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Browsing Archives of Author »Neal Zupancic«

Keyboard Transcription and English Reading

April 19, 2013

I have lately encountered an unexpected source of interference when teaching my students English: their keyboards! Let me explain. Computers sold in Georgia most commonly have a regular English keyboard – QWERTY, with Latin characters. Russian keyboards might be a far second, and keyboards with actual Georgian characters printed on the keys are highly scarce. […]

A Little Lamb

April 15, 2013

Lesson Plan: Mary Had a Little Lamb Local English Teacher: TLG Volunteer: Neal Z. Grade: 2-6 English World Textbook Level: 2+ Lesson Objectives/Target Language: Objective: To teach the song “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with proper pronunciation Target Language: – “short a” as in Mary, Had, Lamb, As, That, Laugh*, Baaa – vocabulary words in […]

The Pizza Aquarium

March 20, 2013

In The Long And Short Of ‘It’ I talked about some issues surrounding the “short i” and mentioned that I hadn’t come up with a way to get students to produce a short i, or /ɪ/. After some trial and error, I have managed to come upon a strategy that seems to have worked, at […]

New Directions

March 16, 2013

TLG was created in order to promote English language education and cultural exchange in Georgia. In accordance with that mission, and with the priorities of Georgia’s new administration, TLG has undertaken several reforms that we’re quite proud of and that we would like to share with you, the loyal TLG blog readers. 1. More money […]

Song and Dance

March 1, 2013

This is a post about why I open every lesson with a song.* I usually start off my new students with something easy and fun – “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” is my favorite for this. Everyone stands, everyone says the names of the body parts, and then we sing the song together. We sing […]

Teaching English World In English

February 18, 2013

I have to apologize if this seems obvious to you, the reader, because for me it took me a while to catch on. See, the Macmillan English World series is meant to be taught in English. I figured this out from using Rosetta Stone. When I came to Georgia, English World had not yet been […]

The Inner Circle

February 6, 2013

Georgian friendship and family ties are strong, and Georgia is a fairly small country, which means that it often seems like everybody knows everybody. As I become more and more integrated into the country, and into family and community life here, that feeling continues to grow. Part of this strong, tightly connected network of classmates […]

Seasons and Solfège

December 27, 2012

There are so many basic facts about the world that we take for granted – things that have surrounded us our entire lives, things that we never even considered might be called into question. Things that no one really talks about because everyone is expected to already know them and everyone more or less assumes […]

Last Links Ever?

December 21, 2012

Welcome to the Mayan Apocalypse. That’s right, after today, there will be no more world, and thus, no more links. …or not. Today is the last day of the semester, though, and I’m more than a little sad to be leaving my students, but I can’t say I’m not excited about vacation! Time to relax, […]

Friday Links Special: Information Online

December 14, 2012

We live in the Information Age, where it often seems like all the world’s knowledge, and several worlds’ worth of pictures of cats, are at our fingertips. But what is the real quality of information on the internet? Can we trust online encyclopedias? Online classes? Online journalism? Does the internet improve the quality of information […]

Friday Links: Being Wrong

December 7, 2012

TRUE FACT: when writing this post about being wrong, I wanted to look up that TED talk about being wrong, and so I went ahead and googled “karen armstrong being wrong.” Trouble is, I was looking for Kathryn Schulz. Karen Armstrong is a religious historian (and a good one; I read her book on Islam […]

November Last Links

November 30, 2012

Last links of November! Enjoy, because there will be NO MORE until December: Linguist Makes Sensational Claim: English Is a Scandinavian Language – This is awesome! It’s like a soap opera! English grew up thinking that Anglo-Saxon was its father and French was its mother, until a tall, blonde stranger appeared with a different story. […]

Giorgobas Gilocavt!

November 23, 2012

It’s Giorgoba – the holiday so important Georgians have two of them! It commemorates St. George, the Georgian hero who slew the dragon and drove the Targaryens back across the narrow sea forever. This event is commemorated by the giant golden sculpture at Freedom Square in Tbilisi, and “George” became a folk etymology of Saqartvelo’s […]

Georgian Educational Perspectives

November 21, 2012

One of our missions as foreign volunteers in Georgia is to exchange cultural perspectives, especially on education. Exchange is apparently a two-way street, so when I’m not bloviating about kids these days running in the halls and touching me with their filthy hands I make it a point to listen to, and try to understand, […]

Friday Links Special: Learning about Learning

November 16, 2012

We have a great links post for you this week! Today we’re focusing on learning and language education – which, coincidentally, is our primary mission at TLG. Enjoy! How do we learn? Here’s a sample of the latest research into education and memorization: The Guardian Chinese Challenge – Can you learn to read a menu […]