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Sharing some Information

Everything has a main bone which holds that and i think the main bone of English is vocabulary.it's the key for English learners to speak fluent. the more words you know, the more sentences pop in your mind up and you can verbalize your feeling and avoid all the wrong perceives.so i think we all know how much vital is to broaden our vocabulary knowledge.  

here in this post i'm going to introduce you some effective tools to boost your vocabulary knowledge.

 504 ESSENTIAL WORDS 

strongly i can say this is one of the best book I've ever seen.this book is provided in 42 units and each unit includes 12 significant words in English.here is some advises in advanced :
 1) don't forget to study word families 

 2) read passages of book

 3) do exercises of book

VOCABULARY FOR THE IELTS

not only this book is a vital book for taking an IELTS exam, but also it's a useful book in general English.

diversity of subjects and selection of important words in each unit is principals of property for this book.

This book is extremely recommended for English intermediate and advanced learners.it's a self-study based book.

The 3 Characteristics Of A Great Teacher

I still believe it boils down to GREAT teachers that instill the 3 R’s – RELEVANCE, RIGOR, and RELATIONSHIPS in everyday practice.

What does this mean?

To me it means:

Relevance = why do I need to learn/understand this? Not just because it’s what’s next in the curriculum or not because it is one of your favorite things to teach, or because it is on the MAP test. Getting to the heart of the students and connecting it to them and their everyday life helps make the subject matter relevant.

Give the learning relevance. For example, essays for an authentic audience such as a blog and then sending the link out to your PLN to have them comment (not just to the teacher reading it) on the students writing. Having the students create, think, explore, or design a product using the technology available to them and that they use regularly to show mastery.

Allow them to choose how they create or design- video, prezi, podcast, etc. Don’t tell them ALL it has to be a tri-fold poster board, or a PP, or an essay. Allow them to choose. There are several free outlets available for students to produce/create these products. In fact they know more about these presentation tools than we do. Remember they are Digital Natives and know more about these tools than many of us.

Rigor = Addressing the needs of ALL students and pushing them beyond their current level. Stretching and pushing them and allowing them to Learn from failing.

Rigor in the classroom is NOT worksheets. It is NOT do all the odd problems and check your work in the back. It is NOT having the students read the section and answer the questions at the end. It is NOT the teacher being the only person delivering the content. I think you get the point.

Rigor is allowing the students to learn by creating, producing, and researching multiple sources. NOT just filling in the blanks, coloring in a bubble, or regurgitating facts. Critical Thinking, Collaboration, and Communication and NOT sit and get.

Relationships = The quote by President Roosevelt “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care” still applies today with children and adults.

When’s the last time you asked a colleague or student “how are you doing?” and really meant it?

Do you have enough trust in one another to visit each others classrooms to observe each other?

Do you know ALL of your students? Do you make it a point to speak to every student in your room every day? Do you smile at them even on a bad day? Your worst day may be the best day for some students.

Make connections. . . even with the _________’s of the classroom. (fill in the blank with the name of the student/adult that pushes your buttons)

TTC Lesson 2

Ways of presenting English grammar

TEACHING

Contexts, prompts and methods used in grammar presentation in the language classroom:

Model sentences for oral practice + picture e.g. the butcher's got some meat. He hasn't got any lamb. Contrasting sentence pairs. (This is the same inductive approach we talked about in the class)

Question & Answer e.g. pattern practice drills of both the "meaningless" and "meaningful" variety. (This is the technique most of the teachers mostly insist on as an optimal way, while it has somehow proved is questioned or let us say vexed)

Dialogues e.g. A. I'd like some bacon, please. B. I'm sorry, we haven't got any. Streamline Departures - Yes, dear. Did you get any bread?

Situations e.g. I'm going to pack / take a bus to….. Robert O'Neill's "English in Situations" See also the situations and conversations in Kernel Intermediate. Julia.

Demonstration e.g. prepositions of place - I'm going to put the cassette tape into the cassette player.

Texts e.g. the sun shines more in Spain than in England. Contextualization.

Grammatical explanations - e.g. "some" used when the quantity is definite for plural or uncountable"(Mother Tongue is allowed so as to avoid MOTHER TONGUE)

Diagrams - e.g. Time Line for Present Perfect v Past Simple

Drawings

Translation (Do bear in mind that in Elementary level translation is allowed only to the unit of Phrases not sentences, propositions or longer stretches of speech)

Grammatical explanations in student's mother tongue

Students' suggestions - e.g. activation of previous language knowledge through The Silent Way (Do you remember what I told you about Schemata Activation)

Language bath - Suggestopaedia

Definitions of suggestopaedia

1. Suggestopedia (USA English) or Suggestopaedia (UK English) is a teaching method developed by the Bulgarian psychotherapist Georgi Lozanov. It is used in different fields, but mostly in the field of foreign language learning. Lozanov has claimed that by using this method a teacher's students can learn a language approximately three to five times as quickly as through conventional teaching methods.

Suggestopedia has been called a "pseudo-science" [1]. It strongly depends on the trust that students develop towards the method by simply believing that it works.

The theory applied positive suggestion in teaching when it was developed in the 1970s. However, as the method improved, it has focused more on “desuggestive learning” and now is often called “desuggestopedia.” [2] Suggestopedia is a portmanteau of the words “suggestion” and “pedagogy". A common misconception is to link "suggestion" to "hypnosis". However, Lozanov intended it in the sense of offering or proposing, emphasising student choice. The intended purpose of Suggestopedia was to enhance learning by tapping into the power of suggestion. Lozanov claims in his website, Suggestology and Suggestopedy,[2] that “suggestopedia is a system for liberation”; liberation from the “preliminary negative concept regarding the difficulties in the process of learning” that is established throughout their life in the society. Desuggestopedia focuses more on liberation as Lozanov describes “desuggestive learning” as “free, without a mildest pressure, liberation of previously suggested programs to restrict intelligence and spontaneous acquisition of knowledge, skills and habits.” The method implements this by working not only on the conscious level of human mind but also on the subconscious level, the mind’s reserves. Since it works on the reserves in human mind and brain, which are said to have unlimited capacities, one can teach more than other methods can teach in the same amount of time. Lozanov claims that the effect of the method is not only in language learning, but also in producing favorable side effects on health, the social and psychological relations, and the subsequent success in other subjects( Wikipedia)

Dictionaries for English language learners

Choosing a dictionary for English language learning:

In buying a dictionary for advanced learners, there is a strong case for looking at the publication date, especially if the dictionary is to be used for vocational purposes. Fields such as information communication technology develop very rapidly and new words can become common very quickly.

At lower levels of proficiency, clarity of presentation and the criteria used to select words matter more than recency. Clarity is facilitated by having a suitable defining vocabulary so that definitions of word meanings are comprehensible to learners at relatively low levels of proficiency. Picture dictionaries can be useful to have around in kindergartens and nurseries, but the modern English language coursebook has all the illustration an elementary learner is likely to need, supported by the realia in the teaching situation. Maps and wallcharts can be very helpful where everybody in the class can see them.

At intermediate levels, publishers are now offering dictionary materials which encourage learners to activate their language and string words together. These are especially useful in the writing class, where use of a bilingual dictionary will normally prove disastrous. You will not get very far in learning written English without models of texts written by people who are already proficient. The possession of an English : English dictionary is essential if you wish to get good results in any recognised examination where written English is tested.

Be prepared to leave your dictionary at home when you are attending language classes emphasizing listening and speaking. Overuse of a dictionary can also delay the development of good reading strategies, especially when the difficulty-level of the texts provided by your teacher presents a fair challenge.

The dictionary habit can be a bad one when learners attempt to look up too much of what they read and hear. Guessing should be encouraged, inference skills should be developed and often a single tonic syllable within a word carries most of the meaning of a whole sentence. Students who use dictionaries on sentences from beginning to end are often caught up in trying to decode the meaning of unimportant words occurring near the beginning of sentences. They then miss the important words nearer the end, which carry the meaning of the utterance. Do not be surprised if your English teacher bans the use of dictionaries in the classroom. If you are studying in a country where English is the native language, a valuable use of lesson time is to let you hear the language being spoken. The teacher does not want you reading it or switching back to your native language, but will want to help you with word meaning through intonation and stress patterns, mime and gesture or presentation of visual aids. Look out for these ways of drawing attention to the elements of English containing the main message.

Dictionaries designed for English language learners should always provide pronunciation guides and it is worth checking that phonetic transcriptions of each word are included. The International Phonetic Alphabet [IPA] should be used for this purpose. All the major ELT publishers will offer dictionaries based on corpus data showing how English is actually used both in speech and in writing.

Bilingual dictionaries are not generally welcome or needed in language schools in countries where English is the native language and can cause a lot of irritation in multilingual classes where switching to languages other than English is bad etiquette and often a poor learning strategy. However, there is a case for bilingual dictionaries in independent learning sessions and where reference is to a precise technical term, which is difficult to explain by using a simple English defining vocabulary.

Teacher-talk in the language class

Behold Behold they who favor verbal frugality(talkativeness) or reticence of teachers in the class.

The Myth of the Silent Teacher [Robert O'Neill - IATEFL April 1994

Some kinds of teacher-talk are bad. Other kinds of teacher-talk are 'good; and even essential For at least twenty years, teacher-trainers have taught their trainees that a good lesson is a lesson in which the class do as much of the talking as possible. It has been an article of faith that teacher-talk is bad because it gets in the way of this goal. The less the teacher talks, and the more the students talk, the better.

I suspect that many teachers today would feel very uncomfortable if the director of studies walked into their class and caught them saying more than a few sentences to their students. Many, perhaps most teachers, I believe, would stop talking and shift as quickly as possible to an allegedly 'student-centred' mode. This, in practice, usually means some kind of group-work or pair-work, or perhaps some kind of technique through which the teacher 'elicits' comment from the class.I, personally, have grown more and more suspicious of the assumption that teacher-talk is automatically bad. I accept that some, perhaps many teachers talk too much, but I also believe that many teachers do not talk enough. I believe it is wrong to judge or assess teacher-talk only by reference to its quantity. It is just as important to assess its quality.

The question is not 'how much teacher-talk is there in a lesson?' but 'what kind of teacher-talk is there?'

I can put it a slightly different way. The question should not be 'how much time do teachers spend talking?' but rather 'How do teachers talk?' 'What do they do while they are talking to their classes?' 'When they talk, do they engage the attention of the class, present them with comprehensible input and also allow them to interrupt, comment, ask for clarification, and so on?' 'Is the teacher checking on comprehension as she or he talks?' 'If so, what kinds of comprehension-checks are they using?'

I am not saying that teachers should always talk, that good teaching consists only of talking interactively with the class or individual students. I think that students learn not only through 'comprehensible input' but also their own output. But I don't believe at all that a 'good lesson' is one in which students do all or even most of the talking. Some lessons may be good if they are carefully structured in such a way that students do a good deal of the talking and at the same time get a lot of feedback, both formally and informally, from the teacher about their performance. But this is by no means true of all lessons.

There are stages of language- development in which good teacher-talk is probably the single most important kind of input.I am using the term 'teacher-talk' here rather broadly. Of course, there are 'learners' who are not students - that is, 'learners that have no formal teachers', and I personally believe that it is often better to have no teacher at all rather than a bad or foolish one. However, there is a lot of evidence that strongly suggests that all learners need 'input' and that 'negotiated input' is always essential. 'Negotiated input' means the kind of conversation, talk or formal teaching in which the teacher and the student or students together 'negotiate' both what they are talking about and the language that is used to talk about it. Students or learners 'negotiate' by showing whether they understand or not, by asking questions, by showing through body-language, facial expression and verbal means whether they are interested or not, whether they want to hear more, whether or not they are getting tired or find the input too difficult. The person providing the input - the parent, the native-speaker friend or companion talking to the non-native speaker who is struggling with the L2 - or whoever happens to be the 'input-provider' at the time negotiates by being sensitive to these signals and adjusting the input accordingly. That, at least is one way in which we as teachers can 'negotiate meaning' - to use a phrase I have always suspected of concealing more than it reveals - with our students.

Learners typically go through 'silent periods' while they are learning. It is especially during these 'silent periods' that 'good teacher-talk' of the kind I have in mind is especially useful.I believe James R. Nord was one of the first to point out and make us aware of the importance of these 'silent periods'. He also pointed out, among other things, that forcing students to speak in the L2 before they were ready to do was very counter-productive. It could even have the effect of de-motivating students. We seem to have forgotten this. What should we do, for example, if we are teaching real zero-beginners? They still exist, you know, even here in the UK. I have a class every Thursday evening in London of these zero-beginners; real zero-beginners. They are adults from Bosnia. Some of them are in their fifties or even older. They have fled from Mostar and other parts of Bosnia to this country. They are trying to begin new lives and even to forget the shattered lives they left behind them; they have little or no English. They are only now beginning to understand questions like 'What time is it?' 'What kind of sandwich is that?' 'How much is it?' and find it difficult to respond properly to questions like 'How are you?'. What good is a methodology that insists that teachers should 'elicit' information from the class, get them talking in pairs or groups, etc. These are students struggling with the simplest elements of the language. Where are they supposed to get the English to express themselves? Does anyone here or anyone reading this article seriously suppose that they discover or invent the language they need through some kind of magic? Or do we perhaps suppose that the process of learning a language is analogous to what charismatic Christians, I believe, refer to as 'speaking in tongues'?

Comprehensible input is essential. The teacher is usually the best and sometimes the only person who can provide comprehensible input.Dare I mention the name of Krashen here? I ask this because not long ago when I gave a talk at Brighton University and mentioned Krashen's name just once, an MA candidate later complained that I had devoted far too much time to talking about him. Yet only a few years ago, he and his theories were very fashionable. I questioned - and still question - his claim that learners learn only through comprehensible input. I expressed my doubts about this in a talk I gave the last time an IATEFL conference took place here in Brighton. I was and am still very sceptical that we can account for anything as complex and as little understood as second language acquisition through one thing alone. It is not comprehensible input alone by any means that is the 'motor' for second language acquisition. Comprehensible input is the fuel, not the engine of language acquisition. But this still means it is essential - and not just, I believe, in the early stages. Comprehensible input, dare I remind you, is not simply 'input'. It is language that is broadly comprehensible to the learner. How 'broad' you may ask is 'broad'? Well, I suggest that the parameters vary from student to student and also from stage to stage. In the very early stages, it probably means at least 95% comprehensible. In later, more advanced states it may be as low as 75% for certain kinds of input.