Joe McVeigh

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 […]

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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 art of teaching speaking: Research and pedagogy for ESL/EFL […]

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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. Doesn’t seem to me that it much matters. The point is to […]

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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 for TESOL Books!
Friday, March 18,  2:00-3:45 Hilton – Jasperwood Room, […]

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Jenny Bixby and I will give a talk at CATESOL in Santa Clara on April 24th. The title is Principles to Practice in Teaching Reading and draws on much of the research that we did in preparation for our forthcoming student reading/writing textbook from Oxford University Press. You can download the handout and PowerPoint here […]

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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 speaking skills for English language learners. Even though the program is theoretically […]

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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 some of the activities from our forthcoming Pearson Longman book, Techniques for […]

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  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 […]

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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, […]

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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 […]

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