“I’m a volunteer at a local library here who helps some advanced ESL students with their English.  I don’t actually have a conversation class, per se, but what I do is help them develop their ability to understand fast speech.  We also work on their pronunciation as well.  A more detailed description of what we do follows.

First, in preparation for the class, I go to www.youtube.com to find a fairly short video clip.  Then I write out a transcript of what they say in the video.  Then at the beginning of our class we watch the video one time (maybe twice), then I read the transcript with the students.  I’ll read the first sentence (or the first part of a long sentence), make sure they know all the words, then ask each student to repeat it after me.  Each students reads it in turn.  When they read, if there is a glaring weakness in their pronunciation I’ll point it out.  If they have a question, I’ll answer it.  I’ll also point out any peculiarities in the pronunciation of a word or phrase if there’s something peculiar about how that word or phrase is pronounced.  For example, some three-syllable words are pronounced as two-syllable words, such as “family,” “chocolate,” “different,” “camera”, etc, and that a stop (the “t” and “d” are the most common) in the middle of a consonant cluster is often silent, such as in the words “softball” and “Christmas”).

Anyway, we’ll go through a couple of paragraphs like that, sentence by sentence, then read the entire section as a whole (me first, then each student in turn), then we’ll listen to that part of the video a couple of times.  Sometimes, if there are two actors in a scene from a movie, two of my students will read the lines of each of these two actors.

We’ll then return to the transcript and go over the next few paragraphs in the same way.  After we’ve read all of the sections of the transcript and listened to them on the video, then we’ll go over the entire transcript once more.  Then we’ll watch the entire video in its entirety (and sometimes more than once — whatever the students want).

Then the next time we meet, I’ll play all of the videos that we covered in the previous lesson one more time.

The videos and transcripts that I use during the class are all available online at the following link:
http://www.englishbaby.com/blog/gohoos02/view_entry/62450

This link takes you to the first blog entry, which is the introduction.  The videos there are short.  To see more blog entries with longer videos (there are more than 40 videos and transcripts on the blog now), just click on the link to the right that says View All Entries From My Blog.”

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,100 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Languages covered include

• Cambodian Khmer
• Chinese 简体中文/繁體中文
• Hmong Hmoob
• Japanese 日本語
• Korean 한국어
• Laotian Lao
• Thai ภาษาไทย
• Vietnamese Tiếng Việt

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ (includes information in other languages, an easy to use medical dictionary, and an ‘easy to read’ version – look at the bottom right corner of the home page for links)

http://www.healthyroadsmedia.org/ (Basic medical information in multiple languages – all presented at the top of the home page in banner format)

http://www.npsf.org/askme3/ (site promoting clear communication between care providers and patients)

Vocab Ahead-Vocabulary Videos
http://www.vocabahead.com/Videos/tabid/58/Default.aspx

WordSpy
At Wordspy, Paul McFedries tracks published neologisms (new word creations, many of which are slang and/or linguistic blends).
http://www.wordspy.com/

Visual Thesaurus
The website allows you to create a visual representation of synonyms for a specific word.
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/

http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 9,800 times in 2010. That’s about 24 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 8 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 55 posts.

The busiest day of the year was July 14th with 94 views. The most popular post that day was 52 More Discussion Topics.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were newtonfreelibrary.net, en.wordpress.com, search.conduit.com, bigextracash.com, and minlib.net.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for good discussion topics, discussion topics for kids, discussion topics for young people, interchange, and good topics for discussion.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

52 More Discussion Topics June 2007
1 comment

Teaching Pronunciation to Adult English Language Learners August 2009
2 comments

The Idiom Book: 1010 Idioms in 101 Two-Page Photocopiable Lessons November 2007

A-Z Sentences July 2007

How to Teach Students to Read and Spell Sight Words July 2007

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