FreeRice vocabulary game

Here's a worthwhile cause, freerice.com and a vocabulary game you might like to try out on yourself.

For every word you get right, the site donates 10 grains of rice to the starving in the Third World, via the United Nations, paid for by advertising on the site. On Novemeber 21, 3,256,135,000 grains have so far been donated.

I'd suggest that the vocabulary is probably going to be too difficult for most of the learners you teach and (from their point of view) it isn't exactly very high frequency stuff, either.

But you might try it out with a Proficiency class -- but it really is that sort of level. It might also be a starting point for a discussion...

More evidence that Google is Evil ,- ) !

My husband... Now would that be "Google search" or "I'm feeling lucky"?

Ananova.com's bizarre news "Quirkies" section is one of my default start pages -- partly because some of stories amuse me greatly and partly because there's often a text there that you can use in class.

Among the headlines this morning, "Wife's £5m Google surprise":

A woman is suing her husband after she Googled his name - and found out he had won £5m on the lottery. >> Full story

What could you do with such a text...?

• Before reading, you could speculate from the headline what the story might be, something which you might do in pairs, with each pair then telling the whole class "their" story
• During reading, you could get people to determine which pair they think got closest to the actual story, which can get them to read more closely, and gives a natural reason for "talking about meaning"
  
• After reading, there are any number of discussion points that might come up -- do they believe the story, what can they guess about the people involved, have they ever "Googled" their own names (or those of their spouses!)
  

Persuade your learners to change their default start pages to a website where they are going to get themselves some reading (or listening) practice -- it's one of the most useful things you can do for them!

Teaching Teenagers

A book I read a long time ago and now wish I'd included as one of my list of 10 ELT books your Mum could get you for Christmas: Teaching Teenagers, by Herbert Puchta and Michael Schratz or "Teaching Teenagers: Model Activity Sequences for Humanistic Language Learning", to give it its full title.

I've personally never been much good teaching teenagers -- I've not got the patience for it, apart from anything else. But if you have to, and many of you teaching in private language schools will have to, read this book. It made me look at my teenagers in a different way: teenagers aren't wild animals (no, really!), they're human beings, too.

I can't remember now who first suggested the idea to me, or whether or not it was in this excellent book, but the vital thing about teenagers is not their attitude to learning English (or to you), but your attitude to them. Treat them like wild animals, and that's how they'll behave...

It takes something special to get on with teens; whether you've got that or not, ask your Mum to get you this book -- and get yourself some attitude!

>> Buy it on Amazon.co.uk

50 Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story

Another link, suggested by Ana Falcon, that came to my mailbox in the ELTECS Latin America news list -- 50 Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story.

I think storytelling -- getting your learners to write stories, to tell multimedia stories -- is one of the most interesting things you can do in a language class. Apart from the obvious opportunities for learning and using language that such a project provides, it's the creating things aspect of it that attracts me -- and it's one of the best possible uses we can make of technology, as it takes much fuller advantage of the potential of technology than, say, seeing and using the Internet as a bank of images for use in class.

You want good group dynamics in your class? Get your learners to create and share something together.

The article (or wiki, to give it its proper term), contains lots of useful ideas and links, including links to audio, images and video available under Creative Commons licences -- ie. that you can use without infringing copyright.

The author, Alan Levine, has the commendable rule that "the media files you use in your story have to be ones that are licensed or shared with permission to re-use". However, my suggestion would always be that your learners create their own images, audio files, etc.

The more they create themselves, the less they steal from other websites, the prouder they will be of their work; the "pride in creation" is wonderful for motivation, for wanting to learn...

>> ELTECS news lists
>> More good stuff in your mailbox
>> Creative Commons
>> More on digital storytelling
>> Er... What's Web 2.0?

More image links and ideas for using them

Yet another useful link from Larry Ferlazzo's amazing collection, to Nations Illustrated, which has over 7,000 images -- free for non-commercial use -- organised by countries of the world.

I like Larry's idea of exploiting the fact that you can send the photo's as e-cards to a friend (or your teacher)... Perhaps you could also have your learners create a story based on a series of e-cards sent to you from different places around the world...?

Note also the "play puzzle" feature, if you're a jigsaw puzzle fan, which allows you to turn the images into jigsaws. I wonder if you could have people doing that in class in pairs, perhaps with one person having the original picture, which their partner isn't allowed to see... Or have them work together to work out how the puzzle must fit together logically ("that bit must go there", "that can't be right...").

>> In the same post, on About.com, Thirty Free Image Resources on the Web

Role playing games for language learning?

Third World Farmer: Wheat and corn are planted, but I can't afford a chicken, and my kids are sick...

The (free) online role-playing game Third World Farmer is one I'd come across before, and one I'd recommended to language learners -- as one they might like to play in their own time, outside class. In reading, and understanding, and responding to the instructions, I think they would learn some English, in an enjoyable game, which might also heighten their awareness of some of the problems people in the third world face.

But maybe in fact it's one that you could use in class with learners... I very much liked the ideas for using the game on Nik Peachey's blog.

We should be using technology "not just to play but to learn language", as someone (Gordon?) who came to my CELTA session today suggested. Nik suggests getting people to do such things as compare strategies, rate and debate the game... There is "language" in the understanding and playing of the game and a lot more language (and interaction) in talking about the game...

You want to build that "after-the-technology" stage into your lesson plan.

More sources of (good) images

Things that matter to me... the pictures of my kids in my wallet

In one of the CELTA sessions this week I mentioned the website of the freebie newspaper 20Minutos as an alternative source of images. They have a great Fotogalerías section, which is a much better source than Google-is-Evil if you are looking for topical photographs, especially ones that will be relevant to Spanish students.

An alternative is Yahoo News, which has a similar, magnificent news photos section.

Newspapers have a vested interest in providing quality images; Google has zero interest in the quality of the billions of images it steals from other websites.

I still think that an even better alternative is for your learners to create their own images (above, another one someone took during the session Wednesday -- my own kids, so I gave myself parental permission to publish ,-) !

A single digital image... plus text!

Things that matter to me...

In the CELTA session we had this morning I suggested a project using a digital camera -- and the image above is one that one of you took.

What I would suggest is passing the camera round from pair to pair and getting the learners to take the pictures, and then writing about each other's objects (which will lead to more interaction than if they just write about their own object...). In our session, we didn't have time to produce the texts, but basically the text would involve writing about why the object photographed means a lot to your partner.

Incidentally, among the pictures taken this morning there were some lovely pictures of the photos of your kids which some of you had in your wallets. I chose not to publish them, and picked the one above, because -- on the grounds of privacy issues -- I'm always very reluctant to publish images of children (and would never do so of my young learners without written, signed parental permission).

The original idea came from techlearning.com and we've used it with people learning Spanish at IH Barcelona, publishing the text and images on our En mi bolsillo blog.

Videos for learning to use technology

This one came to my mailbox from one of the ELTECS news lists.

It mentioned a post on Nik Peachey's Learning technology teacher development blog for ELT, which referred to the materials on teachertrainingvideos.com.

Teachertrainingvideos.com has lots of things of interest, particularly for ELT, for anyone looking for something to "help them to incorporate technology into their teaching".

A possible alternative would be TeacherTube.com.

Nik Peachey's blog is similarly of interest, covering a wide range of the technologies available to us.

Great new things from a great ELT site

TeachingEnglish.org.uk, possibly the best site on the Web for ELT...

One of the first things I do every morning is check if there's anything of interest in my RSS feeds [explanation] -- what useful new content might have appeared on websites I know are interesting, but haven't got the time to check.

Via RSS, I track the excellent TeachingEnglish.org.uk site, which this morning has three new things of interest:

1. An article on presenting new language
2. An article on how to set up a class magazine project (something which, personally, I would suggest you do online with a blog)
3. A question: What makes a good teacher?
   

In the case of the latter, there aren't currently any answers -- but I think it's a great question, and questions are things that, as teachers, I think we should keep asking ourselves about our teaching and our learners learning. The talk section on the site is an interesting one...

If you already have an overdose of information, and RSS sounds like a further dose, you could set TeachingEnglish as your default start page. As you can see in the image above, you would have spotted those three articles this morning.

Me, from A to Z

Not so well-known as the big ELT publishers, Delta Publishing has an excellent "Professional Perspectives" series of resource books for teachers (image, right).

My favourite is Chandler and Stone's The Resourceful English Teacher, which has lots of practical ideas on how to use things like the OHP, video etc (though an update -- or a new title -- to cover the Internet would be an idea).

I also like some of the ideas in Chris Sion's Creating Conversation in Class ("Student-centred interaction"), including "Myself from A-Z", which suggests having them create an "A-Z of your own life", which might be a great way to have people get to know each other at the start of the year, as it will reveal a surprising amount about yourself.

As is pointed out, you need to give a few examples, which can be "trivial, personal or humorous". I found it surprisingly difficult to complete an A-Z of my own life, but don't think it matters if your learners can't. My own examples:

• A is for...?
• B is for Barcelona, where I've lived for over 25 years
• C is for cycling, which is one of my great passions in life
• D is for drawing, which is one of the other things I enjoy doing most (though perhaps doodling would be the correct term...)
• E is for...?
  

The book seems to suggest a "whole class" presentation, but small group, or pairs, might work better, I think.

It's also something that might work well on a class blog, on which each learner could post (and update) their own...

10 great ELT books your Mum could get you for Xmas

10 really useful books for English teachers... Your Mum (or your Gran) always buys you socks for Christmas, or knits you scarves in colours you wouldn't be seen dead wearing? Here's some better ideas...

In each case, I've provided the Amazon.co.uk link, if you want a copy (free p+p if it's going to a UK address).

1. The most useful ELT book I've ever read... 1000+ Pictures for Teachers to Copy, Andrew Wright (Longman ELT) [Amazon]
2. A book you really should read... How Languages Are Learned, Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada (OUP) [Amazon]
3. A book you really need to read if you teach them... Teaching Languages to Young Learners, Lynne Cameron (CUP) [Amazon]
4. Try it, kids love it... Drama with Children, Sarah Phillips (OUP), [Amazon]
5. Kids love this too -- and you want stories, not "games", if you ask me... Storytelling with Children, Andrew Wright [Amazon]
6. For any of you doing private classes... One to One: A Teacher's Handbook, Peter Wilberg (LTP) [Amazon]
7. A great introduction to another specialised field... Teaching Business English, Mark Ellis and Christine Johnson (OUP) [Amazon]
8. Vocab, not grammar, is what is really vital, some people say... How to Teach Vocabulary, Scott Thornbury [Amazon]
9. No, I really want to spend Christmas reading a really good, useful book about grammar... Teaching Tenses: Ideas for Presenting and Practising Tenses in English, Rosemary Aitken (ELB Publishing) [Amazon]
10. Need to teach yourself English grammar...? About Language, Scott Thornbury [Amazon]

Now all you need to do is get your Gran on to Amazon!