Found this cool little toy, Random Text Generator, which generates anywhere from 1 -5 paragraphs of random text. I originally was posting this as a tool for web-designers, in case you get bored of using the same old “Ipsum Loren”. But it occurred to me that if you’re making a template or coursebook of some kind, it could be useful.
And then I started to wonder if it might be usable in the ESL classroom. Could be a fun way to give kids something that it meaningless, and have them try …Continue

This reverse reading activity by Mike Harrison looks really interesting. The idea is that you have students write questions for an imaginary reading. Then they generate the reading to match the questions.
Seems like it would target a lot of skills at once, not only language skills like grammar, writing, and discussion but also teamwork, creativity, and collaboration.
I also love it as a way of teaching pre-writing. I know a lot of authors come up with an idea for a story, or maybe a first scene. Then they ask themselves questions, …Continue

How to change the middle category bar in the Wordpress theme Arthemia so it displays pages instead of categories.

Why use taxonomies for custom management systems on Wordpress, how I used taxonomies to organize my lesson plans and make them very searchable, and why tags and categories are good too.

How using custom post types can help teachers to manage and post their lesson plans more effectively. Basically my thoughts on how custom post types can help teachers and Edubloggers use Wordpress as a content management system.

This article talks about how I displayed custom post types on my Wordpress blog home page and how I made them format differently on the index page so that they stand out.

The 2010 Edublog Award

It seems like Jason Renshaw’s blog is on every ESL/EFL teachers list of blogs to read but in case you’ve missed it, I really recommend it. Generally when I look for lesson plans and activity ideas I look for ways to use them in the class and Jason does a great job of providing concrete ways, often through videos, of how he uses his materials. Often when I search for lesson plans or activity ideas on the Internet I find a lot of worksheets or exercises but not necessarily guides …Continue

Word Wise, from English Raven, looks like an awesome resource for getting students to remember vocabulary. It’s basically a book students fill out with vocabulary, but it gets students to use the word in context, translate it into L1, think about concepts associated with that word, and interestingly enough, to write the word in English three times.
In the video, which I recommend watching, Jason explains that he developed it as a way to appease teachers and parents who associate memorization of words with learning a language. So while it’s …Continue

I don’t know if my experience as an EFL teacher is typical, but I find myself getting suckered into teaching all sorts of stuff I’m not necessarily comfortable in. “We have a student who’s going to be taking courses in English in quantum physics and string theory, Can you help him practice his advanced theoretical physics English terms?He has no one else to turn to?”
More usually, it’s something like the IELTS. I read practice tests and the official website and all the resource books I can get my hands …Continue

Interesting article up on lexophiles.com, Does learning a language give you a split personality? Some people seem to feel that it is very different to think in different languages and others feel that there is no difference. The author drawing on his own experience seems to feel his whole personality changes when he speaks English and when he speaks Indonesian or Balinese. Regardless of whether speaking a new language changes your mentality or not, he makes a great point that I would agree with: students that pay attention to not …Continue

So once again I am doing a blog about blogging. I don’t like to stray from ESL and student life too much, but this is too good an opportunity to pass up. If you’re a blogger and you haven’t checked out Entrecard yet, you really should. It’s done wonders for building traffic to this humble little blog. I’m not an expert on marketing blogs and I don’t have a lot of free time to worry about promoting this blog, joining communities, and entrecard gets me traffic without having to do …Continue

Although I assumed this blog would be read mainly by students from Kazakhstan and the former Soviet republics, in fact my biggest readers are from the US, Malaysia and India (in that order). So it might be interesting for you guys to read about life around these here parts. It’s definitely an interesting part of the world: former USSR, nomadic history, culturally Muslim but not religious. If you want to see what this country looks like through the eyes of a genius Brit living here in Astana, check out Kazakhstan …Continue

It can be really useful to keep your eye on news about universities in the US. It’s always good to have an idea of which universities are doing what kind of research, which faculty members are publishing and what they’re publishing on, as well as sadly, any scandals. Three great resources for keeping up with what’s going on in American universities, in no particular order, are:

Inside Higher Ed. While the site is designed more for professors and administrators than for students, it provides great articles on the big issues, trends, …Continue