English for Koreans or non-English speakers

Koreans or other non-English speakers can learn to speak English the fastest way. There will be a lot of interactive learning, feedbacking, and situational conversations that will surely make the learner acquire fluency of the target language in the shortest time possible. Interested? Text or call cellphone no. 0918-642-1670

can sing, but can't speak...

Huh? How can these kids sing beautifully and not know how to answer simple questions properly? The same is true with some old people. They go up the stage to give a song number and when asked to answer a simple question in English, they could not answer it.

Are people now giving more importance to singing than to speaking? Will people admire a singer if he could not even explain his music or say anything about himself? I don't know what you think, but if you ask me, I just think any talent is useless if you could not "sell" it well. You have a product, then be ready to sell it and when we say "sell it" we mean talk about it or explain it using words or language.

No real singer succeeds if he does not know how to promote himself or his music. So I think it is not right to just focus on a single talent. What I mean is, if you have a talent, okay, polish it but along with perfecting it, you should also learn basic communication skills for you to be able to promote yourself and your product.

How did I get into English?

When I first enrolled in college I was clueless as to what course would fit me. I tried a general course that could lead to anything that came up during the schoolyear.

After the second year I knew that I wanted to learn more about the English language so I finally decided to have it as my major.

Since we were only around 6 English majors at that time we had to campaign for more enrollees in our majors for the subjects to be offered. This made me decide to take up most of my major subjects at another university as a cross-enrollee.

The interesting reads required of us convinced me that I was on the right track. In short, I was at that time finding my passion and I found it in WORDS-----reading them, writing, speaking, listening to them.

This passion has since become my "bread and butter" which has opened up other opportunities related to this passion for words.

Practice, practice, practice

We Asians are trying to be globally relevant by racing to get more of the outsourcing industry which demands good English speakers. Unfortunately, out of thousands of applicants only two, three, or four are really considered employable by call centers. The rest are either chopped out as unqualified while a few may be considered for training. This scenario has made students more and more aware of the importance of knowing one's spoken English very well. The trouble with this is that students who are in school to hone this particular skill get little or no opportunities to do this because English is rarely spoken anywhere on campus, not even in the classroom which is supposed to be the best place to practice this skill of speaking good English.

If we must become good English speakers then we must speak the language all the time most especially when you're in school.

I remember when I was in grade school and high school when we took seriously this business of speaking English inside the campus. We had badges that we gave to those who spoke the native language and the last person to hold the badge at the end of the day got to pay a certain fine. It worked well for our batch became very good English speakers.

I notice that some schools initiate this "Speak English campaign" but do not pursue it seriously enough to see the desired results. Schools must have "Speak English policy" anywhere on campus in order to train students into using the target language much of the time. The canteen, billing section, offices, classrooms, libraries are places where students should be given opportunity to use the language. Make these areas as "Speak English only zones".

Practice makes perfect. If you think you are the only one who is doing your best to polish your English speaking skills, don't despair. Very soon they will be joining you. Never mind what they think. Never mind what they say. Just think of the benefits you gain by doing so.

how to optimize learning in English and speech classes

Let us admit it. Much class time is wasted doing things that do not contribute to the improvement of our students' language skills. Mentors oftentimes overlook to see that they are wasting their students' time and money teaching them lessons that they already know. For instance in a Speech or English class, the teacher should give emphasis on lessons that students find most problems and difficulty.

Teachers should know where her students are by giving them a sort of diagnostic test, like a simple essay, or a simple self-introduction to know their weaknesses and work from there. In English language, is it grammar? Which area of grammar? Is it preposition or subject-verb agreement? If it is Speech it is very easy to isolate problem speech sounds and to start working on those. Teachers will be able to save a lot of class time as well as optimize student learning if he or she will only work on the students' problem areas.

In Speech for example, the teacher can first make a comparison of the sounds in our own dialect against the sounds of the English language. You will notice that there are many sounds in our Pilipino language that are also found in the English language. For example are sounds like /m/, /n/, /b/, /g/, /h/, /w/ and many more. However, there are also many sounds in English that are not found in our own native language like the sounds /f/, /sh/, /v/, /th/ etc.

Sounds that we have no problem producing may be reviewed but sounds that give us many problems should be given more time.

Always work on something that students have little or no know-how. This is the only way that schools can have relevance. Otherwise, there is no point in going to school when you already know what the teachers are talking about.

English teachers: what do you put in your English Corner?

School is back and everybody seems to be too eager to get started in the right way--- teachers especially. Grade school and high school teachers from both private and public schools are putting their thinking caps on in order to make their classrooms most inviting and conducive for learning. All over the land mentors are spending precious time and money cutting out, posting, pasting, encoding, etc. visual materials that will turn the classroom into a one-stop information station.

In fact, the whole school campus comes to life as school personnel prepare it for the coming back of students. Bulletin boards are made alive by helpful information and even the canteen is once more turned into a place of business.

To make everything happen, teachers are given their individual tasks to take charge of one corner in the bulletin board and they are left free to beautify it.

My concern in this corner has something to do with a teacher from China who started a discussion about what should we put in the English corner? I have a few suggestions here. Bear in mind your target audience. Who are they? Whose attention are you trying to capture? Grade schoolers? High schoolers? Whoever they are, always make sure that your corner is attractive because it makes use of color, graphics, and good lay-out. Bear in mind that today's generation no longer stop to read bulletin boards. You put up some announcements there which don't get to be read because they don't stop to read them anymore. Why? Because of the way they had always been presented---boring---colorless, artless, dull. In other words, you have first to work on the visual aspect of your corner by using lots of color and graphics. Always think in terms of the lay-out and design you see on TV and the internet. The visual aspect of your corner is supposed to make your audience stop and hopefully, read what you got in there. So it is not enough to just make them stop and take a look. It is as important to also make them READ your content because this is the main objective of the English corner---to help improve the students' command of the English language.

Let us see what you can put in there which would greatly benefit your students. A bulletin board that gets regular updates also gets to be noticed more. Just like websites or weblogs. Why? Because if you only update once a week or once a month, in the long run, students will no longer be interested to see what's new there because anyway they will assume to see and read the same things. I suggest that you do your updating of some areas daily, some parts every other day, some weekly, and maybe some monthly. I have here a few suggestions on what you are going to put in there. You decide which ones should get a daily update, weekly, monthly, etc.

1. Word bank-- this is where you introduce a new word with its pronunciation , use, and meaning. The new word should also be used in correct sentence.
2. Grammar check---feature a gross grammatical error and correct it (be sure to use nice funny graphics to attract their attention)
3. How's your spelling? Feature a constantly misspelled word, mark it with a red X and put its correct spelling alongside it and mark with a checkmark.
4. bookworm of the month or week---coordinate with your librarian and feature one student who has borrowed or read the most number of books---post her name and photo
5. watch your preposition--- feature just one everyday
6. English speaker of the week--feature a student's name and photo who uses English as her means of communicating with others on campus
7. My best work---feature the best compositions of students in this area.

8. Hey, watch your stop! An area meant to give lessons in punctuating by giving emphasis on the punctuation mark.

There are many other interesting stuff that you could use. For those of you who have suggestions, please leave your comments here.

this girl knows her stuff

Curiousity and interest led me to this girl's blog and site which I got from Mylot community and from then on, I got hooked. I am impressed and lucky to get her links here as part of my list of resources. Her blog, http://www.beasavvywriter.blogspot.com contains very spontaneous and useful guides to becoming savvy writers. I got tickled brown reading her article on how to handle rejection letters---yeah, you can do service to the environment because there is such a thing as fruitful recycling and the blog handled this with a large dose of humor that one can't escape a good laugh. I am surely going to go back in order to read everything she got in there because this lady knows how to handle the language with such ease and smoothness, especially when read aloud, her articles just feel like ice cream to the mouth---nice and smooth.

I may be easy to impress, but there is no doubt about it--Ashley is doing an impressive job in that blog---lay-out, good; language, very good; variety of content, worth a daily visit.

Wait---Ashley has come up with a new site you don't wanna miss. I was there and I saw the great promise of http://www.bellevere.net. The first page gives an appropriate welcome with this phrase "beautiful soul, key to a gorgeous life". With this catch phrase, who wouldn't be enticed to stay and discover its hidden treasures? This site showcases the secrets to real Beauty, Love, Dieting, Fitness, REcipes and everything you need to have a beautiful life. It is a great site owned by one so intelligent and gifted.

Ashley knows what she is talking about as evidenced by her works. Links to both her sites are found in all my four blogs so anytime I want to give myself a break from the monotony of everything, I just make a visit to Ashley's blog and site.

Two thumbs up for this young lady!

The photo above features the front page of Ashley's latest website.

adjusting the curriculum towards conversational English

The reason why India is the top UK market call center provider is because schools there have adjusted their curriculum towards conversational English. The Philippines is 2nd only to India when it comes to catering to the North American market's call center needs. Why? Because our English curricula in the Philippines are not adjusted to the demands of the market. Take the following facts.

In 2004, there were 40,000 seats available in call centers for graduates who could speak good English. Eighty thousand seats were available in 2005 and the Department of Trade and Industry projects a doubling of the figures every year for the next five years.

No other industry in the Philippines is generating and providing as many job openings as the call center industry with salaries that are highly competitive.

But are schools delivering products that fit the demands of the market which is the call center industry?

It is sad to hear that out of 2,000 applicants, they will be lucky to get 5 or 7 real qualified graduates to work as call center agents who will be dealing with English-speaking clients 24 hours a day.

The solution that was proposed by a representative of Bigfoot Global Solutions Inc. is skills practice or conditioning students into practising the kind of work expected by the market.

One of the ways proposed is by giving assessment through conversational English, using oral examination as the testing format for prelims, midterms, or finals. Other activities such as panel quizzes, debate, oration, panel discussion may also be used by the teacher. The point is, to make the students speak and use the target language as often as every meeting.

This may raise the eyebrows of many traditionalists, but hey, we've got to get real. Our students will not be asked to write down their answers in a job interview. No, they will be using spoken English when they will be looking for work and they better start polishing this skill now.

It is only by doing this that schools can truly claim to be relevant to the times.