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Johanna Stirling - low level literacy activities

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Johanna Stirling - low level literacy activities

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Powerpoint presentation on 'It's all in the song'

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Powerpoint presentation on 'It's all in the song'

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It's all in the song - project based learning for academic skill acquisition - worksheets

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It's all in the song - project based learning for academic skill acquisition - worksheets

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It's all in the song - project based learning for academic skill acquisition

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Great website for teacher development and useful resources:
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/

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Cans of Worms and Rotten Parsnips: My IATEFL 2017 presentation

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If you click the link below you should be able to download a version of the presentation I gave at IATEFL on 6th April 2017 in Glasgow. This version includes the powerpoint slides I used with an accompanying audio recording. As usual, I'd be happy to receive comments below.

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Making Learning Visible PPT Silvana Richardson

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Making Learning Visible PPT Silvana Richardson

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Silvana Richardson - Making Learning Visible

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Making learning visible to teachers and students Silvana Richardson, Bell ©Eaquals Eaquals International Conference, Riga, 27 - 29 April 2017 www.eaquals.org 1...

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IATEFL Kerry's Teacher Welfare Vocab Spelling Literacy Low Level IELTS activities 

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IATEFL Kerry's Teacher Welfare Vocab Spelling Literacy Low Level IELTS activities 

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Last month (July 2016) I was in Manchester, training on my Video and Image in Language Teaching course (VILT) for NILE. One of the activities that I gave participants was to take photographs of interesting texts that they saw in the city's streets and public areas. Here is my own offering - a selection of questions which all contain ellipsis (missing words). If you would prefer create a slideshow for your students (rather than use the video) you can access my photographs here.

Language level: A2 +

Learner type: Teens; Adults

Time: 25 minutes

Activity: Grammar activity

Topic: Linguistic landscape

Language: Question forms

Materials: Video + worksheet

Street questions [downloaded 5059 times]
Ellipsis

In linguistics, ellipsis refers to omitting words from a sentence, question or phrase. The idea is that the missing words are not necessary for comprehension. There are many different types of ellipsis and many situations in which you can observe it. For example, in the following sentence, there is an incomplete verb phrase:

I would if I could, but I can't so I won't.

This is not a problem. Context will inform the listener(s) or readers(s) what the complete verb phrase is. For example:

I would help him if I could, but I can't so I won't.

But even here, there has to be ellipsis. If not, the sentence would read as:

I would help him if I could help him, but I can't help him so I won't help him.

That is just one example of ellipsis. Different types of ellipsis can be observed in different situations. And recently, I became aware of how common it is to see ellipsis in questions in posters, adverts and flyers in public areas.

Do you Want a better broadband deal?

Do you Love nature?

Are you Going up?

Some things to point out:

Register: We are usually dealing with informal, friendly messages or calls for attention.

Grammar: In these cases, auxiliaries and subject pronouns are the most commonly omitted words. And we are usually dealing with closed questions (questions that can only be answered 'yes' or 'no'). But that isn't always the case (e.g. 'Who ya gonna call?')

Spoken written: Perhaps the creators of these adverts, posters and slogans are attempting to capture English as it is spoken. Listen carefully and you will hear that it is very common for people to use ellipsis in questions (e.g. "You got kids of your own?")

Language students: Although students of English are generally required to produce full questions for examination purposes, I think that there is a lot to be gained by looking at English as it exists in the wild. In this activity, students work with a number of street questions and have to identify the missing words (i.e. the ellipsis).

Activity outline

The PDF download (see above) contains a grammar activity in which students have to predict the context of each street question before the see the image. They also have to consider what the missing words could be in each case. I hope you / your students enjoy it.

Jamie :)

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Last month (July 2016) I was in Manchester, training on my Video and Image in Language Teaching course (VILT) for NILE. One of the activities that I gave participants was to take photographs of interesting texts that they saw in the city's streets and public areas.

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Ready Lessons - New Internationalist Easier English Wiki

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Would you like to get your learners engaged in topics relating to global justice? More than 150 READY LESSONS HERE for interested, busy, tired, new ... all teachers (and learners) to use:

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IATEFL Sally's Pronunciation Vocabulary 10 mins writing

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Find out more about John Hattie’s Visible Learning meta-study

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english profile cefr common european framework reference level descriptions

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Welcome to English Profile -- setting industry standards for English language learners. Linked to the Common European Framework for Reference for Languages (CEFR), English Profile will provide a detailed set of Reference Level Descriptions for English language learners.

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Nadine's vocab

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IATEFL Julie's: Social Justice in ELT & Making Learning Visible 

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IATEFL Julie's: Social Justice in ELT & Making Learning Visible 

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UCC Language IATEFL CPD June 2017 final Julie

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In 1869 the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev developed the first version of the now very familiar table of chemical elements. This showed all the elements that were known at that time and some that were discovered later. The elements are shown in order of increasing number of protons in the nucleus, starting with Hydrogen (H) which has one proton. The rows and columns are also arranged to highlight families of elements with similar chemical properties, including for example their propensity to interact, or not, with other elements.

These chemical properties recur as the similarities in electron and proton patterns recur, hence the adjective 'periodic'. Thus the position of an element in the periodic table tells you a lot about how that element is made and how it behaves.

The same is true of the Sound Foundations chart. I don't want to push the likeness too far, but there are some similarities which may help us to think about it in productive ways. For example, the rows and columns on the Sound Foundations chart tell you a lot about:

Families of sounds with qualities in common (vowels, diphthongs, consonants, semi-vowels etc)

How a sound is made (lip rounding, glides, fricatives, stops, nasals, liquids, voice, length etc)

With which parts of the mouth and articulatory mechanism it is made (tongue, teeth, lips, voice, nasal etc)

Where it is made (lips, teeth, palate, front, back, high, low, etc)

And just as the chemical elements exist sometimes on their own though usually in multiple combinations as molecules and compounds, so too the (elemental) sounds /phonemes are used sometimes on their own (I, oh, mm, ah, or, er, shhh, etc) but mostly in combinations of clusters, syllables, words and connected utterances.

The Periodic Table of Elements aims to show all possible elements. It is the same in all countries and probably on Mars. A Periodic Table of Sounds could perhaps aspire to show all the sounds in different languages, or all the sounds included in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). However it is of greater use to learners and teachers of a particular language to have a table of just the sounds of that language, and even then not all the sounds (allophones) are needed, but only the sounds that lead to a difference of meaning (phonemes). Thus a Sound Foundations chart can be made for individual languages and varieties of that language.

You'll find Sound Foundations charts for British English and for American English on the right of this page. And see the book Sound Foundations (Macmillan ELT) for additional French and German charts.

Finally, the periodic Table of Elements is beautiful to behold, it simply looks good and triggers curiosity, which I believe can also be said of the Sound Foundations chart.

For other strikingly different and beautiful presentations of the Periodic Table of Elements click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_periodic_tables. And for more info on the periodic table itself, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table

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In 1869 the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev developed the first version of the now very familiar table of chemical elements. This showed all the elements that were known at that time and some that were discovered later. The elements are shown in order of increasing number of protons in the nucleus, starting with Hydrogen (H) which has one proton.