So long, farewell ....

Dear Ladies,
By now you will have arrived safetly back home (and back at work!). It seems very quiet this week without you. I hope you all enjoyed your day trips last Friday, I think all of you had sunshine. I had a lovely Easter visiting my parents, we spent a lot of time sitting in the garden enjoying the spring weather and chatting, my mum was a little bit envious of my lovely necklace which you gave me.
I really enjoyed working with you, and I hope that I get the chance to work with Permians again in the future. I did enjoy our last evening, though I fear that after two glasses of wine I was a little bit "sozzled", if I am to accept an inviation to Perm I think I need to practise my drinking skills otherwise I defintely won't be able to cope with your famous vodka!
We can keep in touch, via the blog, or via e-mail - you know my e-mail address!
Once again, goodbye lovely ladies.
My very best regards,
Caroline

Hard at work!

On-line multiple intelligence test

I know that you are familiar with Howard Gardner's theory, and that you will certainly have done such tests before. But do try this on-line test (link below), it's really simple and so pleasing to view the nicely coloured pie chart at the end!

http://www2.bgfl.org/bgfl2/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/index.htm

Virtual Learning Environments

Farewell meal - The Didsbury

Come out of your hotel, instead of taking a bus towards town, take a bus going in the other direction. Check with the bus driver that it’s going to Parrs Wood. You will go through an area called Withington, and then you will go through Didsbury Village. About a kilometre after Didsbury village there’s a big bend in the road and the pub is on that bend. It’s a huge pub with a lawn in the front of it, you can’t miss it. If you get to Parrs Wood cinema complex you have gone too far.

It’s quite a nice traditional pub, prices start from £7 for a main meal. I have booked the meal for 8pm, but I recommend arriving earlier, as there is a beautiful city park near the pub, called “Fletcher Moss”, also if the weather is nice it would be nice to sit outside the pub and have a drink before the meal.

www.puzzlemaker.com

This website may not be "academic" in appearance, but it's one I find very useful for vocabulary activities and tests. It's really simple to use, you just have to follow the instructions. A couple of tips -
1) when you have finished your puzzle or wordsearch "cut and paste" it onto word, this will enable you to format it
2) having printed it off, before photocopying it, do the puzzle yourself first to make sure there are no errrors
Good luck!
Caroline

www.puzzlemaker.com - good luck!

Photographs of a trip to Chester, posted by Katya

This is Chester. I do apologize for so few photoes but my camera memory card was full after a half an hour since we arrived. The flowers and the ruins of St. John's church drew my attention immediately. Don't you think it's amazing - bare, naked, leafless branches and huge pinkish flowers?

Elena's new blog

I have created my own blog, please visit it on this address -
http://elenakfromperm.blogspot.com/

EFL WEBSITE REVIEW

For our next session my aim is for you to assist each other in being more exploitative of the multitude of EFL websites out there on the world wide web. Each group will be allocated an EFL website to review, and together you will complete a review form which Caroline is going to give you.

In addition to completing the review form, for your final lesson on Thursday you will be required to perform a 15 minute presentation on your site for your fellow Permian lecturers. In this presentation you will show them around the site, point out its useful features (you will have access to the projector to enable this), it’s advantages, why/ when it’s useful and so on.

The presentation will be backed up with a 1hr30min lesson plan, in terms of which you will need to produce:
§ A completed review sheet
§ A lesson plan
§ Worksheets (if necessary)
Please present these to me, neatly paperclipped together, before 11am on Wednesday morning. This will give me time to get photocopies done in time for the lesson on Thursday

Good luck with this project!

Webquesting

Hi there,
I understand your session with Fiona went well on Friday. Please use this new post on the site to exchange information about how useful webquesting is within the context of your teaching.
Here is the link for the website you used with Fiona:-
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-central-culture-living-uk-home.htm

Here are some other interesting / useful links related to the topic:
http://tesl-ej.org/ej24/int.html
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/resources/webquest.shtml
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/resources/teacherquest.pdf
http://developingteachers.com/articles_tchtraining/webquest1_james.htm

F E E D B A C K

Dear Students,
You have now been with us for 2 days. It would be great if you could give us some feedback about the course so far ... We welcome any comments.
Caroline

Blogging

Dear Students,

I hope you enjoyed the lesson today. For more information about using blogs as a resource you can visit this article from the British Council website.
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/resources/blogging.shtml

Over the next few days I hope that many of you will post comments on the blog, and hopefully some of you will create new posts (you have my username and password, follow the instructions I gave you). Some of you have said that you would like to start your own blog, I am happy to assist next week (I'm not here on Friday), however in the meantime you might find that you are able to do it yourself, just go to www.blogspot.com and follow the instructions (if you do start your own blog, don't forget to post a link on Permians2!).

Finally a piece of advice, don't forget that with so many other things in life, using computers and blogging is often a question of "trial and error"' ... if an icon looks interesting, don't be afraid to click on it, if it links you through to another website that's good, if nothing happens you have lost nothing in trying. As you know, making mistakes is part of learning, it's all part of the experiential process ... mistakes are fine, experimenting is fantastic, and anyway I believe it's almost impossible to damage the university computers!

Once again, happy blogging!

Course outline

Below is a brief outline of what we will cover over the next 8 days. Any comments are welcome:

The role of weblogs and "Virtual Learning Environments" in language teaching

The role of the internet in research

Evaluation and exploitation of resource websites aimed at teachers of English

An overview of current ELT methodologies, including Communicative Language Teaching, Task Based Learning, and The Lexical Approach

Eating out in Manchester; Recommendations exchange

Hi there,
As you probably know, Britain is not famed for good food. There ARE good places to eat, but there are also a lot of horrible (and expensive!) places to eat; you have to make an effort to locate the good places. Therefore, I thought it would be useful to have a section on our blog for us to exchange recommendations about places where good food can be found. I'd like to start by recommending "The Soup Kitchen", because Irina mentioned yesterday that Russians love soup! It's located in Manchester's Northern Quarter, actually it's just around the corner from where we are having our excursion to The Police Museum tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon, so I'll show you where it is then. You can find out more about it on the "links" below, double click on the left button on your mouse and you will directly through to that website.
I look forward to you posting more recommendations on this page!
Caroline

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/real_food/article603704.ece

www.whathappenedlastnight.net/manchester/restaurant/the%20soup%20kitchen

Welcome to Manchester!

Manchester welcomes another group from Perm, who are looking fantastic inspite of jet lag!