Sonia Manzano López
Language Development for teachers
(Explorations into Contemporary English Usage and Current Affairs).
(Teacher: Michelle Martin)
Activity 1: Find someone who…
It is a communicative and student-centered activity that involves a lot of talking and moving around. It helped us get to know each other a little bit, learn our names and break the ice on the first lesson. We were giving a worksheet in which we had to ask a question to our partners and write their names if the answer was “yes”. Whatever the answer was , we couldn’t use the same person for more than one question.
LESSON 1: TUESDAY, 7TH OCTOBER 2014
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Activity 2: Britain and British Quiz
In groups of 4, we had to answer 17 questions about the United Kingdom including culture, geography, gastronomy and politics. We were giving a A3 handout, bigger enough so all the members of the group can easily read and participate on the questions. It is a good way to learn from our partners and discuss the answers together. We also had to come to an agreement on the name of our group. When the time was over, we changed our worksheets with another group and we corrected the answers together as a whole group marking our partners’ worksheet.
Activity 3: Different ways of learning
Michelle showed us 4 different pictures and we had to guess which one were a picture for traditional learning, which one for self-taught, which one acquired, which one represents something she wants to learn. Then, in pairs, we had to apply that learning to our own life, writing a traditional learning we had in our lives, one self-taught, something we had acquired and something we wanted to learn. Then, we had to share it with a partner and guess our partners answers.
Activity 4: Thumbs up /Thumbs down
It is an excellent strategy for questioning what topics we would like and we wouldn’t like to talk about in the classroom. It is a way to see easily the students interest’s in a topic , and that makes them feel more motivated as we have the opportunity of choosing our own topics.
Activity 5: Skills we would like to improve
In a post-it, we should write those skills we would like to improve. My reflection on this activity is that it is important to bear in mind our students’ interests in order to increase their motivation.
Activity 6: New words in English
After reading an article from “The Telegraph” titled “Derp, YOLO and Jank make it in to new dictionary” from the 12th of September 2013, we show that there are different ways, new words can be created in English. (Activity done in groups first and then shared in the whole group)
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Blending words: as for instance (brunch)
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Switching or extending fields: eg: surf
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Borrowing from other languages (fiancé)
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Clipping: (pub = public house)
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Technology “googling”, “smartphone”
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Acronyms “LOL” (laughing out loud)
Activity 7: Matching the new word in English with their meaning.
We had to guess the meaning of the following words in English.
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Twerking: dancing to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance. It is a combination between tweet and jerk.
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Blondie: A small square of dense, pale-colored cake, typically of a butterscotch or vanilla flavor. (brownie /blondie)
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Omnishambles: A situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations. It origins come from omni (everywhere) - + shambles (complete mess), first used in the British satirical television series The Thick of It.
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Derp: stupid , foolish (alteration of dur)
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Jorts: shorts made with denim fabric (blending of jeans and shorts). Phablet
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Dappy: Silly, disorganized, or lacking concentration.
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Emoji: A small digital image or icon used to express an idea, emotion, etc in electronic communication. It comes from the Japanese from e 'picture' + moji 'letter, character'.
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FOMO: Acronym of Fear of Missing Out. Anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on a social media website.
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YOLO: You Only Live Once (acronym)
LESSON 2: WEDNESDAY, 8TH OCTOBER 2014
Activity 8: Call my Bluff
In groups, we had to find a new word in English and Write 3 definitions (2 false and 1 true). Then, we had to try to be sure that all three definitions are plausible and make our colleagues guess the correct one. The one that we chose was:
“Applepick”
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The first person in choosing members of a team.
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Steal someone’s Iphone.
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A new technique to harvest the ripe apples.
None of our colleagues could guess that correct answer was b).
Our partner’s words chosen were:
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Bezzie: a way to say my best friend in social networks.
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Acquihire: An act or instance of buying out a company primarily for the skills and expertise of its staff, rather than for the products or services it supplies. (blending of acquisition and hire).
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Blook: a book written by a blogger. (blending of blog and book)
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Gastrosexual: make food to impress friends and potential partners.
Activity 2: Debate.
Firstly, we spoke together about the arguments we had against the statement proposed by Michelle for the debate. “Parents have no right to monitor conversations that their children have with friends online”.
Some of our arguments against were:
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Parents have the responsibility to make sure that their child stays safe online.
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False identities are easy to create. They can lie /can be cheated.
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If parents think that is something wrong with their children, they should have the right to talk and ask their children explanations about what is happening online, as they used to do in “real life”.
It has been curious to see and hear how the debate ran, because it seemed that the “for” group was winning at the beginning, but then the “against” took the advantage. We were supporting our ideas in some real cases, and in hypothesis of children who were in risk of bulling or mistreat on the web which made the other group lose their arguments for the statement. There was also a debate of interpreting the verb “to monitor” which could have been interpreted in different ways by both groups.
Activity 1: We want to… (skills we want to improve collected yesterday).
From the stickers we wrote yesterday, Michelle categorize all the skills we want to improve during this course and showed us a summary.
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Improve pronunciation and develop fluency.
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Learn useful expressions and phrasal verbs and build vocabulary.
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Build confidence and work on how to give presentations and speak well in public.
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Understand native speakers and be able to communicate effectively and naturally.
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Work with literacy content and language.
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Improve written English and academic competence.
NB: Some of comments related to professional language will be covered with Francisco.
Activity 3: Hangin’ worksheet. Teenagers vocabulary or slang.
The teacher handed out a worksheet about teenager’s slang, whose main characters were some members of the programme (eg: Ramiro, Ivan, Beatriz , Ivan and me). The worksheet shows a conversation among teenagers. We acted it out, and saw how difficult is to understand some teenagers slang.
We also saw how there is some regional variation of teenagers slang.
For instance:
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Wasteman (London): idiot or fool.
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Bewt or pearle (Wales): fantastic or beautiful.
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Tidy or sound : good.
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Craic (Northern Ireland) : good fun.
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Banging, mint , lush (Wales): Very good looking.
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Hissy (Scotland): angry or losing temper.
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Owned (London and South England)- Beaten up or made a fool of.
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Beef (Yorkshire)- Grudge or argument.
Two TV programmes to practice teenagers vocabulary are: “Catherine Tale” and “ Am I bowered”.
Activity 4: Rastamouse CBEEBIES (BBC)
We watched an episode of Rastamouse on the classroom and we shared our ideas about these cartoons series for little children in which it uses lots of slang and incorrect English (eg: me wish me could do something).
We debated in groups about the episode and the vocabulary and content on the episode. We could also have the opportunity of seeing a book about Rastamouse.
Activity 5: Newspapers news about Rastamouse.
In groups, we were giving different news about Rastamouse and we had to underline the positive and the negative aspects about these cartoons.
My newspaper article was from the Mail Online, (18th January) and I hightlighted the following aspects:
Positive aspects
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The Rastamouse spreads love and respects as Leader of the Easycrew.
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It introduces more diversity.
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It is good to have different accents in the cartoons(Jamaican).
Negative aspects
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It has been accused of stereotyping black people.
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It uses “patois” language.
The other newspaper news used in this activity were:
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Mail Online: “Rastamouse most- complained about children’s TV show.” (16th January 2012).
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BBC “Slang banned from Croydon School to improve student speech” (15th October 2013)
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Mirror “Rastamouse kids TV show sparks racism now”.
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The Guardian “ Rastamouse: righteous rodent or rank stereotype?
RP: Received Pronunciation.
Activity 6: Debates vocabulary/expressions.
We were giving a A3 paper sheet to work in groups. We had to work on different sentences to express:
Activity 7: British politics
Investigate in the Campus who is this man, and what does he stands for.
Debate in the classroom about British politics and the arguments in favor and against obtained in the consultation.
LESSON 3:THURSDAY, 9TH OCTOBER 2014
MINI-RESEARCH PROJECT
Find out how British people feel about a current newsworthy topic. What can you learn about British values and culture?
1. Choose a topic and conduct desk research. What do you want to know?
2. Design a questionnaire to test a hyphothesis.
3. Go out into Bognor and ask your target audience.
4. Come back and analyse your results.
How to approach people on the street?
Tell them:
- who you are and where you come from.
- what you are researching.
- what you like to do
- how long it will take.
Questionnaire created:
Do you agree that people infected with Ebola should be allowed into the UK for treatment?
a) someone working from the army.
b) someone working for a non-profit organization.
c) UK citizen living in Africa.
d) non UK residents with ties.
Do you think that it is better to send people there instead of bringing them here?
We asked these questions to English people to find out what British people think about Ebola issue.
LESSON 4: MONDAY, 13TH OCTOBER 2014
Activity 1: MINI-PROJECT
We had some time to prepare our presentation in groups. Then, we all presented our mini-research project using a visual support. The rest of the groups had to contribute to the feedback using the Sandwich technique (positive feedback, constructive feedback, and positive feedback).
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Here is the result of our mini-project
Reflection:
What did I like about the mini-project?
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Working in groups.
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Listen to other partners' researches.
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Learning about different methods in presentation.
What did not like about the mini-project?
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Asking and approaching people on the street.
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Making the graphs for the statistics.
What did I learn from the research activities?
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what British people think.
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how to approach people on the street very quick and convince them.
What did I learn from creating a presentation and presenting?
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how to use sense of houmor in a presentation
What did I learn from each other?
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how to express ideas in a simple way
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how to improvise.
What did I need to do personally to improve my presentation skills?
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To speak slowly and loudly.
Activity 2: CHRISTOPHER EMDIN: How to create magic.
We watched a video about creativity in the classroom called "Teach teachers how to create magic".
What can we learn from this speech?
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He speeches up and pauses.
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He encourages spectators.
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The speech has been scripted.
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He raps at some point to catch spectator’s attention.
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He repeats some parts of the speech to emphasize them.
Activity 3: WHAT IS A GOOD PRESENTATION
In groups we created a mind map to represent what we think is a good presentation.
Activity 4: PRESENTATION SKILLS
Presenting information clearly and effectively is a key skill to get your message or opinion across and, today, presentation skills are required in almost every field.
Quick Tips for Effective Presentations
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Talk naturally to your audience – although it may be appropriate to read short passages avoid reading from a script for the majority of your presentation.
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Stand, rather than sit, and move around a little – but avoid pacing backwards and forwards like a trapped animal.
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Vary the tone, pitch and volume of your voice to add emphasis and maintain the audience’s interest. Aim to speak loudly and clearly while facing your audience. Avoid talking in a monotone voice or turning your back to the audience.
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Make eye contact with your audience. Do not stare at your feet, or the podium and avoid looking directly at any one person for more than a few seconds, gain eye contact with the individual members of the audience.
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Use visual aids where appropriate, graphs and charts, diagrams, pictures and video - but don’t overdo it. Visual aids should help to illustrate and strengthen your points not be a distraction from what you are saying.
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Rehearse your talk and check your timings. Always aim to finish you talk in time remembering to allow time for questions if appropriate.
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Prepare and structure your presentation carefully. Introduce the subject – tell the audience what your talk is about. Explain the points you wish to convey. End with a summary of your points.
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Stay focused throughout your presentation – avoid irrelevance and unnecessary detail.
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Learn to channel any nervous energy, relax but stay alert.
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Answer any questions as honestly and concisely as you can. If you don’t know the answer then say so and offer to provide further information at a later date.
Use dancers instead of PowerPoint. That's science writer John Bohannon's "modest proposal." In this spellbinding choreographed talk he makes his case by example, aided by dancers from Black Label Movement.
Activity 5: DANCE VS. POWERPOINT PRESENTATION, A MODEST PROPOSAL
LESSON 5: TUESDAY, 14TH OCTOBER 2014
Activity 1: VENN'S DIAGRAMS IN GROUPS . TEACHING PROFESSION.
We argued about the possitive and negative things about being a teacher and created a Venn's diagram.
A Venn diagram is an illustration of the relationships between and among sets, groups of objects that share something in common.
This graphic organizers are powerful ways to help students understand complex ideas.By adapting and building on basic Venn diagrams, you can move beyond comparison and diagram classification systems that encourage students to recognize complex relationships.
In order to know more about how beneficial are Venn's diagrams for our students , click here
Activity 2: DEBATES.
What things can cause me to strike as a teacher? We were discussing these factors (salary, changing laws, working conditions, nº of students, age of retirement, etc) and we came to agreement. Then, we had to imagine we were a member of the parent association, a headteacher, a trade union representative or a member of the goverment and we are going to attend to a meeting together. We should represent one of these people defending to strike or not to strike. These argument was preceded by a research about British education and the reasons teachers and Trade Unions want to strike to improve British education.
Debates are excellent activities for language learning because it engages students in a variety of cognitive and linguistic ways. In addition to providing meaningful listening, speaking and writing practice, debate is also highly effective for developing argumentation skills for persuasive speech and writing.
Here you can find some ideas for debates in the ESL classroom. Have a look at them!
LESSON 6: WEDNESDAY, 15 TH OCTOBER 2014
Activity 1: GENDER ISSUES
The teacher asked us to line up from the youngest to the oldest to divide us into four groups with a variety of ages.
Then, we needed to discuss gender issues that we remembered from when we were young. This served a warm up activity to order chronologically some gender events displayed on the walls. Here are some pictures.
Then, after the activity, we watched this moving speech that Emma Watson delivered in the UN for the HeforSheprogrammme.
Then, we analysed the content and the vocabulary on this piece of new about sexism and homophobia in rugby.
LESSON 7: FRIDAY, 17TH OCTOBER 2014
HUMOUR
When a joke is not a joke?
Today were looking at when is a joke, not a joke.
Messages have two parts to them. There is the part that you send, and then there is the part that you recieve.
When all is going good, the two match up - when certain users are told jokingly to "STFU" or leave the receiver know its a joke. This is all fine and good.
Sometimes however, we send a joke, and the receiver of the joke doesn't see it as a joke.
It could just be a bad joke - and a bad joke is just a bad joke...We move on, and can move onto the next (hopefully not bad) joke.
Other times however, when the joke is about a person, and that person doesn't take it as a joke, we have here what they call "a failure to communicate".
So what to do?
An ounce of Prevention - If you're not sure if someone is going to take something as a joke, do something to make sure they know its a joke. Add a wink, or a smile, or a (j/k). Its not going to keep you out of trouble all of the time, but its a nice tag, and who knows, they might recipricate with a little ribbing themselves.
Too late, someone is already steamed - Explain you meant it as a joke, and apologise. Back away from the topic unless the other person clearly has accepted the intended joke and has begun to reciprocate (be careful however not to confuse retaliation insults with a return joke... if in doubt, don't).
If the other person is uncomfortable, stop - The wonderful thing about people is we're all different - we wouldnt bother chatting if we were all the same, and some people have thinner skin or are senstiive about certain things. If you're continuing to make a joke targeting someone who is present, who has asked you to stop on that train of joke, you are no longer joking, you are trolling and/or "go(ing) out of your way to irritate others".
I'm a mod - Let the situation handle itself initially. If there are apologies and its all accepted, no need to act. If it doesnt stop after an objection, its time to act as your judgement, and the circumstances, see fit.
Here there are some of the humour videos we watched in the classroom. Have a look at them, they are really funny!
"Women, know your limits".
Stereotypes Portuguese people
"Vicky Pollard in Swimming Pool"
"The Catherine Tate Show - Periodic Table"
"Vicky Pollard in an Assembly"
"The Catherine Tate Show - Lauren Coopper meets Tony Blair"
"Come fly with me"
"What people with no kids don't know"
Using humour in the ESL classroom.
Humor can be an effective way to engage students and activate learning. There are some of the ways humor can be used in the classroom.
Create a Comfortable Learning Environment
When teachers share a laugh or a smile with students, they help students feel more comfortable and open to
learning. Using humor brings enthusiasm, positive feelings, and optimism to the classroom.
Even if you’re not naturally funny, you still can lighten things up a bit! The key thing to remember is to do what’s
comfortable for you. Not only will it make you more approachable, it will also help put students more at ease in
your classroom.
Fire Up Their Brains
During her research on learning and humor, educator-researcher Mary Kay Morrison looked at brain scans that
showed high levels of activity in multiple areas of the brain when humor was used in conversation and instruction.
“We’re finding humor actually lights up more of the brain than many other functions in a classroom,” says
Morrison, author of Using Humor to Maximize Learning. “In other words, if you’re listening just auditorily in a
classroom, one small part of the brain lights up, but humor maximizes learning and strengthens memories.”
Bring Content to Life
Teachers can use humor to bring content to life— through games, parody, or comical voices (or wigs or hats).
Students respond to their teacher’s playfulness and appreciate the effort he or she puts into making a lesson fun.
Final Thoughts
Every teacher’s goal is to be effective in the classroom and help students learn. Educators want their students to be
eager and engaged. Humor has the power to fuel that engagement.
LESSON 8: MONDAY, 20TH OCTOBER 2014
JOKES IN THE ESL CLASSROOM
We can use jokes in the ESL/EFL classroom to teach culture, grammar and vocabulary.
Everyone loves jokes. They can be an invaluable source of entertainment and an excellent vehicle for presenting language in context and promoting genuine communication while having a laugh. As follows, we describe some useful techniques for exploiting jokes in class.
Enjoy!
WHY USE JOKES IN CLASS:
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Just say the word ‘joke’ and they’re ready to listen
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To motivate students to listen, read, write …
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Can be a gateway to understanding new cultures
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To create a relaxed learning atmosphere
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They provide exposure to authentic language and genuine communication
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Students learn without realising
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As a vehicle for language study (many jokes are rule-governed)
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To break the ice or liven up a dull moment
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For fun. Everyone loves jokes!!
20 TECHNIQUES FOR EXPLOITING JOKES IN CLASS:
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Prediction. Leave the punch line out and get students to predict it. You can have this as a race too.
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Leave out the punch line and provide a choice of possible punch lines to choose from. You can also have this as a race.
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Groups compete to match the two halves of a number of jokes. The first one to match them all correctly wins.
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Cut one joke up in different parts or lines and give each to a different student. Students work out the order and physically arrange themselves in the correct order.
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Divide a number of jokes (preferably two-line jokes) in two halves and give one half to each student in class. Students then walk around the room trying to find their matching half.
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Students listen to the joke and identify the stressed words or syllables. They then practice telling it. Good for stress and intonation practice.
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Put a joke up on the board or OHP and leave out the punch line or last few words. The first students to shout the correct answer earns a point. Riddles are good for this.
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Take a joke that involves different characters. Give different characters to different students. Then they act the joke out. This can be planned/discussed beforehand or improvised. They can take it even further by continuing the dialogue.
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Give out a number of jokes to groups or pairs of students. They discuss and agree on the wittiest, funniest, etc. Good for group discussion and negotiation of meaning.
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Tell a fairly long joke and ask pairs or groups of students to reconstruct it from memory on paper.
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Use a joke as a springboard for oral or written production. For example one of the ‘battle of the sexes’ jokes can easily lead into a debate or role-play.
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Use a joke that includes samples of the grammar you want to teach instead of a boring text in your course book … or adapt it so that it includes examples of that grammar!
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Mime a joke and ask students to guess it. Then they do the same in groups.
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Translation. Ask students to think of some jokes in their mother tongue that lend themselves to translation and some that don’t. Students then provide a translation of the first and an explanation of why they think the latter can’t be translated.
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Present a model joke that and ask students to invent new ones following the same structure.
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Students expand the story or dialogue in a joke to add a twist to it.
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Do not mention the relationship between the characters in the joke (doctor-patient, policeman-driver, etc) and get students to guess.
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Play Jokes Bingo! Instead of numbers put punch lines from different jokes in the boxes. Teacher then reads the jokes without the punch lines. When students hear a joke they cross out the corresponding box.
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Give each student the first half of a joke (or a number of them) and stick the other halves on the walls around the classroom, behind chairs, etc. The aim of the activity is to find the corresponding half. You can turn this into a race with students playing individually or in teams.
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Build a bank of jokes over the course. Let students take initiative and add jokes to the existing bank every week. You can assign certain days of the month/term for students to update the bank and do activities with them.
This is an excellent website for English Langauge Teaching for teachers and students. Jokes are written in graded English and followed by grammar and vocabulary excercises.
LANGUAGE OF PRESENTATIONS
In order to be a good presenter we should use some specific vocabulary which shows where they are in their presentation. For that reason it is important to bear in mind the following structures and phrases.
LESSON 9: TUESDAY, 28 TH OCTOBER 2014
Presentation of the final research project