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“The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.” —Haruki Murakami (1949–), Japanese author What should every ESL student know? Beats me. “One size fits all” philosophies often seem a bit strange to me. Can...

Hollywood writer Dennis Hackin and three-time Chimayo Press author, has always possessed a passion for writing, prolifically producing plays, movies, novels, and poems since the age of eight. Hackin’s Bronco Billy was adapted into a movie starring and directed by Clint...

Chimayo Press, publisher of Compelling Conversations books, branches out to sci-fi   “What is consciousness? What is all this? Why do I think? And then you look at computers and computers think–are we programming the computers or are they programming us?” -Dennis...

How and when to use film in classrooms, and why “The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn’t.” -Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909-1993) American screenwriterFilm remains a powerful, if imperfect, tool for providing revealing glimpses...

Japanese English Learners and many English teachers can greatly benefit from this logical guide to clear, modern writing “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” –Mark Twain (1835-1910)...

Judy Thompson discusses how to overcome English as a crazy language “English is a funny language that explains why we park our car on the driveway and drive our car on the parkway.” ―American sayingESL teacher and pronunciation maven Judy Thompson’s new book boasts a surprising...

Piera Fumagalli fuses vocabulary, grammar and idioms with LA “People cut themselves off from their ties of the old life when they come to Los Angeles. They are looking for a place where they can be free, where they can do things they couldn’t do anywhere else.̶...

What do you do with a problem like the TOEFL iBT test? For worse or for better, the TOEFL test remains the standard assessment of English for international students planning to attend American colleges and universities. As a result, many international ESOL (English Speakers of...

What three tips would offer new a ESL/EFL teacher? Hall Houston, author of Provoking Thought: Memory and Thought in ELT, posed this question to several prominent English language trainers and teachers last year. Sean Banville, Russell Stannard, Chia Suan Chong, Nik Peachey, Scott...

Reading remains a great pleasure and a helpful guide. Literature can also enliven our ESL classrooms, and discussing our favorite books opens up new possibilities. The humanities should be for everyone - including English language learners. Let us, as Emily Dickinson advised,...