Steve Hasler at #CambExpBcn - Cambridge English First for Schools: Speaking

Today I have the pleasure (and the time!)  to chat with my colleague Steve Hasler, member of the Cambridge ESOL Presenters Team, who will be delivering the talk Cambridge First for Schools: Speaking at the The Cambridge Experience Barcelona , next Saturday 17th of March at CasaConvalescència UAB Campus.

Steve Hasler at the Cambridge Experience Madrid 2011

* Steve, why did you decide to go into English language Teaching? 

No Damascus road experience and not even any real idea that I would make a career out of it. Back in the 1970s and early 80s Spain was a different place entirely. English Language Teaching chose you if you were “un nativo” and here for any length of time. Then came realization of how little I and almost everyone else at the time knew about the profession, so there was scope aplenty. 

Finally, a love of languages in general that ELT would let me pursue while I earned what was a surprisingly respectable salary for the time - all of 200 euro a month!

* What is your talk about? 

Cambridge First for Schools: Speaking and how to use the examination to encourage students to talk independently and to get more involved in their own learning process.

* Why do you think teachers will find your talk interesting/useful? 

I hope they’ll find it sets off a few ideas that are probably already waiting to be triggered. They should go away with a more positive idea of the examination and be more willing to embrace it not only as an assessment but also a teaching tool.

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

The more you learn about your students’ mother tongue and culture, they more they will want to learn about yours.

Thanks Steve! As usual, it has been great talking with you!

Camera Obscura Drop Locations and great photos of London

My previous post talked about the Camera Obscura Project.


10 cameras were left at various locations last Saturday.

You can see where they were left here.

What a great set of photos for using in class!
Precisely because some of the photos (3, 4, 6 and 10 especially) are not so easy to identify because they do not show famous monuments.

So, for example, at Preliminary level (PET) we can practise language of speculation:
(For picture 10)

The camera looks as if it's on top of a bin or something you find in the street.
It could be outside a park or garden, because I can see a fence in the background.  The camera is easy to see but it might fall off and break.

One of the photos showing where the cameras were left looks very like this one:

You can see St Paul's Cathedral on the other side of the river and the Millennium Bridge which crosses the River Thames between the Tate Museum and St Paul's.

You can read the story of this bridge here:
http://www.urban75.org/london/millennium.html


And for some really great photos of London (as well as other parts of the world), visit Shew, the photographer's photoblog.

One of her photos reminded me of my last trip to London.  We saw squirrels everywhere in Hyde Park.

And Shew also has some amazing photos on Flickr.

Hope you find them useful!

Take a disposable camera and......

I am always on the lookout for photos to use in class.

So when I read the other day about 'Camara Obscura', it caught my eye.

If you are in London on Saturday, 10th March (I won't - I'll be in the Universidad de Deusto giving a seminar at the TESOL Spain National Convention.  Hope some of you might come along to it!!!

Well, as I was saying, if you are in London on Saturday, 10th March, you might get the chance to take part in Camara Obscura 2012.  The organisers will be leaving 10 cameras around London, then they will give hints via Twitter regarding the location of each camera.


If you have Twitter, you can follow this event here:  Twitter: _camobscura




What will happen next?  Probably something similar to what happened in 2010:

On August 18th 2010 a disposable camera was left in the middle of Covent Garden. Labeled with instructions to take a photo, relocate and leave behind for the next person, Camera Obscura began its journey around the UK.

43 days later it returned. 

From Covent Garden the camera soon found its way across London towards Chipping Sodbury in South-West England then, nearing the end of its journey, it was taken on a boat tour of Beachy Head in Eastbourne.

http://www.cameraobscuraproject.co.uk/

And this is where I think the project and its outcomes could be useful for us teachers.

The 2010 photos have been posted on flickr here.

There are 24 photos.

Here is photo number 1:

Ways that you could use the photos from 2010 in class, maybe:

1  Give out all/ a selection of the photos.  Without showing them to each other, each student describes their photo.  They have to decide if any of the photos are of the same people/were taken in the same place, etc.
2  Divide students into groups of 4 or 5.  Give them one photo each.  They have to find similarities and differences between their photos.
3  Show students photos 18 - 24 (but without the numbers).  They have to decide on an order for the photos and say or write the story of their day (they are one of the people on the boat) and where they found the camera and what they did with the camera afterwards.


There have been similar projects in different parts of the world.  Here are two of them:

http://theplug.net/28/strangerphotos.htm  (Camera tied to a park bench in Georgia, Atlanta, USA)

http://theplug.net/38/strangerphotos.htm  /In Tokyo)

Would YOU volunteer to be on a photo like these?