Lesson Download: Digging In On The Urban Farm

Well, delicious fresh food doesn't exactly grow from the palm of your hand, but your hands are most definitely involved! Lucky me got to spend an afternoon with word mentor and urban farmer Tracey Cook to learn some of the basics of urban farming—a.k.a growing fruits and vegetables and sometimes raising chickens, bees... 

Tracey impressed upon me the importance of composting and creating nutrient-rich soil, so I thought I'd focus part of the lesson on composting (p.s. I made that compost visual all my myself!). Word mentors like Tracey help me build authentic lessons that are hopefully also fun and useful! Love to hear what you think about this newest addition to the Here! Magazine "Learn Here" collection. Click image to view, print, or download lesson. Read the article here and read the rest of the wonderful Summer Issue here!

Improve Your Global Business English

The Fabulous Functionall Resource Review #3

One of the goals of this blog is to help you sort through the overwhelming number of language resources available to choose the materials that are right for your language learning or teaching journey. Not only is there a plethora of resources, they don't come cheap. Let this old hat do the research and save you time and money. Lord knows, we teachers need more of both! - Fiona 

for more information about my reviewing approach click here

   About 15 years ago, at one of my first teaching jobs, I was given the assignment of teaching a Brazilian businessman "Business English". I'm not sure why I was asked or what his ultimate impressions were but let's just say it was a learning experience all around. I had no business background. I was a geeky linguistics graduate. The small school where I was teaching had few "Business English" resources, all of which were outdated or extremely basic or both. At that time, there was also very little available online. My student and I cobbled our lessons together, based on his particular needs and what was essentially my ability to fake it. 

Fast forward to Improve Your Global Business English - this resource would have saved my skin 15 years ago. 

Book for Review: 

Improve Your 
Global Business English

Authors: 

Fiona Talbot 
& 
Sudakshina Bhattacharjee

In Depth Resource Review:

Author Fiona Talbot has referred to Improve Your Global Business English as an "office guide" used for "self-development". This is a good description. It is certainly well-suited to independent study and reference but this doesn't exclude it from being a great classroom resource as well. It is smart, thoughtful, practical and relevant. My four favourite things!

¨

The Introduction does a nice job of explaining a) who the book is for b) how to use it and c) the book's terminology and spelling (Mid-Atlantic!) philosophy. It also makes it obvious that only advanced English language learners or native speakers will be able to negotiate the book's meaning and fully engage with its content. 

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The book addresses important themes including:

• defining global business English within your organization
• understanding cultures, subcultures and approaches to businesses and workplaces
• the changing face of writing in the digital age
• common challenges in business English
• using email efficiently
• writing for impact
• writing agendas, notes, and minutes of meetings
• how to write for Twitter
• offering or requesting support
• using the right words to motivate

           ¨

If some of this doesn't sound like a language learning resource, you're right. It is as much a business resource for native speakers as it is a language guide for business English learners and it strikes a nice balance between the two. I think this is what makes Improve Your Global Business English so relevant and useful. It doesn't look at language in a vacuum but in the context of its purpose. 

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And rest assured, the content is well-supported with activities and review exercises that would be very adaptable to an ESL/EFL environment:

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Of course, no resource is perfect - there is a great deal of content crammed into what could have been spread over two or three volumes (which I guess also means you get your money's worth!). I sometimes found the organization odd and confusing (for example, "The purpose of this book" passage really belongs in the introduction, not in Chapter One). 

You know how I love my visual cues and I'm always all about less talk, more action, so I do feel Improve Your Global Business English is text-heavy and that may intimidate some learners and educators. I'd like to see more "check-ins", exercises, images, perhaps even some field activities (a.k.a. 'homework') for self-assessment and practice. 
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Despite these weaknesses, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend  Improve Your Global Business English to any Business English educator or learner as there is much here to draw upon and expand upon - it's a reference and guide that will be dog-eared in no time! 

Pronunciation and prejudice

The class was dynamic: the students young, engaged, goofy, courageous. They were Chinese high school students with excellent vocabularies and confidence to spare. I took to them instantly. Perhaps it was mutual.

I gave them fun tasks and then some challenging projects and they surpassed my expectations every time. But. 

The students often complained that nobody in the shops or restaurants, on the streets, or on campus understood them and their often simple requests. You see, outside of the classroom and beyond my protective #ELT net, my students' English accomplishments fell on deaf ears. Or, to re-phrase, their words fell on ears unaccustomed to their accents and, seemingly, reluctant to stretch a lobe familiar boundaries. For the untrained and impatient listener, these students were very difficult to understand. On the surface, it might even seem and feel like prejudice, much like when my mother-in-law pretends not to understand someone helping her out from a call centre halfway around the world. 

But let's face it. Pronunciation prejudice goes both ways and might be summed up thus:

1) Native listeners and speakers who can't be bothered to negotiate misplaced stress, an off-vowel, or a fumbled consonant cluster

and

2) English language learners who may have mastered the syntax, vocabulary, grammar, and meaning of an utterance but don't take honing their pronunciation seriously

Of course, when discussing "intelligibility", it is more complicated than that and ongoing research has resulted in a multitude of explanations, none of them mutually exclusive. 

I remember in my early teaching days, repeating to my students a theory I half-remembered from a lecture that suggested "stress misplacement" was the most significant cause of misunderstanding, or lack of intelligibility, between speaker and listener.  I hadn't ever bothered to source my assertions but I certainly had vats of empirical evidence in my own classroom and in my own life. However casually I tossed this theory out to my students, it seemed to make them seriously consider and invest in the pronunciation component of their language learning. Thanks to Dr. Google McLinguist, I have no trouble these days finding support for my then-flimsy pedagogy.

An example:

"some accounts of speech processing raise the possibility that the stressed syllable of a word provides the listener with a code that links directly to the representation of the word in the mind"

and in this paper's conclusions: 

"the consequences of misinterpreting even a small

number of content words can be extremely damaging to global understanding"

full paper here

In other words, what I had been saying to my students all along: "They don't understand you, despite your good grammar and natural vocabulary, because it's not how they expect to hear you say it".  The listener is already programmed. ESL teachers, on the other hand, have a certain listening flexibility after years of negotiating intelligibility and meaning with non-native speakers of various backgrounds.

I am obviously far from an expert in this field but the crux of it is this: we can't train all the listeners.  All the perfect grammar and stellar vocabulary in the world may just fall on deaf ears if we don't include or even emphasize pronunciation teaching and practice. With globalization, pronunciation teaching has become a bit of minefield of accents, dialects, and political correctness. Educators wonder what to teach and what to correct or accept. As with any other aspect of language learning, it is a delicate balance and an environment in which ultimately, the educator can only share his or her own experience and knowledge.

In the end, we want our students to be confident, to be successful, and to be heard. After all their hard work, that's the least we can give them. 

p.s. speaking of experts, the talented and brilliant Dr. Bill Acton of Trinity Western University has created an intuitive, effective haptic pronunciation program called, yup, "Acton Haptic". If you're like me and so-so at pronunciation teaching and not sure where to start, this all-inclusive video-based program does it all. Press play and you and your students learn together. Test run Acton Haptic here and read about Dr. Acton's research here.

The Fabulous Functionall Resource Review #2

One of the goals of this blog is to help you sort through the overwhelming number of language resources available to choose the materials that are right for your language learning or teaching journey. Not only is there a plethora of resources, they don't come cheap. Let this old hat do the research and save you time and money. Lord knows, we teachers need more of both! - Fiona

for more information about my reviewing approach click here

Book for Review: Jason's World

Author: Gerry Luton

Resource Review @ a Glance:

In Depth Resource Review:

Before I get down to the nitty-gritty, I have to confess that I ADORE Jason's World. Author Gerry Luton and I are kindred spirits when it comes to a real language approach, a teacher- and student-friendly format, and relevant, current contexts.

Now to business: Jason's World is first and foremost a listening course, an 8-episode audio soap opera for intermediate ESL students to be exact. The text is accompanied by a CD that includes tracks of each episode plus corresponding vocabulary review listening exercises.

The introduction includes notes on methodology, teaching tips, and activity guides. Each unit or Episode includes:

• Introduction to Vocabulary
• Finding Meaning From Context
• Vocabulary Practice
• Before You Listen
• Listening Comprehension Worksheet
• Class Discussion Topics
• Vocabulary Review Listening Exercise

Some units also include various activities such as, Find Someone Who..., Personal Opinion Survey, Crossword Puzzle, Word/Definition Matching Exercise, and Trivia Game to get the students up and moving while reviewing and reinforcing the vocabulary in a fun way. In addition, the book offers a glossary, transcripts, a "parts of speech" table AND a website with supplementary exercises: jasonsworldonline.shorturl.com

The assignments and activities are somewhat standard but the content is certainly not. The contexts and vocabulary are so authentic and natural that it is impossible for teachers and students not to relate to it on some level; this is a lively dialogue excerpt from Episode 2 - "Cheated":

Jason: What the hell is going on here?

Layla: Cool it, Jason. It's no big deal. We were only kissing.

Jason: Only kissing! What do you mean, only kissing? I thought you were my girlfriend.

Layla: Yeah, well, you don't own me, you know. I can kiss who I want to.

Go on and blush, Betty Azar.

The format is clean and well-organized with clear instructions, although the images are few and not-so-fabulous. The book itself is spiral-bound, so it is very easy to handle (read: flip through, search, and generally manhandle in a loving way).

There is really not much I don't like about this listening course. I have to confess that I didn't get access to the audio CD in time for this review but I have been told by colleagues that it is of very high-quality and that their students love it as much as they do. If I were pressed to find one flaw with Jason's World, it would probably be that there isn't more of it. It is worth being fleshed out as a fully integrated textbook including grammar, pronunciation, reading, and all the other bells and whistles. That I would like to see.

Teachers, even if you don't have a listening lab or other audio capabilities to use this as a listening book, it still has great value on its own as a vocabulary and discussion text. If you are an ESL or EFL student reading this review, go right now and ask your teacher or school administrator to order it for your class! Click for more information about Jason's World (or its high-intermediate sister book, Judy's World).

Please leave comments below and especially if you have used Luton's book, let us know what you or your students liked. Please also feel free to suggest another title for my next review. Thank you to Christy Sebelius for this great recommendation!