Software Review: Vocaboly

Vocabulary software can be a great help to the TESOL student as well as the teacher. Difficult words can become easier to pronounce and the sounds associated with the letters can be recognized at a later date. Finding good vocabulary software is often another hard job but I’ve come across a piece of software I think many will like. It is called Vocaboly and it can be found at their website vocaboly.com.

This innovative software is made for SAT, TESOL, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT and any time you would need to build your vocabulary. Some of the highlights include a spelling section where you spell words by meaning, a listening test where you spell words by pronunciation, and other good teaching tools.

They have a free offer on their website and various screenshots where you can look and see if this is something you would want. Please visit and evaluate if this is something you could use. I’ll bet you will find that it can be a valuable tool for any teacher or student. To visit the Vocaboly website click on this: Vocabulary Software.

Characteristics of a Good Teacher

Some who came upon the title of this post probably thought it would be a post on what makes a good teacher. While partially that is true but it is actually a little more personal than you may have expected. One of the assignments of my training for TESOL was to pick the characteristics of the 3 most influential teachers throughout my childhood. The three teachers that I picked differed in age as well as the characteristics I found good.

The first teacher I picked was my first grade teacher who was close to retirement age and what I think made her good was that she respected a student’s individual abilities and didn’t judge the class as a whole. I wrote about my struggles of being left-handed in a right-hand world and thinking that maybe something was wrong with me and I was not normal. She helped me adjust my way of doing things to where I felt as normal as the right-handed people in the class.

The second teacher I picked was a teacher who injected humor and storytelling into his lessons on history. By doing this he made history my favorite subject and still of great interest to me. This characteristic is one characteristic that teachers or teachers- to- be should try to attain in my opinion.

The third teacher I mentioned was a young teacher straight out of college who could understand what kids of our age were going through due to being close to our ages. He had a characteristic that I look for in a leader as well as a teacher. He could relate to students but still had an air of authority which still let the students know he was in charge. So you see this is some of the characteristics that I hope to show during my career as a teacher which will in turn influence my students positively.

I read a story a few days ago about this guy who got fired by a major airline. To get back at them he wrote and distributed a book about how to travel cheaply. He got death threats and all kinds of hassles for the secrets he told about how airlines rip you off. If you want to read about this guy and see what his book is all about Click here to view more details

What is Telegraphic Speech

Back in the day before telphones and computers were common if you needed to get a message to someone fast it was usually done by telegram. Telegrams were morse code messages sent from station to station and delivered personally to the receiver. Since the messages were sent by morse code they had to be transferred to regular words and to save time the messages were sent excluding conjunctions or articles.

As children mature and learn English they use what is called telegraphic speech. If a child says “water now” we know that he means “I would appreciate some water immediately.” Like the telegram the child is speaking using only two to three words to get their point across. But unlike the telegram the child is using telegraphic speech because of lack of language skills rather than for convenience.

In most children the telegraphic speach stage occurs between the ages of 18-36 months or when a person is just beginning to speak a second language. In this stage the child or speaker are able to understand much more than they can verbally show.

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TESOL Thesis Topics

Well it’s been awhile since I’ve posted on this site but believe me the last couple of weeks have been very busy and interesting. I have been studying and doing assignments in functions, learning strategies, and teaching methods. I’ve also been reading and concentrating on different concepts introduced in context to TESOL teaching. Other than that I have my tagalog studies that I feel I may never finish but may take me the rest of my life! LOL!

All that’s left to do before I apply for certification is my thesis. I probably should already know what I want for the topic but right now I don’t. I’m not on any time limit but the sooner I get started the sooner I am done and can start looking at jobs. If anyone has suggestions on topics I will be glad to look them over when choosing. Right now my head is full of information I have just learned so I may take a day or so to clear my mind and then begin seriously getting started.

In the meantime I’d like to share a website for a school in the Philippines that I would consider as my favorite candidate for a job if I meet the qualifications. It is close to my house and I have spent time at the school and really loved it. Just click on the provided link to check it out.

Brent International School

60 Minutes to Learn The Thai Alphabet

The Use of Input Sources in the ESL Classroom

I imagine in earlier days teaching ESL was all done in basically the same way. But with the technological advances in recent years ESL teaching and learning has become much easier. Take for example podcasts, which are digital media files that are made available for download via web syndication. If you have a computer or MP3 player you can download these files and play them back whenever you feel like it. You can subscribe through an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) and get new files whenever they become available. Somtimes podcasts are short 3-5 minutes or they could last as long as one hour. My first experience with podcasts was through Itunes where I picked up music files, for free, and loaded them on my hard drive. One day I went looking for a podcast concerning learning Tagalog and found quite a few which I have subscribed to. I now have a free source of language teaching available whenever I have the time to study. Likewise, I can download them to my Ipod and listen while I’m jogging or working out at the gym. Just recently I searched on Itunes for TESOL and ESL files and returned 19 results of subscriptions for TESOL and 150 files for ESL. Most of these are free and yours to use in your teaching of ESL.

Other input sources that I’ve studied about are music and video. Music or songs are probably one of the easiest and most popular sources available and one that I surely will use. Just about everyone loves music and no matter what age there is some way you can use music in the classroom. Take for example lyrics to songs, you can teach  rhythm  patterns or rhyming words  in class and how they work in the English language. And with the popularity of English songs worldwide many of the students will be familiar with the words to the songs. Young people will usually spend more time with the songs than they do studying material from the classroom.

As far as videos go, they follow many of the same things you would do with music or podcasts. As a teacher you could record DVD’s and play them for the class or record something off of TV or even show a movie. The advantage of using video in the classroom is that the students can observe someone who speaks English as their first language conversing or livng in their own environment. I plan on using these and other input sources as I teach children and possibly adults in my career as a teacher.

Children In Bilingual Households Advantaged or Disadvantaged?

There have been many studies on children from bilingual households. Are they at a disadvantage from other children in that they may be confused by hearing two languages being spoken? In fact one of my assignments in my teaching classes for children addressed this question. We studied that children of these households may seem at first to be disadvantaged in that they take longer to start speaking, and may have trouble expressing themselves as well as mixing the two languages. Later on these children learn to communicate in both languages fluently and actually gain an advantage in that they can speak more than one language.

My study in this came from personal experience. When my children were growing up they had a father (me) who spoke only English and a mother who struggled with the English language and spoke her native language quite often. The children had some problems early in their education and in fact all of them were placed in remedial English classes. Later on when my ex-wife was no longer in the picture and I was raising them as a single father their English improved and they never had problems again. Friends with children who lived in actual bilingual homes where both parents were bilingual seemed to spend a little more time in the remedial courses but eventually they did have the advantage of speaking two languages if the parents promoted it. My children still remember certain words in their mother’s language but have no actual what I would call understanding of that language. What do you think? Are these children disadvantaged or in this global economy are they at an advantage?

TESOL Jobs

Since I began my journey into TESOL I have constantly been checking the job boards to see what is available out there. I will share some of the better sites that I’ve found and I will try to provide a review, if it must be called that, of the ones I mention. Most of these sites listed below will come with a link to the employment part rather than make you search through all the information on the site. Hopefully this will save you a little time and you can go straight to the source.

ESL Teachers Board- I really enjoyed this site simply because most of the positions available were actually that, postions that were available and not just ads for schools or placement companies. You will notice that some of the positions available are in locations not normally advertised on the internet such as Paris, France and Australia.

ESL Employment.com- another good site with plenty of content and information.

ELT Joblink- you can subscribe to this and be sent daily or weekly notifications of positions avalable.

Dave’s ESL Cafe-Self described as “The Internet’s meeting place for ESL+EFL teachers+students from around the world. This is probably my favorite board to visit for TESOL teachers and resources. A very good community type board that I highly recommend.

ESL Base- another good site that is easy to navigate and offers top quality employment opportunities.

Expatriates.com-at this site you will have to wade through the offers for other jobs and advertising but with a little time you probably will find some good quality employment offers, it just may take some time and clicking.

Philippine Kinship

This is a copy of an article I wrote for one of my other sites Retire In the Philippines. I am posting this here to show potential TESOL teachers some of the cultural as well as language differences you will encounter when teaching English in another country. My apologies to readers that have seen this post in my other site.

Philippine kinship uses the Generational system to define family and is considered much more simple than the complex U.S. kinship system. In the Philippine system differences are distinguished by generation, age, and in some cases gender.

As a child your parents would be Ama (father formal) or Tatay (father informal) and Ina (mother formal) or Nanay (informal). Uncles would be mga Tito and aunts would be mga Tita. Your Godfather would be your Ninong and your Godmother would be your Ninang. Let me say that Godparents in the Philippines are important compared to most of the U.S. and in fact may be partially responsible for helping the Godchild with educational expenses and gifts on birthdays.

Your older siblings will be known as Kuya (brother) and Ate (sister) but the formal way they are known is mga kaptid. Kuya and Ate are also used to address your older male and female cousins and if they are younger they are mga pinsan. Kuya and Ate can also be used as a sign of respect for people who are older but not necessarily your cousins.

Nieces and nephews are known as mga kapatid and if you are a Amang/Lolo (Grandfather) or Inang/Lola (Grandmother) your mga apo (grandchildren) would be the offsprings of your mga anak (children) and the offsprings of your mga pinsan (cousins).

Filipinos generally greet each other using their title like: Kumusta Ate Bing. or Kumusta Kuya Bert.

What Countries Will You Teach In?

TESOL Acronyms

According to wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia acronyms are “abbreviations that are formed using the initial components in a phrase or name. These components may be individual letters (as in CEO) or parts of words (as in Benelux or Delmarva).”

Some common acronyms for TESOL and their meanings are:

TESOL-Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
TESL-Teaching English as a Second Language
TEFL-Teaching English as a Foreign Language
ELL-English Language Learner
HLS-Home Language Survey
L1-First Language (A students native language)
L2-Second Language (Language being Learned)
NES-Non English Speaking
SLA-Second Language Acqusition 

Reading, Writing and Learning in ESL: A Resource Book for Teaching K-12 English Learners (with MyEducationLab) (5th Edition) (MyEducationLab Series)