Have you felt constrained by existing teaching methods and materials? Need a little inspiration to get making cool materials? Then let Steven Mayeux be your guide to the cooler side. Steven is an ESL teacher at the UC Davis Intensive English Program and has successfully combined his passion for hip hop music (yes, the kind with Kanye, Jay-Z, and the Wu-Tang Clan) and teaching English. Not only has he created an institutional course (yes, at his university) based around hip hop, but he’s also a launched his own hop hop English teaching website. And guess what, it’s pretty damn good. Here's my interview with Steve (~17 minutes): 

This weekend I had the opportunity to connect with over 300+ ESL teachers at the Northern Regional CATESOL conference. It was a wonderful experience to meet so many many interesting attendees and, with it being a smaller conference, actually make time for deep conversations. Those of you on conference circuits understand when I say it’s a rarity to have an in-depth hallway conversations. Most folks at large conferences are rushing from one talk to another, or succumb to conference-induced sensory and info overload type of ADHD*. Not at CATESOL, thankfully. Here’s what I learned a from our conversations: 

Bruce一对一辅导Stingna有两周了。那么Stingna对这两周复习效果有什么评价呢？是像以前在大班中复习效果相比有什么不同吗？
听听Stingna自己在第二次跟踪采访中是如何说的吧
从采访中可以看出，外教在写作方面不是像以前的中国老师一样要求Stinga背范文，而是针对她的写作仔细修改，让她在用词准确、举行地道、文章结构有特色等方面收获非常大。在每天跟Bruce上课时，因为只能跟Bruce用英语交流，所以Stingna的口语和听力自然而然地也得到了锻炼和提高，可以说在提高口语和听力方面是事半功倍。
采访中，Stingna还透露了很多她在Bruce处学到的雅思准备技巧。 不要错过哦。

Today we hosted our first online ESL webinar. Thanks for all of you who were able to join - your questions were great and really added to the conversation! I'm glad to see the tool is so useful for many of you in-class and independent ESL teachers!
For those of you who were not able to make it, or just want to see we covered, I've actually recorded the webinar (consider it the abridged <20 minute version) as well as the slides. Have your pick!
Video (~20 minutes):

上次博客中的简历共有6个错误，你找出来了吗？很多同学在留言中仅指出了其中语法错误，而对简历中的格式错误却忽略了。其实简历是雇主对你的第一印象，务必要尽善尽美。

英语是一个有很多多义词的语言。下面20个例句中展示了20个常用词的不同含义。你能解释出来吗？第一个正确解释出所有这20个词意义的童鞋将免费获得口语A（WeblishPal）上外教雅思课程（课程链接: kouyua.com/ielts）
请将答案写在下面的评论区里。

雅思口语考试要结束的简洁、有力，千万不要戛然而止，给考官留下你词穷的印象。Kathryn老师总结了10多种常用的结束语，并把它们分了类。把这些常用结束语背下来，并且经常运用到你的段子中，会有不小帮助的。

ESL week may still be a few months away (it's Oct 20-26th 2013) but it's not too early to start thinking about your submissions to the TESL Ontario ESL Week Contest. Haven't heard of it? Well listen up, it could land you $250 for something you already do and love. 
Here are the details form TESL Ontario: “The TESL Ontario ESL Week contest is designed to help us celebrate the hard work of all English language learners, instructors and administrators.  The contest includes a diverse set of activities that is designed to allow individuals with various creative strengths to participate.  Activities include a range of writing, photo and video entry options. All individuals involved with learning, teaching and organizing ESL in Ontario are invited to participate in the 2013 ESL week contests.”

One of my favorite expressions is “See One, Do One, Teach One”. Have you heard of it? It comes from the medical profession in which new doctors have to learn quickly - after they see a procedure completed, they then do one themselves under supervision, and then they teach one to a resident or another physician. Why is this relevant to teaching? For two reasons - it’s the way most people learn best, and it can help you with growing your English teaching practice.
Here’s what I mean: I’ve given many demos on using WeblishPal for teaching now to a few folks (an I’m running a live webinar next week April 30th that you should sign up for at: eslwebinar.eventbrite.com). What I realized was that I was not completing the “See One-Do One-Teach One” loop. 

上一次博客介绍了雅思口语考试中如何利用一分钟的准备时间。今天我们练习两个话题：一个关于礼物话题，另一个是关于人物的话题。
这个话题是：Talk About Present
在看视频之前，先用一分钟自己在心里组织一下要如何说这个话题。然后看看视频中Kathryn老师是如何组织的。
在练习完礼物话题后，再练习一个描述人物的话题。
话题：Some One You Admire
这次Kathryn老师给了我们一分钟准备时间，充分利用这段时间组织一下思路，然后跟Kathyrn老师的思路对比一下，一定有收获的！