My PLN Interview with Lewis Richards, author of IELTS Advantage: Writing Skills

I’m very pleased to finally accept the challenge laid out many months ago – interview someone in your PLN.  I present to you a guy who isn’t particularly active online… yet.  He doesn’t have a Twitter account and he doesn’t have his own blog… yet.  Hopefully we can change his mind about that soon because I know he’s got a lot of really great ideas to share.

I first met Lewis Richards in 2008 when I started teaching in Portsmouth, England.  With enormous patience, he showed me the ropes with regard to something I was going to have to start teaching soon called Eyelets, or Yelts, or IELTS or something like that. 😉  With another fine colleague of mine, Richard Brown, the two of them set themselves the goal of writing a coursebook.  IELTS Advantage: Writing Skills is the result.

So without further ado, I present a multi-talented Lewis Richards!

The Standard 5 Questions

1.  If your students were to describe you with 3 adjectives, what would they be?

Hopefully, passionate about teaching, fun, hard-working.  But I reckon some would also say strict!

2.  What would we find in your refrigerator right now?

Not a lot.  Leftovers.  Rotting vegetables.  It’s lucky you can’t see it, really.  (Gordon – I know this can’t be true because Lewis is actually a very good cook!)

3.  If you weren’t a teacher, what might your profession be?

Hard to say, I’ve been teaching for so long, and enjoy it so much, that I can’t imagine anything else.  But I’ve always enjoyed writing, so maybe journalism.

4.  What do you find most difficult about the teaching profession, or What has been your most difficult class as a teacher?

It might sound cheesy, but I’ve enjoyed every class that I’ve taught.  But I did have a class a few years back in Moscow of total beginners, and a couple of the students couldn’t read or write in Russian, so it was quite tough to teach them English.  We had fun, but I’m not sure we made a great deal of progress.

5.  What was the last book/movie you read/saw, and what have you seen/read way too many times?

At the moment, I’m reading Ian McEwan’s ‘Solar’ – I only started reading his books recently, and I love his style and wit.  The book I re-read the most is Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch 22’, even the hundredth time around it makes me laugh out loud.  A work of genius.

Extra Questions

6.  You’ve just finished writing a book with Richard.  Why did you write it?

Well, both of us have taught IELTS for a long time, about 15 years between us, and we found that although there are lots of good IELTS books on the market, we couldn’t find a single book that made it easy to teach the writing to students.  So we ended up writing our own exercises and material, and over the years accumulated hundreds of our own exercises for the writing part of IELTS.  And it’s worked, our students have always done really well in IELTS, particularly in the writing, so we knew that we were on the right track.

A couple of years ago we thought to ourselves ‘well, why don’t we put all these ideas together into a book’, and so we did.  We hope it will be really useful for students, and help them to get a 6.5 or above in the writing, and also I think the book is great for IELTS teachers – because it contains everything that students need to get a good score, and it’s quite user-friendly, and hopefully easy to teach with.

7.  Who is it for?

We decided to write the book so that students can use it either as a self-study book, because we know that a lot of IELTS candidates just don’t have the time or maybe the money to go to a language school and do an IELTS course.  There are a lot of professional people, like nurses and doctors, who need a high score in IELTS, and have good English, but need help with the writing because it’s quite specialised and technical, but because they are working, they don’t really have time to spend a couple of months in a language school.  I’ve met lots of students who spoke fantastic English, and got a 7.5 or 8 in the speaking part, but couldn’t manage a high score in the writing, because they hadn’t had any training.  Our book will help those people.

Of course, it’s also designed to be used in the class with a teacher – and one of the things we think is really important about the book is that every single exercise in it has been tried out in class many times – so we know that the book works.  The aim in terms of a score, is a minimum of 6.5, hopefully more.  We also drew on our experience as IELTS writing examiners to show students what is required to get these kinds of scores.  One of the things we wanted to put into the book were some real pieces of writing by our students, with our comments and scores, so that students can see what a 7.0 answer, for example, looks like.  We hope that these will be really useful.

8.  Why are neither of you imparting your knowledge through twitter or a blog yet?

Well, just speaking for myself, I’m not very up with the latest technology, I’m more of a paper and pen man, but I know I should drag myself into the 21st century!

9.  What do you like to do to unwind?

I’m really into tennis, I play a few times a week, and find that a really good game gets rid of stress, and keeps me fit.  Beer helps too!

10.  What’s your favourite place in the world?

I think I’d have to say Paris.   Not especially for the landmarks, although it is of course an amazingly beautiful city, but because it was the first place I lived and worked abroad, when I was in my early 20s, and the excitement of learning a language and living in a new culture for the first time is something I’ll never forget.

L'Arc de Triomphe, Paris (Photo from OliverN5 on Flickr)

11.  What do you want to do in the next year and how can I help?

There are several ideas for other books in the pipeline, but it’s a bit early to say exactly what at the moment.  But, probably some more writing, along with teaching, of course.  Feel free to keep talking about our books on your great website!

Final Question

12.  Next time we see each other, whose round is it, what’s everyone having and where will we have it?

Well, I think it’s definitely my round – you’re actually a rare Scot who’s very generous with money, so I’m sure I owe you a few!  Summertime, a nice cold beer, somewhere by the sea sounds perfect!

Looking forward to it! Photo from bovinity on Flickr

Thank you for the interview, Lewis.  I’m sure the book will be a great success and help many students around the world.  Here are the links to the various Amazon sites where the book is available now: IELTS Advantage: Writing Skills on Amazon UK, Amazon France, Amazon Germany, Amazon Canada, Amazon Austria and Amazon Japan.

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For more information from Lewis and Richard about the book, watch these videos:

 

Why I suck at storytelling… and what I need to do to fix it! (Reflections on the August 2011 ABS International Conference, pt 2)

If you clicked onto this page then you are probably interested in storytelling.  So am I.  I think stories in some form or another must represent a large majority of our day-to-day communication: what we did last night, what someone told us once, what you learned from your parents, what the boss told you to do 5 minutes ago.  Not all of these are stories of note, but they are stories nonetheless.

For this reason, I think storytelling is an incredibly important skill and one which learners are hungry to have in L2.

Unfortunately, I suck at it.  As it turns out, I simply didn’t know enough.

Pablo Ponce de Leon’s Talk at ABS

I was very grateful to Pablo Ponce de Leon for his seminar on digital storytelling at the ABS International Conference for ELT Managers and Directors of Studies last Saturday in Buenos Aires.  What I particularly loved was that he didn’t cover the hows and whys of digital storytelling (covered very competently in his handout) so much as the hows and whats of storytelling itself.

I’ve told my classes plenty of times, “Now I want you to write/make a story.”  I recently tried this creativity-heavy exercise myself and it’s really not that easy.  So this left me with a problem; I love stories and I believe they should figure prominently in a lot of our language teaching/learning but I have no confidence in myself to produce an even half-decent story.  We shouldn’t really ask of our students what we cannot do or don’t know how to do ourselves, so I was stuck – no storytelling.

Here are a few symptoms of poor storytelling abilities.  You will probably recognize these as reasons that storytelling activities sometimes fall flat in your class:

• “What should we write about, I don’t have any ideas.” (The infamous blank page!)
• “How many words should it be?” (Perhaps my favourite quote of the whole conference, paraphrased here, “Teenage students tend to see the word count like a prison sentence – counting down the words until they are finished.”)
• “I’m stuck.  I don’t know what to write next.”
• A boring and un-engaging story
• A poorly structured story, with shifting focus and that is difficult to follow
• A story with an abrupt, unsatisfying end
• A story with no apparent end
• A story with no details (something that reads like a police report)

So how do we fix this?

Like everything else new or challenging, the students need support and structure, in other words, scaffolding.  Like a new essay form, the students need to be aware of every paragraph’s structure, every sentence’s purpose.  That means we, as teachers, need to know this too.

If you pay close attention to Pablo’s case study, Toy Story, in the slides (see slides 14-16) you start to get a better idea about the structure of a modern movie plot.  The point being, and it’s a good one, that the three-act structure usually employed in a Hollywood movie is a familiar structure that is easy to relate to.  So from this we have our structure and quite honestly, I think there is a lot of mileage to be had in an English language class from just exploring, discovering, discussing and picking apart a movie’s structure.

To give you an example, I watched a few of my favourite movies (it was a tough job but someone had to do it).  I believe it is customary here to give a Spoiler Alert and say, if you haven’t seen these movies yet and don’t want to know what happens before you see them, don’t read further (or at least, don’t click for the bigger picture).

So how and where should we use this?

The recommendation for this was simple.  Digital storytelling works best as the end of something, a unit or level, as a way to give closure and to produce something creative.  What I also took from a sample video that was shown is that the grammar point doesn’t need to be complicated for digital storytelling projects to be worthwhile.  A slideshow of few pictures with some present simple narration, either text or voice, is a fantastic achievement for a low-level student (a visual family tree, for example).  We were also reminded that “the journey is as important as the destination” and that the process, of course, yields its own language learning opportunities.

A warning we were given was that student projects, if they are young learners, should not be made public, through youTube for example (of course youTube has privacy settings that still make it a viable way to share class videos).  There is a temptation to publicize the great work that our young learners do, but I couldn’t agree more with the speaker here – we have to be very careful what goes out into the public domain.

For a more creative project at higher levels, the following procedure was suggested (see slide 23): submit a story outline, go into preproduction, continue with production, finish off with post-production work and then take pride in your work during its presentation.  We were also given homework, again!  (I’ll learn from this because I haven’t been giving homework in my PD seminars.)  We were told to download Microsoft Photostory 3 and start playing around with it.  I’ve got to apologize to Pablo here and say, no, I haven’t downloaded and tried it out yet – but I’m about to move country so I’ve got a few other things on plate.  BUT, I will because apparently it is very easy to use.

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Microsoft actually has a very detailed pdf, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom, that provides links to real examples of students work along with a step-by-step ‘how to’.

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Pablo Ponce de Leon’s experience inside and outside of ELT, as a teacher as well as professional screenwriter/producer/director made his talk something really informative which answered a very simple yet difficult question: how to I tell a good story?  Even in Microsoft’s guide, the tendency in the activity plan is to simply say “identify the key elements, and arrange them into a beginning, a middle and an end” or “Collect/sort/decide which ideas to pursue”.  This is simply not enough scaffolding for students or their teachers, but now I will be far more confident to plan out and try not only a digital storytelling project but just a storytelling project with my students.

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I’ll let you know how it goes.

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You can follow Pablo on Twitter (@storybusiness), on his blog (HUX Consulting) or on his website (The Story Business).

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Thanks Pablo!

 

Wrong Side of the Bed (A Video Activity Plan)

This is an enjoyable little lesson activity that could really spice up the somewhat dull topic of morning routines.

1. Elicit from the students English surrounding the topic of morning routines.  Get it up on the board.
2. Get them thinking about whether every morning is exactly the same, whether every day is exactly the same.  They should soon be talking about good days and bad days.
3. Ask the students if they can suggest what the phrase “Get up on the wrong side of the bed” might mean. (There are usually similar phrases in the students’ L1.)*
4. Divide the students into pairs.  Arrange them so that the pairs are facing each other, with only one partner facing the board, or wherever you are going to display the movie.  You are probably familiar with this technique.  One partner will watch the movie and describe everything they see as they see it and the other partner has to write it down.
5. Tell them they are going to watch a short video using a lot of the ‘morning routine’ vocabulary that they came up with.  The whole class will see the first 12 seconds.  This helps them to understand that the video is going to look at two alternative realities.
6. Go through a practice run with the students describing to each other what they saw.
7. Watch it again so the students can practise observing and describing at the same time as well as dictating the notes.  Get one half of the class to focus on the left story, the other half to focus on the right.
8. Run through the video once.
9. Get all the writers together to compare and build their notes.  Get all the speakers together for them to ask the teacher questions about specific vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
10. Run through the video a second time.
11. Get the pairs to look over the notes together.  Can the watcher give any last help or piece of information?
12. Get writers to read what they have.  Write up any errors you hear and open the floor to corrections. Also make sure to write up good phrases and chunks of language as well – never good to just focus on the mistakes.
13. Get the whole class to watch the video.  (By this point the writers will want to see the video.)

* It would not be a waste of time to pay attention to these various counterpart L1 phrases.  Maybe get them on the board, or get the students to write it (or them, if there are multiple L1s).  A little bit of translation work to make the various phrases accessible would certainly help the students to remember it and if it is a multi-cultural/multi-lingual class there are obviously other benefits to students each taking a turn to present just a smidgeon of their culture.

Dramatic Finish (for those teachers brave enough and depending on your group)

The students are going to devise and act out their own ‘wrong side of the bed’ day.  But first, get one of the students to read this summary of the story out, one line at a time.  The teacher acts out these plot points.  The reason for this is to give a model and help students not feel so self-conscious.

• The alarm goes off.
• The man turns off the alarm… but accidentally breaks his glasses at the same time.
• The man gets dressed… but trips over while putting his trousers on.
• The man opens the curtains… but they fall off the rail.
• The man makes some toast… but it is burnt.
• The man washes his hands… but the water splashes all over him.
• The man leaves his house… but his scarf is caught in the door.
• The man is shouting at a homeless man… and his wallet is stolen.
• The man wants to eat an apple on the way to work… but he forgot it.
• The man is knocked down… but a lady helps him up.

While there is a temptation to pick all this English apart and analyze it with the class, your students can only assimilate a certain amount at one time.  Maybe just focus on the vocabulary or the use of ‘and’ and ‘but’, or a few phrases like ‘get dressed’, ‘open the curtains’, ‘on his way to…’.

So after this model acting, get the class into groups, give them some time to work on a ‘worst-case scenario’ morning of their own and make sure they have an actor and one or more narrators.  Float around the class now feeding in phrases and chunks as and when needed.

If you do this part, make sure you allow enough time for every group to perform!

Enjoy.

 

Neil McMahon’s “Professionally Developing” (Reflections on the August 2011 ABS International Conference, pt 1)

I’ve just got back from my first conference this year. Disgraceful, I know, considering it’s already August!  Actually, I’m very lucky to have made it to this one, the ABS International Conference for ELT Managers and Directors of Studies, just before I return to Britain next month, thanks to colleague Celeste Batto. And I’m very glad I did made it because it gave me the opportunity to finally meet one of my digital PLN in person.

Neil McMahon has been part of my PLN for a while now and it was great to finally meet someone who, up to now, had just been a small box on Twitter.  Neil was giving a talk on professional development which I really appreciated and I’ll tell you why: it confirmed I am on the right track more or less, it gave me more information on course options available for further development, it filled in some gaps in my knowledge and it has given me some direction and focus for my next teaching project.

Before I go into any more details I’ll come clean and say that this post, a review of the talk, is actually homework given by Neil – yes, there was homework!  Homework #3: “share the ideas in the conference with your peers”.  If I’m completely honest, Neil, I was going to write this anyway but it’s good to know I’ve got your blessing. 🙂

So a lot of avenues for professional development were covered, all of which I won’t go into here but one in particular that piqued my interest was action research.

Action Research

Time being short we had to choose from the handout what we wanted to know about in more detail (a dogme presentation of sorts?).  Along with many other attendees I raised my hand for ‘action research’, mainly because I had a vague idea about what it might be but really was just guessing.

So boiled right down, action research is a project whereby one specific ingredient in the class is added or changed to see if it has a measurable positive effect.  This one change must be based on a specific hypothesis or question with the goal of proving or disproving it after a set period of time, like a month or a semester.  Here is a silly, basic example:

“Will the giving of a cookie to everyone who arrives on time improve the timekeeping of my students?”

Ideally you would have two groups in similar need of improvement, one is asked to improve timekeeping and rewarded with cookies, the other is just asked to improve timekeeping.  This second group is the control group and at the end of the month or however long you choose, the two groups are compared to measure for change.

So why do I like this?

Students tend to have a beginning, a middle and an end; the end coming in the form of a certificate, big exam, dramatic production, etc.  However, teachers often don’t have this end.  Even a new year is often a repeat of the previous year and new students still need to prepare for the same old exams in many cases.  However, something like an action research project can provide that arc and closure to a period of teaching.  It also turns the teacher back into a far more active learner of their profession.  It provides a wonderful opportunity to inject some enjoyment and interest back into your teaching, especially if you are tiring from doing the same level/course year in, year out.  On top of all this, such a project can provide a finished product to be shared with your peers for them to read, consume, consider and benefit from.

One other excellent point raised was that such research lends itself to closer work and collaboration with colleagues as one of you might teach the control group while the other does the experimental teaching, with collaborative assessment, review and write up.  I look forward to an opportunity to implement this soon.

Twitter, Blogs and PLN

It was reassuring when Neil moved onto this topic and highly recommended it.  I’ve been convinced of the benefits and opportunities afforded us by these amazing tools, but it’s always nice to hear someone else champion the cause as well.  He mentioned the recent online debate about EFL teachers as professionals or tradesman.  I’ve got to own up and say I missed that discussion but an idea put forward in the talk was that professional development was the tool by which we as teachers continue to improve, stay fresh and keep our work interesting, both for ourselves and for our learners.  I’m not sure if this really addresses the question of professional vs tradesman as both, if they are dedicated, will continue to actively grow and hone their skills.  Another suggestion I found on Twitter from Neil was this,

“twitter is the realm of the tradesman, perhaps you need to blog to let your professionalism out?”

It is here where I will put forward an idea of my own, which might be a little controversial.  Twitter, blogs and a virtual PLN are professional development for people who are serious about professional development (PD), those who only do the conferences and leave it at that are falling short of how much they could be developing.  Please don’t misunderstand me here.  I like conferences.  I enjoyed this one.  I think they have an important place in PD.  However, even Neil McMahon in his talk admitted that sometimes the most rewarding parts of a conference are the chats we have and the connections we make during the coffee breaks.  Well, those chats and connections are my digital PLN on Twitter and the blogosphere and I’ve loved every minute of it!  (Thank you to all of you!)

I think what puts people off further PD through a virtual PLN is how time consuming it can become.  “I just never have time.” is something I’ve heard far too often.  Further to this, there is no certificate awarded for 10 hours spent reading teaching blogs or for contributing and debating on #eltchat.  I find the idea of certificates for a conference somewhat ridiculous to be honest.*  I got one from this ABS conference and it probably won’t make it into my suitcase for my return to Britain.  Not because I didn’t value the conference, far from it, but the conference is the start of a chapter in my professional development, not the end, so a certificate to say “Congratulations, you started!” seems to be rewarding achievement before it’s happened.

I thoroughly enjoyed this seminar by Neil McMahon (check out his blog here, A Muse Amuses) and the whole conference in fact.  From the 15 pages or so of notes I’ve got plus a list of websites to get further handouts and view presentations again, I’ve got a lot to think about, consume and try out.  Thank you Neil and thank you Laura Lewin, coordinator of the event, for providing me with so many ideas to think about, organize and act on over the coming months of my teaching.

* I discussed this with a colleague of mine who informed me that career development and promotion for teachers in Argentina is based on a points system, these points being achieved by going to events such as these conferences or other extra-curricular activities.  Hence, the certificates act as necessary proof to aid career advancement.  OK, I understand the obsession over certificates that I’m seeing a little better now… however, I’m worried that it has moved the focus of PD from development of abilities to accumulation of certificates.

P.S.  Having read over my post I feel the need to make clear – this is definitely not an attack on conferences.  I’ll reiterate my point that Twitter, blogs and the virtual PLN define a teacher who is serious about professional development and that those who are only attending the odd conference and not following that up with one or all of these web tools are really kidding themselves.  This might seem harsh but I also reckon I’ll get away with it since anybody reading this blog, by definition, falls into my category of “serious about PD” 🙂

 

My Charity Challenge Video is now on YouTube

If you don’t already know, over June I was working like crazy to try and memorize 1000 new words and phrases in Spanish to be tested by my students (Argentinian teenagers) in the hopes that every correct word would raise money through sponsorship.  Here is the video of how it went, how we did it and why we did it.  Enjoy.

For more information, visit this page for all of my videos and posts about the event.

 

Photocopier or No-to-copier

Is a step away from photocopiers a step forward? (Photocopier photo from net_efekt on Flickr)

Yes, this title is taken from Luke Meddings.  I recently saw his British Council Lecture, 20 steps to teaching unplugged (see the video at the end of this post).  In it, he advocated that we should be using texts which are short enough to dictate.

“There’s really no need for photocopiers.  They cause so much trouble.”

This sentiment is reflected in Tom Walton’s comments on his blog;

“I never use the photocopier, the learners create, not merely consume — and especially they don’t consume photocopies!”

For the last six months I’ve been working at a school that doesn’t have a photocopier.  I knew this was the case before arriving and actually looked forward to the challenge.  However, after six months I’m screaming for a photocopier that is close to hand with five minutes to go until the class starts.   In spite of this, I still feel that Luke Meddings and Tom Walton are correct.  However, this leaves me with a question.

Why do I really want a photocopier?

I’m going to take another nugget of wisdom out of Luke Meddings’s recent talk, referencing a business strategy called “The 5 Whys”.  The basic idea being to approach a problem with the question ‘Why?’ and keep asking that question until you have the underlying cause that needs a solution.

1. So, why do I feel uncomfortable without a photocopier?

Because I can’t make up worksheets or photocopy interesting articles that I read and want to share with my students.

2. Why do I think I need a photocopier for this?

Because it’s something I’ve always used, something I’m used to having and something that I’ve never really questioned the use of.

3. There are alternatives, why do I prefer a photocopier to these alternatives?

Picture from Giugiaro21 on Flickr

OHPs*, IWBs  and Projectors are useful if I have them but sometimes, even if I do have them, I just want to be able to get the text into the students’ hands quickly to get on with the activity.  In contrast to this, Luke Meddings talked about taking texts “at a slower pace” with learners and written resources.

Dictation** is a great activity which practises the learners’ listening, writing and spelling skills and gets them thinking faster if done regularly.  However, again, such work takes time away from other activities that I might want to cover with my students.  Again, a photocopier gets the text into the students’ hands quickly.

4.  Why is it important to give the text to the students quickly?

So that I can get on with the original activity.

5.  Do you think the students benefit from having this photocopy in their possession? (Yes, I know, I’m breaking the rule of it being a ‘why’ question.)

No.  I think a majority of the time texts are not exploited as much as they could be, learning opportunities are missed and photocopies are wasted on activities that would be of far more benefit to the learners if they had to make their own copies in their own writing.

I think this for a number of reasons:

a.  In today’s digital world, physical writing is getting less and less common yet I think that it is a skill we should be helping our learners keep or develop (depending on their age and schooling).  Especially among my teenage students at the moment, writing activities are not welcomed and writing of any kind is avoided wherever possible.  This being the case, it is important to make writing an integral part of as many activities as possible – they need the practice!

b.  I have seen too many photocopies left behind on the table at the end of class, stuffed carelessly into backpacks and pulled out as crumpled messes from backpacks to believe that those photocopies are getting any worthwhile attention outside of class.

c.  The action of writing something down is an action of memorization.  Giving out a photocopy is taking away this opportunity for processing and memorizing new language.

d.  A photocopy holds no worth to many students whereas a text written out in the students’ own hand provides at least some measure of ownership for the learner, regardless of the origin of the text.

Returning to the original question; why am I screaming for a photocopier?

Because it is an easy way out, I wouldn’t need to deal with resistance from my teenage students so often while I ‘force’ them to write.  It would be easier for me, but it deprives them.  By photocopying a whole text I’m also being a bit lazy as a teacher as it requires less thought from me as regards where the focus of my students’ reading is going to be.

So where do I think a photocopier is useful?

I disagree with Tom Walton’s ‘never ever’ stance in one area – longer texts for intensive reading or other academic reading skills necessary for EAP (English for Academic Purposes) or preparation for exams like IELTS or FCE.  It is impractical to dictate texts of up to 1000 words.  It is also unfair to simply display them via projectors, OHPs or IWBs – for various intensive reading activities the students need to have a physical copy, to underline or highlight and to read at their own pace without the pressure of having the majority of a class dictate when to move onto the next page.

Obviously the unplugged approach works from a communicative perspective but not all English language teaching/learning is focused on this skill and where communication is not the priority – a photocopier still comes in very useful.

* Regarding OHPs, click here to watch a great little video by Claire Spooner describing an activity for OHPs.

** For more information on dictation, click here to read Dave Dodgson’s explanation of a dictogloss activity.

Luke Medding’s 20 steps to teaching unplugged

 

IELTS Advantage: Writing Skills – A Review of the Sample Pages

Next month IELTS Advantage: Writing Skills will hit the shelves.  I have to own up to a personal interest in this book as I count the two authors, Richard Brown and Lewis Richards, among my good friends and not only that but they are also exceptionally inspiring teachers whose enthusiasm for their work has certainly rubbed off on me.

You’ll get to meet them in a few weeks when I post my first PLN interviews inspired by Brad Patterson’s challenge which I’m sure anybody who has spent more than a few weeks on the teaching blogosphere will be aware of and if you aren’t, here’s the link to the idea.

However, that’s in a couple of week’s time.  In this post I thought I would go through the pages that Delta Publishing have made available and give a bit of commentary on them.  Each of the links below goes directly to the PDF so just right click and save.

Contents Page

The first thing you’ll notice is that the IELTS Advantage: Writing Skills tackles Task 2 first, reflecting the relative scoring weight of the two parts.  There is some explicit focus on grammar and I think this is necessary considering who the book is written for: higher level learners, upper intermediate and above, students looking to quickly refresh for retaking the IELTS exam or simply for higher level learners who are more in need of exam preparation than English development.

Writing Introductions/Writing Conclusions

I immediately loved the layout of this book.  Not too busy and with a clear progression.  There is no fluff here and each activity has a clear aim that leads on to the next activity.  A feature of this section which I like is its focus on analysis.  These pages start off with reading, getting learners to analyze and think about what makes good, cohesive and coherent writing.  Working from exercises that encourage analysis of the model paragraphs, learners have the framework to build their own well-structured introductions and conclusions.

Model Essay: Problem and Solution/Structure and Linking

The model answer is about 100 words over the minimum 250 needed for a Task 2.  This would be a struggle for those learners aiming for a 5.0 or 5.5 but, as I said, they’re not who this book is for.  Again, the model answer is followed by an exercise that deconstructs the composition, analyzing the purpose and function of each sentence.  This approach of starting with the finished product and then going into detail will work to keep the learner focused on what they ultimately need to produce for themselves.

Maps

In this part, learners are asked to produce a 150-word answer first of all.  Again, there is more reading available but this time the purpose is to provide additional useful vocabulary and phrases that could be inserted into an composition of this kind.

One activity asks the learner to discuss changes in their home town with a partner.  This may be difficult for a learner who is self-studying.  Nonetheless, this speaking/discussion practice is important for writing skills as many students can keep up with their thoughts far better through speaking than through writing.

This being the case, I would encourage self-study students to use their mobile phones and record themselves as they speak about the discussion points on their own.  Getting over the initial cringe factor, I know a lot of learners would benefit from listening and taking notes from what they themselves have said.  The act of note-taking and transcribing their own spoken words as a framework for a written answer is an incredibly useful activity for strengthening and enriching a student’s writing skills.  And it’s not bad practice for their speaking skills either!

That’s all for now.

I hope this has whetted your appetite for the upcoming book.  Be sure to come back to the blog in a few weeks when it will be my pleasure to introduce the authors to you, my PLN, and the teaching blogosphere in general.

If you like what you’ve seen so far, you can ‘like’ IELTS Advantage: Writing Skills on Facebook where you can be kept up-to-date on release information.

 

Something we should think about more often… how green is your Internet?

Just a short, non-teaching-related post.  I saw this video about the carbon footprint of the Internet on Tom Walton’s blog.  Thought it was definitely worth sharing.  Thanks for sharing this Tom!

For the Greenpeace report mentioned in the video, follow this link.

 

Cohesion & Coherence – A Visual Representation

I try not to do this too often – linking one blog directly to my other blog.  If I’m going to have two blogs I should have separate content for two blogs.  However, my most recent post on Understanding How We Learn was actually inspired by a question from a few trainee teachers who needed clarification.  As it turns out, I needed clarification too, as the answer was not immediately clear to me.

So here is my post on my learners’ blog, What is Cohesion & Coherence? 

This was aided by Scott Thornbury’s more in-depth and thorough article for One Stop English, Methodology: Cohesion and coherence.

So I’ve posted the link here as well because I think there are probably a lot of us teachers who might be in need of a bit of clarification.

 

 

 

 

Teenagers learn English out of fear of Chuck Norris!

I’m ashamed that this didn’t occur to me a long, long time ago.  Within the first couple of weeks of teaching teenagers in Argentina, I started to hear mention of Chuck Norris… specifically Chuck Norris Facts.  I never followed up on it but the more I think about it, the more I think that Chuck Norris Facts might be a really good primer for quite a few grammar points as well as improving or reinforcing vocabulary.

Example 1:  A simple warmer where you give out one Chuck Norris Fact to each student.  A simple, fun way to get the class started that could springboard into some interesting, unpredictable discussions.

• Chuck Norris won American Idol using only sign language
• Chuck Norris won the World Series of Poker using Pokemon cards
• Chuck Norris is so awesome he created fire by rubbing two ice cubes together.
• Fear of spiders is arachnophobia, fear of tight spaces is claustrophobia, fear of Chuck Norris is called Logic
• Ghosts sit around the campfire and tell Chuck Norris stories.
• Did you know Chuck Norris had a role in Star Wars……he was the Force.
• Chuck Norris smashed a mirror over a black cat’s head while standing under a ladder, then won the lottery
• There used to be a street named after Chuck Norris, but it was changed because nobody crosses Chuck Norris and lives.

Chuck Norris's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (Image from Flickr)

Example 2:  Highlighting a specific grammar point.  A fun way to try this one would be to give the beginnings/ends of the sentences and get the students to suggest the other half.  Or give each student a mixture and get them to try to match them up.

• Chuck Norris can turn Toast back into Bread.
• Some magicians can walk on water, Chuck Norris can swim through land.
• Chuck Norris can drive, fly, and run… at the same time.
• Chuck Norris can eat rice with one chop stick.
• Chuck Norris can stare at the sun, and the sun goes blind.
• Chuck Norris can write a Dictionary by slamming his face into the keyboard.
• Chuck Norris can send an e-mail with a pencil.
• Chuck Norris can turn a hamburger back into a cow.

Conditionals

• If Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks you, even Google won’t be able to find you.
• If Chuck Norris were to ever run out of ammo, his weapon would continue to fire out of fear of disappointing Chuck Norris.
• If Chuck Norris was in the military, there would be no war.
• If Chuck Norris were to ever bungee jump, the earth would flinch.
• If they made a movie of Chuck Norris standing still, it would be rated R for extreme violence.
• If Chuck Norris were a battery, my cell phone would never die.
• If Darth Vadar and Luke Skywalker were to fight, Chuck Norris would win.

Chuck Norris makes onions cry! (Image from Flickr)

Present Perfect

• Chuck Norris once kicked the Earth, it hasn’t stopped spinning.
• Chuck Norris died 20 years ago but Death hasn’t built up the courage to tell him yet.
• Aliens haven’t visited Earth because they’re afraid of Chuck Norris.
• Chuck Norris has found the end of the rainbow.
• Chuck Norris has only lost to one man… himself.
• Do you know how many push ups Chuck Norris has done?  All of them.
• Chuck Norris has lit a fire at the bottom of the lake… with matches.

Used to

• February used to have thirty days. Then it met Chuck Norris.
• The Black Eyed Peas used to be called “The Peas”… until they met Chuck Norris.
• There used to be a street named after Chuck Norris, but it was changed because nobody crosses Chuck Norris and lives.
• There used to be life on Mars. Then Chuck Norris came along…

I got these from http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com.  There are similar lists on the internet for Jack Bauer and Vin Diesel (two other action heroes) but these lists contain a lot more swearing and questionable content.  The Chuck Norris list is, for the most part, good clean fun but I would probably not just go onto the website in class.  Also be aware that some of the jokes will be offensive to any students who are highly religious.

Obviously, it doesn’t take much work to change the name to someone more relevant so these jokes can be adapted to whoever is fashionable among your teenagers… just don’t let Chuck Norris know that you replaced his name. 🙂