Summer 2006
Profile: Virginia LoCastro
Remembering LIOJ
Liberty and Sovereignty
Why I Write Lesson Plans
The Role of Textbooks in the ESOL Classroom
In Defense of Textbooks
Semantic, Lexical, and Thematic Sets
Summer Vacation Essay
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Summer 2006
Achievement Profile: Virginia LoCastro...I majored in French and had been studying it since high school. I spent my junior year in college abroad in Paris. Being in multicultural contexts was much more interesting to me than being in an entirely, solely "white American" environment....
Bill Gatton Remembers the Language Institute of Japan
...LIOJ was where I got my start in Japan and I am very grateful indeed. Certainly I vividly recall my first day in country, in June, the heat, the trudge up the hill, the immediate intensity of the professional focus. The colleagues and students made the experience. The administration was wise and progressive. We knew it was a golden age....
Statement on the Immigration Debate by Jean Frantzy Italien
...The country has been enriched by the contributions of many peoples. English language is very rich because it contains many words from other languages. Its literature, art, music, and dancing are full of ideas from other cultures. Its industry and agriculture have developed rapidly because of the skills of immigrants from many lands....
Why I Write Lesson Plans by Maria Spelleri
...I don’t find it oxymoronic to follow a lesson plan and yet say I am a student-centered teacher. Taking the time to write a thoughtful plan forces me to consider the individuality of my students and how they will respond....
The Role of Textbooks in the ESOL Classroom by Valerie Whiteson
...I have never taken a teaching practicum and so the concept of a lesson plan is foreign to me. In a discussion on TESL_L, teachers who go into a class without a lesson plan are often accused of ‘winging it’....
In Defense of Textbooks by Terry Said
...Like some other posters, I was also aware, yet remain surprised, that some new teachers coming out of university have been told that they shouldn’t use textbooks at all; that they should be creative and make all their own materials....
Analysis of a Recent TESL-L Discussion About Lexical, Semantic, and Thematic Sets
...As I read the exchanges on this TESL-L discussion, I was intrigued by the repetition of the phrase "semantic sets"; I could not imagine how a teacher would organize a communicative lesson without there being groups of semantically networked words....
Summer Vacation: A Participatory Classical Essay
This essay, constructed in June, 1992, with input from students in International Studies at Chubu University, in Kasugai, Japan, gave them a model to refer to in composing their own personal essays....