British life , langauge and culture

I have recently taken part in a training entitled British life , language and culture, with the help of a Grundtvig mobility grant. The following posts will try to disseminate as much as possible of the points discussed during the course or lived outside class.

One main issue that might strike you as being an obsession of mine, is the discrepancy between the tools the teacher has to teach this language , and the actual cultural aspects that lie underneath, and are somehow "off the continent".

This being just the introduction I'll make my first contribution to the upgrading of English teaching materials with the following note:
if you're teaching an upper intermediate or advanced class, you might want to discuss under the umbrella topic of Fashion, or why not, Religion and Diversity, the role of Burkas in society, or the controversy of their banning. For a lighter approach, you can use the article - Burquini VS Bikini

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/122933

Another topic would be Crime and Punishment.

Just check what the British teenagers are offered for buying a T-shirt, by reading the following red top newspaper article:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2711538/Carnage-UK-hits-Brighton.html

that's it for now,
Have a great teaching to you all

Let teachers get together...

Teachers' Workshop by Miha

Use of authentic material

Anything takes time. And we can sometimes understand that we need to sleep on an idea maybe longer than others, but we cannot see why others do to. Now, as a hard working teacher, dedicated to the idea of using authentic material in class I have just realized I had made quite an obsession for www.ted.com and shut my ears to all the other 99 ones worth being checked.

Do not be misled by the title. It is for students just as much as it is for teachers. because we can all call ourselves learners in the end.

http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2010/10/20/100-incredibly-useful-youtube-channels-for-teachers/

Short speech structure

I used to believe in freedom of speech, behaviour, thinking. I still do, but time has taught me the lesson of the " perfect melange", of the mixture of two or more distinct ideas. And I have discovered the order, the subtle organization that lies underneath any so called chaos.


Discourse structure - that is what any TOEFL, CAE, IELTS, examiner is going to look for, among other things. And if you are asked to prepare your speech in 15 seconds and then give a perfectly rounded speech of about 45 seconds, it could sound quite impossible in the beginning. And more than that, if you are asked to be perfectly convincing and into what you are saying while a blank screen is staring at you, counting the seconds that are left until they stop recording, i.e.- stop caring about what you're saying, you might (true story, by the way) burst into tears.

The reason why I decided to post this article is that I have managed to change the way my students deal with this issue regarding speech organization, i.e. they have made the journey from bursting into tears to the one of laughter and enjoyment. Mind you, we're talking now about preparation time.

NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programing, and PREP stands for- Point, Reason, Example, Point. These are two apparently different things that have nothing in common. I used them both to make students aware of the structure of a speech, and not only understand it theoretically but practise it. So, taking the example of the Neuro-Logical levels described by Robert Dilts I came up with the following task:

Each student was given a set of four cards, on which they had to write the four steps: POINT< REASON< EXAMPLE< POINT. (give freedom of choice in what regards the colour of the paper and of the markers used. They then had to place the four notes on the floor in front of them. When asked a question by their peer (guide) they had to step on the note and answer according to the idea on the note. 

• Example: Are exams important at the beginning of one's academic life?
• Point: I believe exams are most certainly important in people's lives..
• Reason: since they are a proof of one's abilities, not only for the others but for the examinee as such. 
• Example: If, for example, one were admitted at a university without any prior test or aknowledgement of the required abilities, this would cause a lot of damage to the university as such, not knowing exactly who they have to deal with, but, in the same time, it would be a source of insecurity for the student as well. They would on the one hand, feel unsure of their capabilities and would most certainly doubt the quality of registartion process, and subsequesntly of the university as well. 
• Point: All in all, I am strongly in favour of exams as part of the registartion process when it comes to the academic life.

The advantages of making students "jump" from one point to another is that they can actually feel that their speech is connected, that ideas follow naturally and that they do have what to say at each step, which will make them use the best language they could possibly use. This type of activity works well with kinestezic students, who do not have the opportunity to move a lot, especially when you prepare for an online exam (appoximately 4 hours of sitting in front of a screen).

Hoping teachers and tutors could use this in their class and adapt it to any other exam preparation, and not only, I am looking forward to any replies, advice or comments you might have.