Category: language
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The Dubbing Competition and Just Rolling with It
So sometimes life in China as a university English teacher is a bit odd. We have to navigate a different culture, a different university system, and the sometimes awkward use of our own native language. My students seem well aware that spoken English in this country is often not correct, as they make jokes about […]
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On the Batak Alphabet and Maps that Make Sense of the World
Recently, blog posts about “maps that will help you make sense of the world” (one example) circulated the internets and facebook. My current location in Indonesia, gives me a different perspective when viewing these maps than my friends from North America and Europe. One of the maps explains population. Indonesia’s population is more than 245 […]
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More of the Unexpected
“…I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Matthew 25:36 Quite unexpectedly one Sunday morning, I found myself walking through the streets of Balige toward the local prison. I was accompanying the 3rd year class of students at the deaconess school, who go into the community every Sunday and attend various churches, often […]
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Yes We Can (a discussion on modal verbs)
The image is well familiar to the American audience. The idea to share this image with one of my classes came as I was thinking about what activities to use when teaching modal verbs (can, could, must, should, would, will …). I showed the picture and asked them to comment. Among the things said by […]
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I’m a Radio Star
Well, video hasn’t quite killed this radio star. During my time teaching at the HKBP Nommensen University last week, I made an appearance on a local radio station. The English program runs every afternoon for one hour. When they have special guests, such as myself, a visiting teacher and native English speaker, it is a […]
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Preparing a Lesson
I am currently in a seminar about teaching English to speakers of other languages. The third and final intense weekend is fast approaching, and tomorrow I, along with the 17 others in the course, will teach a 20 minute lesson of our choosing. My lesson is “going to the market”, teaching about quantifiers and count/noncount […]
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The Adventure of Learning Languages
Halo! Apa kabar? I have a confession to make. No, I haven’t committed a major sin or anything like that. This is actually the good sort of confession. In preparation for living in Indonesia, I am currently teaching myself Bahasa Indonesia. There are over 300 distinct languages spoken across the country, an archipelago of more […]
Megs the Wanderer 