Cafe

Are Republicans and Democrats different because of biology?

What unit do we use to measure "human power"?

English rapper-poet Suli Breaks is out with a video that's taking the Internet by storm, and young people are loving it.

Author Scott Thornbury talking about the use of Repetition in English language teaching.

Professor Richard Day, Chair and Co-founder of the Extensive Reading Foundation, explains the benefits to language learners of extensive reading.

Lead by Kevin Brookhouser, Google Apps for Education Certified Trainer and Google Certified Teacher. Learn some more ways you can use Google Docs & Sites in your English classrooms to have a collaborative writing process and dynamic assignments.

Here is an article (and a video that doesn't seem to be working) on cheating and online courses from the BBC. Imagine taking a university exam in your own home, under the watchful eye of a webcam or with software profiling your keystrokes or your syntax to see whether it really is you answering the questions. Online university courses have become the Next Big Thing for higher education, particularly in the United States, where millions of students have signed up for courses from some of the most upmarket universities.

We're not always teaching Generation Y, but learners think and behave differently than those from previous generations. These students were born into a world of information technology; they regularly multitask and they trust the ideas of peers and web videos more than their teachers.Generation Y is significant: it constitutes 20 percent of the world's population. As Gen-Y occupies the young end of the population demographic, we can assume many second language learners belong to this group; it demands our attention and understanding.

The four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking have dominated the EAP classroom for many years; however in the last decade academic word lists has given much greater prominence to vocabulary teaching. This talk will give an overview of some of the main studies into creating Academic Word Lists and look at the impact of vocabulary knowledge of skills such as reading.

Check out these excellent apps for your mobile device of choice!

One problem with integrating most technology is that schools and teachers rely too much on Internet access. We forget that even without the Internet, laptops and mobile devices are very powerful learning tools. Here are a few ideas of the many, I do with students that do not require a class Internet connection.

Steven Pinker talks about Language Pragmatics and how language is learned through context.

This webinar will explore different aspects of learner-centred teaching. What does it mean to be 'learner-centred'? Why is it important? We will examine some of the practical issues. What problems might arise? Is learner-centred teaching possible in all contexts? We will consider these and other questions, and also introduce some ideas which can help teachers to become more learner-centred.

Scott Thornbury's history of second language acquisition (SLA) in a nutshell. A lot of great ideas.

This talk was given by David Crystal for The English-Speaking Union annual lecture, in partnership with the British Council. There is a widely held view that one of the consequences of the rise of English as a world language is global intelligibility. However, at the level of everyday communication, cultural differences between the countries that use English often present a barrier to understanding. The talk illustrates some of the conversational cross-purposes that have taken place, and discusses the kind of cultural awareness all English speakers need to have when they interact with others on a global scale.

Dr. Krashen is perhaps best know for the general theory of second language acquisition.

Lauren Scharff discusses the Scaffolding approach to teaching.