Do some of your students have a difficult time starting to write? How about FILL IN THE BLANKS? An example from National Geographic Magazine and tips from my mentor Cary Elcome in Japan

Look at the style of this blog.   The blog's owner, National Geographic magazine, has some stock phrases (in BOLD) and the guest is invited to complete the sentences.

Albuquerque is My City 

When someone comes to visit me, the first place I take them is ______________

Fall is the best time to visit my city because ______________

You can see my city best from  ______________

Locals know to skip  ______________ and check out  ______________ instead. ______________

 ______________ is the place to buy authentic, local souvenirs.  ______________

In the past, notable people like  ______________ have called my city home.

My city’s best museum is  ______________

If there’s one thing you should know about getting around my city, it’s that Albuquerque’s not a place you’d want to rely on public transportation. But there are wonderful bike paths and trails.

The best place to spend time outdoors in my city is at one of the city’s many golf courses, including the high-end Sandia Resort course. Or at Tiguex Park downtown on a summer night when live music is being played next door at the Albuquerque Museum.

My city really knows how to celebrate beer at our awesome Beer Week festival.

You can tell if someone is from my city if they finish sentences with “eh” and everything they say sounds like a question.

For a fancy night out, Iprefer the Bien Shurrestaurant at the Sandia Casino for drinks and food, followed by a concert at the casino’s spectacular outdoor amphitheater.

Just outside my city, you can visit    ______________

My city is known for beingt     ______________  , but it’s really    ______________

 ______________ are my favorite places to grab breakfast, and  ______________ is the spot for late-night eats   ______________

To find out what’s going on at night and on the weekends, read  ______________

My city’s biggest sports event is  ______________ Watch it at   ______________

When I’m feeling cash-strapped, I   ______________

To escape the crowds, I  ______________

If my city were a celebrity it’d be  ______________

The dish that represents my city best is  ______________  ,and  ______________is my city’s signature drink.

 ______________ is my favorite building in town because  ______________

The most random thing about my city is ______________

 ______________ is the best place to see live music. If you’re in the mood to dance, check out    ______________

In the spring you should    ______________

In the summer you should     ______________

In the fall you should  ______________

In the winter you should     ______________

If you have kids (or are a kid at heart), you won’t want to miss  ______________

The best book about my city is  ______________   

When I think about my city, the song that comes to mind is     ______________

In 140 characters or less, the world should heart my city because    ______________    Keywords:    ______________

To see how this could look, visit this blog.

http://intelligenttravel.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/22/i-heart-my-city-claytons-albuquerque/

REPLY BY Cary Elcome in Japan

--------------------------------------------

I've been doing things like this in small chunks with my once-a-week older students here. 

My starting point is:

"I cannot read Japanese. Please tell me what this is all about"

OR

"Can you give me the major points from this?"

OR

"What's this line / symbol / name / picture?"

OR

"A foreigner is looking lost, but has this [map, guidebook] in his/her hand. Can you help him/her?"

OR

"You have volunteered to help non-Japanese-speaking tourists in your home town. Can you prepare a short talk using this leaflet?"

OR

"I'm thinking about going to (place). I've got these leaflets. Can you put together a programme for me?"

etc...

In fact, I collect all kinds of tourist fliers, train timetables, menus and other free bumf and distribute them either individually or in groups (for instant on-the-spot work or as homework preparation) get them to tell me about them (as I cannot read Japanese, this is an authentic exercise!!) I can isolate a grammar point or two and practise it/them, plus the students gain real, practical, LOCAL vocabulary. They also have to explain and/or translate... that's a useful skill!

If you have ENGLISH fliers, and you don't want to waste paper and photcopying, here's a way to develop your use of this material:

you need some fliers and post-it strips to hide certain expressions. Students write (on a piece of scrap) the missing words they hear when you read the text to them, then peel off the post-its. Another way (if you have an OverHead Projector) is to make an acetate of the original, then Tippex out certain words and phrases from ANOTHER copy and make an acetate of it. You're set up for life!

This all leads on to an essential feature of (language) teaching in a poor country. 

a) DON'T bombard (children) or learners with global coursebooks full of European / American / "White" faces, kids with mobiles, smart cars, houses with TVs and AC. We immorally introduce a nasty, insidious Western bias into a fragile cultuure which may be very ancient and interesting, deserving of our attention and usefully practised (tourism, commerce, school). 

b) Let's take our cue from LOCAL circumstances and lifestyles and base our lessons on what is immediate and relevant, at hand in the area, rather than arrogantly assuming that our learners should implicitly learn about our nonsensical accoutrements and time-wasters! 

(I have used this approach quite successfully in Laos. I believe it's crucial.)

Cheers,

Cary

M. A. Education (Applied Linguistics)

Editor / proofreader of theses, dissertations and reports, e.g: financial & business subjects; technical  documents; social anthropology, health and medical texts. 

University tutor in English for Academic Purposes.

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Expert in presentations and conference techniques.

Private, customised teaching (individuals, small groups). 

E-mail me for details  bradstow2@yahoo.co.uk

In praise of Dennis Baron and his focus on "Too Much Grammar" (and a tribute to Aaron Swartz)

Dennis Baron wrote an eloquent attack on the over-focus of teachers on Grammar:   oops... I can't find that essay because it is blocked by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The essay has attracted the attention of dozens of academics
rebeccamoorehoward.com/bibliographies/language-standards

When you click on the link on Rebecca Moore Howard's site, guess what you get?


You can't find the article.

The remedy?  Get the content of these academic journals into the open.   Let's take a moment to think about Aaron Swartz.

Here's a link to explain why we should give a new name to a "Terabyte" -- one Swartz.

So, let's get Professor Baron's essay into the public domain:

Here is the same message on Dr. Baron's Web of Language blog

Click and make a difference
YourNetEffect has impact

My point, if you’re waiting for the sound bite, is that mastering commas has little to do with standard English, and mastering standard English—if standard English can even be defined—doesn’t guarantee good writing.

The oft-repeated demand to rethink teaching by teaching more grammar is not the answer (and teaching the comma is not teaching grammar, it’s teaching punctuation). When American schools began requiring grammar in the nineteenth century, teachers, not students, complained that the subject was too hard for them. They were told by school authorities, “Just stay a page ahead of your students, you’ll do fine.” When after a few decades of mandatory grammar lessons it became evident that student writing still wasn’t where it needed to be, the schools dropped grammar as deadening and ineffective. With student writing still an issue, critics want grammar back in the classroom. If nothing else, this cycling in and out of grammar should tell us that writing and grammar aren’t really connected.

The Web Of Language

There’s a reason to study grammar: it reveals the structure underlying human communication, and human communication is, well, it’s what we do. But studying grammar won’t help us communicate better any more than studying the internal combustion engine will help us to be better drivers.

What can make writers better is more writing. Writing more doesn’t always work: the best writers sometimes fall flat, the worst sometimes fail to improve, and the mediocre may stay stuck in the middle. But writing, both for practice and for real, works better to improve writing than sentence diagrams, comma drills, and mantras like “a noun is the name of a person, place or thing” (should there be a comma after place?). The problem, for the schools, is that writing takes time. It’s a messy process. Improvement isn’t linear. It requires one-on-one feedback from an engaged audience. It’s labor-intensive. It can’t be taught by machine. It’s expensive.

On the other hand, writing is also something that, thanks to the digital revolution, more and more people are doing not just for work and school, but also voluntarily, for their own benefit. Schools tend to dismiss the kind of writing that appears on Facebook, Twitter, IM, texting, and blogs as trivial, even detrimental to the development of good writers. But maybe we should rethink how we teach by looking at what writers do when they tweet and post. And that in turn might shed some light on what writers do when they write essays, poems, grant proposals, quarterly earnings reports, or constitutions. (Hint: they don’t check Strunk and White every time they’re not sure where to put the comma.)

Get this blog post here.

Thank you for clicking and sharing this giant's words.
Still, it is nice to read the writing tips by E.B. White and Strunk.

Get these free books from SCRIBD.com -- easy to download as PDF files

GuideOnTheSide.com is my website. Please suggest interesting quotations to inspire teachers and students.

FREE BOOKS from ASCD.org

useful! These downloads come from

http://www.scribd.com/doc/44415727/9781416612766 myths about teaching

http://www.scribd.com/doc/36692182/9781416603627 classroom management that works Marzano

http://www.scribd.com/doc/36692180/9781416603535 dynamic schools with coaching

I also invite you to download my scribd.com documents. Here's one of my favorites:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/58676538/Build-the-Future-Net-Presents-a-Guide-to-School-Reform-by-Mario-Llorente-Steve-McCrea-and-others

Suppose a person creates a book with plenty of versions:

a) lots of photos, color for scrolling online or in a PDF

b) lots of photos, grey for black and white printout

c) very few photos, mostly to reduce printing costs, with plenty of references

d) ready to photocopy with large formats for posting around the classroom.

Basically the same material but the formatting is different for the different uses. That's what Lulu.com allows since there is NOT a heavy cost for the first copy of the book. In some print-on-demand books, you get ONE chance to get the format correct, so it is very difficult to innovate as you create. But with Lulu.com, I can create a version that is pocket sized, then another with LARGE format pages ready to be photocopied. Same quotes, different size of type. One content, two or four different formats. Let me know your thoughts. HappyMathTeacher@gmail.com