CELTA Teacher

Using A Dictionary With Students

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 10:07:45 +0200

Many ESL teachers avoid dictionaries at all costs, seeming to believe that they are being paid to teach so should know the answers. This approach possibly works very well for those teachers but I’m different. At last glance my Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary contained 170,000 words phrases and examples, surely a tad more than the average ESL teacher could hope to memorise.

I actively encourage my students to refer to their dictionary as often as they feel the need to, and just to prove I truly believe in the value of dictionaries, I regularly look-up a word or meaning in the company of my students. Given that we recommend the student buy a Learner’s Dictionary, it does make sense for us to use them as well.

Fun with Dictionaries

Here are some ideas that I use with students to encourage dictionary usage.
At the beginning of the lesson, write a word of the day on the whiteboard, the students could either write a short paragraph that includes the word, or in groups, get them to discuss synonyms or antonyms.
Create a crossword puzzle over at puzzle maker. I find I usually need to take the difficulty level down a notch, these are after all fun activities and we don’t want it to take too long. In addition, the students feel a genuine sense of achievement, and positive reinforcement of their English language skills at the beginning of the lesson often creates good momentum for the rest of the lesson.
Create a simple word game where students need to look up the meaning of words to guess the hidden phrase. This one can take a little more time and is a great end of lesson activity. I usually let the students work in pairs or small groups for this one.
Get the students to randomly open their dictionary and find the longest word on the page. Now get them to use the word in a phrase. If you’re teaching a group, get them to start a story, each student finds a word and they have to keep the story going and use their word in its correct context. This can be a lot of fun and if you’re not to strict with context everyone can have a great laugh.

Private Tuition As An ESL Teacher

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 07:49:17 +0200

Anyone who’s seriously contemplated teaching English for a living will know there is a huge demand for private lessons. Sure there are language schools that offer English lessons in almost every major city but many students just feel like they want to develop a relationship with one teacher.

I think they like the rapport they develop, they feel more comfortable making mistakes with someone they know and trust, and some students learn better with one-on-one lessons. Developing private tuition into a decent income isn’t hard to do, and of course could still be supplemented with part-time contracts from your local language school.

Starting to teach privately isn’t hard to do, you probably get the occasional offer to take on students anyway, but what do you do if you’re serious about turning this into a lucrative full-time business?

Here’s a few suggestions you might like to pursue;

Get some cheap business cards made up with your name, mobile number and email address, and make sure you specify what level of student you take as well as any special skills you have such as business English, tutoring for Cambridge exams etc.

Run a small classified in your local newspaper offering private English lessons. Mention your price, don’t be afraid to do this. Its better to get a phone call from a potential student who’s already aware of your price. Selling yourself is hard enough without having to sell your price as well, and let’s face it, we’re teachers not salespeople.

Make up a half page flyer with rip tabs that you can leave on notice boards. The local library, college, railway station, supermarket etc. are very good places to start. I also ask my hairdresser and lotto shop, mostly because they get to know you over time and most will be happy to recommend you.

English German Visual Dictionary

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:48:23 +0200

I love visual dictionaries, they are an awesome tool when teaching beginner students, and because they are filled with colour images of everyday things I find my students refer to them a lot more than traditional text only dictionaries.

Let me tell you a bit more about these books. I own a copy of the Englisch Deutsch bought in Germany for just €9.95 and for 320 pages of images with both the English and German translations I don’t think you can do much better.

Basically the dictionary is structured around topics such as food, people, appearance, environment etc, and each of these broad topics are sub-divided into more specific categories. As an example, the people pages are sub-divided into body, face, hand, foot, muscles, skeleton, internal organs, reproductive organs, family, relationships, emotions, life events.

The publisher has used high quality stock photographs resized appropriately for the page, and arrows and lines are used to point to detail. Once you get used to the idea of searching by topic instead of alphabetically this kind of dictionary becomes invaluable at beginner and intermediate level.

Students have told me that a visual dictionary cuts down on the learning curve and boosts their confidence speaking English. Specifically I’m finding that if a student doesn’t know the vocabulary needed to keep a conversation going they quickly lose confidence and won’t speak. At beginner level, vocabulary is particularly problematic and traditional dictionaries often provide several English options which may or may not be appropriate and students don’t have enough experience of English to be able to correctly select the word needed. This of course impedes learning.

If you’d like to buy the German version, the ISBN is 3-8310-9034-3

Free English Thesaurus for MAC

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 19:44:31 +0200

Anyone who uses a Mac and needs to use the English language and all its richness in their day to day activities should take a look at the Nisus application available for free download.

As an English teacher and writer, I often need to find synonyms in my written communication, and picking up a printed version isn’t always convenient. Installing the Thesaurus is a very simple, just copy to your applications folder and click to start.

What you see in the image above is exactly what you get, type a word, hit return, and the Thesaurus quickly finds all synonyms. What I particularly like is that Nisus Thesaurus also attaches itself to Finder’s services menu making it really easy to search for synonyms from within text editors, word processors, even iWeb.

You can get Nisus Thesaurus from their website.

Happy or lucky, translating from German to English

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 06:51:16 +0200

In Germany I often hear German people use ‘luck’ or ‘lucky’ instead of ‘happy’ when speaking English. This is an error of translation, and is an easy error to make. Let me explain why.

My Langenscheidt German/English dictionary defines glück as luck, fortune or happiness, and the word glücklich as happy. Going the other way, translating from English to German the same dictionary defines luck as glück and lucky as glücklich, notice the addition of the ‘ich’ similar to the English ‘y’ in lucky. Where things get interesting is that happy is also defined as glücklich. Notice how glücklich defines both happy and lucky?

Is it any wonder German speakers interchange happy and lucky when speaking English. In discussions with students and German friends it seems that glücklich does mean happy and lucky, but the context is important in determining which meaning is intended. In other words, they infer happiness or luck from the surrounding context of the conversation. So, how do I teach the difference between lucky and happy?

I explain to my students and people I meet in the street that they understand different meanings of glücklich, and that if those different meanings are based on context, then context can be used to choose the correct English word to use.

1. happy - an internal emotion of feeling lucky for example waking up after a good sleep and feeling good about the day
2. lucky - an external force that gives them luck for example finding a €2 coin on the sidewalk

Each of these meanings helps me clarify happy and lucky, and really helps German speakers grasp the correct word choice when speaking English.