The Kentucky Fried Chronicles part 1

 The Study of the United States Institute –SUSI for short – on Contemporary American Literature is hosted by the University of Louisville, Kentucky, which happens to be hometown of KFC and of one of the most amazing athletes of all time: Muhamad Ali.

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I was lucky to have been chosen to be part of the group of sixteen scholars from all over the world who will be based in Louisville for the following six weeks. Upon arrival, I learned that Peru was one of the three countries that were participating in the institute for the first time, Namibia and Burma are also first timers. The other countries represented here are Boznia-Herzegovina, Cameroon, Indonesia, India, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, China, Romania, Russia, Syria, Tunisia and Zambia.

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On Friday, we were gathered for the first time at the international Center; but things did not take off so quickly, it might have been the KFC we were served (for the first and only time, we were told) or it may have been the long trip. The thing is, right now we all feel as if we had known each other for ages: the jokes go in and out but, most importantly, the respect for each other as individuals and for our cultures is always the first consideration and the bond that has made us a solid group.

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Tom Bryers, the director of the institute and famous in Spain as the Tomate Vengador, has been so far giving us introductory sessions on the concepts we need to be able to deal with to begin to try interpretations of the literary works we have to read and to connect those works to the culture of the United States expressed in its way of life, architecture, society, etc.

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One of the most surprising things that has happened so far is the proclamation of the sixteen scholars in the SUSI Scholarship as Honorary Citizens of Louisville. We had the opening dinner on Monday night and during the speeches that are typically given on these occasions, Tom Bryers announced that the representative of the Mayor of the City had come to present us with a diploma. We were called, one by one, and got it from the Mayor´s representative. A complete surprise and an honor we all expect to be up to.

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The days go by as we get on track with the works of poetry and narrative we will study, “deconstruct” some may say, in a city that is a nice place to be, hot at times, rainy at others, but with a quiet air that makes it a perfect place to study and develop a view of the American society through its literature.

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Something to say about: collocations

A very important area of learning a language is the correct use of vocabulary in the right contexts, specially the combinations that form fixed phrases, that is: collocations. To a native of Spanish, some word combinations sound right but for the native English folk they don´t. And literal translations don´t help much!!! Take for example the Spanish phrase “tomar el pelo”. We know the corresponding phrase is “pull someone ´s leg”, but if you want to translate it word by word, the result is at least confusing if not really bluffing.

The point is, vocabulary is a hard cookie, and we teachers need to inform ourselves before we “teach” something misleading like “take vacations”. Happily, and conveniently enough for us, the Internet has very good resources we could call “virtual donkey killers” (just kidding, the phrase is an invention). Among them, we can find dictionaries and thesaurus. However, the tool I have found extremely useful to clear any doubts (like the one on “take vacations”) is the Collocations Dictionary. Here you can enter a word and in return the dictionary will give you the possible word combinations, or collocations.

Have a field trip using the dictionary…and learning more.

Free online resources for teachers

This summer I decided to give a touch of technology to my class, but without spending money. I knew and have used Moodle , probably the most popular educational platform, so I performed a simple search that tipped me to the site freemoodle.org where you can host a class for free, provided it is open to everybody. I requested and was granted permission to create a course.

So far, the experience has had its ups and downs. On the lighter side, I can tell you Moodle is a great tool. You can upload any kind of material: text, video, audio, photo, pdf, word, excel, ppt, Hot Potatoes, links, YouTube, you name it! Then, the functionalities it offers are improving all the time. Right now, you can create online quizzes where you can determine the timing of the test, the kind of feedback you give, and then the score goes directly to the Grade Book so your students (and you, with the downloadable grade book facility) can have the record of grades at hand. There are other tools available for the curious teacher who wants to spend some time exploring the platform.

On the other hand, the time you spend on creating a course might be a problem. Specially if you are not familiar with the tool: you have to learn the ropes first! Then, you have to really become a pain in the neck with your students to get them to use the tool. Happily I have achieved this, but there still some who are waiting to the last moment to come an say: Sorry, teacher, I didn´t know. You know what I mean!

Another tool I am using (again really) is Markin4. This free programme lets you mark written texts by inserting notes and commentaries into it. Then you save the corrected work in a browser compatible file and send it to your student so s/he can see the feedback. You can ask your students to write a composition, send it to you on the email and when you got it, you copy/ paste it onto the Markin4window and viola! You are marking the text online.

I hope you find these tools as useful and exciting as I have. I assure you will be fascinated!

Comics in my class? You bet!

Last Friday 20, we attended the interesting workshop “Making the most of comics in the ELT class” by Peter David and organized by the Regional English Language Office of the United States Embassy in Lima. The talk by Mr David was followed by an interesting hands-on session led by David Fay, RELO Andes, and Patricio Rivas, a teacher at ICPNA Cuzco.

To be honest, I attended the event for quite selfish reasons: I am on vacation (which means I have the time), my son likes comics (especially “The Walking Dead,” of which he is such a great fan that he made me buy the Compendium, a one-thousand-page collection of the comic series, on Amazon), and a writer´s curiosity about the creative process involved in the writing of the plots of comics (most of you might know that I am a writer myself so this kind of input is attractive for me, specially if the presenter is such a personality).  Peter is not a teacher, he made it clear at the beginning of his talk, so he aimed at the creative side of the comics writing process: the script writing conventions and problems (he told us really funny anecdotes), the different types of speech balloons used in comics, etc. For me, the 90 minutes I spent listening to him were worth the time.

In the second part, David Fay gave us ideas on how to use comics in class: Ordering panels, filling in speech balloons with both pre-written dialogue and new dialogue, adding speech balloons. He used actual student-made comics from around the world. Patricio continued on this path and had us actually draw a comic starting from the simple and traditional short story theory that says a story starts with a problem and ends with the solution of the problem.

The  material given to us had really good pointers for those of us who want to experiment with comics. The theory behind using them, how the create our own comics (if we are not the artistic type) and ready-made comics we can use in class. Below, you will find a selection of some of the web sites you can explore further.

Finally, we were re-introduced to the new online English learning game Trace Effects –still a beta version but soon to be officially launched. Learn all about it at: http://reloandes.com/2012/06/24/english-through-states-new-computer-game/

In short, the event was inspiring and gave us a new area to experiment with. If you do experiment with comics in your class, we would love to hear about it.

Theory:

http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives/docs/06-44-1-f.pdf

http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives/docs/07-45-3-b.pdf (By David Fay!)

Making your cartoons:

http://www.toondoo.com

http://stripgenerator.com/

http://www.writecomics.com/

Where to find comics.

http://www.gocomics.com/

http://www.onlinecomics.net/pages/

Trace Effects: The State Department’s new instructional computer game

The US State Department has launched a new PC Game to study English.
The Regional English Language Office informs about it: HERE.

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

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.