Talk to the Clouds

Talk to the Clouds archive (to be removed soon)

  • CATESOL 2010 Food & Shopping Suggestions

    I’m looking forward to CATESOL 2010 in Santa Clara! Some of you will be arriving soon; I’ll only be there starting on Friday, but I thought I’d post some suggestions on where to eat in the area. If you aren’t familiar with the area, it looks like there’s nothing nearby–just corporate offices for Yahoo!, Namco…

  • The Twitter Divide

    (Note: This post contains lots of speculation and generalizations based on some extremely subjective observations, without any hard data to back it up. I’m not claiming I’m right about any of this! I’d love to get different points of view, so please comment. Thanks!)   I’m on Twitter as talkclouds. Since I’m currently working as…

  • Distraction

    I’ve been distracted by getting Readable Blog relaunched. I’m also job-hunting, both at community colleges in the Bay Area and possibly at schools in Japan. If your school is looking, please get in touch with me! (I know the school year is about to start n Japan, but sometimes there are openings on other schedules…

  • Eight Quick Tips

    Something new: guests! Two friends are joining us tonight: T., who’s currently teaching in Korea, and Chris, who teaches in Japan (and also is the force behind The Labyrinth Library, where you can either read reviews of writers from Jim Butcher to George Carlin, or you can download podcast/audio versions to listen to on your…

  • Life/Learning Skills

    As you can probably infer from the science links on my sidebar, I’m interested in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and so on. I enjoy reading about issues like how sleep and nutrition affect your ability to remember, react, and make good judgments. Unfortunately, many of our students (well, and many of us!) have bad habits that…

  • Words about Words

    “Euphemism” is a pretty big word, but it’s so useful that it’s part of a set of words I generally wind up teaching to my students if they’re at least intermediate level. These “words about words” belong to a vocabulary set that’s above or outside of the level of the other words they know. However,…

  • Fly Around the World with Google Earth

    I swear I’m not a cheerleader for Google, but they consistently bring out free products that are of interest to the international community, and they’re often or usually cross-platform. Google Earth is a program that I think everyone should try, especially if you’re curious about other parts of the world, you live overseas, or if…

  • Important Reading on “NNESTs”

    It is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the US, so it occurred to me it might be timely to post on this topic, which has surprising intersections with issues of racism and classism. (Language-based discrimination often does.) An issue that is close to my heart is the status of English teachers who learned English…

  • New Twitter Account, Spiffing Up

    I mentioned this briefly in an earlier post, but there’s a new Twitter account tied to this blog. So please feel free to follow @talkclouds. I’m delighted to follow other English teachers back, and if you have some other people to recommend that I should follow, please let me know! Also, I’ve cleaned up and…

  • 12 Days of Christmas: EFL Classroom 2.0

    Well, I’ve made it to Twelfth Night without missing any days. I wasn’t sure that would happen. If you’ve been reading all along, thanks for sticking with me! I hope today’s resource will help everyone who’s trying to force their brains back into lesson-planning mode after the holidays. It’s not easy, searching for inspiration when…

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