TeachingEnglish Newsletter 16 March 2011

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TeachingEnglish Newsletter 16 March 2011 A new Guest Writer will be with us later in the year, but in the meantime you can check out the archive of articles and blogposts from famous ELT names, such as Jamie Keddie, here. Facebook Keep up to date with the latest updates on TeachingEnglish via our Facebook page.  LearnEnglish Kids Children can develop their English skills with topic-based games, songs, stories. LearnEnglish Develop your English, with language games, downloads, stories and articles. BritLit The aim of BritLit is to help teachers from around the world to exploit English literature in the ELT classroom. Premier Skills Enabling learners and teachers to communicate in two of the world's global languages - football and English. Welcome to this week's TeachingEnglish newsletter! This week we have another lesson plan from our UK Languages and cultures series, this time looking at a region of England called 'Norfolk'. The lesson plan comes with a challenging listening exercise that introduces your students to an interesting English accent. There's another article from our 'Think' section this time dealing with the controversial topic of testing - do we need to do it at all? Why not have a look and then leave your own ideas. There's also a new poll asking you to vote on teacher talking time, how much do you talk in class? Too much or too little? Best wishes, Duncan TeachingEnglish Team | British Council | BBC     What do you know about Norfolk? This lesson includes a challenging audio file with what for many students is an unusual accent. This challenge has been dealt with by keeping the listening tasks simple and developing vocabulary around the topic first. The speaker talks about his life in a part of the UK called Norfolk.    Read more     Testing - why bother? This article will ask why we test learners of English. Before I start, let's get some terminology straight. I'm not talking about exams. We as a society need exams. Governments and large institutions couldn't function without exams.  Read more   Poetry is for the brave I have never written a poem. Seriously. Not even when I was a teenager and you may think that putting cheesy words in short lines that vaguely sound as an iambic pentameter equals to great poetry. I simply find the idea daunting and I'm not brave enough to try. Read more Teacher Talking Time Some people believe that a good teacher is one that says as little as possible. Others believe that students can only learn by hearing the teacher talk. How is your teacher talking time?  Read more   Challenging students to speak more We had four interesting high school classes today, Monday. I challenged students to speak only English without stopping for five minutes. Although five minutes may not seem like a long time, it is something that is rarely done in China. Students taking the IELTS exam must speak for two minutes without stopping, and this sends fear into the hearts of most Chinese learners of English. Read more Online Tutoring Hi all, I opened this topic to chat about online tutoring, pros and cons, anything there is to know about this subject. All are welcome to contribute. Read more

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