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!

Pronunciation Journey

Tuesday - July 10th, 2012
By: 
Mark Hancock
Annie McDonald - hancockmcdonald.com/about-us/annie-mcdonald

Brazilian learners often fail to make a clear distinction between pairs of words such as tax-taxi. This is because in their own language, unstressed final syllables are often so reduced that they are almost inaudible, and they transfer this to English.

Dangerous Dictation n.2

Friday - June 22nd, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Pron-Puzzles - hancockmcdonald.com/blog/topic/pron-puzzles
Dangerous Dictations are puzzles which depend on word-boundary confusions. For example, 'Bow Tie' sounds exactly like 'Boat Eye', because you can't be sure whether the /t/ sound is the end of 'Boat' or the start of 'Tie'. This could lead to dictation errors. The puzzle for your students is to identify and explain the error.
  • Pronunciation

Dangerous Dictation n.1

Friday - June 22nd, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Pron-Puzzles - hancockmcdonald.com/blog/topic/pron-puzzles
Dangerous Dictations are puzzles which depend on word-boundary confusions. For example, 'The Great Ape' sounds exactly like 'The Grey Tape', because you can't be sure whether the /t/ sound is the end of 'Great' or the start of 'Tape'. This could lead to dictation errors. The puzzle for your students is to identify and explain the error.
  • Pronunciation

What's New?

Friday - June 22nd, 2012
By: 
Mark Hancock
Annie McDonald
- hancockmcdonald.com/node
A pairwork activity in which students and their partners describe their pictures and find the differences. The pictures are so designed as to contextualize and elicit the present perfect tense, such as 'I've failed my exam'.

What Happened?!

Thursday - June 14th, 2012
By: 
Mark Hancock
- hancockmcdonald.com/node
Let your class get creative with funny pictures from the internet. This is a story-telling activity based on pictures from the internet. You will need to either print the pictures or project them in class. You may use the example pictures provided here or else find your own.

Rome or Home?

Monday - June 11th, 2012
By: 
Mark Hancock
brazilian pronunciation

This is a pronunciation game for Brazil, focusing on the confusion between the sounds spelt by R and H, so that for example 'rat' sounds like 'hat'.

Silent Stories: using pictures in ELT

Speaker: 
Mark Hancock
Annie McDonald
Event date: 
Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - 13:30
Venue: 
Braz-TESOL, room 803
Location: 
Rio de Janeiro
Extra info: 
Plus downloads
Silent Stories: using pictures in ELT - hancockmcdonald.com/talks/silent-stories-using-pictures-elt

Pictures are like silent stories. Silent because they are non-verbal. Stories, because they are pregnant with content to talk about. For these two reasons alone, they are extremely useful in English language teaching. In this talk, we explain these and more advantages of pictures, as well as demonstrating different activity types for use in the classroom.

  • General
  • Materials design

Pronunciation as a listening skill: understanding authentic English (Sweden)

Speaker: 
Mark Hancock
Event date: 
Tuesday, August 14, 2012 - 11:00 to Wednesday, August 15, 2012 - 11:15
Location: 
Sweden (Gothenburg & Stockholm)
Website: 
Utbildningsstaden
Extra info: 
Plus downloads
Talks - hancockmcdonald.com/talks

Pronunciation is just as important for listening as for speaking. In this workshop, we looked at how to help learners to understand authentic English by focusing on pronunciation. Specifically, we looked at features of connected speech and accent. You can download the slides and handout for the talk below.

  • Listening
  • Pronunciation

Mark Hancock in Badajoz, May 4th

Saturday - May 5th, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Blog - hancockmcdonald.com/blog

I talked about "Motivation: the inside story" in Badajoz on May 4th.  Here are materials from the talk, just click on the links and while you're here, take a look around and leave some feedback! And see the PDF downloads below for the handout.

Watery World

Thursday - April 19th, 2012
By: 
Mark Hancock
ELT Materials: Watery World Quiz

The general knowledge quiz will get your students listening intently for 10 minutes. The ten questions contain plenty of repetition and redundancy to help students get there in the end, even if they miss a bit along the way. Read it aloud yourself or use the mp3 provided.

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