Visualising Ideas

Scene One: Wednesday; my hardest day of the week. I teach from 8 till 3:30, 8 lessons in a row. It’s the end of 7th period   I have just used the last page of an impressively covered large memo pad we got from someone in the field of high-tech (he got it at some conference, [...]

This morning I got up at 04:50 AM (!!!!) and went with my husband to Ein Gedi (near the Dead Sea) as he was participating in the 10 km race there. Naturally, I took my book with me. Reading in a public place while waiting, is basically similar in all places, whether it is a [...]

The ITDI Blog’s focus on error correction couldn’t have come at a better time (though it seems to me that any time is a good time to talk about this ongoing issue) as it is very much on my mind at the moment. This round of debating how to correct errors began with an “AHA” [...]

Well, it seems that I’ll be following the Glasgow IATEFL conference from the comfort of home. The competition has ended and I made it to second place! I wish Nahla_Shaw all the best! Her posts were great! I’m actually disappointed and relieved at the same time. I want to attend an IATEFL conference, both for [...]

I can’t put the book down! It is SO good! I find myself totally immersed in the tale and have been going to bed far too late because I can’t stop reading! Set in the Balkans, this book moves between the harsh realities of a troubled region to ancient traditions and the fantasic realms behind [...]

Brad presented us with another challenge (he seems to have a knack for that!): blog a story related to learning a foreign language. Last January, when my blog was only a month old, I posted about how I ended feeling a lot like a deaf person when I was sudying Spanish. Since that was such [...]

The emphasis is on “listening” as opposed to “reading”. “Listening” as in an audio-book of “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens. I find that listening to Dickens has distinct advantages. The reader is excellent and I enjoy hearing the dialogues in the book with all the appropriate accents. I had no idea that so many words [...]

When I saw the Holstee Manifesto video on Sandy Millin’s excellent blog: (Almost) Infinite ELT Ideas I knew the timing was perfect. My favorite kind of homework task is one involving a video. Such videos have to be short, suitable for teens and, of course, don’t require any listening. Such videos aren’t a “dime a [...]

Today was the first warm sunny day in almost  a month. So off we went to the Judean Desert. Life is old here. We saw what’s left of early monasteries (6th century) and the gorgeous spring that sustained them (it is very quiet there, even today!). We saw the route where my Biblical namesake Naomi, [...]

I left the classroom today with a certain sense of satisfaction. Right! It’s February! It’s not just that is the last real month of winter around here. Every year, February is  the time of year when I can finally begin to feel that most students (NEVER say ALL) are moving in the right direction. The [...]