Teaching English in Korea - ESL blog

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Introducing the ESL go language directory. It's a directory of web sites for language learners, langauge teachers, translators, linguists, and educators of all kinds. Categories include:

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Looking for students...

Here's a message from Paul Knight, a Lecturer at the Centre for Language & Communications, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, Tel: 01908 655612, email: P.T.Knight (at) open.ac.uk

I am a lecturer at the Open University and am currently investigating how
students work in electronic environments. As part of this investigation I
am looking for students to complete a task using email. The students will
need to spend about an hour in total on the task at times of their own
choosing spread over a week or two. I am hoping to set up the study for
November of this year, but I am also able to conduct it in January 2005 if
necessary.

The students need to be adults/late teens studying English and at
approximately FCE/IELTS 5.5/TOEFL 550 standard. If you feel your students
might be interested in taking part in this study, or feel it might be a
useful activity for you to direct them to do, please contact me and I will
provide you with further information.

Thanks very much.

Next NGO class and class after

So for my next NGO class, I plan to go over the APA style references homework and have students incorporate them into their writing. The other thing I have to do is some "getting to know you" stuff since that was postponed. Finally, I have to think about the future. Should I assign http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_11483.shtml as homework? Should I give them some vocab stuff as homework and treat this as an in class reading? I've already given them small homeworks the first two days of class. Should we just do it in class (no homework)?

The other question is what to do with all this vocabulary. I mean the students will ahve to answer this one in part. Will they be happy understanding the gist and discussing this thing or will they want to analyze the language in some detail?

Communicative activity: Jill Hadfield's "Tower Block"

So I have done the "Tower Block" activity from one of Jill Hadfield's communicative activities books. Basically each student gets a card with information which could include the student's major and neighbors' majors. Students then had to determine where in the apartment they lived by finding their neighbors.

The problem was that there was lots of extra information and vocabulary built into the cards that was totally useless - students didn't need it to complete the task. Foe example one might say - You don't like your neighbor who majors in economics because his/her budgie is always cheeping. So we've got this tough vocab, that never gets used. All the student has to do is find the economics major. All this information about who you like and dislike is useless in terms of completing the task.

There also seems to be some sort of effort to turn this into a role-play. Stuff like "You don't get on well with your roomate" or on another card "You'd like to move." Who cares? Students can't do anything with this information.

I think what I'm going to do next time is have students prepare their own information sheets with majors, pets, and hobbies. Then sort them out into some Apartment rooms and prepare role-cards - You live next to an economics student who likes playing the piano and has a dog. The task, figuring out where in the apartment you live, is a good one, but why use impersonal information instead of the students' own information? And why include information that's completely useless for students to complete the task?

Not according to plan

An update on the NGO EAP CBI class which met for two hours today after meeting for one hour earlier in the week. Remember I wrote before that I wanted to do some introductions, and then define NGO and civil society and finish up with talking about sources and APA referencing conventions.

Imagine my surprise then when only 6 students showed up (there were 14 last time). I don't know how I scared them all away, but that made doing introductions tough because I don't really know who's in my class and who's not. I postponed the definitions and did the definitions, having students read what they brought in for homework while I wrote the most important stuff on the board. Then I asked students where the information came from. I wasn't ready for answers like "google.ca" - I showed students real APA style references and the detailed info they need including exact web addresses. That took about 45 minutes so we took a break.

Then I split the class into two groups of three and told each team to combine all the info about one word into a really really good definiion. Of course when it came to in text referencing they had to use (Jun Sik's source) for now, but when they bring in the APA info (homework for next class) we'll fix that.

I also noticed that they put the information in kind of a weird order (weird to me anyway). I'm going to work with each group to reorganize the definitions/information and hopefully have some interesting discussion about organization next time. I jsut wonder who will be there...

Beginning the NGO CBI EAP class

So the NGO class I've been writing about met for the first time two days ago. We went over the syllabus and I had students (in groups of 3) write interview questions for each other. That pretty much took the 50 minutes so I assigned the homework: bring in definitions for "NGO" and "civil society" and bring in the sources of each definition. Next class will meet for two hours and we'll do the interviews introductions and then go over the homework. I'm thinking I'll put each word on the board and students will tell me important elements of the definition. I was thinking about putting students in groups and comparing definitions but that wouldn't really match my goals...

What should come out of this:

1. Elements of a definition (not all are necessary and I'm not sure which ones we'll have when we're done)
- general classification
- description
- process (how it works)
- example
- comparison/contrast
- value (how is it important?)
- word origin

2. Using and acknowledging sources. We'll make a list of sources that were used for whatever we end up with on the board. Students' homework will be to prepare a "References" page with each source listed in APA form. Naturally we'll go over APA style in class.