Monday 19 September 2011
Monday 5 September 2011
I have just spoken to one of my students. I dont know what i am doing wrong but there's no way she makes any any progress. and as nicely as i have the abiltiy to speak, I told her I was trying to find new ways to help her improve her language skills as i thought her progress was far slower than what it should be and that frustrated me as a teacher. I know that the bulk to the problem is that she does nothing, is careless when she speaks and doesn't try to use what has been seen in class. Lack of effort. But i needed to say it all as nicely as possible and that's being assertive and you are assertive by using 1st person singualar about things! the problem I see with this is that things are not as direct as they should be at times as the other party may not get the implicit message!
The answer i got was a very nice thanks and a comment about about how efficient I am (que soc molt professional). Curiously enough, last week, another student complimented my job with the same adjective!
Anna and D
The answer i got was a very nice thanks and a comment about about how efficient I am (que soc molt professional). Curiously enough, last week, another student complimented my job with the same adjective!
Anna and D
Wednesday 22 June 2011
Monday 20 June 2011
Nivel medio de inglés
http://www.lasexta.com/sextatv/elclubdelacomedia/luis_merlo__hablo_ingles__nivel_medio__pero_hablo_ingles/208511/5311
Wednesday 1 June 2011
Social Networks in our lives
I want share with you this video, use it how you like it. I'm astonished, at the design, the contents, the music. Just amazing! I have often thought about how the internet has changed my life and hard it would be to get back to a life without it but social networks, I thought prior to watching this video, didn't play that important a role in my life. But I saw this and I do have blogs, which i hardly ever write in, I do have facebook, which i hardly ever use, I do have a number of other social networks. And the truth is that your friends lead you to use them. Reluectantly I find myself little by little using fb more and more, little as it is still, because people dont use emails any more, other than work email! We learn of new bands, new intersting videos online, new venues, new everything on socialnetworks. The word of mouth is the word of social networks, whether we like it or not. How do we apply this to teaching: film what you do in class and post it on youtube, record stuff as podcasts, share pics of activities in class, set up blogs and post all the above there, set collaborative areas where students help each other with homework, set a class tweeter, introduce new tools via social networks, and discuss things online: films, books, activities in class. People are more likely to give their opinions via FB than in a class context.
Wednesday 11 May 2011
Now me as an adult student of French
Now me as an adult student of French
I have writing about my students, about what I do to teach, giving some thought to how my adults learn. With this post I'll give this a different twist for a moment:
On how many occasions have I wanted to speak more languages! On how many occasions have I regretted not studying French and German when my mum was pushing me to! Yet, it's never too late! I envy those who speak three or four foreign languages and I have set out to learn French for once and for all!
Background:I am in my mid 30s and I took up French classes last September. I'd done French for one academic year when I was 15 at secondary school, with a really bad teacher. Nobody speaks highly of her, so it's not just my experience. Then, took a three-month course at uni as part of the Introduction to French and French literature, of which the language bit was an overall idea of how French works as a language and its phonemes as a means to distiguish sounds. Pronunciation is the hardest area of French learning for me, the switch between open a , e the neutral vowel, the nasal a, oe sounds etc is really hard! All of us who teach and learn and speak the gallic language know how important it is to get the sound right if you don't want to be ridiculised and laughed by Parisians.
After that in about 10 years ago I took a summer refresher course for a month. So i've never learned more than what would be level 1, if this at all.
Last summer, I armed myself with old exercise books and online grammars and exercises and reviewed as much as my time allowed me to in order to be placed at level 2 of the school I was going to register for the course. I must say that I like languages, I teach English as a foreign language after all, and I've tried every single opportunity life has put before me to practise French, which has now had its rewards. I am a risk taker and thanks to my travelling to French speaking countries and possibly aptitude i secured i place in the level I thought corresponded to my knowledge or degree of command. I was not going to start all over again after all, i feel i've done level one two or three times in my life before, none of them being a proper level 1, just complete and false beginner!After the level test: written and oral, the oral examiner would have assigned me level 3, which I was not prepared for, hardly having a good command of the two most basic tenses but I felt very flattered. The fact that I had studied French over 10 years ago, practised it only when booking hotel rooms and ordering at restaurants and having limited conversations with people when travelling the country, astonished the examiner. The command i seemed to have for that limited input and output apparently was fairly good. I think it's more the risk-taking nature of mine in this case.
I can see the theory behind the endlessly repeated idea that if you do homework and review regularly you make quicker progress.
I learn by associating words or grammar items to English or to Catalan. We can't help using our mental patterns to learn new things, we compare to what we know, to what we are used to, to what we experience and to our standards and ideas, and I am stretching and extending the idea to not only language learning here. (the idea that it is very xxx or not very xxx is measured to our own idea of xxxx)
I am pro-active, and participate as much as my common sense allows for if/when interested in the subject we are dealing with. Common sense? I'd be interacting with the teacher and other classmates a lot more if I could but the nature of the situation prevents me from doing so. Not only because I am very much aware that one learns to speak by speaking (and listening too, no need to say) but because I, as a teacher as well, simpathise with the teacher when she wants one of us to step forward and say something and I may be more fluency-oriented than accuracy! (I wonder what she's going to react to this if she ever gets to read this bit! :-). It's not a matter of the less shy students dominating the "mis en commun" or plenary debates as it has been the cases on a couple of occasions! You learn to speak by speaking. You overcome the fear by fully being aware that you will make mistakes, that you will get stuck for a word or a tense or a sound mispronounced at times and that it's part of the learning process, not a weakness and it's ok if others laugh with you at a mistake you make. It's fine. That's my approach and that's the attitude I promote among my students.
It's 25-30 of us in a class and I don't want to manipulate the plenary speaking times. That is the risk-taking. I think in my L1, hard not to. I am even more aware of that.
I wonder how or to what extent does me being a teacher helps me in my learning of French.
not finished, more shortly
I have writing about my students, about what I do to teach, giving some thought to how my adults learn. With this post I'll give this a different twist for a moment:
On how many occasions have I wanted to speak more languages! On how many occasions have I regretted not studying French and German when my mum was pushing me to! Yet, it's never too late! I envy those who speak three or four foreign languages and I have set out to learn French for once and for all!
Background:I am in my mid 30s and I took up French classes last September. I'd done French for one academic year when I was 15 at secondary school, with a really bad teacher. Nobody speaks highly of her, so it's not just my experience. Then, took a three-month course at uni as part of the Introduction to French and French literature, of which the language bit was an overall idea of how French works as a language and its phonemes as a means to distiguish sounds. Pronunciation is the hardest area of French learning for me, the switch between open a , e the neutral vowel, the nasal a, oe sounds etc is really hard! All of us who teach and learn and speak the gallic language know how important it is to get the sound right if you don't want to be ridiculised and laughed by Parisians.
After that in about 10 years ago I took a summer refresher course for a month. So i've never learned more than what would be level 1, if this at all.
Last summer, I armed myself with old exercise books and online grammars and exercises and reviewed as much as my time allowed me to in order to be placed at level 2 of the school I was going to register for the course. I must say that I like languages, I teach English as a foreign language after all, and I've tried every single opportunity life has put before me to practise French, which has now had its rewards. I am a risk taker and thanks to my travelling to French speaking countries and possibly aptitude i secured i place in the level I thought corresponded to my knowledge or degree of command. I was not going to start all over again after all, i feel i've done level one two or three times in my life before, none of them being a proper level 1, just complete and false beginner!After the level test: written and oral, the oral examiner would have assigned me level 3, which I was not prepared for, hardly having a good command of the two most basic tenses but I felt very flattered. The fact that I had studied French over 10 years ago, practised it only when booking hotel rooms and ordering at restaurants and having limited conversations with people when travelling the country, astonished the examiner. The command i seemed to have for that limited input and output apparently was fairly good. I think it's more the risk-taking nature of mine in this case.
I can see the theory behind the endlessly repeated idea that if you do homework and review regularly you make quicker progress.
I learn by associating words or grammar items to English or to Catalan. We can't help using our mental patterns to learn new things, we compare to what we know, to what we are used to, to what we experience and to our standards and ideas, and I am stretching and extending the idea to not only language learning here. (the idea that it is very xxx or not very xxx is measured to our own idea of xxxx)
I am pro-active, and participate as much as my common sense allows for if/when interested in the subject we are dealing with. Common sense? I'd be interacting with the teacher and other classmates a lot more if I could but the nature of the situation prevents me from doing so. Not only because I am very much aware that one learns to speak by speaking (and listening too, no need to say) but because I, as a teacher as well, simpathise with the teacher when she wants one of us to step forward and say something and I may be more fluency-oriented than accuracy! (I wonder what she's going to react to this if she ever gets to read this bit! :-). It's not a matter of the less shy students dominating the "mis en commun" or plenary debates as it has been the cases on a couple of occasions! You learn to speak by speaking. You overcome the fear by fully being aware that you will make mistakes, that you will get stuck for a word or a tense or a sound mispronounced at times and that it's part of the learning process, not a weakness and it's ok if others laugh with you at a mistake you make. It's fine. That's my approach and that's the attitude I promote among my students.
It's 25-30 of us in a class and I don't want to manipulate the plenary speaking times. That is the risk-taking. I think in my L1, hard not to. I am even more aware of that.
I wonder how or to what extent does me being a teacher helps me in my learning of French.
not finished, more shortly
new technology
I want to try podcasting with my students as a way to record their progress but the idea of buying all the necessary equipment and then not using it cos it's complex or not engaging is just too strong still.
Tuesday 10 May 2011
Great videos to watch for teachers and students
These are two of the great Ted talks on www.ted.com.
The first is Sir Ken Robinson, not only an excellent speaker but his "Schools kill creativity" talk is awesome. After I watched this video I saw a short bit of a Hannah Montana episode by chance where she was studying for an anatomy exam, singing and dancing. When doing the exam, she kind of needed to sing and dance to remember the names and stuff and she failed because of that. I couldn't help but thinking of Sir Robinson's video.
No room for creativity. Creativity is often punished or frowned upon, which means descreasing the inventiveness of younger children as they grow older.
The second video is from Patricia Ryan, who states that unless you speak English your potentially very good ideas will not reach out to as many people as they'd deserve reaching out.
The first is Sir Ken Robinson, not only an excellent speaker but his "Schools kill creativity" talk is awesome. After I watched this video I saw a short bit of a Hannah Montana episode by chance where she was studying for an anatomy exam, singing and dancing. When doing the exam, she kind of needed to sing and dance to remember the names and stuff and she failed because of that. I couldn't help but thinking of Sir Robinson's video.
No room for creativity. Creativity is often punished or frowned upon, which means descreasing the inventiveness of younger children as they grow older.
The second video is from Patricia Ryan, who states that unless you speak English your potentially very good ideas will not reach out to as many people as they'd deserve reaching out.
Thursday 5 May 2011
Tuesday 12 April 2011
When is the right moment to teach pronunciation? Is there "a" right moment to do so?
more in www.howadultslearn.wikispaces.com
Earlier today I was telling Ester, my student who has written the "essential grammar" wiki around in my wikis, that I think that generally speaking, I find myself thinking that openly and explicitly teaching pronunciation can not be done until students/learners are ready for and open to it, much as this idea is wrong.This tends to happen when they have gained fluency enough to use English in a real life situation, and they themselves realise that yes! pronunciation matters. A lot. My adults were not open to learning (about) pronunciation when they started English with me, it was and is not until a couple of years have elapsed that now they truly understand and see for themselves the need for improving this often "scary" area of the language learning process. Now that they have gained confidence, have a better command of the language and actively use it in their day to day that they see how important pronunciation is. But then again, it's worth "playing with" it early enough to raise a consciousness of the different sounds, so dominoes and quizzes and words-with-the-same-sound competitions may be the way to go with the unacquainted students! By pronuciation I mean knowing how a word or a phrase or a sentence is pronounced, the sounds. Gaining an awareness of the different sounds of English, the distinction about the number of vowel sounds in particular and how using a different vowel sound or dropping the final consonant can affect the message when speaking to an uncooperative native speaker as some can be (or at least that's the students' perception!). You may add and argue to this, that pronunciation is pitch, intonation and all this hard-to-change aspects. Of course it is, but I am going to delve into this now, as i give it fairly little focus in class myself, much as it can hinder understanding or lead to misinterpretations of the message passed on! On how many occasions have I been told that Spanish sound as though they were angry and shouting at each there when speaking! Often I find that they know every single word of is said to them but still can not understand. They don't understand because in their heads there's "their" pronunciation of the words, which often doesn't match with the correct pronunciation. That's why they don't understand. It's obviously not as simple as that but I can vouch this is a very important part of their lack of understanding skills. In addition, there's some kind of mental blockage that prevents them from understanding, plus the sound simplification, the so-weak forms, of auxiliaries, prepositions, etc. To help them gain an understanding of these issues and to "train their ears to catch these little sounds" the teacher comes into play. It's hard for many to reach this goal overnight. Awareness of how slow this can be can be discouraging for some but it works. I can vouch for that. And, to go one step further, it's not only their understanding oral input skills but also their ability to produce understandable output. Before, they lacked to knowledge, they didn't use English. Now they use it, with native and non-native speakers. So it's now it's the right moment to go more in depth. I use a lot material from the bbc.co.uk learning english, as i said in How Adults Learn, a wiki I have, plus books and plus brainstorming and providing examples for them to discover some kind of rule.
Another issue that often takes them by surprise them is that spelling things out in English is so common between native speakers because pronunciation doesn't always correspond to what it may appear from spelling and the other way round. We teach them the alphabet and to spell when they start learning but again, we never put enough emphasis on how an essential and active part of the use of English in English-speaking countries this is. Eureka, now they understand! All those homophones which can be so confusing if they are different word categories! so and sew rite and right pear and pair The above takes to what i said in an earlier piece of writing of how helpful it can be to learn what other words the word goes with .. the rite of , it is right , our rights, you are right, a pair of.. the pear, I sew sth, etc. or the baffling pronunciation of -ough, our the different spellings for the sound of earn, and the different pronunciatins of the letters ea/ear, etc. No wonder our students get mixed up and mispronounce words! who wouldn't?! (will expand) Their own mis pronunciation of words they own -----------------> they don't understand the word when pronounced correctly (and fast and within connected speech) correct pronunciation= easier to be understood easier to understand Spelling is important in English because pronunciation is sometimes arbitrary and unreliable to pronunciation patterns.
Continue writing about:
Earlier today I was telling Ester, my student who has written the "essential grammar" wiki around in my wikis, that I think that generally speaking, I find myself thinking that openly and explicitly teaching pronunciation can not be done until students/learners are ready for and open to it, much as this idea is wrong.This tends to happen when they have gained fluency enough to use English in a real life situation, and they themselves realise that yes! pronunciation matters. A lot. My adults were not open to learning (about) pronunciation when they started English with me, it was and is not until a couple of years have elapsed that now they truly understand and see for themselves the need for improving this often "scary" area of the language learning process. Now that they have gained confidence, have a better command of the language and actively use it in their day to day that they see how important pronunciation is. But then again, it's worth "playing with" it early enough to raise a consciousness of the different sounds, so dominoes and quizzes and words-with-the-same-sound competitions may be the way to go with the unacquainted students! By pronuciation I mean knowing how a word or a phrase or a sentence is pronounced, the sounds. Gaining an awareness of the different sounds of English, the distinction about the number of vowel sounds in particular and how using a different vowel sound or dropping the final consonant can affect the message when speaking to an uncooperative native speaker as some can be (or at least that's the students' perception!). You may add and argue to this, that pronunciation is pitch, intonation and all this hard-to-change aspects. Of course it is, but I am going to delve into this now, as i give it fairly little focus in class myself, much as it can hinder understanding or lead to misinterpretations of the message passed on! On how many occasions have I been told that Spanish sound as though they were angry and shouting at each there when speaking! Often I find that they know every single word of is said to them but still can not understand. They don't understand because in their heads there's "their" pronunciation of the words, which often doesn't match with the correct pronunciation. That's why they don't understand. It's obviously not as simple as that but I can vouch this is a very important part of their lack of understanding skills. In addition, there's some kind of mental blockage that prevents them from understanding, plus the sound simplification, the so-weak forms, of auxiliaries, prepositions, etc. To help them gain an understanding of these issues and to "train their ears to catch these little sounds" the teacher comes into play. It's hard for many to reach this goal overnight. Awareness of how slow this can be can be discouraging for some but it works. I can vouch for that. And, to go one step further, it's not only their understanding oral input skills but also their ability to produce understandable output. Before, they lacked to knowledge, they didn't use English. Now they use it, with native and non-native speakers. So it's now it's the right moment to go more in depth. I use a lot material from the bbc.co.uk learning english, as i said in How Adults Learn, a wiki I have, plus books and plus brainstorming and providing examples for them to discover some kind of rule.
Another issue that often takes them by surprise them is that spelling things out in English is so common between native speakers because pronunciation doesn't always correspond to what it may appear from spelling and the other way round. We teach them the alphabet and to spell when they start learning but again, we never put enough emphasis on how an essential and active part of the use of English in English-speaking countries this is. Eureka, now they understand! All those homophones which can be so confusing if they are different word categories! so and sew rite and right pear and pair The above takes to what i said in an earlier piece of writing of how helpful it can be to learn what other words the word goes with .. the rite of , it is right , our rights, you are right, a pair of.. the pear, I sew sth, etc. or the baffling pronunciation of -ough, our the different spellings for the sound of earn, and the different pronunciatins of the letters ea/ear, etc. No wonder our students get mixed up and mispronounce words! who wouldn't?! (will expand) Their own mis pronunciation of words they own -----------------> they don't understand the word when pronounced correctly (and fast and within connected speech) correct pronunciation= easier to be understood easier to understand Spelling is important in English because pronunciation is sometimes arbitrary and unreliable to pronunciation patterns.
Continue writing about:
Explain how brain and phonological system work, ages...
If they don't hear it they don't use it, etc.
Add ted videos (see newer entries).
Extension: on 21 April 2012, months after writing this, I went to an Oxford seminar and Robin Walker gave a talk named Pronunciation Matters. Fab. Eye-opening, inspiring and realistic. I was glad to see what I am doing well, and go home with ideas on how to continue tackling this issue with my learners! Thanks Robin.
Thursday 7 April 2011
I set up a wiki a month about teaching and a half ago as a way of familiarising myself with the tool as I don't use the blog too much. http://howadultslearn.wikispaces.com/ There I have developed a piece of text that i started a while ago here in blogger about how adults learn English according to my experience, then I went on putting info about what i think are good ways to improve the students listening skills as well as speaking and other ideas and experiences from my teaching.
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