Learning How to Change

In the spirit of cultural sensitivity, I thought I would share an article from the Economist published on Apr 9th 2016. I have made no edits to this article, but  I have bolded some phrases below for you to consider and concluded this post with some comments. The advantages of working in your own language are obvious. Those of working in a foreign one are subtle. More and more of the world is working in English. Multinational companies (even those based in places such as Switzerland or Japan) are making it their corporate language. And international bodies like the European Union and the United Nations are doing an ever-greater share of business in the world’s new default language. At the office, it’s English’s world, and every other language is just living in it. Is this to the English-speaker’s advantage? Working in a foreign language is certainly hard. It is easier to argue fluently or to make a point subtly when not trying to call up rarely used vocabulary or const...

I have been working on some new Professional Development Lessons for teachers these past few weeks, which I hope to base some future workshops on. I thought I would share the infographic I have created based on the Government of Alberta's ATESL Adult ESL Curriculum Framework. This infographic highlights 5 essential elements for building communicative competence, which include discourse,strategic, functional, linguistic, and sociocultural competencies. The infographic represents this taxonomy and shows how these elements are interconnected and how each helps build communicative knowledge and skills when integrated into curriculum and practice in intentional ways. The full curriculum guide can be found here:  ATESL Documents