the eclectic efl teacher

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2010-10-07T00:44:00.001-07:00

Blah, blah... Blogging from Android

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2009-08-11_0435

2010-02-03T16:09:00.001-08:00

2009-08-11_0435

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Great presentations: what the f**k is social media?

2009-08-23T02:59:00.001-07:00

Marta Kagan, of US branding company espresso, outlines in a brilliant presentation why organisations should be actively engaged with social media. While this has nothing directly relevant to EFL or teaching, I just thought it was a great presentation with big-hitting statistics, amazing graphics, repetition, slogans, and a nasty swear word which - a combination totally beyond the majority of my business or academic students!

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

Authentic Philosophy Audio

2009-07-06T11:15:00.001-07:00

Philosophy Talk

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Ten tried and tested internet tools for teachers

2009-07-04T00:44:00.001-07:00

Ten tried and tested internet tools for teachers from http://www.boxoftricks.net.

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Death by PowerPoint

2009-05-14T16:30:00.001-07:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Death by PowerPoint

View more presentations from Alexei Kapterev.

Sliding House Video

2009-05-13T14:56:00.000-07:00

Design and architecture magazine wallpaper is an ideal source for authentic materials for creative high-level students. The short video below shows a house with a sliding roof that opens up just like a convertible car. Such innovative design ideas should stimulate discussion and engage students with an artisitc or engineering streak.

Wallpaper videos, as expected, are slick and stylish and provide an authentic context for low-frequency art and design lexis.

Reith Lectures (BBC Radio 4)

2009-05-07T18:28:00.000-07:00

Self-explanatory stuff really but the Reith Lectures are broadcast by BBC Radio 4 and are available as audio, podcast, mp3 download, and has a transcript. There are also links to relevant BBC news and a discussion on the Open University forum.

Recent speakers include sociologist Anthony Giddens, conductor Daniel Barenboim, and writer Wole Soyinka. In the archive are also Bertrand Russell, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and Sir Bernard Lovell. Needless to say these a great sources of more academic vocab and exemplars of coherent argument.

Moodle Video Tutorials

2009-04-30T23:18:00.000-07:00

Moodle Tutorials ::: Educating Educators

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The Gender Genie

2009-04-30T16:33:00.000-07:00

The Gender Genie

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FutureMe.org

2009-04-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

FutureMe.org

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Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds

2009-04-29T07:47:00.000-07:00

Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds

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prognosticate - the news predicting game

2009-04-26T09:04:00.000-07:00

prognosticate - the news predicting game

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Scrapbooking, Free Ecards, Birthday and Greeting Cards at Smilebox.com

2009-04-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

Scrapbooking, Free Ecards, Birthday and Greeting Cards at Smilebox.com

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ReadWriteThink

2009-04-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

ReadWriteThink

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ReadWriteThink: Student Materials: Persuasion Map

2009-04-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

ReadWriteThink: Student Materials: Persuasion Map

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wefeelfine

2009-04-25T16:50:00.000-07:00

wefeelfine

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Wallwisher.com :: Words that stick

2009-04-25T15:37:00.000-07:00

Wallwisher.com :: Words that stick

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Phatic communication, twitter, and web2.0...

2009-04-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

The first blog post I discovered on twitter was, very aptly, about the nature of communication on twitter itself. Even more aptly, it was tweeted by David Gauntlett, Professor of Media and Communications at Westminster University and general busy-body behind theory.org.uk.

In the post, Leisa Reichelt described the incessant exchange of status messages as an 'ambient intimacy' which keeps friends and colleagues just close enough to communicate with, but with the volume turned down - just enough to provide a little background music. Basically, phatic communication via web2.0.

The blog, unfortunately, quotes someone erroneously attributing this 'phatic function' to Mikhail Bakhtin rather than Roman Jakobson (at least they managed to get a Russian linguist). In Jakobson's (1962) six functions of communication, the phatic function establishes and maintains communciation, a kind of metacommunication. In speech, this includes chit chat to you neighbour about the weather to strike up a conversation and the macho grunts sports jocks exchange with each other; and in writing, the opening and closing formalities like 'Yours sincerely'.

A more appropriate attribution would be to Polish anthropologist, Bronisław Malinowski, who coined the phrase. His ethnographic studies of the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea in the 1920s led to his observations that 'ties of union are created by the mere exchange of words' (Malinowski 1923:315 in Wardhaugh 2006).

The idea of web communication as phatic communion was something I had read before, although usually in the pejorative sense. Academics sceptically remark that "students are certainly engaged in communication. But has this communication led to any new understanding?" (Kern 2000:355 in Kramsch & Thorne 2002).

Though similarly sceptical, Kramsch and Thorne (2002) interestingly suggest that as computer-mediated communciation (CmC) tends toward the phatic function, rather than the instrumental, the nature of CmC may be very different to that assumed in Hymes' framework of 'communicative competence' that has underpinned so much of current EFL pedagogy since CLT.

I think that dismissing phatic communion as mere gossip, or idle chatter, misses the most important function of language. Exchanges of this type of communication may be empty of meaning in an instrumental sense, but they are rich in meaning in a social sense. In fact my own unscientific observations of my family or of commuters on trains leads me to think this could even be main function of language.

However, linguists and applied linguists, have tended to overlook this function and concentrate on the rationalized coding and decoding of messages as the main function of communication, and in doing so have adopted Shannon and Weaver's transmission model of communication (yes, I know they didn't call it that, but that it what it is). Anyone who reads the oringinal article will instantly understand my misgivings in uncritically transplanting a model from applied mathematics to something as social and cultural as human communciation.

Maybe the sheer magnitude of people that are communicating through web2.0, usually using English as a lingua franca, will lead to a reassessment of what 'meaningful communication' is in foreign language pedagogy. I am all for promoting 'ambient intimacy' in the EFL classroom2.0.

Am I being overly hopeful? Well, seriously interested at least.

References

Kramsch, C. & Thorne, S. (2002) Foreign language learning as global communicative practice, in Block & D. Cameron (Eds.), Globalization and Language Leaching, London: Routledge.

Jakobson, R. (1962) Selected Writings, The Hague: Mouton.

Wardhaugh, R. (2006) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Oxford: Blackwell.

Reverse Speech - Voices From The Unconscious

2009-04-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

Reverse Speech - Voices From The Unconscious

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Education UK - Innovative. Individual. Inspirational.

2009-04-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

Education UK - Innovative. Individual. Inspirational.

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YouTube - SAStudyadvice's Channel

2009-04-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

YouTube - SAStudyadvice's Channel

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Ghotit - context spell checker designed by/for dyslexics

2009-04-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

Ghotit Dyslexia Literacy Assistance.

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Everything you need to know about CALL, no really, EVERYTHING...

2009-04-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

English Module 1.5

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Cloze Text tool from EnglishFile site

2009-04-23T17:54:00.000-07:00

New English File Pre-intermediate Cloze Generator

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Make Beliefs Comix - create your own comics

2009-04-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

Make Beliefs Comix For Educators

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CamStudio - Free screen recording software

2009-04-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

CamStudio - Free Screen Recording Software

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Shahi - visual dictionary using flikr, google, yahoo images

2009-04-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

Shahi is a visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr, Google and Yahoo! images. Another clever idea pinched from Nik Peachey's fantastic blog.

Type in the vocab and get a brief definition, example sentences, and a selection of matched images. Click different tabs for to see images from each of Flikr, Google and Yahoo! images. Intuitive, uncluttered, and very pretty too.

You will find the images for anything other than basic nouns and verbs are pretty random. Searching for abstract concepts will get you some amateur photographer showing off his work on Flikr. But it is a picture dictionary after all so you would hardly use it to demonstrate the meanings and uses of 'palpable', 'obfuscate' or 'indeterminate' would you? If used with that in mind, Shahi could be a useful vocab resource for students.

Nik points out that this gap between word meanings and images could also be used as a stimulus for speaking activities where students must choose the best/worst match and explain why. This could be done in small groups rather than pairs to maximize disagreement. Alternatively you could search groups of words to find which have matching images and which don't and then discuss why some words have good matches and others don't (due to homonymy, abstraction, metaphorical meaning, connotation, etc).

NB. Be warned though, people put a lot of weird stuff on Flikr that you might not want your students to see! Even searching for 'potato' generated a half-naked woman...

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The Learning English Video Project

2009-04-21T12:29:00.000-07:00

The Learning English Video Project » The Learning English Video Project

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SimplyBox - post and share website contents

2009-04-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

SimplyBox - Think Inside the Box

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English language to reach 1,000,000 words - rubbish!

2009-04-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

The Global Language Monitor claims English is rapidly approaching its 1,000,000 millionth word, according to an algorithm calculating the number of daily neologisms.

Thankfully debunked by David Crystal and others!

The less scientism colonizes the study of language and languages the better.

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Scribd - file hosting and sharing web tool

2009-04-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

Scribd

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http://www.beyondbabel.co.uk/

2009-04-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.beyondbabel.co.uk/

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CiteULike - build reference lists and bibliographies

2009-04-21T10:31:00.000-07:00

CiteULike: Everyone's library

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CmapTools - build interactive concept maps

2009-04-21T10:30:00.001-07:00

CmapTools - Home Page Cmap.html

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FreeMind - free mind mapping software

2009-04-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

Main Page - FreeMind - free mind mapping software

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Xtranormal - your text becomes a movie

2009-04-20T14:19:00.000-07:00

Xtranormal | Text-to-Movie

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Pronunciation resources on British Library website

2009-04-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

Very nice of the British Library to kindly publish so much of this project on their website. It can be used as a handy resource of UK accents to stretch students' ears. Alternatively, if you teach outside London and the south coast, you could reassure them that it is not just the part of the country where they are studying that they cannot understand the locals, it is everywhere else in the UK too!

The site explains basic terminology (accent, dialect, etc), promotes a "no right or wrong" ethos regarding variations in grammar and pronunciation, examines the origins and development of RP, and even includes 'minority ethnic English' as one of the many varieties of English spoken in the UK.

One complaint would be that the local accents in and around Glasgow (where my school is based) feature elderly ex-coal miners whereas Edinburgh (where most EFL students study in Scotland) uses Rt Hon Sir Malcolm Rifkind, ever so slightly misrepresenting the Scottish East coast!

Anyway, from www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds...

Sounds Familiar? Accents and Dialects of the UK

Do you call a ‘bread roll’ a cob, batch, bread cake, barm cake or scuffler? How do you pronounce the words cup and plant? And are you sitting or sat at this computer? The UK is a rich landscape of regional accents and dialects, each evidence of our society’ s continuity and change, our local history and our day-to-day lives. This site captures and celebrates the diversity of spoken English in the second half of the twentieth century.

What you can hear

You can listen to 76 sound recordings and over 600 short audio clips chosen from three collections of the British Library Sound Archive: the Survey of English Dialects, the Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects and the Millennium Memory Bank. You’ll hear Londoners discussing marriage and working life, Welsh teenagers talking with pride about being bilingual and the Aristocracy chatting about country houses. You can explore the links between present-day Geordie and our Anglo-Saxon and Viking past or discover why Northern Irish accents are a rich blend of seventeenth century English and Scots. You can study changes in pronunciation among the middle classes or find out how British Asians express their linguistic identity.

What you can do

In addition there are interpretation and learning packages relating to the dual themes of language variation and language change within spoken English. These themes are explored using audio clips, supporting texts and interactive maps to illustrate the lexis (vocabulary), grammar and phonology (pronunciation) of contemporary spoken English as well as introducing the concept of social variation. Three case studies are included to provide an in-depth look at specific varieties of English. 7 recordings and a series of audio clips focus on Received Pronunciation, while a set of audio clips is provided to investigate Geordie Dialect. A further 9 recordings feature speakers with Ethnic Minority backgrounds, alongside a series of audio clips to demonstrate the lexis, phonology and grammar of speakers in the UK's Asian and Caribbean communities.

In Regional Voices you can explore the differences that exist in spoken English as you move across the country, while Changing Voices gives you the chance to hear how English has changed in different parts of the country over the last fifty years. The Case Studies section provides an in-depth look at three specific varieties of contemporary English: Received Pronunciation, Geordie Dialect, and English as spoken in the UK’s minority ethnic communities. A selection of suggested activities and research tasks will help you investigate speech in your own community. Your Voices offers you the exciting opportunity to contribute your recordings and language investigations to the site, as part of the BL Sound Archive's ongoing survey of speech patterns across the UK.

Games as assessment (James Paul Gee interview)

2009-04-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

Grading with Games: An Interview with James Paul Gee (from edutopia.org)

An Arizona State University professor sees a bright future for video games in the learning process both in and out of school.

Cloze Text Creator

2009-04-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Nik Peachey's blog I have discovered a very quick and simple Cloze Test Creator that can be accessed online if you do not (or cannot) use Teacher's Pet.

Local Noise: hip hop meets academia

2009-04-14T03:37:00.000-07:00

Local Noise is a project based at UTS (University of Technology, Sydney), funded by the Australian Research Council. Its focus is on Australian hip-hop, and the localisation of hip-hop in different cultural, societal and educational contexts.The website is intended as an archive, accessible to anyone, of the research work that has been produced by the Local Noise project. We want to ensure that these documents, which chronicle important parts of the development of Australian hip-hop, are available, and to assist those who are researching Australian and global hip-hop.

The website contains transcripts of interviews, academic papers, press and media, audio and video, as well as lists of publications by the project leaders Tony Mitchell and Alastair Pennycook.

Teacher Training Videos by Russell Stannard

2009-04-13T16:50:00.000-07:00

www.teachertrainingvideos.com is an award winning website by English Teaching Professional's Webwatch writer, Russell Stannard.

Easy-to-follow how-to videos (using Camtasia) show EFL teachers how to get the most out of technology and the web, from using audio software like Audacity to wikis, blogging, podcasts, and tons more.

Essay Map

2009-04-13T16:35:00.000-07:00

Essay Map is a simple text organisation tool to help students with basic academic writing structures. Students enter key ideas or sentences into a basic essay outline. Can be used to develop coherence, cohesion, and writing purpose.

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Critical theory lectures

2009-04-10T06:53:00.000-07:00

Audio/video lectures on critical theory, culture & technology from CTheory Live hosted by PACTAC.

The Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture is a unique interdisciplinary institute for research focussed on the impact of technological change on culture, politics and society. Linking together researchers in the Faculties of Social Science, Engineering, Humanities, Education, Fine Arts, Law, Indigenous Governance, and Human and Social Development, the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture provides a collaborative interdisciplinary site for advanced research on information technology, new media, and digital communication as well as for rethinking issues related to ethics and biotechnology. Supported by a networked computing platform and thematically organized by means of an annual research seminar on a key topic area in technology and culture, PACTAC sponsors research conferences, streamed seminars and new media publications. Simultaneously a global centre of intellectual exchange and an innovative and collaborative interdisciplinary site for researching the future of technology, the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture is situated in the Technology Enterprise Facility (TEF170) at the University of Victoria--Canada's University of the Future.

Technology Enterprise Facility (TEF)
2300 McKenzie Street . Room 170
University of Victoria . Victoria B.C.
Canada . V8W 2Y2
Telephone : (250) 472 - 5285
Email : ctheory@uvic.ca

British Academy Lectures online

2009-04-10T06:45:00.000-07:00

THE BRITISH ACADEMY
Established by Royal Charter in 1902, champions and supports the humanities and social sciences. It is an independent, self-governing fellowship of scholars elected for their distinction and achievement.

Ideal authentic materials for EAP students!

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Teaching Methods vs. Teaching Principles (IATEFL Cardiff Online 2009)

2009-04-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

Posted on IATEFL forum, Mon, 03/30/2009 - 17:27

Joined: 2009-03-13

Hi everyone,

I am very interested in exactly how teachers form their views of what is good practice. Clearly there are a number of different influences including personal experience and teacher training. I am particularly interested in the shift in emphasis from teaching methods to teaching principles in methodology textbooks and professional training courses.

Methods seem to be almost completely discredited with most contemporary discussion on methods and methodology tending towards the promotion of a 'prinicpled methodology' over any narowly defined methods (e.g. Scrivener, Richards & Rodgers, Larsen-Freeman, Kumaravadivelu, etc). But is there really a difference to what people are doing in the classroom? And where do these principles come from?

What teaching principles do you follow and why???

Thanks

Tony

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EclipseCrossword - free crossword maker

2009-04-09T10:15:00.000-07:00

EclipseCrossword is the fast, easy, free way to create crossword puzzles in minutes.

It's never been simpler—just give EclipseCrossword a list of words and clues, and it does the rest. In seconds, you'll have a crossword puzzle with just the words you want. EclipseCrossword has been downloaded more than two million times by people just like you.

Who can use EclipseCrossword?

Teachers and parents: Use crosswords to review vocabulary and lessons for all subjects. Students may actually even enjoy doing the assignment! Crossword puzzles encourage logical thinking and correct spelling. Crosswords can be printed or uploaded to your website.
Webmasters: You can easily create interactive crossword puzzle web pages with EclipseCrossword—crossword puzzles are a great way to get people to stay on your site, and come back in the future. Your visitors can play the puzzle right on your website, or you can post a printable version so they can solve it at their leisure.
Newsletter editors: Nobody reads your newsletter? Try adding a crossword puzzle next time, and maybe people will look at it before throwing it away. EclipseCrossword lets you easily save files that can be used in your word processor or publishing software.
You! Anybody can use EclipseCrossword to produce great-looking crossword puzzles. If you're not sure what you'd make a crossword about, check out these ideas.

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Quietube: Youtube video without the distractions

2009-04-09T00:41:00.000-07:00

http://quietube.com/

Enables you to show web videos without the comments and other crap. Add the 'quietube' button to your bookmarks bar and click the bookmark button when viewing video to watch in peace - ideal for the EFL classroom or teacher training. You can then make short URLs to send the quietube version to students.

Supports Youtube, Viddler, Vimeo and more.

Teacher's Pet: - indispensable materials development tool

2009-04-08T09:56:00.000-07:00

Teacher's Pet runs as a macro in MS Word enabling you to create all sorts of teaching activities at the click of your mouse including cloze passages, gap fill, anagrams, jumbled sentences, crosswords, etc. It's easy to download, install and use, and it's FREE! (For now anyway.)

This is easily a must-have EFL materials development tool. Simply input source text to Word and then select the desired function from a drop down menu, and test items and activity worksheets appear!

welcome to my blog

2009-04-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

Well, finally I have entered the blogosphere. And you have entered my blog. Weird.

While not being a technophobe by any stretch of the imagination, I have certainly been a technoslug - taking as long as possible before committing to new technology, fearing it would soon be available in a much simpler version or not available at all.

I waited till EVERYONE else was on Facebook before joining but quickly got bored of sending Japanese drinks or doing movie compatibility questionnaires with distant acquaintances from university I haven’t spoken to in decades.

I have only recently converted to Twitter so the buzz has not yet worn off - it provides me with a constant stream of interesting links thus saving me oodles of time.

But I have finally decided it was about time I had one place I could bring together my various online identities and fully participate in Web 2.0, hence the blog.

Here I am. And here I will be. See you around.