Posts filed under: English

Stop and Listen to Yourself

Languages have always been a love or hate issue. If you pay attention, you will realize that here are those who are extremely passionate about the topic and jump at...

Serious Teachers

As I come close to my 20th anniversary of teaching English as a foreign language I can’t help but reflect on the nature of this business and the quality of...

Dictionaries, English, And Coffee

According to Robert McCrum in his book ‘Globish’, Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary gave the English language its ‘contagious adaptability, catchy populism and innate subversiveness.’1 I guess I feel very subversive now...

Pedos de Monja (Nun’s Farts)

I got this chocolate in Mexico. I have to admit I haven’t tried it yet (don’t think I will) since its name means ‘Nun’s Farts’. More so, there’s a small...

High Tech vs Low Tech

Between the whiteboard and me there is a secret…we have an ongoing relationship… My last post was about the iPad. God I love that device. It has changed my life...

What’s a native English speaker

I think the whole ‘Native English’ concept affects a lot of TEFL teachers who are not ‘native’ by the standards expected by some students and are ruled out even if...

The Gatekeepers

I was recently hired to evaluate a group of students at a university. The students needed to obtain a B1 placement score on the Common European Framework of Reference for...

I love Bogotá

Fellow blogger Aiysha recently asked a question about which countries are the most interesting to visit. I want to narrow the search and focus on cities. Now, I have lived...

The Gatekeepers 2

Some months ago I wrote about teachers being gate keepers to people who need to pass an English requirement in order to enter a university, get a degree, or be...

Rosetta Stone as a learning tool

I’ve been learning Portuguese for the past three years and have been using Rosetta Stone for the last two. I decided to enroll in the interactive language learning program, the...