Compelling Conversations for English Teachers, Tutors, and Advanced English Language Learners

What are your core beliefs? More importantly, what are your students’ core beliefs? How can you help English language learners improve their listening skills while exploring their own personal philosophy? Do you use radio podcasts in your English classrooms or ask students to write personal essays? If so, you might want to visit www.thisibelieve.org for excellent, fascinating authentic listening materials.

This I Believe, originally a radio program hosted by legendary American journalist Edward R. Murrow, has been resurrected by National Public Radio. Here is a sample podcast and personal essay by Jim Haynes that should appeal to ESL teachers, EFL tutors, and English students everywhere called “Inviting the World to Dinner”.

The “This I Believe” website includes a tremendous amount of free resources for teachers and students. Naturally, I also have a simple reproducible worksheet that allows students to find, summarize, and share their own favorite podcasts. Students can choose between thousands of essays and hundreds of podcasts on dozens of themes. In my oral skills class, students will present their own “This I Believe” presentation for the final assignment. Consider me curious about what they will choose to share.

English teachers can sign up for the free mailing list and download an exceptional discussion guide at the www.thisibelieve.org website. Check it out if you are looking for quality, reflective materials to enliven your ESL classes. Feel free, as usual, to use the worksheet below for your English classes. I’ve found this reflective exercise builds class rapport, develops speaking skills, and earns high marks from students.

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This I Believe Homework Worksheet

Links: This I Believe – www.thisibelieve.org
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4538138

Please select one radio segment, based on a personal essay, and read by writers. Find a story that resonates with you. Listen carefully. Take notes. Fill out the worksheet below. You will be asked to share your selection with classmates in both a small group and the entire class.

Student:
This I Believe Title:
Author/Reader:
Length:

Who is the author?

What’s the main idea?

Why did you choose this podcast?

Did you hear any new words or phrases?
1.
2.
3.

Who do you imagine is the audience for this podcast? Why?

What is your reaction? Why?

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You can also download a PDF of this worksheet from http://www.compellingconversations.com/worksheets/this-i-believe-homework-worksheet.pdf  along with other free worksheets for advanced ESL and EFL speaking skills classes. Enjoy!

Ask more. Know more. Share more.
Create Compelling Conversations.
Visit www.CompellingConversations.com

How can English teachers encourage adult and university students to expand their language skills and improve their employment opportunities in a difficult economic climate?

Personally, I’ve slightly modified my oral skills course this semester to provide greater emphasis on interviewing skills. Students interviewed each other for 10-15 minute videotaped mock job interviews for their first assignment.

The use of videotaping students in class has gained far more acceptance in the last few years, partly due to the technological advances. OTAN, the adult education website established by the California Department of Education, even created an entire section devoted to using videotapes and videocameras in the adult ESL classes.

Another factor has been the increasing popularity of YouTube videoclips by students seeking practical information. I’ve combined those two trends by requiring students to find and review YouTube clips on vital employment skills and speaking skills. Students found and reviewed videoclips, and emailed them in as homework. Afterwards, I combined all the student evaluations into a single email that I sent to the entire class with a few editorial comments and minor editing.

Here is the homework sheet for that assignment. As with the reviews, “use or lose.”

Getting Job Interview Advice from YouTube!

Student Name:
Class:
Teacher:
School:
Date:

Please find an YouTube videoclip that helps people successfully interview for jobs – in English – that you would like to share with your classmates. Watch the video, take notes, and review it for your classmates.

Video title:
Web address:
Length:
Creator:

Please describe the video.

What interview tips did the video provide?

Where do you think the video was produced? Why?

How practical did you find the advice? Why?

What was the strongest part? Why?

What was the weakest part? Why?

Who do think is the target audience for this video?

Why did you choose this video?

How would you rate this video 1-5 stars? Why?
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This simple worksheet combines research, critical thinking, and language skills. As English teachers, we can use simple technology to help English language learners develop their language skills, especially when they are motivated to learn and search out new sources. Instead of dismissing YouTube searching as a waste of time, let’s turn their interests into productive learning opportunities and share insights. After all, employment interviews often serve as a real-world language tests for our ESL students.

Let’s make sure we give them the tools to pass those crucial tests.

Ask more. Know more. Share more.
Create Compelling Conversations.
Visit www.CompellingConversations.com

How do students conduct online research for their K-12 classes? Do they systematically pursue a topic, use critical thinking to evaluate sources, and focus on the assigned topics? Or do they wander, often confused and easily distracted, from site to site? Is it possible for Google, the creator of the best online search engine,to create a specialized search engine just for K-12 students? Could Google, in other words, do for the K-12 students, teachers, and librarians what it has done for elite graduate students with Google scholar?

That’s the question that Dorit Eilon and a group of tech savvy teachers and educators are asking at Classroom 2.0 .

“We are a group of educators who for the past 7 months did an extensive research about on-line research and the education world. According to studies most students (and teachers) have difficulty conducting an efficient on-line research and most do not understand how Google or other search engines work.

Students, well versed in IM and SN (Social Networking) stumble when they conduct on-line research.
Even with technology many teachers still use the web in isolation. Teachers find great links that… stay on their computer, on their own website or their own blog.

So a group of us, educators, would like things to change.
We dream of a search engine that is unique to the education community with searches that produce text, video, audio results at the same time, where both commercial and school created material is accessible and monitored (we have a whole plan), where the resources will be identified, contributed and monitored by educators in phase one and Middle School / High School students in phase two. A search engine that it’s content will grow by the education community. and we want Google to be a part of it, to work with us to develop it and provide the technology.

But, we need librarians, teachers and students to talk about the day-to-day difficulties of navigating the web. We need educators to speak up so we can show that there is a real need not just plain statistics.

We imagine a search tool that will allow you to search within sites created by teachers, ability to rate sites / review, ability to search by “author” (person contributing links) , connection to Google Maps and much more.

If you feel the same way please go to our blog to look at comments and votes. While there, please take a vote and leave a comment to have your voice and opinion heard. http://cangooglehearus.blogspot.com/

Together we can make a difference.”

Sounds right to me. As the leading search engine and innovative technology company, Google can play an even more prominent role in improving education across the globe. Let’s hope Google hears this eloquent plea for a more student and teacher friendly search engine.

If you feel the same way, please visit and sign the petition.