Last fall I taught a couple of classes (3 hours total) with newspaper articles and discussion questions and then again this Spring I’ve been teaching a company class with two students. These students are quite fluent in English and their only requirement was that we discuss newspaper articles. The topic did not matter. I got to choose and format the discussion the way I wanted to.

Instead of merely printing up the article and bringing it to class, I instead copied it into MSpublisher, formatted it, added vocabulary notes and discussion questions. I then emailed the article to students 1-2 days in advance of the lesson for them to read it and be prepared for discussion. The articles are from a variety of news sources and most of them should be usable in any country or context with adult learners.

I’ve uploaded an archive file (11.2mb) with all articles so far in both publisher and pdf format. If you have pdf then you’ll be able to modify them to your own uses. Here are two sample articles to take a look at before you download the whole archive: metrosexual and toronto subway strike.

update

I’ve finished another article on cloning dogs and pets for class this week. It’s not included in the archive, so if you want it, you’ll have to get it separately.

If you like these or find them useful, please leave a comment.

In class today I did a mingling exercise where students filled in a weekly schedule of events that they wanted to invite someone to. Students invited and then either accepted or rejected the invitation. If they were rejected they were expected to propose an alternative, if accepted then negotiate a time and place with each other. I’ve done this lesson many times before and build up the language before starting.

This time however for the review section instead of just making notes of common errors, I walked around the classroom with my camera and recorded conversations. I then moved the video from my camera to the computer and we watched it as a class where students were encouraged to notice what they did correct and find mistakes if possible.

This went over really well in all three classes that I did it with. I will be doing this again in the future with this and other similar exercises.

I’m teaching an advanced class yet again. This week one of my lessons from last semester was not very good. I needed to replace the second hour so I decided to add another TV show to the mix. This time I chose Corner Gas - A Canadian sit com that just got picked up by an American network. This show is funny, very unique, and I can guarantee that students have never seen it before.

The handout is in pdf format - Corner Gas Whataphobia. If you want an MSpublisher format send an email and I’ll get it to you.

Not my greatest piece of writing, but my latest column for the Korea Herald is out. When I started writing this I searched my archives and was surprised to note that I had not previously written about icebreakers. For the record the article has been slightly re-ordered by my editor.

Korea Herald Readers
Welcome. Feel free to comment and leave your thoughts on this weeks column. If you would like to learn more about me visit my bio page. I have also been blogging at this site for 4 years so there are a lot of entries if you care to look through the archives. Some of my favorite or more popular entries are available on the classic entries page.

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curses to both Zenkimchi (for linking to) & A Geek in Korea for this mind bender of a language puzzle. I’m not good at these kind of puzzles so have a negative chance of cracking the code, but am looking forward to the solution so that I can use this with my students come the Spring semester.My guess is:

You can educate but you can’t teach

I’ve spent a fair amount of time on a lesson utilizing Prison Break’s pilot episode. This lesson is for my English Communication summer course which is mostly 4th year students with a high English proficiency. The course is in a computer lab and the lesson utilizes this, but could easily be adapted for teaching in a regular classroom with a little work.

I’ve been thinking about a lesson that provided instructions for students on how best to use subtitles for language acquisition for some time. I finally have the opportunity to be able to teach it and hope the lesson works. I chose Prison Break as most of my students are familiar with the show, it’s current and very popular, and I also enjoy the show.

To prepare this lesson I ripped the pilot episode from DVD in four sections.  The first clip is 5:13 seconds long and has Korean subtitles, the second clip is 5:55 seconds long with no subtitles. The third clip is 7:17 seconds and has English subtitles. The final clip was ripped 3 times, one with English subs, one with no subs, and one with Korean subs - each being three minutes long. If you have access to the DVD you can easily rip with subtitles using Xilosoft’s DVD Ripper.

My lesson plan takes 3 hours to complete and students will only watch the first 21:20 seconds of the pilot - it’s available here: prison break lesson_plan (MS word) The student handout is available in here:
prison break. handout (PDF)if you would like the original MSpublisher file send me an email and I’ll pass it on.

Two articles of interest related to subtitles and ESL/EFL can be found here and here.

Two years ago and at a previous university position I wrote about a proposal for a course titled Internet English. Well it looks like I will finally be able to teach a course approaching what this was supposed to be.

This summer, starting June 25, I have been asked to teach a course called English Communication Practice. No guidelines have been set, just that the students are expected to practice English communication. I’ve decided to interpret this loosely as communication is not strictly conversation. Communication is done through various media and modes including oral, written, and recorded (books, radio tv etc..).

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Next week is special listening week for my freshmen classes. During this week we don’t use the textbook but rather do a number of listening exercises and talk about how to improve listening and various resources including podcasts & audio books. I have a couple of activities from the past that I decided to scrap because I wasn’t satisfied with them. This semester I’m replacing them with a 25 minute lesson around a music video by Twisted Sister. 

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This is a lesson for advanced students on Internet Piracy. Using the website mentioned here, I have saved all the youtube videos to my harddrive so I don’t have to worry about lack of internet during class. I will be teaching this class today and hope it goes well. If anyone uses the lesson I would of course like to know how it goes for you.

piracy.pdf (393kb)

Enjoy
update
Too bloody difficult. It seems I’m going to have to adjust my expectations down for this class. They could do the discussions but the documentary (only 10 minutes) was too difficult even with two viewings.

As mentioned previously I have been planning a lesson using Van Halen’s video Hot for Teacher. I’ve finished the lesson but am unsure of whether to proceed with teaching it. The order of the handout is not in the same order that I would be teaching it. The class is for advanced students and is all male. Feedback appreciated - the hand out is here in pdf format hot_for_teacher.pdf

for the record, this lesson is going to be taught 28 hours from now, quick feedback needed.
Update in the extended entry

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This semester I’m going to be teaching an advanced class of native/near-native speakers. This course is essentially a freshmen English replacement class. One of the assignments I’m going to do is going to utilize youtube videos. I haven’t exactly determined what I want to do, but the basic premise will be to have the students search a video of at least 3 minutes in length and explain to the class why they like the video and how this video is helpful for their English.

I know that this is a very vague assignment, but I’m still flushing out the idea. Actually I just started and wanted to get the idea down in writing. I will of course not restrict videos to youtube, googlevideo or other English video sites will be acceptable. One alternative would be to have the students make their own video and upload it to youtube to share with the world. I’m pretty sure that option would not be mandatory as I am not going to teach how to make a video or provide cameras to the class, but if they want to do that and have the know how, that would be fine with me.

Any reader suggestions are very welcome to help me flush out this idea. I’ve got plenty of time as I’m not planning on doing this assignment until the second half of the semester.

I’ll be going over the unreal conditional this week. I’ve got a couple of great activities that I regularly do for this sort of lesson. I decided this time around to add another one. Last week was special listening week and that got me inspired to use If I had a $1,000,000 by Barenaked Ladies. This is a great upbeat song that uses the target langauge repeatedly.

I’m not going to do a cloze or gap-fill with this, though the song easily lends itself to that sort of activity. Instead I’m going to focus on generating conversation and fluency after having done some focus on form earlier. This will be a great way to lighten the class mood and enjoy some music the students have probably never heard before.

I’ve uploaded the PDF (226kb). If you have MSpublisher and would like to modify the file to your own needs send me an email and I’ll pass on the original file.

Recently I’ve been reading Learning Vocabulary in Another Language by I.S.P. Nation (cambridge australia link) again - was reading this ages ago and didn’t finish. A few days ago there was some material in this book that I wanted to blog, but I didn’t make note of it and cannot find it now.

However today I found an interesting teaching activity that I think would go over very well in class. I’m going to copy directly from the bottom of page 136 to the top of 138.

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I’ve just finished the hand out for the next episode of Smallville that I am doing with my advanced class. You can see the original on this entry. My students wanted to continue chronologically in the series so prepared episode two titled Metamorphosis. This time I’m not uploading my lesson plan but you should be able to plan any lesson well from this material. On page nine I’ve copied the text from SMALLVILLE: A TV Review. I’m going to have my students read that site before coming to class, but I copied it in case the site goes down in the future and then I’ll be able to distribute it as a handout. I’ve of course included the link on page nine so students can find it for themselves if they want.

Many of the screenshots I included in the script came from this site, which has over 200 screen caps per episode. Again, if you have MSpublisher and would like to modify the file let me know and I’ll send it to you by email. You can download my entire handout in pdf here: Smallville - Metamorphosis

Teacher Dude’s Grill and BBQ is a blog that I stumbled across while surfing. It looks like he’s been blogging since late September of last year so unlike so many other blogs he may not be here today gone tomorrow. Anyhow the post on the top of the page has a stellar idea which I am going to use for my classes.

Anyway I have been handing out DVDs with all the audio material I’ve mananged to download from the net so students can practice their listening skills over the holidays. Usually I hand out two or three DVDs to the class and ask them to copy or circulate the originals. (viral teaching ?) I do this as not veryone has access to a pc and the internet.

The rest of the post links to the resources he’s used - go read this brilliant post.

Another post further down the page is inspired by the movie Die Hard 3 and also looks like a lot of fun. I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing it during this semester. Go read The Die Hard Lesson Plan and read the post that explains the inspiration for this lesson.

Kevin Kim has posted what looks like a fun activity to try out with students. I’ll be trying it out after I do mid-terms. If anyone else has lesson plans or bits they would like to share, please do. There is no better way to improve your own classroom than to share, borrow and adapt each others work.
Kevin’s activity is titled The Two Headed Monster

The setup is simple: students are grouped into pairs (or trios, if the class has an odd number of students) and are told that they are now fused together and have become two-headed monsters. The monster, unfortunately, has a problem: each head can utter only one word at a time.

For all the details go read Kevin’s post.

I prepared a two hour lesson on the pilot episode of Smallville for my advanced students doing independant study. The prep for this lesson took a large amount of time and I thought that it would be nice to see the lesson used by other teachers if they are interested.

The class met for two hours. The first fifteen minutes I had students discussing what they knew about Smallville and Superman in general. I talked a little bit about what native English speakers, especially from North America, would know due to superman being embedded in pop culture. You can see the handout for that section, which students downloaded and printed before class, here: Smallville Assumptions (pdf).

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This week I’m doing a special focus on pronunciation. The first class is focusing on word and sentence stress. I’ve prepared few exercises to build awareness of these areas for students. But I wanted to have something that would instantly make it clear what I was talking about. Especially that it isn’t always necessary to have the sounds exactly correct when speaking but that intonation and stress carries much more meaning than most people know. This is where Ladle Rat Rotten Hut comes in.

Listen to the audio - do it now before looking at anything else. What story is it? It’s easy to guess because of the intonation and rhythm.  (original audio from this site) Sentence sense has the story written side by side in the original as well as the H. L. Chace version you just listened to.

While searching for some minimal pairs lists I came across this useful site; Caroline Browns Word Lists which has the pairs organized and labeled with all the phonetic terms (Fricatives vs Affricates , Voiceless Velars vs Alveolars, Glottal Fric vs Alveolar Stop etc). Additionally I found links to several more lists on the ITESLJ pronunciation links page.The mother of all minimal pairs list is available at minimal pairs for English RP - scroll down to the bottom and click on the pair you want for an extensive list. I know the list is RP, but if you are teaching another variety of English don’t use the pairs that are not correct for you. 

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Last week was mid-terms and three of my students screwed up on their oral exam due to some misunderstanding. Instead of just giving them a zero, I’ve decided a second chance is in order so I’m giving them a book report to do. These students have a good command of English but I am not going to ask them to just buy a book and read it. I’ve decided to have them purchase a book in the Oxford Bookworms series level three.

I’m going to use this as a kind of pilot of something I would like to do with graded readers. The hand out for my students is available here: book_report.pdf