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

When reading a recent post by Karenne Sylvester called "Which came first: time or tenses?" (at https://kalinago.blogspot.com/2010/11/which-came-first-time-or-tenses.html) I thought it would be fun to see what sentences looked like without changing the form of the verb, but simply using modifiers or qualifiers to suggest the tense.kalinago.blogspot.com/2010/11/which-came-first-time-or-tenses.html
The table seen on the left (with some inspiration from Athabasca University) is my attempt to answer that question.
What I'd like to know from readers is: when you look at these sentences, can you understand what is being said? In other words, ignoring the verb form, does the sentence communicate the intended time reference?
Having written them myself perhaps I'm too close to tell, but it seems to me that simply using the basic form of the verb (infinitive without the "to") does work. In each case the reader or listener, after getting over the initial shock, ought to be able to determine when the events were taking place relative to time.
When it comes to fluency and comprehension, it begs the question of whether we are sometimes too hard on our English learners who produce utterances like these, when we actually DO know what they mean.

Today I read an interesting article on "The Web of Language" site entitled "The gender-neutral pronoun: grammatical necessity, consciousness raiser, and after 150 years still an epic fail" written by debaron@illinois.edu.
The article surveys the problems English has in finding an enduring third person singular pronoun that is gender-free, as well as some of the novel solutions offered throughout history.
I couldn't resist the chance to give a tounge-in-cheek comment, partly to spark further discussion. Here is my post which I hope will be uploaded by the moderator soon. Any comments will be enjoyed!
Greg wrote: I don't see why all the fuss about avoiding "he" or "she" when the gender of the person is known, though I agree using the form "he or she" is clumsy.
Well if the pedants of the world won't accept what many grammars already allow i.e. the use of the singular "they", then there is another gender neutral third person singular pronoun already available, with no complications of being considered plural as well as singular, and perfectly acceptable in the case of all other life forms on Earth. The pronoun I refer to is "it".
Both male and female animals, birds, fish, insects, etc can be referred to in this way, so why not humans as well? Would a construction such as "it has left it's book here" be so shocking? confusing? Are we so concerned about gender recognition that this would be unacceptable?
While I myself routinely use "they" in these situations, I feel "it" would be a useable alternative for consideration.