English Skill Level: Advanced Beginning to Advanced
Grade Level: Upper Elementary to Adult

Background

Grammar-based approaches to language learning have been used since ancient times. The most well known of historical grammar-based approaches is the grammar-translation method in which students are presented a text and are asked to translate the text word for word. While translating, students’ attention is brought to the appropriate grammar points to be taught. Although the grammar-translation method has fallen out of favor mainly because of its inability to foster communicative ability, other types of grammar-based approaches are still in common use. What most contemporary uses of grammar-based
teaching have in common is the use of grammatical structures to guide the syllabus or lesson. Unlike earlier grammar-based approaches, more contemporary approaches, while presenting and using grammar points as a guiding force, enlarge on the grammar point to make the syllabus or lesson more communicative and authentic.

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English Skill Level: Advanced Beginning to Advanced
Grade Level: Upper Elementary to Adult

Background

The basis of this method was developed in Europe by Francois Gouin in the 1880s. His premise was that it was best to learn another language by listening to it and speaking it just as children do in stead of learning a set of grammar rules and vocabulary lists. The goal of this method is to teach students, usually adults, how to converse in everyday situations in another language. From this idea developed the direct method as an antithesis to the grammar-translation approach. A couple of decades later, the direct method was popularized in the United States by Charles Berlitz (who called it the Berlitz Method) and used it in his commercial Berlitz language schools. Other aspects of the direct method include class room instruction exclusively in the target language, only everyday language is taught, and grammar being learned inductively. Although this method’s initial insistence on using only the second language (L2) in the classroom as well as its lack of activities to develop reading and writing prevented it from being accepted in public education, it has, with modifications, influenced some contemporary approaches such as communicative language teaching, the natural approach, and total physical response.

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Eng lish Skill Level: Beginning to Intermediate
Grade Level: Elementary to Adult (although older adults may find the quick recall difficult)
Back ground
The audio-lingual method (ALM) was developed during World War II in reaction to approaches that did not adequately develop speaking skills. ALM was strongly influenced by ideas from behavioral psychology that led to the belief that language was a system of habits that could be taught by reinforcing correct responses and punishing incorrect responses. In an ALM lesson, students are asked to repeat correctly the word or phrase that the teacher has said. Students are praised for correctly mimicking the teacher or are asked to repeat the phrase until it is correct. Although aspects of this method, such as drills in the beginning stages of language learning, continue to be used, most language educators now realize that language is more complex than mere mimicking.

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What Is ESL?

The acronym ESL stands for English as a second language. In the United States, ESL refers to the teaching of those students for whom English is not a first language. Some people don’t like the term ESL, pointing out that in many cases English may be the third or fourth language of the students. In addition, in some countries, like India, Singapore, or Kenya, ESL has a slightly different meaning. In those places, it refers to the fact that English is a second official language that is learned in school and often used in government and business but may not be the first language of the majority of people.

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Provide a learning environment that recognizes and celebrates each of your students’ contributions to your class! High self-esteem is one of the most valuable assets a person can possess. Having high self-esteem fosters a healthy sense of self and a positive outlook on life. This writing will help you better understand the nature of self-esteem and how it develops, and the information and activities suggest ways in which you can foster high self-esteem in your students.

WHAT IS SELF-ESTEEM?

Webster defines self-esteem as “a confidence and satisfaction in oneself.” Put another way, self-esteem is self-approval, or a sense that one is lovable and capable. People who have high self-esteem are confident, resourceful, independent, and responsible. They accept challenges with enthusiasm and are willing to take
risks in order to reach their full potential.
People with low self-esteem, on the other hand, lack confidence in themselves and need constant reassurance. They are overly sensitive and often withdrawn. They become easily frustrated when confronted with problems or upsets. In short, people with low self-esteem avoid taking challenges such as trying new
activities or acquiring new skills, and they have difficulty handling competition, rejection, and failure.

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Do your students need encouragement to recognize their own feelings and the viewpoints of others, and to learn how to express and resolve their differences in productive ways? You can teach your students how to handle differences of opinion effectively.
This writing offers practical activities that will help you teach your students better communication, socialization, and problem solving skills.

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A positive attitude is a powerful tool that fosters enthusiasm, promotes self esteem, and creates an atmosphere conducive to learning. If your students do not believe in themselves and their abilities, it is important to change that belief for learning to take place. You can nurture a positive learning attitude by
verbalizing positive expectations and by expressing praise for jobs done well and on time. Try these tips for building positive attitudes:

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Teams compete in a relay race by drawing letters on each other’s backs as a means of passing along a target word to the farthest person in line.

Age Range: 8 to 10
Skills Used: reading, memory
Number of Players: 6 to 10
Noise Level: moderate
Activity Level: moderate
Materials: word cards

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Players wear cards on their foreheads and ask yes and no questions to discover what is written there.

Age Range: 9 to 12
Skills Used: reasoning, factual knowledge
Number of Players: 6 to 25
Noise Level: moderate
Activity Level: high

Materials: elastic headbands for each player, identity cards

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I have found a great web site that has over 500,000 listings of places to live or people looking for a place to live. It only covers the US and Canada, but why would you want to live anywhere else? Navigating thru roomster.net is a breeze and will not leave you out of breath.

One of the nicest features is the Google maps that come with each listing. You can also use IM to chat with potential roommates or renters before giving the OK. Even if your looking for a place you can put that on their also.

If your looking for new digs visit roomster.net

Last weekend’s SLanguages conference/festival was quite something. Over 300 people registered (compared to last year’s 40) and 19 presenters (to last year’s 5) over a 24-hour period. The launch was lots of fun with over 80 avatars attending the first plenary. I took lots of snapshots during the event and have created an overview of it using Slideshare, which you can see below. The SLanguages archive also now has many of the individual presentation slides and audio from the conference.

I found the event itself to be quite an eye-opener and will definitely go back and listen to the sessions I didn’t get the chance to attend and also revist a few of the ones I did get to. There were also lots of places mentioned in SL that I want to visit (when I have time!).

It was particularly interesting to see how things have moved on in a year (there’s now so much educational and language education activity going on in Second Life it’s really exciting) and I also met lots of new people and re encountered others I’d not seen in a while. Great stuff, although I echo the sentiments expressed on the HUMlab blog - now it’s time for more “students that need to be exposed to such situations.” Hopefully, after next year’s SLanguages event we’ll be talking more about this.

The other comment that was made in the feedback to the event, which you can find summarised on Dudeney Ge’s blog is that there was an over-emphasis on Power Point type presentations, which was a shame. I have to agree, and I hope we can move away from this in the future. However, as I wrote on Goodday Tomorrow’s blog, this kind of presentation is the easiest to prepare (we wanted to prepare a quest to present our quests but just ran out of time) and also the safest format when you have lots of avatars at a conference. There were tours, for example, which were great, but these tours do take a lot more organisation (getting people the landmarks, etc) . I went on one, and was impressed, especially as people had been lined up to talk about particular areas…

I’d definitely like to attend more events and see how other people use SL to present ideas, etc. and also would like to follow up the idea of a quest in the Main Grid. I wonder where I’ll find the time from though…

April was so busy that it came and went without a chance to organise an Education@Edunation event. However, I am very excited about the next one, which will feature Nick Noakes (Corwin Carillon in SL), who is a very active educator in Second Life.

Corwin will be leading a discussion - Here’s how he describes the event:

Come join us for a discussion of self-directed team learning in Second Life where we will share ideas and practices for giving learning teams greater control through inquiry-driven projects.

Because Nick is based in Hong Kong, we’ve rearranged the time and date. This time it will be on:

• Saturday 17th May at 1.30am SL Time (PDT), which is 8.30 GMT

Come and join us if you can - Space is limited, so please sign up now by visiting the sign-up stands at Edunation III (see photo below).

Hope to see you there!

Players move to separate parts of the room to show their preferences.

Age Range: 4 to 12
Skills Used: listening, self-evaluation
Number of Players: 2 to 30
Noise Level: moderate to high
Activity Level: high
Materials: list of fun “choice” questions

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Can’t remember who did what or who was going to do something? That is called forgetfulness and it is more common than you might think. I am a constant jotter of notes and it sometimes becomes a little overwhelming. How do you manage your projects?

I think the day of the sticky note has ended for me. The reason is simple, my life has become more complicated and I am doing more than I did 10 years ago. A nice thing to have is simple project management softwares that will get you organized and help you with those pesky memory losses.

If you have no projects than I guess you would not need something to get you organized. Maybe you are the type of person who works his city job and drinks beer on the weekends. That’s OK and I use to do the same before I got the entrepreneur bug and started a multitude of projects.

For each their own and maybe one day you will get the urge and need some management help.

If you ever have kids one of the most difficult things to agree upon is the name. During my years on this earth I have come across some cool and not-so-cool names. I will never understand the reason a parent would name a kid, a name, that will cause them to be ridiculed or laughed at all during their school years.

One cool place I found that will help in your decision is celebrity names a web site that has a wealth of information about baby names and where they come from. Even if you are just curious about your own name there is mucho information to help you get over the mental scars left over from your school years.

It can also be a nice way to show your significant other that you really have put some thought and research into your decision. I do think it is time to stop with the jr’s and the seconds and the thirds. Put a little thought and effort in your babies name, they will appreciate it later in life.