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Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
---- Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
---- Robert Frost
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
---- Albert Einstein
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
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America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
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I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
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Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.
---- Edward Abbey
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
---- Galileo Galilei
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
---- Thomas A. Edison
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
---- Arnold Toynbee
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?"
---- Kelvin Throop III
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
---- Isaac Newton
Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.
---- Author Unknown
As soon as I buy the moose head, I have to go pick up some KY jelly.
---- Mary Roninette Kowal
Technology will not replace teachers...teachers who use technology will
probably replace teachers who do not.
---- Ray Clifford
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
---- Gail Godwin
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
---- Albert Einstein
Drink coffee! Do stupid things faster!
---- unknown
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
---- Sheik Abd-al-Kadir
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
---- Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)
A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.
---- anonymous
Real English
I’ve been clearing out some email and came across another email from a reader with a site for students using real people called Real English - sounds similar to what I posted two days ago - Real ESL.
Real English is produced by Mike in the south of France. The videos head out to the street and stop random people and interview them on a specific point illustrating a language point. I can definitely see this being useful for very low level students. Mike says:
I interview people in the street in order to get original, spontaneous speech on camera. Then I take this very messy spontaneity and organize it into structures and functions for beginners and intermediate students, and then make lessons around these video.
I really like the intro to each video - it’s catchy. Below is the video for lesson six - introducing people, introducing yourself. This video also has participants spell their names.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Jul 3, 2008 at 10:37 PM
Teaching | useful_web_sites | Video |





Michael Marzio wrote 101 words on Thursday Jul 3, 2008 at 11:49 PM
Thanks for the review! I just want to disagree with one sentence where you wrote:
“I can definitely see this being useful for very low level students”.
It is true that I concentrate on spontaneous video for beginners and intermediates, one reason being that it is difficult to find authentic video for low levels, but there is a difference beteween “authentic” (today’s films with actors, for example) and “spontaneous”. I’m not sure, but I think that the naturalness of the speech makes very easy material difficult for students who have never travelled to, or spent time in, English-speaking countries.
Thanks again!