Teaching Teachers and Principals
“Trainees are in a unique position as teachers to re-assume the role of student – an excellent opportunity to use experiential learning to help them reconsider alternative perspectives.”
“Trainees are in a unique position as teachers to re-assume the role of student – an excellent opportunity to use experiential learning to help them reconsider alternative perspectives.”
“I decided to focus on just three important elements: choosing a topic, planning, and audience experience.”
“It is definitely the most genuine and wholehearted language exchange program you could ever wish to experience.”
“The course was a good opportunity to look at the struggles that nations, cities, and individuals have been through when building a human rights city culture.”
Everyone likes stories! We listened to stories from our mother as soon as we were old enough to hear. We followed attentively as we were read storybook stories (over and over) at bedtime. The main form of teaching for millennia has been via stories told by village elders to the children. If people like stories so much and if learning, including first-language learning, takes place through stories, how effective would they be in teaching a second language such as English? To answer this question, we look to Jessica Magnusson.
This month, we discuss some of Ian Moodie’s recent research on English teachers in Korea, about teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) here, and a bit on the fishing connection. Ian is a tenure-track associate professor in the Department of English Education at Mokpo National University, where he teaches linguistics and English education courses to local preservice teachers.
It is not very often that we run into a person who is a speaker of many languages. It is even rarer to meet a polyglot who has had formal instruction in not only learning languages but also in teaching. Our interview here is with one such person living amongst us here in Gwangju: Aline Verduyn. She has much to offer on speaking, learning, and teaching multiple languages.
Learning a second language is time-consuming hard work. We do not usually think of it as something enjoyable. But maybe that is where our thinking has gone wrong. Bryan Hale is an advocate for “playfulness” in EFL teaching and learning whom we were recently able to interview on the topic. Bryan teaches at Yeongam High School. He is presently the president of Korea TESOL and a past president of the Gwangju-Jeonnam KOTESOL Chapter.