Teaching English via Skype - Interview with Jason West
With the voice chat and video call facility, Skype provides an ideal medium for learning English from the comfort of one`s home or an internet café by benefiting from courses taught by qualified English teachers. Happily, Jason West, who is the founder of the English Out There program and the designer of the social media English course taught via Skype, is here to tell about Skype`s usability in teaching English worldwide. Lucky Jim , taught English at, i.e., University of Wales, Swansea. I then worked in media and traveled before starting, slightly by accident, an English school in Chinatown, Soho, London, in 1992, with a guy I met on a one-week introduction to TEFL course. In two years, we had the whole building and were British Council accredited. I left my first school to start English Out There in 2000. I wanted to improve standard General English courses for learners coming to London. I felt that they would benefit from a more active, practical, and contextually personalized program. I had the idea of teaching groups some language and then taking them out of the classroom to use it immediately with complete strangers on the streets of London. After a while, we worked out the best way to do it and then started seeing and hearing incredible improvements. That prompted more research into exactly what was happening in the minds of our learners. In about 2005, I started using Skype and in 2006 realized, just as we were beginning to think about publishing our course materials, that our courses would work extremely well with Skype. So, we did some test runs, and then, when we began the long and difficult process of producing the materials (5000 plus pages over six levels), we included instructions and adaptations for use with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), such as Skype, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk etc. I first designed a Skype course in 2007. The first few trial runs felt a bit like we were in a laboratory. It happened at the same time that we were also helping design a new VoIP platform for a technology company and we used Skype and the bespoke VoIP platform, which we had built with a record button. I wasn`t the first person to teach our lessons using Skype; it was my colleague Jon, who did some work with a Chinese English learner he met online (we used to leave our Skype status to "Skype Me` and pick up random learners looking for people to practice their English with).Teaching Dictionary Skills - News
Jason: You can always get a self-study course, 24/7, just go to our website and buy one with Paypal, Google Checkout, or a bank card; download it; print the first lesson off; do it with a pen and dictionary; then go onto Skype and ask your English
Both of her parents lived to be 90 and four siblings lived into their 90s. She wears glasses sometimes to watch TV or to check a word's spelling in the dictionary. She also wears glasses to drive and prefers to be on the road during daylight hours.
Five spellers who seemingly had memorized the entire dictionary simply could not be stumped with any word tossed their way. It was getting late, way past bedtime and well beyond the time slot allotted by ESPN for its telecast.
Each summer, coach Brian DeHerrera travels up from Denver to spend his mornings teaching basketball to local hoopsters, helping them “develop the proper fundamental basketball skills necessary to improve” their game. How could I resist?
"I believe the heart of the solution is in teaching listening skills in schools. If we teach our children how to listen properly to the world - and especially to each other - they will understand the consequences of their own sound and be far more
Dictionary Skills – Doing it by the book « James Stubbs
It’s easy to take for granted that pupils know how to use a dictionary, that it’s something very obvious (because we, as successful language learners, have been doing it for years and have forgotten how we learned it!) and that it doesn’t need to be planned in to our teaching. And then we discover that pupils’ work ends up full of mistakes or an activity we have planned, which requires that pupils know how to use a dictionary, stalls to the point of collapse.
Their role
Dictionary skills are vital to the growth of pupils’ independence. We often find students at AS or A2 who still haven’t mastered the skill of using a dictionary precisely. The later pupils learn to use this tool, the longer they are dependent on us to give them the words they want and need. They will find it difficult to read texts at a level appropriate to their age and experience of language learning and their range of active language will remain limited. When dictionaries were first allowed for the GCSE exam, there was the risk that candidates would not use them accurately, and the wrong words would be selected for the context in which they were operating. They could become dependent on dictionaries that they had not learnt to use to supply them with words they had not bothered to learn. When dictionaries were prohibited in exams, the danger then became that pupils might never learn to use them at all.
Their development
Like any other skill, dictionary skills cannot be taught in one lesson. An intensive series of lessons would be more effective, but still not much better. After all, something has gone wrong in the planning if a pupil can miss out on independence in language learning by being off sick for a week! Dictionary skills are better taught over a longer period of time, discreetly first, then explicitly later. Like grammatical skills, which as we will see, are closely linked, they should be taught in context and time should be allocated within the teaching of content language for exploring them. Not all skills require the same amount of time to be spent on them, and some will need returning to several times. Keep in mind that many of the issues discussed in this article can be dealt with as ball games, pairwork and other activities, where a dictionary is not even used, because they develop the skills which enable dictionary use to be possible.
So, if we want to take the teaching of dictionary skills seriously, what are the issues we need to take account of?
Teaching Dictionary Skills - Bookshelf
Teaching Dictionary Skills Facilitating Efl Learning Strategies
Building Dictionary Skills, Grades 2-3
These resources for young students in grades 2-5 teach the importance of effectively using a dictionary.Dictionary skills
To be able to use a dictionary, you must know the alphabet. All the words listed in the dictionary are called ENTRY WORDS. The entry words are listed in ...Three instructional television scripts for teaching dictionary skills
Elementary English
... general reading skills; vowels; grammar-English usage; dictionary skills; ... There are several books dealing with teaching children how to write, ...Casual Guide Directory
Teaching Dictionary Skills | LoveToKnow
Teaching Dictionary Skills. You should start teaching dictionary skills around third or fourth grade, as soon as your student is reading well independently. ...
Teach Basic Dictionary Skills
Solid dictionary skills are a great way to speed vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension, and spelling accuracy. But dictionary drills are boring, rig
Strategies for Teaching Dictionary Skills!
Teaching dictionary skills is so imperative so use some of my ideas. They will surely motivate your students.
Teaching Reference Skills Part 4: The Dictionary
In the last of a four part series, Jimmie shares with us about how to integrate using the dictionary in our homeschools, as well as how to model its usage.
Teaching Dictionary Skills: Dictionary Skills Activities and ...
Dictionary skills and games for teaching students how to use a dictionary as a reference guide.