English Virtual Community

Today is my free morning and I am enjoying surfing the net, facebooking, twittering and of course, blogging! Unfortunatelly I cannot blog as often as I would like to due to my duties as ICT coordinator and teacher trainer. I have been pretty busy but really happy. Exploring Second life is one of my postponed activities. By the way, I have found some information about the British Council in Second Life at http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/second-life What can you  do in the British Council Area in Second Life? When you are on the British Council island, you can: learn English in different ways meet new friends throughout the world have fun solving puzzles and problems learn about the UK improve your computer skills This is very important: It's free for all teenagers 13-17 years old Accounts are provided only to users when proof of age is given to the British Council Provided accounts are strictly for use by teenagers Second Life guidelines for teens can be found...

 I am very proud to upload selected material provided by the British Council  for this blog. I hope you find it useful :-) Methodology articles http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/portfolios-elt Related content: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/methodology http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/public-speaking-skills Related content: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/methodology http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/music-visualisation Related content: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/methodology Teaching activities http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities/working-biographies Related content: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities/it%E2%80%99s-1200-oclock Related content: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities/who-it Related content: http://www.teachingenglish.o...

Luckily some new material selected by  the British Council is available in this blog. Let´s start with a very interesting  short topic-based videos where our young students can listen to children talking about their lives on the British Council’s NEW LearnEnglish Kids site for young learners. As you can see the window is visually attractive and user friendly for kids. When you click on the photo of one of the kids that appear on the screen, a video starts running. You can exploit the video extensively and/or let your students explore other listening material at their own pace: You can also print the script of the video and full colour activities with corresponding answers in pdf format. Don´t forget to make your students vote for the video! Students can answer to the personal questions in comments, introducing them to online participation. I hope you and your students really enjoy this online website ! Further ideas to exploit the website? Click H...

Graham Stanley spoke about the educational use of Twitter via Wiziq. We had some technological problems, but fortunately Miguel Mendoza (Venezuela) helped me online. Thank you, Mike!!! The session was a completely new experience for the audience - around 25 teachers of different languages - who were not very much familiar with the use of Web 2.0 tools. Here is a link to Graham's presentation. Enjoy it: div style="width:481px;"> sesion de Graham by Nelba Quintana Get your own Virtual Classroom

In the story " Circus Escape " an elephant escapes from the circus and runs off into town. The elephant meets Billy and saves him from a fire. The story is aimed at learners who already have a basic knowledge of English, and practises narrative tenses in a story context. Circus Escape is an online flash-animated story for young learners on the British Council's site for young learners LearnEnglish Kids. In the classroom there are many ways of exploiting activities to   help children practise their English whilst developing their creativity and imagination by writing poems, stories, reviews, etc. You can find them HERE

I am very happy to announce a new set of material provided by the British Council: Teaching children 1) " Circus escape" is an online flash-animated story for young learners about an elephant which escapes from the circus and runs off into town. http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/teaching-kids/circus-escape 2) There a re many activities on the British Council’s site for young learners which you can use with your learners to help them develop their writing skills. They range from writing poems, making stories, reading and sending book and film reviews and sending ecards to family and friends. On this page you will find tips for using and exploiting the activities in the classroom: Play with Poems, Story Maker,Write a review and Send an ecard http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/teaching-kids/get-writing 3) Superhe roes is an exciting topic for young learners. On this page you will find tips for using and exploiting the materials in the classroom including an extremely...

I have the pleasure to announce that The British Council has offered me to publish their material in this blog.  I hope it will be useful for your classes.