Archive for the ‘links’ Category

As mentioned in a comment or two below (and in every other sentence in my real life conversation), I am off on my reasonably well deserved hols from Friday and won’t even be looking at a computer screen for the next 10 days. For those of you who can’t live without an opinionated TEFL rant until I get back, I’m sure there must be something in my 458 posts over the last 14 months that you must have missed, so have a little trawl through the archives here- I’m sure there must be something there to entertain and/ or offend you!

For those of you still here for the serious stuff that I was supposed to have set this blog up for, here are the links to bits and pieces I have been involved in elsewhere in the world on TEFL. The top two are my own particular favourites from the last few months:

15 ways to help your students forget

15 ways to help your students dream in English

15 games for the language of describing people

15 real life situations for the language of describing people

15 typical textbook activities you can personalize

15 difficulties in teaching the language of describing people

15 ways to write a TEFL review

Office vocabulary compound noun stress

Why does my teacher make us work in pairs?

Talking about your job and company first class

Business English prepositions

Present Simple/ Continuous and Tense Review Guessing Game

Complaints prepositions practice

More bits and pieces that I didn’t know, had never thought about or had doubts about from The Cambridge Grammar of English:

- The reason why you don’t double the p in “developing” is because the previous vowel isn’t stressed. Ditto for “delivered” and “opener”, but lots of words ending in -l in BrE and others such as handicapped and programmed don’t follow the rule
 
- Doubling consonants when adding -ed and -ing is part of a more general rule when “a suffix beginning with a vowel is added”, e.g. -ish, -ence and –er

- The “i before e except after c” rule only counts for the /i:/ pronunciation like “brief”, so most of the “exceptions” are because other pronunciations are spelt “ei”, e.g. neighbour, weigh, reign, leisure. Real exceptions include financier, species and examples of -cy changing to -cies, e.g. democracies.
 
- The final e making the preceding stressed vowel long, e.g. hat/hate, also works for -le, hence able, fable, bible etc.
 
- The plural of bus can be buses or busses. Ditto with biased/biassed, focusing/focussing, gases/gasses.

Some courses, for example, demand a non-refundable interview/ application fee for the pleasure of being asked questions about grammar. Other courses, however, just say this:

“I understand and accept that should I be offered a place on the course I have applied for, I am committing myself to completing the course, and am therefore liable for payment of the entire course fee.”

Wait a minute- you what?? Let’s move that into other areas of life and see how it sounds:

“I understand that by coming for a job interview I am agreeing to work for you, even if I don’t like any of the answers to the questions I ask you at the end or the room we have the interview in smells of pee”

“I understand that by going on this blind date I am agreeing to marry you, even if the photo turns out not to be yours, and will be liable for alimony payments if I do not”

Etc.

Luckily, it was just badly written, didn’t mean that, and they are clearing it up after having it pointed out by me, but the person writing the blog I found this quote on was seriously thinking about paying it all in advance. If you should be only 23 and so incredibly naive too, let me spell it out in big friendly letters- AVOID CELTA COURSES THAT DEMAND INTERVIEW AND OTHER NON-REFUNDABLE FEES BEFORE YOU DECIDE THAT YOU WANT TO TAKE THE COURSE. Luckily, the vast majority of courses don’t charge such fees, giving even less justification to the ones that do (see my article for EL Gazette for more details).

Here’s the original  blog entry , in case you want to give some kind uncle advice or are interested in a TEFL trainer that takes suggestions for improvements (from me!) seriously and are considering Milan.

“While many teachers may attend to the questions ‘Do you like this language? Do you like this class?’, perhaps the more fundamental question for a student is ‘Do I like myself in this class?’”

(more…)

Here are the links for stuff I have published here and elsewhere so far this month that you might have missed, in case the heat makes me lose the rest of my energy and I forget at the end of the month:

On Usingenglish.com (theeeeeeey’re back!)

Why does my teacher use games in an adult class?

Why does our teacher make us read difficult authentic texts?

How British is your English? Questionnaire and explaining unknown vocab speaking practice worksheets- one of my favourites!

Elsewhere on TEFLtastic

Korean speakers- common vocabulary mistakes in English

Determiners practice- starting presentations- designed to go with Market Leader, but also suitable for whoever else is unlucky enough to need to tie those two topics together…

Classroom language TEFL workshop notes- with accompanying teacher training worksheets below

Ranking classroom language- teacher training pairwork worksheets

Simplifying classroom language- teacher training worksheets, with tips on using gestures in class to give instructions etc.

Classroom language further reading and links

Teaching likes and dislikes and free time activities teacher training workshop plan

Business English pron worksheets section (the worksheets are old, but the section is new)

Intelligent Business Worksheets and Games section- also useful for other Bus Eng classes

Market Leader worksheets and games- ditto

My stuff elsewhere on TEFL.net

In the Idea Thinktank

15 games for the language of likes and dislikes

15 classroom language games

15 punishments for pre-school English classes

15 Business English games for describing your company and job

15 criteria for good kindergarten worksheets

In TEFL.net Articles

15 good reasons to write TEFL reviews

In TEFL.net reviews

A History of English Language Teaching Second Edition review

And if the heat is keeping you awake instead of making you sleepy, you can have a look at June’s links too (newly updated as I’d forgotten about the reviews):

New articles, worksheets and reviews June 2008

… and it’s not because of Interactive Whiteboards- see here for details. (more…)

I’m continuing to learn from and ponder on the information in the Cambridge Grammar of English, and as before testing the matters I’ve been chewing on against your native speaker intuitions would be appreciated (sorry for the very unpleasant mental picture from that metaphor first thing on a Monday morning!)

The (modern?) name for & is “and” (not ampersand)
{ } = chain brackets (they’ve always been squiggly brackets to me!)
< > = diamond brackets
 
American English uses commas before and or but more frequently than British English
 
“Subordinate clauses can be separated by a comma from a preceding main clause, especially when the relation between them might be obscured because the clauses are long.” (pg 842), so “We can get there for around six, if there are no problems with the traffic on the motorway” is okay with or without the comma, despite being in the reverse position of the usual first conditional with a comma
 
Colons are used to indicate subtitles, and to mark a clause in which reasons are given: “We decided against it: it wasn’t lightweight enough”
 
Single quotation marks are becoming more widespread in direct speech
 
Colons may be used to introduce direct speech when it is particularly long
 
There are apostrophes (becoming optional) in “for goodness’ sake” and “for appearance’ sake”
 
In informal writing multiple dashes may be used:
 
“Just got back from Mallorca— we really loved it.”

If punctuation is your thing, or really isn’t you or your students’ thing but should be, here are some links:

Wikipedia on the ampersand

Info on Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss- a funny book on punctuation!

A whole list of punctuation books on Amazon

Punctuation worksheets on ESL Printables.com

And that is all I could find of interest. For classroom activities, one thing that works well, especially with FCE and CAE classes, is for students to take a text that is correct and add spelling and punctuation errors for another team to find.

Another good game is to put a text on the board including punctuation and get them to read out the whole text (including punctuation) over and over as you delete it one word or punctuation mark at a time until they can no longer remember it or the whole text has disappeared.

The game above works well with kids too. A more physical game for kids on the same point is to write up a sentence with one piece of punctuation missing in large letters on the board, and get them to take turns throwing a sticky ball (= sucker ball) at the place they think the punctuation mark should be.

There are a suprising number of TEFL blogs that make me giggle (you can find them under “Funny TEFL blogs” on my links page), but now that Chase Me Ladies is no longer TEFLing, the TEFLtastic prize for funniest TEFL blog will probably have to go to English Teacher X.

Like all comic geniuses (or should that be genii from the Latin?) though, the writer has quite a lot of off days. For example, I found teaching Russian slappers funny for about 10 minutes, and that’s about all I can handle reading about them as well. Luckily for you, I’ve trawled through the whole site and come up with the best bits so you can snigger about them on the teachers’ room computer and then say “Nothing, just an email from my brother” when people ask you why you are giving off an evil laugh: (more…)

I’ve been reading through the new Cambridge Grammar of English. Not something I usually do for pleasure (honestly!), but got a free copy for TEFL.net reviews and so felt like I ought to examine at least some parts in detail- and now I am reading it for pleasure!

Maybe the most interesting thing is that the use of corpora rather than just common sense (otherwise known as native speaker intuition) means there are bits on almost every page where you go “Really?” Below is a list of the “Oh yes, I suppose so.” and “No, I really don’t think so” moments so far based on British and American English. Most good science throws out counterintuitive things like this. Unfortunately, so does most bad science, so I’d appreciate it if you would comment on how the things below match with your own experience and instinct- there are a few I have doubts on myself.

- In AmE, the score in “The Seattle Sea Hawks beat the Cincinnati Reds 7-O is pronounced” “seven nothing” or “seven to nothing” or “seven zip”
 
- “Four from nine is/leaves five” is okay in BrE
 
- The form in “Eleven hundred pounds” (rather than “one hundred one hundred”) is more popular in AmE than BrE

- “isn’t” (rather than ’s not) is many times more frequent in BrE than AmE

- Interrogative tags are about four times more frequent in BrE than in AmE
 
- The “do” in reduced clauses with modal verbs
“Are you going?”
“I might do”
is only used in British English
 
- She lives on/ in Leonora Street is a Br/ Am thing

- “Must” is much more frequent in BrE than AmE
 
- “Had better” is six times more frequent in BrE
 
- “Going to” often used for direction giving (finding your way) in AmE: “You’re gonna go two blocks…”
 
- “I suppose” is much more frequent in BrE

If you ended up here wanting to find more more traditional stuff about British and American English, try:

Wikipedia (of course) American and British English differences

The American’s Guide to Speaking British English

BBC America British American Dictionary

If you are interested in worksheets for classroom use on British and American English, look here:

How British is your Financial English?

ESL Printable British and American English page

British and American English elesson from the (recommended) textbook Inside Out

British and American: The main differences from the (equally recommended) vocab book Word for Word

And if you’d like your own shiny new TEFL book hot off the press for free, see here.

“We wanted to get into the way of life here,” said 24-year-old Natan Doyon, who moved from Britain last year with his girlfriend to teach English to Chinese children. He says his pupils were so upset when he told them he couldn’t renew his visa that they begged, “Don’t go. We’ll help you hide.”

He and his girlfriend now plan to try Vietnam.

So many English teachers are being forced to leave that many of the private language schools, the rage lately for children of the upwardly mobile, are closing down for the summer. With only three native English speakers left on its staff, Shane is cutting its summer camp in half and might curtail its fall program. Shane, which is owned by a British chain, advertises that it provides native English speakers.

“If we can’t fulfill that promise, we have nothing to sell,” Wan said. “We’re losing a lot of money.”

See the full story here.

And if TEFL news is your thing (how could it not be?), may I suggest you check out:

http://www.esldaily.org/

http://www.tesall.com