My Approach to Teaching
I have a couple teaching obsessions you should be aware of:
1. I think these eight parts of speech are the center
of the grammar universe:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
noun
pronoun
verb
preposition
adjective
adverb
conjunction
article
parts of speech
2. Reading is super important, too. Reading regularly helps you improve your
vocabulary, grammar, writing, and spelling—and your reading, of course! Do
yourself a favor: set time aside to read in English every day.
BUT it’s not enough to know what each part of speech is by itself, in isolation. I want you
to understand how the words fit together to build big language pictures. I always care
about how one word is interacting with other words, how the pieces fit together.
I want you to see the whole elephant, not just its trunk or its tail!
My goal is to teach you how to teach yourself. If I am successful, you will leave 042 with
the skills to go on learning independently, taking your English just as far as you want to
go!
Your new skills
Finally, you should know that my class is frontloaded; I introduce a lot of important ideas
in the first few weeks of class. Somewhere around week three, my students often look at
me like this:
(This is called scowling.)
Don’t panic! Once we get through all those parts of speech, we spend a lot of time
reviewing and reinforcing those ideas. It gets easier and easier. By the end of the
quarter, my students are usually smiling at me again!