Skip to main content

About

About This Blog
This blog is written for English language teachers who are interested in the intersection of teaching, learning, research, and technology. It was originally created with the purpose of answering frequently asked questions when I was a teacher educator in Russia.  I often found myself with limited time to answer questions during my outreach program presentations, so this blog gave me a platform to more thoroughly answer their questions.  It also helped me to demonstrate the relatively new phenomenon of blogging at the time.

The purpose changed when I became an English language teacher in Wisconsin.  I wanted to use this blog as part of my portfolio, especially with activities and lessons I found to be successful and/or fun to implement.  Just as I started getting grounded with ideas such as skeptical thinking and cooperative speaking and listening activities, I enrolled at the University of Iowa, where I spent the first couple years fleshing out my ideas that emerged in Wisconsin.
 
About Me
After earning my PhD in Teaching and Learning (Foreign Language and ESL Education) at the University of Iowa, I became the Curriculum and Technology Coordinator for CESL at Southern Illinois University.  I have lived in Carbondale, Illinois with my wife and daughter since July 2015.  My research interests are in teacher education, specifically in developing the intercultural competence in pre-service and in-service educators of English language learners.  My dissertation is on the adjustment process of sojourning English language teachers in Japan and South Korea.  

Prior to my life as an Iowa graduate student, I was an associate lecturer for two years at the ESL Institute at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, where I began to develop my ideas for incorporating skeptical thinking into the English for academic purposes (EAP) classroom, a frequent topic in this blog a few years ago.

My interest in English language teaching methodology and curriculum development came from my four years as a teacher educator in South Korea and Russia.  In South Korea, I became a disciple of content-based instruction (also known as CLIL) and a practitioner of classroom interactions, which are a collection of techniques used to develop learners' oral proficiency and increase their oral output.  As a Senior English Language Fellow in Russia, I focused more on cooperative learning techniques and task-based learning and teaching as I traveled around the Greater Volga Region as part of an outreach teacher education program.

The foundation of my pedagogical knowledge and philosophy comes from my graduate studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  There I learned not only about English language education but also instructional systems design, an incredibly useful tool for efficiently developing curricula.  My training at UMBC has helped me stay focused on the academic, linguistic, and affective needs of the learner and to develop course objectives, assessments, and activities based on those needs.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is Wikipedia Too Difficult to Read?

Image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Afghan_man_reading_Wikipedia_article_in_Kandahar.jpg The short answer via statistical analysis is yes .  For more information, read  Lucassen, T., Dijkstra, R., & Schraagen, J. M. (2012). Readability of Wikipedia.  First Monday at   http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3916/3297 .  Wikipedians are aware that the open online encyclopedia may be too difficult, and there is a discussion of its reading level at  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reading_level . Much of this discussion took place over a decade ago, but the gist is that many contributors write at or for the college level. What appeals to me most is at the end of the page, where Wikipedians are discussing accessibility and what it means to be open to all. Here's my screenshot (in case it gets edited later). What does this mean for English language teachers? I was interested in seeing how selected Wikipedi...

The Horror! A Listening Curriculum for English Language Learning

I've been inspired by Clare Maas' blog post , which was inspired by Dr. John Field's TEASIG/CRELLA talks, to share my shock at the listening curriculum of an intensive English program where I previously worked. To be fair, this listening curriculum was designed twenty years prior and my job was to lead faculty efforts to revise it. Unfortunately, the program went through financial difficulties and leadership changes, resulting in the "non-renewal" of most of the curriculum committee members. Upper-Level (EAP) Listening (B2-C1) Listening was relatively equally integrated with speaking and reading skills in one course set apart from another course that focused much more on writing. This was the case for the two highest levels for students who intended to matriculate into the university as undergraduates. The highest level was not dependent on any one coursebook, so all of the listening material had to be collected by the instructors. When I was the curriculum ...

Media in the Learning: Reflecting on a "New" Media Paradigm

The inspiration for this blog post The 21st century has been around for nearly two decades and media has always been used for teaching and learning. I'm trying to think of language teaching without any media, which can be defined as communication tools for storing and delivering information, and I cannot. When we talk about 21st Century Skills and New Media, I think most people don't know what they're specifically referring to. I traced the term "21st Century Skills" to the Framework for 21st Century Learning designed by P21: Partnership for 21st Century Learning. It's a brand that has already grown old with ideas that are even older. However, these skills are often overlooked for mostly political reasons. I believe most teachers would like to focus on these skills more, but that's not what usually counts in most standardized exams. I'm going to add photos like these to blend in with the many blog posts about education technology. The other ...