Leoxicon

Sloppy Brits or uptight Americans?

2012-02-27T11:02:00.000+02:00

Who is sloppier when it comes to grammar or should we all just get over it?

A recent discussion on a teachers’forum has made me wonder amusingly and bemusedly again about correctness,prescriptive grammar rules and how English teachers just LOVE grammar andarguing about it - I wish lexis would prompt such heated debates, for examplewhat verb should go with knowledge: gain or acquire? or somesuch.

Among the comments about pointlessness of teaching grammar to students - why bother if native speakers make mistakes - the one that stuck with me was an amusing remark made by my friend, colleague and former co-mentor Adele who often comes by this blog (Adele, are you reading?). She wrote:

[…] It took me a while after marrying a Brit, to get used to

the poor grammar prevalent in the UK even among many educated people.

Adele

Interesting thought… Recently I was coordinating Jeremy Harmer’s visit to

Israel

.As part of his programme, he was scheduled to appear as a keynote speaker at theannual study day organised by the Forum for College English DepartmentHeads with his talk in which he (midly) criticizes Dogme. The talk originallyentitled:

Teaching Unplugged Beats Acquisition? What to Teach toWho, with What and Why

caused a bit of an uproar when I announced it at a monthly meeting of theEnglish Forum. The English Forum (quite a few of themIsraelis of American origin) found the title ungrammatical, bemoaned falling grammarstandards and stopped short of accusing Jeremy Harmer of not knowing English. Thetitle was thus changed to:

Teaching Unplugged Beats Acquisition? What to Teach toWhom, with What and Why

This also reminded me of another incident when a NorthAmerican friend of mine and I were at the closing gala of the British FilmFestival a few years ago where the former deputy director of the BritishCouncil in Israel said something like “we would like to thank people who weworked with”. My friend launched into a long tirade about how she should havesaid “people with whom we worked” and didn’t shut up until the speeches wereover and the screening started.

So is it really Brits who have poor grammar or Americans whocan sometimes be sticklers for somewhat outdated prescriptive rules?

While I was writing this, the above cited message promptedthe following response:

Americans are no better with overuse of the present progressive,

confusion of adverbs and adjectives and eliminaton of perfect tenses.

Just listen to President Barak O' Bama speak freely (not from a

pre-written speech) and you hear every mistake listed above.

Francine

Diachonic corpus analysis (that’s when you compare lots ofwritten and oral texts from today with those of the past) indeed shows that thepresent progressive is becoming more common which is manifested in suchutterances as:

I’m hating my job

You’re looking good.

and often quoted:

I’m lovin’ it.

(but let’s be honest, have you heard anyone actually use itexcept for Justin Timberlake in his song which was eagerly adopted by McDonalds?)

In all of the above sentences stative verbs are used in thecontinuous / progressive form (pace Raymond Murphy) which was not common, say, 50 years ago.

As regards the issue of adverbs and adjectives, the “confusion”can be exemplified by:

He was driving real slow vs He was driving reallyslowly

Then again, Americans may be using the former more often but aren’t all these examples of spoken language which does not always abide by the prescriptiverules of traditional grammar? For generations of teachers and learners raisedon Murphy’s grammar it might indeed be difficult to embrace the view thatlanguage is a constantly evolving organism whose norms are inevitably changing. As a result, infinitivesbecome split and nouns become verbs (e.g. Facebooking and googling) andsubjects and verbs – this one does not cease to shock me – do not always seem to bein agreement (Windows IS shutting down).

In contrast to Murphy, Carter and McCarthy’s Cambridge Grammar of English (CUP2006), for example, offer a much more descriptiveview of the English grammar based on real every day usage with whole sections devoted to the grammar ofspoken English. In my earlier post Spoken Grammar I talked about the grammar of spoken English being distinctly different from the written grammar and suggested activitiesthat can be used to highlight the features of Spoken Grammar in class.

So what do you think?

Do you also find that the British are sloppier when it comesto grammar?
Should teachers just get off their high horses and stop arguingabout the prescriptive grammatical rules?
Or do you think without these debates our profession wouldnot be as interesting?

P.S. Oh and if you’re still interested – and I trust you aresince you’ve come by this blog – both “acquire” and “gain” mentioned above collocatewith “knowledge”, albeit “acquire” is more common according to both Corpus ofContemporary American English (COCA) andBritish National Corpus (BNC)

What is your favourite chunk?

2012-02-05T13:46:00.002+02:00

Blog visitors poll

Leoxicon is about to clock up ten thousand visitors and I thought I should do something to celebrate this achievement. At first I thought I'd revamp the look of my blog but you need time for that and there is not much you can do on Blogger until they improve their Dynamic Views templates. Then I thought since this blog is all about collocations and lexical chunks I should add a nice little widget somewhere on the right displaying a new chunk every day. But my internet search for "a phrase of the day" or "an expression of the day" widget drew a blank. It's funny that despite all the evidence and research, whether cognitive or psycholinguistic, pointing to the phrasal nature of the lexicon, i.e. words are remembered, stored and retrieved in chunks, all the EFL teaching materials are still preoccupied with words, words, single words. The integration of web technologies doesn't seem to have helped either. Having said that, I stumpled upon two interesting websites:

Phrase Mix posts a new colloquial phrase every day and Tweet Speak English - every week or so. Both come with audio and accompanying activities but unfortunately not all the content is available for non-members.

Since my search for a lexical gadget has proved futile, I decided to open it up to you, my readers, and ask you to post your favourite chunks. But first of all, what's the difference between a collocation and a chunk?

Collocation is a combination of words that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. This definition is rather wide but most collocations fall into the following categories:

Verb+Noun: achieve a goal
Adj+Noun: reckless driving
Noun+Noun: a chance encounter
Verb+Adv: talk freely
Adv+Adj: ridiculously expensive
Noun+Verb: the bomb went off

Even though they statistically occur together very often, most methodologists agree that the following combinations are not considered collocations:

Multi-part/phrasal verb: look after
Adj+dependent preposition: afraid of
Incomplete fixed phrase: sort of

All other multi-word phrases, which are not readily identifiable as collocations, can be considered chunks: See you later (formulaic expression), Come to think of it...(discourse marker), a few years ago (prepositional phrase), If I were you... (sentence head), The more... the better (sentence frame) and many others.

So what is your favourite chunk to teach or simply the one that you find yourself using a lot? Please post your chunks in the comments below.

Teaching vocabulary out of context: conclusions

2012-01-27T21:53:00.001+02:00

This follows on my earlier post Teaching vocabulary out of context: is it worth the time?

About a month ago I blogged about my mini action research on decontextualised vocabulary learning. The post generated some discussion with some people arguing that there was nothing decontexualised about it - you can read the original post and the comments here. The main finding was that on the post-test there was no difference between the items which were learnt out of context and the items presented in class in context. So is decontextualised vocabulary teaching a justified strategy?

Obvious benefits

Even though the decontextualised “Go home and look up” activityproduced mixed results and there was a lot of reteaching involved, I still consider it to be successful. Besides enrichingtheir vocabulary it gives learners a sense of autonomy as well asresponsibility for their learning, not to mention practice with usingdictionaries, an often overlooked skill in ELT. I will definitely keep giving my students such tasks it inthe future.

The fact there wasno significant difference between the explicitly taught and independentlylearnt items on the test attests to the fact that an initial encounter (whethercontextualised or decontextualised) is not as important as subsequent elaborationon aspects of a word meaning, repeated encounters with the item, rehearsal andrecycling. The research seems to corroborate it (see for example Hulstijn 2001).

Ifs, buts and qualifications

Decontextualised vocabulary learning was frowned upon in thecommunicative teaching tradition.However, recent years have seen its resurgence due to the emergingevidence that this type of learning is legitimate for studying the basic vocabularyquickly (see Laufer 2009). Note that Laufer uses the word “basic”. In other words, inorder to get to some threshold level, learners need to quickly acquire a largenumber of words, and decontextualised learning is a perfectly justified strategy. But when it comes to post-intermediate learners, I would only use decontextualised learning of discrete items if learners:

1) are trained to look up words in a monolingual dictionary, carefully studying the provided examples and patterns of use;

2) have a subsequent opportunity to contextualise with the teacher providing guidance and corrective feedback;

3) are given ample opportunities for recall and recycling (as with any vocabulary learning)

Another issue which has been recently raised in the literature on vocabulary acquisition is the question of effectiveness vs. efficiency of a vocabulary task, i.e. how effective a vocabulary task is in terms of the time spent on it. Coming from this perspective, independent decontextualised learning for post-intermediate learners does not seem to be time efficient because a lot of time has to be spent on remedying learners’ problems and re-teaching mislearnt items

References

Hulstijn, J. H. (2001). Intentional and incidental second language vocabulary learning: A reappraisal of elaboration, rehearsal and automaticity. In Robinson, P. (ed.), Cognition and second language instruction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 258−286.

Laufer, B (2009). Research timeline: Second language vocabulary acquisition from language input and from form-focused activities. In Language Teaching, 42(3), 341-354.

Spent but enriched

2012-01-16T23:55:00.001+02:00

In this activity, students play an online digital game (in pairs or at home alone) and then focus on the lexis related to money.

I've never liked online games, apart from Airport Madness 3 and Airline Manager on Facebook - my childhood fascination with airplanes is probably to blame. I would even make snide remarks about people who do like them, such as: "My life is interesting enough I don't need online games" or "I have imagination, thank you. I don't need to escape into the realm of fantasy". However - now this may sound platitudinous - it all changed when I took Graham Stanley's online course "Language Learning Using Online Digital Games" on SEETA (South East Europe Teachers Association). By the way, if you don't know what SEETA is check out their website - they run great courses and you can take part in some of them if you're not a member of a teachers association in any of the 12 member countries. Graham's course introduced me to a lot of online games which can be exploited to class and I came to realise that digital games are not all about aliens, monsters and raising chickens, even these ones have an educational potential too.

One game I particularly liked called Spent is aimed at raising awareness of the poverty issue in the USA. Basically, you're given $1000 and you have to make it through the month. But the depressing subject-matter is not the reason why I got hooked on this game. When you see how lexically rich it is, you'll understand why I took an instant liking to it. Try it for yourself by following this link

The activity outline below is an adaptation and extension of Graham's original idea which can be found on his blog Digital Play.

Pre-playing
Before the game ask students to imagine what it would be like to be poor in America. What would they find most difficult?

While-playing
Students play the game in pairs. Tell them to note down useful chunks as they come up in the game. They can use an online dictionary (Cambridge or Macmillan) to look up any language they don't know.

Post-activity
Collect on the board all the expressions your students noted down while playing
OR give them a list of expressions and ask them to tick the ones they came across:

take-home pay
sick pay

make your ends meet
fired on the spot

keep you afloat
basic necessities
live below the poverty line

make it through the month
pitch in for a co-worker's gift

face the stigma of being poor

affordable housing

life throws curveballs

effective immediately

let a friend camp out in the living room

put up with his/her annoying habits

extracurricular activities

private tutor
know your stuff

place a heavy burden on

monthly insurance premiums

provide full coverage

end up in the street

root canal

put a considerable strain on...

take its toll

stress level is through the roof

feel like lighting up

take the edge off

addiction problems

It seems like a lot of language for one lesson but in fact there will be little genuinely "new" language for upper-intermediate students; most of it will be new combinations of familiar words (e.g. make your ends meet, know your stuff or take-home pay ).

After clarifying the vocabulary (see Teachers notes), ask students to discuss and compare with others what job they chose, what course of action they took, what dilemmas they had to face (some really tough choices have to be made along the way!)

Homework
Ask students to play the game again at home, this time making different choices / taking a different course of action.

Follow-up
This can be done the following week or immediately after playing the game. Print the word cards, cut them up and stick them on the walls around the room using blu-tack (do not enlarge the pages, leave them deliberately small) - preparation which has to be done before the lesson.

Download
WORD CARDS
GAPPED TEXTS
TEACHERS NOTES

Down and Out Walkabout Cloze

Procedure
Divide the class into groups A and B and distribute the handouts. Give two texts: Work & Health to group(s) A and two texts: Children and Social Issues & Housing to group(s) B. Ask students to look at the texts and see if they complete the gaps without any word bank. Then tell them to stand up, walk around the room (background music is advisable) and find the words they need - they don't need to take them off the walls unless you have a small class and only one group A and one group B.

Alternatively and if you're short of time, divide the class into 4 (or 8) groups and give each group half a page (one text each). Bear in mind that some texts are shorter and contain fewer missing words - these can be given to groups of weaker learners.

After students have collected the words they need, put them in mixed groups where they can swap the sheets and check each others' answers

I played the game with a group of upper-intermediate students and they loved it. I originally wanted to use it to round off the lesson (the topic was Work, particularly, a gap between highly-paid and low-paid workers) but decided to go straight into the game instead. It was a great success with my students (a couple of them over 60!). It kept them going for an hour and they found a lot of useful lexis. Try and see if it works for you.

Finally, this is a vocabulary review activity which I used the following week: students have to match three words to make collocations.
VOCABULARY REVIEW - needs cutting up

For other ideas for revising and recycling lexis, see the Cycles of Recycling

News Quiz 2011 - Follow Up

2012-01-03T01:35:00.002+02:00

So here we are in 2012... Come to think of it, it's funny that we keep adding "two thousand and..." - it is obvious isn't it? In the previous millennium we said "seventy-nine" and "ninety-five" without (un)necessarily preceding it with "nineteen hundred". It would thus make sense if we said "in the year oh-three" or "in the third year", for example. Sorry about this digression.

Language focus
I was happy to hear that you liked the news quiz and some of you used it with their students - thank you for the feedback. Below you will find a follow-up activity which is basically language work focusing on the collocations from the quiz. For other ideas on how to revise the lexis your students have come across, read
my Cycles of Recycling post.

VOCABULARY REVIEW
VOCAB REVIEW - TEACHERS NOTES

Easier version
(lower-intermediate / young learners)
If you used the easier version of the quiz, there is also a drag-and-drop exercise for students to do on computers, while the paper version introduces "collocation forks". For more ideas on how to work with these, read my last year's post called the Cycles of Recycling: Cycle 2

VOCABULARY REVIEW - EASIER
VOCAB REVIEW - EASIER - TEACHERS NOTES
DRAG-AND-DROP EXERCISE

Source: dbryant

Other ideas
Thank you to my colleague, friend and former co-mentor Adele Raemer who, in her email to me, suggested a follow-up activity using the "Most Powerful Images" of the year. While the images themselves are worth checking out, I thought these two activities can be combined. Perhaps, you can give the images without the captions and get students to write their own trying to use some of the lexis that came up in the quiz (e.g. massive tsunami hit Japan, mass protests across the Arab world, violence broke out etc). For example, for the image above, even though this news story did not appear in the quiz, students can write "A massive storm hit Arizona".

If you have any other ideas or suggestions, please share them in the comments below.

News quiz 2011 and end-of-year round-up

2011-12-28T23:49:00.000+02:00

Round-up

My blog celebrates itsfirst birthday today. It’s been a busy year so I haven’t blogged as often as Ishould have – probably below the recommended once a week average. But I hope you've enjoyed my posts or rather used in class some of my ideas and activities. It seems Would you like it gift-wrapped? was my most viewed post in 2011, followed by the Cycles of Recycling.

Among the highlightsof the year was speaking at two international conferences: IATEFLin Brighton in April and TESOLFrance in November not to mention a handful of local ones including theprestigious EnglishForum at the MOFETInstitute.

Another defining moment was finally joining Twitter. Better latethan never – and apparently I am in good company because Simon Cowell,Christina Aguilera and the Pope have all joined this year too! (according to this review).Thanks to Twitter I got to know lots of other enthusiastic teachers who, unlikeme, blog on a more regular basis and are passionate about teaching and, notless importantly, learning. Some of the blogs I’ve picked can be found here orscroll down to the bottom of the page to see my blogroll (“Blogs worth checkingout”).

Quiz

And finally theactivity which prompted me to start my own blog a year ago. I like to start thefirst lesson in a new year with the end-of-year quiz. If set up properly, it canactually last me two or three lessons with follow-up activities, studentpresentations and vocabulary reviews – suggestions on how to use the quiz canbe found in the teachers notes:
NEWS QUIZ –TEACHERS NOTES

Easier version
(lower-intermediate / young learners)
NEWS QUIZ 2011 EASIER
NEWS QUIZ - EASIER - TEACHERS NOTES
NB. "Easier" means simpler language, not easier questions

News Quiz 2011

On 29th April the entire world's eyes were on Britain as more than a billion people tuned in to watch the fairy-tale Royal Wedding. Who did Prince William marry?
Who became the first Arab country leader to stand trial in 2011 for the deaths that occurred when his security forced tried to crush the protests?
A powerful earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter Scale hit Japan in March 2011 causing a massive tsunami and nuclear meltdown. What is the highest number on the Richter’s scale?
Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs lost his battle to cancer at the age of 56 in October 2011. Often described as a college dropout, he actually hung around the college for a while and attended a course which, he admitted, helped him later in life. What was the course in?
The death of 27-year-old Amy Winehouse, who had struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for much of her short-lived career, came as a big shock. What is the name of her best-selling 2006 album which earned her critical praise and five Grammys?
After almost 10 years trying to track down the world’s most wanted and dangerous terrorist Osama bin Laden, the U.S. forces found and killed him in May 2011. In what country was he hiding?
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 released in 2011 broke ticket sales record within hours of opening. The film is the final installment in the Harry Potter series based on the best-selling fantasy novels by J. K. Rowling. How many Harry Potter books has she written?
The issue of racism in football has reared its ugly head again as the Uruguayan footballer Luis Suarez was found guilty of racially abusing the Man United defender Patrice Evra and banned for eight matches. What British football club does Suarez play for?
The Internet giant Google launched its much-anticipated online social network as a potential rival for Facebook in June 2011. What is it called?
What pop star surprised the audience of the MTV Video Music Awards 2011 when she revealed that she was pregnant?
In a year marked by mass protests, London was no exception. What sparked widespread rioting in London last summer, ultimately leading to more than 2,500 arrests and five deaths?
The controversial Dutch Director Lars Von Trier caused outrage at the Cannes Film Festival last summer when he said he sympathized with what historical figure?
Whom did the French president Nicolas Sarkozy describe as a "liar" in a private exchange with Barack Obama which was caught on an open microphone at a G20 summit last November?
What politician was forced to step down as Prime Minister under pressure from a lurid sex scandal and amid a deepening economic crisis?
Thousands of protesters across the Arab world took to the streets in 2011 in what became known as the Arab Spring. But the uprising actually started at the end of 2010 after a young market worker set himself on fire. In what country?
The chief of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s visit to New York ended with criminal charges against him. How did he get into hot water?
The Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor died in March 2011 and was laid to rest at Forest Lawn memorial park in LA. What is the name of her close celebrity friend who had been buried in the same mausoleum two years earlier?
Where is Utoya Island and why did it make the headlines in the summer 2011?
Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he would return to acting in 2011 but had to put his plans on hold after the details of his extramarital affair with his former housekeeper began to emerge. What was the last movie he starred in?

Download:
NEWS QUIZ 2011
ANSWERS

Click here for follow up activities for vocab recycling and consolidation.

Teaching vocabulary out of context: is it worth the time?

2011-12-28T23:12:00.001+02:00

Those of you who have been to my workshops or read my articles on TeachingEnglish are perhaps surprised why someone who advocates teaching vocabulary in chunks would even pose a question like this. However, several research papers I read a few years ago while doing my Master's in TESOL made me rethink the issue of contextualisation and try out new things. Besides, as you will see in a moment, learning words in chunks and learning vocabulary in context are not the same things.

In and out of context

Traditionally, in the first lesson of the New Year I discuss with my students the main events and news stories of the past year - anews roundup of some sort. This normally involves a quiz which I prepare based on variousnews items: politics, entertainment, sports, disasters as well as some quirkynews stories - (see the 2011 one here). The questions in the quiz are not aimed so much at testingstudents’ general knowledge, but rather stimulating discussions, encouragingthem to look up information on the web and focusing on vocabulary - I make surethat the quiz is lexically rich.

While discussingthe news stories we focus on useful lexical items as they come up. For example (takenfrom last year’s news quiz)

Great Britain’s Conservative Party returnedto Number 10 Downing Street after they won the election by a narrow margin. Whobecame Britain’snew Prime Minister?

Fansaround the world gathered in December 2010 to mark the 30th anniversary of JohnLennon’s death. Where was the former Beatle killed?

Here we would focus on “win the election by a narrowmargin” and “mark the anniversary’ etc.

However, recently I’ve started experimenting with decontextualisedvocabulary teaching. Last year after the news round-up I gave my upper-intermediate students sevenitems to learn at home (Go home and look up):

go to the polls

adaptation

caught on camera

blockbuster

strain (of a virus)

pay tribute

left stranded

outbreak

The students had to study the items independently and, as a followup, try to relate them to the news stories we had talked about in class. Forinstance, “go to the polls” could be related to the British election story, “paytribute” could be a reference to John Lennon’s anniversary, “blockbuster” and“adaptation” to various movies discussed in the lesson. Does it still count asdecontextualised? I believe so, as the items were given out of context and hadto be contextualised later on in the follow-up task.

What happens next

In the following lesson we reviewed the items that came up in theprevious lesson and then checked the ones students had to look up at home.Overall, they liked the self-study activity; however the results of theirlook-ups were mixed. While “caught on camera” and “outbreak” did not pose muchdifficulty, “go to the polls” was interpreted by some students as “taking partin a survey” – I guess they had previously encountered “polls” as in “opinionpolls”. When dealing with “strain” some students once again fell back on theprevious knowledge of “strain” as “pressure” (despite the word “virus” given inbrackets as a hint). One of the students misconstrued the word “adaptation” as“adoption”. Therefore further engagement with the items was necessary in orderto clarify, further elaborate and, in some cases, re-teach certain chunks

While most of mystudents are trained in using mono-lingual dictionaries (paper or online), someresorted to a bilingual dictionary of the Morfix variety, which do not providecollocations or examples of usage. Ironically, it was the most advanced studentwho went one step further and tried to make his own sentences with the givenitems and got almost all of them wrong.

*Today we haveto pay tribute to the passengers of Air France flight 447 that crashed…

My informal study

A week later I decided to administer a test (aka "post-test") which involved a gapfill task without aword bank but with the first letter (sometimes first two letters) given. I wantedto see which items were learnt better: the ones taught in class(contextualised) or the ones studies at home (decontextualised). And the result was... There were no significant differences between the itemswhich were introduced in context and the ones assigned to students to learn at home.

Do you find the results surprising? Is context overrated? Should we go back to giving our students word lists to memorise at home? I would like to hear your thoughts before posting the conclusions I've drawn from this experiment.

To read the conclusions, click here

Would you like it gift-wrapped?

2011-12-17T17:32:00.000+02:00

A video dictogloss

A dictogloss is an integrated skills activity in which a teacher dictates a text at normal speed and students note down as much information as they can.The students then work in groups and try to reconstruct the original text.

In a video version of a dictogloss, students follow a particular character in a scene and note down all their lines. Then they work withanother student in order to reconstruct the dialogue. For this activity I use a scene from Love Actually (2003).

Procedure

Pre-task

Option 1: Freeze Frame

Show students a short snippet of theclip and pause. Elicit where the scene takes place (jewellery section of adepartment store). Ask students what language they are likely to hear in thisscene and tell them to write as many expressions, collocations and key words as they canthink of, e.g. “How can I help you?”“How much is it?” “Can I have it gift-wrapped please?” etc.

Option 2: Sound off

Play the whole scene without sound anddo the same language elicitation task as above.

While watching 1

Watch the scene (with the Sound On) and check: students tick the expressions they hear. After watching the scene askthem to recall what other language they heard which they did not have intheir lists. You can also discuss possible reasons why the customer was in a hurry and a little nervous - perhaps he wanted to surprise his wife or he was running late etc. (The real reason is that he was buying a necklace for his secretary)

While watching 2

Divide the class into groups of four, then further divide theminto pairs. Assign a role to each pair: jewellery salesman or customer, i.e.each group should have 2 salesmen and 2 customers. Tell students they are goingto watch the scene again and jot down all the lines said by their character. Warn the students that theywill not be able to write down whole sentences word for word - this is not theaim of the activity. They should try to note down the key words. It’s important that allthe students take notes but they should only focus on their character.

Afterwatching, students compare their notes with their partner (another student whofollowed the same character) and help each other reconstruct their character's lines.

While watching 3

Play the scene again and tell students to add whatever theycan to their notes and discuss it with their partner again to improve theirdrafts.

The watching part can be repeated as many times asnecessary.

Post-watching

Repair students within their groups so that a jewellery salesmannow works with a customer. They should now role-play the scene. Obviously, in orderto do that, they will have to use a bit of imagination to make up any missinglines. When students have had a chance to rehearse in pairs, a two volunteersto act out the scene in front of the whole class.

Post-watching 2

If time permits, and if you’re using the original DVD of thefilm, you can watch the scene again with English subtitles on. Students cancompare their dialogues with the original.

Note

This activity is, of course, adaptable for other film sceneswhere two characters have more or less equal number of lines. Hotel andrestaurant scenes or other customer/clerk situations generally work best aswell as scenes with two characters having an argument.

A dictogloss technique was originally proposed by Ruth Wajnryb (1990). Resource Books for Teachers: Grammar Dictation. Oxford: OUP

When the cat's away...

2011-12-03T23:14:00.001+02:00

There is a widespread belief among some teachers that collocations are only reserved for higher levels. Likewise, thereis a popular misconception that authentic video can only be used with higherlevels. This short and fun activity proves otherwise. It is based on a film clip, it focuseson collocations and it’s aimed at Elementary level students.

Procedure

Preparation

You will need a DVD of the animated film “FlushedAway”. The scene starts at 1:17 (“when the cat’s away the mice will play”) andends at 3:14 (“Goodnight”). Or use the Youtube clip below:

Click here to download COLLOCATION CARDS

or do this ONLINE QUIZ

Make a few copies of the page and cut it up so that you have at least one set for a group of 3-4 students.

Pre-task

Give students collocation cards and askthem to match the verbs with the nouns they go with.

While watching – Watch & Observe

Tell students to watch the clip and putthe cards in the right order – the order the main character (the Mouse) does theactivities. Tell them they might not need all the cards that’s why they shouldpay attention as they watch.

Go through the answers with the wholeclass. The should have used all the cards except for ride a bike. Highlight the difference between drive (acar) and ride (a bike, horse)

Post-task

As an extension activity you can focus onadverbs of frequency (and their position in a sentence) and ask students to saysomething about themselves using the collocations above and the followingadverbials:

very often

once/twice a day/week

every day

hardly ever

never

e.g. I never play golf. It’s for richpeople.

I brush my teeth twice a day.

Syllabus fit

The activity can be used to supplement mostElementary textbooks which have a unit on daily routines or leisure activities.

Alternative

For stronger students / classes you can includemore collocations in each set, which means there will be more false clues for the video clip. These canbe other collocations you’ve studied in class or other daily activities. This willalso give students more language for the post-activity.

Click here to download COLLOCATION CARDS- EXTENDED

Edublogs Awards 2011

2011-12-02T22:33:00.001+02:00

It is the time of year when the ELT blogosphere celebrates itsheroes – dedicated teachers who, with unrelenting enthusiasm and passion sharewith us their ideas, insights and inspiration. These are my nominations forthese year’s Edublog Awards.

Best individual blog- http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/

Scott Thornbury’s posts on An A to Z of ELT always generate a lot comments and provoke debate. Even though I am notyet convinced that Dogmeis the ultimate way to go in the post-methods era, it is always a pleasure tolisten to Scott at conferences and read his thought-provoking posts. He wasvery critical of the Lexical Approach once, calling it a journey without maps,but then went on to produce A Natural Grammar, best lexical grammar book everpenned!

Best new blog - http://allatc.wordpress.com/

I met Steve at TESOL Franceless than a month ago. He is just as passionate as myself about using video inthe classroom, although our tastes and choices are somewhat different.

Best twitter hashtag - #eltchat

Every Sunday a poll is postedon Twitter where you vote for topics of interest. The top choice is thendiscussed on Wednesday on #ELTchat, a weeklydiscussion group started by MarisaConstantanides. Teachers from all over theworld join this one hour online discussion and you should too!

Best educational useof audio / video / visual / podcast - http://tefltecher.wordpress.com/

Great ideas forusing video and apps on this blog started by an EFL teacher who, like manyother ELT personas, started his teaching career at International HouseBarcelona.

Best educational useof a social network - TeachingEnglish | British Council on Facebook

I’ve seenthis one nominated quite a few times so I hope they win this year. Ann Foreman isdoing a great job selecting the highlights from the ELT blogosphere and sharingthem on Facebook, even though she misspelled my name theother day :)

Good luck to allnominees!

Spoken Grammar

2011-11-01T20:44:00.000+02:00

Sometime in March the day after the Oscarceremony, one of my Facebook friends posted:

MazalTov to the King's Speech!

to which I replied:

Leo Selivan and Strangers No More - the best shortdocumentary about Rogozin School in Tel Aviv

16 hours ago · Like

(I was rooting for the film to win since alittle over a week earlier I had visited the school with a delegation from the UK).

My comment prompted a somewhat sarky replyfrom another Facebooker (the name has been changed):

Sarky Facebooker I didn't realise that there an Oscarcategory for documentaries about the Rogozin School in Tel Aviv. Seemslike a case of over-specialisation to me.

13 hours ago · Like · 1 person

Admittedly my sentence was not very wellformed and had I been writing it, say for this blog, I should have written “and Strangers No More, a documentary about the Rogozin School in Tel Aviv,which won in the Best Short Documentary category”. But considering the chatty nature ofFacebook posts my post doesn't seem too inchoate. After all, we don’t “write” onFacebook but rather “talk”, i.e. the Facebook language is more characteristicof spoken rather than written English. And when we speak we tend to omit and swallowwords (“Hungry?” instead of “Are you hungry?”), interrupt ourselves (“Iwouldn’t be upset you know – I mean it’s your choice – if you asked her out”),repeat ourselves (“My sister, she has a friend there now, he is staying withher”) and make other deviations from the norms of English grammar. Speaking is less structured and somewhat untidy.

The Facebook episode made me investigate the subject of spoken grammar in more depth. First of all, althoughI refer to it as “spoken grammar”, there is actually no agreement among theoreticiansif it actually exists. There are three main ways of looking at the subject:

1. Spoken language has no grammar

2. Spoken grammar = written grammar

3. Spoken English has its own grammar.

The first view holds that spoken languageis not governed by grammar rules - it is messy and lacking order. According tothe second view, while the vocabulary we use in speaking and writing may bedifferent (for example, more formal register in writing, more phrasal verbs inspeaking etc) the same grammar rules apply to both.

Finally, the last view has received increasedattention in the last few years with a few books published on the subject (see,for example, Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. 1999.Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman). They have challenged thenotion that grammar rules should be dictated by a written model of the languageand proposed that spoken language is governed by a special grammar with its ownrules and conventions

The main features of spoken grammar:

Ellipsis
Omission of one or more words inclause.

Any luck? Instead of “Did you have anyluck?”

Repetition
Spoken language is produced spontaneously,in real time, and we do not have time to plan what we are going to say. Thisoften results in repetition and additions. For example, a quantifier is often placed after its nounor pronoun:

Parisians, most of them speak some English.

Or we often add a "tail” at the end:

It’s a funny place, this town.

Vagueness

"Vague language is more likely to bethe sign of a skilled and sensitive speaker than a lazy one" claim Carter & McCarthy (2006, p. 202)¹. Some examples of vagueness in spoken Englishinclude:

-ish,kind of / kinda, .., or something, … and things like that

Historical present
The use of present tenses to narrate pastevents in order to achieve a more dramatic and vivid effect.

I get to my car and then I realise thatI’ve left my car keys at home so I go back home and guess what?…

Discourse markers
Discourse markers used in Spoken Englishare quite different than those in written English

Well…, anyway…I mean… You know

NB. "You know" is the most frequent wordcombination in English

Formulaic language

Exchanges in a conversation often consistof formulaic expressions rather than full sentences.

That’s fine. What time? What about…?

How to focus in class

To practise the features of spoken grammarin class, you can do the following activities:

- arrange formulaic expressions to make ashort dialogue

- look at different uses of well (e.g. toend a conversation, to introduce a storyetc).

- add sort of,kind of or something like that to a dialogue to make it sound more vague
- describe a picture using stuff, things and bits and no other nouns - but as manyadjectives and verbs as you can

- watch a scene from a film and note downall examples of spoken language.

Here is an example of an activity whichaims to draw students’ attention to ellipsis:

Short questions in spoken language

Inspoken language it’s common to leave out certain words (very often auxiliaryverbs or pronouns) in general questions. Can you put back the missing words inthe short dialogues below?

a) “Hungry?” – “No. I’m fine thanks.”

b) “Sleep well?” – “Yes, thanks.”

c) “You going to the party tomorrow?” – “Might be”

d) “Tired? – “Yes,I’ve been working all day.”

e) “Morecoffee”? –“Yes, please.”

f) “Any luck? – “Nope. I’lltry again tomorrow”.

What do youthink the speaker in (f) is asking about?

Click HERE to download a handout with anumber of other Spoken grammar activities and exercises.

Why focus in class

Natural sounding language

By highlighting the above-mentionedfeatures of spoken grammar we expose our students to real language, notcoursebook English. This is especially important on the courses where the maininput students get is through reading.

Motivating

Dealing with the language that is not oftenfound in conventional teaching materials is relevant to our students’ lives. It is the language they hear in the movies andsongs, and use when chatting on Facebook and Skype.

To counter “leveling out”

“Levelling out” is a common phenomenon intranslation, referred to as one of the translation universals. Corpus studiesshow that translated texts tend to be more similar to one another than texts inthe source language, which is particularly evident in register (level offormality). In other words, both formal and informal texts in the sourcelanguage tend to lean towards the centre of the continuum in translation. Asimilar phenomenon can be observed amongst learners of English. They often useinformal language when writing formal essays or letters and they tend to usemore formal language in speaking. Since we help our learners to sound moreformal in writing, I see no reason why we should not try and help make theirspeaking more informal, where appropriate.

Can you think of other reasons why we shouldfocus on spoken grammar in class? Do you agree that we should spend time on itat all? I would like to hear your thoughts on the subject.

_____________________

¹Carter,R. & McCarthy, M. (2006). Cambridge Grammarof English, Cambridge,CUP

Talking about comedy

2011-10-30T21:15:00.000+02:00

This activity is aimed to supplement a speaking activity in Innovations Advanced

Innovations were the first series of textbooksthat truly embraced the principles of the Lexical Approach (LA). While otherbooks have started including collocation boxes and introducing some multi-wordunits, Innovations (published by Thomson Heinle or what is now known asCengage) was the first one to embody the spirit of the LA focusing on chunks, formulaicexpressions and dealing with aspects of grammar relevant to the spoken languagewhich are rarely featured in other textbooks influenced by the written grammarof English.

Innovations Upper-Intermediate is by far myfavourite. (I may be biased here because upper-int. is my favourite level toteach). Not only does it have engaging, thought-provoking articles andrefreshing topics (Women in boxing, rave parties and hair styles), it introducesthe lexis that will make your mouth water and that you won’t find in any othercoursebook: “We get on like a house onfire”, “I looked like death warmed up”, “They went out boozing” and “Go jump inthe river!”... My second favourite is probably the Pre-Intermediate one. Whatother textbook at this level introduces learners to such grammar points as the Service Passive (Youshould have it X-rayed) or Present Simple after Hope (I hope you have agood time in Switzerlandnext week)

However, I’ve been recently using the Advancedbook with a small group of students and have come up with and collected a few supplementaryactivities which I‘d like to share with you here. Here is a simple idea thatcan liven up Activity 6 on page 99 - Talking about Comedy.

Procedure

Show your students several video clips (trailersor actual scenes from films) which illustrate different comedy subgenres. This is the playlist I've used with my students:

Or follow the link below:
PLAYLIST: COMEDY

Ask students to have their books open and matcheach clip with a description from the activity in the book. Tell them to compare their answers in pairs and then hold a whole class discussion.

Answers

it’s a spoof horror film
slapstick humour
the humour in it is quite dark
puerile lavatorial humour
a sitcom
it’s not laugh-out-loud funny. Most of the humour is quite subtle.
a political satire
it’s full of all these really corny jokes
some moments of real unintentional humour

Please note that the answers are largely a matter of opinion and other answers are possible too. The activity is aimed to provoke discussion, whichyou can facilitate by providing some useful language on the board, for example:

I don’t know what’s so funny about it;it’s just plain stupid.

Funny? It was outright hilarious!

I couldn't make out what they were saying.

I’ve actually seen this film.

If you like _____________ it should beup your street.

You can also use this activity to revisesome of the language from Unit 13 Books, films and music.

Cycles of Recycling: Cycle 2

2011-05-08T22:30:00.000+03:00

Collocation forks

If the previous cycle used collocations that students have come across in texts, this one involves more explicit teaching. To help learners fully understand and use a new word, it is useful to provide learners with its common collocates. This is particularly important with partially learnt vocabulary.

Recording collocations

“Collocation fork” is a useful way of recording collocations when you want to elaborate on possible uses of a word. Draw it on the board and make sure students copy it into their vocabulary notebooks. Slowly they will get used to this recording format. For example, this is the word fork expanding the verb “join”

	an organization
join	the army
	the club

In this HANDOUT collocation forks appear more clearly

If you want to provide translations, remind your students that they have to translate the whole expression, rather than the word “join”. This will make them aware that words do not correspond on word-for-word basis:

	an organization	devenir membre d’un organisation
join	the army	s'engager dans l'armée
	the club	adhérer à un club

Obviously, if you want to elaborate on a noun, a reverse fork should be used:

take
pass	(an) exam
fail

You can also use collocation forks to highlight impossible collocations, i.e. common learner mistakes which, for instance, can be a result of negative linguistic transfer.

take
pass	(an) exam
fail

~~make~~

Activity 1 – Make up a story

For example: I took my final exam last week but I failed. Hopefully I’ll pass next time.

This works well if the key word is a noun. For suggested collocations click here.
Online dictionaries, such as Cambridge and Macmillan, or online corpus (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/) are good sources of collocations.

Activity 2 – Guess the key word

What is the key word in these collocation forks?

	an organization
___________	the army
	the club

	the story
___________	your face
	all the points

You can draw a few collocation forks on the board and as an option provide a list of the key words (join, cover etc).
This works really well if you have an Interactive WhiteBoard (IWB) because all you have to do is go back to the page where you first drew the forks and simply erase the key words.

You can also turn this into a reverse translation activity where you provide three sentences in your students’ L1 and tell them which word (a verb in this case) will be present in all the English translations.

	__________	pagar el alquiler
___________	__________	prestar atencion
	__________	costearse los estudios

Activity 3 – Recall the collocations

At the end of the lesson, after you have collected a few word forks on the board, erase the key word and get your students to recall the collocations. You can give the first letter as a hint

	o …
join (a/the)	a …
	c …

The idea here is to gradually move from pure recognition (passive knowledge) to actually producing correct collocations (active knowledge). At the beginning of the next lesson, write the keywords on the board again and ask students to provide the collocations, this time without a hint. For example,

	__________
cover	__________
	__________

	__________
attend	__________
	__________

Once again, IWBs allow you to do this activity more efficiently, since you won't have to draw the forks all over again every time. You simply erase the collocates written in the prongs.

Activity 4 – Collocation race

Draw a few collocation forks on the board.

Divide the class into three teams. Each team should send their representative (“captain”) to the board. Supply each captain with a board marker of a different colour. Now each captain should fill one space in each fork with a correct collocation. Each team is allowed to provide only one collocation for each fork so that by the end of the activity each fork has three differently coloured collocations. Each captain is of course allowed to consult with his or her team. The team who finishes first is the winner. However, you have to go through the collocations on the board and eliminate incorrect ones before you announce the winner.

Alternatively, this activity can be done as a relay race. The first member of each team takes a marker, races to the board, writes one collocation and races back to hand the marker to another member of their team. Again, go through the collocations before you decide on the winner.

Cycles of Recycling

2011-04-02T22:27:00.000+03:00

Simple but effective activities for recycling lexis

CYCLE 1

Repeated exposures

While researchers do not agree whether encountering words in context or engaging in decontextualized practice is more conducive to learning new vocabulary, most assert that multiple encounters with the word are necessary. Also, there is no agreement in the literature on how many encounters with a lexical item are necessary in order for the learner to retain it, with numbers varying between 6 and 16. Despite this, most would agree that frequent recycling is essential to the effective vocabulary learning.

Unfortunately, coursebooks do not provide enough repeated encounters with lexical items. While learners may be exposed to the same lexis within a particular unit, few coursebooks ensure that the same lexis is recycled across the textbook, i.e. over a series of units. It is therefore our responsibility as teachers to ensure lexical items our students encounter are recycled in subsequent lessons and regularly revised.

Lexis vs vocabulary

The word “lexis” is used here in contrast to the word “vocabulary” to emphasise the fact that we talk about collocations and lexical chunks as opposed to individual words. There are many ways to revise individual words: students can be given cards with words and cards with definitions and asked to match them or fill the gaps with the missing words. However teaching collocations and chunks require slightly different techniques.

Some simple suggestions given below will help you with recycling and revising lexis studied in class. Most of the activities presented here do not require much prep time and can themselves be reused and recycled in subsequent lessons (albeit with minor modifications) to save your time.

Collocation pairs

This is an easy-to-prepare and engaging activity which provides decontextualised practice of the collocations students have come across. It can be used as a post-reading activity or as a revision activity to consolidate the language covered in previous lessons.

You can type it up on Word or simply write with markers or felt-tip pens on cut up pieces of paper.

Activity 1 – Find your pair

Click here for WORKSHEET - needs cutting up.

sharp…	…eye
quick…	…mind
famous…	…painting
deadly…	…weapon
scientific…	…discovery
visual…	…image
designer…	…boutique
expensive…	…restaurant
tourist…	…attraction
industrial…	…city
international…	…journal
highest…	…award

Distribute the collocation cards randomly. Ask your students to stand up and mingle and find their partner. Tell them to sit together with their new partner. Go over the answers or display them on the board if necessary.

NB: I normally use multiple dots to indicate whether the word is first in the pair or second especially if you include noun + noun combinations (like designer boutique where designer act as an adjective) or if you include –ing words which can be either adjectives or nouns e.g. (sleeping bag or poor sleeping)

All the collocations above were taken from two texts in Unit 1 of Mind Matters, published by ECB. As a follow up, you can ask students to sort these collocations into two groups. The first five collocations are from the text about Leonardo da Vinci and the last six appear in the text about the Gugenheim Museum in Bilbao. Ask your students to recall why they were used and what they refer to. Students can look back at the texts to see if they were correct. “Visual image” was added as a distractor but can be easily related to either article.

Activity 2 – Collocation swap

For this activity you will need the same number of collocations as students in the class which means it can be used to consolidate lexis from several topics covered in class. Verb + noun collocations below appear in another unit in the same textbook.

raise…	…money
make…	…a difference
solve…	…a problem
pay off…	…your debts
join…	…an organization
have…	…access (to)
finance…	…a new project
clean up…	…the town
get…	…involved
go…	...shopping
donate…	...money to charity
achieve…	…a goal

Give each student one first part and one second part. Ask them to look at their cards and see if they match. If they do, retrieve the ones that match and redistribute as necessary. Ask your students to stand up and find the nouns (second half) for the adjectives or verbs (first half) they have and give the nouns to other students that need them to complete their collocations. Once they have found the second half and got rid of the first they can sit down. Early finishers can be asked to write a sentence. The activity continues until everyone has found their matches and sat down with them.

Activity 3 – Matching & Sorting

You will need all the previous lists (20 – 25 collocations). Make a few sets and cut them up. Give each group of 5-6 students an envelope with the collocation cards. However this time after matching them they have to sort them according to different criteria:

· Gramatically: adjective + noun / verb + noun collocations

· Thematically: categorise them according to topics

· Collocations with positive vs negative connotation
· Any other another categorizing principle learners can come up with

Activity 4 – Recall the collocation

In a subsequent lesson remove the parts of collocations and ask students to recall what the other half is. For example:

solve…	a problem
pay off…	your debts
donate…	money to charity
achieve…	a goal
deadly…	weapon
designer…	boutique
clean up…	the town
join…	an organisation
have…	…access (to)
go…	...shopping
raise…	…money
make…	…a difference

As you can see, either part can be removed. But bear in mind that delexical verbs such as make, do, get etc have a large number of possible collocates. Therefore stronger collocations (e.g. achieve a goal, solve a problem or deadly weapon) would work better for this activity.

Interested in more ideas for recycling lexis? Follow this link to read about Cycle 2.

The article first appeared in the ETAI Forum

Elvis Costello "She"

2011-02-27T23:27:00.000+02:00

Alliteration is used in a variety of genres: poetry and nursery rhymes (“tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor”), advertising slogans and pop culture (Mickey Mouse) as well as everyday life (Bed & Breakfast, credit crunch). Also, research shows that learners find alliterated expressions (prim and proper, slippery slope) easier to remember.

I will be posting more activities which focus on alliteration, but for now here is a song which has lots of examples of alliteration (and some good rhymes too!).

Click here to download:

WORKSHEET

To introduce the concept of alliteration, you can play the Alliterative Adjectives game - a popular ice-breaker where students (in pairs) think of an adjective that best sums up their personality and start with the same letter as their first name, e.g. Mysterious Myriam or Daring Daniel. Then ask students to introduce their partner to the rest of the class. More alliteration activities to follow.

Paths to Proficiency

2011-02-18T15:40:00.000+02:00

Summary of my talk at the MOFET Institute on 15 February 2011

Post-intermediate EFL learners already have a command of grammar structures, reasonable vocabulary, with particularly good receptive skills, and can generally communicate well in a variety of situations. What they need now is to extend the range of vocabulary to be able to convey subtler meanings and use language appropriately, and make the all-too-difficult transition from receptive to productive use. There are several paths they can take to improve their English language proficiency and move beyond the notorious "intermediate plateau". In my workshop I highlighted the following areas which often pose difficulty for post-intermediate learners:

1. conceptual metaphors

2. formulaic language

3. multi-part verbs

4. collocational competence

These areas of difficulty have been pointed out by a number of studies which compared native-speaker and non-native speaker corpora and which were referred to in my talk.

First of all, learners often know the concrete meanings of many English words, for example "flow", "drown" and "freeze", but may not be aware that these words can all be used to talk about money ("cash flow", "drowning in debt", "wage freeze"). The explicit teaching of conceptual metaphors (Money = Liquid, Responsibility = Weight etc) can help learners unlock the metaphorical uses of the lexical items they already know and increase their lexical repertoire.

Most language teachers often hear learners speaking English without mistakes yet sounding unnatural or foreign-like. This is often due to the fact that they lack shorter, economical ways of expressing ideas native speakers are used to, such as "Long time no see", "See what I mean?", "My point exactly" etc. These pre-fabricated, "ready-made" chunks, according to some claims, account for 70% of the native speaker production.

Another important feature of the post-intermediate learner interlanguage is under-use of multi-part verbs. This has been documented by a number of corpus studies which showed that L2 English speakers tend to avoid multi-part verbs in their productive language use. Strategies of dealing with avoidance behaviour will be suggested.

Finally, I suggested that "collocational competence", the term coined by Jimmie Hill, who claims that we should aim at increasing learners' competence will the lexis they already know, lies at the centre of language proficiency. The lack of collocational competence may actually account for all of the areas of learners' difficulty mentioned above, which leads us to conclude that learning collocations is the single most important priority for our target audience.

Follow these links for:
PRESENTATION
HANDOUTS

A tried-and-tested idea for the first lesson(s) of the New Year

2010-12-28T14:26:00.000+02:00

Hello and welcome to my blog!

As some of you may know, I've been doing an end-of-year news round-up for quite a few years now. However this year it has got an upgrade. I am releasing it into the blogosphere, hoping to reach many more EFL teachers.

This activity, suitable for adult or secondary school learners, is a quiz based on the hottest news stories of 2010. Click on the links below for worksheets, teachers tips on how to use the quiz and additional resources. Don't be put off by the fact that some questions may seem difficult. The idea is not to test your students' general knowledge. Therefore it should be done as a collaborative task or as a webquest (see T notes)

Please let me know if you have used it with your students and how it went. I look forward to hearing your comments. Happy New Year 2011!

LEO

NEWS QUIZ (UPPER INTERMEDIATE)
ANSWERS & TEACHERS NOTES (UPPER INT)
POST VOCAB (UPPER INT) - this can be used for review the following week

NEWS QUIZ (PRE INTERMEDIATE)
ANSWERS & TEACHERS NOTES (PRE INT)

News quiz 2010

A major earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010 causing massive loss of life and devastation on the island. What other Caribbean nation does Haiti share the island with?
The eagerly-anticipated ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ became the last film based on the best-selling Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. How many books about Harry Potter has she written?
The Khalifa Tower, tallest man-made structure ever built was inaugurated in January 2010. Where is the 828-metre skyscraper situated?
Where is Eyjafjallajökull and why did it make headlines last year?
In November 2010, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released from a lengthy house arrest in Myanmar. What name did this Asian country have before the military junta changed it in 1989?
One of the popular sporting events in the world, the World Cup, kicked off on 11 June 2010 in South Africa. Which country lost in the tournament's final game, which was won by Spain?
The future of the Euro was brought into question as several European countries stood on the brink of bankruptcy in 2010. When did Europe adopt the common currency?
Thirty three Chilean miners got trapped in a mine, 700 metres below ground. How long did they spend underground before they were rescued in October 2010?
What country lost its president and several high-ranking officials when their plane came down in western Russia last spring?
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico got worldwide media coverage last summer. What company was responsible for the disaster which caused extensive environmental damage?
The 2010 Winter Olympics were held in Vancouver, Canada. How many times has Canada hosted the Winter Olympics?
What car manufacturer had to withdraw more than 3 million vehicles from the market in 2010 due to faulty accelerator pedals?
Great Britain’s Conservative Party returned to Number 10 Downing Street after they won the election by a narrow margin. Who became Britain’s new Prime Minister?
Luckily the H1N1 virus did not turn out to be as deadly as many experts had feared and in August 2010 the World Health Organisation announced the end of the H1N1 pandemic. What other name was this virus commonly known by?
One of the Hamas leaders was found dead in a hotel room in Dubai in early 2010. The Israeli agents, involved in the plot, allegedly used forged passports from two European countries. What countries were the passports from?
What independent media website sparked a lot of controversy last year after it published secret government documents and other sensitive material?
Fans around the world gathered in December 2010 to mark the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. Where was the former Beatle killed?
What is the name of the 2010 hit movie which tells the story of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg?
A sports match, which lasted more than 11 hours last summer, will go down in history as the longest match ever. What sport was it?

Revising lexis: quality or quantity?

2010-12-28T11:09:00.001+02:00

How many encounters with a lexical item are necessary before it is committed to memory? 6? 9? 12? 15? This article discusses how much heed language teachers should pay to vocabulary acquisition research, particularly with regard to repeated encounters with lexical items.

Follow the link to read the article on the Teaching English website

No more Football!

2010-12-28T09:04:00.000+02:00

In this activity students first listen to a conversation in the film (the technique known as Vision Off) and then check their understanding while watching with the Vision On. The activity is suitable for ages 14 and up.

Procedure

Preparation

You will need a DVD of the film Bend It Like Beckham. The scene starts at 20:18 (Mother shouting "Chi, chi, chi!") and ends at 22:06 (after father says "You must start behaving like a proper woman"). Or, if you have a computer in the room, use this clip

No More Football
Bend It Like Beckham— MOVIECLIPS.com

Click here to download WORKSHEET

Pre-watching

Students to brainstrom in pairs what boys and girls like doing in their free time (Before you watch). Make sure they don't look at Page 2 of the handout.

What are they talking about?

Tell your students they are going to listen to the scene from a film but they are not going to see it. They do not have to catch every single word. The idea is to understand the main idea. Play the scene with Vision Off: either turn the TV around or cover up the screen. Students listen and answer the questions.

Post

Play the scene once again, this time with the Vision On so that students can check if they guessed correctly.Do the After you watch discussion on page 2.

Syllabus fit

Many textbooks have a unit on Gender roles, Stereotypes or Free Time.

Extension

More activities to use with the film (and book!) can be found on the British Council website Teaching English

This activity can be also used in conjunction with a scene from another movie - Billy Elliot.

Note

This Vision Off activity can be adapted for other film clips. Choose an appropriate scene (usually works well with people arguing, but not necessarily) and give students some questions to answer, for example: How many people are there? What are they wearing? How do they feel? What do they look like? Students then watch the clip again to check their guesses.

Hope you enjoy using it.

Let me know how it went.

What do you mean it's not in the computer?!

2010-12-27T22:59:00.000+02:00

In this activity students watch a short clip from the movie “Red Eye” and then discuss problems people may encounter when staying in hotels. The activity is suitable for both adult and young learners at pre-intermediate level and up.

Procedure

Preparation
You will need a DVD of the film or, alternatively, you can show the clip on Youtube (click here). The scene starts at 2.12 and ends with the receptionist saying on the phone “they were such a**holes”. If you find it inappropriate, stop the playback right after the customers say “We won’t!”

Reservation Emergency
Red Eye— MOVIECLIPS.com

Follow the links to download:
WORKSHEET
WORKSHEET FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

Before you watch

Freeze-frame at 2.12 – outside view of the hotel. Discuss with students if they have ever stayed / often stay in hotels. Brainstorm what kind of problems hotel guests may encounter while staying in a hotel (e.g. rude staff, room not being cleaned etc)

While you watch
1. Show the clip. Was the problem the guests experience in the film mentioned in the pre-watching discussion?
2. Give out the handout. Ask students to look at the questions in While You Watch. Show the clip again. Students answer the questions in pairs then discuss as a whole class.
3. Show the clip again. If you are using DVD you may want to show the clip with English subtitles at this stage.

After you watch
1. Do the language work focusing on computer-related expressions
2. Discussion in pairs/groups

Optional extension / follow-up
• Discuss whether students have ever deleted files by mistake from their computers. What happened? How did they solve the problem?
• Mini role-plays: Customer complaining to a hotel receptionist

Coursebook link
Innovations Intermediate. Unit 8. Complaints. Page 49 activity 4 – Softening complaints.

“If We Ever Meet Again”

2010-12-27T22:18:00.001+02:00

An activity for adult learners based on the song by Timbaland featuring Katy Perry focusing on chat-up lines, the future conditional and adjectives ending with -ed.

Follow the links below to access:

WORKSHEET

TEACHERS NOTES