Portonovo Workshop

TO ALL TEACHERS WHO ATTENDED MY WORKSHOPS IN PORTONOVO AT THE END OF AUGUST:

Hi everyone, and first of all, let me apologise for not posting this sooner, but better late than never, and I hope this will be a useful reminder of some of the activities we did in the workshops. Please post a message if you do find this useful or if you have any queries.

Cordiali saluti a tutti!

1. We started by looking at a concordancer, or corpus of language. The one we practised with was this one:
http://www.collins.co.uk/corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx
which has the advantage of offering 40 examples only of the item requested (some sites have hundreds of examples and this can be off-putting, even for the teacher, and definitely so for the learner!
We tried it with ‘worth’ (to produce the ‘worth doing’ structure) and also with so and such, to see the patterns so + adjective and such (a(n)) + adjective + noun. I use it to develop students’ awareness of language, to let them see language patterns without me giving them the ‘answers’, but it is also a useful reference tool for teachers when you might have a doubt about a certain structure or usage.

2. We talked about blogging: many teachers already use a class blog for updates, to encourage class writing and communication and also class bonding. To start your own blog, with simple step-by-step instructions, look at https://www.blogger.com/start

Laura, if you read this, please upload a link to your excellent class blog which you showed us briefly….

3. We looked at some online dictionaries, including the Cambridge University one: www.dictionary.cambridge.org and then mentioned Wiktionary for comparison (which tends to have the very latest words and expressions – the example we tried was ‘chav’): http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page
...and finally, we looked at the site below, where you can paste any text of your choice into the text box and then click on any word in your text to open a window with a definition of the word:
http://personal.telefonica.terra.es/web/chrisfry/test/pinkfloyd.htm
Finally, to make sure your ‘street English’ is completely up-to-date, try this site on the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1130_uptodate2/page14.shtml

4. Flash games
We looked at http://questfortherest.com and then talked about the need to exploit ‘fun’ sites such as these, which are very attractive to young learners (and to many adults) but don’t have any language input as such. If you want an example of a worksheet to produce language when using the site, please leave a comment or mail me direct at mikeonei@gmail.com

I also have another worksheet, to exploit the site http://www.samorost2.net/


5. Pronunciation
A good pronunciation website is http://www.howjsay.com - you just type your word into the box and click on submit. When the word appears in pink, you simply hover it with the cursor to hear the correct pronunciation. Try it as a team game, using all the usual ‘candidates’ – society, report, interesting, chaos etc.!

6. We then looked at exploiting news sites for topical issues: two very good ones are:
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ , which offers warm-up activities, reading and listening exercises, gap-fills, post-reading discussions and lots more… much more than you could possibly need! It also has podcasts – see section 8 below
(for example, click here for a very recent story about a new service offered by gmail!).
…and there’s also a very good BBC site - a section called Words in the News, with a new story every 3 days or so:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/newsenglish/witn/archive_2008.shtml The text which appears is also the tapescript, so students can read the story, listen to it or both, of course, and there is a glossary of difficult items. For instance, click here for a very interesting story about an elementary school in Turin which is going to replace all its books with PCs!

We talked about the usefulness of keeping your own archive for sites such as the two above, which you are likely to access on a regular basis. To create your own archive, simply create a table with 3 columns, then go to the site to find a story you are interested in and copy the URL (website address. Now put the date in column 2 and write 'Click here'in the third column. Highlight the word ‘here’ and then insert a hyperlink (Ctrl + K on the keyboard): paste in the address of the story in question. Put a clear title for the document in column 1 of the table.It may be a good idea to archive stories both by chronological order and by topic, which may be more useful for linking with your coursebook etc.

If you would like a ready-made archive for Words in the News , please leave a comment or mail me direct at mikeonei@gmail.com


7. Sentence Mix
We then looked at a site which can save teachers a lot of time and trouble – it’s a template for making sentence ordering exercises easily and quickly.
All you have to do is type sentences (or paste them from another document) into the top box, then click the arrow key and the program will jumble up the sentence for you and add a question number. Then click on print - your exercise will fit onto a sheet of A4 – so simple!
http://www.parapal-online.co.uk/resources/sentencemix.html

8. Podcasts
We then moved on to Podcasting. What is a podcast? Geoff Taylor of St. Clare’s, Oxford, explains what it is and how it can help the EFL student:
http://bardwellroad.podOmatic.com/entry/2006-01-11T13_49_18-08_00

If you want to read more about podcasts and podcasting, see this Guardian article from 22/01/06:
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/opinion/story/0,,1690887,00.html

and this one from the BBC (‘In Pod We Trust’):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4508329.stm
and these from edublog:
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/mfle/creativeteaching/podcasting/index.asp

http://www.bobsprankle.com/bitbybit/podcast/bitbybit071705.mp3

...and here are a few more good examples of podcasts to check out
www.eltpodcast.com/index.html simple, basic conversations - first at normal speed, then slowed down

http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/podcast.html ready to use EFL podcasts on news stories

http://www.splendid-learning.co.uk/podcast/index.html
this Flo-Joe Radio Podcast is based on the weekly newsletter sent out to students preparing for the Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) Exam.

9. Simulations
This site is another Flash game, but we looked at it under the heading of ‘simulations’:
www.zapdramatic.com/mod1.htm
It’s an excellent one about moral dilemmas: what would you do in the terrible situation depicted in the story? The story takes different courses depending on what choices students make...

10. Wikis
...and to finish our session, we mentioned wikis – a collaborative web site which users can edit.
http://www.archive.org/details/Pbwiki101YourGuideToWikiBasicsapril22
Click on Windows Media in the View Movie box. It shows you what a wiki is & can do. (N.B. Start at about 07.00m on the video)
Here’s an example of a wiki set up by teachers to share materials and ideas: http://websiteoftheweek.pbwiki.com

11. Finally, if you are puzzled by some of the jargon used in connection with ICT, the following BBC page will be of great help to you:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/course/jargon/a.shtml