Online training opportunities

A few years ago, maybe it was difficult for some teachers to receive training and to find out about news and developments.

Nowadays, this is definitely not the case.  With the improvements in the availability and quality of internet connections, together with the range and variety of online materials and webinars on offer, there is no excuse for us to be underinformed or undertrained.  (Well, I suppose there is one problem - the number of hours in a day!!)

http://www.notonthehighstreet.com/remade/product/it-s-time-to-personalised-blackboard-clock

I've mentioned Cambridge English TV before.  Every time I look at the youtube channel, I find more stuff.
I like the English Language Learning Tips.

(A new one - Tenses Part 2 was added just 4 hours ago)

And I regularly sign up for webinars (if I'm free at the time they're taking place) or watch recordings of them if I can't take part in the live session.

There are 24 webinars right now in the Cambridge English TV youtube playlist.

There will soon be more!  Next Monday and Wednesday, you can sign up to find out about the changes  to the Cambridge English: First and Cambridge English: First for Schools that will be coming in from January 2015.  

To register for the webinar on Monday, click on this link.

For Wednesday, click here.

European Profiling Grid

Nearly 12 years ago, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment was launched.  

Since then, talking about levels of language competence seems to have become a lot easier and clearer. 

Parents and students, as well as teachers and language specialists, publishers, exam boards, seem to be speaking the same language!!  I overhear mothers and fathers saying 'He needs a B1' to get into university.  'She has to pass B2'.

And of course, the Cambridge English exams are all clearly aligned to the different levels.

Some time ago, I found out about another European project:  The European Profiling Grid.  

I signed up to receive information about the European Profiling Grid Project and last Friday, I got an email to tell me that the interactive grid is now available on the official Project Website.

I've copied the Objectives of the Grid from the official website:

Objective

The aim of the European Profiling Grid (EPG) project is to help improve the quality and effectiveness of language training thanks to an innovative instrument: the European Profiling Grid.

Designed for teachers working in Europe in language centres and schools, this tool aims to :

• help better identify training needs;
• provide a reliable means of evaluating and self-evaluating professional skills;
• facilitate recruitment thanks to a transparent evaluation system;
• foster mobility by enhancing professional skills.

The EPG Grid is not only a tool developed for the use of the language teachers but also for their trainers and employers.

The Grid was originally developed by EAQUALS and used in it inspections.  There are now more organisations involved:  

Partners

Centre international d’études pédagogiques (CIEP), France
Evaluation & Accreditation of Quality in Language Services (EAQUALS), UK
British Council, UK
Instituto Cervantes, Spain
Bulgarian Association for Quality Language Services (BAQLS OPTIMA), Bulgaria
Goethe-Institut e.V., Germany
Center für berufsbezogene Sprachen (CEBS), Austria
ELS-Bell Education Ltd (ELS Bell), Poland
Università oer Stranieri di Siena (UNISTRASI), Italy
Hogeschool van Amsterdam DOO (HvA), Netherlands
Sabanci Üniversitesi (SU), Turkey

I couldn't find the Grid on the EPG website, but I clicked on the link to the Webinar that took place last week and listened to it (watching it when the interesting bits I wanted to look at came on).

The webinar is quite long - an hour.  The first part is really an introduction to the Project and the actual Egrid that I wanted to find out about appears about half way through - 30 minutes into the webinar.

As I write this post, the Egrid does not seem to be online, but I did find a pdf document on the EAQUALS website here.

From what I can see, this could be a useful training and development tool.  

And if you didn't read my post back in July about the ELT Snapshot Survey, you might like to read it now because it's very thematically related!

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)

Off we go!!!

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!

Useful advice for teachers' first experiences of teaching younger learners (and for parents)

For eleven years, I worked as the director of a large language school. (International House, Santander)

Most new teachers who came to work at the school had had very little experience in teaching children and teenagers - although we also had some teachers who had had the opposite experience - they had taught in primary and secondary schools in the UK and were then moving abroad and had not taught adults except during their 'four week course' as we called the Cambridge English CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) in the staffroom.

As I was reading through the first part of the latest Cambridge English Parents' Newsletter that came into my inbox, it occurred to me that the situations outlined and the accompanying comments and advice would also be very useful for a teacher facing the challenge of teaching young learners and teenagers.  So I thought I'd give it a mention!

http://assets.cambridgeenglish.org/schools/parents-newsletter-issue6-article.pdf

Here is a selection of tips from the newsletter:

When helping children learn a new language, it is important to do things that take into account their stage of development in their own language. 

•  With younger children, try to focus on real things that they will know about, rather than abstract ideas. 

• Embarrassment and self-consciousness can be a complex issue for children and teenagers of all ages, but younger children are often less embarrassed than teenagers or adults about trying new things, like saying new words, in front of other people. 

• Teenage learners are often more independent from adults and teachers, and social factors such as the need to impress their friends may distract them or affect their motivation. This is the challenge with this age group: ensuring that learners have a clear aim or purpose for learning the language. 

Learners in this age group often benefit from tasks that appeal to their interests, reflect their life experiences, and help them achieve a goal that they really believe is important. 

Cambridge Experience Santander, TESOL e-newsletter

Hello again
Today's post is going to be a mixture of things - an update on recent activities before I move onto newer things.

Thanks to everyone who came along to the Cambridge Experience in Santander on Saturday.  It was quite a sacrifice to make, seeing that it was our first glorious day here after days and days of cold and pouring rain!

There was a great turnout, filling the room in the Hotel Santemar.  Participants were rewarded for their dedication with a goodie bag full of useful materials for the classroom (as well as a nice bag!) and they certainly were willing to participate in all the activities.

Here I am being introduced by Helena, from the Cambridge English: Language Assessment in Madrid.
And here is the end of my talk!

And I also wanted to mention that the latest issue of the TESOLSpain e-newsletter is out. I was asked to write an article on this Blog!

How I came to write the Teaching Together Blog and why I enjoy it so 
much!

You can read it here.

The Cambridge Experience events start in Porto

Today I have the pleasure (and the time!)  to chat with my colleague Nick Shaw, member of the Cambridge English Presenters Team who will be delivering the talk "Worried about going for Schools?" at The Cambridge Experience Porto , next Saturday 23rd of March at Hotel Eurostars das Artes

Nick Shaw graduated in Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge and subsequently completed a PGCE course at the University of London and taught French and Spanish for a year before deciding to move into English language teaching. Although he has been preparing candidates for Cambridge English exams since 1977, his active involvement with the organisation began as an oral examiner in 1985. 

In addition to being a member of the Seminar Presenter and Centre Inspector teams in Spain, Nick acts as a consultant to Cambridge University Press on a variety of projects including mainstream coursebooks, examination preparation materials and grammar books.

Nick delivering a seminar at the latest
Cambridge Experience in A Coruña

Hello Nick, first of all: why did you decide to go into English language teaching?

After graduating from university with a degree in Modern Languages I spent a year trying to get myself converted into a trainee accountant, after which my employer and I mutually agreed that the honorable profession was not made for me (or vice-versa). So I decided to take myself off for a year to reflect on my future, and answered an advert for English teachers needed in A Coruña, a town near which I had spent a couple of months four summers previously. Thirty-seven years later, I'm still there and still reflecting!

What is the favourite bit about your presentation?

The questions from the audience, for a variety of reasons. First , if there aren't any I feel that I have failed to engage and interest participants in what I wanted to say. Secondly, they show me to what extent I have been successful (or not) in getting my message across, and most importantly of all, they more often than not make me think on my feet and remind me that we're all learners.

Who or what inspires you?

The teachers I work with, not only at the school in A Coruña, but at events and conferences I attend (not always as a speaker!). There's always so much you can learn from your colleagues if you remember why we were born with two ears but only one mouth...

What’s your all-time top tip for English language teachers?

Softly softly catchee monkey. Or to put it another way, a slow, careful and persistent approach to what you do, giving your students time to grasp a concept, make their mistakes, practice until they get it right more often than wrong and finally internalise it is almost always going to give you better results than a showy display of classroom fireworks that leaves them dazzled, but only able to remember that they'd had a good time.

Do you have a favourite elt website?

No, I don't do favourites. ELT websites, authors, musicians, football teams - you name it, there's good and bad to be found in absolutely everything, and if you keep your ears, eyes and mind open and exercise critical judgement, you can generally get something of value from anything you come across - even if it's realising that although questions don't necessarily have to have a right answer, they can certainly have wrong ones...

A gadget you can’t live without?

A P38 can opener (see picture). I first came across this amazingly versatile and useful item on one of my earliest camping trips to Spain when I was a teenager, and it instantly replaced the much more cumbersome, expensive and pocket-stretching Swiss Army knife as my number one gadget. In my experience, small is beautiful and the simplest solutions are always the best.

And finally, why do you think teachers should see your talk?

You'll have to ask them! I hope that my talk will help to allay some of the fears surrounding the idea of 'external evaluation' and show that Cambridge English: Preliminary for Schools and Cambridge English: First for Schools examinations are not as daunting or unattainable as we may think, and in fact to a great extent mirror the way our students use the language they are learning from us in real-life situations, making what they do in the classroom much more relevant to them.

Thanks Nick! It's been a pleasure to chat with you!

Webinars this week

I have signed up for two webinars this week.

The first, today, Monday.  I'll be connecting to the Cambridge English Language Assessment's site to attend the Webinar below:

The webinar will also take place on Wednesday morning.

From seminars, I know that correcting writing is a subject that raises a lot of discussion and interest, so I'm sure that a lot of people will be online like me.

If you can't make either of these dates or times, there is always the chance to watch a recording of the webinar and to download the slides too.

On Thursday, I'll be connecting to the Cambridge English Teacher website and the webinar by Johanna Stirling on Joined-up Listening.

See you online!  (Or in person in San Sebastian on Friday!)

Black Cat Online practice for Cambridge ESOL exams

This morning I received an email updating me about the resources available on the Black Cat Readers blog:  

Did you know that you can find hundreds of different kinds of interactive exercises on the Black Cat Readers blog?

Click on w.w.w.blackcatreaders.com/quizzes and discover a world of useful and interesting activities to practise your English: Grammar exercises, Vocabulary, Pronunciation and Listening activities, but also sections specifically designed to help you practise Cambridge ESOL exams.

Access is free! Hurry up!

 Given my obvious and known interest in any website or blog that claims to help students practise  and prepare for the Cambridge ESOL exams, I clicked on the link and checked out the materials there.

As you can see from the screenshot above, you can search for Exam skills for the different levels of the CEFR - for Cambridge English: Key, Preliminary, First and Advanced.

As the next seminar I will be giving (November 9th San Sebastian) is about Cambridge English: Preliminary for Schools, I selected the activities available for B1 and this list appeared:

It looks very useful.  I'll be recommending it to my students and colleagues to try out.  If you recommend it or use it, let me know what you think!

Have a great weekend!

101 things to do

It's Monday morning.  Getting myself organised to start the week.  Have started making a list of the things I have to do - and no, it hasn't reached the number 101 yet!!!  (But may well do!!!)

I am working on a seminar I have in Bilbao on Friday.  The session is on 'Planning and teaching short exam courses'.  I want to include some useful website recommendations, and was revisiting squidoo

(If you are not familiar with this site, here is what it says under 'About us':)

 an open, free platform that gives people a simple way to organize their interests online – and bring more human, curated, original content to the web. We make it easy for writers of all stripes to create portfolios of beautiful webpages, each one about a single thing or story or opinion that they know and love

While I was on the first page of squidoo, I clicked on  internet and came across the following 'Top performer':

Now, I suspect that I might not be trying out some of the things on the list (like How about chatting with a random person or Get help with Online Poker Games) and I am already familiar with a couple of the sites that clicks took me to like ted.com or google translate, but there are several others that I will add to my 'for later' bookmarks.

And I have already clicked on 63 Incredible Statistics Art: Awesome (Pictures) 

What a fantastic page!  

It has some beautiful pictures made up of objects that represent different statistics (Running the numbers).

http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#toothpicks

Like the one above, for example:   toothpicks representing the number of trees cut in the U.S. yearly to make the paper for junk mail.

Ah well, I can now cross one thing off my 'to do' list - I've just written my first blog post for the week!  Hope it's a good one for you all!  
Maybe I might see one or two of you in Bilbao on Friday!

The Cambridge ESOL Spain Seminar Team get coaching!

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!

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.

As usual, I received an email this week with the TeachingEnglish newsletter.

As I read through the summaries of the featured content from the TeachingEnglish website, two things immediately caught my eye.

http://www.walls-hd.com/

The first is a video tip explaining how to draw animals on the board.

http://fairydustteaching.blogspot.com.es/

Paul Millard explains (without speaking!) how despite failing his school art exam at 16,

Paul shows us how to draw animals and how changing the size and/or shape of the body especially, we can use similar forms to draw different animals.

Now I don't know about you, but I am reluctant to draw on the board except for some animals like sheep, fish and pigs.  I have these three animals well-rehearsed.  Like Paul, I use a cloud to draw a sheep.  I'm sure if I watch Paul's video a few more times, pausing it to copy his shapes and techniques, I could expand my repertoire!

Looking around the web after watching Paul's video, I came across a couple of useful resources to share with you:

At http://www.meddybemps.com/letterary/letterzoo.html, you can see how to use letters to build 4 animals.  The letters needed to put together a cat, snail, bird and caterpillar are provided.  Students could then produce their own 'letter animals'.

And on the Harptoons site, you can learn to draw lots of animals using letters and numbers.

Let's see if this summer I can find the time to doodle and practise drawing and develop my board drawing skills!

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!!!

Teaching English Radio

Today I wanted to mention a section of the Teaching English website.  (Another of the sites I'm subscribed to and visit regularly.


Teaching English Radio

There are 15 minute radio programmes on a particular theme.

9 themes have been covered so far:

1  Planning your lessons
2  Teachers supporting each other
3  Finding and creating worksheets
4  Using group work in larger classes
5  Pair and group work in practice
6  Developing teachers' language
7  Using English in the classroom
8  Teaching new language
9  Teaching reading

Then, they can download a worksheet which summarises the ideas discussed in the radio programme and also contains some ideas for thinking about/discussing.  For example, this is the Programme Summary from  Finding and creating worksheets:

Programme Summary: Using real-life materials is motivating for students. It provides a very real context for practising English. Our students are also a rich resource as we found out in this programme.

Teachers can use songs, humour, real objects and simple drawings and if we need to find colourful images for posters or flash cards we can cut them out of magazines. Newspapers are a very cheap resource and provide material for craft, as well as a variety of written texts. We hope you’ve heard some ideas to adapt for your teaching situation                                                                                                    .

These programmes would provide great material and stimulus for teacher training and development.  They would also provide useful language input for trainees.

"Distraction in Listening" - Anne's talk at #TESOL2012

Hello Anne!

Forgive us (your colleagues from Cambridge ESOL) for "hacking" your blog! :-)

We have discovered that you are going to deliver a talk at TESOL 2012, which will take place in Deusto from 9th-11th of March, and we would like to know a little bit more about it.

Why did you decide to go into English language Teaching? 

I'd spent a year in France at a Primary school as a language assistant.  Loved it, so when I finished my degree, I came across to Spain for a year before going into international banking or marketing. Never became a banker or a marketer!!!

What is your talk about? 

My talk is about listening and distraction!  (The title says it all!)  

Why do you think teachers should see your talk?

Why do you think teachers will find your talk interesting/useful? What do you think teachers will get out of attending your session/talk? 

We will consider things that distract us when we are listening, how we can help our students overcome distractions when listening, recognise things in listening texts that can help steer them through a listening text, and last but not least, consider how distraction is used as a testing tool to check whether students can understand the listening texts used in the Cambridge ESOL exams.

I hope that the teachers who come to the talk will think about how they approach listening with their students and that they will find the tips and suggestions interesting, relevant and immediately usable!

What's your all-time top tip for English language teachers?

Inspire as much as you can while you teach!  That inspiration can continue even after your students have left the classroom.

 

Thanks Anne! Looking forward to see your talk! 

Anne's talk "Distraction in listening" will take place on Saturday 10th of March, 17.00 - Room 210

The provisional programme can be downloaded,  here.