Being more “meta” : The value of explicit instruction on pedagogical approaches and language-learning strategies

By Melissa J. Enns Recently, I have been busy interviewing teacher colleagues for my thesis. Among the insights they have graciously shared, I have found much to reflect on and inspiration for today’s post. I will discuss the value of offering students explicit metacognitive instruction about the pedagogical approaches we employ in our classrooms and …

Dialogues Between Teachers and Students Through Written Feedback

Guest contributor: Yerim Lee Yerim is a master's student in Second Language Education through McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education. Yerim is doing her thesis work on instructors' and students' perceptions of written and audio feedback in graduate classrooms.  I believe that many students have experienced confusion at least once from teachers’ written …

Kicking Things Off

Welcome to my thesis blogging project! If you have recently followed this blog in response to an invitation to participate, thank you and welcome! If you've been following for a while or just happen to be reading this one post, I'm glad that you're here! To kick things off, I thought it would be useful …

Exciting News!

Dear Readers, I'm writing this post to share two exciting things with you!  First, and most exciting, I am very pleased to announce that I have officially received approval to use this blog as the basis for my master's thesis research!!! Since the fact that you're reading this indicates that you have some sort of …

Language is Messy (Concluding Thoughts on Translanguaging)

Throughout my last couple of posts, I focused on the practical end of using translanguaging as a teaching strategy. Today I will offer one more of Cummins' (2005) strategies and wrap up the translanguaging discussion (for now). In addition to the suggestions described in “Translanguaging for Dummies” and Translanguaging for Emerging Experts, Cummins also recommends using sister class projects …