One teacher's reflections on English as a foreign language
Posted in Abstracts/Presentations, My Teaching Journal, Uncategorized on Jun 11th, 2010
At a recent workshop I conducted at the American Corner here in St. Petersburg, I talked with a group of teachers about tides of change and innovation in education, specifically in Russia. I shared an experience of my own: ten years ago, when I was in graduate school at the American University in Washington, DC, [...]
Posted in My Teaching Journal on Dec 18th, 2009
The end of the year is a special time. In the United States, most Americans celebrate Christmas, both as a secular and religious holiday on December 25. In Russia, as I am learning, the big holiday is the New Year, and it is basically celebrated like a secular American Christmas. This means that, so far, [...]
Posted in My Teaching Journal, Uncategorized on Nov 21st, 2009
I just got back from my first real trip outside of St. Petersburg: The annual National Association of English Teachers Umbrella conference in Kalinigrad, a unique city that is geographically separated from the rest of Russia between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea. I flew there on Sunday, just after presenting at the Saint [...]
Posted in My Teaching Journal, Teaching Culture, Uncategorized on Nov 6th, 2009
This week in my two intercultural communication classes at my university, I taught students about prosody, or intonation and timing, in spoken discourse. I have found that many of the skills of intonation and timing are similar between Russians and Americans, with only a few exceptions. This would make adjustment for non-native speakers not as [...]