The 2010 Soccer World Championship in my Classes

My PLN members have shared lots of material about the soccer championship via Twitter and I've been selecting what I thought my students would find interesting. I've been uploading the material I've chosen in the classroom blogs and wikis for my students to go on practising the language at home. Unfortunately, I haven't written down the name of the Tweetterer who has shared or recommended the material but I have thanked the sharer and made comments as to the significance of the recommendation.

So far, I've uploaded:

1) The game calendar: Calendar Useful for my students to check dates and places where the games are played.

2) An insightful article: Follow your Football Team You can read information, look at pictures and see videos.

3) Articles for my students to read: News Item To encourage students to read about the latest news.

4) Vocabulary Tasks: Useful Vocabulary (by @esolcourses)

5) The World Cup Map: Map For students to be informed as to the countries that participate in the championship.

6) Quizzes: The World Cup Helpful to practise vocabulary and grammar.

7) A Game: Fling the Teacher Highly motivating for students to learn and have fun. (by @eflclassroom)

8) Pictures: Big Pictures For students to enjoy creativity and art.

9) Songs: Wavin' Flag (by K´NAAN)

Waka Waka by Shakira

Videos of songs are great resources for the introduction of talking points in the classroom, for learning vocabulary and for developing listening skills. Singing songs is a good way of practising pronunciation.

10) A video about the star of the champiosnhip "The Vuvuzela Horn": Should vuvuzela horns be banned from the World Cup? The idea is to introduce the talking point about the use of this type of horn and then students can watch the video and write any idea that comes to their heads while watching it (task suggested by Anne hodgdon, @annehodg, in her comment to one of my posts). After that, students can share ideas in pairs and whith the whole group. As a follow-up task students can suggest a different device for cheering teams.

11) A site for students to create a football character: SP Studio (shared by @annapires)

Have you used any other task in your classes connected to the World Cup?

An Attempt to Motivate Students

Motivation is one of our main concerns as teachers, especially if we teach teenagers, whose motivation span deflates at lightning speed. In an attempt to encourage my teenage students to adopt English learning habits at home, I've created classroom blogs and wikis to upload material for my students to use after class. Thanks to my Twitter colleagues I'm able to receive creative ideas I do my best to put into practice so as to prevent my students' motivation from fading.

In this post, I'd like to share some of the links I've used to update my students' blogs and wikis:

1) Quizzes: Definitions

2) WallWisher: Students' Expectations

3) Games: Synonym Toast

4) Songs: The 2010 World Championship Song

5) Surveys: Free Time Survey

6) Articles connected to the topics introduced in class: Extreme Sports

7) Interactive Stories: Inanimate Alice

8) Grammar Tasks: Multiple Choice

9) Intonation Awareness Exercises: English Media Lab

10) Bakcground Knowledge: 2010 World Cup Map

11) Listening Practice: Accidents at Home

12) Speaking Practice: Questions Recorded with Vocaroo

This list is just an example of the kind of material I upload, for which I am thankful to my Twitter fellows for sharing it.

I'm interested in knowing how you encourage your students to practise outside the classroom.

What Do Students Learn When They Learn a Second Language?

The Ideal Teaching-Learning Environment

After reading Shelly Terrell's latest post (Goal: Reach Out), I thought about how unaware many times we, language teachers, are of the fact that we are not only helping our students develop language skills but also contributing a great deal to their growth as social beings. Many times we have heard the phrase "The classroom is a small community" and as such we should model how to interact as members of that community so as to build an ideal environment for the teaching-learning process to take place smoothly.

Social Skills

Many times students participate in pair work or group work and we should walk around the classroom making sure they use the second language for communication. However, that is not the only point that should be raised. We should also check our students are putting into practice the right social skills required for a cordial interaction. Students should be able to express their thoughts, to listen to others and react accordingly. I have seen students developing monologues in a conversation, in which each of the members make a comment and continue adding details without paying attention to what the others are saying. For that reason, the notion of turn-taking is essential.

Ways of Making Students Aware of Social Skills

We should design tasks intended to make students aware of how they should interact to be competent speakers. At the same time, it is important for them to see the wrong way of doing it. In that way they will understand why it is wrong: communication is unsuccessful. It is not easy as in real life, at least in my country, adolescents are used to speaking all together, in a loud voice to be heard without listening to what others are saying. We should provide them with a clear list of items to respect in pair work and group work tasks.

Another interesting task to do is to organise group tasks in which one of the students is in charge of making comments as to their way of interacting. As students know the items to be respected to interact successfully, they will be able to decide if the ones that are interacting are doing it properly. This position of student-observer can be switched so that all of them have the opportunity of participating in peer correction.

Teachers' Attitude

Our attitude in the classroom teaches a lot to our students. If we smile, look at our students in the eyes, speak and listen with respect, our students will receive those values and learn how to interact in harmony. What they will be learning will be useful for oral exams and for their real lives.