I recently decided to return to uni and do some bridging courses, make sure my skills were where I wanted them to be. I’m studying on-line which has its own challenges, but, the biggest challenge has been getting used to the way things work at university again. I don’t want to get into any of the negatives. This isn’t about that, so the only thing I’ll say on that topic is, expect some negatives. Those won’t be the same for everyone, but, if I was a betting person, I’d bet a large sum of money that everyone faces negatives at some point in their university studies. What this post is about, are the things that will affect young ESL learners going to uni abroad. The first thing you need to know is that, there will be a language level requirement Read More …
Writing the essay
In which I delve into the actual writing of an essay, rather than all the prep-work we’ve been talking about up until now.
Researching
A brief look at what you need to do to research an academic assessment essay.
What’s in a question?
In this week’s post, we’re back talking about essay writing again. This time we delve into the importance of understanding the question.
Reading for Pleasure
How to learn English through reading.
Making English Fun Again, Again
Notes about the final play test and an announcement. 🙂
Making English Fun Again
Another update on the development of the Eikaiwa Master board game with a brief review of the on-line systems we’re testing alongside the game.
Prepping for the essay
Prepping the essay – importance of referencing, formatting, choice of questions, analysing the question,
Making English Fun v2.5
I’ve been working hard on this new version of the game. You can see from the image on the right that I’ve done a re-design on the board. There are similarities to both v1.0 and 2.0. The rings are still there, and the goal is still in the middle, but now there’s only one route to get there. I was looking at v2.0 and noticed that someone who had a couple of lucky rolls could reach the goal in about four turns. That was way too quick for a game that was supposed to take about 45~60 minutes to play through. The new version requires 19 lucky rolls in a row to make it to the centre, which should extend game play a bit. 🙂 Also, I noticed that when I put the v2.0 board up on Roll20 that having Read More …
Making English Fun v 2.0
So, I play tested the Quiz Master game and it turns out that it’s a challenging game, even for native speakers. Even more challenging to play on-line on a VTT that doesn’t have built in tracking for hitpoints. Cludging together a way to track who had how many points and how many keys was cumbersome. Also, I put way too many bane icons in there. It was super confusing to everyone playing. Getting around the giant board was a problem, too. But the biggest problem? The quiz questions. Admittedly, my sample size was really small, but none of my players did well when it came to answering the quiz questions. The result? I might simplify the board a little then try printing it out and playing it on an actual table. I’m not going to try playing it virtually again Read More …