Other New Titles

Work and Literacy Resources

Fast Track to Reading

Upon receiving our first copy of this new book, we got very quiet.

"Wow!", we said.

This was the first truly adult-oriented literacy book we had ever seen.

This book is perfect for:
literate students of linear languages like Farsi or Arabic
literate students of pictographic languages like Mandarin
illiterate students

It is great because it:

• has a variety of interesting activities to decode roman script
• helps students who cannot cope with reading at speed
• can be used to supplement any course book, just for those students who need it
• contains global reading
• includes an audio CD
• provides detailed and helpful teaching notes
• includes introductions in Arabic, Farsi, Mandarin and Urdu

...and for once, we are happy to see word searches finally used in their appropriate place.

Have a look at some sample pages and more information.



Office Soft Skills 2: How to Get Along and Get Ahead in Your Career

Part 2 of the recently published Office Soft Skills: How to Make a Good Impression, this nifty little number provides even more information aimed at keeping the newcomer happily employed.

This resource outlines the essential, yet unspoken, rules of getting along with bosses, colleagues and clients in Canada and the USA.

Written in an accessible quiz format, this information is immediately practical for the ESL/EFL classroom and is perfect for anyone working with foreign-trained professionals, or newcomers trying to gain employment.

We particularly like the section on effective team work and all the 'How To Say It' sections, such as contributing positively and phrases for negotiating.

This is a very useful resource, packed with informative nuggets and potentially employment-saving advice.

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Cool Websites (with caveats) for your Students

The Language Garden

The Language Garden is a very slick newcomer to internet space. It has already garnered attention by being the winner of the British version of Dragon's Den, and being nominated for an ELTon in 2009.

Its beauty is inarguable and its combination of language analysis, colour coding and plant imagery is inspired.

It is a paid service, but we think many students will find it worth the small cost.

It features interesting activities to highlight:

• parts of speech
• morphology
• word order
• aural recognition of language
• some vocabulary comprehension

It isn't perfect, and there are a couple of issues we noticed.

1) Some of the information is not accurate. For example, the demo incorrectly explains the 'a' vs 'an' rule as a spelling rule (it's not - it's a phonological issue - e.g. a university and an MBA are correct, yet would be considered incorrect according to their rules).

2) Some of the lexis should be explained in chunks, not in isolation.

However, there is something almost magical about this site, and the use of colour and imagery makes working with the program very enjoyable indeed.

Schools and individuals wishing to purchase access can contact us.

Englishcentral.com




Our website address is www.englishcentral.NET, and so came to be aware of englishcentral.com for obvious reasons.

Another rather sexy site, this one uses samples of video, such as movie trailers, to isolate specific chunks of speech.

Students can listen to these sentences with or without subtitles, and can record themselves repeating the sentences and get feedback on how accurate their pronunciation was...in theory.

The concept is very good and we can see that lots of students will find this fun and engaging - especially with their ability to record and track their scores with a global ranking system.

However, there are some serious shortcomings here that make us hope the creators of this site know they still have major improvements to make.

The two main issues are the dictionary feature - very unhelpful - and the pronunciation feedback system.

Although an impressive foray into speech recognition technology, it is still in its early stages and cannot, for example, recognize inaccurate intrusive sounds or incorrect stress and connected speech patterns.

Still, this website seems very popular and we are sure some of your students will love it.

Just warn them that if they score 100% on their pronunciation feedback, it truly doesn't mean they should stop coming to class!

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Teaching Tips

How to Prevent Learning - some popular techniques

This title has shamelessly been stolen form one of our favourite sections in Jim Scrivener's excellent methodology book, Learning Teaching.

He highlights 14 wonderful easy traps to fall into - traps that could be labeled, 'Clearly trying to help, but unfortunately doing the opposite."

In Part 1, let's examine one of the most controversial topics he mentions - TTT, or better known as...

Teacher Talking Time.

It's a bit controversial because recently there has been an effort to bring more TTT back into the classroom, but the movement is a lot like the argument about fat - there is good TTT (avocados) and bad TTT (potato chips), and we simply shouldn't brand all TTT as the bad kind.

So here's some tips for identifying the bad TTT from the good.

Bad TTT is created when teachers:

...Echo. This occurs when a teacher repeats back to a student exactly what the student just said, for no apparent reason other than to show s/he heard what the student said.

This is a typical 'greasing' strategy in native speaker conversations, but it has very little effective purpose in the ESL classroom. It can be used as an effective CORRECTION technique, if adapted somewhat, but automatic and unconscious echoing simply trains the students to believe the following:

• they made a mistake (when they didn't)
• no one else could have understood what they said if the teacher hadn't repeated it
• students don't need to listen to each other because everything will get filtered through the teacher

...Don't Listen Carefully.  When the teacher doesn't listen carefully to what a student asks they are very likely to fall into the following trap:

1. student asks question
2. teacher misunderstands and provides an unnecessary explanation
3. student is confused and tries to repeat question
4. teacher sees confusion and repeats the explanation that the student didn't want in the first place
5. student gives up or gets annoyed that they are not being heard
6. much time is being wasted

...Repeat Instructions. It is much more efficient to ask instruction checking questions or demonstrate an activity instead of repeating instructions.

...Provide 'helpful' Sentence Completions 
This occurs when a teacher doesn't listen carefully (see point above) and finishes sentences for their students - usually due to impatience or a mistaken idea they can read minds.

Strategies for creating good TTT could be as long as your arm - but suffice to say that it is always created when teachers are conscious of what they are saying and completely aware of the purpose their speech has in their classroom.