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LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
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 Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 7:04 am Post subject: |
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| Glenski wrote: |
| Smartboards are pretty darned expensive ... as for iPads..., show me a large population of students who are willing to shell out the money for them |
You're right but this is China! This is the 2nd private school in a row I've worked for now with eboards (Smartboard is a tradename),--they're arriving this week. Apple products went from virtually non-existent 2 yrs ago to ubiquitious. My 4 adult students all have iPhones and at least one has an iPad.
I absolutely agree about the practicalities.. It's why I left Longman Schools--they rely exclusively on the tech and their name to substantiate extremely high tuition. Longman does publish some reasonably good courseware but for some strange reason, it's not available for their eboards. |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 7:22 am Post subject: |
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| Denim-Maniac wrote: |
| I wish there was a similar publishing industry built around learning other lanuages, specifically Chinese, as I havent yet found any learning source for China that comes anywhere near matching the material I teach English with. |
I'd be genuinely interested to know what sort of books you've learnt (or tried learning) Chinese from, DM. If the books that I'd used to learn Chinese were anything like as thin and needing-a-teacher as most ELT textbooks, I shudder to think of how much worse my Mandarin would be. (For what it's worth, I rate Scurfield's Teach Yourself Chinese/Complete Mandarin Chinese course, and even moreso T'ung & Pollard's Colloquial Chinese course, very highly, but would still supplement them with one of Yip & Rimmington's, or perhaps Ross's, grammar books, and a range of dictionaries starting with the Oxford Beginner's. FWIW, the postgrad dip in Mandarin that I took had the original Practical Chinese Reader I & II as its core textbook - perhaps the TCFL equivalent of our so-so TEFL textbooks - though it used to use some of DeFrancis' books until those became too expensive to justify buying. Personally I'd've been happier had they used the original CC or even TYC course to cover the spoken basics, but I assume the original CC one was sort of off-limits due to it having been developed at and by SOAS, a competing provider of postgrad Chinese provision, and luckily the inferior Kan Qian version of CC hadn't yet been published back then. Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I think it always pays if the student invests in more than the bare minimum required by the school or teacher).
"Bonus" (just cos it made me laugh):
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5.0 out of 5 stars Mandarin made easy - er, 14 Aug 2008
By M. A. Kelly "Wild eyed loner on the edge of o... (Milton Keynes Centre of the Universe) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Collins Easy Learning Audio Course - Mandarin (Audio CD)
I ordered this as my daughter is adopted from China and we thought It would be fun to learn some mandarin.
It wasn't.
It was hard.
Very Hard.
However , thats not really the fault of this very easy to understand guide which was concise and informative and more the fault of a fat slow man coming late to the language and a small cute girl who'd rather be playing on her bike.
However I was quite good at German and French at school so maybe i'd give their other guides a go as for the money I really couldn't fault it. |
( http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RF1KYPS51QZOD/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=000727176X&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode= )
Last edited by fluffyhamster on Tue Feb 28, 2012 12:38 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Glenski
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Posts: 12844
Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN
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| Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 12:39 pm Post subject: |
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| LongShiKong wrote: |
| Glenski wrote: |
| Smartboards are pretty darned expensive ... as for iPads..., show me a large population of students who are willing to shell out the money for them |
You're right but this is China! This is the 2nd private school in a row I've worked for now with eboards (Smartboard is a tradename) |
Private schools may be an exception to a degree. Keep that in mind.
As for iPhones, how are you planning to use them with your adult students, beyond giving them a podcast here and there?
iPads are thought to be godsends to some people here in Japan. Some think they are going to do away with chalkboards and such, especially in elementary school, but I say wait. Other than your rich schools, what school can afford 30-40 of them for each class? And, even though kiddies pick up things like that technology quickly, unless one has an actual plan and software that everyone uses consistently, they will just be a novelty that can break easily, IMO. |
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LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
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| Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Glenski wrote: |
As for iPhones, how are you planning to use them with your adult students, beyond giving them a podcast here and there? |
Good question! I don't have one but my students have copied our courseware audio CDs onto them and taught each other how to vary playback speed. I'm hoping to eventually have them record oral assignments with them. [/quote]
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| Other than your rich schools, what school can afford 30-40 of them for each class? And, even though kiddies pick up things like that technology quickly, unless one has an actual plan and software that everyone uses consistently, they will just be a novelty that can break easily, IMO. |
How about those in developing countries? India plans to distribute 100s of millions of the low-cost ($52) Cdn-designed Akash tablets to students there. And Africa's also placing orders. I think they too come with a hardened glass surface. |
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Denim-Maniac
Joined: 31 Jan 2012
Posts: 1238
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| Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 11:28 pm Post subject: |
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MOD EDIT
My learn Chinese library currently contains the Basic Grammar workbook by Yip and Rimmington. Far too dry for me. The structures contained in it are useful but have so many new lexical items that my failure to complete it is due to that rather than anything else.
I also have two of the Conversational Chinese books published by Beijing Language and Culture University Press, which are labelled as 'the most popular Chinese textbook for foreigners all over the world at present'.
My grammar book is 'An essential grammar' by Yip and Rimmington.
All of the above were/are trumped by the Open Universities course material for Beginners Chinese, which presented information in a far clearer way with more structured activities, simple grammar explanations etc...(although the CDs werent great) but Ive finished that and am struggling to move on to the next level.
I have a solid but small base of Chinese...but dont have enough of a base to naturally accrue language. My speaking is great, my listening is terrible. |
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LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
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| Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 6:07 pm Post subject: |
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MOD EDIT
How many of you feel ELT academia simply doesn't serve us? I'm the first to admit I don't read much of what they write--and yet I've learned a lot more indirectly from many of you--thanks Fluffy et al. 
But as I've pointed out, we're not the only ones. Publishers seem oblivious of ELT research and judging by what they publish, private schools, even more so--the local title I used at Longman School and the ones I'm using now completely exemplify this ignorance.
Even more distant from academia are 'methodists': Pimmsleur, Rosetta Stone, Berlitz, New Concept English--trapped in time or constrained by theory like some Mennonite community living in a perpetual past. I've even accused Japan of being rigidly retrogressive:
Is Japan still 'old-school' in TEFL methods?
But correct me if I'm wrong--hasn't academia come to embrace a mix rather than any one method? Anyway, I understand cognitive science is providing new insights into how, for example, listening skills can be (better) taught but overall, I feel applied linguistics is still largely an ivory tower affair. |
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Denim-Maniac
Joined: 31 Jan 2012
Posts: 1238
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| Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 11:38 pm Post subject: |
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Agree - and this (and the money of course) is the main reason I havent done an MA in TESOL or Applied Linguistics. From things I read, and from people I have spoken to, I dont really see how higher levels of academic study really relate to the majority of my teaching contexts. Quite often I found my 'English Grammar in Context' BA module was study for the sake of study and MA study (or higher) would be worse IMO.
When I think of the academic study...I just imagine whispy haired professors poring over 40,000 transcribed words on conversation, or spending hours looking at case studies of language acquisition in children of bi-lingual families who probably (possibly) have no clue on actually teaching a class of 15 German teenagers who have 10 days of English classes in summer camp. |
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Mr. Kalgukshi
Mod Team
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
Posts: 6613
Location: Need to know basis only.
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| Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:01 am Post subject: |
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Future postings regarding Moderator actions will result in sanctions of the severe variety.
Es verdad. |
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