ELT World » Teaching materials

It's Hot Potatoes charity month

david — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:14:48 +0000

The following is a message from Martin Holmes, the creator of Hot Potatoes, which is probably the best tool for creating online teaching exercises and one I’ve been using for years:

May is Charity Month for Half-Baked Software, which means that for the whole of this month, we’re donating all the money we receive for Hot Potatoes and Quandary licences directly to charity; the University of Victoria has waived its percentage, Stew and I have waived ours, and the company will cover ongoing costs and taxes out of its pocket, so if you buy a licence we’ll give the entire amount of the licence price to charity.

More details are here:

http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/charity.php

Also, please note that licence prices are very cheap right now: A single-user Hot Potatoes licence is only $20 US, and a Quandary licence is also only $20 US. Buy now, get it cheap, and let the money go to charity.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Bilingual babies get a head start before they can even talk

david — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:05:07 +0000

Here’s an interesting finding from the National Geographic:

Even before they can babble a single word, babies in bilingual households may get a head start in life, according to a team of scientists in Italy. Rather than confusing babies, hearing more than one language gives newborns a mental boost, according to the new study, which tested seven-month-old infants.

“In many European countries, parents are wary of giving a bilingual education to their kids and try to speak only one language,” said study author Jacques Mehler of the Language, Cognition, and Development Lab at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy. “They are afraid [their children] might suffer when they get to school and so on,” Mehler said. “Because of our results, I doubt that very much.”

I can't compete with this

david — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:18:54 +0000

Happy new year to all of you, wherever you find yourself mired in the life of the professional TEFLer. Now, I’ve never resorted to getting my kit off in order to teach a particular language point and I’m sure my students are very grateful for that. Nevertheless, this particular ‘methodology’ may have something going for it, if used by a particular kind of practitioner, as this clip illustrates.

Is this truly innovative or just plain dodgy? You decide for yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. should you wish to download this for classroom use, you can do so by clicking here.

[ad#underpost]

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Americans set to learn English

david — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:05:20 +0000

English can be a tough language to learn, just ask the misunderestimated outgoing president of the United States, but the federal government hopes to make it easier with a free website intended to improve access to language instruction for immigrants, as well as ex-presidents.

The website, the innovatievely titled usalearns.org, is a free and easily accessible resource available to anyone seeking basic English language instruction. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, it meets one of President George W. Bush’s immigration reform pledges from 2007, not to mention one of his personal goals of mastering his own mother tongue.

[ad#underpost]

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

It's partly Greek to me

david — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:37:20 +0000

Celia Webb has followed up her article ‘Improving Vocabulary through Latin Prefixes‘ over at the ELT Times with ‘It was Greek to Me: Improving Your English by Knowing Greek Roots‘.

‘Greek provides many important prefixes, suffixes, and roots used in the English language‘ regales Celia in her article at the World’s first online TEFL Newspaper. ‘To understand the full meaning of a word, it is essential to know the original meaning of the roots used to form the word. Not only will your comprehension of the word be more complete and accurate, you will understand many more words since roots and other word parts (i.e. affixes, prefixes, suffixes) occur in many English words.’

For more fascinating insight into the world of Greek word roots, click here.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Improving Vocabulary through Latin Prefixes

david — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:09:54 +0000

‘English contains many words adopted from other languages‘, notes Celia Webb, somewhat emphatically, over at the ELT Times: the World’s first online TEFL Newspaper. ‘In fact‘, she proclaims, ‘experts estimate 80% of English words originated elsewhere. The biggest influence on English vocabulary is Latin. An examination of the 20,000 most used words reveals 5,000 words contain prefixes and over 80% of these use one of only fourteen of the many different prefixes available. By learning these important prefixes, you can improve your mastery of the English language.’

It’s as simple as that folks, it really is. Read on…

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Sesame Street Targets English Language Learners

david — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:18:47 +0000

In news that fills my heart with joy, I was delighted to learn of the emergence of Sesame Street English, a new 26×2-minute series from Sesame Workshop featuring anime-style versions of the show’s signature Muppets introducing preschoolers to the English language. Sesame Street English, which can be adapted for classrooms, uses research-based methods to provide introductory language skills necessary to build a basic English vocabulary.

Read the full story, if you can stomach it…

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Is Watching Dvds A Good Way To Learn A New Language?

david — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:12:00 +0000

In this article, Ken O’Brien offers his opinion on the use of DVDs in language learning.

Yes and no. One of the positives of course is that you can get to hear the language spoken very naturally. You can hear inflexions, accents and the sounds. This is fine where the version of the language is clear and a standard example, but often films use different dialects or very colloquial language.

Here we begin to see the problems of the DVD and how difficult it can be. But it is still listening practice. Unless you are lucky enough to have regular contact with native speakers this is really as good as it gets.

Another difficulty of course is the length of a DVD. For elementary or less-advanced learners it can be very tiring trying to listen to a language they are learning. We miss a lot of words and often we find ourselves just switching to the subtitles and following those.

But even subtitles are not such a bad thing. We still benefit from listening to the sounds even when we are reading the subtitles. Think of how people who are not native speaker speak your native tongue. It usually reflects their own language and ways of saying things. By exposing our ears to the rhythm and sounds of the new language we can still get some benefit.

So what can we do to get the best benefit from it? Start with much shorter pieces. All DVDs now come with the option to choose scenes rather than play the whole film. Choose a couple of scenes at a time, even if it takes you a day or two to watch. By watching and listening to smaller chunks you stand a greater chance of understanding more, which is always a boost for your confidence.

You could also watch the DVD right through first with subtitles and then try watching sections of it again. At this point you are already familiar with the story so you can concentrate a little more on what people are saying.

Language learning takes a lot of time and we can’t always understand everything but DVDs do offer us exposure to the language being spoken naturally. Rather than get frustrated at our inability to understand we need to think of it as an opportunity to learn just a little bit more.

About the Author

Ken O’Brien has over 12 years experience in language teaching and education. He runs http://www.educatedlinks.com, a website of educational links, articles and other resources. He also speaks a number of foreign languages.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Classic Chinglish Cockups

david — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:11:00 +0000

Chinglish is widely recognised as being the hybrid of Chinese and English, often creating mesmerising results. I’ve been lucky enough to have been in email correspondence with Jimmy Ng, who I’m pleased to say is a regular reader of the blog. He sent me the following clip, which had me on the floor in stitches:

Thanks again for this, Jimmy!

It the video clip doesn’t work, click here.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

What materials do you need to teach?

david — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:51:00 +0000

As ever, a video clip is worth a thousand words…

Here is another informative clip from madridteacher.com

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.