Mark Hancock

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Mark Hancock

Mark Hancock - hancockmcdonald.com/node/2/edit

I got my first teaching job in 1984, working at a large boy's secondary school in El Obeid, Sudan. This experience made it very clear to me that there's a lot more to teaching English than just being able to speak the language!

BRAZ-TESOL: a talk on CEFR for teachers

Friday - July 20th, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Braz-tesol - hancockmcdonald.com/taxonomy/term/124/feed
“Transforming the CEFR guidelines into teaching activities” (Janaina Pietroluongo) Janaina began by outlining what the Council of Europe is, as opposed to the European Commission. She went on to put forward the argument that was the main thrust of her talk: that it is a great mistake to view the CEFR as prescriptive. In fact, it is intended to be learner-centred.

BRAZ-TESOL: Plenary “Challenges, trends and aspirations in ELT” (Brock Brady)

Thursday - July 19th, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Blog - hancockmcdonald.com/blog
Brock Brady spoke as past president of TESOL about the irony that demand for ELT is on the up and up, and yet the pressures on the profession threaten to bring standards lower and lower. Among these pressures is the assumption that simply knowing the language as a native speaker is sufficient. ELT is not valued as a profession – and not paid as one either.

BRAZ-TESOL: a talk on attitudes to technology among teachers and students

Thursday - July 19th, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Blog - hancockmcdonald.com/blog
“Changes in teachers’ profile affecting the use of technology” (Janaina Cardoso) Janaina presented demographic change in terms of the generational classification “Baby boomers” (pre-1965), “Generation X” (1965 – 1980), “Generation Y” (1981-1999) and “Generation Z” (2000-now). She made the point that Generation Y, previously researched as being today’s students, have now become today’s teachers.

BRAZ-TESOL: a talk on listening/reading skills

Thursday - July 19th, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Blog - hancockmcdonald.com/blog
“Activating the receptive skills: beliefs and practices versus current research” (Isabella Villas Boas and Marta Diniz de Rezende) Isabella and Marta gave us 12 statements about reading and listening skills for us to mark true or false.

BRAZ-TESOL: a listening skills workshop

Wednesday - July 18th, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock

“Enhancing students’ listening skills with authentic materials: going beyond gap-filling” (Bruna Caltabiano)Bruna began this workshop with a brainstorm session of why humans (and other animals!) listen. She led the discussion to this very human motivation, as expressed by Wilson: “We learn to listen and we listen to learn”.  

BRAZ-TESOL: a pron/listening talk

Wednesday - July 18th, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock

“English is a rhythmical language” (Susan Harris de Melo) The main thrust of Susan’s talk was that there is a great insight that teachers in Brazil are tending to overlook: that English is stress-timed and Brazilian Portuguese is syllable-timed. A consequence of this difference is that for a Brazilian, listening to English is very difficult because the grammar words tend to be swallowed.

BRAZ-TESOL: A grammar teaching workshop

Wednesday - July 18th, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock

“Creating effective learning opportunities”
(Anamaria Campanha and Sirley Trinidade Vilela Lewis)
Anamaria and Sirley are teachers at a Cultura Inglesa in Minas Gerais. Their talk represents the conclusions of a project they conducted at their school to find the most successful grammar input activities. Here are the five elements that they found to be essential:

Braz-tesol Diary

Saturday - July 14th, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Annie McDonald
Blog - hancockmcdonald.com/blog

We're leaving for the Braz-Tesol conference today. The conference timetable is still not published, so we don't yet have any idea what to expect. What we do know is that there are 4 plenaries per day making a total of 12, which must be a record!

Pronunciation Games for Brazil

Speaker: 
Mark Hancock
Ricardo Sili
Event date: 
Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - 09:30
Venue: 
Braz-tesol
Location: 
Rio de Janeiro
- hancockmcdonald.com/talks/speaker/1

In this workshop, we present a syllabus of 8 features of English pronunciation of relevance for Brazlian learners. Each of the 8 points are explained and illustrated with a pronunciation game. You can download the handout and the slide show for the talk below. The full instructions for most of the games can be found in the materials section of this site.

  • Pronunciation

Turn Words

Tuesday - July 10th, 2012
By: 
Mark Hancock
Articles and ideas - hancockmcdonald.com/ideas
Many learners want to pronounce the vowel sound in learn, bird, word, nurse differently, according to the vowel spelling. But in fact, all these words share the same vowel sound. Here's a game designed to raise their awareness of this sound and its spellings.

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