In class we read this article: Kavanaugh case revealed a system rigged against women
This raised many social issues which would be useful to discuss.
MAT 马特
Sample Essay
Hello [xyz-ips snippet=”user-name”]!
Here is the Halloween essay I scribbled at the end of the IELTS 2 class this week. I haven’t had a chance to proofread it so please check it carefully and see if you can find any careless errors. Even if there are errors, it is most likely a very high band essay 🙂
Discussion Forum – Trump 1
During the summer of 2018, students in my IELTS 2 class were asked to read articles on topics in the English language news and recommend ones that they found interesting to other students for class discussion. The results of that homework informed us that US politics and the environment are the most popular choices so … Read more
Applying Corpus Tools to Academic English Instruction
Note: this is a copy of the post I wrote for CELFS at the University of Bristol, updated and edited to make the information available for my students in China. My research involved a very useful tool for teaching and learning academic vocabulary. In this blog post I will provide a ‘walkthrough’ example of how … Read more
Academics’ Perspectives: desired outcomes from EAP input
As part of an induction to a pre-sessional programme for postgraduates that I will be teaching on this summer, I attended a session with several academics from four different disciplinary areas (Education, Engineering, Management, Biological Sciences) to discuss the particular issues that their international students faced. This was very useful not only because it enables pre-sessional … Read more
How to “revert” an email?
As mentioned in my previous post, every so often during examining work, one comes across an odd phrase or expression that occurs too regularly for it to be dismissed as random or individual error. One such occurrence I have noticed today is the word revert being used where reply or respond would be the more orthodox (correct?) choice of … Read more
What’s with what?
It is exam marking season again and I’ve been quite busy. Some seasons I notice a trend to comment on (for example the increasing use of relatable) and this is no exception – what is it with students adding the word what to a sentence where it is not needed? The two sentences below are … Read more
Nakedness and Nudity: an odd law in the UK
Marking student assignments can be a very interesting job. I often get to read about subjects that, left to my own initiative, it would never have occurred to me to think about. Sometimes the odd idea stands out as worthy of a quick Google search. This was one such idea… I was reading a report … Read more
Trolls Drool
I have been working on a series of bilingual English-Chinese educational books based on characters created by my daughter when she was between 18 months and 3 years of age . These Magic People books are a little rough around the edges because they began life as drawing sessions for my daughter and child’s scribble … Read more
Critical thinking and the need for expert opinion
That well known Brexiteer and bane of UK teachers, Michael Gove, famously declared that Britons “have had enough of experts”. This strikes me as an extremely irresponsible comment, opening the door to all manner of pseudo-scientific nonsense to confuse and mislead the public without constraint. I will explain my concerns through two examples where the … Read more
Student Feedback on Pre-sessional @ University of Bristol
I have spent most of July and August teaching on the University of Bristol’s pre-sessional English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme. This was a very rewarding experience. It was a chance to get back into the field in which I am now a certified expert. I was especially pleased to discover that visualisations formed a very important component of the course … Read more
RELATABLE: When is a word not a word and who decides?
Late in 2015, I started tutoring an undergraduate student who was studying education and creative writing. She had employed me to help her better organise her academic writing with the aim of raising her grade for her final dissertation. The first piece of work I helped her with was her proposal and this contained the … Read more