The best gift I ever received was three large boxes of books. My much-older cousin, Donald, was a doctoral student in oceanography and was due to spend the better part of a year far from our homes in Vancouver, Canada, sailing in the Russian arctic. Before he left, he piled about 300 paperback science-fiction novels and short-story collections into boxes and deposited them at my feet with the words, “I think you will enjoy these.” I was 12, it was the first day of summer vacation, and I was hooked. Over the next lazy months and into the fall, I read obsessively. I finished them all.   The consequences, I realize now, were profound. My reading speed and vocabulary certainly increased. My imagination was sparked, as was my critical thinking:…

Mobile Language Learning: The World in Our Hands Abstract Mobile learning has extended opportunities for making teaching and learning available beyond the traditional classroom. Associated technologies, software programs, and Internet access have enfranchised many students who previously had little access to quality teaching. However, a paradigm shift has occurred in which learners are turning to new mobile learning opportunities to supplant traditional teaching as virtual extensions of earlier self-help books, phrase books, and audio-based language learning programs. Audio translation apps, augmented reality, and just-in-time learning approaches are providing alternatives to those with neither access nor time to learn a language. This paper examines the theoretical underpinnings of a range of technologies and applications, contrasting them with the traditional classroom and imagining the future of mobile language teaching and learning and…

“I read through the whole textbook and found a word that was only used once. I was sure the students wouldn’t know it!” Lillian, a teacher trainer in Peru, was explaining her conversation with a teacher who had written a test for his English students. “But,” Lillian asked, “Why would you choose to test the students on something you thought they wouldn’t know?” The teacher did not have a good answer; it showed his the lack of understanding of the principles of assessment and went against Swain’s (1984) principle of bias for best: “Do everything possible to elicit the learners’ best performance” (p. 195). The teacher thought, as too many teachers do, that the purpose of an assessment is to trick students or to cheat them out of marks. The…

“What do you think?” It’s one of the most common questions native speakers ask one another, but it’s a challenging question for beginner learners of English to ask and answer. At Level 46 (CEFR B1), the Global Scale of English (GSE) suggests students Can give or seek personal views and opinions in discussing topics of interest although students may answer opinion questions earlier. One reason opinion questions are challenging is that they are often open-ended. The opposite—closed-ended questions—usually have limited possible answers. For example, closed-ended questions might be yes or no or some other binary choice. Sometimes there is a slightly larger set of choices. The answers to “Do you like bananas or oranges?” could be “Oranges.” or “Bananas.” or “Both.” or “Neither.” Even a question such as “What’s your…

Would you buy a ticket from an airline that crashed 60 percent of the time? No? Would you be more willing to pay if you were getting a bachelor’s degree instead of a flight? Among American students who started four-year undergraduate degrees in 2007, only 39.4 percent completed a degree (Digest of Education Statistics, Table 326.10). Of course, some students take time off to work or travel, but for those who start and do not return to classes, a key cause is a lack of academic survival skills that allow them to meet college and university expectations. Daley (2010) suggests, “Many students are unprepared for the rigors of college academically. They have low academic skills: they do not read and write well enough” (para. 18). Freeman (2009) gives a specific…

“Daddy, can I please help take out the garbage?” Now that my sons are teenagers, it’s been a while since I’ve heard requests like that. But, when they were young, even the most mundane events and tasks seemed to appeal to them as exciting experiences and learning opportunities. What changed? All children learn, but some learn better, faster, and more easily than others. Certainly some learners are more able or less able, but a key difference in any learner’s acquisition of knowledge is motivation. Motivation can be divided into intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation, or internalized motivation, is one in which learners find their own personal reasons for learning. Extrinsic, or externalized, motivation is when learners are driven by others’ ideas of what to learn, how to learn it, and…

How can so much say so little? Quickly skim the following play, Emergency; it’s only a couple hundred words long. Emergency Peter: (desperate) Can you help me? Doctor: Yes. I’m Doctor Wiggle, Director of Emergency. Peter: (clutching his pants) I think I’ve hurt my jabberwocky! Doctor: Well, we’ll just have to have a look. Peter: But I can’t take off my pants! Not here! Not with everyone watching. Doctor: I’m afraid you’ll have to! But first, I’m going to give you antibiotics. Are you allergic to anything? Peter: I’m only allergic to penicillin. My Aunt Mary is allergic to ice cream. Doctor: Good. Then this is what you need (gives the injection). Now your name is… just let me write it down. Peter: Peter Grimes. P-E-T-E-R G-R-I-M-E-S. Doctor: (writing it…

What do these words have in common? a, and, away, big, blue, can, come, down, find, for, funny, go, help, here, I, in, is, it, jump, little, look, make, me, my, not, one, play, red, run, said, see, the, three, to, two, up, we, where, yellow, you Your mind naturally looks for patterns and, as you read, you probably start to put the list into categories. For example, you might look for grammatical classes: articles: a, the conjunctions: and prepositions: away, for, here, in, to adverbs: up, down, not, where adjectives: big, red, blue, yellow, funny, little, one, two, three verbs: can, come, find, go, help, is, jump, look, make, play, run, said, see pronouns: I, it, me, my, we, you But this organization raises more questions. Where’s the article…

“Now, remember, don’t tip your hat to another witch unless she tips hers first—you’re still an apprentice. And if you should come across some fellweed, be sure to pick it, but only if it’s the four-leaf variety. The five-leaf kind will rot your fingers.” “Yes, Grandma.” Mason made a mental note not to touch anything with five leaves. Cowel made a mental note not to touch anything. (Anderson, 2007) I can’t remember the book in which I first read the term mental note, but I remember the author used it excessively. My 12-year-old self was following the adventures of some junior adventurer who used these mental notes as a cheap plot device to foreshadow further adventures and drum up anticipation. But I found the idea enchanting: my own brain could…

It felt like hours. The joke my student was trying to tell perhaps took no more than three or four minutes, but it involved many clarification moves on my part (“I’m sorry, do you mean …?”) and repair moves on his part, hesitating, saying the wrong word, and then backing up to explain (“I mean ….”). At the end of it all, the disjointed story (“Oh, before that, I meant to say ….”) coalesced into an anecdote he’d read about a diner receiving a free meal at a restaurant after finding a cockroach in his soup. Afterward, the apologetic server humbly escorts the diner to the door and helps him with his coat when, unfortunately for the diner, a bottle full of cockroaches spills from the coat’s pocket. I smiled…