Our Director of Studies, Sasha Wajnryb, gave a presentation at the 2012 NEAS conference today. The presentation focused on the ways that colleges can support and protect their students who are working in Australia.
One of our teachers, Adina, describes how she uses the skills from her Master of Speech Language Pathology to help her students improve their pronunciation.
I have been teaching ESL at Greenwich since 2009. In 2010, I started a 2 year Master of Speech Language Pathology at Sydney University, which I recently finished. Speech pathologists (also called ‘speech therapists’) work with adults and children who have difficulty speaking for different reasons. For example, people who stutter (like the King in the movie The King’s Speech), children who have trouble learning their first language, adults who have had a stroke and ‘forget’ how to speak, and people who have trouble pronouncing sounds. As you can imagine, there are many skills from the degree which I use when I teach English. Ion particular, I use these skills during the weekly pronunciation classes.
As a final activity to finish my degree, I did an individual pronunciation class with an Upper-Intermediate student, Jaime (from Peru) and filmed it! We worked on the sounds /dʒ/ (like in the name ‘Jack’) and /j/ (like in the animal ‘yak’). The /dʒ/ sound can be quite hard for some Spanish speakers as it’s not used in Spanish. We did activities such as practicing basic syllables (e.g. /dʒa/, /ju/, /dʒo/), and reading minimal pair words (e.g. “jam, yam”, “juice, use”, “J, yay”).
I showed Jaime a computer program that I can use to ‘look’ at speech. This program, Praat, records your speech and turns it into a image which looks different for every sound you make. As you can see below, the image on the left (/dʒ/) looks different from the image for /j/ – it’s darker (the part circled in red). Jaime used the program to ‘see’ if he said the syllables and words correctly. ‘Seeing’ and hearing speech can help students become more accurate in learning new sounds.
At the end of the 1 hour lesson, Jaime was much better at correctly using the /dʒ/ and /j/ sounds. It takes a lot of practice to use the sounds correctly in everyday speaking situations, but using them correctly in words is a great start!
Adina
Ian’s TESOL group (Marietta, Alejandra, Carla and Rodrigo) finished the 10-week intensive course last Thursday. The previous two and a half months have been demanding but equally rewarding. This is especially true for the girls who came from Chile to do the TESOL course at Greenwich. The significance of their time at Greenwich was illustrated in each of their mini graduation speeches last Thursday. They mentioned how they rekindled their passion for teaching during the TESOL course. Unlike the girls, I began the course without any prior experience as a teacher. It was both challenging but incredibly fulfilling. The skills and knowledge I have gained as a TESOL student will undoubtedly be useful in whichever professional field I find myself in the future.
A big thank you to all Greenwich staff: from Sylvia and Sophie at the front-desk, to the teachers we watched during our observations classes, to our supervisors in English Club and to the students who I found to be very helpful and patient when I taught English Club. An extra big thank goes to Patricia and Vici for taking the majority of our lectures and of course to our TESOL teacher, Ian, who proved to be an invaluable asset to us all with his generous support and guidance throughout our time as TESOL students.
Rod
This week, Manuel, an FCE Preparation student from Chile, writes about his work as a sound engineer and his study technique of recording important information and then listening to it as he walks home
In Chile I studied to be a sound engineer and after finish studying I have worked for 10 years as a Sound Engineer in a television channel called Chilevision. I have also completed a business course.
As a sound engineer, I worked in audio post-production. This position involves putting sound effects and music to movies, soap operas, entertainment programs and a lot more.
My first reason for coming to Australia was to study English but the second one, and no less important, was travelling because I love doing it, meeting people and learning about other cultures. My reason for improving my English is a personal goal that always I have wanted to achieve and it’s possible to get a better job in my country if I have a better English level.
I chose to study the FCE course after being counselled by Roxy who told me that it could be the faster way to improve and now I think that she was right. I certainly know that I need to continue studying but FCE is a good opportunity to learn a lot in a short time period. I need to say that Kerry is a great teacher and I appreciate having her as a teacher.
My reason for making the recording was mainly because I find it very difficult read something and learn it by memory, so I decided to make a recording to study on the way home. I walk about one hour every day. It’s impossible to walk and read so I thought why not walk and listen too? It’s not something magical but if you’re focused on learning, it really works!
I have made the recording using my portable audio equipment. The software is called ProTools. Nowadays, this software is used in every professional recording studio in USA and I have used it at least for 6 years.
In the future I would like to travel to Asia and to have some deserved holidays.
Manuel
We’ve nearly finished our Certificate IV in TESOL. Week 9, our second last week, saw the class complete their last English Club teaching lesson, their last quiz / review and hand-in the third and final assignment.
For me, Tuesday’s class was relatively short. I was absent from the lecture due to a uni and TESOL timetable clash. That evening we either worked on finishing our lesson plans for that week, or finished (started in some cases!) our last assignment. I chose to dedicate my time on completing my lesson plan for Thursday’s English Club.
Thursday was my last English Club teaching lesson. It was a vocabulary lesson with a ‘Heroes’ theme. I explained that heroes don’t necessarily have to be famous. Family and friends can also be heroes of ours. During the ‘production’ phase of the lesson, students gave some great examples and explanations of their own heroes: actors, musicians, footballers and even a student’s grandma!
The Thursday lecture was on the different forms of the conditional: habits / facts, future dreams / plans / expectations, hypothetical / unreal situations and impossible situations (regret and relief). E.g. “If I wake up early, I go for a run (habits).” Ian taught the structure for each conditional sentence. I found it quite tricky at first but slowly got the hang of it. Admittedly, I’m not very used to applying so much thought behind the language I use day-to-day. The exercises presented by Ian were interesting for students learning how to use each conditional correctly. After the lecture, the class re-focused on finishing assignment no. 3.
Our last Saturday class of TESOL commenced with Ian showing us some leniency in allowing us some extra-time to finish our final assignment. During the course of the day, we each intermittently sent our assignments to Ian. He went through each, made comments and points of improvement and then returned them to us. After looking at Ian’s recommendations, I continued to polish my final piece of work. Once I thought it was complete, I sent it back to Ian as a final edition. Funnily enough, that evening, I was thinking about the assignment and randomly remembered that I had completely forgotten to include one of Ian’s suggestions. As Ian’s former student, Paula, mentioned in last week’s Greenwich College Student Newsletter, I too, must have caught the contagious TESOL ‘virus’. I never would have thought I’d spend my Saturday nights thinking about TESOL assignments, but there you have it, I’ve been turned!
Rod
The FCE Preparation classes start their day with a short activity called “Show and Tell”. Last week Ibra did a presentation about traditional clothes from Saudi Arabia. Ibra writes:
Every morning in the FCE class we do Show and Tell. During Show and Tell, one student does a short presentation using an object or photo that has a special meaning to them. Our teacher Kerry gives us the opportunity to do the presentation and helps us feel confiedent.
For my Show and Tell, I thought I would show my class how a traditional Saudi man dresses. It was really good idea and I will never forget this presentation. Thank you Greenwich.
Week 8 of TESOL for me began with a Tuesday morning quiz. The quiz tested our knowledge of timetabling, principles of testing, and lesson planning. I received the coveted ‘C’ for competent which was great! I returned to Greenwich in the afternoon to observe Olga’s Intermediate class. It was my last observation class of the TESOL course. After our Tuesday lecture, Ian allowed us to concentrate on finishing our lesson plans for that week. Alejandra and I were coincidently scheduled to teach the same level and target language. We decided to join forces and work together in devising a lesson plan. We agreed that our topic would be ‘Stereotypes.’
On Thursday I had my penultimate teaching lesson. It was an Elementary class, and the objective of the lesson was to use adjective and adverbs while describing stereotypes relating to different nationalities. For example: all Brazilians are good footballer players or all Brazilians play football well. One of the successes in the lesson was the warmer, I think the students enjoyed it and caught on quickly with the clues I gave. The main issue with the lesson was my inability to explain what a stereotype meant. Apart from that, the students and I forged on with the lesson. I was very happy that they correctly used the adjectives and adverbs for the activities I had designed. In hindsight, using ‘Stereotypes’ as a theme for an Elementary class, probably wasn’t the best idea (for me at least). Megan supervised me and gave me some useful feedback on how I could have better introduced the theme. Having experienced teachers observe us during our teaching lessons has been invaluable in our learning experience and I always look forward to hearing their comments. For our Thursday lecture, Ian showed us how to do a ‘song lesson’. He used Jack Johnson’s Better Together as the song we used during the lesson. I enjoyed this lecture so much so that I’m intending to use some of the things I learnt in this week’s teaching lesson. The lesson concluded with a joint class effort in singing the song aloud!
Rod
Congratulations to Sue Jones, who worked at Greenwich College between 2006 and 2009 . Sue has recently launched a fantastic new series of textbook series.
Sue was one of our most popular teachers at Greenwich, and taught on a variety of program, including General English, IELTS preparation and the Certificate IV in TESOL.
She has written a new series of textbooks called “All Ways “. We know that teachers and students from all over the world will enjoy using these textbooks. Sue always delivered dynamic and engaging lessons at Greenwich and her books will be very popular.
Sue joins the list of Greenwich teachers who have published ESL/EFL materials. Our Director of Studies, Sasha Wajnryb, co-wrote/co-edited the IELTS in Context textbook series which are used in our IELTS Preparation classes. One of our English for Business teachers, Nadia Bentuoa, has written a textbook/e-book called “Learn How the Locals Speak“.
Rod teaches English Club
Week six of the Cert IV in TESOL kicked-off on Valentine’s Day, the TESOL students brought and consumed their fair share of chocolate that day.
My first task on Tuesday was to observe Olga’s Intermediate class. The theme of the lesson was ‘Opinions’. Students were given a text / statement and were to form and articulate an opinion. The frustration was clearly evident in the students’ faces as they grappled to fully and concisely express their views in English. Olga then taught the students some useful functional English expressions so that the students could easily express their opinions.
This frustration is something I can relate to. I have experienced the same frustration when trying to communicate in Spanish or Portuguese. Expressing an opinion in a non-native language is probably one of the most difficult and at times disheartening parts in learning a new language.
After our lecture on ‘Reported Speech’, Ian’s class concentrated on finalising our preparation for our individual teaching lessons for the week. I had my lesson on the Wednesday, I used Tuesday to confirm some last minute queries with Ian and he did a final edit on my lesson plan.
I had mixed feelings approaching my third teaching lesson at Greenwich. I was somewhat nervous but largely excited in implementing all the skills and techniques I learnt during the previous five weeks. It was an Intermediate class, the theme of the lesson was ‘Life Changes’ and the target language was ‘used to’ while describing the changes in their lives since leaving school. Among others, my main habitual weakness is my high TTT (teaching talking time). I did make a conscious effort to lower it, but once again, it was a little too high. The students were aware of my inexperience but they were nonetheless, very cooperative during, and appreciative of, the lesson. One of the bonuses of the lesson was having Ian (my TESOL teacher) supervise me. He already knew my strengths and weaknesses, having him assess me was invaluable.
Ian took our Thursday lecture (Patricia and Vici are our usual lecturers). Ian gave an interesting lesson on Relative Clauses. I was completely oblivious to the fact that a couple of commas in a sentence could reveal so much information. It took a bit of time to grasp the ideas but it was one of the more interesting classes that I’ve had at Greenwich.
After the lecture we had a class discussion about each of the individual teaching lessons we had that week. This is always a good activity as we’re able to relate to one another as we’re completing the course simultaneously. Being made aware of your classmates’ own challenges helps to put your own difficulties into perspective which inadvertently, gives you confidence knowing that you’re not the only one having trouble executing that ‘utopian’ lesson (which will never occur).
Rod
This week, our day and evening IELTS Preparation students completed official IELTS Pretests. IELTS Pretests are designed by the University of Cambridge. They are an important step in the production of IELTS tests.
Greenwich College is an official Pretesting centre and we regularly offer Pretests to our IELTS Preparation students. These Pretests are held under test conditions and are a fantastic opportunity to practise doing a University of Cambridge exam. The University of Cambridge marks the tests and sends the results back to Greenwich.
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