Free online level tests

I am amazed by the wealth of materials that Cambridge English are adding to their Youtube channel and their different websites.

Yesterday, I received an update email telling me about new resources that have been added to Youtube and the website. I immediately forwarded it to schools locally because I thought there were so many interesting bits and pieces in it.

Firstly, the online test for Young Learners.

This is a great addition to the suite of online tests that are available on the website.  It means that there are now four different tests available, for different age and interest groups.                                       

And then, the email shared a resource that I had already accessed myself last week when I was preparing for my seminar in San Sebastian:  

The great thing is that not only do we have the videos, but also the Examiners' comments on the candidates' performance.  This is so useful for us - it helps us get our level of assessment right and really clarifies what candidates need to do.

Many of you will be on holiday this week and/or next.  It's gloriously sunny here in Santander today and I hope you're having great weather too!  Enjoy!!

Catching up

I knew it had been a while since I'd written on this blog, but didn't realise it had been THAT long!

But then again, since my last post, I've set up and/or delivered 19 sessions of Cambridge English Young Learners Tests.  It's always a busy, busy time  (and sometimes stressful - I must admit - making sure that each session has all the administration materials and that everyone of our team of examiners knows where to go and at what time takes some doing).  But the end is in sight and thanks to the professionalism and willingness of the YLE examiners at the Exams Centre where I work here in Cantabria, things have run smoothly like every year.

Normally, while we are inside schools, other lucky people are heading to the beach, but we haven't had that this year.

But today the sun is shining brightly!!

http://doubtfulnews.com/2013/01/tanning-as-safe-as-a-ray-of-sunshine/

Having a bit of spare time today (Saturday), meant I had time to reflect, and I started challenging myself to think of songs about the sun!!!

'Here comes the sun' came to mind of course and I posted a link to the version by Steve Harley and the Cockney Rebels on Youtube.

I also thought of 'Ain't no sunshine when she's gone' (sung by several different artists I like) of course.

And one I hadn't listened to for years - 'Sunshine after the rain' by Elkie Brooks.  Just found that and listened to it on Spotify.  'Sunshine on my shoulders' by John Denver, 'the House of the Rising Sun' by the Animals.


And I discovered a new song to add to my spotify lists - 'The sun, the trees' by Russian Red.  It's great to discover new things.

Now, time to switch off the computer and get outside .......in the sun!

But before I do, just a quick mention of a Spanish group based in Somo here in Cantabria - a great song and fantastic scenery.

Just out - TESOL Spain articles about exams

I must apologise for being a bit 'missing' as people in Spain would say.

But at the moment, my waking hours are taken up by finalising Young Learner timetables and dashing around Cantabria running sessions for the Cambridge English: Young Learners English Tests.

I keep an eye on the emails I receive and answer the urgent ones as they come in, but many are left in my inbox, waiting for a bit of spare time to look at them in more detail.

But I thought I'd mention a couple of articles in the latest TESOL Spain e-newsletter because they are both exam-related.  (And one of them happens to be written by a great friend and fellow Cambridge English: Language Assessment Presenter -  Rosie Burke)

100 Years of Cambridge English talks about how different the exams our students take nowadays are from the Certificate of Proficiency in English when it was first taken in 1913.  I for one have seen so many changes in the Cambridge English exams during the time I've been involved them and the changes seem to happen more and more frequently to keep up with changes in technology (and language too of course!)


The second article, by David Bradshaw links to his blog and includes lots of tips for things to do (and NOT to do) in a speaking exam.   David's post is very attractive, with links to videos with advice and sample speaking tests and his blog looks as if it contains lots of useful materials and ideas.  I'll be bookmarking it in my 'for later' file.

http://davidbradshawenglish.org/2013/05/27/speaking-exams-what-to-do-and-what-to-avoid/

Right - time to switch off the computer, check through the box of materials for tomorrow and switch off my mind!!!

I'm back!

Hello again!
I'm back home now after a busy day in Madrid yesterday.

I flew down yesterday morning and spent some time catching up with my daughters, who both study down there.

Then in the afternoon, I went to the Colegio Sagrada Familia to meet up with lots of people for the trialling of the Computer Based Young Learners Tests.

The project involves people from several parts of the world.  Project partners from Hong Kong, China and Cambridge English: Language Assessment in the UK had come to tell us about the project and we were also given the chance to see a Computer Based Movers Test in action, with a group of students from Colegio Sagrada Familia.

The Young Learners Tests are already Cambridge English Language Assessment's most visually attractive range of exams.  They use colour pictures as the stimulus for most of the tasks.  The visuals are being updated to make them even more attractive to Young Learners.

Seeing the test and the visuals in digital, interactive format makes them even more attractive, especially to school students.  The group we saw took a Movers Test.  Some of them were taking the test on a PC, others on an i-pad.  They obviously enjoyed themselves!  I had a go myself and liked the experience!

So, it's back down to work here in Cantabria before I head off to Malaga tomorrow!!!!

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!

Fun online games for Young Learners

Easter holidays are already here for many students (and teachers!).  Here in Cantabria, schools break up this Wednesday for 10 days.

And then, it'll be back and gearing up for the busiest time of the year for me - organising and running the sessions of Cambridge English: Young Learners Tests here in Cantabria.

So, I thought it would be an appropriate time to mention a great place with some fun games to work on different vocabulary areas for Starter, Movers and Flyers.

ENGLISH FLASH GAMES for Learning Vocabulary

Here you will find English vocabulary games for kids and ESL students: Hangman, Memory matching games, Drag & Drop games, Hidden object games... 



You'll find Vocabulary lists (pictures with words underneath) organised by topic (clothes, food, animals, colours, etc..).  You can click on the speaker symbol and listen to the word, although I have to say that I found that being redirected to another page every time to hear the words very frustrating and I had to listen carefully or I missed the word!

And then there are the games.  It's going to rain, so you have to make the man jump to catch each item of clothing and get him dressed before the rain starts.  

http://englishflashgames.blogspot.com.es/2008/08/clothes-game.html

Or, you click on the different food and drink on the list in a big picture of a kitchen.

http://englishflashgames.blogspot.com.es/2008/09/food-game.html

Hope you and your Young Learners enjoy the games!  

And Happy Easter!  I won't be posting till next week - going to give myself a short break!

www.hdwallpapersarena.com

YLE Teaching Tips

I've mentioned before that I am subscribed to the Cambridge English South East Europe Blog.

This week, I've had three emails about posts describing activities submitted to a global competition run by Cambridge English Language Assessment UK and Bell which invited  teachers of English from all over the world to submit written practical teaching ideas for preparing their candidates for a range of Cambridge English examinations.

All three posts talked about suggestions for fun activities to prepare for the Cambridge English: Young Learners English Tests.

In Post 1, Natalia Cheskidova, from Russia describes an activity involving describing and drawing a picture.  Her suggested activity is recommended for YLE, Preliminary and First. 

In the second post, Julieta Caffarel, from Uruguay again uses a picture and drawing and colouring activity to practise for all 3 of the Cambridge English: YLE tests papers.

And in her post, Daniela Mirza,  from Romania, suggests recording an interview and then creating a comprehension activity.

It was great to be able to see both Natalia and Julieta 'in person' on Cambridge TV!

I leave for Rome in under 4 hours' time.  Hope to inspire and be inspired!!!!!

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!

New YLE Handbook

Great news!

As well as the new handbooks for other exams like Cambridge English: First or Cambridge English: Advanced, Cambridge ESOL has published a new set of Sample Papers for the Cambridge English: YLE Tests.
You can access these on the Cambridge English Teacher Support Website.

Here is the link to the Starters Sample Papers (Sample Paper B is the new one)

And the even better news is that on the same site, you can find the audio files for the listening tasks!


In addition to the new Sample Papers, there is also a new Handbook.

https://www.teachers.cambridgeesol.org/ts/digitalAssets/117422_Young_Learners_English_Handbook.pdf

I wanted to point out that there have been some adjustments and additions to the wordlists for the three different levels.

You can read about this topic in Issue 46 of the Cambridge ESOL Research Notes.  Some (but not all) of the modifications and additions are mentioned on page 20:

As usual, I found myself nodding in agreement at the changes and additions and the justification for making them.

While I write this post, I am listening to the news.  They have just said that today is apparently the most depressing day of the year because it's post-Christmas and the mornings are so dark at this time of the year (and it's Monday of course!)  They suggest going out for a walk - I won't be doing that just yet as we are in the middle of a storm here!

Have a great week!

Great resource! Starters Word List Picture Book

Cambridge ESOL has recently published a book for teachers and parents to use with children.

It's full of beautiful scene pictures - At the zoo, My friend's birthday, At the beach - to name just a few.

You can download here too as a pdf document.

On pages 22 -24, there are three games - finding adjectives in a wordsearch, scrambled letters to write numbers as words and writing the correct preposition of place under pictures to describe where the monkey is.

I have prepared one or two more activities to share with you via this post to use with one of the scene pictures.

My favourite food (pages 12-13)

Lead in
How many people can you see?  (11)
How many people are sitting down? (8)
How many people are standing up? (3)

Ask students to find food and drink in the picture starting with these letters (suggested answers in brackets):
a   (apple)
b   (banana, bread, bean)
c   (cake, coconut, chips, chocolate, candy, carrot)
d   (drink)
e   (eggs)
f   (fish)
g   (grape)
i   (ice cream)
j   (juice)
l   (lemon, lime)
m  (mango, milk)
o   (orange, onion)
p   (pear)
r   (rice)
s   (sweets)
t   (tomatoes)
w   (water, watermelon)

And don't forget - you can use these pictures with higher levels - for example here is an activity to use with Movers students.

Have names on pieces of paper.  Students listen and put the names on the person (or point to the person if you put the picture onto a board or screen).

Possible names:
  Dan, Kim, Lucy, Nick, Sam, Grace, May

Read out:
Listen and put the names.
1  Grace is making the food today.  Can you see her?  She's got a pear in her hand.
2  May is coming into the restaurant now.  She's with her dad.  She's wearing her favourite yellow and pink jacket, and she's very happy!
3  My cousin Lucy is here today.  She's there, with the glasses.  She's enjoying some chocolate, lemon and watermelon ice cream with red fruit.  Mmm!
4  Nick is sitting at the green table  His trousers are green too.  He's having meat and potatoes today.
5  Dan is wearing his red and white hockey shirt this afternoon.  He's got chips and sausages today.
6  Sam loves burgers.  Today he's having a big burger with chips and a glass of grape juice too.  Can you see the purple juice?

Key:
1  Grace is the woman behind the counter.
2  May is the small girl in the doorway.
3  Lucy is the girl at the yellow table with glasses.
4  Nick is the boy in the striped shirt eating a potato.
5  Dan is the boy in the red shirt with number 17 on it.
6  Sam is the boy with brown hair sitting at the blue table, eating a burger.

Hello from Italy!

Good morning!
Just a very quick post from Salerno, Italy.  In a couple of hours, I will be giving two sessions with teachers here.

My journey started in Turin on Monday.
I helped out with the storytelling session given by Marcus Tubby.  (Here's me and the picture washing line!)

And I shared tips and ideas with teachers for getting the most out of pictures and for useful knowledge to pass on to young learners about words.

Then it was on to Milan.  Unfortunately, I don't have any photos from Milan.

One thing I will say is that I have been impressed (as always) by the dedication and obvious love of teachers for their subject and their vocation.

And also this time, by the architecture of the three venues we've been to.  (The photos I have are still on my camera, so I can't share them with you yet)

And what about this sky? - yesterday evening, Salerno.  You can just about make out the Costa Amalfi through the clouds.

And this sunset??????  Even on a mobile phone photo, it's still impressive.

Right, time to get a move on.  Off to meet and share ideas and experiences with lots more teachers here in Salerno.

http://www.quirkyguide.com/story/seconds-to-spare

pinterest - a great tool for classes!

Yesterday evening, I was teaching the vocabulary for containers and the things usually contained in each type.

It suddenly occurred to me that pinterest could be the perfect record (and teaching and revision) tool for vocabulary areas like this.

I have created a pinboard for this topic.  You can see it here:

http://pinterest.com/annerobspain/containers-lexis/

Maybe we could start boards for the different levels of the Cambridge exams, especially for the topic areas that appear on the Cambridge English: Young Learners English Tests and the Cambridge English: Key and Cambridge English: Preliminary Tests??

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!

Take a picture in Oviedo

Just back from Oviedo.  I thoroughly enjoyed my trip along the coast on Saturday morning.

My session was the last one of the morning, so I had the chance to pick up some very useful tips and ideas from Karen Elliot and Borja Uruñuela who were 'on' before me.

Karen shared some great story and story telling techniques with us.  We were treated to her 6 'voices' when she entertained us with some stories.  Another important number in stories is 3 apparently.  I learnt some very useful and simple tips for choosing and using stories for class.  Great!

Next on was Borja.

 I had heard a lot about Borja before I first attended his session in Bilbao at this year's TESOL Convention.  I was not disappointed there nor last Saturday, where, like Karen, he was sharing the Magic Ingredients for the Primary Classroom.


Again, I was impressed by the way he demonstrated simple, effective techniques and suggestions for really involving students in classroom activities and the learning process.

And then it was my turn.  I was talking about one of my favourite topics - using pictures to stimulate language practice.  I wanted to show how the same picture can be used at different levels to practise different language.

Most of the activities and pictures (such as the ones above) that I shared with teachers in Oviedo are available to download from the Cambridge ELT website.

The teachers in the audience were GREAT!  They participated, laughed and smiled.  Thanks if you were one of them!!!

Saturday in Oviedo

If you've read the previous posts on this blog, you might have guessed that pictures are an important part of my teaching tools.


I thought I'd write a quick post about the session I'll be giving in Oviedo on Saturday.

I'll be giving a very practical session called Take a Picture.

Pictures are used in the coursebooks we use and feature prominently in the Cambridge ESOL Young Learners English Tests.  In the classroom, we can use pictures for a huge number of activities and games, and, at the same time, develop our students’ language skills and range.

In the session, participants will try out some picture activities and we will discuss how to help our students notice and think about the contents of pictures.  


My session follows a seminar by Karen Elliot called Storytelling: tips and techniques for Primary and a session by Borja Uruñuela taking the magic ingredients for young learners.  Should be fun!!!

For the  programme, follow this link

If you live near Oviedo and would like to come along - great!!!

Pictures for Starters, Movers and Flyers

Tomorrow morning I will be giving a seminar in Santander, very near where I live, on Teaching Tips for Cambridge English: Young Learners English Tests.

Those of you who are familiar with the YLE tests will know that pictures are a very important part of all the parts of the tests:  Reading and Writing, Listening and Speaking.

So for today's post, I thought I'd share some great sources for pictures for use in Young Learner classrooms.

Let's start with a wonderful resource provided by Cambridge ESOL themselves:  the YLE picture bank.

Here you can see the 12 pictures from The World Around Us.  You can download these pictures in a pdf document from the Cambridge ESOLTeacher Support Website.

Other categories include Places I go to and Things I like doing.

As part of the further resources available for my books (Fun for Starters, Fun for Movers and Fun for Flyers), we uploaded some useful pictures on the Cambridge University Press website.  You can find pictures of animals, food, clothes and weather there.

The website ESL Kids provides a wide range of attractive flashcards and small pictures.  

And for some fun activities with places flashcards for Starters, Movers and Flyers, check out this post on English Raven.  Jason Renshaw also shares a wide range of flashcards with teachers here.

And if you want to create picture crosswords, handouts or wordsearches, the fantastic page www.toolsforeducators.com lets you do this and provides the pictures too!

What kinds of texts are used in the Cambridge ESOL exams?

Texts are used right from the start!

At Starters, in Part 4 of the Reading and Writing Test, students read a text about an animal or a thing and have to choose 5 words to complete the 5 gaps in the text.  (The words all have pictures to show the meaning).

For example, in the text here, Starters candidates read a text about a horse.

How can we help students read texts?

We can show them a picture 

and ask them questions:

What’s this?  (a horse)

How many legs has a horse got?  (four)

Do horses live in houses?  (no!)

What do horses eat?   (grass, carrots, …)

What can horses do?  (run, jump)

Then, students can read the text through and find what it says about horses.

Why is this useful?

In real life, we use information like the title or pictures that appear with a text to predict what we are going to read about.

When we are looking through a newspaper or magazine, we might decide to read or not read an article because of these predictions.

As students move up the levels, the texts become longer and the tasks get more challenging.

This means that it is extremely important for our students to know the best way to start reading each text.  

 Watch this blog for ideas on encouraging students to use the best approach!

Did you know?

The way the text and the questions appear is a clue!  If the questions appear first (e.g. First Reading Part 3 or Advanced Reading Part 4), then students should glance through the questions BEFORE they read the text!