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Back To School EdTech
Guest Post by Paul Lawley-Jones For the majority of teachers in Korea it’s back to school on Monday 1st September. Going through many teachers’ minds is “How can I engage my students? What new things can I do? What tools can I use to help me achieve that?” In this...Article September 1, 2014
Players In The Classroom
A post by Peadar Callaghan A Multi-player online (MMO) game is very similar to a modern day classroom. They are both created environments with different ways to interact with material that is being supplied, either by the teacher (in the case of the classroom) or the server (...Article January 27, 2015
Adding Content to Language: Presenting Text!
By Rob Dickey There's more to English than the nuts and bolts of the language. As with any language, it's meaningful only in context. Unless you are dedicated to strict-translation or the grammar-translation or audio-lingual methods, you probably use content in your...Article January 27, 2015
Blindness
by Justin Ancheta Recently, one of my favorite paintings has been Pieter Breugel the Elder's “The Blind Leading The Blind”. While it's ostensibly an illustration of Matthew 15:14, it's taken on a variety of meanings to a variety of people. For me, it's an illustration of the...Article March 26, 2015
The Responsibilties of Communication
by Justin Ancheta Many years ago, I had the chance to attend a university-level summer engineering camp in high school. Towards the end, there was small-group activity centered around the Challenger Disaster of 1986. My group represented the engineers who were pleading with...Article June 13, 2015
Korea as a dynamic hub of PD?
By Michael Griffin What do Thomas Farrell, Barbara Sakamoto, Claire Kramsch, Chuck Sandy, Willy Renandya, and Jeremy Harmer have in common? Aside from being huge names in our field they are all people who were scheduled to give talks in South Korea in calendar...Article July 17, 2015
E-2 Visas: Eligibility and Enforcement
By John Wurth and Robert Dickey There has been a lot of confusion over the E-2 visa (language teacher) and what it allows. Recent newspaper articles have highlighted foreign teachers given deportation orders from schools without the proper Korean license, and there are...Article July 10, 2017
Let’s talk about the 2019 KOTESOL International Conference
The 2019 KOTESOL International Conference, taking place between October 12-13 at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul, will feature a presentation and workshop with Andrew Cohen. A: My classes have been rather dull. My students are already dozing. They are complaining about...Article October 2, 2019
The 2019 International Conference Is Finally Here
The 27th annual Korea TESOL International Conference will be here from October 12-13, 2019. This year’s theme is Advancing ELT: Blending Disciplines, Approaches and Technologies. Andrew D. Cohen and Rod Ellis are the plenary speakers for the event. There are two featured panels...Article October 2, 2019
What Every EFL Teacher Really Wants
By Jan de Beer What does every EFL teacher really want? That is a good question. A researched question. A question with emotion behind it. What do you as an EFL teacher really want? Before we provide the answer to this question, why don’t you see if you know the answer?...Article October 8, 2019
KOTESOL Gives Back! Conferences Are a-Changin’
By Wayne Finley Grab a hold of a paintbrush. Illustrate the first image that comes to mind when you hear the word ‘conference’. If you’re like me, you start drawing a room… perhaps an auditorium. You sketch out a presenter with a microphone. Hundreds of faces come next,...Article October 22, 2019
Is Your Career Heading in the Right Direction?
By Wayne Finley A career path is not set in stone. It is natural for people to wonder if they are working in the wrong profession, underutilizing their skills or not living up to their full potential. Millions of office cubicles all over the world are occupied by dreams of...Article November 12, 2019
New Year Resolutions on Reflective Practice
By Dr. Yeon-seong Park The 7th anniversary of Gwangju-Jeonnam Reflective Practice Group is coming on April 13. Seven years of fellowship of learning! I feel so lucky to be included in this group because we have innovative co-founders (Maria Lisak and Jocelyn Wright) and...Article January 14, 2020
Blog Review: Willy’s ELT Corner
By Jocelyn Wright By now, you may be familiar with some of the active blogs listed on Top 100 ESL Teacher Blogs & Websites to Follow in 2020 (ELT blogs) (https://blog.feedspot.com/esl_teacher_blogs/). However, you may not yet have seen a new one that appeared on the...Article June 4, 2020
Teaching in a Time of Crisis and the Opportunities to Inspire Social Activism
By Cyril Reyes This year began with a pandemic that seemed, at the outset, to be only located in Asia. By March, it became clear that COVID-19 was a pandemic. The world was not ready for it, but as infections spread, people did their best to tell uplifting stories: of people...Article June 28, 2020
How to Balance Work, Study, and Social Life
by Katherine Scott In today's busy world, more often than not, you find yourself struggling to balance your commitments, whether it be study and work, or your partner and your social life. For instance, last semester, I had to learn how to do online teaching at work. I...Article July 9, 2020
New and Significant Changes to APA References and Citations
By David Shaffer After a reign of ten years over the scholarly publications world of the social sciences, including ELT, the American Psychological Association’s Publication Manual (APA, 2010) abdicated to the seventh edition of the Publication Manual (APA 2020). APA (2020)...Article August 20, 2020
Differences in Maxims, Politeness Conventions, and Directness of Speech Between Korean and English
By George Loetter I once heard a polyglot say that learning a language is learning a culture – when they speak Italian, they become Italian, when they speak Korean, they are Korean – and this is the mindset they have that allows them to speak so well in different...Article November 14, 2022
"They" as a Third-Person Singular Pronoun
By David Shaffer When I was growing up, my English teacher told us that the proper way to express the third-person singular as a generic pronoun was to use he/him/his. Never mind that it was a masculine pronoun; it was the “convention” to keep things neat and succinct. Later...Article March 18, 2023
The KOTESOL Logo and Its Evolution
By David Shaffer How many logos does KOTESOL have? Or maybe we should ask “How many logos has KOTESOL had?” This short article is an attempt to answer these burning questions, and a bit more to boot. The TESOL Logo To consummately understand the evolution of the KOTESOL...Article April 10, 2024
English in South Korea 2024
By Maria Lisak This year, four academic papers significantly deepened my understanding of English language education and its role in South Korea. The first, English as a Foreign Language Education in East-Asian Early Childhood Education Settings: A Scoping Review by Liang...Article January 3, 2025
Why Some EFL Teachers Stay Relevant (And Others Disappear): Lessons from Hollywood
By Maria Lisak Have you ever wondered why some TV actors from massively successful shows seem to vanish while others enjoy thriving careers for decades? Think about the cast of Friends: Jennifer Aniston became a Hollywood mainstay, but others struggled to escape the shadow of...Article April 4, 2025
Are You Just Tired, or Is It Something Deeper? Naming and Navigating Expat Social Fatigue in Korea
By Maria Lisak Have you been feeling drained by every social interaction lately – even the ones you used to enjoy? Do you dread the next teacher dinner, book club, language exchange, or weekend hike? Are you avoiding group chats, ignoring event invites, and mentally...Article June 7, 2025
A Tribute to Francisco Cardoso Gomes de Matos (1933-2025)
By Jocelyn Wright How do we celebrate the life of one we love and respect? By remembering them, paying homage to them, and building off of their accomplishments! On 5 July 2025, a dear and inspirational friend and educator, a pioneering peace linguist, a human...Article July 20, 2025
EFL Teachers as Bricoleurs: Freelancing in a Fractured Field
By Maria Lisak The ground beneath English language teaching is shifting. In East Asia, demographic collapse is shrinking student populations. AI threatens to automate skill-based learning. Public education faces budget cuts, while online platforms commodify teaching with...Article September 26, 2025