A place to discuss language learning and teaching

I’m originally from the Philadelphia area and have been living and working in Asia since 2004. My family and I moved from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in July 2016 to Jeju Island, South Korea. Here on Jeju Island, I lead the middle school English Language and Literacy team and teach Grade 6 English at Korea International School Jeju (KISJ). Before Vietnam, I spent almost a decade teaching Second Language Acquisition, EFL Methods, and Intercultural Communication in a post-graduate TESOL certificate program to both pre- and in-service Korean teachers of English as well as international teachers in Korea.

I play a few different roles at KISJ. My main role is leading the middle school English Langauge and Literacy (ELL) department. We support our students through co-teaching, conferencing, reading intervention, along with individual support when necessary. We also incorporate a lot of the Fountas and Pinnell classroom (Leveled Literacy Instruction, BAS Assessment). Additionally, I teach grade six English Language Arts. In English, our team has worked to bring the reading and writing workshop to the middle school and we’re beginning our third year. When I am not in front of the class teaching, I am in the class providing extra support through conferencing and guided reading. I also serve as a resource for mainstream teachers. I observe teachers throughout the year and record the kinds of talk that happens in their classes between the teachers and students, and between students and students. Based on the observational data, we work find ways to increase meaningful interaction in the class.

Outside of the classroom, I spend most of my time with my family. We have two children who are six and nine years old that keep us plenty busy. Jeju Island provides us the opportunity to do just about anything outdoors and we definitely take advantage of that. We had a great first year and look forward to many more. Here is an album of our first year.

-Click here to view my resume-

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Presentations & Publications:

• Rago, William & Alisha Brizicky. (2020) A Model for ELL Integration in Middle School. Proposal accepted for ELLSA 2020 at Seoul Foreign School, Seoul, South Korea. *cancelled due to COVID-19. 
• Rago, William. (2017). Building Language in the Content Classroom. Presented at the 32nd KORCOS International Education Conference at Chadwick International School, November 18th, 2017
• Rago, William. (2017). Building Language in the Content Classroom. Presented at the 2017 EARCOS Teacher’s Conference.
• Rago, William & Allison Peterson. (2015). Getting the Blog Rolling: A beginner’s guide to social media in the classroom. Presented at the 2015 Vietnam Tech Conference. Saigon South International School, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
• Rago, William. (2015). Encouraging Interaction in the Classroom. Presented at TESOLtalks. Australian Centre for Education and Training, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
• Rago, William & Adam Boothe. (2013). Digging In: Learner Language Analysis
  and EFL Teacher Trainees. Presented at 2013 KOTESOL International Conference. Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul, Korea.
• Rago, William & Seokhoon You. (2013). Pragmatic and Syntactic Interface Properties in Korean Binding. Language Information (언어정보). 16: 89-106
• Rago, William & Seokhoon You. (2012). The Intricacies of Korean Binding: Problems with English L2 Acquisition Research. Presented at the 1^st World Congress of Scholars of English Linguistics. Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea.
• Rago, William. (2012). Who Cares: Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition Theory, and EFL Teachers. Presented at 2012 KOTESOL International Conference. Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul, Korea
• Rago, William. (2011, March) Learner Norms and Language Corpora. Workshop held at the 2011 Seoul Chapter KOTESOL conference. Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul, Korea
• Rago, William, Eunjeong Oh & Seokhoon You. (2011). On Knowledge of Binding Principles A and B by adult Korean learners of English. Language and Linguistics (언어와 언어학). 51: 129-155
• Rago, William. (2010, June). The relationship between total conceptual vocabulary and expressive vocabulary in one bilingual child. Paper presented at the 2010 Seoul International Conference on Linguistics (SICOL).  Korea University, Seoul, Korea.

-Click here to view my resume-