Wednesday 30 January 2013

The 3 secrets of successful listening comprehension

Do your students know these 3 secrets to successful listening comprehension? 

A very brief article on busyteacher.org which talks about some important clues that students need to keep an ear out for when listening to native speakers.


Monday 28 January 2013

Learning and teaching by e-Twinning

Hi guys,
I would like to share with you this tool in order to practise foreign languages, mainly English. Besides, you could enjoy with your pupils, and motivated them with this subject. In my opinion, it is a comprehensible tool because you and your students will know others schools, students, teachers, educational systems, ever their countries. I hope you enjoy working with e-Twinning.

If you want to explore e-Twinning follow this link:




Sunday 27 January 2013

Friday 25 January 2013

English Workshop: Listening / Language and Music

Great to see so many keen teachers at the first session of the English Workshop at the CEP in Córdoba, and pleased to find some faces from last year's course, too!

As always, time just flew by and we'd only just scratched the surface of so many interesting and important issues. With this in mind I think it'd be great to use the blog as a place to sound off anything we haven't had time to deal with in depth during the session and an opportunity to get things off our chests...Who knows, they may just be a solution for a tricky situation around the corner.

Something that kept on cropping up again and again was the problem of large classes and the difficulties of teaching language (and not only language!) with sometimes 30 or more students who aren't always motivated. Motivation is of course central to creating a positive learning environment and it is part of our responsibility as teachers to get and maintain our students motivated. But what do we do with those that just don't want to be motivated? Do we persevere, perhaps at the cost of the rest of the class? Do we crack on without them? How do you find the right balance? It'd be great to hear your thoughts on that, so over to you...

I look forward to seeing you at the next session on the 7 February where we'll focus on the reading skill.

Neda 

This is the presentation on Listening / Language and Music (24th January):

Listening / Language and Music: Links

Here are some of the sites and articles I looked at to compile my lecture. I hope you find them useful.

The Listening Skill

The British Council have a nice collection of concise articles with practical tips on a great range of topics. http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles

Improving ESL Learners' Listening Skills: At the Workplace and Beyond

Silvia Vernier; Gabriel del Moral; Sandra Del Giusti; Silvia Barbuzza (2008) "The five language skills in the EFL classroom ". En: Nueva Revista de Lenguas Extranjeras, Nº 10, p. 263-291.
Dirección URL del artículo: http://bdigital.uncu.edu.ar/2647.

Music and Song in the English Classroom


A dissertation by Claudia Smith Salcedo. The document is very long but interesting to dip into.

A succinct article with suggestions for using songs with kids.


by Fernanda Pereira ELEUTÉRIO, Isabella Araújo OLIVEIRA, Mariana Santiago SILVA
Profa. Ms. Márcia Helena Venâncio Faleiros (orientadora)

An overview of the benefits (linguistic and cognitive) of using  music in the classroom.

Music, language, and the Brain


An article on the overlap in syntactic processing of syntax in language and music. Uses a lot of scientific terminology but is clearly written and overall provides an insight into this interesting area of research.

Brief report on another remarkable area of research of cognitive neuroscience involving experiments with music. Dr. Nadine Gabb has conducted studies which have shown that trained musicians outperform non-musicians in a number of studies centred on detecting split-second differences in rapidly changing sounds.

Videos:


Other interesting stuff:



7 laws of Suggestopedia / Reservopedia  (Principles of Lozanov's teaching method)