ELTeaCH

Here I am once again at NILE , in Norwich, England. It's been extremely productive - we'll revamp the stay in England a bit for the next set of students - and also inspiring! But let's just look at the inspiring language aspect and not the inspiring organizational aspect. Today I got to sit in on Mr. Jamie Keddie ( jamiekeddie .com ) and got to focus on two main text-reconstructions activities that I summarize here below: 1) Watch a Youtube short video without sound (e.g. "Procrastination" Tales Of Mere Existence") 2) After watching the video, elicit vocabulary and recreate the story verbally with the learners 3) Teacher has prepared the text in advance. Do some sort of language work with it, such as a running dictation where the learners then have to write the text and put the sentences in the order shown in the video. 4) Learners compare what they wrote with what was provided and correct their answers. 5) Each sentence is written on a blank card. Each lea...

Who said no more vocabulary tests? Dear Parents, Your teacher asked me to write to you because there seems to be a modern misconception that good principles of modern foreign language teaching encourage your child’s teacher to purposefully neglect to provide you with a list of vocabulary and grammar items that your child can study at home. Your teacher is often asked “which grammar should my child know, which vocabulary?” Just because language aims are not spelled out in terms of structures and words does not mean that these structures and words are not there, otherwise volumes of respectable academic literature (Bablyonia 4/08) would not be dedicated to these topics! Moreover, the new curriculum does provide some suggestions for vocabulary and structures, but generally, how well you know a language is generally more and more defined by what you can DO in a language and this links more to reading, writing, speaking and listening. Grammar and vocabulary fall under the skills. Let’s take...

Ein wichtiges Element des friedlichen und erfüllten Lebens mit Kindern sind echte Kompromisse, die nicht bloss den Kindern gefallen, sondern mit denen auch die Eltern glücklich bleiben. Ein nicht zu unterschätzendes Gebiet für derartige echte Kompromisse ist die Musikauswahl in der Heimdisco. Wir hören zuhause gerne viel Musik und tanzen gelegentlich auch wild dazu. Allerdings findet man in unserer CD-Sammlung auch Werke, die den coolsten Daddy zum Ausrasten bringen. Unsere absolute Folter-CD trug den bedrohlichen Titel "Toddler Rock" und wurde unserer Älteren von einer sadistischen Verwandten geschenkt. Das Cover zierte ein fettes Baby in Lederjacke und Sonnenbrille, die Verwandte hatte also mit voller Absicht gehandelt, die Lieder wurden ausnahmslos von krächzenden Kleinkindern vorgetragen, die allesamt an einem verfrühten Stimmbruch litten und jeden Ton mit Präzision knapp verfehlten. Ich schreibe dies alles in der Vergangenheit, denn wir mussten die CD mit dem Bulldozer z...

Liebe Diskussionsratten, als Teil dieser Diskussionsseite wäre es schön, wenn ein paar Leute Lust hätten, einen Blog (eine Kolumne würde man bei einer Zeitung sagen) zu einem einigermassen elternmitwirkungsrelevanten und interessanten Thema (Erziehung, Schule, Kinder, Ernährung, Freizeit ...) zu führen. Beiträge dürfen kurz sein und ziemlich unregelmässig erscheinen. Blogs sollen die Diskussion (im Forum) anregen, die Bloggerin oder der Blogger darf also durchaus (im Rahmen des Legalen und Anständigen) eine kontroverse und provozierende Meinung vertreten. Ich bin selber auch am Suchen von Blogwilligen. Bis es soweit ist, schreibt hier ab und zu ... der Platzfüller!

Why do young people nowadays insist on showing their underwear or lack thereof? I'm really not prude, really not, and part of me is jealous that my own butt crack isn't nice enough to show, but even if it were, I think I'd keep it neatly tucked in. So I was thinking about what this means for school policies and dress code formulations. I call them the butt crack policies: Students and teachers alike are not to wear apparel which explicitly emphasizes the fact that they are wearing underwear or not. Intentional display of the butt crack is means for punishment. No wise cracks allowed in this school. All cracks must be properly attired. Garments which do not properly cover all parts of one's posterior are not permitted. The reason I am blogging about this is because I thought it would make a fun language learning exercise about clothing for you students out there!! Have a nice day!!

Hello students! I am using my blog like a task card! The goal of today's lesson is to look into materials that can support testing and evaluation of children and to fill in the loose ends of some of the conversations on ILIAS. Therefore, I ask you to: Try out a test or two from one of the Explorers Assessment Packs. Go through the Lingualevel scavenger hunt. Add a comment to our module's ILIAS pages to summarize something you've learned or something you found interesting that might help the person who's initiated the comment. Go to the Explorers website and find the webquest and try out the CD ROM. Go to Laura's website and figure out how to UPLOAD materials onto the materials bank. Go to Laura's website and look at the links to webquests. Discuss how children use computers and where they encounter English. How can you support their English-language learning through the use of the Internet?

Should there really be a unit in the Swiss textbooks about Halloween?? If other countries are going to do Halloween activities, shouldn't children learn the history of the celebration and not just about symbols that are meaningless until the history is known? It seems very strange to me that many Swiss embrace the symbols of Halloween and also spend goodness knows how much money on witches and spiderwebs without really knowing what it's about. Here's a link to Unger's view on it! Thanks for the picture, Kathleen! http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6405989