Photo courtesy of Tomás Fano via Flickr Alastair Lane is co-author of International Express Elementary and Intermediate levels, the all-new, five-level course for adult professionals, publishing in January 2014. International Express includes plenty of coverage of the hotel and travel industry. Here, Alastair shows how you can bring the subject alive with a real-life writing task. "To whom it may concern. I am extremely unhappy with the service I received at your hotel during the week of 1 September to 7 September 2013." Those were the days. When customers received bad service, the typewriter would be out in a flash and our disgruntled customer would be bashing the keys in fury. However, today the idea of a letter of complaint is so old-fashioned that we might as well be teaching our students how to write a telegram. Things are different now. If you go to a hotel or a youth hostel and the service is bad, when you get home you have a chance to complain to the whole world. You might put a negative review on Trip Advisor. Alternatively, if you booked it through a website like Booking.com, you will be invited to place your review on the site. This is the kind of task people are doing in real life, and it’s the kind of writing task that we should be using in the classroom. We can ask the class to write a review of a hotel that they have stayed at, a fictional hotel, or a review of a hotel that they can see online. Students immediately see the purpose of the task because it replicates something they would naturally do in L1. Writing a hotel review can work at any level from Elementary upwards, because online reviews can be as short as a single sentence. Students can go straight to the Internet to find real-life model texts. Sites like Booking.com are particularly good for this. Firstly, they provide an automatic model for writing because users are asked to complete two sections: one for good points and one for bad points. That helps lower-level students organize their texts. Secondly, users can filter the results to read reviews from people like themselves. If you have an older class, you can look at reviews posted by ‘families with older children’ or younger students can look at reviews by ‘groups of friends’. When writing an online hotel review, students can write a fifty-word text and it still looks as real as any other entry on the sites. Students don’t have the sense that the task has been artificially simplified to match their language level. A writing task of this nature also allows you to practice reading skills. Students can exchange their reviews, without the number of stars. The next student or pair has to decide whether the review is a one-star or five-star one. After all, we also want to practice praising the hotel in addition to the language of complaint. With higher level students, you can ask them to write the review as if they are a particular group of travellers e.g. ‘mature couple’, ‘solo traveller’, ‘business traveller’. They then have to pass their text to the next student or pair. Once again, the next students have to guess which type of traveller wrote the review. This is a particularly good way of reviewing the language of facilities, as a business traveller will have very different needs to a 21 year-old travelling alone. The short nature of writing online and the fact that users tend to write for an international audience in English provides a huge number of opportunities for the classroom. So let’s forget artificial tasks like the letter of complaint and start replicating what students are actually doing out in the real world. Alastair Lane has over seventeen years’ experience in English language teaching. Currently based in Barcelona, he has also taught in Finland, Germany, Switzerland and the UK. Alastair is co-author of International Express Elementary and Intermediate levels, part of the five-level course publishing in January 2014.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Business & English for Specific Purposes, Skills Tagged: Adult professionals, Alastair Lane, Authentic texts, EFL, English for Specific Purposes, International Express, Online reviews, Reading skills, Writing skills, Writing tasks

This wordle is free by linking back to==> mrkirsch.edublogs.org <== The following are examples of my 7th grade student’s Video projects. The objective for the students was for them to create a video describing how "Technology Has Impacted their Lives" in either a positive or negative manner. The students were put in groups in order for them to film and describe their content. I really wanted the students to focus on how technology has become an integral part of everyday life; however can this become bad?? In essence, I wanted students to focus on the content people put on the internet and/or share information they should ==> Privacy. These videos were created by 7th grade students. The following videos depicting students do have permission from parents/guardians to be shown on the blog. Student(s) created music video on "How Technology Has Impacted their lives." Original Music/Lyrics by Green Day.   ICt 2 video project 2015 from Mr. Kirsch on Vimeo.

This wordle is free by linking back to ==> mrkirsch.edublogs.org <== 10 Reasons Why Teachers Should Blog - Tech

Christmas is nearly upon us, so we thought we’d share some of our classroom resources for you to use with your students. The below resources are primarily intended for Primary and Secondary levels. All activities are photocopiable for you to use in your classroom. Christmas Activity Booklet Christmas Activities 2013, including: Decorate your Christmas Tree Christmas Decorations Christmas Quiz Christmas Word Search Where is Santa’s Sack? Teacher’s notes for the above Christmas Worksheets Christmas Poster and Worksheets, including: Christmas Classroom Poster Let’s Sing! Jingle Bells Advent Wreath Christmas Card Christmas Crossword Pin the Nose on Rudolph Teacher’s notes for the above Extensive Reading Activities A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (reading text) - Chapter 1, Stage 3 Bookworms Christmas (reading text) - Chapter 7 from Seasons and Celebrations, Stage 2 Bookworms Christmas in Prague by Joyce Hannam (reading text + activity) - Chapter 1, Stage 1 Bookworms More Resources There is a huge bank of free worksheets on the Christmas Corner area on Oxford University Press Spain’s website. Everything from Pre-Primary to Upper Secondary levels. All in English and all available for download. Happy Holidays!Filed under: Grammar & Vocabulary, Pronunciation, Teenagers, Young Learners Tagged: Christmas, Christmas activities, Classroom activities, EFL, Primary, Secondary, Teaching Resources, Upper Primary, Worksheets, Young Learners

This wordle is free by linking back to==> mrkirsch.edublogs.org <== //s3.amazonaws.com/userscontent2.emaze.com/thumbnails/p2220843.jpeg?201504291430048021 Source: app.emaze.com Student created presentation on the possibility of moving to the moon!!

Patrick Jackson, author of the popular Potato Pals series, questions the assumption that there’s an app for everything - especially where young learners are concerned. My son Kai went for a sleepover with his best friend Aedan last night. As we were packing his bag, he asked if he could take his iPad with him. We said he couldn’t. "You’re going to play with Aedan. You don’t need an iPad". Shock! Horror! As far as Kai is concerned, we are totally wrong about this and have done him a great injustice. He reckons that it’s just another toy and playing with an iPad with Aedan is just like playing with Lego or running around in the garden. I think not. I even rang Aedan’s mum and asked if Aedan was going to be using his iPad. I was delighted to hear that he had already been banned for a week for some unspeakable and unnamed crime earlier in the day. I didn’t ask what. I tell you - digital parenting in suburban Dublin is a mine field! Thank goodness technology has not yet managed to replace most of what happens in old-style play. Where it replicates it we have a poor cousin to the real thing. There are apps that you ‘run’ on and apps that you ‘paint’ on but unless you are stuck on a long car journey, neither will be as fun or valuable as the real thing. There are well-understood reasons why kids need to play ‘naturally’. They need to socialise. They need to move. They need to be creative. They need fresh air. They need to communicate in the wonderful way that kids do when they are playing and they need to get dirty. They need to be dancing to their own wild inner drums and until the unlikely day that technology catches up with the ‘real’ world, Kai’s iPad is staying on my desk (where I can play with it) for most of the day and particularly when his friends are around. Apps are all around though and aren’t going anywhere soon. Parents, teachers and educational administrators are dealing with these issues all over the world. In our home, we deal with it with a sophisticated and continually negotiated system of time limits, rewards, checks and balances. We hardly even understand the system ourselves. To make it more confusing, we distinguish between educational apps and those that we consider to be a pretty good waste of time or ‘just fun’. There are many that are virtually impossible to distinguish. We are totally aware that we could be wrong about many of the calls we make. We may indeed be denying our son a future in a world where a key skill will be catapulting different types of birds at distant pigs. Anyway, our current rules allow Kai a 30-minute iPad session in the morning before school during which he is allowed to do creative or educational things. Then he gets 30 minutes of free iPad time after his homework when he can do whatever he wants. The only things we forbid completely are games that show graphic violence. Incredibly, that is not the case for all of his classmates. For language educators, apps are a hugely valuable resource. They will increasingly become part of how languages are learned. We are now just at the beginning of the mobile age in ELT and, for better or worse, it’s only going to become a larger part of what we do. Being able to sort out the digital chaff from the grain is going to be a key skill for the language educator. Knowing when to say "No. We can do this activity better in the real world" will be important. The danger is that educational systems will err by replacing real world activities with cheaper, cleaner, more addictive tech alternatives. The irony is that in many cases in the ‘developed’ world, giving a classroom of children more time on tablets will save the system the time, money and the trouble of organising and cleaning up after real play while creating the illusion that this is preparing them better for the 21st Century. We need to be able to recognise when an app can do the job better and in a more compelling way, and when it can’t. Some apps definitely enrich and support learning in a valid way. Some are really just addictive eye-candy or one-offs without any real lasting depth. So what questions should we be asking when we look at an app? What should app authors and developers be aiming for as they work on the latest educational apps? What should teachers and administrators be asking as they make these important decisions? I’ve found myself asking a few questions while working on an app for young learners that’s just arrived at the big party going on over on the App Store. Does this app allow students to interact with the target language in a way that would be difficult or impossible to replicate in traditional ways? Does the app offer students opportunities to communicate with friends and family beyond the classroom using the target language; opportunities that would not exist otherwise? Can the app deliver authentic language in a more efficient way than by traditional methods? Can students use this app to create personalised learning that puts them at the centre of the target language and helps them to tell the story of their own lives? Is the app going to support home study and take-home sharing, building a bridge between the classroom and the home? Will this app develop student autonomy; helping them to take responsibility for their own learning? Does this app deliver existing materials in a more efficient or more compelling way and does it supplement and enrich those materials? Is the target language delivered through the app in an integrated and linked way? Does the app use a good variety of skills and engage those skills meaningfully? It’s great fun at the app party now but it’s wrong to believe there’s an app for everything. As parents and educators we need to be able to think clearly; know when to be party poopers and know when to jump in and join the fun. Patrick Jackson is an ELT author and teacher. He is author of the popular Potato Pals series, which has just been released as an app for iPad. You can download one story for free from the Apple App Store, with the option to purchase 6 more stories from within the app.Filed under: Multimedia & Digital, Pre-school Children, Young Learners Tagged: 21st Century skills, Apps, Children, Digital, EdTech, ELT, Language learning, Patrick Jackson, Potato Pals, Pre-school children, Primary, Stories, Tablet devices, Young Learners

We’re helping to solve your EFL teaching problems by answering your questions every two weeks. This week’s blog is in response to Mark Armstrong’s blog comment regarding the challenge of helping students to self-correct their own writing. Verissimo Toste from the Professional Development Team discusses how to encourage self-correction. I don’t know if this is my greatest challenge but I would like to see my children self-correct more when they are writing. It’s a shame to see the same kind of errors popping up again and again. Sometimes it’s L1 interference, sometimes it’s just children being children. I do for a fact, though, know that they know better. I don’t want to cover their written work with red markings but I don’t want them to continue repeating errors either. Any ideas?" Mark brings up an interesting problem: students correcting their own writing. Or rather, not correcting their own writing. Although I will focus my ideas for younger learners, I think many of them can be adapted for older students. Mistakes are natural First, let me focus on an important point - mistakes are natural, they are part of learning. They are an important part of learning. Get this message across to your students. I usually ask my students to talk to their parents about the "mistakes" they made when they were young and learning their first language. This generates a fun discussion in class, usually leading to difficulties in learning to ride a bike or learning to swim. The important point in the end is that learning involves making mistakes. If they aren’t making mistakes, then maybe they are not really learning anything new. Mistakes are part of learning Having established an environment in the classroom where mistakes are natural, it is now important for the teachers to consider what mistakes they expect their students to be able to correct. My first consideration is, "If a student were to look at the mistake again, would they notice it?" Then, I consider, "If other students were to look at the mistake, would they notice it?" It’s important to understand what students are expected to correct. For this, I have my students practice. I give them a text or a selection of sentences with mistakes made by students in other classes, maybe even previous years. I tell them how many mistakes there are and give them time to find them. They indicate the mistakes by underlining them. I walk around, look at their work, and tell them how many actual mistakes they have found. Then, I put students into pairs or small groups of no more than 4. I ask them to compare their work with one another. At this point, students come up with a list of the mistakes they all have found. This may add up to 10, but it usually doesn’t. Together they look for the mistakes they have missed. They discuss these as a group and come to a consensus as a group. They must agree on a list of 10 mistakes. Once again, I walk around and tell them the number of mistakes they have found. This activity, which I may do once a month if necessary, helps my students notice the language, since the mistakes I choose are related to the language they have learnt or are learning. The activity also helps to make mistakes part of learning, reinforcing the discussion we had previously. More importantly, however, the activity creates a need for the teacher to help. The next time I do the activity, I underline where the mistakes are and ask them to correct them. I follow the same steps, going from working individually to small groups. This type of activity helps students develop their language noticing skills. Students not only learn to become aware of their mistakes, they also begin to learn how to avoid them. Mistakes are there to be corrected At this point students are ready to begin correcting their own work. However, why should they do this? Why correct? If students are writing, then I suggest that their writing be "published", displayed, shared with others. This could be a simple poster displayed in the classroom or a text on a school blog. If they are writing a story or a poem, these can be made into a book. The important point is that others will see their work. This will give them a reason to correct. It will also help them to accept the teacher’s role as a facilitator, helping them to improve their work. The next step in this process is for students to understand the idea of writing a first draft; that what they write the first time is not final. Equally important, they need to accept that it is not the teacher’s job to correct what they themselves can avoid. Students write their first draft in class and then take it home to check for mistakes. It is important for them to write their texts first in class and then to look at them again at home. Students may not notice mistakes immediately after writing them. This becomes clearer when they look at their texts again after some time has passed. For classes that are reluctant to do this, I collect their first draft and give it back to them two days later for homework. Having looked at their own texts, I ask them to share these texts with other students in the class. At this point students work in pairs or small groups, suggesting possible mistakes to each other.  Taking the suggestions into consideration, they write the second draft of their texts. These they give to me. Depending on how confident my students are, I correct only those mistakes I feel the student will not be able to. The others I simply indicate it is a mistake by underlining it. At this point, students should be able to write their final draft, which they will share with others in the class. In closing… One final thought on this process. In some classes, and with parental permission, I have asked my students to write their work on Word and then to send it to me via email. I do this for a few reasons. One, they slowly learn to use the spellchecker and to react to that information. Two, they are more accepting of correcting mistakes as they don’t need to write all of the text again. Three, not needing to write all of the text helps them to focus on correcting the mistakes and avoiding them later. Finally, it makes use of their computer for classwork, a skill they will need later in their academic life. Invitation to share your ideas We are interested in hearing your ideas about getting young learners involved, so please comment on this post and take part in our live Facebook chat on Friday 20 December at 12pm GMT. Please keep your challenges coming. The best way to let us know is by leaving a comment below or on the EFLproblems blog post. We will respond to your challenges in a blog every two weeks. Each blog will be followed by a live Facebook chat to discuss the challenge answered in the blog. Be sure to Like our Facebook page to be reminded about the upcoming live chats. Here are the topics for our next blog posts: 08 January 2014 - Teaching monolingual vs multi-lingual classes 22 January 2014 -  Teaching students over 50 years old Related articles #EFLproblems - Cell phones in the adult classroom: interruption or resource? (oupeltglobalblog.com) #EFLproblems - Motivating Young Learners (oupeltglobalblog.com) #EFLproblems - Learning English Beyond the Exams (oupeltglobalblog.com) Filed under: Professional Development, Teenagers, Young Learners Tagged: #EFLproblems, EFL, Error correction, Professional Development, Self-correction, Teenagers, Verissimo Toste, Writing skills, Young Learners

Today’s question for the Q: Skills for Success authors: Why are the four skills normally divided into listening & speaking and reading & writing? Ann Snow responds. Do you have a question about teaching English to adults that you’d like to ask our Q author team? Comment below or email your question to qskills@oup.com. Related articles What do I do when I ask the class a question and no-one is speaking? (oupeltglobalblog.com) Should you give homework to students who only meet with the teacher once a week? (oupeltglobalblog.com) Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Skills Tagged: Adult Learners, Ann Snow, Business English, English Language, listening skills, Q Skills for Success, Questions for Q authors, Reading skills, Speaking skills, Writing skills

To wonder what ails American education is to open a Pandora’s box of wicked problems … but the problem is definitely not a lack of computers. Source: www.theatlantic.com

Marie Delaney is a teacher, trainer, educational psychotherapist, and author of ‘Teaching the Unteachable’ (Worth). Following her first article on dyslexia, where she looked at what dyslexia really is, she now returns with strategies for teaching dyslexic learners. In my previous article I looked at the problems learners with dyslexia might face in the English classroom. In this blog, I will share some teaching strategies which can help these learners in the key areas of sound/letter recognition, working memory and confidence. Problems with recognition of sounds and letters 1. Think in colour Learners with dyslexia have problems matching the sounds of English to the written word. Use different colours to show the patterns of words, to break down the sounds into manageable chunks. For example, boat, coat, moat. Some learners will benefit from writing or reading in certain colours, or using certain colours of paper, or certain types of colour transparent overlays which can be put over the reading page. Encourage the learner to experiment to find a colour that works for them. 2. Hear it, see it, feel it Multi-sensory teaching helps learners to consolidate sound and letter recognition. For example: 3D letter shapes can be used to practise keywords; letters can be traced in sand or clay; words can be made physical by making letters from the body. Understanding time is a problem. It can help to get learners to stand in different places on a timeline to illustrate tenses and aspect. 3. Visualise Teach learners how to visualise words. Learners with dyslexia need to develop their own internal visual dictionary. Encourage the learner to imagine the word up high, visualising it rather than sounding it out. They hold the word as a photo in their mind. Write new words on the learner’s right of your board, up high. This encourages learners to access their visual memory. Problems with working memory Working memory is the part of the brain which allows us to hold information recently given to us and to act upon it. Learners with dyslexia have problems with their working memory, they often say that words quite literally fall out of their heads. 1. Instructions, instructions, instructions Remembering instructions is very difficult for some learners. We need to work on giving instructions in all senses, using visual cues and gestures. Check understanding of instructions by giving an example and getting an example back from learners. 2. Teach reading strategies Learners with dyslexia find reading comprehension difficult because they quickly forget the paragraph they just read. Show them how to recognise topic sentences, how to use colour to highlight keywords, encourage them to stop regularly and ask themselves "What have I just read?". 3. It can be fun Use memory games to develop working memory. For example, put words on the board, rub one word out, ask learners what word has been rubbed out. 4. Draw it Use mind maps - they give learners with dyslexia the big picture and help them to condense information in a meaningful way. Problems with confidence and self-esteem Despite our best teaching efforts, learners with dyslexia often lose confidence about learning. They can feel stupid and frustrated when their progress is slow. We can work on this in class in different ways: Teach learners how to access positive states for learning, e.g. remembering a time when they felt confident, keeping the confident feeling as they try their reading Let the learners explain to the rest of the class what it is like to have dyslexia Work with their strengths, for example, use activities where learners have to create new solutions to problems Use audio recordings, encourage learners to record their answers Mark work for content, not always for spelling Don’t label their slow progress as being lazy Praise skills other than literacy, for example, give a reward for the most creative learner Use drama activities to help learners express their thoughts and show their creative ability Above all, encourage your learners to view their dyslexia as a learning style rather than a learning handicap. Celebrate difference! Related articles Dyslexia - A Problem or a Gift? (oupeltglobalblog.com) Filed under: Professional Development, Teenagers, Young Learners Tagged: Dyslexia, Inclusive learning, Learning Disabilities, Marie Delaney, Multi-sensory approach, Primary and Secondary methodology, SEN, Special education, Special Educational Needs, Teaching strategies, Teaching techniques