Autumn is here, and the leaves are just starting to change.
The other day I spotted a cat, sunning itself in the grass and weeds beside the river. It did not want to talk with me.
"I do not want to talk with you," it said when I introduced myself. "I am extremely busy."
"Busy doing what?" I asked.
"Pondering," said the cat.
"Pondering about what?" I asked.
"Everything," said the cat. "I like to ponder. I ponder a lot. Sometimes I get sleepy and need a nap, and then I wake up and ponder some more. Ponder, ponder, ponder. It's what I do. Pondering is my purpose in life. Except when I'm napping. Or eating. Sometimes I stop pondering to eat. But otherwise I just ponder. I love pondering. Ponder, ponder, ponder. I ponder when I'm washing, and I ponder when I'm walking by myself, and I ponder when I'm sitting in the sun. There is such a lot to ponder about."
I didn't know what to say. For some reason the word ponder had started to sound really, really strange.
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At some point, I know, I will have to change over to beta Blogger. I have not done so yet because it seems like too much work. Also, it hasn't been so long since I changed my template completely to three columns, and that was a lot of hassle. Now I have to do it AGAIN?
In fact I have figured out how to do the three-column thing (Hackosphere!), but it seems I have to also add all my links and so on one by one. I cannot just cut and paste them in. There is probably some way of doing it easily, but I suspect using the beta Blogger system is best because then it will be easy to add and remove links later. It is just the first time that will be troublesome. I will also need to make a new header, or adjust the old one to fit the new template.
But I might try to make the switch very soon. I have a couple of days off this week, so have a four-day weekend. I also have piles of homework waiting to be marked, and the monster booksale to go to, and a lot of other things that urgently need doing, but that just means I have more to procrastinate. So if my blog goes all funny over the next week or so, you will know why. I will be experimenting with the new system, and getting it all wrong.
Incidentally, a picture of the seriously silly glasses has been added to the seriously silly glasses post.
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About Me
- Badaunt
- I'm from NZ, and now live in Japan, teaching English to reluctant university students. Email me: badaunt at gmail.com
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Links for language teachers
I have noticed that I get a lot of hits from people searching "present simple" and "ESL," and assume that this is language teachers looking for ideas or lesson plans. The following links are good places to start.
ESL Lounge Here you will find lesson plans organised by level. A fantastically useful site for busy teachers, and easy to navigate.
British Council Here lesson plans are organized by topic. There are more teaching activities in the 'downloads' section.
The Internet TESL Journal
They have not updated this page for a while, but there is still a lot you might find useful.
Humanising Language Teaching
This is an online journal, good for ideas, inspiration, and especially good towards the end of semester when you're feeling not quite human.
Dave's ESL Cafe
Almost too much to wade through, but a very useful resource. Lots of links to other sources.
Karin's ESL PartyLand
This is a page specifically dealing with teaching simple present and present progressive. I have not tried any of these, but there are a lot of ideas here, and they look good. At the very least you will be inspired.
Good luck!
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4 comments:
When I switched to Beta it took all my links with me - but lost all the headings I had them under. I have since tried adding a pic to my header, found instructions, found a pic, sized it appropriately, put the code in... and nothing. So that's my technological attempt for the year.
Oh, and that's an annoying thing about having switched the beta - I type my comment in, it recognises me as The Editter, but won't let me post. "Your account has switched to the Beta", it says. "Log in with your google account". It gets me every time, grrr.
Have you been having any trouble with Blogger? It hasn't let us post at all for some days, and the forums have been full of people complaining. (This is not Beta, whic also seems to be pretty buggy, but the original version). Colin has just made the effort to switch us over to Wordpress, he's got so fed up with Blogger.
Ponder is good. It's what I do too.
Editter: Yes, the Google account thing is really confusing. I thought it was just me, not having sorted it out. I'm glad it isn't.
I suspect it might be something about using a beta account name to comment on an old Blogger account, and vice versa. I hope it will be all cleared up once we've all moved.
Potentilla: Yes, and apparently it's only the old Blogger accounts that have been affected. The Blogger status blog has been full of news about it, and it's one of the reasons I'm thinking of trying to switch out to beta this weekend. Practically every message ended 'Beta blogger has not been affected.'
and re ponder sounding really, really strange, I remember the first time I add that "what an odd-sounding word" moment when as a kid in the back of the car I had said "mud" over and over and over...
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