Other Connections: Common Projects
Travel: Although I'm not able to travel very far from home today, I'm lucky to have gone to many wonderful places over the years. Just before I graduated from undergrad school, for example, I was fortunate to be chosen to participate in a musical group (School Band-School Chorus of America) which made a whirlwind tour of parts of Western Europe (England, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Monaco, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland) in less than a month, and while on the tour, I had the very good fortune to spend time with an aunt and uncle who were living in Weisbaden (they took me on a great trip up the Rhine). Later, after I had begun my professional career, I traveled to my first Mexican border town—Nuevo Laredo. A little later, after I changed my career to ESL and was working for ELS, I visited Mexico City, Tijuana, and most of the U.S. (mostly for short trips) and also made a memorable trip (1982!) to Beijing and Tianjin, PROC. Still later, after I moved to Phoenix, I visited several non-U.S. embassies in Washington, DC, traveled to Taiwan and Korea, took short trips to more Mexican border towns (Ciudad Juárez, San Luis Río Colorado), and visited Beijing (China) again (in 2001: what changes I saw!). There are many more places I'd love to visit (Brazil is one), but these trips will more than likely be virtual, not real. I'd love to hear about places you've visited, too. Tell me about them in a comment.
Materials Development: I've been developing materials ever since I started teaching. At first, they were hand-drawn, typed (on a typewriter, not a computer), and copied via carbon paper, stencils (Who can remember those foul-smelling things?), and dittomasters (Is that what they were called? I can't remember). Later, they were photocopied, usually in black and white. Still later, they were downloadable from the Web and often linked to online graphics and audio files. I also see a great potential for downloadable exercises linked to online video files, but I haven't played around with that very much. In addition, I've developed materials for websites such as Rong-Chang Li's Learning Oral English Online, Dave Sperling's ESL Cafe, and the Internet TESL Journal's (Charles Kelly's) Activities for ESL Students. If you're interested in seeing more information on these and other materials I've created, let me know in a comment.
posted by Dennis @ 7:10 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Hi Dennis!
Wow! I also love developing materials... In fact, I created my blog to make them available to interested teachers.... So, here we are! I'm interested on your materials... What else can you tell me???
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Oí, Lilian.
How nice it is to hear from you!
I just re-visited your blogs. I was pleased to see what you've already put online to give your students the opportunity to practice class materials on their pace outside of class, and I was especially impressed with the number of responses to your "What do you call it?" conversation starter.
Re my own materials, I can say that I'm no longer teaching (in a school, that is) but still have lots and lots of things that I created when I was teaching. Many of these materials are paper-and-pencil grammar exercises because my class assignments were usually in grammar. I also have a number of pronunciation materials, and some of them have sound files. The great majority of the grammar and pronunciation materials are only available on Zip disks and as archived files on my computer. I need to do something about that . . . because the materials were designed to be used, not just kept in storage.
I began putting materials online in 1995 or 1996, and some of them are still available:
At Dave's ESL Cafe
— many short grammar modules
— 15 assorted quizzes
— a collection of about 250 idioms
— a collection of more than 200 phrasal verbs
in Rong-Chang Li's Learning Oral English Online
— listening passage: "A Visit to the Advisor"
at Charles Kelly's Activities for ESL Students
— Go HERE and look through the Grammar-Medium and Vocabulary-Medium quizzes (on the left-hand side of the page) for Verb and Phrasal Verbs).
I plan to put a lot of materials online (mostly for grammar and pronunciation practice) at my personal website, but I haven't yet done it. I'll let you know when something is available.
______________________________________
I'm glad we're in touch, Lilian. Keep up the good work with your online materials!
Até logo—
Dennis
Dennis, unlike you, I haven´t been to many places. In Brazil, I´ve been to Ceará and Maranhão ,both in the northeast. I´ve also been to Goainia, which is not far from Brasília, where I live. Now, abroad, I´ve been only to Washington D.C and Indiana. At the time, the American Embassy in Brasilia and the school I work at, Casa Thoams Jefferson, joined forces to give public school children the chance to travel to the U.S. Have you ever heard of Youth Embassadors? In order to be chosen, they were supposed to get excellent grades. Along with the children, a team of teachers who had never been abroad either would also be put together. I ended up being one of those teachers. There were 5 teachers, each one responsible for a groups of 4 kids, and each group would head to a different state in the States. All groups were to go to the capital first, where we would learn about the American history and all, go sightseeing and shopping. After that, each group headed to their assigned state, where we would spend a week living in a family´s home, each students and the teacher in one different family´s home. My group got to go to Indiana; It was a unique experience. For me and for them, for sure. Never had I been able to experience something so cool.Speaking English with native speakers daily, experiencing such a different culture, dealing with different situations, all that stuff contributed for me to change, to improve, to mature, in terms of language content and personality too. I feel more confident about speaking, expressing myself. I don´t know, do I make myself clear? Do you see what I mean? Traveling abroad definitely broaden our horizons. Everybody should be able to travel abroad and have that kind of experience.
Hi, Cleide.
I'm sorry for the slow response to your very interesting post. I was heavily involved in a project for AZ-TESOL and I got behind in everything else (including sleep).
I'd say you've been to plenty of places!
I'm happy you've been to Maranhão and Ceará and Goiânia. You live in such a huge, diverse, beautiful country that traveling from one state or region to another is like going to an entirely different country!
How I'd love to visit Brasil! I've never been there and will never be able to go there physically, but I visited Maranjão, Ceará, and Goiânia online today, and was enchanted by the beautiful things I saw and the interesting things that I read. I viewed hundreds of photos, and one thing that made a big impression on me was the huge number of birds in Maranhão.
I'm particularly impressed that you've visited Washington, DC and the state of Indiana. There's a lot to see in Washington, DC! And I can relate personally to Indiana because my brother lives there (in Evansville).
I'm glad you were able to spend time in Indiana because there's a lot of scenic beauty in that part of the U.S.
When you were in Indiana, you probably heard a kind of "Southern" U.S. English. I was born and raised about halfway between St. Louis, Missouri and Vincennes, Indiana. Vincennes is northwest of Evansville. People in the part of Illinois where I grew up were amazingly southern in many ways even though Illinois is really considered to be part of what's called "The South" in the U.S.
You and your students had a wonderful, wonderful opportunity to immerse yourselves in the language and culture of the "heartland" of the U.S., and I can certainly understand how it caused you "to change, to improve, to mature, in terms of language content and personality, too." Do you make yourself clear when you say that? – Absolutely . . . because I've experienced the same thing myself.
I'm enjoying our interchange here, Cleide; I'm only sorry that it took me so long to add my half of this conversation!
Very best wishes from Arizona—
Dennis
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