Okay, okay, hiatus, hi-schamtus…
Apologies, eh?
I dug up one of those things I was rabbiting on about in my previous post. It’s a hardcore linguistics research program so as I said previously, I’m not sure I’d use it tons in class. But for what it’s worth…
Check it out: Sound Comparisons
Look in the right-hand column and you’ll see a list of example words. You’ll want to click one of these. This will bring up a grid with examples from a staggering set of English accents (both current and historic).
Hovering your mouse over the hyperlink should activate the audiofile example.
Now, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the Super-Linguistics-Nerds’ phonemic script
attached (yeah, um… that’s the official, academic nomenclature, incidentally)…
And I certainly wouldn’t be discussing it with students if you do decide to send them here.
But where I find this site potentially applicable is in dismissing the notion that you can learn “American English” or “British English” or “Australian English” and so on.
Now, I don’t deny that these varieties of English exist, of course. Nor do I deny that there are distinct differences in accent.
It has been my experience, though, that students seem to think that there’s “a” British accent, or “an” American accent–when clearly if they thought about it for more than 10-freakin’ seconds they’d realise that this is not the case.
So showing them “in living color” (to grossly and unashamedly butcher and expression) might well assist in dispelling that myth.
Somewhat.
Maybe.
On a more practical level…
If you actually work in ESL, as opposed to EFL, as I assume most readers of this blog do, you may well be able to find a set of very useful examples from the local-ish accent and use these in class with your (presumably migrant) students.
You might also use this website to contrast what they hear everyday in their workplaces, for example, with what they hear in textbooks and in movies.
Simply being able to hear the differences between the sounds and then “compartmentalise” them may well help them cope better in their everyday interactions with locals.
Dunno. I’m an EFL teacher.
And I wouldn’t think to use this site extensively in an EFL classroom. It would simply be an awareness-raising tool for me.
I would, however, love to know how you’d use it or, indeed, whether you think it’s useful at all!
Cheers,
P.S. Will post again in a couple of days regarding the brief chat I had with the teacher who was having trouble getting her students involved in lessons. Til then!
Heya everyone!
I’m back from my little hiatus. Hope you’re all well.
I’m VERY happy to say that I turned in the final assignment on my Masters Degree on Friday. **phew!**
Hoping it’s all A-OK and that said degree is conferred upon me come September ** YAY! (Fingers crossed!) **
I’m moving back to Australia at the beginning of August (from Japan) so I expect to be off the air again for a little while around that time, but for now I have a wee bit more free time in my week so I can post some things I’ve come across recently.
I found a neat little site last week that I’ll need to go and dig the link up for again. It has tons of examples of different accents amongst English speakers from all around the world. Very interesting. Not sure I’d use it extensively in the classroom, but I can think of a couple of ideas (which I’ll write up when I get the chance).
I also went to a workshop on Saturday afternoon (primarily for Japanese Teachers of English ahead of big conference–for which they’re planning and preparing) and got some really nice ideas, which I’ll share with you over the next couple of weeks.
And I talked with one of the teachers about what I think is a very common problem: How to get students interested in your lessons. So I’ll post up my thoughts regarding that for comment, too.
Sorry there’s no real “meat” to this post! 
I just thought I’d drop a brief line to say “I’m baaa-aack” and to see who’s still out there.
Feel free to leave me a “Hello” in the comments, eh?
k. Talk soon,
This is a quick post to let you know that I’ve changed my mailing list service provider.
If you have signed up for the mailing list in the last week or you signed up a long time ago and didn’t get the message I sent out letting you know about the change, then please just pop your name and email in the box to the right again.
I’m really sorry for the inconvenience! 
Things should be all hunky-dory from here on in, though.
As you will notice from the dates between the last post and this one, I’ve been away from this blog for a while.
I’m likely to be away from it for a while longer. Apologies.
I’m finishing up my MA this semester.
And my current contract finishes in July so I’m in the process of making plans for moving on from this job, which most likely involves moving country.
And I’ve got a couple of other things going on at present.
As I’ve outlined in the “About” post and on the homepage, this blog was a bit premature given my other obligations and time constraints, and was really just an extension of the delivery mechanism for the Halloween and Christmas packs.
I have a lot of ideas and things I’d like to share here, but I haven’t had much time these last 6 months, and I’ve done hardly anything to “get the word out”.
The feedback has been more than a little thin on the ground as well (I think I know why) so when I come back I’ll be changing a few things there.
I’m also having a few back-end technical issues at the moment. For example, I’m going to change my mailing service provider very soon. And I noticed today that the survey database has been corrupted in some way. (Thanks again to the folks who took the time to fill it out. There weren’t actually many of you, but the information was useful to me. More data would, of course, be nice) So, I’ll try and fix it. And failing that look into redoing it somehow. But I’m not a php-programmer so I’m not really sure where to start diagnosing… which is another story.
Please feel free to take a look around the site; there are a few articles that I think you’ll find useful.
If you’re on the mailing list you’ll get an email soon outlining the changes to come.
I’ll be back later in the year. The site may or may not be the same. The articles currently here might be moved or even removed. I’m really not sure yet.
I’ve been spreading myself far too thin and I haven’t been able to post the sort of content I’d like to, as often as I’d like to.
So I’m going to take a little leave of absence.
If you like the (few) articles here and/or you used the Halloween and/or Christmas packs, then make sure you check back to see how it’s going in a few months.
In the meantime, all comments and emails will still reach me via all the same channels so feel free to contact me with questions or comments.
Till then!
Last week I was at the mid-year conference for JET participants. This is an annual 3-day gab-fest where we get a keynote lecture from some eminent person about some aspect of teaching, there are some workshops by guest presenters, and there are other workshops and seminars conducted by JETs.
It’s a good thing, I think, as most JETs have little or no previous teaching experience or qualifications. So it’s a good opportunity to learn some basic theory and get some practical tips to take back to school.
One girl I was talking with made the point that CLAIR (the governing body for the JET Program) should think about perhaps doing, say, a week-long basic teaching skills course when we first arrive in Tokyo. Not a bad idea, but I don’t think anyone’s going to be holding their breath for that one!
I gave a presentation with one of the JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English) I work with, Fukudome-Sensei, on making what we referred to as an “Assessment Framework” for the entire term, before the term has started.
When I have time to format our notes, I’ll post a link to where you can get a copy if you’re interested in that kind of thing. It’s basically where testing meets curriculum planning. How to take the textbook and make an outline for what you’re going to test, when, and how in a fairly broad-brushstrokes kind of way.
Please leave a comment if you’d be interested in that. If no one comments, I know that I don’t need to spend any of my time preparing and formatting it. If you let me know you’re interested, I’m more than happy to share it with you! 
I’ve had my attention dragged away from this blog the last couple of weeks because I’ve been working on a site that I hope will be helpful to ALTs. That is, people who work as Assistant Language Teachers.
I’m currently on the JET Program so I’ve put together a site I’m hoping will help to bridge the communication gap between:
1. ALTs in different prefectures
2. ALTs & JTEs (the Japanese Teachers of English to whom we are the assistants)
3. JTEs from different schools and prefectures
And… will provide a place to share resources and worksheets.
If you are an Assistant Language Teacher, you will probably want to take a look. The site is called The TT Forum, where the “TT” stands for Team Teaching.
Cheers,
I hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year break.
Even though I’m in Japan I was lucky enough to be invited to a traditional (Australian) Christmas dinner for about 20 people; with the turkey, the roast veggies, the whole nine yards… even brandy pudding, which was set on fire! Andrew Wallace from Kochi (check out his SUPER cool story here) and all of his helpers really put in a sterling effort (they were in the kitchen for a loooooong time!) and it was a dead set ripper!
The pudding was melt in your mouth stuff! Honestly. Puttin good ol’ Grandma to shame!
And, to boot, there were some awesome musoes playing and a wild collection of instruments: taiko of all sizes, djembe, guitars players a plenty (acoustic, electric, jazz, blues, bass), singers a plenty, bells, didgeridoo, sitar, that Chinese instrument with the single string and a bow, a shamisen, and probably a few I’ve forgotten! It was really quite a night.
I hope you did something just as fun.
I thought New Year was going to be quieter, but,… ah… no. Dancing till 3 and then fried chicken and more beer on the way home. If only I coulda gotten a kebab! Man do I miss a decent kebab: lamb, lettuce, onion, tabouli, sour cream, cheese, garlic sauce, BBQ sauce, and a splash of chilli; toasted of course. OH!
Anyway… now I’m back at work, putting together a workshop that I’ll be presenting in a couple of weeks. I expect you’re back at work by now too. Hopefully the break cleared your head and gave you the zoom-zoom-zoom to tackle another year!
>>>
A few people emailed me about the Christmas Pack and offered their thanks and some feedback–which I appreciate greatly! 
I also spoke to a few folks over the break who downloaded it, but either didn’t have time to use it or had already planned their Christmas stuff for this year. That’s okay, if that was the case for you, too, you can always use it next year. I realise that its release was very, very late in the season; like I said, it just kept growing and growing! And testing my skills with technology at every step! Ha!
I’m going to leave the Christmas Pack up for just one more week so if you didn’t get the chance to tell all your colleagues about it in the end-of-year madness, do them the favour now because in a week it’ll be gone. (Yeah, really)
Also, I could do with your opinion. (Not only about the Christmas Pack, feedback for which is most welcome <<click here>> but…)
You see, I’m not really sure in which direction to take the blog and the articles this year, to be entirely honest. There are at least thirty-seven dozen topics I think are worth writing about (!) and I guess I’ll get around to writing about them all at SOME point.
But what I’d really like is for you–as one of my valued readers!–to tell me what kinds of things YOU are most interested in and that YOU would most benefit from.
I don’t profess to know all the answers and, indeed, 100 people might write me back and nominate an area that I don’t have much (or any!) expertise in. And if that’s the case, then I’ll either learn it or find people more knowledgeable than I am and try to convince them to maybe do some “guest articles” or something.
Anyway, what I’ve done is put together a simple survey to find out a little bit about your background, along with what you’re interested in (re: EFL) and what you’d like to learn more about. Or if not learn, what you would get the most benefit from.
It should take about 10-15 minutes, I guess. I don’t know. If you write one-word answers, probably 2 minutes, but that wouldn’t be very helpful to either of us, really, would it? If you get called away, there is a “Save” option and you can come back and reload your answers later. But you shouldn’t need this; I don’t expect it’ll take you too long at all.
Also, I’m afraid I don’t have any “sweets” or “shiny things” to offer you for taking time out of your schedule to do the survey. I’m kinda hoping that you’ll see how this directly benefits YOU. I mean, I could just rave on about whatever I like on this blog, but that may or may not be what you’re interested in. And I can only know what my readers are interested in if they let me know!
So, click here to have Your Say
I look forward to your insights.
Best regards and here’s to a terrific 2008!
First off, I’m really sorry if this article seems to be stating the obvious. Maybe I’m just a bit thick; You see, I learnt a number of these things the hard way! And given that making these little cards can easily eat up a LOT of your time, I’ve decided to spell it out step-by-step.
***VERY IMPORTANT GENERAL TIP***
You should ONLY make flashcards of things you know you can
use and re-use often! Or for special events that you know
will be worth the extra effort. Really.
If you’re not sure what Pelmanism is, please read my article What is Pelamanism? first.
1. Print out your cards and then cut out the main blocks (i.e. not individually; around the outermost border)
2. Turn on the laminator now; they take forever to warm up.
3. Stick them onto coloured paper. You only need a quick swipe of the glue stick through each box. They don’t need to have all the corners stuck down; remember you’ll be laminating them in a minute.
Also, the trick here is to have different coloured paper for each set of cards you want to make. So, for example, if you want 4 sets of cards, you’ll need, say, a green, pink, yellow and blue sheet of backing paper.
There are two reasons for this:
(i) It makes it much, much easier to keep the sets together. If you don’t do this then you will end up with the cards being all mixed up and you will spend a ridiculous amount of time preparing the next lesson because you’ll have to go through and make sure each set only has two of each card! With colours, you just count that you have the required number of cards and hey presto ready to roll!
(ii) The other reason is that without the backing sheet (which you can also do with white paper; just put a coloured spot in one corner of each card with a marker before you laminate them) is that you can see through single-layer cards when you lay them out on the tables! Which kind of defeats the purpose of playing the pelmanism game.
4. Cut out your cards individually at THIS step.
5. Find something rigid. A clipboard or folder is good. Put your laminating pouch on this ready to load your individual cards.
Now, what’s this all about? Well, this will make it easier to move your laminating pouch with your pelmanism cards in it to the laminator without it all going pear-shaped. It will also give you something to butt up against the laminator’s “feed platform” (like I know what it’s called!) so that you can feed your pouch through without the cards going everywhere—It’s too late once the machine is in motion! (Yep, I’ve done that one!)
One final precaution to help avoid the cards going everywhere and your having to start again: Take your glue stick and give the back of each card a quick dab as you lay them out in a grid (in the laminating pouch). Make sure it’s not that stupid purple glue stick because it won’t become transparent like it claims to do! So you’ll end up with these horrible purple smudges on the backs of your cards (which not only looks ugly, it again defeats the purpose of the game!).
6. Use the edge of the clipboard to keep your cards lined up so that they have more or less the same margins. Remember that the space you need between cards is double what you want the margin to be! So, for example, each card need a few millimetres space for the laminating to seal correctly. So… you’ll need to leave double that space so that both cards (i.e. to the left and the right, above and below) get a good seal.
7. Once you’ve fed your pouch into the machine, don’t let it just roll out the other side and flop down otherwise your cards will be permanently bowed—again not so good for pelmanism because students can then see under them and/or tell the difference! So lay the laminated sheets out flat ASAP. (Be careful if it’s your first time using a laminating machine; they can be REALLY hot!)
8. Cut them up and give them approximately the same margins. As you do this, make sure that you also round the edges of each card. This is really important when you work with little kids because… there’s always some boy (yes, a boy; no, almost never a girl) who wants to flick the cards at another kid. And if you’ve never made laminated sets of cards before for class, you won’t appreciate just how sharp they can be on the corners. No, really. Eyes are very easily damaged. Round the corners!
9. Get some of those magnetized sheets which sort of feel like linoleum and which you can cut with scissors. I also see it from time to time in rolls rather than sheets. Just cut off a small chunk and attach with scotch tape (you actually need much less than you originally think! Test whether it will stay on the whiteboard/blackboard by throwing it on the door of your fridge!).
10. Put elastic bands around each set, put them in a large envelope along with your set of larger Teacher’s flashcards and label the envelope. Put the envelope in an alphabetically arranged filing system of other flashcard envelopes (I just use a box and I prefer to file the envelopes by title of lesson or subject area).
That’s it!
As I said at the outset, a lot of these steps might seem really, really obvious, but they’re only obvious in retrospect or once you’ve omitted them a couple of times and had to throw your efforts in the bin!
And as for the filing system, trust me! This will save you time once you start to build up a large set of resources and need to be able to lay your hands on a particular set of cards. I couldn’t count the number of times someone has called in late or sick and my Director of Studies has asked me to cover a class, like “Now!” With your favourite games all nicely filed you should be able to select one or two envelopes and be off to class, ready to give a perfectly educational and fun lesson at the drop of a hat!
Best of luck with it!
P.S. If you like stress, feel free to omit the advice about the filing system.
This seems like the most basic thing in the world, right? And I guess there’s no “right” or “wrong” way to do it. I mean, drilling vocab is drilling vocab, right?
Well, sorta.
I’m going to outline the way I was taught to drill vocab when I originally trained as an EFL Teacher and having tried various other ways since, I’ve come to the decision that this is, in fact, the best way to do it.
Comments are most welcome!
Okay here we go!
Step 1: Gather your flashcards…
Actually, here we don’t go! Ha ha! Take a gander at this article first.
Also, there is no actual need to have flashcards for everything! A rough drawing on the board, a gesture or two and then something to remember it by is enough. But that’s another article.
——————————-
Right. You’re back. Let’s press on…
You take the items you want to drill and you present them one by one (obviously!).
The “trick” to this technique is in going back over the list every one or two items.
That’s it, essentially! Wow! Radical, huh?
It’s really, really, really simple, but…
(a) it’s really effective
and
(b) I rarely see teachers doing this (and I don’t know why; That’s why I’m writing this).
Let’s take an example so that it’s perfectly clear what I’m trying to say here.
Teacher: What’s this? [holding up a flashcard or prompt or drawing on the board]
Students: [blank look meaning “Don’t know.”]
Now, they obviously know what it is in their native language (L1)—providing the picture is clear and large enough—but what they’re saying is that they don’t know what it’s called in the foreign language (L2)]
T: It’s a tiger. [T gestures to listen again] Listen… tiger [T gestures to repeat]
Sts: [repeat] Tiger
T: Again…
Sts: Tiger
[insert individual drilling and one more choral drill here]
T: Okay, next one. What’s this?
Sts: Monkey!
T: Close, close. What colour is he?
Sts: Orange!
T: And he’s quite big… bigger than a monkey, I think. [gestures included here].
Any other ideas?
Sts: [blank look, meaning “Uh, no, Teacher, sorry…”]
T: Orang-utan. Listen… orang-utan. Everyone…[gestures to repeat]
Sts: Orang-utan.
T: Again [gesture to repeat]
Sts: Orang-utan.
[insert individual drilling & once more choral drill here]
T: And this one? [pointing to pic of tiger above new pic/flashcard of orang-utan]
Sts: Tiger!
T: Good! This one?
Sts: Orang-utan!
T: This one?
Sts: Tiger!
T: Okay, next. What’s this?
Sts: Penguin! [pronunciation not quite right]
T: Excellent! That’s right! Listen to me… [correct pronunciation] penguin. Listen again… penguin…
Sts: Penguin.
T: Again.
Sts: Penguin.
T: Good. Okay, what’s this?
Sts: Tiger!
T: And this?
Sts: Um… orang… orang…
T: Orang-utan. Again…
Sts: Orang-utan.
T: And this?
Sts: Penguin!
T: This?
Sts: Tiger!
T: This?
Sts: Orang-utan!
T: This?
Sts: Penguin!
T: You guys rock!
…and on it goes!
This seems like a very long and tiresome method for drilling vocabulary (and the example seems pretty tedious), but believe me…
…it is effective!
This is why an 8-item list can easily take 10 minutes or more to drill. Sometimes it flows really smoothly and the target vocab is easy for the students to pick up (for whatever reason). Other days it requires more work.
But the following basic procedure does NOT change:
1. Elicit vocab if possible—and if they don’t know it, just give it to them! (More on this in another article!)
2. Model the pron clearly. Twice.
3. Get them to repeat.
4. Listen carefully to the pron and correct where necessary
5. Go back to the top of the list of items and drill through—You will almost always find that they have forgotten the item you just introduced when you do this. That is, the most recent item. Almost without fail!
So you then re-drill the latest item, then do a couple of others at random, interspersing the latest item they’ve forgotten between each one (example, “penguin, penguin, tiger, penguin, orang-utan, penguin…”).
Then do the whole list from the start in non-random order (they’ll remember the most recent item now!)… and then you can move onto the next item.
Incidentally, it need not be tiresome and boring at all. You should keep a fairly brisk pace when doing this kind of drilling because if you don’t then I guarantee you that it will be boring.
If you keep moving fairly fast, it keeps them on their toes and they know that they have to really pay attention to keep up. The class will pretty soon get used to this way of introducing and reviewing vocab and this will also help it run smoothly.
Note: Depending on the level of the students, as well as their age, I would be unlikely to introduce more that 8-12 new items in a single drill session like this. The human brain just can’t take much more than that, it seems. Of course, when we’re studying by ourselves we manage to do so, but this is somewhat different and, in fact, I would argue that when we’re doing it alone we’re not learning those items as effectively.
Why I think that is a more in-depth discussion for another day.
But the main reason I think 8-12 items can be learnt very effectively in a single class (no, not long term retention, that takes more work–which is partly your responsibility as the teacher. Again, a topic for another day) is that I’m working on the presumption that these 8-12 items are then “activated” in some way in the lesson.
The students have to do some sort of activity or play a game that involves them producing the vocab from the prompts (without the ability to simply read the words).
We would be much better off when studying at home, to do our learning in “blocks” like this, where we learn a set of expressions and then concentrate on strategies and drills to commit them to memory. Instead, though, we just power on and try to learn the list of 100 items.
Of course, we can only remember a handful of them the next day and conclude that learning vocab is difficult. It is, but it need not be. I’m veering into another article here! The point I would like to make here is that by introducing around 8-12 items and then playing some kind of “activation game” with them or doing some kind of exercise that involves thinking carefully to find the answer (and ideally producing it as well, oral or written–and the latter before the former if you like) will help the vocab “stick” better in the first instance.
Subsequently, you can then focus on working the items into long-term memory.
Good luck with it,
