The Inverted Eagle: A Student's Book Review

I'm super proud to offer you my very first guest post on this blog from one of my students:
Martina R.

Back Story:  

On January 21st, Adam Gray and Marcos Benevides released the World's First Free-to-Share Commercial ELT Textbook.  Martina (an adult who works in banking) and I have been working for some time on her use of connectors in written work - particularly reports and emails - however I decided to invite her to visit the link provided by Marcos on Twitter, as knowing that she loves crime fiction books I thought that perhaps reporting on a story in English might help her to utilize these words in a more natural context.  She downloaded the book and wrote not only a summary of the story but also made notes on what she learned and provided Marcos with feedback regarding the sale of creative commons licensed material via the internet. 

SUMMARY

The story is told by Adam Gray and Marcos Benevides and has 6 chapters. The length of each chapter is comfortable. In the following I will give you a short summary of the content of the individual chapters:


Introduction - Characters:

Mr. Evan and Nancy Reed both are in the fifties, Judith Reed is the mother of Mr. Evan Reed. The Reeds had two children: Kevin and Allison. Lucia Deza was the housekeeper of the Reeds, Miguel was the son of Lucia and was also living in the Reed´s house.  A detective, Eliana Koo, in charge of the investigation. Officer Kazuo Yokota helped Eliana. Eliana’s nickname is Ellie.

Chapter 1

There was a crime in the Reed´s house: a robbery and a drugging. Someone stole all things which were located in the wall safe above the bed of Evan and Nancy. Both were victims. Things of value were kept in the safe: jewelry, some stamps and cash: about $ 80k. Judith and the housekeeper found the Reeds at their bedroom in the morning. 

You should know that the wall safe was opened without the use of force!

Evan and Nancy had to stay some days in the hospital, due to the drugging. But both victims were okay.

Seven people were living in the house of the Reeds: the five Reeds and the housekeeper with her son.  Kevin, the son of the Reeds, was twenty-four years old, and unemployed. His younger sister Allison was twenty-one and a student at Brown University. By the way, she was engaged to marry Derrick Quenton, the son of the owner of the Quenton Hotels. The Quentons were one of the richest family in the country. Miguel was nineteen years old and a pre-med student at Georgetown University. He was born in Peru.

Ellie visited the Reeds and started her investigation.

Firstly, Ellie had a look at the bedroom of the Reeds´ where the crime happened. She made a detailed scan of the whole room and wrote her notes directly into her laptop. An important detail she noticed was a spilled teacup and a large wet spot near the teacup. Then, Ellie talked with Ms. Judith Reed and the housekeeper Lucia to get a first picture of what happened on the day when the crime had taken place. Two important questions were “Who knows the combination of the wall safe?” and “Who had a key to the bedroom of Evan and Nancy Reed?”



Chapter 2: Three Interviews

A lot of questions and many answers as well as an interesting feedback from the crime lab.

The crime lab found out that the tea which the Reeds had got (?) before the robbery was drugged with powerful sleeping pills. Nancy Reed was allergic to these pills.   Ellie had a conversation with Kevin first, the unemployed son of the Reeds. She asked him about his activities last night and where he was.

The second conversation was between Ellie and Allison, the youngest daughter of the Reeds. Ellie asked her the same questions as she had asked Kevin – what did you do last night and where? Moreover, Ellie asked Allison about her fiancé Derrick.

Finally, Ellie wanted to have a talk with Miguel. He started the conversation with “I have something to tell you that will make me look guilty, ….” After his honest statement, Ellie asked him the same questions as the two women.

Two of the three people could have a reason to steal the things out of the wall safe: (a) Kevin – because he was unemployed and needed additional money and (b) Miguel - because Evan and Nancy Reed wanted him to leave the house – and Miguel could be angry about this. In addition, the student was studying medicine, so he knew about the effect of sleeping pills.



Chapter 3 – The Hospital

The first lie: Judith told Ellie that she lied concerning the combination of the wall safe, she gave the numbers to Kevin. Because of her age, Judith forgot, that she also gave the combination to Miguel. After this, Ellie wanted to hear the whole story. Judith started to tell the story which had begun a month ago with the purchase of a beautiful stamp.

At the end of the conversation between Ellie and Judith Reed Yokota, a colleague of Ellie and Kevin entered the room. Ellie saw Kevin and she accused him of lying to her.

The next steps: Elle checked the stories of the involved people and wanted to search the house from the top to bottom.

After that, Ellie drove to the hospital where Evan and Nancy Reed were staying. Nancy was sleeping  and Even was telephoning someone with his cell phone. Ellie stopped in front of the door and tried to understand the call between Evan and the other person. The words (which) she heard were “Brian … investors …. excited about the project – to get money together”. Some / a few seconds after the  call, Ellie went into the room and introduced herself to the Reeds. Then she told the Reeds a part of her investigation. It was surprising, that Evan accused his son of committing the robbery, because the Reeds wanted that Kevin tried to find a job and they had informed him that they were stopping his monthly allowance. Later, Ellie asked the Reeds to describe the occurrences which happened last night separately?

At the end of the Chapter, Yokota called Ellie and told her that there might be a new motive ….

Chapter 4 – The Suspect

The likely suspect was Kevin at the moment – he lied several times: concerning the safe combination, his financial situation and his activities on the day of the crime.

Suddenly, the cell phone of Ellie rang again and Yokota was on the other end of the line. He had an interesting piece of news which would change the current situation and the investigation: The police found the stolen things in the room of ……

Ellie spoke to the person in which room they found the stolen things.

Chapter 5 – Family Secrets

Ellie had a daughter. When Ellie investigated a hot case and needed a lot of time, Sofia –  her daughter – stayed sometimes at her neighbor.

Ellie talked again with Allison. The daughter of the Reed´s didn´t believe that Miguel was a criminal. Ellie discussed again with Allison about the relationship between both and checked the schedule last night. Allison had an advantage, her diary, in which Ellie found the proof that Allison told the truth.

Later Ellie decided to check the bedroom of the Reeds once again and she found new findings.

Chapter 6 – The Arrest

Back at the police station, Ellie made a few phone calls and received some interesting information about Mr. Reed and his financial situation. Moreover, the lab had new findings concerning the stolen things. Finally, Ellie had all information to proof who was the suspect. She went to the hospital and told the Reeds the result of her investigation.

-  0  -

Key words and phrases I learned

The first time I read the story, it was interesting. During the second reading, I marked the words I didn´t know. I translated some of the marked words which I think could be important and interesting for me. For instance: “unconsciously – my donkey bridge = the two people were drugged..”.  The story is realistic, so I can draw pictures in my mind to keep new words. In addition, I have learned vocabulary like “nodded” (nicken), “muttered (murmeln)”, “growled” (knurren), “yawned” (gähnen), “frowned” (die Stirn runzeln), “yelled” (schreien), “urged” (ermahnen), “scoffered” (verspotten / Judith scoffered Ellie.), “annoyed” (verärgert / Ellie looked annoyed).  The word “cane”: A lot of older people being over 70 years need a support when they will go / will move – for example they could use a cane.  “Allowance” – Taschengeld. Children get a fixed allowance per month.   

Furthermore, I reviewed my grammar skills. 

Interesting points of grammar I noticed

The position of an adverb – for example: “Ellie asked gently.” – also possible “Ellie gently asked.” Or “Ellie said politely.”

Best features to this style of writing and exercises – enjoyed most

The style of writing is moderate, the essential vocabularies are understandable and most of the essential vocabulary is comprehensible. The author mostly uses short sentences. The different exercises are helpful as they repeat the content of the chapter and the vocabulary. I especially like the questions, which will result in an answer for an important question. To describe a picture (a room) in a way of adding the missing things is also a good idea.  The story, the exercises as well as the content of the story, all this things are successful but the vocabulary in the story could be on a little slightly higher level - could be slightly more challenging.

If you had to buy this book, what price would be suitable / what is it worth?

I would like to pay around 10 Euros for such a book. The book is worth between 20 and 30 Euros. The ideas / conceptions of exercises are brilliant. But the Internet offers a lot of books and exercises so that I think, people will not pay more than EUR 9.99 for such a learning book which you can download via Internet.

Martina R.

Stuttgart/2 Mai 2010

Oh, by the way, Adam &Marcos - Martina has already started Death on U Street and she wanted me to let you know  that she'd like you to write more books please.

What do you think of Martina's summary?  Would you like to give her feedback on her description or ask her any questions?  Do you think that your students would benefit from reading a summary like this?   

Where are learning materials heading - how long will it be before most textbooks and readers become available online?  What do you think of their bold strategy in allowing the price for download to be determined by the purchaser? 


Useful links

• Whodunnit? by Adam Gray and Marcos Benevides
• Marcos Benevides' blog on Task-Based Learning
• Abax Publishing Blog
• Scraps: a dogme-style textbook?
• Creative Commons 

Best,
Karenne
image credits: Eagles by Alaskan Dude on Flickr.com

Use it: Don't Let Them Lose It!

Scenario:
You've just done a really weighty, vocabulary rich text with your English language learners.

It was a great article from Business Spotlight or maybe something you downloaded from an online news source.

Perhaps it was a reading out of a textbook a little above their level (oops!) or you had them review sections from an authentic, bestselling, business book in their field.

You were so keen - it was exactly their interests, you sigh, yet it was just too much vocabulary.

Now you're all feeling a bit overwhelmed and they're looking at you like you are the meanest English teacher in the world.

So you buckled down and successfully explained the words, spent a chunk of class time dissecting the meanings, giving/getting examples with some of the students hitting their translators or looking in their dictionaries.

At the end of the lesson, you had them list the new words in their language journals.

Done. Ready to scurry on out of that failed lesson?

STOP.

There were at least 12 words they had never seen before. It might have been 20. *Blush*

Deep down you know there's a real good chance they may not know them next week either, let alone in a month's time.

Was it important vocabulary, I mean did you choose the article because it was stuff they expressed an interest in, it's topical and relevant to their lives?

So they would benefit from knowing that great lexis. Right?

It's your task now to transfer some of those into their active vocabularies.

Instead of using a whole lesson dissecting words (or rather you teaching them the vocabulary) why not work on a few and put these into active use.

Here's one tip on how to do this:

1. What's important?

Not all of that lexis is stuff they're going to be able to use again. Get your students to individually decide which words are most relevant and encourage them to choose no more than 8 that they can see as being useful.

All the better if they can choose whole phrases, i.e. a prudent investment is stickier than "prudent."

2. Let's share what was so hard
Get one of the students to go up to the board eliciting words and phrases that the rest of the class want to learn. Encourage students to share at least 4 - add numbers when you hear a word or phrase repeated.

At the end of this, draw a circle around these highest ranking words.

3. Why those words?
Look at the highest ranking words and phrases. Ask students why they chose these, getting them to repeat them as they explain their reasons.

4. What's the situation?
Ask your students to brainstorm circumstances when these phrases might be used in a conversation.

Would it be on the telephone? In a meeting? A meeting about what?

At a business dinner? Throw out some ideas and get them to tell you others.

5. Who's using those words?
Tell them they're eavesdropping on a conversation. It's awfully interesting. Who's speaking?

6. What are they saying?
Divide your students into groups and tell them to write out a dialogue. Get volunteers from each group to become the secretaries.

7. The screenwriting event.
The secretaries' post-task activity is to type up the mini-screenplays and bring in copies for the rest of the class.

The rest of the students should either

a) look for examples of these words in context on google (see here) or
b) use at least two words/phrases during the week with their colleagues or clients and report back with the who and how in the next lesson.

You know what's coming next, right?

8. The Oscars
In the next class, check and edit the screenplays. Encourage students to mix into different groups to read and review each others dialogues. Ask for volunteers to do one as a quick play.

Ask some of the students if and how they used the words they chose during the week or if they read them anywhere else.

Over the coming lessons, throughout the following weeks, you now have two different here's-one-I-made-earlier ice-breakers/ warmers /fillers at hand and can get different students acting out the various dialogues or discussing how students have managed to use the vocabulary.

They love that part, especially if they inject the words into a later conversation and you notice.

As always, hope this works for you as well as it does for me!

You can apply these steps to any lesson which involves teaching a lot of lexis in one go.

Before you dash off though, do you have another tip or suggestion for us on making vocabulary sticky?

Share your ideas by clicking comments and thanks very much!






Useful links related to this posting:

What to do with emergent language
Beam their errors on to the wall
Finding articles in your students fields
Noticing the News
Reading turned into speaking

Best,
Karenne

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

Noticing the news

Do you occasionally use news articles with your English language students?



Do your prefer using newspapers or do you like searching for articles on-line?

I used to use the articles from the Guardian Weekly (about once a month there's a lesson or two enclosed) however, these days I tend to prefer the stuff that's on-line.

The BBC's Learning English site has lessons bundled together with vocabulary activities. Often the topics they've chosen aren't that interesting or, surprisingly, not that topical either!

There are also a couple of sites which utilize news stories to springboard more in-depth discussions and active conversations.

I recommend:

• Breaking News English Lessons
  

• Languages Out There - materials which go way beyond just reading and looking at vocabulary. Challenging speaking activities - much different from the norm.
  

*if you'd like to recommend a site related to this theme, don't hesitate to add it below.

However if you've checked through these and unfortunately haven't found what you're looking for or you're simply in the mood for putting together your own news lesson, then here's a quick techie-sort-of-tip for you below.

PREP (10-15mins):

• Go to Google, look at the top bar and click NEWS.
  

Make sure your computer is set for Google.com (in English).

• Look at the left-hand side of the screen where it reads Top Stories >World >US >Business >Entertainment etc.

• Click on one or all of these and choose one article for each student you have. Choose stories you know are currently in the popular papers of their countries, if possible, or articles related to their professional fields. Print.
  

PRE-DISCUSSION

• Hand out a news story to each member of your class.

• Ask them to scan the article for content and also to highlight INTERESTING words and phrases. Make sure they understand that
  

they don't have to understand every word, they should focus on the story.

• Stop them after a reasonable amount of time has passed.

DISCUSSION

• Break your students up into small groups and get them to share each others' stories.
  

• Encourage them to use the words and phrases they highlighted when paraphrasing.
  

POST-DISCUSSION

• Ask students to transfer the highlighted words and phrases that are useful to their lives/professions or interests into their notebooks.

• Ask them to write new sentences using these.

Also read my blog posting on using
CNN student news


Useful links related to this posting:

GoogleNews

NewYorkTimes -LearningNetwork

Simple English News

Voice of America (listening)

A real-techie-TwIT-tip
Manga (good for lower levels, not really for business classes, not really news but you may find a cartoon or two that'll fit).


Useful book
on using newspapers and articles in the classroom

via Amazon, links

• Germany
• UK
• USA + world

If you've got any other top tips, please do feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

Best,
Karenne

Reading turned into Speaking

As promised in my previous post, I'm going to give you the skinny on the excellent teacher-training workshops I attended at the ELTAF 2008. I'll be posting here and there, in between classes so they will unfold gradually.

BTW: Sabine (I think you're the anonymous commenter from the previous post - YES! I attended a great workshop on Intercultural competence in business English and have much to say on Comfort's workshop but am hoping to get the handouts emailed from Heinle before blogging about it...)

Anyway, let me kick off without boring you guys - you know I talk too much - the training session I learned the most from:

Duncan Laing of Oxford University Press (OUP)'s:

"Magic" formula for getting your students reading.

The blurb for the workshop read "Classroom time is limited and we need techniques to extract the maximum benefit from students' reading."

Super title.

In the initial moments of this workshop we watched as he fiddled around with the Smartboard and his powerpoint presentation & my heart sunk.


He seemed young, not so confident of his materials, kept double-tapping the screen (how fast we all learn, few of us had ever seen a SmartBoard before but after two previous sessions we were all experts "Tap once, Duncan" we said, feeling as frustrated as he must have done that he hadn't done a prior run through of the technical equipment).

Plus his first slides seemed to indicate this was actually a workshop for teachers of kids or teenies. I teach mainly adults.

Man, I love to be proved wrong!

Duncan introduced the Bookworms club, a Reading Circles system. After going through the teachers'handbook, he split us up into groups and got us to become his reading circle.


It was brilliant - AND I've tested out the materials in two classes so far, it works (not just in a workshop!;-).

My role was to be the culture collector and it was my job to read the story, looking for differences and similarities between my culture and the one in the text. I also had to think of some questions to ask the group.

Our story, from Bookworms Bronze, was called Little Hunters at the Lake.

This role led me to recognize the religious and/or philosophies within the story, to acknowledge the universal love for animals, no matter the culture, and how in my own culture they'd be really little chance of boys finding a gun in the house to go hunting with!

We had a dynamic conversation about the boys' emotionality and whether boys in Germany (or wherever else) would be capable of the same depth of feelings as the two little boys, Ali & Hikmet.

The other roles were just as exciting, the word master extracted words and we discussed them and their significance, the connector found relationships to his own experience, and the passage person found areas she thought most central to the story.

My feedback, on the down side, would be that you really need to know what you're doing.

The discussion leader's role sheet does not clearly provide guidelines to help him/her lead nor notes on the other roles in his group - although it does provide a framework for asking questions of the other participants.

My suggestion to the teachers deciding to try out this system, would be read through the teachers' handbook thoroughly before stepping into class and doing it. Because, honestly, once your students understand what's required of them, reading pretty seriously and suddenly becomes speaking. And that's our goal, isn't it!

Here's my rough summary of the system based on the teachers' handbook:

What are Reading Circles?

• Small groups of students who meet in the classroom to talk about stories.

• Language learners are encouraged (by having a defined purpose) to have 'real-life' discussions about the stories they've read.
  

• In each Reading Circle, each student plays a different role in the discussion.

• The six main roles (each with a specific icon) are:

1. Discussion Leader
2. Summarizer
3. Connector
4. Word master
5. Passage person
6. Culture collector

There's also the possibility of extending the roles, adding, for example an illustrator and background investigator.

At the back of the book, there's a very exciting further activity called "plotting the pyramid" and it gives students the opportunity to examine the construction of a story, breaking it down into different sections: exposition, complication, rising action, climax and resolution.

Supportive role icon badges (perhaps a little "young" -it'd be sweet if OUP could make a series and icons for adults and perhaps a business reader series) and photocopiable role sheets can be downloaded from the OUP website, free of charge.

Why use Reading Circles?

They motivate students to acquire both the habits of reading extensively and of working autonomously. They make talking about texts interesting and provide a framework for having a good discussion in English.

Links

The OUP website is truly a minefield - now why is it that British websites so often are?

Both the British Council and BBC's are also very complicated. sigh. BUT after a fifteen minute search - yes, I'm determined, I finally found the links you need to get sample pages and downloadable sheets.

OUP Bookworms samples

So that's it for today, I'd better go teach!!! However I'll leave you with a little zen quote to make you think:

"Conversation is a game of circles" Ralph Waldo Emmerson

Karenne,

p.s You may also be interested in my supportive conversation materials for students who love talking about books and reading.