Speaking tests

As I said in a recent post, we Cambridge ESOL Speaking Examiners are very busy at the moment.

For some examples of Cambridge ESOL speaking tests, you can visit the Research website.

And for some useful tips for the exam day, candidates can visit the Cambridge ESOL website here.

Good luck to all candidates and their teachers!!!

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Busy times

Today, I have finally returned to this blog - at least for long enough to sit down and write this post.

Busy times!!

http://forum.belmont.edu/eleader/2012/04/05/message-from-the-associate-dean-busy-times-a-month-in-the-life/

Right now, my roles of Speaking Examiner for Cambridge ESOL and Supervisor and Coordinator for the YLE Tests in my area for centre ES027 are taking up most of my waking hours!

Yesterday, during the Advanced Speaking Tests, candidates gave lots of different reasons for why they are studying English:  students in their last year of high school who will be heading off to university want and need a qualification to help them along their path towards a career; engineers and businessmen and women for their current or future work; more than one candidate who had lost their job recently and need to prove that they have an advanced level of English on their CV.  I hope they find a job soon.  I have never come across so many people in one examining session who had lost their job at this point in their lives.

Lets hope the situation here in Spain (and other countries) picks up soon.

A week ago, I travelled along the north coast again to San Sebastian, but this time, not for work, but to watch Bruce Springsteen in concert.  Fantastic experience!  Best concert I've ever been to I think.

Bruce sang lots of songs from his latest album, including Jack of All Trades, which he dedicated to all the people in Spain who are affected by the current economic situation:  http://youtu.be/_uoAd36koX8?t=30s


You can listen to a better recording of the song here:

Jack of all trades is a term that we could apply to us teachers.  I could add more roles to this poster, and I'm sure you could too!

Well, that's my post written for today - now I'll turn to something else on my 'to do list'! ................

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My guest post on take a photo and ........

In a previous post, I wrote about an impressive blog:  http://takeaphotoand.wordpress.com/

A while ago, Fiona Mauchline, manager of that blog, contacted me after I left a comment on one of the posts.  She asked me if I'd be interested in writing a guest post for the takeaphoto blog.  I replied that it would be a pleasure and finally, 4 months later, this became a reality!

So, here is a link to the post.  I think that you'll find it relevant, especially if you're preparing student for the Cambridge English: Preliminary or Preliminary for Schools exam.
http://takeaphotoand.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/buddha-and-oral-exams/

Hope it's useful!

Anne

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PET Speaking materials on Writefix

While I was looking at Writefix, a website designed generally to work on the area of argument and opinion essays and describing graphs, I came across a section of the site that focuses on the Cambridge English: Preliminary speaking test.

If you move your mouse over the photo, you can see tabs of text with suggestions for things you could say about this photo.

There are also some Part 2 materials for you to use with students.

I think this could be VERY useful for class and for self-study for Preliminary students.

Hope you're finding my suggestions useful!!!

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Toptenz.net and Toptenzphotos

As you know from previous posts like Camera Obscura, Camara Obscura 1, Life on the Edge, Compare and congrast challenge , I love sites with great photos for use in class.

A little earlier, I was looking at various bits and pieces on a site I like to browse from time to time (http://www.toptenz.net/).  The name says what it is - a wide and varied collection of 10 things on a theme.

To give you an example, here are four photos taken from their list of the top ten Strangest Hobbies.  What do you think the strange hobbies are?

Extreme ironing, soap carving, milk bottle collecting and mooing!!!  Never tried any of these myself!!!


I ended up at the toptenz.net sister site:
http://www.toptenzpictures.com/

When I clicked on one of the categories (Top 10 Live Moving Cinemagraph Pictures), I loved what I saw!  Here's one of the photos from the collection:

The term cinemagraph was invented by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg.  They used the technique in their fashion photography.  Check out their photos here:
http://cinemagraphs.com/


Hope you enjoy toptenz.net and toptenzphotos.com!

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Recording students describing photos

Hello again!  Sorry I've been 'missing' for a few days but life has been even more hectic than usual this week!  And it hasn't been for a lack of ideas to share with you on this blog, believe me!  I have a file full of materials and lots of links saved in my 'For later' file on my computer.

So, let's make a start on one of them!

As I told you recently, I gave a talk at the TESOL Spain 2012 Convention.

As well as giving my talk, I was able to attend a few sessions.  The first one I went to a Keynote presentation given by Russell Stannard.  Here he is in action:

(Thanks Donna Koniholm for the great photos you took at the Convention!) 

I've been reading articles and tips from Russell Stannard for a long long time.  Quite deservedly, his website http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/  has won lots of awards.

For a quick (3 minute) presentation of the site by Russell himself, I recommend watching this video.

During Russell's TESOL presentation, the tool that really caught my eye was MailVU:  http://mailvu.com/.

This allows you to record video clips on a computer using the microphone and webcam and then send them to an email contact.

Here is Russell's description of the potential use of this site for language teachers:

… you can get the students to do recordings of themselves speaking in English at home … and then sending those recordings to you, you can then listen to them and obviously give them some feedback on their oral performance…

Watch Russell explaining this site here.


So, of course, me being a Cambridge ESOL teacher and teacher trainer, I thought:  What a fantastic tool to practise the 1 minute talking about photos tasks in the Cambridge English: Preliminary, First, Advanced and Proficiency Speaking Tests!!!

Let's consider how you could go about this:
For homework, tell students which photo(s) you want them to talk about and the question you want them to answer in relation to the photo(s)

For example,

Here are your photographs.  They show people spending their free time in different ways.  I'd like you to compare the photographs and say what are the advantages and disadvantages for the people of spending their free time in these different ways.  

Source:  First for Schools Handbook

You send students a link to MailVU by email.  They open the link, record themselves doing the task, and send you the clip by email.  You watch it and can give them feedback (by return of email/record a video of yourself talking about their performance/discuss the clip with them in class (maybe while you both watch the video).

I believe it has fantastic potential for working on this part of the Cambridge ESOL speaking tests!

If you try it out, please let us know about it!

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Camera Obscura Drop Locations and great photos of London

My previous post talked about the Camera Obscura Project.


10 cameras were left at various locations last Saturday.

You can see where they were left here.

What a great set of photos for using in class!
Precisely because some of the photos (3, 4, 6 and 10 especially) are not so easy to identify because they do not show famous monuments.

So, for example, at Preliminary level (PET) we can practise language of speculation:
(For picture 10)

The camera looks as if it's on top of a bin or something you find in the street.
It could be outside a park or garden, because I can see a fence in the background.  The camera is easy to see but it might fall off and break.

One of the photos showing where the cameras were left looks very like this one:

You can see St Paul's Cathedral on the other side of the river and the Millennium Bridge which crosses the River Thames between the Tate Museum and St Paul's.

You can read the story of this bridge here:
http://www.urban75.org/london/millennium.html


And for some really great photos of London (as well as other parts of the world), visit Shew, the photographer's photoblog.

One of her photos reminded me of my last trip to London.  We saw squirrels everywhere in Hyde Park.

And Shew also has some amazing photos on Flickr.

Hope you find them useful!

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