George Jacobs

Kampung Senange Charity and Education Foundation Singapore

Ways to inspire people to write others to inspire pro-environment actions

Cooperative learning and the SDGs

This fictional work, set in the near future, highlights the relative importance of content, rather than surface issues, in writing. This content best connects to students' lives and emotions.

The worsening global environmental crisis highlights the urgency of integrating Environmental Education (EE) throughout the curriculum including in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curricula. However, challenges exist, such as the development of appropriate curriculum documents and educators’ understanding of approaches to EE. This study looked...

This is the third in a series of three articles that attempts to draw lesson from the authors' experience preparing a free online resource book for teaching about the SDG via cooperative learning. This third entry is focused specifically on editing a textbook.

This article recommends the Cooperative Debate technique as a means of encouraging students and others to view the world from a multitude of perspectives. Most debates are competitive. Cooperative debates contrast with traditional competitive debates as cooperative debates emphasize fostering understanding rather than winning a debate contest. This...

This is a preface to an ecolinguistics book published by Springer about children's drawing

Like racism or sexism, speciesism highlights how people fail to give due respect to nonhuman animals. After more than 20 years since the publication of Dunayer's (2001) seminal work, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation, speciesism appears to remain a controversial issue. In this article, we explore the issue of speciesist language by consideri...

A review of two books: one about cooperation among humans and the other about humans cooperating for a greener planet.

Meritocracy argues that people's success in life should be based on their own effort, not their family background. Education plays a vital role here, providing opportunities for people of all ages to develop and demonstrate their merit. Although meritocracy is generally seen as positive, this article cautions that achieving a more merito-cratic soc...

This is the second in a series of three articles that attempts to draw lesson from the authors' experience preparing a free online resource book for teaching about the SDG via cooperative learning. This second entry is focused specifically on writing a textbook.

Sustainable diets are food patterns that can be practised as a climate mitigation strategy. Using a bibliometric approach, a sample of 133 papers was selected from 1239 identified articles on “Sustainable diets” and “Climate change” or “climate” or “mitigation” as the query from the Scopus database. The articles were examined to identify the growth...

This article is the first in a three-part series describing takeaways from a project to publish a free online book "Cooperative Learning and the Sustainable Development Goals." Three takeaways from the first article are: (1) identify your passions and work on related projects, (2) look for collaborators, and (3) find and use models. https://jalt-p...

This two-page article suggests benefits of graded readers – provides an environment for immersive language learning, builds confidence and a love for reading, and gives opportunities for contextualized learning of vocabulary and grammar - and counters claims that graded readers are necessarily dull and inauthentic. Also, resources are provided for...

Most ecolinguistic analysis is conducted with texts produced for the general public. This article explores the use of ecolinguistics in the education of young people. The analysis focuses on young people’s media, specifically focusing on films. Two children’s movies (The Lorax and Back to the Outback) are analyzed using the ecolinguistic concept of...

This article advocates for the use of cooperative learning by students and others toward the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). First, the Goals are explained. Second, background is provided on cooperative learning, including explanation of eight cooperative learning principles and exemplification of how one co...

This two-page interview provides info on the interviewee's path to becoming a teacher and some of his perspectives on teaching, including a preference for collaboration and for linking the classroom with the world outside.

This poem is a modern-day rewriting of William Blake's classic work. The modern poem focuses on the plight of one species of tiger, the Malayan tiger, who are critical endangered due to poaching and habitat destruction.

This poem seeks to evoke compassion for the plight of egg-laying hens, who lead absolutely miserable lives, crowded together and separated before birth from their families.

Writers have many digital tools available to help them with the creation of text. In some cases, these tools have been in existence for a long time, such as spellcheckers and basic grammar checkers that are available on word processing software. Today, new and increasingly more advanced tools are in use, and the ramifications of their use are not y...

This free online book, created with input from teachers in four Asian countries, provides educators with information on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and explanations of teaching techniques from cooperative learning. The SDGs are combined with complementary cooperative learning techniques in adaptable modular lesson plans...

some people who advocate for good ideas in Education do not actually implement those ideas in their own teaching. For example, in their articles, books, webinars, and presentations, some noted academics sing the praises of student centered learning methods, such as cooperative learning, but in our observations, these academics’ teaching consists al...

In this teaching-oriented project, we propose an extensive reading while listening (ERWL) program in which cooperative learning (CL) tasks are also implemented. We believe that by implementing ERWL combined with CL tasks, teachers can invite their learners to improve all four language skills while simultaneously enhancing their motivation for ERWL....

English features prominently in global communication as part of the knowledge economy in Indonesia and worldwide. Meritocracy represents a key concept within the rhetoric of this economy, as it promises that how well people do in life is not determined by external matters, but mostly by how hard they try. Included here is how hard they study Englis...

Introduction to promoting diversity and inclusion in language education through research and practice in Global Englishes and translanguaging.

Until very recently, much of the educational and applied linguistics discourse about students and their learning was based on a deficit view (e.g., “low proficiency,” “they should know this,” “they need to improve their command of English”). Such a view justifies the traditional role of teachers imparting knowledge and students passively absorbing...

This article argues that, paradoxically, the selfish action to take in most circumstances is to cooperate with others rather than to work alone, because of the many advantages cooperation brings. The article is situated in the Singapore context.

This paper describes an easy to use cooperative learning technique in which students argue in support of two opposing sides of an issue, and then argue for their own view on that issue. Debate can increase motivation and promote deeper understanding. Cooperative debate encourages collegial relations among students, rather than antagonism.

In education, the phrase "authenticity" has various connotations, including in language education. This article begins by examining different meanings of the term authenticity in language teaching. Some of these meanings refer to authenticity in the assessment, tasks, and materials that language teachers use. The main part of the article looks at a...

This is the introduction to a special journal issue on ecolinguistics. In addition to very brief summaries of all the articles in the special issue, the introduction argues that work in ecolinguistics should aim to be comprehensible to educated lay readers and, most importantly, to have a clear practical focus toward reducing the damage of the anth...

This article considers potential impacts the study of language, including ecolinguistics, can have on important real-world issues, and how linguists and others can involve themselves in addressing these issues for a sustainable future. The article is divided into two parts. The first part provides an illustrative study in which computer tools were...

The authors contend that when students learn together, they benefit both themselves and their teachers. One of the benefits is the development of learning autonomy. Rather than undermining autonomy, student-student interaction promotes achievement and satisfaction in the present and future language learning, as well as many other aspects of life. T...

Education has increasingly turned to virtual learning in response to greater awareness of the benefits of virtual learning, increased technology to support learning outside of educational institutions, and, sadly, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, awareness has also increased of the benefits of student-student cooperation, and...

Appendix

This article argues that language students and teachers are changemakers and that, in keeping with progressivist philosophy and the bottom-up social paradigm, they can play a powerful role in creating a better world. As our understanding of the world continues to increase, both students and teachers can use this increased understanding to initiate...

This conclusion chapter offers advice for readers already active as community-engaged educators and to those who wish to become so involved. This advice includes (a) get involved, even with very small actions, rather than waiting for others to take action in your stead; (b) do not minimize the potential of taking small steps; (c) individual actions...

George Jacobs describes how a quiet person went on to be an activist for moving food production away from animal agriculture and toward alternative protein foods. From someone who did not mention his plant-based diet unless asked to someone who uses his teaching skills in and out of the classroom to advocate for farmed animals, e.g., chickens, fish...

This is a summary/review of a book on the interaction between food and technology. The author is a professor of food policy. Topics discussed include organic food, GMO foods, the different roles of Big Ag and Big Food, the treatment of farmed animals, and the viability of local food. Some of the author's views are controversial, e.g., he favors GMO...

Larissa Zimberoff is a widely published journalist who specializes in the interaction of food and technology. The book covers such topics as algae, fungi, peas, alternatives to eggs and cow's milk, upcycled food, plant-based burgers, high-tech farming, cell-based meat, and predictions and cautions for the future.

The impetus for this conceptual article was the authors’ reflections on their experiences as teachers and teacher educators in various Asian countries (China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam), combined with their support for Social-Cognitive Theory and student-centered learning. Of course, great variations exist with...

This article has one theme and two parts. The theme is that we humans can do more and do it more enjoyably when we cooperate. The first part of the article explains eight principles from cooperative learning, a methodology that facilitates students learning in groups of two-four members, along with the learning they do with teachers and by studying...

Many teachers seem interested in their classes being more student-centered. Students making more choices about their own learning forms a key aspect of student-centered learning, as well as life-long learning. This article offers ideas for ways to provide students with more choices in their learning and suggests ways to encourage students to make c...

This article has one theme and two parts. The theme is that we humans can do more and do it more enjoyably when we cooperate. The first part of the article explains eight principles from cooperative learning, a methodology that facilitates students learning in groups of two-four members, along with the learning they do with teachers and by studying...

One of the key characteristics of student-centered learning is the active involvement of students in the learning process, where they co-construct knowledge with the guidance of the teachers and in collaboration with their peers. The co-construction of knowledge can be greatly facilitated when students respond to teachers' questions and when they t...

This article explains about the life of dairy cows and suggests that people might want to try some of the many alternatives to dairy milk.

This article examines changes in Singapore diets, from diets in which meat was perhaps only a weekly occurrence, to meat and other animal-based foods, such as eggs and dairy, being a fixture at almost every meal. Now, diets may be changing again, as for many reasons, people may be turning to alternative protein foods, some of them which were only r...

Just as language has changed in response to changing views of the place of females in some societies, so too has language changed in response to changing views of the place of nonhuman animals in some societies. Some of these changes related to language and nonhuman animals include the use of idioms and pronouns. This article discusses such changes...

This is a radio interview as part of a British Council series on integrating Environmental Education with language education. Topics discussed include localizing teaching materials, persisting when Environmental Education may be controversial, UN Environmental Education objectives, and why language teaching is so flexible. I am one of three intervi...

This article reflects on how we as global citizens and applied linguists might more effectively advocate for addressing issues of injustice to nonhuman animals, particularly a move toward alternative protein diets. It begins by recounting the journey of one activist for nonhuman animals, Paul Shapiro. As can be seen in a series of TED Talks he gave...

The many reasons we would be wise to include nonhuman animals in our circle of compassion.

1. Yes, we can do cooperative learning online 2. Advantages come from online cooperative learning

Cooperative learning fosters learner autonomy, and learner autonomy fits well with cooperative learning. The presentation discusses why and how.

This article links two approaches to promoting less competitive, more positive, and more student centered learning environments for language learners: cooperative learning and positive psychology. The article begins by explaining each of these two approaches. First, the article provides background, including research support, for cooperative learni...

When most people picture reading, they picture someone sitting alone holding a book or a screen of some type, such as a smartphone or tablet. In other words, reading is not seen as a social activity. Just the opposite, reading can be seen as an antisocial act; instead of talking with others, people go off alone to read, maybe even as a means of esc...

This commentary explains the issue of the use of the relative pronoun "who" with nonhuman animals, and urges the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association to change its stand against such use.

en To promote a more open and more self‐aware Applied Linguistics, we can consider how the many current and developing initiatives and resources in the field can be instruments for achieving a better world. For instance, applied linguists have examined such issues as inclusiveness (e.g., avoiding generic he) and the interface between language and e...

Review of Humankind: A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman, 2020, published by Bloomsbury. This book offers evidence that humans are mostly good and that the truest path to success and happiness lies in cooperation, e.g., when students do cooperative learning.

The book explores the personalities, intelligence, and emotions of eight categories of our fellow animals: insects and arachnids, octopuses, fishes, chickens, goats, cows, pigs, and chimpanzees. Stories enliven the explorations. The main message is that in their own varied ways, our fellow animals sense, learn, feel, and develop unique personalitie...

Blood-feeding aquatic animals are not seen as endearing. Perhaps we need to understand them better, just as we might benefit from better understanding some of our less endearing fellow humans.

This is a brief review of a collection of in-depth, insightful essays about environmental and social issues in Singapore

Advice for teachers often includes advice on the quality and quantity of the praise they give students. The present article reviews and perhaps adds to that advice, as well as cautioning that the influence of culture needs to be borne in mind when praise is considered. The two theories discussed in the introductory part of this article, Behaviorism...

Cephalopods are members of a class of molluscs that feature squids, octopuses, cuttlefishes, and nautiluses. While these “freaky” friends have gained notoriety for their noteworthy features which include arms/tentacles, prominent heads, and bilateral body symmetry, only recently have we started to learn more about the mental and physical capabiliti...

This article challenges applied linguists and other academics to think and act outside of the box to help society confront COVID-19, future pandemics, and other crises that humans and other earthlings currently face and that lie on the horizon. These outside-the-box actions by applied linguists can involve not only the research we do but also the w...

The four-page chapter is a lesson plan for encouraging students to thank each other and to use other social skills, as part of an overall attempt to create a cooperative classroom environment. The chapter begins with a story about an extensive reading lesson in which students collaborated in groups of two. At the end of the lesson, the teacher aske...

Much of the literature on teaching ESOL recommends the use of group activities to promote communication among students. However, these group activities can suffer from difficulties, such as some group members dominating discussions. Students and teachers need to address this, and this article explains ten strategies for promoting equal opportunity...

The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in language learning allows students to be more engaged and innovative. The present article explores the potential use of technology in the planning, drafting, reviewing, and publishing stages of students’ own book creation. First, the use of digital tools to create books in an interactive a...

This article looks at stereotypes about three types of fishes: piranhas, sharks, and goldfishes. Evidence is presented that the stereotypes are inaccurate as to the fishes. Furthermore, it is suggested that humans whom are labeled as piranhas, sharks, or goldfishes may not really as bad as they appear. The article connects most closely with the UN'...

The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in language learning allows students to be more engaged and innovative. The present article explores the potential use of technology in the planning, drafting, reviewing, and publishing stages of students' own book creation. First, the use of digital tools to create books in an interactive a...

The book sheds light on a particular context in which people travelled to work abroad and a particular type of person. In this case, the travelers came to Japan, mostly from Western countries, and all of those sharing their stories were females who took teaching work in higher education, mostly teaching English language or content courses in Englis...

Online education can play a crucial role in increasing access to educational opportunities and promoting lifelong learning. The Covid-19 pandemic has done even more to raise awareness of the importance of online education. The pandemic has been a Category 5 disruptor of education systems. This article was written to help teachers at all levels of e...

This article recounts the author’s journey from first becoming a vegetarian and later becoming a teacher who speaks up for farmed animals and other nonhuman animals in and out of school. Some of the author’s pro-animal activities are described. The goal of the article is to encourage other teachers to become community-engaged educators, regardless...

This keynote address (shown on video) at an international symposium for language educators makes suggestions as to what language educators can do so that positive changes arise from all the hardships experienced due to Covid-19. The three suggestions are: (1) promote equitable online learning for people of all ages; (2) take long-term measures to r...

This article looks at non-classroom factors that can make cooperative learning more difficult, including two views in society: (1) a view that democracy is ineffective; (2) a view that human nature is mostly bad. Next, the article looks at countertrends: (1) developments in science showing that we have social brains; (2) greater acceptance of the i...

An interview by a leading Singapore environmental organization about thoughts and experiences of an educator and vegan activist during the first part of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The book has five sections. The first section, “Unbelievable”, explains why people have such difficulty taking action against the climate crisis. We Are The Weather’s second section, “How To Prevent the Greatest Dying”, presents a compilation of some of the salient facts about the causes and effects of the climate crisis including many facts about...

This book is full of clearly written, extensively detailed nutrition information. Indeed, the authors fulfill the promise given in the book's subtitle: "Everything You Need To Know To Be Healthy on a Plant-Based Diet." 'Everything' includes lists of foods, menus, and diet tips for key nutritional needs. But the main purpose of the book is not to te...

I recently co-authored an article on infusing cooperative learning in distance education: http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume24/ej93/ej93a1/ That article wasn't very practical. Attached is the draft of a second article that we are promising will be more practical, with 9 lesson plans. We need help to see if the lesson plans really are p...

Providing students with opportunities for peer interaction is considered best practice in classroom teaching. However, facilitating peer interaction as part of distance education represents a new challenge for some teachers. The present article raises eleven questions for teachers to consider when infusing cooperative learning (thoughtfully organiz...

LOH Wan Inn and I wrote a children's book entitled "Animal Olympics", the story of nonhuman animals getting together to put on their own Olympic Games, highlighting the unique abilities of various animals, e.g., being the fastest on 8 legs. In the story, two animals that don't seem to have special abilities are snails and humans, but then the anima...

I'm looking for help on this very timely paper. With the amount of distance learning skyrocketing, we need to investigate how to enhance distance learning, and infusing cooperative learning is one way to do that. But doing distance learning is already so difficult.

This book, by two long-time food and health experts, advocates that we eat whole, mostly (or entirely) plant foods, and drink mostly water. Their favorite foods are beans and lentils, and they are against fad diets such as keto and paleo. The authors write very well, and their answers are concise and backed by research, experience, and common sense...

Engaged intellectuals, for the purposes of this paper, are academics who ask themselves what they can do to maximize the role of their academic and other activities in making the world a better place. This paper recounts and reflects on the experiences of the author and others as they have attempted to put their academic and other skills and unders...

This article describes a 2019 incident in Malaysia in which two tigers were seen near a village. After providing context on the situation of tigers internationally and in Malaysia, the article reports an ecolinguistic study of 10 online articles on the incident from established media sources. Categories used in analyzing the articles were human con...

Most books on vegan nutrition focus on macro and micro nutrients. Your Body in Balance talks about those too, but what stands out about this book is its focus on hormones. Our hormones act like orchestra conductors, controlling our bodies’ functions. Hormones “quicken the tempo or slow it down – more violin, less bass … turn your metabolism up or d...

'Homo Deus' follows 'Sapiens', Yuval Noah Harari's first best-selling book. 'Homo Deus' reviews some of the early history of homo sapiens told in 'Sapiens'but focuses on a new species, who Harari calls Homo Deus. He predicts this new species will supplant humans as the planet's dominant species.

Yuval Noah Harari is a best-selling vegan historian. This book looks at the past, present, and future of homo sapiens (humans). The focus is on how humans rose from being a minor species to now dominate the planet.

Anne and Dean Ornish combine to explain the concepts and research behind and the actions needed to implement their guiding slogan: Eat Well, Move More, Stress Less, Love More.

Jonathan Safron Foer's first non-fiction book, "Eating Animals," used the kindness argument to attempt to persuade people to give up or reduce their consumption of animal-based foods. This 2019 book focuses on the environment reasons as to why a shift toward plant-based eating makes sense.

This article explores one technique that is consistent with the student-centered paradigm in language education: student-generated books. First, benefits of student-generated are discussed. Then, the article explores the crucial area of maintaining student ownership of their own books. The next topic explained in the article is why dialog is import...

The book’s title, How Not To Diet, seeks to differentiate this book from others. So many diet books exist (in 2019, Amazon offered in excess of 30,000 diet books): “they always sell because they always fail”. The book's author, Dr Michael Greger of nutritionfacts.org, proposes that the best diets are based on the strong foundation of a lifetime who...

This article suggests a variety of ways for people to address the climate crisis. These ways involve holiday gifts, travel, fashion, and food. Especially emphasized is the need to move toward plant-based food. Published by Channel News Asia, a publication of one of Singapore's two leading media companies.

This paper looks at the value of second language students, teachers, and others interacting in very large groups of tens and even 100s of members of the same group. The paper begins by looking at disadvantages of these larger groups and then at their advantages, before providing advice on how to facilitate groups regardless of their sizes. This adv...

This 20-page course handout advocates for the use of cooperative games in the teaching of languages, although the ideas in the handout have implications for the teaching of other subjects. The first topic in the handout is why to use games. Next, when and how to use games is discussed, before examining types of games. Then, the focus narrows to coo...