2016/04/19

Day 4



Plenary by Scott Thornbury
1966 and all that: a critical history of ELT

The video can be watched at:
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2016/session/plenary-scott-thornbury

_____________________________________________________

You cannot but be carried away by this Talk!!!
As a "Mr Grammar" is speaking about "the Archeology of ESL"!!!


Do you know who or what is or are "Grammar McNuggets"?

Can you see any connections between 1066 and 1966?

What unites TESOL - N.Chomsky - Psycholinguistics - P.Newmark?

Can you build "the bridge" between "communication" and "psychology" in ESL?

How would you continue the statement: Languages should be taught like a  ....?
a) vocabulary
b) skill
c) grammar

No doubt you know
the Era of Space Exploration,
the Era of the Cold War and the Iron Curtain,
the Era of the Internet.
But ..........  do you know the ''Mistakes-Out!!'' Era (1967)?

:):):):):)

You can find answers to these and many other intriguing questions about language teaching watching this Talk!
Or you can brush up your knowledge of language teaching methodology!

In any case - it is a useful Fun!!!!


2016/04/16

I am a Blogger at IATEFL, Birmingham 2016


April 15
Day 4

Plenary by Diane Larsen-Freeman
Shifting metaphors from computer input to ecological affordances

The talk can be watched here: https://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2016/session/plenary-diane-larsen-freeman

The word "metaphors" in the talk title immediately caught my eye...as right at the moment metaphors are my linguistic research focus...And the language learner and the learning process described and commented on by Diane is one of the examples of "Metaphors We Live By" (J.Lakoff)!!!:)
And these really ARE metaphors we live by!!!:):)

The important fact described by Diane was that a foreign language student is no longer treated as a computer with its "input - output" system (materials suggested to the student - the student's speech as a result) but as a complex dynamic system which can react to any new change in the learning environment and adopt himself to these changes.
Bright was the comparison made by Diane of a language learner and the adaptive immune system which reacts to any "unknown invaders" by adaptin itself and thus trying to gain advantages for itself from it!!


2016/04/14

I am a Blogger at IATEFL, Birmingham 2016


April 14
Day 3

The ‘native factor’, the haves and the have-nots

The talk can be watched here:
Plenary by Silvana Richardson

I am happy that I listened to this talk because this is an issue that I faced myself a couple of times when your professionalism as a foreign language teacher is diminished to your place of origin.
I am proud that my motherland is Russia and that Russian is my native tongue.
As a professional I feel like called upon to represent my country the very best way I can, because I know that the way I am makes other people say "Oh, well, then Russian people are like this!!"

Here I post some slides from the Presentation which was used in the talk, I think these slides say for themselves so no extra comments are necessary.

Just just a remark. I know it from my own experience that it is the best way when an ESL teacher is a bilingual who teaches English students from his country because only he can teach them the very best way as he knows cultural peculiarities of his students - he shares with them things making up their backgrounds, he knows peculiarities of their mentality, he knows what difficulties may arouse in learning English and can help them avoid or understand mistakes. He can foreshadow all this.
Whereas an English native speaker as a teacher can be very valuable at later stages of language acquisitin when these are communicative skills that are already mostly to be developed.

That's my view!

So, I would call this talk like "SPREAD THE WORD!"
Spread the word that a professional is not a matter of nationality or anything. It is a matter of professionalism!!

Many thanks to Silvana for her Talk!!!















2016/04/13

I am a Blogger at IATEFL, Birmingham 2016

Wednesday 13th April
0915-1025 Opening Plenary by David Crystal

Day 2

Who would of thought it? The English language 1966-2066 

The video can be watched here:
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2016/interview/interview-david-crystal

I liked this lecture about trends of English changing over the last say 50 years, this was  both a very instructive and entertaining talk - a lot of factual data, systematised trends in English changing examples of words we use widely in our real life!!

For an ESL teacher who does not live in the UK or cannot visit it on a regular basis this was very valuable information.

And it was a real treat for the ear to hear David's English!

So, David talked about changes related to:
semantics,
grammar,
pronunciation,
spelling.

SEMANTICS
I liked very much a short survey of Words that were new for 1960s and that are new for the Present time:

1960s





Present time




So, teaching materials go out ofdate very quickly and publishers of dictionaries and textbooks should be aware of it.

Another interesting thing is that though some words may be liked by some people who use them regularly and consistently, it doesn't mean that these words have regualar usage.

And one more interesting peculiarity about the word stock in English at present is the fact that many new words apperar from different areas (business, arts, computers,environment, leasure), and mostly
they are many-word and we can understand them only knowing their "background".

See the pictures above with the words of the present time!!

Besides, since the arrival of Internet new words come not only from English sources (national press, radio, TV etc) but from worldwide and from anyone, from foreign localities, so our foreign vocabulary grows greatly.

And finally different English dialects now are become neighbours, their accomodation to each other becomes widespread, hence a large number of words originating from or influenced by them.

GRAMMAR

Well, it's a well-known fact that Grammar is more stable, and changes over longer periods of time. As David says about 2% of grammar changes in some long time

There was one useful remark made by David - never trust Internet versions of old texts - see real manuscripts for grammatical changes.

Major Grammar changes that can be observed in English now are the following:

1) frequency of MODAL VERBS is declining - shall, may, must
they are replaced by semi modal constructions - have to, want to, going to and their coll. - gonna to, wanna to

We know that Must is more obligatory, have to - is more sympathetic

it must be right = I am certain
it has to be right = I am not so sure

Thus, right now we observe how social and psychological changes influence - everyone is an individuality -  the categorical use of Must, when less ego-centric variants become more widely used.

2) CONTINUOUS forms take the lead:
I am loving it
statives are used dynamically, perhaps they all will develop a dynamic use over the 50 years...

Interesting.....

3) WHICH-THAT
the book that I bought
the book which I bought

WHICH - its use is dramatically diminishing, the reason for that is - antagonism to the use of WHICH that is very formal; and increasing colloquialism of Englsih which began in the 60s.
WHICH is more formal and used in formal texts

I haven't known that!

PRONUNCIATION

As diffrent from Grammar any change in pronunciation is to be frequently perceived - because we cannot but pronounce words!:)

I would group the changed David described into 2 categories:

1) "Accents are dying out"
2) New rythms of English - Syllable-time speech (like rap music), the future seems to be syllable-timed.

1) English accent changed.
2 major changes happened over the last 50 years:
- change in attitude to linguistic diversity influenced it (influence of Scottish and other accents) - from negative to positive.
Now on BBC many accents can be heard over the radio reading news etc before it was impossible.
It is explained by the fact that in recent years we face the appearance of many regional radios, which reduced the popularity of the national radio.

This trend grew in 1990s when REGIONAL VOICES started presenting various channels
RP (Received Pronunciation)  has yet a strong influece but the phonetics  changed^
lord [lo:d] sounds like [la;d]
Even Queen's pronunciation deviates sometimes from RP, more so the younger generation of the Roal Family:
when the Queen says [hot], the young prince says [ho] (reducing the end consonant).

The examples are of interest!
________________________
Influence of Estuary English - i.e. of people who live on either sides of river Thames , mostly to the North:

it's 3 o'clock, right?
They pull vowels and consonants in different directions.
And it influences through all England.
_________
Rural accents are dying out as long as the people who speak die out.
________________________
In Major population centers we observe pronunciation changes due to the influence of many people from different places (China, Italy etc), these are pronunciation mixes which reflect the cosmopolian character of cities (e.g. London).
_____
It is not that 1 accent replaces another, sooner they blend into the 3rd accent.
____________________________________
Some reginal acents have got positive treatment now, some - negative.
Before some people would say:
"No, I wouldn't buy this car, because I don't trust this voice!!"
Now -  not.

In Call centers earlier we could hear only RP voices, no local voices. Now local accents on the national level are a rule, it is rarely RP.

In pronunciation we see mostly the ongoing changes in English, English is adapted to express local identity.

SPELLING
Internet influences simplification of spelling, even incorrect variants are promoted, graphic design influences it too - e.g. low-case leters for personal names, low case "i" etc

Now people are discovering and exploiting the flexibility of English in punctuation.

The following is rather an amazing thing and fact - In Old English there were few punctuation marks, so Internet is renewing our connection with the past:):)

2016/04/12

I am a Blogger at IATEFL, Birmingham 2016

Итак, сегодня НАЧАЛО



DAY 1

You can watch the video here: http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2016/interview/interview-herbert-puchta

What caught my eye about this Interview is "using evidence of neuro-biology" in the teens ESL classroom.

For myself I wrote these Interview key words:

developing teenage students' language response, responsibility, personality;personilized and challenging study materials; emotion-driven not logics-driven; critical-thinking, values, self-esteem.

I share Herbert's view that there are 2 major psychological issues concerning teens: no match btw emotions and logics; and high or low self-esteem. High self-esteem can lead to the teen's feeling superior to his peers and low esteem leads to agression.

So, developing tasks the teacher should work carefully on them and make them satisfy major demands: 
- they should be Critical Thinking developing,
- values understanding development and
- self-esteem development.

So, the teaching materials should be challenging and related-to-the-world for the teens, but as every teen is individualeach task should be so worked through in the ESL class that it should touch to the quick every teen - using different questions knowing each teen's background etc

In fact, this approach will work well with students of any age because it is PERSONALIZED relative to their age and background




2016/04/01

Хотите узнать, как мы работаем на занятиях?!!!



АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК для КИНОЛОГОВ
и СОБАКОВОДОВ

English for Canine Behavior Specialists, Trainers and Dog Lovers


Приглашаю Вас поработать с небольшой Демо-версией наших уроков: Вашему вниманию предлагаются несколько тестов для отработки специальной лексики "Анатомия собаки".
Один и тот же лексический материал прорабатывается в разных заданиях.
Это лишь небольшой пример того, как можно работать со словами на наших занятиях.

Все материалы представлены здесь: http://myskypelanguagelessons.blogspot.com/

__________________________________

Информацию о Курсе Вы также можете прочитать в мой Группе в ВКонтакте:

Skype-уроки английского и русского языков (РКИ)
English and Russian via Skype

Буду благодарна Вам за отзывы!

МОЙ СПЕЦКУРС

Special ESL Course developed by me, taught in real time class and via Skype

АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК для КИНОЛОГОВ
и СОБАКОВОДОВ

English for Canine Behavior Specialists, Trainers and Dog Lovers

Данный курс предназначен для профессионалов-кинологов, зоопсихологов, хендлеров,  владельцев питомников, руководителей кинологических объединений и собаководов-любителей в целом.

Цель курса - выработать умение говорить на английском языке и понимать устную речь, необходимое для участия в неформальных беседах, в специализированных выставках и семинарах, для чтения специальной литературы и т.п.

Курс предполагает наличие / освоение базового уровня английского языка.

This course target audience is professional dog trainers, dog behaviour specialists, handlers, breeders,heads of dog associations and dog-lovers all in all.
The course aim is to develop skills of speaking and listening comprehension, necessary  for fruitful participation in informal talks with other dog lovers or specialists, for understanding the judges' critique when taking part in dog shows, for taking specialized dog courses and participating in seminars, for reading dog literature, etc
Requirements: basic level of English.

ОБО МНЕ и ОБ ЭТОМ КУРСЕ
Я являюсь разработчиком данного учебного курса.
В дополнение к высокому уровню владения английским языком и солидному опыту преподавания английского языка как иностранного в университете (факультет иностранных языков), необходимо отметить, что:
- я сама являюсь любителем-собаководом: первая собачка у меня появилась в 1987г.
- я интересуюсь проблемами поведения собак и
- постоянно стараюсь улучшать свои знания в данной области,проходя различные специализированные учебные курсы (см. ниже)
- работаю переводчиком на выставках собак (Москва, Россия-2014; Москва, Евразия-2015).

ABOUT ME and THIS COURSE
I am the developer of this Course.
In addition to my English Language proficiency and solid ESL teaching experience as a university professor, to my being a doglover and owner (since 1987) I keep on updating my knowledge in dog behaviour taking up specialized online courses:

2015 Evolution
with Ethology Institute Cambridge
2014 EVIDET: Do you have what it takes to be a veterinarian?
with Edinburgh University
2014 Animal Behaviour
with Melbourne University
Мой блог - проект в рамках данного курса, который я продолжаю вести
(my Blog which is was my project when I was taking this course and which I continue now):
http://animalsbehaviour.blogspot.com

2014 Animal Behaviour and Welfare
with Edinburgh University, www.coursera.org

I also work as an interpreter at dog shows (Moscow, Russia-2014; Moscow, Eurasia-2015).

Детальная информация на:
Details can be found at:


ОТКУДА БЕРУТСЯ ДЕТИ Родители сплюнулись, и получилась точная копия - детенок. А говорят, сперматозоиды, яйцеклетки! Слюни! ⠀ Так чт...