DEVELOPING TEACHERS.COM NEWSLETTER

Welcome to the May Newsletter.

This month we are joined by Gerald Kelly who discusses the value of the DELTA qualification & EAP teaching. For those unfamiliar with the DELTA, it is a practical teaching qualification for experienced teachers run by UCLES at Cambridge ESOL - http://www.cambridgeesol.org/teaching/delta.htm There are centres worldwide & courses are run part-time, full-time (usually 8 weeks), & distance. If you are thinking of making a career in English language teaching then this is the way to go. The BLC in Madrid offers full & part-time courses all year round - see the advert below.

Also this month, Michael Berman offers another storytelling article titled Journeying, Storytelling & Spiritual Intelligence.

One of our new advertisers is offering a 10% discount on refresher teacher training courses. The Language Project, based in Bristol, offers 2-week summer training courses so have a look at their ad below for a stimulating stay in the south west of England.

Happy teaching!

Alistair

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INDEX

1. THE SITE
2. FORUMS
3. TEACHING LINKS
4. DAYS OF THE MONTH
5. BOOK REVIEW
6. WEEKLY TEACHING TIPS
7. PS - Internet/computer-related links
8. THE BIT AT THE END

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Advertisement

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Practical courses in London & Canterbury covering techniques & skills. Ideal as an intro or a refresher. Certificate provided.

£180 for a 20-hour course over one weekend

St. Peter's School of English
(Established for 40 years)
www.stpeters-tefl.co.uk e-mail: info@stpeters-tefl.co.uk

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DEVELOPINGTHEWEB.COM - WEB HOSTING

Developing TheWeb, our associate web hosting site offers three very affordable hosting plans - all with cPanel - Bronze $8/month, Silver - $12/month & Gold - $15/month. For details: http://www.developingtheweb.com/plans.htm

phpBB Forum installations - up & ready to go without any need to know anything about web design. A simple way to instantly create your own online community. For details:
http://www.developingtheweb.com/forums.htm

Online Course Support: Moodle installation, 300mb of space, 1gb of bandwidth/month - $12/month Even comes with a PayPal module so that you can integrate charging for your courses. For details:
http://www.developingtheweb.com/courses.htm

Pay for the year to get two months free & your bandwidth doubled! Pay for six months & get a month free!
Very reasonable domain registration also offered - .com - $20/year.

Reliable & friendly hosting services. For more information:
http://www.developingtheweb.com/

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1. THE SITE

ONLINE DEVELOPMENT COURSES

The online courses are hosted at one of our sister sites, Developing Courses.com (http://www.developingcourses.com ). The individual, personalised courses develop with the experience, needs & interests of each participant at their own rate.

We use Moodle, an excellent course management system, each course having its own password so only the individual participant plus the trainer can gain access. The central focus on the courses within Moodle is the forum & where there may be three or four different threads going on at the same time. Attached to these are a variety of resources. All are very easy to operate in Moodle. Choose between the full, seven module course, & an elective four module course.

For more information, get in touch & check out: http://www.developingcourses.com

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Can the DELTA help you to teach EAP? by Gerald Kelly

(Please note, this article draws heavily on the DELTA syllabus document available from http://www.cambridgeesol.org/teaching/delta0104.pdf . I resisted the temptation to put huge chunks of text from that document in this paper, but you are advised to refer to the syllabus while reading this article, as many references are made to specific parts of it). The Cambridge ESOL DELTA is perhaps the most widely-known diploma-level in-service training course for experienced teachers, alongside the Trinity Licentiate Diploma. Its development has led to a course which, most ELT teacher educators would agree, provides sound training, along with opportunities for reflection and development. Recent years have seen a huge increase in the availability of MA TESOL/Applied Linguistics programmes (or similar titles), the majority of which do not have a teaching practice component. The global and evolving nature of ELT, together with the variety of modes of provision (e.g. private language schools, state colleges and universities) has led to a situation wherein nobody can say with any accuracy which course is going to help teachers advance their careers or gain more stable working conditions, given the enormous variety of possible teaching contexts.

Many teachers are tempted to take the "MA route" because it has more kudos than a diploma, and because, if it does not include a teaching practice element, it may be seen as easier to pass, or perhaps one takes less of a professional and financial risk in choosing this path. However, many employers still insist on teachers having the DELTA (or equivalent) and certain accreditation schemes still look for a percentage of teachers who are so qualified.

Within the field of EAP there can often be added resistance to the DELTA from teachers who have reached the stage where such a course would be appropriate for their career development. There can also be resistance from their more experienced, and occasionally DELTA-qualified colleagues. Such resistance usually centres round the relevance of what is perceived to be an EFL training course to an EAP teaching situation. It has been argued that the provision of university and college-based EAP requires teachers who are accomplished in this specific area of ELT, and that the DELTA casts its net too wide for the development needs of these teachers. In the writer's experience, however, many who level such criticisms at the course do so without reference to the syllabus, and often have an outdated or otherwise misinformed conception of what the course entails. Common beliefs include the idea that the course requires one to teach in a certain manner, or that communicative teaching techniques cannot meaningfully inform EAP teaching.

However, if we examine different units of the course, we can see that it does not preclude EAP teaching, and in fact can work with many different situations, encouraging, as it does, teachers to investigate their own circumstances in some depth.

To view the article

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Journeying, Storytelling & Spiritual Intelligence by Michael Berman

Before dealing with what has been called the third form of intelligence, it might be helpful to say a few words about the other two forms - IQ and EQ. IQ Tests were developed by Binet early in the 20th century and were frequently used to assess the potential of children in schools until quite recently. Tests of this type, however, have now fallen into disrepute. All they test is linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence and this traditional definition of intelligence is now regarded as too narrow. The educational psychologist most responsible for this change of attitude is Howard Gardner, the creator of the Multiple Intelligence Theory.

Gardner's work at the Boston University School of Medicine lead to the identification of eight criteria for the existence of intelligence types: potential isolation by brain damage, the existence of prodigies such as autistic savants, an identifiable set of core operations, a distinctive developmental history along with a definable set of expert end-state performances, an evolutionary history, support from experimental psychological tasks, support from psychometric findings, and susceptibility to an encoding symbol system. (see Gardner, 1983, for further details).

Gardner originally identified seven intelligence types which satisfy the above criteria and our intelligence profiles consist of combinations of the different types: linguistic, logical- mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal - the way we relate to others, and intrapersonal - our ability to self-evaluate.

The term Emotional Intelligence, popularised by Daniel Goleman (1996), covers what Gardner refers to as interpersonal plus intrapersonal intelligence, sub-divided into five domains - knowing your emotions, managing your emotions, motivating yourself, recognizing emotions in others, and handling relationships.

Gardner refers to intelligences as potentials that will or will not be activated, depending upon the values of a particular culture, the opportunities available in that culture, and the personal decisions made by individuals, their families, schoolteachers, and others. A student who believes that intelligence can be developed is likely to be persistent and adventurous. However, a learner who thinks that ability is fixed, is more likely to get upset when faced with failure as it can only be construed as evidence of inadequate ability. The fluid "theory" of intelligence advocated by Gardner encourages students to stretch themselves.

In his book "Intelligence Reframed" Gardner adds Naturalist Intelligence, our talent for classifying and categorising, to the original Magnificent Seven. He also speculates on the possibility of their being both a spiritual intelligence and an existential intelligence but comes to no definite conclusions. Danah Zohar, however, makes out a convincing case for their being a Spiritual Intelligence in "Spiritual Intelligence The Ultimate Intelligence" (2000) and the way in which this can be activated in the classroom will be the subject of this article.

Does the fact that we each have a unique profile mean that we should plan individual lessons for everyone in the class to take this into account? Clearly this would be impractical and the solution lies in including material designed to appeal to each of the types in every lesson we give. The table presented below lists classroom activities that cater for the different Intelligence types. However, this classification is clearly subjective and dependent on individual teaching styles. Moreover, it should also be pointed out that a number of the activities cater for more than one Intelligence type and could consequently be placed in more than one category.

To view the rest of the article

Now Available!

'The Shaman and the Storyteller' by Michael Berman with an Introduction by Jonathan Horwitz from the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies - Price: £12

To buy the book at Amazon .com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0954291379/developingteac0b

To buy the book at Amazon .co.uk
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0954291379/developingteache

10% of all the Royalties will be donated to the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies to set up a scholarship fund.

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Thanks to Gerald & Michael

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If you want hundreds of new ideas for your English classes, contact The Language Project, Bristol and find out about their full-immersion 2-week summer refreshers courses in the beautiful capital of the South West of England.
The courses are very practical and will help you brush up your idiomatic English and learn new techniques for promoting effective learning in your classes. You'll also explore many aspects of UK life and culture. You will receive a collection of over 120 tried and tested classroom ideas that you can apply immediately. You'll learn about 65 types of homework you can give your students, how to use jokes to make listening more fun, and the secrets of helping your students make rapid progress with their English vocabulary, and much, much more. And it's fun!
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http://www.languageproject.co.uk/index.htm
For questions, applications or just to say hello, contact:
info@languageproject.co.uk

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ARTICLES - If you've given a course or seminar or have a lesson
plan & would like to give it a public airing, do get in touch.

ADVERTISING - We reach more than a few thousand teachers every
week with the Weekly Teaching Tip & the same each month with the
Newsletter, not to mention the 2000+ unique visitors a day to the
Site, & the site has the Google PR5. If you've got a book,
course, job...anything that you'd like to advertise, then do get
in touch.

TO GET IN TOUCH

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2. FORUMS

A couple of recent posts:

Rwillmsen would like to know:
Some time ago I came across a reference to particular phrasal verbs such as cut down, finish off, wrap up, etc, verbs that involve a sense of finality and closure. There was a grammatical term for these kinds of verbs which I think mentioned that it is some sort of 'voice', but I have no idea which. Can anyone help?
http://forum.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=956

i+1 asks:
We are looking to replace our young learners' coursebooks (Sail Away 1&2 - Express Publishing). Do any of you know Chatterbox (OUP) or Quest or Magic Time (Longman)? Do they include games, songs, crafts, drama? We don't have them on the shelf and I'm not sure which sample copies to request from the publishers. Thanks for any info you can provide.
http://forum.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=954

Costadina23 lets us know:
The GISIG discussion list of IATEFL will hold a fielded discussion between May 15-19, 2006. The topic will be "Why global issues should be taught in EFL." The guest speaker will be Ricardo Sanpedro. He has written a global issue coursebook, and a project on teaching global issues. Anyone who is interested in following the discussion is free to join. This can either be done through our website at http://www.iatefl-gisig.org or by contacting me at costadina23@yahoo.com.
http://forum.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=967

Aziz Mostafa lets us know:
There is no word game like Crosswords. But... Is it possible to solve a crossword by having the Across Clues Only? .. Will the Down Clues Alone Help? . ... Possible or not? ...Yes, Possible to do Only One kind of crosswords with Either Clues! Flower Crosswords! That's right: These Flowers are designed to Sharpen vocabulary, spelling and other skills for all students at all levels. Go explore and Collect Flowers right off http://www.crAUSwords.com/flowers/WFlowers.htm
http://forum.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=946

TESall.com lets us know:
Where do you want to teach today? TESall.com's new International Job Resource Centre is now online. Search for jobs, exchange lesson plans, discuss industry news and network with other teachers while still taking advantage of TESall.com's other great features including our job search engine and BlogLog.
http://forum.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=963

pjtyle lets us know:
Pleiades Journal of Teaching Young Learners of English. Welcome to Pleiades Journal of TYLE, an online academic Journal devoted to Teaching English to Children and Teenagers. This journal is committed to focus upon young learners of English as a group similar to, yet distinct from, the general ESL population. That's why our Journal stresses not only those articles that maintain such a critical focus upon actual research on these target groups but also seeks to place such research in an actual framework for teaching and learning.
http://forum.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=962

One of many jobs from karen98:
ETEC (English Teacher's Employment Connection) is recruiting for teaching vacancies and we currently have opportunities for E1 teachers in the following cities: Suwon, Incheon, Daejon, Busan, Ulsan, Daegu, Gwangju etc. If you are an enthusiastic and fun teacher and you would like to work in a professional and friendly atmosphere, it is an offer for you. Start dates between May~June. During the year of experiences, we have assisted many schools to offer high salary, high living standard, health and term insurance, round-trip, annual vocation, complimentary with domestic travelling and plus lots more... We know what you need and we know what the schools need!
http://forum.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=976

A job offer, among a few, from PlanetESL:
We have this and countless other jobs available all year round. Teachers can let us know EXACTLY what kind of job they are looking for, including location, preferred student age, accommodation preference, desired rate of pay, etc, and we will contact them with jobs matching their criteria.
http://forum.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=958

Lots of different Forums to choose from. Check them out. Post your jobs, your CV, your questions, finds on the net, ideas, activities, questions, grumbles, suggestions, your language courses, your training courses...they are there for you to use. http://forum.developingteachers.com/

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CONSULTANCY

At Developing Teachers.com we occasionally carry out consultancy work. The different projects have included tutoring DELTA candidates by email, offering advice on curriculum design & materials choice & short training courses in person & by email. If you would like us to help in any way, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

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3. TEACHING LINKS

http://www.teachers.tv
'Teachers' TV is a channel for everyone who works in education, from heads to NQTs, governors to support staff. Programmes take you inside classrooms and schools across the country to see how good teachers are bringing the curriculum to life and improving schools.' Excellent quality videos from UK classrooms. The site detects if you are from outside the UK & says it is unlicensed for international streaming but if you persevere you should be able to see what you want. Register & then you can download the videos to your computer.

http://www.sussexambulance.nhs.uk/community/folder.2006-03-
17.9930284376/index_html
It's always rewarding when you find material that your students find interesting. And it's even more rewarding if they learn something useful, apart from the English you teach them, to take away & use in their daily lives. So imagine a student being able to save a life through one of your listening activities! I came across 7 First Aid podcasts issued by the Sussex Ambulance Service in the UK. The files are in mp3 format & offer straightforward advice on how to deal with a variety of emergencies. They are quite dense in content so a deal of pre-listening build up will be necessary. Try them out & you'll probably learn something as well. Here's the content of each file:

Burns - Explains the immediate treatment for burns and scalds.
Fits - How to deal with fits (convulsions/seizures) in adults and young children.
Wounds - Immediate actions for wounds, bleeding, and bleeding associated with fractures.
Unconscious patient who is breathing - How to deal with an unrousable patient who IS breathing - includes recovery position.
CPR for adults - Adults who have collapsed, unrousable and NOT breathing.
CPR for babies - Babies who are unrousable and NOT breathing.
Collapsed patient in detail - Explains the complete scenario including checks for breathing, circulation, etc.

These files have been prepared by Sussex Ambulance Service and comply with European Resuscitation Council Guidelines.

If you have visited a site that you think would be beneficial for all or would like your site to appear here, please get in touch. Thanks.

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4. DAYS OF THE MONTH

A few days to plan your lessons around in May:

1st - May Day - Labour Day
5th - Cinco de Mayo - Mexico
8th - World Red Cross Day
12th - Limerick Day - birthday of Edward Lear
18th - International Museum Day
24th - Victoria Day - Canada

To see the list of Days

Wikipedia's excellent focus on days of the year:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_anniversaries

http://www.holidayorigins.com/home.html
Some holiday origins.

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5. BOOK REVIEW

Extensive Reading Activities for Teaching Language (Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers) by Julian Bamford & Richard R. Day (CUP). An excellent array of activities to start, support, maintain & exploit this vital activity.

To read the review

To buy the book at Amazon .com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521016517/developingteac0b
To buy the book at Amazon .co.uk
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521016517/developingteache

BUYING BOOKS
If you're going to Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk then please go through our Books page. You will pay the same & we will receive a few pennies to keep the site & newsletters free. Thanks.

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6. WEEKLY TEACHING TIPS

Free weekly practical teaching tips by e-mail.

Recent Tips have included:

- Primacy & recency - memory & recalling lessons.
- In at the deep end - a look at test-teach-test
- Infinitive or gerund? - Non-finite clauses as direct objects.

To see the Past Tips

To sign up to receive them

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7. PS - Internet/computer

A few computer use rules of thumb:
- make copies of all-important files
- run scan disk & then defragment the hard drive
- use firewall software
- use a virus scan & update the files every week
- install security patches that software providers offer
- update your DirectX files regularly
- don't open attachments without scanning for viruses first
- don't respond to spam - just delete & forget
- don't send personal or bank information by email
- turn off your computer at night

http://phalano.com/
The general strike in Nepal with the photoblog at Planao.com

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/
'Atrcyclopedia is the guide to great art on the Internet'

http://savetheinternet.com/
Save The Internet! - US site to keep the internet neutral.

http://www.damninteresting.com/
Damn interesting stuff!

http://www.archimedes-lab.org/numbers/Num1_69.html
Numbers 0-69 explained.

http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/game/colorama/
Square game.

http://www.makaimedia.com/games/game_frame.aspx?gid=11
Toss the spear.

http://widgets.yahoo.com/
Yahoo! Widgets - 'Keep the stuff that you love right at your fingertips. Bring life to your desktop with fun, stylish, and useful Yahoo! Widgets. To get Widgets on your desktop, you first need to download the Yahoo! Widget Engine.

http://www.globalspec.com/BrainStrainer/
Build a rocket launcher.

http://www.joys-of-computing.com/
The joys of computing!

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8. THE BIT AT THE END

This newsletter is ReferWare. If you enjoy reading it and find useful information in this newsletter, you are asked to help spread the word about it. You can do this by forwarding a copy to your friends, telling them about it, and/or putting a link to http://www.developingteachers.com from your site. You cannot:

1.Post this newsletter in part or in whole on your site.
2.Forward this newsletter issue after issue to people - just send them a single issue and tell them to subscribe.

Has to be.

Disclaimer - all of the recommendations for computer-related software are personal recommendations. We take no responsibility for anything that might go wrong when downloading, installing or running them - not that anything should, but you never know. It's your decision, your responsibility. The same applies to the jobs mentioned above. And anything else that you can think of that we might be responsible for as a result of this newsletter!

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