Cultural diversity

What this video and take down notes on the answer of the following questons.
1.- what is cultural diversity?
2.- What type of differences does it cover?
3.- Name at least three of the four tips she mentions on cultural diversity.
4.- Can you sumarise cultural diversity?




Now do this ELLA activity on the essence of britishness

Digital Books

Time is changing the way we learn (and teach as well, of course; here you have a sample of the new materials that are being developed by publishers; hopefully, we wil luse them all in a short time. Try and have a look at them. http://www.digital-text.com/muestra_capitulos/a42i.html

American slang vs. British slang

Listen to this interview of Hugh laurie by Ellen Degeneres: absolutely fantastic!

The curious incident of the dog in the night time

Now that summer time is approaching (thank God), let me rec ommend you a book to read: "The curious incident of the dog in the night-time" by Mark Haddon; the story is written in the first-person perspective of Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy with Asperger syndrome living in Swindon, Wiltshire.

His author has been awarded with several prizes (Whitbread Book of the Year, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize). I'm sure you will enjoy it, and learn to look at the world with another perspective.

A home movie inspired by Tolkien's work

The Hunt For Gollum is a new film based on the JRR Tolkien's world, made by a group of enthusiasts of this british writer and a young director, Chris Bouchard. You can watch it with subtitles in different languages. It is a 40 minutes film, and the result is incredible. And what's more, it has cost less than £5.000 only! The story is placed between The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and it has been filmed taking the Appendices as plot.

Quiz time!

After a whole year of hard work, it's time to put your English to the test with some fairly easy quizzes!

First, you can try this motivating Intermediate Level grammar test (38 questions). You should pass this one with flying colours! Your level is supposed to be much higher, isn't it?

Now, a short BBC quiz on 'Telephoning', testing vocabulary which is specific to the telephone.
(Remember, we have been working on this stuff when dealing with business and occupations).

Another BBC vocabulary test to complement the first two units about travelling and the USA.
Finally, a spelling test designed for native speakers: The Commonly Confused Words Test (just click on 'Next', you don't need to sign up).

When you are old

Listen to this wonderful poem by W. B. Yeats, no doubt one of the most beautiful love poems ever witten.
Post a comment on it later on.




Here you have the words:

863. When You are Old

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Watch this video with Sonnet 29 by Shakespeare recorded by Matthew MacFayden. Absolutely fantastic!



Here are the words:
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, …
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

This is a link to practice on holidays and festivities of English speaking countries. Have a go and enter the page. ESL'>http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/esl-holiday-lessons-lesson-plans-for-esl-efl">ESLHolidayLessons:LessonPlansforESL/EFLwidget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Not seeing a widget? (More info)
Post a comment later on.

Enter the web page and choose one of the famous people biographies; you will find listenings with lots of exercises to practice and improve your skills.

http://www.famouspeoplelessons.com/


I hope you enjoy and learn something new at the same time

BEFORE AVATAR.... A CURIOUS BOY.

James Cameron is no doubt one of the most innovating director in nowadays cinema, and his films create new worlds all their own. If you want to know how he gets inspirired, watch this video.

Remember, you can have the transcription while you are listening to it.

Post a comment on it later on.

Cheers

FARM LIFE

Lets do some listening practice
Visit this webpage:http://www.elllo.org/
Click on 994FARM LIFE. Then, on the right menu, click on Audio Slide Quizz. Play the listening (twice or three times) and try to answer the 5 questions below. Check your answers by clicking on "show score". If you find some part dificult, click on "Show text/hide text" and read the transcript while listening. Once this is over, click on VIDEO RESPONSE and watch the video. Do the quiz. Feel free to explore this web page. When you finish, come back to our blog and write a comment on it.Thank you!

AUSTRALIA

What do you know about Australia? Are "boomerang" or "kangaroo" the first words that come to your mind when you think of Australia? What is its capital? What interesting places can you visit there? Who was Captain Cook?
Well, if you don't know the answers, don't worry. In the link below you can find a listening about Australia which includes all the answers for those questions and much more information about the country.
You are given the whole text you have to listen to with a lot of gaps and, obviously, you have to complete the text.
After doing this listening activity and checking your answers, read aloud the whole text yourself. Listen to it as many times as you need, paying attention to how words are pronounced. Then record it and seng it to me.

Here you have the link:
http://www.members.iinet.net.au/~adelegc/listening/Australia/Australia.html

Cheers

English festivals and festivitie

Watch the following presentation and do the sugested task in pairs; remember that later you will have to make an oral presentation to the rest of the class with the power point material as a support.

English Festivals

View more presentations from agafe2.

This is an example of a video you can embed within the presentation; Jennifer has several similar videos on different cultural aspects you may use.





Try to choose those festivities which you are less familiar with, so all of us can learn something new.

Oral exams and how to mark them

One of the most difficult issues of this subject is how to evaluate our students’ oral productive skill.

First of all, I`d like to point out that I am going to use different types of oral activities: recordings in class both of prepared and spontaneous speech given a certain topic ot deal wih, and recodings the students are going to prepare at home and send via email, video or mp3. I think it's important to take into account all these aspects so student can gain confidence and increase fluency and accuracy little by little.

Talking about the marking of oral exams, I firstly thought of using a single mark to evaluate every student, but I realized that it wasn’t fair. Finally, I decided to mark five different aspects:

1. Pronunciation and intelligibility
2. Fluency
3. language: appropriate grammar and vocabulary
4. The project and its content
5. Accuracy (errors and mistakes)

At the end of each project students get 5 different marks (the final mark comes from finding the average) and that helps them to know which parts they have done well and which areas need to improve.