A jewel from my 'For later' bookmark file

Sometimes when I'm working on the computer and using the internet, I come across interesting websites that I want to come back to, so I have a 'system' for not losing them - I bookmark them in a file called 'For later'.

Just now, I decided it was time - and that I had some time - to check my For later file.  I discovered that over the summer, I had stashed away rather a lot of webpages there.

As you can see from this snapshot of my 'For later' bookmarks, there are a LOT of them and I haven't had the time to organise them - not even alphabetically!!!

I chose one easily recognisable site - http://www.bbc.com/travel/blog.

When I got to the site, I was reassured that my first impression - that it was definitely worth revisiting - was correct.

There is so much stuff that you could use with students here.

Being a blog, the start-up page has the most recent posts, but you can also explore the blog using the drop-down headings at the top:  Explore destinations/Explore themes.

There are articles and videos like the one I have just watched about Madrid.  The reporter, Rafael Estefanía, had to ask local people for advice as to where to find the best street art, how to move around the city in an unusual way, where to watch the sun set

Photo:  http://www.theulifestyle.com/2011/06/living-city-part-i.html

and where to sing to the locals.  

(Interestingly for me, as usual my head started to make connections - at the end of August, I was in Madrid, watching people watching the skyline from that terrace.  I was staying at a hotel right opposite the Circulo de Bellas Artes and was talking about that terrace with my daughter Cristina. It brought back happy memories!)

The video is short - just over 5 minutes - so in my opinion, an ideal length to use in class.  I haven't got time right now to prepare activities for this video (another 'For later' task!), but I would suggest that it could be used among other things as a springboard into talking about what things students do when they visit another city.  They could also prepare a leaflet/presentation/blog entry... with advice for unusual things a visitor could do where they live.

All these suggestions off the top of my head - I'm sure you can think of more.

Oh - and while writing this post, I have just added to my list of 'For later' bookmarks!

I'll no doubt be writing about some of them in future posts!

A well guarded secret

Last Friday, I wrote about the Olympic Opening Ceremony.  I, like many other people around the world, was wondering who would be given the honour of lighting the Olympic flame to burn in the stadium for the duration of the London Olympics.

The people chosen to do the honour were not on anyone's list.  Even Steve Redgrave did not seem to know the exact procedure that was to be used or the names of the people who would take over the torch from him.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19024475

• Rower Cameron MacRitchie, 19
• Sailor Callum Airlie, 17
• London 2012 Young Ambassador Jordan Duckitt, 18
• Runner Desiree Henry, 16
• Runner Katie Kirk, 18
• Javelin thrower Aidan Reynolds, 18
• Runner Adelle Tracey, 19

The Olympic torch was brought to the stadium along the Thames in a speedboat by David Beckham,

who then passed it to five-time Olympic gold medallist rower Sir Steve Redgrave.

He was met by the nominated young athletes, who ran along the stadium track before being joined by the six other Olympic winners who had selected them.
Sir Steve himself chose rower Cameron MacRitchie - the 19-year-old finished fifth with partner James Edwards in the men's pair at the 2012 GB rowing team under-23 trials in April.

Inspiring young people like these often feature in the reading and listening texts on the Cambridge English: Key for Schools and Cambridge English: Preliminary for Schools, so I thought I'd check them out on the internet and find if they had pages.  I suggest they would be good to use in class or for your students to read about.

Here are the pages I found:
Adelle Tracey:  http://www.adelletracey.co.uk/
Callum Airlie: http://www.bankofscotlandlondon2012.co.uk/en/In-your-community/Local-Heroes/Callum-Airlie/
Cameron Macritchie:   Cameron kept lighting of stadium torch secret from his family
Desiree Henry:  A video with an interview with Desiree outside Leicester Square before the premiere of the film Fast Girls.
Katie Kirk:  An interview with the runner the day after the ceremony.

For the article about Aidan Reynolds, students could be asked to read the article and to match the people in the story to the actions:


Who ...
1  - lit the Olympic flame?                                                         Aidan
2  - went to bed before the ceremony finished?                      Aidan's mother
3  - plays basketball for Wales?                                               Aidan's sister
4  - throws the javelin?                                                             Aidan's grandparents
5  - nominated Aidan for the Olympic ceremony?                 Aidan's neighbours
6  - brought some champagne to celebrate?                           Lynn Davies
7  - went to London to the Olympic Ceremony?


Key
1  Aidan   2  Aidan's grandparents     3  Aidan's sister     4  Aidan    5  Lynn Davies    6  Aidan's neighbours    7  Aidan and Aidan's sister


And there is a great article about Callum Airlie and the fact that the ceremony coincided with his 17th birthday: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-19037304.
I suggest that you could use this article in class to practise sequencing and past tenses.
Procedure
1  Identify the events that Callum mentions.
2  Put them into chronological order.
3  Write a narrative (students write a diary or letter as if they were Callum) using the events.

 I hope these links and suggestions are useful! Let me know!

First European Survey on Language Competences

I have been following the project to assess the level of European students' language competence since I first heard about the initiative when preparing to give a general picture of European language learning and teaching at the 21st APPI conference back in 2007 in Lisbon.

ANNE ROBINSON - Where are we heading? This talk will examine the main trends in English Language teaching in Europe. Areas such as starting age, contact hours, content-based learn- ing, teacher training and qualifications will be covered. 

Talk – All Teacher Development – Young Learners Room: Paris (150 seats)

I knew from the Surveylang website that the first survey had been carried out an that the results and findings were due to be published in 2012.

I remember checking the Surveylang website back in May to see whether the findings would be published soon.  They seemed imminent, but were not on the site yet.

The survey tested the two most widely taught European languages (from English, French, German, Italian and Spanish) in each country from a representative sample of pupils in their final year of lower secondary education.

The survey assessed students’ proficiency in listening, reading and writing. A sample of approximately 1,500 students per language tested, per country was used.

So while reading through an email with updates from Its magazine, I was rather surprised to find that when I followed the link below to the news article, that it was reporting the results of the Surveylang survey.  

Teenagers in England, France and Spain are among the least competent at languages. From BBC News. http://bbc.in/Lm4gne

Why was I surprised?  Because I hadn't heard a thing about the publication of the findings, yet I try and keep up to date with articles in the press on language teaching and learning, I receive emails from various organisations, I do a lot of work for the University of Cambridge ESOL (who were VERY much involved in the survey) and friends and colleagues very often pass on news like this.

Yet I hadn't heard a thing about the results being published!   Highly surprising!!!

I thought that this news (and the findings from the survey) would be very relevant and of interest to a lot of you out there, so I decided to write this post!

Here are the links to the final report  (241 pages long!)  It contains lots of information about the survey and the results.  I was impressed by the tasks participants were asked to complete in order to assess their reading, writing and listening skills.  (Speaking was not assessed in this survey)

and also to the Executive Summary (15 pages).

You can also read all about the Survey and the findings on the University of Cambridge ESOL's website here.

Ready, steady, go!

It's July 27th, and the 2012 Olympic Games are almost at their starting blocks!

I for one will be glued to the television this evening to watch the opening ceremony.  I've heard lots of snippets of information about what it is going to be like, but lots of things have been kept secret.

Almost unbelievably in this era of Twitter and Facebook, the tens of thousands of people who watched rehearsals for the opening ceremony this week have largely kept the details secret, although some aspects of the show have been announced already – including the choice of Sir Paul McCartney to bring the curtain down – and photos have shown the stadium transformed into a giant mock-up of the English countryside, complete with live farm animals, cricket players and actors in Victorian dress, with the curve of the Thames sweeping through the arena. Daniel Craig's James Bond is also said to feature.

One of the only things that seems certain, is that at some point, we will see a representation of a typical British rural landscape.

Yesterday, the BBC released a 30 second clip from a dress rehearsal for the ceremony, but unfortunately, because I'm in Spain, the BBC website won't let me watch it!

One of the things that also remains a mystery is who will light the flame in the Olympic Stadium tonight - lots of suggestions have been made.
 (See the previous entry today for an article about this.)
  Apparently, it will not be David Beckham, and I know it won't be me!!!


Of course, the build-up to the Olympic Games has been taking place for months.

You can watch a video showing some of the things that people have been doing around Britain to celebrate the games here.


And if you'd like to have something to remember these games, there are lots of things on offer, for example:

And today, at 8.12 a.m. UK Time, people around the country were asked to ring any bell for three minutes.

You can read about this initiative here.

Don't forget that there is a great part of the London 2012 website dedicated to the different sports.  I wrote about this back in April.

Let's hope the games are fun, successful and exciting!  Good luck to everyone involved in London 2012!!!

Using news with younger learners

When you watch the news on television, although some of the stories shown might be suitable to use with children and young teenagers, others are definitely NOT.

One great source of news items for students of these age groups is CBBC (BBC Children)'s Newsround. 

 

The home of news and fun facts for kids.

I remember watching this programme myself when I was growing up (so it's been around for a long time!)

The start-up page for the website is divided into 5 sections: home, news, sport, entertainment and animals.


I clicked on two news stories that I had watched yesterday morning on Sky News.  I chose them because they were thematically related (both talking about sport).

The first showed the actor Will Smith trying out some sports with athletes, boxers and basketball players from the GB Olympic team.

In class, you could show your students these pictures and then they could be asked to find them within the video clip.


The second story is to do with swimming.

Too many children can't swim properly, says news report

I thought this would be great to use in class when talking about 'can' and 'can't'.  

After the news report, CBBC have published comments from kids on the subject, like this one from 

Lilion, London, England

"I want to be a Olympic swimmer... but our school doesn't teach us!"

Your students could be asked to write their own comment on the subject.
And then, they could take the Olympic Games Quiz.

And don't forget to use materials from the Olympics sports page I wrote about last month!