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Last month, I uploaded the first five articles in my ‘Images’ series for English Teaching professional (click here to see posting). Here are the remaining parts:

Part 6: ‘Advertising‘
etp54_images_6.pdf

Part 7: ‘YouTube part 1‘
etp55_images_7.pdf

Part 8: ‘YouTube part 2‘
etp56_images_8.pdf

Part 9: ‘Book covers‘
etp57_images_9.pdf

Part 10: ‘Digital cameras‘
etp58_images_10.pdf

Thanks again to Helena and Christine.

I’ve made a new friend online. His name is Sid and he’s from India. Sid contacted me a couple of weeks ago and asked if I could advise him on a career in ELT. His teaching situation looks very interesting and I asked if he would mind me posting our correspondence here.

Dear Sir

I am Siddharth from India and I really liked your article in an English magazine. I am planning to make a career in TEFL. Needed your opinion on ‘Career in TEFL’ especially considering that I am a non native speaker. Would you recommend it? How are the job opportunities as I do not have any teaching experience?

There are a plethora of courses available on TEFL. How do I choose a genuine, valid and globally recognised course provider?

Also, please can you recommend me some good online resources on learning and teaching English to non native speakers?

Thanks a lot

Best wishes

Sid

After speaking by Skype, Sid wrote again and told me about his students. He also sent a photograph:

Hi Jamie

Hope you are doing great.

I have been working with a Multinational Bank all this while, so my teaching experience is zilch and I need you guidance with it.

Currently, I am working with a group of people from the Indian Himalayas (high altitude mountains). They can converse in broken English. Their main aim to learn English is to be able to communicate with the outside world. This area experiences a lot of foreign tourism and to become good guides / run a hotel etc, it is always better that they have good conversational skills.

Right now they are in Bangalore as part of an exchange program to give them some exposure on the outside world. They are also trying to learn computer basics (MS Word / Excel / Internet). They are in the age group of 14 - 20 and the group consists of 8 members.

I have also attached a few photos for your reference. We meet alternate days and try to improve our spoken English. However, I do give them dictation, work on their pronunciation and have informal conversations / role plays, related to their day to day life.

What I am looking for is, how to structure and plan my classes (on a day to day basis) and are there any games through which I can make things more interactive. Do I need to also work on their grammar?

I carry my laptop to show them some video clips. They have notebooks and Pens. It’s great to be with them. They are very keen to learn the language. They are my good friends.

Thanks a lot

Best wishes

Sid

To me it sounds as if Sid is doing a good job already. He has a great group of learners. He has bonded with them. He has analysed their needs. He seems to be making use of a variety of methods (dictation, use of video clips, role plays relating to their lives). And importantly, he is thinking about how to improve learning outcomes.

If he is looking for additional teaching hours, then he may benefit from having a piece of paper which states that he is TEFL qualified. But if not, I would definitely say that for the moment, Sid should keep doing what he’s doing without worrying about that.

What does everyone else think? If you have any advice for Sid, please add a comment below.

So I was waiting for a train the other day and I decided that I had just enough time to get a coffee from the sandwich bar on the platform. I ordered a medium cappuccino and a fruity sultana scone.

The girl got the cappuccino going and was now reaching for a scone with her tongs when I asked her:

“Would I like butter with that?”

She gave me confused look as if she had misheard the question so I repeated it for her:

“Would I like butter with that?”

Then she repeated the question but only to confirm that she had heard it correctly:

“Would you like butter with that?”

“Well I don’t know,” I said. “That’s why I’m asking you.”

“Well how on earth should I know?” she replied.

“Well I don’t know,” I said. “But underneath the words ‘Fruity Sultana Scone’, it states quite clearly, ‘Just ask if you’d like butter!‘”

Please forgive me for such a bad joke.

I enjoyed presenting at The Language Show in London this weekend. I would like to say thank you to everyone that came along. As promised, I am uploading my article on Learner-friendly corpora here:

learner-friendly-corpora.pdf

From flashcards to flash images is the title of a talk I gave recently at the 3rd International Symposium and Conference on ELT Materials (link here). I would like to say thank you very much to everyone involved, especially Sujatha, Jayakaran and the people from Pearson, for organising a great conference and of course, for inviting me. I would also like to say thank you to Alan and Brian for putting my name forward as a speaker.

Flash cards

In this presentation, we started off by looking at the pictures that we flash at our learners in order to teach, revise or drill language. We considered the following aspects:

Sources

Teachers lacking artistic abilities, have traditionally had to rely on ELT products or resources as a source for picture flashcards.

Themes

A typical set of flashcards will usually be based around a theme such as animals, actions, adjectives, parts of the body, weather, clothes, colours, emotions, etc.

Authenticity

We often hear discussions on the pros and cons of authenic and inauthentic materials for language teaching. The materials in question are usually always texts. By analogy, images can also be authentic or inauthentic depending on whether or not they are created specifically for teaching language to learners.

Format

Flashcards are usually paper-based.

From flashcards to flash images

At this stage in the talk, I showed some example flashcards of pictures of animals. I’m not going to reproduce them here because I could get into trouble. However, here are three online resources for picture flashcards that I recommend:

• www.eslflashcards.com
• www.onestopenglish.com
• www.englishraven.com

Some of the pictures that are on offer here are great. Whoever has drawn these animals, for example, has done an excellent job and I am sure that once printed off, they could be used for a diverse range of engaging classroom activities.

But if we want to teach the names of animals to learners, there is a much more powerful teaching tool at our disposal. The following pictures were obtained from an image search engine:

A site such as Google image search is nothing less than the biggest picture dictionary the world has ever seen.

Flash images

Perhaps picture flashcards have been suffering from a lack of self-esteem and are in need of a technological makeover. Let us consider how they can be improved:

Sources

Any online database of images can be considered a resource. As well as any standard image search engine (see above), any of the following can be exploited:

• www.amazon.co.uk (a great source for images of book and DVD covers)
• Stock images sites such as www.gettyimages.com or www.corbis.com
• Image sharing sites such as www.flickr.com

Themes

When we turn to the internet to obtain images, possibilities are almost unlimited. We may create series of images to teach specific language points that would not be possible with conventional flashcards. For example, the following images were downloaded in order to teach a specific language point. Can you work out what it is (scroll down slowly if you don’t want to see the answer)?

Answer: The images could be used to teach 15 do or make collocations:

Doing the dishes
Doing 100 mph
Making the bed
Making sure there are no monsters under the bed
Making a wish
Making coffee
Making money
Making a noise
Doing time
Doing business
Doing a bungee jump
Doing a striptease
Making a phone call
Doing housework
Making a funny face

Similarly, we could use online image resources to compile slideshows to teach:

• Idioms, expressions and sayings (link here)
• Superlative structures (pictures of the highest mountain in the world, the tallest man in medical history, the biggest animal that has ever lived on our planet, etc)
• Prepositions (at work, on the moon, breakfast in bed, etc)
• The difference between can and could (click here for a lesson plan which uses images of DVD covers each containing one of those words in the title)
• Specific words or items from a text that students are going to read or hear.

Authenticity

As a result of a higher authenticity factor, many of the above images could activate schemata or spark the imagination and be used for the basis of diverse writing or speaking activities.

Format

As well as being digitally obtained, Flash images can be digitally stored and displayed. We can make use of applications such as Windows picture and fax viewer (standard for PCs), Picassa (free to download and highly recommended) or Microsoft Power Point to create slideshows to play to students in class. Slideshows can even be uploaded onto the Web using sites such as Picassa web albums, and links can be sent to students.

In the classroom, images and slideshows can be:

• Displayed on a computer (students can be asked to gather around the screen)
• Projected from a computer onto a screen or interactive whiteboard
• Displayed on a handheld device such as an iPod (excellent for very small groups and one-to-ones)

Student-generated flashcards

Finally in the presentation, we considered that in cases when it is not possible to obtain specific images online, we can equip our students with paper and pencils and turn to them as a source for images (link here).

I never had a class that didn’t ask me if I wear a kilt when I am in my country.

I wonder if Mexican teachers working abroad get asked the same thing about sombreros.

This is a silly game that I remember from my childhood. I really hope my Mexican friends forgive me for taking advantage of their national dress stereotype in the name of grammar teaching.

What are these?

Answers:

a. A Mexican frying an egg
b. A Mexican riding a bike
c. A Mexican playing the trumpet
d. A giraffe walking past a window (it’s the Mexican’s day off)
f. A Mexican visiting Egypt
g. A Mexican having a bath
h. 2 Mexicans kissing
i. A koala climbing a tree (it’s the giraffe’s day off)

This can be used in class to teach a really useful piece of language: Noun phrases containing -ing structures. Here are some more examples:

• 10 green bottles sitting on the wall (Song)
• Q. Why did the tomato blush? A. Because it saw the salad dressing. (Joke)
• Hey now, all you children, leave your lights on, leave your lights on. ‘Cause there’s a monster living under my bed (Song)
• Who’s that girl running around with you (Song)
• Have you ever seen a man-eating chicken? (A silly question that I remember from my childhood)
• On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me 12 drummers drumming, 11 pipers piping, etc (Christmas carol)

It can be useful for students to be shown the difference between this structure and the present continuous:

A Mexican frying an egg (noun phrase)
A Mexican is frying an egg (sentence)

Here is a lesson plan that uses the pictures above: men-with-big-hats.pdf