By Sabrina Völz

As most of you have prob­a­bly noticed, the Unit­ed States is not among the coun­tries play­ing in the World Cup for the first time in 32 years. There is cer­tain­ly a pletho­ra of expla­na­tions – or excus­es – cir­cu­lat­ing that revolve around the ques­tion why (men’s) soc­cer isn’t as pop­u­lar as oth­er sports in the U.S. Watch a few of the YouTube videos on the sub­ject with your class and have learn­ers col­lect the argu­ments and excus­es. A num­ber of them are just plain sil­ly, so divide the stu­dents in groups and have them see who can give with the best or wit­ti­est counter argu­ments. Here’s my list:
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By Maryann Henck

Cat got your tongue? Excus­es, excus­es. In the impro­vi­sa­tion game, “The Sto­ry­telling Cir­cle,” you’ve got to talk—right away and on the spot—whether you want to or not. No excus­es. No excep­tions. No exit.

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By Wiebke Fischer

For most stu­dents, expo­sure to the Eng­lish lan­guage is large­ly restrict­ed to the chalky class­room and – out­side the class­room – to watch­ing movies or series in Eng­lish. Yet there’s so much more to work with – just think of the dig­i­tal world and its poten­tial. Have you heard of the rather polit­i­cal “Pod Save Amer­i­ca” or “S‑Town” with its South­ern Goth­ic sto­ry? The list of pod­casts is sheer end­less. So why not jump on the pod­cast train and use it for didac­tic pur­pos­es? You won­der how? Alright, let me give you an idea:

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By Lynette Kirschner

Gram­mar doesn’t tend to be a top­ic that stu­dents are enthused about. When­ev­er I men­tion it, many of my stu­dents roll their eyes. To real­ly get a non-reac­tion, all I have to do is men­tion punc­tu­a­tion and their eyes glaze over. Not a pret­ty sight. How­ev­er, gram­mar – and more impor­tant­ly punc­tu­a­tion – is essen­tial, so I have tried many ways to make this top­ic clear and interesting.

There is always humor, which will catch their atten­tion, but most like­ly not clar­i­fy the fin­er points of punc­tu­a­tion. The famous com­ma for can­ni­bals quote (“Let’s eat grand­pa” as opposed to the more humane “Let’s eat, grand­pa”) can make stu­dents smile once they under­stand. So now I have more of their atten­tion. But that is just the begin­ning. Read more »

By Sabrina Völz

If it wasn’t enough that Amer­i­can TV icon and edu­ca­tor Bill Cos­by was accused of sex­u­al assault, rape, and bat­tery – to name a few of the alle­ga­tions – now dozens of women (cur­rent­ly more than 65) have come for­ward about Har­vey Weinstein’s inap­pro­pri­ate sex­u­al behav­ior. Many of these women were pre­vi­ous­ly too afraid to pub­li­cal­ly share their sto­ries of sex­u­al harass­ment and assault. Or couldn’t because of non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments. Some­thing has to give. Read more »

By Evangelia Kindinger

All teach­ers remem­ber moments when they were caught off guard in front of a group of stu­dents. I remem­ber a few years ago, in a class about male authors’ take on wom­an­hood in nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture, I com­ment­ed on Hen­ry James’s novel­la Daisy Miller, say­ing some­thing along the lines of: “As a fem­i­nist, I object to some of the images James cre­ates of women, why is he using those images? What do you think?” There were mur­murs in the group, and I looked into skep­ti­cal faces: “Ms. Kindinger, are you a fem­i­nist?” I real­ized I had said some­thing that changed my stu­dents’ image of me. I was con­fused. Had they nev­er noticed my fem­i­nism from the way I teach and the texts I choose? Appar­ent­ly not.

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