How do you teach English?

Kaplan surveyed more than 500 ESL teachers from around the world to discover what tools they use to enhance their lessons. Here's an infographic they created to show the results.

Which do you use?

Confusing words: Whether or if?

"Police are probing WHETHER the deaths of a woman, 107, and her daughter are a murder and suicide." (The Mirror, 12 Apr 2013)

" 'I didn't know WHETHER to laugh or cry'- Twitter responds to Lindsay Lohan on Charlie Sheen's Anger Management." (The Independent, 12 Apr 2013)

I don't know whether or not I should...

 

There are often doubts regarding the use of "whether", especially among learners up to B1 level.

WHETHER /ˈwɛðə/ is a conjunction used when we're expressing a doubt or choice between alternatives.

In indirect questions which expect a yes/no answer, we can either use whether or if.

I asked them whether/if they were going to take the exams in June.

If or appears later in the sentence, we generally prefer whether, although if is also possible.

They weren't sure whether/if she was telling the truth or not.  

Whether and not if is used in the following conditions:

Before an infinitive 

They can't decide whether to take the exams in June.

After a preposition

The students were unsure about whether the teacher's explanation was helpful. 

Immediately before "or not"

I'm not sure whether or not the students are ready.  

Contrast with: I'm not sure whether/if the students are ready or not. 

Spelling 

Don't confuse the spelling of the conjunction whether with the noun weather. 

Both are pronounced the same: /ˈwɛðə/

The History of the English Language

This is simply astounding. My words aren't needed.

Source: Source: Greg

Breaking rules with John Fanselow

iTDi is a community of international teachers who work together to help other teachers from all around the world. Membership is free, and they offer regular free webinars (online conference), forum and courses.

Next week they have a special course, as you can see from the above poster, imparted by John F Fanselow, quite a character, I can tell you! If I were you, I wouldn't miss it. You can read the details on the poster, so there isn't any need for me to repeat it. The direct link for the course is: http://itdi.pro/itdihome/breakRules.php

Now, the good news. If you register through the iTDi site, the cost is US$99, approximately 80€. If you're based in Spain, I have a special offer for you (we all know about the crisis!). You'll have to register through me though. Payment can be made via Paypal or bank transfer. Paypal is easier and quicker. Paypal charges no fee to transfer money. If you don’t have a Paypal account yet, you can set one up free at https://www.paypal.com. However, you don’t need to have a Paypal account to send money via Paypal. All you need is an international credit card.

Do hurry as I can only keep this offer open until 9th November! Spread the news to your fellow teachers! Email me at acliltoclimb@gmail.com for further enquiries.

Voice #237 on an edventure

Once in a while someone catches me off-guard and this is one of those times. Anthony Salcito, Vice President of Worldwide Education at Microsoft, runs a personal blog, www.dailyedventures.com, where he speaks to "heroes in education worldwide".

Each day the blog features an interview with someone in the education sector: "teachers, school leaders, policy-makers, business leaders, celebrities, NGO leaders, researchers - people who have embraced enhancing education as a core facet in their lives." Anthony tries to find out who these people are, what inspires them, what frustrates them, and what hopes they hold for the future of education.

So, when I was contacted to participate, how can I possibly refuse, right?

You can read about the interview here.

Re-blog: #ELTchat: the loss of eltchat.com – Plan B

This post was originally posted by Marisa Constantinides on TEFL Matters. I may not be a frequent attendee in the regular #ELTChat on Twitter, but I do pop in from time to time and I greatly admire and respect the organisers, moderators and the participants. It is a blow what has happened with eltchat.com but it isn't the end of the world. If anything, eltchat.org will grow and dwarf its predecessor, of that I'm sure.

For the last – well, almost two years now, since September 15 2010, #ELTchat has kept us on our toes and forged hundreds of professional and personal relationships amongst its followers who turn up on Twitter every Wednesday to talk about topics they have suggested and voted on – a community of peers which was created by a small group of colleagues – which grew and grew some more and became something that counts as an important part of our continuous professional development.

Like many great ideas, it didn’t hit just one person but several.

And that is how #ELTchat was created.    

The website to keep up the communication of its members, a base and repository of our ideas was one of the first things we all thought of creating – the wiki came later.

Andy Chaplin was keen to join the moderation team and help with podcasts and technical stuff; he was quick to buy eltchat.com and announced the good news to us after the fact.

A few months later, right after TESOL France 2011,  he suddenly disappeared – some say for reasons of health.

We never found out for sure.

We never received a single word of response to our emails.

eltchat.com was and still is registered in his name.

And yesterday we lost it

On August 8 the domain expired and we have no way of taking over unless it goes up for sale again; it was very sad that Andy Chaplin did not find it appropriate to renew.

The news is really upsetting.

The work we have put in on this website cannot be told in a few simple words – but it has been a labour of love and we have got so much out of it that we have never regretted one single moment

We are pretty upset at the behaviour of this individual – disappointment is one big understatement.

But we trust that our community of #ELTchatters, our PLN for short, will again gather round the new domain which we have purchased – eltchat.org

It will take us a few days to put the website back on its feet

And all will be as it was before – all the posts in place all your thoughts and comments, all the polls and great summaries which got us on the shortlist of the ELTon Awards nominations

We will be back with a vengeance

We are not just a website – we did not get on the ELTon awards shortlist as just another website!!!

We are a great community of teachers and we have a Plan B!

See you all in September!!!

Marisa Constantinides – Shaun Wilden

Chiew Pang

P.S. We would greatly appreciate it if any of you belonging to this great community of teachers,  teacher educators, bloggers, #ELTchat followers,  reposted this on your blog

If you decide to do this, please add your name to the post under ours.

Coconut carrot cake recipe, mmm... scrumptious!

I had some almonds and hazelnuts leftover from the chocolate cake I made almost a month and a half ago so I'd been thinking of baking another since then. Those of you who are following this blog and my Twitter account would probably have heard of (and seen) my healthy carrot cake recipe, so I thought I'd try to vary it a little and make it somewhat naughtier!

So, here goes.

Ingredients:

200g corn oil (you can use any vegetable oil or if you can handle the cholesterol, butter)

200g brown sugar (you can reduce this a little if you wish, to about 150-175g)

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

4 small eggs (approximately 55g each)

200g wholemeal flour

2 teaspoons (10g) baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

50g dessicated coconut

200g carrots, grated

1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cloves

150g almond-hazelnut mix, grounded

Procedure:

1. Heat the oven to 180ºC and grease a cake tin with butter or oil.
2. Pour the corn oil into a large bowl. If using butter, melt it gently and leave to cool before pouring it in.
3. Stir in the sugar, vanilla essence, eggs, flour, baking powder, salt and the dessicated coconut.
4. Mix it well.
5. Add in the grated carrots, spices and the nuts.
6. Blend it all thoroughly.
7. Pour the mixture into the greased cake tin.
8. Bake on a lower rack at 180ºC for about 40 minutes.
9. Turn off the oven and leave the cake in there for a further 10 minutes.
10. If an inserted skewer comes out clean, it's done.
11. Leave to cool.
12. When cool, slide a thin spatula along the edges to loosen the cake before attempting to remove it from the mould.

This turned out really good. My son thinks it's the best carrot cake I've done!

Enjoy!