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!

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!

Speaking tests

As I said in a recent post, we Cambridge ESOL Speaking Examiners are very busy at the moment.

For some examples of Cambridge ESOL speaking tests, you can visit the Research website.

And for some useful tips for the exam day, candidates can visit the Cambridge ESOL website here.

Good luck to all candidates and their teachers!!!

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