Your ESL Tutor

Saw this on the Liverpool waterfront yesterday- a beer bike. Get a load of friends and pump pedals and pints. I hope the guy doing the steering was sober.

Happy 6th Birthday to my beloved Juno. Treats and a walk to play on the beach today.

Haven't been on my page for awhile, but summer break is coming and your ESL tutor has 6 weeks to provide quality English lessons around the Maidenhead area. So - if you want an experienced and engaging teacher - please contact me for prices and venues.

Taught a Year 6 class today, a grammar lesson on creating paragraphs. Funny what you take for granted in writing an English narrative. What are the most effective and dramatic paragraph openers?

Using Songs in TEFL – Aerosmith – Cryin’
I frequently use music in my classroom to teach English. Music is insidious; it works its way into the deepest recesses of your mind and lingers long after the song stops playing. Music stirs emotions, memories and feelings in a way that no other form of media does. Doing a Google search on song lyrics and TEFL, you will find numerous sites with some great teaching ideas – tefltunes.com is a good example. Music can be used in a variety of ways in the TEFL classroom. One of the most popular ways of highlighting a point of grammar, for example the past and present continuous, is to listen to a piece of music and highlight examples. The Aerosmith song Cryin’ is a song that I’ve used in the past with great success. It’s not only modern and relevant, but also one of my favourite bands.

“Cryin'”

There was a time
When I was so broken hearted
Love wasn’t much of a friend of mine
The tables have turned, yeah
‘Cause me and them ways have parted
That kind of love was the killin’ kind
Now listen
All I want is someone I can’t resist
I know all I need to know by the way that I got kissed

I was cryin’ when I met you
Now I’m tryin’ to forget you
Love is sweet misery
I was cryin’ just to get you
Now I’m dyin’ cause I let you
Do what you do – down on me

Now there’s not even breathin’ room
Between pleasure and pain
Yeah you cry when we’re makin’ love
Must be one and the same

It’s down on me
Yeah I got to tell you one thing
It’s been on my mind
Girl I gotta say
We’re partners in crime
You got that certain something
What you give to me
Takes my breath away
Now the word out on the street
Is the devil’s in your kiss
If our love goes up in flames
It’s a fire I can’t resist

I was cryin’ when I met you
Now I’m tryin’ to forget you
Your love is sweet misery
I was cryin’ just to get you
Now I’m dyin’ cause I let you
Do what you do to me

‘Cause what you got inside
Ain’t where your love should stay
Yeah, our love, sweet love, ain’t love
If you give your heart away

I was cryin’ when I met you
Now I’m tryin’ to forget you
Your love is sweet misery
I was cryin’ just to get you
Now I’m dyin’ just to let you
Do what you do what you do down to me,
baby, baby, baby

I was cryin’ when I met you
Now I’m tryin’ to forget you
Your love is sweet misery
I was cryin’ when I met you
Now I’m dyin’ cause I let you
Do what you do down to , down to, down to, down to
I was cryin’ when I met you
Now I’m dyin’ to forget you
Your love is sweet
I was cryin’ when I met you
[fade]

There is an opportunity to discuss not only vocabulary, but also to elicit meaning from metaphors and phrases like Your love is sweet misery. You can ask students to discuss the italicised phrases in pairs for meaning and to offer examples from their personal experience. Songs stimulate discussion. What is the song about? How does the singer use word stress and intonation to create a mood? How does the song make you feel?

Song lyrics, like poetry, are also a good vehicle for practicing pronunciation. In this instance, the fact that the ‘g’ is silent in words like crying, dying etc. Why? Is it the nature of American English? Does it create a better rhythm in the verse?

Try and be creative using songs in the TEFL classroom. Create gap-fill activities, word substitutions, running dictation or creative writing in your lesson. Most importantly, it will engage the student in a way that a simple piece of text won’t.

Remembering Our Teachers
Most of us end up with no more than

five or six people that remember us.

Teachers have thousands of people

who remember them for the rest of their lives.

Andrew A. Rooney

For me, it is probably my High School Political Science teacher, Mr. Wingerski, who stands out over the years. His style of teaching was Socratic, questioning and always challenging. I know his way of balancing argument, anticipating all the ‘angles’ and most importantly – appreciating other people’s point of view – has remained with me since 1973. Who stands out in your life?

Get to know me better! I've just started blogging.

By way of introduction....: By way of introduction....

TEACHERS LIVE IN THE MOMENT
celebrating each success as it happens
because every personal triumph
for a person, no matter how small,
inspires him to achieve more.
Paula J Fox

This is one of the rewards of being a teacher. Celebrating with your student when they pass their Cambridge exam and know they can progress to the next level.

Really looking forward to the Language Show Live 2015 at the Olympia in London (W14 8UX) from Friday 16th October to Sunday 18th October. This will be my third year at the conference and I am looking forward to attending some very useful seminars to help with my professional development. There is a seminar in using Poetry and Literature to teach English as a foreign language. Also a good jobs fair where all the major language centres and schools have representatives. Attendance is free and if you can have an intensive taster 2 hour lesson in a variety of languages for £23.

Just to share one of the most enjoyable Upper Intermediate lessons I've taught recently. It was inspired by this quote from Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel):
I like nonsense,
It wakes up the brain cells,
Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living,
It's a way of looking at life
Through the wrong end of a telescope,
Which is what I do,
And that enables you
To laugh at life's realities.
We looked at English nonsense verse and focused on Edward Lear's wonderful The Owl and the Pussycat. I read it aloud with an exaggerated English accent and then tried to elicit meaning and vocabulary - quince, mince etc. I asked the students to pick out the nonsense words including runcible. I then asked the students to create their own nonsense poem set in their native countries with a small illustration (primarily to give the higher students something to do while the others finished). The results were delightful.

Teaching for a Language School rather than as a self-employed teacher is frustrating. You can see the numbers fall and your own hours cut through reasons that are beyond your control. Anyway, now I have time - I'm back and only a click away from providing high quality, personally tailored language lessons.