You just can't keep a secret these days!!!

I came across an amusing story the other day.  It really brought home the power of social media and how difficult it is for anyone to do anything quietly, without anyone noticing.

Of course, the thing that was supposed to happen quietly was quite likely to not happen that way - I mean you can't really hide a box this big away!!!

https://twitter.com/jenayres/status/420246173522198528/photo/1/large

Another image of this same box was also shared on Imgur with the question:

What's the largest item you can have shipped from Amazon? Because I think my neighbor just got it.

 Readers of reddit and viewers of Imgur started speculating about what could be inside this box.

Very quickly, Ad Age media news got hold of the story and linked it to a campaign announced last September by Nissan and Amazon.  3 car buyers would have their brand new Nissan car delivered in an Amazon box.

Nissan then planned to release pictures and videos of the deliveries via social media next week - but the general public beat them to it by sharing the photos on social media themselves!

http://adage.com/article/the-media-guy/unboxing-photo-giant-amazon-package/290947/

I think this story will make great class material.  Show the picture of the box on the back of the lorry and get students to speculate what's in the box and where the truck is, who it's for, etc.
Then, show them the box with the car visible inside.  They discuss why a car was delivered like this.
Next, they can read the story of how the secret was revealed on social media and they could also discuss if this is a good or bad trend.

Language work could include work on wordbuilding and collocation.  Here is a screenshot of the word 'secret' from the English Profile vocabulary profile.

And here are the results of my search for 'secret' in the Cambridge dictionaries online:

I'll keep an eye out for the official launch of this campaign next week and share it with you.

If you've never failed, you've never tried anything new

I was looking at the latest posts on Facebook by friends and pages that I'm subscribed to.

I came across this and liked it (in both senses - I clicked to say I liked it and it struck a chord!)

http://www.facebook.com/HealingwithArt

Then, I clicked on a link on a friend's Facebook page and ended up on YouTube, watching a short video.

I think it would be a great video to use in class.  You could ask them what they know about some of the people mentioned in the video (Walt Disney, Michael Jordan, Albert Einstein, Eminem...).  Ask them what thing the people have in common, then they watch the video to find out.

For more information and material to use in class on this topic, you could try some of the activities on Famous People Lessons, for example, this text and activities about Albert Einstein.


Hope you feel inspired now!!!

Coping with cold weather

While I was checking my emails, I was listening to Sky News and in the review of the paper, they were discussing the impact of cold weather and snow.

Here in Cantabria, the temperature dropped by 10º(C) yesterday.  Brr!!!!  Many places both in Spain and the UK have had their first snow falls.

http://www.picturesofwinter.net/snow_pictures.html

(There are some great photos of winter on the website I downloaded the above photo)

This reminded me of an article I had saved to share with you via this blog.  I came across it back in September and thought it would make great classroom material.

How does the chef at the British Antarctic Station feed 90 people when the nearest supermarket is 4,000 miles away?


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2195789/British-Antarctic-Station-How-does-chef-feed-90-people-nearest-supermarket-4-000-miles-away.html

I suggest that you could start off by showing students the following subheading:

Antony Dubber works in one of the most remote, dangerous and beautiful places on Earth

Ask them to suggest where Antony works.  
Which remote places can they think of?  
Why might this place be dangerous and beautiful?  
What job does Antony do there?

Then, show them this photo and discuss whether they guessed this place:

Next, they could read the article and find out what makes the South Pole beautiful and dangerous, and why Antony's work as a chef there is challenging.

To follow up and focus on language, I thought students could look at the combinations of adjectives and nouns in the text.  (You could give them a list of adjectives used in the text and  they look for which nouns they describe).

For example:
a varied  (menu)
leading (centre)
fresh (fruit and vegetables) (herbs)
spectacular (night sky)
the nearest (supermarket)
the closest (supermarket)
the most popular (treats)
huge (freezers)

Well, I'd better wrap up because I have to pop out now!  Have a great teaching week!




 

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.

It's Sunday morning.  One thing I miss about not being in the UK, is not spending a large part of the morning reading through the newspaper like I used to do, drinking numerous cups of tea.  (I still read the newspaper online if I have time, but it's not the same - I miss those huge pages!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eloctre/7855061406/

Once I'd tired of reading, I would then start on the cryptic crossword.  I've always like doing crosswords.  (For a few years, I was subscribed to the Telegraph Puzzles website, just to be able to do the cryptic crossword!)

So, thinking about this, I thought I'd have a look at what crosswords to use with students there are out there.
I typed three words into the search bar:

As usual, when you do a search, it is amazing just how many free resources there are on the web.

I went to the first 'match' - a very familiar and amazingly rich site for online exercises for students:

http://iteslj.org/cw/   

The Level 1 crosswords are suitable for beginners and are great for practising gap fills (words like 'he', 'had' were two of the answers to the clues in Very Common Words #1).  Then there are thematic crosswords for Level 2 and in the higher level crosswords, expressions and less common vocabulary is focussed on.

I then clicked on the link to a related website (Manythings.org) and found lots more crosswords, including Puzzles with Images as Hints.

http://www.manythings.org/cs/

I checked out a site that I had not come across before and enjoyed trying out a couple of 3 X 3 crosswords.  (I might revisit and play some more later...... - I have an extra hour today with the clocks changing!!!)

http://www.goobix.com/crosswords/

And of course, there are also numerous sites that offer printable crosswords.  Definitely worth checking out are:

esl galaxy  (Crosswords are thematic.  The only snag I see is that you will use a lot of ink when you print them.)

Bogglesword (more print-friendly)

abcteach.com

As always, if you know of any useful websites for today's theme (crosswords), please share by sending us a comment!

Famous English Speakers!

Just got back home from presenting some Cambridge ESOL certificates at the school where my daughters studied from when they were 3 years old before moving on to do Bachillerato when they were 16.

What memories!

I love going back there, especially when it's for an  event like this - presenting certificates that show how well students have done.

Colegio Sagrada Familia students with their 2011 certificates    

Every year I prepare a short presentation to start the ceremony - it's important for both students and parents to know exactly what the results mean.  To pass the Cambridge English: Key or Cambridge English: Preliminary exams, for example, students have to obtain an average total mark of 70% or more.  This. can come as a surprise in a country like Spain, where the pass mark is 5 (or 50%).

This year, I decided to include some videos of famous people talking English.

First, I showed them a youtube video of some false takes of football players trying to say a couple of sentences in English for an advert.

I think you will agree that at the time the videos was made, the players needed to think seriously about raising their level of English!

Then, I showed them some information about two famous Spanish people and how they had learnt English:

In 1992 Antonio Banderas made his Hollywood debut with Los reyes del mambo tocan canciones de amor (1992). Because he did not speak English at that time, his dialogue for the film was taught to him phonetically.

IMDB.com

Fernando Torres also revealed the method used by his two teachers to improve his English when he first moved to Liverpool from Madrid:

''One of the biggest problems I faced when I first moved here was the language barrier,' writes Torres in his autobiography El Nino.

Two people were vital during my first few days in the city: Rob and Alan, the English teachers Liverpool laid on for me.

'One of the things they used to make me do was ring people in response to adverts in the paper. You'd get on  the phone and ask about a puppy for sale, or that kitten being advertised, or the price of a second-hand car."

That's the first time I've heard of such a way of learning and practising English!  

And to finish, I showed the students a short excerpt from Shakira's speech to the Oxford Union.  I was very impressed by both her performance and her English!

Anyway, once again, congratulations to all the students who took and passed their exams in June.  I have set you a challenge - reaching Proficiency by 2018!  I hope some of you rise to that challenge - you are certainly well on your way!!!

Several digital coincidences!

It's happened again.  Several things that I have discovered and accessed in the past 24 hours seem to be linked!

Yesterday, I received an email because Glyn Jones had posted a comment to my previous post on painting.

I had a quick look at the Five Card Stories recommended by Glyn and will write a blog post about it next week when I've had more time to look at it!  You all know how much I like using pictures and photos (I've talked about this several times in previous posts!), so I will definitely check this out!
Thanks for sharing Glyn!

Then, I clicked on a link in another email and completed a survey for Cambridge ESOL about my use of technology.

http://www.cambridgeesol.org/survey/digitaluse/

After that, I started checking out other things on the cogdogblog, 

Alan Levine’s (hey, thats me, writing about myself in third person!) place to bark about cool technology, web X.0 hype, weird web sites, photography, and other targets big and small- things that get under my fur or make me wag my tail.

and ended up on Michael Wesch's YouTube Channel.

I had seen the first video that appears on Michael's channel last year and was very impressed - both by the way the information was portrayed, as well as by the facts themselves.  You may well have seen the video too because it was uploaded to YouTube in 2007.

A Vision of Students Today

The facts are fascinating, and I suspect that some of the figures may have changed - with the time spent on Facebook, online, sending messages, talking on cellphones having increased since the video was made.

As a teacher, it certainly made me think about the way we teach and organise our classes and classrooms.  Since it was made, Cambridge ESOL has introduced Computer Based versions of many of its exams and judging by the Survey on 21st century teaching and learning I completed, Cambridge ESOL is also keen to keep up.

I will check out some of the other videos on Michael Wesch's Channel, more of the posts on the coddog blog and the Five Cards Stories.  I suspect that this will may well lead to more time spent online  as well as to more digital connections!

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.

What makes us happier?

Back in the UK last weekend, I was reading through the Telegraph newspaper, and came across an article with the headline:
Learning is the answer for a happier life


The article attracted my attention for two reasons:
1  Working in education, I am always attracted to articles related to learning and teaching.
2  I was surprised to find where the source of this information originated:

A study by the Office for National Statistics found that the higher people’s level of general education the more satisfied they were with their daily life and the more worthwhile they felt.

The Office for National Statistics is often referred to in newspaper articles, but if you take a look at the areas of investigation it covers, you would find very different subjects reported, for example:

Output in the Construction Industry - May 2012

     Pupil Absence in Schools in England

Anyway, back to the article, which reports :
The ONS asked a group of more than 15,000 people to rate how satisfied they felt overall on a scale of nought to 10 as well as asking them how worthwhile they felt their lives were.
...  adults aged 16 and over with higher levels of qualifications are more likely to report having medium or high satisfaction with their lives overall and also to report finding the things they do in their lives to be more worthwhile,” the ONS said.


The UK is not the only country to be assessing people's happiness.  Look at this map for the USA:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/06/weekinreview/20110306-happiness.html

I found this map very surprising - for me, living by the sea is an essential part of my happiness.  Yet people on the coast in the USA do not seem to feel the same!


And where do you fit in the following profile?

I personally would rate happiness not on a scale of 1-10 or 1-100, but by asking people to choose from a range of adjectives and expressions:

bright, cheerful, elated, ecstatic, content, floating on air, as high as a kite.....

How are you feeling today?  I hope your answer is one of the above words or expressions!!!

Face Britain

What do you think of this self-portrait?  Who do you think painted it?

If you like the singer, Adele's self-portait, unfortunately, you missed the chance to buy it for   £5,000.00!


Adele painted this picture as part of the FaceBritain project:

Children aged 4- 16 were invited to create their own special self portraits in aid of the project, entitled Face Britain, in the hope that they would be able to explore their creativity and cement their place in history as the 2012 generation. Portraits at all levels of skill, and in any medium were acceptable, including drawing, textiles, 3D, painting, graphics, and photography.

Over 200,000 of the portraits were then used to form a giant portrait of the Queen which was then projected onto Buckingham Palace.

www.telegraph.co.uk

You can watch a video of the projection here.

And what do you think of these two portraits of the Queen?  What do you think they are made of?

Find out! (and see more portraits of the Queen) here.

Funny consular requests

In the past here in Cantabria, teachers at the school where I used to work and myself too were often asked to help out tourists in difficulty.

Incidents included putting up a couple who had missed their ferry till the next one because they had spent all their money and could not pay for a hotel room.

I was asked to interpret for a poor woman who had been involved in a tragic motorbike accident and she and her partner (and the doctor treating her) needed someone who could help them communicate and also help make the arrangements to get her back to the UK.

At the time, we had a British Consulate in Santander (no longer though), yet for some reason or another, people in need of help were directed towards us.  And none of us felt we could refuse to help in such situations of need.

I was reminded of all this when I watched William Hague talking about bizarre requests received by consulate staff around the world.

A fun video to use in class to introduce the theme of helping others or problems that can occur when on holiday?

Do you have any similar stories to share?

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?

Spaniards on the move

A friend sent me an article from the ABC newspaper on Sunday evening.  The title of the article was Spanish kingdom.  An English title to an article written in Spanish in a Spanish newspaper.  (Apologies to those of you reading this entry who do not speak Spanish - but have a go at reading it anyway!)


The article talks about the fact that last year, over 25,000 Spanish people started paying into the British National Insurance scheme.

On a recent visit to London, I myself was witness to the large proportion of shop, pub, hotel and restaurant staff from Spain working there.

From the first day I set foot in Spain, I have always been impressed by the hard work and initiative shown by the vast majority of Spanish people I have met.  My personal experience definitely throws into doubt the stereotype of the Spanish being people who leave everything to 'mañana', drop everything for a siesta.

Although some of the people featured in the ABC article are working in bars and restaurants, others are working and getting on well in professions such as graphic design, translation and interpreting, accounting, computing, etc.

The figure of 25,000 Spanish people joining the existing number of Spaniards already working in the UK  is on top of the 40,000 people from Spain who go to the UK each year to take a language course.  This is the figure given in the English Language Market Report:Spain, prepared by the British Council for UK ELT providers.

Spain, the country where I live and (mainly) work, is facing challenges to its economy.  Let's hope that the country rises to the challenge in a way similar to the Spanish people featured in the ABC article!

Ánimo!

Thank you?

Even after more than twenty years living in Spain, I still get told that I say 'thank you' when I shouldn't and that I say it too often.

Maybe then what appeared last week in several UK newspapers is yet another sign of me losing touch with what's happening in the country where I was born.

Apparently, according to the reports in the newspapers, the average person will say thank you nearly 5,000 times a year.

But not if they are in a bad mood!

1 in 10 people who took part in the survey, carried out by the Food Network UK among 2,000 people, said that being angry made them refuse to say thank you.

And 1 in 20 stated that they did not consider the use of the words 'thank you' necessary in everyday conversation.

Nowadays, people seem to be saying thanks in other ways - texting or emailing their gratitude or via social networks.

But is it the case that people no longer appreciate things other people do for them?

Or is it the case that people are using other terms to express their gratitude?  'Cheers!', 'ta', 'Cool!', 'Fab' are all being used instead of thank you.


And could the fact that 'merci' and 'gracias' were mentioned as preferred choices for some of the people interviewed be a sign that Britons are developing their proficiency in foreign languages?  I hope so!

Well - thanks - I mean fab, cheers, cool, ta - for reading to the end of this!

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?