Movie Madness!

Hey Guys!

Tomorrow we're going out to make movies, so here are some important things to remember. 

1. Be careful! Watch your partner as they are filming or taking shots - keep your eyes open. 

2. Be polite! If you want to film inside a shop/restaurant remember to ask permission. If you are refused just say thank you and leave. The same rules apply if you want to film a person on the street.

3. Check in! Every time you move from one place to another you need to come and tell me. You'll know where I am so there's no excuses. 

4. Charge up! Bring your phone charger, connecting cable and anything else you'll need to get your footage from your phone onto a computer. 

5. Have fun! Enjoy yourselves - this is a good opportunity to work together and produce a really cool film about Dublin, your home for the next while, let's hope the weather stays nice and let's have a great time! 

Recap Wednesday - AARRRGGGHHH!

No updates yet this week, but that's ok, we know you're worried about the big progression test this Thursday. Actually, we need to talk about recaps, so it works out well for us. I think we're all working too hard and trying to retell what happened in the class in general instead of thinking about how we felt in the class and how we thought about it or what we thought was useful. We're probably doing a lot of possibly not-so-valuable work to avoid doing some actually-could-be-quite-valuable work. So, for one night only, please find my recap of today's class as it was for me as a teacher - not a list what we did, but instead how I felt and thought about it. 

Today I was quite excited about the class because we were talking about 2 of my favourite subjects - stories and sci-fi! We started by finding out that nobody but me had ever heard of Ray Bradbury, which was surprising. I thought he might be better known than that, but I guess not. Anyway, I told you guys about him and set you off reading about The Illustrated Man. You seemed to enjoy it, which was good, but I was disappointed that I had the wrong audio on my PC and wasted a bit of time trying to find the right one. I don't think you noticed too much, but I wasn't happy with myself. 

Then I got you to do what's known in the business as a running dictation, where you were trying to recreate the story from the wall on the page. That was good from my point of view as everyone was involved and looked like they were having fun - and we also found out what pronunciation problems we might have (watch out for this weekend when I'll be putting up a post about how/where to practice this online). Then I went for a coffee, Americano, 4 sugars - yes, that's what's in the cup. The good news is that tomorrow's coffee is free, because I've saved up enough points. 

After the break we set you to creating your own stories based on the illustrated man's tattoos. I showed you a little trick about story structure and told you about Kurt Vonnegut, another of my favourite authors. The ideas you came up with for your stories would have made him proud and I'm very excited to see the finished products on Monday. I was really impressed with how well you planned out your work, and I think you'll notice a big difference in how easy it is to write in English once you have a good, solid plan. 

Anyway, tomorrow is your big test. We start at 9 sharp. Writing ends at 9:40 - perhaps it might be an idea to make a plan before you start answering the question. (:

Me, You and Your Mistakes

Mistakes and errors. Errors and mistakes. Why do we say "She have" when we know it's "She has"? Why do we confuse the order of words, "Usually, I don't go out on Fridays" instead of "I don't usually go out on Fridays"? Why do we make mistakes and what can we do about them? That's a question that I have to ask myself every day as I try to help you improve your skills in English. It's a tough thing to do, because we need to find a balance between making sure you're speaking or writing correctly, but also making sure you feel confident and comfortable in the language. To that end, I want to share with you some of the techniques, and the research behind them, that I use in the class to help you. 

The first thing to decide is if someone has made a mistake or an error. But they're synonyms, you might say, there's no difference between them. Well, for us English teachers they are very different things. A mistake, for us, is when you know the correct form but for some reason you don't produce it properly on isolated occasions - we'll talk about those reasons a little later. An error is when you don't know the correct form, or you haven't learned it yet - these normally cause communication problems. Let's look at the two types individually after the jump.

Our Lovely Course Book - New English File

New English File is a pretty cool book for General English, but any course book is only as good as the work you put into using it. The book is a guide, just like me, I'm a guide too. Both the book and I show you things that you can learn, we try to help you understand them, but then it's up to you to take the material and apply it in your daily life. 

Probably the best thing about this book, in my opinion, is that the topics are divided up into nice manageable chunks, so you get a good mix of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation in each of your lessons from Monday to Thursday. Of course, this book could be used as a self-study course, and your class could be used to troubleshoot any doubts you have about the things you learn at home and do lots of other activities and projects to help you develop your skills, but that would mean you would need to do a lot more work outside the class... We'll let you decide on that one.

Anyway, for those of you looking to do some work outside the class, you can find LOTS OF RESOURCES simply by clicking on those big words back there. You can also find a copy of the book online HERE. 

What do you think of our book? Have you used it before? Do you know of a better book? Let me know in the comments and we can talk about it IRL in our next class. 

Welcome!

Hi Guys, 

Welcome to our great digital adventure. The Internet is a wonderful tool and resource for you to use as you learn and practise your English, so it makes sense that we should have a place to gather all our favourite resources, and keep track of all the things we see in our classes. 

Let me know about any cool sites you find in the comments or in class and we'll make sure to post them up here. 

Happy learning!