sabato 6 agosto 2016

MMVC16 Proverbs brought to life in an integrated classroom

 6th August 2016

DAY 2

Webinar by Judy Wong :

                                     " Proverbs  brought to life
           in an integrated  classroom "

I could watch online the webinar by Judy Wong. I must confess that I had been looking forward to the event as I had had the opportunity of watching other presentations she had made online and I had appreciated the great competence and the tips she had provided.
Today I was not disappointed as she made a " cool" introduction to the best ways for using technology while introducing idioms and proverbs in an integrated skills classroom. 
Here is a short presentation about her. I could not but check also her blog online as she is a great master in ELT and I would say also in creativity.   See her blog :http://judysworld.edublogs.org/





The key ideas  for teaching by using proverbs:she shared this simple way for introducing and also practising proverbs in our classes: using pictures and writing a story based on a proverb.





She  showed us some examples of works which had been done by her students and they were good as students used web tools for making their presentations but they also created a text while using the idioms.
She also suggested some apps : some are known to me as I have tried them and I think that they could provide interesting ways for enhancing also the students' creativity in the process of writing.





Finally we were given resources for finding proverbs:



This is the video online which was posted later :





I was connected and found her presentation really inspiring for teaching and learning proverbs in English and other  foreign languages.

I could see that it is possible to find and to teach some proverbs as today we are given a list of idioms and we can see what others have tried to do.
Powtoons and  Storybird are very popular now and I might try to use them in my classes. I really love the first tool while Storybird is more aimed at children's stories but I might check online and see what we can do. 
As a learner I have always loved learning proverbs and the first thoughts that came to my mind when watching the webinar were how to find some videos and see what had already been done by others.
I searched online and found these videos: they were made by educators but they were not the students' works.







I must say that teaching idioms is a bit difficult for me as I am  not a mother tongue speaker, I am a teacher of English and I have learnt some idioms but idioms can vary from one country to the other.
As a result I felt that teaching simple proverbs can be easy for me and I could use them with my lower level students and help them write some stories where they use them.

The challenges

It would be more difficult to teach them at an advanced level:  I might try to see what idioms are more likely to be used and try to introduce them.  As a teacher I am still learning now so I will have something new to learn too.

I have found this interesting video online which might explain what I mean by  difficulties in teaching upper-intermediate or advanced learners:



In the future I would like to collect some interesting proverbs and idioms based on topics- I feel that it might be a sort of  dictionary of idioms which I could use with my advanced students.

I have already researched online and my next question is :  can I find more shared resources online which can help me teach idioms in English?  

Here are some interesting links which I have just found:

http://blog.tesol.org/using-proverbs-in-a-writing-class/

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/English_proverbs#Cup        (   a list of English  proverbs)

http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/sites/default/files/proverbs.pdf

http://www.manythings.org/proverbs/

http://www.lingolex.com/proverbs.html

http://www.phrasemix.com/collections/the-50-most-important-english-proverbs

A free dictionary online :

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/39281/39281-h/39281-h.htm

Idioms in English from  the Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms and the Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms:

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/


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