For those of you who can't wait to use the new placement test on your English Campus I thought I'd make a few suggestions about how you could get it up and running in your school or university.

1.     How will I upload my placement test students on to my English Campus site?

There are several ways you could do this but I think the following options would be easiest:

Use a csv file to upload a group of users with generic names like 'placement1, placement2, placement3' and then assign them all to a special placement test class.

Or get your students to register themselves into a class you have already created for the sole purpose of testing new students. This way you will get the students to write in their own details.

2.     Do I assign the placement test to individual users or classes?

I would create one class especially for new students taking the placement test. Once all of the logins in that class have been used up you can (after you've recorded the results) remove the placement test from the class and then reassign it so another group of students will be able to use the same logins. This only works if you have created generic logins. If your placement test users had personal login details you can simply delete them and add new logins to the class.

3.     I don't know how to do any of the things you've mentioned above. Can you help?

Firstly, go to the teacher support area here. If you don't know the username and password then contact me s.milligan@macmillan.com. Once logged in go to 'Guide to MEC' then 'Guide to MEC for teachers'. At the bottom of the page you'll find a placement test guide for teachers attached.

4.     How will my students know what to do when they log in to the English Campus?

I think it would be useful to make a one page document for your new students explaining how to access the placement test. This would need to be in the student's native language if they have a low level of English.

As always let us know how it goes!

Ever wondered how rich you compared to the rest of the world? You'll find the answer at http://www.globalrichlist.com/

You just enter your annual income and it tells you how you compare, and it might surprise you how well off you are. An annual salary of £15,000 for example, will put you in the top 8.55% richest people in the world. It even shows where you are in a line of people representing the world's population. In case you had trouble visualizing the numbers.

This site is great for generating discussion and debate in class.

·        Are students surprised at their richness ranking?

·        What does this tell them about the distribution of wealth in the world?

You could even tie it in with a MEC News Item such as Bank that loans money to the poor is still successful or Banks to pay out billions in bonus cash.

Here's a really cool way to get your students to do role play activities – get them to make movies from avatars with xtranormal.com. Go to the website and just click on 'Create a movie' to get started.

Japan's women celebrate record old age

If your students struggle with pronunciation or you find it hard to explain how to produce certain sounds in English, then you might find this site useful.

It's from the university of Iowa website and, although it's only available in American English (and Spanish), it's a really useful resource not only for low-level learners, but also more advanced students who get stuck on certain sounds in English.

I'm not in the habit of advertising fast food chains but Burger King's marketing website Subservient Chicken can't be ignored!

You type an instruction for the chicken in the box and it does what you tell it. Honestly I'm not lying. It's hilarious and would make a great exercise for students practicing imperatives.

 

I asked Subservient Chicken to 'do yoga'and it did!

 

Are you tired of using PowerPoint? Are you bored by whiteboard?

Then feast your eyes on Prezi.com, the clever new way to make engaging and innovative presentations.

iwise is a website packed with quotes by famous people. The quotes are organized according to various categories so you can easily find a quote and match it with the theme of your next lesson. The quotes said by a chosen person or on the chosen topic are presented in a slide show and can be downloaded in a powerpoint. The website is quite interactive as is updated with new quotes every couple of seconds as recent tweets and retweets are published.

Steph is a teacher and teacher trainer in the Himalayan mountain kingdom of Bhutan, also known as the land of the thunder dragon. She teaches students from 5 years to 45 years old in a school, a college, an adult education centre and a monastery. Steph worked for MEC as a trainer from 2007 - 2009.

Drama in the ESL classroom is a site designed to help English language teachers incorporate drama into their lessons. The handouts and other materials are free to use.

The good thing about this site is that it acts as a portal for finding other useful drama in ELT websites. For example, in the Plays section there are some links to ready-to-go scripts and role plays like this one on bogglesworldesl.com which is about visiting the doctor. There are also links to longer scripts like this one from aaronshep.com.It's called Master Man: a tall tale of Nigeria and, due to its length and vocabulary, would be more appropriate for learners of intermediate level and above. You'd probably need to consider doing longer scripts like this over more than one lesson. There are nine characters in the play so if your class is larger than this you'd need to have different groups. Alternatively you could use more than one play and have each group perform their play to the others, who take notes and write a synopsis at the end. Props are not essential but it could be good fun making them! Another link in the Plays section of Drama in the ESL classroom takes you to the drama page of eslflow.com, where you can find PDFs and web pages of role plays for general and business English.

With so many relevant and authoritative bloggers writing across the web, and so many new blogs being born every day, it can be difficult to find and select the ones you like to read and to keep track of all their updates. On onestopblogs, the onestopenglish team brings them all together in just one place, ranking them by most popular and most viewed: this means that you can read the best stories on the web from teachers, trainers and linguists, all in one place.

All the blogs are checked for relevance and quality by the onestopenglish team, and their number and variety means that whether you are specifically interested in business English or you only teach young learners, whether you want to know more about teacher training or about using technology in the classroom, whether you're focusing on linguistics or passionate about Content and Language Integrated Learning, you can be sure to find the information that matters to you.

If you only have five minutes to spare, take a quick look at the Top Stories and see all the most talked-about topics of the moment at just one glance.

Videos can open the door for cultural discussions in the classroom, especially when combined with different resources, such as articles and magazines, readers and audio books. Teachers can introduce the topic of a particular book by showing a snippet of a film or part of a documentary, and tying that to questions or debates.

The following video is a good example of material that could be explored in many different ways. It is the adaptation of a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart, and depicts the narrator's strive to hide a mysterious crime. While the language may be quite advanced, teachers can still engage students in "watching for gist" and ask them to present their ideas on what happened.

Face your Manga is a site where you can create your own manga style images in a few simple steps.When you are happy with your avatar you email it to yourself and download it on to your computer.

Googlebattle is a very simple tool which allows you to compare words, phrases to see how they are used. It is very simple to use. Type in two words or phrases and Google will give you results of how popular they are.

I came across a website which might help you to change the dynamic of introducing, drilling or revising vocabulary with your students. GIFUP.com is a personal animation and avatar generator. You can capture a photo with your webcam, upload images from your computer or get them from Flickr or any other website.Then, GIFUP does the magic and you get your animated avatar, banner or a GIF slide show. Then, you may save it on your computer or send a link to your students. I hope that both you and your students will have lots of fun doing it.

One challenge faced by many teachers is to find a simple way to distribute, receive and exchange documents with students.  Email is too limiting when it comes to managing a large number of documents , and the file size restrictions make sending large documents difficult, if not possible.

An alternative is to make use of an online file storage and collaboration service. Many such services exist; however, from my experience, the best is drop.io. 

Think of a ''drop'' as a place where you drop off things for others to pick up. It is perfect for storing course materials for students, and for any type of group project where students need to collaborate.

On drop.io you can store up to 100 MB for free (more than enough for most uses) without creating an account. Check out the great video on the home page:

Here’s how it works:

1.    Go to http://drop.io: 

2.    Each time you go to the site, a random url address is generated automatically. In the example above it's: http://drop.io/thl6r6i. You can change the end to something easier to remember, such as http://drop.io/my_english_class.

3.    Click on ''Select Files'' to upload files to your drop.

4.    You can configure your drop.io space by clicking on ''Additional options'' just below ''Select Files.''

·         Set a ''Guest Password'' to limit access to your drop

·         Choose when you want the drop to expire, i.e. when your drop and the documents, photos, etc. you added to it, will be deleted.

·         Decide whether ''guests'' (your students, colleagues, . . .) can add, delete, download or comment on files.

5.    When you’re finished, click on ''Create a Drop.'' Your drop will be created. On the new screen you have an option to set an administrator password so that you can change the drop’s settings or receive an email in case you forget your drop address or password.  This is optional, but it’s a good idea.

6.     Communicate your drop url and password (if you created one) to your students and/or colleagues.

7.    When others go to your drop, they simply have to hover their mouse over a file they would like to download to see a menu appear.

That covers the basics. You can actually do a lot more with drop.io, but the best way to discover the other functions is to go the site and play around with it. I suggest you start by creating a sample drop to discover all the possibilities.

Hope you find that useful!

Nowadays, teachers find it challenging to draw and keep students' attention, especially while discussing grammar elements during the class.Students have become more demanding and picky in terms of what types of resources teacher use. It is mostly due to the fact that students use various ways to communicate amongst themselves.

Of course, there are loads of attractive resources that we tend to use in the class like songs or video clips. However, it can be difficult to pick out one that is new to students and raises their interest and attention at the same time. It would also be good, if it provided some entertainment and took students' minds away from the fact that they are  studying.

Here is solution to break the routine: BombayTV

This is an amazing website which not only offers enjoyable activities, but also provides an enduring experience for students. You can find there scenes from Bollywood movies, which are usually packed with melodramatic acting. Students are quickly hooked by the extraordinary intonation and situations presented in the clips.

BombayTV gives teachers a lot of opportunities to work around nice lesson plans.

You could easily present and practice such structures as: 'if only' or 'I'd'. Students could use the target language in the form of subtitles to go with the video clips.

However, the best point of the site is that you can save students' final work and send it or  watch the film clips during a lesson. Then,you could use students' work to organize a Bollywood Award Ceremony. You could also make recordings using the microphone option to make the task even more enjoyable for students.

Have fun and explore the opportunities of this website and enjoy it with your students!

Students love games; however teachers are usually afraid that a lesson will end up with students just having fun and not learning anything. Gwap.com offers your students a wide range of games which will help them to recycle and extend their vocabulary. On Gwap.com you can find lots of games that are fun but at the same time have an educational background. Among the games your students could play are:

ESP Games where you and a partner see the same image and each of you must guess what words your partner is typing.

Here's an idea:

1. Ask your students to bring in a photo of themselves on a usb, disc or saved somewhere on the internet

2. Get your students to go to Photofunia and choose one of the many backgrounds and effects to add their photo to. I think your teens will be particularly excited about the Twilight example below.

3. Take your group back to the classroom and give them ten minutes to think about why they chosethe effect they did.

4. Get students to show their photo on an interactive whiteboard or a data projector and present their photo and explain the reasons for choosing it to the class. The class could vote on their favourite one.

I found out about this photo site by reading Life Feast an EFl blog which has some lovely examples of what you can do with Photofunia. I thought I’d better join the club so here’s one I made earlier…

Have a look at this website. It's called Verbix and you can conjugate verbs in over a hundred languages including English. You just write in the stem of the verb and click Go.

It might be a nice MEC Web Link to send to your students. They could have it open when they are completing writing exercises as homework or when they are doing MEC resources in the computer lab.

Planning to do a lesson on nature?

If so, click here to find eleven new creatures that have recently been discovered. MSN has created a slide for each creature with a short description of what the creature is and where it was found. Some of them are truly bizarre and may cause students to recoil in horror but should definitely create an interesting class discussion.

Also, don't forget that on MEC you can find a whole host of resources about nature by clicking on Interactive Worlds.

While looking at the Guardian website I noticed they have 'interactive guides'. These take on various forms, they can be slide shows, pdfs that you can zoom into, or diagrams with areas you can click on to get more information. These guides are added regularly so you’ll find current topics and because it's online the older ones are stored safely there too.

In class you could introduce a topic by showing one of the guides on a projector or IWB. Alternatively your students could choose a guide to read for homework and present in class the next day. If you have a computer lab you could give your students some questions which they have to answer by reading one of the interactive guides during the lesson. 

Here are four of my favourites:

Land of history, land of legends

This week’s news item is our monthly news item for teens. It is about the south-west of England and the various attractions that can be found there.

You can find this story in the News Items section on your Work Area screen.

You can also find longer versions of the news item with extension activities by logging in to our teachers’ area here.

November word games

This month's Witch's Pot topics are 'places in and around the house'(Easy), 'items that can be used when you are camping' (Average) and 'adjectives describing build' (Difficult).  

The Swamp Disaster topics are 'words related to shopping' (Easy), 'words related to money'(Average) and 'materials' (Difficult).

The Wordsearch topics are 'office items' (Easy), 'travelling by plane' (Average) and 'words meaning ''miserable''' (Difficult).

There are new Crosswords and Bridge Builders at all levels too.

Visit the Word Games area to find them all.

TED is a non-profit project started in 1984 to bring together the best ideas from all over the world, on any subject. Today, it is a global community, which includes various conferences, an annual prize, and the website TED Talks.

Songs are nice additional elements to English classes. It is one of the few listening activities, where students are fully engaged and eager to complete the task.  

If you want to refresh your lessons using songs go to musicANDmuffins. They create great cartoons that go with various songs and they also include lyrics.

How to use it with your students:

Elementary/pre-intermediate classes: You could take screenshots of the video and the students first put them in order and then listen again to finish the lines.

Upper/Advanced classes: At first, you could play only the song and ask students to select key vocabulary to visualise the song. Next they make simple drawings. Finally, they watch the video and check how it differs from their work. It is a good way to practise listening for specific information.

Note: Don’t forget that you can send the links to the particular song in the Publish Web Links option on Campus!

Below is an example of the animation done by musicANDmuffins.

This month on MEC, we published five new web projects, at pre-intermediate and intermediate levels, bringing the total to 52 for both British and American English users.The coming clinic will be giving ideas on how to use it with your classes. In addition, we will see how you could include it as a syllabus item in your course. This will all be tied up with demo lesson ideas.

The clinic will take place on 27th November at 10am and 4pm UK time.

If you or any of your teachers would like to attend all you have to do is send me an email at j.trzmielewska@macmillan.com.

What are MEC clinic?

MEC clinics are short sessions involving groups of no more than 25. They are on a first-come, first-served basis to any MEC teachers.

How much is it?

It is free of charge!

How can it benefit me?

MEC clinics give you an opportunity to develop your knowledge of digital resources. You will have a chance to find out more about online learning, resources and the use of technology in your day to day teaching. After the clinic, you will receive

a certificate of attendance.

How long is it?

The session is 1-1.30 hours long.

What do I need to do?

We will set up and host the sessions. Those attending simply need a computer with internet access, sound and ideally a microphone. Don't forget a cup of tea!

Storytelling is a great way to introduce or practise vocabulary, grammar, and speaking. While it is quite easy to use books during storytelling lessons with your young learners, it is not so easy with teens and adults, who sometimes think it is a waste of time. You may change their opinion by including cartoons from aniboom.com in your classes.

This website is a community of independent animators from 72 countries around the world. You can simply go and watch a cartoon, or if you prefer you can create and submit your own work to Aniboom via online competitions.

There are many different ways to include a cartoon from aniboom.com in your English lessons.

On Campus, using the Publish Web Links option, you could send your students a link to a specific cartoon and ask them to brainstorm vocabulary related to it. You could also divide a class into small groups and send each group a different cartoon; their task would be to come up with a story.

Alternatively, you could prepare a cartoon for the lesson together with a basic story, and students could write either the beginning or the end of it.

Below I have included some cartoons:

A few weeks ago there was a MEC online clinic on the FCE exam and FCE resources on Campus. We talked about parts of the exam with the focus on listening and vocabulary. I thought you might be also interested in the speaking part and the changes that were made.

You could start the lesson with this Thai Airways (FCE funny) video. After your students have watched it, ask them to create their own definition of FCE.

In the second video you find out what's new in the FCE Speaking Test.

Pronunciation is a very important aspect while learning a new language. However, very often students see pronunciation classes as boring and not very useful. If you want to encourage your student to practise pronunciation and show them how important it is, I recommend you the following videos.

You may want to start your next pronunciation class with this video where Steve Martin is taking part in a pronunciation class to speak with an American accent.

Next, ask your students to list five ways to learn English pronunciation. When they create their top five play them this Five Ways to Learn English Pronunciation video.

You may finish up with this advert to show them what happens when you do not practise your English pronunciation and listening skills!

Why don't you bring a little bit of music into your writing classes. TIMESONLINE recently discovered, in a local library in Liverpool, an essay written by Paul McCartney at the age of 10. At the beginning of the essay, young McCartney mentions the coronation of William the Conqueror and then focuses on the Coronation Day of Queen Elizabeth II. The essay is praised for its good turn of phrase and neat writing.

The essay won McCartney a book token, which he received from the lord mayor of Liverpool.

You can easily use the essay during your writing classes with teenagers and adults. The writing provides an excellent opportunity to look closer at sentence construction and the usage and range of adjectives while reporting an event. The essay may also serve as an aid to practise present and past tenses as well as the passive voice.

If you want to download the essay and the article click here.

Twelve celebrities and scientists reveal their dream gadgets in The Guardian. They write a description of a gadget they would like to have accompanied by a picture.  

You could send your students a link to the weird and wonderful gadgets using MEC Web Links.

You may want to use Celebs and scientists' dream gadgets, when you are doing a lesson about inventions, dreams, Second conditional or Future.

Here are some MEC resources and ideas you could use with The Guardian's gadgets:

The invention of a new pair of glasses could help the poor (Multi level)

This news item is about the invention of a pair of glasses which people can adjust to correct their eyesight. The invention could help a lot of people in the developing world.

Inventions (Level 6)

In this listening activity you listen to a radio debate concerning the greatest inventions of the past 200 years. You read opinions and select the correct speaker.

No geeks allowed (Multi level)

This news item for teens is about young people who are successful in the world of science.

The technological revolution in education (Level 5/6)

This English for Academic Purposes (EAP) language exercise focuses on avoiding grammatical errors in academic writing. You choose the correct words or phrases to complete an academic text.

Science is proving popular with young people (Multi level)

This news item for teens is about young people who are successful in the world of science.

Weboword Connect is the first community dedicated to Visual Vocabulary.

It has a forum, a blog, a chat, and many other social resources to connect you and your students to other language enthusiasts all over the world.

You can use it as a way of sharing ideas and thoughts on teaching English vocabulary, or even simply to access the “Word of the Day” section. It will bring you a new illustrated definition every day complete with origin, thesaurus, audio file for the correct pronunciation – and of course, vignette.

One of the most curious and unique aspects of London's linguistic culture is the Cockney Rhyming Slang: not properly a dialect, but more than just a set of fixed expressions, it consists in substituting a word with an expression that rhymes with it – for example, instead of saying “stairs”, you would say “apples and pears”. Sometimes, to make it even harder, the second part of the expression is dropped, so that only those who know the slang can understand.

According to the Cockney Rhyming Slang website, a Cockney is someone “born within the sound of Bow Bells”, that is, in the vicinity of the church of St Mary-le-Bow, in East London.

The church of St. Mary-le-Bow in 1837.

Apart from its East London origins, not much is known about the Cockney Rhyming Slang: did it start as a game, as a series of code-words for criminals, as a community tradition?

Whichever the reason why it was invented, the slang is still used today: so much so, that some rhyming-slang ATM machines have recently been installed in East London!

Using the website, you can play with your students and see whether you can guess the meanings of the various expressions – or even come up with your own.

The Spelling Bee is a competition in which students, usually children, are challenged to spell some of the most difficult English words correctly. It originated in the United States, where it still takes place today as the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a real media event sponsored by newspapers and educational foundations and broadcast on ESPN.

In the last few years, Spelling Bee competitions have become increasingly popular and can now also be found, for example, in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and in the United Kingdom, where the first Times Spelling Bee  ended in June with the victory of St Martin's School from Norwood.

While the Spelling Bee was conceived for Anglophone children, you can also use it with your students to test and improve their knowledge of English words.

The website of the Times Spelling Bee is packed with resources that can encourage your students to practise: have a look at the Training Area, where students can play alone against the computer but also compete with each other with the Head to Head game, which comes at the three different levels - easy, medium and hard.

Less confident students might want to try the multiple choice spelling game, or guess the missing letters in the Word Workout game.

Be warned, though: your students might get very enthusiastic!

If you teach your students about countries and nationalities, English for Academic Purposes courses or you are doing business courses have a look in the Faux pas section on Wikipedia.  It gives you a summary of culturally accepted norms around the world.

Langwich Scool is a site full of cartoon strips. They have been published in English Teaching Professional magazine since 1999. On the Langwich Scool website you can find a selection of the most recent strips, which are organized around a few categories such as: Kids, Teens, Adults, Teachers, English and Methodology.

These cartoon strips can be used as a warm-up activity or a filler. At the same time, you may use them for grammar activities or to start a discussion lesson.

Click here to find a new social networking site dedicated to teachers and learners. It's called LearnCentral and is free to sign up to.

Once you've registered you can share material with other teachers, attend live webinars and best of all you have a free virtual classroom. You can use it with up to three people so if you teach a distance learning course this is ideal for catching up with your students.

If you're looking for some inspiring images to use in class why not go to the National Geographic website . There are loads of amazing pictures of nature at work that you could use to start up classroom discussions. As well the pictures you can find videos, articles and quizzes on all sorts of nature based topics.

A few days ago, the language-lovers' blog Lexiophiles opened the voting for the 2009 edition of its annual Top 100 Language Blogs competition.

The nominees are divided into four categories: Language Learning, Language Teaching, Language Technology, and Language Professionals. In each section, you are able to see all the blogs that have been nominated, listed alphabetically, and to cast your vote.

You will find blogs not only for those who study or teach English as a Foreign Language, but also for Italian, French, German, Russian and more; have a look to check if your favourites have made it – and don't forget to find out who the winners are once they are announced on July 30^th!

Click here to find a series of highly entertaining videos you could use with your students. The series is called Ayaka's Surprise English Lesson. In each video Ayaka approaches someone in Japan to ask them a question in English. They're useful videos, you could get your students to correct the English in the videos or answer the questions themselves. They're funny videos because you never quite know how the interviewees will respond. Some respond with delight and some freeze up in horror!

Whether you are spending some time in London or you are just planning a visit, you can keep up-to-date on what is happening in the city with The Londonist.

The website is written by ''a bunch of London obsessives'', who share their passion for everything unique and exciting about this town. You will find a News section, but also an Arts & Events section and a Food & Drink one – so you can plan a day out, choose a show or an exhibition, or discuss what has been going on in London lately with your class.