Final exams

How do you assess your students’ fluency in English? Do you give final exams? I do. But I notice that this semester, I’ve done things a little differently from last semester. What is different and why?

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Academic Writing

Most of my classes are of the “Oral English” type, but I also teach some classes in which students are required to produce academic writing in English. At first, I assumed that my students were getting basic instruction in academic writing in their native language (Japanese) in other classes, e.g. their seminar classes. They probably [...]

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Blogging with students (4)

Because the task I described at the end of my previous post, proved a little too challenging for my students, I re-cast it (see below). I’m trying to lead them to an understanding of web 2.0 What is good blogging? Visit this blog, then this one. Which is better (more interesting, more useful) do you [...]

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Assessing student blogs

Searching for help with assessing student blogs took a long time. I first found Aaron’s summary on Dekita of Jill Walker’s list of what works and what does not. In only one class at the moment am I using blogs. I’m having students write in their own blogs about news articles they find on the [...]

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Slicing teaching

I didn’t think a great deal at first about Dan Meyer’s idea of teaching being an art/science that can be sliced into very (infinitesimally thin) slices, but as time went by I found myself using the concept more and more.Here’s one thin slice that immediately helped me understand what Dan was on about: In my [...]

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Blogging tips and assessment

Some useful tips on good blogging practice, from Idratherbewriting. Nothing revolutionary or outrageous, just common sense, but it works as a useful reminder. #10 spoke to me: “archive by topic rather than date”, unless yours is a purely personal journal. “Date archives mean little to readers.” Following his own tip of linking abundantly (#8), idratherbewriting [...]

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