Madrelingua sinonimo di perfezione?

La settimana scorsa ho insegnato il discorso indiretto in italiano ad una studentessa straniera che vive in Italia da più di un anno. Dall'espressione del suo volto potevo capire che aveva difficoltà ad entrare nel meccanismo del cambio del tempo e/o del modo verbale.
Allora è entrata in azione "Super Larissa" :-)
La regola numero 1 per un buon apprendimento: MAI SENTIRSI SCORAGGIATI.
Le ho detto di non preoccuparsi e che il discorso indiretto era un grattacapo anche per gli italiani. Lei mi guardava stupita: com'è possibile che parlanti nativi hanno problemi con un aspetto grammaticale della propria lingua?
Quando le ho assegnato 5 frasi da trasformare da discorso diretto a discorso indiretto per casa le ho detto che il compito non era per lei, bensì per 5 suoi amici italiani. La settimana seguente avremmo visto insieme se la mia teoria (ANCHE GLI ITALIANI HANNO PROBLEMI CON L'ITALIANO) fosse vera.
Ecco un esempio:
Domani comprerò un paio di scarpe.
Trasformazione --> Ieri il Sig. Rossi ha detto che si comprerà un paio di scarpe.
Quando il verbo che regge il discorso indiretto è al passato (in questo caso ha detto) il futuro diventa condizionale composto --> Ieri il Sig. Rossi ha detto che avrebbe comprato un paio di scarpe.

La mia studentessa era molto soddisfatta perchè era riuscita a correggere un madrelingua e così il discorso indiretto non le è sembrato poi così impossibile da imparare.

Molto spesso si ritiene che madrelingua sia sinonimo di perfezione, tu cosa ne pensi? Ti sei mai trovato/a in una situazione del genere? Raccontaci la tua esperienza!

Royal baby: words and numbers

		Some vocabulary about BIRTH
	pregnant pregnancy	A woman becomes pregnant. We say she's pregnant. She's having a baby. We call also call it a pregnancy.
	antenatal	She goes to an antenatal clinic for check ups. Antenatal means "before birth", it's also called prenatal.
	labour	Eventually she starts to have the baby. We call this going into labour.
	birth newborn	When the baby arrives we say the mother has given birth. The baby is called a newborn baby.
	baby	We also say the parents have had a baby.
	milk breastmilk	Babies drink milk. They can be breast fed.
	bottle	They can be bottle fed.
	nappy	Babies have to have their nappy changed.
	certificate	All babies are registered at birth, and issued with a birth certificate.
	christening	Some babies are christened by their parents. The ceremony is called a christening.
	pram	Babies can't walk so they get pushed in prams.
	pushchair	When babies are older they go for walks in pushchairs.
		Yesterday, 23rd July 2013 Metro UK published this picture.  TEACHING TIPS: 1) show your students the picture at the top of the page (William, Kate and the Royal baby) 2) ask them what they think about this event. 3) write all the numbers shown in the picture above on the whiteboard 4) ask your students to read the numbers (sometimes they forget how to pronounce long numbers) what they represent 5) they will come up with different ideas and practice their speaking skills 6) finally, show them the picture and see if they guessed!

Emozioni d'estate di un'insegnante di lingue

Da due settimane sono ormai cominciati i corsi estivi. Ho conosciuto nuovi studenti e studentesse e ne ho ritrovati degli altri ma, è sempre una grande emozione cominciare un nuovo percorso formativo. La mattina è dedicata soprattutto ai bambini: è una gioia vedere come imparino in fretta prima nuovi vocaboli e poi anche piccole phrases. Sono super contenta di arrivare un'oretta prima per sistemare l'aula per svolgere le nostre attività comodamente, di sentirli arrivare correndo e sulla porta dirmi Good morning e mi commuovo quando il giovedì cantiamo la Goodbye song e loro sono dispiaciuti perchè passerano alcuni giorni prima di rivederci.
Poi ci sono i più grandicelli con cui ho cominciato un percorso dell'apprendimento del Real English affiancandolo e supportandolo con l'uso del computer e dei mobile devices. Alla fine del corso non potranno fare a meno di dimenticare tutto quello che hanno imparato grazie al dvd che porteranno con loro.
In ordine d'età poi ci sono i ragazzi che stanno approfondendo l'inglese e lo spagnolo per la scuola. Come al solito trovo estremamente divertente insegnare la letteratura rendendola più attuale possibile e come sempre  non rinuncio alle mie battute sui diversi autori...
Infine ma non per minore importanza... gli adulti che nonostante il caldo continuano ad imparare e a migliorare come queste ragazze che per dimostrarmi di aver capito la differenza tra present simple e continuous mi hanno portato questi fantastici disegni e li hanno descritti.

Anche d'estate l'emozioni di essere un'insegnante non finiscono mai...

SUPER HEROES: a good input to teach CAN (abilities)

It is summer students are fed up with studying so to teach them CAN (abilities) I decided to use SUPER HEROES. I'd like to share my lesson plan with you

STUDENTS: PRE-TEENS
GRAMMAR: CAN (ABILITIES)


1) I started with this picture and a poll: WHICH IS YOUR FAVOURITE SUPERHERO?

2) After the poll I showed them the trailer of SUPERMAN MAN OF STEEL to get them involved in the topic of super powers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dwYatpwrs8s

3) TRUE OR FALSE?
After watching the video students worked in pairs in order to say whether the utterances on the post-it (on the wall of the classroom) were true or false.
Their level is A1 so the utterances were easy.
Here some examples:

- SUPERMAN IS ARRESTED BY THE POLICE.
- WHEN THE SPACESHIP LANDS NEAR THE HOUSE THE WOMAN IS HAPPY.
- SUPERMAN KISSES A GIRL

4) While the students were working on their own I wrote some utterances on the whiteboard.(You can find here some of them)
__________________  CAN ____FLY.
___________________CAN____ CLIMB.
___________________CAN ____MOVE VERY FAST.
___________________CAN_____DO MARTIAL ARTS.

5) Students were supposed to fill the first gap with the name of a SUPER HERO. I left a second gap if the students made a mistake. For example, they wrote BATMAN CAN ___ FLY. I didn't want to tell them they were wrong so I invited them to ask directly Batman whether he could fly.
STUDENT: BATMAN, CAN YOU FLY?
ME: NO, I CAN'T
So we added NOT to CAN. In this way students don't feel like they are wrong. Plus they learn NEGATIVE, SHORT FORMS AND QUESTIONS.

6) Then I asked students to draw their own SUPER HERO and write what they were their super powers.

7) Students finally worked in pairs to ASK AND ASWERS about their partner super powers.
For example:
A: WHAT'S YOUR SUPER HERO'S NAME?
B: UMBRELLA WOMAN.
A: CAN UMBRELLA WOMAN FLY?
B: NO, SHE CAN'T.
A: CAN UMBRELLA WOMAN RESIST THE RAIN?
B: YES, SHE CAN

8) At the end we put all the new super heros on the wall of the classroom.

I hope you can enjoy it!

Cambridge Book Fair in Rome: my personal review

Yesterday I went to the Cambridge Book Fair in Rome and it was a great experience. Not only was there a huge amount of books there were also highly-qualified, dedicated professionals to give seminars.

I really enjoyed the Joined-up speaking and listening by Johanna Stirling. She focused on fluency by making us listen to two conversations. The first conversation looked like one students can have whereas the second one was a typical  conversation between native people. Then she showed us some activities from the new edition of Face2Face in order to enhance students' fluency when they have a conversation, such as showing interest in what other people are saying. Johanna Stirling also stressed the importance of teaching pronunciation not only to improve students' speaking fluency but also their listening fluency.
The seminar by Marcus Tubby dealt about the use of technology in communicative activities. I had never seen the websites he showed us before and I am going to use them both in class and homework activities in my summer courses.
I was really impressed and I'd like to thank Cambridge English for giving me this fantastic opportunity!

English Summer Courses: A SNEAK PREVIEW

Tomorrow there will be free trial classes to introduce the new ENGLISH SUMMER COURSES.

There will be exactly four classes:

9.00-10.00 ADULTS A1-A2
The aim of this class is teaching students how to give personal information and talk about basic daily activities. How? We'll use pictures, videos, drills and roleplay.









11.00-12.00 PLAY ENGLISH
This course is aimed to children from 6 to 10 years old. Tomorrow we are going to play in English: we'll sing, watch videos and dance with Disney's characters.


17.00-18.00 YOUNG LEARNERS (11-16 YEARS OLD)
Who is your favourite Superhero? We are going to learn some language (the modal verb CAN) by means of your favourite comics characters.






19.30-20.30 ADULTS B1-B2
This course is perfect for those people who have already studied English in the past but want to improve it. Students will use their four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) starting from a newspaper article.

COMIC STRIPS TO WARM UP

Almost everyday I read METRO (a free paper)  in PDF format. I have found its comic strips so funny I started using them in order to introduce the topic of the lessons in some of my classes.

I'd like to show you some examples.

I used this one for a pre-intermediate level. The purpose of the class was:
VOCABULARY: food (fruit & vegetables)
GRAMMAR: countable & uncountable nouns
 

 In this comic strip you can find two kinds of vegetables: BROCCOLI and SPROUTS. Broccoli is an uncountable noun and sprouts is countable. Students easily understand they are going to talk about food thanks to the words sandwich and eat.

I used this comic strip for an intermediate level. Students were studying how to write a cv, how to behave during their job interview and how to keep their job.

Initially I showed them just the first picture, asking them what the girl was doing and then whether it had ever happened to them to oversleep and get to work late. Then we had a look at the lines. Also in this case there are two key words: EMPLOYER and EMPLOYEE.

I think you can use comic strips with all levels and as the IMAGE CONFERENCE suggested, we need to stimulate our imagination by means of pictures.