Using Technology to Promote Reading

Posted on 14 November 2019 by Greg Kessler
Greg Kessler
Greg Kessler

There are so many excellent resources online for teaching all the various aspects of the English language and culture. I have previously shared some of my favorite sites and tools for listening and speaking as well as writing. This month’s blog entry will focus on promoting reading skills. Continue reading →

Posted in TESOL Blog | Tagged as , , , , | Leave a comment

Digital Games for the Writing Process

Posted on 12 November 2019 by Jeff Kuhn
Jeff Kuhn
Jeff Kuhn

Welcome back to another edition of the TESOL Games and Learning blog. To kick off this month’s post, I wanted to encourage everyone to visit the new Ludic Language Pedagogy journal by James York and Jonathan DeHann. The journal strives to encompass all forms of play and how teachers support that play through their classroom practice. Check it out or, even better, submit an article!

Since we are on the topic of journals and article writing, this month’s post highlights several digital games that can be integrated into your writing classroom.  These are all single-player games which engage students in a storyline that makes for interesting writing prompts. Continue reading →

Posted in TESOL Blog | Tagged as , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Collect, Select, Reflect: Portfolios for L2 Writing Assessment

Posted on 7 November 2019 by Betsy Gilliland
Betsy Gilliland
Betsy Gilliland

Portfolios for assessing students’ writing have been around a long time, but I believe it’s worth another visit, particularly given the tools we now have available online for collecting and sharing our work.

What Is a Portfolio?

A portfolio is a collection of documents accompanied by the collector’s reflection on what those documents show about their learning or work. Much literature on teaching with portfolios emphasizes the three-step process in portfolio creation: collect, select, reflect.

Continue reading →

Posted in TESOL Blog | Tagged as , , , , | Leave a comment

6 Arguments for Smaller Class Sizes

Posted on 24 October 2019 by Judie Haynes
Judie Haynes
Judie Haynes

I was recently reading an article about the Chicago Teachers Union and how it is pushing class size as a contract issue. This led me to wonder about how class size affects the academic achievement of English learners (ELs). According to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), a small classroom on the early elementary level would be fewer than 20 students. As a former K–6 teacher of ELs, I would certainly guess that class size has a huge impact on ELs’ achievement in U.S. schools. I’m not referring to the size of the ESL classes (that would be a whole different blog) but that of the general education content class that our students are in most of the day with a classroom or content specialist. Continue reading →

Posted in TESOL Blog | Tagged as , , , , , , | 2 Comments

TESOL Member Moment: Araceli Salas

Posted on 21 October 2019 by Araceli Salas
Araceli Salas
Araceli Salas

TESOL Member Moment celebrates our members’ achievements and contributions to the field of English language teaching. Continue reading →

Posted in TESOL Blog | Tagged as , , | 1 Comment

Board Games for the ESL/EFL Classroom

Posted on 9 October 2019 by Jeff Kuhn
Jeff Kuhn
Jeff Kuhn

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another installment of the games and learning blog. In last month’s blog post, we looked at Minecraft as a standout video game for the classroom. This month, we go analogue and take a look at three great tabletop games for the ESL classroom. Continue reading →

Posted in TESOL Blog | Tagged as , , | Leave a comment

Writing for Professional Development

Posted on 4 October 2019 by Betsy Gilliland
Betsy Gilliland
Betsy Gilliland

So far in my posts about second language writing, I have focused on topics about teaching writing to language learners. As writing teachers, however, we owe it ourselves and our students to be writers as well as teachers of writing, so this month, I would like to share some of my experiences as a writer. Continue reading →

Posted in TESOL Blog | Tagged as , , | 1 Comment

Strategies to Combat Anti-Immigration Bullying

Posted on 24 September 2019 by Judie Haynes
Judie Haynes
Judie Haynes

On 3 August 2019, a mass shooting occurred at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, USA. A gunman killed 22 people and injured 24 others using a version of an AK-47 assault rifle. The gunman posted a White nationalist, anti-immigrant manifesto shortly before the attack. What makes this mass shooting especially alarming is that the gunman deliberately targeted Mexicans, officially making it a hate crime.

This extreme example of bullying exacerbates the fears that our English learners (ELs) are already experiencing because of well-publicized ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and increased bullying in their schools. In the past, ELs were frequently victimized by bullies because of their race, accented language, and cultural customs that are perceived as different. Over the past few years, bullying of immigrants has become a nationwide phenomenon.  Modern day bullies attack not only race but also nationality. Immigrants all over the United States are affected by the anti-immigrant message “Go back to where you came from.” Continue reading →

Posted in TESOL Blog | Tagged as , , | Leave a comment