Here’s the Banksy PowerPoint show http://chrisspeck.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/banksy.pptx

Many many years ago when I lived and taught in the industrial town of Szolnok, Hungary. Someone wrote a very large bit of graffiti across the bottom of our tower-block. In big, white letters, at least a foot high, the artist wrote ‘I’m still love you’. Ever since then, I’ve been on the look out for incorrect English in graffiti, something with isn’t confined to places that don’t speak English as their first language.

Here’s a PowerPoint presentation for intermediate learners on the much loved and hyped graffiti artist, Banksy.http://chrisspeck.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/banksy.pptx

I’d highly recommend his website http://www.banksy.co.uk/ and his book ‘Wall and Piece’. Instructions on how to run the lesson are below.

1. Before you start ask students what they think about graffiti in general, do they think it’s art or just vandalism? You might like to talk about any specific bits of graffiti you all know about.

2. Put students into groups or pairs and show them the slide show. Get them to discuss the following questions for each picture.

1.Describe the picture to each other?

2.Is there anything strange about the picture? What?

3. Is the picture trying to tell us anything political

3. When students have seen and discussed all the pictures, go through them again and elict any interesting information from the students. Lots of the pictures ARE political and need quite a lot of explaining.

http://cdn.sellingbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/novel-rejection.jpg

1. GunPoint – A new pre-intermediate course book dealing with all aspects of international criminal English. 10 hard hitting chapters cover vital criminal skills such as extortion, weapon vocabulary, hacking, robbery and how to deal with police interrogation. The free DVD contains twenty of cinema’s finest criminal moments from movies like The Godfather and Pulp Fiction.

2. Hat Trick – International football player English, includes comprehensive swearing index. Specialist chapters deal with telling lies to your partner, having a diva strop like a man and advanced press conference skills.

3. Spirit Level – Builder’s English including a pull-out section on dirty jokes and chapters on how to avoid paying tax.

4. Pick Up – how to attract and pick up member of the opposite sex in English. Includes a section on body language and social etiquette. Also including a large selection of chat-up lines.

5. Boiling Point- all aspects of cookery, equipment and brutal swearing included in this intermediate course for English learners with an interest in the kitchen

6. Darling! I love it! – An intermediate course book for English learners who need to know everything about the fashion industry with sections on substance abuse, catfights, bitchy gossip and frocks.

7. International Geek English – for those learners who need to be able to discuss physics, comics and the combat system for the 4th edition of dungeons and dragons. This course book includes how to use the Socratic method of discussion, witty put-downs and search engine techniques containing Boolean logic.

8. Cheers! – Drinking English. From the earthy, base language of the backstreet public house to the refined, gentile prose of the English country pub, this three-part course book covers what to say in almost every type of drinking establishment in the world, with chapters on anecdotes, pretending to be interested and how to deal with hangovers.

Any more ideas?

I wanted to see if my human students could do better that the automated, super fast machine that is Google Translate. Here’s what I did.

1. I found a simple story, wrote it out in English and then pasted it into Google translate. I then translated it into the languages that my ESOL students can speak, Swahili, Arabic, Polish, Russian, Latvian, Hungarian and French.

2. In class, I handed students a copy of the story in their language and asked them to try and translate it into English. If there were two students, I asked them to team up and try to translate the story together. I told them where I got the translations and that there might be some mistakes in, but they should try to translate it the best they can. Also, before they started I pre-taught the word ‘worth’ and gave them some example sentences, this word is the key to the whole story.

3. As a group, I now asked them to shout out their translations, sentence by sentence before I showed them a copy of the real story in English.

Here’s the story I used and a link at the bottom to the translations from Google Translate.

Joe and the rich man

Here’s the link to the translated versions:  http://chrisspeck.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/the-google-translate-challenge.doc

My English language students need to read a lot – fact, and I often want them to read something quickly which they can discard when they finish. What I don’t want to do however is photocopy the same thing for each student only to have them read it once and then file it away neatly never to be seen again.(or more likely, thrown it in the bin.)

Here’s where technology can help.

Armed with their smartphones that can access the internet students can read a wide range of material quickly and without wasting resources. (except maybe their monthly bandwith allowance)

Online Reading Tasks
I put my students into pairs and gave them the urls below. I then told them to go away and use their smartphones or any device that could access the internet to read the three stories and come up with three endings …each ending being a single sentence or even just a word.

Story 1 – Joe and the tigers

http://chrisspeck.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/joe-and-the-tigers-read-the-story-and-write-the-last-line/

Write your ending to the story in one sentence here:

——————————————————————

Story 2 – Joe and the hairdresser

http://chrisspeck.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/joe-and-the-hairdresser-read-the-story-and-write-the-last-line/

Write your ending to the story in one sentence here:

——————————————————————

Story 3 – The workman and the beggar

http://chrisspeck.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/quick-stories-2-the-workman-and-the-beggar/

Write your ending to the story in one sentence here:

—————————————————————————

Suggested answers

A good ending for story one – ‘I know, it works really well.”

A good ending for story two – ‘I’m the one who has to look at it all day.’

A good ending for story three – ‘No’.

Further thoughts

When are we going to see ‘electronic paper’? By this I mean a cheap, simple device that can use either a wi-fi or USB connection to show written content to students. I don’t mean a set of expenisve laptops (or even a computer) or a trendy handheld device,I mean a cheap bit of plastic that will show words and pictures, that can be thrown around and used over and over and over again to show documents. Think of the amount of money that could be saved on paper. You’d never need to print exams, worksheets or home made books, or stories, or timetables

…actually, if students already have a smartphone then they’ve got this already.

Joe’s wife was an ugly woman. She had horrible eyes a big nose and fat lips. One day she decided that if she had a nice haircut it would make her more beautiful. So Joe took her to the hairdresser.

When the hairdresser had finished he held up a mirror so that Joe’s wife could look at herself. She looked in the mirror and saw her ugly face. She saw her big nose and horrible eyes. She started to cry. Joe started crying as well. The hairdresser tried to calm them both down. He said he would give them a refund for the hair cut, but Joe would not stop crying.
Then Joe’s wife became angry.
“Will you shut up?” she said. “I’m the one with an ugly face”
“I know,” said Joe, “ _______________________________ .”

One day one of Joe’s neighbours visited him.
Joe was standing outside his house with a bag of salt. He was throwing the salt over the front of his garden.

“What are you doing Joe?” asked the neighbour.

“I’m trying to keep the tigers away.”

The neighbour looked shocked.
“But there are no tigers near here?”

“_________________________.”

Thanks to the unofficial Stanford Blog for this image

Can’t be bothered to read the blog?  I wouldn’t bother either, here’s the worksheet:  http://chrisspeck.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/the-zombie-lesson.doc

I quite like zombie films and most of my pre-intermediate and intermediate students do as well. Here is a three part Zombie lesson to get them talking and reading about the most popular undead monster in modern culture.

Pre- reading. – You can dictate these questions or cut them up and ask students to read them together

Reading - You could dictate a few comprehension questions about this or blank out a few of the words to make it a gap fill exercise.

Discussion – ask students in pairs to make their own zombie apocalypse plan outlining what they and their partner would do to survive the zombies. I put a few sentences students could finish but they could write anything. Help them out by giving them some ideas. What would they do if there really was a zombie threat? Would they go to the supermarket to get food, the DIY store to get weapons? Where would they go long term? How would they really survive?

****WARNING**** I wouldn’t do this lesson with students who aren’t familiar with the Zombie genre, younger students or students who wouldn’t like this kind of thing.

Here’s the worksheet again http://chrisspeck.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/the-zombie-lesson.doc

Let me know if this lesson worked or not.

More of the same from: www.englishlanguagespacestation.com

It’s good to know that people across the English speaking world make spelling mistakes. Some of them, then take the time to print these mistakes or paint them on signs or even tattoo them on their body. Here’s the powerpoint

 http://chrisspeck.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/real-life-spelling-mistakes.ppt

This is a quick PowerPoint show for pre-intermediate to intermediate learners with a lot of real life spelling mistakes. Show it to your students and ask them to find the mistakes and then correct them. Answers below

1. closed 2. mistakes 3. order 4. required/experience/preferred 5. professional 6. February 7. the first ‘to’ should be ‘too’. 8. teachers 9. school 10.stop 11.  illegal 12. exceptions 13. ‘past’ should be ‘passed’

You can find more lessons like this at www.englishlanguagespacestation.com

2011 X-Factor judges. image from http://xfactor-updates.com/

Can’t be bothered to read the blog? Get the worksheet here.

http://chrisspeck.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/britains-got-talent-lesson-plan.doc

Get more lessons like this at the English Language Space Station.com

Like so many, I have a love/hate relationship with The X-factor and Britain’s Got Talent. I like watching it… but I hate watching it. I’ll leave any descriptions as to how bad it is and how it is destroying the music business to those with more fire in their belly. I’m only concerned with how we can use it to teach English.

Here’s the lesson.
1. Talk about the x -factor / Britain’s Got Talent / Pop Idol. It’s all over the world and in every country. Dictate these  questions.

- Do you have the x factor,or something similar, in your country?

- Do you like it? Why?

- Would you go on the x factor?

- Do you think it’s good or bad for young people to go on the x-factor?

2. Students read about the show and them fill in the worksheet about giving feedback. Get the worksheet here http://chrisspeck.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/britains-got-talent-lesson-plan.doc

3.Play some songs from youtube – students watch them and then comment on them very much like the judges in the show. You might also like to give students a card or a book which they can hold up when they are sick of watching the presentation.

Can be bothered to read the short post?  - download the Royal Wedding PPT here.   (can you find the puctuation error?)

It’s the most important wedding since the last important wedding but, like it or loathe it Prince William’s marriage to Kate is big news and it might be a good subject to get your students chatting.

Here’s my own royal wedding powerpoint that I’ve been using with my students. Click here to download the powerpoint.

Royal wedding lessons on the net

Breaking News English has a good Royal Wedding lesson here http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1102/110218-royal_wedding.html

The TES has a few Royal Wedding lessons but you have to be a member http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Royal-Wedding-Procession-Route-6073740/

Some great material for the Royal Wedding here at Michelle Henry http://www.michellehenry.fr/williamkate.htm

Really good lesson plans and a PowerPoint show from Guardian Teaching Resources, discussing, among many things constitutional changes. You must be a member to view these. http://teachers.guardian.co.uk/resources.aspx?q=The%20Royal%20Wedding