The best job in the world?

Ask students if they know of any incredible jobs.

To help them with this, you could show them photos like these of people with unusual jobs.

http://www.udaipurtimes.com/10-most-unusual-jobs/

http://www.extremecanadiancoupons.com/2012/07/be-walmart-toy-tester.html

http://www.mole.my/content/noses-hone-senses-paris-perfume-school

Then, show students the heading from an advert that went viral back in 2009:

http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2009/best-job-in-the-world-shortlisted/

Ask them to guess what the job might be.  (They may remember the advert, depending on their age).

Show them the newspaper advert for the job:

http://mumbrella.com.au/best-job-in-the-world-ad-voted-best-newspaper-ad-10724

And/or, the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTUUWOV4Vns

There is loads more you can do on this theme.  There are hundreds of videos of Ben Southall, who won the competition for the Best Job in the World.  Ben still works in the Queensland area and has a blog about his continuing adventures.

I'll be writing another post about an unusual job shortly.  In the meantime, I have several jobs to do myself!!!........

Interesting webinar

Just a quick post to pass on some information that I received by email yesterday.  I thought the topic was particularly interesting, and the seminars that the Spanish seminar team give on Writing and Marking are always popular, so I thought I'd pass the information onto you asap.

New Webinar - How are Cambridge English Writing papers marked? Dear Anne Cambridge ESOL invites you to join us for our new webinar - How are Cambridge English Writing papers marked? The first the in our new programme of webinars for 2012-13. Most Cambridge English Writing papers are marked using a unified mark scheme that covers different aspects of writing ability. In this webinar, we look at the assessment criteria and other features of this mark scheme, show how it is applied to marking scripts and consider how it can inform teachers’ teaching. To register for this webinar, click on your preferred date and time: Monday 17 September, 14.00 - 15.00 (UK time) Wednesday 19 September, 10.00 - 11.00 (UK time) I won't, unfortunately, be able to 'attend' either of these webinars live but not to worry - I can catch up on them later online: If you have missed any of our previous webinars, you can watch recordings and download the slides from our Teacher Support site. Topics include the revised Cambridge English: Proficiency, Cambridge English: First for Schools, Cambridge English: Key for Schools and Cambridge English: Advanced Speaking.

Great new space to share resources

Once a month, I receive an ezine from Chris Brown at Cambridge ESOL.  Chris outlines some of the new resources that have been added to the Cambridge ESOL Teacher Support Website. 

In August, I followed the link at the start of the ezine to check out the new section of the Forum:

"Last month, we set up a new forum where you can share links to texts, recordings and images that work well with your classes.
If everyone contributes just one idea, this will create a great bank of resources that will save teachers so much planning time. So, why not post a suggestion to 'Share your texts and images' today?"

I clicked on one of the suggested videos: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUEqgH0dxxk

to see what it was about and discovered that it was a report on why the picture of a McDonald's hamburger looks different to the burger you buy.

Photo taken from: http://www.hilltop-products.co.uk/blog/mcdonalds-heat-gun/#.UEYk7KRzH_E

Click on this link and you can see the McDonald's Photo Shoot.

I think the it could be a very useful video to use in class because it is so visual and explanatory.  Students could be asked to take note of what is inside this particular burger and could then discuss if they like burgers, what they like on them, etc.

This brought to mind another video - I'm sure you've seen it - where we witness the transformation of a woman via makeup, hairstyling and photoshop.  I can still remember the first time I saw it.  

http://youtu.be/iYhCn0jf46U

I think the video is so good that it immediately stimulates discussion about whether what we see in the media is real anymore (if it ever was!)  You could use it after the McDonald's video or on its own.

When writing this blog post, I checked out the Dove campaign, and was interested to discover that they have produced more thought-provoking videos on the theme of self-esteem and unrealistic ideals.
Find out more here.

And found two more videos on Youtube produced by Dove:  Onslaught (I think you would probably not be able to use this video in a lot of classes because of the images it contains, but it's worth seeing) and True Colors (featuring one of my favourite songs.

I hope you will join me in sending useful links like these to the Cambridge ESOL Forum.  And for those of you who are starting a new academic year, hope it's a good one!!