• Article: ‘Pronunciation activities using the card popular game Uno!’ by David Ockert
• Research Paper: ‘The Effect of Grammar Learning on Speaking Ability of EFL Learners’ by Parnaz Kianiparsa and Sara Vali
• Video: SpeechSchool.TV Programs
• News: Is txting killin Nglsh @skool? No way sez Prof
• Article: Using poems to develop productive skills
• Article: ‘TEFL Teaching – Business English’ by Natasha Mason
• ICT in Education: Class Blogmeister – Learning as conversation
• GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS

Download ELTWeekly Issue# 53 in PDF Format

Perhaps one of the most fascinating tools that has emerged from the Internet cloud in recent years is the Blog. A shortening of the term Web log, the Blog is an online publishing tool that enables people to easily publish their loves, passions, dislikes, peeves, discoveries, and insights.

Thousands of teachers have discovered the value of classroom blogging, both as an avenue for their communications, but also as a tool for giving voice to what their students are learning and how they are learning.

Class Blogmeister is one of several blogging engines that have been developed specifically for classroom use. The service is provided free of subscription or purchase charges.

Discover more about Class Blogmeister at http://www.unescobkk.org/education/ict

This article is about teaching business English. From a personal point of view, this has always been my favourite form of teaching English. My experience is in Madrid, Spain but this advice covers most countries with teaching Business English.

I was lucky to have a strong business background in law and HR so it felt like a natural route for me to take. However many of my graduates get very nervous about teaching business English, especially if they are new graduates with limited experience in the business world

What are you teaching?

The first thing to remember is that you are teaching English in a business context, not teaching business in English. Many of the directors I have taught have talked about how patronizing they find it for a college graduate to walk into their office and start teaching them how to give a presentation! They know how to give a presentation, they need help with the tone and terminology in English – ensure your classes are never patronizing. Many of the teaching text books do fall into this trap so make sure you adapt your classes to your audience.

You and your students might already enjoy reading and listening to poetry in your own language and perhaps in English too. Poems are, after all, authentic texts. This is a great motivator. Poems are often rich in cultural references, and they present a wide range of learning opportunities. For me, the aim is to teach English through poetry, not to teach the poetry itself, so you don’t need to be a literature expert.

Most of the tried and tested activities used regularly by language teachers can be adapted easily to bring poetry into the classroom.

• Communicative speaking activities

• Working on pronunciation

• Writing activities

• Some pros and cons

• Conclusion

Communicative speaking activities

Before doing any productive work, I like to give my students plenty of pre-reading activities so that they are adequately prepared.

Read the complete article at http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles

If you’re worried that texting and instant messaging are destroying children’s respect for proper English, Kristen Turner, Ph.D., assistant professor of English education, wants you to relax.

“I can’t tell you how many times I introduce myself to parents, and the first thing I hear is, ‘Oh, this texting language is ruining English. All my kids do is text,’” she said. “That’s a big misperception of what’s happening.”

Turner has coined the phrase “digitalk” to encompass communication that occurs between adolescents via modern communication technology, such as text messages, instant messages and social networking comments. “People think that texting is random and that it’s born from laziness. Actually, it’s neither of those things,” she said.

Read the complete story at http://www.fordham.edu/campus_resources

SpeechSchool.tv provides accent reduction, voice training, speech therapy, speaking training, accent training, elocution lessons and online speech classes.

The Effect of Grammar Learning on Speaking Ability of EFL Learners

by Parnaz Kianiparsa[1] and Sara Vali[2]

Payame Noor University In Iran

Abstract

Nowadays, the most important aspect of language learning is how to express your ideas fluently in the target language in order to be understood by native speakers. To reach this aim, foreign language learners should know how to use different words and phrases in sentences. In other words, they should be familiarized with the grammatical points in the target language which have been overlooked in the recent years. Grammar learning and speaking are two significant poles in foreign language acquisition. It seems they are nearly related activities, but various opinions are expressed about the underlying relationship between these two components of language learning. Some indicate a positive relationship between grammar learning and ability to speak a foreign language, and others depict no and even a negative connection between these two aspects of language acquisition.

This paper tries to have a brief review on the literature to investigate whether grammar learning and speaking influence one another. The results suggest that scholars have opposing views about this issue; however, most of them believe that grammar learning can have a positive effect on speaking a foreign language. At the end, the opinions of some Iranian EFL learners (about 30 boys and girls) are presented as well to clarify the purpose of the study better.

Activities to improve pronunciation in young learners of English

By

David Ockert

Key Words: Young learners, games, activities, pronunciation

Learner English Level: Pre-beginner, beginner

Learner Maturity Level: Young learner

Preparation Time: 5 minutes or less

Activity Time: Usually from 10-30 minutes

Materials: The card game Uno!

The activities presented herein are hoped to help young Japanese learners of English (JLE) understand and recognize the differences in pronunciation of /b/ vs. /v/, and /l/ vs. /r/, which are possibly the most distinctively recognizable of any English consonants when mispronounced by Japanese students of English, because so many words in English have different meanings when these sounds are not pronounced correctly (Avery & Ehrlich, pp.134-138). They make the difference between hearing, “Would you like some more lice?” vs. “Would you like some more rice?” And, in my case, the name is Dave, not Debu – fatso in Japanese (Ockert, 2006).

• Dialogue dictations as communicative activities: A four skills task by David Ockert
• Video: Cambridge IGCSE English: An Experiment in eAssessment
• Research Paper: ‘Application of Web Resources for English Language & Literature Teaching’ by Dr.R.Gandhi Subramanian
• News: Sleep learning: Learn a language a week – you must be dreaming!
• Article: ‘Teaching English As a Foreign Language With Social Responsibility’ by Larry M. Lynch
• Article: Google and the lexical approach
• GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS
• Feedback.

Download ELTWeekly Issue# 52 in PDF Format

Teaching English As a Foreign Language With Social Responsibility
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Larry_M._Lynch]Larry M. Lynch

Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Are you conserving and recycling water? As EFL, ESL or foreign language teaching professionals we ultimately have a responsibility to our learners, our adopted communities and ourselves as a form of social responsibility. We can quite easily, quickly and responsibly incorporate global, regional and local social issues into our class sessions to provide our language learners with an outlet for their English as a foreign language or other foreign language communicative skills. Pollution, crime, the environment, global warming and terrorism are all available topics of concern regionally and locally worldwide. Take water conservation for example.