My latest article for the Korea Herald is now out and it is on using video in the classroom. Read it at the Korea Herald site or look in the extended entry.

I have previously posted several entries with materials for download on this blog. You can find them below.

• Smallville Pilot
• Smallville - Metamorphosis
• Lost Pilot
• Corner Gas
• Prison Break

There might be more, but I can’t remember everything I’ve written on this blog in the last 4.5 years. If you find these useful, please leave a comment and let me know.

At the bottom of the article I’ve included a reader question - the first on the column, if you can help out, why not leave a comment.

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.

Read the rest of this post

Many teachers either give presentations to faculty, at conferences or teach a presentations skills class - I know I’ve done all of the above. Make a Presentation like Al Gore is a good resource for a summary of what needs to be done.

UK teacher posts about how twitter has helped him with his classroom. Not as a classroom application but to help him connect with teachers around the world.

Jonathon writes:

After working pretty much alone for the last three years online, the chance to get an idea of what is going on in MFL classrooms around the world, especially in the UK has been wonderful. Twitter has allowed me this chance by being able to see what interests other people. It’s something like staff-room eavesdropping but hey, we all know how useful that can be.

Thanks to Twitter’s users (in particular Jose Picardo) I came across Animoto which is a great site allowing users to submit music with images to create video. Animoto then does the rest for you, turning it into a half-decent slideshow.

I’m also unfamiliar with animoto, but you can learn more about what Jonathon did with it by reading his post. I’ve also been using twitter for a very short time and have found several interesting resources from the people I follow. About half of the people I follow are EFL teachers and the other half are in web design. Twitter is interesting, but also potentially a waste of time - filter what you read and write is my motto. Anyhow go check out Jonathons post for more information.

Over the mid term exam period I set up a survey in my moodle course for advanced students using the excellent third party module feedback. In the survey I asked students to rate the various activities we had done during the semester as well as a couple of other questions to get a feeling for how the students liked my class. I’ve made a couple of adjustments for the second half of the semester.

What I found most interesting was the responses related to the activities we did during the semester. Students consistently ranked activities I made myself much higher than ones from teacher resource books. I’ve included screenshots (in the extended entry) of the survey results where I’ve highlighted in yellow the activities I did myself.

Do I think this means I make better materials than can purchased commercially? Yes and No. I make better materials for my teaching style and my students. With the materials I develop they are 100% tailored to my class and students. Many of the materials I created are available on this blog if you do a search for them. However with commercial materials they are designed to please everyone and quite often end up being less than excellent but better than okay.

Looking at the survey results makes me want to create more personalized material for my students but the amount of time necessary to make quality materials is alot and thus I am required to use my own material to mostly supplement. Any thoughts or comments? What is your experience with personally created material vs commercial?

Read the rest of this post

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.

Langwitches shares a powerpoint presentation created by another teacher on why tech is important for teachers.

I wanted to share, but also highlight for my own sake, the following PowerPoint that was created by datruss on Slideshare.net.

I like the point this presentation makes. Teachers can continue to:

* teach the way educational institutions have taught for the last 100 years
* ignore new tools that will bring the world to their students
* tell themselves that materials they have used successfully in the past will continue to engage and challenge digital natives

but they have to realize that they are placing themselves and their students at a disadvantage.

It is not about using the latest and greatest technology tools. It is about the way we think about learning and teaching that is undergoing a revolution.

It is not about using “insert newest technology...” to lecture, visualize or document a lesson, if the lesson stayed the same, No matter when (on a time line) teachers lived and used corresponding technology tools, learning always depended on the way teachers were able to connect with their students’ world and previous knowledge . If the learning outcome stays unchanged from the learning that occurred without the tech tool, then the “new” technology merely is a glorified (and usually more expensive) version of the traditional one used in the past.

We need to shift the focus off the technology and emphasize the way it can affect the teachers’ teaching style and ultimately the students’ learning. IMHO, today’s students’ learning is influenced by multimedia, interactiveness, connecting, communicating, and creating. if technology can allow us to do that, then we can reach our students in a whole new way and on a different level than ever before.

See the slideshow below

This week I tried a relay race with my class and it worked really well. I’ve been reluctant to try this type of activity out as I thought it was lame, but last awhile ago I observed a class where this type of activity was done and students enjoyed it.

For the uninitiated a relay race is where information is pasted on the wall of the classroom or outside the door and one student from each group has to read it run back to their group and tell them what they read. Accuracy and speed are important as the first group to finish without mistakes is the winner.

I changed it a little by doing an audio race. I set my laptop up outside the classroom with some external speakers and ran a 17 second clip on loop. It’s a short conversation that I took out of one of the English Firsthand books. In my opinion this worked better than having information taped on the wall. When reporting the information students were focusing on details, spellling, and grammar. There was a lot of student negotiation over the accuracy of the runners reports.

The relay race has definitely been added to my basket of regularly used activities. If you want to use the audio I did you can download it here.

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.

Read the rest of this post

Gall is Google Assisted Language Learning and there’s an article about it in the referreed journal Language Learning and Technology. The full text is available and if you want to keep it or print it (with proper pagination) there is also a pdf available.

hat tip to the ELT World forums.

This is my second column for the Korea Herald. I took a short post I wrote almost four years ago and expanded it for this column. My original word count for this submission was 600 words and my first draft was a little long at 687 words though I managed to cut it down to 564 words when my word count dropped to 500. To read the final version visit the Korea Herald or to read the longer original version go to the extended entry. I’m sure the second draft is tighter, but in the first draft I get to talk about more things. Korea Herald version with different headline Tools of the EFL Trade - available online now, in print tomorrow morning.

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.

Read the rest of this post

Do you remember choose your own adventure books? Now something similar is available one the internet and the potential uses for language teaching are very very obvious. Go read the article at CBC, Neverending story: Protagonize.com pushes the limits of interactive fiction and then visit the Protaganize web site. I just woke up and found this so haven’t had time to explore yet.

I’ve come to be quite a fan of the one to one lesson. I like that when you teach a “group” of one, it’s easier to adapt the overall content of the class to the student’s needs and interests.  There’s just more flexibility when you don’t have to balance the needs of a dozen learners.

I think EFL Geek himself hit the nail on the head about a possible downside of one to one’s when he commented on my blog that one to one students often expect to set the agenda even though they know nothing about language acquisition.  If a student wants to pay for a class with me and do nothing but chat, and politely resists my efforts to hover around some useful language or structure by going off topic all the time, I can live with that.  But it’s no good when they resist my direction and then feel disappointed at a lack of progress.  Fortunately, I think my ability to trick people into learning – and to politely but authoritatively direct the lesson - is increasing with practice. 

I have to admit though that the main reason I like one to ones is that they make it possible to interact with people who I would just never cross paths with in my regular life.

Read the rest of this post

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.

For my summer course I have 29 students blogging on the vox platform. I chose to use vox after having it recommended by a commenter, Amanda and also being somewhat unsatisfied with the free wordpress blog hosting services including blogsome, wordpress, and eslblogs. These last three sites are great but students seemed to have trouble with them and there was something missing that I couldn’t place my finger on. I don’t like blogger so I never even considered it.

Vox is a cross between a social networking site and a blog. It’s more blog than social networking but definitely has many features that one would expect of a networking site. It has private messeges between members, privacy controls, and neighbors (sort of a friends list). I liked the extra features enough to decide to try it out with my students.

Read the rest of this post

I previously mentioned that I am teaching a summer course that will be somewhat focused on the Internet & blogging. I’ve essentially finished my macro planning and now have to work on the micro planning. It’s good to have a plan for the whole semester ready as it will help me to work on the daily plans especially once I get to the point where I am planning for the class the night before.

Currently I have the first two and a half days completely planned and several other classes partially planned either on paper or in my head. I would like to have this class complete focused on the internet but it is already titled English communication and students will be expecting it to be a “conversation” class. With this in mind I’ve scheduled some discussion topics, music videos, and movies.

Read the rest of this post

As I mentioned last week, I’ve got a class that will heavily feature the internet in language learning. I’ve set up a teacher blog and will have students set up blogs next week on Monday. Over the next few days and the period of the course I’ll be adding links to resources and options for students.

Students will be required to blog 5 times per week - word count is up to them, but they will be aware that substance will count more than fluff. I’ll also be actively encouraging commenting but not requiring it as I won’t be able to monitor that at all. I’m also hoping to get the students blogs discovered by other readers, but in the short period of our course am not sure how likely that will be.

If readers are interested in following my class blog let me know and I will send the link via email (not posting it here). If you have suggestions for this course, that would also be appreciated. Additionally if you know of another ESL/EFL class that we could mutually comment on blogs I would be very happy to hear about that. For the record I’ve opted to use http://vox.com for our blogging options.

What is the best method for learning a language? or for that matter teaching a language? In my experience most students have one method of learning and that involves heavy usage of rote memorization. They seem to think that language is knowledged that can be memorized and not a skill to be acquired and/or improved. I spend a lot of time in my classes trying to build awareness of the difference but am not sure how effective I am. I have written on this before and if you were to search my blog you would find several entries, but two come to mind: Lead a Horse to Water and Learner Autonomy.

This semester I’ve been changing things up a bit. This week we’re going to take a general look at what students can do to improve their command of English. To that end I’ve prepared a hand out that I feel will be effective. If you like it, feel free to use it. I’m also looking for some critical feedback from readers.

The file is in PDF format. If you would like the original (MS Publisher) let me know and I’ll send it to you.
best_method_for_learning_english.pdf

update
I could have written How do English learners teach us? but I didn’t. It was written by a Taiwanese English learner and university professor.

Pro tip for teachers: When you are planning to show a movie or part of a movie in class on your laptop (because your school doesn’t have in class computers), make sure that your battery is fully charged and that you have brought the power cord. Fortunately I was planning on only showing the first hour of the movie and managed to get past the parts for discussion questions before the battery died at 56 minutes.

Pro-tip for students: don’t sleep in class when the teacher is showing a video. You will be unable to discuss the questions which were distributed in advance. The video was even paused breifly before the appropriate section in order to help you focus. If you plan on failing class this is a good way to procede.

Ars Technica

As podcasting and YouTube have hit the mainstream, the academic world has started to explore the use of these resources as a way to help their students get more out of their classroom experiences. But the new technology can raise as many issues as it solves: what material do you put online? How do you provide students access to it? How does the material relate to what’s presented in the classroom?

As a supplement to his lectures in General Psychology, he maintains a collection of ”precasts” and ”postcasts” that prepare students for the lecture and reinforces the more difficult concepts, respectively.

emphasis mine. I definitely like the idea of a pre-cast or post-cast.

Definitely a lot of work and only really useful where you are teaching the same material over and over. At the university here, I have a predetermined curriculum, so I could do this for a few topics. It may not be possible to re-use the same pre/post cast each semester due to differing paces based on actual ability of students being different each semester. Anyhow the article is an interesting read. Comments? Ideas?

Madrid Teacher has a video up on YouTube detailing his experiences with Obstacles to EFL Learning. It’s definitely an interesting listening. Much of it rings true to me, but I don’t agree 100%. I’d like to hear your opinions on this.