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How much time do you spend preparing your lessons in advance? Are you a planner? Or do you like to let the lesson take its own course? As a young student teacher I learned how to carefully plan my lessons. I would write out exactly what I planned to do during each part of the...

I am not good at remembering names and faces. In the small town where I live,  I am constantly running into people and trying to recall if I know them from my son’s school or from musical theater or from church or just where we might have met. So you can imagine the difficulty I...

We’ve been having a heat wave in Vermont, in the northeastern United States where I live. The temperature has reached 95° F (35° C). It’s actually hotter here than it was in Saudi Arabia when I visited in the spring. It got me thinking about the effect of heat and other...

One of my most memorable teachers was a high school English teacher. Thomas Donovan had been teaching for nearly forty years and was in his sixties when I had him as a 14-year-old student. He was what today we would call “old school.” That is, he was very traditional in the way...

A recent thread on the TESOL English as a Foreign Language Interest Section e-list discussion group raised the issue of teaching conversation in the EFL classroom. I came up with the following list of useful books for those interested in teaching speaking. Folse, K. S. (2006) The...

A recent discussion on TESOL’s e-list for the Teacher Education Interest Section provoked some interest in helping novice (and more experienced) teachers find jobs in our profession. Some of the conversation centered around how long a resume should be or in what order....

I’m just back from performing a program review for a couple of intensive English programs in Saudi Arabia. Lots of grist for the intercultural communication mill. Major issues in student motivation and finding the appropriate materials for the curriculum, as well....

I’ve added three presentations from TESOL 2011 in New Orleans to the resources page. You can find handouts and PowerPoint slides for Writing Textbooks that Sell, Integrating Culture and Social Responsibility, and Writing Effective Learning Outcomes.

I’m looking forward to the TESOL Conference in New Orleans coming up during the week of March 20th. Hope to see you there! Here are a few topics I’ll be presenting on.  Look here for handouts and PowerPoint slides after the conference. Authors Wanted Worldwide: Write...

I’m delighted to report that the new book that Jenny Bixby and I have written for Oxford University Press is now available in the U.S. Q: Skills for Success: Reading and Writing 2 can be obtained from your local OUP rep, on the OUP Website, or at Amazon.com.  This is part...