In Part One and Part Two of this series I’ve talked about issues that may affect attendance for literacy learners, as well as some best practices I’ve picked up over the years. In this post, I’ll pass along some more effective teaching practices for literacy learners and tips on PBLA.
TESL Ontario’s 49th annual conference, Forging Ahead: Building New Normals Together, will be here in no time! The conference, taking place November 3-5, will once again be held virtually this year.
Why should you make time in your calendar to attend? We’re glad you asked!
Over the past months, thousands of language instructors across Canada have been unwittingly or intentionally taking on instructional developer responsibilities. They have been cobbling together, rearranging, and refining digital resources and activities from various sources to meet the needs of their students. Many instructors have been generating original learning resources to fill in gaps that appear while teaching online.
Usually, learning materials are prepared ‘on-the-fly’ to anticipate or adapt to challenges that arise from our classroom lessons. What happens to these documents? Often, they are forgotten on a computer drive and discovered on a slow day when you are considering which files to remove to free up hard drive space. These files are hastily named, filed, and saved, so they are lost. Sometimes, it is too much trouble to save and properly file a document that is created just before your online class is about to start. If you are currently teaching online, I am sure you will agree with this! Continue reading →
Instructors in the LINC program have been teaching within the framework of PBLA (portfolio-based language assessment) for a few years now with the most recent guidelines having been published in 2019. The 2019 PBLA Guidelines outline the history and rationale, address practical implementation, and conclude with a resource section. While some instructors have embraced its use and see its benefits, others continue to find that it impedes effective teaching and learning, consuming a lot of time both in and out of the classroom. Program costs, its impact on teachers’ time, and its accuracy in measuring student language proficiency are important elements when considering its effectiveness. In this blog, I consider “the good, the bad, and the ugly” in PBLA theory and practice. Continue reading →
The work-from-home situation has lasted more than a year. During the pandemic, almost everything has been moved online, including education. This has been especially challenging for ESL education. We teachers needed to quickly learn technology and adapt it to meet our students’ needs. Our students have had to deal with technical issues in the language they are learning. But, at the end of the day, we all managed, and managed well! Here are a few lessons from my year-at-home.
In recent decades, language-teaching methodology has seen a sharp rise in training more independent and autonomous learners through what is known as Strategic Investment. (Brown, 2001). Strategic Investment is a learner-centered approach, with a focus on employing methods to internalize the learning process.
With summer school wrapping up, I am having a difficult time transitioning from a work to a vacation mindset. Some people might not have a problem with this, but I do.
When the semester is finished, it is hard for me to stop thinking about my work and students. I am driven to come up with new teaching strategies, check my emails, and worry about my students’ continued learning. Continue reading →
On June 29, 2021 we gathered on twitter to discuss alternative assessments and interactive activities for ELT. The guest moderator of the evening was Marlaina Riggio (@MarlainaTweets). You can also connect with Marlaina through LinkedIn.
Do you struggle to reflect your value in your resume and cover letter? Ever wonder what exactly a hiring manager is looking for in the interview? Feeling stuck in your career and don’t know where to begin? We all seem to know there is a recipe for success when it comes to job competition, but few of us have sought professional guidance on what that is.
Let me introduce myself. I’m Catherine Crawford, a Certified Career Strategist and Resume Strategist, and I’m very excited to help support TESL Ontario members with career strategies for better outcomes.
Most language teachers are likely familiar with the Cloze Test – the omission of specific words in a written passage (every 5th or 9th word, for example) to assess students’ reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. I have also found them to be extremely useful to teach listening skills.
When creating your own Cloze Tests, the first step is to find a passage that is at the students’ language level or no more than —as Krashen would advise— i+1 (just ONE above the students’ comprehensible input). The first two sentences and last sentence in the passage should also be kept intact as they give students important background information about the text.