7 Naming Customs From Around the World

Immigrant students in the United States  have already suffered the trauma of leaving behind their extended family, friends, teachers, and schools. They enter a U.S. school and can also lose their name. Their name may be deliberately changed by parents or school staff, or an error may be made in the order of the name or its spelling. These mistakes can have lasting effects on students.

A person’s name is part of his or her cultural identity, and it is up to schools to get it right. In order for teachers, administrators, or office staff in your school  to enroll students with the correct the name, they need to understand  the naming conventions of different cultures. Here are seven naming customs from different cultures.

1) Korean names are written with the family name first. If Yeon Suk has the family name “Lee,” his name will be written Lee Yeon Suk. The given name usually has two parts, and it follows the family name. Either part of the given name can be a generation marker: Two- part given names should not be shortened—that is, Lee Yeon Suk should be called Yeon Suk, not Yeon.

3) Russian names have three parts: a given name, a patronymic (a middle name based on the father’s first name), and the father’s surname. If Viktor Aleksandrovich Rakhmaninov has two children, his daughter’s name would be Svetlana Viktorevna Rakhmaninova. (The “a” at the end of all three names shows that she is female.) Her brother would be Mikhail Viktorevich Rakhmaninov.

3) It’s hard to generalize naming conventions for children from Spanish-speaking countries. These students have a given name (often a two-part name) and two surnames: the father’s family name followed by the mother’s. For example, if a child registers as Ana Lorena López Ramírez, the school should retain both López and Ramírez in the child’s records. The child should be called Ana Lorena.  Schools often drop the father’s name, which leads to confusion. Always ask parents if you aren’t sure which names to use.

4) In India, Hindu names are usually based on the child’s  raashis, which is determined by the position of the planets at the date and time of birth. The resulting names are often shortened by family and friends. For example, teachers may call brother and sister Aditya and Aarushi by these formal names, but family and friends may call them Adi and Ashi. Remember that India has many religions and languages, and naming practices will be influenced by them.

5) Chinese names are made up of three characters: a one-character family name followed by a two-character given name. The child’s official name is used for the birth certificate and for school.  Chinese children often have a different name that is used among friends, schoolmates, and colleagues.

6) Afghan names traditionally consist of only a first name. Last names are often chosen, when needed, using tribal affiliation, place of birth, profession, or honorific titles. This may result in people within the same family having different last names. Male given names are compound or double names and often include an Islamic or Arabic component such as Ahmad or Mohammad, and women are generally given Persian or Pashto names.

7) Somali children have three personal names and no family name. In order to identify someone, all three names must be used. Names are a combination of a child’s personal name, the father’s personal name, and the paternal grandfather’s personal name.

Many school districts are faced with immigrant children from a wide variety of countries from all over the world. We should not apply the format of naming conventions from the United States on children from other areas of the world. There is an abundance of information on naming conventions on the Internet. An excellent resource to give teachers a background on naming practices is A Guide to Names and Naming Practices.

U.S. school districts need to strive to show respect for the names of our students and encourage our schools to learn to pronounce names from other cultures. Please share the naming conventions from your culture with us by writing a comment in the box below.

from TESOL Blog http://ift.tt/1I4eyUU

Wednesday is ‘hump day’

Hello everyone!

It is Wednesday and  time for a great quote!

I am making a poster with this super quote for my classroom!

from Fun To Teach ESL – Teaching English as a Second Language http://ift.tt/1glPdNq

Grammar Apps For English Learning

I’ve been using a variety of grammar apps in my gadgets, and I decided to post something here that will give you an idea of the best grammar apps today. I think that these apps can be very helpful if you want to improve your grammar skills or you are preparing for an English test […]

Read Full Article: Grammar Apps For English Learning

Teaching Business English and Project Leadership With Shark Tank

Hello, ESPers worldwide!

As we move forward with the ESP project leader profiles, I have become increasingly interested in how ESP project leaders get the “buy in” (i.e., support) of stakeholders for ESP projects. In this connection, I have found the TV program Shark Tank to be relevant. In this TESOL Blog post, I share how I have used specific episodes of Shark Tank to teach my students how to more effectively promote their business ideas in English.

What is Shark Tank? The show is described on its website as follows:

Shark Tank, the critically-acclaimed reality show that has reinvigorated entrepreneurship in America, has also become a culturally defining series. The recipient of the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Structured Reality Program, the business-themed show has returned to the ABC Television Network for its sixth season.

The Sharks — tough, self-made, multi-millionaire and billionaire tycoons — continue their search to invest in the best businesses and products that America has to offer. The Sharks will once again give people from all walks of life the chance to chase the American dream, and potentially secure business deals that could make them millionaires.

For additional details about these tycoons, click on the show’s website link above.

There are three episodes of Shark Tank that I initially discovered on YouTube and shared with my students. Two of the episodes are success stories for the entrepreneurs seeking investments from the Sharks.

I used the three episodes with my classes at Kanda University of International Studies (KUIS) in Chiba, Japan. In one of my KUIS classes, the students are required to work in teams to come up with original business ideas. In this class, I use Kickstarter as a model for a crowdfunding video and presentation. (See an article about the top-10 crowdfunding sites for fundraising here.) The students in the class must also create presentations about business plans, and that is where Shark Tank comes in. In another KUIS class (my leadership seminars), the students must make presentations about their leadership projects (before and after these projects have been done).

By watching the Shark Tank episodes, the students are able to learn valuable lessons for making their presentations above. These lessons include:

1. Have a strategy. Know what you want from your audience, and go out and get it! (“Grace and Lace”)
2. Be sure that your plan is: 1) strong enough to overcome any attacks and 2) sufficiently attractive to investors! (“Coffee Meets Bagel” – the first 14 minutes)
3. If someone tells you that you are going to fail, don’t necessarily believe the person! Get the buy-in of stakeholders by connecting with them on a personal level (“Simple Sugars”)

In addition to providing the lessons above, the three Shark Tank episodes can be taught as business case studies in the following way:

• Set up a Shark Tank episode as a business scenario that your students must discuss in teams.
• Then show your students the Shark Tank episode and explain how the Sharks responded.

For example, on the board in the classroom, list information about the entrepreneur in the Shark Tank episode. Such information could include: company, product, price, distribution, promotion, competition, financial data, entrepreneur’s educational background and professional experience, etc. List also the amount of money that an entrepreneur is seeking from the Sharks in exchange for what percentage of the entrepreneur’s company. Then have your students talk in pairs or small groups about the following as if they were the Sharks:

1. Do you have enough information to know whether you would be interested in investing in the company?
2. In view of the above, what other information (if any) would you want to have?
3. What kind of deal would you want to make with the entrepreneur? Why?

After your student teams have answered these questions and shared their answers with the rest of the class, show in class the relevant Shark Tank episode. In this connection, I have found that it is helpful to talk about details of the episode in advance, take notes on the board while the students are watching the episode, and then go over the notes on the board as a class.

If your students are interested in business and/or leadership, check out Shark Tank. In my opinion, it’s educational and a lot of fun!

All the best,

Kevin

from TESOL Blog http://ift.tt/1LPA16L

Connectivity With Google’s Cultural Institute

One of the greatest benefits of being online is the global connectivity it brings—connection to other people, other places, other perspectives, and, of course, other languages. Language teachers have been long aware of the connection between language learning and cultural ties, and are often very creative in bringing culture into the classroom and creating experiences for students outside of it, as well.

A current tool that TESOL educators might find intriguing for these purposes is Google Cultural Institute, which has brought Google’s unique technology to the world’s art galleries and museums. Once you’re on the Institute’s page, you can browse more than 6 million items that range from works of art, photographs, personal items from historical figures, and videos from multiple time periods. It is likely the only site on the Internet where you can be linked to a tour of the Bolshoi Ballet, a photo of Anne Frank’s diary, and graffiti from Buenos Aires street artists from the same home page! It is divided into three main sections: the Art Project, Historic Moments, and World Wonders, but because there is so much information available, I suggest taking the tour or watching the short video that Google provides to get started.

As I happily browsed collections, I brainstormed some ways in which I would use this site with TESOL educators. With an emphasis on bringing teachers’ backgrounds and life experiences into the teacher education classroom, I thought that an interesting project would be for TESOL educators to create their own gallery of images (one of the cool features of the institute) by choosing artifacts that represent their heritage, learning experience, and life experiences, and then sharing with their colleagues. This would give teacher educators great insight into the rich funds of knowledge that their teacher education students bring with them.

A similar activity could be conducted with English learners themselves, particularly at the beginning of a course or semester to help them get to know each other better, and to work on presentation skills as they explain their artifact choices in front of the class or to small groups.

In addition, the artifacts found on Google Cultural Institute would serve as excellent writing prompts for English learners, as teachers could post a photo or video and then ask a related question that students must write about—even something as simple as, “What do you think is happening in this picture?” or “Write five action verbs that are occurring in this video.” English teachers who also teach social studies content or current events will appreciate the primary source material that is available, and if you are using a textbook or reading passage about a historical event or geographic location, you can use the artifacts to build schemata for your students before, during, and after reading.

Just as one can easily get lost in a large museum, it is easy to lose yourself browsing all of the artifacts in the Google Cultural Institute. I’d love to hear additional ideas for using it in your classrooms!

from TESOL Blog http://ift.tt/1HUGXN7

Learning About U.S. Advocacy From an International Perspective

The TESOL President’s Blog

In 1988, I saw an Eddie Murphy movie called “Coming to America.” At that time, I had not yet made my first trip to the United States, so I was intrigued by how people from other countries would experience America their first time there. Over the last 20 years, I’ve made many trips all over the United States, but as someone who has been based in Canada, in different parts of Asia, in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere for most of my life, I was excited about attending, for the first time, this year’s TESOL Advocacy and Policy Summit, which took place in Washington, DC, on 21–23 June. Approximately 90 TESOL educators attended the summit, which is a reflection of how this event has grown over the years; there were also a few participants from outside the United States, including me.

Advocates check-in on the second day of the summit.

The summit included talks and activities related to language education legislation and advocacy in the United States, and culminated in a day of visits to Congressional offices on Capitol Hill, where summit participants and U.S.-based TESOL members visited the offices of more than 100 representatives and senators. For me, one of the highlights of the summit was the keynote presentation by Dr. Libby Gil, who is the assistant deputy secretary and director of the Office of English Language Acquisition at the U.S. Department of Education. It’s important to note that she describes herself as a nonnative speaker of English, for whom English is a third language, so she has a lifetime of personal experience that informs her professional roles and responsibilities.

Libi Gil, Assistant Deputy Secretary and Director, Office of English Language Acquisition, U.S. Dept of Education, delivered the keynote address. Dr. Gil provided recent data that showed how ELLs are faring in the U.S. education system.

Another highlight for me was the workshop by Dr. Diane Staehr Fenner, who presented details from her book Advocating for English Learners: A Guide for Educators (2014), which has a foreword by John Segota, TESOL’s associate executive director for public policy & professional relations. Each summit attendee received a copy of the book, which is copublished by Corwin Press and TESOL Press. There were also presentations by representatives from the Office for Civil Rights and the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education at the U.S. Department of Education, as well as the Student and Exchange Visitor Program at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Advocates chat with colleagues over lunch.

It says on TESOL’s website: “Affiliates have been part of the organizational structure of TESOL since 1969, when nine associations applied for and were granted affiliate status.” That page also explains that we now have more than 100 affiliates, with a total membership of more than 47,000 TESOL professionals. Of those 100-plus affiliates, most are outside the United States, but around 40 are in the United States, from Alabama, Alaska, and Arizona to Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. So, for me, another major highlight was the fact that most of the US affiliates—around 30 of the 40—were represented not only by TESOL members, but members who are on the boards of those U.S. affiliates, many of whom I got to meet, and who shared with me some of their concerns about TESOL: the field and the association. These kinds of conversations, though they may be brief and in passing, are a unique source of insights and input that I value greatly and for which I am very grateful.

L-R: Rosa Aronson, TESOL Executive Director; Andy Curtis, TESOL President; John Segota, TESOL Associate Executive Director; Libi Gil, Assistant Deputy Secretary and Director, Office of English Language Acquisition, U.S. Dept of Education; Firdavs Navruzov, U.S. Dept of Education Intern

Coming from Canada, I expected to learn a lot about the U.S. education system, and especially where and how language education fits within that, which I did. As part of that learning, I realized how different the U.S. education system is, even from Canada, which is geographically, culturally, linguistically, and in many other ways more like the United States than any other country. However, in spite of those differences, I realized that many other countries, including Canada, could learn much from the way advocacy for—and in some cases by—language learners and teachers is carried out in the United States. For example, in many countries, meeting senior politicians face-to-face, one-to-one, and “in the flesh” in the nation’s capital, would be unheard of. But in America, this kind of access to lawmakers is such an expectation that the fact that these kinds of meetings can happen at all may even be taken for granted by some.

In the 2-minute video clip we recorded during the summit, I emphasize the point that TESOL International Association is committed to advocating for English language teachers and learners worldwide. That is an incredibly ambitious goal—some would say, far too ambitious—given the fact that every country has its own unique educational history, policy, and practices. But having met and listened to some of our few but growing number of non-U.S. summit attendees this year, from Greece, Saudi Arabia, and France, I can see how the association may be able to help with—as well as learn from—advocacy efforts by and for language teachers and learners elsewhere in the world.

Andy Curtis

from TESOL Blog http://ift.tt/1MOtqYC

Developing Writing Skills Through Personal Journals: Part 2

In today’s blog, I continue describing strategies for keeping a personal journal. In my last blog, I referred to personal journals as a tool for improving writing fluency and overcoming the problem of not knowing what to write about. As I also mentioned, I used this strategy at the suggestion of my writing teacher, and it helped me overcome my writing apprehension.

The issue that some students may face with keeping a personal journal, though, is their lack of experience, or perhaps the mundane character of this practice. So let’s look at some ideas that students can use to find joy in keeping personal journals.

Experimenting With Genres

The beauty of personal journals is that they don’t have a set genre. In other words, journal entries don’t have to and shouldn’t follow a particular model. In fact, I suggest that students aim for creativity in their entries by experimenting with different genres. For example, one day they can write a humorous story, another day a poem, or sometimes they can try writing in an academic style. They can also compose in the form of a letter, a report, or a memoir. Switching genres is a lot of fun, and hopefully it will help students discover new skills and talents they might not be aware of.

Describing Places They Visited

Travel experiences provide lots of opportunities for writing. For example, students can describe the place itself, the people they met there, their impressions about the place, and fun things they did. In addition to describing, they can also try practicing other skills, such as analyzing, comparing, and reflecting.

I personally like to visit national parks here in the United States; every summer, I try to go to a new National Park. There is so much to see there and of course lots to write about. Because I usually take an incredible number of pictures during my trips, I include them in my descriptions, too. They make my entries more interesting and lively and help my trips remain memorable (see the previous blog on incorporating visuals into journal writing). I know that several years later I will have a great time reading those entries!

Sharing Experiences About Food

I have several Facebook friends who post pictures of almost every meal they eat during their travels. What a fun way to share travel experiences with people in your network! Students, too, can make “food entries” in their personal journals by describing food they eat when they go on trips and including pictures of the different meals they try. In addition, it’s another great opportunity for them to learn descriptive vocabulary.

Describing Language Learning Experiences

When students describe their learning experiences, they develop reflective and analytical abilities and get used to noticing their learning styles and strategies. This is important for becoming self-regulated and more successful language learners. Not all students know what kind of learners they are. For example, they might not be aware of the strategies that work best for them to develop their vocabulary knowledge or reading skills. Or they may not be able to identify their strengths and weaknesses in writing. Without reflecting on their learning processes, it may certainly be difficult for students to monitor their language development and set goals for further growth. Personal journals can become an excellent venue for practicing self-evaluation skills. Becoming acquainted with their language learning strategies will help students know how to become more successful users of English. And, of course, when describing their language learning experiences, students should not dismiss the negative ones.

To help students become more reflective, you should encourage them not just to describe, but also analyze their learning practices. For example, let’s say they had a successful experience memorizing an interesting English expression and using it in a conversation with their native-speaking friend. What a wonderful experience to describe and reflect on! Students can ask themselves the following questions:

• Why do they think they were able to memorize this particular vocabulary item effectively?
• What or who helped them?
• What was the context?
• Do they think they can use the same strategy in the future?

These are all important questions to reflect on and to write down in their journal. If students keep describing such language-learning experiences on a regular basis, soon enough they will be able to make a list of their effective learning strategies and the ones they believe are not efficient for them.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, not knowing what to write about is a common writing challenge, both for native and nonnative speakers. If your students have this problem, they can try keeping a personal journal in English. I hope it will help them become not only better writers, but also more reflective learners.

from TESOL Blog http://ift.tt/1OC82qL

Easy Answers for Open-Ended Questions in ELT

I took a deep breath when I heard the announcement: Our school wanted to emphasize open-ended questions in all classes. Teachers would spend less time asking questions that could be answered with a simple term or a “true/false,” as is the case with closed-ended questions, and instead had to implement more questions designed to assess how well students could describe a process or apply knowledge to write out a more thorough and often subjective passage.

That seemed like a scary situation for my English language learners at first, but then I realized what a great opportunity this was for my students to practice speaking and writing if they could overcome their fears of making mistakes. To make that happen, I had to demystify what the types of questions were.

First, I made it clear that I expected my students to not be exempted from the open-ended question assignments. Many teachers are hesitant to offer these to language learners; this hesitancy may be based in concern, but avoiding such questions may have the unintentional effect of making students unaccustomed to answering questions about abstract reasoning that native speakers often receive (Himmele & Himmele, 2009). As long as the subject teachers didn’t expect impeccable grammar and flawless spelling, I was confident even my lower-intermediate students could get their points across.

The next step was to make sure students knew about this change. I made the difference between closed-ended and open-ended questions a theme for my next few assignments. Their reading assignments had some clearly marked closed-ended questions, where they had to find a specific fact or detail, with open-ended questions at the beginning to activate prior knowledge and at the end to assess understanding. In effect, I tried to show students that the goal of the open-ended questions was to explore ideas and make connections without actually telling them that (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshal, & William, 2003).

Once students knew they couldn’t always find the answer to open-ended questions directly in the texts, I focused on how to answer them. This came down to reading the question closely to see what was being asked and how much support the teacher wanted. I started with short rubrics for opinion-based questions that put emphasis on the need to support an idea—I didn’t care what the idea or opinion was, as long as it was relevant to the question and supported. After that, we moved into more analytical questions, where students had to find facts in a passage to support what they thought and why.

When possible, I put the rubrics right next to the question (usually right below it) so my students could see them easily and know what I wanted. These included how many points of support, what grammatical forms I wanted to see done correctly, and the length for this particular answer. I specifically went through each point and noted what they did right or wrong while grading the work.

After a few weeks, I saw my students’ abilities to think beyond the blank space on the answer sheet improve noticeably. They started giving me more thorough answers to meet my expectations and took some chances expressing different thoughts with supported reasons. I like to think that will do more for their language development in the long-term than just circling letters for multiple-choice questions.

References

Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B., & Wiliam, D. (2003). Assessment for learning: Putting it into practice. New York, NY: Open University Press.

Himmele, P., & Himmele, W. (2009). The language-rich classroom: A research-based framework for teaching English language learners (1st ed.). Florence, KY: Heinle ELT.

from TESOL Blog http://ift.tt/1MmRd3X

Discussing Same-Sex Marriage in ELT: A Survey Approach

One of my goals as an instructor in an intensive English program (IEP) has been to encourage my students to pay more attention to the news in the United States. (See “Producing Newscasts for the ESL Classroom“) When students watch the news in English, they strengthen their listening skills, expand their vocabulary, and increase their awareness of American culture.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 26 June 2015 ruling on same-sex marriage was one of several “hot topics” in the news this summer that we tackled in class. Beforehand, I wrestled with the question of how best to approach this issue in a class where I knew that a number of students, because of their religious beliefs, might disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision.

The solution I hit on was to put together a 10-question survey (.docx) that students could administer to each other in pairs. The survey asked questions like, “Do you think being gay is something you are born as or something you choose?”, “Do you think gay people should be allowed to get married?” and “What would you do if you found out that one of your siblings was gay?”

I had the students sit in two concentric circles and distributed a survey questionnaire to each student in the outer circle. Their job was to interview their counterpart on the inner circle, to (anonymously) record their classmate’s answer to each question, and to ask follow-up questions to find out more about why the student on the inside circle chose the answer he or she did.

The “surveyers” took their job seriously, with extended discussion accompanying the recording of each answer. Once the first set of surveys was completed, I asked the students in the inner circle to move over one seat, so they now had a new conversation partner. This time, I gave each member of the inner circle a survey questionnaire to administer to their classmate on the outer circle.  That way, everyone had a chance to respond to a survey, but with different partners for the second round of interviews so that different conversations and discussions ensued. And everyone had the chance to discuss a wide range of issues relating to gay rights in a smaller, more intimate setting than a public, class debate would have afforded.

Finally, I tallied the survey results and put them on the board for everyone to analyze together. The results, I think, were a surprise to everyone. Seven out of eleven students supported gay marriage (strikingly similar to the results of public opinion polls in the United States). However, 6 out of 11 students opposed gay adoption. I asked my students to discuss whether they saw any contradiction between these two outcomes and invited students who supported gay marriage but opposed gay adoption to explain their positions.

The survey results on the issue of whether people are born gay or choose to be gay were also intriguing: 3 students thought gay people are born gay, 4 thought gay people choose to be gay, and 4 weren’t sure.  This led to a class discussion of whether there were significant differences between gay men and gay women in this respect.

All in all, we had close to an hour of lively conversation, mostly in small group settings, that maximized speaking opportunities and allowed us to address one of the most hotly debated decisions of the Supreme Court’s recent term.

Have you addressed this, or other potentially sensitive topics, in your English language class? How did you do it, and how did it go? Please share.

from TESOL Blog http://ift.tt/1RQ5OJX

Hot Potatoes: Free Software for Making Materials

As much as I hate to admit it, fall classes are just around the corner, so I have been spending a lot of time recently creating activities for my students. Vocabulary practice has been one area students always seem to want more help with, and I have been focusing on that for a while now.

At the same time, I am making an effort to reduce the amount of paper I use during the course of the semester, which has forced me to explore new ways of doing things. I have always found Discovery Education’s Puzzlemaker handy, but that works best for printable worksheets. Luckily, a coworker recommended Hot Potatoes, and I have been an activity-making fiend ever since.

Hot Potatoes 6 is free software from Half Baked Software that works on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. It just takes a couple minutes to download and install. It looks a bit dated to me and might not be as sleek or sophisticated as what many of us are used to, but once you get going, it is amazing! Think of it as a diamond in the rough. Also, did I mention it is free?

Hot Potatoes, like Puzzlemaker, makes creating various materials a breeze. With Hot Potatoes, you can make flashcard, matching, crossword, cloze, jumbled sentences, and quiz-like exercises. I went through the textbooks for two of my classes and did flashcards, matching activities, and crosswords for each unit in no time at all, but that is not even the best part.

My favorite feature is the ability to create HTML files and SCORM packages. I do not know exactly how these work, but basically it means that I can take what I have created and embed it in our LMS, Desire2Learn (D2L). Now, when students view my courses online, they can do all these fun activities directly in D2L and I do not have to do any printing or copying at all. If you want to print materials out, though, you can do that, too. If you get stuck, the “help” section and/or the website can walk you through anything that does not seem self-explanatory, and the website is filled with all sorts of extra goodies, too, so it is worth looking over.

Of course, there are other things you could use Hot Potatoes for aside from vocabulary practice, but that is where I started, and I cannot wait to explore more. Even if my students have only half as much fun doing these activities as I had making them, it will still be a win overall.

Have you ever used Hot Potatoes before? Tell us all about it or other resources by leaving a comment below.

from TESOL Blog http://ift.tt/1HO9xNY