English, Jack

iBooks Author straightjacket

Published on 2012-01-22 09:59:00

I downloaded iBooks Author, considering using it to publish teaching materials. The license agreement, however, is rather a barrier. Particularly this section: B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are incompliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by anyavailable means;(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscriptio

The exercise is not the game

Published on 2012-01-15 11:14:00

In football, coaches will put cones on the ground and ask you to dribble the ball around them. This is supposed to improve your accuracy and fluency, but nobody believes that the purpose of this drill is to get better at dribbling around cones. Everybody understands that the purpose is a transfer of skills to a similar but different situation in a real football game.Things are not so clear when it comes to the teaching of writing. It's pretty typical for writing textbooks and writing teachers to

Economist wants to teach English

Published on 2012-01-11 06:55:00

The "Johnson" blog at The Economist is looking for ideas about how the newspaper can make itself more useful to English (language?) teachers.