Greg's English & Music Pages
  • Home
  • Blog Articles & Posts
  • Music & Song
  • My Recordings
  • Learn
    • Learners' Wall
    • Learning Help
    • Play
    • Read
    • See
    • Study
    • Talk
  • Teach
    • Teaching Ideas
    • Teaching Help
  • Portfolio

Young Learner English Resources

11/8/2010

0 Comments

 
I posted a Tweet today to share 31 websites suitable for young learners of English:
31 Ways to Help Young English Learners - GR8 Sites, many interactive activities. http://ht.ly/2nTdu #tesol #efl #esl #elt.

This link to my 44tips.com service provides the best interactive student activities for lower level classes, many usable on SmartBoards as well. There are sites offering videos, sounds, games, activities, cartoons, courses, audio, stories, searches, all aspects of literacy and phonics.

From my observation of blogs and tweets, these sites are among the best available, so I'm sharing them with learners (as many can be used outside of class) and teachers to get the most out of new technologies and to maximise their fun in learning English.

If you have other sites worth adding, please let me know. Please enjoy!
0 Comments

Facebook or Twitter or Both?

11/8/2010

0 Comments

 
Hi Jason,
I agree the basic twitter.com page is like a firehose. However, I've got a few ways of stilling the flow.
I use "Hootsuite" and arrange those I'm following into columns according to interest area e.g. ESL, travel, etc. Then I only put the ones I'm REALLY following closely into each category. The conversations are threaded and if you click on a little + next to the message it brings up a preview of the real site with an image and some text.
If you want to send longers messages, you can use twextra for rich formatting too.
Another nice service is twitt.er times which gives a newspaper version of the main tweets you receive which have attachments. It includes images, a summary of the story and who tweeted or retweeted it.
Also, you can use twitpic or twitvid to upload and share pictures and videos. Twitter is also rolling out a suggested friends function (on the regular .com site).
Of course, I agree that some of these are add-ons rather than built-in features, and that Facebook is more for personal & social communication.
However, FB is not without its issues and limitations also. One of the biggest was privacy problems, which I'm not sure are completely addressed yet. For adults I guess this is less of a concern than with children who may share more on FB than they should. Also, I believe third party companies can still access your friends and friends of friends for direct marketing. Finally, all the stupid/inane apps (like Farmville) are still potential hazards.

That is why I've been terribly unfashionable and started a MySpace account. It's harder to convince friends to use it, but if you look at the new interface and some of the other nice features, it's really as good as FB. Since I have recorded a number of music tracks, MySpace also lets me share these directly from my profile both in audio and video formats. It also offers a blog where you can rant on longer if you want, and it's the second biggest network behind FB.
Bottom line, there's a place for both. It's just a question of getting them to work for you efficiently, and of choosing which to use in which context.

Posted 11th August, 2010 at http://jasonrenshaw.typepad.com/jason_renshaws_web_log/2010/08/facebook-or-twitter-or-both.html
0 Comments

Teaching in Korea: Eight days a week and a cruel summer...

6/8/2010

0 Comments

 
Hi Jason,

Yes, both my short Korean public school career and anecdotal evidence from colleagues, leads me to confirm that things are really sad there.

Both students and teachers waste enormous amounts of time on meaningless, repetitive tasks while patting themselves on the back for putting in so many hours. Unfortunately, it's so deeply embedded in the culture that they don't even see it.

As I've mentioned elsewhere before, this is also a contributing factor to the high youth suicide rate in South Korea. A colleague told me at her school they didn't even acknowledge when this happened to one of her students - it was just business as usual. Does that mean suicide is "normal"? If all one's youth was wasted sitting in sweaty classrooms with no vacation breaks, no time for friends, endless homework and memorisation, and seemingly uncaring parents, one might wonder whether life was worth living as well.

If we could spend an equal amount of time educating governments, parents and administrators there on efficient and effective ways to learn, we could PERHAPS turn things around. However, I fear that nothing short of a "shock and awe" campaign would have any impact on the entrenched ideas, the ruthless pursuit of profit, or the fear they feel towards many things non-Korean.

I'd have to say too that as an "outsider" while living there I felt powerless to influence change. It WILL come in time, but at what cost?

Posted 6th August, 2010 at http://jasonrenshaw.typepad.com/jason_renshaws_web_log/2010/08/teaching-in-korea-eight-days-a-week-and-a-cruel-summer.html
0 Comments

P is for Pronunciation

1/8/2010

0 Comments

 
 (12:24:18) :
OK, I’m a simple teacher, so I may be completely wrong. However, I assume you’re referring to incremental improvements that you might be trying to produce in intermediate or higher level students who have had significant exposure to English already.
I can’t imagine you would subscribe to the same conclusion in the case of beginners. For example, one group of my students are first grade elementary school Taiwanese kids. Many have never seen English Ietters before, and both their Chinese characters and “bopomofo” phonetic system are of no assistance for reading, writing or pronunciation of English. I can’t see myself standing in front of them with an alphabet flashcard and just letting them pronounce the letters any way they feel like on first exposure to them. If I showed them “a” and let them say “b” their chances of being able to communicate ANYTHING would be nil.
While I don’t expect many of them to ever approximate the pronunciation of a native speaker, I do hope they will get to the point where they can at least be understood by one.
Am I wasting my time and theirs?

Posted 1st August, 2010 at http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/p-is-for-pronunciation/#comment-1588.

0 Comments

    Tweet

    Archives

    April 2020
    February 2019
    September 2017
    January 2017
    May 2016
    March 2016
    July 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    June 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    May 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010

    Categories

    All
    Assessment
    Bali
    Blog
    Book
    Buddhism
    Celebration
    Chicken Little
    China
    Christmas
    Classrooms
    College Quals
    Colour
    Computer
    Computers
    Co-teacher
    Countries
    Courses
    Creativity
    Critical Analysis
    Criticism
    Culture
    Curriculum
    Drawings
    Earth Day
    Education
    Efl
    Elementary
    Elt
    English Name
    Esl
    Essay
    Exams
    Expectations
    Facebook
    Feedback Validation
    Feel
    Flow
    Flowers
    Forums
    Friendship
    Games
    Glbt
    Goodbye
    Grammar
    Harpsichord
    Height
    Identity
    Ideology
    Ielts
    Interactive
    Ipa
    It
    Iwb Training
    Korea
    Learn
    Learning
    Leaves
    Lesson Plans
    Life-long
    Links
    Literacy
    Location
    Me
    Mothers Day
    Motivation
    Murphy's Law
    Music
    Myspace
    Needs
    New Year
    Online
    Opening
    Organ
    Paper Planes
    Paragraph
    Pd
    Performance
    Phonics
    Photos
    Pln
    Programs
    Pronunciation
    Publishing
    Punctuation
    Reading
    Referencing
    Resources
    Shape
    Size
    Skills
    Smartboard
    Smell
    Socialnetworking
    Social Networking
    Song Contest
    Speaking
    Speed
    Spelling
    Student-centred
    Taboo
    Tai-an
    Taiwan
    Teach
    Teaching
    Teaching Music Education
    Technology
    Testing
    Textbooks
    Textbooks Taboo
    Toefl
    Toeic
    Tools
    Training
    Trees
    Twitter
    University
    Unplugged
    Vegetarianism
    Verbs
    Vocabulary
    Web 2.0
    Web2.0
    Whiteboard
    Word Clouds
    Writing
    Young Learners

    Blogs I Read

    #ELT Chat
    ABC Teach Blog
    An ELT Notebook
    Angela Maiers
    Breaking News English
    Buddha,Dharma, Sangha & Me
    ED Compass Blog
    Educating Her World
    EFL Teaching Recipes
    Emerging Ed Tech
    Free Technology for Teachers
    Heads Up English
    IH Journal
    Jeremy Harmer's Blog
    Kalinago English
    Literacy, Languages & Leadership
    Maria Constantinides
    Nik's Learning Tech Blog
    Nik's Quick Shout
    Online Learning Insights
    OUP ELT Global Blog
    Sean Banville's Blog
    Some Random Thoughts
    Stephen's Web
    Storynory
    Teacher 2.0
    Teacher Reboot Camp
    Teachers' Tech
    Teach English Brit Council,BBC
    Teaching Life
    TEFL Clips
    The e-Learning Industry Blog
    The Innovative Educator

    RSS Feed

    FIND E-BOOKS

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.