OUP

Just a quickie to share my excitement at a successful E3 lesson today.Wanted to focus on pronunciation after the input session this week. This was a successful lesson, enjoyed by the students, some of whom were already aware of the importance of the schwa from previous lessons with me. Having learned about the difference between stress-timed and syllable timed languages, I managed to design a worksheet for grouping words with the same stress pattern. Not all students were able to differentiate between the groups at first, and I reminded them that they needed to speak the words aloud in order to identify the stress pattern. All but one of the 7 managed to add at least one more word to each of the columns.
They also worked hard to pronounce the schwa in words and sentences, and I had persuaded two non teaching members of staff to record a short dialogue as a listening exercise. Unfortunately this was not very successful, as not all the conversation had recorded properly, and the quality of sound was abysmal, so I ended up abandoning it, and read it aloud myself, which is never as good. No matter, I felt quite pleased with myself and the students, and this has worked wonders for my confidence. I am going to try to adapt it for a shorter activity with my regular class of E1 learners.
The next week or two will be quite hectic, as I still have my Task Based Learning lesson to prepare.(Yes, I’m sure now that this is the approach I’ve chosen……..I think…..!!!!) In addition to this I must try to squeeze in some past tense practice for my student, as we are going on a trip to Gunnersbury Museum’s Victorian Kitchen at the end of the month. It’s been a while since I took a class here, but I can’t recommend it highly enough. The tour guides are brilliant, and incorporate ESOL related ‘tasks’into the session.
Two of my new books arrived today, one (Short texts and How to Use Them) is a resource book by Alan Maley, (whose book for using poetry in the classroom is brilliant)and a rather dated book which was on my original CELTA recommended reading list (At the Chalkface). Sadly, the Methodology book hasn’t arrived yet, nor the new Jeremy Harmer text book ‘Just Right’.I get carried away sometimes on amazon-there are so many ELT books, and I could spend a fortune if I still had a credit card!!! By the way, for those who are not on the OUP mailing list, do sign up-they send so many great offers; I have received free copies of several student books, an ESOL dictionary, and recently a copy of English for Life Elementary. I really like the format of this book, and intend to buy the teacher’s book soon……well, maybe when I get paid next month……perhaps!!! Found some great info on Task Based Learning today. You really can’t go wrong with the British Council website.
Looking forward to the long weekend. I have my first tutorial next week,and no doubt I will learn when my next observed lesson will be, so I shall try - no promises - to decide on a lesson and STICK to it!!! (Yeah, like that’s going to happen!)Still, stranger things have happened.Watch this space!