I spent the third year of my degree doing a British Council assistantship. Normally language assistants go to a primary or secondary school and work with teachers to supplement the English programmes at the school. In my case, and that of the other three students who were on the same programme as me, I went to the Angloin Asuncion, a private language school, where I got my first real taste of the job I do now.

Asuncion's now defunct railway station

During the application process we had to choose three countries where we wanted to work as assistants. At that time, I had no idea what the differences were between different countries in South America, since my only connection with the continent was the three or four lecturers who had taught me during my degree course. With only 14 months of four contact hours a week under my belt, I was so focussed on the language that I hadn’t really thought that much about the culture(s). All I knew was that I was desperate to explore a whole new continent – what was the point of spending a year in Spain when I could go there at the drop of a hat from England?

Unfortunately, there was no box on the form for ‘Just send me to South America please!’ and I had to narrow it down somehow. One of my modules at university had looked at minority languages in Spain and South America, and I knew that Quechua in Peru and Guarani in Paraguay were still quite strong. The next job was to decide which to put as my first choice. In the end, the fact that the application said ‘Assistants in Paraguay normally share a flat with the other British Council assistants’ decided it, and I put Peru first and Paraguay second. For my third country I chose Chile, for the completely frivolous reason that it was long and thin and I wondered what being in a country like that would be like!

Paraguay doesn’t have a British Council office, so those of us placed there perhaps have to be a bit more independent  than our fellow assistants in other countries. During my interview, I spoke about my experiences in Malaysia, and I’m pretty sure this is what got me sent to Paraguay rather than Peru. I really didn’t mind this, as it gave me the chance to spend a fascinating year exploring South America, and I can’t think of any other reason I would have gone to Paraguay without the assistantship. I still miss it, and I hope to go back at some point soon.

Asuncion from the 13th floor

…Brno, Czech Republic

One of my favourite buildings in Brno

My first three years of full-time teaching, immediately after graduating, were in Brno in the Czech Republic. I had studied French, German and Spanish at university, and had spent time living in South America, France and Germany since leaving school. I was eager to visit a new country and learn a new language, but I wanted to stay in Europe to be able to go back to the UK at Christmas (I had spent Christmas Eve with friends, but Christmas Day alone in Paraguay).

I did my CELTA part-time during my final year at university, and pretty much from day one of the course in October I was thinking about where to go next. For a while I thought about Thessaloniki in Greece, then Trieste in Italy (for no other reasons than that they were near the sea and land borders and I didn’t speak the languages there), but I really wanted to work for International House, and neither of those cities had IH schools.

When the IH recruitment list was released I had no idea which jobs to apply for, so I spoke to my CELTA tutors and they suggested I look at Central Europe as they said it would be good for development. I immediately went home and applied for four schools, with no particular preference. A couple of days later I was asked to say which was my first choice, and as with South America I had no idea! Brno was my second choice again, since my first-choice school offered the chance to do a Young Learners Certificate. However, the first-choice posts were already all taken, so I was sent to Brno. This resulted in three of the best years of my life, which I summarised in this video.

Brno from the flat I was lucky enough to live in for 18 months

…Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

The bridges of the River Tyne

I applied for Durham University without really knowing anything about the north-east of my country at all (the further north I had previously been was York). A careers adviser at school suggested I apply there, and I have him to thank for ending up at the perfect university When I arrived on my open day, I immediately fell in love with the city, and over the four years of my degree I came to love the north-east of England too.

When I decided to apply to become an London 2012 volunteer, I knew that it would be much easier to go through the application and eventual training (if I got, which I’m very happy to say I did!) from a base in the UK, and it took very little thought at all to settle on applying to IH Newcastle, where I was lucky enough to get a job. It’s great to be back in the north-east, and to revisit and discover so many places I love visiting.

View of Newcastle from the castle which was new (in 1080)

And my next destination?

Who knows? I’ve spent the last month or so trying to decide where I want to go in September after the Paralympics have finished, and although (like Greece and Italy before) I’ve had various countries in my head, I actually have no idea. This is very exciting, because I really could go anywhere – I fully intend to take advantage of not having any ties – but also a little scary, because I have no idea where I’ll be in eight months time. All I do know is that I’d like to do my DELTA in the next academic year, and that if possible I’d like to learn a new language. Oh, and that I don’t like snow

On page 124 of the teacher’s book there is a list of rules about a possible Utopia, designed to revise modals of obligation and permission (must, have to, should). Students work alone to decide if they agree or disagree with the rules, then get together to debate a final version of their Utopia.

This single sheet prompted discussion about whether taxes were necessary, whether governments really need weapons, the benefits of living in a foreign country, and whether one language should be allowed to dominate the world.

Thank you very much Will Moreton and Kevin McNicholas!

I set up ‘Independent English‘ for students, with the aim of giving them ideas to help them practise English at home. I plan to post roughly once a week, with each post being a step-by-step guide which they can work through alone or with a teacher. If I have time, I will also record myself reading the post so that students can listen to it if they are not confident readers. It is probably best for B1/Intermediate and higher at the moment, although some posts may be suitable for lower levels later.

The first entry is about podcasts, including a list of links to (in my opinion) good podcasts for learners and native speakers to listen to.

There is also a facebook page for you to ‘like’.

Please feel free to pass the link on to your students, and/or to give me feedback on how to improve the site. Hope you find it useful!

It’s based on the game ‘Consequences’. Each person writes one or two sentences, folds the paper and passes it to the next person. Nobody can see what has been written before.

Each student needs a piece of paper and a pen, and the teacher needs a list of questions. This was my list:

• What’s your name and where are you from?
• What do you like doing in your free time?
• Why are you learning English?
• What is your family like? (you could also say ‘Describe your family’ if the ‘is…like’ structure is too difficult)
• When was your last holiday? What did you do?
• What are you going to do this evening?
• What are your future plans? Is English important for your future?
• What is one thing you love and one thing you hate?

Students answered the questions one at a time, folded the paper and passed it on, then answered the next question. In the end, we had over one page of writing for each student, something which they are often reluctant to produce otherwise.

Here are some examples (click to enlarge):

Students then worked in small groups to read the texts and correct them. Because each piece of paper had writing from all of them, it didn’t feel like they were being targeted. They could also see that everyone in the class makes mistakes, not just them. I monitored and helped them with any questions, but generally they managed to correct most things without my help.

Once they had all looked at every piece of paper, I highlighted the remaining few problems (there were never more than six on any piece of paper) and they looked at them together. You can see these in pink on the examples above.

The whole activity prompted a lot of discussion about the grammar, spellings and meanings, and students were really motivated.

Just a quick post to let you know that my Motivation Stations post from last week is this month’s featured post on the British Council Teaching English page. Thanks to everyone who supports my blog. I’d love to know how it goes if you choose to use the materials in your class

Link to the longer post on Twitter for Professional Development

Sandy Millin on Twitter

The tweets which were sent to us from other Twitter users (from newest to oldest):

Thanks to everyone who sent tweets!

duncan_lydburyDuncan Baker

@

@sandymillin Twitter is a really good way to have almost instant communication with all friends and colleagues round the world – friendly!

elizzabetttamartha ador

@

@sandymillin Hi! I love it because you can interact with people any time and get inmediate response! Greetings from Mexico ! Good luck !

1 hour ago

»

WinnersSchoolsWinners Education

@sandymillin #ELTchat Twitter’s great once you find the right connections.Groups you share interests with or “following” belong to are great

1 hour ago

»

leoselivanLexical Leo

@

@phil3wade @sandymillin I was in Paris for best friend’s bday so didn’t hang out much in the eves with conf crowd – so missed all the action

1 hour ago

»

daveclearyczDave Cleary

@

@sandymillin#eltchat New to twitter but finding it great because of the people, it is a social network not a technological one

1 hour ago

»

phil3wadephil wade

@

@leoselivan @sandymillin I wasn’t there but it seemed like a real benchmark in the EFL/Twitter world.

1 hour ago

»

leoselivanLexical Leo

@sandymillin as someone commented yday – attending confs is a whole diff ball game when you get to meet your Twitter followeres f2f

1 hour ago

»

leoselivanLexical Leo

@sandymillin seems half of my twitter buddies were at #TESOLFrance in Nov – I wish I’d been on Twitter then – could’ve met many inspiring Ts

1 hour ago

»

PhilPethybridgePhilip Pethybridge

Twitter brings things to your attention; provides help/ideas; links to blogs/sites; online staffroom; fun diversions! #eltchat @sandymillin

1 hour ago

»

cgoodeyCarol Goodey

@

@sandymillin Hope I’m in time! Twitter’s a gr8 way to keep up w/ what’s going on in ELT world, learn new ways of doing things, & get support

1 hour ago

»

aClilToClimbChiew Pang

@

@sandymillin hi y’all. It’s grt PD bc the world’s open to us. We shr probs, thoughts, reflectns, resources, life, stories,… #eltchat

1 hour ago

»

cerirhiannonCeri Jones

RT @DaveDodgson: @sandymillin  it takes time to build connections & reap the benefits. Definitely worth it though #ELTchat > agree

1 hour ago

»

DaveDodgsonDavid Dodgson

@

@sandymillin Twitter IS great for PD BUT it takes time to build connections & reap the benefits. Definitely worth it though #ELTchat

1 hour ago

»

michaelegriffinMichael Griffin

@

@sandymillin Been using Twitter for about 2 months N have been really impressed with the active engagement in ELT from all around the world

cerirhiannonCeri Jones

@

@sandymillin  Hi!  twitter offers the most amazing variety of voices & experiences of committed, questioning Ts from all over the world

1 hour ago

»

cioccasLesley

@

@sandymillin Twitter has led me to the fabulous community teachers that is #ELTchat & increased my PD 100-fold!

worldteacherAndrea Wade

@

@sandymillin Hi from Vietnam! I get all my best links and info from Twitter and I meet some great people who can answer all my questions!

5 hours ago

»

marekandrewsmark andrews

@

@sandymillin twitter gr8 to share ideas,resources+ 4 you,entering the world of EFL,it’s gd 2 be in touch w/ people whose books u will read!

My group asked me if we could look at some more meaty discussion topics this week, and while I was searching for some prompts, I came across the excellent Talking Points series of worksheets from tefl.net. One of them was about ‘Learner Motivation‘ and it seemed like exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

At the same time, I remembered a talk from TED.com by Matt Cutts, called ‘Try Something New for 30 Days‘, which is helpfully available with subtitles.

I decided to combine these and throw in a few more discussion points, dividing the students into four groups and the tasks into four ‘stations’.  Students moved around from one station to the next every 10-15 minutes. They watched the video using my iPad, but if you don’t have access to anything to play the video on, you could ask students to watch it before the class or give them that section for homework.

I had a paper version of the Powerpoint presentation, not including the first two slides or the last one. To save paper, you could print them as 2-per-page handouts (on the print screen, find the ‘print slides’ option, then select ‘handouts, 2 per page) which should be big enough for students to see clearly.

[To download, click ‘view on slideshare’. You may have to log in (not sure), but it’s completely free. You should then be able to click on ‘download’ above the document.]

Students could also be given the option to work through the presentation themselves, and think/write about the topics at home, ready for discussion in class.

With 10-15 minutes per station, none of the pairs did more than the first three activities from the ‘Learner Motivation’ sheet, so once they had all talked about every topic and we had discussed the final slide as a class, we went back to activity four and looked at how students could motivate themselves to work on their English, especially to learn vocabulary and to do their homework.

The students were motivated and enjoyed discussing the topic. They were particularly interested in the video and the motivational quotes. We started the week with this lesson, and they have mentioned it again and again, especially the phrase ‘Carpe Diem’.

So seize the day and enjoy this lesson!

General

www.flo-joe.com/fce/

Great website, full of tips, especially for Reading, Use of English and Writing. I’d definitely recommend students look at the word bank every day, and that teachers try to make use of those words in their classes to motivate students to use it! There is also a bank of writing showcasing all of the different text types, including teacher feedback.

http://www.cambridgeesol.org/exams/fce/index.html

The official Cambridge FCE website, with information about the length of the papers and the task types, as well as some free materials to download.

http://www.fceexam.com/

http://firstcertificate.wordpress.com/

Two blogs aimed at students. Both include information, tips and exercises covering all parts of the exam.

Practice exams

http://www.english-online.org.uk/fcefolder/gramfce.php?name=Practice%20for%20the%20First%20Certificate%20in%20English

Two sets of Reading, Writing and Use of English practise exercises..

http://www.examenglish.com/FCE/index.php

A free practice test, not including speaking.

Vocabulary

http://quizlet.com/group/114523/

http://quizlet.com/subject/fce/

Three places to find online flashcards to play games with on the quizlet website, to download onto smartphones or to print off and use in class.

The rest of the links are organised by paper. The links above also include some information for each paper, and there’s doesn’t seem to be anything specific for Paper 1: Reading that isn’t just a practice test.

Paper 2: Writing

http://languagesint.blogspot.com/2010/05/fce-advice-how-to-write-review.html

http://languagesint.blogspot.com/2010/05/fce-tips-how-to-write-article.html

http://languagesint.blogspot.com/2010/05/written-by-languages-international.html (report)

http://languagesint.blogspot.com/2010/05/12-top-fce-story-tips.html

Hints and tips on how to write reviews, articles, reports and stories.

Paper 3: Use of English

http://www.ihbristol.com/learn-online/exercise-esol.php

Lots of Use of English exercises.

http://www.imparareinglese.co.uk/esercizi_inglese.htm

Use of English exercises (under the ‘Intermediate’ heading)

http://practiseenglish.blogspot.com/2009/03/fce-key-word-transformation-practice-3.html

72 key word transformation sentences, but no key.

http://www.autoenglish.org/FCEUse/FCEUsePart4.htm

This link will take you to Use of English part 4 Key Word Transformation information and exercises. At the top of the page you can also find links to Reading and the other Use of English sections.

http://quizlet.com/8782322/fce-sentence-transformations-1-20-flash-cards/

http://quizlet.com/8782817/fce-sentence-transformations-21-40-flash-cards/

http://quizlet.com/8782986/fce-sentence-transformations-41-60-flash-cards/

Key word transformations on quizlet. Students can play games to help them practise the forms.

Paper 4: Listening

http://www.britishcouncil.org/professionals-exams-fce-listening-intro.htm

Listening practice from the British Council.

Paper 5: Speaking

http://www.britishcouncil.org/professionals-exams-fce-speaking-intro.htm

Speaking practice from the British Council.

http://www.splendid-speaking.com/exams/fce_speaking.html

Tips and example questions to help students prepare for the Speaking Paper (Paper 5)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=LxCoEdFUcBw

A video showing two students doing part 1 of the Speaking paper. Once you have watched the video, click on the links to the right to take you to the next section. All four sections are available.

I started off with the powerpoint presentation below. I displayed it on the interactive whiteboard, but you could print off the pictures and put them around the room instead. First, students were asked to speculate on what is in the pictures, and naturally they focus on the objects. Next, I asked them what links the pictures together, accepting any suggestions. I then told them that these were objects which immigrants to New York City brought with them. I then asked them to make notes about their thoughts on the gender, nationality, age, job and family of the owners of each object.

[To download, click ‘view on slideshare’. You may have to log in (not sure), but it’s completely free. You should then be able to click on ‘download’ above the document.]

I then gave the students the texts and asked them to read quickly to match each text to the photos. Some of them needed quite a lot of persuading to skim read and not try to understand everything!

You can find the correct answers by looking at the original article online. The students then had to check their predictions about the people by reading the text in a bit more detail. When a colleague reused the materials, she added a worksheet with a table with spaces for each item of information, which worked better than the notes which my students made.

In the penultimate step of the two-hour lesson, I divided the ‘stories’ up around the class, so that each pair of students had two people to read about. They had to create three to five questions about each person, not including the information we had already talked about (nationality, job etc) and write them down.

Finally, they mingled and asked the other students their questions.

For homework, I asked them to choose a story from the comments board, take notes on it and bring them to class the next day to tell the other students about.

A couple of days later I was working on relative clauses with the same class, and created the following gapfill to help them practise which relative pronoun to use:

The texts could also be used to practise narrative tenses, reported speech, time phrases and much more. You could also use it to lead into a discussion on immigration.

Enjoy!

Throughout the course I adapted the way I was teaching, and I have lots of ideas for how I might change it if I taught it again. I thought these might be useful for other teachers preparing students for the FCE exam, so I’ll share them with you here.

Flo-Joe

Far and away the most useful thing I did with the students was introduce them to the flo-joe website, which is specifically designed for students preparing for Cambridge exams. I told the group about the site right at the beginning of the course, but they virtually never used it until I started going through the word bank with them every day, which took about 20 minutes. I showed them the page (we were lucky enough to have an IWB, but you could print it or just write it on the board). They had one piece of paper/page in their notebook each for:

• phrasal verbs
  Here they wrote the verb, a definition and an example sentence which I elicited from the students.
• word formation
  The page was divided into four columns: noun/verb/adjective/adverb. As well as the four forms given on the flo-joe page, we added as many other forms as the students/I could think of.
• collocations
  This included an example sentence, again elicited from the students.

We did this as a whole class activity and I wrote everything on the whiteboard for them to copy. On each page of notes, I encouraged students to highlight the phrasal verb, the key word for word formation, and anything which surprised them in the collocation (for example, a preposition which they didn’t expect).

Here is an excellent example of the notes taken by one of the students. She also added to her list from other Use of English exercises.

Maria’s notebook (pdf document – click to open)

Some of the students also took advantage of other sections of the site, such as practice tests and the writing class.

In the future, I would work with the flo-joe word bank from day one of the course, and I would also show students how to add to their list from U of E exercises done in class. Finally, I would build in a lot more revision of the words. We did some towards the end of the course, but this was not enough.

As one of my students said:

I think it is one of the best website we can use to improve our English.

Quizlet

Quizlet is designed to help students learn vocabulary in a fun way. It is very easy to create flashcards and share them with the students, and they can create their own if they want to. I set up a private group on the site for my class, which I have now made public so any FCE students can join it. Once students join, they can choose to receive an email notification every time a set of flashcards is added to the group.

By the end of the course we had 50 sets, some covering specific lexical groups, while others contained random vocabulary from the lessons that week. I encouraged students to access quizlet outside class, and printed flashcards directly from the site if students requested them. We also occasionally played games on it in sessions.

In future courses, I would create more clear lexical sets, covering as many areas as possible that could come up in the exam. I would also revise the vocabulary more often in class, as only a few of the students used the site as much as I thought they would. It would also probably be a good idea to have more smaller sets, as some of them put students off by their size.

In Class/Homework

We ended up spending a lot of time going over grammar rules in class, and when we weren’t doing that we were normally looking at lexical sets. For the first two months this left very little time for freer practice and exam-type tasks. I think it would benefit students more if they study the grammar and vocabulary at home, then practice it in class.

For vocabulary, the teacher could record the pronunciation of words/phrases/example sentences, to be used in addition to an online dictionary like the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. A recording would give the students all of the vocabulary in one place, and they could put it on an mp3 player/phone to listen to outside class.

It would be better for students to do more exam-type tasks earlier in the course, and spend a lot more time reflecting on them. This might be hard to manage, but is something to experiment with.

Writing

Many students’ least favourite part of the exam (if it’s not writing, it’s Use of English!) After I had introduced each text type in class, I gave the students a set of sample texts from First Certificate Expert. Rather than doing it this way, it would have been more effective to look at one text type a week, and give students as many examples as possible from writing banks as they are introduced. This should help students to get a much better idea of the differences between the genres, which was the most difficult thing for them to grasp. It would also give them lots of tasks to do if they want to. Over a twelve-week course, I would expect students to produce two or three pieces of writing every week. This may seem a lot, but they have seven text types to practice, and this would only give them about three attempts at each text type.

Revision, revision, revision

I’ve already said it a couple of times, but it bears repeating. My course didn’t include anywhere near enough revision, as I often felt I was running to keep up! By encouraging students to look at grammar and vocabulary at home, class time could be used for recycling, instead of introducing language. Creating an overall course plan at the beginning would also have helped me to build in time for revision (I only managed to do this about a month after the course began).

Conclusion

I really enjoyed the experience of intensively teaching this FCE group, though it did take over my life somewhat! I learnt a lot, and hope these lessons will be useful to others teaching FCE, regardless of their contexts.