TESL Ontario’s Magazine for Language Teachers
English for (very) specific purposes: An ESL course for Spanish speaking agricultural workers in the Niagara Region
This is a poster from a poster presentation at TESL Ontario, 2017. We apologize for the HTML formatting. (ed.)
Background
Last year, more than 18,000 workers came to work on Canadian farms as part of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) Of these workers, more than 3,000 are working on farms in the Niagara region The…
Coaching in TESOL
Coaching is a practice that many people typically associate with sports. What does it have to do with Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)? And what might it look like when used to support professional development in TESOL?
The answer to these questions starts with one’s definition of coaching. As we understand…
An interview with Sheila Nicholas
TESL Ontario honoured Sheila Nicholas with a Distinguished Contribution Award in November 2017. This award “is designed to recognize and honour the significant long-term achievements and contributions to the advancement of English Language educators, the English Language training sector and/or TESL Ontario.”
Nicholas, Program Manager of Adult ESL and LINC at St. George’s Centre for ESL in…
The language of success: An interview with Diane Ramanathan, 2017 Sparks of Excellence Award Recipient
She packed her bag and followed her dreams across the globe, holding nothing but her aspirations and persistence to learn. She embraced life with a bold smile, open heart, and determined soul, learned psychology, and served in the military. Things weren’t easy but her memory, as she mentioned, “is very selective” and able to edit all the…
Teaching English as a second language in Ontario: The early aboriginal experience in 19th century residential schools
Today when we think of teaching English as a Second Language in Ontario, we think in terms of teaching immigrants new to the province. But there is a long history of teaching English as a Second Language to people who are old to the province: 11,000-years-plus old.
The schools that first taught English as a Second Language…
Framing LGBT issues and learning outcomes: A Canadian perspective
Whether it is ESL, EAP, LINC, or any other form of TESL, our job is a big one. We are language teachers, and with that comes culture. There is no way to separate the two. Our students need social and cultural survival skills in order to be successful. These sociocultural competencies vary as far and wide as…
What is fluency and how do we develop it?
“I want to speak English fluently.”
“I have to write reports in English.”
“I want to read English magazines, books and websites.”
“I’d like to understand movies in English.”
Whether expressed directly or indirectly, the need for fluency inherently exists within all of these commonly expressed goals and motivations for learning English.…
What can L2 teachers do to assist L2 learners to develop listening fluency
In my experience at many Asian conferences, some people in the audience laugh particularly loudly when they hear a native speaker of English saying something that might be funny. Strangely, they don’t laugh so loudly if a non-native speaker of English says the same thing. There may be multiple reasons but this one is for sure.…
Pragmatics in the classroom: Don’t take it literally
Among the first phrases that English-speaking students of Japanese learn are the equivalents of “hello” (こんにちは konnichi-wa) and “how are you?” (お元気ですか o-genki desu-ka). With these two phrases under their belts, students may fearlessly run around Japan greeting everyone they meet with “hello, how are you?” in the same way they would greet people back home. However,…
Raising and assessing second language vocabulary fluency
The centrality of vocabulary knowledge cannot be overstated; it underlies the acquisition success of not only reading and listening skills, but also writing, speaking, and grammar learning (Alderson, 2005; Segalowitz, 2005). Linguists have proposed various definitions of vocabulary knowledge. Qian’s (2002) definition has generally been a cited gold standard. According to Qian, vocabulary…
Language and the brain: What we have learned from 30 years of brain imaging
With the advancement of cognitive neuroscience and the development of modern brain imaging methods in the 1990s, the field of language neurobiology—the study of the relationship between the brain and language functions—has grown immensely and rapidly over the past thirty years, and finds itself at a crossroad with respect to its theoretical underpinning. The main message…
Implementing Task-Based Language Teaching in Belgium: Lessons for Canada?
Abstract1
Implementing Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) has been central to numerous policy initiatives around the world in the last few decades. The Belgian experience of TBLT implementation has been the focus of intensive empirical research, which makes it of particular interest to policy-makers and practitioners in other countries. Implementation of Portfolio-Based Language Assessment (PBLA) in adult…
