A Picture's Worth...

...a thousand words.

This lovely site that I found through Nik Peachy's 'Learning Technology Blog' is full of contributions of a photograph and a short essay to accompany it.  These are between 300 and 1000 words and are as diverse as you could imagine.  Here's one example:

They are a window into so many different lives and they are touching, funny, interesting and very personal.  They could be used for readings in class -  as short, self contained authentic readings, written in generally quite straightforward language, they are great -  but you can also get learners to read some outside of class, choose a favourite (they're quite addictive - once you start, you keep reading them!) and present theirs to the class, or to explain it a partner.  You could also print a few out and get them to match the pictures with the text.

You can't upload your own directly, they have to be submitted for consideration by the editor, and then they may be published on the site, but you could get learners to write their own 'Picture's worth' and display them in the classroom, put them on a blog or submit them to the site to see if they were accepted (or all of the above!).

Limitations?  There's no embed code, so you can't include one from the site on your own blog, which is a shame, but that's a small point.  They only other problem is that some of the stories might make you cry.....

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Nik's Daily English Activities

This blog is absolutely brilliant!  Nik Peachey has so many great ideas for using the internet, and this is a list of dozens of websites for learners to use outside the class.  It's also a great one for you as a teacher as many of these ideas can be adapted to use in class. 

Here's an example - A city love story  using a short film (9 minutes) from You Tube about Beirut.  I used this is class - opening with a discussion of places you have been that have surprised you (because they've been better or worse than expected) and then discussed people's impressions of Beirut.
I then showed them the first minute (showing what a beautiful city it is) and asked for impressions.



They then watched the next 6 minutes and noted the things that the girl and the boy like.  It's not in English, but there is really nice language in the subtitles (he likes the elasticity of cheese, for example!).  We did watch  the end of the film, but my main focus was then on the learners writing what they like about their cities or towns.  It was really inspiring!
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Storybird

This is such a fantastic site - it is amazing what is available out there!  If you want to give your students motivation to write something, this is your site!  It makes it possible to produce really lovely looking, professional e-picture books that you can then tweet, facebook or embed, using professional illustrations from a really wide range of artists.  How can this be free? I don't know, but it is!

You can also go onto the site to read books that other people have written.  The nice thing about this is that they are short, and illustrated with beautiful pictures, so you can use them even at low levels.  Some are aimed at children, but others are definitely written for a more mature audience.  Here's an example:


Fight off the doubts! by laurig on StorybirdYou could just send one of these a week to your learners to give them some extensive reading practice, or you could use one in class on a IWB for language work based on the content or (most obviously) narrative tenses.  They're really inspiring! The only limitaton I can imagine is that they will appeal to younger learners and to a lot of adults, but teenagers may feel they're a bit patronising. You could get them to write books (maybe even bi-lingual ones) for younger kids in the school or siblings, perhaps?
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Language Plants

This is a link to a blog called Language Garden, by David Warr, which has a whole collection of 'word plants' in it.  They're hard to explain, so the easiest thing is to show you a one!  Have a look at this one - how could it fail to brighten up your class?

There are lots of others, some very thought provoking, using lots of different kinds of texts.  This one is one that stirs me.....

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Martin Niemöller,
a German anti-Nazi theologian

I think that they are a really nice way to introduce a text for further work on vocabulary or structure, or for further productive work on  the same topic.  What's particularly nice for lower level adult or teenage learners is that a lot of the texts are quite profound or thought provoking, but quite accessible due to the repetitious nature of the texts.  The visual aspect may also help to add motivation, and comprehension.

Limitations?  I guess you might have to be a bit sensitive to your learners in terms of some of the content (the one above, for example, might be upsetting to some), but apart from that I think they're great for a five minute filler, or for basing a whole lesson around.  Let the garden grow!

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Web Quests

WebQuests are interactive journeys that learners can make to find specific information using the internet and then report back on it in various ways.  They bring ICT to task based learning and can be very motivating for learners.

This is a link to a ready made WebQuest in which you plan for a trip to Australia.  The introduction states:

In this Webquest your objective is to find out about the culture and lifestyle in Australia. When you go there, what differences do you find? What do you like and dislike about it? What do you miss from your own country? What would you like to bring back from Australia?

and then there are five tasks to complete.  These practise all four skills and also include a lot of helpful functional language. The first task, for example, asks learners to use certain sites to find out specific information, giving them lots of practice in reading.

But it's not all about using the net to find information - the learners are also required to do something with it! 

So, after they have found out the information, there are speaking and writing exercises, including sentence stems to help with language activation (although there would probably need to be some teacher input on the 'I wonder (whether/ if)' structures, too).

There is a wide range of material here, covering grammatical areas such as comparatives and superlatives as well as the functional language. Plenty for several lessons.  In fact, that might be my only real criticism - by the time you get to the end of it, you might well be heartily sick of the subject!

There are lots of WebQuests ready made and available on the net.  The original idea was:

'developed by Bernie Dodge at San Diego State University in February, 1995 with early input from SDSU/Pacific Bell Fellow Tom March, the Educational Technology staff at San Diego Unified School District, and waves of participants each summer at the Teach the Teachers Consortium.'

and their website has loads of resources, There is also a linked site - Quest Garden which has templates to make your own WebQuests. You can register for a free trial for 30 days, or sign up and pay for a member ship, but it's only $20 for a 2 year subscription, so it won't break the bank!  Making your own might be very helful if you were, for example, teaching CLIL and had specific content that you needed to cover. Other than that and if you are teaching general English, making your own is a lot of work and  there are many good WebQuests already out there so you could use 'off-the-peg' ones!

Wordle

This is a word cloud of my blog made on Wordle.  This site is nice because it gives you the option of making really attractive pieces of art with your texts. You could ask learners to make one of these at home, perhaps with a given piece of text.  If you show them how to remove words with from it, change the fonts, colours etc, they will have the opportunity to really look at the words they choose to include and this process may help with memorisation.  You could give them a list of vocabulary that you have taught them in the past month, perhaps and ask them to produce something interesting with it as homework.

It's the prettiest of the word cloud sites, I think, but a drawback is that it is quite difficult to get a soft copy from the site, although you can print out a hard copy or save your word cloud to the public gallery.

Wordsift

What is this?

Wordsift is a word cloud programme, that takes any text, 'sifts' it for the content words and arranges them into a graphic image, showing how commonly a word occurs by its size.

Here's a video on how to use it.

Why is the content good for language learning?

This is potentially really helpful for learners, both in getting the gist of a text, but particularly for giving them an idea of which words are likely to be more useful to learn, given their frequency, in terms of the particular text used and in more general terms.  This kind of information isn't otherwise availabe without painstakingly searching through a learners dictionary, so this is a really nice site. 

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

Here are some ideas that our MA group came up with.....

We think it is a good way to learn new words especially how words are used in context. It is also very useful for sharing ideas with visualgifty at 12:46 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

It could help learners to know exactly what kind of words they can use in different contexts.Jill & Khadiga at 12:46 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

Some words are accompanied by pictures or videos to demonstrate the meaning of it.Farah at 12:45 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

A great way to get the gist of the text.As an activity we could ask students to write a text using these words & compare it to the originalGeorge at 12:44 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

Wonderful to practice reading skills such as scanning the key words and guessing the main idea.Leah at 12:43 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

With key words, Ss can try guessing the main idea of the text. Then, Ss can discuss and form meaningful sentencesVanessa and Ray at 12:41 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

to help students to grasp the main idea and key words in an authentic text or a reading materialJessie&Jenny at 12:41 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

Great for pre-reading. Get the students to look at sift and guess what text is about

Limitations

The only small thing is that this site doesn't produce such aesthetically pleasing images as Wordle (see other blog entry on this site), but the compensation for this is that you can do so much more with the result.

Breaking News English

What is this?
click here for the site

This site is a teacher's dream.  It has an enormous amount of topical material on it, prepared in a manner that means it is very easy to 'download and teach'.  The site consists of an archive of news items, to which a new story is added every three days.  These are all current affairs stories, but are on a wide variety of topics such as politics, sport,  news, health, celebrity.  It would be hard not to find something that would be relevant to your learners.  Each article is also available as a podcast for listening practice.

This side of the site is its main focus, and you could be forgiven for using only that, but in fact, there is a wealth of other material here, too - interactive quizzes, dictogloss activities, matching, hangman, flashcards.  The are also links to Sean Banville's blog which has some great ideas for classroom activities and methodologies, and to his other websites which include News English. com (a site with easier news items) and Listen a minute.com, which has easier listening activities. And all for free - the man deserves a knighthood!

Why is the content good for language learning?

The content is generally of quite a high level.  However, the texts are generally quite short (some are marked 'easier') and so, with preparation it isn't unreasonable to think that this could be used with intermediate level students or above.  As has been noted - the content is authentic newspaper text and as such, with repeated use, will help learners to develop the vocabulary they will need for reading text of a more formal genre.  This might be particularly applicable to learners who are aiming to use their English in a context of academic study or business.

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

How you use this will depend on the facilities available to you.  Even in a class with no computers, the text and some of the activities can be printed off and photocopied for use in class.  If you have access to computers, the possibilities are more numerous.  Possibilities include predicting content and checking against the text, written or aural and using the games and quiz software to increase learner's awareness of vocabulary, collocation and structure.  It would also be easy, given the amount of material on the site,  to set up a jigsaw reading/ listening exercise where each pair int he class have the autonomy to choose a text that interests them, read/ listen to it and subsequently report back to other learners what they have found out.  Tasks could usefully be set for homework, and there is sufficient variety of material and activities to help to maintain learners' interest and motivation.

Limitations

As the text is all newspaper based, the themes are largely of interest to older teenagers and adults, so the site is not so useful for teachwers of yound learners.  Also, as has been noted, the level makes it less suitable for learners under intermediate level.  Apart form that, the only difficulty in using this excellent site is in being selective abot the material you use - there is simply too much and it can be a little overwhelming!  It is perhaps a little churlish, though to be ungrateful when confronted with such riches!
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LoudLit.org

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What is this?

 

This site (you can access it here) has a range of classic literature, that is available in audio form.  Either the site can be used to simply download the stories onto an mp3, or you can listen to them on the computer, whist simltaneously reading the text.  There is a range of material here - classic novels such as Huckleberry Finn, poetry, children's stories such as The Little Matchgirl, short stories and even a couple of historical American documents such as the Declararation of Independence. 

Why is the content good for language learning?

 

In terms of the relevance to language learning, there is a wealth of material here, and it has the advantage of it being possible to use the dual coding of reading and listening at the same time to aid comprehension.  Dual Coding was originally proposed by Allan Paivio in 1971 as an explanation of memory of words and pictures, but has been subsequently developed in the sphere of multi-media teachnlogy by Richard Mayer and Roxana Moreno (2005)  A Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning: Implications for Design Principles. You can read this paper here. Put simply, it helps to processing new  information aurally and visually at the same time helps.

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

You could use this in class to practise either reading or listening - it would be possible to do a small amount of the listening as a dictogloss, for example, possibly after reading and listening independently, as the level of text is very high.  I think it is most useful to promote extensive reading outside class.  Learners can read the text free of charge and can be encouraged to download the mp3 file for extensive listening practice whilst they are tavelling to school/ college etc.

Limitations
I was initially very impressed with this tool, and had planned to use some of the content with my upper intermediate learners in class. The idea was to read/ listen to the first couple of pages of a short story in class, and follow this up with them reading/ listening to more for homework.

When I looked more closely, however, I decided that this wasn't going to work.  The difficulty lies in the cannonical nature of the texts available.  They are, without doubt great literature and great stories, and were certainly chosen for this reason as well as the fact that they are old enough to avoid copyright infringements and royalty payments.  But herein lies the difficulty.  The level of language is high, much of the vocabulary used is poetic, literary and in some cases a little archaic and on reflection, I felt that, even for the upper intermediate group that I have, this would be too difficult to be motivating.

As an example, I had hoped to use the short story 'The Gift of the Magi' but looking at the first page disuaded me....(I've underlined all of the vocabulary that I felt they might not know)

'There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.'


Not to be overcome without some resistance, I looked at teh children's stories, hoping that this may be easier.  This is from 'The Little Matchgirl'.

'One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no one had given her a single farthing.

At this point I decided that 'urchin, to do capitally, maiden, the whole lifelong day' and 'farthing' were just too much to expect, and gave up!