Manic Mondays

The tradition of Manic Mondays has not been cancelled. The busy times have prevented me from sharing with you the latest performances by Helena, Kertu-Kätlin, Laura and Haldo-Rait everybody of whom did a wonderful job.

So, please excuse my laziness and let's start the tradition again next year?!

Christmas Show

It's time to forget conventional learning and prepare ourselves for some serious role-play. :)

As our topic this year is 'history' , you need to get into it more than just imitate some ready-made production.

The play will be preceded by a short overview of the era and the topics of 11-graders are:

15th century - Black Death, Black Prince and other dark things
16th century - Henry VIII
16th century - Elizabeth and Mary Stuart
17th century - Cromwell and execution of Charles I

I hope to make some pics of the rehearsals but the show itself will take place on December 22: 9-11:30 at Kaunase 70, Tartu.

I've finally come to understand that the Christmas Show of our school doesn't really have to be connected with Christmas. It's just held at Christmas.
Hopefully we'll make it more Christmasish next year...

good luck!

.ppt

First, I'd like to remind you that PowerPoint is just a tool. Having slides on the screen is means to an end... However, you have to admit that similarly to the way there is a difference between means of transport (like comparing regional express and ICE), there is also a huge difference between a good .ppt and really weak presentation.

Below are some links you might find useful for preparing your materials in the future (the teaching materials are in Estonian so it shouldn't be all Greek to you).

• PowerPoint presentation - right usage of colours and more (emphasis on training teachers but nevermind)
• Using multimedia in your presentation
• Using PowerPoint programme - free e-course - for those who don't know where to find things and how to use the programme (if there are any such pagans left among us) :D

The last presentations were already rather good but there is always room for improvement.

expressions

When do 'expressions' become an issue? Usually the teachers of English (or any other language for that matter) love to tell the students to write out new expressions from the text - especially in the case of home reading.

The dictionary definition of an "expression" is a word or a phrase (or a look on someone's face - which we are not writing down, right...)

1) The task to write out expressions from the text is not intended to be pure torture to students - it has a point too - if you write out phrasal verbs, idioms or just longer phrases from the text, you will be able to use the words better in context later on. Otherwise it would be just another word to learn. Trust me - you will write out the same word for 10 times before you really learn it... (I've done my bit of home reading too in several languages...)

2) The expressions are important because their meaning usually differs from the meaning of the words taken separately. See the entry on idioms. If you do not learn the expressions as a whole, you won't be able to recognize and use them properly in the future.

3) Repetition is another key aspect. You have to either see, hear, write or use the word in speaking for about 30 times before you have totally acquired= mastered it.

4) The most important thing is not to go through the text afterwards trying to 'put together' meaningful expressions that are actually just 3 words taken from anywhere in the text making no sense at all. (less inhibited, as tall as, have been done etc.)

5) We usually do not consider of-phrases as 100% expressions especially phrases like 'number of people', 'Streets of Rome', '2 years of my working life' and 'living-room of my home'.

So let's tackle this thing one baby step at a time...

NB! When you finally understand the way teachers see expressions in the text, the vocabulary tests will never come as a surprise to you :)

Participle

There is a page that has a very good collection of participle exercises which our grammar workbook does not have on the particular topic... Feel free to practice participles here

and
I'll be adding some good links into my Link-List

Have a happy holiday!

Manic Monday vol. 4

Joosep - Slayer: Catalyst

Information about the band.

Gapped lyrics + a couple of questions.

Animal idioms

English idioms are fun to learn because they are sometimes absolutely different from what we use in Estonian. Instead of raining cats and dogs as it does in English, in Estonian it "rains from a bean's stalk", you're "as stupid as a sheep" and "the chest of a bold wolf is greasy"... These would be much fun to learn for a foreigner as well. In addition to that, we have things like 'bear's trousers' which are woollen trousers worn by small kids, 'cow cake' - meaning cow pat and all the food is referred to as being 'addition to bread' and much more.
Feel free to add any interesting translations of Estonian idioms in comments!

You may also check out a very good page for finding Animal Idioms in English.

A general idiom page (with an awful colour palette, I must add).

Pronouncing words

I cannot stress enough that you need to check how the unfamiliar words are pronounced before starting your presentation. Bombing the teacher with questions 5 seconds before you start - is too late - you won't remember the answers anyway... So there is the dictionary that you can use: www.webster.com - type in the word, click on the loudspeaker icon and listen/repeat as long as it takes. Good luck!

Manic Monday vol.3

Rivo - Urban Trad.
"Rapadoo"

The task will come later...
Just enjoy!

The Use of Board

The thing is with my teaching that it is all clear in my head. As soon as it pours out in form of sounds or images - it gets complicated. Take the given photograph for example. That's the closest I have come yet to explain Present and Past Participle.

People said I should get another whiteboard which won't help at all I fear - I'll just have two boards crammed with information that won't make any sense to the viewers.

Any suggestions concerning improvement are welcome!

Happy Teacher's Day!

Today is the Teacher's Day in Estonia (it's a kind of moving holiday here -> end of the first week in October).

For the school it usually means that the 12th-graders are appointed the leaders of the school and they do all sorts of crazy things like ask teachers to fold a paper plane and throw it out of the window or test their drawing skills etc. etc.
I've been a pig-tailed pupil drawing with crayons on a Teacher's Day in my previous workplace making hell of the student-teacher's life :)

By the way, the Teacher's Day is not on the same day in every country (if you didn't know that yet)!
In Turkey it is November 24th;
In Malaysia May 16th;
In India September 5th
and they spend it, like Estonians do, on a working day.
In some countries the Teacher's Day is considered the national holiday.
In some countries the Teacher's Day is celebrated to commemorate somebody's death or birth - in China the birthday of Confucius (28.09) or in Czech Republic the birthday of Jan Ámos Komenský (28.03) also known as Comenius.

Manic Monday vol. 2

Kaisa presented a song by Norah Jones today and asked the following questions:
(You can listen to the song on her webpage ...)

Task

1) Put the lines in the right order, number them.
The mingled text as well as the original lyrics and some info about her life.

2.) What is the title of the song?
3.) Who is the artist?
4.) It blends elements of a.) soul b.) jazz c.) country d.) all of them
5.) Which is not her album a.) Come away with me b.) Get your glow on
c.) Feeling the same way d.) Feels like home

Junior Achievement

Today we had a lecture on making pupil's companies.
Was very enlightening.

Of data (lacking a writing stick), I only managed to remember one webpage www.ja.ee
Carina wrote down the e-mails of the people who made the presentation (previously members of award-winning pupil's companies): pilleperi@hot.ee and martjallai@gmail.com - if you have any questions concerning the JA-issues, write and ask.

Let's all make a company.
We'll go through basics in tomorrow's business English class...

War

The world has gone crazy - everybody fights with everybody. Governments wage a war against drugs, prostitution, illegal immigrants and terrorism...

You obviously need some
WAR vocabulary... in order to survive in today's world.

There are other sites providing some more vocabulary for those who are more interested in the topic.
1. Glossary of the Great War terms
2. Soldier's vocabulary
3. a quiz on some war words

There are the songs you might listen to while you are studying the vocabulary:
Civil war by Guns N' Roses (1992)
In the Army Now by Status Quo (1986)

If you know any other good songs about war/peace/terrorism or any other issues (Free Nelson Mandela :)) please leave a comment...

temperatures - is it hot or cold?!

It's rather difficult to understand the texts, programmes, films etc. that use other measurement system than our own. Therefore, I post here a conversion page that you can check when you have problems with temperatures in Fahrenheit.
And for quick reference 0 degrees Celcius = 32 degrees Fahrenheit and -19 degrees F is -28 degrees C...

But the calculating formula is too difficult for me to know by heart.
So just have fun converting different temperatures...

European Day of Languages

September 26 is declared to be European Day of Languages by the European Council and the day is supposed to celebrate the linguistic diversity, plurilingualism (keep your dictionaries handy) and lifelong language learning.
How many languages do you know? How many can you speak? If you have learned at least one foreign language properly it's easier to learn more as you have already acquired skills to do so.

The Stone City High celebrated the day by organizing quizzes for different classes. The questions of the quizzes were compiled by the students who had a task to ask questions about Europe, its culture and languages.

Here is a selection of questions that were asked:

1. How many countries are using the euro in their everyday life?
2. What is considered to be the most difficult language in Europe?
3. In which two cities are the buildings of the European Parliament?
4. Who is the Pope at the moment?
5. In which city was formed the famous pop group - the Beatles?
6. Who is the famous Norwegian artist, who painted 'the Scream'?
7. What are the state languages of Vatican?
8. How many years has Queen Elizabeth II ruled in England?
9. Who are called the 'sprat-thieves'?
10. Where are the British kings and queens crowned?
11. Which town hosted the last Olympic Games?
12. Do you know where the Nobel Prize originates from?
13. Which is the most forested country in Europe?
14. What is the motto of the European Union?
15. Where in Europe there is the largest sand city in the world?
16. Which languages are the Baltic languages?
17. Which countries will join the European Union in 2007?
18. By whom was the the EU anthem originally written?
19. Which is the smallest country in Europe?
20. Which European language is the most beautiful?
21. Which are the 2 most popular religions in Europe?
22. Why is Switzerland not a part of the EU?
23. Which 3 languages characterize the historical development of Europe?
24. How many words from the Greek language are used in Europe?
25. How many official languages are there in the EU?
26. Does the Polish language have cyrillic alphabet?
27. How many countries belong to Europe?
28. Which town was the first European capital of culture?
29. Name the famous Norwegian author and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1920?
30. Name the group of languages where the European languages belong (total number of people speaking these languages is 3 billion)?

You know all this? You can check your answers here...

If you spot any mistakes then let me know.

About workbooks

The issue of workbooks, their price and usefulness has come up once again as in every autumn. The teacher's newspaper in Estonia is full of comments on the issue.
The government of Estonia has expressed a wish to move towards helping the parents with the money (which sometimes is nearly a 1000 EEK) that is spent on the workbooks each year and I'm sure that everyone who hears the idea would at first feel happy about it.
(Especially the students who weren't able to collect the workbook money by the deadline...)

But there is always a but as they say.

The reason, why I am writing on the topic, is that I would appreciate your feedback and opinions.
It's common knowledge fact that at our high school everybody has to buy the GrammarWay 'workbook' as well as at least 2 English workbooks during the three years. (Yes, some of you people are lucky - I mean the Puzzle people ...)

The authors in the Teacher's Newspaper argue that workbooks are maybe necessary in lower grades but by the time students get to high school they become useless. The danger in government funding the purchase of the workbooks is that the publishing houses issuing workbooks would become sort of monopolies that get their profits anyway because the schools feel more relaxed in ordering these.
Everything, of course, depends on whether the government wants to give the money to the parents as a sort of schooling support or to the schools in order to provide free education - so for the students the workbooks would seem free of charge.
That's where the catch is.

How many exercises do you find useful in the English language workbook? Those using the Upstream books probably agree that the exercises in the workbook are just for revision of the same things that one finds in the books. For some students that sort of 'revision' is good for improving the language skills but for those who are already familiar with the topic/language issues/grammar that is revised, it's utter waste of time and money :) Surely there are other subjects where workbooks are used - so feel free to comment on these as well... I only remember some from my childhood - usually thrown away in spring with a couple of pages filled in and most left empty.

Our E-government has also suggested an idea of e-workbooks but it seems that the pros and cons of e-workbooks might be the same as we have discussed in our for-and-against essays about using the Internet and computers in classroom work. One of the minuses that the newspaper points out is that when a teacher would want to print out the whole 'e-workbook' it would cost more than printing workbooks in large publishing houses (and if that would not be the case then our present workbooks must be seriously overpriced). What is more, they do not find authors to compile these e-workbooks and haven't solved the issue of copyright and payment.

I like the idea of virtual workbooks to some extent.

• Supposing that I had the projector in class (as we do now in the library) - I could just project the task on the screen and let you do it. You can still develop your writing skills and do not damage your eyes by looking at a flickering computer screen.
  
  
• I could hold my lesson in an IT class where everybody could do the exercises on the computer and send them to me to correct at the end of the class as well as save them and print them out later if they wish.
  
  
• I could give everybody different revision exercises as people have different skills and different needs.
  

None of the above-mentioned would require carrying along heavy glossy-papered workbooks. But most probably the school would have to pay somebody who compiled the workbook to be able to use these in class. At the moment I somehow get the feeling that we use the workbooks because we don't want to see our money wasted not because there are any serious benefits involved.

In conclusion - my question is: how much use do you have of workbooks in different lessons and what do you like and dislike about them?!

Listening improves talking

If you haven't discovered the page yourself then BBC Learning English is a wonderful site where you can listen to the news and acquire new vocabulary. The only things you need are headphones/loudspeakers, Internet access (which you obviously have if you are reading this post) and a RealPlayer.
In case you should get tired of learning then you can improve your language skills in a kind of passive way by listening to the BBC radio (choose your favourite styles yourself - from classical music to hip-hop; sports, news, plays, etc.)
Have fun listening!
If you listen long enough, you will get better at speaking too...

Still art

Finally have had the chance to get introduced to the favourite artists/designers/ sculptors of 11th-graders.

The presentations were on:

Estonian artists: Viiralt; Konrad Mägi; Navitrolla

Fashion designers: Donatella Versace and Alexander McQueen

Painters: Da Vinci (d-version), Raphael, Rubens, Rembrandt, Courbet, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Dali, Klimpt, Matisse, Estes as well as the pop artist Andy Warhol (D-version).

There shall be more to come but eventually - when the week ends and everybody has performed, I'll try to provide you with the links to all the presentations (which is why I asked you to save them in the library PC) - So, have to admit that I don't have all the presentations...

Manic Mondays

Decided to have B-class as my guinea pigs and launch a project called Manic Mondays.

The basic idea is as follows:
Every Monday one student of the class brings along a song, introduces the band or the singer and prepares for the class (and the teacher) an exercise about the song.

The first brave one was Helena who took this song and asked us the following questions:

1. What is Billy Bragg’s real name?
2. What do you think is the genre of this song?
3. Is this song dealing with political or romantic theme?
4. Write down a line of the song.
5. What is the title of the song?
6. What feeling did this song give you?

Colours and art

The colours are essential to anything connected to the visual arts. Surely pictures can be monochrome as well but there is some vocabulary that comes in handy when you want to talk about art. So the All the World's a Puzzle 11 textbook kindly gives us the vocabulary list.

I don't think that Puzzle is the masterpiece in textbook writing but the thing with the new textbook is that grass is greener on the other side. There are bound to be things in the new one that we do not particularly like as well.

Hope you all pass the word test with flying colours i.e. successfully.

Take it with a pinch of salt: history

Galadriel (LOTR movie): History became legend, legend became myth.

History is a very difficult topic to cover in a nutshell. Everybody writes their own history - so you can say that history is just his story and usually the official history is written by the winners which doesn't mean the other versions are not true or do not exist. When losers become conquerors the history is re-written...

There is a nice quote from a character in a book called The Diviners: “Well, now, then, I read it all in a book somewheres, so help me, and it is all there in the books, but you don’t want to believe everything them books say, for the good Christ’s sake. We believe what we know.” (p. 67)

We had a quote in our textbook by Napoleon Bonaparte: "History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon." Which shows us that history is basically a story that people have agreed to be true.

And what do we learn from history? We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
So, take history with a pinch of salt and don't forget to use your own judgement in approching it.

By the way, every story becomes more credible when you use a lot of quotes, so here are some good quotation pages (feel free to add more pages in the comments).

Famous Quotes
Collected quotes
My own humble collection

ps. in writing out quotes from a book, remember to write down the book and the author as well :) Honestly, you will not remember them later.

Topic to be mastered

The following topics have been taken (and translated) from "Riigi Teataja" and that is what you are supposed to have mastered in a foreign language by the end of your high school studies.
1. ALL about ME: I as a personality among others; special features, abilities, preferences, strengths/weaknesses
2. FAMILY/HOME: marriage and family; roles in family; rights and obligations, home and upbringing; family budget
3. FRIENDS: relationships between friends; social issues/problems
4. ENVIRONMENT: nature, nature protection, natural resources, climate, country/town, urbanization
ESTONIA: http://www.einst.ee/ government, economy, traditions, international relations
WORLD: international relations
5. ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES (UK, USA, NZ, Australia etc): government, economy, traditions, international relations
6. HABITUAL ACTIONS: healthy lifestyle, nutrition, communication in service sector, accidents (giving aid)
7. EDUCATION / WORK: education system and study possibilities in Estonia and English-speaking countries, learning skills, exam skills; employment/unemployment; development in technology
8. HOBBIES, CULTURE: sports, art, music, theatre, important cultural figures; advertising and its role; Information society and its problems

Big Brother Is Watching You

The fun song "Big Brother Is Watching You" that we listened to in class was released by Twenty 4 Seven in 1996. Nance, by whom the song is written, is Nance Coolen and was female vocalist of the band. The performer of the textbook verision is, however, unknown.
Enjoy the Eurodance!

"Big Brother" is a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the enigmatic dictator of Oceania (an imaginary totalitarian state).

(Those attempting to download the song - please forgive me but it's the same track from the textbook CD - so it has an introduction with page numbers and such...)

Reading dictionaries

I still firmly believe that everybody should use dictionaries at least occasionally and, what is most important, should be able to use them even if they are monolingual and not bilingual (those who don't understand the words - please look them up).
It's hard to choose the best from hundreds of web dictionaries but I'll but down just a few today:

Merriam-Webster - is a good page because you can check the pronunciation of the words (providing that you have speakers or headphones attached to your computer). I strongly advise you to check it before presentations.

The Free Dictionary - not very familiar with it but it seems to have different sections for speciality language.

Maybe you prefer Cambridge dictionary?

The English-Estonian-English - claimed to be the best one by 12th-graders.

Have used this one as well - no complaints.

Anyone interested in legal issues - ESTERM - would be the best choice then.

Anyway. Have fun with the dictionaries.

I'll start reading them now and get a life later.

Life is art

Here we are then. Moved to the Internet to increase efficiency and to reach people.

Art lesson links:
Art movements in English - the list that was given in class - feel free to explore - it's education. :)

Art history in Estonian

Visual art vocabulary (pdf-fail)

Art vocabulary

Glossary of art terms

Vocabulary list for seriously interested people who want to describe things in detail

Life is art.

Art is everywhere.