Write and improve

Hello again
Sorry not to have been writing much recently, but I have so much on workwise right now, that it's hard to find time to do everything I'd like to.  Still, keeps me young and active as my dad would say!

Tomorrow, I'm off to San Sebastian again (I was there last Friday too).  I'm giving a session on Writing and Speaking for Cambridge English:  First and Cambridge English: Advanced.

I try to avoid repeating anything that I've done in San Sebastian before (quite a challenging task seeing as I'm usually there 5 times every year!), so I was checking out what new stuff there is and came across a very attractive development on the Cambridge English Youtube Channel.

Write and improve

I  registered yesterday to see how it works.  You register and put in very few details

The tasks are designed for levels B1 and B2.  Students type in their answer to the question they choose (or they can write about any topic), save their answer and submit it and get feedback on their errors and sentences.

To find out more, there are two videos on the Cambridge English Youtube channel:

Try it out - pass on the link to your students and contribute to a research programme!

Busy week - listening, listening........

This week, I've signed up for two webinars on the subject of listening.  

Today, I'll be connecting my computer at 3pm to watch:

Then, on Wednesday at 4, I'll be online again to take part in another webinar on Listening:

It's a shame that they are taking place this week because last Friday, I was in San Sebastian, giving 2 seminars on ...... Listening!  For Cambridge English: First and Cambridge English:  Advanced in my case!

Maybe some of you will also be connecting today or Wednesday :·))

I'll be uploading some activities that I prepared for the Cambridge English: Advanced Listening session in my next post!

Webinar: Changes to Cambridge English: First, First for Schools and Advanced

This webinar will focus on the revised versions of Cambridge English: First, Cambridge English: First for Schools and Cambridge English: Advanced, which go live in 2015.

It is aimed at teachers who are preparing, or going to prepare candidates for these exams. The presenters will concentrate on the formats and timings of the exams in order to fully inform teachers of the changes which are taking place.

To register for this webinar, please choose your preferred date and time.

Monday 11 November 2013  14.00 – 15.00 (UK time)

Wednesday 13 November 2013  10.00 – 11.00 (UK time)

More useful resources from UsingEnglish.com

I'm back from holiday.  Had a great time in Madeira.  Great weather, food, experiences.  Loved the decorations in the streets and around the churches for August 15th.

I won't be working flat out yet, but I will try and write a couple of articles per week.

I've written before about Using English.com and the resources they have.  I have about 50 pdf documents that I've saved in a file on my computer.

Recently, I've had 2 emails telling me about articles with tips for approaching Parts 1 and 2 of the Cambridge English: First speaking test.  I especially liked the suggestions for useful language and approaches for Part 2.

Part 1
http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/how-to-teach-cambridge-first-certificate-fce-speaking-part-one.html

Part 2
http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/how-to-teach-cambridge-first-certificate-fce-speaking-part-two.html

With many students taking the Cambridge English: First exam earlier this year (I know lots of candidates for October 2013), no doubt many of you are already priming them for the different parts of the exam. The two articles on UsingEnglish.com will be very useful for focusing on the Speaking Test.

Granada Cambridge Experience

On Saturday, I'll be in Granada.  I'm really looking forward to the trip and also to meeting lots of teachers and sharing ideas (as well as picking up some inspiration from Michael Tomlinson and Guy Brook-Hart.)

If you live (or will be) in the area, there is still time to sign up - see below for how to do this:

Hope some of you will come along!  I'll write about the experience next week on this blog!

Great, simple idea for Describing photos in Speaking Tests

I have just finished reading another post from the Cambridge English South East Europe Blog.

(I mentioned the tips for teaching YLE a couple of weeks ago here.)

I really liked a new tip for preparing the photo task for the Cambridge English: Preliminary exam.

Laura Casetti from Argentina submitted this tip. I thought it was great and well worth a mention on this blog.

Exam preparation idea for:
Cambridge English: Preliminary (PET), Speaking paper, Part 3

Summary:
1. Ask students to bring in a topic-related picture.
2. Divide the class into pairs and ask the students to swap pictures.
3. Ask the students to describe their partner’s picture.
4. Ask each student to describe their own picture to the class, and then explain how their partner described it.
5. Encourage the class to discuss further ideas.

Materials needed:
A picture or photo from home

Describing a personal photo
“I usually ask students to look for a picture at home, related to a given topic (usually the one we are dealing with in class), and bring it to the following class. This gives them the chance to choose a picture that, in a way, inspires them. The class works in pairs, exchanging their pictures, which, as I said before, have a topic connection.

Once they have done this, I give them a task for Part 4. After they have finished this, they are asked to tell the group how they would have described the picture they brought, and how their partner actually did this. Then, they can ask the rest of the group for further ideas.

This activity proves quite fruitful, since it allows students to open their minds to new ideas about what to say about a picture, enlarging the scope of possibilities. If this is done regularly when we finish dealing with a given topic, at the end of the course they will have a folder with their own pictures, which will be useful for revising the topics, prior to the oral interview.”

I would suggest that the same idea could be used with groups of Cambridge English: First, Advanced and Proficiency students.

With these groups, you could either ask them to bring in two related photos or they put their photos together and make pairs of photos and think of a question that could be asked in the style of the Cambridge English: First, Advanced or Proficiency photo tasks.

Online First & Advanced Use of English practice

I am just gearing up for another trip to San Sebastian.  Hopefully, the weather will be just as good as last Friday when I was there too.

This time, we'll be looking at Cambridge English First: Teaching Tips and also Advanced Speaking.

I was looking through the links I have bookmarked for First preparation and revisited a site I discovered back in November.

I thought it was well worth a mention on this blog.

English Revealed has interactive exercises for the Cambridge First and Advanced Use of English papers.  Most of the material on the site is free (you can sign up for 5.99 Euros to get more over the course of 6 months).

I'll be passing on the address to the people who come along on Friday (and am doing the same with you now!)

Back from Alcalá, a name change and gearing up for seminars and YLE.

As you will have seen from my previous two posts, last weekend nearly everyone involved in running the Cambridge exams in Spain and Portugal (Centre Managers, Inspectors, Presenters, Team Leaders, the people who work in the Madrid office...) met together in Alcalá de Henares to find out about developments taking place or in the pipeline.

At the gala dinner, I was extremely proud to be given an award - a silver plaque 'For continual support of Cambridge English activities in Spain as Senior Presenter and the development of the 'Teaching Together' Blog!

One of the biggest changes we learnt about and one which will affect all of us immediately is the change in the name of the organisation we work for.  We no longer represent Cambridge ESOL.  The name has changed to Cambridge English Language Assessment.

You can read about the change and the reasons for it here.

We will be receiving information about other developments, like the revision of the Cambridge English: First and Cambridge English:Advanced exams and the trialling of Computer Based Young Learners Tests over the next few months.  I will cover them on this blog as we get details of these.

Myself, well I'm gearing up to some busy months ahead.

Tomorrow, I'll be in Santurzi giving a seminar on Cambridge English: First for Schools and Cambridge English: Preliminary for Schools.  Then, for the next five weeks, I'll be jumping in the car and driving to many more Centres in the north of Spain.  The rest of the seminar team is going to be very busy too.  You can find out more about where we'll be, click here to find out.

And I'll also be setting up the Young Learners Tests here in Cantabria for the Centre where I work.

There are lots of useful resources and also news to share about the YLE tests.  My next post will look at some of these.  Speak to you soon about these!

Spain seen from two sides

After watching the news yesterday evening, I switched on the computer to take a look at the photographs that have been submitted to Antena 3, the Spanish TV news channel's website, in response to the article and the pictures that appeared in the New York Times on September 24th:

Spain Recoils as Its Hungry Forage Trash Bins for a Next Meal

(See this and the other photos here)

One of the biggest criticism's of the photos is that they paint a very one-sided picture of Spain and they are all in black and white.

There are 150 photos on the antena3.com website.  They are all in colour - some of them are very colourful indeed.

After looking through all the photos, my teacher's brain began thinking about how I could use them in class.

One way would be to use a couple of them to illustrate ways of completing three different sentences about Spain:

1  Spain, the perfect place to ...

 (ride a bike)

2  In Spain, we still have ......

 (bubbles and smiles)

3  Visitors to Spain should see:

(Granada)

As a follow-up, students could be asked to find three images of Spain to submit to Antena 3 for the campaign (1 picture for each sentence).

And the pictures make great material for the speaking tests for Cambridge English: Preliminary, First, Advanced and Proficiency.  Either the teacher or each student/pair of students could choose a pair of related pictures and then be asked to write the intoductory rubric (and follow- up question) for the pair of photos.

For example:  (For Cambridge English: First Speaking Practice)

I'm going to give you two photographs.  Both your photos show people from different generations spending time together.  I'd like you to compare your photos and to say what things the two people in each picture can learn from each other.   You have about a minute for this.

I hope you enjoy looking at the (Antena 3) photos as much as I did, as well as reflecting on the photos from the NYT.

  

Just one thing

If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, which one would it be?

If you could choose only one place to live for the rest of your life, where would you choose?

If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?

If you could only kiss just one person for the rest of your life, who would it be?

If you could only support one team for the rest of your life, which team would you support?

If you could watch just one film for the rest of your life, what film would you choose?

If you could look at just one piece of art for the rest of your life, which one would you select?


These seven questions appear in an interactive campaign for Volkswagen Golf VII.  onething.com

All onething.com users can create their own profile and share their answers with their friends via the Facebook, Twitter and Google+ social networks

I thought these questions would be great for use in class.

I suggest you could start with a bit of grammar practice (very useful for Part 2 of the Cambridge English: First and Advanced exams), by showing students the questions with the relative pronouns deleted then they have to supply who, which, where, what.  

To stimulate discussion, students could watch the video below and see the different answers given to three of the questions:

Then, students could choose their answers individually before sharing and discussing them with their classmates.

Finally, they could compare their choices with the most popular answers to each question.

In Spain, the most popular song is Imagine.

The most popular food is pizza.

61% said they would prefer to live abroad.

Women are quicker then men at saying who they would prefer to kiss.  (Average time taken = 2 seconds!)

Pulp Fiction, Titanic, Forrest Gump are among the most cited films.

And Mona Lisa is by far the most popular work of art.

Great source for examples of answering questions

I have spent most of the day looking at some different web tools and pages.  One of the things on my 'to do' list for this academic year is to start using some new tools and applications with my students.

I was revisiting a favourite of mine - Nik's Daily English Activities.

I mentioned Nik back in a post in January this year.  I had been watching a recording of a webinar Nik gave and had really enjoyed it.

Anyway, today, I clicked on Nik's link to VYou.  

First, I watched the questions asked by Oprah Winfrey, then I looked at some other questions and answers on the site.

I thought that it would be a great page to use with students preparing to take the Cambridge English: First, Advanced and Proficiency exams, in particular when preparing them for the first and final parts of the Speaking Tests.

For example, someone out there has set the following question:

If a book has been made into a movie, which do you prefer to do first, see the movie or read the book? Why?

http://www.odcpl.com/index.php?p=1_81_Books-into-Movies

As I write this post, 4 people have recorded their answer with a video camera.  You can watch them here.

I think that this and similar questions and answers could be a great source for discussion in (or outside) class.
Students could be asked to 'give marks' using the criteria that Speaking Examiners use:

- Grammar and Vocabulary
- Discourse Management
- Pronunciation

(It's a bit difficult to evaluate the answerers' interactive communication because they are monologues!!!)

And I also think that the site could provide us teachers with some interesting discussion and opinion questions to put to our students (or they could each choose a question to ask the teacher and/or their classmates!)

And if you're feeling brave, they could also record their own answers and share them!

(Note:  Some of the questions (and answers!) might not be suitable for sharing with your students, especially with teenagers, so I suggest you choose the ones you can use carefully! )

Learn and play!

As I write this post, my computer is playing some jazzy music to me.  Why? Because I've just been trying out Academy Island!  What exactly is that, you may ask?  It's a game!  I'll paste the description provided by Cambridge ESOL (I couldn't describe it better myself!)

What is the game about?

An unknown alien life form who landed on earth today has had to learn the English language to get by in a range of social situations... Don't panic, it's just the plot of Academy Island – a new social media game from Cambridge experts designed to help learners improve their English language ability.

Where can I find the game?

Academy Island is a free educational game aimed at English language learners. It’s available from the University of Cambridge ESOL Examination’s (Cambridge ESOL) official Facebook page – which currently has over 120,000 fans.

What do players have to do?

Players of Academy Island have to progress through different difficulty levels by helping the alien use English in a range of situations such as shopping in a bakery and visiting places such as an art gallery and library.

Who wrote the game?

A team of language experts from Cambridge ESOL who work on the actual exam papers came up with the questions and tasks to ensure they were pitched at an appropriate level for learners of English. They worked closely with TAMBA – an award-winning digital marketing agency who specialise in social media games. Players who take on the Academy Island challenge can post their scores on a global leader board through their Facebook profile.

From what I have seen (I haven't had time - yet! - to visit all the places on the Island - the language level is quite high - I would say that for students preparing for Cambridge English: First and above.

Try it out and post your results!

Recording students describing photos

Hello again!  Sorry I've been 'missing' for a few days but life has been even more hectic than usual this week!  And it hasn't been for a lack of ideas to share with you on this blog, believe me!  I have a file full of materials and lots of links saved in my 'For later' file on my computer.

So, let's make a start on one of them!

As I told you recently, I gave a talk at the TESOL Spain 2012 Convention.

As well as giving my talk, I was able to attend a few sessions.  The first one I went to a Keynote presentation given by Russell Stannard.  Here he is in action:

(Thanks Donna Koniholm for the great photos you took at the Convention!) 

I've been reading articles and tips from Russell Stannard for a long long time.  Quite deservedly, his website http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/  has won lots of awards.

For a quick (3 minute) presentation of the site by Russell himself, I recommend watching this video.

During Russell's TESOL presentation, the tool that really caught my eye was MailVU:  http://mailvu.com/.

This allows you to record video clips on a computer using the microphone and webcam and then send them to an email contact.

Here is Russell's description of the potential use of this site for language teachers:

… you can get the students to do recordings of themselves speaking in English at home … and then sending those recordings to you, you can then listen to them and obviously give them some feedback on their oral performance…

Watch Russell explaining this site here.


So, of course, me being a Cambridge ESOL teacher and teacher trainer, I thought:  What a fantastic tool to practise the 1 minute talking about photos tasks in the Cambridge English: Preliminary, First, Advanced and Proficiency Speaking Tests!!!

Let's consider how you could go about this:
For homework, tell students which photo(s) you want them to talk about and the question you want them to answer in relation to the photo(s)

For example,

Here are your photographs.  They show people spending their free time in different ways.  I'd like you to compare the photographs and say what are the advantages and disadvantages for the people of spending their free time in these different ways.  

Source:  First for Schools Handbook

You send students a link to MailVU by email.  They open the link, record themselves doing the task, and send you the clip by email.  You watch it and can give them feedback (by return of email/record a video of yourself talking about their performance/discuss the clip with them in class (maybe while you both watch the video).

I believe it has fantastic potential for working on this part of the Cambridge ESOL speaking tests!

If you try it out, please let us know about it!

Para todos La 2 - Hablar inglés

I wanted to post a quick link to the recording of a programme shown on TVE2 last Friday.  I have  many reasons for sharing this with you: I am a member of TESOL Spain and a reader for their magazine, I will be giving a session at this year's conference in Bilbao on March 10th.  I know the four people who took part in the programme.  And as I obviously believe in the University of Cambridge ESOL exams, the plugs for the First and Advanced exams are very welcome!

El 80% de las ofertas de trabajo en España exigen el conocimiento del inglés.La crisis y la altísima tasa de paro empujan a muchas personas a buscar oportunidades de trabajo en el extranjero y a otras a reciclarse.Hay quien aprovecha que está sin empleo para aprender inglés; otros, reciben formación en las mismas empresas o en las escuelas¿ pero el inglés sigue siendo la eterna asignatura pendiente.Coloquio entre Olga Fernández, Profesora de inglés en la Universidad del Pais Vasco; Rebecca Place, British Council del Bilbao; Hilary Plass, Profesora de inglés de la Saint Louis University de Madrid; y Elena Bañares, Vicepresidenta de TESOL-SPAIN.

As you like it:Catching Up in an Age of Global English

I was re-reading a report today of a study into the future of the English language, published in 2007.

The report, 'As You Like It: Catching Up in an Age of Global English', focuses on various issues, including the continuing fall in the number of school and university students in the UK who study a language other than their mother tongue.

The pessimistic view expressed in the report about the state of foreign language learning in the UK seems to be born out by an article in the Times Higher Education last week,  with the headline:

"Tongue-tied UK badly equipped to join in the conversation of nations"

This report contains some thought-provoking figures, for example:

There has been a general fall in the number of people applying to UK universities this year :

Much of this decrease is explained by a sharp decline in applications from older students - those in their twenties as distinct from school-leavers aged 18 among whom the application rate is down only slightly.

The biggest worry is the marked decline in languages and related studies. There has long been anxiety that the new funding arrangements would adversely affect language studies, partly because many language courses require an additional year of study and thus an additional year's worth of debt. Now we have evidence. Applications to European language courses are down by 11.2 per cent, those to non-European languages are down by 21.5 per cent: both decreases are well above the average decline across all subjects.

The writer of the article: Sir Adam Roberts, is president of the British Academy. He expresses concerns raised in As You Like It, such as: 

We Brits are at risk of becoming a nation of monoglots in a world of polyglots. 

All this contrasts starkly with the article from the ABC I referred to in a previous post. The 25,000 Spaniards contributing to the National Insurance Scheme in the UK and the 40,000 Spanish students taking a language course somewhere in the UK each year.

I found myself nodding on reading the following reflection on learning another language in an article published in the Guardian yesterday: 

the initial years of studying a language are tough: there is no escape from the grind of learning how to conjugate verbs, construct sentences and to absorb enough words to begin to understand what is written and said.

To elect to do this, young boys and girls need to know that, like practising a musical instrument, designing clothes or playing a sport, the end-result will be worthwhile. They need teachers who can inspire them, classmates who encourage them and families who understand the value of the skill. In Britain, none of this exists to a sufficient degree.

 

Let's hope our students are not reluctant to learn another language and see it as something useful!!!

If you need some arguments to convince them, there are lots in this New York Times article:

English Is Global, So Why Learn Arabic?

You could give each student or group of students one of the different views put forward by the 6 debaters - all of them coincide in the desirability for everyone to speak at least one other language.

And you can also read what the readers of the New York Times have to say on the matter.

Why not follow this up with some essay writing practice:

"Everyone should learn at least one foreign language" Why?

Another favourite

Earlier this month, I shared one of my favourite sources for teaching ideas with you:  Its-teachers.

In this current entry, I wanted to share another source of inspiration:

This is one of the first webpages I subscribed to when I started to use the computer and the internet.

So it's been around for quite a few years!!!


When preparing seminars, I often check out the articles in the resources section.

For example, a search for articles relevant to FCE, produced 65 results (some of the matches were the second, third, fourth... parts of articles so there are not really that many matches).

Among the matches, there is a good article on preparing Cambridge English: First candidates for Part 2 of the Speaking Test:

First Certificate Speaking: Part 2. Avoiding "ermmm": Adding coherence to spoken discourse using discourse markersby Jonny Frank


As well as the stock of articles, the lesson plans section is worth checking out.

And if you like to base your lessons around Days of the year, you can find a list of some of these as well as some materials on this site too.

There are other sections of the site that I am less familiar with - such as Moodle and Web hosting.  I mention them because they may be useful and relevant for you.

And, I dipped into the Warmers and Fillers section and found a useful suggestion at number 9 in the list for collocations.  I might try it out in my seminar next week in San Sebastian!

9.Collocations. Sort out which are right/wrong e.g. high person, tall building, Happy Birthday.

Online Cambridge exam style exercises

Picture from: Education week

In almost every class, there will be students who barely have time to make it to class every week and struggle to get their homework done on time.

There will also be other students who have more time on their hands (or maybe they just manage to find more time for English!)

Picture from:  Cortland edu

For both of these types of students, I try to cater for them as well as I can.  I set homework for everybody and tell them that it's really important for them to do it by a set date.  And for those who want and have time for more, I point them in the direction of other things they can be doing.



When a friend mentioned the International House Bristol website and the online practice exercises there for First, Advanced and Proficiency, I looked at it immediately.

I have mentioned it at several Cambridge ESOL seminars and shared it with colleagues and friends.  Now, I'm mentioning it to YOU!

I hope you and your students find it useful and if you know of any other sites like this one, please share them with the rest of us!

newspapermap.com

How did we ever exist before the internet? I’ve been having tremendous problems with my internet connection. Among other things, it has meant that I haven’t been able to add any new entries to this blog for over a week.

And I was itching to share newspapermap.com with you.

As so often happens, I can’t remember where I first heard about newspapermaps – maybe I stumbled upon it on one of those days when I had time to look through the ‘for later’ bookmarks on my computer.

Anyway, it is a gem! It works like google maps in that the start up page shows you a world map with pins pointing to the location of the newspapers. The pins are colour coded showing the language the newspapers are written in. There are nine different languages labelled separately. English has by far the largest share of newspapers, with Spanish, French, Portuguese and German following on.

The reason I like this site is like many other websites for a mixture of personal and professional reasons. I was delighted to be able to take a quick look at the Sunderland Echo – my local newspaper where I grew up. I hadn’t seen it for years.

And for classes, it could have endless uses – accessing articles on the same theme and comparing how the story is treated or focused. At lower levels, this could be in terms of how much space the story is given on a page and whether photos are used or not. At higher levels, the actual language used (for example, level of formality, use of passives, use of nouns versus verbs….)

And I have just tried out the translation tool on the Sunderland echo (by clicking on ‘español’ in the translation option)

Artista Sunderland en Londres llamando al

ARTISTA Alison Barratt ha conseguido un papel de trabajo para la ciruela, el alcalde de Londres.

I deliberately hadn’t looked at the newspaper in English first, so didn’t have a clue what was meant by ‘working for the plum’.

Compare this to the original headline and first sentence:

Sunderland artist’s London calling

ARTIST Alison Barratt has landed a plum role working for the Lord Mayor of London.

Thank goodness that we still need humans to translate and to teach!

Hope you enjoy this link and why not share your ideas for using it with students?

Blog challenge:compare and contrast photo

In a previous entry, I talked about elt pics: a wonderful resource for teachers created by teachers.

While I was looking at this resource, I also came across an interesting blog challenge: Compare and Contrast Photo.

The idea is to choose two different but similar photos and compare and contrast them. To those of us who prepare students for the Cambridge ESOL speaking tests (and examine students too in my case!) the idea of comparing and contrasting two photos will ring lots of bells!

I checked out a few of the blogs from people who had taken up this challenge and share here a link to one of my favourites by Tyson Seburn.

Tyson Seburn has also provided a worksheet for students to collect and note down useful expressions for comparing and contrasting and some sentences written by students – some of them contain mistakes and need correcting.

And there is also a powerpoint presentation considering ways of comparing two job adverts.

Another post I liked is by Sandy Millin– maybe I was influenced by the first photo on her post – a picture of Durham near where I grew up – and also one of my favourite places!

So, I decided to share a couple of pictures of Durham with you - compare the weather and the angle the photos were taken from!

And so that you can see a bit of the inside of the Cathedral, here is a youtube video showing Sting performing there!

A wonderful resource for teachers created by teachers

At the end of last week, I was finalising my preparation for a seminar on Bridging the gap from Cambridge English: Preliminary to First when I came across some fantastic news for teachers needing photos to use in class and to practise the photo parts of  Speaking Teachers.

This is a description of the site I’m referring to:

‘ Eltpics is an ever-growing gallery of creative commons licenced images for teachers and learners of languages.  It has its home on flickr.  For the last year it has been collecting photos by teachers for teachers for use in class, on blogs and wherever they fit in to learning and practising languages.’ Ceri Jones 

And here is a screenshot of the eltpics homepage on flickr.com:

 And once you’ve checked out these links, take a look at: http://takeaphotoand.wordpress.com/

This blog has weekly posts with ideas for using photos in our classrooms. 

Enjoy and use!

Anne