The Dowbrigade uses an icebreaking exercise with groups of recently arrived students in which one of the categories for discussion is “One thing you really want to do before you leave Boston”. When our turn came we always list visiting the Harbor Islands, something we have yet to do 37 years after we first came [...]
Can you spot the real Dowbrigade? On Halloween (which would have been game 7 of the World Series that wasn’t) we were confronted, at the ungodly hour of 9 AM, by an apparition that would curdle the hair of any sane teacher – a dozen Dowbrigades! Luckily the Dowbrigade has little of either hair or [...]
God help us, we’re going back to England. Back to the Olde Sod, back to that deranged and diseased island which has spawned the best and the worst of modern culture, from Pink Floyd to Princess Diana.
Our track record on Her Majesty’s turf is mixed. The last time we were there we were busted for [...]
Haven’t been posting much lately, as a result of real, interesting work in our non-blogging existence, lack of any specific focus for our spleen or wit, and general indolence.
However, any readers interested in the application of technology to higher education may want to take a look at a mashup we created with our Nikon [...]
They
say the fastest ways to learn a foreign language are to fall in love
or get sent to jail. Groundbreaking media like this are bound to put the
Dowbrigade out of business, one [...]
width=”228″ height=”169″ align=”left”>They
say the fastest ways to learn a foreign language are to fall in love
or get sent to jail. Groundbreaking media like this are bound to put the
Dowbrigade out [...]
Teachers
of English to Speakers of Other Languages are known for xeno-philiac
eccentricity and bizarre, unstable behavior,
but this is mostly due to the weird and exotic locals in which we often end up plying our trade.
Be that as it may, this story goes beyond the pale. Even a twisted and cynical fan of the outre like [...]
It looks like the Dowbrigade won’t be making his big
presentation next week to the 40th annual National
Teachers of English as a Second Language conference in St. Petersburg (Florida not Russia).
We
[...]
Tomorrow, we plan to introduce the following
paragraph in class as part of the language component of the Science and
Technology section we are currently teaching.
”Yo! It’s the buzzphrases, stupid. Is this
[...]
The
Dowbrigade has just finished editing, or correcting, his last student
paper of the Summer One semester at a Major Boston University.
Somewhat ill-advisedly, we volunteered to teach the night section of
[...]