Sunday 10 February 2008

GENERAL TEACHING RESOURCES, MOVIE SITES


http://www.daveeslcafe.com/
http://www.eslbase.com/ http://www.englishclub.com/ http://www.saberingles.com.ar/
http://www.lessonplanet.com/ Thousands of ideas to choose from http://www.sitesforteachers.com
http://www.onestopenglish.com/ http://www.historychannel.com/ Good to teach historical events http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ A well-known resource http://www.lyrics.com/ Thousands of song lyrics to browse http://www.biography.com/ Which biography are you looking for? www.instructenglish.com/Teaching-English-As-A-Foreign-Language.html http://www.efl.net/
www.insideout.net/e-lessons.htm Inside Out Series / Subscription required
www.linguistlist.org/sp/LangLearnESL.html
www.oup.com/elt/teachersclub Oxford Teachers Club
www.macmillanenglish.com/readers MacMillan Resource Site
www.insideout.net/webguide/intro.htm Inside Out Series / MacMillan
http://www.slideshare.net/eshare.net/ (create slideshows and add voice to them)
http://voicethread.com/ (voiced mini-projects)
http://hotpot.uvic.ca/ (create worksheets and interactive exercises)
http://languagecenter.cla.umn.edu/index.php?page=makers ( interactive exercise makers)


http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/teachers/


MOVIE SITES

http://www.top100moviesites.com/
http://www.movies.warnerbros.com/
www.ovguide.com/tvfilm.html
www.worldbestwebsites.com/movies.htm
www.imdb.com/links
www.teachwithmovies.org
www.oscar.com (official web page)
http://www.oscars.org/

DIAGNOSTIC TESTS

www.oup.com/elt/global/products/practicegrammar/test/ OXFORD PLACEMENT TESt

http://www.world-english.org/

www.network.gr/networkdiagnostic/

www.prenhall.com/diagnostic_test/

BOOST YOUR SKILLS AND EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS

http://www.tefl.com/

http://www.etprofessional.com/

http://www.quia.com/

http://www.eslmag.com/

www.englishprograms.state.gov/forum
www.aitech.ac.jp/-iteslj/links
http://www.onlinemet.com/ ( Modern English Teacher)

LISTENING RESOURCES


http://www.real-english.com/new-lessons.asp


http://www.audioenglish.net/ a very good source of listening material

http://www.history.com/media.dowVideo Gallery / famous speeches

http://www.esl-lab.com

http://www.cla.univ-fcomte.fr/english/listen_index.htm

http://www.eslvideo.com/

www.englishenglish.com/listening_skills.htm

http://www.evgschool.org/

www.eslhome.com/esl/listen/

http://www.yappr.com/ Excellent source of short and updated videos, brand new webpage

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL LINKS

http://www.anep.edu.uy/ (Administración Nacional de Educación Pública)http://www.ces.edu.uy/ (Consejo de Educación Secundaria)http://www.uruguayeduca.edu.uy
http://www.ceibal.edu.uy
http://www.ascd.org/
http://cfe.edu.uy (Consejo de Formacion en Educacion)
http://www.tesol.org/
http://www.urutesol.org (links with affiliates worldwide)
http://www.cambridgeesol.org/
http://www.alte.org/
http://cie.org.uk/
http://unesco.org/
http://unicef.org/

THE IMPORTANCE OF SEQUENTIAL ART


Most all of us are familiar with one form or another of sequential art, a term coined by Will Eisner(1985) to name an art form that has come to include cartoons, comic strips,comic books, and graphic novels. It is an international art form and ranges from an innocent but witty girl called "Mafalda", loved by South Americans, especially "The Rioplatenses", to strong and historical comic characters such as the French Asterix.

Despite its popularity, sequential art has long been misunderstood. After widespread use throughout the first half of the 20th century, comic books in the United States came under attack in the 1950s when psychiatrist Frederic Wertham wrote, in his highly influential "Seduction of the Innocent", that they are a " reinforcing factor in children´s reading disorders" ( 1954).

Despite all this, research by Hanes and Ahrens(1988) highlights the fact that comic books contain a greater number of rare words than ordinary conversation and are thus and excellent stepping stone to more difficult reading. Cary points out that sequential art is rich in ellipses,blends,non-words (uh,huh,humph,sheesh!) and other common aspects of spoken language, exposing students to "the ambiguity, vagueness and downright sloppiness of spoken English". Sequential art is a window on the spoken vernacular, a variety of the target language that is commonly overlooked in efl classes in large part due to its absence in both educational material and in more formal authentic texts. The obvious absence of an informal register from a student´s linguistic repertoire is a key contributing factor to misunderstanding and confusion when students confront a native speaker of English or when they watch a film in English.


Sequential art also provides an up-to-date look at target language culture and society. As an art form that is kept current by active publishing houses, newspapers,and the Internet, it is a widely accesible source of popular topics, concerns, and fashions that can interest almost any age level. And as most comic involve a number of characters from different backgrounds interacting over a long period of time, they can serve as a tool for studying socio-cultural aspects of people,allowing a teacher to design a lesson based solely on cross-cultural differences and similarities between the target language culture and the students´native culture.



from English Teaching Forum, Number 3 ,2007

COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK FOR LANGUAGES


VERY IMPORTANT - CHECK OUT these links, PLEASE !!!
NOT-TO-MISS LINKS, COUNCIL OF EUROPE : http://www.coe.int/

COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK OF REFERENCE FOR LANGUAGES www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/CADRE_EN.asp

ALSO FOR THE EUROPEAN LANGUAGE PORTFOLIO: http://www.alte.org/

Friday 8 February 2008

INTERNATIONAL EXAMS- British and American

British Examinations
Important link: http://www.cambridgeesol.org/

Cambridge Assessment: www.alte.org/2008/

Cambridge International Examinations Website http://www.cie.org.uk/

FCE - Handbook for teachers, updated and ready to be downloaded

www.cambridgeesol.org/assets/pdf/resources/teacher/fce_hb_dec08.pdf

PET - same link path, click on PET ( CB computer-based or paper-based)
CAE - same link path, click on CAE ( updated as from December 2008)
CPE - same link path, click on CPE

American Examinations

TOEFL Exam www.ets.org/toefl/ (required to enter any University in USA)

Michigan Exam www.lsa.umich.edu/eli/testing/ecpe/register

These two exams are offered in Uruguay by Alianza Uruguay Estados Unidos, if you need further information click on http://www.alianza.edu.uy/

USING LITERATURE IN THE CLASSROOM

INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION

Wednesday 6 February 2008

CREATING A CULTURE OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT


PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES

" A successful face-to-face team is more than just collectively intelligent.It makes everyone work harder, think smarter and reach better conclusions than they would have on their own".


- James Surowiecki

What are true learning communities?

  • Teachers establish a common, concise set of essential curricular standards and teach to them on a roughly common schedule.


  • They must meet regularly, the ideal is twice a month, for a minimun of 45 minutes, to help one another teach to these selected standards.


  • Teachers must make frequent use of common assessments, these assessments are pivotal.


  • With common assessments and results, teachers can conduct " active research" where a "culture of experimentation prevails".


  • These fundamental concepts combine a " guaranteed and viable curriculum" with continual analysis of actual lessons and units, and improvement of instruction.


We have to be very clear about what true teamwork entails: a regular schedule of formal meetings where teachers focus on the details of their lessons and adjust them on the basis of assessment results. The use of common assessments is essential here. Without these, teams can´t discern or enjoy the impact of their efforts on an ongoing basis.Enjoying and celebrating these short-trm results is the very key to progress, to achieving "momentum" toward improvement.

Taken from " Results Now", How we can achieve unprecedented improvements in teaching and learning. Mike Schmoker , ASCD Publication