Tokai University English Writing Contest

I wanted to share with you a very nice experience I had yesterday. I was invited to the Tokai University English Writing Contest to present a certificate and prize to one of my students for an essay she wrote in my writing class. While I made some suggestions on how she could improve her writing, it was her ideas and hard work that produced such an interesting and well-written piece of work.

The Writing Contest is a great way to recognise and reward students who have worked hard and produced a great piece of writing. One of the best things about the contest, aside from the awards ceremony, is that all the winning entries are published in a Tokai University Writing Contest booklet.

Anyway, the reason for this post is to remind you about the writing contest and to encourage you to enter some time in the future. Next time, you might be a winner and see your essay or paragraph in print! I also want you to pick up a copy of the English Writing Contest booklet from the Foreign Language Center the next time you are there. You will see many excellent pieces of writing and lots of great model essays to help and inspire you in your own writing class.

Presentation Zen

Many of my students are now working hard on their end of semester PowerPoint presentations, so I would like to give you a few ideas to help. First, I'd like you to know about a great presentation blog called 'Presentation Zen'. I've mentioned the author of the blog - Garr Reynolds - to quite a few of my classes but if you haven't checked out his blog yet, have a look when you have the chance. It is full of good ideas and tips for making great presentations. Take a look at: http://www.presentationzen.com

Garr lives in Japan and takes a lot of his inspiration from Zen and the natural world in Japan. He has written a number of very popular books on presentation techniques but I think the best place for you to start is with a very useful handout he made called 'How to Design & Deliver Presentations Like a Pro'. The handout is available here: http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/pdf/presentation_tips.pdf

Here is a small selection from his handout of the presentation ideas I think you will find most useful:

1. Brainstorming - write down your ideas on paper first before making your PowerPoint
2. Keep it simple - avoid too much information on your slides and have one idea per slide
3. Visual - it is best to speak with pictures
4. Stories - illustrate your points with personal stories
5. Keep good eye contact with the audience
6. Use the "B" key

To be honest, using the "B" key is something I sometimes forget to tell my students about. If you press the "B" key while using PowerPoint, the screen will go blank. This is great if you want the audience to stop looking at your slides and just focus on what you are saying. When you are ready to move on, just press the "B" key again. In fact, anyone he tries it in their end of semester presentation will get a bonus point. Firstly, it is a good presentation technique. Secondly, it shows that you have been catching up with this blog!

M Reader

     As some of you know, I'm a big fan of extensive reading with graded readers! Today, I want to tell you about a great website called M-Reader. This website has quizzes for most of the graded reader books in our graded reader libraries (at both Tokai and Rikkyo University).

     This is useful because, when you have read a book, you can take a short quiz and prove to your teacher than you have actually read it! When you log in to M-Reader, you will see your own page, displaying all the books you have read and the total number of pages. It's a great way to keep a record of your reading.
     Also, if you like a challenge, you can try to read more books at a particular reading level than any other student from around the world. One of my students at Tokai University recently found that she was the top reader in the world at level 4. She was really happy and it motivated her to read even more books.

     To start using M-Reader, your teacher needs to join up. This is very easy. I am the administrator for Tokai University and have all the information your teacher needs, so tell them to talk to me. To get your teacher interested, you can suggest that he or she has a quick look at the following link:
http://mreader.org/mreaderadmin/s/html/about.html

Summer Listening

As the summer holiday begins, a few students have asked me what they can do over the break to improve their English. One good idea is to do some English listening every day. Here are some ideas.

     If you have the Podcasts app (see the previous post), you can subscribe to two good podcasts. First, there is 6 Minute English, which I discussed in a post a couple of months ago. In this programme, two people discuss a recent news story and use it learn some new vocabulary.
   






Second, you can subscribe to English at Work. This programme is a weekly drama about people working in an office called Tip Top Trading.

The programme follows the lives of four main characters and is a good way to study English communication in an English-speaking office. If you go to the BBC learning English website, you can also find the transcript for each episode. However, please remember, it is better to listen first and read later.

     Finally, also at the BBC Learning English website, you can find Words in the News. Here you can find a simplified BBC news story every few days. You can listen to the story and read it. Any difficult vocabulary is explained at the bottom of the page. For students who want a more challenging listening or reading exercise, you can follow the 'Related BBC links' link to find a more complete version of the news story.

Podcasts App

     The podcasts app is an easy way to listen to podcasts on your phone or mobile device. Remember, podcasts are radio programmes that can be downloaded onto your computer. Once on your computer, you can transfer the podcasts to your mobile device. You can subscribe to podcasts in the same way some people subscribe to a magazine. You can download the podcasts app for free from the iTunes store.


     To get some podcasts on your phone, go to the iTunes store and find some podcasts you want to listen to. Next,  click the 'subscribe' button. The podcast will be automatically downloaded to your computer every week or every time a new podcasts is released. Connect your phone or mobile device (iPad, iPod Touch or MP3 player) to download your podcasts. You can find your podcasts on the podcasts app. The picture opposite is a screenshot of the podcasts I have subscribed to on my iPad.

BBC Learning English Website

The BBC Learning English website is one of the best resources on the web for students. In fact, there are so many good things there that it can be a bit overwhelming when you first take a look. In this post, therefore, I'll just tell you about two great resources to help you with your listening skills.

The first is a soap opera (weekly drama with the same characters) called Flatmates. Each episode is quite short at just over a minute and you can watch a simple animation of the drama on the BBC learning English website. The animation includes character speech bubbles so you can read what the characters are saying as you listen. Flatmates also has other features including a quiz, downloadable audio file and an archive of old episodes. Overall, it's short, fun and great listening practice.

The second resource is 6 Minute English. In this radio programme for learners, two people discuss a recent story from the news and use it to learn some new vocabulary. You can download the programme as an audio file, listen to it on the BBC Learning English website or subscribe to the 6 Minute English Podcast. Personally, I think that subscribing to the podcast is best because this way you'll always have some English to listen to on your MP3 player or phone. This is very convenient if you have a long commute to university in the morning!

English Dictionary App

I really think it would be great idea to put an English dictionary app on your phone. These days, almost all my students have a smartphone (usually an iPhone) but hardly any of them have an English dictionary app on it.

While many students bring a bilingual Japanese-English dictionary electronic dictionary to class, many students have no dictionary at all. However, I think that using an English dictionary regularly can be one of the best things you can do to improve your English. Indeed, I try to get students in my class to use their dictionaries for at least a few minutes every class. Only by looking up a word they don't know and seeing it in an example sentence can they increase the size of their English vocabulary.

My recommendation is the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary app. You can buy it from the iTunes store or Google Play depending on whether you want it for an Apple or Android phone. This dictionary is designed for learner's of English and has easy to understand definitions of thousands of English words (about 170,000). Importantly, it also has example sentences showing how a word is really used in a sentence. I have this app on my iPad and it is very easy to use.

I know that one reason students don't buy an English dictionary app for their phone is that these apps are quite expensive (this app costs 1,400 yen at the iTunes store). However, I'm sure that if you explain to your parents what the app is for, they will help you with the cost of buying it.

Just think how useful this will be. You take your phone everywhere with you. If you have the Cambridge Advanced Learner's dictionary app on your phone, then you will always have access to thousands of English words, definitions and example sentences. There will be no need to carry an electronic or paper dictionary to your reading or writing class anymore. Moreover, you will find that you begin to learn more and more English words. You will also become a more independent learner of English.