New Blogs on SGI

I'm now blogging regularly for the SGI blog, which is my old school in London, where I go back to teach every summer.

The school is fantastic for students learning English and for EFL teacher training.

There is a blog every day from a different member of staff on a whole variety of subjects, so it's an interesting read if you are studying English and looking for your daily 5 min English reading exercise!

If you are really looking to improve your English, but you can't afford the time to travel to London and you are thinking of learning English online, then check out English SKYPE Lessons, which might just be the perfect alternative for you.

Learn English when you are travelling

Learn English when you are travelling: Describing things – a simple and enjoyable mental challenge

It’s difficult to find time for studying English everyday. We all know that. But every little bit that you do will help. You probably have to travel somewhere everyday, so when you are commuting back and forth, look at the world around you and describe in your head everything that you can see in English. This is a really useful exercise to challenge yourself.

You could describe basic things: The man in the red t-shirt is reading the newspaper.

Or, if you are a higher level student, you should push yourself into using more advanced vocabulary and grammar: The man with the wrinkled face is probably reading the football report because he is a lifelong fan of Barcelona. He’s really gutted that he wasn’t at the match last night because Barcelona thrashed Real Madrid four – nil.

You can make your descriptions as easy, or as difficult as you like…depending on how tired you are.

The more you do this kind of exercise, the more inventive you will become. Then, of course you will need more vocabulary. Eventually, you will get to the point where you don’t have all the vocabulary you need and so you will want to check in a dictionary to get that perfect word.

So, a daily mental challenge on your way to work, or on your way home from school, has suddenly given you the inspiration to find out something for yourself (some vocabulary or grammar that you actually need). Using those 5 minutes on your daily travels has turned into something that makes you teach yourself some English…and that’s the best way to learn!

(This is one of my my posts that I write for the St George International Blog, which is my old school and where I return to work every summer)

Jeremy Harmer Lectures

I had quite a bit of spare time today (don't say, "Lucky you", because I've got 12 lessons tomorrow!) and I was watching some of Jeremy Harmer's conference speeches to try and pick up some tips from the "TEFL master".

Surely, you have all come across him before at some point, at least through the standard text 'The Practice of English Language Teaching', among others.

His speech on ideas for working with (and controlling) very large EFL classes were not new for me, but it was good to get a reminder of them, seeing as I haven't taught such big classes for a long time.

The lecture on motivating English students also contained lots of common sense stuff, that was put across in a very entertaining way. Again, good for just brushing up on methodological ideas.

If you've got an hour or two for some infotainment, then Jezza's your man!

Students! You are the teacher!

I have just listened to an interesting podcast (you don't have to download, sign up to anything etc, you can just listen without any commitment or passwords!) from Steve Kaufmann who is the king of LingQ.com (an excellent language learning site btw).

The subject is "What I would do if I were a teacher". He freely admits that he has never been a teacher and doesn't know how to teach, but he is giving his opinion merely as a language learner who has had lots of experience from the receiving end of L2 teaching.

It's interesting to get student feedback in this way, as perhaps teachers do not put themselves in the shoes of the learner often enough.

To paraphrase the podcast, he says that if he were a teacher he would outline to Ss in the first lesson that the onus of L2 learning responsibility lies completely on their shoulders. This is what he would say....

• My job is to make myself unnecessary.
• You (the Ss) must be independent of me.
• You should not expect ME to teach YOU the language.
• My job is to give you the habits and attitude for YOU to learn the language yourself.
• You cannot learn the L2 only in the classroom and I cannot teach it to you only in class

He also highlights the huge importance of reading when outside the classroom and dedicating the time needed.

I think that this is not only good advice, but would make all language teachers' jobs much more interesting (than they already are, of course). Imagine having a class of rabidly motivated students, that bring the lesson to you, in terms of new vocab, phrases, idioms etc etc.

My in-company business students could do with a little bit more of this student ideology!

Personalised vocabulary sentences

When we encounter new vocabulary in class, I get the students to make sentences about themselves that contain the new words.

However, Ss sometimes get stuck for inspiration when making a personalised sentence.

I had continued success with a TOEFL group by adopting a "Theme of the session for the personalised sentence". This did not have to be related to the lesson content.

For example, one day Ss had to write the sentence relating to 'summer holidays'. Another day it was 'winter'.

'Things I do at the office', 'Stuff I do at the weekend', 'Favourite films and actors' were other themes of the day.

This focus seemed to be a faster way of forcing a personalised sentence out of Ss.

...and they all got the TOEFL scores they needed in the end :-)

More free books!!!

Wow!!! More free downloadble TEFL books

Here's some from the OUP

And a whole raft from the British Council

Get reading fellow Dippers!

Free e-book: The Lexical Syllabus

Something free? Too good to be true?

Well, unbelievably the CELS at the University of Birmingham have The Lexical Syllabus: A new approach to language teaching by David Willis absolutely free to download on their website.

I've just scanned a couple of pages and it looks very useful if you are doing the TESOL Dip/DELTA or MA Applied Linguistics etc.

Download it while it's still up on the website. It says it's free for students (at Birmingham!).

Happy studying! :-)