7 Reading Tips...& some cool links

1.If there're more than 5 words you don't know in 3 sentences, try something easier!
2.BUT – you don’t need to understand every word. Guessing is an important skill to develop! Try to guess by:
Skimming (searching for the main idea only). This quiz will help you. www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/reading/techniques/skimming/index.shtml
Scanning (searching for details quickly). This game is a fun way to practice. www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/reading/techniques/scanning/index.shtml
3.To read the news,
Advanced learners -> You can try anything (CNN? BBC? Google News?), but for something different, try the very cool - www.wired.com/
Intermediate learners -> try BBC made simple www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/ or follow @SeanBanville for links to www.breakingnewsenglish.com on twitter. MP3
Elementary learners > try www.newsenglishlessons.com/. MP3
4.To read fairy tales, try http://storynory.com/ It is a great site with stories and MP3. To read other children’s stories , try www.starfall.com/n/level-c/index/play.htm?f
Reading children’s stories is one of the best ways to pick up grammar points (such as past tenses & articles) naturally. Sentence patterns are often repeated many times.
Fairy tales help us understand modern culture, eg Tim Burton's movies are more meaningful if you've read Brothers Grimm stories.
The language is often simple, but colourful.
5.To read conversations:
Advanced learners – try movie transcripts. Check out www.script-o-rama.com
Elementary learners – try comics. Here’s Snoopy with some wise words to motivate you. http://comics.com/peanuts/
Intermediate learners – try both!
6.To read quizzes, try http://www.bbc.co.uk/switch/slink/play/quizzes/
Reading quizzes can help us pick up question forms
Personality quizzes often have a lot of useful descriptive adjectives
Quizzing your friends can be a good way to practice reading aloud

Of course there are lots of other things you can do too. Please leave a comment or tweet @getgopam with suggestions for Tip No. 7!

Ken Watanabe & why 'perfect' English is not important!

The big debate at my school now is: Is Ken Watanabe's English in Inception really good? Our office manager, Mayumi, says - No. She thinks his accent sounds unattractive. My partner, Junshi, says - I don't know. He thinks Watanabe's English was more difficult to understand than diCaprio's, though. I say - God, yes! His grammar was perfect, his vocabulary great & I will never understand why Mayumi dislikes his accent. Accents are great! & Ken Watanabe has a beautiful, expressive voice.

Of course, in Inception he had a script. In real life, his grammar & vocabulary are not so perfect. But check out this clip to see how well he can connect with people & express his ideas, despite this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP-cvU7va9s

Isn't he great? Notice how he uses his face & hands to help him. & when he can't think of the words he wants, he just stops mid-sentence & uses other words instead.

Now listen again, and try to catch exactly what the interviewer asked him.

*****************************************************************************************
Interview about Inception with Ken Watanabe - Transcript

Hello. Good Evening. It’s an amazing experience ________the film.
Oh thank you.

What was your reaction when you _______ __________ the script?
So confusing. So confusing. And, uh, I needed to back and read again 3
times. Yeah, definitely. And then… But when I saw the movie it’s more clear
and visualize it’s speed and the good speed. And then everybody can understand
about the story. I hope it.

What’s Christopher Nolan ________, as a director, to work with?
So talented. Sometimes mad.

And diCaprio? Fun to work _________?
Yeah. Very. Yeah. Thank you.

*****************************************************************************************

Want to check the answers? Write to me.

Also, challenge yourself! Try to correct Watanabe-san's English so that it IS perfect & check it with me.

& tweet @getgo_pam under the #ebookclub conversation to join the debate about whether his English is good or not.

How to choose an 英会話 (English School)

Studying English in Japan? There are so many choices thesedays that it can be difficult to choose the right way to study. So here are some tips...

(Let's be honest. I want you to come to my school. And if you live anywhere near Nishifunabashi, you should! But these tips are valid information for any ESL learner.)

1. BRAINSTORM ALL YOUR OPTIONS
Make a huge list. Don’t limit yourself. Consider standard 英会話 such as Berlitz & GABA, independent 英会話　such as GetGO!, online lessons through services such as Cafetalk & private teachers found through matching websites such as senseisagasu. Consider self-study using textbooks, twitter (read Mayumi Ishihara’s book), watching movies.
2. ELIMINATE ANY INCONVENIENT CHOICES
I’d love to recommend that you all come to GetGO, but if you live in Shibuya it’s just not practical. Choose a school &/or way of studying that you can sustain. If your school is conveniently located, there will be no excuse for quitting.
3. KNOW YOURSELF
What kind of study do YOU need?
Are you a self-motivated, independent learner? Maybe you can handle self-study. Are you confident? Maybe you can handle speaking English in crowded cafes.
But be honest with yourself! Most people are NOT self-motivated or confident enough to handle self-study or café lessons. And most people get more benefit from face to face lessons than online ones – it’s like the difference between a conference call and a business meeting. Communication is more complete in person.
4. KNOW WHAT STANDARDS ARE NECESSARY FOR YOU
If you just want to practice chatting, you only need to find a convenient, willing and sympathetic English speaker. But if you want to IMPROVE your English – look for a real teacher, real lessons and a real curriculum. How?
a) Check the teacher(s)’ qualifications. At minimum, they should have a TESOL Certificate. A Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma or Masters’ in TESOL are much higher qualifications. In Japan, foreign teachers are in high demand so quality is inconsistent. Teachers who’ve ONLY worked in Japan aren’t always qualified. Check.
b) Check the curriculum & the assessment system. Do they exist??? Independent schools and café teachers often don’t have a curriculum. This means your lessons may be too hard (or too easy) to follow because they don’t understand your level; you may waste time studying irrelevant information based on your teachers’ interests & language structures may not be presented clearly; you may not be able to see how you’ve progressed.
c) Check the textbooks used in the curriculum.
No textbooks? If the teacher is well-qualified, this could be great. Your teacher will be exhausted, though! If not, it’ll probably be a slow & painful way to study English.
Textbooks designed in-house? Be careful! These texts don’t go through the same screening processes that professionally-published ones do. Berlitz probably has the best texts of any of the Big 英会話, but even Berlitz texts are full of language errors, and not always based on great teaching methodology.
A mixture of good textbooks (from publishers such as Cambridge, Oxford & Macmillan) & ‘real’ material (such as newspapers & youtube videos)? This is the best way to learn.
5. MEET YOUR TEACHER(S) – LIKE THEM.
Or, at least, don’t DISlike them. Language learning requires high motivation and low anxiety. At minimum, you need to feel that you can trust your teacher(s). At best, your teacher should be so much fun to be around that you feel motivated to go to their lessons.
So take advantage of the ‘free trial’ system. But check – is the trial teacher going to be your real teacher? Is the trial lesson really a lesson or just a meeting? At GetGO, we offer 2 free trials, as well as a 1st-month money-back guarantee. Ask other schools if they can match that.
6. DON’T GET RIPPED OFF!
Look for hidden costs. Is there a registration fee? A maintenance fee? A textbook fee?
Do you have to sign a long-term contract?
What’s the cancellation and rescheduling policy?
When comparing prices, consider ALL these factors.
7. LOOK FOR ADDED VALUE
Does the school have parties or other activities (eg We invite special guests from different countries to organize cultural activities every 2 months.)? Can they lend you books? Do they have an online presence so you can connect with other English learners?

feeling demotivated

I should be a prime candidate for learning Japanese. But in fact, my Japanese could best be described as absolute crap - and that would be a charitable description.

So why am I so unmotivated to study? I live in Japan. Actually, not only do I live here - I have a business here: a business that could really benefit from my not pretending not to hear when the phone rings. I even have a Japanese husband who would no doubt like to have a rest from constant internal translation. And a mother-in-law who can't speak English at all (query: does the real answer to my resistance to learning Japanese lie here?).


Anyway, despite the millions of reasons I should be studying, I'm not. But I'm not blogging this just to navel-gaze. In fact, I'm quite a typical case among ESL teachers in Tokyo. Occasionally we get together to snicker about the apalling English of our students (& partners... gomenasai, Junshi!) while simultaneously scratching our heads in bewilderment at the drinks list in a pub. I suspect we all know we really should hit the books, but... most of us just don't wanna.

I've been reading some stuff about motivation in language learning (Zoltan Dornyei is a language learning motivational god, but I can't find his '10 commandments' listed for free on the net except in this article by Kazuya Sawada... so thank you, Sawada-san. I've attached the article Sawada-san wrote here - www.kuir.jm.kansai-uac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10112/1286/1/KU-11006I-20040331-09.pdf).

However, my own experience keeps leading me back to thoughts on powerful de-motivating forces. Fear of the language being too big to ever conquer. Fear of the lessons being a boring time-suck. And money-suck. Fear of finding out that my hubby and I get along a whole lot worse in Japanese.

Anyway, I just wanted to send out some admiration for all the language students out there. Whatever motivating forces lead you to stick with learning, good on you. Good on you for not letting those forces be clouded out by the dark forces that crush the spirits (work ethics?) of us weaker (lazier?) folk! Seriously - as a teacher, I'm truly humbled by your persistence.

And truly hopeful that my crap attitude to study gives me the empathy to prepare lessons that motivate my students.

and also...

And if you search through http://mikeharrison.edublog.org, you can find his thoughts on using the Nike ad I mentioned below to contextualise teaching of the 3rd conditional (If Rooney had scored a goal, he would have been knighted).

So the moral of the story is...

Don't promise rashly, dear readers.

Last week, after a stupidly busy day, I sat wild-eyed and caffeinated in front of my computer. A blog! I thought. Yes! I'll write a blog for esl students! and esl teachers! About...umm...esl!

Then this weekend I tried to write another entry.

And I realised that I just don't have what it takes to write for esl students. That requires absolute commitment to a pared-down, succinct style that just takes too much time and energy to maintain. For me, it's hard enough to write 1 twitter entry a day in under 10 minutes (saying something meaningful in under 146 characters is a hell of a discipline: now I get why all these esl twitterers are out there tweeting 'I had a banana for breakfast :)' day after day).

So the new resolution is... this blog will be like a diary. I will add links for esl students (please feel free to skip my blather and go straight to the language-learning links). And as I am an esl teacher, I'm bound to stumble upon the occasional useful piece of advice for esl teachers.

Let's start with the very famous - www.breakingnewsenglish.com. Sean Banville - thank you! Show me a teacher who doesn't use his stuff and I'll show you a teacher who doesn't know how to google. But he gets a mention because his website is particularly useful at the moment. Not only has he listed 42 lessons on the World Cup, he's uploaded new lessons every day based on commentary of every single match! The man must not sleep.

I've been trying to milk the World Cup for all its worth, too, but in a more authentic (ie lazier) way.

For advanced level students, I've found discussions based on this irate open letter about vuvuzelas addressed to '...Europeans, Cristiano Ronaldo and whingy South Africans' to work well. Check it out - http://gotravel24.com/theme/world-cup-2010/vuvuzela-love-or-lump-it You can have debates, throw around proverbs like 'Silence is Golden' or 'When in Rome do as the Romans do'. It's good fun.

For pre-int or intermediate students, I recommend using the Nike 'Write the Future' ad (it's all over youtube). Play it and pause over each stars face - elicit who the player is, who they play for, why they're famous and how they performed in the World Cup. Use that time to teach language such as 'score a goal', 'win against' 'lose to'. At the end of the ad, ask if any of those players performed well in this World Cup. Then introduce the notion of the 'Curse of the Nike Ad' (read the article about the curse before class so you know what you're talking about - http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/nike, but don't bog the class down trying to make them read it). Use that to lead into a discussion about their opinions of the different players.

Enjoy!

The biggest bank of ESL resources in the whole blogging world!

I love English. I love hearing it, reading it, talking it... I especially love telling other people how they should use it.

This is not always a wise thing to do. In conversation, anyway. You try telling someone that they've used past perfect tense when they should've stuck with past simple. Go ahead, try it. Friends will drop you, lovers will stop calling, your rock n roll image will wither on the vine. Not that I've ever had a rock n roll image, but this is virtual reality - let's say that I do. In fact, let's say that you do too. You're wearing leather pants right now, aren't you? You naughty, naughty reader of blogs about studying English!

Anyway...so I became an English as a Second Language Teacher. This turned out to be great fun, but as far as an outlet for my language control-freak issues it's been a total waste of time. As I've since discovered, a good ESL teacher (in a Japanese environment, anyway) mainly listens to their students; smiles, nods and encourages them to express themselves without fear of making mistakes.

Hence this blog. I intend to make daily postings about English. And I intend to promote the websites (ie steal the links) that other, better teachers have already posted on the net.
By July 2011, I intend this blog to be THE blog with the best-quality bank of ESL materials in the whole blogging world!

Come and join the ride!