Random thoughts on iBT, CAE, and blogging

I'm switching hats again, this time back to CAE after a break in order to teach a four-week TOEFL crash course. So far, despite having had only five students for the iBT class, there have been good results. A Swiss student reached his goal of 100 (out of 120), so he will be able to come back to the US and get into a choice college or university (assuming his undergraduate grades are also at a high level). There was another strong TOEFL candidate from Austria who passed the CAE in December. He also has a good chance of breaking 100.

Now I'm getting back into gear to teach our new CAE Preparatory Course, using the Oxford Series called 'CAE Result.' I used the book last year in the fall, on a 15-hour/week schedule. This time I will be following our school's 2009 curriculum of 22.5 hours/week dedicated to Cambridge prep. Most instructors and students seemed pleased with the extended hours in the winter session, so we'll continue.

Each time I teach a closed class, I try to think of ways to use this blog. Last night I put up another calendar from Calendars Net (my last one from widgetbox disappeared after a year, and I never bothered to replace it). In the past, students liked having an internet calendar where they could see reminders of homework assignments and upcoming tests or activities. I'll see if I can get that going again.

My plan this year to do more blogging has been a positive experience. Though I hadn't planned on teaching a blogging class, that recent experience forced me to become familiar with wordpress.com, which has proven to be quite user-friendly, friendlier than it was a few years ago. If you haven't visited Our Hi Five yet, please drop by and leave a comment on one of the student's posts. I will try to keep that blog alive after school with any interested students.

English Spelling Makes No Sense

This is a link to a site that may help you with English spelling. I've often told my students that even native speakers have trouble spelling correctly. The disconnection between the pronunciation of words and their spelling makes achieving literacy in English quite a daunting task, even for people who are native speakers. Take heart, ESL students! And if you're good at spelling, then be proud of yourself!

Useful Planners for Teachers

If you have to do or like to do record-keeping, I'm sure you'll find these free organizers and calendars to be very handy. Even if you're not a teacher, you may find some of the charts and templates useful for studying, for planning a project, and for journaling.

Donna Young's site has a well-organized range of materials for almost every purpose imaginable. Time Savers for Teachers also offers some free downloadable record templates for teachers. I recommend a visit to both sites to see which materials might serve your purposes and also to get ideas of how to use them.

Textmessaging and Learning English

There have been several articles written on the topic of textmessaging and its effects on native speakers of English. The following site called Learning Now brings this topic up for comments and contains a range of thoughtful arguments for and against teaching SMS in the public school classroom. What are the pros and cons of teaching these skills to ESL students?

On the one hand, we want our students to learn standard American English. On the other hand, we want them to know how to use English effectively. Certainly, in the "real" world, outside the classroom, where communication often takes place via textmessaging, it is important to recognize common shorthand expressions, like lol, tmi, imho, and omg. At the same time, we can teach students that register or level of formality affects whether to use those expressions or not. Also, I've discovered that these expressions are finding their way into speech. If someone says, we're now bff, or asks if something is tmi, without knowledge of these acronyms, you have no idea what people are saying.

Here's a starter package of expressions I found online. I say have fun with them because if you can't have fun with a language, what's the point of studying it? ttyl....