EFL & Language Acquisition

                                  A blog is a great way to keep track of the work we do. I have really enjoyed keeping a record of my work this way and I want to start a blog as a project as soon as I finish my courses. I have already begun to use a Padlet website for something I call "5 Minute Grammar" and I want to work on this so it is user-friendly and helpful for English language learners. Blogging is also in line with part of my learning philosophy, which is to create things and especially to create things with the content we need to learn. Utsunomiya University Monday, October 3: I taught three 90-minute classes: Integrated English IIB (x2), and Advanced English EAP Arts & Sciences.  I really enjoyed my first two days back at this school and I also feel that I have taken a step forward in my teaching, especially in the last month or so. I prepared fairly we...

  This past week was really busy teaching and preparing for my start at Utsunomiya University on Monday, October 3rd. I would like to visit each classroom and provide a little glimpse into what I have been preparing and also what has been going on pedagogically in my current classes. Ben' class: 9/27, 3pm-430pm, every Tuesday We are reading short dialogues/ scripts. We focus on reading aloud with prosody and students generally need some modeling and assistance with question sentences, pausing and intonation at punctuation marks (in general). This weeks short ( 3 page) script had quite a few tag questions. These are a bit strange because they are sometimes, (or always?) a positive phrase, combined with a negative question: " You like sports, don't you? ( do not you?!). After reading our script, students asked a few questions about words, pronunciation, and grammar. We then explored tag questions.  I explained one use of these questions. When we meet people a second time, w...