NEW VIDEO PLAYLIST: Prefixes and Suffixes

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Oct 182016
 

prefix-suffix-introDRUM ROLL….. We are delighted to announce the launch of a new video playlist!
It’s designed to help ESL learners understand the meaning and grammar of English words with prefixes and suffixes. We think it’s great way to grow vocabulary fast and great study material to improve scores in exams like IELTS, TOEIC and TOEFL. The first video came out today and we’ll be publishing two more this week. Do hope you like it!

Here is the introductory video:

And here is the first video.

And here is a link to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwrM2Wcy_MsDXAyBxhc6iUutf_DUdpoXn

 Posted by at 6:23 pm

Creating ELT Videos – an iTDi Course Next Month

 Events, Video and tech  No Responses »
Oct 112016
 

Have you ever thought about making your own English language teaching videos? Then let’s get together! Next month I’ll be giving an online course on Creating ELT Videos with the wonderful team at iTDi, where we’ll be collaborating and developing our video making skills. Please tell all your teacher-friends about it and come join us for some wonderful creative fun, fun fun! 
Creating ELT Videos

 Posted by at 5:01 pm

For and To (and how to explain purposes)

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Oct 042016
 

gadget2In our latest video we look at common ways we use the prepositions ‘for’ and ‘to’ in English and look at how we use them both to explain purpose (What’s it for? You use it to…). You also get to see our new spiralizer in action.

This is a particulary handy video for Spanish and Portuguese speakers because the same preposition (para) would be used in a lot of these situations.

Let us know if you like it and tell us about your favourite gadget and what it’s for in the comments below or on YouTube. Oh and please share it if you like it.

You can subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=vickihollettvideo

Also, did you know that we have a Facebook Page where we post a video every day? https://www.facebook.com/SimpleEnglishVideos/
Twitter: @vickivideos

 Posted by at 6:37 pm

Hurry, hurry and get small changes, big results

 Events, Research and curiosities  No Responses »
Oct 012016
 

 

john_fb-image2Sometimes making just a small tweak in our teaching can deliver big results.  But what are the tweaks we should be making? John Fanselow is a man who knows, in fact he’s written a book about it. Here’s just one of John’s many examples.

Mariko thought that when she gave dictations, all of her students wrote exactly what she said, because there were never any errors in their notebooks. However, when she looked at a video clip of her class, she saw that the students were erasing and writing while she wrote the correct sentences on the board. She had told them to compare what they wrote with the sentences on the board. But instead of only comparing, they were rushing to “fix” without time to process or question.

The next day Mariko asked them to keep their erasers in their pencil cases. After she said, “I like ice cream.” three times, she did not write the sentence on the board. The next time she checked the students’ notebooks, only 10 out of 40 students had written, “I like ice cream.” Instead, she read such phrases as “I cream; I ice; I spring; like ice.” After that, she asked the students to correct what they had written with a different colored pen. This would allow the students to compare their mistakes with what was correct later on and allow the teacher to find out what the students could understand and not understand.     

So a tiny change like using a coloured pen brought great results.  John is giving a course about many many more of the useful changes we can make in our classes. It runs on  iTDi all through this month.  Here is the course page: http://itdi.pro/bigresults . You can download the entire preface to the book there, and you even get the whole book if you join the course before it’s available for sale. But this is going to be a great course, even without a free book.

 

 Posted by at 9:45 pm

It’s Deaf Awareness Day! #NoMoreCraptions

 Events, Video and tech  No Responses »
Sep 252016
 

Today is deaf awareness day, so we’ve made a special video. If you want to know how you can help the deaf community and also help us teach the world English, please watch it, share and help us by writing translations!

This video was suggested to us by my friend Rikki Poynter who is deaf herself. She does awesome work as an advocate for captions for the deaf and hard of hearing. Go Rikki!
Here’s another video we made about captions that explains more about how to translate them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTkElmxpv8I
We can’t say thank you enough to the people who have helped us by doing this.

Happy Deaf Awareness Day everyone!

 Posted by at 6:21 am

How to check in at an airport

 Business English, Video and tech  No Responses »
Sep 132016
 

checking in at an airportI’m just back from Europe where I spent a good deal of time in airports and saw airline personnel and travellers struggling through the check in process. It can be a daunting procedure if your English is only elementary, but hopefully this video will help learners understand and know what to expect.

It was made with our dear friend Rachel of Rachel’s English. She has the best channel on the YouTube for improving your English pronunciation and you can subscribe to it here.

Here’s her video where she analyses our pronunciation.

Our video is also available with a full transcript on our website here.

 Posted by at 3:47 pm

How to Teach Negative Questions

 Teaching functions and speech acts, Teaching ideas and lessons  No Responses »
Sep 062016
 

It’s taken me years to work out how to teach negative questions. They’re so tricky! Here’s why…

1. The answers aren’t logical.

If someone says ‘Will you sit down?’, you say ‘yes’ if you plan to sit down. So why do you say ‘yes’ if they ask ‘Won’t you sit down?’ Shouldn’t it be ‘No, I will’?
There are other languages like Russian and Japanese where they are more logical about it. I didn’t understand this when I first started teaching in Tokyo and I caused lots of confusion.

Me: Can I have everyone’s homework?
(Hiroshi looks embarrassed)
Me: Haven’t you done your homework, Hiroshi?
Hiroshi: Yes (meaning ‘Yes, I haven’t done it’)
Me: Oh good, can I have it then?
(Hiroshi looks flustered)
Me: Sorry? Didn’t you say you’d done it?
Hiroshi: Yes (meaning ‘I didn’t say I’d done it’)
Me: Have you left it at home then?

When I went back to the UK, it took me a couple of years to re-learn how to answer negative questions the English way again. And actually, if you listen carefully you’ll sometimes hear native speakers answer them the other way round too.

2. If you use them in the wrong context, you can sound like you’re nagging.

In some Central European languages a negative form makes a question more polite. This can happen in English too, as in ‘Won’t you have another cup of tea?’ But more commonly we use negative questions to indicate that something is not quite what we expect it to be, and that means we can use them to express (mild) irritation. Compare ‘Can you hurry up?’ and ‘Can’t you hurry up?’ Which one is
nagging?
In Slovak you might say things like ‘Haven’t you finished yet?’, and ‘Aren’t you ready yet?’ to enquire about someone’s progress when you want to sound extra pleasant. But if a native English speaker hears this they’ll think ‘Give us a chance!’ or ‘What are you breathing down my neck for?’ There’s potential for relationship damage here.

So all in all it would be jolly nice if we didn’t have to teach negative questions but there’s no getting round the fact that students will hear them and have to respond. So what to do? Well, let me show you how I now teach them…

 Posted by at 4:09 pm
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