Despite what you might think, Speaking Frog has nothing to do with French people learning English; it's a site which features
videos and transcripts of speeches by famous people, past and present, real and fictional. The nice thing about the site is that the videos and transcripts are presented side by side, so that you can read the transcript, or refer to it, as you watch. Here, for instance is Barack Obama's Second Inaugural Address from January 2013.
I already posted something about Palabea way back in 2008 (see here), but they've launched a new version, and Palabea is now totally different. Here's what they say:
Palabea—the speaking world is the first marketplace that allows users from all over the world to learn languages and share knowledge while speaking via video chat about a topic they are really interested in!
At Palabea you can create palabeas (video chat about a topic) for free and earn money for that. You can create online lessons via video chat, upload video tutorials, organize a teaching schedule and fix a price for your palabeas.
If you want to know more about Palabea.com, please visit our Press site. There you will find a collection of our press material.
COMMENT I haven't tried the Palabea, but if you have, I'd be interested to know what you think. Please leave a comment below.
You can either get your students to choose their own POTY, or give them a list to choose from. The TIME Magazine website has a gallery of 40 candidates, each with a short bio, which should provide inspiration if necessary! TIME will be announcing its own choice tomorrow (13 December). My money's on the Higgs Boson (not a person, I know, but neither was the computer back in 1983).
I used this great little Yahoo! News video as part of a lesson about gadgets with my EM Normandie students. After working on the video, and doing a questionnaire, I got them to work in pairs to come up with an idea for a new household gadget and present it to the class. You can find a Word version of the transcript along with a glossary, the questionnaire, and details of the presentation activity here. I also did a PowerPoint, which you can download
here.
TRANSCRIPT
I’m not lazy, just selective. I’m not willing to make something unless it’s easy, cheap, and super-useful. So in this episode of Upgrade Your Life, handy gizmos you can make for under a buck. Starting with — eeuuww —toothpaste mess in the bathroom. Cheap and easy solution — clean out a pump bottle. Fill it with toothpaste. It holds multiple tubes, which is nice, and now no caps to deal with, no dribble from the tubes … neat and tidy. One note — make sure you clean out that pump bottle well.
Staying with cleanliness, the back of your desk is a mess. Sure, you can buy fancy organizers for cords, but the cheapest way to do this: binder clips. Clip on the desk, thread the cords, you can even flip the handle to lock them in place. Genius!
Next, listening to music on your phone, but the speakers just aren’t loud enough. Solution — keg cup. Classy, right? Cut a slice out, place the device inside and it’s louder. How much louder? Well, as a tech reporter, I always have my decibel meter on hand. And the keg cup makes it ten to twelve decibels louder. This is great for music, speakerphone calls, and it also works with your iPad if you’re watching video.
Now the whole touchscreen thing is great, but sometimes you just want a stylus, the feel of a pen. Of course, you can go out and buy one but you can also make one using just a pencil, some cotton, tape, and a candy bar wrapper. Cut the candy wrapper, wrap the pencil, put the tape up high so your fingers will directly touch the wrapper. This totally works in a pinch, but if you’re gonna be doing a lot of fine work on a touch screen, spending eleven dollars for a real stylus is probably a good idea.
If you’ve ever had kids, or a geeky boyfriend, you got a tub of this stuff lying around. How about making a key-holder system? Drill hole, insert key-ring, attach to base, and voilà. Also cool, adding personalized little figures to watch over your keys.
Finally, every once in a while, you have a half a bag of chocolate chips left over. Solution — take a plastic bottle with a wide mouth, cut it, thread the bag through the neck, and now you’ve got a screw top for the occasional chocolate chip indiscretion. Thanks for watching. For Yahoo! News, I’m Becky Worley.
The New York Times Learning Network blog has a fantastic list of 163 discussion questions taken from its regular Student Opinion feature. Each question is based on content from the NYT and links to the relevant article. The questions can be used to help students practice writing (in class, for homework, or in an online forum), as inspiration for lessons, or as jumping-off points for class discussions and debates. Here are the first ten questions:
A man is using his feet to drive as he sticks his head out of the sunroof in order to avoid smoking in the car. A policeman with a megaphone tells him, "We know you're not smoking in the car, sir. But we'd still like a word ..."
COMMENT Actually, this is a very serious issue which opposes libertarians and anti-smoking lobbyists.
LESSON IDEA Get your students to debate this motion: "Smoking in cars should be banned." They will find arguments for and against here and here, and in the articles below.
I used this video from training organization Speak First in class this morning with my final year marketing students. It's not perfect (the coach overdoes the positive feedback, and the presenter is not totally convincing), but I've not found anything better for illustrating basic presentation skills with a 'before and after' situation. And the topic was relevant (see transcript below). You can find more videos by Speak First here.
TRANSCRIPT TRAINER: OK Laura, so what I’d like you to do now is do a short presentation, just a little sound bite, maybe 30, 40 seconds. I think you’re going to do it about something related to marketing, is that right?
LAURA: I work in search engine marketing. I make sure that the website for the company goes really high up in things like Google because it’s really important, eh, for the company to be seen by lots of people because then people will buy stuff. It’s really important and so I do things like making sure there are lots of keywords on the page, and making sure there’s no duplication between pages, and there are lots of things that you can do and it’s really important, um, and yep, that’s it.
TRAINER: OK Laura, thanks very much for that. That was fantastic. So what I’m going to do is give you a bit of feedback now and then I’m going to ask you in a moment just to do it again with some improvements. First thing to say is that I think the content was fantastic. If you saw that written down, it would sound tremendous. You said all the right things, but I think there’s maybe some ways in the delivery we could get that across a little bit more. You just look a little bit kind of uncomfortable, as if you don’t really care about what you’re talking about. So I think perhaps as you look at the camera just be a bit more excited about it and just imagine that you’re not just trying to get some information across but you’re trying to get, fire people’s imaginations when you do it. So, just look into the audience and just project it a little bit more. Let the hands come up. So I think this is as much a mindset thing as a body thing. Once you start to do that, I think you’ll find it so much more engaging. So don’t change the content, but it’s the delivery that needs to be improved. Do you want to have a go at that?
LAURA: Imagine life without search engines. A few years ago, they wouldn’t even have existed, and we didn’t know what they were, but now there an essential tool for all consumers to find what they’re looking for. That’s why it’s really, really vital for all companies to invest in search engine marketing and search engine optimization. There are a few key tips for how you can make sure that your website is really high up in the search engines and that you’re therefore found by anybody that wants to buy your product. For example, you need to make sure that the relevant keywords are really high on the page. This means that the search engines can find the relevant pages for the person that’s looking. You also need to make sure that your content is fresh, and that it’s renewed regularly, and that it isn’t duplicated between several pages. Those are just a few tips to get you started.
TRAINER: Laura, that was great. You really projected your personality there. One of the things we’ve talked about is that the audience would tend to feel what you feel, so you’re kind of in charge of their emotional state and you projected positive energy and that’s what—as you look at the audience, you can see how they were responding to you. And a lot of other things happened—your hands came out, you had a smile on your face. And even the content change, which it often does when you’re doing that. You were so much more positive, you were selling the benefits. So it’s just that one small change about how you feel about what it is you’re talking about that makes a very big difference to the impact that you can have and the influence you will have over your audience, and I thought that was absolutely fantastic.
LESSON IDEA Give your students a few minutes to prepare a one-minute presentation on a given subject. (I got mine to prepare in pairs, and tossed a coin to see which one would actually give the presentation.) Get the class to play the role of the coach, giving positive feedback and points for improvement.
Ward Farnsworth, Professor of Law at Boston University (and fan of The English Blog), sent me a copy of his new book Classical English Rhetoric (thanks Ward!) While English learners may find the intricacies of anaphora and epistrophe a bit beyond them, teachers of English (and anyone who has to give speeches or presentations) will appreciate the numerous examples of the rhetorical art from Shakespeare through to Churchill.
Everything in the English government appears to me the reverse of what it ought to be, and of what it is said to be. (Paine, The American Crisis, 1783)
No change there then. That's an example of symploce, by the way. You know, a combination of anaphora and epistrophe.
COMMENT I wonder whose speeches will be used as examples of classic English rhetoric 50 years from now. Obama? Probably. David Cameron? Doubtful.
New York City just passed a ban on smoking in public spaces. This has caused much debate. View transcript >>
COMMENT Since most classes will contain a mix of smokers and non-smokers, the question of smoking bans is always a good topic for discussion or debate.
While many people seem to only speak in other accents when drunk, this kid reveals himself to be an inadvertent dialect savant in this remarkable video. Within eight minutes, he masters two dozen accents used by English speakers. He says that the video is "mostly for his friends," but it's no surprise that such an impressive mimic has received so much attention on YouTube (over 2.3m hits in less than a month—ed.).
We're curious how he's learned all these accents, which he effortlessly flows out in hilarious one-sided phone conversations. (Yes, he even gets the American accents mostly down pat -- rare for even many trained professional actors!) Source: The Huffington Post
COMMENT Surprisingly good—and much more entertaining than the annoying Amy Walker and her 21 accents.
NOTE You can find a transcript of this video and some exercises on 119Eng.com.
How To ... is a course on the BBC Learning English site where you can discover and practise phrases and expressions which you can use in all kinds of different situations, whether it's to order a drink in a restaurant or have an argument with someone. Each unit has audio and texts you can download or you can subscribe to an audio podcast. There are also quizzes and exercises to help you practise what you have learnt. Great stuff!
COMMENT On The Economist site you will find arguments for and against the motion, reader comments and background reading. The winner will be announced in 9 hours (from now).
LESSON IDEA Get your students to debate this motion, using The Economist's debate to prepare their arguments.
COMMENT Another excellent Newsy report. Those guys are really doing a great job. A possible subject for a class debate (or essay) would be: "Should the government be telling people what to eat?"
