The US State Department has launched a new PC Game to study English.
The Regional English Language Office informs about it: HERE.
lunes, 25 de junio de 2012
jueves, 24 de mayo de 2012
Cambridge Exams -Cambridge English TV
As you may know already, Cambridge University, through Cambridge ESOL, delivers a range of language exams. Among them, the most popular are those in the so-called Main Suite: Key English Test (KET), Preliminary English Test (PET), Fisrt Certificate in English (FCE); Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) and the Cambridge Proficiency Exam (CPE). Besides these, there are a couple of rather new developments: Young Learners (YLE) and Teaching Knowledge Test (TKT). There are also the regognised teaching qualifications CELTA and DELTA. Which of these do you already have?
The link below will take you to Cambridge English TV, where you can watch very interesting videos about the exams above. I specially like the one called "Behind the Scenes of Cambridge Exams," where you will see all the preparations and hard work that people back in Cambridge do in order to deliver.
Have a look, you´ll love it!
Cesar Klauer
The link below will take you to Cambridge English TV, where you can watch very interesting videos about the exams above. I specially like the one called "Behind the Scenes of Cambridge Exams," where you will see all the preparations and hard work that people back in Cambridge do in order to deliver.
Have a look, you´ll love it!
Cesar Klauer
viernes, 18 de noviembre de 2011
How I met Miss Silva
Today, the news of Miss Maria Silva´s death caught us by surprise. She was our boss and example at the ACPB for years. This goes to her.
I had finished my training (now called “induction”) with Ita Valcárcel and was waiting for “the call.” It never came. So I got kind of angry, why had they made me go to training for one whole week? I couldn´t resist the temptation and went to the ACPB on Avenida Arequipa and asked to talk to Miss Silva. I had seen her only once and didn´t know what she was like, but I didn´t care, I wanted to know why they had made me waste my time.
Miss Silva is not available, said María, the secretary. I thought that maybe she didn´t want to see a Mr Nobody who wanted to talk to her for God knows what reasons. So she´s not in? I stared at her. Well, can I leave a message? She was silent, waiting. I said: Please, tell Miss Silva that I want to know if I am going to be assigned classes or not. She looked at me as if I was some kind of madman. Surely she was thinking that classes had already started! I continued: Tell her I won´t get angry if I don´t get anything but I want to know, that´s all. She pressed her lips and wrote it down.
The next day, I was summoned to her office: a little partition in a big room where she sat at a tiny desk full of papers and books and many other things: a coffee mug with pens and pencils sticking out, a table calendar with curled corners, a cup and saucer (empty), post-it tags; on the wall behind her a cork board announced the opening for teacher courses at Bell College (two years later, what a coincidence, I was sent to that same place!). The “office” was really minuscule, that´s probably why I though she was larger than she really was; or perhaps, her desk was too small. She looked at me, motioned me to sit down, put on her glasses and read a piece of paper: You asked to be assigned here in San Isidro, didn´t you? She moved her mouth in a peculiar way, as if she was about to spit something. I said I preferred San Isidro, yes, Ma´am. She Looked at me and offered me a couple of classes in Lima. The centre of the city? I thought, and almost rejected the offer but then a light that nobody saw enlightened me and my mouth, without my permission, said: OK, Lima is fine. She sent me to see the supervisor there, Miss Vicky.
Three weeks later, she called me in again. Do you still want to work here in San Isidro? She looked at me knowing in advance what I was going to say. Since then, I taught at the San Isidro branch for almost 7 years, and took to going to see her with ideas and suggestions (that she listened to attentively). Sometimes, she just sat there with her eyes closed, I would stop my talk thinking she was falling asleep, but she wasn´t. It´s the migraine, she said to me once, and you´re wearing a yellow shirt. Yellow made her headaches wake up, and they never left easily.
Miss Silva was loved, respected, feared and even hated, all at the same time. And I understood the different feelings. She wasn´t easy to content. She wasn´t there to make anybody happy either. Her presence, even in the other two branches –Miraflores and Lima– was felt: she didn´t need to be there in person to really be there. That´s the type of woman she was, and will always be in the memory of those of us who remember her. So long Miss Maruja, now you´ll be keeping Ita company, and waiting for us to join you one day.
I had finished my training (now called “induction”) with Ita Valcárcel and was waiting for “the call.” It never came. So I got kind of angry, why had they made me go to training for one whole week? I couldn´t resist the temptation and went to the ACPB on Avenida Arequipa and asked to talk to Miss Silva. I had seen her only once and didn´t know what she was like, but I didn´t care, I wanted to know why they had made me waste my time.
Miss Silva is not available, said María, the secretary. I thought that maybe she didn´t want to see a Mr Nobody who wanted to talk to her for God knows what reasons. So she´s not in? I stared at her. Well, can I leave a message? She was silent, waiting. I said: Please, tell Miss Silva that I want to know if I am going to be assigned classes or not. She looked at me as if I was some kind of madman. Surely she was thinking that classes had already started! I continued: Tell her I won´t get angry if I don´t get anything but I want to know, that´s all. She pressed her lips and wrote it down.
The next day, I was summoned to her office: a little partition in a big room where she sat at a tiny desk full of papers and books and many other things: a coffee mug with pens and pencils sticking out, a table calendar with curled corners, a cup and saucer (empty), post-it tags; on the wall behind her a cork board announced the opening for teacher courses at Bell College (two years later, what a coincidence, I was sent to that same place!). The “office” was really minuscule, that´s probably why I though she was larger than she really was; or perhaps, her desk was too small. She looked at me, motioned me to sit down, put on her glasses and read a piece of paper: You asked to be assigned here in San Isidro, didn´t you? She moved her mouth in a peculiar way, as if she was about to spit something. I said I preferred San Isidro, yes, Ma´am. She Looked at me and offered me a couple of classes in Lima. The centre of the city? I thought, and almost rejected the offer but then a light that nobody saw enlightened me and my mouth, without my permission, said: OK, Lima is fine. She sent me to see the supervisor there, Miss Vicky.
Three weeks later, she called me in again. Do you still want to work here in San Isidro? She looked at me knowing in advance what I was going to say. Since then, I taught at the San Isidro branch for almost 7 years, and took to going to see her with ideas and suggestions (that she listened to attentively). Sometimes, she just sat there with her eyes closed, I would stop my talk thinking she was falling asleep, but she wasn´t. It´s the migraine, she said to me once, and you´re wearing a yellow shirt. Yellow made her headaches wake up, and they never left easily.
Miss Silva was loved, respected, feared and even hated, all at the same time. And I understood the different feelings. She wasn´t easy to content. She wasn´t there to make anybody happy either. Her presence, even in the other two branches –Miraflores and Lima– was felt: she didn´t need to be there in person to really be there. That´s the type of woman she was, and will always be in the memory of those of us who remember her. So long Miss Maruja, now you´ll be keeping Ita company, and waiting for us to join you one day.
miércoles, 9 de noviembre de 2011
Two common words
According to the Merriam Webster´s Dictionary, the origin of the word “clock” can be traced back to the Middle English word “clok”, Middle Dutch “clocke”, Old French “cloque”, Medieval Latin “clocca” and Middle Irish “clocc”, all of which mean “bell.” When the clock we know was invented in around the 14th century, it told the time using bells that went off on the hour and on quarters and half hours. People say five o´clock, etc., as an abbreviation of “of the clock”, or, in other words, “of the bell.”
Have ever “gotten the sack”? I hope not. The expression was born before the industrial era when a worker carried his tools in a sack. When he was dismissed, the employer gave him his tools and literally “got the sack.”
Cesar Klauer
Sources:
The Little Books of Answers, Doug Lennox, MJF Books, New York, 2003
Merriam Webster´s Dictionary
miércoles, 7 de septiembre de 2011
Ten years ago
Federico Salazar´s nose shrugged a little bit and his eyes shone a doubtful spark. Not even him, a seasoned newscaster, accustomed to the terrible events of life, could believe what he was about to tell the millions of viewers who were getting ready for a day´s work. Many of us, cup of coffee in hand, the towel drying our hair, or kissing our children good morning, witnessed, without fathoming for sure, through the immediacy of live television the strange but certain crash of a passenger jet plane into a silvery scrycraper in New York City.
I called my wife, still trying to figure out what was happening, and pointed at the screen. Was it an accident?, she narrowed her eyes in awe. I didn´t know, the pilot must have gotten lost, but none of us really swallowed the explanation.
I left for work thinking about Sharon, the American lady who worked with me. Was she from New York? No, she was from Miami, or so I thought. In the office, her desk was empty and I was sure she had stayed home, unable to move or talk about the tragedy. But she got in as if nothing had happened. Have you seen the news?, I stood up. She smiled, what news? Then I broke it down to her in as careful a way I could possibly find. The rest of the morning we spent watching the news, zapping from CNN to BBC to Chanel N and backwards.
This Sunday, it will be 10 years of the insanity that hit America hard. Some of us Peruvians thought, ha! Tell us about crazy terrorists! And deep inside us we knew how it felt in the heart.
This is a great chance to teach your students some history, and practice English of course. Voice of America has a special feature with MP3 downloadable audio and language activities for free. Visit:THIS LINK
viernes, 26 de agosto de 2011
Helicopters, boomerangs, cougars and bromances
I don´t think I am a helicopter parent, at least I try not to be one, as I tried, when younger and beautiful, not to become a boomerang child. But that one was hard, because in our society here in Peru, children don´t leave home until they get married. Forget the boomerang, then.
I really hope my friends (the females) don´t become cougars. I have never met one in person –though stories have always been around –, but they are out there hunting…bad (or good…) thing is they will not be looking for men like me anymore, their radar is pointing at another direction.
Are you involved in a bromance now (males only, huh)? You might be but don´t know yet, think about it while you listen some Americana.
The words used here are real and have made their way to the 2011 Merriam-Webster´s Collegiate Dictionary. The tip came from our friend and colleague Carmen Caceda. She sent this link to an article where they talk about the new words that the dictionary people have included this year: 150 in all!
Have a closer look at some of those HERE.
Time to update your vocabulary books!
lunes, 22 de agosto de 2011
"Cool" teachers
Back in February this year I published a short entry titled: Something to say about NNESTs. The acronym stands for Non Native English Speakers. In the post, I speak about English speakers who are hired to teach English only because they are native speakers, forgetting or simply disregarding (the hiring institution, I mean) the need for appropriate qualifications to do this important job. This is not the case with all native speakers, of course!, but there are far too many to just pass under the radar without detection.
This all comes up now because of a publication of El Comercio on Friday 19th, just last week, called “Institutos y Centros de idiomas.” The twelve-page supplement offers interesting articles, they even interviewed recognized specialists in the TEFL field like Marita de la Lama from U. del Pacífico, Claudia Marín from UPC and Cesar Saldaña from U. Ricardo Palma. But the item that connects this comment today with the February post is the advertisement on page 5, whose image is posted here too, but with the name of the institution covered, just to avoid problems.
The ad opens with the line “Pagaré mis estudios dando clases de ingles,” that is “I´ll pay my studies teaching English.” I suppose the phrase is an invention from the “creative team” (the quotes are mine) that produced the ad. I can only speculate and/ or speak of my own personal reaction to the message that the ad implies.
The line tells me that the people who wrote it (I am not so sure if the institution supports this view) think that teaching English is a temporary activity that university students can do just to pass the time and get some easy bucks out of it while they pursue a more “serious” career. Once this “cool” teacher finishes university, what? No problem, mate, there are more “teachers” waiting in line.
The implications are easy to list but I´ll mention only two. The first one is that training can´t be too demanding. Logic tells me that it is not efficient to spend resources on a person who will not last long in the institution. The second is the rate per hour. Why pay high if the “teacher” is actually NOT a teacher. This affects directly those who are (and there are many professional teachers in that institute, I know). Then, a question appears: Is this happening at other institutes as well?
Another line that called my attention is the one that says: “Profesores certificados por la University of Michigan y TESOL, USA.” As far as I know, the certificates given by Michigan (and Cambridge) are not professional qualifications but language certificates. I don´t know about TESOL USA (is it a qualifying body? Beats me.) Are they trying to substitute (in their scarcity) native speakers by “near-native” speakers?
Between non-teacher native speakers who are hired to teach and university students who take up the job as a sport, how much space is left for the real teaching professionals? My intention with the two posts, last February´s and today´s, is not to attack these people (who are ultimately looking for a job) or institutions (who may hire whoever they want) but to raise awareness among us, the teachers who do this for a living, who try and get the appropriate qualifications, who try and look for opportunities to improve (and, in passing, among the authorities at the institutions). We are the ones who must point the finger and demand professionalism, who must demonstrate that our job is not a form of moonlighting. And to do this, there are so many ways.
This all comes up now because of a publication of El Comercio on Friday 19th, just last week, called “Institutos y Centros de idiomas.” The twelve-page supplement offers interesting articles, they even interviewed recognized specialists in the TEFL field like Marita de la Lama from U. del Pacífico, Claudia Marín from UPC and Cesar Saldaña from U. Ricardo Palma. But the item that connects this comment today with the February post is the advertisement on page 5, whose image is posted here too, but with the name of the institution covered, just to avoid problems.
The ad opens with the line “Pagaré mis estudios dando clases de ingles,” that is “I´ll pay my studies teaching English.” I suppose the phrase is an invention from the “creative team” (the quotes are mine) that produced the ad. I can only speculate and/ or speak of my own personal reaction to the message that the ad implies.
The line tells me that the people who wrote it (I am not so sure if the institution supports this view) think that teaching English is a temporary activity that university students can do just to pass the time and get some easy bucks out of it while they pursue a more “serious” career. Once this “cool” teacher finishes university, what? No problem, mate, there are more “teachers” waiting in line.
The implications are easy to list but I´ll mention only two. The first one is that training can´t be too demanding. Logic tells me that it is not efficient to spend resources on a person who will not last long in the institution. The second is the rate per hour. Why pay high if the “teacher” is actually NOT a teacher. This affects directly those who are (and there are many professional teachers in that institute, I know). Then, a question appears: Is this happening at other institutes as well?
Another line that called my attention is the one that says: “Profesores certificados por la University of Michigan y TESOL, USA.” As far as I know, the certificates given by Michigan (and Cambridge) are not professional qualifications but language certificates. I don´t know about TESOL USA (is it a qualifying body? Beats me.) Are they trying to substitute (in their scarcity) native speakers by “near-native” speakers?
Between non-teacher native speakers who are hired to teach and university students who take up the job as a sport, how much space is left for the real teaching professionals? My intention with the two posts, last February´s and today´s, is not to attack these people (who are ultimately looking for a job) or institutions (who may hire whoever they want) but to raise awareness among us, the teachers who do this for a living, who try and get the appropriate qualifications, who try and look for opportunities to improve (and, in passing, among the authorities at the institutions). We are the ones who must point the finger and demand professionalism, who must demonstrate that our job is not a form of moonlighting. And to do this, there are so many ways.
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