Mad about ELT

What would you look like as a super hero?

2012-02-10T19:33:00.000-08:00

Answer ten questions and find out! This is me! I love it =)

Create your own at What would you look
Find other great ideas at The generator blog

Have fun!

Sharing the EVO experience - Week 5

2012-02-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

Well, we reached Week 5! It's been 5 weeks of great learning and sharing!

In our Digital Tools for the Classroom group we worked on reading and writing this week. We read some articles on technology and education and our task was to choose one of them and explore several tools to summarize the article and use our summary to write a newspaper page, a magazine cover, a brochure, a newsletter or a booklet. You can read the article I chose here.

These are some of the tools I tried:

ReadWriteThink

It's a great page for kids to create simple newspapers, flyers and brochures. I created a newspaper page (which looks rather childish I must say =), the problem was that I didn't find the way to upload a picture; apparently you are supposed to actually stick a picture once you print it.

Fodey

This an amazing page! You can create a newspaper (which actually looks like an old one) and other fun things like talking flowers or tomatoes. Unfortunately, the image of my newspaper wouldn't download, but it's a tool worth trying!

Big Huge Labs
I also loved this tool. It's great to make posters and magazine covers. This is the magazine cover I created with the information from my summary.

The last step was to publish an e-book, using epubbud. I haven't had time to do it so far but I promise I'll give it a try soon! Sounds like a great idea for a classroom project!

In our Digital Storytelling for kids group we had to choose one of the tools we'd tried before and prepare a presentation on one person we admire. I loved doing it, looking for the pictures and thinking of the text. The most difficult part was to actually choose the person! Finally, I decided on Borges, he's one of my favourite authors in Spanish (just one of the many writers I admire, that's why it was so difficult!).

Jorge L. Borges by Barbara on PhotoPeach

Well, I guess that's the end of the journey. It's been an amazing experience!!! I hope you find the resources I mentioned as cool as I did (all these are included in my scoops, on the right-hand column of this blog)! And remember EVO is held every year, starting the second week in January. I highly recommend the ride!

Thanks a lot to all the moderators, who have worked so hard,

and to all my co-participants for sharing this experience with me!

Sharing the EVO experience - Week 3

2012-02-08T17:23:00.000-08:00

I just loved being part of EVO this week! I discovered tons of interesting tools to make animated videos and work on listening-comprehension. Have a look!

Week 3 at Digital Storytelling for kids

This week we explored some tools to make video stories for children. After a great introduction to the topic by Dave Dodgson, we had a look at some essential tools, like Animoto and Photopeach, and then we plunged into animation. The moderators suggested three tools, which participants used to create some pretty impressive videos!

Go animate
Domo
Dvolver

This is a video my ten-year-old daughter created in just five minutes. She was thrilled!

Bianca's Dvolver - In the park

Also, have a look at these great videos by some of my fellow participants!

Valerica's Photopeach

Carol's Google Search

ValyD's Photopeach

Week 3 at Digital Tools for the Classroom

We worked on listening-comprehension this week. The moderators organized a fantastic "Listening Treasure Hunt" in which we had 30 minutes to explore 12 amazing websites and then choose at least two of them to create a lesson plan. The time was short, so I must admit I "cheated" and spent a lot more on each tool, really enjoying them!

Movie segments to assess grammar goals

This is a very interesting site which I've used before (actually this blog's been in my blogroll for a while). You can find short sections taken from well-known movies and exercises to work on grammar. It's an incredibly job carried out by Claudio Azevedo, the blogger behind it.

Smories

Stories for children told by children. Great idea! The only problem I found is that, while the stories are intended for children, kids in Argentina rarely reach the level of English to understand them (except for bilingual school students).

10 questions

A selection of reader-submitted questions on Time.com serves as a basis for a candid interview with major entertainers, business leaders and other influential personalities from around the world. Really great authentic input!

Listen and write
A dictation site organized by level. Great source for listening material.

Am New York
A sample of speakers from New York talking about their lives and thoughts. Great to work on accents.

Backbone
Pretty much along the lines of AM New York but with speakers of British English.

Teaching with TED
This is an awsome wiki with tons of ideas to use TED in the classroom. Although I've used TED many times, I didn't know this site. Very useful!

Wordia
Wordia is a site where you can search for specific words and find videos related to the topic of your interest. Some of the topics also include educational games.

Hope you enjoy going through all these

great resources as much as I did!

Sharing the EVO experience - Week 2

2012-01-25T16:11:00.000-08:00

Week 2 at Digital Storytelling for kids

This week was all about Sharing Stories through Comics. I loved the idea! Comics are a simple and fun way of telling stories, even for beginner students, as the language used may range from very very simple to very specific and advanced (phrasal verbs, idioms and the like).

The first great material shared by the moderators was a presentation by Janet Bianchini at RSCON3. Her slideshare contains many examples of how to use comics in the ESL classroom. Have a look!

Fun with Comics and Cartoons

View more presentations from Janet Bianchini

After having a look at how other teachers used comics in their classes, participants were expected to explore different comic-creation tools and reflect on their uses, advantages and disadvantages. The tools proposed were Make Beliefs, ToonDoo, Garfield and Cartoon Studio por Iphone and Ipad. I wrote a post on comics a while ago, so you can find my opinion on most of these tools and a few more here.

Some of the participants created very funny and reflective comics! They are all compiled in a Posterous group. You can spend hours browsing around, there are so many great strips to read!

Week 2 at Digital Tools in the Classroom

Wow! Week 2 was intense! It was creative writing time! We had to write the beginning of a story in the tool of our choice, based on some pictures that served as prompts. Then, we were asked to share our review of these tools with the other participants. These are the tools I explored; I chose the ones I didn't know or I wasn't too familiar with.

Story Starters

A Scholastics website. Just great! You can choose thelevel and then spin a wheel and get your writing prompt. I got "List thefive characteristics of a a thousand-year-old game host that only speaks inrhyme". Super cool, isn't it?

The Story Kitchen

You choose from a list of heroes, villains and places and you get the beginning of the story.I liked the idea, as writing the beginning of a story is a tough job for students (the blank page effect!). The problem I found was that the language is quite advanced and therefore over the heads of many of my students.

FutureMe

What do you want to say to your future self? Thiswould be great to set objectives and evaluate your results at the end of theyear!

Dreamdoze

Social dream interpretations. You share a dream you had and someone else writes an interpretation. It's fun! But you have to be careful because some of the dreams or interpretations include inappropriate language.

Oh life

Oh life is basically a way to keep an online journal.

After this first activity, we all collaborated to finish the stories, which turned up to be fantastic! We used Entri, Mixed Ink, Writeboard and TypeWithMe, whichare all free and very easy to use. This is a post I wrote on collaboration some time ago,where you can find some more information about some of these tools and a fewothers.

As I said, it was an intense week! Full of new resources and great contributions!

Looking forward to week 3!

Sharing the EVO experience - Week 1

2012-01-24T14:10:00.000-08:00

If you are not familiar with EVO (Electronic Village Online) you might want to start here.

Week 1 was a week of introductions in both sessions. Participants were encouraged to introduce themselves using visually appealing tools to share personal and work information. The result was great! I met teachers from many different places and discovered some nice tools at the same time!

The first task was to get acquainted with the different platforms used during the sessions (Edmodo, Posterous, Wikispaces and Yahoo Groups). Participants were also asked to create a blog or wiki to keep their personal portfolios.

The second step was to create a personal space to introduce ourselves to the group. Some of the tools proposed by the moderators were Glogster, Animoto, About.me, Flavors.me and Prezi.

I decided to use Glogster because I liked the idea of sharing links and pictures on the same canvas. Want to have a look?

This is my glog!

These are links to only a few of the many introductions shared by other participants in their blogs. Enjoy them!

Maria Angie's Animoto

Davor's About.me

Svetlana's Slideshare

Exploring English's Animoto

Sharing the EVO experience - What is EVO?

2012-01-24T13:00:00.000-08:00

EVO (Electronic Village Online) is a set of freeonline workshops dealing with a range of topics related to the field oflanguage teaching and the integration of new tools to the ELT classroom. EVOtakes place annually, over five weeks, starting on the second week of January,and it is attended by hundreds of teachers around the globe.

EVO sessions are moderated by teachers andteacher trainers from different backgrounds, according to the topic, and held100% online. Sessions are mostly hands-on workshops, where tools and resourcesare shared and participants are expected to explore them and come up with theirown conclusions and materials. The good thing is that, in general, materialsand assignments are shared on wikis or blogs so that participants can work attheir own pace. Some moderators also offer weekly webinars where doubts are clearedand questions answered. You can find more information on EVO and prior sessions here.

I chose to take part in two sessions: Digitaltools in the classroom (moderated by Carla Arena, Ana Maria Menezes and Jane Petring among othertrainers from different countries) and Digital storytelling for kids (moderatedby Shelly Terrell, Barbara Sakamoto, Özge Karaoglu, JenniferVerschoor and David Dodgson among others). I knew most of the moderatorsbecause I follow them on Twitter, and I was really excited to be able to attendtheir sessions because I knew they would be just great!

Imust say I realize now that I was far too ambitious to register for twosessions, because there are lots of tools and resources to explore and I’mfinding it difficult to keep up with the pace of both groups! However, I’mdoing my best to take every advantage of this great opportunity to meeteducators from around the world and discover new and exciting tools!

I’ll blog about this experience weekly. You are welcome to join theride!

2011-12-27T09:52:00.000-08:00

Some days ago, I came across this lovely video about teachers and the effect of a good teacher on our lives. Watching it was fun and, I must say, thought-provoking! These are some of the beautiful things that people in the video remember learning with the help of their teachers:

I learnt I didn't need to be like everybody else.

I learnt that everything is possible.

I learnt that you can approach knowledge with a sense of wonder and fun.

I learnt how to be myself.

A good teacher inspires you, invites you to venture into new worlds, changes your life. We keep repeating it and we keep forgetting it: being a good teacher is not about the academic content (at least not only about the academic content). Being a teacher is a unique opportunity to touch someone's life and a huge responsibility. I guess it all comes down to a simple question: what kind of teacher do I want to be?

We are approaching the end of the academic year here in Argentina, so I have some time to think.

Hope you have an inspiring summer!

See you soon!

Barbara

My top 10 sites to look for images

2011-10-31T14:09:00.000-07:00

This post continues from the post I previously wrote on using images in the ELT class. So where can you find interesting and useful pictures on the net? Below you will find my top ten sites when I’m looking for some inspiration. But first, a note on copyright. Remember to choose material that is royalty free or licensed under a Creative Commons attribution (some people choose to register their creations this way so they can be shared for certain purposes). You will find some more information about Creative Commons here:

Creative Commons - What, How, Why

View more presentations from Ivan Chew

My top 10 places to go for pictures

Stockxchange offers a huge gallery, with many royalty free pics, and you can also share yours.

Imageafter Here you will find a large freely licensed photo collection. You can also look for textures and and backgrounds.

At FlickrCC you can search for Flickr pictures licensed under Creative Commons.

Morguefile has a large gallery where you can contribute your own picture (Why morgue? Who knows!)

Burning well is a public domain image source, offering photographs donated by photographers from around the world.

WP Clipart is a collection of artwork for schoolkids and others that is free of copyright concerns as well as safe from inappropriate images.

EveryStockPhoto, Picfindr and Veezzle are free stock photo search engines, indexing free photos from large collections.

And, last but not least, our very own collection of pictures for teachers!

Take a photo and... is a free photographic resource intended for and created by teachers. Also, teachers contribute their pictures via Twitter. This is a great project curated by Carol Goodey, Vicky Loras, Fiona Mauchline, Sandy Millin and Victoria Boobyer, aka @cgoodey, @vickyloras, @fionamau and @sandymillin.

Enjoy!

Some ways to use images in the classroom

2011-10-31T13:52:00.000-07:00

We teachers know, probably even more than other professionals, that what the old phrase says is true: a picture is worth a thousand words. We experience the wealth of possibilities offered by visual stimuli everyday. We use pictures to teach, practice or review vocabulary, to do guided oral and writing practice, as visual clues to help in listening-comprehension and as starters for activities such as role plays and class discussions. And we choose to use images because we realize that they actually make explanations simpler, save students lots of effort and add a touch of colour to our classes. In other words, most teachers agree that they actually work!

Some ways to use images in the classroom

ZAs triggers for discussions or debates

ZTo practice descriptions

Adjectives

Prepositions

Opinion expressions

I think...

In my opinion...

I suppose...

I believe...

ZIn listening-comprehension activities, like listening to a description and choosing the right picture.

ZIn speaking and listening-comprehension activities, where a student “dictates” a picture for a partner to choose the right picture.

ZTo practice comparing and contrasting

Picture A shows... while picture B...

On the contrary, picture B...

I think picture A is more... than picture B

If I had to choose between the two...

There’s a marked contrast between...

On the one hand, i don’t think...

The main advantage/disadvantage is...

ZAs a variation of the previous activity, to work with a set of pictures with something in common (let’s say people using computers in different environments) so the discussion relates to this particular element, comparing its use in the different contexts.

ZFor students to make up the story behind the picture. Then they can use a site like Storybird to write their story.

ZAs a variation of the previous activity, students can use Five Card Flickr to get five random pictures and invent the sequence of a story.

ZTo discuss about “fixing” problems in a picture (how would you improve or change a roo, a flat, a city?)

What I kike/dislike is...

I don’t really like the...

I’m not too keen on...

I’d prefer...

I’d be more attracted to...

ZTo practice speculating and making a decision

I think it’d be better to...

I believe... should be...

It would be more convenient...

It wouldn’t be a good idea...

Don’t you think...?

ZAs starters for role-playing conversations based on pictures of people talking (students take the place of different people in the picture).

ZTo create conversations, adding text balloons. They can do this, for example, at Blabberize.

ZPlaying Snap (to find pairs of pictures that match)

ZPlaying Piggy goes... (students pass one card to the left or right and try to find the four cards that match or are related)

ZPlaying Who’s who? (students guess the character by asking yes/no questions and using descriptive vocabulary)

ZListening to a song and putting pictures in order

ZPlaying Partial pictures (where you show part of the picture and students have to guess the name of the object)

ZCollaborative writing (students are given an unrelated picture to write a pragraph in groups and then they have to work with other groups to make their paragraphs fit in a larger story)

ZUsing maps to practice directions and negotiating meaning in information-gap exercises

ZUsing graphic organizers to revise and recycle vocabulary

The list is by no means exhaustive,

but simply offers some suggestions t

hat might encourage some fresh ideas.

You are welcome to share them here!

Guide to writing an academic paper

2011-09-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

Wow! It’s been more than a month since I wrote my last post! I’ve been so busy lately that I hardly noticed! Anyway, I’m back! I promised my students to write this short guide to academic writing ages ago. With the beginning of the new academic term I’ve regained forces so here it is!

WHEN WRITING AN ACADEMIC PIECE OF PAPER...

The number of sections and amount of information that you are expected to include in a piece of writing depends of course on the kind of work you are doing, the degree you are working towards, the length expected and some other things, but the following is intended to help you with some general doubts you might have when you start your paper.

WHAT YOUR PIECE OF WRITING MUST INCLUDE

1. Title page

University

Course title

Lecturer (s)

Essay title

Your name

Date

2. Table of contents

This is necessary if you’re writing a relatively long piece and/or if you have different chapters or sections.

3. Introduction

This is a crucial part of your writing. Provide a brief description of the topic you are planning to address and an outline of how you plan to tackle it. Keep it reasonably short (one page tops). Do not include any discussions of the topic here, just state what you are going to do later.

4. Literature review

Are there any research studies relevant to the topic? Describe and, if possible, evaluate them.

5. Methodology

You will have to write this section if you are carrying out a study. Describe your hypotheses and discuss the methods, design and subjects of your study.

6. Data analysis

Analyze your data. You may include graphs, tables and other visual aids here.

7. Discussion

Discuss and summarize the results of your data analysis. If you haven’t carried out a study, this is where you discuss your topic, put forward arguments to back up your ideas, etc.

8. Conclusion

Summarize what you have done in your essay and evaluate what could be answered and what could not. This can be suggested as necessary subsequent research. Although the conclusion is a fundamental part of your writing, keep it short. You are not supposed to discuss your results here, you did that already in the previous section.

9. References

Include all the sources that you have cited or mentioned in your essay. Remember that failing to cite your sources is considered serious misconduct in any academic setting. You might find this post I wrote about citing useful.

10. Appendix

Include tables and graphs that you haven’t included in the running text here. You can also include questionnaires, texts and any other material that that you have used in your study.

REMEMBER!

Be to the point! Sometimes it’s hard to cross things out if you've spent a lot of time doing research and writing them up. However, if you somehow ended up with material that is irrelevant to your essay, you must let it go!

Be careful with plagiarism! Acknowledge both direct and rephrased quotes and always give credit to the sources or your ideas.

Write in a non-sexist way. Don’t use man as a false generic, adopt non-sexist terms for job titles (eg. sales agent instead of salesman), use the pronoun they instead of he, or otherwise provide both the feminine and masculine pronouns (eg. the student should be asked if he/she is comfortable with the test before it is carried out). However, be careful not to overdo it! Here you can find very interesting examples of people who are not so happy about political correct language.

Finally, proofread your paper! Always re-read everything when you finish and check for typos, grammar mistakes and possible inconsistencies in the organization of your headings, subheadings, examples, tables, etc.

Hope this helps! See you soon!

Politically correct language: yes or no?

2011-09-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

I must say I’m not a big fan of politically correct language myself. I mean, I don’t think anyone after Foucault would doubt that language does create reality and that language is used to exert power and dominate those who happen to be in a weaker position. And of course I’m all in favour of respecting differences and the rights of the minorities (although, you see, I even dislike the term minority because I perceive it as discriminatory itself).

But I’m sure all of us can see that we can use language for power or discrimination without necessarily using politically incorrect language (so if I decide to “let someone go” I’m definitely using my power to cause someone a terrible problem, even if I choose not to say: “hey, you’re fired!” . And we can use political correct language and euphemisms to conceal politically incorrect actions (so “the rebels were neutralized” sounds better that “the rebels were executed/murdered/killed” and that might make someone feel more at ease with the idea that they were executed/murdered/killed, but it doesn’t change the fact that they were executed/murdered/killed).

Anyway, it’s a very serious subject and we could debate it for hours. Guides on how to use political correct language, especially in academic settings, are all over the place, but some people actually write against its use. Interesting links:

Guides on PC language:

Guide to non-discriminatory language Salford University

Guide to non-sexist language University College Cork

Against PC:

The poverty of postmodernism

Political correctness and free society

An A-Z guide of PC madness in modern Britain

Writing in a politically correct era

About Spanish:

¿Es sexista la lengua española?

El cyberespanglish y el español neutro en la red

Enjoy!

Any questions, class?

2011-08-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

Funny and sad at the same time, isn't it?

Twitter mania: why join the craze!

2011-07-29T08:27:00.000-07:00

When I talk to other teachers and teacher trainees about how I think they should get a Twitter account, I can see that most of them have more or less the same ideas about it:

It’s difficult!

Actually it isn’t! Once you get the basics, you realize it all comes down to choosing whose ideas you’d like to read and which things you find interesting enough to share with your followers! Of course there are a couple of Twitter-specific tools and it has its own language (follow, RT, # and other terms), but they are actually quite simple once you get used to them. Here’s a very good introduction (which I got from TW, of course =)

10 steps to kick start yout Twitter network

It’s overwhelming!

I have to agree here. It’s overwhelming, especially at the beginning. There’s so much going on on Twitter! So many interesting people, so many resources shared, so many webinars and chats offered. You have to choose! There’s no way you can profit from it all. So choose!

I can’t see how it helps profession-wise!

It depends on who you follow really. We are dealing with social media here, so the social part is really important. But the treasure of Twitter lies in the fact that you get to interact, share ideas, help and being helped by like-minded professionals around the world, people you would never have access to otherwise!

I’ve only been on Twitter for some months now and, I must admit, I’m more of a lurker for the time being, although I’m gradually starting to take part in conversations, discussions and the like. However, I feel Twitter has started to change my career! I learnt so many new things, tried so many new tools, read so many thought-provoking discussions and reflections! Here are some examples of the things I learnt in the last couple of weeks only:

@edutopia compiled this great list of online tools and resources that kept me busy for some days.

@Onestopenglish provided a link to an archive of free online games and activities for different levels.

@SimpleK12 offered several webinar sessions on great tools to integrate technology to the classroom.

@TeachingEnglish provided a link to a range of free ELT publications by the British Council.

@The ConsultantsE tweeted an amazing list of TED talks categorized by speaker, title and summary.

I read a fabulous presentation posted by @tombarrett: "37 ways to use Search Engines in the Classroom".

Thanks to @harrisonmike I got to know that many of the IATEFL BESIG presentations had been uploaded here.

And the list goes on!

Twitter can totally transform your professional life!

Comments on your Twitter experience most welcome!

The magic power of sounds

2011-07-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

I thought of two different titles for this post: "The magic power of sounds" was one of them; the other was "Too bad we teach our kids to write in a foreign language too soon". I decided to go with the optimistic one.

My five-year-old daughter has been exposed to some English at kindergarten for a couple of years (she’s at “preescolar” now, her last year before primary school first grade). She’s starting to learn how to read and write in Spanish, so my house is full of sticky notes of different colours here and there with words and numbers on them. In her English lessons, they speak and sing songs and recite short poems. They don’t read or write any English yet.

Yesterday, she gave me a present: a small paper with the names of an English family (which they had mentioned at school). The names she had written were MAM, TAT, TOM and LITTU BABY. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that TAT was actually DAD and LITTU meant LITTLE. I thought "wow, this is interesting!"

Our /d/ sound in Spanish is not plosive. In fact, it’s much more similar to the sound in they than to the sound in day in most contexts. So what seemed obvious was that she was perceiving an extra force in the sound in dad, different from Spanish d, which she could only accomodate as a t. Along the same lines, she quite evidently hears some kind of dark l in little, which she interprets as a u. This is great! She’s acquiring sounds!

Trust me: next year, when she starts writing in English, she will say thad (for dad) and litel (for little).

A pity, isn’t it?

Comics are fun! But are they a useful resource in the EFL class?

2011-07-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a colleague some days ago about the fact that most of my adult students don’t seem to be interested in writing (I must say secretaries are the exception!) and how they keep saying that “they only want to speak”. The ideal class includes as little grammar as possible and writing is confined to homework (which many times they don’t do). My friend then said: “Have you tried comic strips?” “Well no, I’ve never been the comics type (as a learner or reader). And... for adults?” But she was pretty convinced that they are an effective way of working on visual storytelling, so I set out to test her hypothesis (rather skeptically I must say =). These are my results!

The first step was to learn how to create a comic strip myself, so I needed to become familiar with a couple of sites offering easy and quick ways of making your own cartoons. I started my tour at Toonlet. My 9-year-old daughter was with me and she wanted to try. The result was amazing! In minutes she came up with this beautiful strip in English (she is a Spanish speaker, she learns English at school).

I felt like trying with my adult students now! We'd been working on the language of meetings and one of the topics we'd dealt with was interrupting, so I thought the topic was appropriate and making a comic might be a fun way of practising it. And it was! They had a good laugh and revised the relevant vocabulary and phrases while doing some writing as well. This is one of the cartoons they created:

Loved it!

So my conclusion so far seems to be that comic strips are a very interesting resource to:

Use language when the linguistic resources are limited (even beginner students can write a comic, as language displayed can be very simple).
Work on dialogues and reflect on the specific properties of oral speech while writing at the same time.
Reflect on values such as responsibility, politeness, etc.

Other sites to visit:

ReadWriteThink Comic Creator

This tool is intended for students from kindergarten to high school. It is very easy to use, and you get access to a printable PDF to draft and revise your work before creating and printing the final strip.

Marvel Comics

Students can create a comic strip or book using Marvel's super heroes and villains.

Chogger

Students can build a comic using their own webcam pictures. There's also a tool to turn the contents of any webpage into a comic.

Bitstrips

Create a comic with famous characters and lots of different scenes and text bubbles.

Garfield Comic Creator

Great fun for fans of Garfield!

Enjoy!

Fun with words Part II

2011-07-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

I came across some fab sites since I wrote my post on word clouds a couple of months ago and, as I'm both a vocabulary fan and a compulsive sharer ;) here they are! Definetely worth a look!

Worditout
Just copy or paste text and you'll get great clouds.

Wordsift
Make your clouds and then change them by changing the visualization criteria.

Tagul
Very easy to make clouds with gorgeous forms.

Tagcrowd
Very easy to use, you just copy and paste to visualize in different fonts and colours.

Lexipedia
You introduce a term and get definition, usage and related words.

Quintura
This is a search engine that shows results in the form of a cloud. Also check out Quintura kids

Have fun!

Pronunciation matters!

2011-06-10T12:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, there is such a thing as an International English and, yes, it’s good to know that our “Englishes” are accepted and even appreciated for their contribution to worldwide communication. But I’m sure many of us would still agree that good pronunciation is important, not only to speak more clearly and communicate more effectively, but also to discriminate sounds and process language better and more quickly when we hear.

There are quite a few pages with resources to study and practice pronunciation online, and others with nice ideas to use in the classroom. Here’s a short list of resouces I’ve used at different times.

A Course in Phonetics by Peter Ladefoged

You can listen to and practice minimal pairs, work on stress and watch movies to see how speech organs actually move when producing a sond, among other things. Audio available for British and American accents.

Antimoon

Find a chart with all English sounds and their IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols and short introductions to topics such as sounds and word stress. They also offer specific software to learn and practice (not free and American accent only).

English Pronunciation Podcast

You can find free English pronunciation and accent reduction lessons here. Mostly American English. (By the way, I think podcasts are always a great resource to improve listening skills and pronunciation!).

BBC Pronunciation Tips

Downloadable videos and posters to work on different sounds and interactive chart (you click on the chart to listen to the sound).

Plato

Plato means Place the Tonic. You listen to an utterance, mark the nuclear tone as you hear it and get feedback.

Toni

Toni helps you recognise English nuclear tones. They use terms I don’t think we use in Argentina any more (like low rise, low fall, etc.) but it’s good to work on the recognition of falling and rising tones.

IViE Project

Audio examples of different speaking styles and regional varieties (British English).

Sandy Millin's blog
Sandy has compiled a very interesting list of authentic listening resources, with accents from around Britain.

Phonetics Focus

Great site from Cambridge English Online. Lots of games and activities.

Sounds of English

Pronunciation activities to do with your students (poetry, drama, games).

The necessary question that comes to mind is: how much pronunciation should we teach and practice in our classes and how much progress should we expect?

It’d be great to hear your opinion on this!

Some musings on kids and self-esteem

2011-05-30T15:44:00.000-07:00

Over the last few months I had the chance to talk to many teachers working at both public and private schools in Buenos Aires and I heard some recurring complaints: teaching at primary or secondary school is virtually impossible, real life has little to do with the setting we are trained to teach in, episodes of violence at school are commonplace and kids don’t seem to relate to their teachers or mates in any way. It is frequent to meet teachers who find themselves working as counsellors rather than teaching the subject matter of their expertise. This seems to be a widespread reality in Argentina, across the board in different social classes, types of school and regions.

One way of looking at this issue would be to come to terms with the idea that, in the 21^st century, we are there to teach much more than subject matter, that –whether we like it or not– what we do with these kids everyday affects their lives enormously. We are not only language teachers; we have to prepare students to pass the tests of life.

This idea is not new. Different approaches to emotional education evolved from the insights developed in Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (1993) and Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence (1995). These two books sparked unusual interest when they were written, as they provided a detailed picture of what many teachers started to see and perceive as a shortcome in traditional education systems.

I feel that many times, when dealing with this issue, we fail to ask a crucial question: why? (I’m going to use he here for the sake of practicity, no sexism intended).Why does a kid insult or beat a classmate? Why does he turn into the class bully? Why does he refuse to talk to the teacher? Why does he look withdrawn and absent in class? Why has he lost the will to learn, to investigate, to acquire new knowledge and experience?

Probably because he doesn’t know or recognize his own emotions, or because he hasn’t been taught to feel empathy and respect for others, or because he hasn’t been taught to take responsability for his own behaviour. Mostly, I think, because he doesn’t have enough self-esteem to feel he deserves something GOOD.

The question of self-esteem in kids is doubly fascinating and challenging for me, because I’m a teacher as well as a mum. How can we help our kids build up their self-esteem? How can we contribute to their developing genuine, lasting self-confidence? These are questions I often ask myself and I must confess I’ve done some reading on the subject. I know this is a major topic and we can’t jump into any simple conclusions, but there are a couple of things that have stuck after my readings. How can we help them?

By stimulating their curiosity and encouraging them to try out different things
By trusting they will do things right and letting them try by themselves
By showing them how to talk about their feelings (by talking about ours!)
By having our senses ready to detect and encourage their natural talents
By praising them for their achievements
By helping them to face their fears
By letting them be the independent beings they are meant to be
By understanding that nothing good may come out of ill-treatment

I recently came across a very thought-provoking video on how to boost self-esteem in kids, which I’d like to share here. After watching it, I added a new item to my list: “by giving them as many poker chips as we possibly can”. Watch the video and you’ll see how!

When the chips are down

See you soon!

Bárbara

Collaboration, that good old friend

2011-05-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

One key word of the web 2.0 era is collaboration. The term relates to a new way of using the web, with applications that facilitate the sharing of information and building of common spaces by people who work together, are fellow students or haven’t met at all! The social component of web 2.0 is so important that we often refer to it as Internet’s social revolution.

As I was browsing through a couple of blogs and webpages, trying to learn some more about collaboration tools and how to use them in the classroom, I realized that we teachers intuitively know the meaning and acknowledge the value of collaboration in our everyday practice, when we:

Encourage participation
Create favourable conditions for knowledge and content sharing
Propose activities in which interaction is crucial
Ask our students to work in pairs or in groups
Emphasize the importance of listening and accepting the opinion of others
Step back and watch how our students learn from peers in a non-hierarchical structure
Offer them tools to negotiate and come to an agreement with their mates
Organize projects for them to work together with a common aim

Sooo, good to know this is not new! As with many other things, it’s a matter of applying new tools to our pedagogy (I always favour a pedagogy-first, tool-second approach) and having our eyes and minds open because we might come across some refreshing, challenging ideas as well!

There’s loads of collaboration tools on the web! I selected a few, which I found interesting and potentially useful to work with in the EFL class (I’ve included others in my Resources section).

Writing, editing, revising

Titanpad

Different people can work on one document simultaneously. Everyone gets their own colour so changes and comments are easy to track.

Type with me

Several people can work on one document at the same time and the text is synchronized as they type so that everyone sees the same text. You can save revisions and share the document at any stage of the process.

Scribblar

It works as an online multi-user whiteboard that allows audio, chat and file sharing.

Notaland

It’s a free, open canvas where you can collaborately create presentations and scrapbooks by using videos and other web content. It also allows interactive chat.

Dabbleboard

Online application centered around the whiteboard. You can draw as you would on a real whiteboard to visualize and share ideas and text.

Storytelling

Storybird

Create short, beautifully illustrated stories, share and/or print them.

Tikatok

Intended for children to create, illustrate and publish their own books.

Our story

Create stories on a collaborately timeline. You can also add photos and videos.

Xtimeline

Web-based tool to easily create and share timelines with pictures and videos.

Tabblo

Use styled templeates to create stories with photos and text.

Wallwisher

A digital wall where you can stick and rearrange notes, photos and videos.

Social networking in the classroom

Edmodo

Safe microblogging platform that imitates the way social networking is carried out outside the classroom.

Todays Meet

Create and name a chatting room of your own, use live stream to make comments, ask questions and get or provide feedback.

Chatzy

Create a chatting room for you and your students only. Very easy to use.

Class projects

Weebly

Create a free class website. You can manage different accounts, work on homework and provide feedback online.

Working with words

Lexipedia

Your students submit a word and Lexipedia identifies their part of speech, provides definitions and word families.

Crappy Graphs

Web-based tool to create beautifully coloured graphs and Venn diagrams. Once you finish you can save your graph and you are sent a link to see it whenever you like on the site.

Nice tools! Any ideas of specific activities to put them to use?

Cheers!

Great sites: using videos, movies and the news in the classroom

2011-05-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

Lessonstream

Tons of activities based on videos (YouTube, TED, etc.), organized by grammar goal, vocabulary area and level of students. Also, keep updated by following Jamie Keddie on Twitter @lessonstream

Movie segments to assess grammar

Movie segments with activities to work on grammar points through a variety of exercises. Includes printable worksheets.

Breaking news English

Lots of activities based on the news, updated every couple of days. Also includes listening and speaking activities. On Twitter: @SeanBanville

Enjoy!

Beware of the P word: plagiarism!

2011-05-01T15:42:00.000-07:00

Every year I ask my students at college to write a short paper on a given topic and each time we do this, we need to tackle the question of plagiarism and discuss proper ways of citing sources. This is a problem in Argentina, because we are never taught to do it at school. Students copy and paste information without bothering to cite the source. Sometimes, even teachers distribute handouts and materials without acknowledging the source. So when students get to college and have to write essays, they need to acquire the habit of citing and actually learn when and how to do it. This is a simple guide I’ve written for my students but there’s lots of information on the web (links recommended at the end).

Learning when and how to include references and quotations in your writing is an indispensable skill in academic life. Including references is an important part of your writing, not only because failing to cite the source of your ideas may be considered cheating and penalized as such (remember there are codes of practice that aim at protecting intellectual property), but also because a good command of this skill will help you in two main ways:

(1) It shows the amount and quality of your research, indicating the reader that you know the subject matter and that you have chosen relevant and appropriate materials.

(2) It indicates how you developed your own position by supporting or challenging others.

To cite or not to cite: that is the question

The first important thing you need to learn is when to cite. The general rule is: when you are referring to something that is considered common knowledge in your field, you don’t need to cite. If, on the other hand, you are referring to an analysis developed by someone with specialist knowledge on the topic, you do need to cite. When you are quoting verbatim, you always have to cite. Let’s see some examples:

If you are studying Linguistics and in your paper you refer to Universal Grammar (UG) and you say something like, “we assume a set of principles that are common to all natural languages”, this is common knowledge to anybody with an elementary knowledge of UG (and if you are writing an essay on Linguistics, we can assume your audience will have this kind of elementary acquaintance with the subject matter). Therefore, you don’t need to cite.

However, if you mention the fact that “in Welsh there is no morphosyntactic marker of inherent genitive”, you are definetely referring to a specialized analysis carried out by someone in particular, which is not common knowledge to the majority of your audience, therefore you do have to cite the source.

Finally, if you want to use the exact words used by the original author -either because you need the voice of an accepted authority to reinforce your ideas or because you want to avoid misinterpretation of the original material- you always have to acknowledge the source.

Now, sometimes you may have doubts as to whether the information you are citing is common knowledge or not (where to draw the line is precisely one of the most difficult things to learn). So when in doubt, cite. You won’t be penalized for citing too much, but failing to credit ideas is considered serious misconduct.

How to cite in the running text

There is not only one way of quoting and referencing academic work but several styles, although in general we aim at consistency of style within a given field. I will briefly discuss the APA (American Psychological Association) style, which is commonly used in Linguistics (you will find links to references manuals of other styles at the end of the text).

The APA style is widely used in Psychology and the Social Sciences. It follows the author-date system, i.e. when you cite in the running text, you must include the surname of the author and the year of publication of the cited work. If you are quoting verbatim, you must add the page number where that specific sentence is to be found. All sources cited are found in the References section at the end of the paper, where they are listed alphabetically. In this style, footnotes are used to provide information that is not essential to the text, not to provide references. Some examples:

One or two authors:

White (1986) hypothesized that second language learners initially adopt the L1 parameter value.

Some studies are consistent with the claim that the L1 value is the first value adopted but that it can be reset later (White, 1986).

Dulay and Burt (1974) found a common accuracy order in the production of a set of grammatical morphemes of Chinese and Spanish speaking children.

It was thought that a set of “universal cognitive mechanisms” (Dulay & Burt 1974:52) applies to both native and nonnative language acquisition. Note that 52 is the page number here.

Schachter claimed that “one’s knowledge of the L1 has as much influence on the learning of an unrelated second language as on the learning of a related one” (Schachter, 1975, cited in Schwartz, 1995:17). You haven’t actually read Schachter; you are citing something that Schawrtz cited.

Three, four or five authors:

Further research has drawn attention to the fact that these structures emerge gradually based on input (Clashen, Eisenbeiβ & Vainikka, 1994). First time you mention them.

This author takes a position similar to that of Clashen et al. (1994). Subsiquent citations.

Quotations of more than three lines should be indented as a separate paragraph, with no quotation marks and usually in a smaller font size. An example:

Whilst one may suppose that the first language learner has an unlimited number of hypotheses about the nature of the language he is learning which must be tested (although strong reasons have been put forward for doubting this) we may certainly take it that the task of the second language learner is a simpler one: that the only hypotheses that he needs to test are: ‘Are the systems of the new language the same or different from those of the language I know’ ‘And if different, what is their nature?’ (Corder, 1967:168)

How to build your Reference List

All sources cited in the text must be listed alphabetically in the References section at the end of the paper (if there is more than one reference by the same author, order these chronologically). This list must include books, articles, academic papers (published or unpublished), websites and any other kind of source that you’ve consulted and cited when writing your paper.

What should be included:

- Author’s surname

- Author’s first name or initial (but be consistent!)

- Year of publication

- Title of article or book

- Place

- Publisher

o If the reference is a book, thesis or dissertation, italicise.

Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

o If the reference is an article in a journal, use plain style for the title of the article and italics for the title of the journal. You must also give the volume number and the page numbers.

Anderson, S. (1982) Where is Morphology? Linguistic Inquiry 13:571-612.

o If the reference is an article in a book, you must provide the full reference of that book: name of the editor, title of the book (in italics), volume number (if applicable) and page numbers.

Chomsky, N. (1993) A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory. In K. Hale and S. J. Keyser (eds.) The View from Building 20. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. pp 1-52.

o If the reference is an unpublished thesis or a manuscript, say so and provide the name of the relevant institution.

Schwartz, B. D. (1987) The Modular Basis of Second Language Acquisition. Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation. University of Southern California.

o If the reference is an article from an online journal, provide as much information as you can (author, name of the journal, URL and retrieval date).

Jacobsen, J.W. (2001) A history of facilitated communication. American Psychologist, 50(2): 750-752. Retrieved August 25, 2001, from http//www.apa.org/journals/ jacobsen.html

There are a few online tools that you may find useful when compiling your Reference List. For example, you can build your list, save it and adapt your references to the citation style of your choice. You might want to try one of these:

Bibme

Citation Machine

Find out more:

Taking your first steps in social networking

2011-04-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

I really liked this introduction to learning and teaching in the 2.0 era, by Jason T. Bedell. Some of the points he covers:

Starting and growing your PLN
Why Tweeter?
Social Bookmarking
Blogging
What is an Unconference?

Hope to convince some of my students to take the plunge!

Professional Development 2.0

ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) / EIL (English as an International Language)?

2011-04-11T14:37:00.000-07:00

There was a very interesting discussion on #ELTchat last week about the widespread use of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) or English as an International Language (EIL) and its implications for the classroom. More specifically, those who participated discussed what kind of English we should be teaching. Is it OK to stick to a standardized English (mainly British or American) or we should take into account that nowadays English is a tool for communication mainly among non-native speakers around the world, and adjust pedagogy accordingly? Some colleagues felt that the field should accept and incorporate EIL variations in classrooms, textbooks and materials, as this is the English students most probably hear and use outside the classroom.

I agree that incorporating EIL in the classroom is a good way to make students feel they are legitimate speakers of the language, it contributes to their “claiming of the language for themselves” and therefore helps enormously from an affective point of view. I also think it’s a good idea to raise awareness of the fact that English is a language spoken around the globe by people with many different backgrounds, ideas and beliefs. When it comes to developing oral skills I have second thoughts, though. I have the impression that exposing students to EIL is more appropriate for ESL students than for EFL environments such as Argentina. Here we actually learn English as a foregin language, we learn it in classrooms and many times our students have little or no opportunity to use the language outside the classroom for meaningful communication. Almost all the exposure these students get to the language are to a non-native speaker, i.e. the teacher (who is, generally speaking, also Argentinian). That's why I’m a big fan of materials that expose them to native speakers’ accents, fluency and vocabulary richness, and I often find myself looking for audio material and videos to supplement textbooks.

I must say this #ELTchat was really thought-provoking as I realized so many native teachers were much more relaxed than me on this point. But then, again: isn’t this because their students have exposure to their (the teacher's, I mean) native language in the classroom? As a NNEST (non-native English-speaking teacher), I’m constantly looking for sources of native English because I believe this raises the bar for me and challenges me to go for more. I guess this is what I want to offer my students.

Anyway, these are the webpages where I look for material. By all means add others!

You Tube

Everyone knows You Tube, of course. There’s plenty of material, you can find some very good things and some very bad things as well! For example, after a unit on Introductions or Job Interviews, I might use one of these:

How to properly introduce yourself at a job interview

Accenture: how to impress at interviews

TED

I just love TED. It’s all high quality content, although sometimes a bit too specific on a certain topic (and therefore over the heads of many of us) and sometimes quite long. I choose short talks on topics I know will engage my students, generally business-related. The following are some on motivation and success:

Richard St John's 8 secrets of success

Success is a continuous journey

Vimeo

Vimeo is a website where people share the videos they make. There are good quality videos on a huge number of topics. Some of them don’t actually show people speaking, just music; I use these for inspiration (but not listening of course). The following is one I've used to help my students talk about habits or things people do:

A day like today

Veoh

Lots of videos arranged by category. Also TV interviews and movie trailers.

5min

Also arranged by category, it contains many business-specific (sales, marketing, investing, etc.) videos.

Current

TV shows, reviews, trailers. All about showbiz!

Funny videos:

Break

Funny or die

If you don’t have the chance to work online, you can download videos from many of these pages to your computer. Try here: Savevid

In the following websites you can find videos specifically made for language practice. They are generally followed by questions or exercises you can use if you feel like it.

BBC

British Council

Just adults today. Any ideas of resources to work with kids? Please add them to the list!

Barbara

More on wordle.net

2011-03-28T15:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a Google doc compiled by Tom Barrett (@tombarrett), in which many teachers worked collaborately suggesting classroom uses for Wordle. Most of the slides have the name of the teacher who added it, so there are lots of Twitter usernames to follow if you find the activities proposed appealing!

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhn2vcv5_157dpbsg9c5

Food for thought

2011-03-26T15:06:00.000-07:00

A student of mine sent me this wonderful, thought-provoking video and I couldn’t help linking it to some of the arguments presented by Sir Ken Robinson in many of his talks and in his recent book, The Element.

In case you don’t know him, Sir Ken Robinson is a creativity expert who has extensively dealt with issues related to education in the last years. He puts forward a key question: why don’t we seem to get the best out of our students? He proposes an answer: our education system is outdated, based on ideas that no longer work and pursuing goals that are not valid in our present world. Our system suppresses creatitivy and stifles diversity. He calls for a radical re-think of our school systems and a re-evaluation of terms such as intelligence, achievement and success.

The following is a great animation of one of his famous talks, Changing Education Paradigms. It’s not ELT-specific but I truly believe it’s worth watching for every educator. I also highly recommend his tweets: @SirKenRobinson.

Do you work with young learners? Do you agree with him?

See you soon!

Mind mapping

2011-03-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

I was first introduced to the technique of mind mapping during my English Language I class at Joaquín V. González. I had a wonderful teacher -María Alejandra Martínez- who was very inspiring in many ways: she was energetic, fun, she knew her stuff and spoke beautiful English! There’s an unimaginable amount of vocabulary to learn at Language I (phrasal verbs, adjectives for people, adjectives for places, false cognates and the infamous “ways of” speaking, walking, holding and others). So after each unit or so María Alejandra asked us to do what she called a “network”. Surprisingly enough, this was the first time I used this technique, as I had never been told about it in all those years studying English! I was fascinated! Finally something that worked for my learning style! For, you see, I have never been good at studying from “linear” summaries, I’ve always needed to “manipulate” the information, change the appearance, re-write, re-order, add drawings, etc.

Basically, a mind map is a diagram used to represent words or ideas connected to a central and more prominent key word or idea. The words are generally arranged according to their importance in relation to the main concept and are organized in groups, branches or bubbles. Actually, it is a tool for your students to study from, so I guess any design is valid as long as it works for them! Lots of examples (mainly business-related) here:

http://www.mind-mapping.co.uk/mind-maps-examples.htm

I often ask my students to make mind maps and most of them find it really engaging and helpful to remember new vocabulary. Personally, I love hand-made ones, but I’ve noticed that many of my adult students (especially Business English students) enjoy making their maps using on-line resources. There are many websites offering mind mapping software (in most of them you can download a free trial version); here are just a few:

If you work with adults:

http://www.edrawsoft.com/freemind.php

You can choose from quite a few different designs (bubbles, brainstorming diagrams, flowcharts, etc.) and it’s easy to use because you start working from a template. You have to download the software (free trial version available).

http://www.mindomo.com/

I think this is one of the most popular. You have a tutorial online and you can download a free trial version.

http://www.mindgenius.com/
Business oriented. Free trial version available.

http://my.hrw.com/nsmedia/intgos/html/igo.htm

You can find very good templates here, some of them with great teacher notes and ideas. But you have to print them out and complete them yourself (I mean, it’s not a software).

If you work with children:

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/

Here you will find graphic organizers (not really mind maps) to work on stories, plots, comparisons and fun activities like crossword puzzles. Activities are carried out online.

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=2983

Great for reading-comprehension.

Now, here’s a tool I absolutely love! It’s for us -teachers- to present vocabulary in a new, different way. You can make vocabulary posters, work on vocabulary frequency on texts, manipulate words so that students see a lexical item once and again, etc.

http://www.wordle.net/

Wordle is a tool to generate word clouds from any text that you upload. It organizes words according to their prominence and frequency in the text. You can save your clouds to the gallery or print them out, but you can’t download them to your computer. Here's a cloud that I created with the words on this post. I printed it out and then scanned it:

http://www.tagxedo.com/

With Tagxedo you can create word clouds with many different and funny shapes. You can print them or save them to your computer. Here’s the shape I made with the text on this post =)

Working with words is fun!

So you are a teacher...

2011-03-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

In the about me section, I argue that sharing is a fundamental part of teacher development. I also mention that I’ve organized teacher development sessions for teachers of English and Spanish. Now, what do we talk about when we talk about teacher development?

After four years (at least!) of studying English Language, Grammar, Literature, of practising your Phonetics in front of a mirror until you sound like the Queen Mother, of trying to come up with the most enlightening and dynamic lesson ever for your Methodology class... you got your degree! You are a teacher of English! Yeah!!! It’s been a long trip and you finally reached your destination. Well, yes. But a new journey begins, a life-long journey called teacher development.

What is teacher development? In what ways is it different from teacher training?

Basically, teacher development is all up to you. It is not compulsory, you don’t follow an external agenda (i.e. you don’t have to comply with requirements imposed by somebody else). It has to do with your own growth and development of insights. It has to do with the activities in which you choose to get involved in order to develop your professional competence as a teacher. It includes (but is not limited to):

keeping up-to-date with recent developments in the ELT field
reflecting on your own practice (aiming at being capable of monitoring, criticizing and defending your actions)
networking

So how do we actually do these things?

By attending talks, conferences, workshops (not only ELT-specific ones, but also those about disciplines that give us interesting tools, such as NLP, counselling, etc.)
By keeping updated with relevant literature (books, journals, magazines)
By belonging to professional organizations and specific interest groups
By getting in touch with other teachers! At work, at conferences and seminars, and also on the web!

Did you know that there are hundreds of blogs run by English teachers? Native, non-native, experts, newbies... Then you’ve got Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and... There’s a whole professional networking universe in your computer, just waiting for you to take the plunge!

So here is my first recommendation:
You can start at http://www.kalinago.blogspot.com/. Karenne Sylvester is (for me anyway) like the goddess of ELT bloggers. She writes interesting stuff, she’s funny and she is a native speaker (which is a plus for us, non-natives). She also has lots of links to other interesting sites.

Enjoy!