ESL Podcasts

I just listened to a 20 minute podcast entitled ESL Podcast 613- Being a First Time Parent  and thought how much I would like to share it with my students.  (I currently have 4 first-time pregnant women in my class and this past week one of my male students became a father for the first time.)  What I liked about the podcast was that it is designed for ESL learners.  It presents a phone dialogue between two adults: one who had a baby three weeks prior and the other who was a veteran parent.  The speakers speak clearly and slowly and introduce a variety of vocabulary.  After the dialogue is finished, another speaker goes over the scene and explains what is happening in the conversation.  He explains vocabulary by providing definitions and also using them in different contexts.  He also explain the idioms that the that the speakers employed which is very helpful for ESL students.  I liked this podcast because it offered my students vocabulary utilizing an interestingtopic that my students in which my students can relate.

EPals: A great way to learn about the world

I recently went on line to reaserach EPals and find out how I could use the site in my adult ESL classes.  I was very impressed with the website and the myriad of languages that students could use to communicate with each other.  I really thought that the different topics/ themes that the communication are designed to revolve around are academically sound(The Standards are addressed in each project) and also interesting. 

Students and teachers can choose to focus on topics like weather, natural habitats or maps.  Students can create projects, often in pairs or groups, and truly inform someone living in a different part of the world.  Although the website seems to be designed for K-12 learners, I think that I could use various projects that it presents with my adult learners.  One project is entitled Holidays and Festivals.  It has many links that provide information about how holidays are celebrated around the world.  Moreover, it introdues symbols and asks students to design their own.  Another project is Digital Storytelling that enables the user to create and post their own stories.  There is step by step directions as there are for all the projects.  I think that my students would really benefit from the Holidays and Festivals project as well as the Digital storytelling one as they can write in English but read in both English or their first language.  I do not think that they could correspond with students outside our classroom as the site is aimed at K-12 learners.

Creating Reading Books Using Bookr

Photo courteousy of James F. Clay

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesclay/3509154283/

Bookr is a great tool for creating books for beginning ESL students.  I created a short picture book for my beginning literacy students entitled Going to the Store.  Bookr enabled me to choose culturally relevant pictures and words that my students would be able to read and understand. I would use this in my classroom to teach my students vocabulary and literacy skills.  As shopping is an activity that all my students engage in, it is a shared daily or weekly routine that does not need a big introduction.

Copyright and Usage



http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeblogs/3020966666/

 Photo courteousy of MikeBlogs


There are various Creative Common Licences.  The first one is Attribution which means that although your work is copyrighted, others can distribute and display it but they have to give you credit.  Another license is Noncommercial which means that others can use your work but only for non-commercial purposes.  A third type of license is No Derivative Works.  This license prohibits people from altering your work but allows for your work to be copied, distributed and displayed.  Finally Share Alike is a license that means that others can use your work to produce new things but must use the same license that governs your work.

Microblogging!

This week I learned about Twitter and how to microblog.  In the course of my learning, I came across some interesting articles that answered questions about Twitter and how to make it useful for my teaching.  On Langwitches blog I read a post that further explained hashtags to me and how they could be beneficial in the classroom.  One just has to put a number sign and follow it by the topic. (e.g. #pasttenseverbs)  I think that Hashtags could be very beneficial in the future if I choose to use Twitter in my classroom.  Langwitches post was http://langwitches.org/blog/2010/06/09/what-is-a-hashtag/

Another interesting post that I read was entitled "Free Technology for Teachers: Don't Eat Lunch Alone"  In this blog, Richard Byrne talks about the use of Personal Learning Networks to connect with colleagues.  As many people's schedules these days are very busy, the internet has become a social networking hotbed, but it is important to realize that it also is great for professional networking.  I think that I will try to stay connected to my professional learning network for insights into the classroom and teaching.

Teaching Pronunciation

I read an interesting blog post at Critical Mass ELT: Reflections on the World of English Language Teaching entitled It's all in the accent: Being critical how you teach pronunciation that focused on the issues that surround teaching pronunciation.  The author discussed accent prejudice and whose pronuncation students should seek to imitate.  This interests me as I have students with marked accents and some of them struggle to imitate the local regional accent.  Although I think that pronunciation is important for communication as I often have difficulty understanding students who have accents that differ from mine, I also think that accents are part of our identity.  I need to contemplate and discuss with my students the importance of pronunciation in communication but at the same time respect the fact that there are is not only one standard for pronunciation.