Will Slade's Language Teaching Blog

Places to see art and beautiful sunsets: I think seeing beautiful places and art is valuable for its own merits, but I would also highly recommend these activities to someone who is visiting or living in Austin and working on their English. These can be inspirational and they can lend themselves to meeting people, making friendships, and engaging in stimulating conversations! - Mozart’s Cafe (nice coffee, snacks, and sunset!) - The Blanton’s Ellsworth Kelly installation (new art space/building.  Closed on Mondays) - The Oasis (beautiful sunset at this restaurant… I’ve never been there; it’s a little far northwest on Lake Travis, but people recommend it highly) - The MexicArte Museum displays Mexican art and culture in Downtown Austin - “Skyspace” art installation by James Turrell on UT Campus in the Student Services Building (location) .   Go at sunrise or sunset for a really amazing light and color experience. - More Art recommendations ...

Online Listening Opportunities and Podcasts ESL Lab This has a ton of Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced English conversations with questions and activities. English Central -- listening, spelling, vocabulary, speaking -- although a short trial, it requires you to pay for most of the services. Eng Vid --  Great material on grammar, spelling, pronunciation, and you listen to it to get the lesson! Modern Family on ABC and on Hulu   (this is the TV show we started watching together) BBC Learning English -- If you want some exposure to a British accent PBS Learning Media   has a variety of subjects for any interest. These Podcasts are favorites of mine.  They are more advanced than the listening above: Radio Lab is an excellent NPR show from New York that specializes in fascinating, unusual scientific stories.  In class, we have listened to this episode about technology , and I like this long one one about the environment and ...

I stumbled on this awesome animated music video about a shy man named Mr. Morton , which is trying to focus on subjects and predicates, but does a really nice job with past tense verbs too. My students found it funny and useful to listen to and re-tell. Here's another nice one that's more of a pattern chant. For the different pronunciations of -ed in regular past tense verbs, here's a nice list . For irregular past tense verbs, I like giving a fairly complete alphabetical list and then shorter lists grouped by patterns . That's all for now!  Have a great day!

I'm a big fan of songs for learning in general.  You can learn vocabulary, phrases, rhythm, slang, grammar, and so much more!  Here are a few songs that one of my classes listened to and sang a long with last week.  Yes, they're for children, but they're still useful! Vowel Spelling and pronunciation song (short and long vowels!) Head Shoulders Knees and Toes Health Vocabulary I'll add more as I find them! Will

Learning a new language is hard.  If you have money to devote to learning English, I highly recommend you study where I work!  UT ESL is awesome! However, sometimes paying for courses is not possible.  Austin provides many free or almost-free opportunities to learn English.  Here is an incomplete list.  The Austin Public Library has a great list of ESL Classes around town.  I will replicate it in part below, with my own commentary, but their list is more complete. UT hosts a free ESL course that is taught by master teachers and practicing teacher interns.  They provide a free class that the students can practice teaching, and ESL students can get an excellent, challenging free classes, Monday through Friday from 5:00 - 7:00.  Space is very limited, so watch the website or get on the e-mail list for information on how to register. Manos de Cristo provides almost-free ($20/semester) classes with morning and evening schedules.  They...

These comics are some of my favorites.  I think they would be wonderful, bite-sized reading practice.  Some are decidedly advanced in their vocabulary and cultural context; others could be accessible to a beginner.  Enjoy!  Calvin and Hobbes (a new strip every day, although actually they were all written ten or more years ago) Here is a list of several people's favorite 25 Calvin and Hobbes strips .  They are some pretty great, philosophical ones!  Non Sequitur is another of my favorite comic strips.  It is more consistently advanced, but it's worth the effort!

I have been tutoring a few high intermediate Korean students, and I have compiled some resources that I think are great for practicing pronunciation, reading, and listening.  I thought, why not share these on my blog?!  Here they are. Pronunciation: Guide to IPA pronunciation George Mason University’s accent archive database -- a cool way to listen to different accents around the US and the world. Reading: Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/ good news source and amazing photograph of the day section (not actually a religious publication) Wait But Why -- fun, insightful, illustrated articles.  I'm hooked on this guy's material.  His illustrations are fun as well.  Enjoy! xkcd -- a fun, nerdy comic strip.  Some of the vocabulary may be difficult, but the illustrations and humor are great, and I'll bet you can get something out of most of them regardless of your level. USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/ The Week: ht...

I've been hearing about Edutopia on the radio for years, and right now I'm finding a bunch of cool resources on their site.  This list of alternative strategies for reading instruction is awesome.  The Crazy Professor Reading Game looks particularly fun!  (start watching at 1:49 minutes) I'm teaching adults these days, and I'm curious which of these techniques will appeal more to adults than the others... I've seen Reader's Theater and Jig Saw activities be very successful.  I'm looking forward to trying Radio Reading , FORI (Fluency Oriented Reading Instruction), Reciprocal Reading and others that are recommended in the above Edutopia article by Todd Finley .

You know how a lot of times students need more examples in context for a new word or phrase?  And a lot of times there are weird collocations that you just need to see in different contexts to understand?  Corpora can give you tons of real in-context examples for any given word or phrase.  They can do a lot of other stuff too, but I'm still learning to work with them. One that I've started using are Brigham Young University's Corpus of Contemporary American English , also known as COCA. It's great!  Just click the link above, click "Enter," and search something that might trip a student up, like "wont to" or "despite."  Then click on the blue link that pops up, and you've got hundreds of in-context examples!  You can see what words go with them, how they're punctuated, and students can come up with their own rules to use those words. Maybe more exciting is this translation corpus: Linguee .  You can translate tricky words an...

I was searching for ideas for interviews that students could do with random people in the community, but I stumbled on some pretty cool resources that might help with job interviews as well. Talk English. com has a bunch of sample questions and advice on how to answer them.  It's pretty advanced, but it could be really helpful even for a native speaker. I may have posted this before, but the University of Iowa's English Phonetics page is a really powerful tool for the mechanics of producing sounds in English!  They have other languages' phonetics too, such as German and Spanish!

I have been fairly impressed with two apps for language learning.  These are by no means a magic solution that replace attending class and practicing with real people (nothing is, despite the claims of Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone).  But they do as good a job as much more expensive software for providing basic vocabulary, spelling, listening, and functional grammar practice. Duolingo has options to study French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German for English speakers.  I just now noticed (maybe it's a new addition) that they are offering English for Spanish speakers, French speakers, Italian speakers, and Portuguese speakers.  Good for them!  Complaints: sometimes I have noticed that the stress on the syllables in the Spanish version are incorrect, leading to some strange pronunciations that a Spanish speaker would not understand.  Also, I find the typing on the phone a little bit cumbersome, so I actually prefer the computer version.  But th...

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!

Lou Rawls performed this popular classic using modals in the past .  His title "If I Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda" uses an informal contraction for "If I could have (done something), I should have (done it), I would have (done it)."  He is using the modals in the past to talk about the regret when someone realizes that they have made a mistake but it is too late. This popular song by Cheap Trick uses infinitives patterns and verbs in the past tense in an interesting way.  It also includes some  puns or jokes with the double meaning of words like "want." The lyrics to this Smokey Robinson and the Miracles song are very simple, but they include a nice use of an idiomatic phrase "get a hold on someone"... They use it in kind of a unique way, that seems to mean that the singer is very attached to his or her lover.   (Of course, this is different than to "get a hold of someone" which means to contact them, especially by phone.)  There are...

One of my current students is focusing on verb tenses, and he asked for some resources and advice.  Here's what I sent him: For practicing verb tenses , here are some websites:  http://www. englishpage.com/verbpage/ verbtenseintro.html http://www.eflnet.com/grammar/ verbtense.php These should be good opportunities for specific practice on these skills; however, continued conversation and speaking practice is my number one recommendation.   Have you downloaded the  Audacity  program?  That is a great way to record yourself speaking and listen to yourself or send to an English teacher (like me) for feedback.  Obviously I am limited in how much I can listen to and comment on, but I will do what I can.  : ) Also, listening to  esl-lab.com  and noticing the use of tenses will help raise your awareness of correct usage.  As you pay attention to the tenses, you will find it more natural to use them in the standard way.  and notic...

Austin is famous for having a lot of stuff going on.  How can you find out about it?  How can you access it?  This post will brainstorm different activities that I enjoy, and give links where you can find more information.  Search any of them in google maps  and click on "BUS" to figure out the best bus route to get there. Improvised theater can be really fun.  There are many theaters, like the Hideout , the Cold Town Theater , and Salvage Vanguard .  You can watch hilarious performances, and you can sign up to take an improv theater class -- most of these are attended by American English-speakers who are practicing to speak spontaneously. There are lots of outdoor places to swim in Austin.   Barton Springs and Deep Eddie are two of the most popular places to swim in Austin.  They are both natural water, but Barton Springs has more plants.  Big Stacie is a free pool in South Austin, and there are lots of pools at apartment comple...

I'm excited to be teaching at TIEP with a group of fascinating, intelligent students this summer!  We are using the Grammar in Context book by Sandra Elbaum, which I have used before and really like.  The stories are interesting, and the grammatical explanations and exercises are very detailed. The website for the text book:  Grammar in Context  has quizzes and writing activities.  When we finish a lesson, we will do the quiz.  For example,  this is the quiz  for Lesson 2 in Book 3.   Before Tuesday, would you go back and take at least three quizzes from  Grammar in Context 1  and/or  Grammar in Context 2  and e-mail me your results?  My e-mail address is sladewill AT gmail DOT com (substitute @ for AT and . for DOT).

In previous posts I've mentioned an interest in group improvisational story telling; I love role play activities that use improvisation, and even the URL of this blog has the word "improv" in it. I wanted to give some ideas for places where teachers and language learners can experience and learn about improv techniques and games for fun and for language learning. In Austin, there are a variety of theaters that put on Improv shows and teach classes in improvisational acting. I am most familiar with the Hideout , the Salvage Vanguard Theater , and Coldtowne Theater . Check them out! I can especially recommend the P-graph show on Thursday nights at 8:00 at Coldetown or classes from Andy Crouch at the Hideout. For games, check out these sites and blogs: Five Minute Fillers , Larry Ferlazzo's games for students , Dave Kees Teach English in China Also, great board games for creative, spontaneous speech are Apples to Apples (especially the youth version), Balderdash ,...

This past week, our methods class has been conducting lessons for each other in some fascinating contexts; I wanted to record some of the cool activities from my favorite groups (to quote Dr. Elaine Horwitz). Several of my favorite books used songs to integrate listening, reading, speaking, vocabulary, and grammar. Of course, this was a hit. Today we heard "Who wears short shorts" as part of an beginners' ESL lesson about clothing. The video they used was a wonderful old 1950s rock video, but the only one I can find is this short commercial for Nair . My favorite group used " Dos Gardenias " performed by Maria Rita for a beginning Spanish lesson on expressions of love. My other favorite group used Hi5 to appeal to small children. I had never heard of this show, but apparently it is popular with small children. My other favorite group did not use a song. They used a really cool game of Clue. I will link to Mieca's site and ask her to share the title...

In our Oral English class with Alison McGreggor we've been looking at a lot of pronunciation and prosody sites. I want to share some of them: http://www.manythings.org/ has a ton of resources. I like the minimal pair practice for segmental perception. If a Spanish-speaking student needs help with B-V or a Korean student needs help with F-P http://www.manythings.org/pp/ This may not be explicitly a speaking exercise; however, research suggests that perceiving sounds in your target language leads to being able to produce those sounds (Pennington, 2007). http://www.englishlearning.com/ is another cool pronunciation site that a classmate shared with us. http://www.eltgames.com/ESL-jobs-CoUpIn.htm has some great conversation games. I find games to be one of the best ways to practice speaking. http://speak-read-write.com/tonguetwister.html gives you tongue twisters. I love tongue twisters for practicing speaking, because they give focused practice in context, and they are fun ...