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Learning English with Laughter becomes a founding Sponsor of Happy Schools


Learning English with Laughter is proud to announce our association as founding sponsor with trail blazing teacher certification program, Happy Schools.

Happy Schools, a charity based in Canada, was founded to keep criminals from gaining employment as ESL/EFL teachers overseas. Happy Schools works closely with partner organizations to give children studying English the same protection children studying in western public schools automatically enjoy: screened teachers.

Sadly, the exploding demand for TESOL worldwide has also a magnet for criminals, fugitives of all sorts, and pedophiles. Many private English schools don't check criminal records when they hire western teachers, and often hire anyone and everyone they can get. This disturbing trend taints the ESL industry and affects the reputation of all ESL teachers.

Pedophiles gaining access to children through employment as ESL teachers is more common than most people assume. Happy Schools Director Duncan MacLeod continues, "Whether the situation involves drug related crimes or pedophilia, instances are in the rise in Asia, the Americas and just about everywhere else the opportunity to teach English affords criminals access to new markets and new victims. English language classrooms worldwide are becoming havens from those who mean to exploit the TESOL opportunity for their own purposes." More details of this disturbing trend can be found on the Happy Schools website, http://happyschools.org/headlines.php.

"We are hoping that conscientious teachers are going to care about the safety of their students and the state of the profession. By participating, and helping to create a minimum employment standard ESL Teachers are contributing to an industry that holds no place for pedophiles and others who exploit the situation which, right now, is for the most part unregulated," says Duncan MacLeod. "Happy Schools is for teachers who want to make a difference."

Please see the Happy Schools website for more information http://www.happyschools.org.

I asked Happy Schools Director Duncan MacLeod what kind of response he was getting. "The response to the Happy Schools program thus far has been fantastic but educating teachers and schools to the problems of exploitation in the TESOL industry remains our number one hurdle. Opportunities to make teachers aware of what we are doing, how it will make a difference, etc. are greatly appreciated. We've been working on this project for nearly a year now and in our discussions with the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) it was made very clear to us that for every convicted pedophile we prevent from teaching provide we will deter an additional number of yet-to-caught pedophiles without criminal records simply by existing as an organization and making it known that teachers - good teachers - are rallying against the exploitation of children in the ESL/EFL teaching world."

Members of Happy Schools are entitled to a number of benefits, including 20% all items in our Online Store, as well as our Storybooks website online store. Please see their website for full details.

Happy Schools is has a special offer on their landmark teacher verification program to our newsletter readers of CDN$60 for a 2-year membership. Please visit the Happy Schools website at http://www.happyschools.org, or email Duncan MacLeod duncan@happyschools.org

Asking and Answering Questions
6 question and answer activities 21 pages.

The Past Tense
Newly revised and updated -- now includes 4 activities, 21 pages.

The Present Progressive Tense
Newly revised and updated -- now contains 2 written and oral activities - 14 pages.

The Bathroom
Vocabulary enrichment activity -- 13 pages

The Kitchen
Vocabulary enrichment Activity -- 14 pages
Teaching ESL To Children
Don't forget to visit our new site ESL Storybooks --
(http://www. esl-storybooks.com).

ESL Storybooks carries a complete line of ESL textbooks for Children aged 8 - 12. Featuring adventure themes, each book includes a Teachers Guide, Student Storybook, and Creative Writing Workbook.
Quick Tips
Teaching: Methods and Approaches
What can a new teacher do? What can a teacher who suddenly has ESL students do to make that lesson plan work? Some of the best focuses for a first class or for a class early in the student/teacher relationship include writing practice, basic vocabulary, getting acquainted, and themes of tolerance of individual differences. Newspapers, phone books, magazines as well as other media and your students themselves may be the best resources for lesson materials.
Website Announcement
 
Free ESL Games

Let Students teach their class
This is a somewhat academic paper, but nevertheless has some great ideas on getting students to teach themselves.

Pedagog Teachers Search Engine -- Search Engine for Teachers with a database of 10 million sites.

Global English -- Comprehensive TEFL courses of 150 study hours giving you the expertise to teach confidently. Your final appraisal lists course content & duration for employers.
Tutorial Support second to none. An interactive course with full, individual feedback on your work & phone/email support throughout the course & beyond.
Unique options: Courses by post or email, TEFL certificate with business course option with free Train to Teach English CD-ROM and study notes.

English to Go
HUGE library of teaching resources. Fun, engaging, up-to-date resources based on ReutersŪ news articles

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Let us know -- send your article or idea, feedback, suggestions to brian@efl-esl.com
ESL in the News
Coming Soon

English as Second Language Classes Boom


Carolyn Bower Of the Post-Dispatch 09/16/2004

As students debate their favorite Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon character or the best way to play ball, it is hard to tell that one in six students at Bierbaum Elementary School in south St. Louis County speaks English as a second language.

Since the number of English language learners has quadrupled over six years, Bierbaum, in the Mehlville district, now sends information to parents not only in English but also in Bosnian. And school officials plan to translate parent information this year into other languages such as Spanish. Full Story >>>

The ABCs for teaching ESL

In Room 5-185 of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, professor Elizabeth Coelho relates the story of a Grade 4 teacher who would award Raptors basketball tickets to the student who talked the least each term.

" A good classroom is not a quiet one," she warns the 30 teacher candidates in her class, ESL Across the Curriculum. The class is a rarity. Indeed, few newly minted teachers in Ontario are taught how to meet the needs of English-as-a-second-language students even though many will have to bear considerable responsibility for that endeavour in big-city classrooms. Only 60 of 1,300 graduating students at the University of Toronto's OISE will take the ESL elective in any given year. It means the vast majority of teachers going into Ontario classrooms will have had little or no instruction in how to teach students learning English as a second language. Full Story >>> 		The Bedroom Vocabulary Enrichment Activity
13 pages of vocabulary exercises


The Case of the missing Heirloom
Summary: A few years ago, a very strange event took place on the family estate of Lord Robert and Lady Daphne Buckingham, in England. A priceless heirloom necklace apparently vanished. The only people present at the time were either close family members or close friends, except for the butler and the maid. None of them had much money, to be sure, but would they steal a valuable necklace? That was the question that the police faced.

The Windfall
Summary: Lou Wilson, the meanest man in town left all of his estate, approximately $950,000, to the city. The will said that the city was to spend the money in "some lasting way for the betterment of the citizens." That was when all the fun began! Everyone wants to spend the money differently.
Students debate how to spend the money!

The Lady who Knew too Much
Summary: Mrs. Hillary Ashton-Smith was found dead in her living room by the cleaning lady. Her husband, a wealthy importer-exporter, was in South America on a business trip. Medical examination revealed that she had been dead since the night before, and that she had died from arsenic poisoning. She had been drinking Scotch whiskey, which had been poisoned with arsenic.

The Body in the Study
Summary: The time is Christmas morning in the large house of the wealthy Lord and Lady Chudleigh in a small village in England. When the family woke up, Lord Chudleigh was found dead in his study, stabbed to death with a letter opener. A picture had been removed from the wall of the study, and behind it, to everyone's surprise, was a small safe. The door of the safe was open and the safe was empty.

A Trip to Canada
Summary: You have just had an exciting phone call! You are the winner of a contest sponsored by Air Canada! You have won a free flight to any point in Canada, return, two weeks' free car rental, and $1000.00 towards your expenses.
Software in the ESL Classroom

How do I select software for the classroom?

In selecting software for use in the adult ESL classroom, teachers need to consider how software can help them meet their objectives. Some questions to look at in evaluating the software include:

1. What is the language difficulty level? Language difficulty can be assessed by familiarity of content to be learned, concreteness of the concepts being presented, and grammatical complexity of the language used.
2. Does the language and content reinforce my curriculum?
3. How easy is the software for the students to use? Is it easy to move from page to page or are the buttons hidden on the screen? Is it easy to recognize what particular task the student needs to do or must the student guess?

Teachers also need to look at what equipment they have and the amount of time they have to learn how to use the software. Most publishers and software companies have demonstration versions of software that they will send out for preview. Teachers can also attend conferences where publishers are exhibiting their software. Conferences usually have computer rooms with software available for preview.

If a computer system is on a network, it is important to talk to a network administrator before purchasing and installing any software. If software is installed incorrectly for that particular system, it could cause the entire system to crash or fail.

Finally, price and the ability to integrate the software into the curriculum must be considered. Publisher software, drill programs, problem solving programs, and productivity tools such as word processing programs are relatively inexpensive to buy and relatively easy to integrate into the curriculum. As was discussed above, courseware is usually expensive and allows little room for variety in the curriculum.

Excepted from - National Center for ESL Literacy Education (NCLE) http://www.cal.org/ncle/digests/SwareQA.htm
Software for Building ESL Vocabulary -- VocabBuddy
Vocabulary has always been important for students. Recent events, however, suggest the theory and practice of learning vocabulary are coming together. Computer literate practitioners are starting to develop vocabulary learning materials for ESL.
Vocabulary learning is seen by many as a skill in which the learner should assume responsibility for developing on their own, beyond 'the basics' learned in class. The words and phrases each student knows reflect their individual learning history. Each student has his or her own idiosyncratic network of known and partially-known vocabulary. This is supported by the research literature, which suggests that much vocabulary is learned by students individually through reading, and not deliberately, under the teacher's control in class. So how are different vocabulary needs of students met? How do we help students become better learners?

I have recently been looking at some vocabulary software from EFLsoft Ltd. This is a UK company recently set up by experienced EFL professionals. Their software program, VocabBuddy, aims to become a valuable tool in shifting responsibility for vocabulary learning from teacher to learner. Teachers often advise learners to take notes on vocabulary items that they encounter for the first time to help them remember them. However, it is important to remember that the simple act of storing a word-in whatever medium-does not guarantee it will be remembered. A variety of factors involved in short and long-term memorization determine how well and for how long learners retain words. The strengths of the VocabBuddy program is it allows learners to easily organise vocabulary items into meaningful groups, it increases the number of exposures learners receive to vocabulary items through the use of built-in vocabulary games, and it puts the onus on learners to choose which items to store. If you would like to see if VocabBuddy could be useful for your students, visit the website at http://www.eflsoft.com.

In addition, a freeware version of the software, Vocabbuddy Lite, is available. It includes a glossary of EFL terminology which is useful for CELTA candidates.
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