Counselling Unit

What did you do for Earth Hour? I had dinner by candle light at a friend's place . There were 12 people, 8 adults and 4 teenagers. We all loved it! After dinner our host gave a piano concert in the dark. What about you? Did you do anything special? Tell us about it in comments.

Congratulations on your first podcast. Read about it and listen to it here. By the way, read the statistics about Australian population according to the 2006 census.

• Let's try to see if we can record our voices in the World Map. You have to tell us where you come from, etc. I can do it from my office pc, so it should work in the computer room.


• We have been talking about study pathways (what courses you can do after ESOL 3 & 4). Our college offers all our students career advice. You can make an appointment in the Counselling Unit (building A). Listen to Luisa, one of our college counsellors, for more information about the type of services they provide. Do the worksheet that comes with the podcast.


• Marion's students have added their opinion to our forum on men & women's roles. Read them and feel free to write more on the topic.


• Let's try once more Time4English. It worked when I logged in the day before yesterday. Go to Intermediate, 8a and 8b about Driving in Australia. Write a summary in your blog.
• You know how to put a bubbleshare in your blog. This is another way of displaying images
  

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Our First Podcast!

Great job everyone! Listen to your first podcast in Let's Talk, if you are at home, or in our f2f wiki, if you are at TAFE.

What do you think? Listen carefully and think of how you could improve your pronunciation.
You can listen and write what you say. Check the pronunciation of words you are not sure of in a dictionary, an Internet dictionary, your teachers or a fluent speaker.

Write your impression of your first podcast in comments. Suggestions on how to improve it are most welcomed!

Traditional Roles, Earth Hour

• Three weeks ago we had great discussions about gender roles. Listen to Traditional Roles, Intermediate 5D in Time4English.



• Then I would like you to continue the gender roles discussion in our private forum. Marion's students will also take part in it. Remember to read what everyone says and write more than once to give others time to express their opinions and make it a good discussion.



• Last week I made the little video below about our Harmony Day celebration. Write a bout it in your blog.



• Practise adding a bubleshare photo album in your post. Copy the one I posted for Harmony Day and paste it in the Edit HTML tab of your Harmony Day recount post. Follow the instructions.



• You can also add the video. Go to blip.tv and click on this icon at the bottom of the screen:

It will say Email or embed this video. Click on the embed tab and copy the HTML code. Paste it in the HTML section of your post. Publish it and check that it works. It is the same for other types of slide shows and videos. Very easy!





Click to Play

Finally, I sent everyone an email about Earth Hour. When is it taking place? What is it? How can you help? Write about it in your blogs (or in our esolf2f wiki if you prefer).

Harmony Day

Click to Play

ESL students & teachers celebrate Harmony Day at St George TAFE Sydney . The organiser of the event is the Multicultural Education Coordinator. Check the video to hear us all sing the Australian National Anthem, clap and sing to a traditional Chinese song sang by one of our students and sing the song We are Australian. The lyrics appear written on the screen.

Below is a photo album of the event. You can write in your blogs about it!

Feel free to add your own photo from this album to your blog. You can also add the whole album. Follow these steps:

1. Just click on the album
2. Click on Add to my blog
3. Choose the way you want it to look
4. Left click on the box with the HTML code to highlight it.
5. Right click and and click and copy
6. Go to your blog post
7. Click on the HTML tab
8. Right click and past
9. Check in Editor tab. If you don't like the size of the bubbleshare fonts, you can change it by highlighting it and change it to smallest text
   

Our Country

Make a Smilebox photobook

We have been talking about Australia in class this week. This is a photo album with pictures taken by my brother and myself while he was visiting Sydney last month. On page 7 there is a video of the Blue Mountains which gives you a good idea of the Australian bush.

• Go to our esolf2f wiki and add the Oz Quiz questions you prepared in class yesterday. Remember to check your email to activate your membership in the wiki. You have to open my invitation email and follow the instructions it it. Take turns to do the questions, as it's not possible to have 2 people working on the wiki at the same time.
• While the others type, search the Internet for information about Harmony Day. Write a post in you blog about it. Call it Harmony Day. Visit the post from last year's Harmony Day.
  
• Tomorrow add a recount to your Harmony Day post. In it tell everyone about what we did to celebrate Harmony Day at St George College.
  

• Why don't you have some fun while you practise your spelling? Check this video and spell all the names of the people in it. You can check your spelling easily because they repeat the questions and add subtitles with all the names correctly spelt in writing.

Aussie culture

We had such an exciting week last week! Your library short talks (or not so short...) were a great beginning to improving your English oral skills. You've started writing your blogs, commenting on each other's blogs, Rita started writing in our esolf2f wiki, Dina managed to write in our world map (finally someone had access to it!), Diana wrote a comment (which hasn't been published yet!) on a teacher's blog post about spelling and keeps us entertained while the presenter writes on the white board. Mitu gave a presentation on a Mathematics book (I'm afraid most of us are very green on Maths... ). Veena got our attention when she talked about the Titanic, didn't she? Asa showed us a fantastic book about Sydney then & now. Mercedes made us think about Colombia in a new way and Cellena got us thinking about saving money. You are such an informative & interesting group!

Now let's start work!

• Jovanna talked about a very interesting book, 1000 questions and answers about Australia. Let's see if you can do this Oz crossword.
• Wang and Aleya talked about Australia history. Alan said he's studying for the citizenship test, What about writing our own quiz? Let's try to do it in our esof2f wiki (ask Rita what f2f means). Each one of you should write at least 2 questions about Australia history, Australian culture or slang. Why don't you start by doing this Oz Quiz my students wrote a while back? You can check the links below the quiz, the slang dictionary in Time4English and this Australian government website to get some answers/ideas for questions. Once finished we'll publish it and everyone has to try and answer all the questions.
• Finally, listen to Andrew's podcast. Read the article that some students wrote about it and ask Andrew more questions about what he says when you see him tomorrow.

• Remember to add photos that are copyright safe or your own photos. In tutorials links (right sidebar) I have a link to a very good post on how to find photos on flickr. Have look at Marion's bubbleshare & smilebox photo albums. If you want, we can create one for our class.
  

Recounts

Hi to all our students


Today I would like you to publish your recounts. Some of you have written about your first day in Australia and others have written about an anecdote ( a funny short story) that happened to you in the past.

An English teacher, Wendy Tanner, has left a comment in one of our posts. Read it. She has a fantastic wiki for her class. Feel free to read it, listen to the songs and everything else in it. We are going to try and work with her class. Do you have any ideas? Write them in comments or in our wiki esol f2f. I will show you how to do it.

I told you about looking up the pronunciation of new words online. This is one of many dictionaries you can use: dictionary.com. Check out the pronunciation of some of the new words from yesterday lesson: condition, blaze, battling, firefighters, drought.


When you write in English you have to make sure you don't have any spelling mistakes. I know it is quite hard to know how to spell things correctly. Read this post on spelling mistakes from a primary school teacher. You will see that spelling is difficult for everyone. Some people would like to change the rules and make it more phonetic/phonemic (spell things as they are pronounced).

This week you have started your library short talks about a book borrowed from the college library. Listen to one of the St George librarians, Patricia, and do the worksheet in it.

The librarians at St George are producing excellent tutorials on how to use some of their facilities. You can find them in their wiki, St George Library wiki. There is a permanent link to it on the right sidebar of this blog. Keep visiting it to learn how to put money in your TAFE library to photocopy or print from one of the library computers, searching skills, etc. Today I would like you to watch their tutorial on how to start your TAFE portal access and change your password.

Give your opinion in last week's forum if you didn't do it then.

We should try to write/record a message in the voicethread world map. Dina managed to join and leave a message.
Our new students can start creating their blogs today. Check out the video on How to create a blog posted two week's ago in Our Blogs.

Challenge

Try to write a sentence with the words in the pictures below. Put them together. Do you know what this is? Tell us in comments.

(you will need 2 she for picture 1)