ESLweblog

This article would be a good addition to a discussion or activity on Mother’s Day, which would itself fit nicely into a larger activity on cultural differences in families, family roles, etc.

I’m not sure to what extent this western concept of Mother’s Day has traveled, but it’s certainly a big deal here in Taiwan. So, assuming that the western Mother’s Day is not recognized in most cultures, a question would be whether there’s anything remotely similar, i.e., a recognition of mothers, women, coming of age for women, etc., in the cultures of activity participants.

As a note, I was not familiar with the origin of Mother’s Day until I read this story.

Mother’s Day celebration reaches 100th anniversary - Yahoo! News

Mother’s Day celebration reaches 100th anniversary

By APRIL VITELLO, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 26 minutes ago

GRAFTON, W.Va. - On this 100th anniversary of Mother’s Day, the woman credited with creating one of the world’s most celebrated holidays probably wouldn’t be pleased with all the flowers, candy or gifts.

Anna Jarvis would want us to give mothers a white carnation — she felt it signified the purity of a mother’s love.

Read the rest of the article at Mother’s Day celebration reaches 100th anniversary - Yahoo! News

The script npr.py (see link below) is a great tool if you want to download authentic listening material from NPR and save it in mp3 format. The script wasn’t working for a while due to a change in how NPR was formatting their pages, but the author has obviously made the appropriate updates.

Mike Pickering’s Website - npr.py

The following probably doesn’t have much to offer as material for the ESL teacher, but it is of general interest to language professionals and other educators:

Study: Dyslexia differs by language - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON - Dyslexia affects different parts of children’s brains depending on whether they are raised reading English or Chinese. That finding, reported in Monday’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, means that therapists may need to seek different methods of assisting dyslexic children from different cultures.

This is a promising application. This is the only free voice message board I’m aware of. The most popular commercial product, Wimba, seems to work better, but then it’s only really affordable for large departments.

I’ve played around with NanoGong only a little, and I’ve had some trouble getting it to work on a Linux client, but I’m very happy to see that they’re still working on it. I’ll probably put some serious effort into getting it to work on my server in the coming years. Here’s the link:

NanoGong - Home

PS: If you’re familiar with other free or low cost voice message boards, please let me know at dan@eslweb.net or by posting a comment to this blog. (Comments will show up within a day or so of being posted.)

I need to get around to finishing this article soon:

Water boys | Health and wellbeing | Life and Health

The following could be used as the basis for a discussion on ethics. Other questions to consider would be with regards to situations in which a cashier gives you too much change, you see someone drop their wallet, etc.

My guess is that most people would return a wallet if they saw somebody drop it, maybe fewer would return too much change given, while even fewer would return extra money given by a machine.

ATM gives shoppers double-money windfall - Yahoo! News

A cash machine became a big hit this week after it started paying out twice as much money as it should.

The following were allegedly taken from actual church bulletins. Regardless of their authenticity, they do make for a humorous lessen on idioms, verb phrases, and ambiguity.

1. The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.
2. The sermon this morning: ‘Jesus Walks on Water.’ The sermon tonight: ‘Searching for Jesus.’
3. Our youth basketball team is back in action Wednesday at 8 PM in the recreation hall. Come out and watch us kill Christ the King.
4. Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.
5. The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been canceled due to a conflict.
6. Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say ‘Hell’ to someone who doesn’t care much about you.
7. Don’t let worry kill you off - let the Church help.
8. Miss Charlene Mason sang ‘I will not pass this way again,’ giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.
9. For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
10. Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.
11. The Rector will preach his farewell message after which the choir will sing: ‘Break Forth Into Joy.’
12. Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.
13. A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.
14. At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be ‘What Is Hell?’ Come early and listen to our choir practice.
15. Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.
16. Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.
17. Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.
18. The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.
19. Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM - prayer and medication to follow.
20. The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.
21. This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.
22. Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B.S. Is done.
23. The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.
24. Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.
25. The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.
26. Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance.
27. The Associate Minister unveiled the church’s new tithing campaign slogan Last Sunday: ‘I Upped My Pledge - Up Yours’

New image technique could allow scanners to read minds | Science | guardian.co.uk

This article is too difficult for use in class ‘out of the box’, but the premise of one day scanning people’s brains for ‘thought crimes’ would seem to hold a lot of promise of in-class activities, almost certain to turn humorous. An activity might take the form of one of those games where you tape something to your forehead without looking at it and have some sort of interaction with the person across from you who also has information taped to their forehead. (This is also a form of poker.)

The article below could be part of a unit on adoption and types of families:

Twins unwittingly got married in Britain - Yahoo! News

Powered by ScribeFire.

The article linked below gave me the idea for the following upper-intermediate activity.

Russians rescued after missing for 3 months - Yahoo! News

Activity

1. Students get into groups of 3-5. The premise for this activity is that each group is stranded in a remote location.
2. The teacher has prepared a set of cards for each aspect of the groups’ ordeals:
   1. Situation leading to the stranding (boat wreck, lost, hot air balloon goes off course and lands, etc.)
   2. Environment in which the group is stranded
   3. Season
   4. 1 ‘lucky break’, which would be the equivalent of the group in the story above finding an abandoned army base near where they were stranded at which they found some flour. Other ‘lucky breaks’ might include items that could be fashioned into weapons for hunting or into shelter.
3. The teacher has prepared a variety of items for each of the above 1-4. Students then randomly draw a card for each number 1-4, which could result in some interesting situations (a downed hot air balloon in the arctic, for example.)
4. Each group then discusses what course of action to take. They need to come up with a plan for their immediate (24-48 hour) survival and a strategy regarding how to deal with the possibility of an extended stay in their environment.
5. Finally, each group shares their situation and strategies with the class.

A variation on this activity would be a ‘5×5′ exercise, in which, for a class of 25 for example, students get into initial groups of 5. In this case, the whole class is in the same situation. Each student is handed a unique card containing some information regarding environment, available tools, health and skills of stranded people, etc.

In the initial groups, members share the contents of their cards (which ideally they have committed to memory so the cards can be retrieved, forcing them to speak rather than simply show their cards to each other), and start collaborating on strategy.

After sufficient time, a member from each group becomes a member of a new group, so that each new group has a representative from each of the previous groups. The members of the new groups share all their information, and continue working on strategy with the new information that each member has acquired.

This is an old setup that I call ‘5×5′, but it would obviously work with any class the size of which mostly closely approximates a number squared (9, 16, 25, etc.). I’m not sure who is responsible for the original design of this type of activity. It’s a bit of a complicated information gap type activity, and it takes some explaining, but students seem to catch on to it pretty quickly.