My EFL Teaching Blog

Hello! I am Jay. I'm a grad student getting my Master's Degree in Second Language Acquisition from a USAmerican university. This blog was created for a class on Current Issues in TESOL. It's currently being updated for a course on Assessment in TESOL. I have been teaching since fall 2016, both as an EFL Teacher in Asia and an EAP Teacher in the US. This blog contains a mix of contemporary TESOL research, my personal/critical opinions, and fun linguistics content. Note: if you find this blog and realize you can figure out who I am IRL . . . don't do that? Don't understand all these acronyms? Click here! Want to know more about my personal journey? Click here! Blog Icon from Ben White on Unsplash, Header from 2y.Kang on Unsplash

[my-efl-blog]

My Tags

Putting an explanation here of all the common tags on this blog.

For my classmates who may not be familiar with tumblr: tags are both a categorization system and a comment system.

Linguistics -- posts that are about linguistics, language phenomena and features, aspects of English, etc.

Theory -- posts about ideas, theories, ideologies, and frameworks that do not have practical applications

Praxis -- posts about ideas, theories, ideologies, etc. and how to apply them in a classroom setting

Practice -- posts with useful things for the classroom

Not Mine -- posts that I did not create. Tumblr is like Pinterest in that the majority of the content is shared from other creators. I've tried to tag all of the posts I got from other people.

Showcase -- the highlights of the work for The Class This Blog Is For, for a quick skim of what I've made.

Portfolio -- all of the things I've made for this class that should count towards my final grade.

MateAssePortfolio -- Portfolio for the second Class This Blog is For, Material and Assessment

MateAsseShowcase --Showcase for the second Class This Blog is For, Material and Assessment

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I am currently finishing up some training in work, and the topic is on helping international students to avoid culture shock. They have just presented me with this graphic:

They've captioned it with "This is a bit of fun but it highlights the underlying point" but I am now completely stuck on "I'm sure it's my fault" - "It's your fault" - "Why do they think it was their fault?" as an interaction

[mememuseumofhistory]

[eatmyeyes]

rbing this cause it gives me the same satisfaction "She told him that she loved him" (put "only" in front of any word in the sentence to change the meaning) gives me

[nonbinary-wrath-month]

The reason why so many of y'all's feminism sucks is because you still believe deep down in your hearts that there are only two kinds of people in the world: precious, ethereal, fragile dollthings called "women", and violent, lustful, rage-fueled apes called "men". Until you throw that idea away, 3rd-grade-tier "girls rule boys drool, girls are princesses and boys are stinky :(" is as feminist as we'll ever get-- and I hope it's obvious that that's lightyears away from the bare minimum of where we need to be.

[teathattast]

[ruhua-langblr]

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

[unrelatedwaffle]

not to be a pain about this but not only should you learn to read scientific papers but you should know how to find out if a journal is reputable and some basic statistics (i promise it's not as scary or hard as it seems). these are key adult life skills, not niche academic pursuits. science journalism is abysmal, and researchers misrepresent their own findings all the time.

How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

From vaccinations to climate change, getting science wrong has very real consequences. But journal articles, a primary way science is commun

The credibility of a journal may be assessed by examining several key factors.

Libraries: Assessing Journal Quality: Journal Quality

A guide to the tools and methods for evaluating the quality of scholarly journals. Intended for authors, editors and reviewers.

Khan Academy

1.1: Basic Definitions and Concepts

Statistics is a study of data: describing properties of data (descriptive statistics) and drawing conclusions about a population based on in

Data Analysis with R

Offered by Duke University. Master Data Analysis with R. Statistical mastery of data analysis including basic data visualization, ... Enroll

[metfell]

"contract grading" "only 4 absences or you drop to an F" "in this class we will be teaching about disabilities. attendance is mandatory and i do not accept late work" "please respond to at least two of your peers in this discussion post" "people with autism need time to decompress in a classroom environment. your class is four hours long with a 7 minute break." "we like to let students learn the way THEY want to learn. please buy our 150 dollar textbook."

[ceausescue]

debating if it would be funnier to have a bumper sticker saying "my other ride is a [exact make and model of the car the sticker is on]" or "my other ride is a [equally shitty but different car]"

[k-simplex-deactivated20241001]

2008 Honda Civic with the bumper sticker "My other ride is a 2007 Honda Civic"

[newkidsontheblocklist]

This post has found its target market

[afniel]

This is the magic lucky word count. Reblog for creativity juice. It might even work, who knows.

[the--quotifyer--innit]

please i have writers block please

[archivegeo-deactivated20260222]

got a major pest problem this year actually

[mitchipedia]

[cumaeansibyl]

if the tech teacher doesn't know what linux is then he deserves whatever mayhem this middle schooler is going to inflict

[vonlipvig]

WE NEED TO KILL HIM

[startedwellthatsentence]

The research I’m currently doing involves going through articles in an academic journal manually — article by article, issue by issue, in reverse chronological order.

In 2010, an in memoriam article was posted about a notable scholar in the community who was trans. It shared about her life and work, and mentioned her birth name and her chosen name.

Just got to 2005, and she published in issue 2 under her birth name. And then in issue 3, she published under her new name for the first time.

She was in tech, and a lot of what she wrote about is obsolete by now. I have no need to read her publications. But it’s just so touching to see our history laid out like this — an unremarkable name-change in a journal followed by an obituary five years later. It really is never too late.

[fanficmemes]

Anybody else got that Evergiven sized writers block

[fanficmemes]

“Where’s the next chapter?!” Well buddy you’re never gonna guess

[fanficmemes]

[callmebliss]

What’s the comic sans trick?

[cargopantsman]

[chaifootsteps]

#i feel like someone just asked me to eat dirt for my health

[buc-eebarnes]

wingdings' true purpose as a font

[naamahdarling]

Wingdings holy shit some of y'all are on a whole different level of galaxy wizard brain batshittery and I am in awe.

[brawltogethernow]

Exciting. When I don't want to see what I'm writing I just make the font color almost indistinguishable from the background color. (Do not do this.)

(I don't think the secret to the comic sans hack is comic sans itself; I think it's any deflation of being intimidated by your canvas.)

[brawltogethernow]

Hold on I need to go look something up immediately.

[darker-than-darkstorm]

... you can't say that and not give the link.

The Internet's best write-reward system! Write one hundred words, get an image of a kitten!

Looks like you can even make it something other than kittens, by appending ?search=dinosaur (that's the example the page gives) to the end of the URL.

[nightingaletrash]

@andauril

[todaysbat]

sharing this here because you can can do bats

[probablyasocialecologist]

AI Is Wreaking Havoc on Global Power Systems

New artificial intelligence data centers are coming online so fast that the electricity demand is straining global power grids and threateni

The almost overnight surge in electricity demand from data centers is now outstripping the available power supply in many parts of the world, according to interviews with data center operators, energy providers and tech executives. That dynamic is leading to years-long waits for businesses to access the grid as well as growing concerns of outages and price increases for those living in the densest data center markets. The dramatic increase in power demands from Silicon Valley’s growth-at-all-costs approach to AI also threatens to upend the energy transition plans of entire nations and the clean energy goals of trillion-dollar tech companies. In some countries, including Saudi Arabia, Ireland and Malaysia, the energy required to run all the data centers they plan to build at full capacity exceeds the available supply of renewable energy, according to a Bloomberg analysis of the latest available data. By one official estimate, Sweden could see power demand from data centers roughly double over the course of this decade — and then double again by 2040. In the UK, AI is expected to suck up 500% more energy over the next decade. And in the US, data centers are projected to use 8% of total power by 2030, up from 3% in 2022, according to Goldman Sachs, which described it as “the kind of electricity growth that hasn’t been seen in a generation.”

21 June 2024

[unforth]

Y'all I know that when so-called AI generates ridiculous results it's hilarious and I find it as funny as the next guy but I NEED y'all to remember that every single time an AI answer is generated it uses 5x as much energy as a conventional websearch and burns through 10 ml of water. FOR EVERY ANSWER. Each big llm is equal to 300,000 kiligrams of carbon dioxide emissions.

LLMs are killing the environment, and when we generate answers for the lolz we're still contributing to it.

Stop using it. Stop using it for a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. We need to kill it.

Sources:

AI’s excessive water consumption threatens to drown out its environmental contributions

Artificial intelligence promises revolutionary solutions to global challenges, but the water costs to produce and power AI hardware and infr

The carbon impact of artificial intelligence - Nature Machine Intelligence

The part that artificial intelligence plays in climate change has come under scrutiny, including from tech workers themselves who joined the

Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

First-of-its-kind US bill would address the environmental costs of the technology, but there’s a long way to go.

[lawofcollage]

can we talk about how this is even more annoying when websites start forcing AI on us even though we didn't FUCKING ASK (@ meta)

like, you stole my art. you stole my writing. and now you're making me fuck up the environment even though i DIDN'T FUCKING ASK

[idk-my-aesthetic]

^^^^^ I’ve been avoiding the hell out of AI for this reason now every damn google search automatically uses AI??? WTF