ELTWeekly Issue#5, Tip of the week: Reading Aloud
By Tarun Patel
Reading Aloud
by
Tarun Patel
During your ELT session pick a student and ask him/her to read the instructions for your activities for that particular session.
e.g. ‘Nilu, please read the instructions for Activity X for us’.
And yes, don’t forget to pick a different student each time.
Why read aloud?
1. It saves you doing it.
2. You can check pronunciation.
3. The other students may well understand the instructions better when read by another student.
4. The students are more likely to listen to another student than to you.
5. If they all read the instructions silently they will all finish at different times. If they listen to someone reading the instructions out loud they all finish at the same time.
I hope this helps! 
January 10th, 2009
ELTWeekly Issue#5, Video of the week: Podcasts and Voice emails
By Tarun Patel
Here is the video of the week for the fifth issue of ELTWeekly:
In this video Dafne Gonzalez provides information on using podcasts and voice emails for ELT. This workshop was held for teacher training in ICT. An event sponsored by the BC in Merida, Venezuela.
Don’t forget to leave a commend after watching the video
ELTWeekly Issue#5, Featured article: Teaching the Students with Learning Disabilities
By Tarun Patel
Here’s the featured article for the fifth issue of ELTWeekly:
Teaching the Students with Learning Disabilities
by
Bhaskar Pandya
Learning Disabilities Defined:
In a Language Class, a teacher often finds that all the students, including exceptional students have their own unique and individual set of learning strengths, weaknesses, and needs. It is for the teacher as important to identify a student’s strengths and weaknesses as it is to determine his or her needs. The reason is many factors such as physical, intellectual, educational, cultural, emotional, and social influence/affect a student’s ability/disability to learn.
Learning disability can primarily be defined as a learning disorder apparently evident in both academic and social situations. It is not a result of impairment of vision, of hearing, or physical disability, developmental disability, emotional disturbance, or cultural differences or varied traditional practices.
Language Learning Disabilities:
With reference to Language Learning it can be defined as a significant language disorder evident as a discrepancy between academic achievements and assessed intellectual abilities. It refers to the problems that can be perceived in the receptive language skills which involve listening and reading as major activities; language processing wherein one can think, conceptualize, and integrate; expressive language skills which involve speaking and writing as major activities.
Technically one can easily say that it refers to a condition diagnosed as perceptual handicapped, a brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia or aphasia.
Observations in a Language Class:
In a language class, generally student’s strengths are used to address his or her areas of need. But unfortunately students with learning disabilities typically have average cognitive abilities. And hence they require specific teaching strategies to learn and then to demonstrate their knowledge and language skills.
A language teacher’s general observation would suggest that students with some learning disabilities face problems in receptive language skills, language processing, expressive language skills or in their ability to sustain attention. More specifically the teacher will go to the extent saying that some other with learning disabilities will have problems in consistent performance, conceptual skills, understanding the directions, vocabulary, reading and comprehension, writing, spelling, and/or oral expression of language, organizing and sequencing thoughts and ideas, the social use of language, strategies for reception, storage, and production of information, long and/or short-term memory.
Teaching Strategies and Suggestions
There are some general strategies for a teacher, which help him/her retain the learning environment of the classroom. First of all the teacher needs to provide an encouraging and supportive classroom environment wherein it has to be ensured that the student feels that he or she is a valued member of the class and tries to establish and communicate consistent behavioral expectations and consequences. Moreover, the students should also be recognized and praised for their efforts, improvements, and task completions putting a check on their regularity. They should also be provided preferential seating to help the student focus and maintain attention. They should also be allowed alternate tasks (in case of task based language teaching or should be permitted to take short breaks.
Some social skills related suggestions can also be taken care of. They are: The teacher should teach the students to notice, interpret, and respond appropriately to body language; to initiate, maintain, and conclude a conversation; foster opportunities and provide strategies for the student to make and maintain friendships;
The teacher can also attach daily schedules/timetables to the student’s notebook cover; provide extra text books to use at home; teach the use of metacognitive strategies; encourage the use of lists, advance organizers, and personal planners for personal organization; provide written outlines for assignments; encourage the student to label, date, and number pages in his or her notebook; employ verbal rehearsal and questioning strategies following instruction, to help the student focus on important information; provide immediate reinforcement of correct responses and immediate feedback where Possible.
And at last with reference to enhancing the language skills of the students the teacher can provide the students with many formal and informal opportunities to develop his or her oral communication skills; organizational strategies to help the student prepare oral presentations (e.g., short and long speeches); opportunities for the student to use technology, such as PowerPoint or other kinds of presentation software, to help organize and present information; demonstrate and discuss ambiguity, figurative language, and irony; opportunities for discussion of cause and effect, humorous situations, feelings, and
characters; use wh questions as prompts to help the student convey information orally; restate key concepts in grammatically simple structures; use visual aids consistently to support oral messages; give the student extra time to process information; and encourage the student to ask for clarification.
ELTWeekly Issue#5, Useful ELT resources
By Tarun Patel
*** ESLgold.com ***
ESLgold.com provides teachers with thousands of ideas and materials for your classes and students. It offers lesson plans, handouts or new ideas for teaching English. ESLgold offers tons of resources for both the ESL and EFL environment. It saves hours of preparation time. ESLgold is a virtual library of English teaching materials that you can adapt to fit your individual classrooms and students.
Need something to keep your students busy in the multimedia lab? Why not assign online homework from ESLgold.com? (They have vocabulary study and quizzes, grammar andpronunciation exercises, speaking practice, etc.) Or choose games and activities to make the learning process more fun. Also, look into our expanding selection of English teachingSoftware and CD-ROMs. You’ll find a virtual gold mine of materials at the click of a mouse.
*** yappr.com ***
yappr.com is the premier community for English learners.
At yappr.com people can learn English by having FUN. Experience the world’s only site that teaches English through entertaining videos, worldwide chat and more. It’s all free at yappr.com.
yappr.com enables teachers to make friends, get yappr mail, save favorite English practice videos and more.
People can learn, study and practice English by connecting with other Yapprs worldwide. You can chat, post messages, make new friends and get status updates on all.
*** Teachit ***
Teachit is a tried and trusted education resource used by thousands of teachers nationwide. Specialising in English, Drama and Media Studies from primary to post-16, the online Teachit library offers over 11,000 pages of classroom materials, schemes of work, lesson plans and teaching tools, all created by working teachers and – thanks to our team of Teachit contributors - constantly growing.
Becoming a member allows you to:
- Edit the content of the resources in an adaptable Microsoft Office version of the PDF files, and make them your own. You can differentiate them, personalise them, mix and match … it’s up to you.
- Use the wonderful computer-based Whizzy things (Teachit.works members). Some of our lessons include ready-made drag and drop matching and sequencing activities for your IWB. Simply select the html or flash versions for an instantly whizzy lesson!
- Make your own flippable, on screen fridge magnets with our whizzy tool, Magnet (Teachit.works members) – they’re incredibly versatile and easy to use.
- Put resources and your own annotations into the My Teachit filing system. The green folder icon
will appear to the right of each resource when you are logged in. Just click on it to add that resource to your My Teachit page. You can then organise the resources into folders and even upload your own files and weblinks.
ELTWeekly Issue#5, Subscriber space: An article by Dr. Ranganayaki Srinivas
By Tarun Patel
Teaching in Multilingual Contexts
by
Dr. Ranganayaki Srinivas
Language teaching strategies have to be reconsidered in the multilingual context of countries like India. We use a number of approaches, methods, tasks and techniques imported from other monolingual countries with or without modifications. However, they do not satisfy the needs of multilingual learners. We need to develop indigenous strategies that tap the enormous resources of multilingual learners and teachers.
It should be possible to effectively use more than one language in our classes. Using the mother tongue in the Second language (SL) classes has been looked down upon for a long time mainly due to the misuse of what is termed as the Grammar Translation method. Many teachers resort to translation in all their lessons resulting in an indiscriminate use of L1 for a rather mechanical practice and reducing the chances of genuine communication in either the Target language or the mother tongue. No wonder many of the learners, poor victims of the system, come out like zombies incapable of using (any) language to think clearly. To avoid such situations, SL experts have subscribed to the view that mother tongue should be banished from the English classroom. Though it has some advantages, the loss is more, as we are not able to use the rich resources of bilingual and multilingual learners and teachers.
This might app ear as putting the clock back or going back in time when we should be going forward. But as Alan Maley(2001) rightly points out in his article ‘A matter of time’ included in the January issue of English Teaching Professional
As a profession, we like to think of ourselves as ‘cutting edge’, ’state of the art’, with all the connotations of excitement in a future driven enterprise which that entails. We live in a capsule of the present moment, with no time for a backward glance. …When we do look at our past, it becomes clear that many of the current ideas which we think of as being so innovative have, in fact, been around for a long time. We have very often re-invented or re-discovered them rather than created them out of nothing in the present instant.
To support his point of view he has produced a number of quotations from Billows (1961) which voice some of our concern today about teachers spoon-feeding the learners. In his book, ‘The Techniques of Language Teaching’, Billows says,
“One of the satisfactions of language learning lies in the slow clearing of the fog…the gradual emergence of pattern where formerly there seemed to be none. If the teacher tries to by-pass this process and serve up to his pupil a systematisation not worked for and not developed out of the learner’s experience and its organisation, he deprives him of this satisfaction…”
- Multilingual Resources
- Sample Multilingual Activity Type 1
- Sample Multilingual Activity 2
- Sample Multilingual Activity 3
- More Multilingual Tasks to Ponder
Here is a Free Personal Learning Styles Inventory, at HowtoLearn.com. It’s a quick and easy online test to help you figure out how you or your child learns best — by seeing, hearing, or doing. To check it out click here.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions post them on my blog and I will respond to you: What to Pursue Blog.
About Dr. Ranganayaki Srinivas
Dr. Ranganayaki Srinivas, an ESL specialist, has been working online after VRS. She started with a teaching English site. She has been involved in projects with many online marketers. Webinars and web conferences appeal to her idea of distance learning and continuing education. Hence her latest projects have been related to gathering information about webinars, web meetings and web conferencing services.
ELTWeekly Issue#5, Book of the week: A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom
By Tarun Patel
The ELT book of the week for the fifth issue of ELTWeekly is:
A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom
by
Michael Berman
Book Details
- Paperback: 216 pages
- Publisher: Crown House Publishing (February 1, 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1899836233
- ISBN-13: 978-1899836239
- Paperback: 216 pages
- Publisher: Crown House Publishing (February 1, 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1899836233
- ISBN-13: 978-1899836239
- Price: $34.95
Editorial Reviews
Refreshingly lucid and jargon-free. Emphasizes practical applications of MI theory and is full of immediately useable classroom activities. –Christine Barker, teacher/trainer Refreshingly lucid and jargon-free. Emphasizes practical applications of MI theory and is full of immediately useable classroom activities. –Christine Barker, teacher/trainer
Book Description
ELTWeekly Issue#5, Guest Article: Why I Like the English Language
By Tarun Patel
Here’s the guest article for the fifth issue of ELTWeekly:
Why I Like the English Language
by Barbara Freedman-De Vito
I really like the English language. I’ve been speaking it all my life, but it’s not until I became an English teacher, teaching English as a foreign language, that I really started to understand how it functions and to appreciate both its richness and its versatility.
I believe that, at an elementary level, English is easier to learn than some other languages. A beginner can form good basic sentences without knowing a lot of complex grammatical forms. English verbs don’t have many different endings to memorize before one can express the simplest of thoughts.
Another strong point is that English does not, as a rule, have masculine and feminine nouns and there are no changing forms for adjectives to slow a learner down. For instance, in French you must memorize a number of verb endings and match adjectives to nouns before you can verbalize even the simplest ideas, but a novice does not need to study English for long before being able to construct good basic sentences.
English has a mix of vocabulary with Germanic roots and vocabulary with Latin or French roots, allowing speakers of numerous European languages to recognize and understand many English words. Although sometimes the meanings are no longer the same in the two languages, they are often still similar enough to serve as an aid to comprehension and to help a learner get the gist of texts.
Once English learners have reached a more advanced level, they become exposed to additional structures that reveal some unexpected complexities in the language. For example, the uses of the present perfect tense can be quite confusing. On the other hand, English verb forms allow for a wonderful element of subjectivity and point of view in expressing attitudes towards events. Consider “I’ve just lost my glasses” and “I lost my glasses an hour ago.” Both are fine, but your choice of one or the other reflects your attitude toward the situation. Do you want to emphasize the consequence of losing your glasses? If so, then choose the former, the present perfect tense. If you prefer to focus on when the glasses were lost, then use the latter, the past simple tense.
English can be wonderfully expressive. Because it has accumulated vocabulary from many different languages, there are far more words to choose from than some other languages offer. You can discuss a topic at length without ever repeating yourself or overusing a specific word. You can choose from an array of words with similar meanings to find the most perfect match in meaning and connotation to suit the thought that you want to express.
Sure, you can simply walk down the street, but you can also stroll, march, amble, trot, mosey, shuffle, skip, run, race, promenade, lope, slink, fly, zip, crawl, gallop, whiz, zoom, or careen down the street. A cursory glance reveals that the English section of my bilingual dictionary is considerably larger than the French portion. The enormity of English vocabulary allows for precision and economy of expression. Ideas and instructions can be concisely stated. When viewing multilingual signs and equipment usage manuals, the English version is frequently shorter than that of many other languages. To take a simple example, in French it takes four words, “sautez a cloche pied,” to express what English does in just three letters: “hop.”
English easily absorbs new words from other languages and cultures. Just think of “salsa,” “smorgasbord,” “taboo,” “wampum,” and “pajamas,” for starters. When necessary, English also seems to revel in inventing entirely new lexicons of words, such as for new technologies like the Internet. Internet is full of colorful and amusing imagery from “the web” to “spidering” and “click on the mouse,” let alone such silly sounding words as “googling,” “blogging,” and “WIKI.” It is a riotously “living” language and this flexibility has helped English become such a widely used international language.
I also love English because colorful wordings and vivid imagery abound in both old and new expressions. I picture tall sailing ships and Errol Flynn films when I hear someone say, “She passed her exam with flying colors.” Think of other expressions, too, such as “That makes my skin crawl,” “It sent shivers up and down my spine,” “He’s got his head in the clouds,” “She’s full of get up and go,” and “They’re head over heels in love.”
English even has a strong sense of whimsy, and so lends itself to delightful combinations of alliterative phrasings like “the whole kit and caboodle,” or “footloose and fancy-free.” It’s also chock full of amusing words that are especially for children. Think of “choo-choo train,” “puppy dog,” “kitty cat,” or “do the hokey pokey.” Fun-loving authors have added to the festivities by feeling free to invent their own words, just for the pleasing sound of them, from Edward Lear’s “Dong with the Luminous Nose” to Dr. Seuss’s “Sneeches with stars on thars.” J. K. Rowling has invented an entire vocabulary of her own to use in the magical world that she has created for Harry Potter. The so-called “language of Shakespeare” has contributed much literature and poetry to the world, plus other beautiful expressions of thoughts through the abstraction of words. As someone who writes stories for children, I’m also fond of simple jingles and fun forms such as Mother Goose rhymes.
Now that I’m an English teacher, I try to unlock many of the mysteries of the English language for students who have other languages as their mother tongues. In doing so, I’ve taken a much closer look at the language myself, in all of its complexities and inconsistencies, all of its rules and abundance of exceptions to its own rules, in its enormous vocabulary and subtleties in shades of meanings. Whenever possible, I try to give my students the logic behind the grammar, so that they can gain a deeper understanding of the thought processes behind our many ways of looking at time, rather than just have students randomly memorize rules.
To put English into perspective and make allowances for its many idiosyncracies, I try to briefly explain the history of English and the many historical influences that have affected it, from a series of early invasions of the British Isles, by people such as the Romans, Saxons, Vikings, and Normans, to later British Empire building around the world, and then to America’s melting pot of cultures and languages from the world over. With each new group has come an infusion of new vocabulary. Some element of comprehension of that historical perspective can explain to students both the richness of expression and vocabulary that English possesses, plus the maddening inconsistencies in English spelling and pronunciation. I’m no authority on other languages and I’m not saying that English is the best language in the world but, as I’ve taught English to others over the years, my own appreciation of it has grown immeasurably and I’ve really come to love it.
About the author:
Barbara Freedman-De Vito is an American TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certified English teacher who teaches live English classes over the Internet, via Skype. In addition, she creates amusing TEFL T-shirts and other clothing designs with a TEFL or other educational focus for English teachers and students around the world. Learn more at: http://www.cafepress.com/giftstshirtsmug/2512452
**ELTWeekly team would like to thank Barbara Freedman-De Vito for granting permission to reprint this article.
ELTWeekly Issue#5, Quote of the week
By Tarun Patel
President Bush gave his first-ever presidential radio address in both English and Spanish. Reaction was mixed, however, as people were trying to figure out which one was which.
- Dennis Miller
ELTWeekly Issue#5, Worldwide ELT news
By Tarun Patel
$1b to widen school choice
Adele Wong and Beatrice Siu
Friday, January 09, 2009
Secondary schools will be allowed to choose the medium of instruction for various subjects from September next year, according to a HK$1 billion plan unveiled by the government yesterday.
However, schools choosing to use English must ensure that 85 percent of students in a class are among the top 40 percent of students in Hong Kong.
Read more here: http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=30&art_id=76781&sid=22172385&con_type=1
Report Suggests Georgia Lags in Teaching English to Language Learners
Georgia is among 20 states where the number of English language learners in schools more than doubled between 1995 and 2005. A report released today by Education Week suggests the state is not keeping up with other parts of the country to help them become proficient in the language.
The report shows that in the 2006-2007 school year, fewer than 6 percent attained language proficiency, compared with a 17 percent national average. And a smaller percentage were making progress toward proficiency than the national average, too.
Read more here: http://publicbroadcasting.net/wabe/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1454365§ionID=1
Teaching English should take priority
“New teachers finding their way,” (Sunday article) and what’s good and bad about the accompanying photos: The good is the obviously earnest, intent and attractive Port Chester kindergarten teacher with her lucky class; the bad is the scheduling of Spanish in the morning and English in the afternoon.
It should be the reverse, with more time spent in the morning emphasizing English, and Spanish in the afternoon. Moreover, why should many children whose native language is Spanish need further instruction in that language?
Read more here: http://lohud.com/article/20090108/OPINION/901080359/-1/SPORTS
The Truth About Teaching English in Foreign Countries #4: The Knitting Circle
When I first entered this field, I wish somebody would have warned me about the various lions dens I would be entering. Of course, I was naive not to consider the politics of a foreign education system.
Many people begin teaching in schools where they forget about how long their coworkers may have been teaching there. Some teachers have been there as long as 20, 30, even 40 years. Furthermore, as in most cultures, the majority of these teachers are women who have been sharing an office, possibly for too long.
Read more here: http://www.bloggernews.net/119334
Good teaching is a talent
What makes a good teacher? Knowledge of subject is only a partial answer. Much more is required: A good teacher simplifies the complex, enlivens dry or dull material. And, even where subject matter is difficult to master, the good teacher instills an eagerness to meet the challenge.
You must have been blessed with a few such guiding angels as you climbed the learning ladder. They are the ones who made the difficult seem easy and the dry stuff come alive in the classroom.
If you listen to some politicians who continually use public education as their favorite vote-getting whipping boy, the answer lies in merely making sure teachers become better educated.
Read more here: http://www.mercurynews.com/alamedacounty/ci_11409277?nclick_check=1