I've moved

Hi all, thanks for dropping by. To make things easier, I've decided to merge some of my blogs, which, including this one, can now be found at ELT World. I've been getting off my backsides and writing recently, so come over to the new URL and leave lots of lovely comments.

Would Rather for Preference

In my teaching environment I’m blessed with great Access to IT and my students have constant Access to the internet, consequently I use this as a teaching tool regularly in my classes. One thing I often do is a quick bit of googling to find a topic relevant to the grammar point my students are failing to grasp.

This week I was left with the conundrum of bringing the would rather to show preference structure to life. What joy. Naturally, I wanted to avoid production of sentences such as ‘I’d rather not be here’ or ‘I’d rather I weren’t here.’ After literally seconds of searching I found this post on a website: Movies the US government would prefer people not watch. Mmmm… interest piqued. Would my students like to discuss such an issue? Now this instantly appeared to me to be a topic that would generate discussion, so what the hell, I went for it. The link basically lists 10 films that, er, the American government probably would rather their citizens didn’t see, and a jolly fine list it is, too. Along with the title of the film is a very brief synopsis and a link to IMDB.

What I did (after presentation of the structure):

• Ask students to go to the site and read through the list.
  
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• Get them to discuss in groups why these films could cause controversy.
  
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• Feed back to rest of class, ‘the US government would rather people didn’t watch this film because…’
  

Reasons to be careful:

• How comfortable are your group of students with such a topic?
  
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• Do they have the background knowledge to be able to discuss this issue?
  

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Visit the Skeleton Project blog to view the list of films.

The ELT World Wiki

As those of you unfortunate enough to wade through my blog posts on a farily regular basis may well know, I set up a Wiki devoted to the fine profession of TEFL awhile ago. This appears to be a growing phenomenon, with none less than Jeremy Harmer, the TEFL legend, addressed the issue of Wikis in a recent edition of the ever popular HLT Magazine, when describing why publishing overlords Pearson Longman had created their TEFL Wiki. It parallels so well what I want to achieve with the ELT Wiki that I thought I’d steal his words:

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Wouldn’t it be useful, we thought, if there was a wiki devoted to ELT terminology? That way anyone, teacher, trainer or trainee could have access to a useful glossary – and (and this is the BIG THING about Wikis) they could amend or change what they find there if they don’t think the explanation they are presented with is ‘quite right’.

Our reasoning is that with a free resource like this we could end up with an incredibly useful, democratic resource which could be really helpful for anyone who has one of those jargon ‘blackouts’ that affect us all from time to time. All they would have to do is go to the wiki and check out how other people (how the profession) had defined the piece of jargon that had confused them.

Wikis, by the way, are easy to navigate. All you need to do is go to any page, any entry, and use the edit button. If you can’t find an entry there, you go to the letter, open up the list of terms for that letter and then edit it in order to add your new term. Or whatever. Like all effective software, wikis get easier the more you use them!
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Words of wisdom from the big man. Now, I’ve checked out the Pearson Longman Wiki and it hasn’t really expanded, in fact, I feel that the ELT Wiki has already gone further in creating a useful resource for us TEFLers, for which I already have to thank those who’ve contributed. Please don’t be shy in wading in and adding your contributions. Together, we really can maket he world of TEFL a better place.

Ideas for Newbies Forum

We've opened a brand new forum: ideas to help newbies. DMB, one of the fine moderators of the ELT World forums, is the man behind this great idea and remembers, 'we were all newbies once and in need for presentation ideas.'

I hope this forum will be a great resource for anyone starting out in the profession.

Not Hangman Again! English Droid's Games

A fine collection of games for the English language classroom is available in PDF format over at the ever hilarious English Droid website.

Covering old favourites such as hangman, battleships and blockbusters, as well as variations on common adaptable classroom fun activities, Not Hangman Again is a comprehensive guide to playing games in the ELT class.


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Building blocks of language

Lessons in construction and the relevant English required are helping the unemployed return to work, notes Anita Pati

Knowing the term "dovetail joint" may be the passport to a career in construction for Said Madarbukus. Despite being a builder for 25 years in Mauritius, 50-year-old Madarbukus's level of English has made it hard for him to find work since he came to Britain four years ago. Now a north London local authority's pilot scheme, which "embeds" conversational and vocational English into a construction course, may be his best hope.

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Learn more about teaching English around the World at David’s ELT World.
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Islington council's six-month scheme, which ended in March, was targeted at local, unemployed people with Esol (English for speakers of other languages) needs. It taught eight men and one woman basic building skills as a precursor to further NVQ training.

As well as improving his language skills, Madarbukus learned a different style of construction. "Before, when I built walls in Mauritius, I was using big, big blocks, not bricks, like here," he says. "The course is very nice and it's helped me. I have been able to learn everything I need."

Read the full article at Education Guardian.

The correct use of errors

How learners' wrongs help lexicographers get their dictionaries right

"The world's English pitfalls revealed." This is the intriguing claim made by the Cambridge Learner Corpus (CLC), an electronic database of 25m words taken from candidates' written papers for Cambridge Esol exams.

There is nothing new about collecting and analysing the language of learners. Teachers have always kept notes of their students' problems. Many books have been published on "common errors". But since the 1980s things have changed. First the world of dictionary-making and ELT publishing was revolutionised by the development of large-scale corpora of native-speaker use. Hard on the heels of this came an interest in using similar techniques to capture and explore the world of learners' English.

Read the rest of this interesting article at the Guardian Weekly.