Dr. J's Blog of ELT Praxis

  I will not be posting any new blog posts for the next two months as my family and I are in the process of moving.  I have accepted a job that is more relevant to this blog, so I plan to increase both the quality and quantity of future blog posts starting in August or September 2015.

What does this figure mean? This is one way the work of English language teaching can be framed, according to Pennington & Hoekje (2014).  This appeals to me as both a practitioner and a researcher because attention to English language teaching is often simplified to only instruction.  The other parts of the frame sometimes influence learning and pedagogy more than direct instruction.  To learn how so, I will review the peripheral parts of the frame that support instruction. Disciplinary Field Pennington & Hoekje (2014) claim that the three disciplinary fields had the most affect on English language teaching curriculum:  linguistics, psychology, and education.  They also claim that the "home discipline of ELT" is applied linguistics, where studies on second language acquisition are in the heart of the profession.  Coming from two graduate programs in education, I am much aware of the differences linguists, applied linguists, and educators br...

In January 2015, the University of Warwick (UK) hosted a lecture by Dr. Adrian Holliday, whose work has greatly influenced my dissertation.  The lecture was recorded and can be viewed at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/research/groups/llta/activities/events/holliday .  If you are interested in watching the video, I advise that you wear headphones as Dr. Holliday was not wearing a microphone.   For this blog, I briefly summarize the video, highlighting what I found most provocative.  Following that, I explain how Holliday's work has influenced my research and teaching philosophy for the past 5-10 years. Summary of "Revisiting appropriate methodology, BANA, TESEP and 'contexts'" The main purpose of this lecture was for Holliday to reflect upon his book Appropriate Methodology and Social Context , published 20 years ago by Cambridge University Press.  In this lecture, he integrated criticism from another professor whose research I admire, Dr. Suresh Ca...

There's been a noticeable move here in Iowa towards Competency Based Education .  It's slowly gaining traction in the PK-12 system, and it may eventually affect the way we learn and teach in higher education.  What I like most about it is that it rewards competency more than seat time, the passive version of attendance.  I have sat through many classes in which I learned very little because I knew most of the content already.  As a teacher, I've had students that I recognized passed my course way before the class was complete, so I had to find ways to make the class more engaging without "over-preparing" them for the next course. For a class to effectively embrace competency based education, I believe the whole program, in which it is a part of, needs to adopt the approach, otherwise other teachers and students may find that the competency based approach may be unfair.  I'd be happy to expand on this later, but I'd like to present an interim solution...

Reading through a lot of literature about the professional development or professional learning of teachers has inspired me to reflect on my participation and beliefs concerning my own professional learning.  Before I do this, I'd like to distinguish between the two terms: professional development and professional learning.  According to Gibson and Brooks (2013), professional development is a deficit model implying that teachers need to develop in order for their students to meet certain achievement scores and institutional goals.  It fits the narrative that teachers are what is wrong with the schools and education system.  Professional learning implies ongoing growth and is part of the narrative of the growth mindset popularized (at least among educators) by Carol Dweck .  For most people, the terms are interchangeable and "professional development" is still more widely recognized. Professional Learning as a Newbie ELT I became an English language teacher a...

My experiences teaching English abroad plus my research investigating the culture learning of sojourning English language teacher have helped me gain a deeper understanding of intercultural communication.  During the past year and a half, I have been developing my skills to become an intercultural communication trainer as an instructional designer at Kirkwood Community College.  Although I have achieved a lot with Kirkwood's Culturally Responsive Classroom course, I was still uncertain if my intercultural communication training skills could be applied elsewhere.  I found a good opportunity to interact with other intercultural communication trainers was to attend the 2014 SIETAR-USA Conference in Portland last month.  I learned about SIETAR through my literature review for developing the Culturally Responsive Classroom, which is what I and a colleague presented on at the conference.  Below is our presentation, which represents a portion of what we shared with ou...

As promised in my previous posting , here are some of my ideas regarding quiz design for English language learning following the tips suggested in Make It Stick:  The Science of Successful Learning . Tips Frequent quizzing Create study tools that incorporate retrieval practice, generation, and elaboration Reach back to concepts and learning covered earlier in the term Space, interleave, and vary topics If I could go back and include more quizzes in the English language courses I taught at the ESL Institute at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, I would start the class with a quiz every day for courses that were offered twice a week and every other day for courses that were offered four times a week.  Although I would design the time of the quizzes to be completely predictable, the content of the quizzes would be less so. I would prefer that the quizzes take no more than 10 minutes of the class.  If all of my students and I had acce...