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Summer. For c1.1s & c1.2s

1. For all…

Reading Club, with books, poems, stories, essays I suggest for our work. Rememer to 1. sign up and 2. subscribe to the R.Club!!! (the online course).

We will also include TV Series and movie senes for Dramatized Readings & performances.

talkingpeople.net/ecampus

2.

Grammar in context extra support for people making under-the-level grammar mistakes and for new students joining the c1.1 course next September.

+ for people who I recommemded to take the c1.1 course again, and use their summer work to consolidate the B2+ level in grammar and types of written texts…

About learning about textual structure I recommend my notes on Writing, on Talking People, and reading students work published on Your Stuff. I’ll be adding some c1 writing texts I have.

This self-study exercise book is also good for people who will start a c1.2 year in September but whose grammar needs urgent improvements and consolidation. It will help you understand which are mistakes you should work on avoiding by connecting this training to the input you get from reading and listening in your everyday bilingual life!!

3.

For people who wish to advance work they could be doing at home during the c1.2 2019-20 year…

Remember my courses are about projects and workshops with original materials, SO read the C1 RESOURCE PACK, downloadable for free on talkingpeople.net – enter – in class – c1

Diary for March 23. UL 4 conversations

Today the lesson was awesome! We welcomed Greg to practice/practise conversations, and Bea S. brought these delicious cookies/biscuits!

 

 

Bea made a picture, which is great! I’ll add it to our banner! 💜💕🧡🌱🙏😚

Please, jot down my notes so you re-use this UL and also connect it to your LoM!

 l

About the two-year C1 course, teachers & methodology

Can you lend me a hand with some brooding over the C1 course? I would like to ask you to answer these questions if you manage the time. You can do 1 (the polls), or 1 + 2 (reading why’s), or 1 + 2 + 3 (developing your own analysis).

1. The Polls – this will take you very little time and it’ll be of great help. It’s anonymous and you can tick as many answers AS APPLY TO YOUR CASE.

NB: In the polls, I’m not including Education for Equality because all teachers need to include in their teaching this crosscurricular subject — not only me, OK?

2. Background Information. Explaining the whys of this post

As you know, because when we started this 2018-19 academic year our syllabus was for a year, not two, we’ve had to adapt to the new situation throughout the course, so I asked my colleagues in our last meeting if it would be OK for me to stay with you C1.1’s next year too in C1.2, so we can succeed in our mission of covering all the points the C1 syllabus included! You see, in our Department we try to choose groups expressing preferences and then reaching a consensus, because we think teaching is a very complex matter and it’s important each teacher feels positive about her or his levels.

I’ve been thinking that considering the methodology we use in class, which was published by my school as the C1 Resource Pack, is so novel to so many students (in spite of the fact that it is not that new, really — textbooks share a lot of the aims and procedures I explain. Actually, I learned those in textbooks too!), and the fact that we use original materials which you share via your projects and which I share in non-stop diagnoses throughout the year, to adapt to individual and group needs, I think it would be a good idea…

• to allow students taking the c1.1 course with me one year to continue with me (the same teacher) the following year too, whether in the c1.2 course or because they need to take the c1.1 course again.

For the English Department this would mean I would have a two groups of C1 every year, a c1.1 non-certifying group and a c1.2 certifying group, which would need to be the same students I worked with the first year. In our last Department meeting we talked about this, due to the peculiar situation we faced this year, and my colleagues agreed I should teach the new c1.2 course next year, and stay in my old c1.1 (with new students and whoever decides to take the c1.1 course again). But now I’m thinking this should be so hereafter!

About next year, because B2 students will be able to move on to the c1.1 course, I imagine we will have new groups and more teachers giving the C1 level, which is wonderful because then students will have more teachers, days and hours to choose from. But so far in our School (since 2013 that I know) levels are understood as individual one-year courses and we have not had one teacher staying two years in a row with a same group — mostly for organizational reasons, not because we did not want to.

3. The Question or Writing Topic. I would like to know what you think about this proposal:

• spending two learning years with the same teacher at the advanced level.
  Do you think this would be a good decision? Why (not)?

Writing Tips. Approach: You can speak in general and then focus on or illustrate with your own case, or else, you can focus on your own case OR speak in general! 😀

Deadline and Language: You can answer whenever suits you best — preferably before the end of June 2019, in English or Spanish or both! The good thing about answering in Spanish is that I could share it more broadly; say, with the School’s Claustro (teachers’ governing body) and Consejo Escolar (the school’s most important governing body), and the authorities when they request info about the C1 courses at EEOOII.

Diary for May 6 – BH, the end!

Today we had no orals and I answered questions.

Then we finished working on our wonderful listening comprehension activity, including phonemic transcription by Margarita, so well done!!!, congrats!, and lamguage questions at the c1 level.

Please, give me a copy of your checked handout with the result on the top right corner.

Remember to gather UL  from dictionary entries and other you find or think of, on the term ‘responsibility’. Consider ‘guilt, blame’ and ‘accountability, holding sb accountable.’

Next day, orals, please prepare a little oral, reading a poem, retelling another story or simply telling us about your day. And the spring test. Peeps who did not take it can print it, do it and correct it in class next Thursday, with us!

We welcomed Teresa back!

And I had 4 brief tutorías!

Thank you for a wonderful lesson, with people totally involved and interested! Curiosity to power!!

Night night, sleep tight, don’t let your fears bite!!!

A little pressie, enjoy what a 16-year-old Elementary student shared in our I Feminist Cultural Week!

http://www.talkingpeople.net/tppodcast/2019/03/01/special-episodes-feminist-artwork-desis-poster-my-body-my-rules/

 

Edited! Getting Ready for an Interactive Speaking Activity

With Greg!

Activity designed by Greg and MF on the 16th of May. Spare paper copies in class, but you can also downloaded here: apartmentsharingGreg (1 Word page).

These are my old worksheets. I’m planning to update them or adapt them.

 Sharing a flat 2 – 2 tasks (1 page)
 Sharing a flat 3 – 3 tasks (1 page)
 Sharing a flat 1 (2 pages)

Remember to give me the info I need. See Diary May 2

Collecting your checked work

Dear students, please, remember to get your checked work from the tray in class. And of course, to work on your List of Mistakes, make clean final copies when needed, and share in class what you learned/learnt or I marked “In class”. Remember you can always read out your written work, because it helps us review language questions.

I’d like to ask people who worked on the time and tenses workshops, like Ana and María Isabel, to conduct a session on that. Also, María Isabel has done very good work on conditional sentences and I think we should be preparing an activity (any volunteers?) on Mixed Conditionals, after María Isabel presents her review of type 0 to 4 based on Useful Language from Parker’s story “A Telephone Call”.

See you soon!

Lesson Plans

Plans for next week are:

• YOU SPEAK TIME. One hour you talk (orals, questions, comments, discussions, practicing things you wish to share later on…) + reminding us of pending exercises, or solving them on the spot!
• One hour LISTENING TASK (2) for Term 2. We’ll listen to a radio interview and you’ll answer some questions. Then you will have to write a summary in 150-250 words based on what you understood or your thoughts after listening.
• Remember you need to hand in a copy of our Listening Task (1) on Helen Mirren!
• If time allows, I’ll end the lesson any of the days explaining why I became ill.

Upcoming Videos: Presentation of the FCW by C1 Students

Dear all,

I have finally downloaded all the audios and videos de 11 people volunteering to read out your own group translation of “Presentación de la I Semana Cultural Feminista”. I’ll be working on the editing of this video whenever I find free chunks of time!!

• The recordings are by Lorena, Andrea, M Isabel, Efrén (replacing Bea S.), Marina, Mabel, Juanfra, Asun, MLuisa, Ana and Lola.
• The translations were done by Lorena, Amparo, María Isabel, Bea S., and Lola.

Thanks so much for your work and your support! ❤

All of the info in all of our languages is posted on the DIF Blog here.

Upcoming Lesson Plans: 2 weeks

Your booked – and unbooked if time allows – orals any day are welcome.

SCF. Those of you who have work on this need to write your name down for sharing 3-4 min. talks on something that allows us to learn about women’s work & achievement, so we can overcome our profound ignorance on half of humanities’ minds. We can’t have more time because workshops will be full of students sharing. You can also present your highlights of our work on the human rights declaration: sharing an article, what you learned about the importance of language in our conceptual system, whatever. Posters, collage, anything you image, talk to me. Let me know, so I can organize the c1.1 participation.

Tues Jan 22

• Listening Comprehension. Part 2 for people who did part 1. Part 1 for people who missed it.
• Time & Tense workshop part 3. Practicing narratives in small groups.

Thurs Jan 24

• Second lesson for sharing your work on Wangari Maathai.
• Use & omission of “the” in small groups.
• Contingency plan for any day: second session for playing the “If this person were…” game. Catching UP: Time and Tense narratives we did not do on Jan 22
  

On the following week we’ll go through your checked work (LoM for oral & written work) to learn about how to improve what, in terms of textual structure, communicative purposes, functional grammar, methodology…

And we’ll start with documentaries: 1h watching, one hour sharing thoughts.

Lesson Plan for Today

Pending (agreed): two people to share their Maathai autobio first contribution to share in class (Margarita and Antonio, if I remember correctly)

today is a language lesson, so bring your Time & Tense workshop, and we’ll also do a listening comprehension exercise.

I’ll give two new handouts, too.

The Time & Tense workshop:

Supposedly, we’ve all read the intro and now we need to consider the first exercise or example I give of how to use tenses.

Procedure: individual speaking: each member in the small group needs to imitate the exercise I do as an example, to practice my language awareness with tenses, and monitoring my production. Other group members need to listen and take notes, and once the person has finished, give feedback on mistakes once the person has finished, and/or engage in having a conversation where you practice BEING AWARE OF THE USE AND THE MEANING OF TENSES IN CONTEXT.

Listening Comprehension exercise:

We’ll also do a 10 minute listening exercise: listen twice and answer a multiple choice exercise. Plus listen again and jot down useful language. Plenary where you’ll share and we’ll also go through my own example of UL.

Evaluación Continua requires in Term 2 at least one of my listening exercises a month.

About the video on the 7 pages of Gender Issues

If I am right, I only have Margarita’s two parts and Laura’s, and from the Difitas, Cirenia’s.

We are in no rush here, for this one, because I’m editing a video with the 18 guests and then your video presenting the week (see previous post), then the video presenting the week in French, and then I could start with this one.

But whenever possible, please, people, check if you sent me your part of Gender Issues and Coeducación. And send it to me with this subject line, please: video gender, so I can spot it fast!

Here are the people involved: https://c1coursebymf2018.wordpress.com/2019/01/07/aclarando-quien-hace-que-porfa-mirar/

 

 

 

Language Learning and Boredom

One of the very many obstacles many people have when learning a language is being unable to focus on actual language learning when using materials for language learning because they expect to be very much entertained! The more entertaining a course is, the more demanding people get, or so it feels at times! 😛 Every year I hear that it’s boring to listen to the same audio or audiovisual many times, or to read this or that material or book. Funny (=Strange). Repetition makes learning easier. Are we being self-destructive here? People who manage to be competent foreign language users should be role models. They may or may not find some material boring, but they are able to focus on how that material allows them to improve their command of the foreign language.

Just consider my case. I’ve watched Friends 1×1 zillions of times. And I’m always interested because I focus on language and repetition makes me learn the lines effortlessly. I’m not a good reader, but in every single book I read in English I find interesting material for my language learning. I may skip parts I find more boring, of course, but I understand the book offers me opportunities to learn, to improve my English. So if you feel bored when you watch a same episode of a TV series, listen to a same chapter of Mary Poppins, a same podcast episode, or read a book you’re not much into, consider what I’m saying. Language learners are lucky to be able to use all kinds of materials to learn, they don’t focus on being entertained because they’re eager to work on their learning. You’re all studying, learning a language, after all. This involves effort, action. In the past it was all about filling in gaps in grammar exercises. Appreciate our incredible progress! (On top of it all, you are free to choose which materials you wish to work on from a wonderful selection this course offers and also from your own selection.)

There is more to this, but it might sound harder. I hope you understand what I mean, because I intend no harm. I’ve been extremely poor and lived in countries where people had to survive war and terror, and I’ve experienced what it is to come back to my country and feel like an alien. Feel that all the good things that make our lives more comfortable, safer, nicer are not appreciated as if we had become spoiled. We should appreciate, value the fact we have the chance to devote time to learning (and this is harder to do if we’re feeling guilty, bored, or stressed out), and that we have the opportunity to learn about real life, real people. Like junk food, colorful and tasty, totally artificial, our physical comfort and general safety along with our audiovisual culture tends to make people unable to appreciate human-sized reality. We should be aware of this and fight it because a relevant source of happiness is real life, mutual human company and communication, learning about real people, not only being engrossed by stories we can’t possibly put down or stop watching.

The Maathai Projects

After your fast reading of Unbowed, here is the working plan for the next months.

For Evaluación Continua the February Maathai OP + the March Writing Assignment will be minimums to comply with.

• 2019_projectsaroundunbowed+fcw (2 Word pages) We will read them and agree on things to get organized for making the most of this great chance to learn about the world while including women’s analyses, experiences and achievements. ❤

Wise Women offering us a gift… (Today is The 3 Wise Men’s eve)

I got this reply to the email I sent out – See our Wangari Maathai page for that

Dear Michelle,

I am happy to send you 20+ copies of Taking Rootfor free if you will pay for the postage. How does that sound? Or, I could send you a link that you could use. The DVD has closed captioning and that might be useful. There are also DVD extras – that is, 90 minutes of footage that’s not in the film that is wonderful footage. There is one clip of Wangari talking with a BBC Reporter and one of the questions he asks her is what it means to be a strong African woman. It is a great interview – very appropriate for your class on Women Transforming the World.

If you’d ever like me to Skype in to your class at some time, I would be happy to do that. And we are coming to Spain in March! We will be just north of Almeria in Terque … I see that it is about a two hour drive to Malaga…well, we can keep in touch about that! I knew Wangari for about 10 years and am still very involved with the Green Belt Movement and her family.

Let me know how you’d like to proceed.

Feliz año nuevo!

Lisa

Presentation of FCW: who’s recording what (reminders)

People who volunteered to record an audio or a video (landscape, horizontal) reading aloud bits of the presentation of our Fist Feminist Cultural Week are:

OMG! Who’s reading the title plus credits for translators? – pending

§1 Lorena (video) from “We, women…” to “has human rights” and Andrea (video) from “For centuries,” to “asked to be named”.

§2 María Isabel (video) from “With our First Feminist Cultural Week,” to “or don’t want to listen to now” (we agree we would cross out “self” in “self-respect” and Bea S. (video?) from “We women have human minds” to “on this planet” (we introduced a comma before “overcoming the antifeminist prejudice”).

§3 Marina (video) from “When we rescue our untold history” to “thanks to her intelligece and wisdom” and Mabel (video) from “More recently” to “intelligence and human knowledge”.

§4 Juanfra (video?) reads from the title “Our Week (FCW”to “how we want to relate to each other”.

§5 Asun (video) reads the complete point under the heading “Plenary Sessions…” (including the list of guest speakers I mean).

§6 María Luisa (audio) reads the first paragraph under the heading “Workshops…” including the heading, of course! 😀

§7 Ana (audio) reads the second paragraph under this same heading of workshops.

§8 Lola (audio) ends by reading from “Friday March 8” to “we can change it”!

Thanks so much for this valuable support to our SCF!

NB: If you said you would record an audio and you change your mind, feel free to do so! 😀 ❤

When should you be sending in your recording?

If possible, any time next week, so that I can put together the video in the following week. But if you can’t, don’t worry, send it whenever you can. I’ll have things ready with the rest. Send it to my email (eoi at and then my website) and if the video were too heavy, remember you can use WeTransfer to send video emails.

Acknowledgements

You are role models for people learning languages at our school, and both your translation of this text, by Lorena, Amparo, Beatriz S., Lola, and María Isabel (the ad), plus now this video are precious work! ❤ And practical too: it will allow us to spread the word in English! ❤