During semester break week, I was assigned to the team that would be teaching a class for a contingent from the Royal Malaysian Army. For my “role play” segment of three hours, I decided to design a card game that doubles as a rudimentary roleplaying game (RPG). Two nights before, I spent up till 0200 hours designing the mechanics and […]
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I’m clearly in red
Herein lies the collection of blog posts about my teaching English as a second language to university students.
First Week of Social Social in Class
The first week of the first session of the 2018/2019 academic session has begun. Do the students possess the not-very-instinctive ability to position words in an adjective phrases — specifically the positions of the noun and the adjective? I would like to happily report that this semester, the students have this ability… mostly… as these Kahoot quiz results show among […]
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Last Exam of the Semester
It is the last final exam I have to invigilate in; the last activity with students I have this semester. I will miss this batch of students. Although none of the exams tonight were English language course papers, there were a number of my English students for the semester taking them. Somehow, exam invigilation feels like a blast with these […]
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Gaming at the Geomatics Carnival 2018
Today, the Centre for International Languages was officially invited by Zainee to UiTM Arau nearby for their Geomatics Carnival 2018 exhibition. There was a hobbies exhibition section where I set up shop with tabletop RPGs with my colleague Bazli. I would talk to visitors about using RPGs as a language learning tool. Also, to run games if and when I […]
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Multicultural Night
With Ain away at Pasir Mas to take care of some things there, it was just Irfan and I at home for the weekend. After spending most of the weekend binging on The Terror, an excellent show by the way, we would have nothing else to do until the weekday rebooted itself. Thankfully, I had bought a couple of tickets […]
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SWD6: A Hot Day in Mos Espa
I brought West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game 2nd edition Revised and Expanded with me to class on Monday. There was time for me to run an hour of Star Wars RPG for my students, so I mustered together all the ones who would speak and ones who would take notes on behalf of their characters, which meant […]
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Meanwhile, During the Rest of SILK 2018
The Symposium of International Languages and Knowledge was quite the event. Besides running the RPG workshop, I also sat in other talks, participated in other educational workshops and also had lots of food. Here are some photos to show the experience I underwent at Walailak University, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand. WU was holding their 26th anniversary expo on campus, a […]
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Mini Six: Whiteout, or an RPG Workshop at SILK 2018
This weekend I was honoured to be able to run a tabletop RPG workshop during the 2018 Symposium for International Languages and Knowledge which was held at Walailak University at Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand. Last year, SILK 2017 was held here in Perlis and was featured on the blog as well. Here are some photos of the event with an […]
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A VCX-100 in Class for Some Reason
A VCX-100 model transport made an appearance in class during lessons today. I used Kahoot for a live online exercise with my classes this week. The exercise covered Transition words. What better imagery can I use for Transitions other than hyperspace corridor scenes. Believe it or not by 2005 and after 6 major Star Wars motion picture releases, we were […]
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First Class of the New Semester
The second semester for the 2017/2018 academic year has begun! And here are photos from the first class of the semester. Wait what? What are the students doing fiddling about on their phone, you ask? Why are they not listening to me in class? Well, it’s because they were… …signing into Kahoot to do the quiz I had set up […]
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Photos from an Academic Workshop
Once upon a time, the entire department was invited to attend an academic excellence workshop in which it was hoped that we would all be much more excellent than we were at being academics. Here are some photos from the programme. Perhaps some mouseover text will be provided as well.
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Photos from a Keynote Address
The university’s vice chancellor was slated to hold his annual keynote address before the entire staff, and I was given a new task some weeks earlier. I visited the site a day earlier to help prepare the multimedia guys to run an online Kahoot quiz for the audience. I handed over my set of questions to them and ceded the […]
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Crafting a Brochure Once More
It has been decades since I made an actual three-fold brochure for real. The workplace needed one for an upcoming postgraduate programme they would be running. Using Inkscape (and actually running around the office building to take fresh photographs) I managed to hammer a design out. The photos above are of the mock-up I printed out. These brochures would be […]
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A Feast Concludes the Year
The Welfare Club of the workplace organised a little feast for CIL’s staff members. It was also a pot luck so Ain made her fusilli pasta goreng tom yam to add to the table. It was also a Friday morning, so we all recited surah al-Kahfi. There was even a birthday cake to celebrate those born in December. All in […]
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On The Airwaves
One of my students Clement is not only running his own radio show at the university, but he has also experience in the radio broadcast industry. He had been asking me to be a guest om his show. So there I was talking about English learning and role-playing games with students on an actual radio show. Another one of those […]
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Students Take Centre Stage
Narrator: Previously on Hishgraphics Blog… Yesterday, my theatre arts students completed their course. In conjunction with the final session, the students and I organised the inaugural Performance Day for the course. We began at 2pm. Ain brought snacks and kuih for the students. Irfan was our videographer, using the department’s camera. The students had prepared for two plays to be […]
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