Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

My learner  loved the book Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, suggested by the leader of the intermediate to advanced discussion group.  The following site includes useful information for discussion for a tutor.  

 http://www.randomhouse.com/anchor/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385722209&view=rg

A film was made based on the novel.  Another article includes discussion questions and differences between a film and a book which open up discussion points for things kept and not kept and why.

Re the film

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balzac_and_the_Little_Chinese_Seamstress_(film)#Awards_and_nominations

Particularly meaningful for a Chinese learner, but appropriate for any
person.

Health Stories

  Health Stories

 

Literacy, Low Beginning, and High Beginning

Written specifically for adults to master the idiosyncrasies of the U.S. healthcare system, Health Stories provides engaging stories and multi-skill lessons to ESL learners to have better access to good health care for themselves and their families, understand and deal with common health problems, and develop the language skills needed to communicate effectively with healthcare professionals. The lessons offer a contextualized presentation and practice of basic language skills, combined with critical thinking and communicative activities, with a focus on reading, speaking and vocabulary development, and listening. There is no sequential order of the lessons, allowing for instructional flexibility.

Student Books

Each Student Book offers skill development and presentation of basic health information in the context of an engaging story. Students will feel comfortable scanning the illustrations, which encourage groups and classroom discussions and elicit vocabulary. Dialogues model interaction with a healthcare provider so that learners can practice the language they can use in authentic interactions, including those conducted by phone. The books are filled with realia, discussion questions, activities, and vocabulary exercises to reinforce key terms and concepts. An Answer Key is provided so that students can check their own activities. (Each Student Book is 96 pages)

 Courtesy of New Readers Press

Find Health Stories in the Newton Free Library’s Literacy Collection: LIT 613 G34T

P I Z A Z Z

P I Z A Z Z

People Interested in Zippy And Zany Zcribbling

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Eleslieob/pizzaz.html

Oregon Web Site a Boon to ESL Instructors

By Tom Mueller

The hardest thing about this Website is entering the long URL intoyour browser. But if you save it as afavorite, you’ll only have to do that once!  The site achieves its author’s goal,which is to provide an easy-to navigate site full of simple, creative writing and oral storytelling activities. You even get handouts for use with English-as-a-second language(ESL) students of all ages and at all skill levels—beginning through advanced. Permission is given to use these resources for in-class, nonprofit use.  Author Leslie Opp-Beckman teaches at the Universityof Oregon and its American English Institute. She has set up this site with links both to lesson plans that she has designed (or borrowed with authors’permissions) or to lists of supporting sites to help you design your own activities. For example, if you go to the poetry section and click the Persona Poems link, you will find a template for students to follow in developing their own eight-line poems that say some things about themselves. This is great for pairwork and is a good way for students to exchange information about themselves at the beginning of a class or semester. Take a peek inside the bag of tricks section and you’ll find links such as Writing Roulette and Rolls of Fun. The former lists sites containing word games that can be used as story-sparkers for authors of all ages.The latter contains a zany icebreaker activity where students race against the clock to write as many words as possible on a roll of toilet paper.

Tom Mueller has 20 years of experience as a literacy practitioner. He works as an ABE/GED teacher for a health care workers’ union inSyracuse, N.Y. 

Courtesy of Proliteracy America

The English Language

You Think English is Easy?


1) The bandage was wound around the wound. 2) The farm was used to produce produce.

 

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

 

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present , he thought it was time to present the present

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

 

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

 

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

 

We take English for granted But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

 

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

 

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. – Why doesn’t “Buick” rhyme with “quick”

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is “UP.”

 It’s easy to understand UP , meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car . At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special .And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP . We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP ! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP , look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP , you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP . When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP . When it doesn’t rain for awhile, things dry UP .One could go on and on, but I’ll wrap it UP ,

 

for now my time is UP , so……….. it is time to shut UP…..!  

Backward Buildup

Some sentences are just too long for English-as-a-second-language students to repeat correctly the first time. They may have no problem at the beginning but have trouble near the end. The backward buildup technique for repeating long sentences provides more practice where the problems are — at the end.

In the following sentence, We’re going to the supermarket to buy meat and vegetables for dinner, students often repeat the first two phrases correctly but stumble on the third. And they usually can’t remember the fourth.To use the backward buildup technique, first divide the sentence into phrases: We’re going / to the supermarket / to buy meat and vegetables / for dinner.  Start on the last phrase, proceeding backward from there. Use a natural stress and intonation pattern for each phrase.

Tutor: for dinner

Student: for dinner

Tutor: to buy meat and vegetables for dinner

Student: to buy meat and vegetables for dinner

Tutor: to the supermarket to buy meat and vegetables for dinner

Student: to the supermarket to buy meat and vegetables for dinner

Tutor: We’re going to the supermarket to buy meat and vegetables for dinner.

Student: We’re going to the supermarket to buy meat and vegetables for dinner.

This technique can be used with lower-level students who have trouble with shorter sentences, but it is particularly helpful as students begin to work with longer sentences.

Adapted from I Speak English, by Ruth J. Colvin, p. 80. Available from New Readers Press

Courtesy of Proliteracy America

Newspapers make good teacher

By Heidi Stephens, Developmental Editor, News for You

It’s hard to find any teaching tool more relevant or authentic than a newspaper. Here are three activities to consider when planning lessons:

1) Send students on a “treasure hunt” to find grammatical structures. Give them a sheet that lists the structures they should find (e.g., three present-tense verbs, three past tense verbs, three adjectives, three proper nouns, one abbreviation, and a comparative adjective).

2) Have learners rewrite headlines in the form of complete sentences, using proper capitalization and punctuation.

3) Choose a photo in the newspaper. Without showing the caption or having them read the article, ask learners to write a few lines about the photo.

 

The full version of this article can be found on the ProLiteracy America Web site. Visit the Online Information Center located in the Resource Room and click on the Tutoring link.

Courtesy of Proliteracy America

June Display

Don’t miss Legacy for Literacy’s 2007 June Display in the 3 glass cases on the first floor and the 2 glass cases on the second floor at the Library.  Since we are working on our Memoir Writing Project this year, learners contributed objects, pictures, and writings which evoke personal memories.