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Hi <<First Name>>,

Welcome to your May newsletter.


Featured New Titles

Teaching Unplugged


Pete Townsend

Jethro Tull

Bon Jovi

and now...

Scott Thornbury and Luke Meddings with DELTA Resources for Teachers - 2009

The title, Teaching Unplugged, however, is a bit misleading. This book was inspired more by the Dutch Dogme film movement from 1995 than from musicians unplugging their electric guitars.

Essentially, the application of Dogme to English Language Teaching is a result of believing that ESL classes are burdened with an excess of texts and technology, making the language and contexts unmeaningful for learners.

There are 10 key principles, but in a nutshell it promotes teaching that is:
  • materials-light
  • conversation-driven
  • focused on language that 'emerges' from the students

Organized into three sections, this book answers in detail just what it means to teach in the Dogme 'approach' on both a theoretical and practical level.

Section A is an overview of dogme ELT and explores in more detail dogme teaching principles.

Section B is full of practical teaching activities that use the students as the "primary resource" and promote the idea that language "springs from communicative need".

Section C explores how a dogme approach can be applied to different teaching contexts such as exam-prep, one-to-one and ESP.

To see the table of contents click here.

To see some sample activities click here.

To read a summary of highlights from the dogme ELT discussion thread on Scott's home website click here.

Watch our interview with Luke and Scott talk about Teaching Unplugged - although you can't see how cool WE looked that day...


Sad goodbye to Akua...
and welcome to Tyson

We have some sad news to report...

Akua is leaving us. She has decided to jump back into the classroom and will be teaching at U of Toronto as of May.

Just after so many of you got to know her too...

We'll all miss her but we wish her the best of luck!

The good news is we have a new guy in town.

This is Tyson and although he looks like he's hiding something, he is... greatness is behind those crazy glasses.

Why do we think he is greatness personified? Click here to see why Tyson is our man.

Tyson will start his position as manager of English Central on May 19th.


Books you can't judge by their covers (or titles!)

Geode - rock on the outside, beautiful gems on the inside!With Susan Boyle (and geodes) as our inspiration, the concept of hidden gems has hit the shelves at English Central.

With titles that don't do justice to the treasure trove inside, here's one that definitely deserve a proper look under the cover.

Top Up Listening is what it says it is...but it's actually a lot more. In fact, we recommend this as one of the best resources for pronunciation work.

This 3-level series does an excellent job at linking listening skills to key phonological issues.


It embraces the concept that understanding is hampered by the inability to decode sounds and streams of connected speech.

Afterall, if students can't her it they won't say it.

Why we rave:
  • organized by topic, so it is very easy to use with any coursebook
  • listening skills follow current best practices
  • personalizing speaking activities practice key areas
  • attractive layout and use of colour
  • wide range of pronunciation issues covered (stress, connected speech, intonation and sounds)
  • comes complete with full audio CD

This book fulfills so many wishes it belongs in Alladin's lamp.

We'll feature another hidden gem in next moth's newsletter, but if you want to tell us about one you know of and love, please let us know! Click here to send us a quick email.

Industry News

Speaking skills - hmmmm. We all know that we want our students to be 'good speakers' but this term has always been a bit difficult to adequately define.

English Profile is a new international venture, headed up by the University of Cambridge to better identify the language and sub-skills of speaking for all levels of ability. 

In their own words, this project offers "a unique, detailed and objective analysis of what levels of achievement in language learning actually mean in terms of the grammar, vocabulary and discourse features learners can be expected to have mastered at each level".

They are using a 27-million strong corpus of learner-generated English and when the project is finished there will be a new website of information and resources available to all teachers, learners and course designers.

For more information on this project, please click here.
 
Join the Conversation

This is call out for anyone who would like to join us at our Teacher's Club once a month to hash over what's new for our classrooms and our industry.

We have decided to change our meeting date to Thursdays now, so if you were unavailable on Wednesdays, but was always wishing you could come, perhaps now you can.

To give you an idea of what we talked about last year, here are some highlights:
  • teaching grammar using guided-discovery
  • understanding the dogme approach
  • using learner-based teaching
  • sharing cool websites we use
  • using the lexical approach

Although we've become quite the cozy group, were more than happy to welcome other interested and engaged folks to our discussions.

To recap how it works:
  • We meet one Thursday a month at English Central (click for map)
  • We choose a topic prior to the meeting so people can read up on it, try some things out in their classes and report back or just think up some good questions or comments they might have
  • Most discussions focus on a book, or an online resource that clarifies the discussion topic in some way
  • If folks want to buy the book being discussed, a 25% is given
  • If folks want to buy any other book that evening, they get a 10% discount
  • We chat, we laugh, we connect, we nibble (on snacks) and drink coffee and sparkling water

The best things about it?

We all come from very different backgrounds, levels of experience and teaching contexts and we all love to share our thoughts and classroom adventures.

The worst things about it?

The time flies by and we tend to get excited and talk over one another sometimes.

If this is something you'd like to try, you can email us by clicking here or just show up at our next meeting on Thursday May 14th - 6:30 - 8pm.

We'll be discussing the issue of teacher development - what schools do right and wrong and how teachers stay (or don't stay) motivated.

Hope to see you then!






Other New Titles
New Editions of Well-Loved Series

Understanding and Using English Grammar - otherwise known as "Blue Azar" has just come out with a new updated edition.

The format, approach and style are the same, but they've added new exercise types and colour to make it more class-friendly.

The new additions:
  • speaking practice activities
  • excellent pronunciation and concept-testing listening exercises
  • warm up exercises
  • more text-based grammar exercises.
All good things for teaching grammar... but if we could ask for the moon on a stick, we'd also ask for:
  • comprehension questions to go along with all the readings and listenings before students do language-focused work (not just for 2 of them)
  • more communicative-based speaking activities
One thing that is pretty close to the moon on a stick is the Azar teacher support and resource site.

Visit AzarGrammar.com for free downloadable worksheets, lesson plans and more.

Updated Academic Listening

Contemporary Topics - Academic Listening and Note-Taking Skills has just come out with its third edition.

Appropriately titled, this book does just what it says: offers effective listening and note-taking strategies for the academic context.

Although some topics have remained the same, they have been updated in content and activity type.

The improvements:
  • wider variety of cross-discipline academic topics
  • use of Academic Word List (at back of book)
  • highlighting of key language and study tips
The most significant difference is the new DVD, which features:
  • typical leactures
  • smaller tutorial sessions
  • coaching tips
  • instructor's presentation points
  • student discussions of the lectures
  • subtitles

Tres neat, say we.
Cool Websites
Free Online Journals

You know how some people are able to quote interesting publications and articles and seem so in-touch with what's happening in our industry?

Creepy, right?

We thought so too until we found these great resources.

These informed ones aren't mysterious...just...informed.

If you want to join their ranks,  have a peruse!

Journal of Academic Language and Learning

For interesting research articles and book reviews of a more 'scholarly nature' (their words, not ours), try the Journal of Academic Language and Learning. Registration is required.

Admittedly, it's a bit dry - but lots of good things are: wine, crackers, wit...and the content is great.

Compleat Links

For a zippier ride through current thinking in the EFL/ESL world, check out Compleat Links.

This is TESOL (USA)'s online magazine full of articles, teaching stories, tips and reviews.

Internet TESL Journal

The Internet TESL Journal
is full of great ideas and cool articles. This one is a veritable mother-load of resources.
  • articles
  • lesson plans
  • actitity ideas
  • great links
  • technique highlights
...and you can even download and listen to each month's issue.

Share the good stuff. If you know of a good online journal, click here to send us a link to it. We'll pass the info along in our next newsletter.
Teaching Tips 101

Personalization

The concept is certainly well-known enough, but putting it into practice can be a bit tricky to pin down.

One way is by looking at it from two perspectives:
  1. personalizing materials
  2. personalizing the learning experience

Here's some ideas to help you do both of these.

Personalizing materials
  • seek students opinions about content, and beyond if they like it or not
  • have students create the materials for a class
  • encourage students to revise by creating non-linguistic prompts (photo montages, videos, gestures)
  • adapt coursebook activities to suit your learner's interests (not only yours :-)


Personalizing the learning experience

  • do activities which highlight and expose different learning styles
  • identify your own learning style so you will remember to teach through a variety of learning styles and not just through the one you favour
  • seek honest feedback about your lessons and materials choices
  • allow students some control over the activities they are doing (e.g. deciding which questions they want to answer - but they have to defend why they cut some out)
  • give students some choice of the syllabus (school willing!)
All Hail to the Survey-takers!

A quick shout out to those who completed our micro-mini survey on newsletter satisfaction levels.

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions.


Educator's Quote

The art of teaching
is assisting
the art of discovery
~Mark Van Doren

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