Today I give you one bookmark for future use: http://delicious.com/Literacy_Network.

Delicious.com is a website that makes internet bookmarks portable, so you can bring them wherever you plan or teach lessons. In this case you are getting my bookmarks--all of them. Here you will find links to 62 helpful websites that I use every day to find resources for tutors. These include multimedia sites, games, free worksheets, grammar handouts and even the Literacy Network feedback form (please remember to do one every month).
You can use the Delicious link in a library where you tutor, at home, on the road or anywhere you can get to a computer with internet access. The site has navigation tabs that you can see in the illustration above. Click on the picture and you will be directed to Literacy Network's Delicious page.

The pulldown menu on the right marked Tags is especially meaningful. Tags are key words that help you find specific items. For instance, one site has information on how to make a phonics game. Attached to that bookmark are the tags literacy, onset, rime, game and phonics. You can search for information among the tags and bookmarks. In addition to tags, you can read a brief abstract of what you will find if you click the link. Here is an example:

Azar Grammar Exchange Companion site to the grammar bible used by tutors
& teachers worldwide. Worksheets, resources, FAQs and questions answered.
TAGS grammar exchange work sheets books ESL Azar

Delicious gives you instant access to many of the resources we use to help tutors with lesson planning. The list can and will grow. In fact, it grew while I was writing this message. When you tell me about sites you like, I will add them to our library of links. I admit that I am new to Delicious; please advise me if you find any problems. I hope you find it helpful.
Until next time, thanks for teaching someone.

Learning Style Quiz

A little bit of experience in teaching people language skills makes it very clear that human beings have wide diversity in learning styles. Thinking about the different ways in which human brains can work--well, it staggers the brain. Recently I got a message from Literacy Network Tutor Jeanie Bettner, who had just begun working with her learner. Interested in finding out how best to teach her, she found a way to learn more about he learner's learning style. Jeanie wrote,

I had her complete an online quiz (found at the Slingerland Method website) that helps reveal what type of learner you are
(visual, auditory or tactile) to help me get a better idea of how to form my
lessons for her.

Everybody's brain is wired differently. My four-year-old son Simon, also a tactile learner, likes to model a letter 'S' as big as his arm in Play Doh (we make our own, so there's always a bucket of it around) and asks me what starts with 'S.' He knows that his name does. He just wants to make me say it.

Political Speeches as Teaching Tools

Today's tip comes from Tutor Eunice Gibson. She recently wrote,

Hi Brian, I am still meeting regularly with Jose. He has been very faithful and I see (hear) improvement. I saw on TV where an English-teaching company in Japan was using videos of President Obama to help advanced learners improve their accent. I was watching the press conference tonight and I started wondering if the Network would want to tape this (It's over now, but he's always on C-Span.) He doesn't talk fast, the way the talking heads do, and he doesn't have a regional accent. If it's politically sensitive [emphasis added], maybe we could identify another speaker that would also speak moderately and without a regional accent. There aren't that many, to tell the truth, but we could probably identify one. For example, I have a DVD of Laura Bush showing the decorations in the White House. She speaks moderately and her regional accent is very mild. I don't think Jose is very interested in the decorations at the White House, but you get the idea. Are other tutors using materials like this? What do you think?

I replied,

Eunice: That's a very interesting idea. You know, my second language is French. I'm not that great, actually, but I often find that when I watch Nicolas Sarkozy speaking the language I can understand him pretty well. Politicians speaking to a wide audience do indeed keep their diction clear & their pace slow. They usually avoid conspicuous regional slang unless they're trying too hard to sound folksy . I don't know about other tutors using these videos. Let's ask them in a tutor tip message. As for politically sensitive topics, immigration is the hottest (in the sense of radioactive), and usually one to avoid bringing up on your own. Have you tried taping the president speaking for use in your lessons?

So what say you, tutors? Do any of you still use your VCRs at all? Recording a speech on C-SPAN might be a helpful way to use the aging technology that many of us still live with, especially our learners. Here is a link to a speech by Barack Obama that I found on the Voice of America site, just something to get your search started. It was not hard to find. You can also search You Tube for speeches. Here's another one.

Verbs!

Verbs. Ask any learner what makes English so hard and there is a good chance they will give you a few opinions about verbs. The tenses of English are complex and filled with irregularity. And it is sometimes hard to explain to a learner the difference between present perfect and simple past. Why is it, for instance, that you can say "I did it yesterday," but "I have done it yesterday" sounds gratingly wrong to native speakers?
For those of you with a need to know Purdue University offers a wealth of practical grammar lore, the Purdue Online Writing Lab, or OWL. There you can find information on English as a Second language, including helpful illustrated handouts and worksheets on prepositions, spelling and other tricky topics. In addition you will find some information, for instance a worksheet on appositives, that may not be particularly helpful to anyone. But if you find that "grammar is life's greatest joy," as Josephine Anwhistle, a character in a Lemony Snicket book enthused, then this site offers multiple reasons to explore. As always, have fun and please share your questions and ideas with me. I love hearing from you.

Musical Homework

How to give homework that can expose your learner to English between lessons? Now that is one persistent question. We want our learners to get practice, but their busy lives leave little opportunity to do worksheets, write essays or do anything else that requires academic rigor. Tutors and teachers have to find assignments that can be done in the background, while other work is going on. That is the reason I suggest assigning songs as homework.
The specific idea came up in the middle of a tutor training. A new trainee, Carlos Lewinson, suggested assigning one song to listen to, which made me think, "Hey, good idea," because it harked back to an experience I had. A supergroup called Los Super Seven perform a song called, "El Canoero." That Mexican folk song came in a CD with the Spanish and English lyrics side by side. Its haunting melody and driving rhythm kept me wanting to hear the song again and again. Through repetition I learned phrases from its lyrics, "Yo soy el canoero que rema y rema y rema y rema." [I am the canoeist who rows and rows and rows and rows.] Most of my conversations in Spanish do not concern rowing, but the other verbs I learned in the romantic song - darle [to give her], buscando [searching], encuentro [i find] - were very useful.

So find a good song. By "good" I mean a song where someone sings with clear diction and at a reasonable pace. So, the Rolling Stones are a pretty poor choice, as is REM. Ozzy Osbourne is right out. But Executive Director Jeff Burkhart suggested the ever-mellow James Taylor as a good source. You can find his lyrics at www.jamestaylor.com, as well as a limited number of songs and videos. "You've Got a Friend" is perfect. "Steamroller Blues" is more risqué but very catchy. Another slowish, clear singer is Billy Joel, whose site is www.billyjoel.com. "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" is a nice song with a simple narrative. You can also search lyrics by artist at the site Lyrics Zoo.

Before you introduce the song, look over the lyrics. You may need to pre-teach any vocabulary that could be confusing. For instance, in "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" there is the line, "A bottle of red, a bottle of white. It all depends upon your appetite." You can explain that he means red and white wine and the meaning of the phrase "it depends on ___" using simple English. Music is a great way to learn idioms.

You may need to lend a CD, or possibly make a copy to give your learner--a modest investment. But if the song keeps playing in their mind--if you can infect them with a songworm--the English lyrics will be repeating themselves between lessons. Yes, tutors, English is an infectious disease. And we are the vectors.

P.S. Tutor Brett Rohlwing had this to add shortly after reading my message:

Another fun song I have used with my learners is the Barenaked Ladies classic "If I Had $1,000,000" which has pretty clear lyrics and is easy to understand. I've used it for explaining the use of subjunctive and the verb "would"-- like, "I would buy you a house" etc. It's also fun explaining some of the jokes and word-plays in the song, like "If I had a million dollars, I would buy you some art- a Picasso or a Garfunkel"

Editor's note: The same subjunctive idea works with the stately song, "If I Had a Hammer" by Pete Seeger