I'm Not Afraid: Banish the Word and U give it its Power

Ooooh, I'm musing on a Tuesday.

That's, in my editorial calendar, not allowed (did you know that I have one of those?  For a private edu-blog, yeah...) because I save my deep thinking for Sundays.

But, see... thing is, I tweeted out this fantastic link to Enimem's lastest video:

If you are reading my blog in a country where this youtube video is not accessible, 

the song I am discussing is I'm Not Afraid by Enimem

and many of the teachers who saw the link immediately saw it's potential because the song is so fuckin' rich: each line filled with delicious collocations and examples of real life and its real life street pronunciation; subliminal messages in idioms which almost make a joke of the listener.  

It's backed by a solid, deep, belly-hitting beat which is powered by rhythmic personal storytelling as Enimem begs his fans for their forgiveness, like a gambling man promising to never pick up the cards again.   There is so much here for teachers to exploit  (the language / the story of his past: his despair, depression, obsessions: predictions for his future; the business of fame and how it wears on those who reach it)  sparking off numerous authentic conversations.  

Can Shakespeare reach teenagers or young adults like this piece could?

Oh...wait, are you still reeling - did you stop to blush in horror at the use of my phrase above, the so fuckin' rich, each..?  Are you sitting in front of your computer gob-smacked, in shock, that OMG, you saw me just use that word, out-loud and in-public, on my blog? 

Why?

Don't worry, though, it's probably for exactly the same reason that this absolutely amazing poetic resource won't get used by many teachers and it sucks.  Really, it does....

Because if you listened to this song (and to the majority of Rap) and you don't ever use it because you're worried your students' parents and/or your DOS will raise wagging fingers at the inappropriate language - can I just say: please - you think they don't know those words anyway?  Check out Chaucer desalinated, take a good ole gander at Shakespeare's insults:

Our language may have been cleaned and spruced up around the 18th Century, but you know what, those words only attained power as a result.

Without a doubt, undoubtedly

And all those who look down on me

I'm tearing down your balcony

Enimen, 2010

Thoughts? 


Useful links related to this posting:

• Pinker: The Language of Swearing***
• The F-bomb by Anne Hodgson for Spotlight Magazine
• The origins of British Swear Words, BBC
• The history of American Swear Words, CBS
• Urban Dictionary see blog post by Chris Cattaneo
• Flocabulary: a new movement in teaching through Rap music (thanks Teresa)
• $trictly 4 my teacherz  (blog with rap songs)
• Shakespeare was, like, the ultimate rapper (thanks Nicky)
  

Best, Karenne
image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smileham/3543823314/sizes/m/

p.s. follow the hyperlinked links in the text too :-)
p.p.s see Practical English Usage, Swan, page 573-578
p.p.p.s. thanks to my bro' Martin for sharing the vid with me on Facebook

EFL Carnival of Lessons Prezi

I'm a whole month and a day late.  

Sorry... if you submitted a post and have been wondering where on earth and when on earth it'd be posted - really many, many, many apologies for taking so long to put the lesson carnival together... it has been very busy round Kalinago's way: presentations, conferences, computer-crash, eeee....

Anyway, thing was... see, you wouldn't believe the quantity and quality of absolute creativity, inspiration and sheer brilliance which exists out there in the blogosphere - your peers, well they have some mean ideas and put together challenging and dynamic lessons for our students... and the first version of this  blog post and carnival was well, it kind of resembled one of those supplementary activity books - you know, all dry methodological facts and information in orderly boxes and it dully ran on for a whole eight pages, completely bypassing all the energy put in by my fellow ELT blogging teachers.

So I went stop.  

I had to respond in kind...

So I put together a Prezi - (and um, had to learn how to put together a Prezi)... and it's below.  

To use it, click through in sequence from blogger to post or randomly select wherever you want to go, midstream.  Whenever you see a lesson you'd like to do with your students or you'd like to zoom in to something in particular, scroll in/out with your mouse and whenever you want to get on over to a specific post mentioned on the canvas, click on the links near red arrows...  You can also download it onto your own desktop or embed it within any community website to click to the links from there.

Have fun and enjoy this roller-coaster ride through the ELT blogosphere!

ESL/EFL Carnival of Lessons on Prezi

Thank you very much to the teachers, materials writers and bloggers who participated in this ESL/EFL Carnival:

• Sabrina De Vita: Monsters Inc
• Mike Harrison: Dr Who Lip Reading /  An Unusual Reunion
• Nightwalker: Brainstorming
• Johanna Stirling: Guided code words activity
• Shelly Terrell: Using a Word Cloud Tool to Teach Students Vocabulary
• Anne Hodgson: Pigeon: Impossible / The Google "Search Stories"
• Jessie Voigts: Icebreaker Activities for the ESL Classroom
• Larry Ferlazzo: "Will Sleeping Make Me Smarter?"
• Mr. Foteah: Let the Games Begin!
• Nick Jaworski: The Easter Bunny Hates You
• Diana Diodati Konrad: Preparing a Negotiation Role Play
• Jeremy Day: A lesson in the psychology of learning languages part 2
• Vicki Hollett: A handy dictation
• Arjana Blazic: Travel posts turned practice tests
• Natasa Bozic Grojic: Trouble with the Mobile Phone
• Barbara Sakamoto: The Foolproof Lesson
• Janet Bianchini: The Power of Images - a Powerpoint Presentation
• Eva Buyuksimkesyan: Games vs Handouts
  

Best,
Karenne
image credit: Venice carnival by Neomodus photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/7935996@N04/4392393813/sizes/m/

NB:  Larry Ferlazzo, King of the ELT bloggers is the organizer of the EFL/ESL carnivals.  He keeps track of the carnivals and spreads the news throughout the blogosphere inviting submissions and hosts.  The next ESL/EFL carnival will be on June 1st, 2010 and will be hosted by Mary Ann Zehr.

You can also use this link to make your submission to the next carnival.

What's in the News?

"Pick a card, any card.

Share with us what you heard in the news today /this week/ this month..."

"Interesting!  I didn't hear about that, did you Frank?"

"No way!"

"He said what?  Anna, what do you think about people who do that sort of thing?"

"Uh huh, I agree."

"So what happened next- oh, the word you need for that is prejudice - preh.djew.dis - golly! Oh yes, Stefan, do write it down, it's spelt p-r-e... that is terrible and then what did they do?"

"Well done.  That was a very, very good story.  Thanks for sharing it with us, I hadn't followed the story myself... oh yes, you can put the card back on the table, yes face-up's fine.   By the way, Stefan, great grammar, I didn't hear you make more than one or two mistakes - perhaps you can work on your past perfect when you get home this evening - uh, huh, use link to the games I gave you last week.

So, who wants to go next?  Jakob?

Pick a card, any card..."


"Tiger, really - back, is he?  Funny."

~ ~


Best,
Karenne

p.s. Teaching dogme-style (or in any other communicative way) means that you put the student at the center of your classroom, or... let me see if I can say this in other words - Der Weg ist das Ziel (the journey is the reward) and not getting to page 65 by next Tuesday :-).  

It means your work is in the classroom, not before or after - but intensely paying attention to your students in TT focused listening; it means you encourage them and help make sure that the words that need to come out come out.

It means they spend most of the class time simply speaking.

Powerpointing Grammar - EFL Tech Tip #13b

One of my favourite quotes is :

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.

Mark Van Doren

PowerPoint is one of those tools - really not quite as fancy as the vast majority of web2.0 tools out there at the moment but, nonetheless, still a favorite for achieving the above effectively.

I'm sure you've already done this sort of exercise with your own students - handing over content control - probably using great big A3 sheets of paper and giant markers all throughout your career ;-) so I won't belabor the point but simply head straight on to an example of student work:

The Dark Past


Procedure

• Group a few students together and encourage each group to decide on one particular grammar point or series of points they would like to be in charge of.  This is especially useful close to an exam when they need a review or at the end of a course.  

• Using books or the internet, they should check on their understanding of the explanations and, most importantly, must decide collaboratively how to explain this information in the simplest way within their own presentations.  

• Using Powerpoint (or any similar software) they then create the slides, adding pictures, graphics, sound or videos (or whatever else).
  

• Let them choose who will be the teacher for each group and if you have a beamer (data projector) beam their presentation on the wall, if not, print out.

Sharing

If you're using a Ning or other community based platform either upload the presentation directly into it or upload them into a file-sharing website like Scribd.com or Slideshare.net.

Alternatively, distribute copies via email so that all copies can be revised at home - encourage questions and examples a few days later, after the presentation has finished.

Update June 2010, a simpler student example:

Prepositions of Place 1

Best,
Karenne

Useful links related to this posting:
Powerpointing me, tech tip 13a
Seth Dickens version of Powerpointing me
Using Powerpoint when teaching metaphors in Financial English

Coming soon: 
Powerpointing Lexical Sets 13c
Powerpointing Country Guides 13d

Have you tried this sort of activity with students?  How much error-correction  or other meddling do you do  - what about if you see a strange choice of images or an incorrect explanation?

And, by the way, if you've got another great Powerpoint activity suggestion don't hesitate to share your tricks and tips with us by explaining in the comments or if you've blogged it, do add your url.   (Or consider writing a guest piece for this blog on the subject! :-))

Predictions 2010 - 2019 (Lesson Plan)

Probably one of the easiest, getting-back-in-the-groove, sans materials, dogmesque lesson I can think of:

Step 1

Write 2009 on the board

• Ask students to quickly jot down a list of the 5 most important things that happened to them (and/or their companies or families) over the course of the year.

• Put them in pairs and ask them compare and share.
  

Add 2000 - 2009

• Join some of the pairs of students to create mini-groups of 3 - 5 students. Without asking them to create lists, encourage them to share the significant events in their own lives and the world around us in the previous decade.
  

Step 2

Draw a table on the board and fill it in with some of the key words below - areas where one might expect to see change within the next decade - and elicit others from your learners:

- politics
- economy
- war
- sports
- weather-environment
- technology
- social media
- entertainment
- education
- can you suggest any other areas of change for your own specific students' interests?

Hand students large sheets of paper and in micro groups ask them to brainstorm, collaborate and make predictions. (Adding dates of when they expect these changes to occur).

Encourage them to agree and disagree, discussing fears and solutions, feelings and hypothesis. You can choose on whether or not to focus in on the use of the various futures which will naturally emerge as you circulate.

Change the members of groups after every 15 minutes or so in order to keep content, ideas and conversations dynamic. Their sheets should be completely filled.

Step 3

Post-task: get your students to take specific areas of responsibility and write these up in notebooks or blogs - they can also create posters, glogsters or simply powerpoint them.

Best,
Karenne

p.s. if you've got a "don't like to talk to each other group" - help kick off these conversations using a prediction based news article, Abba song, slideshare, video or last years' conversation prompts / change lesson from Eric Roth's Compelling Conversations.

Or tell them your own.

What is one thing you predict happening 2010-2019?

(I reckon they'll be a lot more edu- blogs and many more university lecturers online - but you'll have to pay for monthly access (some sort of i-tunes-like platform) and... I think there will be a whole lot less printed textbooks: 2016 on and hmmm... learning a 3rd language will suddenly become a fashionable trend - it somehow gets easier: brain implants probably :-).

Bring on the teenies...

The decade of the uh-oh's is finally done.

Hallelujah!!

For me those ten years were made up of:

A marriage... a divorce, surviving volcanic eruptions and political coups, moving from South America to Germany, completing a full-length screenplay, not selling said screenplay, trying to sell a conversation skills supplementary book then putting pieces of it for sale online instead, working on an animation film, writing materials for Klett, meeting President Obama, joining facebook, completing a pilgrimage across the north of Spain, creating this blog... abandoning the other one... becoming addicted to Twitter and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember...

'xcept co-convincing someone important that there really is a paradigm shift going on in education today :-)


What's next?

No doubt another roller coaster of a ride but also...

• teacher training for teaching associations
• presenting at conferences
• participating/hosting online training sessions
  
• more writing... tons more writing
• more blogging... lots, lots, lots more blogging

and hopefully...

• studying film and its application to learning English
• some kind of techie related job, related to the above
  
• coming back home (Grenada) and working online from here
• lots of pictures with loads of ultra-cool ELT people :-)
• some travel (Tibet, Machu Picchu, Pyramids)
  

How was your decade?

What are you hoping to get out of the teenies?

How are you hoping to develop professionally or personally?

Whatever it is, I truly wish you much happiness, heaps of passion in your journey and many, many smiles along the way!

Best,
Karenne

New Year Lesson (Abba video, worksheet, conversation prompts)

• Be the hit of your New Year party by Shelly Terrell
• Bridget Jones and my New Year Resolutions by Marisa Constantinides
• New Year celebrations by Sue Lyon Jones
• Best sites for learning about New Year celebrations by Larry Ferlazzo
• 2009: the year of living technologically by Janet Bianchini
• How to survive in 2010 by Ozge Karaoglu

Conversations at Christmas

Confession:

Christmas is not my favorite holiday.

It's my least favorite.

To go into all the reasons for that would be dull...

I could say I don't like the materialism, am not a big fan of shopping or crowded markets - suffer from glühwein headaches... I could tell you I hate the cold: Christmas for me, growing up in the Caribbean, was about playing cricket on the beach, picnic'd turkey on Boxing Day.

Everyone wants it to snow here. Sssh.

Also, all those expectations to be happy. All that pressure to "let's make everything perfect."

And how exactly did Coca-Cola manage to influence everyone into thinking that a big fat man in a white beard brings gifts down a chimney and more importantly how did this concept shimmey it's way into every little boy and girl's dreams all over the world?

Bah, humbug I say.

But in the meantime, here's a little gift for you and your classes over the next 10 days:

Merry Christmas
;-)

Best,
Karenne
p.s. for the new year

Related Links:

• Youtube Xmas songs +lyrics
• 12 days of Christmas, Sue Lyon-Jones (YL)
• Lots of Christmas Stuff Isabel Perez Torres
• Six topical teaching ideas for December, Lindsay Clandfield
• More questions at Christmas, Sean Banville

& if you've also done a lesson on this theme... do add your link!

Who's your googlegänger?

Is anyone wandering about the planet with your name?

What do they do? Where do they live?

Do they have a better job, make more money than you do? Have they written a book, do they lead a football team, are politicians or doctors?

Are they busy creating a digital footprint more weighty than your own?

A great conversation activity for EFL students, especially after a Getting to Know You lesson, is to ask your students to research the 'net for others walking around with the same or a similar name (perhaps an anglicized version) and to report back to the class on what they've discovered.

Good sites to check include Google obviously, however Wikipedia, Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing and Geneology sites can also produce interesting results.

Once in class, encourage them to share their findings in pairs, along with notes and photographs if they found these, and switch groups as often as time allows.

However, after the second switch, they should leave their paperwork behind and simply discuss their googlegänger freely.

At the end of the session do group feedback, asking participants to tell you about the most interesting thing they found out about another colleague's name-double and discuss some of the authentic words and expressions which came up as a result of their forays into the internet.

Post-task activity
Students write an email to their googlegängers introducing themselves and commenting on what they learned - what they both have in common or don't and they don't need to send these, but can if they want to.

Best,
Karenne
p.s. My googlegänger is an artist in Trinidad - one day I'm going to buy some of her paintings! Do you know who yours is?

Powerpointing Me -EFL Tech Tip #13

The other day when I was reading Nick Jaworski's blog postings on using the Teacher as the Narrative in EFL classes, I left a comment behind regarding one of my used-a-gazillion-times-first-lessons...


The Getting to Know You, Getting to Know Me game

I've no idea where I originally picked up the bones of this before techitizing it for my own purposes, so 'xcuse me if I don't reference the source - however, if you know, let us all know below.


Objective

• Create an atmosphere of sharing right from the get-go.

• Find out your students' communicative abilities and weaknesses: particularly when making small talk /asking and answering questions.

Prep

• Approx 2 - 4 hours, depending which option you choose below. However you'll be able to use it an infinite number of times in an infinite number of (first day) lessons for an infinite number of years.
  

Brainstorm

Who are you?
Jot down quick notes on words that describe you and your life.

• country of birth
• countries lived in
• marital status
• family & siblings
• current job
• previous jobs
• a job you dreamed of having
  
• degree(s)/ other studies
  
• hobbies and interests
• group/ associations you belong to
  
• places you've been on holiday
• your age (number)
  
• how long you've been teaching (number)
• your house number
  
• fave food /drink
• fave music /musicians
  
• fave book(s)
  
• something unusual about you
• anything else you feel like sharing
  

Procedure Option 1 (no tech, photocopier optional)

• Dig out photos that match the above list, clip pics out of a magazine
• Type the numbers using a large font and print
  
• Photocopy the pics to A4 if you'd like them to be uniformed in appearance
  
• Stick on to colored card and laminate

Procedure Option 2 (low tech)

• Open up a PowerPoint document
• Insert personal pictures from your computer
• Search www.flickr.com or google images (cc-licensed*) for the images/maps you don't have yourself - import these into your ppt.
• Type the numbers in a large font.

Procedure Option 3 (medium tech - quickest)

• Go to Wordle.net
• Enter the words you brainstormed
• Print several copies of your wordle & laminate (or capture as a jpeg / insert into a ppt slide)

Procedure Option 4 (will take >4hrs)

• PhotoPeach your life. Use with intermediate learners+ re fast imagery.
• Same as option 2
• Save all slides as jpegs
• Upload into Photopeach
• Select music: something related to your own culture or fave band works best.
  

PhotoPeachingMe on PhotoPeach



NB. It doesn't matter what order you present your images in.



In class

After briefly introducing yourself to your new students and getting their names, ask if they know anything about you and if they'd like to.
Optional: depending on your students' levels you may like to review question structures (wh-q/auxiliary and modals/conditionals/present-perfect) prior to doing this exercise, but not necessary.

Tell your students you're going to show some pictures and you'd like them to guess what the images have to do with your life by asking you questions.

Show the first picture / beam the first slide / show the first 30secs of movie.

Once you've elicited the correct answer, elicit the best question form which would produce that answer.

A rough example:
Picture: A boy and girl which look like me
Teacher: What does this have to do with me?
Students: "Brothers and sister?"
Teacher: How can you make that into a good question?
Students: "Do you have brother and sister?"
Teacher: Brothers and sisters are called siblings, you can also ask "Are they your brother and sister?"
Students: "Do you have (any) siblings?"
Teacher: Yes, I do. I have 2 brothers and a sister. My little brother wasn't born yet - in this picture - he's only 19. Do you have any questions about them?
Students: "Where they live?"
Teacher: Where do they live
etc...

Show the rest of the pictures or slides and continue getting students to ask about your life.

If you chose the movie option, show the whole film and then get students to ask questions about your life based on the images they've seen.

If you chose the Wordle option, get students to work in groups to figure out what the words might have to do with your life before getting them to ask the questions.


Their turn

Get students to jot down 5- 10 questions they'd like to ask each other. Circulate and correct their structures and vocabulary.

Form pairs or small groups and encourage them to ask each other about each others lives.

After around 15 minutes, switch members of groups and now ask them to tell their new partners about the lives of those they were talking to, as well as themselves. Depending on the size of your class, you can repeat this step as often as you like.


Post task

Students can create their own powerpoint presentations, wordles or movies based on what they're able to learn from the internet and/or other sources regarding one or more of the following:

• politicians /local or international
• sports figures
• entertainers: singers, movie stars, tv personalities
• their googlegänger
• anyone else

Ask students to bring what they learned to the next class in order to present it - share and discuss what they learned - again encouraging them to ask each other to ask questions & prompting for extended answers.





Useful links related to this posting:

Getting to know you, video with lyrics (can be used pre-task)
Getting to know you introduction games
Getting to know you - conversation prompt cards (available free to registered members of my website).


Do you have any questions or a creative tip for first lessons that you'd like to share with us?

Best,
Karenne

Note: you can print these lesson tips as a pdf by clicking on the title of the post, scrolling down and then clicking on the green "print as pdf" button.

Hi English Fans! (Motivation in Adult EFL)

alternative title: UP, DOWN, TOP/BOTTOM, CHANGES & NO CHANGES


There have been some rather hot and heavy discussions recently about whether or not it's a good idea to use technology in teaching.

And if you're a regular visitor to my blog then you pretty much already know what I think.

For those who're new: I drum it in hard and heavy. It's the world we live in, it's the world we better be teaching in.



This time, though, I won't be socking you with my opinions. I'll just show you the result.

For those who don't know any back story, I'm very proudly a dogmeist which is a kind of radical movement in teaching, started up by Scott Thornbury back in 2000 (see his website and articles here).

Dogme has the goal of student-centered learning, conversation-driven lessons and a clear focus on emergent language.

Trouble is, I'm also a technologist and most dogmeists aren't.


Now, although Scott Thornbury is my thought leader (there really isn't anyone else like him or his work in our field) we've had a few, somewhat public, arguments about the tech side of things.

I enjoy these discussions - he makes valid points which force me to up my anty each time: just because I think I'm right, doesn't mean that I am.

Being wrong is a point of growth and opportunity to develop - it's specifically because of these arguments, every time they flare up, that I keep copious notes on what's happening in the classroom, how my students are responding, how much they're retaining, where they're improving and constantly question my teaching practice and its effectiveness.

Today's post is about student motivation in my hybrid dogme meets technology teaching.

This blog mostly contains lessons I've done again and again, things that I have experimented with way before you get to see them ;-) however today... I'm going to go out on a wing and admit I don't know what my students will produce next week.

Today, I'll simply ask you to look at the level of motivation my students are displaying due to the fact that we focus on things that they are interested in learning, work on language they need to learn and reuse this in ways applicable to their lives.

We use technology when it fits to do so, not because it's fancy.

Part 1

Language objective:

Mastery over phrases used in statistical reporting /Financial English.

In class procedure:

• Get each student to draw trend expressions as given onto large sheets of paper then present to the rest of the class. If we had had computers in class with us that day, these could have been done in excel.
  

• Discussion and agreement /disagreement. Building contextual examples.

• Cross checking via BlackBerry for expressions when validity of use uncertain.

The expressions in drawings:





Setting up the pretask activity:
(I dislike the word homework)

Brainstorm potential sources for reports.



Pre Task

Find pre-existing graphs, pie-charts, annual reports and download from the internet, preferably in English but not necessarily.

The task is not to create a graph (they know how to do that) but instead to choose any figures and trends personally interesting and think about how to best describe change.

Next week we'll discuss their findings in English.

Student involvement

See emails from Eva, the self appointed moderator, who decided to make sure that all students (including those missing) are on the same page for next week. I did not request for this email to be written, although I wasn't surprised to see it - she often follows up on the lessons.

We live in a world with email. We live in a world where digital photographs can be taken and shared, where .pdfs can be downloaded and distributed.

We live in a world where our phones are micro-sized computers.

We live in a world where the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented but can instead be analyzed - where the focus in language learning can actually be on the language.

Next week I will show you what happens next In Task - what they produce, if they reused the language, how they present these and anything else.


Best,
Karenne
p.s. Can I just say this cracks me up: Hi English Fans! My German/Polish students in this class are aged 40+ and work in the Financial sector.

Water Words (on using images in ESP: Financial English)

One of the absolute best supplementary books to use when teaching banking or financial types is Financial English by Ian MacKenzie.


However, despite the absolute wealth of vocabulary it contains, the exercises can be a bit difficult for students to do, especially if they've never seen the words before and also the book is, quite frankly, a wee dry.

If you've been reading my blog for a while then you've probably already gleaned by now that I like to have a bit of fun in my lessons... and I've noticed you do too... while still sticking to the core learning objectives.

So in this posting I'm going to hone in on two different approaches to working with lists of words, when presenting a visual lexis.

For this example, we'll look at the language in unit 2.10 of Financial English, Liquid Metaphors.

Step one:
Divide up the following words by the number of students you have:

2.10 includes:
channel, dry up, flood, flow, pour, run out of, swim, trickle down, drain, ebb and flow, pool, source, awash, crest, depth, under(water), fluid, sank, plug.

*To mix things up, I also brainstorm a list of related lexis with my students and provide extras before evenly distributing these amongst the students e.g. (water)fall, drop, river, cross that bridge, laundry, ocean, wave & drown.

Step two (the dogme version)

Hand out the vocabulary and ask your students to draw pictures matching each word.






As great masterpieces aren't expected, you'd be surprised how much 50+ year old bankers enjoy doing this type of activity, LOL!





For the words they have difficulty drawing (because they don't know them) either encourage them to help each other out, mime the words or allow them to use a dictionary.

OR

Step two (the techno-teacher version)

Give your students their share of the words and set image searching as their pre-task activity.

They can use Google images (use safe search), any photo based web 2.0 platform and/or my personal favorite, flickr. Remind them to look for images that are creative commons licensed.

Ask them to copy the pictures into Powerpoint, create slides & label if wished.

n.b. if you don't have a computer in the classroom this pre-task can be set as a home based activity.



Step three

Spread the pictures across the table or if you have one, pin them up on a corkboard.

Encourage your students to present their drawings or slides and to share their understanding of the words they've learned with each other.





Step four

Do the exercise provided by the book* - if feasible, get them working in pairs of groups discussing the different solutions applying the words to a financial context, referencing the pictures on the table.

*obviously although I'm using Financial English as the example here, you can do this activity with any vocabulary book.



Step five

Build awareness by highlighting and discussing the common expresssions i.e. trickle down, run out of, riding on the crest of a wave, pulling the plug on something, a huge pool of resources etc - encourage them to come up with alternative sentences using these.

Step six

Now ask your students to write up a short essay reusing the metaphors. For example, in this case, they could describe:

• their company's financial situation
• a project they're currently working on
• their country's economy
• the financial crisis and the global economy
• a current financial news item (e.g. a company heading toward bankruptcy or being listed on the stock exchange)
  

Step seven

Correct their pieces and get them to share what they wrote with each other - encourage further conversation on the opinions stated - reusing the collocative phrases as often as possible.

Best,
Karenne

Side note: I've done both of these methods with my learners and they all reported 1) increased awareness of the vocabulary and 2) a noticing of the lexis in later financial news articles.

For me, these approaches of working with images, while similar probably have different effects on memory.

I've been thinking about it and reckon that they probably trigger different learning processes (one involves some physical learning and discovery of the lexis, the image searching would result in immediate association between the word and image) however, honestly, as I'm not a scientist nor do I have a masters in second language acquisition, I'd really love to know your professional take on this issue.

Do you know of supportive texts that back these ideas up?

Have you/would you also do this type of activity with kids or teens? Why, why not?


Useful links related to this posting:

• Jeremy Day's excellent tips on using Imagery in Financial English
  
• Murder of a Superhero (using drama in the classroom)
• Other teaching tips with a dogme angle added
  
• Other vocabulary teaching tips

• Scott Thornbury on Repetition, great YouTube video!

• The Weboword Ning - for vocabulary enthusiasts, lovers and learners! This is the world's first community dedicated to Visual Vocabulary.

• Jamie Keddie's post: Reasons for buying flowers (grammar + images)
  
• Vicky Saumell on Using Phasr
  

The walls that divide us

(A Business English/EFL/ESP:marketing lesson)

After having lived, worked and taught English all over the world, I've noticed that cultures differ from workplace to workspace and this cultural divide isn't limited to the country of residence, nor to the sub-cultures there but, instead, is a part of a company's own philosophy.

Here in Germany, many people work side-by-side for years, never ever reaching first-name basis. Often they think Americans and Caribbeans are far too relaxed and dislike what they perceive to be a level of superficiality.

On the other hand, when you get to know the Germans, they are, deep-down, some of the most warm-hearted and generous people I've ever had the pleasure of teaching and they continually surprise me with their insights and knowledge.

As you've probably had conversations with your own students about cross-cultural business communication issues, no matter where you live, I thought I'd post up one of my older video exercises (you'll have seen it already if you've been in one my training sessions).

This video is a brilliant supplementary activity to take in with you: it's short, the speech of the actors is clear and the advertisement is particularly poignant for a Business/ESP:marketing lesson.

You can use it across a variety of objectives. On one side working on the concepts of business communication/cross-cultural issues or concentrating on the emotive metaphors, expanding the activity further by brainstorming others.

If you're teaching a group of marketing students, discussing the actual effectiveness of the advertisement can turn it into a particularly interesting conversation.

As an extra bonus, the video also provides a great context for practicing the Present Perfect vs the Past Simple.

Worksheet here (pdf)

Video here

Teaching notes:

The video works well with PreIntermediate students right up to Advanced students.

With the latter, the comprehension questions can be quickly glossed over if you wish, spending more time on the discussion, post video.

With the lower levels, watch twice and do the questions which your students can handle comfortably. Prompt your students to give you their general impressions and/or work on the grammar presented in the dialogue.

Enjoy!

Useful links related to this posting:
How to download video on to your laptop/netbook.


Best,
Karenne

List of Business English textbooks this video activity can be used to supplement:
-Business Basics unit 10
-Market Leader PreIntermediate unit 7 /unit 9
-Business Focus PreIntermediate unit 7
-Intelligent Business Intermediate unit 6
-InCompany PreIntermediate unit 4
-InCompany Intermediate unit 17

As a warmer
-Up to Speed unit 6
-Business Result unit 8

As always, if you'd like to add a book title to this list or you've got a suggestion for working with the video in another way, don't hesitate to add your thoughts!

The God in Marketing

A word regarding the following posting which is an attempt to kill three birds with one stone -

because why knock down two if the rock in your hand's big enough to hit more?

part 1 : aimed at my fellow triiibesters - how Seth Godin has been a huge influence on my life, my way of working -teaching me how to lead online communities, understanding business, learning best marketing practices while remaining ethical, having the guts to make some noise and get my stuff out there.

part 2: aimed at you, one of the great EFL teachers surfing the 'net looking for lesson tips and authentic materials for your ESP and Business English students - on how you can use Seth Godin's blog postings and books in these.

part 3: aimed at you, my fellow BELTfreers and also the N00bies anxiously awaiting your promised carnival - - a quick video about blogging, Seth Godin and Tom Peters.



Part 1: for the Triiibesters.

You, the band of Seth Godin's merry men and women are what make it such an amazing place to be. I have gained so much from being in your company and thank you very much for the laughs, for the discussions, for your sharing.

In honor of the 1st anniversary of Triiibes, this is what I've learned from the guru:


a) to be unique

The name, the pretty picture.

We speak English in the Caribbean, where I'm from originally, hence no imperialistic flags on the header here or website.


b) to answer all my emails

If Seth Godin is able to find the time to answer my emails (which um, was before I knew who he was... I just wrote the odd looking guy with the head you have to click on 'cause I thought his page was cool and couldn't comment), then, well, um...

I can find the time to answer the teachers and bloggers who write to me.

c) to be an amateur on purpose

No mimicry here.

Just Karenne and her rants, tips, ideas and uploaded lessons for teaching English.


d) to listen to my sneezers

Whenever someone out there decides to say something nice about my work, I not only appreciate it, I really try to make sure that they know that I've heard and that I appreciate their time, energy and effort.

e) to lead

I work on connecting people with other people who have similar objectives, goals or needs.

I try to make a difference by (re)igniting a passion for teaching.

Whatever brain stuff I know that doesn't hurt me to share, I give transparently and ethically.


f) to be succinct

Less is often more.

This is an area I'm still working on.



On Seth's books

The Dip saved me from quitting when I really thought I'd made a huge mistake in going solo, Purple Cow's case studies gave me new ideas and helped restructure my marketing plan and product.

Triiibes influenced the creation of my BELTfree Ning group - a passionate and exciting part of my daily activities, connecting me with so many other ELT bloggers from all over the world - bringing much joy!

I could also probably list at least ten other ways his writing has influenced my work but I won't 'cause, really, you need to move on to read the next entry...

Leading from Bob Poole's post about Magic to here, you can now head on over to Pat Ferdinandi on Triiibes.... Special thanks to Megan Elizabeth Morris & Matt Kern for organizing this event, Paul Durban for the blog-ring image.





Part 2a:

Because four birds are way better than three.

Seth Godin's blogs and books are an ideal source for authentic texts in the Business English classroom. He writes succinctly. Single paragraphs lead to hour long discussions so they're ideal texts for practicing Business English contextually.

www.sethgodin.typepad.com


click on his head to get to the blog

Who with?


ESP Marketing
Get your students to subscribe to his blog as should you. You will instantly have much more in common with your students.

Grab his postings - take them into class, these are particularly good:

• Guy #3
• Two ways to build trust
• Leadership is your strongest marketing ability

Encourage learners to each purchase a copy of Unleashing the Ideavirus, Permission Marketing or both.

Read these with them, setting chapters as pre-tasks, combing through for relevant vocabulary in class and discuss language, philosophies and concepts.


ESP IT

As the web 2.0 grows, many of your international developers and designers are investigating the ideas behind communities.

Encourage them to get copies of Tribes and read this with them.



Business English, especially entrepreneurs, management and HR.

If you are teaching entrepreneurs, I recommend the Dip because they're going to go through one.

Purple Cow is also excellent and filled with ideas on how people can approach thinking outside of the box.


Great posts:

• Ignore your critics
• What are you good at?
  
• The posture of a communicator
• Two ways to deal with 'no'
• Social norms
• Three jobs you might want to consider
  

Part 2b:
As a fellow English teacher with an interest in linguistics, here's a few definitions of words and phrases used by Seth, no doubt very soon to be entered in dictionaries everywhere:

• an ideavirus - an idea that spreads from mouth to mouth (or brain to brain)
  
• to sneeze - to tell others about something
  
• a sneezer - someone who consistently shares ideas, news about things they've discovered
  
• a purple cow - someone or something that is not only unique, but is in fact, remarkable
  
• being in the dip - the feeling of wanting to give up on a project
  

Stuff related to themes in our industry.

• On punctuation
• On textbooks

Part 3: for the bloggers and the wanna-be bloggers and the really... should I be a blogger-but-why people

Useful links related to this posting:

• What is BELTfree?
• More videos of Seth Godin and Tom Peters

Best,
Karenne

Smart Phones Meeting (EFL Business English Lesson)

These days, at least over here in Europe, smart phones are about as commonplace as, er... um, desks.

So let's use them to teach with...



Lesson objective:
Practice the language of arranging meetings

Procedure (1):

You can easily dogme this lesson - simply ask your students to brainstorm a list of meetings and appointments they regularly and irregularly have with their colleagues and in their personal lives.

• Get them to write these down in their notebooks or stick up on the board.

• Ask them to drag out their computers-in-their-back-pockets a.k.a phones and encourage them to organize meetings with each other. Provide a time frame to work within, e.g within the next 2 - 8 weeks.

• Work on their grammatical weaknesses, supply alternative phrases, correct the common errors.

Procedure (2):

For students who feel more comfortable with a worksheet, download these:

Smart Phone Meetings (students)

Smart Phone Meetings (teachers)

Who's this lesson for?

Employed adults with smartphones or BlackBerry devices.
Elementary (with some vocabulary explanations) to Advanced.
Best with Pre-Intermediate.

Timing

25 - 40 minutes. Longer if you do the extension exercise.

When to use this lesson:

• to support a textbook unit on telephoning or meetings
• as a review of expressions for arranging meetings
• to focus on prepositions of time (on, at, in)
• to practice using ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd..)
• to work on the future structures (will, be going to, future continuous etc.)

after the first time of presenting this lesson, you can also

• follow up weekly/ whenever you need quick ice-breaker or a 5 minute filler

Have fun!

Best,
Karenne

p.s. before you dash off - have you got any other great ideas for using smartphones in class? The other day we google'd and wikipedia'd (we were looking up Farah Fawcett's age) and this was loads of fun too - would love to know how you've been using them too...