June 7, 2015 karinawp

Topic: Flash Fiction/Short Story Aim: Introduce and review adjectives for adding details to factual or fictional stories, the concept of ‘showing’ instead of ‘telling’ Language Level: Intermediate Learner Type: Teenagers and Adults Time: 90 minutes Language Skills: Reading & Writing Materials: Digital Tool: Flipgrid Warmer Teacher (T) plays a short clip of American students during…

June 7, 2015 karinawp

Topic: How to write a Good Beginning Aim: Introduce and practice writing beginnings (of short stories) Language Level: Intermediate Learner Type: Teenagers and Adults Time: 90 minutes Language Skills: Reading & Writing Materials: A large copy of the text above with words missing. And a large copy of the completed text above. Make enough copies…

June 7, 2015 karinawp

Topic: Self-Introduction Aim: Introduce and practice vocabulary related to self-introductions Language Level: Beginners Learner Type: Young Learners Time: 90 minutes Language Skills: Listening & Speaking Materials: Karina’s Voki, Karina’s Tellagami, Karina’s Ask Me ppt, Karina’s My Little Bird: Ask Me video, pens, paper, internet access, IWB, mobile devices Digital Tools:Voki.Com, Tellagami app, My Little Bird…

May 23, 2015 karinawp

ELTeach Symposium On 24th April 2015, I had the honour of joining the Symposium on English Teacher’s Professional Development Through Online Self-Access Learning, an expose on the current situation of English Teacher Training/English Teaching in the China context and an introduction to a new, online English Teacher Training platform for local teachers: ELTeach. Symposium Topics…

May 21, 2015 karinawp

On 14th April 2015, I participated in Learn Lab’s Business Models in Education workshop at Binggo Cafe in Beijing. About Learn Lab Learn Lab is an accelerator, an entity that brings people with ideas (entrepreneurs) together with people looking to invest in ideas (angel investors). Through education-focused training and mentoring, Learn Lab’s aim is to…

May 6, 2015 karinawp

What do the Chinese Parents Think? Continuing my research into facilitating parental involvement, I wanted to think more about my role as a teacher from a cultural perspective. For my current SLA project, I am thinking of ways for parents to get more involved in their children’s learning. However, upon deeper reflection, it may be,…

May 5, 2015 karinawp

In this interview I chat about learning and teaching with Q, a Shenzhen-based New Oriental teacher who wants to inspire us to read more. Watch the video to learn more about Q’s: – learning and teaching background – take on what makes a good and bad teacher – involvement with Mike’s Reading House – passion…

May 5, 2015 karinawp

Web 2.0 Creative Writing Tools and This week I began to think about what online tools would be suitable for enhancing reading and writing skills. With sooo many to choose from, I reviewed a list given by my tutor and selected two candidates: Curriculet and Little Bird’s Tales. Curriculet is a digital reading platform which…

May 3, 2015 karinawp

A British Teacher in China As an individual, my view of teaching is based upon my own personal background, upbringing and culture. However, Starr (2012) highlights the dangers of this: “Western, predominantly Anglo-Saxon teachers (take) with them the assumption that the communicative approach (is) the ‘right’ way to teach a foreign language…” So as a…

April 23, 2015 karinawp

Welcome to Educollaborate, a podcast about teaching and learning languages in Chinese! Each podcast is based on one of Han Ban’s Standards for Teachers of Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages. For the second episode we discuss the relevance of Ice-breakers and Warmers for teaching and learning languages. This topic is tagged with Standard number…