to adults, and with absolute beginners to upper-intermediate students, are worth sharing with others.

The present book, therefore, includes academic papers, conference and training presentations, and curriculum and planning papers to assist fellow educators. Many of these were developed in the context of formal tertiary training in Queensland, Australia, and refer to issues and cases from that location. Nevertheless, they are equally relevant in other English-speaking contexts.

There are also links to my Internet-based materials and websites where electronic versions of many resources included here may be found for the reader’s convenience and further exploration.

I don’t look on this publication as the final authority on all matters of English language teaching, but as part of the ongoing professional support and discussion so vital to our dynamically evolving and collaborative field. This is why I encourage readers to continue the conversation with me and others using the links given throughout.

How can you get this book? Click on the Lulu link on my home page, or go directly here.

Question: Great teachers have high expectations. Who do they have high expectations of?

I don’t really know who “great” teachers have high expectations of, as I’m not sure what a “great” teacher is.

For me as an EFL teacher in a foreign land, I have great (possibly even unrealistic) expectations of myself and my students, but I accept that reality often falls short of my expectations as far as others are concerned.

Partly this is because different cultures and different educational systems within them don’t always work the same as we might expect. Partly it is also because the structures that do exist bar “foreigners” (here, we’re actually referred to as “aliens”) from climbing the institutional ladder to gain greater power or influence, or even be consulted.

At some point, after banging your head against the wall, or perhaps the “glass ceiling”, for long enough you adjust your definition of “great” to suit the circumstances you are in, and you put aside most of what you learned throughout your advanced studies at university for the reality of others’ decisions, however poorly founded.

For example, it would be great if every classroom had an IWB or even a regular whiteboard, let alone a working CD player. It would be great if we could have teachers’ books for classroom texts that are written in English rather than Chinese. It would be great if we had dedicated classrooms rather than having to trudge from room to room where we enter like something from outer space. It would be great if we could set the format and content of exams or even decide if or when there would be exams. It would be great if we had access to computers with English operating systems, the commands of which we could read. I guess you get the picture.

For a more stress-free life, when you cannot change things, it’s easier to make your high expectations fit the situation.

Posted at http://busstop.stedi.org/index.cfm/2010/5/14/Quick-Question
5/14/10 11:19 AM