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Two intermediate-level lessons from the world-wide web.
I liked this one because of the subtitles. Both videos focus on oral and visual components at once: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. These are, as we know very important for ELL students and their teachers.
Note this one thing; the first one is focused toward writers and readers, while the second one leans toward speakers and listeners. We all need to slant in each and every one of these directions, in spite of a personal proclivity we may have to one side or the other. As teachers we are universal in our aim.
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I have included above the paper I wrote in early 2013 on the interface of Spanish language and ESL, with some introductory notes on linguistics in general. This website has been aimed toward teaching and has been directed at the teaching profession. Thus it has been mainly in lecture-bite format. We must never treat out students the way we are with one another. We aim for an interactive classroom, using the grammar we have learned as individuals in the field. Www.sophia.org calls it a "flipped classroom." Perhaps the Latin phrase Docendo Discitur also applies, one learns by teaching. We are always to engage our kids and our adult learners too. Let this be my final caveat, and let me close with a quotation my wife found, one by Noam Chomsky. When we succeed in channeling our students' energies through the hoops and wickets of the material, they will become more confident learners. We must focus on the positive!
“Most problems of teaching are not problems of growth but helping cultivate growth. As far as I know, and this is only from personal experience in teaching, I think about ninety percent of the problem in teaching, or maybe ninety-eight percent, is just to help the students get interested. Or what it usually amounts to is to not prevent them from being interested. Typically they come in interested, and the process of education is a way of driving that defect out of their minds. But if children['s] ... normal interest is maintained or even aroused, they can do all kinds of things in ways we don't understand.”
― Noam Chomsky
In terms of children's motivation in school, I think it could not be said better. The elephant nobody wants to refer to in the room is how mean and nasty most teachers are to their own students a goodly portion of the time. Can you imagine a school where teachers are nice, albeit businesslike? I think William Glasser, Carol Dweck, and Alfie Kohn would agree with a whole heart and mind.