Photo box

While I was doing my CELTA, and before I knew about eltpics, I saved photos from magazines in an old biscuit tin. Shortly after my CELTA, I put said tin in my mum’s attic, where it stayed for the three years I was in Brno. When I came back to the UK to work in Newcastle, I thought it was time to retrieve some of the materials banished to the attic and try to make use of them. It took another eight months for me to finally find a good use for the photo box, and they have now become a staple of my current beginner classes. You could substitute eltpics or pictures drawn by students. Here are some of the ways I have used them.

With all of the activities, I modelled first, then the students copied the model to do the activity. I have never given explicit instructions as the students would not understand them at this level.

What’s her name? What’s his name?

After introducing the structure ‘What’s _____ name?’, elicit a selection of names and write them on slips of paper. Save them after the class (I keep mine in the tin with the pictures) as they will come in useful again and again. I wrote girls’ names in pink and boys’ names in blue to help the students. They don’t have to be English names – my students just decided that was what they wanted, and all of the names shown in these pictures come from them.

Ask the students to attach names to the photos by asking ‘What’s his/her name?’ They could also pick up a photo and a name to take on the identity of that person.

Other structures we practised here were:

• His/Her name is (not) _______.
• Is his/her name _______? Yes, it is. No, it isn’t.
• He/She is (not)  ________.
• Is he/she ________? Yes, he/she is. No, he/she isn’t.
• (By grouping pictures or using ones with more than one person) What are their names?
• Their names are ______ and ________.
• Are their names ______ and ________? Yes, they are. No, they aren’t.
• How do you spell _____?

What’s his name? What’s her name?

Where is she from? Where is he from?

Using flags, add an extra stage after eliciting the name. You can practise similar structures to those above, and by including pictures of objects you can add structures with ‘it’ too.

• Where is he/she/it/Jake from?
• Where does he/she/it/Kate come from?  (introduced by my students)
• Is he/she/it/Ivy from _______? Yes, he/she/it is. No, he/she/it isn’t.
• Does he/she/it/Harry come from ________? Yes, he/she/it does. No, he/she/it doesn’t.
• What country is he/she/it/James from?
• He/She/It/Lucy is (not) from __________.
• He/She/It/David comes/doesn’t come from ____________.

Where is he from? Where is she from?

Colours

Spread a selection of pictures, both people and objects on the table. Ask students to point to a picture showing a particular colour: blue/red…. You could make it harder by including more than one colour in your requirement: blue and green. You could also practise ‘What colour is it?’

Objects/Possessives

First, revise the name questions as above – I normally get students to do this as they are assigning names to the photos. Then, put an object with each name/photo pair. You can use this to practise:

• Does he/she/Michael have ________? Yes, he/she does. No, he/she doesn’t.
• He/She/Jack has __________.
• He/She/John doesn’t have _________.
• What does he/she/Anna have?
• Do they have ______? Yes, they do. No, they don’t.
• They (don’t) have ________.
• What do they have?

We played a guessing game using the ‘doesn’t have’ structure. One person said a negative sentence, for example ‘He doesn’t have matches.’ The others were allowed one guess (only!), before the first student said another sentence. The other students had to work out which person it was using the fewest guesses.

With the same photos and flashcards, we also practised:

• It is his/her/their/Jack’s _________.
• They are his/her/their/Jack’s ________.
• Is it his/her/their/Jack’s __________? Yes, it is. No, it isn’t.
• Are they his/her/their/Jack’s ________? Yes, they are. No, they aren’t.

What does he have? What does she have?

Clothes

You could do practise any of the structures listed for ‘objects’ above. You could also practise the obvious structure of: ‘What is he/she wearing?’ ‘What are they wearing?’ I introduced colours as adjectives at this point:

• She is wearing a grey jacket.
• He is wearing a black jacket.
• Michael is wearing a white shirt.

The course

I have managed to teach at least 50 hours of lessons over the last five weeks based largely on a combination of these pictures, some flashcards, a (non-interactive) whiteboard, and trips to the school cafe to introduce other students. The pictures have formed the backbone of drilling and repetition, while providing variety through their mix and match nature. I’ve had a maximum of four students, so this variety has been important. I will continue to use them throughout the course, and will share any more activities as and when we do them. If you have any more ideas on how to use the pictures, with any level (not just beginners), please feel free to leave a comment.

Enjoy!

IH TOC 50

International House is celebrating 50 years of teacher training courses. The first course took place in 1962, and was the forerunner to what is now the CELTA. As part of the celebrations, a one-day online conference has been organised for Friday 25th May 2012, and I am one of the presenters.

As it is my first webinar, I thought I would present on a topic I am familiar with, so I chose ‘Twitter for Professional Development’.

Here are all of the links I shared during my presentation:

• Twitter
• Russell Stannard’s introduction to Twitter
• Me on Twitter
• Barbara Sakamoto’s starter PLN: recommendations of tweeters for you to follow
• My list of International House schools on Twitter (please tell me if I have missed any)
• IHTOC50 on Tweetchat (IH Teachers Online Conference)
• ELTchat
• ELTpics and the ‘Take a photo and…‘ blog
• Tweetdeck – a way to organise Twitter
• Diigo – a social bookmarking site
• Google Reader – a way to keep track of blogs you are following

For a more detailed explanation of how to make the most of Twitter, look here.

Thank you to International House for providing me with the opportunity to present this webinar, and to Oxford University Press for providing the platform to host the workshop.

Setting up a self-hosted blog (guest post)

This guest post was written by Chris Wilson, who has his own self-hosted blog at ELT Squared. On his blog one post is about choosing a blog provider to use with students. He has also written a step-by-step guide to for setting up a Posterous blog. Over to Chris:

If you reading this I’m guessing you’ve been convinced. It’s time to set up a blog.

Congratulations and welcome to the club!

Just to help you along the way I thought I’d pass on a few tips I’ve learnt during my many years of blogging, and by the end of this post, you’ll have set up your own self-hosted blog. But first let’s answer some important questions.

Why do you want a blog?

This can really affect every subsequent step you take. If this is something for yourself and you don’t really want anyone else to see then you’ll choose something completely different from someone who wants a blog to make money.

Why should you choose a self-hosted blog?

There are many great free blogs but they do lack some features of pricey ones (such as audio/video hosting or advertising). The free ones are great to start out on but from experience of changing between blogs three times it’s best to stick with just one.

How can you choose a name/style?

Go through these questions quickly and answer them honestly. They can help you pick a good name to use for your blog/persona.

• Think of three adjectives to describe yourself
• Imagine your ideal reader then try to write to them
• Write down some books/blogs etc that you enjoy reading. What do you like about them/the way they write?
• What other influences do you have? What is it that you like about them?

Setting up a self-hosted blog

Self-hosted blogs are very different from hosted blogs in that they require YOU to buy your own webhosting, basically a place where you can upload information, or in this case a website, to the internet and then other people can access it. Self hosting is obviously a lot more technical and requires a great deal of computer competency. It also costs money, thought the exact amounts vary.

However, the advantage is it is completely customisable! You can do whatever you want with it, install any add-ons you like, change the theme to any theme you like, have your own unique domain name etc.

I recently changed over to a self-hosted wordpress blog (wordpress are generally considered the best blog option) and I have not regretted it.

Here is the more detailed instruction process I followed

1. Sign up to a hosting company.
   There are various webhosting companies which have different features and different pricing schemes. I use Zyma.com which is a British company that offers great support. Despite my issues in setting up, they quickly responded and helped me through every step. Their service costs only £4.95 a year, but there is a hidden charge. You also have to pay for domain hosting. Despite owning my own domain before I went over to Zyma, I still had to pay for it for 2 years at £18.98 in total.
   For a list of different companies check out this comparison list.
   Once you have your webhosting you will need to choose your domain name and you can even have one that ends in .com .co.uk or any other country domain!
2. Installing wordpress
   Once you have signed up you need to log in to your cPanel (control panel) and then install wordpress. Many hosting services have a quick install option which is usually under a category like software and services. One of the great things about Zyma is the presence of this quick install option and video guides on their website for how to install a blog.
   For more detailed instructions on how to install wordpress with or without a quick install option click this link.
   Consider where to install your blog. If you install it in a subdirectory (like /blog) then you can have a website with several sections including a blog! When you are installing, it will ask you for an account name and a password. This is very important as they are your administrator account details.
3. Getting the details
   Enter the email address where you want your blog details to be sent to (you may have got a free email address along with your domain and webhosting)
4. Done!
   Once you have installed your wordpress blog, you’re basically good to go! Except you have to wait 24-48 hrs for the domain name to be registered for your blog and for your use. However, you can get your first post ready, find a cool theme, write your about page and much more! You should be able to log in to your admin page via your server address (a series of numbers) and /wp-admin/ or once your domain is up using this formula: http://www.domain name/wp-admin/

If you are considering a self-hosted installation, then there is no harm in setting up a blog on wordpress.com first so you can get used to the style of using wordpress ready for when you have your own site. [The blog you’re reading right now is hosted on wordpress.com.]

I hope this is a useful guide for how to set up a blog. If you have any more questions then leave a comment, visit me at eltsquared.co.uk or find me on twitter @MrChrisJWilson.

I’m published!

The IH Journal was published today, and on page 26 you can find my first ever print article. It is the first in what will hopefully be a series called ‘Developing Teacher’. The first post is about being a reflective teacher.

You can read it here.

I’d recommend reading the whole journal, as there are lots of interesting articles in it. I particularly enjoyed reading Chia Suan Chong‘s post about the pragmatics of politeness, Lewis Waitt’s tips about surviving your first year after CELTA, and Shaun Wilden‘s description of the new IH CPD system, which I can hopefully start taking part in soon.

Enjoy!

Ideas for an IWB…

…or a projector!

I shared these ideas and links with colleagues at my school during a 45-minute workshop. They are meant to help us all get more use out of our electronic whiteboards, which are sometimes only used as an oversize television, or at best a way to access Google. I presented four tools, and demonstrated a couple of ways to use each of them. Since I’m not too confident with the pen functions of our IWBs, and the calibration needs to be redone quite regularly, all of these tools could equally well be used with projector too.

PowerPoint

Not just a presentation tool! PowerPoint is actually very versatile, and is great for vocabulary revision games. There are many templates on the web which are (relatively) easy to download and adapt. I have also written a post showing you how to make two games: one for hidden pictures and the other flashing pictures up quickly for students to remember vocabulary.

Triptico

Triptico is my favourite IWB tool because it is versatile, easy to use, constantly updated, and best of all, free! David has created a video showing how to use a lot of the tools within Triptico. I shared my ideas for using Triptico here and recorded a video showing you how to download it and use word magnets, although it’s a little out-of-date. This is what Triptico looks like now, and there are about twice as many functions as there were a year ago when I made the video:

#eltpics

To declare an interest, I am one of the curators of the Flickr #eltpics site and it is something I am very proud to be a part of. Teachers, writers and other interested parties from all over the world share photos on Twitter, including the #eltpics hashtag in their tweets. A group of us then upload them to Flickr, where they are then available for anybody to use in classroom materials or on blogs, with no need to worry about copyright restrictions. There are only two conditions: that you attribute the photos to the photographer (their name is under each picture) and that you do not make any money from anything featuring the images. At the time of writing, we have just topped 8000 images divided into 66 sets, and we also take requests for topics or types of image which people would like us to add. You can see the 10 most recently uploaded #eltpics at the bottom of the right-hand column on this blog.

How to join in

How to download the photos

Ideas for using the photos – blog

I also shared Big Huge Labs excellent mosaic maker and captioner, which are a great to use with #eltpics. You could use the captioner as a way to revise or introduce a particular piece of language. Here’s a picture I added captions too. It was taken by Ian James (@ij64):

Quizlet

Quizlet is an online flashcards site, where you can search for content which has already been created, or make your own flashcards. The scatter and space race functions are both great for an IWB/projector. I have written a complete guide to Quizlet over on my blog for students.

Further reading

Here are a few other posts I have written with ideas or tips which might also be useful:

• Easy Technology for the EFL Classroom
• Teaching 2.0 in the One-Computer Classroom
• Tools for the 21st-century teacher
• Go online: getting your students to use Internet resources
• Twitter for Professional Development (almost all of the ideas shared here are ones which I found out about through Twitter)

Chiew Pang has a series of games on his blog, which are very good for specific purposes:

• Places in a town
• Pronunciation of regular past simple
• Irregular past simple
• Jigsaw puzzles, including one for adjectives of feeling

Phil Bird has written a post about SmartNotebook tools and activities.

Gareth Davies has a whole blog dedicated to IWBs called ‘Interactive Whiteboards made simple’.

If you have any other ideas, please leave them in the comments.

Enjoy!

Creating two PowerPoint games

Most people think that PowerPoint is just for presentations that put you to sleep. In fact, it’s a very versatile tool and fairly easy to get a lot out of, despite seeming a little scary at first glance. Here I’ll show you how to create two simple PowerPoint games.

Hidden Pictures

I made this example a while ago, and if I did it again I’d probably use #eltpics! Although it doesn’t look like much here, if you download it you can see that each time you click a box disappears, gradually revealing a picture and a word underneath. As this happens, students call out or write down what they think the picture/word are.

Adjectives for people hidden picture game from Sandy Millin

[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.]

This is great for revising vocabulary especially with young learners, who get very into it – definitely a stirrer rather than a settler! It could also be used for introducing or revising modals of speculation – as you reveal a picture, students have to guess what’s in the picture, or what the people are doing.

This is how to make  it. I’m using PowerPoint for Mac, so my screen may look a little different from yours, but the names of the menus are normally fairly similar – click on a few things and see what happens! If it really doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll add screenshots from a Windows computer.

Creating the basic template

1. Open PowerPoint. You will normally see a title slide already in your presentation. Delete it.
2. Add a blank slide. Insert new slide > Blank
3. Decide how many boxes you want covering your picture – I would recommend four or six, unless the picture is quite complicated, in which case nine could work. Generally students guess quite quickly, so lower numbers are better to avoid boredom.
4. Insert a rectangle. Shapes > rectangles then click and drag the box where you want it to appear.
   
5. Copy the box using CTRL + C (CMD + C on a Mac).
6. Paste it three, five or eight more times, using CTRL + V (CMD + V on a Mac)
7. Click and drag the boxes so that they fill the slide.
8. As you can see, my boxes don’t quite fill the slide. This normally happens, so resize the boxes to fit or to leave space for some visible text at the bottom of the slide.
9. If you want to, you can change the boxes so that they are different colours. This makes it easier for you and your students to see at a glance how many boxes there are and what part of the picture they cover. To do this, double-click on the box you want to change. A box should appear. Edit the ‘fill’ and the ‘line’ to the colours you want.
10. Next you need to animate the boxes so that they will disappear. Click on the box you want to disappear first. Then click Slide Show >Custom Animation, select ‘exit animation’ and choose the style of animation you want to use. I would recommend something simple, as you don’t want it to distract from the purpose of your activity. I would also suggest using the same style of animation for all four boxes. There is normally a preview so you can see what happens with each effect.
11. Repeat this process for all of the boxes on your slide.
12. Once one slide is ready, copy and paste it a few times so that you have as many slides as you need. 
13. To make the slides a little less predictable, go to some of the slides and change the order of the animation so that the boxes disappear in a different order. On my version of PowerPoint, you do this by selecting the name of the shape (‘rectangle 5’ in the example below) and using the arrow keys to move it up or down the order.
14. If you want to reuse this type of game for different purposes, save what you have now as a template so you can reuse it without having to start again from scratch.

Adding your content

1. Choose the images you want to use in your game. I would recommend using #eltpics as you don’t have to worry about infringing copyright, as long as you credit the photographer. To find out how to download #eltpics, watch this screencast. I’m going to use the jobs set in this example. Collect the images that you want to use in one place – I normally put them on my desktop, then delete them when I’ve finished. Don’t forget to record the source!
2. Returning to your PowerPoint, insert the first image on the first slide. Insert > Picture > From file > [your file name] It should appear on top of the boxes. Resize/move it if necessary.
3. Right-click on the image, then arrange > send to back. It should now have magically disappeared behind the boxes.
   If you want to see it again, right-click on any of the coloured boxes, choose ‘send to back’ and you should see a corner of the photo. You can then right-click on the photo and choose ‘bring to front’ to see it again.
4. Add any words you need, as well as the source of the photo in text boxes. Insert >Text box, then click and drag where you want it to appear. 
5. Right-click on the text boxes and choose  arrange > send to back again.
6. Repeat this process for all of your other slides, so that you now have photos and text on all of them.
7. Preview your slideshow to check how it works. Slide show > View slide show You might want to change the order of the box animation on some slides if it is too easy to guess what the hidden image shows. For example, if removing the orange box first shows the farmer’s body, it will probably be a lot easier to guess than removing the blue box first.
8. Save.
9. Play!

Here is the finished version of my example. Click to download it: Jobs hidden pictures game eltpics

Flash vocabulary

In this game, pictures or words flash up on the screen for a few seconds each. Afterwards students write as many of them as they can remember. It is great for revising old vocabulary, especially if it is a few lessons old.

Manual version

1. Choose the images you want to use in your game. I would recommend using #eltpics as you don’t have to worry about infringing copyright, as long as you credit the photographer. To find out how to download #eltpics, watch this screencast. I’m going to use the same photos as above from the jobs set in this example. Collect the images that you want to use in one place – I normally put them on my desktop, then delete them when I’ve finished. Don’t forget to record the source!
   Alternatively, for every stage saying ‘images’ below, you can do the same with text boxes so that words flash on the screen.
2. Open PowerPoint. You will normally see a title slide already in your presentation. Delete it.
3. Add a blank slide. Insert new slide > Blank
4. Insert the images on the slide. Insert > Picture > From file > [your file name] Resize/move them so that they are all arranged on one slide. Alternatively, you could place each image on a different slide.
5. Next you need to animate the pictures so that they will appear and disappear. Click on the picture you want to appear first. Then click Slide Show >Custom Animation, select ‘entrance effect’ and choose the style of animation you want to use. I would recommend something simple, as you don’t want it to distract from the purpose of your activity. I would also suggest using the same style of animation for all of the pictures. There is normally a preview so you can see what happens with each effect.
6. With the same picture still selected, choose an ‘exit effect’.
7. Repeat for all of the pictures.
8. Preview your slideshow to check how it works. Slide show > View slide show
9. Save.
10. Play!

You can now play the game by manually clicking through the images so that they stay on the screen for as long as you like. However, if you want the game to be a bit more automatic, you can now add timings.

Adding timings

1. Click Slide Show > rehearse timings.
2. Your game should appear as a full-screen slide show. Click through the pictures so that they stay on the screen for as long as you want them to. For this game, 2 or 3 seconds is probably enough.
3. Once you have shown every picture and clicked out of the slide show, you should be given the option to save the timing to use in the future.

Here is the final version of my example, including timings. Jobs flash vocabulary game eltpics

I hope these two games are useful to you. Please let me know if any of the instructions are unclear.

Enjoy!

Watching movies (guest post)

While at IATEFL Glasgow 2012, I was lucky enough to see Khulood Al-balushi’s presentation, in which she shared various ideas for using movies with your students, as well as offering advice on how to choose suitable movies, especially important in the Kingdom of Bahrain, where she works as a Curriculum Specialist at the Ministry of Education. I asked her to share her ideas via my blog, and she agreed. Over to Khulood:

How can you make your students benefit from watching movies they like ?

Since movies are a rich source for language learning and they are considered to be fun and enjoyable, here are some practical ideas that you can implement to make use of movies in the English Classroom:

Introductory activity

• Make students watch a movie trailer of the movie you intend to use and present the following activity:

This will help you motivate your students to watch and respond to the movie and can tell you if the movie is favored by the students. Otherwise you can look for a different movie.

Watching movie clips

You can make your students watch movie clips if the length of your lesson is short or if you intend to present a specific language skill such as reading, speaking, grammar or writing. The following are a few examples:

• Students can watch a scene of the movie “The Cat in the Hat” and write down the process the cat uses to make cupcakes.
  

• Students watch a scene from the movie “Volcano” and answer the following question: “What would you do if you were in this situation?” to promote critical thinking and present a lesson about natural disasters.
  

• Ask students to watch a scene from the movie” Cast Away” and ask them to think about the following question “What would you do if you were trapped on a remote island?” (critical thinking and second conditional)
  

• Students watch a scene from the movie “Titanic” and answer an activity that involves reading and vocabulary and promotes critical thinking by comparing the actual story and the selected scene. Click to download the activity: Titanic movie task
  

• Students watch the movie trailer of the movie “Inkheart” and answer the following question: ” What if you had the power to bring a book to life by simply reading it aloud?” to promote speaking and critical thinking.
  

• For creative writing and speaking, you can show your students a clip from “Spy Kids 2” movie and ask them to imagine being in a virtual reality game and ask them to describe their game in writing and present it to their classmates.
  

Watching full-length movies

• Students watch ” Charlie and The Chocolate Factory” and answer an activity that aims at discussing characters:
  

• Students watch the movie “Oliver” and read the book and then compare between the movie and the actual story by answering a given activity. Click to download the activity: The Movie versus the Book
  

• Student watch a full-length movie and answer the activity sheets which are designed for two different levels. Click to download an example: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

• Students watch the movie “Finding Nemo” and asked to produce a creative project such as drawing, creating bookmarks, designing a puppet show, performing a play…etc.
  

Of course, all of these activities can be modified based on your needs and your students.

By: Khulood Al-balushi

A beautiful symmetry

Two weeks ago I started studying Mandarin for the first time.

My school offers weekly two-hour evening classes, and in the two classes so far we have covered the basics of ‘What’s your name?’ ‘What’s your surname?’ ‘I’m English. And you?’ ‘I’m a teacher/student.’ I am one of two students, and we have a native speaker teacher, who also speaks English. Outside class, I thought I should practice what I preach and find some extra things to help me study, in addition to the materials our teacher gives us. I have started compiling a list of the resources I’ve found, and if anyone has any others to recommend, please let me know. My three favourites are currently:

• Chinese Pod – honestly one of the best language learning websites I think I have ever seen! Discovered through Fluent in 3 months review
• Chinese writer by train chinese (iPhone/iPad app)
• Hard to articulate sounds for Western students (YouTube video)

During the first lesson, I was reminded how alien a new foreign language can sound, especially when it is as different as Mandarin is from English. It was also a timely reminder about how scary it can be for students to be confronted by a wall of sound, with no distinguishable features or similarities to your own language, and how easy it is to cling to your L1 in such a situation – my classmate and I discuss most things we have to do in English before attempting them in Mandarin. Being used to the teaching method and having studied various languages before, I have a slight advantage as I can guess what some of the language is or what we are expected to do in tasks, but even this is not enough at times. This is not to say that our teacher is in any way lacking; in fact, she provides us with clear tasks and models all of the language needed. She is also very patient, which is necessary because what we produce must have sounded horrible to her! I’ve really enjoyed the lessons so far, despite leaving with a headache both times (!) and I’m looking forward to continuing with them for the rest of my time in Newcastle. The bug has definitely bitten!

One day, this will all be perfectly clear! (from http://flickr.com/eltpics by me)

So, what does that have to do with a ‘beautiful symmetry’ then?

Well, four days ago I started teaching two Chinese men English. They are both in their early twenties, and probably had about fifty words of English between them when they arrived (separately) in Newcastle a week ago. I didn’t know I would be teaching them until after they had their placement tests on Monday, so this was a happy coincidence.

Their first class with me probably felt a lot like my first Chinese class, although at least they can write Roman letters as they are used in Pinyin 🙂 But apart from that, we were starting with an almost completely blank slate. There are two students for two hours every morning, and one of them has an hour of personal study programme time and another two hour lesson in the afternoon, which we mostly use to consolidate what I introduce in the mornings, and to try it out on students around the school. In eight hours, the total time of the morning lessons, we have so far looked at:

• What is your/his/her name? My/His/Her name is…
• How are you? I’m fine. And you?
• Where are you from? Where is he/she from? I’m from… He/She is from…
• Where do you come from? I come from… (introduced by the students)
• 1-20
• A-Z; How do you spell…?
• colours

This has included a small focus on I/my, you/your, he/his and she/her differences, which don’t exist in Mandarin – one pronoun is used for both functions in each case.

So far, all of the lessons have been based on flashcards, cut out letters, a set of felt-tip pens, a box of pictures from old magazines, board pens and the whiteboard. I have also invited in almost every person who has walked past the classroom so that my students could practise introducing themselves! Taking advantage of the wifi, I showed them how to play the scatter mode on Quizlet (guide) and they have already become quite competitive. We have also recorded some conversations on Audioboo for them to use as examples when they are at home. I am using Edmodo to record what we have done and give the students exercises to practise more at home.  If you would like to see what we have been doing on Edmodo, please let me know via Twitter or by leaving a comment here with a way to contact you.

I’m really enjoying the challenge of teaching beginners, especially the look of happiness on their faces whenever they manage to have a successful conversation or complete a challenge I have set them, like putting all of the number flashcards in order as quickly as possible, and beating the fastest time from the previous day. It has reminded me how important it is to be patient as a teacher: students at all levels need space to take in what you are teaching them, and this is particularly important at low levels. Patience also includes an ability to stay interested as a teacher: if you get bored with recycling ‘What is his name?’ ‘What is her name?’ again and again, then teaching beginners probably isn’t the right place for you! Creativity is important here too, to keep up both your own and the students’ interest in what you are doing.

I’m looking forward to seeing how much they remember after a three-day weekend, and to my third Chinese lesson, which happens on Tuesday too!