Our seminar season is about to begin - in Spain and Portugal, we are set to go!
Last Friday, we held our annual Spain and Portugal Presenters' Meeting in Madrid.
Here, you can see us in action!! It was a very dynamic get-together, with a considerable amount of sharing of ideas.
The Portugal team has lots of new members - so lots more seminars should be taking place!!!
Welcome back to Lucy Bravo and Antonio Malva!
And welcome to the team Idalia Luz, Martin Heslop, Robin Barnes!
The Spanish team also welcomes two new members - Gabby Hewitt, based in Cordoba and Karen Ludlow, who lives in Madrid.
We have many, many sessions lined up so hopefully many of the readers of this blog will see us some time, somewhere!
Myself and the rest of the Presenter Team are busy busy right now. For the next two Fridays, I'll be going to San Sebastian to give seminars, then I'll be popping across to Rome to talk at the International House Young Learners Conference at the beginning of March as well as giving a seminar here in Santander and in Miranda del Ebro and at Deusto University. Phew!!!
As always, when I'm preparing for these sessions, I come across some great material and ideas on the web. I saved one of them and made a note to myself to share it with you here!
It's a pdf document from one of my favourite sites for materials to prepare students for First, Advanced and Proficiency: flo-joe.
It's not new (dated 2005), but it contains some very useful advice for students when taking Paper 2 (Writing).
Get your students to read it (and read it through the day before the exam to remind themselves) and work on suggestions like planning and paraphrasing in class.
I received an email about the Cambridge Monitor just over a week ago. What is the Cambridge monitor?
It's basically a survey of 1,700 Spanish speakers and their attitudes to English, their level of English and learning English.
There are 98 infographics, tagged with one of 19 labels (false friends, apps, errors, celebrities, etc.)
Here's one of the infographics you can find on the site:
It makes me think of some years back when I was in a village in Cantabria, listening to three 8 year old girls singing a Spice Girls song. They had no idea what they were singing (I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want...) but were making a very good job of imitating the Spice Girls!!!
Check out the infographics on Cambridge Monitor - some interesting and amusing facts are reported!
Just a quick hello from Alcalá de Henares, where centre managers, seminar presenters, inspectors, team leaders and many others are gathered for the Centenary CEM Cambridge English conference.
As I walked from my hotel to the Parador, I was intrigued to see so many storks nesting on the top of so many buildings.
This afternoon, the conference was officially opened in a beautiful setting: in the Paraninfo Universitario Colegio de San Ildefonso of the Universidad de Alcalá.
Then, Mike Milanovic shared many amusing and intriguing facts about the history of the Cambridge exams.
And after that, we enjoyed some great food, music and company in the Parador.
Tomorrow will be a busy day. Time to turn off the computer and the light!
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:
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 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 withLos reyes del
mambo tocan canciones de amor (1992). Because he didnotspeakEnglish at that time, his dialogue forthe film wastaughttohimphonetically.
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!!!
Yesterday, I was at the British Council, Bilbao for a 2 hour seminar on the theme of:
'Planning and teaching short exam courses'
I really enjoyed the session - there were some teachers I've met at previous seminars in Bilbao, plus some new faces. Great to share ideas with you all! Thanks for coming!
When planning the session, I decided to take the Cambridge English: First exam as the focus for the course we were going to plan.
We looked at the English Profile website - the Vantage pdf document that can be downloaded via a link there, at the Vocabulary Profile and various other useful resources for material to guide us with our course content and focus planning.
One point that all of us at the session agreed on is the need to offer students the opportunity to practise and study outside the classroom (especially with students that you may only see once a week for example).
We looked at various online resources for doing this. I've mentioned some of them on this blog before - mailvu, IH Bristol...
Interestingly, when looking around the web at what is available for teachers and students to prepare and practise for Cambridge English: First, I discovered that there is a British Council Bilbao blog for Cambridge English: First!
The blog has posts on different aspects of the exam and some practice materials based on authentic texts.
I also showed the teachers in Bilbao a blog about Cambridge English: First that I discovered recently.
I got back to Cantabria from Madrid very late Friday night (even later than planned due to my flight being delayed - I finally got home at midnight!) Still, the next day was Saturday, so I didn't have to run!!
The reason for my trip was to meet up with lots of the other members of the Spanish presenters team. It's something we do every year at the start of our seminar programme, but October 2012 was going to be different.
This year we were going to be 'coached' by a trainer from Coaching y Comunicación. Mónica Martín was our coach for the day.
Mónica
After introducing ourselves, (two new members of the team were with us too - welcome Cathy and Graham!) we shared ideas and experiences ......
and had a lot of fun, (as you can see from these photos!)
Sue, Katie, Rosie, Cathy
Katie & Helena
Mike & Caroline
Myself and Steve
Nick, Graham, Caroline
Anne, Steve, Jane, Mike
We came up with lots of ideas and suggestions and thoughts. In the photo above, Nick, Graham and Caroline were discussing and noting ideas for things to consider about the ideas and facts we want to present.
In my group, we were asked to talk about and write down important things to consider to ensure good communication with our audiences.
As usual, it was great to meet up with this great group of presenters, who also happen to be great people too!
You can read about Rosie and Steve and one of their seminars on this blog in earlier posts. We will be interviewing other members of the team for future posts. Watch this space!
Right, let's go off and start communicating!!!! Let's take our enthusiasm,empathy and energy and engage and empower our audiences!
Self-Access materials for ESL teachers and students
For the past 4 years, I, along with a group of local teachers, have been preparing materials for teachers and instituto students. We meet once a fortnight and develop materials to upload to the blog. This year, we have been trying to expand the range of materials available on the blog and have prepared several videos for use in class.
As you can see, the biggest section focuses on PAU texts. (This is the exam that Spanish students have to take on various subjects in order to get into university).
The ones on our blog are specifically written taking the format of the PAU exam here in Cantabria (where I live) into account. We have been delighted with the number of visits from both teachers and students to this and other sections.
Recently, we have been updating the links we have on the blog. Currently, we have 19 different categories of links. I've rediscovered old gems and also some new sites worth sharing - future posts will cover some of these.
I hope you will visit the blog and that you appreciate the hard work behind it. Please feel free to use the material and send us your comments and suggestions!
And if you write or know of any blogs you think should be recommended on the Teaching Together Blog, please send me the details!
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.
