Managing Conflict: Scenes from a classroom

The Center for Teaching and Learning at University of Minnesota has some wonderful videoclips on managing difficult situations in the classroom. I find it very helpful to me and would like to share this link with you.

http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/conflict/

Drop in English Conversation Group

International faculty and staff are invited to stop by for a weekly conversation hour. This is a great way to meet people from all over the world, find out about what is going on in Boulder, practice English and have fun, challenging conversations! Join us on Thursdays, 12:30-1:30pm this fall in UMC, room 335. Sponsored by International Student and Scholar services, Office of International Education, 303-492-8057. Contact: Rebecca Sibley.

English Oral Training resources in Boulder

I received several inquiries from ITAs who would like to improve their English intelligibility in the classroom situation. Here's a tentative list of English Oral Training resources available in Boulder. Please let me know if you would like to add some institutions to the list. Please also feel free to comment on the courses if you took one of those before.

1. International English Center (IEC)
Contact: Debra Dais & Charl Norloff, Co-Directors
Phone: (303) 492-5547
Address: 1030 13th Street
Website: http://www.colorado.edu/iec/ESLG_courses.html
(IEC currently offers two writing courses and one speech course. The fee is $595 for non-resident.)

2. Center for Talk Mastery
Contact: Dr. Antonía Johnson, Director
Phone: 303-499-5117
Address: 1800 30th St. 217A
Website: www.talkmastery.com
(Center for Talk Master currently offers accent reduction courses. Check with Antonia about the assessment fee and class fee.)

3. Clearly Speaking Program
Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences Department, CU-Boulder
Contact: Leslie Mahler
Location: Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences Building
Website: http://www.colorado.edu/CDSS/slhs/slhcintv.html
(SLHS students in Clearly Speaking Program help you to pronounce words so they are easier to understand. The current students’ supervisor is Mark Guiberson. The fee is 300 dollars with perhaps 10% discount for CU students.)

4. ESL / Multilingual Program in Student Academic Services Center
http://www.colorado.edu/SASC/esl.html
(One of the ESL workshops “Pronunciation Workshop” focuses on the phonetic pronunciation of English vowels and consonants. Not sure if there’s any fee.)

5. Boulder Public Library
http://www.boulder.lib.co.us/special/multicultural/conversations.html
(The Boulder Public Library has a conversation group.)
http://www.boulder.lib.co.us/special/multicultural/english2nd.html

Suggestion on ITA workshop time/day of the week

I received a great suggestion from one of the ITAs and I'd like to share this with you guys.

"I find that all ita workshop is on tuesday 11-12. it might be convenient for us to memorize the date. however, if we have class during that time, we will never be able to go to the workshop for a whole semester. would you mind considering other time of a week for our ita workshop? Thank you."

My reply:

"That's a practical suggestion. I'll send out a survey about when ITAs would like to have the ITA workshops for Spring 2007 at the end of Fall 2006. I'm guessing that's when you have a better idea about what your class schedules look like for Spring 2007."

Any other suggestion as to when you would like to do the workshop?