ELT Blogs I’m looking forward to in 2013
In my previous post I made a point to catch up on commenting on other blogs that had piqued my interest way back in 2012. As I was compiling the list (and missing out on more than a few posts to be sure) I noticed a few new(ish) blogs that I think are very deserving of attention. In this, my first (of many?) blog post of 2013 thought I would share a few of these blogs. In order to be considered for this prestigious list the blogs need to be be new (at least to me) as well as a blog that I am looking forward to reading more of in 2013. Of course, there is no intended pressure to those listed to entertain me in 2013! Readers might observe that that there is a high percentage of Korea-based blogs, to which I might say, “Interesting observation” as I stroke my chin and pretend to think deeply about it.
The blogs are listed in no particular order and are as follows:
(It might not be obvious but you can click on the headings here and be brought the homepages)
Early Reflections:
Starting out in Reflective Practice
Author: Gemma Lunn (@GemL1)
I have been enjoying Gemma’s insightful introspections for the past month or so and I am looking forward to reading more. I think she does an amazing job of capturing Reflective Practice from what she calls a beginner’s perspective. For a sample post you might want to read this one about self-observation. Also, do be sure to check out her informative “About” page for more information on the author and why she blogs.
The Itinerant Teacher
Author: Darryl Bautista (@Darryl_Bautista)
The “About” page shares a great deal about why Daryl is blogging and why now and why in that particular space. His blog focuses on culture, narrative inquiry and research, and teacher identity. Please check out blog for more information. Finally, here is a narrative piece I enjoyed.
Rose Bard -Teaching Journal
Author: Rose Bard (@rosemerebard)
After reading this post from Rose I almost wrote, “Where have you been all my life?” to her on Twitter but I worried that might sound creepy. I really connected to her writing from the first moment that I saw her blog. I love her writing style and the depth in which she considers things. I also appreciate her reader-friendly treatment of Freirian ideas. Her “About” page tells you lots about her.
jeroenroot: English Educator in South Korea
Author: Jereon “Chop” Root (@ChopEDU)
“Chop” recently joined the fray as a blogger and I am looking forward to reading more. He has thus far blogged about learner autonomy, as well as his pedagogical philosophy in 2 parts. (part 1 and part 2). Some signs on Twitter point to him blogging about why teachers blog but that might be incorrect at worst or a spoiler alert at best. I will be on the lookout for future posts and hope that you will too.
Ratna’s ELT Journey
Author: Ratna Ragunathan-Chandrasegaran (@Ratnavathy)
Ratna writes, “I’m Ratna, an English teacher currently residing in Korea. These are my thoughts, reflections, tips, lessons plans, and all there is to share on ELT. To me, teaching isn’t a career. It’s a journey. And maybe we can walk down the path together, hand in hand……Shall we?” In some ways this invitation gets to the heart of Ratna’s blog. She really does take readers along with her on a journey, whether she is sharing a lesson plan, exploring analogies between “real life” and class, or expressing her gratitude to others after an interesting year or sharing what she learned and is still learning Ratna always seems to poetically convey a sense of wonder that keeps me eager to follow her as she goes along her journey.
Carol Goodey
Author: Carol Goodey (@cgoodey)
Carol teaches in a very different context than I do, but I have thoroughly enjoyed all the posts of hers that I have read. Carol is working as an Adult ESOL & Literacies worker in Community Learning & Development, which is quite different than my context which is teaching uni students here in Korea. I think these different contexts as well as our shared interest in “teaching unplugged” and her clear and insightful writing make her blog all the more interesting for me. This post on “The Power of the Post-it Note” might be a nice introduction to her blog. Also, this post called “Encouraging Talk, Encouraging Learning” on what she included in a workshop for voluntary literacy tutors is a nice intro as well. (I noticed Carol has been blogging for a while but her blog just recently appeared on my radar and I have already written this up so I will keep it here!)
Korean Teaching Reflections (KTR)
Author: Christopher Miller (@Christo63789662)
On his blog the author describes himself as “Teacher, Father, Jogger, Sleeper, Husband, (add extra label here).” I could add thinker, reflector, and thought-provoker to this. Though he started his blog in September he has already built up quite a few posts (many of which I have just decided to read for the first time!). I enjoyed his Prelimary thoughts on Fanslelow’s rules for student centered language learning and his thoughts on how to best leverage textbook listening activities for very different reasons. I think these two pieces show his And yes, Mr. Miller did gain extra points for using the phrase, “Anti-douchism”
I guess that is the list for now. Thanks for reading and I wish you all the best for 2013. Happy blogging/reading!
Notes:
Please feel free to list any other new(ish) blogs in the comments and I will list them here.
Also, if I have listed anything incorrect about the above blogs/bloggers I am very happy to change it. Please just let me know.
Updates:
The super helpful and wonderful Vicky Lloras (whose blog is highly recommended) suggested a few people. Thanks Vicky!
I disqualified Anne Hendler, Laura Phelps, and Guven Cadgas because they are blogs that I have been familiar with for a while. They are all excellent and certainly worth reading and looking forward to in 2013!
2 suggestions that I accepted were:
Think! from James Taylor (@theteacherjames).
[It should be noted that Think! features a guest post from the aforementioned Carol Goodey here.]
Dinçer Demir’s Blog which he says is, “a page to share all about learning , teaching ,education , e-learning& e-teaching …” and I will be checking out very soon. And perhaps you will too.
Updates 2:
A few more blogs that caught my eye since I first wrote this:
This is My Whiteboard A blog for teachers of young EFL learners A young learners teacher in Japan shares his whiteboard and much more.
Documenting Another Year As an ESOL Teacher “publicly documenting all of 2013 as a way to engage in some cooperative learning with teachers around the globe”
~ Simple English ~ The author says it is about “thoughts on ELT, English and whatever else comes into my head”
Creatitivites “Creative writing activities and ideas for the EFL classroom”
Unplanned “Thoughts on Marketing and Publishing in the World of ELT”
Special Bonus 1:
In his excellent year-in-review post our friend Leo Selivan shares some tips for new bloggers (towards the end of the page, but go ahead and read the whole page).
Special Bonus 2:
Hot of the presses on Twitter:
Scott Thornbury @Resolution: to resume blogging. New post next Sunday at http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/
ELT Rants, Reviews, and Reflections 
Mike, you make it hard for me to use twitter – I already get your (and others’) posts to my email, and now I don’t even need to go hunting for new stuff to read. Looking forward to a massive PLN in 2013.
I am sorry/you are welcome. I almost named you as a blog to watch (to pressure you to blog more) but cooler heads prevailed. Here is to a great 2013!
Hi Mike,
Thanks for this great list of bloggers! And thank you for the kind words : )
Happy New Year,
Vicky
I am thanking you for the excellent additions!
Hey!
Hey! 🙂
great thanks for the sugesstion 🙂 happy I am. and thanks Vicky,too.
🙂 Happy to include you. Looking forward to reading more in 2013!
Hi Mike,
Many, many thanks for including my blog in this list and I’m really glad to hear that you enjoy the posts. Thanks also for the introduction to some really interesting new blogs. I’ve enjoyed exploring some this morning and will leave this post open to investigate further soon. And, yours is one of the blogs I’ll be paying close attention to in 2013 having discovered it this year!
Carol
🙂
…having discovered it LAST year!
I wondered about that line… thanks for the clarification. 🙂
Very happy to include you, Carol. My concern was pressuring people to blog more in 2013 than they wanted to but hopefully this was not the case. I am very happy that I was able to introduce you to some new blogs. Excellent.
Take care and talk to you soon, on some channel.
Mike dear, I am the one shouting out… “Where have all of you been??!!!” It was so silly of me to spend all these years lurking. But I was also feeling lost and I have not made peace with PPP yet, if I ever will. (that one is borrowed from a post from Luiz Otávio Barros on the subject of lesson planning). Those mixed feelings about learning and teaching came from being trained to do as the Teachers Guide told us to ( I started first working for a major language school in Brazil, who taught me to teach by numbers, according to their numbers. when in my second semester teaching I had an adult teacher who wouldn’t fit in the method and I couldn’t help because I didn’t know how to do it, lack of knowledge and experience, it made me feel angry at myself and the system. I learned how to do it, but not how to deal with learning difficulties. It was frustrating. ) That happened about 14 years ago. Ever since I promised myself that I would learn as much as possible to teach better. Then, after leaving that school I started a community project with a low price course with a classroom borrowed from a local church who provided as many social services to the community as they could. Through Macmillan that provided all the support I needed and methodology books, I arrived at PPP, then in 2008 all the things started falling apart. I came across after that to Dogme list and a lot of heated discussions, but nothing that could help me to set my path straight or a community to take me on board and discuss with me apart from Karenne Sylvester who would exchange emails with me. I guess everyone at that time were a bit confused themselves with Scott’s ideas. Nowadays, Dogme ideas is not news. lol Freire’s idea and so many others changed my way of viewing education for sure and that is how I arrived at Dogme and its list, and thanks God someone with much more experience in the field than me took those ideas seriously enough to apply in ELT. So, I sort of read I guess almost everything I could find on the subject (mainly written by Scott at the time) and Karenne’s blog helped a lot too. But I was still under the pressure to teach by numbers, use coursebooks and use it and all the things that come with it. By the way I do have Teaching Unplugged which I never used. Because most activities books I have, the part that interests me the most are the pages about the rationale that underlies the activities, so I can create my own activities based on those principles according to the needs I encounter. I prefer to teach with principles in mind now.
Teaching is so intense for me that I am not sure yet that I will be able to keep up with the blog. I really hope I do because I can see the benefit of connecting and sharing. And I want also to keep a list of blogs to read weekly and interact by commenting and asking questions. Something I am still learning to do as you can see. lololololol
Thanks so much for adding my writings to your blog list and I count on all of you to help me out on my journey as well as to contribute to yours myself.
Geeh, I think I need to create a new page on my blog based on this comment. What do you think?
Great list of blogs that I intend to add to my blog list and few other ones. 😀 Happy New year guys to all of us.
Hello Rose!
Thanks so much for the (great) comments. I think what you have written here looks like it could be a be a blog post of its own. 🙂
You mentioned lurking… I think sometimes a period of lurking can be very helpful and then when we are ready we can burst out of our shells.
Perhaps what you are experiencing now?
It is interesting you mention the dogme list because checking the list was part of my daily routine. Also interesting that you mention Karenne and her blog because I used to read her blog a lot too.
You wrote, “Teaching is so intense for me that I am not sure yet that I will be able to keep up with the blog.” I think this is a concern for many of us. Personally, I am much better about blogging on vacation! Ha. I am thinking about trying to find a better schedule/system for blogging more regularly because I do enjoy it so much and get so much out of it. Actually, haha, i might blog about this soon! You also wrote, “I really hope I do because I can see the benefit of connecting and sharing. And I want also to keep a list of blogs to read weekly and interact by commenting and asking questions. Something I am still learning to do as you can see.” Hahah. Yes. 🙂 Best of luck with this.
Take care and talk to you soon, somewhere.
Cheers,
Mike
PS I just linked to this article http://www.joshkurzweil.com/uploads/3/1/6/3/3163972/etp-oct02-pppunderscrutiny.pdf on twitter because it relates to PPP. In some ways, I think it helped me “make peace” with it.
Please don’t get me started about the time I asked the trainer on my CELTA course if what we were doing was PPP (it was). His response was less than clear.
Mike, thanks so much for this great list of blogs. There are some I still need to check out. Looking forward to it 🙂
Happy New Year!
Got some interesting keynotes lined up for 2013 Watch this space!
Ok, will do! Looking forward to it!
Great post Mike. You did two services for me a) promoting my blog and b) connecting me to several blogs down in my neck of the woods (i.e. Busan/Daegu). Keep up the good work.
Thanks! I am happy to help! Keep up the good work, too!
Cheers,
mg
Thank you muchness for including me on your reading list, Mike. Why blog? Spoiler alert indeed! Stay tuned…
I hope the spoiler alert was more like an awareness raising and excitement building trailer! BTW if you haven’t already I strongly suggest reading Gemma’s about page for her reasons for blogging.
Staying tuned and wishing you great year.
Great list. Timely too since many of our more seasoned bloggers have seemed to ‘slow down’ lately. 😉
Thanks Tyson! Glad it was helpful! Also thanks for sharing it! I basically cut the list to blogs I found late fall or later… but I think there are lots of great blogs that started all throughout last year.
Thank you for the inclusion, Mike
I have a tough job now to live up to your expectations and the standards of other blogs you mention above.
Best wishes for 2013 and happy blogging!
L
No pressure, Leo. Yours was a special bonus. (Though I am 100% that your blog will be very worth reading throughout the year!!)
I am so glad that I discovered it and had a chance to check out some earlier posts.
Thanks!
Mike, again I’m late as I ‘yet again’, stumbled upon this!
Thanks so much for the mention, now you’ve given me another reason for keep going with my blog. And this time it’s my turn to think “Will Mike like what I’ve written?”….:)
Cheers!
Ratna
Hello Ratna,
I think you are right on time! Thanks for reading and thanks for the comments. I am happy that my post will be a small influence to keep going on your (awesome) blog.
As for wondering if I will like what you have written….it is a safe bet that the answer will be yes!
Warm regards,
mg
Thank you Mike. I got lot of information for this year
Thanks once again
pjreddy
Thanks! I am so happy it was useful for you! Have a great year!