Save It and Save Yourself: Books

I don't know if any comprehensive studies have been done, but I think it's a safe bet to throw this out there as fact: the younger your students, the shorter the lifespan of the books that are anywhere in their vicinity.

Now, believe me, I am the first proponent of that new book smell, though I prefer the musty smell of old books. I can admit that I have listed a books smell as one of the deciding factors of my purchase. But I also don't have to box up my e-books so my cat won't chew on their covers.

This is a wave of the future that many book lovers have had trouble embracing, even as book-like as marketers try to make their product. About a dozen programs have a feature that allows you to press the screen with your finger to turn the page. Hmm. Not a big selling point for me.

In fact, one of the biggest reasons I usually print stuff out even if I have a digital version is so I can make notes on it or dog-ear my place. Well, if you thought you could only do this on real, physical paper, you were wrong!

The site Mobipocket not only offers a wide selection of e-books to download, but it allows you to download them to your smartphone or BlackBerry for free. While it has yet to include an app for iPhone, the much more famous Kindle program from Amazon.com offers this, also for free, while Kindle users are waiting on a BlackBerry version!

What's even better--both versions allow you to download samples before purchasing. For an ESL class, a single sample like this can provide more than enough material for a day's scanning lesson or in-depth reading homework.

But for book addicts, that probably won't be enough. Mobipocket's e-books are about $8 a piece, which is a lot better than most paperbacks, but there are many sites that offer free e-books, some for classic literature now in the public domain, some with new work by aspiring authors, and some with a nice blend of both. The best known of these is The Gutenburg Project, which provides tens of thousands of free books as well as editing services if you want to submit your own.

Other free sites include Feedbooks, Scribd.com, and ManyBooks.

The ability to upload your own material provides a great project opportunity--having students write poems or short stories for publication. They will not only have something to show others for their effort, but you will have reading material for the classes that come later. Short stories may seem like a lot of work for less advanced students, but be sure to look up "nanofiction" if they give you too much grief.

Another great site is DailyLit, which sends a 5 minute excerpt from a book of your choice to your e-mail. This is a great way to help make larger readings more manageable for students or to let students focus on specific chunks for discussion.

Finally, if you have books you just couldn't live without but which may never reach the public domain (the way Congress keeps extending copyright duration), then a last resort option is always to scan them in as pdfs. Many scanners can now do this with the push of a button... well about 300 pushes in all?

Sure, it sounds tedious, but if you have a student teacher, then you can always just say it's the new wave of education. They'll need to get used to it, so why not practice with your library?

Save It and Save Yourself: Flashcards

I have hundreds of flashcards for Russian verbs. It's my area of trouble. Of those hundreds of verbs, I have learned a very small percent. That's probably because one pack of flashcards is under my bed. I'm not sure what happened to the others, but I know I don't study them. My little brother is the exact opposite... in some ways. He loved studying the German flashcards I made him... until he lost them.

Flashcards are a hassle. For each chapter in your run-of-the-mill textbook, there are 50 or more words. For economical students, I've seen flashcards the size of paperclips, or multiple words on the same card. Ultimately, I've found that the most economical thing to do (and the best thing for the trees if you blame your bad grades on saving the planet) is to make digital flashcards.

Or not! Lots of people have already done just that and stored their flashcards on web sites like Flashcard Machine! It is 100% free. And if you register, you can make your own cards or save lists you want to study.

While there is a plethora of material from the RFL books Golosa and Nachalo, there is a... something bigger than a plethora of ESL-specific vocabulary, including the ever-popular 20+ lists called "Essential Words for the TOEFL," "Prefixes and Suffixes," and "Everyday Idioms." However, there are also smaller lists by content, such as "Body Parts."

Unfortunately, just searching for "ESL" will also bring up lists meant for native English speakers, such as words for the SAT or the GRE, though really advanced students may also appreciate this practice.

This is a great site for students, but it is even more useful if teachers post vocabulary lists for discussion topics or tests and e-mail students the links to them to ensure they are working on the right list. Or, for projects, students can also provide their peers with jargon that may be specific to their interests or that will help their presentations be more comprehensible.

I am very partial to the desktop version, called i Study to Go, though it costs about $17. While both versions allow you to create your own cards and study them anywhere, it's a little difficult to pop your laptop open on the bus or get an Internet signal in the deepest subway in the world. Desktop versions allow you to study cards without the Internet, which I like. The Internet gives me the option of playing Mafia Wars instead of studying my flashcards. But the desktop version also allows students to add words to their iPods.

The best program for this, in my opinion, is actually Flash My Brain, which allows cards to also be downloaded to cell phones or PDAs, in addition to including talking flashcards and memory games. It costs $30, so if you're going for mobility, the extra cost is worth it for this program over the other one.



Whichever you choose, I've found it very beneficial to be able to scroll through a list of Russian words while on the way to class, sitting in a boring class, riding on the bus, and anywhere else you can eat green eggs and ham.

Save It and Save Yourself: DVDs

Until recently, CDs and DVDs were assumed to be a lot more reliable than information on tape because there wasn't any chance of it getting tangled up in the machine or mysteriously wiped after spending two months baking in storage. Well, disks can be just as tricky, whether it's a tiny scratch that makes the whole movie freeze or new time effects known as "CD rot."

Ripping and copying CDs has become a common method of backing up music and data, but doing the same for DVDs is more difficult. I am not encouraging you to rent movies from Netflix and make a library for yourself! But why should you have to buy a new DVD every time your old one gets a scratch from a dodgy player?



Or even more ridiculous--why should you have to buy or bring a Region 1 DVD player to Russia or set one of your computers to only play Region 1 disks just so you can watch movies from America over there? If Pixar had released Ratatouille in America with Russian subtitles or a Region 5 coding, I wouldn't have had to buy it in Russia to get what wanted out of it! (In fact, it's a much better deal in Russia, even buying from legal vendors like Mega Video, because I got both versions of the movie for the price of one!)

Okay, so the DVD industry has really restricted us teachers with all this copyright nonsense, but fear not! There is a safe and legal way to back up your classes' favorite DVDs and take the region coding off of them, too!

Some quick notes:
-With a VHS -> DVD recorder, you can back up tapes, but the cheapest of these is in the $150 range, and may not copy protected material like Disneys.

-One Step DVD Duplicators also may not copy protected material, and they are in the $300+ range.

-DVDShrink is able to decode most protection encryption to allow you to copy your DVDs and also removes the region code, so you can play it worldwide. This sounds very illegal, and it can be used to do illegal copying, I'm sure. But if you own material, there's no reason you shouldn't be allowed to protect your investment.

DVDShrink:

DVD Shrink is a program that copies DVDs into a digital format. If this works for you, and you have the classroom technology necessary to hook up your computer to a projector, then this is all you need!

It is 100% free, but it isn't the most user friendly program, but the YouTube tutorials are so good, that giving instructions here would just confuse you!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

If you want to burn a copy of the disc, DVDShrink won't be enough. Firstly, you will need DVD burning hardware inside your computer. A CD-RW (read / write) does not mean you can write DVDs, and neither does DVD-R! You need a DVD-RW. If your computer didn't come with this built in, then exterior ones are available in the $50 range.

Secondly, you will need DVD burning software. These programs range in the thousands at least, but DVDShrink is set up to work with Nero. You used to be able to find used versions of Nero pretty cheap on e-Bay, but now it's easier and cheaper to use a program called Image Burn.

To use Image Burn, in DVDShrink, you can click "Back up," then select "Create an ISO document with Image Burn. Save the file where you can find it, then go to the Image Burn program and click "Write to Disc."

If this becomes too tedious, however, you can also follow this guide to download a version of DVDShrink already integrated with Image Burn. This is only practical, though, if you have more than one DVD drive on your computer tower. It also costs about $12. Depending on your computer's speed, the entire process takes 15 - 30 minutes using them separately, and for $12, you're really only shaving off a few seconds.

Save It and Save Yourself: YouTube

About a month ago, I directed people to a site that downloaded YouTube videos via their links, but this turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. I spent a few hours looking for cookies... the less interesting kind. But thanks to my friend Zhenia, YouTube now has immortality in its grasp once more!


Download Helper:

Download helper is a widget / add-on that works with the Firefox web browser to save YouTube videos as flash (.flv) files or other file types, depending on your preference. As often as videos get taken down or changed on YouTube, this widga-ma-jig has become my new best friend. My Queen karaoke videos will not be taken from me if (against all expectations) Freddy Mercury rises from the dead to join the ranks of Metallica and McCartney on the side of corporate greed.


Instructions

1. Download Firefox. If you don't have it already, chances are you do a whole lot of waiting, when you could be doing much more surfing. It's much safer than Internet Explorer, too!

2. On the Menu bar (File, Edit, View, etc), click "Tools."

3. On the drop-down list, click "Add-Ons," then on the pop-up window, click the button that says "Get Add-Ons."

4. The screen will change to a list with a small search bar above it. Search for "Download Helper." A few different devices will pop up, but the one you want is named Download Helper and has an icon of three atomic-looking balls: yellow, red, and blue.

5. After the Download Helper is successfully widgetegrated into Firefox, its icon will appear next to the address bar and above YouTube videos. If you want to just save them as flash files, you're work is done!

________________________________________

But it's often helpful to be able to alter the content of the video-- cut parts out, add an intro slide, add subtitles, etc. The easiest way I've found to do this is with Windows Movie Maker, which comes free with most Windows packages and is very user friendly. To be able to use the video file in Windows Movie Maker, you will need to download a file converter.

1. In YouTube, find a video you want to download. Notice that next to the Download Helper icon there is a little arrow pointing down.

2. Click the arrow, and the available download will appear. Don't click the selection! (The world won't explode. You'll just get an .flv file) Just put your cursor over it, and another menu will appear that includes the option "Download and Convert."

3. When you click this option, you will be informed in a pop-up that you need to click a little box that allows conversion. Sort of ridiculous, I know, but check the little box.

4. You may receive another pop-up that says you need to install a converter. Even if you don't get the pop-up or you already have a converter, it's easiest to just click the link that downloads one for you, since then the add-on will download and convert for you. (The link is about half way down in the pop-up window.)

________________________________________

After you've downloaded a video, you can start playing with Windows Movie Maker. I'll list a few unintuitive things about the program, but there are a lot of tutorials for the program on YouTube.

1. To shorten movies, you need to view them on the timeline. If you are presently in Storyboard mode, just click where it says Storyboard in the lower left hand corner, and a drop down list will appear.

2. To add subtitles, "Titles and Credits" in the left hand bar. On the next page, select "Title on the Selected Clip."

3. On the following page, there will be two text boxes to type in. The bottom one will make subtitles. Once you have added this subtitle, it will appear below the clip on the timeline, where you can select how long you want it to last.

Save It and Save Yourself: Evernote

Whether or not you are technologically savvy, you have probably lost some vital piece of work at some point in your life because of technology. There is nothing more irritating than completing your thesis or finding that perfect resource for class... only to discover the next day that it has disintegrated into invisible 0s and 1s somewhere out in the great digital unknown.

So, whether or not you are technologically savvy, I have found a few sites that will help you preserve all your favorite teaching resources.


Evernote:

Evernote is a digital notebook that really looks more like a scrapbook. It allows you to save webpages through a type of screen capture, so even if the link breaks somehow out in the Internet, your sample of it is safe. Of course, if only one small part of the page is relevant, then you can simply highlight it and save it, which also works well with pictures. You can access everything you capture from any computer--or a hand-held device like an iPhone or BlackBerry with these downloads.

All this content can be sorted into separate notebooks. I have one for EFL, and one for RFL (Russian as a Foreign Language). I thought of breaking it down even more into the four skills, but it isn't necessary. Just like you can "tag" people in a photo on Facebook, you can write tags under each entry and find them by typing the tag into the search bar. Every political cartoon I've saved is under "rhetoric," "cartoon," "politics," "culture," and "discussion." If I type in just one of these, all my cartoons pop up.

But what's even better- I don't have to tag a lot of content aside from that, because the dialogue in the cartoon does it for me. If two characters happen to mention zombies in their quote bubble, then Evernote can decipher the text and bring up the cartoon when I search "zombies." It even works with hand writing! The only thing that could be better is if it understood Cyrillic letters, so I wouldn't have to tag as much on all the pictures of Russian plaques I took, promising myself I would read when I got home.

Price: Free, unless you want to upload pdfs. You also get a lot of upload power. But if you find you need more and really want to save those pdfs, you can do so for just $5 a month.


Registration Help:

1. Click here to "Get Started."
2. Enter your information. Before you really get started, you will need to check your e-mail and click a link the site sends to confirm it is a real address.
3. Once you enter your notebook, you can create notes from scratch using material already on your computer, or you can download the Web Clipper, which will allow you to copy information from sites.
4. For more help, visit the support page or feel free to send a comment my way.

Mary Poppins' Bag of Speaking Fun

For those who don't remember or who had an underprivileged childhood, Mary Poppins is a nanny with a magic bag that fits anything and everything. This post is kind of like that. I found some great sites that will address all your speaking needs--topics for discussion, idioms, pronunciation, and everything in between.



I'm very partial to discussion topics, myself. For one, it makes students feel like it's worth it to speak up when the topic is important or interests them. And though some may try to avoid using forms they aren't proficient with, they will also be confronted with these same forms when other speakers use them. But sometimes it's difficult to constantly come up with something to discuss. At least if I went on a blind date, I would run out of things meaningful things to talk about pretty quickly before reverting to the daily habits of my cat.

ESL Discussions is a great site with a plethora of topics to discuss, and each comes with several questions for teachers to ask students to elicit their opinions. There is a bar on the right side of the page with links to discussions of the latest news topics, such as "Swine Flu," "Barack Obama," and "Rising Prices." There are even sections for discussions that revolve around grammar and idiomatic language.

The discussion on animal idioms, for example, opens with "Does your teacher ever have to badger you to get your homework?" This can open up into a great cultural comparison of which animals are used to convey which personality traits in the L1 and L2. There are actually many similarities between these in Russian and English, such as the infamous crafty fox.

Another site I'm fond of, English Daily, focuses specifically on idiomatic language. Each "lesson" provides a short conversation for context that features an idiomatic word or phrase, such as "to get on board" for "to participate. At the end of the conversation, it glosses and explains the phrase. These can provide great warm-ups for a class in general or for a discussion in which you want students to use idiomatic language. No book-talk allowed!

I would also like to use these discussion questions, particularly those on "Russia" and "A New Cold War" and record the reactions of people from different cultures to discuss Russian history and stereotypes and how they feel about them.

Finally, the real bag of goodies comes from the website SpokenSkills. There are idioms, specialized vocabulary (from business English to aviation), and speeches, and practice with pronunciation. Every one of these is accompanied by listening practice and a recorder, so students can compare their pronunciation to that of a native speaker.

Many advanced students can recognize which sounds they need to work on because they are the same sounds they have difficulty distinguishing in listening comprehension. For example, Russians tend to have trouble distinguishing between the short "i" and short "e" (pin / pen) and the short "u" in "but" and "love" and the long "a" in "father." (On this site it is referred to as the short "o," but it is commonly known as the long a). These clips will help them compare the sounds, so they can draw the line between them.

The site also offers teachers the opportunity to upload sound clips, so students will have more of a variety of material. This would be a great site to supplement practice with minimal pairs or drawing attention to the different types of language that are used in different situations, such as telephone calls vs. business meetings, but it also offers students an invaluable resource for self-evaluation and practice.

Role-Playing Madness!

In the world of language teaching, role-playing usually means a short activity where students pretend to interact in situations, such as "You are having lunch with a friend, but you forgot your wallet. Try to negotiate with the waiter to let you go get it, so you don't have to wash dishes all night." These make great speaking exercises, and I found a few I really like.

Strangers on a Train: In this activity, students are situated in groups of four, facing each other as if they are in a train car. They then engage in some light conversation about the weather, where they are going and why. Now, it may be unusual for Russians to talk to each other on the subway, but they have no trouble talking on trains in my experience. Why the difference? I have no idea.



The next part of the activity, though, is where it gets interesting! Taking students aside individually, you give them time to memorize a short phrase. They will have to work it into the conversation in a regular way, so the other students can't guess what their phrase is. This not only encourages fluidity of speech, but also focus on what their partners are saying. Phrases like "I agree" or "me neither" depend on what the former speaker said, and more uncommon phrases like "I've always wanted to go to Zimbabwe" depend on the topic of the conversation.

Jungle Survivors: This activity splits the class into reporters and the survivors of a plane crash. Questions could include everything from what they lost in the crash to how their bowels handled coconut milk. They have been living on their own in the jungle for two days, but that's not too unbelievable, is it? You can survive that long easily without food or water. I think students would have a much more interesting time explaining how they survived if they'd been lost for a week or more. And why did they leave the crash site to begin with? Maybe someone shot them down, or maybe they just couldn't stand each other anymore! I think this activity could be spiced up a bit, but the download comes with some nice resources.

Similar activities can be found on ESL Flow


Other Types of RPs
Now, these are fun, but there is also a wide, wide world of role-playing beyond this. It includes video games like Final Fantasy (one of my favorite, but pretty useless for the classroom), forum stories, IRCs (instant refresh chat rooms), and- best of all- the LARP (live action role-playing). Each of these have some similarities, though: participants create an original character that is appropriate for the story setting, and they reply to each other as if they are this character.

Now, I'm not telling you to have your students run around screaming "Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! Plus 20 damage!" But this can be a great way to tie writing, reading, and speaking practice in with culture, depending on the setting.


Forums:
A forum is a place where members can create threads and reply to comments on each thread. On forums for computer trouble, for example, threads usually denote different types of problems, different conversations. An RP forum is laid out in exactly the same way, but the threads usually denote a new scene to help with organization. Other sections can also offer a place for students to provide information about their character. This alone could become a great research project for students.

For example, if you fancy a story that takes place in the old American West, students may need to become familiar with the geography, the relationships between immigrants and Native Americans, the different jobs available, and maybe a little history. As many times as I've been asked whether or not I ride a horse, this may not be as much work as it seems!

This can become an area for students to freely practice their English, or you can develop scenarios that elicit certain forms. If your cowboys are about to go on the Oregon Trail, for example, they need to buy some oxen and whatnots. This then becomes an interesting way for students to practice shopping vocabulary.

Free forums are available at My Free Forums, and the site offers a lot of tutorials for narrowing membership, adding sections, etc.


IRCs
Instant Refresh Chats are very similar to forums, but these would be even more helpful for advanced students because replies are required in real time. They are basically instant messaging tools that allow multiple people to write to each other at the same time. Many IRC role-playing groups usually have an accompanying forum or web page for members to reference information about their story setting or characters.

One free IRC service is Star Chat, but it may require a download of the program pIRCh. The same can easily be done by inviting multiple members to Windows Messenger or AIM conversations. But Windows, AIM, and pIRCh all allow participants to save or "log" conversations, so students can have something to show for their effort.


LARPs
The most famous LARP known is Vampires: The Masquerade, but if you ever played "make-believe" when you were a kid, then you have LARPed. In free-structure LARPs, this will be exactly the same, but just like with the others, if you want students to concentrate on something specific, then you simply do something like, oh, tell them they are strangers in a train car that strike up a conversation about the weather!

All LARPs give a little freedom, but there are also pre-made structured games online that you can purchase, such as Dinner and a Murder. These are a little costly (~$40) and much too long to be completed in class, but it is definitely worth it to organize a fun get together like this for students at the end of the year.

In the Dinner and a Murder games, students will receive information about their character, their background, and their personality. In the 1920s game, festivities are interrupted by a murder, and all the guests are detained while an investigator talks to them. As the night goes on, however, other guests may feel inclined to murder each other for various reasons. (After a body is discovered, these people get to come back as a secondary character of less importance.)

Once the party is dying down, the participants regroup to try to solve the mystery together, but this can also be revised into a writing activity-- just to make sure you cover all four skills!

Compulsive Liars

On the site ESL Go I found an interesting activity called "Unbelievable Story," which basically has a student tell a story about having met Tom Cruise during an LA taxi ride. Then another student must argue and say they don't believe the story. I thought a starter like this might be good, but imagine how great our students would speak English if they were compulsive liars! Maybe a day should be set aside for students to exaggerate everything!

I know in my Russian, I tend to give an awful lot of "normalno"s when people ask how I'm doing. Maybe on this particular day, you could begin the class by telling students you felt like you were hit by a bus--and then proceed to insist that it really happened, with each detail making the accident seem worse and worse. After the students begin to insist that it's not true, you can explain the day's mission: lie as you have never lied before!

This should also provide some great synonym practice. When it's the students' turn to say how they are, they don't just feel "okay." They feel great, awesome, wonderful, magnificent-- or bad, awful, terrible, miserable, wretched! (And if they insist they're only okay? Well, then they're ambivalent or nonchalant, which will be a lot harder on them!)

And, of course, I will ask the students just why they happen to feel this way, which should elicit some fun results. After one student has exhausted their lying capacity, I might ask if any student can top their experience. The discussion can focus on whatever you wish, so long as you ask the right questions. If we happen to be working on time expressions, for example, the conversation might go like this:

S: I'm tired.
T: How long has it been since you slept?
S: Four days.
T: Well, that's nothing. I bet Dima isn't just tired. He's exhausted. How long has it been since you slept, Dima?
S: Two months.
T: You haven't slept in two months? Why not?
S: I flew to the moon.
T: I fly to the moon every weekend, but I still sleep every night. When will you finally get some sleep? (etc.)

I think young adults would have a lot of fun with an activity like this. It could also be adapted into a writing activity, or a getting-to-know-you session. Students could tell stories about their lives and discuss whether they though each others' were true or false.

It could also work well with other activities listed on the site, just to spice them up, such as "Restaurant Interview." In this activity, some students are restaurant owners, and some are applicants who have no experience but really need the money. Lying seems to be the only option, but what if the interviewer wants to try them out in the kitchen? Maybe they happen to be a master chef allergic to salt, or the lack of feng shui in the kitchen is giving them too much of a headache to work right now. In America, you can't refuse to hire someone because of their health issues!

Whatever you decide to do, just make sure they know you're not lying about the homework!

ELL-Designed Information

In my limited high school experience, the most important things in laying out a newspaper is space and marketability. You need to make sure the story fits, and you need to make sure it's understandable. Our instructor's advice was to write every article as if you were writing it to a child in about fifth grade. Usually, smaller words help save space, too!

Unfortunately, my more extensive experience in reading the newspaper is that most journalists don't follow this advice, especially now that the Internet provides limitless space for their articles. Many times, article-reading can turn out to be very similar to searching for a word in the encyclopedia or dictionary. Trying to understand one thing ends up trying to understand a chain of different things.

For learners of other languages, this can be an extremely frustrating experience. Luckily, there are several sites that shape the articles for ELLs, such as The Bangkok Post: Easy English News and the Simple English Wikipedia. Both simplify existing articles that can be compared to the original if you want, and the Bangkok post also has listening components.

The Bangkok post is designed for locals in Thailand. It has glosses of difficult words in English and Thai. The news is also more relevant to that region, but it can easily be expanded into a culture lesson or related to news relevant to your own students. For example, the article on smuggling could be related to the problems America had with Britain just before the Revolutionary War or to the more recent standoffs America has had with pirates.

Or for my own EFL setting, I could have students discuss their experiences with knock offs brought in from China, shoddy bootleg DVDs, or the Russian Mafia. I find it very difficult to watch V for Vendetta in Russian with the same guy dubbing all the male and female roles!

The Simple English Wikipedia, on the other hand, is designed to be readable by children and adults learning English. I figured the best way to test its usability would be to look up psychology:

Psychology is the study of human behavior, thought, and feeling. It deals with all actions and reactions of people. Because behavior is difficult to study as a whole, psychologists often only look at small parts of it at a time. Psychology overlaps with many other fields including Medicine, Biology, Computer Science and Linguistics.

Not bad! Even without reading the whole article, I think students will find these explanations more helpful than short dictionary entries. And if this version is even half as addictive as the full version of Wikipedia, your students will be reading junkies in a week! I also love that encyclopedias give students the opportunity to discover things in the target language that they didn't even know about in their L1. Just yesterday it helped a Portuguese student discover the walrus. After reading about it in English, he could click the Portuguese button on the left and read a similar entry in his native language-- after which he was certain he'd never heard of this majestic creature!

Stories in Steps

In reading, vocabulary is key, and in learning vocabulary, repetition and context are the keys! I think we all know that the door to SLA has a whole lot of locks on it!

I really like the reading activities available on the California Distance Learning Project web site and Forrest Lunn's ESL site because they provide a sort of reading skeleton key! (Okay, keys and locks are getting old, I know). Both these sites offer students the option to read a text in a natural version or an easier version.

While the natural version feel authentic in a journalistic sense, the easy versions used simplified grammar and vocabulary and also use a lot of repetition to keep students from becoming confused. The familiarity can also help them figure out other words in the sentence.

In the year 1986 there was a terrible explosion. The explosion was at a nuclear power plant in the another country called Ukraine. The radiation caused a lot of damage. It contaminated the soil and other things. People lived in the area when the explosion happened. Twenty years later those people are still suffering. Effects from the explosion will go on for a long time. -"Children From Russia Spend Summers in California"

Even if students find this version easy to read, it can help them figure out more difficult sections of the authentic text. Or, being a bit of a sadist, I wouldn't mind asking students to practice more complex grammar structures like clauses by rewriting the article without the repetition.

The effects of the April 26, 1986 explosion and meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet-controlled Ukraine persist 20 years later. Contaminated soil and the lingering fallout from the explosion's radioactive cloud continue to spawn serious health concerns across several western former Soviet states like Belarus, where experts estimate more than 60 percent of Chernobyl's nuclear fallout settled. -authentic article

Of course, it also helps that the sites provide vocabulary learning activities, such as matching games with listening components. For the articles, both sites also provide accompanying dictations, which are especially helpful with English's fun orthography. When students learn a new word from the context of the stories, it would make it stick if they can pronounce it and use it in conversation. Too frequently, I've settled on a lesser word even in my L1 because I'm not sure how to pronounce it. (Taciturn-- is it an s or a k? I can never remember!)



Both sites also provide numerous ways for teachers to test comprehension. There are vocabulary quizzes, content quizzes, and even spelling quizzes! On the California site, these exercises smack of rote learning to me, but the aspect of interaction can still make them useful.

Lunn's site provides much more thoughtful activities more appropriate for advanced students. First off, many of the stories are paired with similar ones, which makes them great for comparison discussions or exercises. And while the follow-up activities aren't electronic (aside from the quizzes), they are more integrative of the four skills. I also think his vocabulary exercises are more useful in setting up new words in students' schemata. One has them sort words according to whether they are negative, positive, or neutral.

Either of these sites would be great resources for integrating vocabulary-building with reading and listening.

Bad Designs for Consumers, Great for EFL!

I've already spent a ridiculous amount of time on the site Bad Human Factor Designs. It is both a celebration of human ingenuity... and stupidity in all the best ways.

Each entry discusses a design, usually for a simple, everyday item, which should be very simple but becomes overcomplicated by Man in his infinite wisdom. The entries also provide explanatory pictures that will help students through the text. And while there are some unexpected words, the author's sarcastic, journalistic approach to each topic makes it a very easy read.
Many entries also deal with problems that foreign language learners are likely to encounter.

Several center on travel, such as how to open the sealed toothpaste bottles that airlines give you, confusing bathroom and kitchen utility designs, and how to navigate the controls on cluttered gas pumps. I wish there had been a Russian equivalent, when I was trying to figure out the flusher in St. Petersburg...

The format of each entry is also helpful for students. Each explains the problem with the design and then offers suggestions for fixing it. Below that are reader comments. This makes for an easy discussion in class or a short writing assignment. What is the problem with the design? How does the author suggest fixing it? Are there other solutions you can think of? How does the design of this particular thing differ in Russia? Have you ever had a similar problem? These could also be prediction questions for before the reading. I definitely think it would be a fun warm up activity.

As a follow up assignment to warm up the next day, students could also write about design problems they have experienced in their own life. Keyboards, for example. The Russian Cyrillic alphabet has more letters than the Latin alphabet that English-speakers use. That means more keys, right?

Wrong. It means that for some keys, instead of a bracket you get a hard sign. Of course, you can easily program a little code to, for example, press Ctrl + R + U to change your computer between Russian keys and English keys, but that's a lot of work for one bracket. And what about remembering the keys when they are marked with English letters? One solution that I've seen the most for this is stickers that go over English keys to mark where the Russian letters are. As Russo-Centric as the country used to be, I would have figured that they had specifically designed Russian keyboards. What happened to them?

Luckily for our purposes, these are good things! Students in my particular age range (teens and young adults) will be eager to complain about anything! So while I get them honing their writing and reading skills, I can also let them blow off some steam on the petty annoyances of everyday life.

Book Jacket Predictions

Our teachers and parents always told us not to judge a book by its cover--usually before having us read a very boring book. While this idea is a good maxim to live by in general, my experience tends to be that publishers spend more on fancy covers for books they know are going to sell (the interesting ones).



That gave me an idea for a fun classroom activity. Bring up (or print out, depending on your resources or level. Print outs will be helpful for additional reads at home and for providing word glosses, but the online version may feel more interactive to students in class.) Amazon.com or your e-bookstore of choice. On Amazon, under each genre tab customers see the covers of six or so of the latest books. These new releases also frequently have the "look inside" feature that allows you to read the first few pages.

Together, teachers can use these features to have students predict what they think will happen in the book. First, show them the cover. For a larger class, I would prefer to have them work in groups and discuss the picture, so each group will come up with their own interpretation. There, they will have to discuss clues that cue them in on whether the book is fiction or nonfiction, and what sort of world they have to play with. Then they can write down their results. When the class is regathered, students can take turns reading from the excerpt provided. Testing their comprehension of it is the fun part!

Have the students write what they think will happen. The scholastic part, of course, will be a summary of their version with supporting clues from the text, but I think the fun part is asking them to include a climactic scene or a turning point in the story. With their own creativity at work in it, students will probably put more work into their summary, too!

The American Harry Potter covers would be great for this exercise because students would already be familiar with the characters and dimensions of the world. Unfortunately, these books have become so popular that they are probably also familiar with the plot! Similar series that are less popular, however, include Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Gregor the Overlander, and Artemis Fowl.

I think young adult fantasy and science fiction would probably yield the most varied results, the most interesting covers, and the most appropriate reading level. After all, what could be a better follow up activity than to read the book and compare the results?

Or in the case of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, students can make these predictions... make a few more based on the movie trailer... read the novel... compare it to traditional Greek myths... and then maybe even compare the book to the movie when it comes out! Or while you're getting into it, you could just take them on a vacation to Greece! (Can I join your class?)

Deviant ELLs

On the Internet today there are sites for every interest imaginable, from babies to skateboarding. These are nearly universal, and for English speakers, they are easily accessible online.

My own interests are in art and science fiction, and luckily Deviant Art has attracted artist from several nations, and the forum makes it easy to find them and strike up a conversation. Just today, there are call outs on the Deviant Meet Board to "Deviants" in London, Barcelona, Denton, Ekatarinburg, Venice, Sydney, New York City, India, the Philippines, and more! In my foreign language studies, I've actually run across several Russian and German speakers who just by chance joined the same interest groups as me on the site. This has really improved my writing ability, even if the subject is a drawing of a psychotic, one-eyed samurai who fights aliens.

But regardless of one's own artistic ability, it is easy to get started on this site even just as an observer and to search for art relating to one's interests. Photographers in particular tend to flood their sections with pictures of, say, their Chow. And Chow owners tend to be very enthusiastic about their dogs, so they will be glad to tell you all about them! Or for the more serious student, there is also a section in the forum for political discussion.

Wherever the conversation will be taking place on the site, it is guaranteed a quick response. On the forum, responses are immediate, while personal notes or comments to artists may require a two day wait or more. But a response of some sort is almost certain, and this, I think is the most important part of writing ability. Just like listening is important for speaking, reading is important for writing. To keep up with their new virtual pen pals, students will need to read their reply... and depending on the age and socioeconomic status of the artist, that could be difficult. And even if they happen to be Harvard graduates, recipients are unlikely to provide any correction.

To ensure this interaction (and the ability to monitor what sort of "deviant" input students are receiving), teachers can even create a section for themselves and post pictures or poems for students to comment on. Of course, it will have to be original material, so strap your creativity boots on!

A common strategy for clubs on the site is to allow members to submit their material for publication on the club page. (The administrator will simply save their picture or file and resubmit them there as an original production of the club members as a whole). This could provide a fun project for the class, where students could take turns posting pictures of their surroundings or interests, write a description of them, and wait to reply to comments provided by their peers. Teachers could even connect with other ESL classes this way and invite them to join in the fun! This is also a great way to have students expand on their vocabulary by drawing from their peers' differing interests.

Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab

I am in love with Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab. Randall's got listening exercises on topics ranging from UFO sightings to cancer treatment and all organized according to their difficulty. Even better? They play right off the site. You don't have to bother with downloading (but you can by clicking on the links below the clip)

If you don't love him enough already, each topic is also accompanied by pre-listening exercises great for schema activation in the classroom or at home. For example, on the section Car Accident, the student is asked what some common causes of car accidents are and how they can be managed.

The topics are accompanied by related idioms that could prove troublesome to learners. A crash course is not necessarily synonymous to a course you failed or a driving course that ended in disaster! They have quizzes to check comprehension, transcripts for visual learners, and several interactive vocabulary-building activities.

My favorite touch, though, is Randall's integration of the post-listening exercises with his blog, so students feel like their learning and opinions are meaningful and can discuss the exercises with Randall himself or with other ELLs:

Car accidents are often a part of life, and getting the right car insurance should be part of owning a vehicle. Choose a type of car in which you are interested. Then, select two in car insurance companies and compare insurance rates for each. Which company seems to provide the best coverage and the best price? Do the companies provide cheaper rates for good students? Do the rates go up for younger drivers?

Please write your opinions on a similar topic at Randall's ESL Blog HERE.

What a practical exercise! This would be a great one for American teens, not to mention a Russian buying a car. I don't know about Australia and New Zealand, but I know you can't get away with driving like a Russian in America or Britain unless you buy a radar detector, too!

All in all, I think Randall's site is one of those rare Internet gems. I'd like to use these in class as springboards for cultural discussions. Randall's particular expertise is in Japanese ELLs, so many culture clips are directed toward those students, but the activities open a door on American culture. The Car Wreck episode paints an interesting family dynamic-- an angry, expectant teen who blames her father's carelessness on what she ultimately decides will be the end of her social life.

Drawing from this and the mention of the father's golfing hobby, this could easily lead to a discussion of American child-rearing practices, particularly among the wealthy. Most adult Russians don't have the privilege of owning their own car, let alone teens, so I would be really interested to discuss this particular episode with students and ask how they feel about the daughter's behavior. As a follow-up activity, I would have them re-write the scene from the perspective of a poor family. What if this is the only car the family owns? What if it were the daughter's fault?

In a pinch, these short listening clips could easily blossom into a full hour-long lesson. The transcripts could be altered, so students could discuss what they believe will happen before listening to the full clip, or they can simply provide extra at-home practice to support themes covered in class.

Podcasts Galore (non SLA-centered)

Today's English in Today's Russia

You just spent $50+ dollars on a textbook... only to open it up to photos of the main characters to writers developed. It's 2005, and every page is polluted with plaid shirts and mullets. Apparently, your top of the line textbook is already out of date. If you took a foreign language in an American school, then you've had this experience. Luckily, the Internet has really helped solve this problem by giving students access to more contemporary material, and at the forefront is the podcast-- shows and mini-shows that can be heard live or downloaded onto a computer or iPod.

There are many good and bad sides to podcasts. In Russia, more often than not the problem is going to be access. Borat and his neighbor may have iPods in the Hollywood version of Kazakhstan, but the reality is that, in general, mp3 players are just too expensive for the average Russian and the average English teacher!

Luckily, podcasts can typically be downloaded and then burned to disc, allowing teachers to play them in class or students to listen to them on their own time with a basic CD player. So long as you have Internet access and a CD burner on your computer, the timeliness of the podcasts can still be captured with just a little more effort.



A Cast for the Whole Class

The moment I found
Silver Street: Daily Urban Soap on the BBC Podcast Directory, I knew it was a winner. Soap operas or character-centered series are popular in language classes. They're a great way to learn language and culture at the same time by listening to how people interact, but they often have the same "dated" issues as textbooks.

Silver Street, on the other hand, takes place in modern England with a flavorful blend of the issues and mixed ethnicities that now characterize it.

Gritty daily radio soap set in a vibrant urban community. Want something that really gets to grips with your issues? This soap brings different cultures and generations together and isn't afraid to tackle taboo stories rocking the foundations of relationships, family and religion. The cast reflect the cultural mix of Britain today strongly representing British Asian, Irish and Black characters in a cool non-stereotypical way.

Even better, each show is labeled with a title and summary that shine a light on the context and help student gear up their schemata, such as "Vinnie gets annoyed with Jodie: Vinnie wants to get Jodie off his back, and Sean feels guilty for wanting to leave." The episodes are also only five minutes a piece, so students won't become numbed or anxiety-ridden by an enormous amount of input.



I could definitely see burning a week or a month's worth of episodes and assigning one for listening homework each night with some guidance or consideration questions: "Why is Jodie upset with Vinnie? How do you know?" A second listen at the beginning of class will help warm students up for the day and lead into a discussion of the show to date. How did they feel about Jodie? Did she have a right to be upset with Vinnie? How do students feel about issues at play, and how are they dealt with differently in Russian culture?

The Downsides?

1) It's British English, so students may have trouble if they've had instructors with different accents. In fact, as an "urban" soap, it isn't even "standard" British English. If students have trouble, though, transcripts will help with assignments and broaden their dialectic comprehension in general.

2)There are a lot of characters, though, so teachers will definitely need to familiarize themselves with the series and give students some background information on them, who's in which episode, etc. until they can pick out the voices.

3)Because the textbook didn't script them, you might be hard pressed to integrate episodes into the unit in terms of grammar or content, and it's difficult to pick and choose, just as it's difficult to figure out what's going on when you jump into The Young and the Restless. Who slept with whose husband?



Peas in a Pod: A Podcast for Every Interest

In my opinion, the key to improving L2 output is to play to the students' interests. When it comes to global politics, I always start to nod off, but when the topic shifts to science-fiction, I suddenly become pretty talkative! Well, that's what I want from my students, and the wide variety of podcasts floating around the Web provide a great way to draw in different students.

The BBC Podcasts Directory is an amazing resource for shows of every interest, from business to gardening, and mostly in "standard" British English. A great class exercise would even be to have students get on the site (if such technology is available in the class) and choose a podcast to follow. They can present from time to time and offer the class helpful vocabulary that pertains to their subject. With technological constraints, teachers can just as easily download a few episodes on topics the students have said they like. This may be more helpful for students that are less advanced and need more guidance through the episodes.

Grammatical Sing-a-Long

When The Beatles said they were bigger than Jesus Christ, there was definitely some debate as to whether or not they were better. I won't go into that argument here, but at least in Russia the band is probably more universal. While scanning the mosaics in the Church of Spilled Blood, my Russian guide admitted that because of the anti-religious stance of the former Soviet Union, she didn't know the stories portrayed, but she did know the lyrics to "Yellow Submarine!"


Karaoke Videos

There are a wide variety of karaoke videos on YouTube, and they're not hard to find, as long as you search the song name with "lyrics." Many songs, especially by The Beatles, would make fantastic listening activities in a lesson on informal speech habits, such as the use of "ain't" or leaving out beginning words that can be implied: "(I) Love you every day, girl / (You are) Always on my mind." (Eight Days a Week, The Beatles)

"(You)Can't Buy Me Love" is also a good example of this, but would make an even better exercise in conditional sentences. "I'll buy you a diamond ring, my friend, if it makes you feel all right."


Work with Clauses

Songs are also a great resource for grammatical structures, though, because they tend to follow a repetitive pattern. The lyrics of "When I'm Sixty Four" contain examples of the subjunctive ("would you lock the door?") and multiple clauses in every other line! "Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm sixty four?"



Notice that in this example the dependent clause follows the independent clause. I plan to use this in my class to show students how these clauses can be rearranged by having them rewrite the lyrics as "When I'm sixty four, will you still need me?"

This song also provides an opportunity to discuss the punctuation of clauses. While I prefer to mark a beginning dependent clause with a comma, the accepted position is that it is only really necessary if this clause is very long. For example, "When I suddenly discover that I've grown very old, disheveled, and generally bothersome, will you still feed me?" (Not by The Beatles)


Some Advice

Because YouTube and its "directors" have a habit of removing items, I also strongly recommend saving material you like. This can be done through ripping software or a ripping site. Just type in the video URL address and save as an .avi, .mp4, or .mov.

Why I Want to be Mugged on the Subway

Unlike a few of my unfortunate friends, I've never actually been mugged on the subway in Russia, but I did end up in a hospital. And if it means getting to teach there, I will gladly let my wonderful nurses Svetlana and Olga stick me again!

To be willing to undergo such torment, of course I could only have one career goal in mind: a teacher. I'm a graduate student at the University of Texas, and because there are no courses in teaching appreciation for science-fiction, I will be doing the next best thing-- teaching English in Russia!

This blog is primarily a place for me to organize activities I plan to incorporate in my English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom for teenagers and young adults in Russia. English First, Vladivostok, here I come! However, because I will be teaching late intermediate to advanced learners, I hope this blog will prove useful to other EFL and ESL teachers, teachers-in-the-making like myself, and advanced students of English.