Showing posts with label walk-through-the-archives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label walk-through-the-archives. Show all posts

What a mad month! July 2009

The Big News

473 blogs were nominated from 26 countries and 5000 readers voted placing Kalinago English as #9 in the Bab.la/Lexiophiles list of top language teaching blogs!!!

For other winning categories, see :

Crazy, don't really know quite what to say.

It's a mega honor, so to all of you who voted:



THANK YOU VERY, VERY MUCH
;-)



And if that's not enough, just as insanely, it's currently the no. 1 blog on OneStopEnglish blogs!

Hmmm... are you guys liking reading my rants or it's the pretty picture of the sailboats that keep bringing you back?



Anyhoo, on to

Summary of July's Postings


This month I wrote:

Lessons/ lesson tips:

Social-networking:
Rants and musings:


Coming Next Month...

The series on She-In-ELT kicks off this month and I've got some seriously fantastic guest-pieces lined up.

Towards the middle of the month I'll be doing a feature piece on ELT teacher trainers who are on LinkedIn (check the discussion pages of the LinkedIn groups: BESIG/ Teacher-trainers for details).

And will also be posting up a workshop review regarding David Graddol's fascinating research into the current state of English and other languages.

For those of you on Twitter, that's how I got to meet @ShellTerrell and @EnglishProfi! Such fun ;-).

The long awaited Advice for NOObie bloggers will be going up early next week plus a really awesome speaking skills game/lesson worksheet in the pipeline.



On Life


Isn't summer supposed to be when everything goes a bit quiet and you get to catch up on important life stuff? Mine's all been a bit nuts and I've had to do quite a bit of juggling to get everything to fit together.

My cousin Pat, her husband and son were here and I discovered that there is actually a LegoLand not far from Stuttgart - we had great fun together and Chris declared that Stuttgart is all about fountains and trains.

He's right.

I started working on a materials writing project for Klett and also confirmed a major client for ESP: IT classes + community based language learning platform to begin October. Very chuffed about this.

Despite all this, I actually had a holiday!

Ran off to Malta for five days of relaxation, recharging the batteries via forced unplugging of the internet and all other electronic devices and instead caught up on some important reading - booked the holiday with a last minute travel agent and somehow ended up staying in a palace built by the Knights of St. John!



Read 5 books.

Okay, 4 and a half. There was a lot of waiting around in airports.



I really enjoyed Hape Kerkeling's I'm Off Then - about his Camino de Santiago - it's funnier in German but still, as I'd listened to this pre-pilgrimage, it was a treat reading about the places that I'd been to myself along the road and recognizing experiences.

On the same sort of theme, I then read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert - absolutely recommend this if you're into travel/exploring spirituality books. She journeys through Italy, India and Indonesia and talks about what happens to her there.

Then, of course, I got a bit serious and did my homework. Ploughed my way through Hugh McLeod's Ignore Everybody and Seth Godin's Purple Cow. Both excellent books on creativity.



Lastly, I read most of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers which I'd been meaning to get to for ages.

Now that I'm back, haven't finished it. Pah!

Hope you've been having an awesome summer too!

Best,
Karenne

A walk through my archives - June 2009

This month on Kalinago English I've been writing about teaching speaking in

süiderman
and loaded up notes and teacher-training slideshares from two workshops I gave at the VHS in Leinfelden

advanced

Shared a vocabulary tip, inserting a bit of drama into this process and got some excellent extra suggestions and advice from readers in


Had a bit of a reflective moment and whittled on with thoughts on online relationships but also had a big ol' rant about teachers who are still not using technology in their classes in


...and according to a privately received email, the people who do these jobs are actually called Blacksmiths if they make the shoes and Farriers if they fit them on to the horses! See how much you learn when you're a blogger ;-), (Thanks, Bob!)


shotput

At the beginning of the month, I offered up my latest tech-tip on using google alerts and rss feeds to find information easily (important for bloggers too) in


Put out two call-outs for your participation & contribution to this page and still accepting your emails, recommendations, comments & forum additions via LinkedIn, Facebook or Yahoo!

But not Twitter, okay... I really do need more than 140 characters ;-).


captain bob

Offered up a poll looking for the best-class-busy-blogging here (results coming out: Wednesday!) and dealt with a frequent email request on how to find work in the TEFL industry by listing the links to the sites that usually deal with those issues here.



On How-2-Learn-English, my blog for students learning English, well... I lost my very newly smart, self-programmed, layout when tweaked one minor detail, so pah... another 10 hours down the drain!

Nevermind, I've uploaded a simple Blogger-supplied-Minima-template until I can find the time to redo it!

Wrote up a fun series on learning English through business quotations and included the wisdom of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sherman and Wayne Gretzky.

advice

Posted up some videos and exercises for students:

  • Did you know, regarding the shifting paradigm the world is currently undergoing
  • The Break-Up, a funny web 2.0 best practices video which is especially good for marketing English students
  • Michael Jackson's Ben, in memory.

Discussed collocations that go with act and ask.


Dissected the words and expressions for saying nothing in Do you know your zeros and posted up a series of Business English pronunciation videos I got from Soxo-exchange.



egg


I was also incredibly lucky:


Anthony Green of VOICEbook wrote up a lovely guest-piece for my students with a link to download a fab & free listening exercise - you can grab it too in


That's it!

I really hope you enjoyed your month with me.

Tomorrow I'll be listing up the links to all the fab blogs I've been enjoying from all across the blogosphere so prepare for a grand adventure, there are some truly brilliant minds out there.

Best,
Karenne
 

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