“Embromation”

Hi, everyone!

If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is: the Cultura Inglesa embromation video.

Really amazing how that bloke ‘enrollates’ so well! =D

Cheers,

Fernando

Funny communication videos

Hello everyone,

Just to say I made it to the UK in one piece and Dyego has given me permission to keep putting things on here if I think you might like them. The other night I was splitting my sides watching videos from failblog.org – short real videos that show people “failing” at all sorts of things. Here are two connected to communicating in English which are epic failures. The surfer is using his own language (barely English) and the Chinese lady is singing in what she thinks is English, but clearly isn’t.

You may find some use for them in your lessons?

Take care,
DM

some good-byes

This website would like to say thanks to one of our most beloved contributors Dave MacLure which is leaving us not for good, but for some time (we hope). Dave with his contributions and support helped us to build this weblog which has given us so much. I can´t find proper words to say how happy I am for being your mate and friend, Dave.

All the best to you in any career you choose ( even magician ), and keep contributing with us, wherever you are!

Dyego, on behalf of all Cultura Inglesa Natal.

Logic puzzles

Just a quick post about logic puzzles. If you’re teaching the language of deduction (must / may / might / can’t ) or if you’re teaching quantifiers (all / every / none / any / both / either / neither / or / nor) as I will be later today than a logic puzzle is a good way to get students using the language. A very simple and popular one is Mastermind. Here is an online version of the game which you could fire up on the old E-board…

http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/game/guesscolors/

song for second conditionals

Working with second conditionals? Check this song out!

the lyrics: http://www.google.com.br/search?hl=pt-BR&num=50&ei=O08QSvCVD6CW8wTQ07yiBg&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=if+i+had+a+million+dollars+lyrics&spell=1

Have fun!

Internet roundup

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on here, but I’ve found a few useful things which you might like.

1) Wikipedia - the free online encyclopaedia (<spelling?) has launched a Simple English version of its website. They only have 60,000 articles (compared to the many million in the normal version) but for students who feel inspired to read the internet, or for teachers to find a lower level reading this could be the place. Why not create a scavenger hunt on the web. Brilliant!

2) Ted.com – a while ago I mentioned this extraordinary site. Famous and well-known experts talk for about 10 minutes about their ideas. Great listening practice for students! The best thing is – I only noticed this week, most of the videos have an English subtitles option! You can turn it on and off – so see how much students can get for gist first then put the video on again with subtitles. They have 100s of videos so use the search option to find something related to your subject area. Amazing!

3) From time to time I see some fun videos on YouTube that people send me. All of these are to do with sport. The first is an amazing slo-motion video of surfing – it shows what happens to the water when a wave breaks, beautiful.

Another amazing video of a guy riding his bike in the most unusual places in Edinburgh (up trees, along fences etc.)

And finally this one – probably my favourite YouTube video of recent times: Ronaldo (and Lula, Pele and many others!) singing “I will follow him” from Sister Act. It’s a Brazilian video and so helpfully includes subtitles back into Portuguese. Hilarious!

Efl geeks and vintage ads

Today I have 3 websites to share with you:

- EFL GEEKS is a good website for the ones connected to this new era of 30-megabyte-speed-internet full of gadgets for learning and teaching. It is full of good links to browse and the recent ideas on efl.

http://eflgeek.com/index.php

This post is for people like Fernando, like Dave, like Steve, like Ercília, like myself: GEEKS.

- Vintage/ old ads!

Old ads are good resource of many topics for efl. You can, for example, ask sts to talk about life in the past; or you can take sts to the lab and they will find car ads and compare these cars; etc.

http://www.old-ads.com/

http://www.adclassix.com/ 

Why we chose Sponge Bob as your mascot

Hi!

As I was working on our blog’s new header layout, my wife came into the room and saw Sponge Bob on the screen. Quick came the inevitable question,

“What an earth is Sponge Bob doing there?”

- “Uh… he’s our blog’s mascot.”

“Why him?”, she asked.

-”Well, uh, er… we took a vote. Yes, Sponge Bob was democratically elected by some Cultura teachers as the ideal representative of hard work, joy and fun inherent to English Language Teaching. . .”

Of course she didn’t buy it:

- “Really!? How many teachers took part in this so-called election? And WHO were they?”

She had my back up against the wall. I had to come clean:

“Madam, for your information, Mr. Sponge Bob was UNANIMOUSLY elected by BOTH voters, Dyêgo Simpson and Fernando Flanders. Also, after the counting of votes, we both agreed that Sir Dave Mac Dilbert, another important member of the electoral body, would have entirely agreed with the result!”

She left the room.

So, now you know how Sponge Bob ended up on our blog header.

fernandoguarany

Roleplaying in class

Hi everyone, it´s me again (I update this site more then my own ).

I´ve been seaching for some time a website where we can find roleplaying activities, you know, a PORTAL?  And I DID IT!

http://www.eslflow.com/roleplaysdramatheatregames.html

RolePlaying can be used in many ways, specially to activate that weird topic you found in your book and you don´t know what to do with that.  

‘Esl flow’ is favorited here and I challenge you to do the same.

Dy.

Story strips

I´ve been searching for some activities to do with strips, and a good one I found deals with semi-controlled story trips to fill in:

http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/games/story_strips_flash.html

It´s a good idea for passing on to your Sts do at home / in-class activity or lab.

Dy.