Experiences of a teacher of English

I’ve composed this sheet for an adult learner : I consider it may be sound for an adult to be aware of strategies he or she may be already using! It’s also interesting for an adult to read about learning strategies. Just a few minutes ago I handed him out this sheet. Photo from cdn turner com, thank you. Frodo Baggins and the Ring. I don't know exactly the sequel of The Lord of the Rings this photo has been taken from. Do you know? Rebecca Oxford has many more so interesting learning strategies for us teachers of languages, in the book ref below. I feel somewhat sorry because I have rewritten some LLSS with my own words, and she presents them very well structured and outfitted, and with other terms, different from the ones I've used, sorry. Get the book! Worksheet 104 31 May 2010 Learning strategies Adapted from: Rebecca Oxford (1990) Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know . Boston: Heinle and Heile Publishers. For communication , and learning: 1. Usin...

About management and discipline. A piece from my book. Photo from checkingnetworks com Los jóvenes nos pueden llegar al centro, nos llegan de hecho, desgraciadamente, hechos una ruina, para cogerlos con pinzas. No todos, claro. Debes seguir adelante con ellos, aun construyendo con material de derribo, como decía también Antonio Vázquez, gran pedagogo y orientador familiar. Tienes alguna referencia de sus obras en la bibliografía final. Sucedieron en un instituto californiano de High School (en una película), una serie de actuaciones que reflejan bastante la realidad, entre otros motivos porque la película está basada en hechos reales: un instituto con detectores de armas para los alumnos, más algunos estudiantes con un dispositivo electrónico en la pierna para estar localizados por la policía. Pues bien, una chica de origen hispano, dijo a sus compañeros el primer día de clase, contemplando a la profe novata que les iba a enseñar literatura: “Hey, guys, d’you guess this cute whitey is...

I just opened www.teachingenglish.org.uk and I saw the staff published a comment of mine. Thank you. On this comment on the site I respond to a teacher who asks for any clue or help about making groups according to the students’ level of English. Dear colleagues, I would be glad to get feedback from Ts who have experience in making groups according to level. It may sound very simple but in fact it is not. The situation is as follows: My Faculty (English Studies) offers a course for Ss from other faculties. The course is compulsory and motivation is very low. The course aims at developing their listening skills only, using authentic recordings from the radio for instance. The Ss have to take a free online placement test and pass on their score to the head teacher. This is not supervised by anybody. Consequently, many Ss easily manage to be in the lowest level group so as to twiddle their thumbs and get good marks. The Faculty has not budget for reliable placement tests, which Ss coul...

One day teacher B said to teacher A, "I offer you some more games for your classes. For example, on grammar and memory: The teacher writes one sentence of his students' level, on the blackboard or whatever. One sentence their level or a bit above. The teacher and a few students read the sentence aloud. You then, the teacher, erase it. Then you say it from memory. And then you jog their memory, one by one: you ask them to repeat the sentence - as much as they can. They like competitions, freeze this point in your memory for your teaching. Oooops, silly me, I forgot my class-notes at my school, and I had some other games. Next day I'll tell you more games. I have learned many games from my students themselves, from the way they work in the class and their reactions to my prompts and their capabilities or flaws. Thus, you learn how to treat them and what you can expect from them; also, with more ample lenses, you learn, one day after another, how to get the best out from them...

Here you have a new version of a composition I had to write for my course of English, Level 8 (C-2), at Centro de Lenguas Modernas, Universidad de Granada . The student, on this exercise, had to continue the beginning of a novel. In all, 11 beginnings appeared on the exercise of the coursebook. I chose 1984 . / Photo from crux baker edu From the Teacher’s Book – 3: Communication – Telling stories Begun on 21 December 2009 (Version 2: 27 May 2010) Fernando Díez Gallego I have taken 1984 , by George Orwell. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen … Then I awoke at that sound, but remained in bed, very still, eyes wide open. I was just listening. A few more metallic strikings in the distance... So cold a morning... Windows wide open to the countryside. For granted, every day I used to hear some other clocks striking, far, in the distance, in some corner of the ship, where I was on. By that time, April of 19...

Just I'd like to make one point clear, to be honest. I just attached a pic on post #203, a portrait of Captain Cook, and I said he discovered and viewed many lands for the first time in history. Without willing to aim at any controversy, I should say that most of the seas he sailed through had been already sailed by Spanish and Portuguese sailors. Anyway, any discovery this kind is one of humankind and we all write History. You yourself write History too. We teachers also work as a big community to assist our learners - think just of the many forums on ELL, TEFL, TESL, TESOL... on the Web. Obviously we can't steal Cook's great merit, sure. This photo above is from www Irgaf org

One day teacher A said to teacher B, “The climax, the ambience, of our classes should be of calm work. This is the environment where they can learn a language. Give them clear instructions about the exercise they have to do right then. Mold the answers. Or make them focus on the example of the sentence given by the exercise. Or ask one high-achievement student what they are expected to do in the exercise. Circulate among the rows of desks, observing how the kids manage to fulfill the task. After they have finished the exercise, ask them realistic, practical questions so as to use the grammar pattern in a ‘real’ and meaningful way. They’ll someway notice this exercise was useful, was communicative, was not something to be just fulfilled. Calm down a starting ‘riot’. The exercise ought to take a short period of time. Also you be humane, close to the students, and firm in a discipline of serious work and learning. Be benevolent, but not lenient, as a colleague of ours said some days ago. ...

I'd like to thank Alistair for his proposal of a dictionary game, presented post #353. I just read it, and sounds great, and it would put variety in my own class games. Thanks also for I had the chance to read stuff in English adequate to teaching and conducting games and so. It's good to put in variety: I've noticed my veteran students can get bored if I always implement the same games. What I'm trying lately is to change some things in the games I run in the classes, besides the fact that from time to time some variety within a specific game spontaneously shows up during the class. Picture from www uniquetranslations eu

This is a post within a thread I contributed for, some days ago, about dictionary games, on the website of Pearson-Longman. Thanks to the author of the following post. – Picture from lego star wars blogspot com Fernando Diez Gallego, A new message was posted in the thread "Dictionary Games": http://www.eltcommunity.com/elt/message/2255#2255 Author : Alistair Melliar Email : alistairm@eircom.net Profile : http://www.eltcommunity.com/elt/people/voyager Message: -------------------------------------------------------------- This game is a bit different to any others so far, but I've found it works very well - have used it with upper-intermediate and advanced groups only but could be played by intermediate groups with a change of dictionary type preferably. You have 2 teams, each with a dictionary, the first team starts with letter 'a', opens dictionary with eyes closed in this section, and selects a word from the page opened to ask the other team about. There are 3 p...

Here I offer you a linguistic point. Taken from http://www.putlearningfirst.com Photo from www.ascobi.com NB.: We would need some special characters to show differences in the pronunciation of some letters below, if compared with contemporary English. To say in simple terms, OE is from the stem of Germanic languages. And as you may know, this stem comes from the Indo-European family. Basque, Hungarian, Finish are some of the very few languages that do not come from this big family but anyway spoken in Europe. Finish and Hungarian, and I think one of the languages of Mongolia, have the same origin. (I have read something somewhere about the thing of Mongolia). How English Has Changed Five translations of the Gospel according to St Matthew, Chapter 8, Verses 1 & 2. Anglo Saxon 995 Sothlice tha seHaelend of tham munte nyther astah, tha fyligdon hym mycle maenio. Tha genealaehte an hreofla to him and hine to him geathmedde, and thus cwaeth, Drihten, gyf thu wylt, thu miht me geclaensi...

Thank you, nish, for your compliments and your encouraging comment! Picture from www flyingswans co nz

One day teacher B said to teacher A, "The most common thing is that your class-groups will be ones with mixed-ability learners. Until short ago I used to combine one basic activity in the class-period with a higher-level activity, but it didn't work - I noticed lately. I tended to implement activities bearing in mind high-achievement students, while the basic-level ones were rather left behind. So, now, I combine activities thinking of the students' varied levels of grammar and vocabulary, and at the same time, in the same activity I ask more simple questions to the kids that know less or can't do less." Picture thanks to Minessota School of Business.

This is a post with which I responded to a teacher of English. The posts, both his and mine appear in www.pearsonlongman.com . The thread of posts are about dictionary games. This was my contribution. Picture from www friendlyplanet com Hello Daniel, I can also suggest some games I implement and they work so fine in my classes, and my students love those games! 1. (I hope to be any helpful: I see you implement similar stuff). Dictionary competition. I write a word on the whiteboard, and the students have to find the word as soon as possible in the dictionaries. The winner is the first in finding the word. Currently my students are aged 10 to 14. 2. Sometimes I am one of the players in the latter game. They wish to play vs their teacher. It’s funny. 3. One student counts the seconds one other student takes to find a given word in the dic. Obviously the winner is the fastest. 4. On worksheets or on the WB I write words that appear close to one another in the dictionary. The ss have to pu...

One day teacher B said to teacher A, "A few days ago we had a wonderful experience in our classroom. One student proposed to teach the following class himself. These kids are aged 10 to 12. He wanted to be the teacher. They adore to 'play the teacher', for a few minutes. Their level is rather low, but it has gone up a lot this year. Ok, so, this kid prepared the class on his laptop, one borrowed from Junta de Andalucía , the community or region government in this part of Spain. He made the other students, firstly, to do their homework of their corresponding schools. My students come from different schools and institutes of the metropolitan area of Granada. My class is extra-curricular, in the afternoon, after their regular classes and lunch. Then, believe me, he implemented some games, scripted on his laptop, with 'authority', and most of the time in English. I was sitting among my students, even I participated in some games. The groups are small." Picture fro...