TweetA Mongolian student of mine wrote this about her first experience working in groups and having to complete a task with three of her groupmates: At the lesson on Wednesday our classmates divided /split/ into 5 groups. Students will work together effectively, to learn more in small groups. Every member of groups choose role for [...]
TweetNow that summer is over and I have mostly settled into my new home in Ulaanbaatar, I feel it is necessary to provide an update on my current goings-on. My plan for the next two semesters is cobble together several smaller projects which, because of my busy schedule during the past two years, I was [...]
TweetWriting is the most difficult of all the language skills. This is true for the teacher as well as the learner. It is not necessarily a requirement that, in order to be good writing teacher, one must also be a good writer (but it helps). More important for teacher is that she has a clear [...]
TweetThis is the first time I’ve written an entry in my teaching diary in a very long time. To be exact, the last time I wrote an entry in my teacher’s diary was in September of 2009, just over a year ago. I recall that when I did this, I found the reflective process to [...]
TweetAt 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, [...]
TweetThe 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, [...]
TweetI 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 [...]
TweetThis 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 [...]
