Dr. J's Blog of ELT Praxis

I came across the term "glocalized communication" a few years ago when I was researching perspectives, on teaching English language learners, similar to mine.  I found the term in a chapter of a book about language policies edited by Suresh Canagarajah.  The chapter is an extension of an article written by the same authors a few years earlier.  Below is the reference to that article. Lin, A., Wang, W., Akamatsu, N., & Riazi, A. M. (2002). Appropriating English, expanding identities, and re-visioning the field: From TESOL to teaching English for glocalized communication (TEGCOM). Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 1 (4), 295-316. What appealed to me the most came not from the original article but from the last section of the chapter, titled "International TESOL Professionals and Teaching English for Glocalized Communication (TEGCOM),"   in which the authors proposed a research program for TEGCOM.  I believe that providing their preliminary out...

One of the biggest reasons multiliteracies is not implemented in the classroom is that it is difficult to assess.  And if you cannot assess your students' learning, then how do you know they are learning?  I'd like to propose a formative assessment, which is more like an activity.  It also happens to be one of my favorite multiliteracies activities that I would like to implement fully.  I have done bits and pieces of it, and that experience has helped me create this example. Purpose and Context  For the past few years multiliteracies has been a secondary research interest of mine. I will define it in the construct section of this posting.  One of the key articles I discovered made a point of concluding the implications of its investigations at the very end of the article, “And finally, there should be alignment between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Assessment criteria should include future-oriented new literacies if the latter are to become part ...

As promised in the previous post, I am going to share an idea, although it has not been tried or tested by me.  Perhaps some other English language teacher has done something similar to this: developing English language learners' information and communication technology (ICT) skills while developing their English language skills.  This is kind of like a hybrid of content-based instruction and task-based instruction.  The content includes academic and workplace language regarding ICT, whereas the tasks can vary. For the sake of continuity from the previous post, the example task for this blog is more linguistic:  teach another group of English language learners (in their own classroom, in another classroom, or to future students in their current class) a grammar rule and demonstrate its usage as authentic to your life as possible.  Although some novice level students may be able to do this, I would aim this task at intermediate speakers.  For advanced spea...

Before I begin discussing my ideas about the flipped grammar classroom, here is an infographic providing the essentials of the flipped classroom for general education. Created by Knewton and Column Five Media I became aware of the flipped classroom in 2010 when I was teaching Technology in the Classroom (07E/S:102) at the University of Iowa.  Khan Academy was becoming quite well known at the time as a popular resource for teachers to turn to for flipping classrooms.   I could easily see how flipping the classroom could help in math and science classrooms. Although I haven't had many opportunities to teach English language learners since I left my full-time teaching job in 2009, I was playing with many ideas of how flipping the classroom could be applied to English language teaching.  I do not suggest flipping the classroom without a purpose, or else you may be wasting your students time.  For the most part, I am skeptical about flipping the classroom like fe...