I have just had an amazing time in Rome at TESOL Italy's 35th National Convention. The theme was "Language Flows".
I would like to say a huge thank you to TESOL Italy organisers for putting on a fabulous action-packed 2 days of exciting talks and presentations. I will do a feedback summary of the talks I attended as soon as I can. I learned soooo much, and met so many people from Italy and abroad. I want to write my incredible experience down, so that I can share all the excitement and "buzz" with my readers.
As promised, below is my presentation from TESOL Italy's 35th National Convention. You can see it in full screen if you press the icon on the slideshow. Thank you to all the teachers who came to my talk. It was lovely to see you in Sala Antioca on Friday at 2.15pm.
A little taster of what I will be presenting soon in Rome at TESOL Italy. I've been having some fun experimenting with www.photopeach.com, one of my favourite sites for using photos.
I enjoy teaching everyday English, or "natural" English. The reason for this is that students often arrive in England ill-prepared for the kind of spoken English that is heard in everyday situations."It's so different to what I've studied back home," students often complain. "It's like a different language!" The following examples below are the sort of phrases that puzzle students when they hear them in England for the first time.
What is this "innit" I hear everywhere? Somebody stopped me in the street and asked me for a "ciggie". Why do people say "Cheers, mate" all the time? Why do young people say "I'm not bothered". I heard someone say they were having bangers and mash for their dinner. I often hear "Are you gonna watch the footie tonight?" What is" footie"?
The "Y" Factor I would like to share one lesson I will be doing next week. The focus will be on groups of words which end in -y or -ie. These tend to crop up a lot in everyday conversation.
I introduce the topic by reading out the dialogue below at normal speed, without showing the words. It is a dialogue, which I actually heard a few years ago. I then ask my students to tell me what the dialogue was about. I am usually met with some bemused looks!
A Bickie, Polly? B Cheers, mate! A Choccy bickie? B Oooh! Fab! A Here you go. B Cheers, mate. A No probs!
I ask my students to "translate" this brief dialogue into more formal English:
A Would you like a biscuit, Polly? B Thanks, my friend. A Would you like a chocolate biscuit? B Ooooh! Fabulous! A Here you are. B Thank you! A My pleasure.
The next stage is to get students in groups to brainstorm words that the students may have come across, which feature these 2 particular endings. Groups then feedback to the whole class and words are written up on the board.
Using Authentic Materials Next I ask students to stand up and look around the classroom walls, where I have stuck some articles from newspapers/magazines/the Internet, which show concrete examples of words or phrases ending in -y or -ie. In pairs, students jot them down in their noteboooks and they try to work out the meaning from the context. General open class feedback follows with definitions and explanations of the 20 or so words from the authentic materials. I have copied some examples below, taken from the Internet:
Bring in the barbecue and get out the brolly - the heatwave will end today with thunderstorms. And temperatures will plummet to a chilly 13C (55F) in the North next week.
C
Gourmet tour of Britain:Nicholas Roe enjoys a foodie safari through the UK countryside.
A Cider Route Tour will let you roam through the sweet-smelling orchards of Herefordshire
Hastings has a reputation for serving up good-quality fishPhoto: CORBIS
One of the most enjoyable ways of exploring the highways and byways of Britain is to follow a regional food trail - of which there is an ever increasing number. These involve touring restaurants, farm shops, delis, vineyards and cider producers in some of the most scenic areas of the country. Here's a selection to whet the appetite this summer.
Via the Telegraph
D
Taxman demands share of Oscars goodies
Lavish Oscar gifts are set to be taxed. Those who hold a rose-tinted view of the entertainment industry may wish to look away now. It turns out that the eye-poppingly expensive gifts showered upon the film stars who present the Oscars are not given purely out of a spirit of generosity.
America's tax authorities are cracking down on the "goodie bags" handed out to awards presenters, which now frequently include luxury holidays, expensive hi-tech gadgets, designer clothing and even free laser eye surgery, and are valued at up to $100,000 (£53,000) each. The free items are a marketing tool and a de-facto payment for the stars' services, the internal revenue service insists, so do not count as gifts and are liable for tax.
Further Practice
I then have a few more activities to practise the new words. For example, a wordsearch created on www.puzzlemaker.com. Students have to find the 17 words in the puzzle. The answers are directly below.
H U T R T R K W G J X W Z H H R U H C S Y C C O H C G I C Y J W Z C R A T J H S X H U E G R I B D Y B B J K W D I B W C E P I B U E I N R A S E P B U S E B B O M E P V H H C J I W B U L A I R Y L L K M B Z E S E U O F L L P E E K W G L M Q Y I S D T E G Z K E P C O M L C F T Y I C T J E Q B B R U U L O H O I E F O Y R K I B Y U Y F M G O O V L L L K C E N N B W G F O F B O S I C K I E W H T Y L V J F F C D Z Z Y C J U O F L P K G R J V X L L Y Y
H + Y + + + F + + + + + Y + + + O + L + + + R + + + + L Y + E + O + L + + + E + + + L M + + I + D + E + + + E + + O M + C + T + I C T + + + B B R U + + O + O I E F + Y + + I B Y + + + M G O O + L + + + C E N + + + G F O F B + S I C K I E + + I + D Y B + + + + + I + W + E + I B U E I N R A S E + B + + E B B + + + + + + + + + I + + U L A I R Y + + + + + + E + H + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Y C C O H C + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
I create a set of flashcards with the words above and the more formal equivalent eg
TELLY = TELEVISION BROLLY = UMBRELLA COMFY = COMFORTABLE etc
I hold up the informal words and students shout out the formal words. I then hold up the formal words and students shout out the informal words. I do this slowly the first time round, but much quicker the second time.
Memory games can be played by placing all the cards face down on the floor. In teams, students have to pick up 2 cards to make pairs. The team with the most pairs, is the winner.
Story building Write each new word on a small bit of paper. Put them in a hat. Go round the class inviting a student to pick a card from the hat. The student has to begin a story using the word. A second student picks out a word and has to continue the same story incorporating their word and so on, until all the students have taken part in the group story building activity. Depending on the number of students, I sometimes get them to repeat the same story several times verbally and then ask them to write it up using the words as a visual prompt. For this activity, you may like the students to create their stories as a newspaper article. The Newspaper Generator from fodey.com is excellent for this purpose. See an example below:
Students could create a wordle of their stories and then exchange them with other pairs/groups of students who then have to guess the context of the story.
Students could also create short dialogues to practise the new phrases and read them out to the class.
I would love to hear how you would teach the group of words I have selected in this post.
Being a very inquisitive type of person, I couldn't resist trying out a new Web 2.0 tool which I have just read about in the July 2009 edition of Modern English Teacher. Russell Stannard has written an article called "Web 2.0 for ELT" and in it he describes 5 exciting Web 2.0 sites he has enjoyed using. I liked the sound of ToonDo and decided to look into it. Below is a very simple cartoon that I was able to create in seconds. ToonDoo is an amazing resource and I believe students would have great fun creating their own comics or books. Russell Stannard has made an excellent video on how to use ToonDoo on his Teacher Training Videos site. I will be studying this video lesson very carefully and hopefully I will create my own book soon!
Making phrasal verbs fun is quite a challenging task. Today I did a session with my primary school teachers and used a variety of activities and techniques. Creating a quiz with phrasals is excellent for collaborative group work.
Have a go at the following review quiz:
How would you feel if your holiday plans FELL THROUGH? What does OTT STAND FOR? If my car is a WRITE-OFF, can I use it? Do you need to BRUSH UP your phrasals?
Can you unjumble the following questions and then answer them?
RED GOES WITH COLOUR WHAT?
TO ARE FORWARD YOU HOLIDAY ON LOOKING GOING?
TO UP ON DID WERE YOU YOU YOUR USE YOUNGER PARENTS WHEN CHECK?
EXPECTATIONS TO IN UP LIVED HAS YOUR ENGLAND LIFE?
DOWN YOU COLD DOES GET WEATHER RAINY?
The phrasal verb Dvolver scenes above were created in a matter of seconds!
Teaching colloquial English in the correct context is of great importance for language learners. Numerous "slang" lessons have evolved from what I have heard in person on the street or snippets gathered from the telly or the Internet. I am always looking out for examples to use and demonstrate in the classroom. In fact, there is a future lesson idea in all sorts of everyday situations that I encounter. I have just read an article from Yahoo news entitled "Mucky Pup Saved In Dramatic Toilet Rescue" and couldn't resist doing the quick newspaper clipping generator activity above from www.fodey.com.
Vocabulary a pooch: a dog the loo: commonly known as the toilet/lavatory in UK English a toddler: a young child that has started walking (poetic licence used in my article) a pup: a baby dog mucky: dirty a "plumb" job: a play on the word plumber/plumbing. A plum job = a fantastic job draining: a play on the word "drain" and an adjective meaning exhausting flush the toilet: pull the chain so that water will engulf the contents down the drain
Lesson Exploitation Ask your students if they have ever had a "sticky" situation occur with a pet of theirs or heard of an unusual story in the news about someone else's pet. Have the students compare their stories and then get them to vote on the most unusual one mentioned in the class. Students quickly read the above newspaper snippet and analyse any new words in context. Ask them to predict the full story before reading the article. Once the article has been read and new vocabulary has been reviewed, students can do a short summary writing activity.
Ups and downs are the usual ingredients of the hurly burly of life. The past few weeks have been a roller coaster. Riding high in the clouds one day, lying low the next. It is so easy to lose track of one's direction if one is not focused enough. One needs rugged determination, powerful will and extreme dedication to fly high. I feel I am "back in the groove"!
A Holy Familiar Reunion Today the family celebrated my nephew's First Holy Communion at Corpus Christi Church. It was a wonderfully joyous occasion and it was made extra special with the presence of my dear mother. She was able to leave OCE for the whole day for the first time since she had her devastating accident four months ago. She is a walking miracle. I am very proud of her progress and her zest for life, which remains incredibly undimmed.
The Black Boy A truly amazing celebration lunch was served in a new eaterie in Headington called The Black Boy. The choice of menu was varied and the meal I chose was perfect in every way. The portions were generous and everything was homemade. One thing that really stood out was the great attention to detail. Everything was organised to a high degree. Abigail Rose was the "hostess with the mostest" and ensured that everything went off smoothly and without a hitch. A lovely personal touch was that my mother and aunt were provided with lovely, plump cushions to ensure that they were sitting comfortably. Absolutely nothing was too much and we were looked after very well indeed. Would I recommend The Black Boy? Yes, indeed. It is tucked away in a beautiful corner of old Headington and has a long and varied history. I believe it will definitely become the "in" place to dine. If you are ever in the local Oxford area, make sure you drop in to sample the delicious food and at the same time, unwind in the relaxing atmosphere.
Language in Motion I am now busy compiling examples of slang words that I come across in newspapers/magazines and of course, the Internet. This is in preparation for my Primary Teachers' Refresher classes called "Update your English" which I will be doing for the Lake School of English in July . The English language is constantly on the move and as a teacher of EFL, it is vital to keep up with what is happening. One of my favourite sites is wordspy.com. How many of these words in the Top 100 have you come across? I admit, there are a lot that are new for me, too!
WAGS in the News Just today I saw this eye-catching headline about Posh Spice wanting to "ditch" her WAG image in order to appear in Vogue Magazine. To "ditch" something means to get rid of something/remove something, which you no longer want. WAG stands for the wife and or girlfriend of a famous footballer. It is now not so cool to be known as a "WAG".
There is an old saying "you make your bed and you lie in it". The literal meaning is that if you make your bed in a bad way, the consequence would be you would have an uncomfortable night's sleep. The metaphorical meaning, however, is that you have to live with the consequences of your own decisions and actions, so it's best to think carefully before doing something. In the following story, copied from Yahoo news, we have both the literal and metaphorical meaning.
Dumped mattress lands cash in trash in Israel
"A stash of cash landed in the trash when a woman in Israel dumped her mother's mattress not knowing it was stuffed with the equivalent of about one million dollars.
Israeli media reported that the 40-year-old woman showed up at a garbage dump in a panic on Tuesday, looking for the valuable bedding.
She had bought a new mattress for her mother and, wanting the gift to be a surprise, threw away the old one. She then found out the decades-old mattress contained her mother's life savings.
Workers are helping her search the garbage, but have found no sign of the cash so far".
An Unfortunate Surprise For many years the mother literally made her bed and lay in it and unknown to her daughter, was stuffing the mattress with approximately one million dollars, only to have the daughter unwittingly throw the mattress out one day because she wanted to "surprise" her mother with a new one! Oh dear....
How would you feel if you were the mother? How would you feel if you were the daughter? What is the moral behind this story??
Vocabulary To "stash" something means to hide something secretly
To "trash" something means to put something in the rubbish bin. "Trash" means rubbish.
"Dosh" is a UK slang expression for money.
Twitter has been voted number one top learning tool of 2009 in a recent poll published by the Centre for Learning and Performing Technologies. I decided to set myself the challenge of creating a little dialogue about the top tool of the year after reading Nik Peachey's excellent "Quick Shout Blog" where he presented how to make comic strip cartoons by using Make Belief Comix.com. I was inspired to create the comic strip above. It was quick and very easy to do and I had a lot of fun! Please click on the cartoon to enlarge it.
Twitter and Colloquial Expressions twitterless: being without twitter tweetless: being without a "tweet" (a message on twitter) a twit: a silly person twitter on: go on about something tweetie pie: a play on the endearment "sweetie pie" cheers: thanks no probs!: no problem! a doddle: very easy, a piece of cake
Onestopblogs I found out today that Janet's Abruzzo Edublog has been included in Onestopblogs!. I feel greatly honoured to be amongst other illustrious ELT bloggers and it's a very proud moment indeed. I hope to continue publishing posts that will inspire teachers and students of English.
Kalinago English Blog Today has truly been fantastic. My blog has been mentioned in kalinago English Blog under the posting "Best Articles Circulating the Blogosphere - May 2009". I am happy that I am doing what I love and I am experimenting with new web 2.0 tools and trying to keep up in my own modest and very simple way.
Guess the Idiom The picture below is a clue to an idiom which you might think applies to my writing about the two mentions above. Can you guess it???
The film above consists of a little dialogue created in just a few minutes. I was inspired by Nik Peachey's "Quick Shout" Blog post about Dvolver. For students, this scene would be a nice introduction to the new expressions used by the two characters. I am sure students of any age would really enjoy making their own short mini-dialogues to practise slang, idioms or other vocabulary areas.
I have just been inspired to create another Xtranormal movie after watching Russel Stannard's excellent video tutorial. It was simple to create and fun to do.
I would use the above short video extract as a listening activity to introduce the following colloquial expressions, or as a vocabulary review activity:
BLING OTT DOSH NO WAY! COST A BOMB
Once the students know the meaning of the words I would ask them to make up their own mini dialogue using the above and then act it out in front of the class. An alternative would be to get students to create their own video film in small groups or pairs and then view them open class. I am certain students would find this sort of activity challenging and great fun.
Have a go yourself and see what you can produce and then report back here, if you like. Good luck!
For some unknown reason, I seem to like the word "bling". I have just read this article about one police force in England warning the general public not to wear too much "bling". As I like wearing a bit of bling on occasions even in the garden (cheap costume jewellery from second-hand shops, I hasten to add!), would I be stopped by the Gloucestershire Constabulary if I happened to be walking around Gloucestershire in my usual attire?? An intriguing question.
Have a look at this Youtube video advocating the sale of "Bling" jewellery. I think you will get the meaning of "bling" if it is a new concept for you!
Is Big Brother watching YOU?
I don't know about you, but the story above does seem excessively OTT (Over The Top). Does living in England now involve you watching over every citizen and encouraging a world of snoopers, a world of secret surveillance, a "spy on your neighbour" society?? It used to be like this in the former Stasi state of GDR, where I lived for one year in 1982. I am still patiently waiting for information regarding whether I was surveilled during my time there......
1984 by George Orwell is an amazing book full of prophetic glimpses into our future and actual present. I was fascinated by it when I read it for the first time as a teenager. It seemed like a surreal society back in those days. However, I feel a lot of his vision is indeed true today and I think we are getting closer and closer towards an "Orwellian" society. Do you my readers, have any thoughts on this?
Sadly this post is no longer current, as Xtranormal ceased to exist in 2013, so no videos are available. They are all lost! What a shame!!
New WordsQuiz
I am fascinated by the new words which are entering the English language at such a fast rate. I only took "my eye off the ball" for a short while during the summer (to get down to composting, bricklaying, making a huge haystack, learning how to cook Italian dishes and many other gentle pursuits) for me to re-enter the world of teaching English only to come across such strange sounding words as "twitter" and "Plurk". What on earth did these words mean? Where did they come from? Who was using them? Did I need to know them? If yes, why did I need to know them? I asked myself these questions from a pedagogical point of view. Being of an inquisitive nature, of course I had to find out what these words meant.... If you are not sure of the meaning just press on the words. I have actually become a "Twitterer" and I have joined a Wiki for fellow Twitterers. Where it will lead me to will be an adventure!!
In the middle of writing this post I took a short break and I couldn't help looking at my sidebar and I saw the word "smeet" in Larry Ferlazzo's blog. This is a totally new word for me today and it's "hot off the press"!!! Larry Felazzo's site is excellent and I learn a lot from it.
A brilliant site for teachers and students to keep up to date with new words is bbclearningenglish.com. One of my favourite words of all time is "bling" and this lesson click here is dedicated entirely to this word!
Another one of my favourite sites for keeping up with the meaning of new expressions which come into the English language is WordSpy Recently I had to look up the following words as they were new for me and I thought it would be good to create a little quiz to test you! Have a go and see how you get on!
A "fakeaway" is
a) something which you know is fake but looks genuine
b) a homemade meal that is similar to a takeaway meal purchased from a restaurant
c) something not worth the price you have paid
" recession chic" is
a) style and elegance on a tight budget
b) living beyond one's means during a recession
c) trying to look chic but not succeeding
"adorkable" means
a) adorable and cuddly
b) delightful and charming in a sociably akward way
c) an adorable young lady from Dorking
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