Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Interesting topics in Tesol

I feel pressured to think of my maters thesis topic. I haven’t explored every avenue that interests me and I’m afraid that if I choose a topic to pursue now I will regret the choice later. I understand that by selecting my topic now I can at least complete the literature review during this course. This will no doubt be of great value.
What interests me are quite broad issues and I haven’t whittled them down to what can be posed as a decent topic for a thesis yet. My background in psychology and particularly in early childhood development guides me towards some questions. For instance, the optimal age of second language acquisition, the role of play in language learning or the possible negative effects of early socialization on second language fluency, are all topics I’m considering.
I plan to work in the developing world and there are range of options that stem from that. How to be an effective teacher in an environment with few resources, how to create materials for children with scant resources, assisting and empowering non native speaking teachers to achieve optimal results, are some. The role that English education can play in improving the lives and standard of living of those in the developing world, is also something that I want to explore.
I beg your patience.

1 comment:

  1. [ imagine this with a really bad fake movie Hitler accent ]

    NEIN! I vill not give you my patience! it is mine - all mine!

    [ finé ]

    --- --- ---- --- ---

    of course I understand your situation . . . I have felt the same way myself. However, as a person who always gets dragged down by "the perfect getting in the way of a possible" I want to encourage you to get started on some thing, so that you can see if you like it...

    Either way, you'll learn a lot about the process. :-)

    Also, I worked with the Soros fund [ the Open Society Institute ] in to Tajikistan for awhile . . . if my experiences might be interesting to you or useful in your future directions, let me know. I would be glad to chat with you about them.
    cheers,
    Eric

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