• Stimulating Small-Group Discussion Activity 6: Happiness Is Not the Same in the East and West

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Cover read for discussion SHOT

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*

Some reasons why students seemed stimulated by this discussion:

  • Many of the Asian students were surprised at how much Westerners think about happiness.
  • They enjoyed comparing with their classmates what made them feel good, and they realized that they were often quite different.
  • Some students were surprised that some of their classmates actually were uncomfortable with the idea of feeling happy.

This and future discussion activities include four parts:

1) A one-page article usually including a brief summary of a high-interest research study.
2) Ten true-false comprehension questions.
3) Pre-Discussion Exercise in which students read and think about several questions about their own experiences about the topic.
4) Small-group discussions of the article in which each student is given a paper with different questions in the form of Student A, B or C.

About Discussion Activity 6: Happiness Is Not the Same in the East and West (and the handout).

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• Myth 1 About Teaching Grammar: Focusing on Grammar will Stifle Students’ Ability to Write.

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Cover Myths 1 revised

A former ESL Writing student of mine was quite surprised by her English Comp class.  She told me that her instructor isn’t concerned about the grammar in his students’ essays. At the same time, a common complaint by academic instructors heard around the campus at that college was that their (American) students had many grammar mistakes in their academic papers. In fact, the grammar skills of the students coming out of the English Comp classes were so weak that the Business Department decided to offer business writing courses that would deal with these grammar issues.

I decided to pursue this further by interviewing several English Comp instructors. In response to my question, “Why don’t you work with grammar in your courses,” I heard this, “Focusing on grammar will stifle students’ ability to write.”  In a college newspaper, an instructor explained, “An exaggerated focus on grammar stops the development of engaging and complex ideas.”

That sounds like a straw man argument. Yes, if an instructor assigns a paper and tells students that they would write one draft and that their grade would be based on the quality of grammar in their paper, then students might overly focus on that rather than their ideas.  But what professional instructor would do that?

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• Great Whole-Class Game for ESL Listening Skills

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Cover Team A shot

This game has it all:

  • Motivates listening skills.
  • All students focused.
  • Students are up and out of their seats.
  • Easily customized to the interests and level of a specific class of students.
  • Organized with minimal teacher work.
  • Stimulating with a lot of laughing.

Here is how it works.

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• 4th Free ESL Reading Unit: Handwashing and Motivation (Surprising pre-coronavirus research)

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Screenshot (467)

 (This posting includes handouts which you are welcome to use with your students.)*

YouTube  This posting is discussed on my YouTube video Handwashing and Motivation (Surprising pre-coronavirus research)

Several years ago, long before the coronavirus pandemic, researchers found that restaurant workers and hospital staff members were very negligent about washing their hands. This article discusses a clever study that was conducted to find a way to reverse this trend by comparing positive and negative messages.  The results from the study can give us some interesting insights into how we might best motivate people in general.

Excerpts from paragraphs 2 and 11

2 We expect doctors and nurses to be aware of how important it is to wash their hands after they have examined or helped a patient.  They understand that if they don’t, they could spread a disease from one patient to another.  Surprisingly though, a researcher found that only 39% of hospital workers washed their hands properly.  That is almost the same as the 38% of restaurant workers who do.

 11 In sum, the researchers found that using a positive approach with the electronic board was much more effective than the negative signs about spreading disease.  Every time the staff members washed their hands, they received immediate positive feedback.  This positive feedback triggered a pleasure signal in their brains which they enjoyed getting.  In other words, they tended to repeat this action in order to experience that pleasure signal.  After a while, it became a habit, and they continued to do it even after the electronic boards were removed.

Article & Study Guide for Handwashing and Motivation

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