An Exploration of the World of Teaching

“Learning a second language is an ongoing, long and complex undertaking during which one’s personality is greatly affected. Struggling to go beyond the confines of first language and walk into a new language, a new culture, a new way of thinking, feeling and acting are some of the influencing factors to name just a few. Therefore, language learning requires total commitment, involvement and a total physical and mental readiness to successfully pass the path and reach the goal, i.e being able to communicate in the target language.” ~ H. Douglas Brown

What you just read, to me, is one of the best delineations of what learning a new language constitutes. Being an English language learner (as my 3rd language) for almost 7 years, I have become clearly acquainted with the hardships and challenges of such an undertaking.

Today, as an English language instructor this fact has even become more tangible for me. Therefore, in a quest for self-development and growth in my career and in the field, I decided to start this blog where I will explore and will share the existing issues in the world of TESOL and hence will provide myself with the opportunity to reflect, learn and develop.

So if you are visiting this blog, feel free to surf it and hopefully it will be of use and help to you as well.

Best,

Addeh Hovassapian

Yerevan, Armenia

The vocabulary cannot be taught. It can be presented, explained, and experienced but at the end of the day it is the learner who should learn the vocab. So one of  the main roles of language teachers is to araise interest in the words and teach their students how to be autonomous vocabulary learners.

A great deal of what is involved in acquiring a functioning lexicon is simply a memory task.

Techniques which can be taught to the students for more effective vocabulary learning:

1. Using mnemonics – keyword technique: after presenting the new vocabulary to the students, allow the a couple of minutes to silently and individually devise keywords – creating an image that typically connects the pronunciation of the word in the second language with the meaning of a first language word.

2. Creating index cards: a full set should consist 20 to 50 cards.

David Crystal & I – Yerevan, Armenia

Beginning October 7 to 10, 2012 David Crystal, the world renowned linguist, visited Armenia and delivered 4 fantastic and unforgettable lectures on different aspects of the English language.  The lectures were passionate, full of jokes, and enjoyably informative.

Prof. Crystal During his stay hosted the following lectures:

1. English Accents: Past, Present, Future

2. Future of Englishes

3. Internet Linguistics

4. Advanced Conversational English: Fact and Fiction

What stroke me most during these lectures was Professor’s humbleness and approachability. There is a nice saying ” The deeper the river, the calmer it is”, isnt it?

I will post the highlights in Professor’s lectures in the upcoming posts.

In the meantime, to learn more about professor’s biography, read his blog, and listen to and experience how Shakespeare’s plays and poems are originally read click on the following links respectively:

http://www.davidcrystal.com/

http://david-crystal.blogspot.com/

http://www.pronouncingshakespeare.com/

Evaluating Websites

The second week of the course was devoted to understanding and learning the techniques for website evaluation and selection. The rationale was that Internet is an open source with potential benefits as well as exploitable resources for language teaching purposes and educational use. Despite this, finding “the best” ones for meaningful and appropriate use requires that teachers to be able to evaluate them effectively and select them wisely.

The unit included the following main learning aspects:

1. What are URLs and why is it important how are the constructed?
2. What is the criteria against which the websites should be assessed?

After understanding these two issues, we had to evaluate a set of websites for primary and secondary language learners applying the criteria provided by BC and select the ones appropriate for use. Here is the criteria and a template for use:

Evaluation_of_web_resources_-_Criteria_2011

A_framework_for_evaluating_websites