Today, EnglishCentral released the first version of their Pronunciation and Vocabulary courses. They’ll be making some changes and additions as they go along but what they have right now is just “out of this world” and a great leap forward in how students can both gain clear pronunciation and build academic vocabulary quickly.
Tailored to the students L1, they allow students to review the major challenges they face regarding pronunciation. The language is presented through highly contextualized video context. To work on specific sounds, students may purchase individual sound units for practice. Demo the Free Course /I/
Made to ensure students gain a lot of practice recycling the vocabulary item and learning it in highly contextualized video segments – students first study each word in the patented speech recognition player. After studying in the player, students take a quiz of all the words in the unit. See all the courses available but more are forthcoming. Students can study the whole AWL and get prepared for study at an English university. Demo the Free Starter Course
Interested in using EnglishCentral and our patented “Teacher Tools” LMS with your students this semester? Please take a look at our Academic Pricing and contact me. I’ll offer a full tour and can address any questions you may have.
I’m a big fan of drawing in the EFL Classroom 2.0. Last night, my parents related a story about a neighbors door mat (pictured). I immediately thought “LESSON!”, so here it is.
It would be great for students to make / draw their own door mats for the whole class. Maybe even have a contest. Watch the presentation / examples below – discuss as needed. Make one together as a whole class and then give out the A4 paper and let me do it! Check their language and sketch and they can then turn it over and do it as a final draft. Finally, present them for the class and display on the classroom walls.
Teaching vocabulary can sometimes be trying. Mostly because it involves a lot of “new” stuff for students and a lot of slogging through, a lot of hard work on the part of the learner.
What The Wordle helps! They are a series of presentations, games really, that I made to “liven up” vocabulary learning. Click on a presentation, preview and then play with your students. Can they get the answer? You can also get the ppts for most HERE. Try this example, One of these things is not like the other.
Try it, I’m sure you’ll like it! Lots more “gems” from EFL Classroom 2.0 being highlighted here all this month!
BestWords.me is a really cool, authentic website where students can build vocabulary (adjectives) in a Web 2.0 / interactive fashion. Simple as pie and no registration! Students just:1. make a personal “word” page 2. Choose words to describe themselves 3. Share the page with other students (by email or on your class page) 4. Other students add words about that person ( add words about me – try it out! Please be kind!) Here’s my quick screencast showing how this works. Visit the creator’s page (Jared) and find out more about what he’s into. Interested in other website reviews? Find hundreds of my reviews HERE.
As an “insider”, I’m privy to a little of what is going on at EnglishCentral. The team has really been working overtime and coming up with some fantastic changes that will be in a new release.
Here’s my insider’s sneak preview!
I hope you like the new look and changes. Please comment and let us know your thoughts about this or other things you think EnglishCentral should do. This summer we are working overtime to prepare for September and the school year. Working overtime to get EnglishCentral teacher ready.
Important Changes
1. The player will give students “fluency” feedback as well as that on pronunciation. Meaning, your students will also get scored at their ability to match the length of utterance and pause of the original video. If they don’t say the word(s) at the correct time, a pause icon will show and indicate this. This is one step towards building a complete prosodic model by which to assess student speech. (forthcoming – tone/pitch/stress/power).
2. A simplified interface. Take a look – every page is less busy and easier to use and find what you need. In WATCH, simply click the sidebar and go any category. Drop down menus take you to the videos you want, instantly.
3. Unified Difficulty Level. Meaning, you’ll self select your level based on internationally recognized standards or the EC levels. When you use EnglishCentral, you’ll only get videos and vocabulary at your preselected levels. We’ll track your progress as you climb through the levels. Level 7 is the vocabulary beyond 8,000+ words and represents an addition 25,000 words of study!
Tomorrow, I’ll detail some more delicious changes you’ll love!
Note one thing. The teacher tools will remain the same BUT they will get an overhaul later this summer. They’ll be sleak, easy and work like a charm. We are working overtime on them!
I’ll only say thank you to my niece Gabriella, who painstakingly went over the copy and edited everything. Thank you! Here, I’ve reprinted the short forward (the print book will contain a much longer and well researched essay on the topic of “the dictionary”).
Enjoy and comments, your fav. definitions, welcomed!
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About this book
This book was written over 20 years ago, over a few days. A result of my own “Foerster’s Syndrome”, a kind of lexical illness which I suffer gladly. Both an incessant need to pun and an uncontrollable reflex of seeing meaning within words. A kind of inability to see the forest (word) for the trees (the sounds / meanings).
But I’ve lived with it and learned to control it. Still, ever so often, this Jabberwooky, this moloch and primordial beast attacks and I’m back in the land of the idiot’s dictionary ……
I’ve written a lot about the power of words over the years. See my previous book – “The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Teacher” for those. I’ve studied and been influenced by all the creative writers / poets who’ve pushed the frame of reference in which language lives. Valery, Mallarme, Stein, Breton, Borges, Gass, Calvino, e.e. cummings to name just a very, very few. The Gagaism manifesto, born of the same time as the dictionary (at the end of this book) – stands as my own theory of language in the world.
I also must emphasize my own use of the word “dictionary”. This book is my belief that “We, the people” should have control of the language – not the Websters and Murdochs of the world. A dictionary is not a definitive source but rather, an interpretation. This book, my small attempt to put a dent in the prescriptive armor we wear as we walk the world, in the flesh born of “the word”.
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I’ll end with this wonderful passionate appeal of McKean for a new kind of dictionary, a new participatory and living dictionary of meaning and metaphor.
I already got creative with it. It teaches verbs connected to technology so well! (and verbs are the flypaper of language – have a lot of verbs and lots of language will stick). See the lesson idea/material below. Pretty basic – students link up the verbs with technology nouns. You can probably even get into the song and have the students chanting, each group taking one part. That’d be fun! Technology vocabulary
I’ve been noticing more and more, teachers and especially those acknowledged as “leaders”, sharing sites where learners learn “words”. These sites usually involve games or tools that allow the user to have fun with words.
These can be useful, just like the odd game of hangman in the classroom. However, I think it encumbent on those listing these sites, to also remind teachers that teaching “words” IS NOT teaching language. Language is MORE than words. It isn’t as simple as believing ” a student has more words therefore they are better at English”. I really think teacher trainers and those sharing online need to really focus on promoting sites which offer a fuller set of communicative possibility.
That’s all I want to say – a word to the wise! We all need this reminder, me thinks.
It’s an iconic word and game. I’m surprised we don’t use it as an adjective – like, “I’ve been scrabbled”.
Today, I was going over some of my past writings, all hidden away in boxes and notebooks. Came across a “feuilliton”, a reflective essay that I wrote about scrabble years ago. I won’t bore you with it – but I will share some great info. and amazing resources for Scrabble.
{ caveat: I’m not a big fan of using word games in the classroom – but they do have their place, like a dictionary does }
1. Watch this “Crazy” presentation about Scrabble. ‘nough said, it will speak for itself.
Words, words, words. Sometimes I feel like becoming a monk solely for the reason to be beyond words, of no need of words, away from words and their slinking skullduggery. They are cruel and they often don’t mean what they mean.
I know I’m groping for trout. I’ll get to that point in a moment. First, let me tell you what set off this minor mental meandering.
My wife has been doing some translation work and she asked me about this sentence -
“The watch is going”
I immediately told her that it meant the watch was “dying” or almost finished.
She looked at me puzzled and asked if it might mean something else. I thought about it and couldn’t think of anything else it might mean (so clouded we are by the force of WORDS).
She said, “might it mean that it is working?” And then it hit me, of course, that is what it does mean! And then it hit me again, blyme – isn’t that the exact opposite of the first meaning?
You see, words have got us by the throat and they won’t let us go. They are our are our arrrr arrrr real taskmasters. It is us who are groping for trout.
And that brings me to the title of this little piece.
You see, often when I get confused, I seek refugee with those who have even got more confused by the same demons. So I took down my newly unpacked volumes of William Gass and cracked open an essay or two. More exactly, his essay on “Groping for Trout” where he elaborates on how we create our own meaning of things and there is no center that holds….
“No, we can put order anywhere we like. There’s not a trout we can’t tickle, a fish for which we can’t contrive a net. We can find forms in ink blots, clouds, the tubercular painter’s spit: and to the ants we can impute designs which Alexander would have thought himself vainglorious to dream of. But to think of order and chaos in this relative way is not to confuse them, or put conditions out of the reach of judgement. there are clashes between orders, confusions of realms. Not every arrangement is equally effective. And we must keep in mind the relation of any order to the chosen good.”
Hmmm. What I think good, great Gass is saying is that we create the meaning, not the words! I guess, I see this point. And time, that destroyer of all things is the worst culprit. It changes the meaning and let’s some things endure, others die. And our words get full of confusion. We now drive on a parkway and park in a driveway.
Still, I’m not quite sure if words don’t have their own “hold” and power. Not to do a Wittgenstein but as a teacher, honored to be a meister of words, I’ve seen how words have their own force, independent of human will or even Fromkin and Rodman.
Think of fAt and fit. Does the eye lie? Or what of all those gutteral sounds that all represent a disgUst? William Blood wrote a whole book on the poetic alphabet centuries ago and his point still stands – words (by default sound) have their own power independent of man. This is how the hole expands with slit – slat – slot (and even “slut”) as the vowel sound widens?
I guess I’m not making a lot of sense. But that is precisely the point. Words don’t make sense, so we do. Or we make sense and words do. Or perhaps the truth is somewhere between?
To end on a lighter note, a story. Long ago, teaching ESL to new immigrants to Canada, I received a note from Snezenka, a Serbian student (and I kid you not, her name means, “Snow White”). It was a letter apologizing for missing some classes. At the end it read, “P.S. Thank you for the massage. As I read it, I was really confused. She was a beautiful woman and had this really happened? I was working long hours and who knows…. but then, after some long thought, my mind started “going” – it dawned on me. It was simply a spelling mistake, “message” not “massage”.
I”m still like that, still groping for trout in the wonderful stream of words.
Today, I’d like to share my top Language related posts of 2010.
I believe it really helps a language teacher if they have a passion and “eye / ear” for the infinite beauty, complexity and subtlety of language. Language has me fascinated (and may I say “in love) and it energizes me as a teacher to no end.
Enjoy these posts on what Baudelaire might have said, “Your walk through the forest of symbols”.
Yes, if you caught the mistake in the title, you are well on your way to being a great speller! Almost everyone, native speaker or 2nd language learner, has a problem spelling certain words. It usually comes down to how we processed the word when we first “learned” the word. Not our first encounter with the word but the first time it was “acquired” and became part of our standard inventory of recallable language.
Here’s the best list I know of the top most misspelled words in English. Which one(s) do you have particular trouble with? I can’t spell “accommodation” if my life depended on it!
This list has some words children have difficulty spelling. I’m not sure of the veracity of this list – from my experience teaching grade 4 – kids are “all over the place” when it comes to the words they have difficulty spelling. But then again, I only have a couple of years under my belt and maybe veteran primary school teachers would know more.
Also try this quiz and see how you do. But remember, recognizing a word’s spelling it and spelling it are actually two different things/skills!
I find them haunting. So well done, so real. I kind of think I’m right there in the screen or like that Woody Allen movie, “The Purple Rose of Cairo”, the people on the screen will come right off and start “living” with me.
I hope you enjoy this video as much as I did – but most importantly, made a cool “watching” activity to go with it. Watch and keep replaying the different scenes for each “Word”. Check which words were “associated”.
Find a nice associated podcast from NPR about “Words” here.
Thinking skills are an essential reason why kids are in school. Our job is all about fostering them and getting students to think and develop, “creatively”. Recent studies in America have shown that children since the 90s have stopped progressing in the realm of creativity. (see Po Bronson’s Newsweek expose or watch the famous Ken Robinson TED video). We need to do more in our classes to foster this precious skill.
So in that vein, I offer some nice ONLY CONNECT games I made and which can be used as a template for you and your students to make their own. Even better if they make their own games and then challenge others to “connect” . 10 min. to make the game – 10 min. to play!
The games I made highlight 3 variations of the basic game.
1. Student / teacher created (either draw or spell)
2. Picture only
3. Word only (students draw the word too)
One good idea is to also have students cut and make cards. Then, the cards are simply put into categories, groups.
Get all the games on EFL Classroom in our Resources area. Enjoy and feedback always welcome. Please share your own games here too!
Zoom Words is a pretty cool way to present vocabulary. It is super simple to use and probably even quicker to use than Wordle or Tagxedo. However, it is browser based and you’ll have to have a webpage/blog to embed your creation in (or just use your page here on EFL Classroom. See my example below but let me describe what I did to make it and how I’d use it.
1. Get a list of vocabulary items or phrases you want the students to practice.
2. Go to Zoom Words and select your colors (white background is best I think).
3. Input your words or phrases/sentences, one by one. Click the “add to list” button each time.
4. Press “Copy the code” and then embed on your blog/webpage (or here on EFL Classroom). I think “Posterous” is perfect for this sort of thing. HERE is my creation on Posterous. Tip: increase the width/height in the embed code if you wish.
5. Get students to talk about the words/phrases that appear by giving them some target language on the board or on paper. For my example, I provided the simple phrase:
I think __________(s) is / are _________________!
That’s it – Zoom Words, a great vocabulary tool and way to present language for learning. A big Hat Tip to Ana Maria’s Life Feast blog for this.
VerbaLearn is a new site which does a lot of things well. I’m not usually a big fan of learning English through “word study”, however, it is a reality and it does work for many students. Also, VerbaLearn caters to those who are trying to pass all those significant tests….GRE / SAT / ACT and though not directly or yet – TOEFL.
On the site, you are prompted and can test yourself. The words you get wrong, are put into a word list for later study. You can then use that list to be tested upon continually until you’ve learned the words. If you get them right, absolutely (by hitting the “I know” prompt and not guessing), the word is eliminated from your study/test list.
This could be a great place to refer higher level students. And this is a major job of most teachers — we can’t really teach everything in class, there isn’t enough time to conquer the 6-7,000 words needed for academic success….
Also included here – a few word lists which will come in handy!!!! If you also haven’t checked it out on our Practice page – visit Word Count. A “real time” analysis of the most popular words in use on the internet! Maybe use it to get your students to guess what rank “X” word will be. Could be a fun game!
Please also see these other resources including an article on word lists/study by two of the top authorities in this area… Further, don’t forget to visit WORDAHEAD. A video vocab site with much the same high level vocab. I also highly recommend our Vocabulary discussion – loads of ideas and resources there!
However even better, is to get your students playing the games online. Yes, you can print and cut out all the flashcards (this is superb!!!) but now with their new “speaking” component, there are more reasons for your students to practice online. Students can “speak” the flashcard word or sentence and try to make it disappear. Really works!
Watch the tutorial I unprofessionally made – it does the job of introducing you to it. Then send your students to Quizlet for practice. This is cool — your voice has magic and what you say can make things happen!
Flikr poet is so simple it is astonishing! A great example of how web 2.0 applications are transforming our teaching and classrooms. No doubt, Flikr Poet makes learning happen – happen quicker, better, faster than many other methods.
What is it? Well, Flikr Poet gives you pictures for the words you type in. It makes a nice collage that you can use for instruction. I imagine it could be used in the following ways;
1. Just for simple instruction and vocabulary review. Simply type in your lesson/units vocabulary words and have students review or make sentences
2. Guessing games. Put in your vocabulary words. One student chooses one photo and others ask questions to guess it. Set a limit and if they don’t guess the right picture after “x” number of questions, that student wins.
3. Story Dominoes. Much like my powerpoint game, you can make a Flikr Poem and challenge students to take turns telling the story. First in groups and then share the stories or the best stories.
*** One tip. After getting your first selection of photos, keep refreshing the page and seeing what new photos show up. You will invariably get a perfect example/meld of pictures after a few times.
Many other great ways I’m sure. Try Story Dominoes with this Flikr Poem I produced! Or try the vocabulary “ing” one!
There are so many great websites for teaching young learners. See a list of my own below (culled from my big list, also attached). However, after our own resources here (always got to toot our own horn!). KinderSay is next in line.
It has wonderfully colorful images and rich, clear audio. It works fluidly and you can easily click “slideshow” and get a presentation for whichever content you want to display. What’s even better – students can visit it outside of class without registration and practice safe and soundly. A great site and big help to teachers!
We live in and by and through words. Baudelaire famously said, “Life is a forest of symbols”, meaning, we walk through life as we would walk through words.
Yet, though on one hand “words are mightier than the sword”. On the other hand, “Actions speak louder than words”. Which is it?
As a teacher, we face a similar dilemma in our classrooms. Do we teach students “words” or do we teach them “how to use words”. Which is more important? How to find the right balance? Ah, the tension of it all! And to wit, “Words – do they really matter?”. Doesn’t a lot else count and that past the first few thousand words, we get little pay off?
I’ve always found it fascinating how so many parents that I meet, want their children to have a large vocabulary. It is like a rooster and his comb. There is a strong belief that if you have a large vocabulary, the world is yours — all other kinds of problems are solved. You’ll make more money, you’ll climb up the social ladder, you’ll be healthier, you’ll have more friends, life is your oyster. Have a small vocabulary and you are a midget of the verbal world. Neglected and a circus oddity.
But is this true? And what does vocabulary size say for us teachers and our own practices? Let me know what you think.
I’m off on this diatribe and mental exercise after reading this morning’s New York Time’s, On Language column about vocabulary size. Also, after asking my students (teachers) about how many words they think a basically fluent second language speaker probably knows and getting answers no where near the mark!
IN short — here’s how the levels match up with vocabulary size for EFL (not ESL) students.
Level and Vocabulary Size
A1
<1500
A2
1500 – 2500
B1
2750 – 3250
B2
3250 – 3750
C1
3750 – 4500
C2
4500 – 5000
** But it takes getting to the magical 7-8,000 word level to really be advanced and fluent. Some studies have suggested that for studying in an English university where academic language is needed — we are looking at a vocabulary size of 12-13,000 words
I’ll begin by stating my own position. Probably different than all those lexicographers and vocab. specialists. I THINK VOCABULARY IS OVERRATED. I’m a big one for process and quality. How you say something is much more important than the words you use. Further, the majority of people on this planet DON”T have the vocabulary of Shakespeare or Eminem. And the goal being “communication”, does size really matter?
The growth of research into vocabulary frequency and corpus (here’s a good place to start) has truly been phenomenal. We now have an idea of word frequency in many settings. (Jonathan Harris’ Word Count for the internet is also very handy). But I think many researchers and teachers have become too enamored by words (and being a poet I know their ability to hypnotize, ensnare, enchant and woo). Here in Korea, I find too many students memorizing long lists of vocabulary in search of a holy grail. (given by teachers who also believe in this holy grail).
I’ve also witnessed the return of the lexical syllabus, books with sneaky agendas for “growing vocabularies”. Seems even the internet can be accused of promoting the view that vocabulary size = fluency. So many powerful sites dedicated just to learning vocabulary (many times out of context – here’s my list of bookmarks for some browsing).
Given all this – I still prefer a student with good communication skills and only 1,000 words of vocabulary over a student with a 5,000+ vocabulary that speaks choppily and with no “style”.
So my tips for the teachers in the trenches.
1. don’t focus on vocabulary size. Focus on meaningful production.
2. when learning words (as all beginners must), students should concentrate on verbs. They are the flypaper to which the flies (nouns) stick.
3. teach any vocabulary in context. Not randomly (like with a word search or a list). Teach it with a dialogue or by talking about a situation or using it for a real communicative act.
4. A word is not a word is not a word. Meaning, don’t teach just one definition. Use the same words in different contexts and environments. Knowing “x” number of words does not do anyone any good if they only think of a word as one thing. It isn’t. A word can mean many things, it collocates and is truly a camelion. Teach your students to appreciate this.
This video – though dated, is fascinating. What is a word. I’ll leave things at that…..nothing is certain in our field and I enjoy this marvelous feature of language!
PPS. If you want to test your student’s vocabulary size – you can’t go wrong with Paul Nation’s short tests. Also, see THIS DISCUSSION for many vocab. teaching resources including this Vocab size test – to find where your students rank (Korean version in the previous link).
Today, EnglishCentral released the first version of their Pronunciation and Vocabulary courses. They’ll be making some changes and additions as they go along but what they have right now is just “out of this world” and a great leap forward in how students can both gain clear pronunciation and build academic vocabulary quickly.
** Not your ordinary, endless list – just what’s 
