Mark Hancock, co-author of the English Result series introduces his forthcoming IATEFL talk on the keys to developing students’ use of dictionaries and important features that can support independent learning. Proverbial wisdom tells us that if you give someone a fish, they can eat for a day, but if you teach someone to fish, they can eat for a lifetime. It’s a message about the long-term value of learning new skills and becoming independent. A similar thing could be said about pronunciation and dictionaries. Each time you teach a learner to pronounce a word, their English benefits a little, but they remain dependent on you. If, however, you can show your learners how to teach themselves the pronunciation of a word using the dictionary, they can improve their own English independently for ever more. The dictionary is an immense resource, containing information about all the English words a learner is ever likely to need. In learners’ dictionaries, pronunciation information has traditionally been provided using phonemic symbols based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Nowadays, however, with the advent of online dictionaries, there are also recordings of all the headwords, accessible at the click of an icon - a wonderful resource. It is well worth helping your learners get familiar with the IPA symbols, even though there is now an audio option. It’s a great learning investment for the following reasons: - A knowledge of the phonemic symbols enables you to ‘see inside’ the pronunciation of the word, like an x-ray. You can see exactly what sounds are in there - and what sounds are not. Furthermore, these x-rays help you to see similarities and differences between words. For instance, your student may not be able to hear the difference between hit and heat, but they will definitely be able to see that the transcription is different. - The ear is not always a reliable source of information. You can hear the word calm, for instance, and believe that you are hearing an L because it’s there in the spelling. When you see in the phonetic transcription that there’s no /l/, it makes it official somehow. - The audio recording is only the voice of one person at one time. You don’t know which features of their pronunciation are essential and which are just one-off idiosyncrasies. For example, if the speaker places a glottal stop after the /k/ in document, the learner doesn’t know if this is a feature that they need to copy, or just a feature of that individual’s speech. The transcription shows it not to be essential. If you can help your learners to be comfortable in the company of phonemic symbols, you are doing them a lasting service, because it will give them a more complete access to the information in the dictionary. It’s not that they have to memorize all the symbols - many dictionaries have a running footer across all the pages with a key to them. So it’s just a case of them getting to know the symbols little by little, as they use them. Stress information is also provided in the transcription, by a vertical dash like an apostrophe. This is superscript for primary stress and subscript for secondary stress. If a dictionary entry does not have a transcription of its own, then these stress marks are shown in the headword itself. It’s very important for learners to become familiar with this method of marking stress. The dictionary also provides stress information beyond single word level, for compound words, phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions. Compare, for example, the different stress patterns in the following pairs: compound nouns:               ‘roller blind - ve"netian ‘blind phrasal verbs:                       "look ‘on (observe) - ‘look on (regard as) idiomatic expressions:        ‘one of these days -  one of those ‘days. Due to the limitations of the WordPress editor, we cannot display the stress markings correctly. The single mark should be subscript (secondary stress) and the double one should be superscript, but single (primary stress). Encourage your learners to look out for these stress markings, and try reading out loud the example sentences in the dictionary using the stress as indicated. We do of course need to recognize the limitations of dictionaries for pronunciation work at the level of connected speech. Dictionaries, by their nature, are more focused at word-level features. However, the 9th edition of the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (OALD9) does take a step towards remedying this situation by providing pronunciation guidance for common spoken functional exponents. For instance, under the headword invite, there’s a box of exponents for inviting and responding to invitations, along with recordings of these, and even a short video of an interaction. The OALD9 also includes videos of students giving model answers in some typical speaking exam scenarios, and these exemplify some of the prosodic features of longer stretches of speech.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Dictionaries & Reference, IATEFL Tagged: Adults/Young Adults, Dictionaries, IATEFL, Learners' Dictionary, Mark Hancock, OALD, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary Reference skills, Oxford Dictionary

Interview with Blackboard CEO, Jay Bhatt. He talks about their new business strategy that is mainly focused on making students successful. We discuss:Bb World Blackboard historyJay's background Student-centered focus MyEdu acquisitionePortfolio featuresLinksBlackboardMyEduPodsafe music selection from Music AlleyMaybe I'm Amazed by Blake Morgan. Licensed cover of the Paul McCartney classic.Duration: 27:49

Because I originally signed up to Facebook as part of an experiment to see how it impacted my learning experience, I took a deliberate decision to treat it as a melting pot. This is less true of other spaces my great big digital feet tread. For example: I have two blogs (well, three, but we won't go into that third one right now), and I address two completely different groups of people. In my mind, I am writing for a person, an archetype, if you like. On this blog, you're it. On the other, it's someone else entirely. While I have LinkedIn contacts who are personal friends, I look on that as a purely professional space, and use it to pursue purely professional interests. I have two separate Twitter accounts: one for personal and eclectic bits and bobs, the other for learning-related contributions.By contrast, my Facebook friends include people from my youth, people from my career path, people from my church, people from my leisure pursuits... and people that I've 'met' on Facebook, of course. And it has been fascinating to watch them interact with one another in reaction to something I've posted on my page.But one thing has come home to me with a vengeance this past week, and that has to do with hospitality and the respect or abuse thereof.My husband and I are rather hospitable souls who enjoy nothing more than having a house full of people to feed. We head up a team called Connect in our local church, where we take it upon ourselves to meet anyone new to the church and find out a bit about them. We then introduce them to other members of the congregation who share their interests or who are at a similar life stage. If you know me in person, you will know how perfectly suited I am to this role. The initial meeting with new folks happens in a small room off the main hall, where we serve coffee/tea and something to nibble... something I have baked myself. We like to treat people as if they are our guests.We then take this one step further. Once a quarter or so, we host a dinner (a very informal dinner, mind) at our home, to which all recent visitors to the Connect room are invited, together with a few likely candidates for them to get to know. Once again, we have the host/guest thing going on.But what has this got to do with Facebook, I hear you ask. Well, rather more than I would have thought, actually.You see, I wouldn't expect the guests in the Connect room to be rude to us or to one another. I wouldn't expect visitors to my home to pick a fight with one another. Disagreement is fine, but healthy, respectful conversation is not an unreasonable expectation, I would have thought. And I feel the same about my Facebook page. After all, it is my Facebook page, and if you're there, you're there at my invitation. As my guest if you like. As I am, when I visit your page.Recently, I felt I had to 'unfriend' someone I've known for more than 30 years. For the too-many-eth time, she mounted an aggressive, irrational attack on someone else on my page. Someone who didn't know who she was and who was too polite to retaliate in kind. She threw out insults left and right, many in shout-implying capital letters. She even took a few side-swipes at me.Now, I don't want people being reluctant to come to my home because they're afraid my dog might attack them, or because they're afraid that X person will also be there. Similarly I don't want people being unwilling to comment on my Facebook posts for fear that one of my other friends will tear into them.I love introducing people to people. I love to see those people form a new relationship that is independent of me. But if some of those people cannot respect my hospitality, I have to withdraw the invitation.Not so?

Louis Rogers, author of Skills for Business Studies and an EAP teacher, discusses whether topic knowledge and fluency is key to performing well in IELTS testing. He speaks on the subject at this year’s IATEFL. Prior to the internet we had limited sources of information and limited access to it. Therefore if we wanted to access the information we had to develop ways to store it in our minds so that we could easily access it at a later date. With the internet we have fast access to a range of information and we have such instant access to the internet that we do not need to exert such energy on encoding it in our minds. According to Sparrow et al ‘No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can ‘Google’ the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. When faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it’. For example, when participants in the study were asked to think of the Japanese flag many would think of a computer rather than try to picture a flag. How is this all relevant to the IELTS exam? Many students express concern at not knowing anything about a topic. In particular, they worry about part 3 of the speaking test and part 2 of the writing. They fear facing something they feel they have nothing to say on. There could of course be a number of reasons for this. It is not necessarily the case that students commit less general knowledge to memory. Some studies such as Moore, Stroup and Mahony (2009) found that some of the IELTS topics were perceived too Eurocentric in nature. If students feel the topics are not related to them or they have never considered them, then they undoubtedly will feel disadvantaged when encountering them. To a certain extent this lack of confidence could make students hesitate, repeat ideas and even have a flatter pronunciation. Creating materials and activities that challenge students to think and respond personally in common IELTS areas could help reduce some of their fears. IELTS lessons can provide an insight into some of this knowledge and give students the confidence to respond to such topics.Filed under: Exams & Testing, IATEFL Tagged: IATEFL, IELTS, Louis Rogers

Interview with Blackboard CEO, Jay Bhatt - Part 2. We talk about the NEW Blackboard user experience and more:The new User Experience New User Interface (UI) "Ultra"Fully responsive - dynamically adjustsNew Collaborate - no more JavaMassive data integration between Bb and other componentsNew delivery choicePublic cloud implementationMulti-tenant public cloudUses 1st instance of the new Ultra UIProduct bundlingChanges to Mobile LearnBlackboard Labs Polls AppMobile Grading AppJob Genie App "Tip/Txt" Anti-Bullying free to all K-12 schoolsBb fundamental cultural change #PayMyTuition ChallengeLinksBlackboard World 2014 (Youtube Videos)Sneak Peak of Blackboard UltraPodsafe music selection from Music AlleyAngels We Have Heard On High by Bill MeyersDuration: 31:59

Interviews at the 12th Annual Pennsylvania/Delaware/New Jersey (PADLA) Distance Learning Association Conference & ExpoLouis Stricoff, MEd, CTS (starts at 3:36 min)Executive Director, PADLADirector of New Business Development, IMS Technology ServicesConference IntroductionSteven Hart, CPBA (4:48)PADLA PresidentAssistant Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of PhiladelphiaReflections on Conference Will Thalheimer of Work Learning Research, Inc. (6:54)Keynote SpeakerReflections on Research-Inspired Learning Maximization (PDF) Jeff Rothenberger (13:45)Program Adminstrator, Office of Professional Development and Currriculum, Berks County Intermediate UnitDiscussion about NearpodScott Beadenkopf (17:41)Director, Academic Technology, Neumann UniversityReflections on asynchronous vs synchronous teachingPodsafe Music Selection Comcast Connection Blues by Miller & Pirillo from Music AlleyDuration: 27:28

In this blog Elna Coetzer continues to talk about ways we can use our time more effectively (inside and outside the class) when doing writing tasks. How does one become a successful cook? The answer really is very obvious - by cooking, of course. But does that mean just cooking dish after dish, over and over again? No. Even if you are a successful cook, it is not about the number of dishes that you prepare, but more about the focussed attention you give to each aspect of a dish. In essence, you have to practise every step of the process over and over again. Only in this way can you know which choices are correct and what possible actions should be completed in order to create a masterpiece. And only in this way can the cook use their time effectively. If we link this with writing, similarly our students need to make choices every step of the way. And if our students do not know what the possibilities are, they cannot make the correct or best choices at any given time in the writing process. So firstly, writing is about having knowledge available - knowledge of language and vocabulary, style, layout, genre etc. Secondly, writing is about making the best choices with what you have available in order to communicate successfully with your audience. Therefore, thirdly, writing is about making these choices (based on your available knowledge) in a timely manner. Returning to our cooking analogy: if I see that the sauce is getting too thick, I need to make a choice immediately and this choice I make on the basis of my prior knowledge and experience cooking exactly the same dish. To summarize: 1) students need a lot of support in order to complete writing tasks (the prior knowledge), 2) students need to be aware of a variety of ways of expression etc. (choices), and 3) students need to be able to access the above-mentioned aspects easily and most importantly, quickly (retrieval time). And all of this is accomplished by targeted practice activities. What are targeted practice activities? Targeted practice activities are tasks that focus on a very specific aspect of the writing process, which allows students to notice in an explicit manner how something works or how something is done. These activities can take the form of vocabulary exercises, for example brainstorming language for a suspense story (extreme weather words, adverbs, etc.). Looking at the writing sections in Solutions, you will immediately be able to notice these types of tasks. These tasks are about noticing specific aspects of writing and raising the students’ awareness of the requirements when writing a specific type of text. Why are they so useful? These types of tasks allow students to focus on specific aspects of writing which will help them in the overall writing process. This means that if my students have practised a specific aspect extensively, they will have the knowledge required, will be able to make the best choices in a specific writing task and retrieve the information fast. Of course this is not an immediate process, but over a period of time students will become more efficient in their writing which necessarily then means that writing lessons will not be so laborious. Here are some ideas: Focus on only one aspect in each writing section. So instead of thinking about the layout, useful vocabulary and useful language chunks in the writing task, what about choosing one aspect to address? This would allow more time to focus explicitly on one aspect, more detailed attention given to the chosen aspect and more detailed practice for the students. This would also allow for more effective correction, because you would then focus only on the aspect discussed. Use jigsaw writing tasks. For some writing tasks it may be useful to show that the style and layout students are using can be used again for different purposes: for example notes written to say thank you, to congratulate or to take a message. In these cases one could get students in groups to only work with one type of task: group A only work on thank you notes, group B on congratulatory notes etc. When they have finished all the tasks related to their note writing task, regroup the students so that they can share what they have learnt with students from the other groups. You might want to give students some kind of grid or table in which they can take notes from the other students. (We learn better when we can teach somebody else!) Collaborative writing. If, for example, your students need to write a book review, it would be more time efficient to do all the tasks in groups. This means that the thinking and planning stages (brainstorming ideas, thinking of useful lexis and language, considering the layout, etc.), the writing stage (a draft, some editing and a rewrite) and also the feedback after the writing stage (peer correction), will be performed in groups or pairs. (Learning is a social activity!) Promote self-awareness, task-awareness and strategy awareness. This is useful because this actively encourages students to analyse, evaluate and create during writing tasks (Bloom’s revised taxonomy!). This can be done by getting students to think about the purposes of tasks (both before the writing and afterwards) and also by setting evaluative questions which prompt students to look more critically at the writing process. Questions like the following are useful: - who is the audience? - why would the audience be reading this text? - which register should be used? - what is the purpose of this text? (to advertise, to thank, to invite etc.) - which aspects of writing do I enjoy - which aspects am I good at or do I need to work on? etc. (Learning is a conscious process!) In conclusion, we can offer our students more differentiated and effective writing support within our time constraints by making sure that we include more targeted practice tasks, by raising our students’ awareness of the specifics of the writing process and thinking more deeply about the planning stages of writing lessons. Join Elna in her upcoming webinar to learn more about how we can use class time more effectively in improving students’ writing skills. Filed under: Professional Development, Teenagers Tagged: Solutions, Solutions writing challenge

Jane Hart has written an excellent article about the top-down implementation of social tools for workplace learning and why that approach is doomed to failure. As she points out, top-down is the traditional approach for implementing a new initiative, but in respect of social media for learning:Those that are already collaborating, sharing and learning with one another, will resist attempts to force them to use other social tools or platforms in order to track and control what they are already doing. This may well push their activities even further underground.Those that have yet to experience, understand and feel comfortable with social media will not want to be forced into sharing and collaborating when they are not ready for it, and are likely to resist attempts to make them do so.Hart suggests a more bottom-up approach. Providing support to those who already are sharing and collaborating with one another. I would also recommend a performance management attitude that gives kudos to those who are seen to be supportive of their colleagues. In this post in December, I talked about the value of the enabler within your team. Give these people kudos and the space to 'do their thing' and you stand to gain a great deal. As Hart's article says, "autonomy is a powerful motivator" and "better results come from getting out of the way".I wonder how many managers have considered that the biggest barrier to excellence in their team's performance might be their own attitude to people management (and people, come to that).It's funny how these things go in waves, because yesterday, Aliza Sherman published an article called 5 Reasons why Corporate Social Tools Fail. Top of the list for her is the lack of a social culture. As she says, mandating the use of x and y tools isn't going to change anything if you don't already have a culture of mutual support and collaboration within the organisation. Too many organisations make this very mistake. It's not about the technology. The technology is a just a conduit, a tool. You can give your 17 year old a car - that won't make him a competent driver! But, if he is already a driver, having his own car will enable him to do so very much more.It has to start with culture. So we find ourselves back at Hart's article which identifies the need for more autonomy and more getting out of the way. Less micromanagement and more belief in your people.

Interview with Bryan Alexander, educator, futurist, speaker, writer, and senior researcher for the New Media Consortium (NMC). We discuss the future of higher education.Education ContextsChanges in international education, demographics, enrollment decline, education for seniorsTechnology3d printing, Internet of Things, social media, augmented reality, cloud computing, digital video, alternative means of education, makerspacesEducation IssuesToo much testingCarnegie Unit vs competency based advancementePortfoliosthe LMS dark webadjunctification of higher edonline educationCreative Commonsopen educationLinksBryan Alexander Consulting, LLC@BryanAlexanderMakerspacesAlexandra PickettPodsafe music selectionA Passage Of Life by KitaroDuration: 47:09

Ten years ago today, the first YouTube upload was made live on the platform. Entitled ‘Me at the zoo’, it was uploaded by one of the platform’s co-founders, Jared Karim, and can still be seen on the site today. With over 19 million views on this video alone, and users in excess of 1 billion, YouTube and the influence of video content on our lives is undeniable. But how do we translate this medium into a practical learning tool for the classroom, without losing out on efficiency? Is the integration of digital content into language learning falling victim to fads, or a step towards the future? In recognition of an upload which changed the landscape of social and digital content sharing, here are some of our favourite articles dealing with the use of video in the EFL classroom. Using video for Business English The Power of Business Video Part 1 - Using ‘graded video’ in Business English teaching John Hughes examines the case for using graded video in the first of two posts on using video in the Business English classroom. The Power of Business Video Part 2 - Key uses of video for Business English teaching Taking the Business English classroom as context, John Hughes explores the most effective uses of video for learning. Practical ideas for the Business English classroom Part 2 - Making the most out of video In this blog post John Hughes looks at practical ideas as to how the use of video can support business English teaching. Using video for language skill-building Integrating video content in the EFL classroom with International Express - Part 1 Keith Harding shares some ideas and video resources for Elementary Unit 6 - Santiago, Chile, focusing on comparative and superlative adjectives. Integrating video content in the EFL classroom with International Express - Part 2 Rachel Appleby explores a video clip from Pre-Intermediate Unit 10 - Selexyz bookstore, which focuses on using ‘will’ to talk about the future, Zero Conditional and 1st Conditional. Using video and ICT to present grammar David Mearns, a teacher in Turkey, discusses the benefit of using video to show grammar in an authentic context and gives a few tips on how to teach grammar using video. Developing critical thinking by using video to teach essay writing Vanessa Medina is an English teacher, freelance ELT consultant and writer. Here she explores using videos to teach different writing structures. How and when to use video in the classroom Flipping and creating video presentations Thomas Healy explores the concept of ‘flipping’ in the classroom, aided by the use of video and video presentations. Video cameras in the hands of learners Jamie Keddie, author of Bringing Online Video into the Classroom, looks at the benefits of handing over control of the video camera to students. Using video in the classroom Christopher Graham, teacher and teacher trainer, looks at the benefits of using video in the classroom. What a 2 minute video clip can teach us… Annie Tsai, a teacher in Taiwan, writes about how music and the video-based Everybody Up Global Sing-along changed the lives of her students last year. Where’s the video? Rachel Appleby, co-author of the Business one:one series, looks at some of the benefits and drawbacks of using video in the classroom. Teaching and learning with video Part 1 - Video in the classroom Bruce Wade considers how and why video should be used in the ELT classroom of today. Teaching and learning with video Part 2 - The use of reportage and mini documentary In this blog post, Bruce Wade considers how reportage can be used as a visual and factual aid to learning. Teaching and learning with video Part 3 - Interviews, vox pops and beyond Can video interviews be used for contextual language learning? Bruce Wade explores how different formats of video can be used to support EFL training.  Filed under: Multimedia & Digital Tagged: EFL classroom, International Express, Multimedia, video content, YouTube