Little Victories

General
http://www.esl-lab.com/

​Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab. Many stories with pre-listening, listening, and post-listening exercises. The stories are divided into Easy, Medium, and Difficult categories, and you can also search for stories about particular topics.

http://www.voanews.com/   (VOA News main site)
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/index.cfm   (VOA Special English)

Voice of America News (VOA). Click the button for “Special English” or go to http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/index.cfm to listen to simplified news stories in extremely slow, careful, precisely pronounced Standard American English. There are complete transcripts for each story. In the regular news section, there are somewhat more difficult stories in clear, careful English that is not unnaturally slow.

http://www.penguindossiers.com/​

Penguin Dossiers (Penguin Publishing Co.). Read news stories and listen to many of them. Click on “Audio” at the top of the page for a list of all the stories that have sound recordings. The speaker has clear and careful pronunciation in an American accent, but it is not unusually slow. You can also print transcripts of the stories and comprehension questions (“Factsheets”).

http://breakingnewsenglish.com/

​Breaking News English. Listen to stories on current news topics in Easier and Harder versions. There are also vocabulary and comprehension exercises for before and after reading.

http://www.elllo.org/​

English Language Listening Lab Online. Hear recordings of native speakers from the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and Australia talking about themselves or telling stories. Most of it is unplanned, casual, authentic conversation rather than specially written stories. There are complete transcripts and comprehension questions for each story.

http://www.world-english.org/listening.htm

​World-English. Listen to radio broadcasts in English from the U.S., Canada, England, Australia, and other countries. There are listening comprehension exercises for some of the news stories.

http://www.npr.org/

​National Public Radio. Listen to real-time radio broadcasts or past programs that have been broadcast on public radio stations. Programs are authentic English and so are appropriate for higher-level learners. They cover a wide variety of topics.

We talked about this in class. The following are categories of heuristic language that teachers use. Remember, heuristic language is "the language used to talk about learning, understanding another language." It's a kind of 'meta-language.'

 Starting and finishing the lesson 

 Giving instructions 

 Asking questions and eliciting 

 Using classroom management language 

 Correcting students 

 Presenting new language clearly 

Now, the task for us is to list the language patterns that fit under these categories. Any one want to help? Please comment below.

1. Get to know your audience.
2. Build into your lessons and curricula various activities that activate the different channels of learning.
3. Summarize the lesson at some point.
4. Short activities
5. Concrete activities
6. Familiar activities
7. High-interest Activities (be careful that boys and girls really do have different interests at these ages)
8. Interact with students in feedback, before and after class, and during class. (but how?)
9. Warm atmosphere
10. Positive atmosphere
11. Establish classroom discipline
12. Strong communication with parents
13. Give parents tools too!
14. Effective diagnostics
15. Field-trips with a purpose
16. Teachers need to be fearless