Random Quote
"It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.'"
---- Sam Levenson
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
---- Evan Esar
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
---- Gail Godwin
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
---- H. G. Wells
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.
---- Jack Lynch
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
---- Franklin D. Roosevelt
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.
---- anonymous
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
---- Robert Frost
As soon as I buy the moose head, I have to go pick up some KY jelly.
---- Mary Roninette Kowal
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
---- Pablo Picasso
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
---- Terry Pratchett
The least of learning is done in the classrooms
---- Thomas Merton
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
---- Arnold Lobel
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison
This may be the most interesting blog theme I've ever seen. http://eflgeek.com/index.php Definitely in my top 5 at least.
---- Steve Dembo
Drink coffee! Do stupid things faster!
---- unknown
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
---- Sheik Abd-al-Kadir
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
---- Albert Einstein
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
---- Mitch Hedberg
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
---- M. Cartmill
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
---- John Ciardi
Life English
This semester I’m teaching a course titled “Life English”. No course goals, guidelines or information was given only the title and that it’s two hours once a week. A couple of weeks ago on facebook I posted a status update something along the lines of “Life English, whose life? my life, your life, a transgender lesbian sadomasochists life, a preachers life, a billionaire retirees life? throw a dog a bone”
To some extent I still feel that way, but I did a level assessment this past week and also got a couple of ideas from the students of what they want from the course. Hopefully it goes a little better. In any case I’m going to focus on language skills that get used in real life, rather than on textbook produced stuff.
This weeks lesson is based on a Breaking News English lesson Facial Expressions are not Universal I’m not using only the BNE handout, but rather using it as a springboard to focus on non-verbal communication. I’ve created additional handouts that focus on interpreting facial expressions, smilies, and internet acronyms.
The greater focus of the lesson is on the last two as I feel that these are potentially the most useful for students living in Korea who wish to use the internet to exercise their language skills. Joining, or lurking in, English internet communities it is very useful to know what the various smilies mean especially since English smilies and Korean smilies are different – I’m referring to text based smilies and not graphical.
For those interested in chatting via twitter, msn, or other chat rooms it’s also important to understand what all the internet acronyms mean. I did some reasearch and found a great list that is actually to help parents know what their kids are typing on the computer. I took about 20 of these and turned it into an exercise. I’m sure students will like to know what b4n or iwkwm means when they start chatting with native speakers.
Alex Case wrote 106 words on Monday Sep 7, 2009 at 03:59 PM
I’d assume it would be functional/ situational stuff like “Asking for directions”, “Interrupting” or “At the post office”
In answer to your post below (never did understand why the comments function disappears on old posts), it’d be a real shame to see EFL Geek disappear, but I understand that you actually have to pay to keep the domain. If you ever do decide to pack it in, give me a couple of weeks’ notice and I’ll save some best of bits on my blog like I did for TEFLtrade when it disappeared.
2011? Seems like you might still be there after me, though I’ve just arrived!
Sean. wrote 50 words on Monday Sep 7, 2009 at 04:16 PM
Alex,
I turned off commenting on entries older than 3 or is it 4 weeks because usually after that all I’m getting is spam. Will definitely let you know when this blog is about to die. Though I keep changing my mind about keeping it up or letting it go.