During the past semester, I’ve been running classblogs for my writing classes. Here are my observations from this experience: It’s really hard to keep up with multiple classblogs. One should either (a) tell students from the start that it’s for practice and peer feedback, and that comments will be limited to encouragement but mainly on the content of random posts not feedback on grammar or structure, or (b) make sure that one can actually keep up with giving specific feedback on mechanics to a certain percentage of posts. It’s quite useful to tell EFL students that a specific number of …
Month: May 2006
I Hope The Info Packet Suffices
People in the Academic Affairs Office are once again requesting more explanation of the Clarion Workshop. This is the third time they’ve asked for more info, and this time they’re looking for some kind of official explanation of the “Program”. I explained that there’s no official “program” and that it’s not really a conference but more like a “course”. I’ll be bringing the Info Packet I received in the mail to the office tomorrow morning, to see if there’s anything there which can be photocopied to explain the program. I really hope that suffices, because I can’t think of any …
Amusing Quote From a Speech Today
Today some of the students in my public speaking course made presentations. They’re technically “extended presentations” which means they ran from 7-10 minutes each. 4 people presented and we only managed 4 speeches plus some announcements by me at the beginning of class. (We’re supposed to fit in 11 more next class, plus a short Powerpoint Presentation… I’m dubious, but luckily, many other profs will be canceling class on Wednesday.) Anyway, the funniest line of any speech was as follows: “Guys, a blind date is like a war: it’s a kind of battlefield, I mean.” I had an interesting time …
A New ESL/EFL Wiki
The indefatigable EFL Geek has started something new: an ESL & EFL Wiki. For those of you who don’t know what a Wiki is, the short version is that it is the most promiscuous of website forms. That means that just about anyone can edit it, contribute, and so on. What this means is that he’s started a cooperative website at which people can post articles, links, information, materials, resources, and so on. It’s a lovely idea, and I heartily encourage anyone who’s interested in, or working in the field of, EFL or ESL to go on over there and …
The oops list
From a list (again) look at these airplane mishaps!