Elt magazine winter 2012

Department of Language Studies Tel +64 9 815 2945 Freephone 0800 10 95 10 www.eltmag.com

Department of Language Studies

Issue 2, Winter 2012

Unitec Institute of Technology welcomes visitors from New Zealand and around the world to use this website. By accessing and using this website you agree: 1. that the copyright in each article on the website vests in the relevant contributor of that article; 2. that the content of any article may be reproduced free of charge in any format or media for personal or non- commercial use provided it acknowledges the contributor as the author, is reproduced accurately, is not sold or otherwise disposed of on a commercial basis and not used in a misleading manner; and 3. that you are responsible for determining and clearing copyright and obtaining permissions if you wish to reproduce or distribute the contents of any article otherwise than in accordance with point 2.

ELTmagWelcome to ELTmag!About ELTmagThis ezine is funded by Te Waka o nga Reo, The Department of Language Studies at Unitec in New Zealand, and edited by Jill Hadfield, author and teacher-trainer, who is a Senior Lecturer in the department. It has an emphasis on practical teaching ideas with a global/universal appeal. The aim is to provide an counterbalance to the largely Eurocentric cultural bias of many of the materials available today. The Maori name of our Department, Te Waka o nga Reo, means The Canoe of Languages, a metaphor for the fact that, whatever our nationality, whatever our language, we are all bound on the same journey. The main section of our ezine, devoted to practical teaching ideas, has the same philosophy.

This issue contains practical teaching ideas from teachers around the world - Spain, Britain, Austria, Iran, New Zealand and Chile - including well-known authors Russell Stannard, Charlie Hadfield, Jamie Keddie, Nicky Hockly and Marjorie Rosenberg. Besides the usual features, we have two new features this issue: Into the Classroom and Weblinks. Into the Classroom, aims to bring research into classroom practice and features articles outlining a piece of research in a brief and readable way and exploring direct applications for the classroom. Weblinks provides a list of links to sites with useful materials for teachers.

Happy reading!

Jill

In this IssueLessons for all page 2 Practical teaching ideas including suggestions for teaching used to and relative clauses, listening to a youtube video, revising tenses, and using mobile phones, contributed by Jamie Keddie, Amir Abbas Ravael, Emma Lay, Marjorie Rosenberg, Heather Richards, and Clare Conway

TT Time page 9 Charlie Hadfield shares ideas on varying feedback format

Try This! page 10 Russell Stannard explores the Connected Classroom

Webwise page 13 In her regular feature Nicky Hockly introduces Glogster

Hi-Tech/Lo-Tech page 14 Joanna Smith uses Sound Recorder or Audacity to explore awareness of discourse structure

Lit Kit page 15 Jenni Percy’s regular feature on useful websites for literacy teaching

Into the Classroom page 15 Chris Baldwin explores the classroom implications of his research on error correction

Conferenceshare page 17 Thomas Baker shares some highlights from the recent Edcamp ‘unconference’

Bookcase page 18 Short and sweet: 100 word reviews

Weblinks page 18 Links to useful websites for language teachers

Submit An Article page 18 Guidelines for contributors

Enjoy!

And send in your articles for the next issue!

Tel +64 9 815 2945 Freephone 0800 10 95 10 www.unitec.ac.nz

ELTmag2012

Lessons for all An unusual recipe Jamie Keddie A reading activity based on a youtube video: Lesson type

» Language level: Pre-intermediate (A2) +

» Learner type: Teens; Adults; CLIL

» Time: 30 minutes (+ follow up)

» Main activity: Reading

» Topic: Food and cookery

» Language: The imperative

» Materials: Video + worksheet Preparation, equipment and materials

1. For this activity, you will need a short animation from filmmaker PES called Western Spaghetti. It can be seen on YouTube. To access the video, copy and paste the following link into the address bar at the top of your browser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBjLW5_dGAM

2. Make a copy of the worksheet on the last page (Mystery recipe) for each student.

Lesson plan

1. Tell students that you have a recipe for them. Give out copies of the worksheet (Mystery recipe).

2. Tell students that something is missing. Ask them to tell you what it is (answer = ingredients).

3. Make sure students understand that: » Ingredient (1) appears on the recipe five times and ingredient (3) appears twice. » In some cases, students will have to write more than a single word in the spaces provided on the worksheet.

4. While students complete the worksheet, help with any unknown words or problematic vocabulary. Alternatively, allow access to bilingual dictionaries.

5. Let students compare their answers and conduct a feedback. Pay close attention to singular, plural, countable and uncountable forms.

6. If you have students who cook, ask them if this is how they would prepare pasta or spaghetti. Find out what they would do differently.

7. Show the video.

8. Ask students to recall as many of the objects in the video as possible. In many cases, they won’t know the names and will have to rely on descriptions.

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Decide how you are going to display the clip in class. Possibilities include:

» Laptop or desktop (good for small groups)

» Computer, projector + screen

» iPhone or other mobile device (good for one-to-ones/intimate classes)

Don’t forget the loudspeakers

Common answers include:

1. Spaghetti / pasta / rice 2. Salt 3. Oil / butter 4. Garlic 5. Peppers / tomatoes 6. Bay leaf / handful of basil / bunch of basil (or other herb) 7. Spoonful of sugar / sugar lump 8. Butter / cream 9. Cheese 10. Salt and pepper


Follow up

Ask students to write out their own recipes (serious or silly). Note that they should refer to the language in the worksheet as a model for their own writing. Variation

Try to get hold of as many of the items from the video as possible (a ball of wool, a pin cushion, a dice, etc). Use these to play a game in which you pass each object around the class and in pairs, students have to think and write down something it could be used for. After this, tell students that they are going to do something completely different and then move onto the main activity. Students will be especially surprised to see the objects make an unexpected appearance in the video. Comments

» For more great animations, go to the filmmaker’s own website: www.eatpes.com

» The difficulty of this lesson plan may depend more on students’ experience or (cultural) knowledge of cooking and recipes than on the language used in the worksheet. Jamie Keddie is a European-based teacher, teacher trainer, writer and presenter. He is the founder of www.lessonstream.org, the site that was formerly known as TEFLclips, winner of a British Council ELTons award. His publications include Images in the in the Resource Books for Teachers series published by Oxford University Press. Jamie is an associate trainer at Norwich Institute for Language Education in the UK.

Mystery recipe

To prepare the ___________________ (1):

» Turn on the gas and place a pot of water on the heat » Add some ___________________ (2) » When the water starts to boil, add a handful of _________________(1) » After boiling for about 10 minutes, the ______________ (1) should look like rubber bands – this means that it is ready. » Drain the ___________________ (1) in a colander To prepare the sauce:

» Add some ______________________ (3) to a frying pan » Chop a clove of ___________________ (4) and add it to the hot ________________________ (3) » Add a few ripe _____________________ (5) and squash them with a wooden spoon » Stir the sauce » Take a _____________________ (6) (perhaps you grow this in your own house or garden), chop it up finely and add it to the sauce » Add a ____________________________ (7) to sweeten » Melt some ___________________ (8) into the sauce And finally:

» Transfer the _______________________ (1) to a plate » Add a good-sized spoonful of sauce » Grate some _______________________ (9) on top » Season with _______________________ (10) » Light a candle, sit down and enjoy your meal! Jamie Keddie 2012

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Objects in the video:

1. Pick-up sticks (a game in which you have to remove a stick from a pile without disturbing the remaining ones) 2. Plastic eyes (perhaps from a doll or teddy bear) 3. Aluminium foil 4 A Rubik’s cube 5. Pin cushions 6. A one-dollar bill 7. A dice (or ‘a die’ if you prefer) 8. A Post-it note 9. A ball of wool 10. Glitter (from a kaleidoscope) Note that some learners, especially young learners, will have little or no knowledge of some of these items (pick-up sticks, Rubik’s cubes or kaleidoscopes, for example).


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Lessons for allWe’re Relatives Emma Lay Overview

Using relative clauses with accuracy can present syntactical and conceptual challenges for many learners of English. This interactive activity aims to address these challenges and make this tricky area of grammar fun!

Aims: 1. to promote understanding of the syntax of non-defining relative clauses and the relationship between the clauses.

2. to raise awareness of punctuation and the absence of the subject pronoun in non-defining relative clauses.

Level: Pre-intermediate – Intermediate

Time: 30-40 minutes

Materials: A4-size cards enough for 4 or 5 long sentences with one card per word/punctuation mark (see below), a marker or felt-tip pen for each student.

Preparation: space in the room for students to move about and make a long ‘sentence’ line.

Language practice: relative clauses

Procedure:

1. Show students a sentence that includes a non-defining relative clause – ideally have as many items in the sentence (including punctuation) as students in the class.

2. Ask them to identify which part is the main clause and which part is extra information.

3. Give students a card each and ask them to write the sentence onto the cards. For example:

4. Ask them to then stand up and ‘be’ the sentence (the surprise element here really engages them all!).

5. Now ask students to separate the sentences into the two parts (main and relative clauses). Sometimes students will just break the sentence in half and not realise that the relative clause is embedded in the main clause.

At this point, it is useful for students to put the main clause first and the relative clause second just to highlight the ‘extra’ nature of the information in the relative clause.

6. They will have 2 spare commas and no subject pronoun for the relative clause. Ask students what is ‘wrong’ with the second sentence (no subject pronoun and no full-stop). Give them blank cards to write and add these features, replacing ‘who’ with ‘He’ and adding the full stop.

7. Ask them to remake the combined sentence. The students with the relative clause have to physically ‘embed’ themselves in the main clause, replace the ‘He’ card with ‘who’, remove one of the ‘full-stop’ cards and put the commas back in. This really gets the message across and highlights the changes that occur between the 2 original sentences and the combined sentence with the relative clause.

8. Repeat steps 1-7 with a different sentence. The students who struggle with the changing of the pronouns the most could take these particular cards the second time.

9. Repeat as required. The repetitive nature really helps to ‘drill’ the sentence structures and you should start to notice them get faster and faster at making the changes.

10. If this is going well, you could move up a notch and reverse the activity. Show students two separate but related sentences. For example:

Emma has taught in Japan. She is from Birmingham.

11. Ask them to combine them using a non-defining relative clause with each student taking a physical role in the sentence. They will have to decide which information is extra and reuse/write cards for commas and relative pronouns.

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Time: 30-40 minutes

Materials: A4-size cards enough for 4 or 5 long sentences with one card per

word/punctuation mark (see below), a marker or felt-tip pen for each student.

Preparation: space in the room for students to move about and make a long

‘sentence’ line.


Procedure:

1. Show students a sentence that includes a non-defining relative clause –

ideally have as many items in the sentence (including punctuation) as

students in the class.

2. Ask them to identify which part is the main clause and which part is extra

information.

3. Give students a card each and ask them to write the sentence onto the

cards. For example:

4. Ask them to then stand up and ‘be’ the sentence (the surprise element

here really engages them all!).

Khaled , who used to Jeddah

, wants to

work in

study finance next year .

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Time: 30-40 minutes






Procedure:





information.


cards. For example:




, wants to

work in


11

Time: 30-40 minutes






Procedure:





information.


cards. For example:




, wants to

work in


11

Time: 30-40 minutes






Procedure:





information.


cards. For example:




, wants to

work in


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5. Now ask students to separate the sentences into the two parts (main and

relative clauses). Sometimes students will just break the sentence in half

and not realise that the relative clause is embedded in the main clause.

At this point, it is useful for students to put the main clause first and the

relative clause second just to highlight the ‘extra’ nature of the information

in the relative clause.

6. They will have 2 spare commas and no subject pronoun for the relative

clause. Ask students what is ‘wrong’ with the second sentence (no

subject pronoun and no full-stop). Give them blank cards to write and add

these features, replacing ‘who’ with ‘He’ and adding the full stop.

7. Ask them make the combined sentence again. The students with the

relative clause have to physically ‘embed’ themselves in the main clause,

replace the ‘He’ card with ‘who’ ,remove one of the ‘full-stop’ cards and put

the commas back in. . This really gets the message across and highlights

the changes that occur between the 2 original sentences and the

combined sentence with the relative clause.

8. Repeat steps 1-7 with a different sentence. The students who struggle

with the changing of the pronouns the most could take these particular

cards the second time.

9. Repeat as required. The repetitive nature really helps to ‘drill’ the

sentence structures and you should start to notice them get faster and

faster at making the changes.

10. If this is going well, you could move up a notch and reverse the activity.

Show students two separate but related sentences. For example:


Khaled wants to study finance next year .

who used to work in Jeddah

12




























12




























12





























Conclusion

This works very well as a reinforcement activity, especially for students who are having problems with the punctuation and substitution of the subject pronoun for the relative pronoun. The kinaesthetic and analytical aspect highlights the structural and conceptual manipulation that needs to take place to create and understand sentences with relative clauses. One of its strengths is that it is a collaborative, learner-centred task with students working together to build their sentences, with all students playing a part. The teacher is truly a facilitator and guide in this activity and it’s great to be able to watch the activity and witness the penny drop the more they do it! Extensions

» Ask students to then write and ‘be’ their own sentences (a nice personalised touch that will aid retention of the patterns).

» Students can try to remember the sentences for homework and write them up as a record, as two sentences and then the combined version. Variations

» You can have students with the relative clauses stand closer together/sit down, stand up to exploit the activity for intonation practice.

» If you don’t have space to move about, you can do this in small groups/pairs and index cards on tables or with cards and blu-tack on the whiteboard.

» For larger groups you can have two or three sentences going at the same time or the groups racing to finish the same sentences to add a fun, competitive element.

» This can be done for defining relative clauses too as well as other grammatical structures such as cleft sentences.

» Different colour cards can be used for the punctuation marks to really get the point across and add an extra visual dimension. Emma Lay has worked in various sectors of ELT for 11 years in the UK, Italy and Japan. She teaches EAP and EFL at the University of Leicester and is interested in authenticity in the classroom, the Dogme approach and learner empowerment through involvement in the learning process. Contact [email protected] and [email protected].

Lessons for allGrammar Bingo Marjorie Rosenberg Aims: to revise tenses

Level: Pre-intermediate – Intermediate

Time: 30-40 minutes

Materials: A copy of the worksheet for each student.

Preparation: Copy the worksheet Ensure there is space in the room for students to move about.

Language practice: mixed tenses Procedure:

1. Give out copies of the worksheet and ask students to write the answers in the boxes.

2. Students then move around the room trying to find people with the same answers as theirs.

3. The aim is to find five answers that make a line (across, down or diagonal).

4. The first person to do this can shout ‘Bingo!” Marjorie Rosenberg teaches general and business English as well as exam preparation (CAE) at the University of Graz and is employed at the University of Teacher Education in Styria where she teaches ESP to ICT students. She is an active teacher trainer and holds seminars, workshops and conference presentations throughout Europe. Marjorie is a co-author of ‘Friends’, a text book for lower secondary schools and of ‘Business Connections’ and ‘Technical Connections’, course books for upper secondary professional schools in Austria. She has published ‘In Business’ and ‘Business Advantage Intermediate and Advanced Personal Study Books’ with Cambridge University Press, ‘English for Banking and Finance 2’ for Pearson and has revised Pass Cambridge BEC Vantage for Heinle-Cengage/National Geographic. She currently writes regularly for Professional English Online, the CUP website. Her newest book, ‘Spotlight on Learning Styles’ with Delta is due out in autumn. Marjorie is currently the co-ordinator of the Business English Special English Group (BESIG) of IATEFL.

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What were you doing on Saturday at 8pm?

What haven’t you done since you were a child?

What do you do every morning?

What are you going to do at the winter break?

What do you hope will happen next year?

What did you do yesterday?

What do you do several times a month?

What are you going to do next summer?

What do you do on the weekends?

What book are you reading?

How many films have you seen this year?

What are you going to do after class?

What did you enjoy doing as a teenager?

What are you studying?

Which sport have you never done?

What event do you think will be important next year?

What are you going to do this weekend?

What do you dislike doing?

What do you do in the evenings?

When did you begin to learn English?

When are you going to finish your studies?

What were you doing this morning at 9 am?

How many times have you been abroad this year?

Name one other class that you are taking.

How do you usually get to the university?

Grammar Bingo

Write your own answers to the questions. Then find someone with the same answer. Try to get five answers in a row (across, down or diagonal) from five different people. Then you can say ‘Bingo’!

Marjorie Rosenberg 2010


Lessons for allNoticing classroom diversity: Mobile phones Heather Richards and Clare Conway

Teachers’ Notes

Aim: To provide opportunities for learners to notice diversity within their own environment in the context of talking about mobile phones.

Level: Elementary and above

Time: 10 -15 minutes

Materials: One mobile phone; set of questions

Preparation: Write questions on board; group chairs in threes for student discussion. Skills

Speaking and listening Language

Present simple for describing an everyday object Culture

Making connections with own culture

Procedure

1. Group learners in threes.

2. Teacher shows learners mobile phone (preferably an older model). Say, “This is my mobile phone. I want a new one.”

3. Show questions and depending on level, check vocabulary (eg. ‘reveal’,) in questions.

4. Tell learners to talk about their phone – mobile or landline.

5. Set students off to talk in groups.

Feedback

Provide feedback on both language and culture.

1. Language: Depending on the level of the class, feedback may involve error correction; new vocabulary (eg. ‘apps’); new structures (eg. ‘I really like’, ‘I wish I had’, ‘I don’t need’).

2. Culture: Acknowledging range of phones in class (variety of models, colour, range of uses etc.) gives learners the opportunity to reflect on diversity of practice amongst classmates.

Activity

Overview

Effective lessons for learners integrate language and culture. The Intercultural Language Learning Framework (see References) provides teachers with a guide when planning lessons to develop intercultural language speakers. The framework has five domains:

» Make connections with own cultures

» Compare and contrast and make meaning

» Link culture and language

» Reflect on own culture through the eyes of others

» Interact in the target language across boundaries

This mobile phone activity can be linked to the domain ‘Make connections with own cultures’ and gives learners the

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Classroom diversity: Mobile phones

Tell your group about your mobile phone if you have one. If you don’t have a mobile phone, tell the group about your landline.

Answer these questions:

» What make is it?

» What colour is it?

» Have you got a case for it?

» Where did you buy it?

» Where do you keep it?

» When do you mainly use it?

» What do you use it for?

» How would you feel if you lost it?

» What does your phone reveal about you?

» Do you want a new phone?


ELTmag2012

opportunity to recognise diversity within their immediate environment, encouraging them to see beyond stereotypes. References

Conway, C. Richards, H., Harvey, S. & Roskvist. A. (2010) Opportunities for learners to develop Language Knowledge and Cultural Knowledge. Asia Pacific Journal of Education. 40, 449–462.

Richards, H., Conway, C., Roskvist, A. & Harvey, S. (2011). A framework for analysing observation data: Language teacher provision of opportunities for learners to develop intercultural competence. In A. Witte & T Harden (Eds.). Intercultural Competence: Concepts, Challenges, Evaluations. pp 239-252. Oxford, England: Peter Lang.

Clare and Heather work in Language Teacher Education in the School of Language and Culture at AUT University. Their research interests are in intercultural language teaching and reflective practice. They have published and presented locally and internationally.

Lessons for allWhen I was young… Amir Abbas Ravaei

Teacher’s Notes

Level: Intermediate

Time: 20 minutes

Aim: In this lesson we will look at “used to” + infinitive for past habits and states which are now finished, and contrast past routines with a present state

Language: “used to” + infinitive for past habits

Preparation: Blow up two pictures one of yourself now

and the other of you when you were younger. Or, for fun, use a picture of someone who is totally different to you, but obviously younger (I use Brad Pitt for example). Procedure

1. Engage

Stick the pictures on the board and tell the students some things about each person, using the present simple

Young me Me now Smoked 30 cigarettes a day I don’t smoke Played football every other day Plays golf once a week

Ask the students to guess some further ideas about you now and before. Write correct guesses up. If there aren’t enough correct guesses tell them some more facts: aim to get about 6 sentences in each column. 2. Study

Usage 1: Past habits/states

Elicit some sentences about the younger you, using a gap fill for the first example. e.g. I _____________ to smoke 30 cigarettes a day.

Ask for further sentences using ‘used to’ Now note the negative form i.e. “I didn’t USE to play golf” and ask for further example sentences. Usage 2: To contrast past and present

Show an example using the young you and now I used to smoke 30 cigarettes a day, but now I don’t smoke. Ask for some further examples. Study activity 1:

Put students in pairs and ask them to write six sentences about themselves that were true but aren’t true now., eg

» I used to go out a lot , but now I stay home and watch TV

» I didn’t use to like cabbage, but now I do.

» Ask students to share 3. Activate

The way we were!

First, tell them that they shouldn’t write their names on the sheets but should write male or female at the top. Students complete the activity sheet for themselves when they were 10 years old and now, filling in columns 1 and 2 only. Tell them not to write anything in column 3.

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Swap the sheets around the class and get each student to write a brief summary in column 3 from the information on the sheet they have, using both affirmative and negative of ‘used to’ if possible.

Swap the sheets randomly again, and they have to guess who the people are. Materials: A questionnaire

1Me aged

10

2Me now

3Sentence

look like

be like

favourite food

favourite TV show

clothes

hobbies

sports

Favourite music

dreams

Amir Abbas Ravaei has been an English language teacher, teacher trainer, and ELT manager for 23 years. He is also a Cambridge ESOL Speaking Examiner and runs TESOL courses at Hakim Language Institute which is the partner school of “ London Teacher Training College” in Iran.

TT TimeVarying Feedback Format Charlie Hadfield

Feedback can take place in either oral or written form, or both. I believe trainees can learn most if they receive both kinds of feedback , as each medium has its advantages and can carry a different message.

Written feedback gives the opportunity for a more carefully thought out and elaborated message which can be read and re-read and pondered on. Oral feedback on the other hand maximizes trainees’ opportunities to learn from each other and also to ask questions or clarify misunderstandings. Here are some suggestions for feedback formats that offer variety and a mixture of oral and written feedback.

1. a) Put trainees in pairs to talk to each other for 5 minutes , then regroup the pairs so that everyone has a new partner. Continue regrouping until everyone has talked to everyone else.

Ask them to give each other: one ‘praise’ one question for that trainee one question to ask the tutor later

b) Now make a circle, including the tutor. Get them to ask their ‘tutor questions’.

2. a) Ask them, individually, to formulate a question about their own practice, to share with the whole group.

b) Form a circle, and each trainee asks the question, and then each of the other trainees and tutor responds if they can.

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3. Jot down main thoughts about the lesson on the whiteboard/flipchart. Try to find 3 or 4 relating to each trainee. They can be put up in random order. As a group, together, they have to comment on the topics, and say why you have put them up, and who they might relate to. The board might look a bit like this:

4. Ask them as individuals to write down three action-plan points for each of their co-trainees for the next TP.

5. “I wish I was you” activity Each trainee singles out one or two features of their co-trainees’ teaching style that they admire/ envy/regard highly and which they’d like to develop in themselves. They tell the group in turn what these are and why. This activity can really help quieter/shyer/ less confident trainees. Usually trainees sense when a colleague is not doing so well or having a downturn, and will instinctively rally round to help in this way. Everyone leaves feeling praised and patted on the back.

6. Some TPs, not all the trainees teach. I then put the ‘teacher’ in a group with one or two ‘observers’. Teacher asks the observers about his/her performance.

With a very solid bunch, one can develop into pairs/ groups talking in terms of a) a positive comment + b) a question ? c) an action point but only if you are sure they can be supportive and practical and not negative.

7. One trainee (roll a dice) is volunteered to role-play the Tutor – what issues am I going to bring up with regard to the lesson?

8. Generally, I manage to write a set of General Feedback notes as well as their own individual ones, which I copy for them all after the TP. These are thoughts that occur to me during the TP which I feel will be generally helpful to all.If there is one outstanding issue, for

example, language of instruction-giving, we often focus solely on this and run the feedback session as a micro- teaching session. In this example, trainees could be asked to script a set of instructions for a complex activity, such as a card game or information gap activity and try them out on each other. This is particularly helpful in the early stages of TP.

9. Silence…. Make no particular comments, but see which issues are on their minds, and what they need to talk about. This is very helpful mid-course on a full-time course when they are feeling most pressured.

10. During the TP, write out small slips of paper with key topics on (similar to activity (3) above) Trainees draw a slip from the hat, and have to say how they think it relates to the lesson.

11. Looking forward: instead of dissecting the lesson just finished, start by looking at the planning for next TP. Each trainee must say what s/he will improve on next time. Charlie Hadfield has worked as a teacher and teacher trainer in Britain, France, China, Tibet, Madagascar, run short courses and seminars for teachers in many other parts of the world, and worked as a consultant for the UK’s Department of International Development, reviewing aid projects in Africa. Charlie now teaches at ELA, Auckland University. He has written several books, including Reading Games, Writing Games, five books in the Oxford Basics series and An Introduction to Teaching English (OUP). He is also the author of 4 books of poems.

Try This!The Connected Classroom-Using Technology to get students speaking Russell Stannard

There has been a general belief that technology and especially the internet facilitate listening, reading and writing skills more than they do speaking. This perception has perhaps changed to some degree with the introduction of the podcasting since it offers the chance for students to make “oral” recordings of them speaking, telling stories, doing interviews, describing places and much more.

However over the last 3 years, there has been a steady trickle of web 2.0 tools that can easily facilitate speaking. Among these are two free tools: mailVu and Eyejot, which are what are known as videocam tools. Both are available on the internet and offer excellent opportunities for students to develop their speaking skills. At the Centre for Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick, I have been experimenting with these tools and the results and

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1. a) Put trainees in pairs to talk to each other for 5 minutes , then regroup the

pairs so that everyone has a new partner. Continue regrouping until everyone

has talked to everyone else .

Ask them to give each other: one ‘praise’

one question for that trainee

one question to ask the tutor later

b) Now make a circle, including the tutor.Get them to ask their ‘tutor questions’.

2. a) Ask them, individually, to formulate a question about their own practice, to

share with the whole group.

b) Form a circle, and each trainee asks the question, and then each of the other

trainees and tutor responds if they can.

Pic of people in a circle

3) Jot down main thoughts about the lesson on the whiteboard/flipchart. Try to

find 3 or 4 relating to each trainee. They can be put up in random order. As a

group, together, they have to comment on the topics, and say why you have put

them up, and who they might relate to. The board might look a bit like this:

Whiteboard work correction of student X

posture instructions

timekeeping!!

OHP?? Jokes

SMILE! Students’ names

Grading of language

Accuracy/fluency Use of colour

TTT

pronunciation drill


outcomes are very interesting. One even more pleasing thing is that these tools are incredibly easy to use, so even the most technophobic teacher will be able to engage with the ideas I have outlined below. MailVu.com

You will never find an easier tool to use than mailVu. You need a computer, microphone and webcam. You go to the site, click on a button and then record yourself speaking. The system also videos you at the same time. You can then click on a second button, write in the address of the person you want to send the video-mail to and that is it. The person who receives the video mail, simply clicks on the link and can listen and watch you talking.

This is used a lot in business where organisations need to send video messages rather than simple e-mails. However it can also be used in language teaching. Students can prepare speaking activities in the classroom then go home, open up mailVu and record themselves speaking and then send the video-mail to their teacher. The teacher can then click on the link and listen. It opens up a whole new world ( especially for homework) where we can get our students doing speaking outside of the class and what is now important is that it is free and easy to use. The Connected Classroom

I have been working on several different scenarios with this tool and with a lot of success. However one thing is clear above everything else. The more you prepare the speaking activity in the class, the better the students will do the recordings at home. Below are 2 great ideas of activities you can do with this tool. Activity One

The first activity was with a group of 24 Japanese students whose level was probably somewhere around IELTS 6.0. The level is not that important and this activity could easily have been done in a lower or higher level class.

In the lesson I drew a time line on the board. It was simply a line across the whiteboard with a series of dates on it

1965 1970 1979 1983 1986 1988 1993 1999 2000 2007 2009 2010 2011

I told the students that these were “Important dates in my life” and I then began to talk to the students about the dates, giving a short history behind each date. It took about 10 minutes of the lesson and I encouraged the students to ask me questions to get more information. I told them about things like my first ever football match, first time I went abroad, first time I visited China, first time I fell in love, my job in Spain, winning the Times Higher award, when I met my best mate, a great holiday etc.

I then told the students to do the same thing. They had to draw a timeline and add in some dates. I also suggested they add a few notes in English to help them remember what happened at each date. I encouraged them to include anything they felt was “important in their life”. After, I put the students into A/B pairs. Student A started by talking about his/her timeline and student B listened and could ask questions and then student B talked and student A listened. I moved around the class, listening and taking notes. After I asked some of the students to talk about what their partner had said.

I then went over some of the mistakes or problems that I had noted. Obviously the students were using the past tenses a lot so I went over some of the pronunciation problems and irregular verbs. We also looked at the adverbs and how to contextualise events.

I then showed the students MailVu and explained that we were going to use it for their homework. I explained that the students had to go home, go onto MailVu and record themselves talking about their lives. They were allowed to use their pieces of paper with the dates on to help them. So it meant they had a sort of “framework” from which to work and help them organise their thoughts.

Not a single student thought that the activity I had suggested was strange and only one person complained they didn’t have a webcam. I simply suggested they did their recording on a friend’s laptop. Results

All the students did the activity. In fact many of them used up the whole 10 minutes of the recording time ( mailVu is limited to 10 minutes). As the teacher, I simply received the emails, clicked on them and could play back their video mails. I took notes on some of the mistakes and problems they were having and I gave them back their notes in the next lesson.

I found marking the work really interesting. Instead of marking an essay, an exercise or the normal sorts of things we set our students for homework, suddenly I was listening to my students speaking and telling me about their lives. I found it really interesting. I simply clicked on the link, listened and took notes as I played the video. In the questionnaires and feedback we did with the students after the activity, the students were very enthusiastic about the idea. Some even said that they were going to use mailVu for other things in their lives. In other words, the activity was not only useful for learning English but also for the knowledge they picked up about technology which they felt they could transfer to other areas of their life. I also played some of the best examples back in the lesson and we talked about why they were good in terms of the language or organisation of ideas.

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A second idea

The second idea is not my own but rather one that was suggested me by someone who had seen one of my presentations on the “Connected Classroom.”

The idea in this activity is to get the students to interview each other. It would work well in any level class but the activity I am going to describe was actually done in an elementary adults class. What I like about this activity is that it exploits the use of the web cam as well as the sound.

The students were put into groups and asked to think of all the personal information questions they could think of. They were told to think of questions in the following categories: general information, hobbies, job, education, travel. They were told to think of at least 10 questions. After the teacher asked one member of each group to read out their lists of questions. The teacher and students then selected some of the best questions and the teacher wrote them on the board.

The students then worked in pairs and interviewed each other. Student A asked B the questions and then student B asked student A the questions. The teacher moved around and took notes and after provided some feedback regarding the questions and answers.

The teacher then explained to the students how mailVu worked. The students were asked to work in pairs and to interview each other. The students were told to organise a time to use the computer rooms and do the recordings there. The computer rooms have laptops with microphones and cams. Students could either do their homework at home in pairs or meet and do the recordings in the school computer rooms. Results

The results were very encouraging. Again students really enjoyed the activity. What I felt worked here was the preparation and practice that the students had done before they actually did the recordings. One suggestion is to get the students to add two more questions to the list so that each interview is slightly different. The teacher listened to the interviews, took notes and then in the next lesson went over some of the problems the students had. The teacher also played some of the more interesting interviews in the next lesson so that students could hear what other students had done. Conclusions

MailVu ( or Eyejot) offer great possibilities for developing students speaking skills. They are very simple technologies to use and they are free and generally very reliable. They open up great possibilities for speaking. What seems to be

key to making the most of these tools is that we connect very tightly what we do in the class with what we get our students to do at home. It is this connection between the class teaching and the homework which I really like. The homework is almost an extension of the lesson and not an after thought. In fact the way these lessons are organised , it becomes an essential component of the lesson plan. This is why I like the term “Conneted Classroom” More ideas

You can use mailVu for a whole range of speaking activities. Here are a list of a few ideas

1. Get the students to talk about their typical day

2. Get the students to talk about a holiday they liked

3. Get the students to talk about their best friend ( they could even bring them onto the camera)

4. Get the students to talk about an object that is important to them. Again this makes use of the visual element since the students can hold up the object to the camera.

5. Get students to debate a topic in groups of pairs

6. Get the students to prepare a monologue around an issue that is important to them.

Many teachers have asked me if the videos can be downloaded. The way the system works, the videos are kept “ in the cloud” so with mailVu you can only play the videos by clicking on the link. However there is another tool called Eyejot which works in similar way. You can only make videos for 5 minutes with Eyejot but you can download them if you want them for your records. This can be very important if you want to build up a portfolio of evidence of the speaking skills of students. This tool is great for demonstrating student’s progress and providing evidence of how students develop overtime. Some of my ideas with MailVu and Eyejot have created a lot of interest amongst teachers who want to get their students to provide portfolios. MailVu and Eyejot can really help to produce more inventive and interesting ways of keeping a record of a students learning and development. I have been using them in my own learning of Chinese and found it quite interesting to play back examples I had made several months ago and compare them to my progress now.

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Video Help How to use MailVu http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/mailVu/index.html

How to use EyeJot http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/eyejot/index.html


Russell Stannard runs www.teachertrainingvideos.com a website that offers free step by step videos to show teachers how to use technology in their language teaching. It received around a quarter of a million visits in 2011. Russell won the British Council ELTons award and the Times Higher “Outstanding Initiative Award” for his work on the website.

WebwiseGlogster Nicky Hockly

The Internet provides a great range of free tools that English language teachers can use with students. In this second in the Webwatch series, Nicky Hockly takes a look at Glogster.

What is Glogster?

Glogster (http://www.glogster.com) is a multimedia online poster tool. You can create posters with text, images, audio and video. Glogster Edu (http://edu.glogster.com/) is especially designed for teachers, and enables you to set up accounts for students and manage these centrally. Pricing plans for student managed accounts vary, but teachers (or students) can set up free individual accounts to create their own ‘glogs’ or online posters.

What do you need?

You need an Internet connection to create a glog (poster) and to view others’ glogs. Glogs are stored online, not on your computer, so it is easy to share glogs via their web addresses. You can add ready-made media (images, audio and video) to your glog, or you can create media at the same time as creating your glog. If you plan to create media for your glog, you will need a headset with microphone to create audio recordings, or a webcam to video record or take still images on the spot. But you can also easily add any media you already have stored on your computer, to your glog.

How can you use Glogster?

» Students can create individual personal glogs about themselves, their family, hobbies or interests, and share the glogs with classmates, or use them as the basis for an oral presentation. This works well at the beginning of a new school term or year, for students who don’t yet know each other

» Students can create individual glogs about a special trip, holiday or occasion (eg. a birthday or other celebration), or a party invitation

» Students can create individual personal glogs with examples of their English work, with scanned examples of texts, photos, and audio or video recordings.

» Students can create ‘culture capsule’ glogs in small groups, with multimedia examples of cultural artefacts from their own or other cultures

» Students can create glogs in pairs or small groups with the results of research on a particular topic (the environment, animals, history, famous people or inventions, etc.)

» Students can create glogs summarising the main points in a short story, book, film, or You Tube video

» Students can create glogs with key words and images to revise a topic or course book unit

» Students can create glogs about their school or country, and share them with students in other schools or countries

» Teachers can create a class glog to collate and showcase students work e.g. videos, drawings, posters...

Some example glogs

Glogpedia: the best glogs

These are examples of glogs produced by students and teachers on a wide range of topics on the Glogster Edu site http://edu.glogster.com/glogpedia/

Personal glogs

A glog created by the author to introduce herself in online teacher training courses http://www.glogster.com/nickyhockly/nicky-hockly-glog/g-6nbhff03mb7f0eeisgm1a27

Greetings from the world

These student glogs were produced as part of an international project http://greetingsfromtheworld.wikispaces.com/

Ghost stories A glog created by a teacher to collate videos of her young learners telling illustrated ghost stories http://nadans.edu.glogster.com/the-canteville-ghost-digital-stories/

QR codes in education

A glog explaining how QR codes can be used by educators; this is an example of a blog being used as a tool to introduce teachers to new concepts http://theohiobloke.edu.glogster.com/qr-codes-in-education/

Party invitation

A party invitation glog created by the moderators of an online teachers’ association http://antolina.edu.glogster.com/invitation-to-a-party/

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Nicky is Director of Pedagogy of The Consultants-E (www.theconsultants-e,com). She is co-author of several methodology books about ICT and ELT. Her most recent publication is an e-book on Webinars (http://the-round.com/resource/webinars-a-cookbook-for-educators/), and she is currently co-writing a book on Digital Literacies (forthcoming 2012). She lives in Spain, and is an ex-technophobe turned technophile.

Hi-tech/Lo-techTeaching discourse structure Joanna Smith

Hi-tech

Level of students: Advanced

Time allowed: 2 hours in the computer lab

Aim of activity: to help students understand the concept of spoken discourse schematic structure – i.e. that certain types of conversations have particular ‘rules’ or a ‘structure’ that fluent speakers follow.

Procedure:

This activity has two parts to it – production and analysis.

Production task: In the computer lab, invite students to pair up, and use a double headphone jack to plug in two headphone sets into one machine. Alternately, if there is only one headset per computer, students will need to hold the microphone, and take turns speaking closely into it.

Tell students they are going to do a role-play. One student is a McDonald’s employee, and the other student is about to order through a drive-through window.

Tell them to record themselves having a normal drive-through ordering conversation. It does not matter what they order. They should aim to complete the conversation

within two minutes. They may like to practise once before recording. Recording can be done with Sound Recorder (free on most PCs) or Audacity (freely downloaded from the internet).

Students then save their sound recording as an MP3 file, and post it onto a discussion forum, such as can be found in Blackboard, or Moodle. Here, they can then also access their classmates’ recordings as well.

Analysis task: Allow students to spend some time listening to the various ‘orders’ that are now posted on the discussion forum from their classmates. This can bring a lot of humour. They may wish to post response comments on the discussion forum, either to their own posts, or classmates’ posts. Students then complete the following tasks:

1. Write down what is common to all the different recordings, e.g. specific items of vocabulary, (both words and fixed expressions – greetings, idioms, phrases) and structure.

2. Are any of the recordings unusual in any way? Why?

3. What ‘stages’ do you think these conversations all go through?

4. Can you develop a ‘formula’ for this type of conversation?

After discussing initial answers, show students what some researchers have come up with, explaining the stages that such ‘service encounters’ go through. Discuss with the class whether they can see the researcher’s formula working in their own generated conversations. It may also be a good idea to have a couple of back-up ‘real life’ service encounters, such as some clips from YouTube, to show and analyse, to see the formula at work, just in case the students don’t produce typical service encounter conversations. The students themselves are often able to see which conversations are ‘more typical’ than others.

Ask students whether they think that a service encounter in their own country would follow a similar pattern. (This highlights the fact that genre are usually culturally specific.)

The point of lesson can then be discussed – students need to become aware and listen to the everyday ‘formulas’ that they hear, if they want to achieve a high degree of fluency in the language. Formulas are everywhere – coffee orders, supermarket exchanges etc.

Lo-tech

This activity can be done completely ‘lo-tech’ as well, by having students write down the McDonalds’ ordering conversation, rather than recording it digitally. Students can simply share their pieces of butcher’s paper around the classroom during the analysis phase.

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The advantage of doing it orally, through recording, is that students can have a chance to listen to themselves talk in English, and compare their pronunciation with that of their classmates, and/or with their expectations of what an English service encounter should sound like. The advantage of digitally recording it, and posting it to a forum, over using cassette recorders in a language lab, is that students can access classmates’ recordings easily, and also can have access at other times, from home. Written and/or spoken responses can also be made on the forum from either peers or teacher.

When I did this activity recently, one student told me after the class that that lesson had given her an epiphany – she was able to hear each student’s accent, and see the difference that the L1 influence made. It’s important to note that this student had been with the same classmates for twelve weeks prior to this, and had never ‘noticed’ all the different accents. But the opportunity to listen carefully to her classmates’ speech, at her own speed, with no other disruptions, and with no expectation on her part to interact, was a new experience for her, and one which she valued highly.

Joanna has a background in descriptive linguistics and has been teaching English for more than a decade. She is currently a lecturer at Unitec, New Zealand. She particularly enjoys teaching various aspects of speaking, from discourse analysis to pronunciation. She’s also interested in World Englishes, and the place of New Zealand English in that mix.

Lit Kit Supporting Oral and Visual Literacy Jenni Percy

In this issue are a couple of ideas for using technology to support oral and visual literacy.

Oral Presentations

Have you ever had a look at http://igniteshow.com/, where the motto is ‘Enlighten us, but make it quick’. The concept is that a series of 20 slides auto-advance after 15 seconds, giving a speaker a total of 5 minutes to talk about a topic, using graphics to highlight the key points. While not designed for ESOL learners, higher level learners may be able to use some presentations for listening and note taking practice. Also, critical analysis of the presentations could support learners to improve their own presentation skills.

However, I have drawn you attention to the idea, because I can see the value of this type of format if your learners need to give short presentations supported by Powerpoint, Prezi or whatever. 15 seconds requires the learners to really focus on just the key ideas and be succinct and fluent. It

reminds me of the old 4-3-2-1 method of having 4 minutes to tell a story to person 1, three minutes to repeat it to person 2, 2 minutes with person 3 and finally, when you are really honed, just 1 minute to repeat it to person 4. By the final time, learner fluency and confidence is much enhanced.

Idioms

Below are links to 2 examples from a whole series of short YouTube clips (from 30 to 90 seconds in length) called ‘Quite Literally”. Produced by PearsonLongmanELT, they introduce idioms to learners in a fun way, that gets them talking about what the idioms might really mean. They can be used at many levels because the jokes are visual and they contain very little language. Once you click on the links below you will have access to many others.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS00BFRH0V8&feature=related (pull my leg) and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWZtUBKCtr8&feature=related (let the cat out of the bag)

Into the ClassroomTo correct or not to correct, that is the question Chris Baldwin

To correct or not to correct, that is the question – whether ’tis nobler in the classroom to suffer the tenses and syntax of outrageous grammar or to take red pens against a sea of errors and by correcting end them (to misquote Shakespeare, 1602).

This question has troubled us all, I’m sure – we correct their errors until our red pens have run out and we’re blue in the face, but they keep on making the same mistakes. Why does this happen? What can we do about it? I started to think about these questions when I was doing my Master’s in TESOL with Aston University (UK) and I found the research to be fascinating. Here’s a brief summary.

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Truscott (1996, 1999) makes a very strong case against written error correction, stating that correcting errors doesn’t work, and can be harmful because it can cause students to avoid trying to use hard language. He makes the point that many studies on the subject are either short-term, thereby not able to show long-term effects on language acquisition, or they do not have control groups which did not receive error correction.

On the other hand, Ferris (1999, 2004) strongly argues that correction is effective, although most of the studies she sites are only looking at short term effectiveness of error correction. My research

In order to test this myself I decided to set up a study with both corrected and non-corrected groups. I had the fortune to be teaching several groups of experienced primary teachers who wanted to teach English in their classes, so had a lot of willing guinea pigs to do participatory action research with.

I divided the classes into correction and non-correction groups, giving the students the choice of which they preferred. One of the arguments against correction is that class time used to go through and try to understand the corrections is better used to produce new writing (in line with the output hypothesis (Swain 1985). In order to address this issue, I gave the whole class an essay to write, then the next lesson gave the correction group their essays back, with an error code system used, and the non-correction group a new essay to write. I repeated this cycle seven times over a two month period.

At the end of the study I analysed the first and last essays of both groups to see if there were any changes in the number and type of error.

I also conducted a short survey to assess the participants’ attitudes and feelings towards both being corrected and not being corrected. Findings

When I looked at the total numbers of grammar errors between the correction and non-correction groups, I found that there was no difference in correctability between the groups. In order to analyse further, I categorised the errors according to type, such as simple errors in a word’s meaning, misspelling, verb tenses, syntactic errors and morphology.

I did this because both Truscott and Ferris agree that some types of error should be more correctable than others, and this categorisation allowed me to test this.

When I compared changes in errors with and without correction, I found that the simpler the error, the more correctable it is. What this means in practice is that errors like spelling, punctuation and errors in word meaning are

correctable, but grammar errors cannot improve by being corrected, in particular morphosyntactic errors, because they come from complex systems. One very good example to think about is the famously hard to crack third person ‘s’. This looks on the surface to be simple, but as it’s part of the underlying morphosyntactic system, which is very complex, it should not be correctable. We all know it isn’t, so this helps us to understand why.

The questionnaire showed that while students liked being corrected, some did admit to avoiding using structures they found to be hard. The non-correction group generally didn’t like not being corrected, but the higher level students were keener on non-correction. On the other hand, half of them said that they wrote more freely because they were not worried about making mistakes. What it all means in the classroom

The conclusion I came to is that a selective error correction strategy is needed – correct some errors, not all. The basis upon which to select the errors to correct is how correctable they are, rather than the more traditional ‘where the student is in the course’.

One of the criticisms of correcting errors is that it leads to a negative atmosphere in class – look at their faces when you hand back an essay covered in red ink. On the other hand, non-correction is criticised for not taking into account students’ desire to receive correction. This selective methodology strikes a balance between the two positions in that there won’t be too much red ink, but students will feel that there errors are being considered. They should even notice an improvement themselves in there errors, which they probably wouldn’t if many complex errors were corrected all the time.

Space doesn’t allow me to give a detailed explanation of all the implications of my study, but this is a summary:

» Selective correction is a valid methodology. » Lexical errors can be corrected.

» Simple grammar errors may be corrected, but not with elementary level students.

» Complex morphosyntactic errors should not be corrected.

» Fossilised errors should not be corrected, unless as part of a larger defossilisation strategy.

» Follow-up grammar instruction may be a way to help improve problems with complex forms.

» A positive atmosphere should be cultivated in class towards writing correction.

» Students should use corrected lexis repeatedly, possibly by re-writing and recording words in vocabulary books.

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» Students should be encouraged not to avoid difficult language.

» Simple codes may be an effective correction system for lexical errors.

If you would like to see my reasons for these points then you can download my whole dissertation from my website: http://www.chris-baldwin.com/written-error-correction.html Where in the world?

One of the aims of this publication is to give a world-wide view on language teaching, avoiding the euro-centric ideas that are often seen. When I carried out this work I was, in fact, based in Italy. Shortly after, however, I moved to Hong Kong and began to implement the suggestions above into my own teaching and training. There I found similar reactions to those in Italy in that students and teachers were a little unsure at first, but it seemed to work as they got used to it. It’s interesting to note that Truscott, noted above carried out his work in Taiwan, where you might expect students to dislike not being corrected, but he found again that after some learner training and experience that the non-grammar correction methodology worked very well. Why not give it a go - your red pens might even last a bit longer! References

Ferris, D. R. (1999). The case for grammar correction in L2 writing classes: A response to Truscott (1996). Journal of Second Language Writing, 8, 1–10.

Ferris, D. R. (2004). The “grammar correction” debate in L2 writing: where are we, and where do we go from here? (and what do we do in the meantime . . .?). Journal of Second Language Writing, 13, 49-62.

Shakespeare, W. (1602). Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act III, scene I

Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensive output in its development. In Gass, S. and Madden, C., Input in Second Language Acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 235–253

Truscott, J. (1996). The case against grammar correction in L2 writing classes. Language Learning, 46, 327–369

Truscott, J. (1999). The case for ‘‘the case for grammar correction in L2 writing classes’’:A response to Ferris. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8, 111–122 Chris works for the British Council as an elearning consultant in teacher development and is currently based in Hong Kong. He has written several magazine articles on the field of CALL and is particularly interested in the use of wikis. He has an MSc in TESOL from Aston University, UK.

ConferenceshareEdcamp Santiago 2012: An “UnConference” Report by Thomas Jerome Baker

REdCamp Santiago 2012 was held in Santiago, Chile in January. Being the middle of summer, it was hot. However, the level of excitement at this conference would have been impossible to cool down.

The high level of excitement and enthusiasm was special. Nobody present that day had ever attended a conference like this one before. Edcamp is, a “R(E)volution” in teacher professional development.

Edcamp is an “unconference”. It is free, informal, democratic, active professional development by teachers, for teachers. It makes PD relevant.

Firstly, Edcamp Santiago was absolutely free. Nobody who attended had to pay for anything. Everything was provided by a diverse group of sponsors.

Second, there were no keynote speakers. There was no preplanned schedule of speakers. There were no publishers’ stands and no vendors. Further, when you went to a session, you didn’t have to wait to ask questions. Since everything was informal, you could enter a conversational mode that would have been frowned upon at a traditional conference. You could even get up and walk out if a session did not meet your needs (The Law of Two Feet).

Needless to say, the morning went by lightning fast. After registration, everyone participated in a “Meet and Greet” activity aptly named, “Getting to Know You”. Next, Damian Rivlin made a 5 minute, “Welcome Speech” on behalf of our generous host: Universidad Mayor.

Then, using an “Open Grid”, the sessions for the day were proposed and decided on. Within 30 minutes, we registered and met other teachers. After a warm welcome from our host, we were off to our first session of the day!

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After lunch came the highlight for everyone. Using state-of-the-art videoconferencing technology provided by Microsoft, we had a live session with educators from Edcamp Delta, in Canada. Their collaboration made the day not only an unforgettable one, but also a truly remarkable example of international collaboration that will live on in everyone’s minds and hearts... Thomas Baker is an author who has written and self-published over 40 books available on Amazon. He is the Past-President of TESOL Chile (2010-2011). He is the Head of the English Department at Colegio Internacional SEK in Santiago, Chile. He is the Co-Founder and Co-Organiser of EdCamp Santiago, which was held at Universidad Mayor in Santiago. Thomas is also a member of the Advisory Board for the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL), where he serves as a reviewer and as the HETL Ambassador for Chile.

BookcaseShort and Sweet Book Reviews Jill Hadfield

Thinking in the EFL Class Tessa Woodward, Helbling Languages 2012 This innovative book provides an overview of the field of teaching thinking skills and over 80 practical classroom activities. The introduction poses the questions what are thinking skills and what types of thinking are important for language learning. It then summarizes various taxonomies of thinking skills such as Bloom’s or Costa and Kallick’s and discusses how we as language teachers can incorporate work on thinking skills into our teaching. The practical activities are divided into eight sections, each covering a different skill, such as looking for patterns, using thinking frameworks or creative thinking. The activities are imaginative and appealing and will provide a fresh new slant on English language teaching. Jill Hadfield has worked as a teacher and teacher trainer in Britain, France, China, Tibet, Madagascar and run short courses and seminars for teachers in many other parts of the world. She now teaches on the Certificate in Language Teaching at Unitec. She is the author of thirty books, which have been translated into a total of fourteen languages Her new book on motivation , co authored with Zoltan Dornyei is forthcoming this year.

Weblinkswww.eltknowledge.com In this issue we feature a brand new website set up by the well-known teaching journals, English Teaching Professional and Modern English Teacher.

It features articles from over 20 years of publishing, containing both immediately useable classroom activities and discussions and debates on various aspects of language teaching written by well-known ELT authors , together with blogs and interviews from ELT professionals.

The editors say : ‘eltknowledge brings you more than 20 years of content from two of English language training’s most respected journals – English Teaching Professional and Modern English Teacher.

Along with the wealth of archived content, eltknowledge provides users with plenty of exclusive special reports, blogs, videos and user generated material.’

The subscription for this website is modest, considering the wealth of high quality material, and free for three months to subscribers to either of the journals.

Submit an ArticleOur aims

This is a new webzine for language teachers worldwide. It has an emphasis on practical teaching ideas with a global/ universal appeal. The aim is to provide an counterbalance to the largely Eurocentric cultural bias of many the materials available today.

Regular features

» Editorial introduction to the issue’s content

» Lessons for all practical instantly useable teaching ideas with a non Eurocentric focus – eg either generally global/universal/ international or specifically Australasian. These can focus on grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, any of the fours skills, or integrated skills and be complete lessons or shorter single activities .

» Hi-tech/lo-tech Ideas for a hi tech activity and one that uses minimal resources

» TT Time ideas for teacher training and development– eg ways of giving feedback, ideas for language awareness sessions, methodology sessions etc

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Department of Language Studies Tel +64 9 815 2945 Freephone 0800 10 95 10 www.eltmag.com 19

» Webwise useful websites with some ideas for exploiting them. A regular feature contributed by Nicky Hockly

» Bookcase a book review feature – with a difference. Reviews must be short and sweet: written within 100 words!

» Try This! a report on a new technique or technology tried in class

» Conferenceshare short reports on insights and ideas gained from conferences. These do not have to be long, comprehensive or formal – just a brief account of something you found interesting inspiring or useful.

» Lit Kit practical ideas for teaching literacy. A regular feature contributed by Jenni Percy.

» Into the Classroom An account of a piece of research with practical implications. The account of the research should be short and readable, the emphasis of the article is on the implications for teachers in the classrooms with suggestions for implementing these

» Weblinks Send in links to any websites for language teachers that you found paarticularly useful, together with a brief description of the site and why you like it

Submit an article

Please submit articles for any of the categories above except for our regular features Webwise and Lit Kit following the guidelines below . Articles can be submitted by clicking on the Contact button or sent to [email protected].

Guidelines for submitting articles

Please follow these gudielines for layout:

Top Left-hand Corner: Name of feature ( eg Bookcase:) Arial 18 bold blue

Centred: Title Author: Arial 16 Blue bold

Subheadings: Arial 14 blue bold

Text: Arial 12 black

Spacing: 1.5 lines , justified margins.

If contributing a lesson idea please lay out as follows:

Teachers’ Notes

Aim:

Level:

Time:

Materials:

Preparation:

Language practice

Functions

Skills

Language

Functions

Skills

Language

Procedure

1.

2.

3.

etc Please remember to put your biodata at the end of the article. I look forward to reading your ideas!

Jill

Tel +64 9 849 4321 Fax +64 9 815 2907139 Carrington RdMt Albert, Auckland 1025, New Zealand

www.unitec.ac.nz

Elt magazine winter 2012

Education

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