Month: April 2019
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New Mexico will pass bill requiring TESOL training for teachers
Rebecca Blum Martinez, the director of the bilingual and ESL program at the University of New Mexico, said having every educator qualified to teach English learners makes sense in New Mexico. It’s the same requirement California has because of its large number of immigrant students. What’s more, she believes PED is undercounting the number of…
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Punctuating “So”
The distinction between “so” to mean “therefore” and “so” to mean “in order that” often goes unmentioned in ESL books, yet the two words require different punctuation. “So” the conjunction that expresses an expected result is a coordinating conjunction (one of the words comprising the mnemonic FANBOYS), and requires a comma to precede it, as…
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San Miguel de Allende–Guanajuato’s Enchanted Pueblo
San Miguel de Allende the city that makes us fall in love at the first moment was named by Travel +Leisure magazine as The Best City in the World in 2017 thanks to its artistic, gastronomic and cultural heritage. A colonial city with a unique charm, where you can appreciate the old Mexico combined with…
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Examination of Aptitude & Vocabulary on L2 Writing in Chinese College Students Highlights the Importance of Receptive Vocabulary
The article “Exploring the Relationship between Language Aptitude, Vocabulary Size, and EFL Graduate Students’ L2 Writing Performance” in TESOL Quarterly by Yingli Yang, Ya Sun et al. of the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, China examines the relationship between language aptitude and L2 writing performance. The study tested sixty-seven Chinese grad students…
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Email Etiquette
Observing appropriate email etiquette is a perennial problem at the International Academy. Teach students to write effective emails with Grammarly’s post on best practices for writing effective emails: Every email has the same basic structure: Subject line, greeting, email body, and closing. But as with every written form of professional communication, there’s a right way…
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Microsoft Class Notebooks in the Communications Classroom
An early-view article in the TESOL Journal by Pamela Everly examines how Microsoft’s learning management platform the OneNote Class Notebook (ONCN) can facilitate speech activities in a listening/speaking or communication focused classroom. Pamela says the following: ONCN’s capacity for handling multiple data types, providing individualized content, and delivering multiple computer‐assisted pronunciation technologies on demand increased…
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Stroll Through Mexico City’s Incredible Little Tokyo Neighborhood
I asked about this when I was in Mexico City last August, but I didn’t get a chance to visit–something for the itinerary next time. … tucked in the quiet Cuauhtémoc neighborhood directly north of Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City’s main artery. … It all started four centuries ago, when a samurai sailed to…
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And thus begins year two …
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Hyper-Vigilant Attribution Culture Exacerbates Academese
… the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb which carries the same meaning that is already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing…
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The APA Style Blog on Citing Instagram and Other Social Media Platforms
If you thought the nice people over at the American Psychological Association didn’t have anything to say about your social media habits, think again. Never let it be said a medium yet exists that American style guides can’t swarm with a flurry of rules that could dissuade a grizzly from a comb brimming with viscous,…
Ezra Vasquez 