Whether you’re a returning attendee or joining us for the first time, the TESL Annual Conference is underway to deliver insightful sessions, innovative topics, and networking opportunities. We spoke with two of our key organizers: Mohsen Jazeb, Event Coordinator, and Allison Keown, TESL Ontario’s Executive Director, to give you a sneak peek into what to expect. 
I was fortunate enough to have moderated a few Avenue webinars on Poodll technologies in June. The webinar speaker was Justin Hunt, the founder and CEO of Poodll. I have since been developing learning experiences for the CanAvenue.ca project using Poodll technologies and would like to share some of the basics with the TESL Ontario community through this blog post and a TESL Ontario webinar.
One of the main challenges that ESL students face both in language learning in general and in listening skills specifically, is how to improve! Often, not surprisingly, one of the teachers’ frustrating questions is how to help their students overcome their difficulties. In fact, they should both know that if they place their focus on the listening process, they can improve listening skills, and achieve successful comprehension. In this blog post, I’d like to highlight the problems that students deal with in this process, and how we can better assist them as teachers. Continue reading
Session after session, I integrate a “word of the day” into my lessons for students to add to their notebooks. I explain what the word means, provide examples of its use, and task them with using it that day. But I recently wondered whether it would be better to teach a “lexical chunk of the day” instead, as they tend to have a greater impact than isolated words. Also, students gravitate to these fixed expressions and are always asking what they mean. Indeed, well-known language educator Scott Thornbury supports this approach in Chunk-Spotting–A User’s Guide: “the possession of a memorized store of chunks allows more rapid processing, not only for production but also for reception. It’s quicker to process several words at a time rather than each word individually.”
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Technology is so embedded in our daily lives that we hardly notice, even take for granted, that we can’t get through our day without our phones, the internet, automated check-outs, Zoom. Yet, when it comes to using computers in the classroom, most teachers are reactionary in their response.
The school where I work will be using Avenue as the main delivery platform for all levels starting in September. This decision, when it was announced last year, did not, and indeed, has not, gone over well with the teachers, to put it mildly.
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Teaching is a rewarding profession, but it does come with its challenges. One important aspect of teaching is to establish a rapport with the learners. A teacher who is unable to communicate with her learners in the first few days is at risk of “losing” her class altogether. Research shows that learners learn better when they find the content interesting and like the teacher! In fact, a positive and favourable learning environment is necessary for effective communication in a classroom that learners find safe and supportive. This article will pose some challenges and offer solutions that will ensure student engagement.
Let’s face it, teaching in an online learning environment can be difficult when it comes to engaging and
motivating learners. This non-traditional learning environment poses an additional challenge to ensure learners are constructing meaning from the content and deepening their learning and understanding.
Educators often struggle to help learners make meaningful connections to the content while deepening their understanding within an online learning environment. For this reason, I want to emphasize the benefits of discussion boards in online learning.
Discussion boards can be defined as virtual platforms where learners can interact with their instructor and peers by posting and responding to discussion posts. This type of interaction and knowledge building foster a sense of community among students while promoting active learning within an online learning environment. Continue reading
If when reading the title, the first word that came to mind was “Relax,” you are lukewarm. Collocation wise, you are correct. However, as a teacher, I am referring to “Reflect” — as in Time to Reflect. Don’t get me wrong; teachers need time to relax, and I have been doing some of that during my summer break from teaching, but as teachers, we also need time to recharge for when classes restart. That is where reflection comes in.
Continue readingThe concept of language ego is intriguing.
People usually discuss ego in psychological terms. In linguistics, however, language ego is seen as a normal and natural byproduct of learning a second language, which has everything to do with the affective part of language learning.