Hit the Business Blogs, EFL Tech-tip 5

Do you know where I get a lot of my ideas for teaching Business English?

The blogs.

Nope, not the teaching English blogs, although they're full of handy tips and tricks (see my posting here with a great list) but the blogs actually written by business people and marketers.

They're an excellent resource as they're generally well written, authentic, up2date and short!

Most of the time the writers don't use a lot of wordy words but when you do find an interesting phrase or idiom, you can spend time exploring these too, discussing the relevance and why used.

Here's a list of super material, tried and true resources:


#1 - Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

It really doesn't get better than this one so I probably shouldn't have started with it!

I may actually read this blog too often as it's more interesting than Facebook. Seth has a way of writing one-liners that you and your students, no matter who they are, will enjoy discussing. I use him with secretaries, IT students and with bank board members.

Sometimes he's spot-on, many times he's very controversial, he goes totally against the mainstream and it's always a challenging, interesting read.

His books are great too, by the way, and I've had students reading parts of them.

#2 - Presentation Zen http://www.presentationzen.com/

If you're teaching students who have to give presentations, are interested in marketing or selling products then this is an amazing resource of topical, timely written, beautiful stories along with handy tips for making their presentations look professional and modern.

#3 - The Customer is not always right http://notalwaysright.com/

Quirky stories. You can't always take these in as they are written to your classes but whenever you find a good one, you'll have your business English students laughing their heads off, nodding in sympathy or frowning in disapproval.

#4 - Autoblog http://www.autoblog.com/

Their tag-line says it all "we obsessively cover the auto industry" - if you're based in Stuttgart, then you're no doubt teaching at Daimler, Porsche or for any number of their suppliers.

Visit this blog and raid it for the latest news that not even your students know yet!

#5 -Engadget http://www.engadget.com/
Engadget's great as a springboard to find real stories later. Their posts are short, sweet and often pre-story. Great for the IT and engineering sectors.


#6 - Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Mike Shedlock is not an economist by profession (he's an investment advisor) however his blog is full of economic observations and analyses on the ideas, projections, figures provided by the media, 'so-called' experts and government officials.

Great materials/ideas suitable for bankers and financial experts. As to whether or not he's right is for them to say. You can just sit back, lap it up and get them to explain to you, the jargon.

#7 - Personal MBA http://personalmba.com/

Here's another blog which is best used for getting a tip or smart idea.

Recently I found a posting on patterns with a youtube video of 36 songs in 4 chords; took the video in with me but simply wrote the concept of the posting on the board : you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Then, dogme style, asked my students to think up the patterns that successful businesses all have in common. (The post which inspired that lesson here).

#8 - Dumb Little Man http://www.dumblittleman.com/
Just about any topic under the sun. Often funny. Some greats include 40+ tips for improving your grammar (with lots of links, makes a good post-task activity) and 10 ways to make your boss think you're brilliant and indispensable.  Time management tips, issues in the workplace, business, entrepreneurship, web2.0... and more.

UPDATE May 2010

#9 - Mashable http://mashable.com
A must follow if you're teaching adult Business English students: filled with short bursts of genius, offering advise on social media, how-to guides, entrepreneurship; the latest developments in technology, news on major corporations; PR and advertising tips.


Not teaching Business English, feeling left-out?

Try PostSecret, especially with your older teens and housewives - be careful which stories you choose though. http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

An easy way to find blogs directly related to your students' interests (you've brainstormed this with them already, right) is by visiting http://www.blogcatalog.com/ or technorati http://technorati.com/ and doing a search from within their pages.

Do you have another good blog recommendation for teaching ESP, Business or General English? Do write with the URL address and let us know who it works best with, ta!


Best,
Karenne

More techie-type-tips here!
More Business English tips here.


education

Slide over to slideshare.net, EFL Tech-Tip -4

If you've been reading my blog postings for a while now then you'll already know that I'm a big fan of slideshare and even have my own page there.

If not, then let me quickly introduce you to a super source of material for your business, general English and ESP classes; teacher-training tips; grammatical explanations and much, much, more.

Slideshare is basically a platform where trainers, normal people and experienced consultants load up their powerpoint or open office presentations so that anyone who might be interested in learning from them can.

It's a wonderful source of authentic material, mostly highly professional and very informative.

The best of these are written with very few words, many images and thus work as excellent skills prompters.

You can use them as a basis to get your students chatting, writing, dissecting the issues in context or extracting core vocabulary. Get them making predictions, explaining backgrounds behind the ideas, comparing cultural influences or just simply learning English by learning something they're very interested in knowing more about.

Downloading from this site is a simple procedure: above each presentation which allows this function, there's a button you can use to do this. Look for the little pink heart which marks favorites - next to that there's a button with a down arrow indicating you can take the presentation and store it on your own computer.

And of course, if you don't have access to a computer in your classroom, you can also set the slideshares as a pre- or post-task activity (a.k.a homework) by sending your students the link(s) via email. Best, of course, is getting them to slide on over to make their own choices.

Useful links related to this posting:

Lesson tips using slideshare

Stuff I've used with my students, stuff I learned from, stuff I save here.
(see left side for tag types)

Best,
Karenne

p.s. If you've got any other great tips to share with us on how to use slideshares in the ESL & EFL classroom or if you'd like to tell us how you used one of them with your students, don't hesitate to do so - we can all learn together - click on comments.

Update 25-March-2008 for the smartphone/blackberry and i-phone users:
Slideshare available on your mobile phones (as far as I can tell, still free)

Introducing SlideShare Mobile: use SlideShare on the go!

View more presentations from Amit Ranjan.

Tech Tips for ELT Trainers-3: Using Wordle for Vocabulary

Have you heard of Word Clouds?

Wordle is a great site that allows you to create word clouds out of a text.

You can use this

• to pre-teach vocabulary, 
• do a predictive exercise on an article or a reading you're about to do, 
• make a vocabulary review exercise based on a lexis presented in a textbook and you can even  
• make a poster for your classroom of discussion starters.

Here's a video that explains how to use it:








Pre-teach vocabulary based on an article:
Simply copy a recent article on a subject your students are interested in (online from the net) and then paste this text into wordle. The most frequently used, key-words, will be larger. Get your students to focus on the smaller words and check understanding. 


Predictive exercise based on a reading you're about to present:
Read through an article and then choose around 15 words which you think are an essential part of the story. Type these words into wordle. Multiply the most relevant words exponentially so that some words take on greater importance, i.e. copy a couple of the words and then paste them in ten, fifteen, twenty-five times etc. - depending on how large you'd like some of the words to be.

Give the sheet to the students and get them to tell you what they think the story/ article will be about.

Make a vocabulary review exercise:
Take a list of vocabulary based on a course book you're currently using and import these into wordle, along with synonyms and antonyms, if you wish.

Give the list to the students and review them. You can also do a matching exercise with these.

Consider working different lexical sets within one wordle - say car parts, automotive collocations,  frequent idioms about cars, name of manufacturers and then get your students making different groups out of the words - try turning it into a conversation exercise.



Conversation starters:
Type a list of topics which are regularly seen in the headlines or brainstorm topics you know your students are interested in discussing into a wordle.

Print the wordle(s) out, magnify and paste it up on your classroom wall.

Regularly encourage students to choose which topics they'd like to talk about at the beginning of each class and hold 10-15 minute conversations based on the ones they chose.

Homework activities:
Get your students making their own wordles of words they would like to review in the next class with you.

Useful links related to this posting:
A Wordle I made about Facebook for Business English students
Article that goes with this activity
Notes and further lesson ideas I wrote on the biz-e-tech wiki.
More tips on teaching with technology here.

• Update 18March2009 -just found a few extra tips on Nik Peachey's blog, here.

• Update 20April 2009 - Tom Barrett has created a comprehensive list of different ways to use wordle. The list is mainly aimed at primary/secondary educators but contains many ideas which can be adapted for the EFL classroom.

•  Update 29May 2010 - Marisa Constantinides has written a post comparing different kinds of word cloud tools. JamieKeddie discovered a really useful way of keeping phrases together here.

Best,
Karenne
This post was last updated 29-05-2010

Have you already used Wordle

to create BE lessons? 

Have you got a great tip to share?

Technorati: education

Happy Holidays!

Dear English Teachers




Just a little note to wish you all the very best for the holidays - see you next year!


Best,
Karenne

Most visited postings:

CNN student news
Personally, speaking
BESIG conference
Politics, power and the media
Toys for teachers
Company secrets

Using slideshare for teaching business English

My student Markus called in the early afternoon.

'I didn't have time to do my presentation' he gushed.

Markus is a part of a 3hr, once-a-month evening presentations course I run. Part of the requirements are to bring in their real presentations for "hands-on" practice, powerpoint slides - which we review, discuss and dissect for standard lexical chunks and language specific to Business English.

'Markus,' I said 'Go on over to Slideshare, find a presentation in your field, download that and bring it in. I need your English, not specifically your slides.'

He did.

The presentation he chose was from by Bach, Abraham, Fisher and Dupree of the Moore School of Business and was about Hydrogen Fuel Cells.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: hydrogen fuel)

As this topic is directly related to his industry and key responsibilities, he was able to follow the original authors' work and successfully add his own specialized knowledge and input.

What slideshare offers are presentations: on each slide there are only key words and/or images so the success of the exercise is entirely dependent on the student's ability to elaborate on the information and statistics.

In our case, a quick, less than 5 minute download led to a half hour presentation which we then could turn into a dynamic pedagogical exercise. As a group, we discussed his lack of 'signposting' (language indicators of where one is within a presentation), worked on his introduction and summary language, reviewed phrases they'd been taught previously from Business Builder, 7.2b and Macmillan's Presentations English, unit 1.

What was also interesting was the territorial aspect Markus to on to the work - he didn't agree with all of the statistics or the slant on each slide and didn't hesitate to let us know what he thought they should be or what Germany is doing in these ventures.

Try this type of exercise with your students -low prep on both your parts, maximum speaking practice on your student's - and, of course,

do let me know how it goes!

Useful links related to this posting:

www.slideshare.net
More lesson tips using slideshare

Some links to sets for Business English and ESP (English for specific purposes) included below but not limited to:

• English for Automotive
• English for Business and Management
• English for Finance
• English for Health
• English for Marketing
• English for Real Estate
• English for Technology

Related textbooks/supplementary:

Business builder - Germany, UK, USA +world
Presentations in English - Germany, UK, USA +world

Authentic books related to teaching presentations:

Harvard School of Business - Germany, UK, USA+world
Beyond bullet points - Germany, UK, USA+world


Best,
Karenne

Where does the buick stop?

The news are currently a-buzz with corporations lining up to hold out their begging bowls in the hope that something, anything will rescue them from the worsening financial crisis.

One of the most ridiculous of these is quite probably the BIG THREE, the CEOs of the giant US automakers (Chrysler, Ford and GM) who somehow did not have the vision to implement a change to smaller, high mileage, 'greener' vehicles and who now need a bailing out to the tune of $25bn.

I say 'vision' somewhat sarcastically.

The last few years have seen an outpouring of commercials advertising their so-called greenness which suggests that they did indeed recognize the trends in the market yet hesitated about doing anything about it other than launch propaganda machines.

Instead they dined like kings, sipped Cristal champagne, earned upwards of 40k A DAY and now, surprise, surprise, they must go to PapaUSA (i.e. the American taxpayers) for a little cash injection.

How long will it be before other global car-makers, except Toyota LOL, rock on up with the same plan?

It's not their fault? Pah!

But their errors, if left unsolved, will cost the world's employees in jobs, be the end(!?) of a stable global economy - opinions range and are as hot as they are indifferent - yet can you imagine what will happen when hundreds of thousands worldwide (millions if you count semi-related industries, especially in the US) lose their jobs?

Can you imagine the knock-on effects?

The US government and our governments will probably have no choice but to rescue the car-mega-corporations and their factory workers.

How very, very careless you have been Mr Mullaly, Mr Nardelli and Mr Wagoner (yes, even if you just recently took on your jobs). Shame on you.

Do you really expect the man on main street to pour yet more capital into your extravagant business models with narry a word on how you will effectively restructure and clean up your shops?

Lordy B, I can't help but muse on whether or not big OIL will need bailing out next!

Anyhoo, my rant's over...

Just stirring up the pot to show you how highly controversial and topical this subject matter is and how you can use it to make an exciting ESP lesson: be it with your financial students or those in the automotive industries.

As usual I'll just provide you with tips & some sources, so go on ahead, browse around and use what's useful then construct the lesson the way you'd usually do it...

Articles on the big 3

(3 levels given especially for your mixed ability groups-different articles to different students)

• 'Simpler' English (int: B1-B2)
  

Bloomberg
International Herald Tribune

• A little harder (upper int: B2-C1)
  

LA times (full of good idioms)
US News:6 myths debunked
NewsOK

• Tough going but really worth reading (upper int/adv: C1-C2)

Editorial, truth about cars

• Your audio learners (radio)

4 interesting, short segments from the BBC

Videos

Note: Most of these vids are made up of various car ads and a report on the 'SEXYgreenCARshow'. You can not make this stuff up - if you teach ESP:automotive students you'll have a whale of a time with this video, the language is generally slow and clear.

The "Ripple Effect" video at the end is well, seriously scary - a nice finish to a lesson on this theme (it's fast though so have a finger ready for the pause button).


Sidebar:
In 3 of my classes today, the craziest thing occurred while showing the GM never-seen-before ad - the men (one banking class, one insurance, one automotive) all talked back in English, involuntarily, to the projected screen and text/images.

Some just named the models as they whizzed by - all mentioned Opel, others 'hmphed' and made fun of the philosophy underlying the video. Most interesting -definitely a keeper.

To download the entire playlist or to simply choose which you'd like to use in your class(es), go here.

Karenne's lesson ideas

• divide up and set the various articles as homework by sending on the links to your students (if you can't do this, get them to skim for gist in class).
  

If by the time you read this blog entry, decisions have already been made you might want to look for new articles. A pre-search link to googlenews is set here - as a general rule (in my experience) bloomberg and reuters tend to have shorter and easier business articles, iht is a good link for students because it has translate-a-word functionality, BBC and Guardian Weekly often have topical worksheets for language learners prepared; financial press and blogs tend to be harder - full of lower frequency words. As much as possible try to vary the "slant" if you want your students to really discuss!

• review the vocabulary students had difficulties with, especially concentrating on chunks of text and idioms used in a business context.

• show one or two of the videos as a pre-task, intro and/or to review vocabulary (not sure how to download video? go here) If unable to do this, send your students the playlist and let them choose what they'd like to watch.
  

• discuss the articles for comprehension or simply get them to summarize their articles' slant or positions introduced - encourage students to agree, disagree and generally opine.
  

• ask how this issue is being reported in their own media - should the automakers get bailed out? Why, why not? Are car makers in their own countries turning up with hat in hand?
  

• Roleplays:

Big class - split up your students and ask them to play the role of Nardelli, Wagoner, Mullaly; other students play the role of the government (Pelosi, Obama, Bush, governmental economic advisers etc) and yet others play the role of the union bosses. The rest of your learners can play the man on the street: factory workers and normal joes (themselves).

Ask your students to design the focus of the roleplay themselves, getting them to spend some time thinking of what they will say - then hold the debate.
Small class - with 3 students or less, ask students to play the role of the President's economic advisers who will be interviewing the CEOs. Their task is to prepare hard-hitting questions (regarding future plans, how the bailout money would be spent and on what).

Advanced levels - with your higher students control (!) their language, encourage them to flex their grammatical muscles: to use the future continuous, perfects, passives and perhaps even use some 3rd conditional in natural context! ;-).

Another video, from Sabine- thanks, worked like a charm- but man, rough stuff!
Here are the lyrics.


Purchase conversation lessons:

SimplyConversations prompt cards plus SimplyQuests:

• finance & investment
• auto industry

€1.49 individuals
€4.99 institutes

More lesson-tips blog postings for teachers of ESP-Financial English:

• fatally financial
• company secrets

If you've got a top tip related to this theme, don't hesitate to share - simply click on the green line that says Comments and add your opinions, lesson ideas or any relevant links to websites, blogs on the same topic - I don't mind!

Best,
Karenne

I hate the words "Blended Learning"

I woke up this morning thinking about tags.

Aside from the fact that tags are things which hang off the collar of your shirt, tags  - in the world of the web - are used by people who create content (text on web-pages, blogs, media etc) and they are used to bring these like items together.  The tag system is at its finest form on delicious where they have even gone a step further and created bundles (a way of creating uber categories for your tags) but you can also find them on youtube, slideshare and just about any web 2.0 website.

Examples of tags include the blue labels at the top of this and all my posting - they're there so that if you want to find another blog entry which is similar then all you have to do is click on one of those and travel around.



But I'm getting distracted.

Back to my point, the reason for writing this post:: I really, really, really, hate the term blended learning.

It doesn't say anything to me - a blended what? A mix of... oh man, what does that mean exactly?  Are we talking about mixing skills or are we talking about mixing styles... I mean if I use a tape-recorder instead of my smartphone to listen to an audio recording then I'm now not blending?   Why is that device any different to any other device.... And how exactly do I tag that in my posts - using the keywords blended+learning? Nah, don't like it. I just can't do it anymore, I simply cannot get my fingers to type this phrase nor to make my mouth to move that way.  In fact I can't even get my head around it.

I even looked it up on wikipedia and then got a rather in-depth explanation that even they'd like to be cleaned up. The explanation brought me somewhat closer to its meaning, I guess, but sorry love the concept hate the brand, way too stuffy for my tastes.

So, you know what... from now on guys, I'm going to refer to the whole teaching with technology as  TwIT: http://kalinago.blogspot.com/search/label/TwIT

There's a little irony in there but ya kno', it says what it is.


Best,

Karenne

Projecting projects

A good language institute will consistently make an effort to keep its teaching staff up to date on modern teaching practices and new methodologies and Tom Carlson, DOS of Linguarama Stuttgart, certainly excels at this.

Although his training style can sometimes be teacher-centered, I can honestly say that over the last four years he's provided me with many new ideas and overall been a great influence. I've learned so much from him and look forward to much more!

Anyway, this latest workshop was entitled Projects in the Classroom and in this blog posting, I'll review some aspects of Tom's transparencies, go through the quotes he presented for us to reflect on and at the end of the posting provide one of my own tried&tested project concepts.

Great theme, isn't it, and so vital for long-running courses. Have you ever tried doing a project with one of your business English groups?

It's such a smashing way to engage students and encourage collaborative learning.If you've done any project work in your adult EFL/ESL classes, don't hesitate to add your tips and tricks in the comments - even if they weren't BE oriented. We discovered, after careful searching, that there's really little out there, in print or on-line and yet there's a strong market for this type of work and age group.

If you're a materials author or a wannabe.... this is a niche! Just quote me and Tom in your acknowledgements, ok!?

Why do a project?

• to encourage speaking in a natural and realistic setting
  
• to focus the course in a motivating group activity that requires English
• to counteract some of the "same old, same old."
• to work on a specific lexical set over and over again
  
• to provide an opportunity for feedback based on a series of classes

What projects are not:

• task-based-learning activities

The Framework
The project should include the following:

• clear language learning aims
• relevance to the business students are in, the field or market
• a defined final result

Notes when planning:

• when doing and for how long
• where
• resources that will be necessary
• process the teacher will use to monitor language
• process the students will use to record language

Why bother?

• collaboration leads to confidence, is highly motivational and provides continuity.
• projects give students ownership; students buy into working together not just as a learning activity.
• provides realism and is highly communicative.

Potential pitfalls, problems:

• unexpected or extended absences
• if students don't 'buy in' right from the outset
• students lose interest or feel the work's beyond their level
  
• marginal results

But as Tom said:

Planning ahead is the best weapon you have for avoiding these problems so you still need to be ready to think on your feet!

Tom then handed out a few quotes from Project Work, Diana L. Fried-Both, OUP 2002, to all of us teachers - we had to think about what the quotes meant, what effects would be desirable in a language course and how our students would be affected.

We also had to think about problems which could occur when planning or implementing projects.

Project work draws together students of mixed ability and creates opportunities for individuals to contribute in ways which reflect their different talents, creativity, language goals and styles.

As colleagues we agreed in general with the quote and thought about how projects encourage team cohesion, how it feels natural to the students (reflects their lives, simulates their professional work) and gives the students an opportunity to learn something about themselves.

Of course, one area to watch out for is the possibility of having team members who are really very dominant!

Your role is perhaps the most vital in trying to maintain an overview and inspiring confidence so that your students feel they are learning by working towards their objectives.

As long as aims are formed and clarified by the group of students, we agreed with this statement.

We felt that clear strategies should also fall within the process of planning and that the teacher's role should include regular feedback to ensure that they themselves can see that they're learning.

To get a copy of a good, simple speaking skills feedback sheet - from my website, go here.

The irony is, the more passive you appear to be, the more successful the project is in terms of learner autonomy and independent learning.

Funny concept, the idea of passivity. It's a scary theory and it's even scarier in practice - 'til you're practiced anyway. ;-)

However we all agreed, if you do less - the students do more.

Student-led activities require teachers to step back.

The line has to be carefully defined, the borders firmly in place because passiveness in the classroom can also be perceived as laziness on the teacher's part and some students, depending on their cultural backgrounds, will strongly object if they aren't actually being controlled!

Transparency is clearly important.

On the other hand as Jim mentioned, when doing projects there's actually more opportunity to feedback to the Training Officers/HR managers regarding the students' English levels and abilities to deal in a team within another language setting.

It was a very good session - ta, Tom!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a PROJECT idea
-tried, tested, true.

Where-oh-where's my business angel?
by Karenne Sylvester

Objective: find funding for a new project
Duration: minimum 10 lessons x 1.5ue (works best with 15)

Overview:

Students have to create a company (or use their own/one in their field). They are required to define a product or service, establish the objectives and mission of this work - it does not need to be something serious, they work out the financial viability of their concept, create a presentation for venture capitalists, present the presentation and win funding (or not).

Notes:

Best with a large group so that you can make at least two competing groups but not essential (have also done this activity with a class of 4). Best results occur when you can find another BE EFL class within the company or institute who will be prepared to act as the venture capitalists. Working with another teacher is lots of fun and their class can research millionaires and take on their personalities (see Forbes 500 for list of global millionaires). Failing this, in the final lesson you can also act as if you are one.

Language resources:
Supportive photocopiable sheets from Business Communications Games, Business Builder, Business English frameworks to discuss: mission statements, company structure, corporate culture, company history, company image/designing a logo, sales figures, trends and graphs, employee morale.

TwIT (Teaching with Technology) resources:

• Youtube playlist (here)
  

• Slideshare presentations
  

| Get your Presentation Pack

Procedure:

In the first lesson, present the idea to the students. Explain what materials you have which can support the activity. Get them to decide what they would like to do, how they will create both company and product and what supportive materials they think would be a good idea to use in order to learn the necessary lexical steps (I usually give them the books and let them choose but you can bring in photocopies of relevant sheets and let them do a scan of them and decide). Get them to do a full project plan and curriculum timetable, ask them if they would like to establish roles and decide who's doing what.

In my experience, each time that I have done this project with BE adults, I have been wowed by the results and out-of-class effort the students have put in. One group created a new bicycle and then found pictures of future bicycle concepts and photo-shopped them to carry "their" own logo.

One group presented the most complex and detailed sales projections I've ever seen, one group invented a cup which connects to a computer to stay warm with revolving photos.. part of which apparently now exists...

Perhaps I'm just lucky, but even at one company I worked at, our sister class who had become the millionaires took the project very seriously indeed, reviewing the presentations with the utmost of sincerity, eventually granting "5million" to one of the teams!

Have you got a great idea?
Go on ahead and share too - click on COMMENTS - a box will open up and you can write out your project there. Or, if it's something you typed up you can e-mail it to me and I'll stick it somewhere with a link to it. If it's already on your blog or website, simply write the link for us all below.

Best,
Karenne

Politics, power and the media

What an amazing picture!

Don't they look like they're great friends here, discussing a project or working out how best to get things done - together?

Well, as we all know, they're not friends.

They're opponents in the great race for US Presidency. The story is being covered globally, in every newspaper and on every news website... on every social site. It's not as if we can run away from it, now is it?


This situation prompted me to think that this would make great fodder for an EFL lesson on the role media and social networking sites play in politics.

The effects of Joe the Plumber or the Obama Girl have been tremendous - it seems everyone's jumping on the band wagon so why not us, English language teachers, too.

However, I do wonder what effect this will have on politics around the world.

Will all politicians create their own Youtube channels? Will they too twitter and flickr?

I've a tough time seeing Angela Merkel being loved this much - but I could be wrong. Maybe this is the new way to reach 'the people.'

What do you think, is it an effective way to preach a message? Does it seem strange to you or is it fascinating?

Don't decide, get your students to!

And if you're hoping to do a lesson on this subject sometime over the next 10 days or so, check out the collection of youtube videos I've slapped together or visit the articles, images and more that I've saved on delicious.

You're welcome to send the links on to your students too. Get them to do the research at home and then come into class geared up for a great debate.

I've also made a "special edition" version of my SimplyConversationsTM: downloadable Politics set with a SimplyQuestTM for your students for free.

Don't hesitate to let me know how it all goes & may the best man win!


Here's an example video of social networking and media in action. This is a video which came via email. Very interesting - very effective.
5.11.08
If I was an American, if I was in the US, I'm pretty sure I know where I'd have been that Tuesday!! Although, I did celebrate in Germany!



Useful links:

Articles, blogs and more
Youtube videos (various videos in the lead up)
Wordle cloud images (great for pre-teaching vocabulary: search for Obama & McCain or politics - new versions updated regularly)
Flickr photos (good for prompting discussions)

If you're not sure how to download videos on to your laptop go here.

Added 5 November 2008:
He did it!!!

The Guardian UK have a fascinating interactive map which you can use with students to discuss the demographics of the voters (and of America itself). Click here.

Obama's acceptance speech:




Higher quality (full) video can also be watched on the Guardian, transcript to the speech here.
The Changing Minds blog has written a very interesting analysis of the speech. You can find this here.

McCain's gracious defeat:



Still not enough materials to smack together a great lesson? Here's a flickr photostream!




Download the photos (or your students can) and use to discuss the probable feelings and emotions during the different scenes - in the lead up, when it happened and the aftermath.

Would work well with A2 students and above.

"He was nervous, he looks sad... she seems bored, she's excited etc."

The direct link to the photostream on flickr is here.

If you also teach kids or young adults, get them involved in a letter-writing project to Obama, details can be found on Nik Peachey's blog here.

Karenne,

p.s. If you would like to purchase a set of conversation cards on politics, you can find them here (€.79 for individuals, €2.39 for institutes). Free samples of other sets, here.

Fatally Financial

The messages of doom and gloom slither out of every corner of the newspapers.

Your students cautiously mention that their companies aren't doing so well this year.

How did it happen? How'd we get in this mess?

| Get your Presentation Pack

Did you know that you can use professionally made presentations in your classes? I got these above from SlideShare - a great site with many, many seriously good presentations which can be downloaded for free.

My favorite of these is Credit Cruncher (3rd one in the righthand bar) - although if you don't have a fast computer and can't see these, it might be a good idea to travel on over here.

The presentation is full of metaphor and meaning; the images used are simple, dynamic, straightforward and although the author uses few words, what's there creates a good lexical set.

Slideshares make excellent teaching aids, it's a good idea to spend a little time on their site although of course, I'll be dipping back in and showing you my faves. They're especially good for pre-teaching vocabulary, providing support to conversation activities and generally, they work well when blended-learning supplementing textbooks or other materials.

You can also discuss the visuals, stylistic cues and how well /accurate the slides are.

Karenne,


p.s. To buy a copy of my SimplyC:finance & investment €1.49 individuals, €4.99 institutes go here. To find articles, videos etc related to this theme, go here.

Company secrets

Following on from my post about Facebook vs Twitter, the privacy or lack thereof when one chooses to place one's photo albums, private thoughts and messages to friends in a public space, I somehow got around to thinking about secrets in general.

In today's modern world, via the internet, we can easily access just about anyone's dirty laundry.

I teach a lot of bankers and financial staff in general and we're in, it would seem the beginnings of a major financial crisis, so I ended up musing about financial reporting. Okay, okay, I had nothing else to think about. But

company reports are great materials for the language classroom.

They are authentic, relevant and often topical and believe it or not, interesting(!) , in short, if you teach financial English and want to get away from the textbook they make the perfect tool.

All the language your students could possibly need if they have to write their own reports in English, is contained within.

When discussing them - what is involved and included, the introductions written by the CEOs, the format and style of language, the pie-charts and statistics - you will be able to cover a lot of very useful vocabulary and believe me, it's very realistic and relevant English speaking practice.

I've got some notes below on what you can do with them in class, however, please feel free to add your own tips and tricks in the comment box as I'd love for you to share with me too.

But first,

where to find company reports?

A lot of corporate websites actually have links on their pages which lead to their published reports.

First, visit the website of the company you're interested in, then look for a heading that reads financial reports or investor info or annual report.

You are often given the options of downloading (.pdf), or printing (watch out, they can be very long) and, if you're lucky, there will also be an emailing option. Emailing is a good idea if you have your students' addresses, let them decide if they want to print it out or read on-line.

There is also a great site, called AnnualReports.com which offers a huge variety of freely downloadable reports on listed companies.

The site is easy to use: simply state what company you're looking for in the box, click and you reach a pdf which you can download/read on-line. You can also search by industry or sector.

Top Tip:
Merrill Lynch have also published a guide to understanding financial reports, available on Scribd.

This .pdf brochure explains the major components within a financial report and a lot of the "jargon" is broken down into layman's terms (perfect as a teaching material - or a training tool for the non-financial Business English teacher who find him/herself having to teach these types of students!).

What to do with financial reports in the language classroom?

Lesson plan idea 1:

• Ask your students for a list of 3 - 5 of their top competitors. If you're teaching at a bank or investment company, then ask them for a list of their clients. (This may be confidential information so treat it thus).
  

• Find the company reports. Bring in the most relevant pages (or let your students do this task and make this decision). Some may be interested in only the balance sheet, some may like to concentrate on other specific areas.

• Ask your students to make a comparative chart using either a flip-chart size piece of paper or an excel spreadsheet.

Lesson plan idea 2:

• Provide students with the link to AnnualReports.com and then get them to choose a company they would like to do research on. They can do this at home or if you have a classroom with internet access and laptops they can do it in-class.

• Ask them to create presentations of what they've learned. Multi-media it! (i.e. grab logos, link to videos and advertisements etc.,)
  

Lesson plan idea 3:

• Choose a large international company that is currently undergoing a financial crisis (based on the news of the day).
  

• Print out their report for the previous year(s) - focus on the balance sheet - get your students to analyze it and make opinions on why they think the company went bust/ is experiencing difficulties.

• Ask students to become detectives and follow up on their opinions. They can check googlenews, wikipedia and other sources (including news published in their own language).
  

• Ask them to go in-depth and find out the steps that ocurred before the company went under.
  

• Hold an interesting discussion on what they found out.
  

Lesson plan idea 4

• Get students to pick a major international company and ask them to read the financial report. Look specifically at their plans for the future.
  

• Ask your group to think about what the future really holds - are the company's expectations realistic, why - why not?
  

Take care, enjoy the weekend!

Karenne


p.s. If you teach financial students, you may also be interested in my SimplyC:finance and investment conversation cards and related webquest. Click here to purchase them (€1.49).