Tutoring, Lessons, and Editing
A common theme in a lot of my classes is that many of my students absolutely adore magic tricks. They like to try guessing how it is that someone can possibly insert pencils into balloons without popping them, and they enjoy telling me about the magic tricks that they’ve learned in the past. I’ve even […]
Because of how school is structured, a lot of students aren’t really exposed to a wide range of texts. They’re exposed to things that, according to whatever curriculum they’re working within, are placed within a specific canon or hold a particular kind of importance to a culture or a state. That doesn’t mean these texts […]
For the past couple months, I’ve been reading two different manga with one of my students. This was largely their decision as an activity, though I did have to restrict it to manga that I could access and was in English. Though I call it a restriction, this really has kept things much more accessible […]
Silent films are wonderful tools. They can be used in so many ways, providing a background for discussion and story development. It allows people to talk about what they see as opposed to what they hear, which just supports people in developing a larger range of communication. Not all of us watch the same thing, whether it’s […]
Far too often, the conversations that people have during language lessons feel stilted and not at all realistic. They feel forced, which means that people are less likely to really engage in them because they feel like something they must do instead of something they want to do. This is pretty clear when you look at the […]
One of my favourite activities has been improv. It’s also been something that I’ve missed quite a lot because I’ve never found other people who want to do improv, and it’s something that definitely needs a stable location to meet every now and again. But it’s such a fun way to build confidence in speaking and […]
One of the best things for anyone learning anything—particularly for my students who are working on learning another language—is to find something that you enjoy. This much is pretty obvious because, when we think about all the things we’ve ever done, it’s clear that we really struggle to get through anything we don’t want to […]
