business EFL eikaiwa expectations living in Japan school management
by sendaiben
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English Teachers -scarily spot on
Something a bit lighter today (it is Saturday, after all). A web-based comedy series with surprisingly good production values came out earlier in the year. They are updating it gradually, and episode four came out a couple of days ago.
Here is the first episode. I used to work in a sleazy eikaiwa school in Sendai, so this rings so true at points…
online resources presentations self-study teaching technology theory
by sendaiben
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TED online videos
Is there anyone out there who isn’t watching TED videos regularly?
Just in case, here are my three favourite ones:
1. Hans Rosling’s 2006 talk on poverty and statistics. Funny, compelling, jaw-dropping, illuminating.
2. Ken Robinson’s 2006 talk on creativity and education. Inspiring, funny, moving.
3. Ray Kurzweil’s 2005 talk on technological change. Amazing, unbelievable, futuristic, hopeful.
And an honourable mention: William Kamkwamba’s talk about building a windmill. Heart-warming, inspiring, wonderful.
What are your favourites? Please post them in the comments and give me more excuses to avoid my MA essay…
EFL eikaiwa Language learning online resources self-study SHS teaching
by sendaiben
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Literal music videos -a fun homework assignment?
I was doing some research on Youtube the other day (heh) when I came across an interesting subculture. It seems there are quite a few people that enjoy redoing music videos so that the lyrics describe what is happening in the video. You can see one of my favourites below (the Smashing Pumpkins, doing a teenage angst song from my misguided youth):
I showed it to my daughter and she mentioned that it might be good to practice English with, as it is fairly understandable and has subtitles.
What do you think? There are hundreds of these things on Youtube. They might make a fun homework assignment or filler activity in class…
EFL eikaiwa extensive listening JHS Language learning listening online resources self-study
by sendaiben
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Great listening practice -improved! How to combine two websites to maximise student benefit
Last Thursday I was teaching a special class to high school students (my university loves reaching out to the community, and this program is part of their PR efforts) when I accidentally combined two websites: Popjisyo and Elllo. I encourage my students to use both websites, but had never thought to combine them before.
Accessing Elllo through Popjisyo allows students to get mouseover translations of tricky words in the transcripts, and also to save new words to a vocabulary file that they can then email to themselves to review later.
Best of all, both websites are free and don’t require registration, so they are easy to introduce and get students using. This also opens up Elllo to lower level students that would have found it too challenging without the mouseover translation support.
I successfully introduced the combination to junior high school students on Saturday, and they seemed to like it!
EFL eikaiwa online resources Reading rikai self-study SHS technology university
by sendaiben
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Popjisyo supports online reading for learners of English or Japanese
I am a big fan of rikai and it’s various browser plugins (little programs you can download to add to the Firefox or Chrome browsers that give you rikai’s functionality), but the main page has personal ads on it, so I feel a bit hesitant about introducing it to students. Rikai allows you to copy and paste text or go to a website, and then provides mouseover (popup) vocabulary for words on the page. Basically, if you don’t know a word, you can move your mouse cursor over it, and a translation will pop up. It is incredibly quick and makes reading online very easy. Mouseover translations are much better than using translation software because they allow you to figure out a text rather than scrambling it, as is so often the case with machine translation between Japanese and European languages.
A while ago I found an acceptable alternative in popjisyo. It has the same functionality as rikai, but looks much more respectable. It also has a very cool ‘save to vocabulary list’ function, where if you double click on a word it saves it and then gives you the option of emailing the list to yourself. A great way to keep track of all the words you couldn’t understand during your web surfing session. Best of all popjisyo doesn’t require registration and is available in both Japanese and English, so it is very easy to introduce to students.
On the whole, junior and senior high school students tend not to be as impressed with the site, as almost all of their English studying is still through textbooks. University students, on the other hand, were extremely excited by the prospect of being able to read articles online in a more efficient way.
I recommend popjisyo (or rikai, they are very similar) to anyone who is studying or using Japanese or English (they have functionality for other languages too, but I haven’t personally tried them). I use them for two main tasks:
1. Reading email
I get a lot of group emails at work, most of which do not really pertain to me. If I can’t get the gist quickly, I cut and paste the email into popjisyo and can scan it easily using the popup translations to fill in unknown words.
2. Reading websites
This is a form of extensive reading, where I use popjisyo to make websites easy enough to read for fun. As an added bonus, I can save words by emailing them to myself and come back and review them later.
As tools, these websites can allow us to interact with our target language much more quickly and effectively. While there is a place for intensive reading and meticulous dictionary use in study, sometimes we just need to get a rough idea of the meaning and move on. Popjisyo and rikai allow us to do that.
*I talk about rikai in a previous post about learning Japanese here.
Listening to natural conversations online -the best website I have found
I have been a fan of Elllo.org for quite some time. It is a free website that allows visitors to listen to dialogues on a variety of subjects. There are several reasons why I like it so much:
1. You don’t need to register
This makes it incredibly easy to use with students, and to recommend to students, because you don’t have to walk them through a registration process or deal with personal information worries.
2. Incredible variety
The site has over 1,000 conversations at time of writing, and more are added on a regular basis. The range of topics is incredible, and many of them are genuinely interesting.
3. Different accents and Englishes
Elllo has a huge variety of accents represented in its content. This is extremely useful to my students, as they mostly have only encountered North American, British, and Japanese English. Given that most conversations in English now take place between non-native speakers, it is clear that getting used to different varieties of English is a necessary part of preparing to be a user of English in the future.
4. Natural Conversation
The conversations appear to be largely unscripted, as they show features of spoken English (false starts, ungrammatical features, etc.). This makes them much more useful than most materials, which still tend to be read from a script.
5. Full Transcripts
The site provides transcripts for all the conversations that can be hidden or shown as necessary.
6. Complementary exercises
The site also includes follow-up exercises for each conversation, including vocabulary work, comprehension questions, and a very interesting speaking practice section.
7. Downloads
Students can also download all the conversations as mp3 files to listen to on portable devices.
Basically Elllo.org provides almost everything my students need to seriously increase their listening ability in casual contexts. I recommend it to all my classes, as it only takes about five minutes to showcase how and why to use it, and for a motivated student it could make all the difference.
The Oxford Reading Tree
I am very interested in teaching English to children, and spend a lot of time thinking about how to possibly do it in a more efficient way. At the English school I advise, Cambridge English, we have a strong phonics and reading program.
I love reading, and I am a strong believer in the power of reading to allow students to absorb language (I am a Krashenite at heart). It is my goal to allow my students to start reading in English, to encourage them to continue, and to empower them to become confident and voracious readers after they finish at our school.
In order for that to happen, students need a strong foundation of systematic phonics instruction, phonetically decodable reading material to start with, and interesting material to fuel the flame once they get used to reading words and sentences.
The Oxford Reading Tree provides the third ingredient above. I was originally introduced to the series by a colleague who used it with his own children and students, and quickly came to love the characters, the pictures, the humour, and above all, the warmth of the series. The ORT is not phonically decodable (although it has phonics-based components among its 500+ books), so it is less suitable than other series (such as Jelly and Bean) for absolute beginner readers. However, the strong stories and characters make it perfect for students who are starting to read for pleasure.
We use the ORT in three ways at Cambridge English:
1. Story Time
The teacher will read a book to the students, helping with unfamiliar vocabulary, asking questions about the story and the pictures, and asking students to predict what will happen.
2. Free Reading in Class
Students are given reading time (normally 5-10 minutes), during which they can choose any book of a suitable level to read. They read independently, and record basic information about each book they read as they finish them.
3. Reading Homework
Students borrow books to read at home, either in a structured manner where the books are assigned and students are supposed to read to their parents, or a freer style more like the in-class reading above.
The ORT has clearly defined levels which make it easy to see which books students should be reading, and our school has several sets of the trunk stories (the fiction ones with Biff, Chip, Kipper, etc.) so we have the option to let some students borrow books while others read in class.
As you can probably tell, I love the ORT stories myself (I find the materials that work best for me are the ones I actually like, as I find it much easier to be enthusiastic about them), so I was delighted when Oxford University Press Japan asked me to present about it at the ETJ Expos. I did one presentation in Sendai on the 3rd of October, and I’ll be doing another one in Tokyo on the 7th of November, at the Tokyo ETJ Expo. I’ll be talking more in depth about why reading is so important for Japanese students, and about how parents, teachers, and school administrators can use the ORT to strengthen English skills and programs.
I hope some of you can make it, it should be a great weekend.
The Archive
Sounds like something out of the Matrix, doesn’t it?
The content from my old blog will be migrated over here gradually (if/when I have time). In the meantime, if you are looking for it, you can find it here.
Goodbye blogspot
After many years together, I am leaving blogspot. I have set up house with WordPress at sendaiben.org, and we hope to be very happy together. Please come and see us!