A few thoughts on learning words whilst living abroad and in the classroom

So I want to share my experience of learning another language from living in another country and then talk about what can be taken from this to the TEFL environment.  Firstly a brief introduction, I am currently living in Dnipopetrovsk in the Ukraine where the main spoken language is Russian rather than Ukrainian. I have… [Read more…]

Deeply moved

Today I came across a short Youtube video that was shared by Ray William Johnson of =3 fame. I don’t want to spoil it so watch it first. http://www.youtube.com/v/ZiRHyzjb5SI?fs=1&hl=en_GB Part of the reasons that this video affected me so much is from my own experience of my Grandma suffering from dementia. It was so painful… [Read more…]

I didn’t fight the law….it still won.

Whilst lying facedown on the floor I did wonder how I managed up in this position. This was not a philosophical reflection but rather amazement due to my limited knowledge of Russian and in particular the phrase “lie facefirst down on the floor”. I knew at the time that of course everything would eventually get… [Read more…]

The dangers of Blogging

The internet is always a dangerous place to debate or even to express yourself. You are instantly open to any tom DICK or harry who comes along (pun intended, accusations at anyone not) who happened to stumble across you and decided that you are worthy of being targeted. There have been occasions when I have been the victim… [Read more…]

Winnie the Pooh as you’ve never seen him before

I have to thank the receptionist Natasha for showing us Soviet Winnie Pooh. Pure brilliance. http://www.youtube.com/v/sqdiEUp6s4E?fs=1&hl=en_GB

L1 articles

This is a selection of different discussion posts on L1 in the classroom Better Language Teaching Tefl certificate courses From the British Council website Round up of some academic books Iatefl British council

A quiet week

[Interestingly if I had changed two letters in that sentence (Quite a week) then the Blog post would have a completely different meaning to the one that it actually does. Isn't the English language fun!] As you may have noticed there has been a distinct lack of blogging this past week. This was due to… [Read more…]

Visitors from Donestk

During the last weekend we were lucky enough to have some of the teachers from IH Donestk come to visit us in Dnipro [unfortunately one teacher wasn't well enough to come]. It had been a few weeks since we had trekked across  Donestk for the Ukraine Workshop and with the impending departure of one of… [Read more…]

Lets talk about SKEPtiks baby…

Yesterday I came across this rather interesting article in the Guardian citiquing the Skeptic movement. For those who don’t know essential the skeptic movement is a group of “skeptics” who are sceptical of many things (mainly religion, homoeopathy, and conspiracy theories). The main criticism this article brings up is the similarities with religious gatherings, all be… [Read more…]

I had put of posting about my first experience of Church in The Ukraine partially because of lack of time and partially because I forgot. However, having seen Andrew Brims’ latest post I am convinced this was divinely inspired. Last Sunday I went to A Baptist church in Dnipropetrovsk, I have to say I wasn’t… [Read more…]