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My First Book - Now Published!

3/2/2012

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Picture

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.
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T is for Taboo

27/6/2010

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 (12:22:32) :
Scott, another stimulating topic for discussion in “T is for Taboo”.

The previous posters have stated the case for a more balanced and sensible approach quite succintly, and I would agree with them on this point.

In the EFL field, we should factor in cultural sensitivities through openly communicating with the various stakeholders, while not just assuming they exist and thereby being guilty of our own stereotyping.

Two further points I’d like to add to the discussion are:

(1) Good teachers use a text as a framework, but go well beyond it by accessing their own resources, other activities, the Internet, and so on. In this sense, it doesn’t really matter if the texts are imperfect since they are only a jumping-off point anyway.

(2) Those writers who do have something valuable to add to ELT, if faced with opposition from publishers, should realise the power of the Internet, PLNs, social networking, etc and SELF-publish. Perhaps if enough did so, the publishers might be forced to re-think their current censorial approach.

Posted June 27th, 2010 at http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2010/06/27/t-is-for-taboo/#comment-1417


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