Season's Greetings and a Happy New Year from Rod's Pulse Podcast Podsafe Holiday Music Selections from Music Alley "The Christmas Season" by Sudden Death - combines hip hop beats with what Dr. Demento calls "some of the funniest hip hop lyrics I've ever heard" "Jingle Bells" by Natalie Brown - soulful vocalist/songwriter with a dynamic, multi-ocatave vocal range "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" by Twisted Sister - yes, that hard rock group from the '70s "A Soldier's Christmas" by Jay Goeppner - a Chicago singer/songwriter who has shared his message of peace and love in the style of his hero, John Lennon "If Every Day Were Christmas" by Podsafe for Peace - Buy the song for 99 cents and all the proceeds will go to UNICEF Duration: 22:03

Students often find it difficult to engage with reading and writing instruction and practice, particularly when large, intimidating texts are involved. This is the first in our series of insight blog posts, aimed at helping teachers to overcome this problem. Here are the Top 10 Tips for Reading, from teacher-trainer Zarina Subhan. What does reading really mean? To your elementary students it involves letter recognition and decoding the letters so they can decode words. To your advanced students it’s a process of decoding ideas which may be stated directly, or a process of ‘reading between the lines’. Either way, your students are practising a form of decoding. This decoding is a perfect way to expose them to vocabulary because it’s embedded in a context. This technique is similarly useful for grammar study, but whether it is vocabulary or grammar that we highlight, this is a chance for students to see models of language that they can then put to use in conversation or writing tasks. In our L1 we read for information, whether it’s following signs at an airport, or doing an internet search to find a relevant article online. When reading in English, it’s important to maintain a purpose for reading the information. We need to remind ourselves as ELT teachers that our students are not English language specialists; 9 out of 10 are very likely studying English because it’s on the school timetable, or someone has decided for them that it’s best they take English classes. So don’t treat reading as the teaching of vocabulary and grammar structures, because that won’t be what persuades them to read. So what can we do to encourage our students to read? Try these top 10 tips: Get that schema warmed up Always warm up students’ background knowledge (known as ‘schema/schemata’) first. We cannot guarantee that our students all have the same knowledge on a topic or theme, so it is important to get everyone to the same point. Images are an ideal way to gather together what your students know - and allow time for a quick brainstorm where they can discuss their thoughts first. Get them using all the clues, in true Sherlock Holmes style Focus on headings, images and subheadings (if there are any) to help students to predict what the topic or content might be about. This stimulates ideas further and prepares them to read, allowing for a subconscious awareness of what type of vocabulary might be found. This also illustrates that a handful of words can help us understand and that we don’t need to know every single word to appreciate a piece of text. Peer checking After their first reading of a text, get students to discuss it with each other. Speaking about something you have just read helps to clarify your understanding because you can’t explain something until you’ve understood it. You’ll also find that students voluntarily re-read sections to make sure they’re explaining their thoughts correctly. It also allows them to get help with sections they may not have understood well when they read it themselves. Question their understanding To reinforce the main ideas of a text, ask questions that check understanding of the context, rather than finer details. If we focus on overall comprehension, we encourage students to skim the text to find areas that are relevant to questions, rather than them reading in detail. Word recognition The quicker we learn to read, the more efficiently we can get information, so it is helpful to encourage this in L2 as well. Have a competition to train students to ‘see’ a word/collocation/phrase in the text. Project a text onto your whiteboard and bring a group of students to the front of the class. You say a word that is in the text and they have to point to it. Speed them up Get students to time themselves reading a text so they have a record of how many words they read per minute. Then, at intervals throughout the academic year, give them a similar text, in both length and complexity, to see how they progress. In each instance, ask questions that bring out the main points of the text after, so you know that they are not simply glancing at the words, but actually reading them! Recall and highlight words Once the context has been understood, highlight vocabulary by using flashcards. Use different coloured cards to differentiate between different parts of speech - main verbs could be on a green coloured background; auxiliary verbs on yellow; nouns on blue, etc. If students are in groups, get them to take turns to give a definition, synonym or antonym. Recall and highlight structures Take sentences from the text and write each word on a separate card, jumbling them up into the wrong order. Then, get students to place them in the correct order. This could be done in groups or on large flashcards at the front of the class. Do these with useful sentences, or ones that include important phrases so that they are subconsciously reinforced. Lure them into reading Have lots of reading material available - pamphlets, brochures or graded readers for students to pick up and read. This can play on students’ curiosity and encourage reading in L2 for pleasure as well as for information. Nurture a love of reading Finally, get students to find a piece of text on a topic of their choice and have them talk to you about it and why they chose it. If you don’t have time to do face-to-face interviews with each student, they could record themselves talking about it and send it to you as an mp3 recording, along with a link to the text. As Krashen said, "Reading is good for you…Reading is the only way we become good readers, develop a good writing style, an adequate vocabulary, advanced grammar and the only way we become good spellers." (1993:23) With all these benefits, reading is something we need to ensure is developed, but without necessarily making students aware that all the above is going on. It’s like enjoying a meal - who wants to be told about all the nutritional value of everything you eat when you can enjoy the taste?! Reference Krashen, S. (1993) The power of reading: Insights from the research. Englewood, Co.: Libraries Unlimited.Filed under: Teenagers Tagged: insight, Reading, Secondary, Teaching tips, Top 10 Tips, upper-secondary

Those who still adhere to an older business model are puzzled by those of us who engage in the various social spaces with people who, in effect, are our competition. Happily, we advise each other on the best way to tackle this or that problem, and we take uncomplicated pleasure in the knowledge that we have helped one another.Today, courtesy of a new Twitter follower, Indira Balki, I was reminded of this poem which reflects much of this attitude:One Star Fell and Another by Conrad AitkenOne star fell and another as we walked.Lifting his hand towards the west, he said--How prodigal that sky is of its stars!They fall and fall, and still the sky is sky.Two more have gone, but heaven is heaven still.Then let us not be precious of our thought,Nor of our words, nor hoard them up as thoughWe thought our minds a heaven which might changeAnd lose its virtue, when the word had fallen.Let us be prodigal, as heaven is:Lose what we lose, and give what we may give,-Ourselves are still the same. Lost you a planet-?Is Saturn gone? Then let him take his ringsInto the Limbo of forgotten things.O little foplings of the pride of mind,Who wrap the phrase in lavender, and keep itIn order to display it: and you, who save our lovesAs if we had not worlds of love enough-!Let us be reckless of our words and worlds,And spend them freely as the tree his leaves;And give them where the giving is most blest.What should we save them for,-a night of frost? . . .All lost for nothing, and ourselves a ghost. I have nothing to add to that.

Picks from Rod's Podcaster Guide and E-Learning News Facebook Apps for eLearning - Here is a list of 20 facebook apps for educational use  'Horizon Report' Highlights 6 Technologies to Watch in Education - The open-content movement now joins mobile computing as the two trends most likely to enter mainstream learning in the next year, says the report (40 page PDF), from the New Media Consortium and Educause Repositioning Higher Education: Factors Driving Online and Blended Program Enrollment - by Kristen Betts, Kenneth Hartman, and Carl Oxholm III, Drexel University Because of the recent economic downturn, higher education must re-examine and reposition itself to meet new and emerging challenge Learning on Demand (29 page PDF) - This Sloan Survey of Online Learning reveals that online enrollment rose by nearly 17 percent from a year earlier Apple iPad - Apple's new tablet computer with an unfortunate name ScrollMotion to Develop iPad E-Books for Major Publishers - ScrollMotion will make textbooks compatible with the new Apple iPad for four major publishers Diagnosing the Tablet Fever in Higher Education - Tablet-style computers bring classroom collaboration and push the adoption of electronic textbooks Create Your Own iPhone or Android App in Minutes With iSites - iSites is a new service that take an RSS feed and quickly transform it into an iPhone, iPad or Android app Podsafe Music Selection from IODA Promonet  "As The Wind Blows" by Kitaro Duration:  26:35

ELT teacher, teacher trainer and course book author, John Hughes, shares some classroom ideas for teaching pronunciation in your business English classes ahead of his webinar on 19th February. Register now. Is there any essential difference between teaching pronunciation in business English and teaching pronunciation on a general English course? In many ways the answer is ‘no’. After all, in any type of ELT classroom we need to work on pronunciation in two ways: firstly, to help students with receptive pronunciation; in other words, to help them recognise features of pronunciation which affect their ability to listen and understand. And secondly, to help students improve their productive or spoken pronunciation; this doesn’t mean that they need to sound like a native speaker but that they are intelligible to a wide range of other people when communicating in English. However, when we teach pronunciation in business English I do think our approach should be tailored to learners’ business needs and that they should have plenty of time to practice pronunciation for specific events. In addition, your business students can also use pronunciation to make their communication skills more effective. Let’s take a closer look. Tailored pronunciation Typically on a business English course (especially with one-to-one or small groups) we ask students about their needs for using English. Part of this will include asking them who they need to communicate with in English. If they answer, ‘colleagues working in our China offices’ then we already know that the students will need to listen to recordings of Chinese speakers in class. If, on the other hand, my students make phone-calls to the United Kingdom, then I might spend time focussing on the features of different accents within the UK. Prepared pronunciation In business English we also have to prepare a student for speaking at particular events; for example, if your student has a meeting in English coming up soon then you can predict the type of language he/she will need to use. You can practice using that language and identify any pronunciation problems that may affect the student’s intelligibility for the other participants. One useful technique is to role play the upcoming situation with the student and record the conversation. Then listen back to the recording and then pick out potential pronunciation difficulties. Powerful pronunciation Many effective presenters and speakers in the world of business also use pronunciation to make their message more powerful. So in my presentation skills classes I help students to work on stressing certain words and adding pauses for emphasis. Take this example which shows an extract from a presentation in which the stressed words are underlined and the / indicates short pauses between words and phrases. Try reading it aloud as you think the presenter said it: Now I’d like to present the figures / for our most recent quarter / and / I’d like us to consider / the implications / for the rest of our financial year. The speaker stresses the content words in the presentation and adds short pauses to break the sentences down. In particular, the separation and stressing of the word ‘and’ in the middle emphasises that the presenter has two distinct aims to the presentation. Having students mark transcripts of their own presentations like this can really add power to their communication. To consider more of the issues behind teaching pronunciation in business English and to get more classroom ideas for teaching pronunciation in your business English classes, join me for my webinar on 19th February. Register now. John Hughes is a teacher trainer and course book writer. For Oxford University Press he has co-authored on the Business Result series and the video courses Successful Meetings and Successful Presentations.Filed under: Business & English for Specific Purposes, Pronunciation Tagged: Business English, Communication skills, John Hughes, Pronunciation, Pronunciation skills

Picks from Rod's Podcaster Guide and E-Learning News YouTube - What Would Google Do? - blogging pioneer Jeff Jarvis reverse-engineers Google to discover forty clear and straightforward rules to manage and live by... Integrating Google Apps with Blackboard - digitalteacher from the Google Apps community shares 12 ways teachers integrate Google Apps with their Blackboard courses...

I have identified a situation in which I am anything but an enabler.My younger son is learning to drive. He's doing very well, and his instructor speaks very highly of his progress. Whenever possible, I let him drive me around. On short jaunts to the shops and such, this is fine. It's the longer trips that are the problem.The other night, I let him drive to rugby practice. It's a distance of some 8 miles or so, along a minor road. He has a tendency to drive rather close to the left side of the road (this is the UK, remember, where we drive on the left), and, when he changes gear, he tends to drift even further.I'm sure his instructor deals with this kind of thing day in and day out, and is inured to it (judging from the utterly unscientific sample of my two sons, this seems to be a fairly common tendency). I, however, am less accustomed to it, and my rising stress levels were doing nothing for my son's confidence.Eventually, he pulled into a side road and instructed me to drive the rest of the way. I was mortified.It seems that when I fear for my personal safety, I am unable to be the unfailingly encouraging person I would like to be.L plate image by canonsnapper

Picks from Rod's Podcaster Guide and E-Learning News Rod's Delicious iPad Bookmarks - Links to more than 20 sites that were viewed in preparation for this podcast Interview: Dr. Mary Ann Gawelek, Provost, Seton Hill University on "An iPad for Everyone" - Dr. Gawelek tells us about their Griffin Technology Advantage Program and how they prepared their faculty and IT infrastructure to handle iPads and MacBook Pros for all their incoming students. iPad Apps for Education - selected iPad Apps faculty and students might find useful GoodReader - read and store Office docs and PDF files The Elements: A Visual Exploration - the periodic chart comes alive Netter's Anatomy Flash Cards - navigate through 324 fully annotated images Molecules 3D - manipulate 3D renderings of molecules; download more from the protein databank iTunes U on iPad - free lectures, language lessons, audiobooks and more for students CourseSmart eTextbooks for iPad - rent electronic textbooks Podsafe Music Selection from Music Alley "New Soul" by Yael Naim, the acclaimed singer/songwriter from Israel, from her album Yael Naim. 'New Soul' gained fame as the music played during Apple's Macbook Air ad campaign. Duration:  23:36

For many teachers the extension of language learning outside the classroom can really benefit their students, but how can you be sure they’re using the right materials to further their practice? Freelance teacher trainer, Zarina Subhan-Brewer, looks at how Oxford Online Practice can complement their classroom activities. "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them."            - Aristotle How do we get students to continue practicing the things we want them to learn outside of the classroom? Normally, we give them homework and hope they do it. We no longer only have workbooks to depend upon for further practice, we have online material nowadays too. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to learn a language online, but there’s a lot out there. Parents, understandably, will assume that if their child is on an educational website that they don’t need to be monitoring their child and will feel happy that their child is learning. However, much of what is out there seems very ad hoc, with materials jumping about from grammar point to grammar point and sometimes with a very strange focus on some obscure vocabulary. The quality and suitability of some visual imagery out there being used for educational purposes, may not be ideal. So why and how can students use online learning safely and effectively? Firstly, Oxford Online Practice is not random - it is designed to complement, but not duplicate, what is being studied in the book. It looks like the book, with similar or identical images, but the activities are additional to those in the textbook and workbook. The units cover the same topics and language content, with an opportunity to extend language and interact with it on the screen, for example clicking for further information, or dragging to match a response to a question / vocabulary / grammar item. Grammar practice in the Engage edition of Oxford Online practice.   When it comes to differentiated learning, online textbooks are very powerful tools. I’ve always found that it requires a lot of preparation and organisation to constantly have something up my sleeve for the students who are picking up language quicker. While helping those requiring more time to grasp things, you have to keep the others occupied, right? All this with the dilemma that you don’t want the quicker ones getting too ahead in the book/workbook, while at the same time you don’t want your slower students to feel they’re having less fun and are ‘behind’. The beauty of online textbook material is that not only is it relevant and related to the topic of the book, your students can also do additional activities without the knowledge of whether their peers are ‘better’ than them or not. Because of the nature of the technology, a simple click of the mouse in a computer lab, or a tap on the tablet in the classroom gives them access to further practice of any sort. Previously, reading and writing were the only skills that could be practically improved outside class, which meant students rarely heard any English outside the four walls of the classroom. Nowadays it is possible to assign an additional listening activity, without controlling a CD player or standing at the computer at the front of the class. So if you feel some students could do with going over a listening activity again in more detail, you can assign it to them. Did you know students can even record themselves if they’re working on a computer / tablet? This means that students get the chance to really listen to their own pronunciation and compare it to the native speaker recordings on the Online Practice platform, so they learn much more in terms of both listening and speaking. Online Practice takes homework to a whole new level, with students assuming more responsibility for their learning - autonomous learning at its best. But this isn’t to say that the students are simply left to their own devices - teachers can allocate particular activities, tailoring each class or student’s progress to suit their needs. You can also organize your students into particular online groups. You can then monitor which exercises have been completed by which students and also what scores they achieved on each activity they try. Without collecting in physical work and marking it (because it is marked as soon as the student clicks on the ‘Submit’ button), you have a record of names, activities completed and grades for each student. This will save you from hours of administrative tasks, leaving you more energy for the actual teaching. So your students will find varied and engaging activities that allow them to practice exactly the same language areas that you have been working on in class, with the added bonus of it being visually familiar. By allocating activities to students, they feel their individual needs are being met. Parents can breathe easy knowing that their children are on carefully designed websites that are entirely appropriate learning tools. And you as a teacher have more time to assess, monitor and actually teach. I’d say that was a win-win-win situation, wouldn’t you?! These features are all available on the Online Practice components for the courses pictured below. Features and/or capabilities may differ for other Oxford courses.  Filed under: Multimedia & Digital, Teenagers Tagged: 4 skills, Digital, engage, Language practice, Online Practice, Secondary, Zarina Subhan-Brewer

Being in the job market has made me the target of many 'top ten tips' type articles and posts. Just do these five/seven/ten things, and you'll have a new job in no time. If you don't it must be because of something you're not doing.As a few of us were saying on Twitter yesterday, this is more than just a little disingenuous. With unemployment figures soaring in many places, and some industries/sectors being harder hit than others, it only serves to make people feel even more like failures when they load their weapons with silver bullets... and still remain unemployed.Signing up for automated searches on some of the larger sites automatically means that you receive their regular little homilies about what you need to do better. And, if you're serious about looking for work, you read them, and try to follow their advice, in the hopes that it will make a difference. But after you've tweaked your CV, and honed your cover-letter-writing skills, and tapped your network, and pro-actively approached the people you'd like to work for, etc. etc. What then?If everybody follows the 5-steps to a standout CV, recruiters still wind up with a slew of CVs with none that stand out. Because, to quote Syndrome in the rather Rand-ian The Incredibles, "Everyone will be special, and then no one is."The fact remains that there are many more job-seekers than jobs out there, and being over-qualified turns out to be just as much of a disadvantage as being under-qualified. And the job-seekers range from those looking for minimum wage, all the way up to those who have worked at C-level.Let me share a personal perspective:My CV has been professionally reviewedI write (if I do say so myself) a pretty kick-ass covering letterI have more than 20 years of experience in my fieldI hold a Masters' degreeI'm not exactly a global mover and shaker, in terms of innovation but many of the global movers and shakers know my name and are on hug-terms with me (so perhaps I could be called part of the second wave)Doesn't that sound pretty darned employable to you?And I haven't been over-selective. I have applied for some fairly humble posts, which have offered the opportunity to make a real difference to an organisation. After all, I don't need to be rich. I only need to be able to meet my commitments. But I do need to be fulfilled at work. I am not a person who is prepared to do something I hate day in and day out in service of Mammon. I don't measure success in Sterling.So let's just take a look at one of the jobs I've applied for. It's fairly local, and they're looking for an 'innovative L&D manager'.You will support the business to drive performance through the effective design or management of the design, of learning solutions globally. In order to build their internal capability you will need to deliver learning solutions to help support their strategy and ensure methods and content utilised within design reflect leading edge practices and deliver the learning outcomes specified in the design brief.The role requires a high level of competence in learning design and evaluation methodologies and in training delivery skills.You'll also have the ability to manage multiple projects concurrently and deliver on time and to quality and to manage and influence multiple stakeholders.Anyone who actually knows me, would think I was a shoo-in for the role. But within 90 minutes of my application, I received an email telling me that they had received an unprecedented number of applications for this post, and several of them more closely matched the skills and experience required by the advertiser. Since my covering letter had taken their description and identified how I had every point covered, I didn't see how this was possible... and I emailed them to ask for feedback on these grounds. I respectfully requested that they give me guidance as to how I might better demonstrate, next time around, that my skill set and experience did in fact map across to what was advertised.No response. Not a squeak.And to make matters worse, that job continues to be advertised, week in and week out.I have been advised by people who claim to know about these things, that some (many? most?) of the jobs advertised on the really big recruitment sites are bogus, and that this appears to be one of them. What they would stand to gain from such a practice?And how do they have the temerity, in the light of these bogus posts on offer, to keep publishing these silver bullets that tell us that the onus is on us to do better?