One of my students today used the work “isomeric”. (Which I find now, looking it up, means “of the opposite sex”.) She was trying to say, “self control”. I couldn’t understand what she meant until she finally decided on the synonym “self-control”. This, I explained, is what makes dictionaries so dangerous. Heh.

My 8:30am morning class on Wednesday is a wonderful bunch of kids. They’re young, so very, very young. All college sophomores, advanced level, and really nice kids. They’re still getting used to me, and my class, but they’re the kind of students I dream of when I am teaching a class of unresponsive zombies. They get into the discussions, when they change partners it doesn’t feel as if they’ve been traumatized by the experience, they ask questions when they don’t understand something, or are having trouble expressing an idea in English for the first time… They’re a great class, which …

I’ve already written to exhaustive posts about this subject, but I have finally found the way to express my thoughts on certain elements of a program change we’re just starting in on, where I work. I’m going to use an analogy here.

… and then it was lost to the aether. It was about curriculum, program changes, and levelling programs, and how an educational institutions can effectively implement programs and program changes in a way that is centered on student benefit. It’s not really a whine-and-bitch session, but it does focus on the fact that realistic, honest assessment of negative factors is necessary if any real improvement is to be made. It also focuses on the idea of student-centered program implementation, and how this relates to interdepartmental politics. While it’s particularly true of the program change I’m witnessing now, it’s also true …

Here are a bunch of listening exercises for ESL students. And here’s a funny page lampooning, uh, well, our profession. There are some rather pithy observations in there, to boot. via Hypersonic Beams