On April 17th I’ll be giving a talk at the Literacy New York Volunteer Conference in Saratoga Springs. The participants are mostly volunteers who work one-on-one with individuals and families from an amazing array of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. This talk is on...

If you’ll be attending the TESOL Convention in Boston, come and see my presentation with Ann Wintergerst on Ten Techniques for Teaching Culture in the Classroom.  The presentation is on Thursday, March 25th from 10:00-10:45 AM in room 153 B.  We’ll be highlighting...

Darren Elliot keeps a great blog called The Lives of Teachers.  He interviewed a number of people at a recent conference of JALT (The Japan Association for Language Teaching.)  One of those interviewed was Miles Craven, a British ELT author based in Japan.  Miles talks about the...

  Tim Murphey had his EFL students at Kanda University of International Studies in Japan talk about their experiences learning English in junior high school and high school.  They then made a very interesting video about their experiences. In it, they ask the Japanese Ministry of...

Writing in the January/February 2010 edition of The Atlantic, Amanda Ripley follows the efforts of the U.S. nonprofit organization Teach for America to distill the essential qualities of teachers who really make a difference for students in elementary and high schools. She...

Pearson Longman co-author Ann Wintergerst and I will be giving a talk at the New York State TESOL Conference in White Plains. The presentation is called Practical Techniques for Teaching Culture. We’ll preview some of the activities from our forthcoming book Tips on...

As a musician, I’m always interested in ways of incorporating music and the arts into instruction. I think that “Using Songs in the ESL Classroom” was one of the earliest professional presentations that I ever gave.  Here, however, is a new twist: an English...

The Los Angeles Times reports on the implications of statewide budget cuts for education: no new textbook adoptions for grades K-8 until 2016!  The state superintendent of instruction is quoted as saying, “It could be close to a generation before we see new...

I’m back from a terrific time in Chile, hosted by colleagues at Universidad Andres Bello in Santiago. They were wonderful hosts, and while there, I gave a talk called Teaching Languages with Technology. Several of the teachers at the university joined in and gave brief...

For possible inclusion in a forthcoming book on culture, we are seeking brief stories of experiences that you as teachers have had that involve aspects or dimensions of culture and intercultural communication. These stories could be situations or realizations that you have had...