Who is behind this website?

Modern Technology in ESL     

  I quickly fell in love with modern technology which I have been employing in all areas of my teaching to facilitate language acquisition. My great success in this area started from humble beginnings. My first gamble with technology in the classroom was with the use of PowerPoint lesson plans, usually to teach very large classes in China. My adventure into PowerPoint opened the gates for other forms of teaching with technology. With no technology background I had to get into self-tutoring of most education related software, usually with my students in mind. This led to the creation of over 200 self-grading computer-based quizzes and several video lessons you see on this site. My colleagues at EF-Shenzhen soon nicknamed me the “hi-tech English teacher”.

Language Learning experiences  

I believe that a language teacher who has learnt another language is in a great position to understand students’ learning needs in a more profound way. Learning a language demands a lot of effort from both teachers and students.
   I am a fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese which I picked up in China. I also have experience learning languages without the environment. Unlike my Chinese learning experience, I picked up French as a second language at school, in an environment that was predominantly English speaking. Today I speak Chinese and French fluently.

My experience learning languages also goes back into “dead” languages like Latin. I studied Latin at school for five years. Being a grammar-based language learning experience, I also had a chance to see how a student can learn a language yet not be able to speak. Latin has a complicated grammatical system and although pure Latin died, it still resurrects in many European languages, giving me a great etymological understanding of European languages. It is not unusual for me to read a Spanish newspaper and understand the main ideas without having ever studied Spanish.  

Sharing my experience on the web

 With these language learning and teaching experiences, I couldn’t help philosophizing and theorizing. When I set up the ESL Galaxy www.esl-galaxy.com I started sharing these ideas with teachers in the form of worksheets, tips and lots of lesson plan free stuff. Within a year of its existence, the ESL Galaxy website has not received one negative feedback. It was always messages of thanks from teachers who found the site useful. I strongly believe content is key to a successful website.
    It was against this background that I sacrificed my free days to sit at home and construct this website www.englishmedialab.com & www.english-4kids.com. After about six months of non-stop work, I emerged victorious with several videos and quizzes for self-access ESL  learning. This time around students were my target. Not surprisingly, after launching the site I have noticed a rapidly increasing number of visitors. At least 70% of the website visitors bookmark this site. So I have several returning visitors.  What could me more refreshing? After seeing visitors come and stay, I believed more strongly in creating quality content for my website visitors.
  I am currently teaching at English First, in Shenzhen, South China. My job as teacher enjoys a great symbiotic relationship with my websites. I always plan my lessons thoroughly with the hope that after they are successful in class, I will share them on the internet. So most exercises I put on my site have been tested in class already. Only successful exercises make it to my sites. That way I can always supply my visitors with quality content.

 Family inspiration in teaching  
My inspirations as a teacher have come from a number of sources.

I will like to start with my Dad, a star professor of English and Literature and a man who learnt and speaks 7 languages fluently. Very early in my life I had learnt the importance of developing a passion for everything job we do. My Dad's passion for teaching led to five consecutive 100% passes of his classes at the GCE Ordinary and Advanced Level exams. When he retired at the age of sixty he could boast of thousands of students whose lives changed through his teaching. Although the government quickly recognised his hardwork and rewarded it with several office promotions, his office work as prinicipal and District education director did not stop him from teaching in the classroom.Today my brother Roger (an English/French teacher) and I are carrying this great legacy as teachers of English and French. My Dad loved to say, "Sorrow to the child who never did greater things than his parents." I easily interpreted this to mean that one day I will be pushing this great spirit ahead as demanded by the modern times. I had the habit of reading several ESL magazines which my Dad put in the family library. Having been a TEFL trainer, my Dad subscribed to several magazines and I when read books in my family library I always noticed there were several books on teaching English as a foreign or second language

Other Web sites

Other sources of inspiration have been some great ESL sites like Randall’s ESL Lab web site, Charles Kelly’s ESL journal, ESL Lounge by Neil Coghan and Boggles world ESL. These sites provide quality materials for teachers and students and are quite focused on what they do.

Our Team  

Kieren and Kisi have similar ideas on teaching English.Kieren donated his high quality kids stuff to the ESL Galaxy web site which enabled us create the kids page.He is currently undergoing a teachers training course in the U. K. At the moment Kieren is still supporting us with his constructive criticisms and teaching aids. He has served as an English teacher in many Asian countries, especially China, where he has spent most of his time.Kieren loves young learners and has spent most of his TEFL career working with children.That is what he does best. His major teaching interests include developing new and adapting old methods of teaching early learners. He is artistic and highly creative. He likes to employ every bit of his creative talent and skill in the TEFL education business.

- Elena Kudryasheva: A teacher and fluent speaker of four languages, Elena has been instrumental in translating this site to Russian and Chinese. She also offered constructive criticisms to this site while in the making.

- David WeiHuang- David, a coworker with Kisito always admired and learnt from Kisito. He was more than eager to translate this highly useful web site into Chinese. He is a great addition to the team