Joe McVeigh

  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 Education to change the exam system and they ask teachers to focus less on exams and grammar and more on speaking and real-world language use. Fascinating. See the video here.

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 reports that the following six characteristics are what set great teachers apart: 1) setting big goals for students, 2) constantly looking for ways to improve their effectiveness and reevaluating what they are doing, 3) recruiting students and families to become part of the process, 4) staying focused, ensuring that everything they do contributes to student learning, 5) planning extensively, working backwards from the desired outcomes, and 6) working relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the threats of poverty, bureaucracy, and low budgets.  Read the full article here.

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 Teaching Culture.  The presentation will be from 10:20 AM - 11:05 AM in the Scarsdale II meeting room. If you’ll be at the conference, come by and say hi!

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 language school in Bankok, that makes extensive use of music and song in their teaching and learning. Imagine making up songs to practice vocabulary and to encourage students to keep learning.  Perhaps there is a Broadway musical in here, or an international version of the television show Glee!

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 textbooks.”  A spokesman for the Long Beach Unified School District say, “There’s really no impact on students . . . .”  An accompanying graph shows the states in the U. S. that spend the most money on textbooks.

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 demos of the way that they use the language lab, electronic whiteboards, and blogs.   You can download the PowerPoint slides here or view them online here.

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 personally or could be experiences that you have had with your ESL/EFL students.

Please summarize the incident in a brief paragraph or two—sorry, there isn’t space for stories longer than 200 words.  In your write-up, note the country or culture in which you were teaching or working, and the country or culture of the student(s) involved. Also, be sure to let us know the age group of the students and the educational context in which the story takes place.

We are particularly interested in vignettes that would illustrate cultural challenges or competence in the following areas

1.      Culture and language

2.      Culture and nonverbal communication

3.      Culture and identity

4.      Cultural conflict and adjustment

5.      Culture and education

6.      Culture and social responsibility

Please include your name, institutional affiliation, and contact information. Send your contribution to me at the email address at the end of this message. We’re sorry that we can’t include all of the accounts.  If included for publication, your story may be edited for length and style. Contributors whose stories are included will be notified and appropriately credited in the text.

If your story is about your own experience, use the first person. If you are writing about a student, write in the third person and anonymize their name.Many thanks for your help.

Joe McVeigh, Middlebury, Vermont, USA

Ann Wintergerst, St. John’s University, New York, USA

Please send contributions and questions to joe@joemcveigh.org or use the contact form.

If you’ll be at the TESOL conference in Denver, Please join me for the presentations listed below. Handouts and PowerPoints will be available a day or two after the presentation. Check the Resources page for teachers, trainers, and consultants.  I hope to see you there.

Designing Effective Reading Activities

Thursday, 3/26/2009, 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM

Convention Center 407

Jennifer Bixby, Joe McVeigh

How can materials writers design more effective reading activities? The presenters share a menu of exercise types that writers can incorporate into prereading, reading, and postreading materials. The presenters then demonstrate the development of a sample reading lesson designed to build academic success.

Exploring College Slang

Friday, 3/27/2009, 11:00 AM - 11:45 AM

Convention Center 504

Joe McVeigh and Ann Wintergerst

The presenters describe a survey of U.S. undergraduate college students to discover which slang terms were most commonly used on campus. They present an online dictionary of terms with definitions and examples. They share a list of the most common terms and offer suggestions for teaching slang to ESL students.

Current Trends in ESL/EFL Publishing

Saturday, 3/28/2009 3:00 PM - 4:45 PM

Convention Center 304

Joe McVeigh, Louisa Hellegers, Pietro Alongi, Sherrise Roehr, Laura Pearson

A panel of professionals discuss trends in ESL/EFL publishing and answer questions from participants. Topics may include the respective roles of authors and editors, the impact of technology and of second language research, and changes in international and domestic markets.

Submit a question to the panelists here.

In mid-December I was flying back to Burlington, Vermont from LaGuardia airport in New York. A couple with a small child, dressed in a slightly unusual fashion were in the wrong seats, and were properly relocated to the very back row of the 20-seat plane where I was sitting. The father had something very like a luggage tag attached to him. It turned out that they were refugees from Bhutan, who were being relocated by an international immigration organization, after having spent 18 years in Nepal. I was able to talk with them a little in their limited English. The man told me that in addition to speaking Drupal and Nepalese, that English was like a mother tongue to him. Then the twenty-something flight attendant got on the intercom and gave the safely briefing. The man looked at me and said, “She’s speaking two languages right? American English and something else?” I had to inform him that, although it may not have been a very good model of language, she was in fact speaking American English and nothing else. He sighed. I thought at that time what an important role ESL teachers play in the lives of people like this. A nice reminder during the holiday season that the opportunity to make a significant difference for people is why many of us teach ESL in the first place.

Congratulations to authors Jo McEntire and Jessica Williams on the publication of Making Connections Intermediate: A Strategic Approach to Academic Reading. This terrific intermediate level reading book has just been published by Cambridge University Press, and the whole editorial, marketing, and production teams deserve a hearty round of applause. You can learn more about this title at the CUP website. I helped with the development editing of this title and it’s great to see it in print!