14 maio 2018

by | in Classroom Experiences, Learner Autonomy, Reflections about Education, Sin categoría

I plan all the lessons I teach, but I don’t teach all the lessons I plan. The initial idea for this one was not mine; I found it online. I was looking for different ways to review past modals of speculation for an FCE prep group. Having a group filled with teenagers, ages ranging from 13 to 16, I wanted something cool to use for a TTT (test-teach-test) approach that would eventually culminate in… past papers. Oh, woe. A fellow teacher had posted a suggestion online: why not use a...

13 mar 2018

by | in Reflections about Education

We have recently celebrated Women’s Day. As I walked to and from work this last week, I kept thinking about the female students that I have. Their names sometimes carry a lot of meaning: the victorious Vitoria. The brave Valentina. Lucia, full of light. This reminded me of Esperanza, a strong female character from a book I love, The House on Mango Street, by Mexican American writer Sandra Cisneros. Esperanza is a young girl who describes the world and the people around her. "In English my name means ‘hope’. In...

13 jan 2018

by | in Language Acquisition, Learner Autonomy, Skills, Speaking and Spoken Language

Last January 3rd, my husband and I were driving back home from the beautiful state of Minas Gerais. Days before, during our stay in the effervescent Belo Horizonte, the capital city, we had met a very interesting twenty-something Japanese young man in the hostel. His name is Goro and he’d been living in Brazil for 2 years. He was doing some backpacking since this is his last month in Brazil. As we were all going back to São Paulo, we offered him a ride. A pause to explain: Goro's...

13 nov 2017

by | in Speaking and Spoken Language

[This is a reflection; I am not here to give you answers nor do I have any. I would like to pick your brain about something that has been bothering me for long.] The first time I went to Argentina was in 2010. Getting there, my former boyfriend, having learned a little of the language from a “How to say everything...

25 out 2017

by | in Reflections about Education

Confession: for most of my adult, academic life I have always feared being discovered as a fraud. I even used to phrase it as this: I am afraid that one day people will find out that I am not as good as they think. I remember saying this many times, to close friends, to advisors, to myself. I did not know, at the time, that there were many people that felt like me. So many that there were studies related to this feeling. On one of my favorite episodes...