ROGER'S PLACE

Yep, that's me in the morning before I get my act together for my morning swim. Don't you love my summer haircut? (Is that my Speedo hanging on my ear? I wondered where I put it.) You can call me Roger when you write to me, but most know me as Dr. T or Roger M. Thompson, professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Florida. I am the webmaster for Roger's TESOL Page.

Roger's TESOL Page | Me | English Bio | CV | TESL Resume | Sunshine State TESOL of Florida |
Recent Conference Papers | Family Fotos |

Classes

Recent and Upcoming Conference Papers and Workshops.
• Singing in the rain: Theatrical metaphors for teaching prepositions presented at Sunshine State TESOL 2001, 17-19 May 2001 at St. Petersburg, FL.
• Commercials as English teachers: Language socialization through Philippine television presented at 4th Pacific Second Language Research Forum (PacSLRF2001), 4-7 October 2001 at the Imin Conference Center on the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus in Honolulu, Hawaii.
• Using Web-Based Resources in English Language Teaching, a twelve hour workshop presented at TESOL Academy 2002 June 21-23, 2002, in Orlando, Florida.
• "That stinks, doesn't it?" Tag questions for small talk presented at Sunshine State TESOL 2003, 2-4 May 2003 at Jacksonville, Florida.
• "How's it been?" Practicing the perfect with pictures presented at Southeast Regional TESOL 2003, 24-27 September 2003 at New Orleans, Louisianna
• Games to teach classroom routines and rules presented at Sunshine State TESOL 2004, 29-30 April, 1 May 2004 at Tampa, Florida
• Providing language context for content courses: A Hungarian experience presented at Sunshine State TESOL 2005, 28-31 April 2005 at Orlando, Florida
• ESOL strategies for content courses: A Hungarian experience presented at Southeast Regional TESOL 2005, 22-25 September 2005 at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
• Hidden biases in English tests: A Philippine case study presented at Sunshine State TESOL 2007, 10-12 May 2007 at West Palm Beach, Florida
• Tagalog case markers in informal Filipino English presented at AILA 2008, 24-29 August 2008 at Essen, Germany
• Investigating the cultural dynamics of Taglish presented at Linguistics Society of the Philippines, 29 November 2008 at Philippine Normal University, Manila, Philippines.
• Populism in pop culture: English in a Filipino sitcom presented at 14th Conference of the International Association for World Englishes, 1-5 December 2008 at City University of Hong Kong.
• Investigating the cultural dynamics of English in Southeast Asia presented in University of Macau, 9 December 2008.
• Pop culture in English commercials: Hidden messages for Filipinos presented at the lst International Conference on Popular Culture and Education in Asia, 11-13 December 2008, Hong Kong Institute of Education.
• English and pop culture in the media: Hidden messages on Philippine television presented at the University of Pecs, Hungary, 27 March 2009.
• Using the media as a data source for language analysis: A Philippine case study workshop on research methods in cross cultural communication presented at the University of Pecs, Hungary, 27 March 2009.

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Who is Roger anyway?

Well, one way to answer such a thought provoking question is to show another picture. I'm the guy with the glasses standing in the back. The others are my wife and my children (and three grandchildren) at a recent family reunion at Bear Lake in Idaho. (If you believe in quality you might as well have a lot of them--reunions or children--the choice is yours. I now have sixteen grandchildren)

In 1996-1997 while we were in the Philippines on a sabbatical sponsored by Fulbright, I worked for the Philippine Department of Education, Culture, and Sports in Manila training English language teachers throughout the country. I gave workshops to more than 4,000 high school and college teachers on how to use context embedded teaching to make their lessons more effective. I also trained some 800 teachers on using the internet to enrich their English, science and math classes. In the Philippines all English, science, and math are taught in English from the first grade on.

The highlight of all the computer workshops came when I was helping a 65 year old teacher who had never worked with a computer. She decided to put her favorite recipe for buko pie (Philippine coconut cream) on the Internet. I can still see her jumping for joy when she pushed the reload button and her lime green page with swaying palm trees and her recipe appeared. She certainly impressed the computer experts in the class who thought there was no way that an old person could learn to make homepages in one easy lesson.

The new version of Roger's TESOL Page reflects my experience in the Philippines. My experiences in the Philippines are recounted in my new book Filipino English and Taglish: Language switching from multiple perspectives.

Before you take a look at my academic CV or my departmental bio, I'd suggest you scroll down for a more personal introduction. There's also an album of Thompson family pictures that people have sent us through email.

I like

• Learning languages: I do best at English, German, Spanish, and French, but have dabbled in Hungarian, Cakchiquel, Hebrew, Portuguese, Japanese, and American Sign Language (which I fail at miserably because I shut my eyes when I want to concentrate). I learned only a few words of Tagalog in the Philippines since everyone speaks English and it is the language of half the school subjects. I was expected to speak English every where. Even street signs and advertisements are in English.
• Parenting: I have ten children--all fantastic, of course. If you believe in producing quality, you might as well do it enthusiastically and in quantity.
• Biking: I have ridden a bike to school or work nearly every day since 1960. I biked Nordrhein/Westfalen in Germany for two and a half years. No, I don't wear a helmet.
• Traveling/living abroad: I love being in new places, watching and interacting with the people, and trying to figure out how they do things. I've taught/studied in Patzicia and Solola, Guatemala; Quebec City, Quebec; Mexico City and Cholula, Mexico; Pecs, Hungary; Bonn, Dueren, Duesseldorf, Herford, Krefeld, and Solingen, Germany;  Baguio, Bacolod, Boac, Boracay, Cagayan de Oro, Dumaguete, Iloilo, Manila and Tacloban, Philippines;  Hong Kong, Macau, and Weihai, China; and Utrecht, Netherlands. If you see me with a glazed look in my eyes, I'm probably daydreaming about another foreign adventure.
• Oral history/family history: If you belong to any of these family lines, we might be related: Scotland: Moffat, McLean, McPhail, Leishman; Colonial USA: Thompson, Richardson, Ransom, Howard, Denison, Schnell (Pennsylvania Dutch); Germany: Gentzler (Guenzler), Schweizer, Schneider, Knapp, Feig, Lallatin (actually an amorous pepper merchant from Italy who passed through Germany in the early 1700's). Family tradition says there is also Chippewa mixed in there somewhere.
• Music: Anything but country-western. My favorite composers are Janice Kapp Perry, Jeff Goodrich, and Michael McLean (If you know who they are, you have another important clue as to who I am.)
• Dancing: Latin is my favorite. I'll do just about anything else (including folkdancing). At one time I was a dance instructor. Just don't ask me to do country western line dancing or clogging.
• Beaches: Anywhere I go, I check out the beaches first. To me heaven is being barefoot in shorts near the water--yes, I wear a swimming suit even on the beaches of Europe. Our favorite beach in the Philippines was Boracay. Ah, yes, I love cleaning my pool--great time for thinking and daydreaming. I also swim a kilometer every morning before starting on my activities for the day.
• Thinking: I know that seems strange, but I like to think of new ways to do the tried and true so it will be attractive for the next generation. (I also have a low threshold of boredom--thinking is a good antidote.)
rthompso@english.ufl.edu
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