tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78010085465116680252024-03-19T22:39:35.913-07:00Teacher's Petlesson ideas, activities, eflAnastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-46012129810730301512015-07-29T10:25:00.000-07:002015-07-29T10:25:25.045-07:00What's new in my life<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I haven't written in a while and although I have plenty of time and plenty of thoughts to write about I feel this holds me back. There is a transition I haven't really announced (at least in a blogging world) and it feels strange to continue writing without acknowledging the change. In the end of May I moved to <b>California, US</b> to be with my family.<br />
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So it's been already 2 months and I finally started feeling more or less settled. So a quick update on what I've been up to:<br />
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<li>Took up <b>volunteering</b> at a local<a href="http://www.rescue.org/" target="_blank"> IRC </a>- an organisation that helps refugees from all over the world to settle in the states. I volunteer in the ESL program twice week and I have a small group of students from the Middle East (and recently one person from Ukraine). That's a development I'm really happy about since my biggest concern coming here was my job and continuing teaching and I was and still am worried about job opportunities for me here (hello NNESTs!). But the important thing is that for now I can at least continue teaching which feels great. It is also my first experience teaching without knowing students' L1! I'll definitely write more about that.</li>
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<li>Continuing my <b><a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.com/2014/12/skype-lessons_30.html" target="_blank">skype lessons</a></b>. I started working with <a href="http://www.italki.com/" target="_blank">italki website</a> and I managed to find a few students through it, which is, again, a completely new experience for me. I have many more online classes than I had before so there is a big learning curve here as well. I've also been thinking more and more about developing my own thing online, which requires me to put my businesswoman hat :) I'm not sure if I'm made for it but trying it is surely fun.</li>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGJjL5VnYNoxSSqALwavYfiCMqL0-mtQAlisiWUB6pYW3ftVbyT4mftMkWzU-1h_P680TMELGmoa22MuRuBOhZojrfPU7jq4C4miTPmycpK2kOVgTMWjQtODTfY3fslmjEym3B0ztxgeI/s1600/DSC02819.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGJjL5VnYNoxSSqALwavYfiCMqL0-mtQAlisiWUB6pYW3ftVbyT4mftMkWzU-1h_P680TMELGmoa22MuRuBOhZojrfPU7jq4C4miTPmycpK2kOVgTMWjQtODTfY3fslmjEym3B0ztxgeI/s640/DSC02819.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">mingling with the locals</td></tr>
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<li>Writing <b>esl articles.</b> I started writing for a Russian website after <a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.com/2015/03/emf5.html" target="_blank">E-merging forum</a>. It's a website for a local bookshop in Saint-Petersburg where I've contributed couple of articles (in Russian). Here is one on <a href="http://www.britania-spb.ru/articles/1264-lessons-observation" target="_blank">observation</a>, <a href="http://www.britania-spb.ru/articles/1256-professional-development" target="_blank">professional development</a> and <a href="http://www.britania-spb.ru/for-students/1277-cambridge-exams" target="_blank">2015 changes in Cambridge exam</a>s. Be sure to check out the store if you're in St. Petersburg!</li>
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<li> Signed up for <a href="http://www.catesol.org/" target="_blank">CATESOL</a> . I've never been a part of an esl organisation, but for some reason I was compelled to join California branch of TESOL. So far it is a trial membership which means I basically only get a newsletter, but I hope it will allow me to get in contact with esl teachers over here.</li>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUJK5G1NhRPPnKELp1VQrhXckA_u1yhpwJ22fWIn7FVNlJrcaswtlZyk0R50EGLXhrlf7SMlGxt3gqphcP0G27OGjYiN0jenSMQI6mkWc5ENjXmVtYXnGXzyhmMbE3MTA4BXeoFGW0Ydg/s1600/DSC02606.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUJK5G1NhRPPnKELp1VQrhXckA_u1yhpwJ22fWIn7FVNlJrcaswtlZyk0R50EGLXhrlf7SMlGxt3gqphcP0G27OGjYiN0jenSMQI6mkWc5ENjXmVtYXnGXzyhmMbE3MTA4BXeoFGW0Ydg/s640/DSC02606.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">food is still my biggest priority</td></tr>
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<li><b>Exploring and discovering</b>. It still feels a little bit like a holiday (hot weather doesn't help) and everything is fairly new to me. That's why we're trying to take advantage of all that California has to offer - food, travelling, entertainment. I don't know exactly when it'll wear out, but most of the time I have a feeling I'm on a big anthropological expedition watching people, their language and their behaviour, sorry, <i>behavior</i>.</li>
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0Северная Америка54.5259614 -105.25511870000003-18.8897046 89.510506299999975 90 59.979256299999975tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-12887453052419168662015-05-22T01:55:00.003-07:002015-05-23T01:06:28.860-07:00Some revelations concerning quizlet ...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
... or practice what you preach.<br />
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I discovered <a href="https://quizlet.com/" target="_blank">Quizlet</a> about a year ago and, like many people, instantly realised what a great service it is. I started recommending it to all my students. Some took up on it very quickly, others were a bit hesitant. So understanding how important proper introduction is I introduced Quizlet to one of my teenage groups in the language school last September.<br />
As I'd expected nobody jumped from their sit, shouted "Eureka!" and started typing away. So I put a word list from our unit there myself and sent a link to everyone. As our vocabulary test was coming up (we write one after each unit) the students started moving and most of them used it for their preparation. It worked (the test results were visibly better too) and the window of opportunity was opened. Next I asked my students to take turns in transferring words to Quizlet. They had to take smaller parts of the units so the work was doable. For the past 8 months my students have been working with the service. And although there were couple of hiccups along the way (somebody forgot to type in the words), overall I felt it was a successful experiment.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5zK586RwkLDZMzx1sEPzHOAM4sCNRjHykzrEwy2UaDwQLnI3a29tfvioT0eWmD-sZRuLp9YgazKc87FweT38RshUS-eCGax06xFJa6v0_A21MH3n6sSizchmwMxEkz9eX7ITeIMTcFA4/s1600/3+309+++Quizlet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5zK586RwkLDZMzx1sEPzHOAM4sCNRjHykzrEwy2UaDwQLnI3a29tfvioT0eWmD-sZRuLp9YgazKc87FweT38RshUS-eCGax06xFJa6v0_A21MH3n6sSizchmwMxEkz9eX7ITeIMTcFA4/s640/3+309+++Quizlet.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">my little zoo</td></tr>
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Now the funny part. I recently decided to use quizlet for my own purposes. As a NNEST I strive to perfect my English in any possible way and I decided to make my vocabulary learning more systematic. I created a folder for a current month and started putting new words there whenever I came across one. The list grew longer, but the surprise came when I started working in a "learn" mode. I sucked so much!!! There was a lesson number one for me<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJY2jpgOLKzB9-9vnpOFZMZLQMdb7k38DMrs-2SAMqaen3QdsLAoWYudJrwyV0uvlA003KVd_RGH2wLLNoINMYpPtKtT81g7jqXsMpMJ3XVC_dtH15-4DClB_C_gLIWSCFfSg-fO97Hw8/s1600/March+2015+flashcards+++Quizlet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJY2jpgOLKzB9-9vnpOFZMZLQMdb7k38DMrs-2SAMqaen3QdsLAoWYudJrwyV0uvlA003KVd_RGH2wLLNoINMYpPtKtT81g7jqXsMpMJ3XVC_dtH15-4DClB_C_gLIWSCFfSg-fO97Hw8/s640/March+2015+flashcards+++Quizlet.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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1) <b>Actually study the words you add.</b> Duuuh, I was totally under the impression that <i>for me</i> it is enough to put it out there and the words will magically appear in my head and stay there forever. Little did I know that rare minds work this way ;) So <i>adding</i> new words have to be followed by <i>studying</i> the words.<br />
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2) <b>Sometimes you need to translate to your native language.</b> This one is funny ironic I usually tell my students, especially at a higher level, to try not to translate the new words but rather understand the definition. Turns out that it doesn't always work. Yes, there are English words and phrases that don't have exact translation to Russian or the concept itself is not existent in our language. That said, there are plenty of words (usually synonyms to already familiar words) that I can only remember and understand the exact shade of the meaning only if I translate them to Russian. Some examples include "vehement", "adamant" and "livid'. I realised that your native language is your asset in learning a second language and if you need it to remember a word, don't fight it.<br />
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3)<b> I remember the words that I heard from the video better than the word from the reading.</b> The source of new words for me usually is Internet articles or Youtube videos. I noticed that it is easier for me to remember the word that I got from the video. The process goes like this : I see the word - I remember the video - I remember who said it - I remember the context - bam! i remember the word! Here is the example for the word "conducive" which I heard in Jemima Kirke's psa.<br />
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Not sure how I can use this discovery to help myself or my students, but I'll keep thinking ;)<br />
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4) <b>And, yes, collocations help.</b> I heard the idea from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti-_0eI_Q-Q" target="_blank">Leo Selivan's webinar</a> for IATEFL and I finally got to test it. What I did is I added gapped phrases/sentences to the definitions. I found out that I manage to remember the word in almost 100% of cases. In addition, it provides me with a context the word could be used in.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4nukfgd5TtTGf7VH-rRyFGLYsEewhMDs9kES7CNsF4JmRVdutQtkAb0aGznD-S7oiqlWZRytafSdm6x3ZXdeHtfCh9CQmRc46JpqV5i1Kdb34cG4dmBfG4O8YLUyTChzgV7bYDUwDwDc/s1600/Cards++March+2015+++Quizlet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4nukfgd5TtTGf7VH-rRyFGLYsEewhMDs9kES7CNsF4JmRVdutQtkAb0aGznD-S7oiqlWZRytafSdm6x3ZXdeHtfCh9CQmRc46JpqV5i1Kdb34cG4dmBfG4O8YLUyTChzgV7bYDUwDwDc/s400/Cards++March+2015+++Quizlet.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">definition and example for "to detract"</td></tr>
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Probably, these ideas could be self-evident for somebody, but they weren't for me and maybe somebody will benefit from my observations. But I guess the bottom line here is for teachers to <i>really</i> test the apps and services you recommend to your students. Don't just glance over them and send the link, put yourself in your students' shoes and really try it. If you have some more ideas on how to get the most of Quizlet, I'll be happy to hear them.</div>
Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-19765383395482256182015-04-23T00:56:00.000-07:002015-04-23T00:56:56.483-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Between moving houses and preparing for a bigger move, I had not time to blog or to even read my blogroll. The other day I opened my feedly, saw 140 unread articles and shut it down. But I'm slowly going back to my routine and enjoying all the IATEFL reports and summaries. I have to also admit I haven't been preparing for the lessons as much as I did before. I mean I did sit down and opened the book. But often I just couldn't gather my thoughts, started to panic, search for the ideas in the Internet, search for any ideas in the Internet, making a cup of coffee... well you know how it goes.<br />
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The surprising thing for me was that my lessons weren't that bad. I would even say some of them were pretty good/successful. And then I remembered other times when I spent hours searching for the right material, typing, drawing, printing and then seeing bored faces of my students and feeling a great disappointment in myself. So what the hell happened here? What's the secret for a "good" lesson?<br />
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I guess it's time to define what the good lesson is. For me, it's how the students feel when they leave the class. They feel accomplished because the learnt something, found out something new and interesting, finally got to understand something difficult. They feel cheerful because the atmosphere in class was positive, maybe their pair work went well or they got fired up by the team game we played before. So that loud many-voices chirping exit tells me I did something good!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-aE8Qk2rfi9By8Qu9xgWFZS7bmtLTHCArhZH6440U0yPDTtUokmKswWTqav-qLmhn08paTX7LTtjCZ-o82NFFI-BcxePgMypCi_a6R1R86dnZEKoPaHTDdGn6RSj_D8rPZ6m1x2F0iFc/s1600/7116109027_47dd076885_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-aE8Qk2rfi9By8Qu9xgWFZS7bmtLTHCArhZH6440U0yPDTtUokmKswWTqav-qLmhn08paTX7LTtjCZ-o82NFFI-BcxePgMypCi_a6R1R86dnZEKoPaHTDdGn6RSj_D8rPZ6m1x2F0iFc/s1600/7116109027_47dd076885_z.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Black pencils" eltpics by @JosetteLB</td></tr>
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Now, why has it been happening lately more often? Well, as I said, I didn't have much prepared for each lesson. I mean I have a book but as a rule I always have to prepare something extra, think about all the twists and turns for usual exercises, invent something in order not to get them bored quickly and so on. This time when I didn't have anything special up my sleeve I had to really focus on what was happening in the class and use any chance to engage my students (I know it sounds strange, because that's what teachers are supposed to do in the class). So when I thought we could discuss the news a bit more in the beginning we did and when I thought something was not going well we stopped. And when I saw my students really struggling with topic/supporting sentences and getting frustrated with themselves I was like "Why the hell they need it right now, I'd better have my students sane and happy, then miserable and aware of how to write a "good paragraph".And I allowed myself to talk more, because I wanted to tell a personal story related to the topic and my students enjoyed it because (surprise) they like finding out about their teacher's life. We also played a game which we rarely do because I believe my students are "too old" for that. And surprise again - it went well. So I was alert and I was sensitive to what was happening in the class and flexible to make my students feel comfortable. All because I wasn't prepared enough.<br />
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What happens when you plan "well"? First of all, you're super excited about the activities you prepared and you like them so much you don't even consider changing them a bit. I go through my plan straight and steady as if I'm a solider marching in a parade. I'm so concerned with following the initial plan that I get very upset if we don't have time to do everything or something goes wrong. It can also have something to do with the fact that I'm a control freak.<br />
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I'm not saying teachers shouldn't prepare, but now I do think once in a while we have to come to a lesson under-prepared. We have to get out of the comfort zone just to spice up our lessons and test our skills against this "risky" situation. It maybe really eye-opening as it was for me, But again it can have something to do with the fact that I'm a control freak :)<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6000003814697px;">Photo taken from </span><span style="line-height: 25.6000003814697px;">https://www.flickr.com/photos/eltpics/7116109027/in/set-72157627618575084 </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 25.6000003814697px;">by </span><span style="background-color: #f3f5f6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18px;">@JosetteLB</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 25.6000003814697px;">, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial license, </span><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/" rel="external" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 25.6000003814697px;" target="_blank" title="Creative Commons">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/</a></div>
Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-14418657628734157912015-03-22T00:29:00.002-07:002015-03-22T00:29:54.755-07:00E-merging forum 5 afterthoughts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'm finally home and rested after E-merging Forum 5 in Moscow. A week after the end of the forum I sat down to think about it again. Being registered blogger definitely changed my experience of the conference and I'm not sure in which way. On the one hand I feel like I spent most of the forum head down in my tablet trying to type fast on the elusive keyboard. In some way I even feel that the conference kind of went past me :) Although it was tough the first day, I felt upbeat and even jotted down a post in the metro in the way to the conference building. I also have a very tangible proof of my presence there - 6 (!) posts, more than I write in a usual month.<br />
I was trying to compare emf4 and emf5, but soon stopped trying. The first time is always super-exciting and new, I remember being really inspired by the ideas and people I saw a year ago. This time around I also left inspired not so much by the ideas (many didn't seem new), but by the people, teachers who continue to create, write, present, assess and improve.The final presentations left a big smile on my face and continued humming "If you are a stunning teacher.." (search for videos in instagram with #emf5) all the way to Saint-Petersburg. I wish I had had more time and courage to talk to my fellow teachers, but it is something I'll leave for next year...<br />
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I looked through my posts again and below you can find corrected versions with added links:<br />
<a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/2015/03/herbert-puchta-teaching-very-young.html" target="_blank">Herbert Puchta "Teaching Young Learners: What's hot and what not"</a><br />
<a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/2015/03/catherine-walter-lerning-grammar-and.html" target="_blank">Catherine Walter "Learning grammar and pronunciation: what do we know and what can we do about it?"</a><br />
<a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/2015/03/rimma-chaldymbaeva-reasons-to-use.html" target="_blank">Rimma Chaldymbaeva "10 reasons to use smartphones and tablets at efl classes"</a><br />
<a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/2015/03/anna-loseva-flashmob-in-elt.html" target="_blank">Anna Loseva "Flashmob in elt"</a><br />
<a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/2015/03/emf5-day-3-pleanary-talks.html" target="_blank">Day 3 Plenary Talks</a><br />
<a href="http://nastyaghttp//nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/2015/03/group-discussions-day-3-emf5.htmleinrikh.blogspot.ru/2015/03/group-discussions-day-3-emf5.html" target="_blank">Day 3 Discussion Groups</a><br />
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Check out other registered bloggers' posts:<br />
prolific <a href="https://eltgeek.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Olya Sergeeva</a> on ELT stories<br />
<a href="http://www.languageflame.com/" target="_blank">Elena Matveeva</a> on Language Flame blog<br />
<a href="http://englishclassroom07.blogspot.ru/" target="_blank">Natalia Almaeva</a> on Natalia's blog<br />
<a href="https://eflnotes.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/e-merging-forum-5-some-related-notes/" target="_blank">Mura Nava</a> on EFL Notes<br />
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and an official blog + interviews with speakers on <a href="http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/e-merging-forum-5" target="_blank">TeachingEnglish website</a><br />
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Thank you, British Council, for organising this wonderful event and all the teachers that made it worth visiting! Till next year!<br />
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-16060391947144442622015-03-14T06:52:00.001-07:002015-03-18T10:14:10.152-07:00Group Discussions Day 3 #emf5 <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The forum traditionally concludes with special interest group discussions and following presentations. I was looking forward to this part as last time we had a blast. This time we got into the group of around 10 teachers and started brainstorming. Our topic was technology and we were supposed to come up with a short bit of advice/idea/solution based on our experience in the forum.<br />
We started pitching our ideas but soon the conversation focused around one particular but also quite vague idea. We continued developing it, but soon I felt it was out of our hands. I suddenly felt lost and uninspired.<br />
<br />
Why might it have happened:<br />
○ the group was too big <br />
○ the topic was too wide (last year we were assigned an area)<br />
○ the group lacked organisation<br />
○ the group spoke their L1 which unlike English lacks advanced communication strategies (see next)<br />
○ some participants lacked basic communication skills such as turn-taking, disagreeing and interrupting politely (!), summarizing etc. It was especially surprising considering we are all teachers and we are supposed to TEACH them to our students (and you know, practice it)<br />
○ critical rather than creative attitude towards a final product<br />
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No wonder spirit of some people including me sank. My colleague and a friend later noticed how amazing is the fact that so many like-minded people from all over the country can't seem to get along and do something together. I remembered how listeners at the plenaries were quick to correct non-native presenters' English. Or loud conversations during the talk. Is there something that we call "professional deformation" in elt or is it just common (in)decency?<br />
I enjoy this conference for the spirit of 'everything is possible' and inspiration it supplies for many months ahead. So I refuse to get upset or disappointed! :) As they say in English: every cloud has a silver lining. In fact, it inspired my friend to research the issue of teacher's behaviour and possibly present here next year! <br />
Off to hear the presentations! So long!</div>
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-17225429914307349602015-03-14T05:53:00.001-07:002015-03-18T10:20:30.776-07:00#emf5 Day 3 Pleanary Talks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The last two plenary talks in the forum were devoted to technology in learning languages. They were coming from different places but, in my opinion, had ultimately the same message.<br />
<br />Alla Nazarenko started with a short history of distance learning in MSU. Back in 1990s the University had an idea of making their preparatory courses available to people outside Moscow. But they noticed a distinct disadvantage of this project right away : the students were ALONE in their learning from the start. The answer came in the form of imitation of a regular classroom and the backbone of the new idea was DISCUSSIONS. Having other students interact with you,"seeing" your partner and teacher's involvement seemingly improved the situation.<br />
On the other hand, students are not passive objects of the educational process and their <br />
* responsibility<br />
* motivation<br />
* self - organization<br />
are all crucial in every kind of learning. A good example of this principle is MOOCs which normally have a huge dropout rate. This led the teachers to the understanding that technology is just a vehicle for learning but not a cure. Alla then continued to demonstrate how their department successfully developed a few blended and distance learning programs.<br />
<br /><a href="http://www.theconsultants-e.com/about/team/GavinDudeney.aspx" target="_blank">Gavin Dudeney</a> comes from edtech background and he feels that this area has started getting a bad press in the world of elt. From his point of view, the numbers were the reasons for it. Any number - big/small/irrelevant and soon meaningless. Our obsession with numbers feeds in social networks (number of comments, friends, retweets), publishers and app developers use it to sell us a "new" book/technology/system (if 1000000+people use it, so should you).<br />
Numbers take over our life and substitute the simplest things which sometimes are impossible to measure. Gavin's concern is that everything in the class will be assessed in the future. But can it help anyone? Sure some ways can be more EFFICIENT, but are they the BEST ways to go about making research into elt?<br />
Gavin's answer is to turn our gaze to classrooms from all over the world where educators still teach face-to-face, use their students as a resource and use technology as a means of enhancing the learning process.<br />
<br /><i>Resource to check out:</i> edtech concerns podcast<br />
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-72721394924186008332015-03-14T00:28:00.001-07:002015-03-18T10:29:37.722-07:00Anna Loseva Flashmob in elt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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What is #flasmobelt? Is it teachers dancing in organised groups after classes? Is it a group of students deciding on telling the teacher there was no homework last time (and the teacher going crazy)? None of that and quite the opposite- a tool that will make teacher's life a bit easier and a bit more interesting.<br />
<a href="http://linoit.com/users/annaloseva/canvases/flashmobELT" target="_blank">#flashmobelt</a> is an online post-it notes board where teachers from around the world can post activities they successfully tried in their classes. The ideas should be simple, almost no-prep, technology-light, so that a teacher from another class/school/city/country could read it and bring it to their classroom the same day. Participation is easy (just go<a href="http://linoit.com/users/annaloseva/canvases/flashmobELT%20%232" target="_blank"> to the board</a> and type away) and the results are truly inspiring - you get to peek into a class in Korea, Croatia, the USA or many more.<br />
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Here are two activities Anna demonstrated:<br />
1) Hate Love<br />
Students get in pairs and decide who goes first. This person decides to love or hate something and prepares to talk about it for a minute. The teacher reveals the topic - strong reaction guaranteed, your class starts talking!<br />
2) Finish the sentence in as many creative ways as you could in 1 minute. Possible beginnings and endings<br />
When in Rome.....<br />
Never say....<br />
...... and she slammed the door<br />
...... caught him by surprise.<br />
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Check out the board with activities from #emf5 - coming soon! Anna's blog for the link to the board - annloseva.wordpdess.com</div>
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-61023221875918324542015-03-13T07:40:00.001-07:002015-03-18T11:05:51.274-07:00Catherine Walter "Learning Grammar and Pronunciation: what do we know, and what can we do about it?"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Catherine's talk started with the overview of popular grammar teaching approaches and their merits and drawbacks. She pointed out that many of them neglect explicit grammar teaching (e.g. immersion). However, there are many definite advantages of this method: it is straightforward, it helps to notice language features and gives negative feedback (things that don't happen in the language ). There is also enough evidence to conclude that explicit grammar teaching does work (Norris&Ortega 2000; Gass&Selinker 2000). The research found that it leads both to conscious and unconscious acquisition and has a lasting effect.<br />
Some people think that the best way to introduce grammar is when the need for it comes from a student. We can also create a situation for it artificially. On the other hand, in the class setting it can be difficult to satisfy all the different needs different students have. It can also be challenging for the teacher to come up with the perfect explanation for a grammar point on the spot.<br />
Catherine also shared her understanding of 3E system necessary for successful explicit grammar teaching.<br />
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1. Explanation (or rules) could be of different types. One - such as street signs and notices- are exposed by an authority. The other such as facts of nature are a result of observation of natural linguistic processes. The latter is the most desired one for teaching grammar. There are 6 criteria a teacher have to bear in mind while presenting a rule (both deductively and inductively). It should <br />
□be true<br />
□demarcate (should clearly show the limits of the use of a given form).<br />
□be clear<br />
□ be simple<br />
□be conceptually economical (do not contain new and difficult concepts)<br />
□ be relevant<br />
<br />
2. EXAMPLES should be <br />
☆prototypical<br />
☆naturally sounding<br />
☆ not contain irrelevant difficulties<br />
☆there should be enough of them<br />
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3. EXERCISES give students opportunity to develop <u>fluency</u><br />
<br />
In the question of pronunciation, Katherine considers receptive skills to be more important than productive skills (for most learners). She also sees a strong link between grammar and pronunciation. Schwa is the most common sound in English language, it is often found in grammar words. So a teacher can incorporate pronunciation teaching (in form of decoding activities) into regular grammar lesson</div>
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-9187565051397963632015-03-13T06:10:00.001-07:002015-03-18T10:28:48.860-07:00Rimma Chaldymbaeva "10 reasons to use smartphones and tablets at efl classes"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Rimma has been using a tablet and a smartphone for three years now and she has 10 good reasons why you should do it too.</div>
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1. Personalization.<br /><i>
Idea:</i> ask a student for a letter from an alphabet. Then search for the contact in your phone starting with this letter. Name him/her and ask students to ask you questions about this person. Then students can work in pairs </div>
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2. Motivation<br /><i>
Idea:</i> add some listening to a traditional running dictation. Record a story/text on your smartphone and make students transfer it to their notebook.<br /><b>
Tools:</b> Kahoot.it for engaging quizzes</div>
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3. Organizing learning process. Ss can note down homework, a teacher can use digital notebooks like evernote to send students reminders and share the materials from the class</div>
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4. Economy. No paper involved!</div>
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5. Differentiation. <br /><i>
Idea: </i>Ss choose podcasts or video they would like to watch and control the speed and number of times they will watch/listen to it. </div>
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6. Facilitates special needs education.<br /><b>
Tools:</b> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/ru/app/proloquo2go-symbol-based-aac/id308368164?mt=8" target="_blank">Proloquo2go</a> enables speech impaired learners communicate with a teacher in the class.</div>
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7. Evidence. <br /><i>
Idea:</i> Ss can record an interview and evidence for their project/homework</div>
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8. Assessment and self assessment. In a big class with no time to spare try using the following<br /><b>
Tools:</b> Socrative.com<br />
Polleverywhere.com<br /><i>
Idea</i>: ask Ss to record their voice in the lesson and check it after the lesson.</div>
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9. Reflection and self-reflection. Ss are able to record and document their progress<br /><b>
Tools:</b> use whatsapp to give students feedback</div>
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10. Learning outside the classroom-> developing autonomy</div>
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-85806811491831108022015-03-12T12:16:00.001-07:002015-03-12T12:21:31.135-07:00Herbert Puchta "Teaching Very Young Learners - What's Hot and What Not"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The first plenary of #emf5 was devoted to something I have a very basic competence in - teaching young learners. I have to admit, I did start my teaching career with the interview for the pre-school English courses. Luckily, they didn't take me. Luckily because I later found out that it is almost a completely different area of esl, and I was more comfortable teaching teenagers and adults. However, I found Herbert Puchta's quite interesting and realised I was a true beliver in many myths that surround teaching YL and which the speaker tried to debunk.<br />
The speaker started with the arguments against teaching YL. He claimed that there was no solid evidence for a Critical Period hypothesis. Moreover, small children do learn much slower than, say, adolescents. On the other hand, there is no scientific backing-up for the theory that learning second language will influence child's 1st language acquisition. Puchta himself admitted that he is in no way against teaching English to YL pointing out some distinct advantages of starting out early such as increased motivation, enhanced cognitive development and improved attitude to English in the future.</div>
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That said, he continued with what he thought should be necessarily at the core of teaching YL.</div>
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<li>Quantity. Lessons should be regular and happen more often than, say, once a week.</li>
<li>Embedded interaction. Learning has to happen in the context and create classroom culture of participation. An old input-output system will just not work on its won with YL</li>
<li>Embodied interaction as in use of one's body. Quite often children can't express themselves in words even in their first language, so watching the body language of your students can be a valuable resource in the classroom.</li>
<li> Cognition. Hebert didn't put it in a separate category, but I felt a lot of words were said about it. The idea was traced back to Lev Vygotsky's theory of "shared cognition" that places a great importance of parent-child interaction. Thinking and speech in this situation go together and develop simultaneously. Another side of it is gently pushing learners beyond what they know and can do because learners will always have a need to express more than they can.</li>
<li>Stories. Puchta reminded us that stories help children make sense of and experience the world around them. Child's thinking is ultimately story thinking and their understanding of the world is mythic understanding. So stories are a quick way into that reality. The speaker warned us against "fake-stories" often published in textbooks and reminded us 4 properties of a real story</li>
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<li>it has to have beginning-middle-end structure</li>
<li>it has to involve some magic (like talking animals)</li>
<li>something unexpected should happen</li>
<li>there should be strong emotional contrasts</li>
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Herbert concluded with the hope that there are three competences teachers have to pass on their learners<br />
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<b>communicative, linguistic</b> and <b>personal.</b></div>
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-4228043612453822632015-03-10T02:53:00.001-07:002015-03-10T02:53:38.123-07:00Premier Skills Lesson Plan Competition<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://premierskillsenglish.britishcouncil.org/" target="_blank">Premier Skills English</a> - a project promoting English learning through football - organised a<a href="http://premierskillsenglish.britishcouncil.org/teachers/lesson-plan-competition" target="_blank"> lesson plan competition</a>. To enter you have to register on the site, watch and choose one video (interview with players) and design a lesson plan around it. The deadline for applying is 10th April - so you still have time. The winner is the entry with the most shares.<br />
I have also entered the competition and submitted a lesson plan. Please consider checking out<a href="http://premierskillsenglish.britishcouncil.org/teachers/lesson-plan-competition/looking-future" target="_blank"> my submission </a>and sharing it if you find it worthy :) Thank you!<br />
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-28958874286315264202015-03-07T11:27:00.001-08:002015-03-07T11:27:42.188-08:00#emf5<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.britishcouncil.ru/teach/emerging-forum" target="_blank">E-merging forum</a> 5 is almost here and I'm excited to attend it in a new role - I'm going to be a registered blogger! This means I'm going to write 1 or 2 posts a day through all three days of the conference! I've never done anything like that and I'm not sure I can think/write/proofread that fast but I hope it will be fun :)<br />
<span id="goog_568937707"></span><span id="goog_568937708"></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishcouncilrus/13600220805/in/set-72157643348762235" target="_blank">source</a></td></tr>
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<b>What is E-merging forum?</b> It's an annual conference for ELT professionals organised by British Council. It's held in Moscow and this year it will take place from 12th to 14th of March.<a href="http://www.britishcouncil.ru/sites/britishcouncil.ru2/files/e-merging_forum_5_programme_all_speakers_final_0.pdf" target="_blank"> Each day consists of </a>several plenaries and about 15 meetings of 5 special interests groups. On the third day participants can join a discussion group of their interest and take part in the final presentation. If you can't come, a few of the sessions will be <a href="http://www.britishcouncil.ru/emerging-forum/online-coverage" target="_blank">streamed online.</a><br />
In my own experience, the forum is a great place for teachers to meet, talk, discuss, listen, get inspired and even relax. So if you still haven't made up your mind about it, I strongly recommend you to come or check out the live sessions. <a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/search/label/emf4" target="_blank"> Here</a> you can read my impressions from the last forum.<br />
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See you there!<br />
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-71736080859587845132015-03-01T00:50:00.001-08:002015-03-01T22:50:59.122-08:00Twitter and Graded Readers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This semester we're reading "The Body" by Stephen King with my Intermediate classs and I can already tell my students are enjoying it much more than "The Tales of Mystery and Imagination" we read last semester. Last week we read 6 chapters filled with many events and to consolidate the narrative I suggested the following activity. It can work well with other stories and readers, especially if they're set in pre-internet era.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB2Lj0ktovIt-VuFHFH5mqoVofJDAPWU1l7b14VRicdGV9G2pebFXs_j9D-brJasmJGYPR3o4lD3H8-9hgseRvsFkAT8xAUze4Jhgt_ygauYhZDD1qZiVM_zd-K-pLe4-LEvjXHug9CXc/s1600/body.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB2Lj0ktovIt-VuFHFH5mqoVofJDAPWU1l7b14VRicdGV9G2pebFXs_j9D-brJasmJGYPR3o4lD3H8-9hgseRvsFkAT8xAUze4Jhgt_ygauYhZDD1qZiVM_zd-K-pLe4-LEvjXHug9CXc/s1600/body.jpg" height="400" width="260" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.eltbooks.com/cover/9781405882378.jpg" target="_blank">source</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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1. Ask your students "How would the story be different if it had happened nowadays?" The topic of social media will come up pretty soon.<br />
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2. Draw their attention to Twitter, ask if anybody's using it or know about it. "What's so special about this social network?" - the length of the posts is limited to 140 characters.<br />
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3. Ask "What is a hashtag?". Elicit possible hashtags for this novella.<br />
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4. Now explain that the Ss are going to work in pairs or groups and create twitter accounts and messages for the characters of the book. They don't actually have to create an account electronically, just fill in the <a href="https://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/089/3/c/twitter_template_by_ebbymac-d4ufu08.jpg" target="_blank">template</a>. Variants include<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>everybody in the class takes one character and composes tweets from his point of view</li>
<li>everybody has a different character and composes tweets from his point of view</li>
<li>Ss create twitter news feed that includes messages from different characters of the story.</li>
</ul>
Remind them to stay within 140 characters and encourage the use of hashtags.<br />
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5. Give them around 10-15 minutes (in my class they needed to create just 5 tweets), monitor and help if needed.<br />
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6. Display the tweets around the class and ask everyone to read them. Choose the best/ the most creative/ the funniest tweet. I think my Ss had fun writing the tweets and here are some examples:<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Gordie "Just fired a #gun. Still can't believe it #wow"</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Milo "Stupid children. Gonna get fired #lovechopper"</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Teddy "Just been pushed away. So sad #liketrains"</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Gordie "#lol looking for body #amazing #trip"</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Gordie "The secret will die with us #bestfriends"</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Gordie "I'm an olympic champion in leaping over the fence #athleticGordie"</b></div>
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As an <b>extension</b> you can actually set up a twitter account for one or several characters and ask you students to update it as you move along the book. If you have different accounts for different characters they can interact, comment and share their posts making the experience more authentic and bringing the story to life.<br />
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-70627210962015100602015-02-20T04:11:00.001-08:002015-02-20T04:11:16.461-08:00My #dailyELTroutine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I recently came across <a href="http://myeltrambles.blogspot.ru/2015/01/dailyeltroutine.html" target="_blank">this post</a> in Joanna's blog about her daily teaching routine. It's inspired me to write about my typical day.<br />
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Country: Russia<br />
*Most of the time my schedule is so relaxed that sometimes I even feel a little guilty about it :)<br />
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9.00-10.30 Wake up. Yes, it's that late! In winter, especially from November to January, it's almost impossible to wake up earlier than that. Although I<b> used to do it</b> last year when I had two 8 am classes a week. Lately, the sun has been appearing more often, so it's really pleasant to wake up to this view.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg526FH22j6bn1a6LE14alXKUPawxbvPrcJc3OmcJReLicsypsDf-LQGaiyXv3F9cLgcnGsAcXRHgK75XH-VocMHt6UfVomJ_-4SwRIqvSHLL0fNQblbfh_jUFRIp3q8UJGo05lNKtuBzo/s1600/view.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg526FH22j6bn1a6LE14alXKUPawxbvPrcJc3OmcJReLicsypsDf-LQGaiyXv3F9cLgcnGsAcXRHgK75XH-VocMHt6UfVomJ_-4SwRIqvSHLL0fNQblbfh_jUFRIp3q8UJGo05lNKtuBzo/s1600/view.jpg" height="506" width="640" /></a></div>
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10.00-12.00 Have coffee, browse the Internet, start preparing. I have a rule of preparing a lesson a day in advance, so I'm never in a rush. So if it's Tuesday today, I'm preparing for Wednesday classes. I also have two skype lessons a week that start at 11.00am<br />
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12.00-13.00 Prepare lunch, get ready, go! I go to my school twice a week and it takes about an hour to get there. I like getting there 30-40 minutes in advance, so I can print, copy, cut everything I need and lay them out in a convenient way. This way, I don't have to think about having the right paper during the class. If I don't go to school, I go to my students who luckily live nearby or have lessons in my place (in this case a proper cleaning is involved beforehand)<br />
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15.00-20.30 Classes! Usually, I have 3-4 back-to-back classes which can be exhausting. Sometimes I can sneak in a cup of a tea or a banana or a chat with a colleague :) But more often I feel drained by the end of the day, so I take it slowly on the way back and try to unwind before coming home.<br />
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22.00-24.00 Home time, an episode of<i> "</i>Seinfeld" and sleep!</div>
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-5997506693543556482015-02-07T05:21:00.000-08:002015-02-07T05:26:04.606-08:00Song Activity: The Lumineers "Ho Hey"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This nice song starts with the verse entirely in Present Perfect Continuous so I used it as an extension activity with my Intermediate students following the revision lesson on PPC.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/zvCBSSwgtg4/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zvCBSSwgtg4?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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1. Start with a <b>song dictoglos </b>activity. Tell the Ss that they are going to listen to the song and the first part consists of 5 sentences in PPC. Then play the verse a couple of times, allowing students to write and compare their results .(They are fairly easy to grasp since they have the same beginning). Do a whole-class check and write up the sentences on the board. Here you can focus on the language a little bit more and draw your Ss attention to the fact that there is no usual time indicator like <u>for</u> or <u>since</u>. Or ask them to listen to pronunciation changes that occur in fast speech (dropping of "v" sound).<br />
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2.<b> Prediction</b>. Now it's time to look at the meaning of the lines. Ask Ss to predict what's the song about based on the beginning. Depending on how much time you have the descriptions can be more or less detailed.<br />
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3. Listen to the song and<b> check the predictions</b>. If the Ss can't get much from listening you can elicit general idea: is it a happy or a sad story?<br />
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4.<b> Listening more closely</b>. Give out <a href="https://ru.scribd.com/doc/255010023/Song-Lesson-Plan" target="_blank">the lyrics of the song</a>. Ask Ss to listen again and cross out an extra word in every line. Compare in pairs, then do a whole-class check.<br />
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5. Now it's time to look at some possibly<b> new words and phrases</b>. I found that the text of the song doesn't have many difficult or unknown words for Intermediate students. However, their combination can cause some problems. So we discussed some of the questions related to expressions in the text<br />
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<i><b>When do people bleed? Can you bleed from non-physical causes?</b></i><br />
<i><b>If I bleed out for somebody how do I feel about the person?</b></i> It's quite a tricky question, you can refer Ss to the <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bleeding+out" target="_blank">urban dictionary definition</a> that gives an insight into this line.<br />
<i><b>What can make a person think that he/she doesn't belong? Have you ever felt this way?</b></i><br />
<i><b>What can go wrong in the relationship?</b></i><br />
<i style="font-weight: bold;">China Town, Canal and Bowery are the places in the city. Can you guess which city it is? </i>(answer: New York)<br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
6. If you think your Ss understood the lyrics ask them to <b>reconstruct the story</b> of the couple working in pairs/groups.<br />
<i><b>What happened? Are they together or not? How do they feel? What was the reason for their break up? Why is he regretting about her not taking the bus? What would have happened if she had taken it? </b></i><br />
Hopefully, Ss got some ideas in the previous stage and can imagine the rest. If they are having a block, you can prompt them with more questions. Help with any vocabulary or grammar questions.<br />
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7. Ss write up their stories on the pieces on papers (I don't think they should be too long, 5-7 sentences should be enough) and <b>display</b> them around the room. Allow everyone to read each other's stories.<br />
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8. Within the same pair/ group Ss choose the story they liked the most (it shouldn't be theirs) and write up a <b>dialogue</b> between the main character and the girl based on the story. Ask them to imagine their meeting on the Canal a month later and come up with a short conversation.<br />
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9. Ss role-play the dialogues. For <b>homework</b>, they can write a letter to the main character from the point of view of a girl.<br />
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-15819350866305355212014-12-30T06:40:00.000-08:002014-12-31T00:43:23.472-08:00Skype Lessons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This year I started teaching via skype for the first time and have been doing it for about 6 months now. Although, I still feel pretty much like a novice in online education, there are couple of tips + resources I found useful along the way. If you're a skype rookie as well, maybe you'll find them useful.<br />
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<b>1. Have a headset. </b>It seems obvious, but many people forget about it. As a result your students will hear everything: from your typing to your roommates coughing and walking.<br />
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<b>2. Think of the ways you can use the camera</b>. Once I was really surprised when I heard that some skype teachers don't use cameras. Sure, if you have a speaking lesson with an advance auditory learner, that may work. However, in the rare moments when I switch off the camera (to share the screen for example), I feel the change in the communication right away, it becomes slower and less smooth. Perhaps, it's because both I and my students are visual learners, but in general I feel the image is a necessary communication channel in skype. I'm still working though on incorporating gestures and mimes into my classes more, there is little space I can use for it and the little time lag can make it almost unintelligible.<br />
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<b>3. Share screens</b>. You would probably discover this option pretty soon and there are many ways to use it. I share screens mainly for demonstrating pictures, so my next advice would be to build a digital library of images and make sure they are all high resolution/large pictures (you can set it as a requirement in google search).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIeLbykksgJPjlS6y8gvqJ9ZijrIQfFNnW_1j6HhIuCxHh4zDVbUeIufq26Rh3S5g3jyW9SCYKVTt5ZhjW14d-wLCYUDrgtYpKCXRG9IoVhcJoAzRnH45CHem6CKxNKbdWjwU_VN5UIMg/s1600/lesson.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIeLbykksgJPjlS6y8gvqJ9ZijrIQfFNnW_1j6HhIuCxHh4zDVbUeIufq26Rh3S5g3jyW9SCYKVTt5ZhjW14d-wLCYUDrgtYpKCXRG9IoVhcJoAzRnH45CHem6CKxNKbdWjwU_VN5UIMg/s1600/lesson.JPG" height="223" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sometimes it got interesting :)</td></tr>
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4. We use a usual textbook, but sometimes there is a need for extra material. There are couple of ways you can present the material. If you take a page from another book, you can use <a href="http://www.splitpdf.com/" target="_blank">pdf splitter</a> to extract one or more pages and <a href="http://www.pdfmerge.com/" target="_blank">pdf merger</a> to put them together.<a href="https://evernote.com/intl/ru/skitch/" target="_blank"> Skitch </a>- Evernote product - also proved to be a useful tool. With Skitch you can make a snapshot of anything you have on your screen (on and offline) and save it as an image. Then you can add words, symbols, arrows, crop and rotate it. That works well if you want to take a picture or only one exercise from a book. Recently I discovered a Chrome extension - <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/awesome-screenshot-captur/alelhddbbhepgpmgidjdcjakblofbmce" target="_blank">Awesome Screenshot</a> - that offers basically the same function online.<br />
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<b>5. Online editing tools like Google Docs are you friends</b>. I found out right away that checking writing in the class is much more time-consuming than offline. So I quickly introduced my students to Google Docs and got rid of one problem. One of my students keeps putting her writing in one document, which I think is quite ingenious - you can track your progress and keep an eye on the previous mistake as you create new text.<br />
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<b>6. The chat is invaluable.</b> First of all, it clears many comprehension questions during the lesson. If a student missed a word or simply does not understand what you say, just type it in (+ reading practice). Then, there is error correction. Write up the mistakes you hear and discuss them after the speaking exercises. It will also do you a good service later if you want to make an exercise based on student's mistakes or track his/her progress. Most importantly, it's a reliable record of your lessons which you can use for various purposes.<br />
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There are still a lot to learn and find out like<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>how to make reading tasks more fun</li>
<li>is there a listening tool where both a teacher and a student can listen to a track</li>
<li>and a video tool like that</li>
<li>which online board is the best (there are so many) and do I need it</li>
<li>how to perfect communication with a student outside class</li>
</ul>
and so on..... So if you have any advice on that, please feel free to comment!<br />
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-3902891702699948962014-12-19T11:56:00.000-08:002014-12-19T11:56:20.092-08:00Vocabulary revision activitiy: 4 and a half games in one!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When it comes to vocabulary revision I always panic a little bit. All of the revision activities I know or find seem somewhat shallow. So this time I tried something new: I bombarded my students with 5 different activities which I presented to them as a <b>Super Vocabulary Challenge. </b>They worked as two teams the whole lessons and their <b>aim</b> was to score as many points as possible.<br />
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<b>Preparation: </b>choose target vocabulary and put it on separate pieces of paper. Fold them and put them in a bag or a hat.<br />
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<b>Round one. </b>Ss are divided in pairs, each pair works as a team (we successfully did it with 5 students in my class). A student draws papers from the bag and explain the word written on them to their teammates. It has to be in English and they have to do it within 40 seconds. If the team get it, it scores a point, if not they can have another try until the time is up. Then the bag goes to another team. I usually tell my students that I will retract points for using L1 as well as for using root words. It was amazing how much English they spoke! Calculate the number of the papers each team got. One word = one point. Write up the score on the board.<br />
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<b>Round two:</b> Ss put all the words back in the bag. This time the drill is the same, the only difference is that for explanation they can use only one word (like a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYJnrjw-zm0" target="_blank">Secret Word</a> game). By this time students know most of the words, so it won't be as difficult as it seems.<br />
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<b>Round three: </b>The same bag. 40 seconds. No words. Mime it!<br />
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<b>Round four:</b> Put the papers in the bag and take it away. Students work on their own trying to remember all the words from the previous challenges. Then they write it up on the board. For each correctly spelled word teams get a point.<br />
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<b>Round five:</b> Leave the words on the board. In the next challenge students have to make sentences with it. For each words they get a point, in one turn they can say one sentence. The number of words used in a sentences is not limited. However, the team score the point only of the sentence is grammatically correct and makes sense. So if you have words like<i> saucepan, grow up, achievement </i>the sentence<i> "His biggest achievement while growing up was inventing a saucepan"</i> will get 3 points and the sentence <i>"The saucepan is in the kitchen</i>" - 1 and the sentence " <i>They grown up in Minnesota</i>" - none, because it is incorrect. When the word is used cross it out from the board, the game is finished when the last word is erased. By this time, those words you chose would be engraved on your students' brains :)<br />
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I'm sure you are all familiar with these games and activities on their own but mixing and matching never hurt! The first three rounds are basically a famous party game and the last one I'm sure I found somewhere in the Internet, but don't remember where! If you know, please give me a link.<br />
Here are some other revision activities I used<br />
<a href="http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/a-homemade-revision-game/" target="_blank">A Homemade Revision Gam</a>e by Sandy Millin<br />
British Council Teaching English<a href="http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/revision-activities" target="_blank"> Revision activities</a><br />
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-86696605665769836192014-12-07T08:25:00.000-08:002014-12-07T08:25:14.434-08:00Keeping promises?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
2 months ago I wrote my <a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/2014/10/learning-teaching-contract-month-1.html" target="_blank">second post </a>on "learning teaching" contract and it's time to present the results!<br />
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<ol>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><i>Post here once a week</i> - did it! And very proud of it! There were weeks when I thought I wasn't going to make it. If you look at my blog carefully you can notice that I've been posting predominantly on Sunday nights where there was no more time to put it off. I felt like in Uni again barely meeting my deadlines. But with every week I looked at what I have written and the fact that I still managed to do made me feel good (not that every post was good). That made me thinking how important it is to keep some kind of a record and return to it from time to time. Really gives you a sense of progress</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><i>Read at least one blog post every day. </i>I didn't do that and here is my explanation. Before it was new and difficult to read elt blogs that's why I tried to read at least a little bit every day. It was also a way to find daily inspiration for teaching. Now I'm quite familiar with my blog roll and I dont' feel a need to read it every day. I read it in bulks once or twice a week and return to the ones I liked later. I also use twitter more and it turned out to be another inspiration-generator for me.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><i>Sign up for TKT Module 3 and start preparing</i>. Did not happen either. The fluctuation of an exchange rate between rouble and euro really affected everyone financially in Russia. Even though I didn't travel and don't buy things abroad normally, the prices grew up almost for everything. The exam, which is produced in the UK, obviously costs more now and I'm still considering whether I should take it now or not....</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><i>Continue reading Jeremy Harmer's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-To-Teach-English-DVD/dp/1405853093" style="color: #80c2d4; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">How to Teach English</a> and finish at least 3 chapters by the end of each month</i>. I did not do that and I have an excellent excuse: I had better things to read (not to offend Jeremy Harmer). I am taking part in British Council seminars which happen in the library with the whole section dedicated to elt books in English. For a small fee I was able to register and now I can take up to 5 books every month. I have already read 4 books! The important thing for me is that I can choose books which are the most relevant to me right now like that "How to teach Pronunciation" book or "Teaching teenagers".<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnjlaTWt9T-PHKth26ylJMT5vH1297C2jipK-QczWImjN0xzlCHO6ho8br0Os9by-eC6Fj0WWFDztpsXj1BW6eL49pdOjzqm_IrnYB9pCbaUV_DjFZ4CdQ2si2fQOl57WJh5kZayUzE-g/s1600/books.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnjlaTWt9T-PHKth26ylJMT5vH1297C2jipK-QczWImjN0xzlCHO6ho8br0Os9by-eC6Fj0WWFDztpsXj1BW6eL49pdOjzqm_IrnYB9pCbaUV_DjFZ4CdQ2si2fQOl57WJh5kZayUzE-g/s1600/books.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"> Have at least one day a week where I don't prepare for the classes.</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"> Well this was not easy and there were weeks when I couldn't catch a breath. But by choosing my schedule more wisely I managed to de-clutter my life a little bit and now I have at least one day work and thought-about-work free.</span></li>
<li><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px; text-align: left;">Continue writing reflections after each group class (also think about how I can use them in the most productive way)</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px; text-align: left;">. I did start writing them after every lesson but gradually I stopped. I realized what a great thing it is to do when I came back to my notes looking for one idea I wrote down once after a lesson. So I would really like to continue doing it. To make it a little easier, I would try to concentrate on certain aspects for different groups like "ttt in group #" or " communication between students in group #" and so on.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Afterthoughts</b></span></div>
</span><div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">One of my students has this poster on her wall</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.bcoach.ru/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/20101120-003517.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.bcoach.ru/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/20101120-003517.jpg" height="320" width="235" /></a></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><br /></span></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><br /></span></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">Thinking about my success and failures in achieving my 6 goals, I couldn't help but measure them against these criteria. And it really makes sense. Number 1 one was very much specific, attainable and measurable. While number two and four were no longer relevant when I was writing the list. They already became a habit and didn't need so much work. As for number 6, it had to be more specific and measurable. And sometimes it just not up to us - goal number 3 ....</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">So considering all of the above, I would like to make a new list and give it another three month to come to life:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><br /></span></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div>
<div>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><i>Post here once a week</i></li>
<li><i>Post here at least once a month not on Sunday</i></li>
<li><i>Write reflections on my group classes twice a week. It has to be at least two sentences recording my observations and ideas about the class.</i></li>
<li><i>Take part in at least 1 #eltchat</i></li>
<li><i>Have an even freer day once a week with no blogging, reading elt books and blogs</i></li>
</ol>
It is shorter but I hope it will make it more attainable.</div>
<div>
<br /><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
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</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-820052831196016832014-11-30T10:14:00.002-08:002014-11-30T10:14:32.956-08:00My experience with language school in Russia: Part III. There is hope<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today I would like to tell you about the last school I worked in. Part I can be found <a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/2014/11/my-experience-with-language-schools-in.html" target="_blank">here</a> and Part II <a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/2014/11/my-experience-with-language-schools-in_16.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
In the summer of 2013 I found a job in a small language school whose primary focus was on in-company teaching. My employment there started with a teacher trainer seminar which spanned over four weeks. I was also required to visit 3 lessons of fellow teachers and give a "test" lesson. After that I started working in a company teaching Business English to two Pre-Intermediate groups.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUo1VMR0h8lv01E8Ju8T7RvXClm4ImqYuK45Eie_FcFvCdEVG60JUZ6PK4AzCi-G-DsVK8Qyi5V9t3j8ZZgOr8z5SU7MoOiguDALKQUtu7jdWgSRK_KXyVEcqDOlegG0h8ECfWcCD6c0w/s1600/_18_00058.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUo1VMR0h8lv01E8Ju8T7RvXClm4ImqYuK45Eie_FcFvCdEVG60JUZ6PK4AzCi-G-DsVK8Qyi5V9t3j8ZZgOr8z5SU7MoOiguDALKQUtu7jdWgSRK_KXyVEcqDOlegG0h8ECfWcCD6c0w/s1600/_18_00058.jpg" height="426" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Schedule.</b> I had a morning group and an evening group, each of them had 2 lessons a week. Luckily, the company was not far away from my place, so the schedule was pretty much perfect. However, I understood that teaching morning groups is veeery hard (especially if most of your classes happen in the afternoon and evening), and that was one of the reasons why I left the school after 9 months (it was obligatory to have at least one morning group). </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Pay.</b> The rate wasn't particularly high, but it was always prompt. The director of the school made a point of paying teachers on time. Later I learned that she even took the loans from banks for salaries when there was not enough working capital for that. So this and relative "easiness" of the job (not a lot of travel time, one book for both groups of the same level) satisfied me in terms of money.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Possibilities for Professional Development.</b> As I mentioned earlier there were professional seminars when I started working there. They promised to hold them again half a year later, but it didn't happen. However, the school recognised the value of professional development and sent out reminders of various teaching related events happening in the city. A</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">t some point, t</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">hey also organized a speaking club for teachers with a native speaker to maintain teachers' level of English. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Group sizes</b> and </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Class Equipment</b> were pretty usual for in-company classes. There were 8 people in each group, the level of their English varied but at least there were on good terms with each other :) I already wrote about the situation with equipment in the second part. It was a little bit better here, but some rooms got unbelievably cold in winter and there was nothing we could do about it.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Course Requirements.</b> The course consisted of 120 academic hours, teachers were suggested to cover the book which we did quite easily (for me it means, that this number was well though out). The company and the school required quite a lot of paperwork done every month. It was to be filled out and sent on particular dates. I think now it is pretty standard procedure for this type of classes, but show me a teacher who enjoys filling out excel squares? :)</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Employment Status.</b> I was not employed officially. It was an option in case you take more classes on. However, the usual perks (coverage of sick leaves and holidays) were not included. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Atmosphere.</b> The thing I liked the most in this school is director's desire for teachers to be a part of a team. She encouraged us to get to know each other, organised different team-building events and found ways to bring us together at any occasion. The staff, which consisted of 3 people, were always very nice and helpful, I felt I could ask for advice or favour from any of them. For example, if my company didn't have some equipment I didn't have to deal with it myself, I could just tell the manager about this problem and she would contact the company and sort it out. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">I think, director's personality and attitude to her company (teachers' included) made work there so comfortable and enjoyable for me. I still have the deepest respect for her and her work and if I ever decide to set up my own school I would follow her example in many parts.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">The end.</span></div>
Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-29225343819582125262014-11-23T11:53:00.000-08:002014-11-23T11:53:15.201-08:00Bookmarking and information storage for teachers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Discovering the brand new world of English Teachers on various Internet platforms made me extremely happy circa 7 months ago. I got inspired almost every day. But them came the trouble: how to save and not to forget all of those useful pieces of advice and experience of other teachers I dug up all over the Internet? Being an organization-freak as I am I took this task very seriously. After half a year I have something to say about that. Here are couple of ways you can keep your ideas and notes organized. Each one is evaluated on the basis of its merits and drawbacks.<br />
<a href="http://draggo.com/" target="_blank"><br /></a>
<a href="http://draggo.com/" target="_blank">DRAGGO</a><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggDqPbgIj_CUDYuDAHNo-G0n1MbcdIyBOPi3fQpJ9AJu6SJy8d7A9Q58eOu7xfHmM0UKH_bl7CVhy89tltqwOjR7A2u7iFd_B2CSlhKBLajh5y5Xa7mrRykX2KjeTAslKX5Zib7RqDkJE/s1600/draggo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggDqPbgIj_CUDYuDAHNo-G0n1MbcdIyBOPi3fQpJ9AJu6SJy8d7A9Q58eOu7xfHmM0UKH_bl7CVhy89tltqwOjR7A2u7iFd_B2CSlhKBLajh5y5Xa7mrRykX2KjeTAslKX5Zib7RqDkJE/s1600/draggo.png" height="396" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
This was the first website I started using to collect Internet links. It is a web-based bookmark manager. You need to register and start organizing your links in tabs and folders.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
+ </div>
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>It is free and easy to use.</li>
<li>You can download a "Save to Draggo" button on your browser window and save pages in one click.</li>
<li>You can share tabs and categories with other people. For example, this is <a href="http://draggo.com/geinrikh/teaching-resources" target="_blank">my tab on teaching resources.</a></li>
<li>You can organise your links in tabs and categories and vary their size and location.</li>
<li>You can add descriptions to you links</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>The button doesn't always work.</li>
<li>There is only web version.</li>
</ul>
I still use it but not often as I find this kind of organization to be a bit stiff. As a rule I want not only to bookmark a website but to save a blog post or just take two sentences from a page and Draggo is not the right tool for that.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://feedly.com/" target="_blank">FEEDLY</a><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxw0K81ysPXpwuUqydoM2cEDwDSdPkjULh6v1nyKAClrdxlv0GKBYeQR8gGtW7Dmf_uRk-29Hx7yAG8OG5AAYuCrUmOeYwmYrKHhmOkkAgPiR_tcbPm_Mul9LiFr-vHAMocstDJ6RcHIs/s1600/feedly.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxw0K81ysPXpwuUqydoM2cEDwDSdPkjULh6v1nyKAClrdxlv0GKBYeQR8gGtW7Dmf_uRk-29Hx7yAG8OG5AAYuCrUmOeYwmYrKHhmOkkAgPiR_tcbPm_Mul9LiFr-vHAMocstDJ6RcHIs/s1600/feedly.png" height="324" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
I found Feedly when I started looking for a simple reader. It has a clean and user-friendly interface as well as an option of categorizing the content. As in any reader the article disappears once you read it, but they introduced couple of options in case you want to return to them later.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
+</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Feedly has a tag system, you can create a tag and assign it to the article after you read it. You can access all of you tags on the bottom of the</li>
<li>You can also save content for later reading and use it as a storage for articles you want to read in more details and make notes about</li>
<li>They have web and mobile version.</li>
<li>You can integrate your feedly with other services like Evernote, Pocket, Readability etc</li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK99OFvSm1ytM4A0jWroV8qOaKKNG3ya5ZcfIDFhBTJ_LOorXxE8N_-p2MKqgD7sH1tnDJeSRGjH78b3UThNCK8BhTUKx0AwfnTfN9M8LmIjjpH55tR4HuLdr7hgKU0k3SAVJ4AuICGQA/s1600/feedly+tags.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK99OFvSm1ytM4A0jWroV8qOaKKNG3ya5ZcfIDFhBTJ_LOorXxE8N_-p2MKqgD7sH1tnDJeSRGjH78b3UThNCK8BhTUKx0AwfnTfN9M8LmIjjpH55tR4HuLdr7hgKU0k3SAVJ4AuICGQA/s1600/feedly+tags.png" height="196" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
- </div>
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>I don't use tags in feedly that often, mostly because it saves only articles from your feed</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
Richard Byrne made a <a href="http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2014/11/organize-your-favorite-finds-with.html#.VGo8AzSsWSo" target="_blank">comprehensive video</a> about using feedly for organizing your stuff.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://getpocket.com/" target="_blank">POCKET</a><br />
Then I started looking for a tool that can save content of different kind from different sources and I found Pocket!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpU4wCaCysNpR9_T4XCDnsvOZ7bVOI-BCVXFOAoh6vpTD9kBHyFsCmutRX0XvV3w5qFhRhfmQ218o0WjAbR5N2faElM7QC6qvTQugWJNezVmuFhvhQpYEV1B-On5lSA-lDzJFgdbqVXQw/s1600/pocket.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpU4wCaCysNpR9_T4XCDnsvOZ7bVOI-BCVXFOAoh6vpTD9kBHyFsCmutRX0XvV3w5qFhRhfmQ218o0WjAbR5N2faElM7QC6qvTQugWJNezVmuFhvhQpYEV1B-On5lSA-lDzJFgdbqVXQw/s1600/pocket.png" height="316" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
+</div>
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>By far the biggest advantage of this service is that you can use it offline. It means accessing saved articles at any time and place.</li>
<li>You can get a pocket button in your browser and save in one click.</li>
<li>You can use tag system to categorize your content.</li>
<li>They have web and mobile version.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
- </div>
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>You can't underline or highlight information </li>
</ul>
<br />
<a href="https://www.evernote.com/" target="_blank">EVERNOTE</a><br />
Evernote is a digital notebook with many many many functions. I started using Evernote last winter but hasn't explored it fully until late spring. Now I use it for both personal and professional purposes and find it extremely diverse and useful<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
+</div>
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li> Evernote clipper allows you to save pages from your browser.</li>
<li>When you work with Internet pages you can highlight important parts</li>
<li>It has a desktop, mobile and Internet version</li>
<li>You can save Internet pages, text and pictures</li>
<li>There is a multilevel storage system. You can make notes, organize them in notebooks</li>
<li>There is also tags system</li>
<li>There is a handwriting function which I haven't explored yet</li>
<li>You can share your notes and notebooks with selected users</li>
<li>It continues to grow and the developers offer something new almost every month</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>I wish you could read Internet content offline. Then Evernote would be PERFECT!</li>
<li>Also it is quite a bulky programme and takes ime to start on my computer</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<br /><ul style="text-align: left;">
</ul>
<br />
<a href="http://www.pinterest.com/" target="_blank">PINTEREST</a><br />
I was avoiding Pinterst for quite a long time thinking it is another overhyped service. Once I started using it about two months ago I found out it's a great tool to collect visual data and maybe not the best for articles, blog posts and such. I say 'maybe' because I have really used it to collect pictures of classroom decorations, recipes and clothes.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoScqL4jYveVvVZrBQHbTcHjTZL8RtHDpED3-mjS-Z9f3uBpr1JwELTPaXk8ipvYMeAP03_LKwrCwNd12w487QJPE42QqcIiUdG6qHwquqptXcJmORY83cWYwCx0IyNolmkOGKDLZgp74/s1600/pinterest.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoScqL4jYveVvVZrBQHbTcHjTZL8RtHDpED3-mjS-Z9f3uBpr1JwELTPaXk8ipvYMeAP03_LKwrCwNd12w487QJPE42QqcIiUdG6qHwquqptXcJmORY83cWYwCx0IyNolmkOGKDLZgp74/s1600/pinterest.png" height="259" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">you can clearly see the priority here ;)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
+</div>
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>there is a key word search system and you can search the whole website for the necessary content</li>
<li>you can organise your links in folders</li>
<li>there is a pretty thumbnail to every link</li>
<li>Pinterest button can be applied to both pictures and the whole pages</li>
</ul>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: left;">the linking system is quite bulky, in my opinion. For some reason, it takes a long time to move from the pinterest site to the target page.</li>
</ul>
<br /><span style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;">
WRITTEN NOTEBOOK</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I still keep a notebook which I started about 4 years ago. I wrote down activity ideas and lesson plans I found in the Internet or books long before I was using any of the services mentioned above. I also write down my notes during lectures and seminars I attended and books I've read. So now it's turned into quite an old and flimsy folio which I cherish.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwGmQWdQIl4vXLuUZ5Uoq8xScdEm9MaaOqIBikMIyeWVDwZ-StppcAy2tdD401dxN6F0d7LI8RLylmt0-nPrgZDw3pGnUGFE4qWE5jzqjBPAVmzj2oOdx81DR6GL8HHpvfONvt9srOv7E/s1600/collage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwGmQWdQIl4vXLuUZ5Uoq8xScdEm9MaaOqIBikMIyeWVDwZ-StppcAy2tdD401dxN6F0d7LI8RLylmt0-nPrgZDw3pGnUGFE4qWE5jzqjBPAVmzj2oOdx81DR6GL8HHpvfONvt9srOv7E/s1600/collage.jpg" height="280" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
+</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>you can take it anywhere and use it instantly</li>
<li>the battery will not run down</li>
<li>you're unlikely to lose this information</li>
<li>you can glue papers in (for example handouts from seminars and lectures)</li>
<li>you remember better what you wrote</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>it could be difficult to find necessary information</li>
<li>once written, you can really change information or move it to another place</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
Some other ways you can store information but I haven't made a good use of them (yet).<br />
<a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/">Personal blog</a><br />
When I started my blog, I made <a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/p/links.html">"Links</a>" page right away. I put there some of the blogs I follow, some useful websites with esl material and stuff like that. I guess, it was dome more for the visitors of my blog not for me, so it just re<br />
<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/">Twitter</a><br />
After I revived my Twitter and turned it into a professional development network thingy, I rethought my way of posting, retweeting and favourting things. I feel that one can develop a special system here, but I have not done it yet.<br />
<br />
<br />
I'd be interested to know if you use these services differently or you have a completely new way to store information.</div>
</div>
Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-12566331947376463982014-11-16T11:56:00.000-08:002014-11-16T11:56:02.541-08:00My experience with language schools in Russia: Part II<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Here are the worst bits of my experience. <a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/2014/11/my-experience-with-language-schools-in.html" target="_blank">Part I can be found here.</a><br />
<br />
School # 2 was a big international chain of schools that accepted almost anyone as teachers. I remember some of my fellow students at University were working there part-time starting from the 2nd year. Actually, I have quite a few friends who have worked there at one time or the other. In the interview I was given a simple language test and was admitted right away. My first class was a business course in-company, the second - one-on-one classes with a manager also in-company.<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Schedule.</b> The classes usually took 2 hours in the evening + commuting. The individual student was ready to have classes as much as possible and as long as possible. Unfortunately, the factory, where he worked, was situated outside the city, so normally I would come three times a week for about 4 academic hours. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Pay.</b> As the lessons took place on client's territory I got a bit more than usual but still not high enough. There was a huge problem with paying on time; as the year progressed the waiting period got longer and longer. The summer was the toughest (as I learned later it is like this in many schools) with no sign of improvement. They did have a good policy on classes missed by students. If it exceeded certain number the teacher was reimbursed for the rest of missed classes which gave some sense of security.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Possibilities for Professional Development.</b> The school organised couple of seminars. If I'm not mistaken there were two of them during the year that I worked there. They were devoted to NLP practices and focused on building rapport with the student. It would not be my first choice (if I had one), but it turned out to be unusual and quite useful in the future. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Class Equipment</b> is always a bit of a problem with in-company classes. As a rule they have a flip-chart and a marker. But one day a teacher may come and find no traces of it. Usually students are glad to bring their laptops and help in other ways, but the fact that I could not control the equipment stressed me out a bit.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Course Requirements.</b> The school sold hour packages, so, for example, a company would pay for 100 academic hours and there were no requirement as to how spend these hours. That allowed for a certain freedom. Also, there was some paperwork to fill in every month recording both the attendance and the progress students have made.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Employment Status</b>. I was not officially employed. Although it was an option (my friend was working there officially), I again could not get to the bottom of the matter of how to do it.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Atmosphere.</b> The school was so big and there were so many people working that every time I visited I felt like a little insignificant bug expected to be paid for no reason. I understand, it is a strange concern to have :) It is inevitable in big international schools and it may be partly due to my quiet personality that I didn't feel like I was a part of a team. However, later I learned that it all depends on the school and it is possible to build and support your team of teachers. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><br /></span>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8dvNOt3HZhxWAxP2LjHO5LdeHTK3SDmex-c5GCEWM8GTpX6hGFNCcJ1y5-fffX40R_eAuyaHJQhh7u50PXQ9MZtzAcGkwtp42XlaufyEYk1F3vLkkLXG0pNTI_C7sZt90eAEmlJTemdg/s1600/014_11.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8dvNOt3HZhxWAxP2LjHO5LdeHTK3SDmex-c5GCEWM8GTpX6hGFNCcJ1y5-fffX40R_eAuyaHJQhh7u50PXQ9MZtzAcGkwtp42XlaufyEYk1F3vLkkLXG0pNTI_C7sZt90eAEmlJTemdg/s1600/014_11.JPG" height="426" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ECLA</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">School #3 was quite a popular school in the centre of the city. The location was super-convenient for me, it was in walking distance from my house, that's why I didn't think long before agreeing to work there. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">The school attracted their clients with relatively low prices and promises to reach a certain level over a short period of time. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">I taught a variety of groups: General English and IELTS courses, groups and individuals. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Schedule.</b> Classes lasted 4 academic hours twice a week. There was a short break after 1,5, but even this did not help students stay focused for three hours straight. The late hours of classes (7-10pm) didn't help it either. It taught me a lot about maintaining class concentration and engagement. I learned the hard way about the value of varied activities and interaction patterns. However, I find it hardly reasonable to organise such long classes and still refuse to teach one group or a student for longer than 2 hours straight. It is simply not effective for the student.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Pay</b>. Hour rate was a joke, the only thing that made it bearable was the 4 hour aspect of it. There were also considerable delays, especially during summer. The thing that annoyed me the most though was that the teachers were never informed in advance about the delay. So most of the time I felt miserable just not knowing if I was ever going to get paid and having no one to complain about that in school. The chain of command, so to say, was very undefined. I was given money by a secretary who received them from an accountant and she obviously had no control over finances.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Possibilities for Professional Development.</b> There was one good thing about the school and that was weekly professional seminars and a brilliant teacher trainer working there. It was an excellent chance to meet other teachers, to talk and, of course, discuss elt issues. Unfortunately, it was cancelled after some time due to the poor attendance but the teacher trainer was ever so helpful.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Groups.</b> The number of people usually stayed at around 8 sometimes reaching 10. The biggest problem was the dramatic difference in the levels of English which was especially unfortunate in IELTS classes. Apart from having students passing General Module (course was strictly Academic) I also had students who desired different scores with different knowledge of English. When I deaw the attention of the DOS to this problem, he just nodded and explained there was only one group of IELTS and they had to take everyone... It was by far the best exercise I had in mixed-ability classes but I would not like to repeat the experiment.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Class Equipment</b> was adequate. The class had a whiteboard (sometimes extremely small size) and a CD player, the laptop was available at the office and teachers could borrow it for the lesson. However, if the markers were missing or a player didn't work it was extremely hard to find a replacement. Here I have to mention a strange employee of the school - a middle-aged man who occupied a table in the hall and was responsible for opening/closing the rooms, equipment and such ( so I thought). He was also supervising the attendance of the teachers and the lenght of the breaks (!). So when I turned to him when the CD player didn't work for the first time, he shrugged his shoulders and asked me if I had broken it (!) in a joking manner. Then he advised me to go around classes and find a working player myself and try not to break it again!</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Course Requirements.</b> The book was crammed in two courses 120 academic hours each which made it 15 lessons ( 1 lesson has to be devoted to the final test). They were very strict about following the schedule and completing the course in certain dates. I was very afraid of getting ill and not showing up to work. Of course, this is what happened in about a month of working this way. You can imagine how terrified I was to call them to inform them about my illness! </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Employment Status.</b> In the beginning, I signed a "temporary working contract" which did not make anything better or worse for me, so I don't even know if it had any legal power.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><b>Atmosphere </b>was not particularly friendly. I got to meet couple of nice teachers, but the staff (including the strange middle-aged man) was almost always indifferent which I read as them being fed up with the school as well. I was overjoyed when I finally quit working there. I got a call from them a while later inviting me back to work for them and promising pay rise. I guess that made me hesitate for a moment but when I remembered how miserable I felt there the decision was not difficult.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">To be continued...</span></div>
Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-11818815013666926152014-11-09T11:23:00.000-08:002014-11-09T11:24:32.918-08:00My experience with language schools in Russia. Part 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today's post is different. It's not about activities, lessons or inspiration. But it's still connected to it. I've worked with 4 language schools in Russia (one of them is my present employer) and I feel I have a good understanding of how they work. The main advantages of working for schools for me are a chance to work with groups (I love teaching groups) and being connected to other teachers. However, language schools in Russia (like<a href="http://libcom.org/tags/angry-language-brigade" target="_blank"> in many other countries</a>) are far from being a perfect employment for TEFL teachers. So I decided to write about all of my places of work as it is. Why? Maybe I hope it inspires some change in the industry, or maybe a rant is easier to write than a substantial blog post about teaching :)<br />
While writing this post I noticed main categories that influence my impression of the school: Schedule, Pay, Possibilities for Professional Development, Group sizes, Class Equipment, Course Requirements, Employment Status, Atmosphere. So I'm going to go through them as I describe every school.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXpdp18ESugE6BZBSt7V_mr7ZeGnQDro-h1iC95aCDb_0q9bWXDefvO2Phfy0tSS6CtlOmLUlZmecFPGLHwGjX3u_-cxyfAS6Gr0naXHk-G0QPv3kHsew8WPtWbjY4oIWfTJ4gFC1c7Qg/s1600/_17_00059.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXpdp18ESugE6BZBSt7V_mr7ZeGnQDro-h1iC95aCDb_0q9bWXDefvO2Phfy0tSS6CtlOmLUlZmecFPGLHwGjX3u_-cxyfAS6Gr0naXHk-G0QPv3kHsew8WPtWbjY4oIWfTJ4gFC1c7Qg/s1600/_17_00059.jpg" height="425" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a uni in Hamburg</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<b><i>School #1 (and the last one).</i></b> I got there quite by a chance. I applied as a secretary for the school (at that time, I didn't want to be a teacher he he), it was close to my place and I went for an interview. I was chosen as one of the three candidates, worked one day and then called back later to be invited to work as a teacher. At that moment, I changed my mind and decided to give it a go. I was very scared, of course, never having taught a <i>group </i>of students. On the first meeting with the DOS I was given books and quickly briefed on the groups, that's all, no more guidance, showing the ropes and all that stuff. I had to figure out even the simplest things by myself<br />
<b>Schedule:</b> My first year I had 4 groups twice a week. 3 of the classes were 1,5 hours long and all of them were back to back. I don't think I went to the toilet my first day working there. When I brought it up (the tight schedule not my peeing habits) in the conversation with the DOS, she suggested talking with the students and working around it with them, because "there was no other way for her to change it". Of course, students liked their time slot and didn't want to change. Up until now (this year I have 3 groups twice a week) I have no breaks, the only way for me to get out of the class is in between classes (1-3 minutes) or by giving teacher-involvement free task (which is always undesirable for me), but the desire to eat or relax for at least 5 minutes wins in the end of the day. The school is open from September to June. Most of the groups are school students, so they normally finish in the end of May leaving the teacher job-less for the whole summer.<br />
<b>Employment Status:</b> The school does not offer an official employment for everyone, it means I don't pay taxes, which is a not satisfying situation for me. You have to work a considerable amount of hours and be lucky. Still I haven't figured out why some of the teachers are registered and some are not.<br />
<b>Class Equipment:</b> The school is not great on a technical side either. My classroom is equipped with a CD-player and a board, while others have TVs in them. It seems a bit unfair to me but the administration is promising changes... My first three years I spent changing the classesrooms every lesson which was of course annoying, this year a new system has been introduced and now I finally have my own room where I can keep my books and other stuff.<br />
<b>Possibilities for Professional Development: </b>There are no teacher trainers or professional development seminars. The DOS (the working teacher herself) often suggests coming to her with the questions. However, our schedules do not always match and I do not feel comfortable coming to her before classes when I know she is preparing for her lessons.<br />
<b>Course Requirements:</b> On the positive side, the school does not enforce any time-slots for a course, you're given a book (actually, a teacher also can choose the book herself) and you work at your own and group's pace towards the end of the book. With a typical "slow" group it takes about 12-13 months to cover the book. And I can include virtually anything in my classes. For example, having home reading classes or doing project work. This is something I really value there, as it seems like such a rare thing nowadays.<br />
<b>Groups: </b>there is a maximum of 9 people in class, but average number is 6-7 which is quite a comfortable number. Groups are formed according to the level and age not always spot on (has it ever?) and, by comparison with other schools, quite successfully.<br />
<b>Pay</b>: is also satisfying and prompt. Although it depends on the number of the students in the group, the administration always tries to keep the number high (up to 9). That allowed me to build close relationships with my students, some of them I've been teaching for over three years. Another nice thing is that the cost is also kept relatively low for students.<br />
<b>Atmosphere</b> is generally nice and friendly. I know and communicate with most of the teachers working there. It occupies two floors of a block of flats in the outskirts of the city and may seem gloomy but it also shapes the audience. There are no random passers-by, the majoiruty of students live nearby and many of the of them have been attending the school for many years. Couple of teachers (!) had gone to this school in their time and employee turnover is extremely low.<br />
<br />
<b>Overall,</b> I grew fond of the school and learnt to cope with almost all of the drawbacks. Most of it is due to the fact that I work there only twice a week which is a very comfortable schedule for me. If I worked there full-time I don't think I would find them that acceptable.<br />
<br />
(to be continued)</div>
Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-9371261044974061412014-11-02T09:31:00.001-08:002014-11-02T09:31:18.906-08:00Biography Writing Activity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Recently I've come across Tricia Hedge's book <a href="http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780194421904.do" target="_blank">Writing</a>. It's a book of writing activities that follows different stages of writing. I found it very useful especially in terms of giving controlled writing practice to Ss. I've noticed that coursebooks often contrive writing in two or three stages. At the same time, coming from my students' feedback, writing is one of the most difficult tasks for them. One of the reason being a multiple tasks you need to perform while creating a text: getting ideas, organising, drafting, proofreading and so on. Anyways, there are plenty of activities in the mentioned book and I recommend it to everyone with the same concerns as me.<br />
The book also inspired me to create my own activity which I will briefly describe.<br />
<br />
This week we've been studying biographies, we had an interesting text about Matt Damon and couple of more exercises to study the genre. However, I felt it was too early to give my students writing biography for homework. Last year, one student copied information from wikipedia and, frankly, I was afraid it would happen again. So on the second lesson I decided to revise what we have learnt about biographies and teach them how we can use information from the Internet.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI_bTDPApLBIDfYNR70BMCNuNl9IuJ4JfWQMOhjvZjka08W_hfdeTYjAtImKnXUVX55zz-F91sL7HRnOIFpTpT_lTlKLxwCpo8BlAePgw8Dm0SAndzhPUiZySGSWYOoBuvglr60mG9pAw/s1600/writing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI_bTDPApLBIDfYNR70BMCNuNl9IuJ4JfWQMOhjvZjka08W_hfdeTYjAtImKnXUVX55zz-F91sL7HRnOIFpTpT_lTlKLxwCpo8BlAePgw8Dm0SAndzhPUiZySGSWYOoBuvglr60mG9pAw/s1600/writing.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
1. Ask Ss to brainstorm (or remember in my case) the typical parts of the biography in groups or pairs (Birth place, Achievements etc). Give them couple of minutes and hold a feedback session after.<br />
2. Write up all the categories on the board. We used an empty desk and sticky notes.<br />
3. Show a picture of a famous person of your choice (e.g Mark Zuckerberg). Elicit any kind of information Ss may know about him/her. If you get some good answers, ask Ss which category it belongs to. Put it on the sticky note and place it next to the category.<br />
4. Explain that Ss are going to read pieces of text from the article about this person. They have to find information related to the categories on the board. I intentionally chose a more difficult text (wikipedia article), to make the task less straightforward and train Ss deduction and scanning skills. You need one article for a class, cut it in a pieces and give out to Ss.<br />
5. Ss read the texts and find relevant information. They put it on sticky notes and connect it to the right category.<br />
6. After given time, take away the texts and hold a feedback session as to whether the content matches the category. If some categories are without information, just erase them.<br />
7. In pairs Ss decide in which order they will put this information in the biography.<br />
8. Give Ss a certain amount of time and necessary guidance. For example, I wanted them to use time-sequencing words (we practiced them at the previous lesson) and a variety of past tenses.<br />
9. Ss work together to write their version of the biography based on the information on the board.<br />
10. Ss exchange texts and check it for accuracy and logical content. After that they can discuss the corrections they proposed.<br />
For<b> homework</b>, Ss write the biography of a chosen celebrity following the guidelines from the lesson<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-88478534258568980092014-10-26T05:15:00.001-07:002014-10-26T11:29:49.984-07:00Tour Builder Project is Over!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A month ago I set off on a journey in project-based learning. I chose <a href="https://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com/" target="_blank">Tour Builder </a>as a starting point, as I see it now, quite on a whim. But I stuck to it and tried to get as much experience from it as possible.<br />
In this post I'm going to describe the process of working on it , what I learnt and where I failed.<br />
I'm going to briefly describe the stages and draw some conclusions in the end.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRWaYBO-rteay4LoID0_2mA2Ormr7MjC5UfJlHLE_torF_NyWqVD6Ipx60R0-YRPGM4FYf7dT4SA4rjD148XhaF9fWA9Sr0OfYXrqiiWmC4cQK3W1fyf7iwRucTE2w36QNAcuGEgUg18g/s1600/map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRWaYBO-rteay4LoID0_2mA2Ormr7MjC5UfJlHLE_torF_NyWqVD6Ipx60R0-YRPGM4FYf7dT4SA4rjD148XhaF9fWA9Sr0OfYXrqiiWmC4cQK3W1fyf7iwRucTE2w36QNAcuGEgUg18g/s1600/map.jpg" height="300" width="640" /></a></div>
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To be honest, when I started with my own tour and a tutorial I didn't see where it was going. Ok, I had some ideas, which <a href="http://nastyageinrikh.blogspot.ru/2014/08/ideas-for-using-tour-builder.html" target="_blank">I posted here</a>, but nothing was thought through (bad teacher!). At first, I thought Ss will just make their own projects. But the logic of project based learning demanded some feedback and collaboration. That's how steps 5 and 6 were born. All the time I was curious to know what my students think of the project and, of course, I asked them for little feedback in the end (step 7)<br />
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<b>Aim: </b>To engage students in project work through digital storytelling<br />
<b>Level: </b>Intermediate<br />
<b>What students need: </b>access to Internet and personal computers<br />
<b>Time:</b> class time was devoted to instructions and clarifications. Ss worked mostly at home. With reasonable deadlines for the assignments it took about a month.<br />
<br />
<b>Step 1. Introduction</b><br />
On the first lesson this year I shared with my students that I would like them to be more autonomous learners this year. We discussed different ways to become one and I brought up project work. They seemed excited and experienced having done it in school work.<br />
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<b>Step 2. Example</b><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I created<a href="https://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com/builder#play/ahJzfmd3ZWItdG91cmJ1aWxkZXJyEQsSBFRvdXIYgICAqMfWrggM" target="_blank"> my own tour</a>, shared it with them and asked simple comprehension questions such as</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.9400005340576px;"><i>1.When did I go to Belgrade?</i></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.9400005340576px;"><i>2.How did I get to Montenegro?</i></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 16.9400005340576px;"><i>3.Who did I hang out with in Nurma?</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 16.9400005340576px;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This familiarized them with the tool and showed what kind of information it can include. Then we discussed answers in class and I explained that I would like them to do a similar project about their summer.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Step 3. Theory</b><br />
I asked Ss to watch the video tutorial on how to make a tour and again asked them to answer some questions.<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/oYiOmQeClvk" width="560"></iframe> <br />
We discussed it the next lesson and I tried to ensure they understand the mechanics of the web tool.<br />
<br />
<b>Step 4. Creation of the tour.</b><br />
I gave my students a week to create a tour about their summer. It had some formal requirements such as<br />
<ol>
<li><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There should be at
least 10 slides</div>
</li>
<li><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There should be at
least 1 picture for a slide (doesn't have to be a personal picture)</div>
</li>
<li><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There should be at
least 4 sentences in English (don't forget to use Past Tenses)</div>
</li>
</ol>
<ol>
</ol>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe2HA3v2X8-NYduFQfQMBmci1KZLyWudyDQzla1iPFG2nb3wYdbno-q5rRW8Q0fA2XJ_K616YmAXKL1H2egUgH7LKItjqhal1gOPAHudEIyuZ6h7aYovKbI5JD3_TaLsjMMaAAD0MvtLo/s1600/TOUT+JULIA.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe2HA3v2X8-NYduFQfQMBmci1KZLyWudyDQzla1iPFG2nb3wYdbno-q5rRW8Q0fA2XJ_K616YmAXKL1H2egUgH7LKItjqhal1gOPAHudEIyuZ6h7aYovKbI5JD3_TaLsjMMaAAD0MvtLo/s1600/TOUT+JULIA.png" height="270" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">example of student's tour</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I wrote a detailed feedback to each work. That included both my impressions and language correction.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii3LkaVZkHw15XT2h7uGcFf785HsNHmrpKxl8lGnGL649CTgYRcW1E3sublu3RrPa2VHCdDJyUH1hZcxs8udKpqh0I9_mQNbVY7xL4cCfzElG0zZztSM4BGQGcpV81fO6ELdG7PsgKYzs/s1600/feedback+example.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii3LkaVZkHw15XT2h7uGcFf785HsNHmrpKxl8lGnGL649CTgYRcW1E3sublu3RrPa2VHCdDJyUH1hZcxs8udKpqh0I9_mQNbVY7xL4cCfzElG0zZztSM4BGQGcpV81fO6ELdG7PsgKYzs/s1600/feedback+example.png" height="138" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">example of feedback</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
<b>Step 5. Peer feedback.</b><br />
Each student randomly got a project of their peer and had to write their feedback. I asked them to include a summary of the summer and also their personal impressions.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeS6t0zGutsxuFD6jh80zcU2NkhGfItNxsxTFxnFbCGHwgTqsnHr_PO1Cg-fcBrYR3mfmB0N2nFi2ywbqvH0lc3AF23q1T9j0E0af2bhzPCp_5g3r2f6O8C_Nqrz3d2MIwjclWJtjkx8Y/s1600/peer+review+example.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeS6t0zGutsxuFD6jh80zcU2NkhGfItNxsxTFxnFbCGHwgTqsnHr_PO1Cg-fcBrYR3mfmB0N2nFi2ywbqvH0lc3AF23q1T9j0E0af2bhzPCp_5g3r2f6O8C_Nqrz3d2MIwjclWJtjkx8Y/s1600/peer+review+example.png" height="178" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">example of peer feedback</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
After I got the writings back, I checked them and located some common mistakes. I compiled a list of incorrect sentences (anonymous) and gave it to my Ss for correction.</div>
<br />
<b>Step 6. Creation of a collaborative map.</b><br />
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The final task came out quite spontaneously by me asking : What else can they do with it preferably together? Their task was to create the class' tour of the summer, put it together
and present it to me. Again there were some formal requirements such as<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="line-height: 150%;">You
tour should include 2 locations from every person in the class.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 150%;">Each
slide should have at least one photo and 4 sentences of description.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 150%;">The
places should be coordinated according to time scale.</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<span style="line-height: 24px;">To help my Ss with group work I devised four roles - two people for one role - and we assigned them in the class. </span><span style="line-height: 150%;">The
roles in the group were:</span><br />
<div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"><i>The
web-designers</i></span><span lang="en-US">. People who will put
everything together using his/her gmail account.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"><i>The
time-masters.</i></span><span lang="en-US"> People who will
time-coordinate all of the locations.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"><i>The
editors.</i></span><span lang="en-US"> People who will check and edit
all of the sentences.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"><i>The
gatherers.</i></span><span lang="en-US"> People who will gather
information from everyone.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US">I mentioned that the
</span><span lang="en-US"><b>preferred </b></span><span lang="en-US">language
of communication was English. However, I didn't intend to force it or control it in any way. In the end, 3 out of 8 students admitted using English in their written communication (which made me happy).</span><br />
<span lang="en-US">By this point I decided to let go of the control and make them take more responsibility of their work. It didn't turn out ideally but I think it was necessary at this point: group work implies collaboration between students not always through the teacher.</span><br />
<span lang="en-US"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJAFOTMUoz_08aIQQA_uuMVmHf0izbEp1U8NHS9vQocLHcMfKZmUVIvvSvshHJUbAPofPVf-nNCojjov5YsEQWU0g3W2u2VeqBuzFh4I7tbgxrDGMS1Z2XxMkLg0o1C2WoS8o8j11GgSM/s1600/students+project.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJAFOTMUoz_08aIQQA_uuMVmHf0izbEp1U8NHS9vQocLHcMfKZmUVIvvSvshHJUbAPofPVf-nNCojjov5YsEQWU0g3W2u2VeqBuzFh4I7tbgxrDGMS1Z2XxMkLg0o1C2WoS8o8j11GgSM/s1600/students+project.png" height="296" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">screenshot of the group project</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="en-US"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<b>Step 7. Reflection</b><br />
In the end, I asked my students to answer couple of questions. I was dying to know what they think of it and whether they feel it helped their English. Everyone agreed that it was useful but couldn't really specify how. These are some examples:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcIeQKcUFmMRh4mwvDT6ueDisWurfmOmKavjZdzV-vJrUkaO5cfyl4nnZ9ZnO7R9kpibx6w5kn1NYtasgKIJwEOfPwFyJK1gYVJ4PV32Os732DI6ceK8eEQQRMgqBf_HOjlkEb-7xKDxA/s1600/feedback+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcIeQKcUFmMRh4mwvDT6ueDisWurfmOmKavjZdzV-vJrUkaO5cfyl4nnZ9ZnO7R9kpibx6w5kn1NYtasgKIJwEOfPwFyJK1gYVJ4PV32Os732DI6ceK8eEQQRMgqBf_HOjlkEb-7xKDxA/s1600/feedback+1.jpg" height="112" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>What I would change</b><br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>I would try to make the final presentation on a digital device during class time. I think it will make the end of the project more accentuated. As well as being an excellent opportunity for Ss to practice public speaking, it automatically makes their personal stories more interactive as they can engage in genuine discussion.</li>
<li>Grading. This aspect is definitely not a strong point of this project. I tried to avoid rigid 2 to 5 system and introduced rubrics. For every stage of the project students could get 10 points and overall there were 4 stages. In the end I converted the final score into percent. Still I questioned whether the grades were appropriate.</li>
<li>The group work didn't go as smoothly as I hoped. There were definitely some problems in communication during step 6. Some people got more done than others, there were some mistakes and bugs and it wasn't clear who was responsible for them. I'm still asking myself if I could have foreseen and prevented those, but I also understand that sometimes group dynamics is difficult to predict and you have to lay some responsibility on students' shoulders. I made sure to discuss the specifics of group work with my students and some of them seem to agree with me.</li>
<li>Grammar activities. I was surprised to see quite a few grammar mistakes in my students' projects. Most of them had to do with past tenses which could have been avoided for they are strong Intermediate students. If I did it again, I would include short preparatory activity that focuses on Past Tenses and their use. At this point, it would also made sense to revise the idea of proofreading.</li>
<li>Couple of weeks in the project I started feeling that my Ss are doing something completely useless, something that will not be of any relevance to their lives. I still think it is partly true. In the future, I will try to carefully select the tasks to match Ss reality. Nonetheless, a week after the end of the project I see it differently. I see that students shared their stories through the medium of digital web tools, they tried working in groups and hopefully understood something about collaborative work.</li>
</ul>
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Despite these concerns, I'm happy I stuck to it. It taught me the whole lot about projects, teaching, google maps and my students.<br />
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I would be glad to hear any feedback and suggestions from experienced PBL educators!<br />
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Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7801008546511668025.post-35775507727072758672014-10-16T12:34:00.000-07:002014-10-16T12:34:49.268-07:00Reporting Verbs Dialogue Activity <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
I'm teaching reporting verbs this week and I have been looking for some interesting ways to practice them. After a quick search I noticed that most of the activities are based on the transformation of the sentences from direct speech. For example,<br />
"I'm sorry, I'm late" (apologise) ---><br />
" She apologised for being late."<br />
I decided to turn this activity upside down and come up with the following activity with minimal preparation.<br />
<br />
1. Put target reporting verbs on the pieces if paper.<br />
<br />
2. In class, revise the verbs and elicit example sentences<br />
<i>Apologise ---></i><br />
<i>I'm sorry I didn't do my homework.</i><br />
<i>Deny ---></i><br />
<i>I didn't do that</i>!<br />
<br />
3. Divide Ss in pair or mini-groups.<br />
<br />
4. Distribute the papers (3-4 for a pair).<br />
<br />
5. Explain that each pair needs to come up with the dialogue that exemplifies the verbs that they have got. They don't have to use the verbs themselves but they have to make the speech act clear. Moreover, it has to be a natural-sounding dialogue.<br />
Example:<br />
<i>-Hi, Lisa!</i><br />
<i>-Hi, Chris! Would you like to go to the movie with me?</i><br />
<i>-No, sorry, I need to look after my younger brother. But next week, we'll go for sure!</i><br />
<i>-Oh, I hate it when you don't spend time with me!</i><br />
Verbs used: invite, promise, complain<br />
<br />
6. Ss work on their dialogues. Teacher monitors and helps if needed.<br />
<br />
7. Ss present their dialogues. Meanwhile the rest of the group has to guess which verbs they are exemplifying and write down their ideas.<br />
Example:<br />
<i>-I think Lisa suggested going to the movie.</i><br />
<i>-No, but very close!</i><br />
<i>-Lisa invited Chris to go to the movie.</i><br />
<i>-Correct!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
8. Ss guess. Teacher gives feedback.<br />
<br />
If listening to the dialogues is not an option time-wise, Ss can exchange their written dialogues and guess the verbs that were used.<br />
<br /></div>
Anastasia Geinrikhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10040332050749485509noreply@blogger.com0