Over the last week, my students have been making a series of unusual presentations. In my bid to: make conversation classes more interesting, and get students to think about conventional problems in unconventional ways, … my second-most-recent homework assignment for them was to consider major potential problems like a possible influenze pandemic; global warming; peak oil; and the ecological collapse of certain areas of the world. However, getting people to just talk about these problems rarely does any good. Young people are aware of them, are used to their existence, and seem less than appropriately concerned about them. So having …

I was recently interviewed by a student magazine on campus for an upcoming feature on English education in Korea. The interview is unapologetically opinionated, though some of my facts might be a little off — it was a kind of hurried thing, conducted by email. In any case, it ranges from the challenges faced by Korean students, and what I think would improve English learning experiences both inside and outside the classroom, to “English mania” and the adoption of required courses that use English as the language of instruction at many top Korean universities. It seemed a shame to only …

Students are interesting creatures. Teachers too! There are all kinds of complicated interactions that happen inside classrooms, the kinds of complications that don’t often happen in comparable ways in other parts of students’ lives. It can be like a pressurecooker of all kinds of different energies, and as a teacher, you’re right there in the thick of it, sometimes without any idea how to direct it all! Good classes usually find a way to direct it themselves. Me, I find giving students as much autonomy as possible, within clear a framework, is the way to go. But even so, the …