Thank you…

… for continuing to visit my blog although I have been writing less and less for the past 18 months.

Truth is I went through a very bad period (as some of you might remember) and I felt less and less inclined to update my blog. Then I decided to take a sabbatical and join my daughter in London, so I have been in London for six months now. The only thing I updated in these last six months was the banner on the main page, inspired mainly by my own feelings in connection to what it is like to be a foreigner in London. I created the banner by cutting and grouping together the images, hoping to suggest the gap between the UK and Romania mainly in point of what we usually call ‘the culture clash’, but also aware that the same applies for any other two countries in the world, especially if one is a western European country and the other is… not.

I am not going to make any promises as to how often I am going to write a new post. I used to think I could keep up with two new posts every week, but discovered I couldn’t. So I’ll write whenever I have something to share and, I’m sorry if I am going to disappoint anyone, there won’t be much on teaching English in Romania or on teaching English in general for that matter.

So once again, thank you for visiting and reading me, I am so grateful to all of you for your support!

Wish I were there today…

If you were in the UK, no strings attached, no Easter preparations to finish and no one to check on your schedule, where would you be today?

Besides wishing I were in the UK today, anywhere, no matter where in the UK, today – more than on any other day of the year – I would be in Stratford-Upon-Avon…

A HAPPY EASTER to ALL MY DEAR FRIENDS

celebrating this holiday!

EASTER EGGS painted in Romania

 

EASTER EGGS traditionally painted in Bucovina

Facebook is not your friend

“If you care about your privacy and that of your real friends, unfriend Facebook now. We are its product, not its customers.“

Pretty old article – published about 10 months ago in The Guardian. Yet, still worth reading here.

CONCURSUL “PASAPORT PENTRU EXCELENTA”

http://pasaportpentruexcelenta.ro/

Ești pasionat de limba engleză și de cultura Marii Britanii? Îți place să faci fotografii sau să desenezi ? FII CREATIV și chiar tu poți sa fii unul dintre câștigătorii concursului: “Pașaport pentru excelență”.

O tabără de două săptămâni, la Oxford, îi așteaptă pe cei care vor reusi să obțină acest pașaport. Cu “Pașaport pentru excelență” ai ocazia să-ți completezi cunoștintele despre limba și cultura engleză într-o tabără timp de 2 săptămâni, chiar la Oxford.

Nu ai încă un certificat de competență lingvistică Cambridge? Cu “Pașaport pentru excelență” ai șansa să participi gratuit la un astfel de examen. Înscrie-te pentru un “Pașaport pentru excelență” și poți fi câștigătorul unuia dintre zecile de premii din concurs!

În acest concurs și profesorii sunt premiați! Primii 3 profesori cu cei mai mulți concurenți înscriși în competiție vor fi invitați să participe la o tabără de 2 săptămâni în Anglia.

***************

ETAPA I

Un proverb britanic spune: “Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere”. Tu unde cauti aceasta comoara? Educatia=comoara? Care e cea mai importanta comoara a unui om? Cum trebuie ea pastrata? Plecand de la proverb, gaseste sau realizeaza chiar tu o imagine care sa ilustreze invatatura acestuia. Motiveaza apoi, intr-un text in limba engleza de maximum 35 de cuvinte de ce este relevanta imaginea ta pentru proverbul britanic si inscrie-te in concurs pana pe 22 martie. SUCCES! http://pasaportpentruexcelenta.ro/inscriere-concurs

***************

Calendar concurs

- 1 februarie 2011 – 22 martie 2011 – desfăşurarea primei etape a concursului;

- 28 martie 2011 – desemnarea elevilor care vor participa la cea de-a doua etapă a concursului;

- 29 martie 2011 – 17 aprilie 2011 – desfăşurarea celei de-a doua etape;

- 25 aprilie – anuntarea participanţilor la cea de-a treia etapa a concursului, in Bucureşti;

- 30 aprilie – 1 mai 2011 – interviu Bucureşti – 7 mai 2011 – premierea.

(Elevii Liceului Callatis care doresc sa participe sunt rugati sa ma anunte, pentru a putea primi indrumari si indicatii.)

Teach

2011 Shakespeare School Essay Competition

Concurs national de eseuri in limba engleza pentru elevi

Dragi colegi,

Ne face placere sa va informam ca centrul de învăţare a limbii engleze Shakespeare School lansează cea de a treia ediţie a concursului naţional de creaţie în limba engleză “Shakespeare School Essay Competition”, desfăşurat sub egida Anului European al Voluntariatului. Va adresam pe aceasta cale rugamintea de a ne sprijini in mediatizarea acestui concurs, prin informarea elevilor cu mijloacele pe care le aveti la dispozitie.

Participarea la concurs este gratuită şi deschisă tuturor tinerilor din România pasionaţi de limba engleză şi cu real talent la scris, care se încadrează într-una dintre cele două categorii de vârstă ale competiţiei: 11-14 ani, respectiv 15-19 ani. Temele propuse sunt un îndemn la implicare şi responsabilizare: liceenii vor avea de scris despre rolul voluntariatului şi felul în care acesta poate schimba societatea, iar elevii de gimnaziu vor avea de realizat un eseu în care, pornind de la 4 imagini sugestive, să-şi imagineze o lume ideală.

Concursul se desfasoara in perioada 7 februarie-20 martie 2011 si credem ca este o oportunitate deosebita oferita tinerilor creativi sa isi foloseasca talentul si imaginatia, punandu-si in valoare potentialul!

Premiile oferite marilor câştigători constau în tabere internaţionale de limba engleză de 2 săptămâni în Marea Britanie: la Cambridge University, Oxford Brookes University, Harrow House International College şi St. Michael’s College, în valoare de aprox. 1400 lire fiecare! Sponsorii competiţiei vor pregati si multe alte surprize: cărţi în limba engleza si dictionare (oferite de Fischer Internatonal), cursuri gratuite de limba engleză, taxe de înscriere la examene internaţionale de limba engleză (oferite de British Concil) şi articole sportive la alţi 40 de participanţi.

De asemenea, toţi participanţii vor primi diplome de participare, iar premianţii vor dobândi şi un Essay Award Certificate. Toate eseurile premiate vor fi postate si pe blog-ul Shakespeare School (http://blog.shakespeare-school.ro).

Profesorii de limba engleza care vor trimite minim 10 participanti la 2011 Shakespeare School Essay Competition vor primi un “Certificate of Merit” din partea centrului nostru.

Ediţia de anul trecut a avut o amploare naţională, concursul înregistrând peste 3.000 de eseuri de la tineri din 350 de localităţi, iar anul acesta ne asteptam la o participare şi mai numeroasă. Vom lansa si o antologie a celor mai bune lucrari ale editiei precedente, insa vom reveni cu detalii in curand pe blogul Shakespeare School.

Toate detaliile se regăsesc începând de luni, 7 februarie pe pagina oficială a competiţiei:  www.shakespeare-school.ro/concurs.

Sprijinul dumneavoastra va conduce la informarea unui numar mai mare de tineri despre un proiect educational care atat prin temele abordate, cat si prin premiile oferite va deschide participantilor noi orizonturi culturale si academice!

Speram ca initiativa noastra vi se va parea interesanta si in beneficiul tuturor tinerilor!

Cu multumiri,

Adriana Alionte
Director Shakespeare School

London… forever…

London… every teacher of English dreams to visit it at least once in their lifetime! I had been dreaming about it for more than 25 years when, eventually, in December 2010, my dream came true!

After an adventurous flight to London – which was supposed to take me there in five hours and, lucky me, finally got me to London City airport some 15 hours later, my daughter bought me an Oyster Buss Pass for a week and we hopped on the DLR, direction home. Several minutes and stops later we changed it, took the underground and got off at Westminster. Dragging the suitcases, we headed towards one of the exits my daughter had chosen. I was craving for a cigarette so when I finally saw a flight of stairs, a brick wall and day light in front of me, I rushed up the stairs and stopped, looking for my cigarettes in my pockets and announcing Alexandra that I intended to smoke then and there. “Mum,” she said, “I don’t think we’re out yet, we’re risking a fine if you smoke here. Let’s take this other flight of stairs and then we’re out and you can smoke all you want.” Completely disappointed, I grabbed the suitcase again while rolling up my eyes and then… WOOOOW! There it stood, towering above me, leaving me breathless and suddenly filling my eyes with tears: Big Ben!

Big Ben, the Clock Tower

I don’t remember how long it took me to get to the surface, just to lose my breath again… London Eye, Queen Boadicea (or Boudica) and Westminster Bridge in front of me and Westminster Palace, a.k.a. The Houses of Parliament behind me.

London Eye and Queen Boadicea

The next stop on our way home was a few hundred meters on, after going along the railings surrounding the Houses of Parliament and crossing the street just in front of Sir Winston Churchill’s statue… another breathtaking view:

St. Margaret’s Church and Westminster Abbey

I suddenly felt I envied every person passing by these marvels every day…

The left-side traffic, the Look Right marks at every crossing, the red double deckers,  the black taxis, the buildings with the same facade on one side of the street, matching those across the street… and then

Trafalgar Square and Lord Nelson's Column

and

The National Gallery and I

The Royal Opera House and its fragile Ballerina Resting…

Ballerina Resting, just opposite The Royal Opera House

I simply loved the Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square, surrounded by banners which read: Yes! I am a gift! And so are you! and the bus station ad announcing Christ’s birth!

Bus station ad

We spent Christmas day walking – no means of transport work that day. We covered a distance of 8-10 miles in about 7 hours: Buckingham Palace Road, Victoria Station, Buckingham Palace, St. James’s Park, The Mall, Admiralty Arch, Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross Station, Victoria Embankment, The Houses of Parliament, Millbank, Grosvenor Road and back to Pimlico.

Buckingham Palace Gate

On the 26th, we happened to enter St. Paul’s Cathedral just when an hour-long service was beginning so we attended it… Divine! The acoustics of the cathedral made the Saint Margaret Choir sound simply divine! Late one night we got to see…

Tower Bridge and The Tower of London

For 8 days I just kept losing my breath and wiping the tears rolling down my cheeks whenever I found myself in front of yet another of these wonderful places I had been teaching about for 25 years without ever seeing them live… It was all sooo overwhelming!

London is nothing one can imagine, no matter how many pictures of it one sees, no matter how many cyber-walks one takes with Google maps and its street-view feature, no matter how well the description is written, no matter how many years one has been teaching about it, thinking they know what they’re talking about. London is one city worth visiting at least once in a lifetime!

Stables Market - Camden Town

 

We have time…

A poem by Octavian Paler, a Romanian writer, journalist, editor and politician. I find this poem so inspirational that I decided to venture and translate it into English.

Octavian Paler (1926-2007)

We have time

We have time for everything.
To sleep, to run to and fro,
to regret our mistakes and make mistakes again,
to judge others and indulge ourselves,
we have time to read and to write,
to revise what we’ve written, to regret what we’ve written,
we have time to make projects and to not follow them through,
we have time to dwell in illusions and to rummage through their ashes later on.

We have time for ambitions and illnesses,
to blame destiny and details,
we have time to watch the clouds, the ads, or some accident,

we have time to drive away our questions, to postpone our answers,

we have time to crush a dream and reinvent it,

we have time to make friends, to lose them,

we have time to be taught lessons and to soon forget them,

we have time to accept gifts and to not understand them.

We have time for everything.

There’s just no time for a bit of tenderness.
Just when we’re about to do that, we die.

To read or not to read aloud in class – SURVEY

It took me a while to deal with the results to the survey on RA in class – the one I was mentioning in my post Some more on RA in my classes, mainly because of the following reasons:

- disappointment – I sent the survey to 14 teachers in Constanta, hoping for and looking forward to their help; an impressive number of 8 responses were added to the already existing 45 – no further comment!

- the winter holidays and the sudden change in my plans on how and where I would spend them – waiting for my first time in London to happen, there was little room for anything else in my agenda…

However, I feel bound to publish the results of that survey, especially because I promised I would do that and because, as I already mentioned, they are important to me.

Here are the tables and charts automatically generated by the Google Docs application I used for the survey and collection of data.

1. Participants’ age:

I am 14	2	4%
I am 15	23	43%
I am 16	20	38%
I am 17	8	15%

Age

2. I am a:

boy	30	57%
girl	23	43%

Gender

3. When we do a Reading Practice activity, …

I usually volunteer to read aloud	11	21%
I sometimes volunteer to read aloud	25	47%
I rarely volunteer to read aloud	14	26%
I never volunteer to read aloud	3	6%

Question 3

4. If it were my choice, …

I would never read aloud	3	6%
I would sometimes read aloud	35	66%
I would be the only one to read aloud	15	28%

Question 4

5. When I read aloud in class and the teacher stops me and names another student, …

I feel relieved. I am finally left alone.	3	6%
I feel disappointed. I would like to read the whole text.	17	32%
I feel generous. Everyone should have a chance to read aloud in class.	30	57%
I feel ready to laugh at my colleagues’ mistakes.	3	6%

Question 5

6. When I read aloud in class, I generally feel…

confident. I have an opportunity to show the teacher how good my English is!	24	45%
nervous. What if I don’t know some of the words?	14	26%
proud. The teacher rarely corrects my pronunciation.	14	26%
insecure. I know I will make mistakes.	12	23%
indifferent. It’s boring anyway!	7	13%
uncomfortable. Everyone will be looking at me.	7	13%
bad. They’ll laugh at my pronunciation.	3	6%
embarrassed. The teacher always corrects my pronunciation.	3	6%
scared. Why me? What have I done?	3	6%

People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%.

Question 6

7. When I read aloud and the teacher corrects my pronunciation, …

I simply hate it! Why did she ask me to read if she knows I’ll make mistakes?	0	0%
I don’t particularly like it, but I understand why she does it.	27	51%
I feel so bad! She makes a fool of me in front of the class!	0	0%
I kind of like it… She helps me improve my English after all…	26	49%

Question 7

8. When I do my homework and there’s a text in the coursebook, …

I prefer to read it aloud.	19	36%
I prefer to read it silently.	31	58%
I would like to listen to someone else reading it.	2	4%
I just turn the page!	1	2%

Question 8

9. I like reading aloud in class because… – 25 participants answered this question*

1. … if i don’t i get really bored.
2. … no one understands what I read anyways.
3. a better pronunciation never hurts
4. Because I pay more attention to the meaning of the text.
5. I can discover my mistakes .
6. I can improve my English.
7. I can show the level of English that I have and also I have the opportunity to express my opinions and share them with my classmates.
8. I can test my English skills and because I can correct the spelling mistakes that I make.
9. I can test my pronunciation, i can test also my english.
10. I improve my pronunciation.
11. I like reading aloud in class because I improve my English speaking.
12. I like to read and I understand the text more when I read it aloud.
13. I only read when I feel confident and I like that subject
14. I think I can improve my English.
15. I usually like to read and I learn to avoid a lots of my mistakes.
16. I want to see how good my English is and i want to improve it.
17. It gives me the chance to improve my English, I can learn how to read the words I meet for the first time, I get the chance to be corrected by my teacher when needed, so this way I’m not going to be emberessed when someone else who is not from my class corrects me and finally because it gives me great pleasure to read aloud.
18. It gives me confidence in my own skills of pronunciation, and the teacher is always there to correct my mistakes
19. It helps me improve my English. I like reading texts in English aloud with someone else because I like to speak English with other people. I think it’s my chance to learn English and to use it in the future.
20. it is the best way to improve english
21. Maybe i could improve my pronunciation
22. our teachers are good with us, although we make mistakes. They just correct them and give us some advice. I like improving my pronunciation.
23. the collegues can hear the correct pronunciation of the words.
24. the teacher helps me to improve my English.
25. when I make mistakes the teacher corrects it and thus I can improve my English.

10. I don’t like reading aloud in class because… – 13 participants answered this question*

1. I am nervous sometimes. What if I don`t know some of the words?
2. I don’t always feel confident
3. I don’t have a reason to dislike reading aloud, after all it is a way of improving my English
4. I don’t like reading aloud because that way I attract peoples attention and that makes me unsecure of my capabilities.
5. I don’t like to make mistakes.
6. I feel embarassed by my classmates who are always listening to my spelling mistakes.
7. I like to read aloud.
8. I usually make lots of mistakes and the teacher always corrects me  so I feel embarrassed some times .
9. if I make mistakes, my colleagues will laugh.
10. i’m insecure and i may make some mistakes
11. Some of my classmates do a lot of noise and I can’t concetrate.
12. some of my colleagues may laugh of my mistakes , and because I discover that what I thought I knew well , has, infact , another way of reading .
13. Sometimes is embarrassing. I don’t like when the teacher corrects me but after all she helps me improve my English.

* the mistakes in the students’ answers to Question 9 and Question 10 are a proof that I did not edit them in any way.



Questions 9 & 10

My conclusion:

- 68% of the respondents would volunteer to read aloud in class, 94% would choose to read aloud at least sometimes, 32% feel disappointed when I interrupt them and name someone else to continue with the reading;

- analyzing the students’ answers to Questions 9 & 10 reveals some inconsistencies: 2 students answered Q 10 by saying they actually like or have no reason to dislike RA, 1 student answered Q 9 saying they like RA because it prevents them from getting bored… For some of my students, RA did not necessarily imply the texts in the coursebook – see Q 9, answer No. 7, which refers to students RA their essays or compositions.

Aware that my survey doesn’t prove anything worth considering anywhere else in the ELT world and that its results are meaningful only for me, I am glad to conclude that my students – all of them Romanian – actually enjoy RA in the English class. This conclusion encourages me to continue believing that reading aloud in the English class is not a waste of time. Not for my students anyway!