Will Slade's Language Teaching Blog

Well, I am a huge advocate of traveling to reinforce your language learning, and to establish and maintain the relationships that help sustain a love for your target culture and language.  This week I am practicing what I preach, visiting Mexico City and Puebla.  I can report that I arrived today at the zócalo down town and am in my hostel.  It seems like a really good place to base a trip out of, but I´ll just be here tonight and tomorrow I'll meet up with my friend Leti and we'll head down to Puebla. The trip from the airport to the hostel on the metro and then walking along busy streets was exciting, and I've already passed several churches and monuments that I want to go back and look at more carefully.  Underground in the metro tunnels they have some ancient remnants of temples and altars from the Aztecs, and many buildings have a plaque that tells you what pre-colombian palace was on that spot. I'll post more soon, and try to be more descriptive...

Many thanks to Vera Dugardsyrenova, a fellow language teacher and education researcher, for introducing me to  Mi Vida Loca, a cool, interactive BBC Spanish series .  I am really impressed with it!  The scenes of Spain are beautiful and interesting; the plot of the series seems engaging, and they manage to expose you to really useful vocabulary in meaningful contexts.  As you watch the episodes, there are opportunities for you to participate as a character and practice some of the phrases they have introduced.  Mi VidaLoca is designed for beginners, but I think someone who is a little more advanced could still get a lot out of listening to the native speakers in the videos.  I came across some vocabulary that was new to me in episode 19, la inmobiliaria (the real estate office), either because a different word is used in Latin America, or just because I have never bought real estate, furniture, or even appliances in Spanish. Check it out and let me know ...

My new position teaching fifth grade bilingual education has introduced me to tons of resources that would be really great for other language learning contexts as well.  I had done Reader's Theater before, but I didn't realize how many awesome, free on-line resources there were for Reader's Theater.  Aaron Shep comes highly recommended, and has a huge variety of texts. This school district from Spokane also has a bunch of cool Reader's Theater. There are some fun Cinderella adaptations, like Cinderella Bigfoot and Cinderella's Step-family's press conference which is probably aimed at a teenage or young adult crowd. Anyway, lots of fun stuff!  And all of this is after a few recommendations and some quick google searches.  You can probably find a bunch of other materials without much effort!

I'm excited to recommend Science Niblets , an on-line magazine that a friend of mine writes and edits.  The articles there will interest intermediate English learners and fluent native speakers alike with topics such as the physics of a curveball and solar powered electricity.  Incidentally, Elmar, the author of the website is an extremely proficient second language speaker of English.  His level of bilingualism and his writing skills are an inspiration to me as a language learner and teacher!  Not to mention I find his articles really useful for my students!