Something that is currently being debated in several circles is just how an additional language is added to one’s arsenal. There is of course the more traditional idea that we learn a language through dedication, study and hard work. And there is the fanciful idea that we simply acquire a language. Like many things in [...]

In the first Self-Study Materials overview we covered the big names of Assimil, Linguaphone, FSI, etc. This time we’ll go over a few of the other big names; the big names that many of our readers will be more familiar with – Teach Yourself, Colloquial, Hugo and Living Language.

Teach Yourself: In many parts of the [...]

Culture in the classroom.. is this something that the students need or want? This argument can very much go both ways and much of it relies on what exactly your students want, but one model for the classroom isn’t likely to please everyone… as you’re not doubt aware.

On the one hand we have the ongoing [...]

I’m sure as language teachers that this thought goes through our head a fair bit. It’s not a difficult decision for most languages since there is the standard. And yes, while there are varying dialects and accents, there is typically the one golden standard that we can revert to. Let our students fall back on [...]

Nothing too technical here… this is just a short post about how to trick yourself into learning. I’m sure you’ve heard countless times before how you should learn in context… but it can be a little vague at times right? So… in laymans terms.. the mythical in context beast is one that pretty much means [...]

I’m sure if you’ve been a teacher for any length of time you will have stumbled more than once at creating a valid and reliable test for your classroom. The question is, why are we always struggling along attempting to reinvent the wheel? Countless people before us have researched and implemented successful assessments for the [...]

As a teacher it is ultimately up to us to decide what our students should be learning… but on the other hand, it’s also up to the student to let the their teachers know what they could be learning. This is where needs analysis comes into play.

Teachers aren’t mind readers as much as we pretend [...]

As Nayoung and I have just had our baby boy – Leon Jaewoo – I may as well do a write up on multilingual children and the common methods surrounding the raising of them. Obviously, we would love for our boy to grow up as a coordinate bilingual of English and Korean… but how are [...]

The Zone of Proximal Development is a concept that was introduced by Lev Vygotsky and is still one of the foundations for educational development together with Piagetian theory. I’m personally a big fan of the Zone of Proximal Development and it’s little brother, scaffolding. Whether this is teacher-initiated or self-guided scaffolding it doesn’t matter… finding [...]

Assuming you’re interested in be a professional teacher – as opposed to a backpacker that has no actual interest in teaching but needs to pay off student loans back home – then here are a few thoughts on different TESOL qualifications and how useful they may be.

First up, I may as well point out that [...]