A Newsletter Published by TESL North York and York Region

TESL TIMEVol. 9 Issue 1 Spring 2010

Executive Committee 2009-2010

President & Susan Richarz

Affiliate Rep

Past President Linda Cooper

Conference Chair Aida Aganagic

Membership Secretary Bassouma Kassouf

Treasurer Janette Rampersad

Recording Secretary Iole Millescamps

Newsletter Editor Shirley Turchet

Members-at-Large Sarah Tsang-FaheyCathy KreuterStephanie VorstermansNasreen NasirHeather BawdenStacey Vandenberg

President’s Report

It’s hard to believe that theschool term has ended formany of us and summer ishere. I hope everyone whoattended our SpringConference enjoyedthemselves. A special thankyou to all of the executivemembers of our Affiliate whoworked tirelessly to ensurethe day was a success. Ouraim is to provide qualityworkshops that areinformative and applicable toLINC/ESL classrooms. Asalways we welcome anysuggestions with regards totopics or presenters that youwould like to see at ourconferences. Have awonderful summer and Ihope to see you at our FallConference and AGM.

Regards,

Susan

supplement to the maindocument. It is often aligned onthe left or right of the page, orlocated at the top or bottom.Use the Text Box Tools tab tochange the formatting of thesidebar text box.

Keep this date!

Fall AGM and mini-conference:Thursday, October 14, 2010.Watch our website for furtherinformation

2

The Big Spring Conference

Northview Heights S.S. was abuzz with160 of our North York-York Regionmembers as they enjoyed meeting eachother over mini-muffins and croissantswith coffee or tea to start the morning. Adozen presenters engaged, challengedand inspired us in morning andafternoon workshops, and the plentifulsandwiches and wraps for lunch gave usa chance to network, visit publishers’displays, and join in a sing-along withmember Lynn Raxlen.

Michael enjoys every conference.Lots of yummies for the lunch bunch.

3

Warming up a class, teaching Englishrhythms and stress, repeating verbforms in action are so much more funwhen it’s a sing-a-long. Thanks, Lynn,for entertaining and involving us atlunch.

Noor Khan sang enthusiastically.

Sara Perrin enjoyed singing too!

Workshops gave members new ideasand fun for all.

Dig in. There was lots of fresh food.

We stood for the sing-a-long’s “OhCanada” – now to learn the Frenchversion…

4

The Workshops

My morning workshop for the Spring Conference was called Prioritized ErrorCorrection in ESL Written Essays and the presenter was Andrew Vance. He teachesTOEFL, LINC distance study and is an IELTS examiner as well. In his workshop,Andrew covered key definitions, the why, what and how of correction and he gave us asample to correct.

We correct to: encourage and reinforce, to broaden lexis, tojudge level according to usage, to reduce L1 interference, tofoster proper mechanics, to promote clarity of expressionand to ease reader strain. Amongst the most persistenterrors are those concerning articles, prepositions, infinitivesand subject/verb agreement - to name a few. We should notmark every error, since in an essay of 200-300 words wecan expect about 20-30 errors. This would frustrate anddemoralize learners, so we need to differentiate between amajor and a minor error. Major errors impair meaning orcause undue effort by the reader. A minor error, repeatedfrequently, should be considered major since it increases theerror rate to an unacceptable level.

Andrew feels strongly that most ESL teachers should be preparing students for TOEFLand IELTS because most students will eventually be required to pass these standardizedtests. The four D’s of correction are: decode, demonstrate, deconstruct and document.Students should documenting errors by filling in an error log that records date, prompt,error, error type and correction; that way they are actively involved in their own progress.A prioritized method of marking and a consistent approach by teachers is the best way toensure student success.Barbara Stasiuk

My afternoon workshop covered Global English and the differences between spoken andwritten English. The presenter Judy Thompson teaches ESL at Sheridan College, is aCLB Assessor and has written a book for teaching Speaking, titled English is Stupid oringlish iz stuwpid. She firmly believes that the most powerful gift that teachers can giveto their students is confidence.

It was during teaching in Korea when Judy had 500 students and very little time toachieve basic fluency with her students that she began to develop a streamlinedmethodology for teaching speaking. In her workshop she said that “ the world’spopulation is increasingly sitting around the table speaking in Global English, makingmoney and not inviting us because we spoil the party with our insistence upon ‘properEnglish’. I think she’s pointing out an ideological gulf that exists between native andnon- native speakers that can be bridged by language teachers who are affirming andinsist upon comprehension being the main goal of communication. More>

5

Some solutions for this problem are set out in her book. Of primary importance is thatteachers and students must recognize that there is a wider gulf between reading andspeaking than was delineated in our teacher trainer courses. I’m sure we’ve all hadstudents who are expert grammarians and can read well but aren’t very fluent.

Her six simple rules that lead to fluency are:

1. Use the English Phonetic Alphabet toidentify the 40 sounds in English.

2. Teach students to listen for and create stress.3. Teach students to focus on important words

and to reduce stress unimportant words.4. Help students to decode English by showing

how we slur speech in predictable patternsthrough a process called ‘linking’.

5. Include collocations in lesson planning asEnglish is an idiotic, oops! I mean idiomaticlanguage.

6. Understand that learning the verbal mustinclude learning non- verbal forms of English communication like gesturespausing and intonation.

The chapters in her book correspond to these rules with plenty of useful explanationand advice for teachers, as well as some tasks and handouts for students. Forexample, there are exercises for teaching about function and content words,collocations and a linking word search. Currently she is developing more classroomactivities based on the principles of the book.

In her book, Judy tells us to advise our students that speaking English is a guessinggame and that native speakers are always playing a guessing game in conversations.She also created the ingenious Thompson Color Chart that assigns every vowel sounda colour ex: black represents EPA /a/ - so cat is black. This gives learners a colorassociation to remember the correct vowel pronunciation in words. Her book isinformative, hilarious and contains plenty of useful advice for teachers and practiceideas for students, and I’m finding it very useful for teaching speaking.Barbara Stasiuk

6

Using Multiple Intelligences to Teach Pronunciation

As an ESL instructor I always try to incorporate pronunciation into all my classes, andthis workshop provided new and interesting ideas on how to do this more effectively.

Sylvia Fung first gave an overview of the Theory ofMultiple Intelligences in general, which was helpfulfor those participants that were not familiar it. Next,she connected the theory to different learningactivities that can be used in an ESLclassroom. Wewere given a comprehensive handout kit that includedthe Power Point presentation of the workshop, aMultiple Intelligences Survey for self-assessment, anda handout outlining ten pronunciation activities thatwere linked to different intelligences. The workshopshowed that teaching pronunciation can be fun,engaging, communicative and can be tailored tostudents with different learning styles. I especiallyenjoyed trying out some of the activities with otherworkshop participants. Aida Eaganic

Let’s Make the Finale a Grand One!

I had heard many positive remarks about Fran Marshall’s presentations, but had neverhad the opportunity to attend her workshop until thisyear’s spring conference. I was not disappointed. Franis an engaging and humorous speaker. She providedparticipants with a wealth of ideas and handouts forending the class. What I found the most intriguing wasthat most of her material was not a single activity butan assortment of ideas used as one activity. In hergrand finale quizzes, there would be a variety ofquestions, including grammar, tag questions, rhymingwords, math and so on. Most of the quiz questionsrequired either a one word or a one sentence answer,so that the exercise could be fast- paced enabling theinstructor to maintain the end of day momentum. Thisstyle is one that can be translated to any CLB level, orESL stream (settlement, work related) because the

central idea is to review that days material, in a question and answer format that is variedand quick. It’s a great idea and one that I have been using since the conference with greatsuccess. Stacey Vandenberg

7

Learning About Legal Rights in the ESL Classroom

Carol Olson, Project Leader for CLEO’s ESLResources, led an informative presentation on CLEO(Community Legal Education Ontario) tenant andemployment law series. I was surprised to learn that asan instructor I can order booklets free of charge onboth tenant and employment rights andresponsibilities. I was also pleased to find out thatthere are free printable on line activity kits that rangefrom CLB levels 1-5. The following website:http://www.cleo.on.ca/ can be accessed either fromtyping CLEO into Google or pasting this website intoyour browser. Here is a sample of a lesson planregarding workers rights (CLB5+, p.2).

Your Rights at WorkDiscuss these questions:

Describe what you see in the drawing.What do you think is happening?

Have you, or has someone you know, everbeen in a situation similar to the one in thedrawing? If so, explain what happened.

Imagine that the person is telling someoneabout his situation and together they try tofigure out what his next step should be.

Role play their conversation with another student.

Both the booklets and ESL lesson plans are available for the Employment and Tenantrights, however there are many more topics available on line or in free booklet form thatdon’t have a lesson plan developed at this time that include: criminal, family, health anddisability, immigration and refugee services and many more. CLEO is a work in progressand it is well worth spending a few moments exploring their website. Fortunately we canlook forward to more publications and lesson plans in the future. Stacey Vandenberg

Other Workshops held were:

Practical Teaching Techniques with Christien LeeBeyond Bingo with Lesline SmikleOh! Canada with Kathryn SharpGiving Good Instructions with Ken LackmanFocusing Vocabulary Activities in Meaningful Ways with Maxine A.MangatThank You for Speaking English! with Andrew Taylor (see interview in this issue).

8

Andrea Mesa Christien Lee

Kathryn Sharp Ken Lackman

9

Lesline Smikle Maxine A. Mangat

Workshop participants.

10

New from the Publishers

The Conference gave participants the opportunity to check out new publications and buyat special prices, and many gathered up catalogues to take back to their schools. Thefollowing publishers and presenters, with Fran Marshall, donated books for the luckydraw:

Canadian Resources for ESL not only has the Wonder Disc for irregular verbs, andthose neat little boxes of question cards, photo-copiable workbooks, but new this year isthe series Big Things in Canada. These Intermediate workbooks have stories and pictures,cloze and dozens of other exercises, and are by two of the authors of When’s the NextHoliday. Also out now is Phonics for Adult ESL Students – no more ‘P is forpony’…now it’s ‘P is for parking..’, and it’s well-illustrated for your beginners. There’salso a ten book series of vocabulary builders on themes, Let’s Get Started. They’re atwww.eslresources.com

CLEO Community Legal Education Ontario/Education Juridique CommunautaireOntario’s Carol Olson presented a workshop and was available to hand out great ESLresources on tenant and workplace rights. They operate a 24-7 multilingual legal referralservice at 1-866-667-5366 (toll free), and have 26 free, downloadable activity kits atwww.cleo.on.ca.

ESL Transcend Publications Inc. carries popular workshop leader Andrew Taylor’sresources. All the workbooks give the purchasing teacher and his or her class copyingrights, and they are packed with interactive activities and exercises. www.student-centred.com.

11

Oxford University Press, publishers of the wonderful picture dictionaries, pointed outtheir You’re Hired..Now What? An Immigrants Guide to Success in the CanadianWorkplace, a new text with workbook for multi-level classes. For college level teachersof ESL, Creating Meaning works on academic reading and writing at CLB levels 6+.Contact them at www.oupcanada.com

Pippin Publishers were on hand with their English through Pictures series and the newGames Language People Play – word games and activities galore arranged by level –great for warm-ups, cool-downs, reinforcement and interaction. www.pippin.com.

The Resource Centre carries lots of English test preparation materials – for TOEFL,IELTS, TOEIC and more. They pull together resources for the ESL teacher fromMacMillan and other publishers. Check them out at www.salesattheresourcecentre.com.

Thompson Language Centre is workshop presenter Judy Thompson’s publisher, andmany picked up her entertaining book English is Stupid emphasizing a different, morenatural and realistic approach to teaching spoken English from that of written English.www. EnglishIsstupid.com . Also www.ThompsonLanguageCentre.

Twice lucky! Carolyn and Peter Enke each won a book in the draw!

Suneeta Persaud was another lucky draw book winner.

12

An Interview with Andrew TaylorBy Nasreen Nasir

Andrew Taylor holds a TESL Certification from York University and has been anESL/LINC for 18 years in Canada. He currently teaches LINC 4 at the NewcomerCentre of Peel and ESL 4/5 at the Adult Education Centre- South both in Mississauga.Andrew is the author of I Can’t Believe I Learned GRAMMAR, Thank You forSPEAKING ENGLISH, and 8 other ESL/LINC books all published by his own companyESL Transcend Publishing Inc. You can visit his website at www.student-centered.comfor more information.

How did you get started in your teaching career?

I’ve always had this profound urge to help the less fortunate, so I thought I should workas a volunteer to help educate the Vietnamese refugees in Southeast Asia. My mainresponsibility was to prepare them for resettlement in the United States, Australia,England, and Canada by teaching them survival English, Western culture, job skills,history and geography. I had no teaching experience prior to that, but I went for it, andon the first day on the job I fell in love with the teaching profession and have beenteaching since then. I am grateful to Dalia Taylor, Donna Laxdall, and Marilyn O’Donnellfor strongly believing in me when I was just starting out in Canada. I’m also thankful tomy mentor Loretta Meaker, who inspired me to present my first workshop “Look Who’sChanting in the Classroom” at the Peel/Halton TESL Conference, which eventually ledme to TESL Ontario. I’ve been a regular TESL Ontario presenter since 1996. So far I’vewritten 10 well-received ESL/LINC books, and I’m in the process of completing my 11th

and 12th, which I will release in the upcoming TESL Ontario Annual Conference inOctober 2010. More>

13

How do you stay fresh? What is your inspiration?

I stay fresh by being aware of what is going on around me, in my community, in Canada,and around the world, and I incorporate all my day-to-day learning experiences into mylessons. I attend TESL conferences on a regular basis, present workshops to inspireother teachers and/or challenge myself. I put my passion into writing poetry and ESLbooks. I write books that my peers and my students need and appreciate. I write booksthat make me proud of myself as a professional.

I’m truly inspired and grateful to God for giving me the opportunity to make a differencein other people's lives. I am fascinated by the similarities of people around the worldregardless of their cultures and races. I don't focus on people's differences; I focus ontheir similarities. I like to validate people (especially my students) in any way that I can. Istrongly believe that it is a natural human nature to long for validation. I like to help. Itgives me so much joy and heart's contentment to be able to help other people,especially the newcomers to Canada.

Do you have any special teaching tips you want to share with us?

Inject humour into your teaching as often as you can. Always affirm your students andtreat them with respect and compassion. Make suggestions; don’t criticize. Rememberyour students are adults not children. Show them that you trust them. Treat yourstudents equally regardless of their nationality, religion, gender etc. In my opinion, if youtreat someone differently because she’s from a culture different than yours, you aremaking this person feel she’s different. You think you’re just being sensitive.Unconsciously, you’re making her feel that she doesn’t belong.

If you’re teaching a full-time class (e.g. 9:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.), do your mainListening/Speaking activities in the afternoon. What I normally do in my classes is:

(1) I tell them a short story (about myself, my family and friends, about the traffic,what I did over the weekend, what I plan to do during the long weekend etc.

(2) I teach them a pronunciation lesson, not based on what the books suggest butbased on their needs.(3.) I use the pronunciation words in sentences and I let each student read the

sentences.(4.) Then I introduce and develop my theme (e.g. workplace).(5.) I support my theme with a grammar activity, which is normally focused on

speaking.(6.) Then I’ll have a listening activity to support the theme.(7.) This is followed immediately by a speaking activity (group or pair-work) to enrich

the theme.

Thanks, Andrew, for inspiring so many students and colleagues to be our best.

Nasreen is a Member at Large for our NY/YR TESL Executive.

14

Building Local Communities through Teaching English as a SecondLanguage

This year I’ve had the unique experience of teaching for The English Circle in theDorset Park area of Scarborough as part of a resident-driven initiative to transform thestruggling community into a vital area of growth and engagement. Although the projectwas started through Action for Neighbourhood Change, it is currently funded by theToronto Community Housing’s Social Investment Fund and run by three volunteers whohave worked very hard to make it a success. Classes are held from 9-12 three mornings aweek, the time is split between beginner and intermediate, and it is women only with freechildcare provided.

It has been amazing for me to witness how this educational effort is intertwined withcommunity involvement and advocacy. To name a few of the activities: we’ve hadvisitors from the West Scarborough Community Legal Services do a workshop on workerrights, the students have been part of focus groups on safety and barriers to employmentfor Local Immigration Partnership and students created beautiful posters about theirhome countries forMulticultural Night.

I’ve tried to focus on giving thestudents the language skills theyneed to survive and thrive intheir community. We’vecovered visits to the doctor,shopping trips and theimportance of the local libraryin improving English. The bestclasses have been when students find their voices and debate issues that concern them.For example, the recent banning of the niqab (face veil) in Quebec language classesbrought up diverse opinions amongst them. Together we’ve discussed the term “visibleminority”, how the government defines it and what they think and feel about it.

After attending the Multicultural Night last week in the community where we weretreated to lovely performances of Sri Lankan dance, Tai Chi demonstrations andCaribbean drumming and dance, I made the observation that there are many areas of thecity that are wealthier in terms of money, but, I doubt that there are manyneighbourhoods that are as wealthy in terms of community spirit and engagement. Beingpart of this spirit has really motivated me to look at my own community to see how Imight utilize my teaching to address similar issues.

Barbara Stasiuk

15

REVIEW

Dictation – New Methods, New PossibilitiesPaul Davis and Mario Rinvolucri (2002) Cambridge University Press

Written by Paul Davis and MarioRinvolucri, and published by CambridgeUniversity Press as a part of theirCambridge Handbooks for LanguageTeachers series (edited by Penny Ur),Dictation is a great resource book forlanguage teachers looking to use thistraditional language learning techniquein a new and exciting way.

The book, although only 122 pages long,offers a wealth of activities that aresuitable for a wide range of levels andages. It provides example texts andworksheets for many activities withpermission to photocopy and has anindex that enables teachers to identifysuitable exercises for immediate use inthe classroom.

Activities in the book provide thestudents with the opportunity to activelyparticipate in the exercises, as well as anopportunity to self-correct and providefeedback to each other when working inpairs. Many of the exercises in the bookcan be used as a lead-in to oralcommunicative exercises and aresuitable for mixed-ability groups as wellas large classes.

The book is divided into sections (e.g.Correction; Sounds, spellings andpunctuation; The telephone; Single worddictations; Text reconstruction, etc.). Inaddition, a detailed explanation for theteacher is given for each exercise andmost of the time includes a sample text.Next to the name of each exercise is adiagram that shows the level for which itwould be suitable (beginner/elementary;lower intermediate; mid-intermediate;upper intermediate; advanced;proficiency). At the end of the book youwill find solutions to problems given insome of the exercises, as well as abibliography and index.

Since purchasing it a couple of monthago, I have used the exercises from thebook in both my beginner andintermediate classes with great success.Students loved the activities andparticipated eagerly. This is a book thatevery ESL teacher should have in his/herpersonal library.

Aida Aganagic teaches at Seneca andYRDSB and is a member of our NY/YorkRegion TESL Executive.

16

Settlement and LINC/ESL

Since October I’ve been working parttime in the Settlement field as aCommunity Development Worker for acommunity organization. You may notbe aware of the similarities anddifferences between LINC/ESL teachersand settlement workers, so let meexplain.

Let’s start with the similarities. We bothhelp newcomers to adapt to Canada. Ourcompetency often determines success forour clients/students. We are both in thesettlement sector, and if our wages arepaid by CIC, we both work for thefederal government in an indirect way.We both need to keep up a positiveattitude because the experiences of thosewe help are often very stressful anddifficult.

How are we different? Teachers havemuch more contact time withnewcomers, but we usually have lessindividual time to spend with studentswho are experiencing specific problems -like a housing or employment issue.Teachers have to implement a specificset of guidelines and benchmarks forstudent success, whereas the field ofsettlement has not had a specific set offederally recognized duties for which it

is responsible. Settlement is currentlyundergoing changes that will ensure bestpractices for the field. For example, thisspring my colleagues and I went for twodays of training on the principles andpractices of information and referral.Settlement counsellors need to be goodat providing information and makingreferrals, and almost always haveanother language besides English to helpclients with. They also should havetraining in crisis intervention since thismay be needed as problems arise in theclassroom.At the ISAP conference this year welearned that CIC is implementing theModernization Approach which seeks tocreate a ‘one stop shop’ for immigrantswhere they will receive languageinstruction, settlement help, andemployment support all at one location.This approach is client-centred and seeksto avoid the problem whereby each partof settlement is separate and it’s up tonewcomers to negotiate between them.You can find out more detailedinformation about this atSettlement.org’s Settlement at workwebsite.

Barbara Stasiuk