Inspiring China - It's an amazing world - ISSUE #6 NEW! - Articles - HighLight

Inspiring China - It's an amazing world - ISSUE #6 NEW! - Articles - HighLight

Ecological issue of Highlight

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Edmund Burke 1729 - 1797


Dear friends!

EVERY DAY the world is losing an estimated 137 species.

2000 trees a minute are cut down in the Amazon alone. That is 7 football fields A MINUTE!

200,000 people A DAY are moving to cities from environments that no longer support them....

No one on Earth feels safe and secure.... but our future is in our hands, isn't it?


This issue is all about ecological matters: global or local;about the things people do to save endangered animals, to protect forests and to stop any kind of pollution, etc.

Our aim is to attract your attention to the world around you and raise the awareness that you are a unique and irreplaceable part of it. And you can make a difference!

It's high time to go green.

Best regards,
Marina Shvets.

The issue is here

Unplugged teaching An idea from Scott Thornbury

After 14 years of teaching English I'm quite bored with all those predictable course-books, and I feel like teaching something my students really need to improve their language skills, something really relevant for them. I know it might be more time-consuming than just following the instructions in the Tachers's book, but the results of such teaching I mean meeting exact students' needs is absolutely amazing and rewarding.

I made my first steps in this direction when I was preparing some students for IELTS. I gave up using the text book in 3 weeks as I realised it was "eating up" our prescious time. I started modelling every class according to my students' weak points in a certain skill. Let me boast a bit - My students' IELTS results are 6.5-7.5)))

It goes without saying, it's a risk. But Russians say "Those who don't risk, don't drink shampagne!" What's more I lke all sorts of experiments) This year I launch a course that is't based on a single textbook,actually, it's a number of books focused on particular skills. Hope I'll manage to do my best. Keep my fingers crossed.

This idea I 've stolen from Scott Thornbury and going to use it in practice asap!

"Paper conversation" - students in pairs have a conversation but written, passing paper back and forth (like on-line chat). Monitor and extract interesting errors. Change partners and do this spoken. Introduce "back channel" devices - e.g. showing interest - and they change partners a third time, trying to incorporate these. Students report to class on partner's day.

One of discoveries in 2011 : voisse.com

In our school every teacher makes a monthly audio vocabulary for the students. Some of them use Audacity, but for me it appeared a bit of a problem since you need to install that software onto your computer and then keep all MP3 files on the hard drive. So I started looking for online voice recording resources.

The 1st one that I found was vocaroo.com. I kept using it for 3 months but finally quit because there was some bug, sometomes it close while I was recording:(

The second resource was chirbit.com but again I ended up looking for something else due to the fact that on this platform it's possible to record only 5-minute tracks, which is absolulely inconvenient.

Voila! God answered my prayers - I came across voisse.com on the net! It's brilliant, very easy to use, you can record your voice as long as you like and to top it all, you can use poctures with your adio:)

Try it and you'll like it!

My article about Cuba - in our school ezine HighLight

Cuba - Cuba - Articles - HighLight




I'd appreciate if you left your comments to the article:) If you want to write an article about your home country, we'll publish it in our ezine with great pleasure! Join us:)

Phrasal verbs with TURN

According to research, phrasal verbs are the most common verb forms in spoken English. They are often used by native speakers, especially in everyday English. Significant part of the English vocabulary is made up of phrasal verbs, but EFL students tend to dislike and procrastinate learning them. WHY? Because they feel confused, they don't see the difference between them, cramming doesn't help, etc

Our aim is to help them:) If our students can learn and use common phrasal verbs, their vocabulary will enlarge, their listening and reading skills will improve, and they end up speaking more fluently, like natives.

I think that the easiest way is to use spidegrams and images (even draw them). It impossible to remember more than 10 verbs at once. It's better to learn phrasals based on one verb ( ex. go- go out- go on - go off - go up - go down - etc) and brush them doing at least couple excercises)

To begin with, I made a set with TURN on quizlet.com. Feedback from students is positive:)

Choose a Study ModeScatterLearnFlashcards

Study these flash cards | Study english flash cards

And follow-up activities
Excercise http://www.advanced-english-grammar.com/phrasal-verb...
Quiz http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/phrasal-verbs/...

It's obvious that the best way is to learn phrasal verbs in context, through reading and listening, the fact that you’re interested in the context will make it much easier to remember the phrasal verb later.

Some more useful links
8 podcast episodes "Write me back soon" on Radio Lingva

Prasal Verb games

Matching Cards 2 - Phrasal Verbs

WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from?

With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward.

Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines.

Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas.



I think this video from TED also might be interesting:)

Just liked this quotation

“If you are interested, you will do what is convenient. If you are committed, you will do whatever it takes.”

Challenge

Today on EFL Classroom 2.0 site I came across the topic concerned teaching poetry , how it might be challenging at times, in fact it is really difficult - tomorrow I give a class for Upper-Intermediate teens and it will be all about poetry (metaphor and simile)! I'm a bit nervous today - the thing is I need to get tuned somehow...
Otherwise how will I be able to get my students interested in the lesson material?
So I spent plenty of time just reading and listening to random poems on the net, started making a glogster poster and finally I found this poem. Honestly, it's not  Shakespeare but it touched some cords in me , 'cos it expresses my personal and teaching philosophy.

The Challenge

by Dr. Heartsill Wilson

Blessed is the man, indeed, Who in this life can find; A purpose that can fill his days, And goals to fill his mind! The world is filled with little men Content with where they are; Not knowing joys success can bring, No will to go that far! Yet, in this world there is a need, For men to lead the rest To rise above the "average" life, By giving of their best! Would you be one, who dares to try, When challenged by the task; To rise to heights you've never seen, Or is that too much to ask? This is your day--a world to win Great purpose to achieve; Accept the challenge of your goals And in yourself, believe! You will be proud of what you've done, When at the close of day; You look back on your battles won, Content, you came this way!

Happy Women's Day!

Just a coincidence?

   The dictionary defines the word coincidence as a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by a mere chance.  Is a chance just a part of Fate?  Coincidences happen to all of us all the time, we find them really amazing and always enjoy sharing OMG Stories (Oh My God! Stories) with our friends, colleagues and relatives.

Have you ever been caught by a feeling "Oh! That very thing happened to me in the past!"? This phenomenon is called "deja vu" which in French means "I saw it". Do you think it's nothing but a coincidence?

Coincidences fascinate us but only few admit that they believe in that. Men tend to say that being superstitious is just a waste of their precious time. However, deep inside we have an uncanny feeling that something supernatural exists, we just don't allow ourselves to think about it, we say "Things happen" or "c'est la Vie".  Right?

Is it just a coincidence  that a certain number can refer to certain events or certain people? I got struck by that question a  while ago - the main numbers for my family: my husband, my daughter and me are four and two.

For  instance, our Birthday months are in 2 months each - August, November, January. 

As for Birthday dates- (13/17/21) there's 4-day difference. My husband is 4 years older than me. We got married  in 1996 and our daughter was born in 1998 -2  years later when I was 24. Our surname has 4 letters. In fact, there are more examples but  they are either too private or too trivial. 

Personally I find 9/11 ( terrorist attack to New York in 2001) a very impressive example. Did you know that.....

     

•  New York City has 11 letters and it's the 11th state
•  Afghanistan has 11 letters. 
•  Ramsin Yuseb, the terrorist who intended to raze the Twin Towers to the ground in 1993, and George W Bush have 11 letters in their names.

This might be a sheer coincidence, but this gets more interesting:

•  The first plane that crashed into Twin Towers was flight #11
•  Flight 11 was carrying 92 passengers. 9 + 2 = 11
•  The second plane which also hit Twin Towers, was carrying 65 passengers. 6+5=11
•  The tragedy was on September 11, or 9/11 as it is now known. 9 +1 + 1 = 11
• The date is equal to the US emergency services telephone number  911. 9 + 1 + 1 = 11.

 And to stretch the odds even further, 

•  The total number of victims inside all the hi-jacked planes was   254. 2 + 5 + 4 = 11.
•  September 11 is a day number 254 of the calendar year. Again 2 + 5 + 4 = 11. 

   If you got intersted, you can learn more about that tradegy coincidences here.

    Is it just a coincidence? In 2000 I started teaching Lesya Basyrova, a girl who was really  bright and determined.( BTW now she's also a teacher of English) From the very beginning  I had a feeling that we were on the same wavelength! 2 years had passed before I asked her who was her first English Teacher. You can imagine how I was amazed to hear that it was the same teacher as mine - Galina Ivanovna Sarayeva, now deceased. She taught both of us for 2 years (5th-6th grades)...

     The history has more remarkable examples, namely, life stories of Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy (JFK). Have you heard that....

Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, JFK became the President in 1960. They were both killed on Friday in front of their wives. Both successors were called Johnson, Andrew Jonson was born in 1808 and Lyndon Johnson was born in 1908. Both assassinators,John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, were killed before their trial. Lincoln's secretary, named Kennedy, cautioned him against going to the theatre and JFK's secretary whose name was Lincoln also asked him not to go to Dallas. As you know, Lincoln was shot in the theatre and Booth ran to a warehouse. JFK was supposedly shot from a warehouse and Oswald ran to a theatre. It's just a happenstance, isn't it?

Coincidences are a highly exploited topic in the media, for instance various Doppelgangers projects on TV

or  "Samesies" - a project on the Internet  started to highlight how different people from different places happen to take the same photos.

 This guy, Zurab Akhmedov,  is from Russia. He lives in a small town Engels and works as a paediatrician. Like Barack Abama, he has a wide smile, writes with his left hand and likes whisky. Sure they are not twins:)

Yes, things happen. Unfortunately, you seldom know the reason. And anything, which is beyond your  comprehension,  seems to be menacing and daunting. You keep asking yourself "Why?"and get no answer just a crawling thought inside "Isn't it the hand of Fate?" or maybe it's a Matrix or a sort of "information field"?  Anyway, it's not you who take decisions, everything had been predestined before you were born. That might be really demotivating at times.

When I decided to write about coincidences in life, I asked myself if this topic would be interesting for anyone.

Actually, I can only hope that my article finds its reader. Indeed, all people might be roughly divided into three camps- "Believers", "Non-believers"and "Don't- Cares". And what group do you belong to?

PS. I guess you might like this-
Linguistic coincidences:
Arabic akh 'brother' and Mongolian akh 'brother'
Bikol aki 'child' and Korean aki 'child' 
Arabic ana 'I' and Gondi ana 'I' 
Arabic anta 'though' and Japanese anta 'though'
Arabic ard 'earth' and Dutch aard 'earth' 
Hebrew ari 'lion' and Tamil ari 'lion'
Hebrew awir 'air' and Welsh awyr 'air' 
Kyrgyz ayal 'woman' and Parji ayal 'woman'  
English bad and Persian bad 'bad'
English chop and Uzbek chop 'chop' 
English dog and Mbabaram dog 'dog'
- and hundreds of others.

HighLight Issue#2

Dear readers!

I'm happy to announce that the 2nd issue of our ezine HighLight is ready for you to read. Many things happened throughout this 3-month break - New Year, Christmas and St.Valentine's Day. Have a look at our photo reports about some of these events:) I really hope that your can find something to your taste in our ezine and learn something new here.

We would really  appreciate if you left your comments after the articles you liked. Doing this, you will reward and inspire the authors for further writing!

Thank you!

Yours,

Marina Shvets

Incredible!!!

WHO FIGURED THIS OUT?

1) Fold a NEW $20 bill in half...

2) Fold again, taking care to fold it exactly as below

3) Fold the other end, exactly as before

4) Now, simply turn it over...

What a coincidence! A simple geometric fold creates a catastrophic premonition printed on all $20 bills!!!

COINCIDENCE?
YOU DECIDE

As if that wasn't enough...
Here is what you've seen...

Firstly The Pentagon on fire...

Then The Twin Towers.

...And now .. look at this!

TRIPLE COINCIDENCE ON A SIMPLE $20 BILL
Disaster (Pentagon)
Disaster ( Twin Towers )
Disaster (Osama)???
It gets even better 9 + 11 = $20!

Creepy huh?

Contributor: Howard
source: http://Johns-Jokes.com

 

Pod cards

8 Podcards from Australia

10 Podcards from England
4 PodCards from Canada
6 Podcards from Ireland
6 Podcards from Scotland
10 Podcards from The USA
6 Podcards from Wales
5 Podcards from New Zealand

PodCards are audio postcards about a town or city from different countries around the world. Or it might be a biography of a famous person or info about something remarkable about this place.

PodCards are for teachers and students of English as a second language. They provide valuable practice to improve learners' listening skills and give teachers additional cross-cultural classroom material. A worksheet is provided for each PodCard.

What's more, PodCards are divided into two levels. Low level PodCards are aimed at students up to and including Pre-Intermediate level - these cards are read at a slower speed and mostly contain structure appropriate to that level.

High level PodCards are read at a higher speed, contain more advanced structures and vocabulary and are for Intermediate students and above.

All in all, it seems to be quite an interesting resource to try with my students for extra listening practice.

Focus on Pronunciation: Stress and Intonation

A while ago my students asked me to give them a class on Pronunciation. To be honest, they don't have any problems with pronouncing English sounds but still don't feel that confident about their accent. So I decided to start with stressed words in the sentence and intonation.
The lesson was successful, so I decided to share the lesson plan:) Hope you find it handy.


Original doc is here.

Warm-up Idea Word Cloud

The game is called Word Cloud. Student A needs to say a word in English related to a particular topic, e.g Health or Shopping, and the following one has to say another word beggining with the ending letter. This is a nice way of practicing your pronunciation and at the same time revising the vocabulary of the unit.The whole game takes no longer than 5 min.

Heidi, Cross-eyed Opossum

Innovations Pre-Intermediate Unit 6 Review

HiLIGHT ezine

I am happy to welcome you to the launch of our school online ezine HighLight. I wish to extend my gratitude to all teachers, students and friends who were so kind to submit their articles to this issue. We could not start this journal without the support of Nastya Shelyakina, Guzelia Ataulova and Sergey Papushin wishing to make this magazine a success.

I strongly believe that for a language school it is important to have a magazinе which gives free access to its contents and promotes communication in English . This is particularly significant for us whose first language is not English. That’s why we aim to invite native speakers to write for our ezine. Frankly, the goal of this project is to involve in writing as many people as possible and go international! The only criteria are willingness to master English and have something to say to the world:)

So if you get inspired and feel like writing something, join us!

HighLight is a peer-reviewed ezine which publishes 3 issues a year – in November, February and April.

I look forward to a successful first year as Editor-in-Chief and welcome any comments or suggestions you may have that would improve the Ezine.

P.S. Our ezine is not a commercial project, and it's on a free website. That's why there're commercial pop-ups on every page. Please, just switch them off and enjoy reading.

Using a projector in the classroom

Yesterday I got inspired by my colleague to make this google presentation for Pre -Intermediate Innovation course - Unit 3.

The thing is it's really important to use as many visuals as possible at any levels I guess. Moreover, showing a presentation doesn't take a lot of lesson time, just 5 -7 minutes. But it should be interactive, I mean students are supposed to be involved. That's why pictures in this presentation appear one by one to promote students' speaking.

Thig presentation is aimed at brushing major vocabulary items of the unit before the progress tests.