Tuesday, February 22, 2011

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Welcome!

Welcome to this blog. It's not my first, but hopefully it was continue for longer than my Spanish diary (which lasted for about 4 posts over 1 month).

Let me explain what I want to do here. I've invited you to this blog because you are all learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL students). Some of you are intermediate, some of you are advanced (and some of you are perhaps even more advanced than I am!). But you all have a similar experience - you made a decision to learn English, which for you is a non-native language.

I am going down to Argentina next month to work with a school where I will be the only native-English speaker (all the other teachers are Argentinian). I am very excited by this opportunity because I expect I will learn about English language teaching from a completely different perspective.

But why should I learn about this by myself? AND, why should I wait until I get to Argentina? With your help, I can start now. And I think you will benefit from this as well.

So, what will I, Gordon, do in this blog?

I am going to ask you about your experiences and your opinions about various aspects of learning English.

What will I get?
  • More understanding of my students (both old and new) and what they thought and think about their English learning.
  • Some ideas about effective ways to teach specific parts of English
  • More contact with all of you - friends I have made around the world.
What will you get?
  • An opportunity to practise your English by writing replies and reading other people's replies.
  • Perhaps a cultural education - I hope that friends and students from Mexico, France, German, Turkey, Spain, Italy, Oman, Korea and Thailand will all be able to join in. That's lots of different cultures and traditions. Lots of different attitudes about learning and education.
  • A better understanding of how you, personally, learn a language. If you can understand your own learning style and preferences, then you can learn more and faster.
  • Some funny stories from me (I hope) and from other people who contribute (more likely).
  • Perhaps some new friends.
  • Another way to procrastinate and avoid work. :-D
So, hopefully, this will continue for a while and maybe, MAYBE will become part of your daily (or at least weekly) routine.

I am VERY interested to hear about your opinions and experiences so please, don't be shy. The only rule that I will put here is that people must be nice to each other (except me, you can be horrible to me if you really want). ;-)

14 comments:

  1. GREAT IDEA GORDON!!!!! I`LL TRY TO KEEP IN TOUCH MORE OFTEN BY THIS MEAN. CONGRATULATIONS!!!

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  2. Thanks Victor. Hope you can help to build this - I need help from my fellow teachers. :-)

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  3. Gordon I think this is such a nice thing for you to do.!
    I have to say, that I am verry sorry that we havent been able to meet recently, something always comes across..
    anyway.

    Chating with you was one way to improve my english!
    so... thank you

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  4. Well hopefully this will work and you won't just improve your English with me but with many other contributors from around the world. :-)

    Remember to talk about your experience with grammar when you were learning English in Mexico!

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  5. Hello Everybodyyyy..
    Great idea from a great Teacher!!!
    I am so happy that You've started this blog.
    You should have done this before !!!
    I'll share my experiences about learning english...
    Keep posted,You'll be followed :):)

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  6. Congrats Gordon! What a good idea! I could say I mainly improved my English by reading books in English. Of course I went o an English course but after learning the basics in the course I needed to continue learning and learn more. So, I read. The first novel was very difficult despite the fact that it was a bestseller and tha language was not that complicated. After 3 or 4 books it got easier and easier. It's been more than two decades and I am still learning! It's true! :)

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  7. HI Gordon may I say that this is such a good idea for studying English as two way communication both reading and writing. I hope I could use your blog for improving my speaking and listening skill as well. About learning English, I would say practice is require.

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  8. Günceci, that's interesting. I wonder what you mean when you say "the basics". How do you define "the basics" of English?

    Hmm, this is a topic for a future discuss - "how we deal with reading" - you are obviously very patient to read and read in English. You said that your first novel was difficult, which one was it?

    Reading is a subject that I want to talk about in a few weeks. Please make sure you come back for that discussion. And thanks for supporting the blog.

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  9. Fon, thanks for the support! As for your recommendation "practice is required", I would agree - that's something your teachers in Portsmouth were telling you everyday. :-P

    I'd love to hear your views on how you felt about 'learning grammar'. So don't be shy about posting in that discussion as well. :-)

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  10. HI, mate how are you ?
    good to make this idea for us to let us practising the language. however,will try to give my idea and my point of view about learning English.
    thank mate for your gr8 idea

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  11. Hay gordon how have you been?
    I am glad to hear you again
    In my opinion, international students who are looking to study English are preferring general language that can help them to deal with people in daily life more than formal language.In addition, students should find out the meaning of any English word by another word
    english
    I hope these points can help you
    Best Regards
    Talal

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  12. Talal, your point about finding the meanings of words in English with other words in English is very familiar - did I mention it in class? :-)

    This method of learning is very easy if you are living in an English-speaking country. Immersion, where everything you do in the day is in English, is obviously the quickest way to learn a language. If you are lucky and you can move to another country then this means learning another language will probably be easier (not easy, but easier) but unfortunately lots of people don't have this opportunity.

    Hopefully we can talk about and help both types of learner in this blog.

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  13. I HOPE EVERYTHING ARE GOING WELL AND YOU ARE FINE SOME TIMES I AM STRUGGLING WITH MY LANGUAGE AND IT DOESN'T IMPROVE SO WHAT DO YOU THINK I SHOULD DO MORE TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM?
    THANK MASTER

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  14. Mohammed. The English Language is a huge subject to study. I am certainly not a master of all of it.

    You need to look at your life and your English and decide where your English is not good enough. Are you struggling with a specific skill, like listening or speaking? Or are you struggling with a specific range of vocabulary or a particular grammar point?

    When you can answer these questions, then you will have a better idea how to focus yourself to fix those specific problems. Or, at least, you will be able to give your favourite teacher a more specific problem to try and solve. :-)

    In teaching, we call this "needs analysis". We identify what English and English skills a student needs, why he or she needs it, and what English does the student already have?

    Does that help you at all? Let me know.

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