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The only useful thing I ever learned about curriculum design was at a staff development day while in Mongolia. Thankfully the presenter spoke in English and it was translated for the Mongolian staff. I say, “thankfully”, because this (a) reduced my overall cognitive load, and (b) meant I could process
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Asking New Testament students to provide a translation of a known (chapter/verse) NT text in an exam or exegetical paper is a waste of time. It tests nothing and it discriminates nothing. Every student ought to be getting 90-100% on this part of an assessment anyway, because either:
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I am known as being a "hard marker", apparently. And I am coming to terms with that, not as a perverse badge of honour, as if I get some delight over punishing students with low marks. Actually, I work hard to grade consistently, in line with the rubrics
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I usually give Philip Schaff a hard time, but let’s be honest – the ANF and NPNF series of translations (the former edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, the latter by Philip Schaff, and later with Henry Wace) – were amazing feats of translation and publishing for their times. They
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I’ve very recently started some of that endless list of Greek reading discussed in the last few posts, joined by one brave soul determined to get along with some Greek with me while the sun yet shines. However, what happens when the sun shines at radically different times? What
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If you want to read a nice selection of Greek patristics with some helps, there’s Rodney Whitacre’s 2007 A Greek Patristic Reader, which I had until recently forgotten that I owned. If you want to read Latin, tough luck, no one will help you. Hence a recent tweet
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So earlier this week I wrote about my desire to read a lot more canonical classical texts, and plan to use a university reading list to do so. This caused the minorest of flutters among my minute circle of acquaintances, which prompts me to write a second post today. How
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I'm not really a classicist, I don't pretend to be. Patristics isn't Classics anyway, and my route to where I am was very, hmm, "liberal arts". Across my studies I accumulated majors, or their equivalents, in Philosophy, Creative Writing, Latin, and Theology.
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[Disclaimer: I was given a complimentary license key to this program in conjunction with doing this review] I think it’s a brave person who asks me for a product review. Especially if you know the general tenor of my reviews, and general views on pedagogy. So, I had to
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Within the orbit of evangelical mission activity, teaching English overseas seems like an easy and perfect fit. People 'overseas' want to learn English. You already know English. They often prize a native-speaker over accreditation or experience. And English provides a vehicle to the Bible and to the
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I semi-regularly hear the term “rigour” applied to teaching programs, and worse, language programs, as if it were a kind of virtue. It might be, but what is usually meant by “rigour” is not virtuous at all, it just sounds like it. What is “rigour” anyway, and why would
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(And we’re back. Being sick threw my blogging schedule out the window.) What’s the point of marking essays? So often in humanities we make essay-writing the examinable element of a course, and the more I both read up on this, and reflect on this, the more problematic