Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with EFL

Show me some mystery objects.

djstig — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:23:02 -0800

Are there any good online resources for "Mystery Object" games? A friend teaches EFL students and once a week takes a quiz with them. We decided that showing mystery objects and asking the students to talk about what they could be would be a good way of making learning fun!!

However I can't find many websites with mystery object pictures, can you help. They could be a random object that people are not sure what it does, or preferably a close up of a well known object.

I can find a lot of "What the hell is this thing?" - especially on AskMe & Flickr. But sites with a collection of different pictures (with answers) would be very handy.

Helping an ESL student with a lisp

msbrauer — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:07:35 -0800

How best can a teacher address an ESL student's lisp or other speech impediments? My girlfriend is teaching English in China and a couple of her students have lisps that make their spoken English extremely difficult to understand. While she does have training as a teacher of english as a foreign language, she has no training in dealing with speech impediments. The program at her university, similarly, has no real structure for dealing with this kind of problem. She'd like to help these students with their pronunciation, but has no idea where to start. The problem isn't limited to the students' English; the lisp is there when they speak Chinese. What sort of exercises can she give these students to help overcome their severe pronunciation problems? Is it even possible? If you had a lisp, is there something in particular that helped you with better pronunciation?

Jokes for EFL students

Sar — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:09:10 -0800

I`m looking for jokes to tell my (not so advanced) EFL students. They`ve got to be clean, and I`ve found any thing dark doesn`t go over too well. They love half-Japanese / half-English riddles, the cheezier the better. As an example of what works-

Q: 500 cars go north-east from Hiroshima, 500 cars go south from Aomori. Where do they meet?

A: Sendai

ESL Writing: What are the best ways to improve my ESL Writing?

clsubmit — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:05:57 -0800

ESL Writing: What are the best ways to improve my ESL Writing? Hello everyone. I am looking for ways to improve my ESL writing assignments. (English as a Second Language) As a ESL student, paper editing takes me a long time. I have gone to the ESL Writing Center at my school, but there advice isn't very helpful. Does anyone know ways that I could improve my essay editing / essay writing abilities so that I could finish my homework faster and get better grades?

What blues/jazz songs to teach my EFL class?

alidarbac — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 20:03:46 -0800

[SchoolOfRockFilter] I'm teaching an EFL class of four high school students in rural Taiwan. There's a reading on music history about early African-American musical idioms (blues, gospel, ragtime, early jazz). It's TERRIBLY dull reading, especially considering names like Duke Ellington and Ma Rainey mean absolutely nothing to them. To liven it up a bit, I'd like to make a mix CD with 5-6 songs, print up the lyrics, and teach them that. What songs would you suggest? Criteria: 1.) Safe for high-school students (no talk of "squeeze my lemon until the juice runs down my leg" or anything) 2.) the more intelligible the lyrics, the better 3.) at least one early jazz song (Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington), one blues song, one gospel song, and one ragtime song 4.) it'd be nice if it shows a clear evolution from the earliest forms to something they'd recognize in modern-day rock.

Super bonus points if you can, um, help me find these songs and their lyrics.

826Indonesia?

mdonley — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 20:34:25 -0800

What activities can I suggest during a workshop on designing awesome creative writing assignments for overworked ESL teachers to use in class? (In Indonesia?) (With learners across many levels?) (For little/no money?) (Without Powerpoint?) Backstory: we work with a pretty prescriptive, grammar-focused, exam-based curriculum. "Writing" is worth just 10% of a student's mark, and I'd like to make that 10% something they look forward to doing well, not something they have to somehow scramble to achieve. Creative writing - really, anything fictional at all - is currently not on the agenda; the Powers That Be have decided that it's more important for students to write about the, um, more boring aspects of reality. We all want to change this.

The goal of this workshop, then, is to help teachers widen students' literary experience into the realms of what they actually enjoy reading about in the comic books or watching on the soap operas so popular here - drama, romance, fantasy, science fiction: writing from the point of view of a shark, or a sandwich, or a jealous lover, or an alien queen.

Our students range from absolute beginners to "upper-intermediate"/"advanced" levels, but few of our students are older than, say, 25, and many are also enrolled full-time in universities and high schools, and many are enrolled by their parents because their English scores at school aren't so great, so we don't have the most enthusiastic groups of students sometimes, especially among teens.

We don't have internet access for students in any meaningful way at school, but nearly all of our students have access to the internet at home or in internet cafes.

The workshop will last about an hour, so we won't have much time.

Any ideas about making this workshop effective? I'm looking for both effective workshop strategies, and ideas relevant to the topic: creative writing in an ESL context.

Thanks!

Teaching in China for just a few months?

jiawen — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:50:13 -0800

I'd like to teach English in China, but only for a couple months. I studied in Beijing in 1992, I taught English in Taiwan from 1996 to 2004 and I'm fluent in (Taiwanese-flavored) Mandarin. I'd really like to get back to the Mainland, though, especially Beijing, which I miss a lot. And I'd like to see how it's all changed in the 14 years since I've been away.

I'd like to find an EFL school that will allow me to get back there for a few months, hopefully enough to save up a bit of money to go traveling before coming back to the US. Ideally, I'd like a school that'd pay for my plane ticket and housing, because I'm pretty much broke right now. I'd like to go before the Olympics are over, too. But most importantly, I want a school that's reputable and honest, and one that won't force me to use terrible or trendy pedagogy.

Thanks!

Alexander, could you pass the ribs?

mdonley — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 20:53:35 -0800

If you could invite *anyone* from all of history to your house for dinner, who would you invite, and why? Further details, and reasons why this isn't chatfilter: I'm an English teacher in Indonesia and there's an activity I do where I divide students into groups and ask them to choose 10 people from a list of historical figures (plus two of their own choosing) to invite to a dinner party. They decide on the guest list and reasons for inviting people, seating arrangements, the menu, and any entertainment options.

The issue I have is that the list neatly provided on the worksheet is from 1988, features only 7 women, 10 people who aren't religious or political leaders, and 15 non-Westerners on a list of 60+ people, and the people it does feature includes people like Anwar Sadat and Mikhail Gorbachev. I'd like to update the list and make the activity more representative of today's world, as well as including more "minority" voices and non-politicians.

I've seen things like "The 100" but those lists seem really tilted towards the heavy movers-and-shakers of history while neglecting thinkers, artists, and other people who'd make fantastic guests at a dinner party. In this vein, note that the people don't have to be important or influential, just well-known enough to be discussed by secondary school/university students.

So, then, who's coming to dinner at your place? Feel free to list as many people as you want.

moving to Latin America, languages galore

jetskiaccidents — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 14:28:40 -0800

I am seriously considering moving to somewhere in Latin America to teach English and learn Spanish. The short story is: I just received my ESL license from the state of MN after finishing a grad-school program. Problem is, I can't seem to find a job here. Things could open up, but I figure I should turn this seemingly bad situation into a fabulous opportunity to travel and learn Spanish.

My thinking right now is to sub locally and make some money while I figure things out. I also have the opportunity to house-sit during the winter so I would be able to save a lot of money during that time. After that, (around March or so) I would be free to leave (although there is some flexibility with this). I'm 23, no car payments or credit-card debts or whatever.

That's the background, now the questions:
1. How do I go about finding a job? I've been searching, and the results have been pretty overwhelming so far. I'm not expecting to make a ton of money (hopefully enough to live on), but I don't want to volunteer. I'd like my savings to be for travel and emergencies for the most part. I know some people suggest just moving down there and finding a job when you get there, but that makes me nervous. (Not saying I wouldn't do it, but it's not preferred.)
2. Where should I go? I'm pretty open in terms of locales. Right now I'm leaning towards Costa Rica or Argentina for unknown reasons. My main criteria is that I want the city/country to be relatively safe. (archive question)
3. Places to take classes to learn Spanish while I'm there? Even if it's just for a week or so at the beginning. I know some basic Spanish, but my listening/speaking skills are pretty low. (~~I know there was a thread about this recently but I'm having trouble finding it...~~ erm, nevermind.)
4. Is my timeline off, or does it not matter? From a few sites I've looked at, it says the academic year in some Latin American countries starts in February.
5. Any other suggestions, advice, reasons why I should or should not do this...(although knowing this place, all I will get is "Go! See! The! World! Right! Now!").

Yes, I've searched the archives. This is helpful too.

Question number 9164

squirrel — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 22:08:44 -0800

Teaching English in Vietnam: Have you or has someone you know ever worked in Vietnam? I'm teaching EFL in Chiang Mai, Thailand now, and considering a move to Hanoi, where I hear the pay is better. I've visited Hanoi before and loved it. I'm seeking your experiences and informed advice.