Lydia's blog

A month ago I set up a blog for my daughter to help her with her English, but also to give a sense that we live in a wider world. When she sees the comments people leave on her blog or checks out the counter she realises that there is a whole, wide world beyond the boundaries of her neighbourhood.



So check out this week's thrilling episode of BarbieForever2007.

Seven days, seven photos - the Flickr group.

I decided to set up a Flickr group with the basic idea of seven days, seven photos. If you want to join click here.

Seven days, seven photos

A bus passing by.

On Tuesday university students closed down Egnatia St and held a party. This was one of the bands playing on a stage that overlooks the road opposite the Trade Fair.

Lydia engrossed in one of her favourite sites on the internet. Basically, she's teaching herself to read in English in this way. I did the same thing with comics when I was her age.

This was taken in the local park on Clean Monday. The council had organised free food and entertainment and this lady was sat next to me eating her souvlaki and bread.

Taken in the train station, before I was asked to leave. Apparently, you need special permission from the station manager to take pictures.


Outside the railway station here in Thessaloniki. Permission not needed for these photos.

Hateful Graffiti on wall near the PAOK basketball stadium. I won't translate it, suffice to say these neanderthals have a vocabulary as limited as it is vicious.

More photos

All photos grabbed in a couple of breaks I had between lessons today.

Pale Blue Dot

There are time when I stand in awe, speechless at the stuff coming out of YouTube. Here is an amazing video I came across thanks to TooManyTribbles. This is the kind of stuff I'd love to be able to make.



Video by Icecorescientist.

Today's photo

Some classroom have views that inspire. Others however.......

Teaching EFL/ESL using headlines

The basic idea is to use newspaper headlines n order to get students to ask questions and write the opening paragraph of a news story. This is aimed at intermediate students and above and will probably need 15 to 30 minute depending on the level of your students and the length of the article you choose.

Lesson Plan

1 Ask students what's the weirdest news story they heard recently. Student question each other about what the story is about.

2 Write a strange headline on the board (click here and here for some sites that have such stories every day). For example;

"Please don't invite us to your wedding, couple says"

3 Ask students what the story might be about.

4 Now explain that when a journalist writes a story the first paragraph has to answer five questions;

who
what
where
when
why

5 The students then write down their five questions, e.g. Who doesn't want to go to a wedding?"

6 They write down their own opening paragraph which answers their own questions.

7 Students check each others writing and make suggestions about how the story could be improved.

8 Give a photocopy of the original story and ask them to compare and contrast their version with the original.

"BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Fed up with spending too many weekends going to weddings, an Argentine couple took out a paid announcement on the social pages of a major newspaper expressing their desire for some social neglect."

Using the internet to teach young learners English

Every weekend I help my daughter with her English. The idea is that we do things together that will help her with her reading and writing. As she goes to a Greek school she gets plenty of practice with these skills in Greek, however, they haven't started English yet. I thought that it would be a good idea to expose her to written English through books, games and the web. Her favourite sites are PollyPocket, MyScene and the British Council's Learning Kids. So, here is a short video showing how we used an activity from the Council's site in conjunction with Google Earth.

To see the activity we were using click here.

I'm willing to try any approach as long as it keeps her interest and enthusiasm for learning alive. Too much of what is taught crushes learners natural curiosity about the world around them.

Student protests - Greek style.

Today the protesting students at the university decided to take their sit-in to the streets and closed off Egnatia in order to have an impromptu party, complete with live music, jugglers and barbecue. I took the pictures while killing half an hour before my lesson at school.

To find out more about why they are protesting click here or here.

Pics de jour

YouTube

I just took a look at my YouTube page and I've had 20, 000 visitors since I set it up in October. Cool!!!

Clean Monday

Today was Clean Monday or Kathara Deutera in Greek. It sees the start of the Greek Orthodox Lent and is marked by many different traditions. The most visible one is people flying kites, though this year the lack of strong winds meant that most of the them, at least in my neighbourhood, remained stubbornly grounded.

A chill out list

I was just making a list in itunes today of stuff that that help me unwind and relax. What do you listen to ?

1 I Will Follow You into the Dark by Death Cab For Cutie.
2 Rue St Vincent by Yves Montand
3 Two by Konstantinos Vita
4 Old Man by Neil Young
5 The Piano Has Been drinking by Tom Waits
6 Help Yourself by Death in Vegas
7 Midnight Cowboy by John Barry
8 Life on Mars Seu Jorges
9 Coming Back to Me by Jefferson Airplane
10 Mad world by Michael Andrews.

Good night and sweet dreams.

Preparing for the CPE interview

Here's an activity I've been using with my exam classes over the last few years. The idea is that you use a digital camera (or video camera if you have the cash) to record an exam style interview.I then, either give them a CD with the interview on it or post it on their blog. They then look at it and we discuss it together in the next lesson.

Even in a large class you can do this, the trick is to make sure that the other students have something to do otherwise they get bored and restless very quickly. Here are two ideas:



Idea 1

A Get the students to copy down everything you say to those being interviewed.

B They then work together to write down a complete list of questions and instructions which they will use to interview each other.

Idea 2

A Give the students the handout below with CPE do's and don'ts and go through it, giving examples and explanations where necessary.

B Then do the interview with two students.

C The others listen and note down what the interviewees did right or wrong according to the handout.

D Students then discuss their notes with those interviewed in groups.

CPE interviews do's and don'ts

PART ONE


1 Be friendly, be polite. This is a chance to show the examiners how well you can speak English, not a fight to the death.

2 Learn some words that may come up, e.g. the name of the subject you are studying or the job you want to do in the future.

3 DO NOT learn a little speech by heart. It sounds unnatural and you'll get even more nervous than you need to be trying to remember it.

4 Keep eye contact with the examiner. That means looking him or her in the eye rather than staring at your shoes or some point on the wall behind them.

5 Remember there are no wrong answers here, only well- expressed and badly expressed ones.

6 DO NOT give short, monosyllabic answers, nor tell them the story of your life.


PART TWO


1 If you don't understand the question ask the examiner to repeat it. You'll not lose marks for this. However, you will lose marks for answering the wrong question.

2 Move your chair so that you are facing the other person. Remember what we said about eye-contact.

3 Start with a question, not a monologue.

4 Listen to what the other person says, comment on it, ask them questions.

5 Disagree with the other person whatever they say. It's always easier to have something to say if we disagree.

6 Give the other person chance to speak. You'll lose marks if you monopolise the conversation.

7 DO NOT stop speaking until the examiner tells you that your time is up.


PART THREE (part one)


1 Make sure you understand the question before you start speaking. If necessary, ask the examiner to explain it.

2 Give yourself a few moments to think about what you want to say.

3 Remember there are no wrong answers. Nobody expects you to be an expert on the subject of the question.

4 Feel free to ignore the prompts suggested. You do not have to use them, if you do not wish.

5 DO NOT stop speaking until the examiner tells you that your time is up.

6 Listen to what the other person says as you will be asked to comment on it.


PART THREE (part two)


7 Remember the longer questions asked towards the end of this part are always connected with the topic discussed in the prompt cards.

8 Give full answers, not just short, monosyllabic ones

9 Comment on what the other person says, use their name.

10 There are no wrong answers, only badly-expressed ones.

Seven days - seven photos

Carnaveli

Carnavali is something like Mardi Gras, an opportunity to dress up and have a party. Lydia had her own party "maske " (fancy dress, to you and me) last night. As you can see everyone had a great time.
Photo effect courtesy of Mosaic Maker.

Science fiction to science fact - a case study

It's strange how sometimes very disparate strands and ideas suddenly form themselves into a coherent thread. I was in a lesson last talking about using Skype with one of my students, a senior doctor in a hospital here in Thessaloniki when he mentioned that the already knew about the idea of teleconferencing as the hospital had just set up a regular link with another clinic in which doctors would be able to take part. Then again, he added he'd first come across this technology in action more than ten years ago in a conference in Spain.

I suddenly remembered that I'd read that the idea of using phones to transmit images was not a new one and that it had first been presented in the 60's. After a little googling I found out that the Picturephone was first presented to the public by AT&T in 1964. However, when it came out commercially in the 70':

"It was a disaster. People queued in droves to avoid buying it. What happened? Part of the reason was the cost. Picturephone was not cheap: $125 per month plus $21 per minute. Also, there was the problem of how you use a picturephone when you're one of the very few people who have one. Without a compelling reason to think that people were going to sign up for picturephones real quick you're faced with the reality that there's a whole lot of nobody to talk to out there.

Whatever the reasons, the picturephone limped along briefly and then was quietly pulled at a loss of $1 billion."

Tales of Future past

Later on, with the advent of the internet the idea was revived in the form of the videophone in the 90's. Once again expensive specialised equipment was needed and the the price was beyond the means of most consumers. I remember working in a school were they had such a system which scandalised us all as it cost over a million drachmas (or six months wages for most of us). Once again the technology remained unused and quickly was taken away.

What has changed now is that with the introduction of voip applications such as Skype we can now have the same kind of communication for almost nothing. If you have a computer and a broadband connection then all you need is a headset and a webcam. (my equipment cost me 25
euros in total).

As far as education is concerned check out Vicki Davis's great post on using Skype to bring in outside expertise to our classrooms here. Also check out how an Electronic Peace Corp could transform education (and not only) in developing countries here .

In the centre

The weather today was grey and gloomy. Hence the black and white.

Teacher Dude goes public

I've decided to join the 2000 Bloggers project for no better reason than it seems a cool ideal. I'd like to thank Devious Diva for putting me onto it. However, there are two rules about joining;

1 You must have a photo of yourself on the blog.

2 Your blog must have been created prior to January 1st 2007.

So, here's the Dude in all his faded glory.

Mosaic Maker

Check out this wonderful application for Flickr.

Using pictures to revise vocabulary

A couple of weeks I posted an idea about how we can use Flickr to help students with their basic vocabulary. I also thought that this would work well with more advanced students and indeed it does when describing concrete nouns (i.e. things we can actually see and touch) or action verbs such as "crash", it is not so great with other words e.g.invincible is very hard to explain just using a picture.

However, what we can do is use the internet to help students revise items they've already covered in their course books etc. The slide show above uses items from a difficult text I covered with one of my students while doing unit 6 of the Headway Upper - Intermediate course book.

The basic idea is that we go through the items in the usual manner, but when it comes to revising them we use Slide.com to make a slide show with images that illustrate the new word's meaning. As long as the image is meaningful to the student it doesn't matter if its meaning is obscure to you and me. Also, this is not simply a copy and paste exercise as I found out myself when I Googled the different lexical items in the passage in order to find good, representative images. You need to think and search about what you want to show.

The slide show then acts as a visual mnemonic when students need to revise for their unit/term tests.

Using video to improve student's interview performance

Here is Dimitris's and Bill's FCE interview. As you can see, neither of them particularly enjoyed the experience but it is a great learning activity. I'll let them know how they did in more detail next lesson. However, I wanted the rest of the class to comment on their performance on their blog using the ideas and suggestions from the handout below.

PART ONE

1 Be friendly, be polite. This is a chance to show the examiners how well you can speak English, not a fight to the death.

2 Learn some words that may come up, e.g. the name of the subject you are studying or the job you want to do in the future.

3 DO NOT learn a little speech by heart. It sounds unnatural and you'll get even more nervous than you need to be trying to remember it.

4 Keep eye contact with the examiner. That means looking him or her in the eye rather than staring at your shoes or some point on the wall behind them.

5 Remember there are no wrong answers here, only well- expressed and badly expressed ones.

6 DO NOT give short, monosyllabic answers, nor tell them the story of your life.

PART TWO

1 Remember that the question you'll be asked about the photos will have three parts, answer all of them.

2 If you don't understand the question ask the examiner to repeat it. You'll not lose marks for this. However, you will lose marks for answering the wrong question.

3 DO NOT stop speaking till the examiner tells you your time is up.

4 Pay attention to what the other person says as you will be asked a similar question to theirs when they finish.

PART THREE

1 Make sure you understand the question before you start speaking. If necessary, ask the examiner to repeat it.

2 Move your chair so that you are facing the other person. Remember what we said about eye-contact.

3 Start with a question, not a monologue.

4 Listen to what the other person says, comment on it, ask them questions.

5 Disagree with the other person whatever they say. It's always easier to have something to say if we disagree.

6 Give the other person chance to speak. You'll lose marks if you monopolise the conversation.

7 DO NOT stop speaking until the examiner tells you that your time is up.

PART FOUR

1 Remember the questions asked in this part are always connected with the topic in part three.

2 Give full answers, not just short, monosyllabic ones

3 Comment on what the other person says, use their name.

4 There are no wrong answers, only badly-expressed ones.

Here are the questions from the interview. I asked the students to pay particular attention to those in Part 2 and 3.

Taken on a whim whilst returning home from a private lesson. It's a football stadium in the western suburbs of Thessaloniki,

Testing times

Taken today while the kids were taking their mock tests.

Teaching English through football (soccer)

Photo by Heikomeins

To say that I'm not interested in football would an understatement of massive proportions. However, I do realise that is something that many of my students love and so, it gives us a great opportunity to find materials and opportunities for them to practice their English. Here are some ideas about how to use it and so spark some enthusiasm amongst our often, disaffected male teenage learners.

Idea 1

1 Give them a short match description in English and ask them to underline the words and phrases that are used in football e.g. This works best if the article is about their favourite team(s), of course.

2 Then ask them to write their own short description of a game they've seen recently.

Idea 2

1 Go to Garth Crook's dream team page at the BBC football website. Ask them to comment on his choice of players and create their own dream team.

2 Students post their choice on their blog and the other students comment.

Idea 3

1 Ask your students to commentate on a clip from a match from YouTube and record it on the PC or mobile phone. Students then listen to their commentary and if necessary re-record it.


The BBC sports site is an endless source of learning activities as it covers sporting activities from all over the world. As well as written articles there are also radio programmes and podcasts about sport and chat rooms.

Street scene

Taken on Tsimiski st today whilst rushing around the centre paying bills and the like. For more click here.

Thessaloniki for newbies

I just thought I'd re-post these three videos which give a taste of what it is like to live in Thessaloniki, Greece. In each I tried to break through the cliches and stereotypes that seem to hold the city back and give a fresher sense of what the place offers. Let me play Virgil to your Dante.



The music is by Death in Vegas.



The music is from The Persuaders by John Barry.



The music is by The Crystal Method.

Practising what you preach

Here is Lydia's latest blog entry;



You can check out her blog here.

farewell, la contessa.

farewell, la contessa.
Originally uploaded by fetching.

One of the things I love about web 2.0 is the way that you can get a glimpse into other people's lives, to see how extraordinary "ordinary" people can be. Through blogs, podcasts, photo sharing services and the like you can see how the pool of human talent is nothing short of an ocean. For me, Flickr is a chance to see this in practice. So, today take a look at another world, another gorgeous slice of human diversity. Check out Fetching's world.

A postcard from the nineteenth century

Today I was helping my daughter (aged seven) with her homework and she asked me to check put some exercise she'd been given to do over the weekend. As well as the usual times tables she asked me to look at the following activity;

For those of you who don't read Greek, it is a declension of masculine, feminine and neutral nouns in Greek along with with an exercise which asks them to give example of various tenses such as present perfect, future simple etc.

For anyone who studied Latin or Ancient Greek, I'm sure the format is familiar, however, trying to teach young learners in this fashion is madness. It shows an almost total lack of understanding of the way in which children learn. Imagine teaching a second grader English by asking them to list the differences between the present perfect continuous and past simple. The ironic thing is that I can't help my daughter with these exercises because I never bothered to learn the ludicrously complex (not to mention outdated terminology) used to teach syntax in Greek. Instead, I actually went out and used the language to read, write, speak etc.

The exercises Lydia has to do are all set out by the ministry of education and have to be followed to the letter by teachers in elementary school. (see here for the curriculum and material). I'm starting to believe the the school curriculum in Greece is the longest suicide note in history. How is this generation going to compete in a global economy where their peers learn skills at, say ten that they won't till they reach university, if at all?

If you believe that this is an exaggeration then tell me where in the country students in the public education system can do what these American fourth graders can?

A day in the life

Recently, I started lessons with Athena and Vicky who who didn't have the chance to learn much English at school. English will be their third language and third alphabet as they already know Russian and Greek. I'm trying to use many of the new ideas that I've picked up from the internet in our lessons and they seem to be working.

One thing I do insist on is that they record themselves speaking. I cannot stress strongly enough the benefits of getting students to do this. In our lessons that means using the listening exercises from the Headway book we're doing. After every short such exercise I ask them to practice saying them on their own (thankfully, the book has transcripts at the back), recording their performance and, if necessary, redoing it. As most newer mobile phones have audio recording capability no special equipment is needed.

By the way, the 19th century is over

I came across this great video whilst over at Cool Cat Teacher's blog and it just about sums up everything I've been trying to do via my lessons over the last few years. As well as teaching English I've been trying to impart to my students, irrespective of age, how we are now part of a truly global economy and that much of we'll need in the future can not be found in the antiquated education system they have to endure.

Snap

Image by Schilling

I've just added Snap's amazing little widget that allows you to preview where a link goes. Just let your mouse linger for a second or two and a small window with a snapshot of the link's site appears.Cool, not to mention free and easy to add to your blog.