I am writing today’s TESOL Convention Tidbit from the Denver airport. After a “flash blizzard” yesterday, flights are delayed. So I’m typing as I sit in an uncomfortable chair outside gate A30, waiting for my flight.

Luckily, the snow didn’t affect the conference. I was a busy bee… buzzing around to six different sessions.  The tidbit comes from Ruelaine Stokes, Andrew McCullough, and Nigel Caplan’s session titled “Beyond ‘Help!’ Diagnosing the L2 Writer’s  Essay: A Strategies-Based Approach.” Their session was delightful and full of witty metaphors. (For fear of ruining the humor, this post is metaphor free.)

Anyway, this panel had a great way to get students writing by using a free writing activity. They called the activity “Pick a Sentence and Go!” Students chose a sentence from a list to begin their story. They were instructed to write non-stop for ten minutes (in typical free write fashion), but they were also instructed to use the words “suddenly” and “murky” and the phrase, “rich beyond my wildest dreams.” Giving students words (especially words like “suddenly” that allow students to change the direction of their writing) help them sustain the freewriting. Other freewriting ideas including having students keep track of how many words they are able to write each time. Over a term, students will be able to see their progress in writing fluently. For other great tidbits from this session go to their webpage and download all the handouts.

March Madness usually refers to basketball, I know. But this March is full of conferences for ESL teachers like me. And doesn’t that conference logo to the left kind of look like a basketball tournament logo? It’s pretty intense.

I am gonna give you my top three conferences in March. You might not be able to go to them all. (I certainly can’t.) Hopefully, though, you’ll be able to go to one. So here they are:

1. TESOL Convention- March 26-28 in Denver, Colorado. Learn teaching tricks and tips. Hear about the latest research. And bonus, there is a large job fair at the conference.
2. American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL)- This conference is more research based, but it is the same week as TESOL (March 21-24) and in Denver. So you could do both maybe!
3. Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO)-At this conference, you will find out how people are using technology in their classes and how that benefits students. It will be on March 10-14 in Arizona.

I am going to the TESOL Convention. I’ll be presenting a little something about why ESL students report using Facebook. If you happen to go to one of the other conferences on my top three list, please tell me all about them. You can learn so much at a conference. I am excited!!