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Tuesday, September 21, 2010
- I find that intermediate to advanced students are often after words that belong to a relatively rare word category, academic word list vocabulary or idioms that are quite rare or even old-fashioned. They roam the vast resources of the Internet (which is good, but can present an overload of information) or draw their knowledge from bilingual grammar/vocabulary books that sometimes have inaccurate or out-of-context translations which they put a lot of effort acquiring.
At the same time, students are often wordless in questions of ‘which..?’ type e.g.: ‘which dog do you have?’ (name a breed), ‘what flowers did you buy?’ (roses,...well...no answer), ‘which fabric is it made of?’ or ‘what fish did you have for dinner?’ that are more of a day-to-day value.
The fall is here. With warm afternoons and cool nights the trees are starting to change colors and it makes a wonderful small talk topic of the day. Can your students name the trees that are native to their region?-
- Here are some links that can help your students to explore Canadian trees:
how different trees look
provincial and territorial trees
Ontario trees
What’s more useful than being able to name and describe what you see?
POSTED BY Olga Galperin AT 12:09 AM
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Friday, September 03, 2010
- In our adult ESL classes here in Toronto our students call us (the instructors) by our first name or more rarely Mrs./Mr. + last name. I ask my students to call me Olga. Throughout the course I write my name on the board a few times and use it in sample sentences or made-up stories when I explain new words or structures, and yet some students persistently call me ‘teacher’ or Mrs. Olga.
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- True, we say ‘driver, can you please open the door?’, but ‘teacher, I have a question’ sounds impersonal. Similarly, we don’t say 'excuse me, cashier, or bank teller' - we read a name tag or ask for a name. Addressing each person by his/her name before starting a conversation is an important life skill and worth an effort to emphasize in class.
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- Mrs. Olga sounds quite amusing too - this probably comes from different perceptions of distance between a student or a teacher. Just ‘Olga’ sounds disrespectful for students with higher levels of power distance and they feel better if they use Mrs.
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- It’s hard to make students ‘unlearn’ addressing their instructor as ‘teacher’. But I find the following activity can be a memorable way to keep the importance of addressing people in the right way in mind:
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- Read the list of terms (1-15) below. Match the term to the correct group of people (A-E) that you could address using this term.
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- A-casual friend or acquaintance
B-superior i.e. boss, teacher, customer etc.
C-close friend
D-girlfriend, boyfriend, or spouse
E-unacceptable
bro - C
sugar __
miss __
boy __
ma’am __
old man/woman __
dude __
Mr./Ms./Mrs./Prof. __
sir __
girl __
sweetheart __
buddy__
baby __
first name (i.e. Lucy) __
POSTED BY Olga Galperin AT 11:52 PM
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