Craig's English Blog

In the summer of 2008, after teaching English to Taiwanese junior and senior high school students for 3 years, I was trying to think of ways to better engage my students in English learning. We had such limited contact time each week,  it didn't seem like enough to make much of an impact.  Giving more homework in the traditional sense would probably not have been well received. What I needed was a way to connect using English to something that they really enjoyed doing.

One common activity that most of my students enjoyed involved using the computer. Many of them enjoyed playing computer games as well as writing in their blogs.  That gave me the idea to create an interactive blog with games, puzzles, songs, quizzes and other English learning activities and assign it as homework.

It was met with mixed reviews and limited success, but I used the blog for one semester as homework for my higher level students.  Once the blog was not part of their required homework, however, participation dried up. I kept the blog online for another 6 months, but the limited use was not worth maintaining it any longer.

Therefore, I have decided to transform the site into a more traditional blog, where I will write occasionally about my life in Taiwan.  It may serve no purpose other than for me to record some thoughts, observations and experiences, but perhaps someone out there might find the information interesting or entertaining.

Thank you for visiting the site. Please feel free to leave your comments and suggestions.