July 2000 - issue 7/00

DEVELOPING TEACHERS NEWSLETTER

Welcome to the Newsletter.

If you're in Europe you've probably had enough of football with the Euro 2000 competition coming to a close. Did you see the Spain/Yugoslavia match - what a cracking end. If your students are still after more check out the sites in the theme. There's lots of info & texts about any kind of sport for use in class at the sites.

Contributions on any of the sections are welcome - e-mail them to alistair@developingteachers.com

For those of you who are at the end of the academic year I'm sure you deserve a pat on the back & a well-deserved rest. Well done! It's difficult for those not connected to teaching to imagine what a tiring job it can be, both emotionally & physically. If you're about to embark on summer intensive course work then I hope you have lots of fun - & a break before starting again in October.

Happy teaching!

Alistair

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INDEX

1. THEME
2. COURSES
3. LINKS
4. WEEKLY TEACHING TIPS
5. PS

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1. Theme - Sports

http://www.worldsport.com - http://www.sporting-life.com/ -http://skysports.co.uk/skysports http://www.sports.com - http://sportal.com
International sports' sites on any sport you can imagine.

http://www.olympic.org
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Olympics. There's a lot about a chap called Baron de Coubertin. Apparently he was responsible for reviving the Games & set up the International Olympics Committee in 1894. There's a profile of him & his life which would make interesting reading material.
According to the site 'He was convinced that sport was the springboard for moral energy and he defended his idea with rare tenacity...His definition of Olympism had four principles that were far from a simple sports competition: To be a religion i.e. to "adhere to an ideal of a higher life, to strive for perfection"; to represent an elite "whose origins are completely egalitarian" and at the same time "chivalry" with its moral qualities; to create a truce "a four-yearly festival of the springtime of mankind"; and to glorify beauty by the "involvement of the philosophic arts in the Games".
Also on the site is the Horizon Project. This follows five top athletes on their way to the Sydney Games. On each athlete there is My Diary, Stats, Sports Calendar, Training Progress, Photo Album & a chance to e-mail them. Great for project work & jigsaw reading.

http://www.explore.com
Lots of interesting info about different sports set in exotic locations such as diving in Galapagos and hiking the Inca trail. Print it off to use for jigsaw reading activities.

http://www.fansfriend.com/ - http://euro.zoofootball.com/ - http://www.euro2000.org/
Football, football & more football.

http://www.realmadrid.es
In English or Spanish. Enough said.

http://www.realrunner.com/
I'm inclined to throw myself around the countryside where I live two or three times a week. The majority of locals think I'm mad as they sit outside the bars with their cañas & tapas. Here there's advice for the beginner, 10K, cross & marathon runners. Lots of uses for the material. You never know, you might find yourself peeling yourself away from your computer to get out there & run. As they say, just do it.

http://www.uk.cricket.org/
Excellent cricket site.

http://www.wimbledon.org/ - http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/wimbledon2000/
Game, set & match! & the Beeb's news on the event.

http://www.james.rtsq.qc.ca/sportslinks.htm
A page with lots of links about sport on the net - from John Rainsville's ESL Ciberlinks at: http://www.james.rtsq.qc.ca/index2.html

If you don't know already, find out which sports your students are interested in & take them in material in English for them to read. Just give it to them to read for pleasure - they'd appreciate it.

- Vocab:
go/play distinction e.g. go swimming/jogging, play squash/chess - for each sport - name/equipment/place/ people/on land, in the sea, watersport etc.

play: ball, straight, truant, with fire, it by ear, a trick on somebody.

play: off, on against, up, at..

a sporting chance, be a sport, sports car.

win/lose/beat/gain/draw/score - contrast

compounds: racing car, table tennis, gold medal, football player, record-holder, record-breaker..

characteristics to play different sports - aggression, competitiveness, fitness, stamina, endurance, suppleness .

- talk about skills & sports: I'm not bad at.., I'm brilliant at ., I'm out of practice in., I need to brush up my ., I'm hopeless at.

- comparatives & superlatives: which sport is the most expensive, exciting, boring, enjoyable, difficult etc. & e.g. football is more exciting than cycling. The most exciting game was in the Euro 2000 when Spain won in the last 5 minutes against Yugoslavia. - Invent a game/sport.

- Give instructions on how to play a game - teacher can explain the game of all games - cricket! Could give out instructions on how to play board/card games the stds might be unfamiliar with, read & explain to others & play!

- Sports commentaries - for present continuous practice. Collate a series of different commentaries of different sports on tape.

- Sports questionnaires - stds write, ask classmates/other class & then collate the results.

- Sports injuries & language of warnings & advice.

- Fitness - write a brochure promoting it, write a class questionnaire to see who is fittest & least fit. Total physical response type activities with different exercises - you give instructions & all do the exercises & then stds write own instructions for each other - imperatives.

- Discussion points - should certain sports become Olympic sports, sponsorship by controversial companies, children in sports e.g. tennis, violence & sport, unusual & dangerous sports - e.g. bungee jumping, paragliding. hunting, blood & violent sports e.g. boxing & should they be banned? The best sportsperson /footballer of all time/the year/the competition.

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2. COURSES

Courses running this summer at the British Language Centre in Madrid:

CAMBRIDGE CERTIFICATE IN ELT - CELTA Full-time four week courses: August - September - October All are filling up so if interested don't delay.

CAMBRIDGE DIPLOMA IN ELT - DELTA Full-time eight-week courses: October/November Part-time six month course: October to Easter - this is proving to be very popular this year

LONDON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE & INDUSTRY EXAMINATIONS BOARD FOUNDATION CERTIFICATE FOR TEACHERS OF BUSINESS ENGLISH (LCCIEB - FTBE)

You can see brief descriptions of all of the current courses on the BLC web site http://www.cospa.es/blc/ted/ttframes.htm

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3. LINKS FOR TEACHING

http://www.uselessknowledge.com
Here's something to add to all of that useless knowledge that you've gleaned from coursebooks. This could be a mine of information for your lessons. For example, I'm sure you've had endless sleepless nights wondering why jeans are traditionally sewn with orange cotton. Relief is at hand - check out the That Explains It section. As the title suggests this is hardly 'Britannica' but there's a lot there. On the front page there's Today in History, Quote/Fact/Word of the Day sections & then lots of info behind each heading. Could be good for warmers, quizzes ...

http://www.iatefl.org/
The site for the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language. An excellent organisation & certainly worth joining. Not only is there the general body but also the Special Interest Groups which are mini-organisations in their own right. Apart from joining & conference info there are articles from past newsletters, a good links page & some jobs advertised.

http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?index&ring=esloop
As they say 'ESLoop is a collection of sites relevant to English Language Teaching and Learning on the World-Wide Web. Each site is linked to the next, so that no matter where you start, you will eventually make your way around all the sites and end up back at the beginning. The ESLoop is run by a cgi-driven system, kindly donated by Sage Weil of the Webring. This allows a user to skip a site or to get a list of the next 5 sites in the loop. In addition, this will make it so that members will not have to change their code if a site goes down or changes addresses.'

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4. WEEKLY TEACHING TIPS
Sign up - it's free! http://www.developingteachers.com
This week - a simple & effective way to test a large number of students at the beginning of a course. Works well on summer intensive courses.

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5. PS

http://www.dropthedebt.org
Here's another worthy site. This time it's devoted to trying to get the G7 countries to clear the Third World debt. On the site there's a video of rocksters such as Bono & Travis & to support the cause all you have to do is drop in on the Drop the Debt site and give them your e-mail address. This will then be sent to the G7 leaders in an attempt to create the largest petition ever. Don't worry about them passing on your address as they promise there will be no spam. 21st July is Net the Debt Day. It is being organised by http://www.jubilee2000uk.org/ so give them a visit too.

http://www.yukyuk.com
After the Drop the Debt site get along for a few laughs at the YukYuk site.

http://www.tucows.com
Famous site for a host of guaranteed virus-free downloads. Among the software:
- CD, Jukebox & MP3 Players
- Bookmark Utilities, Browser Add-Ons, Searchbots
- Internet Phones, Web Cams
- E-Mail Tools, Modem Sharing, Web Accelerators
- Anti-Spam Tools
- Games, Compression Utilities
- HTML Utilities, Auction Tools
- Language Translators, Image Animators
- Stock Quotes, Weather Monitors
- Anti-Virus, Parental Control
- Backup and Restore
Check here first if you need anything.

http://www.fontfile.com     http://www.reflectdesign.com/bvfonts/
More fonts than you can cope with!

http://www.webbrain.com/
Now you see your search results with this new search engine called WebBrain, Netscape's Open Directory Project database. It gives you a picture of your search results as well as the traditional list. You can see your original search category while still becoming more specific, all in the form of a spider map. Much more interesting & the way search engines will go, they say.

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