Sometimes I find stuff that has no connection with anything I usially do or read/watch but which I love anyway. I re-found two blogs with recipes this week, omnomicon and The pioneer woman cooks , and boy, do they make you hungry just by looking at the pictures. Omnicon has some pretty elaborate dishes, while the pioneer woman has fun, cute cooking projects, many to do for/with kids (the rest of her website is pretty cool, too. When I first found it, I spent a couple of hours going through some of her entries on subjects other than cooking. She seens to lead a pretty interesting life in the ranch...).
It's got nothing to do with nothing, but I felt like posting it, so I did. Can anybody think of a way we could use this in class?
Later!
:)
March 23, 2009
Mind your Language - a blast from my past
Isabel commented with me last Saturday about these british videos she'd found on Youtube about a multiracial English class in England, and I must admit it sounded kinda familiar. But when she sent me the links today, I realized It was Mind your Language, a program I used to watch when I was a teenager living in South Africa. To be perfectly honest, it was already an old series then (Youtube tells me that the first episode aired the day after I was born, on December 30th, 1977!), and it was mostly my dad who watched it and we kinda looked at it, as I never thought I'd become an English teacher then - I was sure I'd bee a psychologist...
Anyway, I'm posting the 3 parts of the first episode here, and there are lots of laugh-out-loud moments, of the "OMG, something like this has TOTALLY hapened to me before" kind... Don't decide not to watch this because it looks old - the comedy is very real, especially for us teachers, and it's british humor (or should I say humour?), after all... My favorite part is the third, where they go through the VERB TO BE!!
So, here it is:
Here's the "official" Youtube description:
For more videos http://myspace.com/ferrytrance
Original Air Date: 30 December 1977
In the pilot episode, Mr. Jeremy Brown begins teaching an English class to a diverse group of ten foreign adult students in London, hailing from nine different countries. From Europe come two au pairs, the flirtatious and beautiful Danielle (France) and prim and proper Anna (Germany), two young single men, Giovanni (Italy) and Max (Greece) and a laid-back middle-aged bartender, Juan (Spain), who speaks no English at all. From Asia, come a revolutionary-minded secretary from the Chinese Embassy (Su-Li), a Japanese businessman (Taro) as well as three students from the Subcontinent, a devout Sikh (Ranjeet) and an unemployed Pakistani (Ali), who are constantly at each other's threats, and finally a Hindi-speaking housewife (Jamila) who can't speak a word of English.
Thanks a lot, Isabel!
Later!
:)
Anyway, I'm posting the 3 parts of the first episode here, and there are lots of laugh-out-loud moments, of the "OMG, something like this has TOTALLY hapened to me before" kind... Don't decide not to watch this because it looks old - the comedy is very real, especially for us teachers, and it's british humor (or should I say humour?), after all... My favorite part is the third, where they go through the VERB TO BE!!
So, here it is:
Here's the "official" Youtube description:
For more videos http://myspace.com/ferrytrance
Original Air Date: 30 December 1977
In the pilot episode, Mr. Jeremy Brown begins teaching an English class to a diverse group of ten foreign adult students in London, hailing from nine different countries. From Europe come two au pairs, the flirtatious and beautiful Danielle (France) and prim and proper Anna (Germany), two young single men, Giovanni (Italy) and Max (Greece) and a laid-back middle-aged bartender, Juan (Spain), who speaks no English at all. From Asia, come a revolutionary-minded secretary from the Chinese Embassy (Su-Li), a Japanese businessman (Taro) as well as three students from the Subcontinent, a devout Sikh (Ranjeet) and an unemployed Pakistani (Ali), who are constantly at each other's threats, and finally a Hindi-speaking housewife (Jamila) who can't speak a word of English.
Thanks a lot, Isabel!
Later!
:)
March 21, 2009
March 10, 2009
Accents - just for fun!
Ok, so Willian Jr. Sent me this video of a guy prank-calling Taco Bell about finding a cockroach flying out of his quesadilla and attacking his dog, only speaking with a thick (strong) cuban/porto rican accent which made me laugh my ass off:
He also has a video prank calling MacDonald's about finding nails in his MacMuffin using a redneck (American southern) accent:
This guy got me thinking about how every once in a while somebody will ask me about accents. The truth is that, if you're really interested in sounding like people from a certain part of the world, there are plenty of videos out there wich can help you. The two previous videos made me think of this series of videos I saw a while ago where this guy made videos of him telling the same story using several different accents, so I started looking for that. I couldn't, for some reason, but I did find a whole lot of other things that were just as good (sometimes, looking for videos on youtube can be like browsing a used books store - you end up not finding what you went there to look for, but take something else home anyway!)
First off, there's this video response to a video a guy posted with a supposedly southern redneck accent, and this girl does it soooo much better (She sounds exactly like the real thing):
Then there's the one where Ben Affleck talks about the different accents you can get in Boston...
... which took me to the video where this girl does 21 different accents in 2:34 minutes - and she's Damn good! ...
... which took me to this HILARIOUS video response of this guy trying to do the same in Spanish:
And just to end this post with a challenge, I DARE anyone to figure out what they say at the end of this video (which is a scene from the movie Hot Fuzz)
And there you have it: A couple of videos on accents! There are a lot more, which a quick search for "English accents" on youtube will show you. Only beware: sometimes titles on youtube can be deceiving. I found this video with Hugh Laurie (Dr. House from the television show, an actor I LOVE) named "Hugh Laurie: the British accent vs the American" which is actually a show-off of British and american SLANG words, not accents:
But slang would be a subject for another post... anyway, have fun!
Later!
:)
He also has a video prank calling MacDonald's about finding nails in his MacMuffin using a redneck (American southern) accent:
This guy got me thinking about how every once in a while somebody will ask me about accents. The truth is that, if you're really interested in sounding like people from a certain part of the world, there are plenty of videos out there wich can help you. The two previous videos made me think of this series of videos I saw a while ago where this guy made videos of him telling the same story using several different accents, so I started looking for that. I couldn't, for some reason, but I did find a whole lot of other things that were just as good (sometimes, looking for videos on youtube can be like browsing a used books store - you end up not finding what you went there to look for, but take something else home anyway!)
First off, there's this video response to a video a guy posted with a supposedly southern redneck accent, and this girl does it soooo much better (She sounds exactly like the real thing):
Then there's the one where Ben Affleck talks about the different accents you can get in Boston...
... which took me to the video where this girl does 21 different accents in 2:34 minutes - and she's Damn good! ...
... which took me to this HILARIOUS video response of this guy trying to do the same in Spanish:
And just to end this post with a challenge, I DARE anyone to figure out what they say at the end of this video (which is a scene from the movie Hot Fuzz)
And there you have it: A couple of videos on accents! There are a lot more, which a quick search for "English accents" on youtube will show you. Only beware: sometimes titles on youtube can be deceiving. I found this video with Hugh Laurie (Dr. House from the television show, an actor I LOVE) named "Hugh Laurie: the British accent vs the American" which is actually a show-off of British and american SLANG words, not accents:
But slang would be a subject for another post... anyway, have fun!
Later!
:)
March 9, 2009
Youtube for teachers
I was watching a tv spot on the use of technology in schools, and the guy mentioned a website I visited a few months ago but had forgotten about: Teachertube. It's just like Youtube, but with a focus on education. The videos have the area of study (science, literature, etc) in the description. Many of the videos were made by students (lots of children's and teens' voices in the narrartions, which is a good break from the massively adult-centered conversations in the book), and many were projects kids did for school and which the teachers have uploaded, which could serve as inspiration for you to encourage your students to prepare a similar presentation of their own.
Hope this is helpfull!
Later!
:)
Hope this is helpfull!
Later!
:)
March 8, 2009
A couple more things...
Luiz Leandro left a comment with a lot of cool sugestions on the first post, which I'll post here now, ok?
................................................................................
Hello guys
I'd just like to show you some sites I visit that are so good for english teachers and learners:
http://www.englishtips.org/ - It's a Russian site but you can read it in English too. There's a lot of books, magazines, comics, softwares, etc. for we to download. You can find there, for instance, all the books of the series "English *** in use", English file, New Interchange, TOELF/TOEIC/etc. preparation books, and so on. It's not legal, but it's cool.
http://gigapedia.com - This one is similar to EnglishTips, but here you can find not just English books fot teachers and students, but all sort of books you can imagine, from Astrophysics to Persian Literature. You need to be registrated in order to see and download the books.
http://www.englishforums.com/ - It's the best English forum I've ever met on the Internet. Everything you ask, they answer. There's a lot of native speakers commenting there so you can trust them (sometimes there are big discussions about some topic, it's funny =). You can also find people from all over the world to talk in MSN and similars.
http://www.elllo.org/ - Elllo is a GREAT site. There's a lot of dialogues we can listen to and read the transcripts. All the dialogues have "audio notes" where they explain the vocabulary and phraseology. People talking in the conversations are from various countries so you can listen to a lot of different (and some so dificult) accents.
http://www.englishbaby.com/ - English baby is similar to Ello - you have some lessons with listening activities (most of them dialogues) and some videos too, with transcript. People speaking are almost ever Americans, and they speak SUPER fast and with a lot of slangs and so on.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ - The gratest dictionary. Use it with http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ and http://www.ldoceonline.com/ and you'll never be without a good definition.
Have fun =)
................................................................................
Thanks, Leandro! We really appreciate your suggestions!
Later!
:)
................................................................................
Hello guys
I'd just like to show you some sites I visit that are so good for english teachers and learners:
http://www.englishtips.org/ - It's a Russian site but you can read it in English too. There's a lot of books, magazines, comics, softwares, etc. for we to download. You can find there, for instance, all the books of the series "English *** in use", English file, New Interchange, TOELF/TOEIC/etc. preparation books, and so on. It's not legal, but it's cool.
http://gigapedia.com - This one is similar to EnglishTips, but here you can find not just English books fot teachers and students, but all sort of books you can imagine, from Astrophysics to Persian Literature. You need to be registrated in order to see and download the books.
http://www.englishforums.com/ - It's the best English forum I've ever met on the Internet. Everything you ask, they answer. There's a lot of native speakers commenting there so you can trust them (sometimes there are big discussions about some topic, it's funny =). You can also find people from all over the world to talk in MSN and similars.
http://www.elllo.org/ - Elllo is a GREAT site. There's a lot of dialogues we can listen to and read the transcripts. All the dialogues have "audio notes" where they explain the vocabulary and phraseology. People talking in the conversations are from various countries so you can listen to a lot of different (and some so dificult) accents.
http://www.englishbaby.com/ - English baby is similar to Ello - you have some lessons with listening activities (most of them dialogues) and some videos too, with transcript. People speaking are almost ever Americans, and they speak SUPER fast and with a lot of slangs and so on.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ - The gratest dictionary. Use it with http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ and http://www.ldoceonline.com/ and you'll never be without a good definition.
Have fun =)
................................................................................
Thanks, Leandro! We really appreciate your suggestions!
Later!
:)
A couple more videos
Ok, here's the "25 things I hate about facebook" we also saw last class, just in case you guys wanna see it again:
Check out this guy's channel on Youtube; he's got other interesting/weird videos.
On a more serious note, I found this animation a couple of months ago, and haven't actually shared it with anyone yet (I'm not sure why...)
The best thing about it is that it has the text presented in a really visually interesting way, and it is about a pretty serious subject, which can spur discussions on a whole lot of different things. How would you use this video in class?
Later!
:)
Check out this guy's channel on Youtube; he's got other interesting/weird videos.
On a more serious note, I found this animation a couple of months ago, and haven't actually shared it with anyone yet (I'm not sure why...)
The best thing about it is that it has the text presented in a really visually interesting way, and it is about a pretty serious subject, which can spur discussions on a whole lot of different things. How would you use this video in class?
Later!
:)
March 6, 2009
First post Ever!
Okay, let's kick this off with the video featured in the teacher's class this week: Signs!
(I don't really know why - I think it's because it's a widescreen format movie - but the screen seems to be cut off a bit. Just double click it to watch it directly on Youtube...)
Remember this blog is opened to collaboration from teachers - actualy, we demand it!! :P Please leave a comment if you would like to post suggestions of videos and websites, or just write something you think would be profitable for other teachers or students to know or think about.
Later!
:)
(I don't really know why - I think it's because it's a widescreen format movie - but the screen seems to be cut off a bit. Just double click it to watch it directly on Youtube...)
Remember this blog is opened to collaboration from teachers - actualy, we demand it!! :P Please leave a comment if you would like to post suggestions of videos and websites, or just write something you think would be profitable for other teachers or students to know or think about.
Later!
:)
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