Brendon Albertson, M.S. TESOL
Thank you for visiting my website, and for your interest in my skills/experience.
Since 2008, I’ve taught English as a Second Language to university, K-12, business, and adult immigrant students, including overseas in Japan, China, and Korea. I am also certified to teach ESL in grades 5-12 in Massachusetts.
My other experience includes curriculum development as Assistant Director and Lead Teacher of ESOL programs in Boston, TEFL teacher training, and research/conference presentations ranging from spoken participation and identity among Asian international students to the use of beatboxing in the classroom.
My learning apps at www.eslquiz.net reflect my teaching style: empower students to direct their own learning outside the walls of the classroom and pages of the textbook.
I speak/read business-level Japanese (JLPT N1) and conversational Mandarin Chinese (NHK 3), and have MA state teaching certification for ESL Grades 5-12.
In my free time, I study Japanese, skateboard and snowboard, beatbox, play the tin whistle, and drink tea (Sencha and Assam, mostly).
LinkedIn Profile
Teaching Portfolio (Pine Manor College)
Sample Lesson Plan (Content-based ESL, University Level CEFR B2)
Apps I’ve Developed
My GitHub
Online learning resources I’ve created:
EslQuiz.net – Generate word-to-picture matching tasks
This site contains 2 activities for helping students learn on their own.
One activity, TextMix, uses the MediaWiki API and other existing text databases to automate the creation of novel sentence scramble reading tasks. This type of task involves students reading a text by unscrambling one sentence at a time; it differs from traditional sentence scrambles by providing repeated exposure to a large number of authentic sentences in the context of a text. TextMix tasks are highly customizable, gamified, sharable, and require only a few clicks to create a set of scrambled sentences for an entire text. As such, it holds potential for building understanding of sentence structure, from basic word order to sentence patterns of academic writing, via exposure to a large number of authentic sentences as input. More information about TextMix can be found here.
The second activity, “Picture Match,” is aimed at beginners and is helpful for learning vocabulary for concrete nouns, verbs, or adjectives. It automates the creation of word-to-picture matching tasks from a given list of vocabulary words, including automatically gathering images from Google. I created it in response to a need for quick ways to create frequent vocabulary quizzes for my beginner secondary and adult ESL students, as a way to increase “active recalls” and assist with vocabulary acquisition. The site also includes a cloze generator. The site is used approximately 25 times per day by various teachers.
esldrills.atspace.cc
A collection of dictation exercises for ELL students, in both fast and slow versions, designed to practice recognition of reduced/connected sounds in English. This website also contains small apps to help students practice grammar drills with count and noncount nouns.
BCNC Blog
A blog created for Foundations Level 1 students in the Adult Ed ESOL Program at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, this website contains my own audio recordings at a pace suitable for beginner level students, on the theme of college and career goals. These were created in response to a need for ESL content about a high-level topic (college and career goals) but at a lower language level (SPL 1-2, Beginners). It also contains a curated collection of links to useful ESL practice materials and YouTube videos for students.
Feedback on Student Writing:
During COVID, many classes transitioned online. This provided a great way to explore the use of video-based feedback on student writing. Here are a few samples of feedback videos I’ve created for my college students in a foundational writing course:
Video feedback on a weak persuasive essay:
Video feedback on a strong cause/effect essay: