Dan Isbell
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danielrisbell.bsky.social
Dan Isbell
@danielrisbell.bsky.social
Associate Professor of Second Language Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, specializing in language assessment. Associate Editor at Language Learning journal (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14679922). Views own. https://isbell.github.io/
This part kind of blew me away. Just amazing how some people, who I probably disagree with on most things but are reasonably intelligent, just miss the incredibly obvious subtext and refuse to believe it even when spelled out explicitly right in front of them (as Carvalho did on this call).
January 16, 2026 at 9:35 PM
All the free speech warriors who go apoplectic when a professor comments on race or gender in lecture complete ignore the actual state-enforced censorship of ideas sweeping the country:
pen.org/report/americas-censored-campuses-25-web-of-control
January 16, 2026 at 1:35 AM
But then, right after discussing how difficult it is to publish in top-tier journals now, he laments that *some people* are getting hired too easily:
January 6, 2026 at 7:09 PM
Nice to be featured in Grixoni et al.'s recap of SLRF 2025 in Language Teaching:

doi.org/10.1017/S026...
January 5, 2026 at 8:09 PM
The American people do want to hear more about Dershowitz, but not for the reasons Weiss imagines:
November 25, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Regretting the Japanese class for my 2nd grader:
November 15, 2025 at 5:50 AM
The Korean National English Curriculum is not set up to get students to this point. Students get to B1-B2. Here's a short reading passage from a 2nd year HS textbook (last year before cramming for CSAT). Flesch-Kinkade grade level of 7.15, CEFR B1, 16.75 words per sentence, easier vocabulary.
November 14, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Another year, another story about how difficult Korea's College Scholastic Ability Test (수능, similar to SAT) is. This year, Kant showed up in several places, including the English portion of the exam:
www.koreaherald.com/article/1061...
November 14, 2025 at 9:26 PM
A neat tidbit in the local sports linguistic landscape... place kicker Kansei Matsuzawa, who is originally from Japan and taught himself how to kick field goals by watching YouTube vids, has his surname written in Japanese kanji on his University of Hawaiʻi jersey.
October 30, 2025 at 6:34 PM
I tried another animal emoji prompt, and apparently there are people who think the badger emoji is an anteater emoji, which people use generically for animals with long snouts?
October 15, 2025 at 11:40 PM
This is great - Gemini (my uni pays for it, might as well use it to show AI failures...) gets it right because it searches the web for recent articles, but then suggests people combine the wave and horse for seahorse, which I have no idea on.
October 15, 2025 at 11:40 PM
So I rephrased their reasoning in a question to Google Gemini (happens to be what my institution paid to give everyone access to...). Here's what I got: 2/
September 7, 2025 at 4:26 AM
I haven't and won't read the book, but like... What is this? Not the #1 threat but critical to vaguely discuss "a social norm that kicks in" on campuses while politicians who ban books, words, etc are spared from being named.
August 31, 2025 at 7:48 AM
Ian Bogost's piece on AI is sobering and worth a read, though entirely too sympathetic to AI users and too cynical regarding the entire project of universities.

To pick a specific nit: Lectures might remain unchanged for decades because the fundamental knowledge students need to know (and be /n
August 19, 2025 at 1:24 AM
August 8, 2025 at 7:18 PM
I'm in Korea with a study abroad program, and I have students take pictures of Korea's #linguisticlandscape focused on language mixing and non-Korean languages.

I also participate and share things I find.

But I don't think I'll share this one with the students...
July 22, 2025 at 10:26 AM
Clear skies in Seoul today! View from my home-away-from-home office as I work on a final project report:
July 11, 2025 at 6:48 AM
Perk of going to Korean education conferences: K-beauty swag!
July 5, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Nosek seems to qualify the need for/value of replication studies here: more critical for interventions connected to policy.
June 30, 2025 at 6:47 AM
My son and I rode big helium balloon in Suwon and walked a part of the Hwaseong wall. Fun to come back to that part of Suwon after many years!
June 7, 2025 at 11:19 PM
Test security in the nightly news here in Korea: test items and keys leaked, including English section.
June 5, 2025 at 12:44 PM
An especially good Aloha Friday yesterday! Happy to be able to continue being a part of Second Language Studies at UH Mānoa.
May 24, 2025 at 9:33 PM
Yes, even if their schools are understaffed or teachers poorly trained, children in Arizona will finally be able to get the right information about "Kill the Boers" and the never-written books of famous authors.

www.12news.com/article/news...
May 23, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Some interesting Korean language testing news: Apparently there is talk of privatizing the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK). Korean language educators and researchers are not happy about this - see screenshot below from the International Association for Korean Language Education website:
May 17, 2025 at 1:35 AM
Good news, which serves as a good reminder to donate:
May 9, 2025 at 7:05 PM