Search results matching tags 'vocabulary', 'all levels', 'online resource', and 'cpe'

Online Teaching Resource: Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus

Anonymous — Thu, 12 May 2011 11:38:56 GMT

The visual thesaurus was pointed out to me some time ago as a great alternative to the standard online dictionary search, and also as a great way to help learners broaden their vocabulary, particularly with higher level students who have a tendency to rely on a more limited than necessary lexical resource.

But…. I’ve tended not to use it because of their policy of only giving users a limited set of “tries” on the online version before shutting you down. There is of course a way round that, which involves deleting all the cookies on your computer and clearing down your browser’s history and such like (check out this nifty and free download, if you want to know more about how to do that), but the hassle is a little too much to bother with….

However, the other day I went back and discovered the visual thesaurus has evolved into something more…

There is a growing collection of lesson plans related to use of the visual thesaurus, 53 and counting thus far, and while many seem more intended for native speaker language lessons, there are those that are aimed and EFL / ESL, and those that are adaptable to it (like the one on prefixes – word formation anyone?).

Other things on the site that I think are worth a mention include:

Michele Dunaway’s “Teachers at Work” blog, whose most recent post encourages us to think differently about the way we teach creative writing to our students.
the “wordshop” collection of vocabulary activities (same caveat about target market applies…)
and finally, the vocabgrabber, which you paste text into and which generates word lists of “the most useful vocabulary words” from the text. I’m not so sure about this one, but it might be useful in deciding which items you want to pre-teach to allow learners to access a text more effectively. Though that would require you to type the target text into the website…. like I said, not quite sure about how best t0 use this tool.

State of the World’s Mothers 2011 Statistics and Facts – Save the Children

Anonymous — Tue, 10 May 2011 23:54:20 GMT

State of the World’s Mothers 2011 Statistics and Facts – Save the Children - thanks to Greg Fuller for posting this on facebook…..

There’s a lot of information here and obviously the most interesting thing for any class to do would be to pull out all the statistics that relate to their country and decide whether or not they agree with them, why, and what could be done to change the situation….

Who knows – we could start a social revolution right here?

But information transfer tasks are good ways of processing information and creating a meaningful context for language learning to occur in, so designing tasks around the huge pile of data that Save the Children provide would all give a good reasons for learners to develop their linguistic resource. Poster tasks, presentations (with or without powerpoint), charts and graphs all spring to mind. Of course for IELTS candidates, there are a lot of graphs and charts just waiting to be described in the data!

There’s also a documentary available on the website which could provide the basis for both listening tasks and discussion afterwards (though maybe not a good idea to watch if you’re expecting, or have just had, a recent addition to the family).

These are all just some initial ideas – if you have any plans, materials or ideas you’d like to share to develop this topic, please let me know!

Online Teaching Resource: Primary Pad

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 10:32:25 GMT

Thanks to Tommy Holt for spotting this and mentioning it on facebook!

Primary pad is an online synchronous editing tool – learners can access and edit the same document at the same time. This is the first tool I’ve come across that allows synchronous editing and as such is quite an exciting development! It’s free and requires no registration, though “public pads” only last for 30 days, so longer term projects would require a sign up to the “professional” paid for version.

Take a look at it here: http://www.primarypad.com/

There is a google docs presentation on the site by Simon Haughton, which lists five ways that you can use the tool – synonyms generation / sentence correction & development / online interviewing / task achievement identification / collaborative writing tasks.

I really like the idea of the collaborative writing task as it puts the learners in the positions of writer and reader at the same time, thus hopefully allowing for a peer teaching mode where good ideas are justified and bad ones discarded. It could also work well with text organisation and structure as ideas would need to be grouped effectively and paragraphed. I can see this being used with exam preparation classes a lot!

It would also be perfect for use with Grammar Dictation / Dictagloss tasks – if you’re not familiar with these, the basic premise is that the teacher has a short text (which can be littered with examples of the target language structure) that they read to the learners initially for a content reaction, then read again. On the second reading the learners take notes on what was said. They then try to recreate the text exactly as it was read out. A common problem I find with this, is that the learners’ notetaking ability varies, and so different reconstruction pairs achieve the task with differing accuracy. Bringing all the learners together to recreate the text using primary pad would solve this issue and might lead to a more effective collaboration and reconstruction of the target text!

Also, I like the idea of error correction tasks. As it is a synchronous tool, learners could work together to correct a set of teacher generated sentences, before challenging each other by adding additional error strewn sentences to challenge each other with. I really like asking learners to deliberately make errors – after all they have to know what the correct form is before they can make a deliberate error, and it can raise their awareness of incidental errors that creep in!

One further idea is in identifying the main ideas in a reading text. Useful, again, for exam preparation classes, but with a target text uploaded onto the primary pad, learners can reach a mutual understanding of the text by discussing their ideas below it.

As far as I can work out, the system works with the teacher creating an initial “primary pad” and then simply sharing the URL. So you just send all the other computers to the same web address and they should be able to simply get on with it! And if they don’t finish in class, they can still access the primary pad from the comfort of their own home! (for 30 days!).

Only one word of caution – it’s called “primary pad” – but personally, I think the “primary” is a bit misleading. I can see chaos ensuing if this was used with a class of 24 six-year-olds… and I’m not sure whether it’s bright and shiny enough for the younger end of the teaching spectrum! But teenagers and adults could happily get into it and get a lot out of it.

It’s currently the Easter break with me, so no opportunity to use this with a class at the moment – any feedback from those of you who have tried it, and suggestions on what you did with it are gratefully received!

Other sites that do much the same thing:

A quick look through Larry Ferlazzo’s archive reveals “The best online tools for real-time collaboration”: where he lists primary pad alongside http://sync.in/ and http://piratepad.net/front-page/ and http://typewith.me/. Though pirate pad appears to be exactly the same as primary pad and typewithme.

Not used any of them – so again, any feedback appreciated!

Online Teaching Tool: Kubbu

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 10:40:06 GMT

This website has the potential to be an invaluable online teaching tool and is worth checking out!

I only came across this the other day, but they’ve been around for a while and further research reveals that Larry Ferlazzo mentions this site in a post from 2009!

Kubbu offers a “free account” to teachers who register, which allows you to create student profiles for up to 30 learners and limits you to creating 15 resources. I’m not sure if you can then delete old resources / student profiles and create new ones.

Here’s the list of things that Kubbu say you can do with their site:

Match – extended form of a classic matching excercise. It is an ideal tool for language practice. Matching helps assimilate new words, idioms, meanings, collocations, synonyms, etc.
Divide – used when some notions, terms, concepts or definitions must be classified into categories or groups.
Slider – a type of a dynamic quiz. It contains three types of activities, classic single and multiple choice questions with four answers, as well as a unique “climb up” quiz which leaves no place for mistakes.
Composer – a tool for teachers who want to introduce their own concept of a quiz. With Composer you can create quizzes with single and multiple choice questions, true/false questions, fill-in or short answer questions. Pictures as well as sound files can be used to make your quizzes fully multimedia and interactive.
Crossword – with a crossword generator you can create crosswords using your own list of words.

It also allows you to create / print paper versions of your tasks, so that theoretically you could give them the task on paper in class and ask them to complete it online for homework.

There is also a tracking feature that allows you to monitor learner achievement, how they did, and to track that over time, thus allowing you to track progress.

All in all, well worth a visit!