English Virtual Community

Hello ! ¡Sos de los que le gusta cantar sus canciones favoritas en inglés?  En este blog post, te presento un canal de YouTube de canciones en inglés que te permite completar la letra a medida que vas escuchando el tema.  Tiene diferentes niveles según tus conocimientos de inglés. A medida que vas escuchando, completás la letra y el soft te da la cantidad de aciertos. También tenés la opción de repetir la actividad, imprimir la letra o buscar tus letras favoritas.  ¡Encendé los parlantes, hacé click en este enlace y a practicar ! 

The greatest benefit from living in our times is that we can share information or knowledge easier than our grandparents could. Technologies and social media applications simplify the process of sharing and provide us with an access to any person in the world. However, many people question their language skills and fluency level. Usually, it stops them from interacting with other learners. Hence, they mistakenly postpone speaking practice which predetermines sharing until they get enough background. Fortunately, there are always ways to begin a good talk even if you are a beginner. 1-Join a group of similar interests to train your speaking skills through social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc. If you are a beginner, small chats with other learners or native speakers will help you overcome the fear of mistakes and prompt you to switch to longer talks.   2-Create your own YouTube channel to share useful tips about cooking, knitting, preparing cockta...

¿Sin tiempo para aprender inglés en una escuela o instituto de idiomas? Te ofrezco clases virtuales de inglés  en el horario que más te convenga.  Sólo necesitás una computadora con conexión a Internet. (Solo disponible en Argentina)

Hello, everybody: I am in front of the pc screen - where else could I be? - thinking about a title for this post and the lyrics of "The Wall" by Pink Floyd came to my mind when they sing: Hey, teachers. Leave the kids alone. Please, read the title of this post with the tune of the song ;) Although Pink Floyd and their fans may insist, teachers cannot leave kids alone. Poor little things, they are learning how to cope with the Internet alone because neither teachers nor parents know much about it :( But I am not going to write about Pink Floyd or music. As I have announced in my previous post, today Ana María Menezes has given a presentation at the School of Languages. If you attended the event, I hope you have enjoyed it and got some ideas to incorporate technology in your classes and stop teaching as decades ago. She started pointing out the differences between how students used to learn before the digital revolution and how they learn now . One of the differ...

José Luis Cabello (Spain) invited me to co-moderate the first online workshop in the ITE NING group "Lenguas Extranjeras"  The workshop is in Spanish language. It is free and intended for teachers of all languages with little experience in the use of Web 2.0 tools . It will last 5 weeks and here is the syllabus:  1st Week     Collaborative Web 2.0 tools 2nd Week    Sharing tools 3rd Week     Presentations 4th Week     Asynchronous voice tools  5th Week     Language learning activities using online resources  We use the NING group to discuss about different topics connected to the use of Web 2.0 tools in the language class and we'll have a  chat session per week. We have also opened a wiki to upload reading material and videos.  We bookmark online resources and tweet ideas and opinions using the hashtag #taac. To be continued...

Practicing English with a native speaker or another ESL student is a great way for international students to improve reading, writing, and speaking skills. There are many different sites that make it easy for students and other ESL learners to connect online. Here are a few sites to try: MyHappyPlanet - This online language learning community allows members to message native speakers from around the world. The site can also be used to learn about the English language and culture through videos and member-created lessons. italki - italki is a great place to find ESL partners. Members hail from more than 200 countries and are always eager to discuss and practice English reading, writing, speaking/listening, grammar, pronunciation, and more. MyLanguageExchange - More than one million people practice their language skills on MyLanguageExchange. The site employs the Cormier method of language exchange which groups native speakers of two languages so that they can spend half their tim...

 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...

As I announced in this blog , last year I was appointed as ICT coordinator at two schools of languages. The experience was really enriching and with great satisfaction I can say that authorities  and teachers are much more interested in digital technology than they used to.  One school opened a  full equipped computing lab and the other changed all the computers for new ones! The beginning Things were not easy. I found a bit of resistance on the teachers' part. They used to think they would have more work for the same money. In a way, it is true that teachers should devote some extra time to update their professional skills or get familiar with any  new teaching material. I insisted on the importance of applying digital technology to language classes, but what was more important , I demonstrated it to them.  From simple tools to more complex ones I started showing them the advantages of the three portals : Google, Yahoo and Hotmail. How teachers can use a m...

This is a very good post in LexioPhiles site about how you can improve your language learning process. The link is : http://www.lexiophiles.com/english/learning-a-language-in-two-weeks-really I hope you like it

It is not easy to find the right time for training teachers in technology . Teachers are usually very busy teaching, marking tests, filling reports, correcting homework or preparing classes. So, Saturday mornings or some evenings are the only possible meeting time, but these are not the most popular times. Teachers – usually women – also have a family, dinners to prepare or children to look after, so virtual meetings may be an interesting possibility to solve this problem. WIZIQ is a web based education platform powered by teachers who continually improve it in response to its users’ feedback. This collaborative web conferencing environment is amongst the best online teaching solutions in the world, and it integrates the following set of online tools : synchronous (happening at the same time) and asynchronous teaching through virtual classrooms, online tests and a content sharing and messaging system. Pros : Wiziq is absolutely free of cost for teachers and students; it enables ...

I am taking an online workshop leaded by Nik Peachey and this morning, while I was checking mails coming from my workshopmates, I came across this Web 2.0 tool which looks  a really interesting storymaker called StoryBird StoryBird   is really simple and speedy. You must get registered (i t takes a couple of minutes ), and after exploring it in a few seconds, you can start writing. The artwork available is great. Have a look and tell me your opinion in comments :-) Storybird Quick Tour from Storybird on Vimeo . If you are fond of children's literacy and literature, you cannot miss this blog:

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...

Last Saturday June 27th I attended a seminar about How to Assess Young Learners carried out by Prof. Analía Caldiz (MA Discourse Analysis, ICAB staff member) at Instituto Terrero. On this ocassion I had the opportunity to meet the representatives of three important publishers: Ticiana Neder (Longman), Carolina Coppa (Oxford), Mabel Manzano and Fabián García ( Richmond). I asked these representatives for online interactive material. Longman offers a four module course called Teacher Development Interactive which provides professional development and an internationally recognised certification from Hunter College, City University of New York. Jeremy Harmer is one of the facilitators ; an internationally hosted online learning and assessment system for English courses designed to go hand in hand with Longman’s texbook series; iTests , and dictionary widgets which you can add to your blog. Among Richmond Publishing brochures, I got the one belonging to the “New Framework” book s...

The Top 100 Language Blogs 2009 is the largest language blog competition and is hosted annually by bab.la and Lexiophiles. It is aimed at finding the best blogs related to languages and awarding language-loving bloggers. This year there were 473 nominated blogs from 26 different countries in four categories. I am very happy to announce that this blog has been nominated for the "Top 100 Language Blogs 2009" competition!!! Due to the amount of blogs they have created categories. (Language Learning/Language Teaching/Language Technology/ Language Professionals) English Virtual Community blog is in category Language Technology . Voting will start on July 8 and close on July 27 . Winners will be announced on July 30. Thank you very much for this nomination! It means I am doing things well. Thanks to all who have inspired me these years and who follow this blog :-)