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Systems versus Tools
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between systems and tools. This is partially because of the Organize Your Language Teacher Life course I’ve been working on, as well as my own recent decision to make a major switch to the digital tools that support my own planning system. With digital tools in…
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Experiments with Notion
As blog readers know, I have been using the program Trello to organize projects in all of the various areas of my life, including my home, my work, travel, events, teaching, and more! However, I recently switched over to using another program, Notion, for a similar purpose, and so I thought I’d share here why…
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Organize Your Language Teacher Life!
I’ve been having a lot of fun over the past month or so designing an online course called Organize Your Language Teacher Life that brings together two of my favorite things, language teaching and organizing! The course is set to launch on May 24, and so in this post I thought I’d give a preview…
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Weekend Planning
While I’ve discussed weekly planning several times on this blog, it occurred to me recently that I’ve never discussed weekend planning, even though this is a fairly large component of my planning system! So, I thought I’d delve more into this process in this post.
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Language Ideologies in the Wild: Duolingo
In this latest post on language ideologies in the wild, I’ll be discussing the popular app Duolingo, which describes itself as “The world’s best way to learn a language”. As usual, I’ll be discussing the language ideologies behind the assumptions this app makes about languages and language learning, and the ways these ideologies contribute to…
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Strategies to make mundane tasks more interesting and less painful
I’ve had a few conversations recently about the annoyance of mundane tasks and chores, such as laundry and email. While none of these activities would make a list of things I’d do for fun, I realized that I’m less annoyed by them than the people was I was talking to, or even my past self!…
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Language Ideologies in the Wild: The Middle Aged Brain
It’s time for another language ideologies in the wild post, this time focusing on middle-aged life. Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife, by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, interweaves stories and research focused on life in middle age. As with the other books discussed in this series, the book overall is interesting, so this…
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Language Ideologies in the Wild: Entrepreneurs
Last year, I wrote a post on Language Ideologies in the Wild: The Science of Learning, where I described some of the underlying ideologies that frustrated me in an otherwise interesting book. Since this is a fairly common occurrence, and I read a lot of books, I’ve decided to make it into a series, where…
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Variation and Standardization in the Language Classroom: Are We Asking the Wrong Questions?
Variation is inherent to languages and language users, yet is it often the subject of consternation in the language classroom, especially at lower levels. Essentially, the questions center around which variety to teach? Can we teach multiple varieties? Will this confuse students? Will they understand how to use them? What if they mix varieties? Per…
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We Can Learn Arabic Website: Spring Update
Last Fall, I mentioned that my colleagues Heather Sweetser, Abdullah Serag, and I had launched We Can Learn Arabic, an open access website for Arabic learners at beginning and intermediate levels. This is the culmination of six years of moving away from a textbook in our lower level classes, as well as many of the…