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Helping Cantonese speakers with unstressed words

Q: Dear Lucy, Do you have any tips regarding how I could help native speakers of Cantonese overcome the staccato like speach that some of them have when they try to speak English or not? Yours, Hubert

A: Dear Hubert, According to Michael Swan, the reason for the staccato speech common amongst Chinese learners is that in their own language, each syllable carries equal stress. They don't have the notion of stressed and unstressed syllables or words. If you want to work on eliminating this staccato style, you will need to do some work on the schwa and unstressed words. The first step is to raise students' awareness to the existence of stressed and unstressed syllables and words in English. Below are some ideas for raising awareness...

read on...

Talking Point:
Reading in English is a Waste of Time
A worksheet designed to motivate students to maintain their level of English by reading in English. Ranging from topic-related vocabulary to popular "book" idioms and phrases, this worksheet can spark your students' interest. Fluency is practised through discussion questions which are both topic-related and personalised, such as: "Which books have had the biggest impact on you?"

download lesson plan...

Talking Point worksheets are designed for pre-intermediate and above levels. They are printer-friendly and come with Teaching Suggestions and answers.

 

Which animal is a marsupial?

a) a gorilla
b) a dolphin
c) a kangaroo

See end of newsletter for answer.

Control your life with ELT Part 1 - TEFLtastic Voting

Had a flash of inspiration while reading an IHT article comparing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (uyoku bakayarou!*) and ex-PM Junichiro Koizumi (also uyoku bakayarou!*, but with a cool haircut and a bit more personality and subtlety). If you were in the unfortunate position of having to chose one of these to vote for, which would you choose? If you were in the financially fortunate but morally disheartening position to choose one to teach, either one-to-one or in a group, which one would you choose? You see- it's the same!

So from now on, when an election comes around, all you have to do is picture the various candidates coming into the classroom and imagine your reaction- bang, you have a voting decision made!

If you would like Aunty Alex to sort out anymore of your life dilemmas with the tools of TEFL, let me know...

read on...

The Creative Classroom: teaching languages outside the box
Hall Houston
Publisher: Lynx Publishing

The first thing that attracted me to this slim and colourful book was its title - what a great title! Then I thought "shouldn't all teaching and learning be creative?" Well, yes, of course it should. However, anyone who has ever felt constrained, or even straightjacketed, by a syllabus, course book, number of hours or deadline will understand the attractive nature of a book entitled The Creative Classroom.

This book is for anyone looking for something different to do in class, for teachers who want to be more creative and stimulate more language, anyone interested in creativity, or anyone in need of some material to fill up the first or last ten minutes of class. In short, it is a great collection of useable and user friendly activities. It's entirely up to you, the user, whether you use activities as fillers and warmers, or whether you want to get seriously involved in the business of being creative and generating creativity. This, in itself, singles out this book as a little different from the now vast collection of classroom materials available. Every activity can be used with, or adapted to, a variety of levels and ages; they can be used as stand alone activities or linked into course book or syllabus requirements.

read on...

Reviewed by Kaithe Greene

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c) a kangaroo

This is a level 5 question and answer from Word Up, the ESL board game that's fun to play in class.