On Wednesday, December 13th, I did an in-house presentation on the principles underlying an effective vocabulary learning programme. This session focused on such practical considerations as: how many words learners need; which words are important; and how new vocabulary can be remembered. The slides for the presentation are contained in this post. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.
Paul’s Vocab Workshop

Level 2 Reading teachers are due to give a minimum of five quizzes this semester. As well as the in-house quizzes that you can use with your classes, there are also a set of publisher tests. They are a little easier than the in-house ones, as vocabulary is not recycled from previous units.
unit-quizzes-for-totally-true-3.pdf
unit-quiz-answers-for-totally-true-3.pdf

The posted materials support Unit 15 of Let’s Talk for the Level 2 Speaking/Listening course. However, they might be useful for any class focusing on tenses. Essentially, the students have to compare their life now and their life ten years ago. Through reminiscing, there is plenty of potential to practice lots of useful grammar. The materials involve the teacher comparing their life now with that of ten years ago. Following this, the students have time to do the same. The handout contains a language box containing useful grammar forms and vocab items. Feedback welcome.

then-and-now.doc
then-and-now.pdf

The posted materials support Unit 13 of Let’s Talk for the Level 2 Speaking/Listening course. However, they might be useful for any class focusing on jobs and personal appearance. The materials are pretty self-explanatory. As in the children’s game of “Guess who?”, the students have to ask a series of yes/no questions to eliminate possible candidates from the 28 famous faces, and guess the celebrity who their partner is thinking of. A variation (see Part D) is to have the students take it in turns to ask questions and guess. The first person to guess the right famous person is the winner. Feedback welcome.

guess-who.doc
guess-who.pdf

The posted materials support Unit 10 of Let’s Talk for the Level 2 Speaking/Listening course. However, they might be useful for any class focusing on advice giving. The materials involve the students thinking of problems and giving advice. The handout has a language box, which provides suitable language for the task. When giving the task, I recommend making sure that the students have plenty of time to embellish their problems and make them as heartfelt as possible. Feedback welcome.

thats-good-advice.pdf
thats-good-advice.doc

If you haven’t already come across them, there are some nice Let’s Talk publisher materials available online. In particular, the review board games are a nice chance to look back on what has been covered in class. The board games are in the binder, in share files and at:

http://www.cambridge.org/elt/letstalk/support/games/

The publisher instructions on how to play the game are below. If you haven’t got a dice, you could get the students to use the “janken” dice method patented by Hans. To determine how many spaces the first player moves across the board, two players use the janken method. However, instead of indicating “rock”, “scissors” or “paper”, the two players hold out between zero and three fingers. The first player moves forward by the number of fingers simultaneously held out by both players (e.g. 3+1).

Publisher instructions:

Procedure: Divide the class into groups of four students. Give each group one game board, one die, and four tokens.

Position all the students’ tokens on the square marked “Start.” The first student to play rolls the die. His or her token advances the number of squares indicated on the die. If the square asks a question or requests information, the student should answer the question or provide the necessary information. There are no right or wrong answers. Students should be encouraged to give thoughtful, complete answers.

If a token lands in a square at the bottom of a ladder, it immediately advances to the top of the ladder, where the student should respond to the question or request in that square. If a token lands in a square that contains the head of a snake, it slides back to the square at the tail of the snake. (The token makes no extra move if it lands on a square at the top of a ladder or on the tail of a snake.)

If a token moves to a square that does not have a question or request, the student gets to stay on the square without answering a question or giving information.

After the first student completes his or her turn, the other students roll the die in turn. The first student to reach the square marked “Finish” is the winner.

Option: As a bonus for answers that show creativity, thoughtfulness, or extra effort, you (or other players) can choose to advance a player an agreed-upon number of squares.

There seem to be lots of great ideas floating around for how to use the Level 2 Eigo B textbook, Totally True 3. I would like to try and document and share these ideas for all of our benefit. Here is the beginnings of a list. To add to the list, please go to the relevant file on Shared Files (2007 Eigo 1A & 1B>Level 2>Eigo 1B Reading and Writing>07 Eigo 1B Reading>Ideas for Using TT3). To just see the list, as well as being on the Shared Files, it can also be found in the back of the Level 2 Eigo B binder.

Template and example for TT3 ideas.doc

I’ve posted some crossword puzzles to support for Units 1 to 16 of the Level 2 Eigo A book, Let’s Talk 1. The crosswords target the new vocab that is selected and defined in the Teacher’s Book. There are 2 files per unit, a student puzzle and an answer key.

These puzzles can also be done online by students on the elpweb.com site. Here is the link: http://elpweb.com/resources/slevel2listspeaking.php

U1.pdf
U1 answers
U2.pdf
U2 answers.pdf
U3.pdf
U3 answers.pdf
U4.pdf
U4 answers.pdf
U5.pdf
U5 answers.pdf
U6.pdf
U6 answers.pdf
U7.pdf
U7 answers.pdf
U8.pdf
U8 answers.pdf
u9.pdf\
u9-answers.pdf
u10.pdf
u10-answers.pdf
u11.pdf
u11-answers.pdf
u12.pdf
u12-answers.pdf
u13.pdf
u13-answers.pdf
u14.pdf
u14-answers.pdf
u15.pdf
u15-answers.pdf
u16.pdf
u16-answers.pdf

There were plenty of paper copies at the orientation, the files are on Secret Sensei, and you can find them on Shared Files if you are at Obirin, but for easy reference anytime and anywhere, here are links to the curriculum documents for Level 2, spring term, 2007.

07 Eigo I Instructor Notes Level 2.pdf
07 Eigo I Student Notes Level 2.pdf

If you have questions about the content of these notes, please don’t hesitate to ask any of the members of the Level 2 team. Suggestions are always welcome too.

For Levels One and Two, Participation Grade is worth ten percent of the students’ grades for both Eigo IA (Listening and Speaking) and Eigo IB (Reading and Writing). Specifically, the Participation Grade has been sub-divided into English Use, Classroom Participation, and Classroom Behaviour. To ensure the Participation Grade encourages students to meet the course goals of improving their English and enhancing their study skills, it is important that learners receive updates on their Participation Grade progress during the semester. The handout in this posting should be given to the students. Learners should review their own performance, and get feedback from their teacher. The Participation Grade should not simply be used as reward/punishment that is only introduced at the end of the semester.

Participation Grade Handout

Translated Participation Grade Handout

The posted materials support Unit 2 of Let’s Talk for the Level 2 Speaking/Listening course. However, they might be useful for any class focusing on describing personal appearance. The material first involves a listening activity. The students hear two people talking about the people in the line-up (which is printed on the materials). The recorded conversation involves one first person asking yes/no questions to the second person to work out who the second person is thinking about. The students simply have to work out who is being thought about. The accompanying CD is available on the Level 2 shelf. After the listening, there is a speaking activity in which the students have to do the same thing with a partner. Hope that description wasn’t too confusing. Feedback welcome.

Guess Who?

The posted materials support Unit 2 of Let’s Talk for the Level 2 Speaking/Listening course. However, they might be useful for any class focusing on describing personal appearance. The materials involve the learners describing their perfect mate, while their class partner draw this perfect specimen. Since the drawing rarely looks like anything like how the first person intended, the activity can be a lot of fun. However, it’s important that the “artist” does not show the “describer” the drawing until the end of the activity. Before getting the students to do the activity, I model what should be done by describing my perfect partner and getting them to do the drawing. Feedback welcome.

The imaginitively titled, Activities Activity supports Unit 3 of Let’s Talk for the Level 2 Speaking/Listening course. However, it might be useful for any class focusing on freetime and hobbies. During the activity, the students have to associate the verbs, “go”, “play”, and “do (some)” with the appropriate activity. Then, there is an opportunity to use this language in a fluency-based activity. Before doing the fluency activity, it is worth carefully modelling the task to ensure that everyone understands what to do. Feedback welcome.
Activities Activity

The posted materials support Unit 2 of Let’s Talk for the Level 2 Speaking/Listening course. However, they might be useful for any class focusing on describing personal appearance. Before class, the teacher has to cut the handout into 2 pieces. Before giving the paper to the students, the learners should be given one minute to try to remember their partner’s clothes and appearance. Then, they should sit “Back to Back”. At this point, give one half of the handout to Person A, and the other half to Person B. The rest is self-explanatory. Feedback welcome.

“Back to Back”

The second semester Level 2 Reading Final Test is now ready. There is no need to print out the tests, they will be printed for you. This posting is just for reference purposes.

1) The test requires students to know enough of the words to put them into a cloze. There are also a lot of questions tapping a purely receptive understanding, and a few spelling items.
2) The cloze sections are summaries of the stories in the units. So, the students who regularly come to class will be at an advantage.
3) Some students will finish much quicker than others. To to keep the fast finishers occupied, there is a riddle at the end. The answer is on the answer sheets.
4) There are two versions of the tests to provide an obstacle to any nefarious test taking strategies. The tests cover the same material, but the questions are in a different order.
5) The test can be given any time that suits the intructor.

Apart from the spelling questions which are each worth half a point, each question is worth one point. The grades to associate with the scores are the same as for the speaking test and are as follows:

49-50 A+
47-48 A
45-46 A-
43-44 B+
41-42 B
39-40 B-
37-38 C+
35-36 C
33-34 C-
31-32 D+
29-30 D
27-28 D-
26 and below F

As you will see from the scale above, scoring an A+ may be quite difficult. However, but many students should be able to score an A- if they have prepared regularly. It is hoped that many of the students should fall in the B range. Some students may receive an F according to this scale, but that mark still earns them points towards their final EIgo II grade.

Please feel free to pass on any feedback.

Level 2 Final Test VERSION A with answers.doc
Level 2 Final Test VERSION B with answers.doc
answer sheet.doc

As the Level 2 writing teachers will know, there are more weeks than there are units in the Totally True 3 coursebook. Therefore, for some weeks, there is the opportunity to use some of your own materials. I’ve attached some materials that I put together for a non-coursebook week. The materials essentially revolve around a gap-fill reading exercise. I adapted the text from something from a textbook. The materials are a work in progress, so any feedback or upgrading would be welcome!

Reading Exercise: Sarah Chang Violinist
Reading Exercise: Sarah Chang Violinist - Teachers’ Notes

As part of most writing courses, there are a number of technical writing terms that students need to be aware of. However, few of the first year students are familiar with these words at the start of the year. To help them review these words, I’ve been using a few vocabulary related warm-up activities. The crossword is self-explanatory, but there are teacher’s notes for the pelmonism activity. I’ve focused on the vocabulary, topic sentence, transitions, details, draft, mind map, paragraph, sentence, and indent, but you can easily adapt the materials to anything you want.
Writing Vocabulary Crossword.doc
Vocabulary Pelmonisms.doc
Teacher Notes - Pelmonisms.doc

This is a writing rubric that Peter McDonald and I have been working on, and using with our Level 2 classes. It focuses on 3 main areas, content (whether the essay uses clear topics, and has contains ideas that are well supported and developed), presentation (spelling, indenting, sufficiently long and with enough paragraphs, etc.), and grammar/vocabulary (clarity, accuracy, and complexity). It is pretty broadly-based, so we’ve been able to use the same rubric with all of the level 2 first semester essays.
Level 2 Writing - Alternative Rating Rubric.doc

There seem to be a lot of people who, like me, are teaching discussion and debate extensions classes. Since I’ve not heard of anyone using a textbook, there’s a good chance to improve our courses by sharing materials. I’m going to gradually add my “Discussing Current Issues” materials to this posting. When it’s unclear how to use them, I’ll add some teachers’ notes.

Language for giving an opinion, agreeing and disagreeing
Language for giving an opinion, agreeing and disagreeing with answers