Almost done!

Last Friday I took my comprehensive examination for my Master's degree, which was (as you might expect) a Big Freakin' Deal. Essentially, if you don't pass, you don't graduate. While I never thought that failing was a possibility, I was still pretty stressed out over it. Not to worry; I passed :-) I have not yet received my official score (one can fail, or one can receive a low pass, a pass, or a pass with distinction), but I have been unofficially told that everyone who took the exam last Friday received a passing score. Official scores should be out by the end of the week. Now that comps are over, my to do list has shrunk to an amazingly small size: finish writing a paper (it's almost done; all I have to write is my conclusion and then proofread the thing), teach one class, attend one class as a student, and administer a final exam to my students. And find a job. 

I thought job hunting was stressful back in February. Now that it's April, the stress level has increased exponentially. There still aren't many jobs in TESOL in the US, the positions are very competitive, and I am developing an ever increasing urge to punch the people who design some of these job application websites. (The last job I applied for required me to submit a US state, zip code, and telephone number for each of my former jobs... a bit of a challenge for those positions in South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. In order to get the website to accept my application, I had to enter false information... and then click a checkbox certifying that all of the information I had entered was accurate. Grrrr.) 

I'll be moving out of Orlando and back 'home' to Georgia at the beginning of May, where I will remain until I find a job. Moving is an expensive and annoying process, and I would have loved to move straight from Orlando to the location of my next job, but unless something appears in the next two and a half weeks, it seems that wherever I end up, I'll be getting there by way of Georgia. Whatever happens, though, the graduate school phase of my life is nearly over; time for a new chapter to begin!

3/4 Done!

My third semester in the MA TESOL program has just come to a close. I have just one more semester and I will have my MA and be done with school for a while.

This semester I taught my first university level classes: mainly juniors and seniors; mainly education majors; all native or fluent English speakers. I had worried that while I loved teaching EFL/ESL, I wouldn’t enjoy teaching future teachers about second language acquisition and how to teach ESOL students. I needn’t have worried; I loved it. I had a really great time with my classes, and I hope I have students next semester who are as fun to teach as these guys were. I should also have a much lighter workload next semester, as I won’t be making PowerPoints from scratch for every single lesson; I’ll just be tweaking the ones I made this semester.

My experiences teaching this semester have changed my outlook on the future a bit. I used to think, ‘Why bother getting a PhD? I don’t want to be a university professor.’ Except that now I kind of do. And I didn’t go the thesis track. It seems that everybody says, ‘Oh, if you want a PhD, you absolutely must write a thesis for your MA’ and maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not. The thing is, I don’t want to get my PhD in TESOL. If I were to shoot for a PhD, it would be in Sociolinguistics – and it would be at a different school. I didn’t want to write a thesis for the MA because I came to this program wanting to learn more about how to become a better ESOL teacher, not to conduct research. Oddly enough, this semester I took a sociolinguistics course, and ended up getting really into my research on language policy in Kyrgyzstan – and I’m hoping to get my paper published. Here’s hoping that if I do apply for any PhD programs and I get dinged for not having written a thesis, a published article will suffice. You know, assuming it gets published. I guess we’ll see what the future brings. Were I to apply to a PhD program, it wouldn’t be for a year or so anyway.

I’m heading up to GA for the next three weeks. I’m actually going to be pretty busy designing a curriculum for a baseball-themed EFL program for a major league baseball team’s training center in the Caribbean. Which should be interesting, given my general lack of knowledge of baseball. I’m also taking a fairly large dog up to GA with me, in addition to Mochi and Charlie, as I’ll be pet-sitting her over the break. That’s going to make for an interesting car ride there and back, let me tell you. Sigh.

Lastly, vimeo seems to be letting me keep my Kyrgyzstan-is-Middle-Earth video online, so check it out:

Of sunsets, kittens, euthanasia, and head colds

I went up to GA for the Thanksgiving holiday break. In some ways it was not what you’d call a happy holiday, although I’ve certainly had worse. Two of our elderly cats – Tuffy and Grey – had to be euthanized. Both of them had chronic illnesses that had plagued them for years (and for which they had been treated for years), but they had finally reached that point. Tuffy was 13, and we’d had her since she was a kitten. Grey showed up, fully grown, on my doorstep in the fall of 2009 and had been part of our lives ever since. We have a lot of animals, my mom and I, and as a result, we experience animal deaths more frequently than people who only have one or two pets. I’d like to say that it gets better with experience, but it never does. It’s been five days since we buried Grey and Tuffy, and I’m crying typing about it. They will be missed.

Grey and Tuffy

But there’s never a shortage of homeless pets.

This is Sunshine. My aunt (who lives in an assisted living facility not far from my mom) found her in the woods by her home, and brought her to my mom. Our home is not the best place for her, as we do have several cats with feline leukemia, but when the only other option is tossing her out on the street (don’t even get me started on the local animal control situation…) I guess it’s the best chance she’s got. She’s been vaccinated against feline leukemia already, although she’s also developed a head cold, which we’re keeping an eye on.

For Thanksgiving proper we drove down to F’s house at Dekle Beach. The weather was beautiful: chilly (for Florida), but with bright sunshine and crystal clear skies. The sunset was pretty spectacular. I promptly developed a rather nasty head cold and spent the time feeling rather wretched.

I’m back in Orlando now for the tail-end of the semester. I have one presentation left to give and I’ll be done. I don’t even have any finals. (I know; it confuses me, too. Don’t get me wrong, I like not having to take finals, but not having finals just seems wrong somehow.) And speaking of finals, I can’t leave Orlando for a few more weeks because my students most definitely do have finals. I don’t control their official exam schedule, and the school has decreed that one of my sections will take their final on the very last day of finals… and I can’t leave until they’re done. I’m hoping that the extra free time I’ll have before going back up to GA will enable me to get a head start on my Christmas vacation project: designing the ESL curriculum for a major league baseball team’s training program in a Caribbean country. I should probably point out that I know sweet fuck all about baseball, but hey – I did order both Baseball for Dummies and the Idiot’s Guide to Baseball. I have to have this done by the beginning of January, so it’s definitely going to be my project for the break – unless I can get a good chunk of it knocked out beforehand.

I only have one semester left before I AM YOUR MASTER. Er, before I have my MA in TESOL. I’m still feeling fairly ambivalent about whether I stay in the US or go back overseas. I’ve applied for a pretty prestigious and rather competitive position which would definitely involve going back overseas (most likely to somewhere in the former Soviet Union), and if I am offered said position, I will most definitely accept. (There’s more than one ‘position,’ BTW, and chances are good – especially as they have a hard time filling their positions in the ‘stans.) Unfortunately, even though I submitted my application last month, I won’t hear from them until sometime ‘between early April and late June.’ Great. Meaning that if I don’t get it, I’ll be in a bit of a bind. June is a bit late in the year to be applying for teaching positions. However, I really do not want to be in a position where I am telling others that I cannot accept their job offer as I am waiting to hear from someone better, so I’ve simply decided to hold off on the job search until I find out one way or the other. However, I do think I will be confining said job search to the southeastern US – maybe even to FL – if ‘the position’ falls through. I guess we shall see.

Word Formation and Morphology

In case you're interested. We discussed word formation in our last class, and will be doing morphology tomorrow :-) (BTW, I know that my transcription of the Chinese word for boyfriend is probably way off base, but I don't speak Chinese...)

Language Learning, PowerPoints, and Teaching

This semester, I am teaching a course on second language acquisition, or the process by which we learn second languages. I was provided with a complete set of PowerPoint presentations which had been used by current and previous teachers of this course... but I'm kind of picky about my PowerPoints. To me, there are certain fonts which should never be used in a PowerPoint presentation. I'm not just talking about Comic Sans; in my opinion decorative fonts and any sort of serif font should never be used in professional presentations. Likewise, multiple colored fonts can be used for emphasis, but this should be done sparingly. ClipArt and WordArt need to go. Slides packed full of words need to be rare and limited to Really Important Things. Basically, the set of PowerPoints that I was given pretty much hit on everything that makes me shudder with regards to presentations. As such I'm re-doing them. They're based on the PowerPoints that I was given as well as on the text The Study of Language by George Yule. Here are the ones that I've used so far. Annoyingly, I haven't found any share-your-powerpoint website that lets me embed the files on my blog AND lets the animations work AND doesn't mess up my formatting here and there. Boo. I'm using SlideShare, as it seems to work the best for sharing on Blogger. If any of you know of a site that would work better, please let me know. Anyway, keep in mind that a good PowerPoint presentation should be used as the backdrop for your lecture - it shouldn't simply contain the text of your lecture. As such, a lot of the slides are just pictures, short video clips, or short phrases meant to stimulate discussion. Anyhow - enjoy!
After using this one in class, I learned that my students have no clue as to who Kirk Douglas is. I was finally able to get through to them by saying "You know Michael Douglas? The guy who's married to Catherine Zeta-Jones? Yeah, his father." Also, note to self: warn students before showing the video on brain surgery. I nearly had one guy puke. Not everyone has as tough of a stomach for such things as I have.

You can't discuss second language acquisition until you know a bit about first language acquisition. Also FYI, the last slide consists of discussion group questions. And a picture of me as a toddler.

ESL Monkey's Paw (Passages 2)

This is an activity I whipped up for class a few weeks ago - and which I spent this morning modifying just a tad. It's designed to accompany chapters 3 and 4 of the ESL textbook, Passages 2. The grammar points that these chapters focus on include ~ing clauses (Ex: Hoping to find proof of life on Mars, NASA launched the Curiosity probe.), active-voice reporting clauses (Ex: Scientists claim (that) they have found proof of life on Mars.), and passive-voice reporting clauses (Ex: It is believed (that) life once existed on Mars.). The main topics of Chapter 4 are superstitions, beliefs, and legends. 

I adapted the short story, The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs to contain language that my students would be able to comprehend. I also changed the sum of cash featured in the story from £200 to $20,000, to make it both American (as my students are studying here in the US) as well as modern. Lastly, I made sure to include examples of the three grammar points mentioned above, as well as to use some of the vocabulary from the chapter. If you'd like to take a look at (or use) my version of the story, you can download it from here. (I have highlighted the grammar points in hot pink, and the relevant vocabulary words in yellow. Also, dropbox seems to have done something wonky to my formatting; I promise everything was properly formatted in my original!)

After reading through the story, I also showed my students a clip from The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror II, in which the Simpson family acquires their own magical monkey's paw. Unfortunately, it's not readily available for free online, but you can download the episode from Amazon for $1.99.

This lesson works really well! The students seem to enjoy it, and they get to review the grammar and vocabulary without realizing that they're doing a grammar/vocab review. Also, a big hat tip to my friend YH who first came up with the idea of using The Simpsons' version of The Monkey's Paw as an accompaniment to Passages. 

Reading ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ in Orlando

The first time I read Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran was in 2008, near the end of my stint in Kyrgyzstan. This being the pre-Kindle period, my friends and I read whatever English language books came our way, from dry histories of Central Asia, to entertaining mysteries, to bizarre works of soft-core porn allegedly categorized as ‘romance.’ We read whatever we could get our hands on, simply because our supply was so limited. Some of what we read was pretty awful (the sci-fi story about the aliens and the grandmothers, the aforementioned ‘romance’ that utilized the term ‘pearly essence’ in a way that has scarred me forever, that horrid ex-pat bio I nicknamed Boobs in Bishkek, etc.), but others stood out as really well-written, entertaining and/or educational (numerous Nevada Barr mysteries, Colin Thubron’s Central Asia travel memoirs, tales of reindeer herders in Siberia, etc.). Reading Lolita in Tehran fell into the latter category. I absolutely adored it. Not only was it incredibly well-written, but it provided incredibly in-depth insight into the lives of women in Iran – insights that went far beyond the stereotypical limitations of OMG THEY WEAR VEILS! that permeates our media today. As I was, at the time, living in a predominantly Muslim country, I had so often been asked by friends, family, and acquaintances back home: ‘Do all the women wear veils?’ ‘Do they all hate Americans?’ ‘Is it safe for non-Muslims to go there?’ etc, etc, etc. I can only imagine that these types of questions increase exponentially if one were to go, not to an obscure country like Kyrgyzstan, but instead to a well-known and well-vilified country such as Iran. Additionally, Nafisi’s teaching style (encouraging her Iranian students to connect the events discussed in Western novels to the events in their lives) was something that I wanted to try. While it wasn’t something that I could use in the classes that I was teaching at the time, I had visions of creating a reading list based on the one included at the end of Nafisi’s book and incorporating it into a class of advanced EFLers who were interested in English language literature. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. Instead, 2009 happened.

Fast-forward to 2013. One of the courses I’m taking is on dealing with different cultures in the ESOL classroom. The course really seems to be designed for people who have never been out of the country before and who have never had to deal with people from different cultures before. To be honest, I personally am getting very little from the course. We were given a ‘suggested reading list’ from which we were supposed to select a book about which we were supposed to write a report. (Don’t even get me started on how lame of an assignment this is. A book report? Is this grad school or elementary school? Yeah.) Anyway, one of the books on the list was Reading Lolita in Tehran. Remembering how much I’d enjoyed it the first time around, I decided to go with that. (Hey, I’m working two jobs and taking four classes – cut me some slack for working with a book I’d read before!) I enjoyed the book as much as I did the first time around, and I got to actually formulate my thoughts into a paper on how I would use what I learned from the book inside an actual classroom.

Then, four days before the paper was due, I saw a poster advertising a speaking event in Winter Park – Azar Nafisi would be speaking that very night! Free to the public! I had a splitting headache that wouldn’t go away no matter how much Excedrin I fed it. I was so shaky from taking too many Excedrin that I actually felt dizzy. Normally I would have celebrated the arrival of such a headache by curling up under the covers with a pillow atop my head. Instead I forced myself to drive over to Winter Park. I am very glad I did. Nafisi was incredible – and surprisingly hilarious. Reading Lolita in Tehran is such a serious work that I really didn’t expect her to have such a sense of humor. I video-recorded part of her presentation, and audio-recorded the rest. I missed the very beginning, as I was having trouble getting my audio-recorder to work (which was why I ended up videoing the first segment), but I did get most of it. Sadly, despite the fact that I could have met Nafisi at the end of the program, I had to leave – my headache had reached the point where it was going to try to do me in if I didn’t take it home immediately. But at least I was able to record her for your listening pleasure:

Anyone remember that Verve Pipe song?

I'm in the process on writing a 'reflection' on a chapter in one of my texts on participatory language teaching. Participatory teaching (language or otherwise) involves a lot of power sharing between students and teachers - allowing students to take more of a role in deciding what and how they are going to learn. While there are many aspects of participatory teaching (language or otherwise) that I think can be incorporated into a classroom in a useful manner, I think the teacher/professor/instructor should always be careful not to hand too much power over to the student. The student is still the student for a reason. If he could teach himself, he wouldn't be taking the class. I don't say this because I'm a teacher and want to keep hold of the reins of power in the classroom (well, maybe to a certain extent...). My biggest problem with this concept dates back to some experiences I had in high school. I've been writing about it in my reflection, and I'm trying really hard not to reference the Verve Pipe, but...

Over the winter break spanning 1993-1994 (while I was in 9^th grade), two of my teachers (English and Biology) attended a conference on participatory teaching which really inspired them. During the fall semester, our classes had been very normal and boring. My English teacher spent a lot of time drilling us on parts of speech (which was annoying, as my peers who studied with other teachers were reading Romeo and Juliet), and my biology teacher gave daily science lectures. Normal but boring. After Christmas break, both teachers came back, having attended said conference, full of new ideas on how they planned to completely reinvent our classrooms. In both classes, the teachers decided, would be run as “businesses.” We divided ourselves up into “departments,” and each “department” was supposed to be in charge of teaching part of our Language Arts or Biology textbook. One group was elected to be management, and their job was (ostensibly) to oversee the rest of us and make sure we were on-task. At the end of each grading period, we were supposed to meet with our group members and determine what grades we felt we deserved.

At the beginning of the process, we were all very excited. This was something new, something we’d never done in a class before. However, it was problematic from the get-go. The “popular” kids were all elected to management, and friends formed their own “departments.” The teachers insisted that we (the students) were in control, and that we were responsible for planning and executing all tasks. For the first few weeks, we struggled to do some work – but as our teachers had taken to giving us no guidance, English and Biology rapidly devolved into gossip hour and study hall for other classes. We had to turn in final projects by the end of each grading period, and of course we all scraped something together at the last minute… but as we were deciding our own grades, none of us put much effort into it (especially after the first grading period ended and we learned that our teachers really had been serious about letting us decide our own grades).

I can see some merit to the general way in which my English and Biology teachers attempted to run our classes that semester; however, it is obvious to me that these specific projects were a failure. I did not learn anything in either of those classes that semester, other than how to do the bare minimum to scrape by. We, as ninth graders, were not mature enough to handle the complete responsibility for our education that our teachers turned over to us – and being immature and irresponsible, we took advantage of this opportunity to goof off as much as possible. This is one of the dangers in taking participatory education too far – it expects a lot from students, and often expects more than the students are able or willing to give. In my high school English and Biology classes, things would have gone a lot better had “management” been the teacher, as opposed to the cheerleaders and the football stars. We needed someone to guide us, to show us what we needed to do and how we needed to do it – and to make sure we stayed on task. Instead, our teachers turned the classroom completely over to us, and we took advantage of it in the worst possible way. After all, we were only freshmen.

Have you taught English in Asia? I need your help!

As you know, I have taught English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Asia - both in East Asia (South Korea) and in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan). Some of my grad school classmates and I are working on a project that we hope to present later this year at a TESOL conference. The focus is on native and non-native English speaking teachers of EFL.... and we need your help!

If you are now (or have been) a teacher of EFL in Asia (and are either a native or non-native English speaker) please CLICK HERE and take this survey. Also, no worries - it's completely confidential. (Sometimes it takes a little longer than normal for the survey to load, so please be patient.) When you are finished, I'd love it if you'd share this survey with your EFL teaching colleagues, both native and non-native speakers.

If you'd like to know the final results of our survey, please leave a comment either here on the blog (or in the optional comments section of the survey) with your email address.

Thank you for your help!

My Feet Hurt

This happens every time I return to the classroom after an extensive absence. There’s something about standing in front of a class for four straight hours that just makes your feet ache. This is nothing like the way my feet hurt when I returned (full-time) back in 2010, but still!

I am teaching part time at a private language school for foreigners who want to come to the US and for recent immigrants who don’t speak English or who want to improve their English skills. Right now I’m subbing for a teacher who’s out of the country for a few weeks, and working four hours a day. Once she comes back, I’ll be taking over a different class and only teaching an hour and a half a day.

In addition to this new job, I’m taking four classes this semester (compared to last semester when I took three classes), and I still have my graduate assistantship. I have to admit that I am a little worried that I might have bitten off a little more than I can chew!

But for now, I’m sitting on the couch with my feet propped up.

A dreary sort of day

I am back in Orlando, ready to get the new semester started... although that doesn't kick off for a few more days. Ideally I'd be enjoying my few days in limbo before the work kicks back in, but as it's unpleasantly dreary outside, I've done little more than get dressed and work on some of my computer-related projects. (I hate to complain too much about the weather, as it got up to 66F today, which is not cold at all - but with the omnipresent clouds and the continual drizzle, it just isn't the sort of day for doing things that involve leaving your house unless you absolutely have to do so.)

I posted two stories written by my friend BS (and it never fails to amuse me that his initials are BS) to the Desolation Travel website:

Holiday in Abkhazia and Elista: Desolate Disappointment

I added a new video to The Inhumane Society - although if you haven't been keeping up with the posts over there, you might want to read the first one hundred pages in one stretch... which can be done by clicking here.

And lastly, here's a video I shot before leaving Georgia of the current state of my mom's 1906 Bungalow. Enjoy!

I'm not sure how much time I'll have for blogging this coming semester. Last semester I had my grading assistantship and three graduate level classes... this semester I'm taking four classes, plus my graduate assistantship, plus a part time teaching gig that will be anywhere from one and a half to four and a half hours a day (not including prep time). I'm not sure when I'll have time to sleep, much less blog, but I'll keep you posted when I can!

Grading over 100 students... and doing it well?

One of my grad school courses is all about how to assess your students. As this is part of a Master's in TESOL program, the course focuses on how to assess speakers of English as a second language in terms of their reading, listening, speaking, and writing abilities. The course spends a lot of time focusing on the importance of providing quality corrective feedback. One of the things the course stresses is that simply marking answers as correct or incorrect and giving a letter or numerical score doesn't do much to actually help students learn. A good teacher should explain what the student did wrong and how to fix it, in addition to providing positive feedback about the specific things the student has done well. General comments such as 'good job' or 'awkward' don't go far towards helping students know what was done well or what was awkward and why. I'm sure we all agree with this (in theory).

Then reality hits.

I am only grading for one undergrad class, but it has four sections and over a hundred students. I've taught over one hundred students at one time before, but as they've always been in separate classes I could often (although not always) make sure I didn't have a hundred assignments to grade all at once. When you have such a large number of assignments to grade, whether you're a graduate assistant grading for huge undergraduate courses at a large university, a public school teacher teaching five classes of thirty students, or teaching English in a private language institute in Korea teaching ten classes of ten to fifteen students, the reality is that you are going to spend a lot of time grading.

I don't have too much say in how the assignments that I grade are graded; I'm just a lowly grading assistant after all. The grading rubric is established by the course's instructor, and I am responsible for adhering to the established rubric for each assignment. The one thing that is left up to me is what sort of feedback I provide. In theory, I could comment on each student's assignment, providing detailed information on what they've done well and what needs improvement... but I have something like thirty assignments to grade, multiplied by one hundred and eleven students. Even if I weren't also a full-time student myself, I don't think it would be possible for me to leave quality feedback on every assignment and still manage to finish grading everything before the end of the semester.

Because of this, it seems that the students who hear from me the most are the worst ones in the course. They  hear from me the most because whenever students lose points from an assignment, I am required to email them and explain why (although the length and depth of the explanation is up to me). I could totally get away with messages like "I deducted 3 points from your score because your explanation of X was incorrect" - but I don't. I've been trying my best to explain to my students not merely what they lost points for, but why what they did was incorrect as well as what the correct answer should have been and why. As you might imagine, this takes a lot of time. 

Due to the way the grading rubrics have been established for most of the assignments that I grade, doing the bare minimum and going the extra mile earn my students the same number of points. That's an entirely different can of worms that I'm not entirely sure I want to get into here on this semi-public blog. However, I mention it because it is relevant to this topic. It bugs me that a student who does the bare minimum gets the same score as a student who has obviously put a lot of time and effort into his or her work. I've tried to encourage those who have gone the extra mile by giving them extra praise. Unfortunately, for the most part this 'extra praise' tends to consist merely of banal statements like 'Great job!' and 'Excellent work!' instead of  detailed descriptions of what it was that I thought was done well. Sigh.

And those poor students in the middle of the pack? They hardly ever hear from me. I feel somewhat guilty about this, but can't come up with a practical solution. (And to any of those people who think class size doesn't matter, let this be one of an innumerable number of possible examples as to why it most definitely matters!)

Online courses and “discussion”

This semester I am a grading assistant for an online undergrad course. I am also taking one online grad course, as well as one mixed mode grad course (meaning approximately 50% of the coursework is online, and the rest is done in a classroom setting). I have a lot of mixed feelings about this, but I think I’ll try to confine this post to my thoughts on, well, online posts – or as they tend to be called in the online course world, Discussion Postings.

In both the undergrad class for which I grade and the grad courses that I’m taking, we’re supposed to participate in online discussions about the things we read or about videos we watch (etc). These discussion postings are meant to simulate the types of discussions that would normally take place in a real-life classroom. Unfortunately, these “discussions” are so incredibly stilted, awkward, and contrived that I don’t think it serves that function at all. They are also meant to “prove” to the instructor that the assignment (reading, video watching, etc.) has been completed; however, as the postings are relatively short (the undergrad ones are typically a minimum of three to five sentences (!) and the grad level ones are typically a minimum of 500 words), it seems very easy to create a post without having actually done the reading/watching/whatever. I know that online learning is rapidly growing in importance and popularity. I love teaching in an actual classroom – and I love studying in an actual classroom – but I also realize that at some point I will probably find myself teaching an online course. As such, I’ve been viewing my online courses not just as something that I’m taking/grading, but as an example of what works and what doesn’t in online education.

So why is it I feel that these discussion postings are so inauthentic in terms of a substitute for an actual classroom discussion? Well, it has a lot to do with the specific way in which they’re scored. They’re typically graded along the following lines: X points for posting your thoughts on the reading/video/whatever, and Y points for commenting on at least two other people’s posts. This means that instead of engaging in an actual discussion, students quickly look for two posts to comment on, and then they never look back. They very rarely reply to comments on their own posts. (I try to, myself, but I am one of the very few grad students who do this. Even fewer of the undergrads do.) One of my undergrads was docked points because while she did make two comments, they were in response to two comments to her original post (as opposed to comments on other people’s posts). This was sad, because it was the only instance of actual discussion in the entire class for that assignment, and yet the student did not get full credit.

During my undergrad years, I sat through many a class discussion without saying all that much. We were given points for participation in general, but it wasn’t based on the number of times I opened my mouth in class. Sure there were times when I participated, but there were many other times when I either had nothing to say, or was simply more interested in what others (including the professor) had to say about a topic. While I certainly don’t know what motivated my undergrad classmates to speak (or not) during class, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t “I have to open my mouth X times to get a good grade.” This led to some undergrad discussions that were actually discussions. And whether I was talking or not, I was still listening and learning.

I’m not sure how that kind of actual discussion can be fostered online. Part of what makes a real-life classroom discussion work is the fact that it is moderated by the instructor in real-time. The instructor can bring up points that students have missed (or have neglected to bring up), can emphasize which aspects of the reading are more important, and can ask questions to get students to think about what they’ve said, why things happened, etc. This sort of real-time monitoring/direction is impossible to maintain in a discussion board that is open for, say, a week, with participants posting at random times throughout the week.

One of my professors responds to our posts during the discussion period and asks us questions, which at the very least leads to a mini-discussion between the student and the professor, although I have yet to see any actual discussions. My other online professor comments on our posts after the “discussion” period is over. It’s always interesting for me to see what the professor thinks of what I’ve written, but again, a comment after the fact hardly leads to discussion.

Is there any way to turn “discussion postings” for online courses into actual discussions? The only thing I can think of is to set up weekly live chats… although that would almost defeat the one of the main purposes of an online course, which is that you can take it regardless of your schedule.

As ironic as it is to be posting this online (haha), have any of you had any good experiences teaching/taking an online course? What worked? What didn’t? Please share!

Learning Styles

I am a grading assistant for an undergraduate class that is wholly online. A lot of online courses like this one have assignments that exist purely to prove to the teacher that the students have done the reading or watched the video or what have you. For the assignment that I'm grading today, students were required to write their opinions about one website (containing an article) as well as about two videos. They were instructed to include their thoughts about the website/videos, what they thought about the topic, and which one of the three best fit their learning style. As far as actual assignments go, this one is obviously very easy to complete, as long as you read the article and watch the videos. (Amazingly, there are students who didn't bother doing the assignment. SMH.)

The article in question can be found here, and the two videos are posted below. What I have found the most interesting is that among the students (and there are a little over 100), I'd say they are divided into equal numbers over which of the three items best fits their learning style - and they are very opinionated about which one(s) they like and which one(s) they don't like and why. Even though the goal of this assignment wasn't to make this point, it clearly shows that students have different learning styles, and that even if you prefer one style, you should include other styles in your classroom. (I personally prefer the article, although I enjoyed the first video. What about you?)

Low-Tech and No-Tech TESOL Solutions

Today I gave a presentation at the Central Florida TESOL fall conference. I know a lot of you who read this blog are also English teachers, so I thought I'd share some of the information from my presentation with you here as well.

As many of you know, I spent 2008 in Kyrgyzstan teaching English. (While the blog that I kept while I was there is no longer online, I am working on getting part of it back online, and I will certainly link to it from here when I do.) In 2008, I taught at The London School, located in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. (If you know me, you might notice a picture of me in my pjs on their website!) Now, since I know when I typically mention Kyrgyzstan, most people look at me in confusion, here are some helpful maps:

That red arrow points to Bishkek.
This is The London School. The classrooms were in the tall grey-blue building, and the teachers lived in the grey building on the right.
This was my classroom as I saw it on my very first day in Bishkek. As you see from this picture, we have electricity. And a TV and a VCR. I also was given a stereo/CD/tape player. I had electric-powered speakers that allowed me to use my ipod in class, and I could use my laptop in class if I needed to as well...
It wasn't the most high-tech classroom in the world, but it wasn't the least high-tech... right? Well, I arrived in January. In about February, things began to change. 
Kyrgyzstan doesn't have much in terms of natural resources. While its neighbors Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan make their money selling oil and natural gas, Kyrgyzstan doesn't have much to offer. The one resource that it does have is water. Due to its location - and its high mountain ranges - Kyrgyzstan has a lot more water than its neighbors. As such, the Kyrgyz government contracted to sell water to both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Additionally, most of their power grid runs off of hydroelectric power. Unfortunately, 2007 was a very dry year for Kyrgyzstan. The water reservoirs became very low, and the country began having rolling blackouts in February 2008. These blackouts continued throughout my stay in Kyrgyzstan.
The first time it happened, we thought it was a fluke. We taught our last class of the day by candlelight, and made the best of it. Soon we learned that the blackouts would be a regular thing. Sometimes they occurred only once or twice a week. Sometimes they happened several days in a row. Sometimes we knew when the power would go out and how long it would be out. Other times it was a surprise. I taught from 2pm to 9pm (roughly). My night classes were often taught by candlelight, and I knew that if I planned a lesson involving tapes, cds, film, ipod (with its electric powered external speakers), or laptop (with its short-lived battery), there was a good chance that things would not work out as planned.
This was how my evening classes looked on many occasions: students studying by candlelight. This was a little problematic with a couple of my younger students, who liked to play with fire...

My headlamp was absolutely the BEST thing I brought with me. Not so useful for teaching (I tried it once, and ended up shining a bright light in my students' faces), but WONDERFUL for planning lessons in the dark... which was how I planned most of them!
There were a lot of things that I wished I'd had with me while I was in Kyrgyzstan, things that would have made working in a no-electricity environment a lot easier. I'm planning to go back this coming summer, assuming everything works out. I know that there are still power outages, even in Bishkek (although I'm not sure if they're still occurring with as much frequency as they did back in 2008) - and I'm actually planning on working in a small, rural village (through a volunteer program set up by The London School), where I imagine regular, reliable electricity will be even less likely than in Bishkek. 
Based on my experiences - and the things I wished I'd had - I've gathered a bunch of items to take with me this summer. These things are small and lightweight and would be very useful for anyone planning to teach in an environment where electricity is unreliable or absent altogether. (And to be perfectly honest, these are also useful things to have on hand in general in case of a natural disaster.)
For starters, get a headlamp! I cannot even begin to express how useful my headlamp was. The one that I brought with me to Kyrgyzstan was battery powered, and while the batteries lasted a pretty long time, they would still go dead periodically. Inevitably, this would occur late at night while I was planning lessons. The solution to this is a wind-up headlamp. I recommend the Mitaki-Japan Wind-Up LED Headlamp. The light from this thing is just as bright, if not brighter, than my battery powered headlamp - and you never have to buy batteries! Crank it for about a minute, and it will run for an hour and a half. This thing is wonderful.

Next up: Get a wind-up lantern or two. These things are small, lightweight, and relatively cheap. They're super bright - and unlike with candles, you don't have to worry about some of your younger teenage boys lighting things on fire in the middle of class if you're using them. I recommend the Wind 'N Go Mini LED Lantern. Just like the wind-up headlamp, it lasts for about an hour and a half off of one minute of cranking.
Remember how I mentioned that I had speakers for my ipod, but they were electric powered? Well, I've found some really great (and surprisingly loud) speakers that are battery powered: the Kinivo ZX220 Portable Twin Speakers. They come with a built in rechargeable battery, and can be charged through your USB cord, or a USB-to-power adapter. I'm not sure how long they last on a full charge, but it's at least two hours. (This also requires an ipod or other MP3 player.) You can't tell from this photo, but these are very small (although like I said, they're also very loud).
Now, your MP3 player and the above speakers are both powered by rechargeable batteries. This is great if you have a power source available on occasion - but what if you don't? What if you're working somewhere without any access to electricity? Well, there's a solution to that, too. It's the K-TOR Pocket Socket (which is seriously a wonderful name). Using a USB-to-wall-socket adapter (such as this or this) you can charge any rechargeable device with this thing... although it is a long process. Your item has to be plugged into the charger while you're cranking it, and it can take a good five minutes or so of winding to get enough juice to play one song on your ipod - still, if this is the only way you can bring audio into your class, it's definitely going to be worth it. And you can probably get a student to work the hand crank for you :-)

And lastly... how do you make copies without electricity to power a copy machine? Sadly, by hand. However, some good carbon paper is both reusable and it can allow you to get 3-4 copies from one time of writing. If you have a class of nine students, it's much easier to write a test or a worksheet three times (and get 9 copies using carbon paper) than to hand copy the same thing nine times! Roaring Spring Carbon Paper works really well.

Analyzing research on native-speaking English teachers in Korea

Sorry for the lack of posts of late. The grad school work load finally kicked in, and I've been up to my ears in papers, projects, presentations, volunteering (required for one of my classes), and articles. One of my assignments is to read and review several published, peer-reviewed articles on a topic of my choosing. As there were no such articles on my first choice (native speaking English teachers in rural Kyrgyzstan), I went with a topic for which there is indeed published literature: native speaking English teachers in South Korea. Unfortunately, the three articles that I've analyzed thus far are nothing short of abysmal. Normally I wouldn't waste your time with information on things I've read and then rated as crap, but given that a lot of my readers  either are or have been native speaking English teachers in South Korea, I figured some of you might be interested.

The first article (and the best of the bunch so far), Globalization and native English speakers in English Program in Korea (EPIK) by Mihyon Jeon proposed to examine the perceived legitimacy of the native-speaking English teachers hired by EPIK. Jeon sought to examine the views that both the native-speaking teachers held of their legitimacy as teachers in South Korea, as well as the views that their Korean counterparts held of them, by attending an EPIK conference (at which several native-speaking teachers presented), as well as by conducting one-on-one interviews with several teachers (Korean and native speakers) and EPIK coordinators. The following four conclusions were reached:

1. While the Korean government places emphasis on the importance of the native English speaking teachers hired by EPIK, Korean English teachers and students often do not view EPIK’s native speaking English teachers as important. 

2. Korean teachers often did not have either time or desire to work closely with the native speaking teachers.

3. Native speaking teachers did not feel that they had been fully integrated into the school curriculum, resulting in feelings of isolation and marginalization.

4. Native speaking teachers felt as though they were valued for their "entertainment value" (with several teachers describing themselves as "performing monkeys"), as opposed to their work as educators.

5. Classroom management problems presented a great difficulty to EPIK teachers, as students did not consider them to be real teachers, and therefore did not respond to them as such.

The sample size for this study met the minimum threshold for being considered generalizable in terms of the number of native English speaking EPIK employees; however, the number of Koreans sampled did not meet the criteria for generalizability.

The second, and certainly the most absurd of the three articles, was Global fatigue: Transnational markets, linguistic capital, and Korean-American male English teachers in South Korea by Songpae Cho. The purpose of this article was to examine the reasons why Korean-American males move to South Korea for the purpose of teaching English, to examine their perceptions of their value in South Korea, and to examine the views that South Koreans hold of them.

The "study" (if you can call it that) featured a series of interviews conducted by the author with his coworkers, an individual that he "met in the elevator" and another whom he described as "an Apgujeong matron" - hardly a representative sample by any stretch of the imagination. The results of this study were as follows:

1. Korean-American males come to South Korea "on a whim" often with no teaching experience. (I'd say the same can be said of most native-speaking English teachers in South Korea, although like this article, I have no actual research to back up my statement.)

2. Korean-American males remain in South Korea longer than their female counterparts due to their perceived desirability in the Korean patriarchal society. Cho basically says that Korean-American males are more valued sexually in Korea than in the US due to their elite status as American English speakers, and the fact that Korean males are at the top of the food chain in Korea (while they’re emasculated in American culture). 

3. Koreans are suspicious of Korean-American male English teachers, wondering if perhaps they did something wrong in the United States, leading them to seek work overseas. (As far as I can tell, the only person who expressed this view was the aforementioned "Apgujeong matron.")

4. Koreans think that Korean-Americans do not speak English as well as white Americans.

5. Korean-American males become anxious both about staying in Korea (due to the above two reasons) and about returning to the United States, due to “the fear of getting older and becoming less marketable in the U.S.” 

I think my favorite part of this article was its repeated use of the term "English prostitute." One of Cho's interviewees described himself as feeling rather like an "English prostitute" - and then Cho went on to use this analogy several more times in the paper, even though doing so was totally unnecessary. 

The third article, The novice, the native, and the nature of language teacher expertise by Ji-eun Shin and David Kellogg, was the only article to involve a statistical study. Unfortunately, out of the thousands of native and non-native English teachers on the Korean peninsula, the study focused on one native and three non-native English speaking teachers. If you need a minimum of one percent of the population (in this case the native English teacher and non-native English teacher populations) to achieve generalizability, what is even the point of conducting research that is so far below the generalizability threshold that it's not even funny? When you consider that a lot of work actually went into this pointless study, the mind boggles. 

The purpose of this article was to quantitatively analyze and compare the teaching talk of native English speaking teachers and non-native English speaking teachers, as well as to compare the amount of English spoken by students in classes taught by native and non-native English teachers. The one native speaking English teacher chosen for this study had neither studied education nor worked as a teacher prior to coming to Korea at the beginning of the study. In contrast, the three Korean English teachers chosen all had education degrees and two to five years teaching experience. One of the three Korean teachers was also Ji-eun Shin, one of the authors of this study.

Fourteen classes over a six month period were recorded, transcribed, and statistically analyzed to look for various things such as number of times each teacher spoke, complexity of their utterances, grammatical structure/correctness, and amount of English/Korean spoken by students in class. Well, in this one native speaking English teacher's class, Korean was spoken more, she spoke English less, and she had more grammatical errors than her Korean counterparts. The authors then attempt to generalize their results, because obviously this shows that Koreans are better English teachers than native speakers! Dude, really? Have you seen your sample size?

An off kilter labor day weekend

Most of my classes and classwork are online. I have one class (G) that meets in real life once a week. Another class (R) meets in real life every other week, with online interaction in the interim. The third class (A) is completely online. Labor Day weekend was approaching, and my mom up in Georgia was both sick and making noises about my lawn needing to be mowed. I decided that since my class that meets in person had already met, and that since the rest of my work could be done from wherever I happened to be, I'd spend a few days up in Georgia. I decided to go Thursday through Sunday, the idea being that I would miss the Labor Day Friday to Monday traffic. That part of the plan worked well. The part about doing schoolwork while I was gone? Not so much.

I left Thursday morning - taking Charlie and Mochi with me. I decided to take the back roads, which as I've mentioned before are substantially more interesting than driving the interstates. It took two hours longer than the interstate route, but there is just so much more to see! The area of highway 17 between Deland and Palatka in particular has sooooo many interesting things to see that I could spend weeks exploring that area. Instead, however, I didn't stop more than just a couple of times. This is because poor Charlie got carsick around Cassleberry (which, for those of you who don't know, is an Orlando suburb). I had to pop into a Publix for paper towels, then pull over several times to clean up after the poor girl. I figured I should make as straight a go of it as I could for her sake.

I did have to stop and snag a picture of this (in Sanford, maybe?)
I have no idea where the time went while I was home. Granted, I just managed to piss away five months there without accomplishing hardly anything, so I'm not sure how it is that I expected to be efficient with my school work while being there for an extended weekend. Still, I guess I got a good bit done. I played with all the animals - take a look at Blondie! (Remember her?) She looks a tad hungover here; I woke her up while trying to take a picture of her asleep:

I took my aunt shopping, went with my mom to get hay for the horses, took Grey Kitty to the vet for his steroid injection, mowed my lawn, weeded my garden, and (sort of) supervised the roofers who were working on my roof. Oddly enough, my 90 year old roof was not leaking... although it sure looked like it would leak all the time, which is why my insurance company demanded that some work be done. Sigh. All the loose tin panels have been firmly secured, the entire roof has been double-coated with cool seal (making it white), and a possum may or may not have been sealed into my attic. I guess I'll find out next time I'm home :/

Top: Before, Bottom: After
I did get a *little* schoolwork done - I posted two postings to one of my online discussions (for R class), caught up on my reading for R, and got about halfway caught up on my reading for A. I didn't get any of my work done for my assistantship. Sigh.
Friday night I had thought I'd heard water running when I was in my backyard, but it was getting dark and I couldn't see what was making the noise. I checked, and nothing was running inside, so I made a mental note to check it out Saturday morning. And forgot. This morning, right before I left, I noticed the source of said noise:

Yay, hole in the pipe.
Luckily mom was able to convince the same people who fixed the roof to fix this as well.
I decided to leave early this morning, and to take the interstates so that I would get home - and thus be able to get back to work - sooner. I got home sooner, but then I took a three hour nap. Yeah. So needless to say, I've got a lot of catching up to do. Reading and web discussions, here I come!

so far, so good

It's difficult to judge a two year experience based on the first week; however, it's always encouraging when things get off to a good start. I've had my first week of classes (although I certainly haven't finished my first week of coursework), and so far I really enjoy all of my classes - much more than I had expected to - and I am feeling very glad I made the choice to begin earning my MA in TESOL. 

I'm currently enrolled in three classes, which for the sake of maintaining the vague sense of anonymity I've got going here, I'll refer to as G, A, and R. (If you can't guess what those stand for, email me or something and I'll clue you in.) Before taking a look at any of the course materials, I had expected to find G and A useful but dull, and I expected R to be incredibly boring. I'm quite pleased to report that in contrast to my expectations, I am finding most things pretty interesting. 

I can't judge A too well at this point, as the textbook is still on back-order (booo, campus bookstore; I'd have ordered from Amazon if I'd known it was going to take this long!), and as it's a wholly online course limited mainly to online interactions revolving around the course materials, we're getting off to a slow start. That being said, I like the online interface, and have been getting to know my classmates and professor online, and at the very least it seems like a good group.

G seems like it is going to be a great class. While the topic sounded dull, as soon as I opened up the textbook, I was able to get sucked in - I found myself staying up until 2am reading one of the textbooks for this class for fun. In addition to really awesome textbooks, our professor (who just so happens to be the author of said awesome textbooks) is a great lecturer who incorporates techniques that EFL/ESL/ESOL teachers can use in their classrooms into his lectures (or at least into his first lecture). I'm getting ideas on how to change how I work my lessons already!

I was really worried about R. I didn't think it was going to be difficult, just unbearably boring. The textbook put me right to sleep the first time I opened it, which I didn't think was an auspicious start. Luckily the professor is a really good lecturer. Additionally, we have a series of projects throughout the semester which should all focus on one topic... and we get to choose our own topic (as long as it pertains to TESOL). I'm focusing on Native Speaking English Teachers in South Korea - something I know a good deal about from personal experience. 

While working on the aforementioned series of projects, I discovered that there is NO scholarly literature available in the TESOL field on Native Speaking English Teachers in Rural Kyrgyzstan. Haha. No really, I looked. This is giving me ideas for the paper I'm going to write when I come home at the end of next summer... which (assuming all works as planned) I'll be spending in Kyrgyzstan, teaching English in a rural village.

My classmates are a really interesting bunch - some are actually from places in the former Soviet Union, South America, the Middle East, East Asia, etc., while many of the others have taught abroad in interesting locations. I've had some great conversations with people about their overseas teaching experiences (and mine!), and I've gotten to practice my Russian and even speak a little Kyrgyz. These things make me very happy.

pets, pets, vets... and school!!

My life continues revolving mostly around my pets. I'm not going to write about the airline pet-transport nightmare until it all get resolved - but suffice it to say that I have been feeling frustrated to no end, and have broken down into tears over it several times. Also, Delta is incompetent. The wonderful Maya from http://www.petairline.co.kr has been helping me, and I truly hope that we will get everything straightened out by early next week.

Mochi is still a little under the weather. Despite the fact that I have a vet just around the corner from my house, I loaded the little fella into a taxi and rode over to Itaewon to take advantage of the English speaking vets at the  Chung Wha Animal Hospital. They, too, were wonderful. It was very reassuring to be able to explain his symptoms in detail, and to receive explanations from the vet in detail. (The vet by my house is friendly and conveniently located, but he speaks less English than I speak Korean.) Courtesy of the Chung Wha Animal Hospital, Mochi now has a dog-sized transport crate, antibiotics, and deer antler extract to boost his immune system. (Anyone who thought my honey-citron was strange... take that!) Also, Chung Wha is open Monday through Saturday, and they're open until 8pm, meaning I was able to go after work. Woohoo!

The following photos were all taken with my cell-phone, so they're not the best, but they'll do :-)

Mochi and his new travel crate. I've got the door off so he can get used to it.
Of course, Charlie's the only one who goes into the crate.
Mochi and Charlie
Trying to get a picture of myself and the two critters.
Mochi posing.
Charlie looking superior
And... I have superawesomefantastic news!! When I applied to grad schools (time to get my Master's in TESOL), I applied to schools that had good programs, were in places I'd be willing to live, and for which I could fulfill all application requirements from overseas. I would have been willing to go to any of them, although if forced to choose, I would've preferred the two located in the southeastern US, as they're located close to home. Still, I figured I would go to whichever school offered me the most funding. This morning I awoke to the news that the school located closest to home has not only accepted me, but is offering me full tuition, health insurance, an assistantship, and a kickass stipend!!! This is such a relief, and such a weight lifted off my chest. (Now the dog needs to fully recover and Delta needs to get their act together - then life will be perfect.) Six more weeks until my 5 month vacation begins, then grad school in the fall :-)