English Assisted by Computers. I mean it.

Great debates on the use of Technology have been on lately and they food for thought.

The reading of those posts found me in front of my screen this morning, almost not remembering that I had to set up an activity for my pre intermediate teens who are dealing with the past simple forms these days.

Here's how I exploited the computer / internet aids that I has at hand:

I needed a song to deal with the PAST, so I asked "Google" for a famous song to practice the PAST TENSE (I didn't want to use the classic "Imagine" by J. Lennon) so there I was, asking for another classic...the feedback was immediate: "Summer nights" (from the musical Grease).
Yes ! Lovely -I thought.
So I looked for a clip on YouTube and the lyrics.
The idea of a very long clip didn't sound appealing, so I used Chop Tube , a magic online tool to cut long YouTube vids short. And ...voilá ...this is the extract I decided to exploit with my students.
I cut and pasted part of the lyrics from the web page indicated above and prepared a ppt file that I then uploaded to google docs (the lyrics were pasted on slides that were then placed in the wrong order). Students would later have to download this file from the web (in ppt format)and they would reorder the slides while listening to the song.
They might even check they have sort everything out correctly by visiting another brand- new - chopped YouTube video that I published on the web to serve the purpose.

Is there any other better assistant than the web and technology? The issue presented above might be really simple and basic before the endless debates arisen after the blog post mentioned in the first paragraph. But - I want to point this out- this is one of the reasons why I like working with technology. It certainly helps me by making my life easier.

Comments

Video to practise the Present Simple with kids

Some of the bad aspects of teaching Grammar is when you feel your students find the practice activities really boring. I always say that sometimes students have to put up with boring grammar exercises. But they also have the right to see something different (and not so unattrative) from time to time. You can create a funny video to get them to do what you want them to practise: One thing I learnt while exploring the web is that you have to be on the alert all the time-you can discover extremely varied sites /tools / resources that will trigger further ideas. This happened to me when I came across this site and I tried it . Then you can always use sites like Classtools.net to create some activities. ( Process shots ) I once used the same video to get students to practise a harder exercise

Cursos de verano 2019

Clases destinadas a : 1. Adultos que deseen aprender inglés o mejorarlo y que durante el año no cuentan con el tiempo para hacerlo. 2. Adultos que busquen cursos cortos para refrescar el idioma porque planean un viaje o necesitan activar el idioma por potenciales cuestiones laboraleso académicas. 3. Adolescentes que necesiten trabajar más intensamente con inglés, para iniciar un ciclo lectivo 2019 sin problemas en ese área. LAS CLASES PARA NIÑOS SE IMPARTIRAN SOLAMENTE EN GRUPOS DE 4 ó 5 ALUMNOS CON EDADES Y CONOCIMIENTOS SIMILARES DESDE EL MES DE MARZO A NOVIEMBRE DE 2019 EN LA MODALIDAD DE CLASES REGULARES ANUALES. --------------------------------------------- DURACION DE LOS CURSOS DE VERANO: Los horarios y el tiempo de duración se podrán acordar al momento de tomarlos. SOLAMENTE SE TRABAJARA CON CLASES UNO A UNO (INDIVIDUALES, O SEA UN ALUMNO Y LA DOCENTE) o EN PARES (NO GRUPALES, O SEA DOCENTE Y SOLAMENTE DOS ALUMNOS), de allí la característica de clase...

Introducing web tools to students:"Type with me"

It's always a nice idea to get students to practise the "classic" language items through innovative ways as they often tend to get bored at doing exactly the same sort of things. Do you know how many times they've gone through the Present Simple Tense? And the classic "read a text and answer questions in the present simple" kind of activity? Well, this could have been another boring practice again : Three different texts taken from somewhere online ( Scarlet , Amr and Asan and their habits around their school lives)- Sets of 10 questions per pair (they were working in pairs) that they made themselves-ie each pair was assigned a text an allows d they had to prepare the set of questions for that text. They would then interchange questionnaires and answer the questions the other teams had made. Typical activity that could have been well developed orally or even in writing (on paper). However, a new alternative has come up : Typewith.me , a web applicat...

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