Understanding the Author's Craft by Writing

My school has started a Data Team that is in charge of analyzing the data that we receive from exams and letting us know what we should try to focus more on in our classes. I am not going to lie, this scared me a bit when they started (am I just going to be teaching to the test?), but for the most part, what they have told us are things I focus on anyways, now I just have to add a note to my Haiku saying, "We are focusing on __________ because of _______________."

One of the areas they feel students need more exposure is analyzing the author's craft. I am pretty excited because I have wanted to justify using the National Novel Writing Month's Young Writer's Program, commonly known as NaNoWriMo YWP, in my classroom and now I can.

NaNoWriMo is so easy it is almost hard to explain. Essentially, it is an idea that anyone who wants to write a novel can sit down and do it in a month. For the adult's program, on November 1, participants start writing with the goal of hitting the 50,000-word mark by 11:59 PM on November 30.

NaNoWriMo also has a Young Writer's Program specifically for students!! For students, they can set their own word limit, making it achievable at any age.

My NaNoWriMo

There's a teacher's kit you can buy / get for free (depending on their supply and your location) that comes with

• An awesome poster for your classroom where students can chart their novelling progress
• 35 stickers that say "Contents Extremely Imaginative" (great for laptops or binders)
• 35 "I Novel" NaNoWriMo buttons 
• One Writer's Emergency Kit (Fun for speaking activities and downtime in class)

But that's not all! There are some different workbooks (for different school levels)  you can download for free or purchase for $10. It goes through some fun ways to introduce your students to plot, setting, characters etc. They also have some lesson plans developed for Kindergartners through High School Seniors.

I won't be using these exactly. I'll be adjusting them so that we can use them to discuss the characters we have read about and analyze how the author has used the skills and methods we are learning about (as well as use them on their own).

I contemplated doing this on Haiku, but I think I will be using the website they have set up where my students can sign up, get motivational speeches, and track their word count. I can also give them announcements etc.

The best part, if your students meet the goal, then they get a voucher to get free copies of their book published and mailed to them. AWESOME motivation.

This will be my first year rocking it, but I'll be sure to post any amazing lessons I come up with while this goes on, and expect a post in December about how it went.

If you've ever done this before or have any pointers, comments below! If you're a newbie like me and you also teach high school, maybe our students could Skype or otherwise collaborate?

Audio Book Quizzes

I usually share links to audiobooks as well. We read a lot in class, so I know they are practicing that skill, but sometimes listening is more convenient. They can listen as they are doing the dishes, showering, cooking and other times that it can be a bit difficult to read a book.

Secondly, it can help my ESL students hear proper pronunciation or words. Even with my non-ESL students, this is nice because when we read books like Things Fall Apart, they can hear the African names spoken as they should be spoken.

Finally, in some cases, they can listen to the text as they read it. In some cases there are websites set up to do this. For example, with The Great Gatsby  the website ESLBits actually has the text and the audio book on the same webpage. Even when the audio and text are separate, students can still read and listen at the same time.

Students can actually purchase mp3s of the audiobook (or often find them free online). In the future, I want students to create their own audiobooks, but for this semester I wanted them to do something a bit different.

In the case off Things Fall Apart, the chapters worked perfectly for the project I wanted to do with my class. Each student was assigned a chapter to make a triv that would help the other students listen and check comprehension.

Here are the steps and a finished project.

STEP 1 - Setting the Stage
We used a triv in the class, so students could see what they looked like. We have used these before, but if you haven't I'd be sure to use one.

In my class we had read Yeat's poem, "The Second Coming," to prepare to read, Things Fall Apart. The next class we did a quick review on the poem by using this triv. (Triv is what www.blubbr.tv calls their trivia games)

STEP 2- Explaining YouTube Videos
I introduce how to listen to the book on YouTube. Most students seem to really be amazed by this concept. They never considered looking for audiobooks on a site for mainly videos.




STEP 3 - Setting the Assignment
I treat this as an individual outside of school activity. They are each assigned one chapter. They need to find the chapter online, and use it to make a triv. We do a sample with the first two minutes of Chapter 1. They need

1. Find an audiobook of their chapter
2. To create a triv for their chapter
• They need at least FIVE questions regarding the plot (or basic comprehension)
• They need at least TWO questions regarding vocabulary (or literary /rhetorical skills)

They send these links to me and I share them with the rest of the class who can use them to study.

STEP 4 -  On Their Own
Then students are on their own! I made these videos to help them.

Here's the video on how to sign up for an account:


Here's one on making triv:



I love this project because students are helping one another, and they become experts on one chapter.

Here's a Triv one of my students made

How do you use Trivs in your class?

Book Review: The English Tenses

Tenses can be tricky!

This review is late. I read this book about a month ago and had a review written up to auto publish about two weeks ago. Unfortunately, due to the magic elves that live in my computer. I have no idea where the original review went, and I've been very busy with school lately and unable to write a new one. Apologies again to author Phil Williams for this delay.

The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide is not a book I would suggest students or teachers read from start to finish (though you certainly could). I would suggest that teachers keep this on hand to review before teaching a specific tense (or to brush up if they are teaching a new level). I would also encourage advanced students who learn well independently to consult this book to help them grapple with English tenses.

Basically, this would be a great addition for any English teacher's bookcase.

This book goes into a detailed description of the differences between all the different tenses of past, present and future. Seriously, all of them. Go to the link I gave above (or click on the book cover below) and check out the, "look inside" function Amazon gives. You'll be able to peruse the very detailed table of contents to get an idea of exactly what is in the book.

To the left you'll see a quick example of the table of contents with all of the different information is has on past tense! This repeats for the future and present tense as well.

Each section includes an explanation and the basic rules of the specific form in question. Then, Phil goes over the affirmative, interrogative, negative and negative question forms using multiple different examples and charts to make it clear what part of the sentence correlates to previous examples.

As a paperback, this book is under $25. If you read books on your tablet, kindle or online, then you can download the Kindle version for less than $7.00! It has AT LEAST 100 pages of solid information on tenses sure to clarify this topic to anyone who reads it.

Overall I'd encourage you to add this book to your wishlist. If you do get a chance to read it, or have a different text you'd recommend let me know in the comments.

Graffiti Parties

Here one of my students is decorating my t-shirt

Do you ever have a chance to throw a celebration in your classes?

In the summer I teach a temporary job where students from all over the world come to San Diego to visit the city and practice their English.

Saturday my Italian students left, so we had a small party at the end of class on Friday to send them off! Students were encouraged to bring an old t-shirt or buy an SDSU t-shirt at the college gift store. Those who did not bring a shirt participated by making, "memory books."

Students were given easy rules, "Write in English only unless you want to add your name or a brief phrase in your native language." I normally keep it to English only, but Italian students like having Japanese and Taiwanese words on their shirts, and I consider it sharing cultures!

My finished t-shirt!

That's pretty much it! Students can wear the shirt and have other students write on them, or the shirts can be placed on desks. I find sharpies work best to keep the writing permanent. If students have problems writing on the shirts you can tape them down or put sandpaper under them to make them stick. They are easier to write on if someone is wearing them, but with older students you need to be sure they are only writing in appropriate places.

For 15-30 minutes students go around class asking, "Will you write on my shirt," and "Teacher, how do you spell enough?" I have never had problems with students writing inappropriate things, but if this did happen I would simply remove the student from the party and give them a worksheet to finish.

Students enjoy this, and I usually keep the radio on for background noise.

Our beautiful blackboard that doubled as a backdrop

If a few students finish early I normally ask them if they would like to decorate a board that we can use as a backdrop for pictures.

In this case one of my students created a red, white and blue background which stated the name of the University where the classes took and the year. I think she made it look quite nice given the fact that she was dealing with a chalkboard!

I won't embarrass my students by posting pictures of them online, but here's a corny picture of me posing in front of the blackboard.

If I wanted to make it look better, I could crop out the tables, but I kept them in to let you see we were dealing with your normal crowded classroom!

I know this seems like a pointless activity, but students practiced their English, listened to some English music, took thousands of pictures, and have a memento to make sure they never forget their time at SDSU. Plus, I get a memento of them!

You can see the t-shirt that they made for me (above) is a lot of "thank you" along with some personalized messages that will always make me smile when I wear it.

Do you do anything special the last day of school?

Doodling for Complex Sentences

Are your students struggling with making sentences more complex?

Many students can write simple sentences, and run-on sentences, but they struggle with writing solid complex sentences.

This written activity is a fun way to get students to sculpt more complex sentences using relative clauses and transition words.

Before ANY of this, my students have learned different transition words, how to use them where to use them relative pronouns, etc.

Pre-Activity:  
I usually start by drawing a few random doodles on the board. describe what a doodle is. If students guess scribble, I also accept this word as appropriate.Then, I ask what they see in the doodles. Once they see how doodles can be changed into different forms, we are ready to start!

Activity: This can be arranged in many ways, but I like to have students sit in circles.

Step One Doodle on different pieces of paper and 

STEP ONE Each student gets a paper with a doodle drawn (Note: To make this a no prep activity, students may make the first doodle, but I find giving them a doodle tends to work out better.)

STEP TWO Each student expands on the picture. I know the picture below vague, but notice how the student turned the doodle into a rabbit!

STEP THREE (optional) Have the students write one or two words describing their picture. Again looking at the picture to the below, the student could write something like, "An animal," or, "A rabbit,"

Have a box of transition words and relative prnounouns

STEP FOUR The students pass the paper to another student. The student will form a sentence describing the picture: "The rabbit is tall"

STEP FIVE Pass the paper again. This time students also take (or are given) a piece of paper with a random connecting word.  They are told to find a way to make the sentence longer using that word, "The rabbit is tall; however, he is fat."

STEP FIVE  There are multiple ways to do this. I like having students pass the doodling paper to the right, and their connecting word to the left. The students then needed to add another word to the sentence, "The rabbit, who is furry, is tall; however, he is fat."

STEP SIX At this point you can continue having the students pass connecting words to the left and doodles to the right, or you can give out new connecting words.

STEP SEVEN Continue step six until students become bored you you have had them make at least four rotations.

STEP EIGHT Finally, the last time students don't add to the sentence. Their job is to read through the sentence, which at this point can be quite complex, and make it coherent.

STEP NINE Students present the final pictures to the class as well as the final description of the picture.

 Why it Works 
Students could get bored by this, but because the pictures are so random almost every time it goes like this:
Teacher: OK pass the paper to the next student please.
Student 1: What is that?
Student 2: What did you draw?
Student 3: Oh my god this sentence is ridiculous.

They are ALWAYS entertained!

This is also a great activity to use with adjectives or any other clauses. Basically, anything where students add onto a basic sentence. If you want students to practice speaking you can have them do this in partners.

This activity isn't directly humorous, but I PROMISE you that your students will laugh at some of the doodles created and sentences written.  On August 2nd the deadline for submitting your blog to be part of the ELT Blog Carnival on Humor will CLOSE! Don't miss out!

Group Collaboration- Crossword Puzzles

This is nothing new, but my students had so much fun on Tuesday, that I wanted to share a more dynamic way to use crossword puzzles in class (rather than making them and passing them out yourself). 

This can be used for almost any grammar point, but we were reviewing relative clauses on Tuesday, so those are the examples you'll see. We use Passages Student's Book 1, which teaches defining and non-defining clauses by discussing different cities and overall travel.

After my students and I worked our way through some grammar activities, it was time for them to produce some sentences, in a collaborative and (I hope) fun way!

My board work

Setting it up (5 minutes): I wrote some sentences/ phrases using relative clauses on the board.

1 Down Something that you use to eat

1 Across _________, which is the capital of Japan, is the birthplace of Joan Fontaine.

2 Across When in Japan, you speak _________

I asked students for the answer to 1 down. One student shouted, "Spoon,! At this point I drew crossword boxes to the side. We quickly solved the puzzle (Chopsticks, Tokyo, Japanese).

Dividing the class (3 minutes)

I have a small multicultural class right now. I have five Japanese students, three Taiwanese students, and one Brazilian student. I don't really love having nine students, but at l east in this case it made the decision to divide the students into groups of three easy. I "randomly" assigned each student a group (A, B, C) to be sure that each group had as many different nationalities as possible.

The Assignment (3 minutes): You can do this many different ways, but this is how it went Tuesday in class.

Teacher: "With your group you need to come up with a theme. What was the theme of my puzzle on the board?"

Students: "Japan."
Teacher: "Yes! You're all so smart! We have been discussing traveling, so what other themes could be select?"

Here is a student making her clues

Students: "Asia" "China" "Barcelona"
Teacher: "Good, you can also do other themes like: 'Things you pack in a suitcase,' or 'Different ways to travel.' The FIRST thing you need to do as a group is  agree on a theme. The SECOND thing you will need to do is come up with some clues. How many clues will you need?"

Students: "Ten" "Five teacher" "Twenty"
Teacher: "There are three of you so 15 clues, but only 10 of them need to have relative clauses" (Note: I thought this would take 30 minutes, but students took about 50 to complete their puzzles. Looking back I would change it to 10 clues.)

Students: "How many clues?"
Teacher: *Writes on the board* "15 clues 10 relative clauses"

Students: "Does it matter how many across and how many up?"Teacher: "Nope. You may do this however you like. When you finish, you must give me TWO blank cross word puzzles. Each group will receive a crossword puzzle from every other group" (With larger classes you could have them photocopy for homework, or just make it so they trade with another group).

Students: "Can we use our phones?"
Teacher: "You can use the textbook, or your cell phones to get information. Please TALK to your partners, but don't talk too loudly, or the other teams will hear your answers."

The Work:

As students worked in groups I heard a lot of English! Some of it was the grammar point (What about, "The woman who is the queen of England?") and some of it was the task based English, "No it doesn't fit there." "That question is too different. Not our theme." etc. I originally was going to give 15  minutes to create the questions and then 5 minutes to make sure everything fit on a crossword puzzle. Maybe with an extra five minutes to actually write out the two final copies for the other groups.... the groups ended up needing about 30 minutes to make the clues and another 15 to assemble the puzzle. However, they were speaking English THE WHOLE TIME! Because they were on task, I told them they could take as much of the class as they needed.

In the end they needed all of my class-time, but I feel it was well worth it!

Complete the Puzzles

Give groups a crossword puzzle(s) from another team. Allow them five minutes to work on it as a team WITHOUT CELL PHONES. Just see how many they know. 

Then, because this isn't the main aim of the class, give them the option of using cell phones or textbooks to find answers. 

The first group to finish both crossword puzzles wins! Since my students are just visiting America for the Summer I give them American paraphernalia (there was an after Fourth of July sale where I got tons of bracelets, pencils, necklaces etc. for less than $1.00 each!), but anything works! If nothing else they win bragging rights!

 

Alternatives:

• Provide each student with a different text from which to find their answers and clues (a short article about safaris in Africa for examples)
• Use this as a literature assignment. Have students each create a crossword for a different character, or chapter.
• Make it about the school, or the teacher!
• I know there are many crossword puzzle generators on computers, but part of the reasons I like doing it by pen and paper is because students get to talk about where to put the boxes. While you could have them use an online tool, I would avoid it.
• The options are pretty close to limitless :)

There it is! A simple, and dynamic way to get students to work together, practice the target language, and create a little fun for all the students. How do you use crossword puzzles in the class?   

Using ‘COMEDY FOR ELT’ Clips

This is a guest blog written by Nick Michelioudakis and it will be included as part of the August ELT Blog carnival on humor. You can read more about the blog carnival and how to participate here (11 more days to submit your blog!). This post covers how English Language Teachers can use different YouTube videos to get students more interested in English. I am sure you'll enjoy it and hopefully get a laugh or two from the videos shown here!

Why use these clips?

This material is not meant to be used like ordinary coursebook material. There is no progression from easier extracts to more difficult ones, nor has there been an attempt to focus on micro-skills in any systematic way.  The main purpose of these sketches is to motivate students.  Having used extracts from comedies for a number of years, I found them by far the most interesting material for students and I was amazed to find that although virtually everything else has at some time or another been put to use in the EFL classroom, this was not the case with radio and TV comedies. 

What can I use this material for?

The fact that most of the sketches are quite short suggests that they can be used as ‘fillers’.  Naturally, this is not to say that they cannot be used to achieve other aims.  For example they can be used to...

... introduce some topic (‘Comedy for ELT – Relationships 1’)

... demonstrate activities (‘Comedy for ELT – The ‘Yes-No’ Game’).

... practise topic vocabulary (‘Comedy for ELT – Technology’)

... practise functions (‘Comedyfor ELT – Small Talk’)

However, most of the dialogues are so funny that very often all the introduction the teacher needs to make is: ‘Listen to this!’

In what way is this material different?

Compared to what one normally finds in ELT coursebooks, these excerpts are generally more difficult for a number of reasons:

• They are authentic – i.e. not originally meant for the ELT classroom.
• They are scripted, so there is none of the redundancy and repetition which makes real-life speaking somewhat easier to understand.
• The delivery is usually very quick.
• The accents are either ‘strange/funny’ (deliberately) foreign-sounding or exaggerated.
• There are puns and ‘double-entendes’ which make real-time processing harder.
• There is often play with register, or other devices which again make the listener’s task harder – just as even in the L1, it is often difficult to ‘get the joke’, even if one understand all the ‘words’.

DOs

It follows from the above, that the teacher’s role is to help the students as much as possible, to make it easier for them to enjoy these extracts.  This can be done by:

• Setting the context: explaining what the situation is and who the participants are.
• Supporting students with unknown vocabulary / background knowledge / cultural elements etc.
• Keeping the tasks easy – easier than the students’ level would suggest. 

Precisely because the material is fun, it may be that some students (of the ‘unless-it-hurts-it-can’t-be-good’ school of thought) may feel that it is a waste of time.  For this reason it is a good idea for the teacher to:

• ‘Sell’ the idea to the students, stressing that if they can understand these dialogues they will have no problem with the – relatively easier – ones in the exams, and
• ‘Link’ the dialogues to the rest of the lesson, so that they are integrated and there is a sense of purpose and continuity (that is the reason why the ‘Theme’ is mentioned in the notes accompanying the clip).

 DON’Ts

• Don’t give students the punch-line; it spoils the sketch for them as it deprives them of the pleasure of understanding it themselves.
• Don’t play extracts which require too much explanation.
• Unless you know your class / private student really well, don’t take unnecessary risks with ‘dangerous / taboo’ topics (e.g. sex, politics, religion).
• Don’t treat this material like the listening tasks you normally come across in coursebooks.  Make it clear to students that you see it as an ‘extra’, a ‘treat’.  If they expect it to be special, this will act as a self-fulfilling expectation.  Remember: Anything can be ‘schooled’!.

Task 1

Normally in listening activities it is a good idea to get students to listen to the audio/video clip more than once, with the normal sequence being first listening for gist and then for detail. In the case of these sketches the first task is normally easier than one would expect as focusing too much on it would detract from the students’ enjoyment.  Typical activities are T/F Qs, Complete the sentence, Ordering or Straightforward open-ended Qs.

Task 2

In my experience students want to be able to understand the dialogues as fully as possible, which is why in most cases the second task involves them working with the script (e.g. typically filling-in gaps combined with adding, deleting or changing words). 

[NB: The words which are blanked out are not random; in most cases words are deleted so that students have to understand the missing words to ‘get the joke’ or in order to focus their attention on some important preposition, collocation etc. Similarly, when a word is substituted for another, in the vast majority it is a near synonym, so that students will not have to look up the meaning of the original word].

Repetition

For the students to both enjoy the extracts and derive the maximum benefit from them, I believe it is a good idea to listen to them more than once.  In fact (unlike other material) the less challenging their task becomes through repeated listening, the more students enjoy the dialogues as they can appreciate the humour more – their increased confidence enables them to catch things they had previously missed! 

Follow up

As the main aim of the listening activities is to help students to appreciate and enjoy the dialogues, I have not included any follow-up language or skills work so as not to spoil the whole experience for them.  However, there are a number of things teachers can do after these listening sessions.  Here are some ideas:

• Role play:  students may like a particular extract so much, they may want to act it out, or, better still, record their dialogue on audio or even video tape (‘Constable Savage’).
• Parallel writing:  students may write a similar dialogue on the same or a related theme (‘Two Recipes’).
• Extension:  where a dialogue is part of a story, students may want to continue it, or simply write a paragraph ‘predicting’ what is going to happen next (‘Letters H – Miss P.’) They can then listen to the rest of the sketch/episode to check their predictions.
• Noticing:  unless the script-writers have deliberately tried to create a funny effect, the language used perfectly mimics colloquial speech. Indeed, some of the best scripts are not scripted (‘Death’). Therefore it makes sense to occasionally ask students to go through the scripts simply underlining phrases.  [NB: Instead of focusing on unknown–extremely rare/low- frequency items, it is best if they look instead for expressions/collocations which they can easily understand, but which they would not have used themselves.] 

Last words

This is the main idea: You ‘sacrifice’ some of your precious contact time in the hope that the motivational effect will more than make up for it! In a sense, it is a calculated ‘gamble’; there is always a trade-off between quantity and quality. Here the bet is that the amount of exposure the students get, will more than make up for the opportunity cost. If the ‘gamble’ works, you may find that the students who spent 15 minutes in class watching a Rowan Atkinson clip, will then go on to spend another 5 hours at home watching every similar clip they can find!  To find out why just watch some of the clips yourself! :)

 About the Author

Nick Michelioudakis (B. Econ., Dip. RSA, MSc [TEFL]) is an Academic Consultant with LEH (the representatives of the Pearson PTE G Exams in Greece).  He has worked as an ELT teacher, examiner and trainer for both teachers and Oral Examiners. His love of comedy led him to start the ‘Comedy for ELT’ project on YouTube. He has written many articles on Methodology, while others from the ‘Psychology and ELT’ series have appeared in many countries. He thinks of himself as a ‘front-line teacher’ interested in one-to-one teaching and student motivation as well as Social and Evolutionary Psychology.  When he is not struggling with students, he likes to spend his time in a swimming pool or playing chess.  For his articles or handouts, you can visit his site at  www.michelioudakis.org.