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Improve Teaching Effectiveness by Paying Attention to Business
…Well, ask buyers and they’ll tell you that you should know their pain points before you even walk in the door. They want to start the conversation with their pain points and work forward from there—without talking about what you have to offer them. They are looking for good ideas, facts, and data about how to solve ...
Could TESL Benefit from Open Badges?
I used to be a Boy Scout. One of the things I loved the most about being a Boy Scout? Collecting the badges after mastering a new skill. I wore those badges with pride, and toted my Scout handbook around with me to be always looking for ways to achieve yet another badge for my ...
Program Design: Challenge Ordinary
Program design has nearly all my burners occupied right now. We’re redesigning our program of studies to better serve one of our clients. The Challenge: Create a stronger and more obvious ROI for our client. Happily, we’ve managed to build a 6 year relationship with them to date. We’ve seen them grow from 75 employees ...
Planning ESL classes with Bloom’s Taxonomy
What is Bloom’s Taxonomy in about 300 words? First, what the heck is a Taxonomy? It’s a system for organizing similar things into groups. (If you didn’t know what Taxonomy was, join the club. I just looked in the dictionary.) And Bloom’s Taxonomy? A really smart guy named Benjamin Bloom researched and developed a classification of learning objectives. ...
Can Homework be Enticing?
Source: design-conundrum.blogspot.com via Maia on Pinterest The problem with homework is that it’s usually so boring that it doesn’t attract attention. It’s a chore. A task. Sure, some things in life just live in the ‘this is boring, but I have to do it’ category. Washing dishes or cleaning the toilet are examples. There’s really ...
Can You Systemize and still Teach with Spark?
I think highly systemized courses are the way of things in corporate environments. Money is involved, and the powers that be must know what that pesky ROI is. Even for an English course. Our courses are being pulled in that direction, and it makes total sense. If I were my clients, I would want to ...
Are Your Students About to Leave?
I’ve just lost a group. Has that ever happened to you before? If you’ve been teaching for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve experienced the sting of a class deciding to call it quits on you. I’ve been at this for 12 years, and it’s still a hard pill to swallow. The reasons will ...
Service Design for Teachers
Today I had an amazing experience in the Mercado de San Juan, Mexico City. The market was, on the outside, your average marketplace. But the spot where we went for lunch was FAR from normal. La Jersey specializes in exotic cheeses and cold cuts, wine, and wonderful desserts – among other products. Our lunch: a 160 ...
How to help ESL Students write E-mail.
Today I’m going to help my ESL student write a better e-mail. A few days ago, I got a sample of the work he has been doing. The problems I noticed were not really about spelling or vocabulary. Grammar was a minor offender. But there was another, more serious problem that was creating 90% of ...
Why Teaching Vocabulary Is More Important and Challenging than you Think
Typical classroom approach to teaching vocabulary: New words are brought to student attention from bold ‘in text’ examples. Word lists. Teacher makes sure students understand what those bold or listed words means. Students attempt to use vocabulary in exercises which follow from their book. New words are recycled throughout the unit (perhaps once), and then ...
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