ELT Blog Carnival – Send me your links!

 Events  7 Responses »
Oct 022013
 

Attention all ELT bloggers!

Please send me a link to your very best post on teaching and learning English with videos. On November 1st I’ll be posting the 36th edition of the ELT blog Carnival right here (https://www.vickihollett.com/teaching-blog).

clicker-mdAnd the subject is dear to my heart.(Drum roll……) Teaching and learning with videos!

So here’s the plan. You send me your links before the deadline of midnight on October 31st.  On November 2nd, I publish them here and we all get to find out about cool ways to use videos with in our classes and cool ways our learners can study with videos themselves outside class too.

Old and new posts accepted. So if you have a gem of an idea for video lesson that you’ve written about in the past, just send me the link. Or maybe there was that class you taught with video that you haven’t got around to writing up yet. Now’s the time! Write a blog post and then send me the link. And if you don’t have a blog but you have a lesson idea to share, then just drop me a line. I’ll be delighted to publish your post for you here on this blog.

  • Maybe you’ve found a great video on youtube?
  • Maybe you’ve got your learners making videos in class?
  • Maybe you’ve been making videos yourself?

We want to know about it!

So many more teachers have access to video now so video is HOT HOT HOT! Lets help spread the word and share some of the great stuff that’s out there.

You can check out all prior Blog Carnival entries on the ELT Blog Carnival Website. And make sure to join the ELT Carnival on Facebook, so you get notified every time a new carnival is published. (The last one was on great lesson ideas and it’s a gem!) So please send me an email with a link to your best video lesson post  now!

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 Posted by at 6:45 am

Stop Doing and Stop to Do

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Sep 142013
 

Here’s a video we’ve recently made about gerund and infinitive forms after the verb ‘stop’. Someone recently pointed me at a site called fiverr.com where you can hire all kinds of folks to do all kinds of jobs for ‘a fiver’. So we hired a knife juggler and a dancer for this video. Ha! We had a lot of fun making it. Enjoy!

And now, please STOP READING this and STOP TO vote for our ‘Learning to speak ‘merican blog. As many of you will know, I’m very interested in pragmatics and sociolinguistics. For years I have been writing another blog called “Learning to Speak ‘merican” that explores some of the curious differences in discourse style and linguistic politeness between the British and ‘merican varieties. To my surprise and delight it’s up for an award. Please check the competition out. We’re up against the best of the best so I feel very honoured to be included. Click  to explore all the blogs and then vote for us! Vote for us in the best blog competition!

 Posted by at 6:19 am

British and American Pronunciation – Tomahto-Tomayto

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  6 Responses »
Aug 302013
 

Here’s our latest video. Rather than vocabulary, this one explores some British and American pronunciation differences.

It’s got some tricky vocabulary but pictures can help.

10thingscollage-no.namesIt’s also an opportunity to introduce the International Phonetic Alphabet – handy for when students need to check pronunciation in learners’ dictionaries.

And of course it’s an opportunity to have some fun with the two varieties. Singing it correctly is quite a challenge. Jay and I accumulated lots of outtakes where we got muddled up and said words the other way. Hope you like it.

It’s available with a free clickable transcript (handy for making worksheets) at Simple English Videos and I’ve also made a PowerPoint, students worksheet, teachers notes etc. which you’ll find in the Simple English Videos Store. It’s called ‘Tomahto-Tomayto.’

Oh and it’s available on my YouTube channel too. Have you subscribe to that yet? (Nag, nag)

 

Slide9

 Posted by at 3:13 pm

Sensible and Sensitive

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Aug 192013
 

Harry Potter’s grown a beard and his scar is troubling him today. It’s sensitive to the touch so scratching it isn’t a sensible thing to do. Check out our latest video on the false friends sensible and sensitive here to see it with a clickable transcript.

Also, some of you may remember a video we made about taking calls when you’re busy. Materials for this video are now available at the Simple English Videos store and this week only you can download them for free. Put it in your shopping cart and to enter the coupon code ‘MAGIC’ at check out. So what are you waiting for? Best get over there!

 Posted by at 1:48 pm

Birthday Give Away

 Indie publishing, Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Aug 142013
 

Simple English Videos is one year old and we’re celebrating the event with lesson materials give-aways.

birthday-cake-one-candle-hiSo I’ve written materials to go with some of our English Video Lessons which you can find in our new store. My first indie publication!

And over the next few weeks we’re going to be giving stuff away. For example, this week you can download our ‘Alone – Lonely’ lesson materials for free by using the coupon code BIRTHDAY when you check out. It includes:

  • PowerPoints (These are the things I find most useful in class – they get students focused and enable me to use lots of pictures)
  • Students worksheets. They can be used in conjuction with the the PowerPoints if you wish – or given out for homework.
  • Teachers notes with answers.
  • Tapescript
  • An .mp4 version of the video. The videos are available free on youtube and also at the Simple English videos website, but it’s handy to have your own version of the video that you can play when you’re off line.

So the materials arrive as digital files that you can carry with you on a memory stick. I like to have them handy when I’m teaching because you never know when things will come up. It also means you never run out of materials, of course . Just play the video and run the PowerPoints – no preparation required.

The lesson materials are heavily illustrated with images from the videos. Generally they’ll ask students to recall words and phrases they heard and then move on to a short role play or discussion activity. They’re very straightforward.

But why not try one out yourself? Go to the Simple English Videos store. Add ‘Alone-Lonely’ to the shopping cart and then type in BIRTHDAY as you check out to claim your free copy. The BIRTHDAY coupon code is only valid this week, so don’t delay. Also subscribe to the weekly email update because we’ll be giving more lesson materials away and that way you can get all the coupon codes as we create them.

All the movie trailers and Video English Lessons we make are available free at the Simple English Videos site and the lessons are also available on my youtube channel. We plan to try to continue to offer them for free. We’re a two-man team (me and Jay) so we’ve been very appreciative of some of the help, support and encouragement we’ve received from users of the site this year.

If you too would like to support our efforts, here are some things you can do:

  1. Click the like button when you see videos you like. It helps Google know we’re there and just makes us feel good. Oh and comments – we love getting comments and feedback too!
  2. If you really like our videos, please share them on facebook, twitter, tumblr, google+ etc. The video English lessons on my youtube channel are all embeddable.
  3. Consider buying something from the store. We hope it’ll help us offset the costs of running the site.
  4. Help us write a movie trailer transcript – or rather get your students to help us. See more here.
  5. Tell your friends and students. There are more than a hundred movie trailers with clickable transcripts available now – a terrific resource for learners. Plus we have 36 video English lessons, and lots more in the works. We think Simple English Videos is a great place to see real language in context and practice English and probably the very best thing you can do to help us is spread the word.

Finally – a big thank you to all the  Simple English Videos website users. Hope to see y’all back again this year.

 

 Posted by at 4:31 am

Strong and weak versions of CLT

 Events  No Responses »
Aug 112013
 

I loved watching this event with Jeremy and Scott at the New School. I wasn’t there, and I’m so glad they recorded it. I’ve heard other talks looking at the history of CLT and come away surprised thinking, oh, is that how it happened for you because my experience and memories are very different. But this one was right on the nail for me. And lots of great food for thought…

 Posted by at 5:08 am

Two more video English lessons

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Aug 082013
 

Here’s one we made before that we’ve updated and added some gags to.

And we also finished this one a week or two ago:

They are both available with clickable transcripts (handy for worksheets and roleplays) at our Simple English videos website. For regular updates on the videos we make, subscribe to our weekly mailing list.

Please click the ‘like’ button if you like them, and if you have any suggestions for videos you’d like us to make, please drop us a line. Cheers!

 Posted by at 10:04 am

Help us write a movie trailer transcript!

 Teaching functions and speech acts, Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  2 Responses »
Jul 292013
 

A class activity – write a transcript for either or both of these forthcoming movies.



Jay and I write the transcripts for the movie trailers at Simple English Videos and I think generally we do a pretty good job between us. I’m aware that we sometimes make mistakes, but it’s handy that I’m British and he’s American. There are phrases I struggle with in American movies that he gets and vice versa.

A few weeks back we had a very kind offer from Tomasz,  a teacher in Poland. He was teaching an advanced pronunciation course and wondered if we’d like him to ask his students to transcribe some trailers for us. ‘Oh, yes please’, we said and I sent over a list.  What I should have done is explained that we have to turn the videos over pretty quickly and given a deadline, so in the event I had to publish the movies before the transcripts arrived. Duh! But looking at the transcripts gave me an idea.  Tamasz’ students’ versions sometimes differed from ours in tiny ways – and sometimes I think they (not us!) got it right.

So it gave me an idea. I’ve just posted two movie trailer videos with NO transcript on the website and invited students to provide one. The deadline is midnight on Friday 16th August and we will be publishing the videos with the clickable transcripts we make (after reading any other versions) on August 19th and 20th.  We’ve no idea whether any classes might want to try it, but it seems like such a good listening task to me – either for classwork or homework. Plus hopefully we will all wind up with a better transcript!

A big thank you to Tomasz, Borys, and Sara for inspiring this idea and supporting the Simple English Videos site! It’s much appreciated.

 Posted by at 8:51 am
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