Sunday, October 21, 2012
Vocabulary: Daylight Saving Time ("Horário de verão")
As the Daylight Saving Time has just started here in Brazil, let's have a look on some useful vocabulary:
DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME ("Horário de Verão")
(also referred as 'Daylight Savings' or 'Daylight Saving Time')
SET / TURN YOUR CLOCK AHEAD
SPRING AHEAD / FORWARD
("Adiante seu relógio")
TURN YOUR CLOCK BACK / FALL BACK
("Atrase seu relógio")
SPRING FORWARD, FALL BACK
This expression refers to the season of beginning (Spring) and the end (Fall) of the Daylight Savings Time in the US and in the UK. But in Brazil it is in the Summer, that's why it's called "Horário de Verão" (something like "Summer Daylight Savings Time" or simply "Summer Time").
(A expressão "Spring Forward, Fall Back" (algo como "adiante na primavera, atrase no Outono") se refere ao início e ao fim do horário de verão nos Estados Unidos e no Reino Unido.)
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What does it stand for? Acronyms and Abbreviations in English
Marcadores:
Daylight Saving Time,
English,
Inglês,
resources,
Time,
Vocabulary
Saturday, October 20, 2012
The Ducks Go Gangnam Style (or 'what's meaningful learning?')
When I got back from Oregon after taking part on the ELCP course (read more here), one of my first actions was to talk to my students about the experience of living in the US and studying in an American University.
And, of course, I couldn't talk about the University of Oregon without mentioning "the Duck", the symbol and mascot of UO football team. The kids loved that and all the stories that followed.
That was six months ago. But, to my surprise, last Friday, the 'duck' subject arose again. One of my students come to me saying 'hey teacher, do you remember the Oregon duck you talked about? I saw it dancing 'Gangnam Style!'.
Psy and the Duck: who has more style? |
At first it sounded like an hallucination and I thought to myself 'what's this boy talking about?', but he explained before I could ask: he had seen a viral video on the Internet featuring the Oregon Duck performing the song 'Gangnam Style', an international mega-hit by the Korean pop singer PSY.
So, what's all of this has to do with teaching or learning? Well, in my view what we call 'learning' is the capability of making connections between different aspects of our experience as 'living thinking beings'. Some connections are really obvious, and based on that, we teachers create our expectations over our students as a minimum curriculum. But some connections go beyond our expectations, which leads to the creative thinking. Of course, this happens on a very personal level, but the quality of the 'input' we offer to our students is crucial for that. The more diverse this input is, the more creative can these connections be.
And then we have marvelous (maybe miraculous...) coincidences like this: a singer in Korea has this song that happens to be a worldwide phenomenon; it echoes on an Oregonian mind who comes up with this parody, that's heard and seen in a small city in the countryside of Brazil by a young boy, who had previously learned about the Oregon Ducks from his teacher and talks back to him, who's now writing about this and coming up with some ideas for a lesson plan, which means that the echo will go further and, therefore, more connections will be made.
By teaching, we learn. By learning, we teach. Both ways we make connections; both ways we get connected...
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Monday, October 15, 2012
Happy Teacher's Day
October 15th, Teacher's Day in Brazil. On a personal level, I have a lot to celebrate. I really enjoy teaching and I have very smart and nice students. But generally speaking, we teachers don't have much to cheer about.
Our Educational System still have a lot to improve and we lack more serious and long term investments. Not to mention all the obstacles educators usually have to face.
And I think that's what makes me keep a little optimistic: even with all these difficulties, we still have commited and hardworking teachers.
Believers? They might be. But by believing, they make me believe.
Happy teacher's day!
Sunday, October 14, 2012
What does it stand for? Acronyms and Abbreviations in English
When teaching or studying ESP it's very common to come across with a lot of abbreviations and acronyms .
An acronym is "a word formed from the first letters of the words that make up the name of something" (that's how it's defined by OALD, or Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary).
And in this era of micro-blogging and fast written communication, more and more acronyms are created everyday (just have a look on Twitter's "TT" (Trending Topics) and you'll see that).
In the business area, acronyms are usually an important part of the professional jargon.
When someone wants to know the meaning of an acronym the question is:'What does it stand for?'
Take a look:
'What does ESP stand for?'
'It stands for English for Specific Purposes'.
Some acronyms can make the answer to this question quite complicated. That's why it's very helpful to have some resources at hand. Besides the traditional Google search engine and the online dictionaries, there are some websites like acronymfinder.com, acronymsearch.com and abbreviations.com.
But take care because an acronym can have lots of different meanings.
For instance, I looked for "ESP" in abbreviations.com and got over a hundred definitions!
TAFN. TA. SYS!
(That's all for now. Thanks a lot. See you soon!)
You may also like: 5 tips for ESP teachers
Beyond Google Translator
Sunday, October 7, 2012
PBS: Positive Behavior Support
Have you ever given any kind of reward to your students for an accomplished task? What about giving them a prize for a positive attitude they had?
Marcadores:
Approach,
Education,
ELCP,
PBS,
Positive Behavior Support,
strategies,
Teaching,
UO
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