Tim's academic adventures!

I cannot say that my scholarly interests have changed dramatically since the start of this semester. However, I believe I have added more to the already somewhat long list of topics that attract my attention. I was lucky that I got an opportunity to work on a literature review in one of my other courses with Dr Hogue, Foundations of Literacy (EDCI 50000), and that literature review gave me a lot to ponder. I read 7-8 articles on bi-literacy, and unpacked it under various lenses such as pedagogy, cognition and socio-cultural practices. This strategic approach opened up more avenues for me to explore. I found out that in the context of pedagogy, teachers can play a very positive role to foster and maintain our students’ bi-literacy which can have profound implications for not only our students, but also their parents and the wider community or society in general. For example, fostering bi-literacy leads to the engagement of migrant parents in the education of their children which in tu...

The event/conference that I attended during this semester was ICLCLE. It was held at the Purdue campus in West Lafayette from October 25 to October 27. I attended a number of presentations. The two that stood out to me were Content and Language Integrated Learning in Cambodia’s Higher Education by Dr Wright and Vikrant and Incorporating Sustainability in Language Curriculum Development by two scholars from Indiana University. In the first one, Dr Wright and Vikrant spoke about some of the challenges that educators face in higher education in Cambodia, and the methods that they apply to overcome those challenges. The second session was about Arabic language learning. The unique thing about this one was that the designers of the curriculum tried to incorporate UN’s principles of global citizenship in it. Both sessions were quite interactive; the presenters engaged the decent number of listeners that they had managed to garner, and answered all the questions satisfactorily. Overall, to ...

Now, this may not count as a very personal event or experience, but it was definitely a very, very meaningful moment to me. One of my students in one of the courses that I teach went to a school for his lesson observation. The task was to work with a few focal ELLs/EBs. Help them, teach them and observe the way they learn and acquire English. While working with one of his students, my student found out that the teacher at the school had labeled the child as a troublemaker. The child himself had lost hope, and kept saying that he would drop out after finishing 8 th grade. That broke my student’s heart. He decided to do something about it. He started having regular conversations with that child. He found out a lot of background information about the child. The child told him that he was looking after his younger siblings at home on a regular basis as his parents were always busy working since they had to make ends meet. The child also told him that he wanted to be a soccer player, but...

  I have always been very passionate about curriculum writing, English Language Teaching (ELT), cultural studies, identity formation & modification, role of power in educational contexts and Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC). I know it is a pretty long list, but it doesn’t end here. Since joining Purdue, I have actually added more to it. I took a course on bilingual education and gentrification. That course gave me so much to think about, and more importantly, I was able to connect the new knowledge that I gained in the course to what I previously knew regarding the role of power, gentrification and bilingualism/multilingualism. In the future, I intend to build on all this knowledge as I endeavour to narrow down a research question or questions for my final dissertation. I would love to do something related to bi-literacy/biculturalism, identity formation/modification and perhaps, the role of curriculum or teachers in relation to that. I know it’s a lot at this sta...

 Hi there everyone,  My name is Muhammad Taimur Sabih. I usually go by Tim. I don't have a lot to add at this stage, but I believe I will have a bit more to say as we get through this semester.  A bit about me: I was born in Pakistan, but I have been bit of a globetrotter as my family moved to UAE when I was only 6 months old. After that, I was fortunate enough to get constant opportunities to live in countries like the UK, Australia and New Zealand before recently moving to the US. I have two Master's: MA English Literature from Greenwich University and MA TESOL from Victoria University of Wellington. I am a New Zealand citizen, and I have a very strong research interest in Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and English Language Teaching (ELT) curriculum development. This is my first year at Purdue pursuing my PhD in Language Education & Literacy.  I guess that's enough for now - more later.  Take care! Regards, Tim