Canadian Superfoods

Hello, students of the seniors' class!

Your presentations on using local foods when they are in season were very interesting! Thank you for following the guidelines. You did a great job of not using notes in front of the class. Your body language was good; you made good eye contact with your audience. I loved the visual aids you created to make your presentations more engaging.

Here is the audio text about cranberries. You can download it, open it in Windows Media Player and listen while you read the transcript that I gave you. There are many other audios and lessons available online HERE. Scroll to the bottom of the page.

This week we also talked about working on the purity of your vowel sounds. You can use Ellis Master Pronunciation software for this purpose. Call me over and I will show you. The desktop icon is purple. If you are at home, you can watch Rachel teach vowels. Here are some of her vowel videos.

Our Listening / Speaking Strategies

We have begun Listening Boot Camp!

What is a boot camp?

It is intensive training for new military recruits with a strict drill sergeant. Sometimes health clubs also offer boot camps for people who want to get in good shape fast. The personal trainer is there to motivate people to work hard for quick results. The personal trainer doesn't let you make excuses or take the easy way.

I am here to motivate you to awaken and strengthen different areas of your brains. We have agreed to close our bilingual dictionaries during listening lessons. The dictionaries can distract us from the main goal: improving listening and speaking skills.

This week we started building our tool box of L / S strategies. We can:

• Guess an unknown word from context. (Remember the Shillybog!)
• Listen for the gist.
• Use repair strategies. (Communication is a two-way street.)
• Talk around a word we do not know by explaining to the listener what we mean.
• Tune into CONTENT words.
• Practice good linking and prosody so your brain is prepared for the way native speakers really talk.

Here Rachel teaches you about consonant sound to vowel sound LINKING.

Watch this video about HOW TO GUESS A WORD FROM CONTEXT.  Here is another video about the same thing. There are many!

This is a great video on keys to improve your listening comprehension.

If you want to print the words to one of the 265 Short Stories on Mr. Zhang's Listening Page, call me over and we can do that together.

Computer Lab - October 3

Hello, Cas' class!

If you would like to practice listening skills and hear dialogues for everyday activities, please go to 5-minute English and click LISTENING.

You may also want to watch some videos on YouTube on EnglishHelper's channel. These skits cover a number of topics from daily life.

Those with very high reading skills may wish to try this 100-question health survey. You do NOT have to give your name or email address to do the survey. You only need to give that information if you want to enter a contest.

Why not use Google to research Canadian Thanksgiving? You may end up discussing it in class this week. Click HERE to watch a video about how to cook a turkey, followed by a quiz to check your understanding.

You may also use Ellis software or any other link as long as it's in English.

You may check email or Facebook during the break.

Kelly

Computer Lab Day

Hello, students,

Are you done using Ellis?

You may use any of the websites in my sidebar (the links on the right). Have fun!

If you want to watch a funny teacher explaining the TH sounds, click here. That is Teacher Dave. He also has a good lesson about the SH sound. Try not to laugh at his hair, okay?

High intermediate students, you might want to try "Listen and Read Along." You can stop the audio whenever you want. You can click a line of text to play it again. Please notice which words the speaker stresses. Also notice which syllables are stressed in the words. Call me if you need help.

Very advanced students, you might want to try watching a TED Talk. Many of them have been translated into your language. You can read the text in your first language, then you can watch the lecture while reading the English text. This is good practice in listening, but it is very advanced. If you decide to try this, call me and I can help you learn your way around the website.