I haven't been blogging over the past month because I started a new teaching job at a community college. This job is a refreshing change for me because I haven't been focusing on improving student writing in my career for a while. In my previous position, I was leading the curriculum committee at an intensive English program in an effort to update its curriculum. We thoroughly analyzed the reading curriculum and were nearly done analyzing the listening and speaking curriculum before the department made drastic personnel cuts, which included me. If none of these cuts were made, the committee would be focusing on the writing curriculum right now. Instead, I am teaching two rhetoric and composition courses to first-year community college students. None of them are international students or English language learners, so that's a big change. Is my ELT training relevant to first-year college students? The quick answer is somewhat because the ESL and EFL students I have wo...
Attempting to bridge the research-practice gap in English language teaching with a focus on curriculum, instructional technology, and intercultural communication.