Blog #8 Banking Lingo Podcast

Basic Banking Lingo

This podcast is designed for intermediate ESL students. It discusses a few common banking terms.



How to Listen

Before listening, review the following list of words used at a bank:


Account- When you keep your money at a bank, your money is placed in an account. You will get an account number that helps you identify your account. There are different types of accounts.

Savings Account – A savings account is a place to save your money. You will mostly add money into a savings account.

Checking Account – A checking account is an account that you can add money to and also take money out to pay bills or get cash.

Interest – savings accounts earn interest. Interest is money that is added to your account by the bank. The bank pays you interest because you keep a certain amount of money at the bank.

Deposit – A deposit is money you add to your account at the bank. When you put money into your account, you say you are depositing money. You can deposit money at the bank with a teller, or you can use an ATM machine to deposit your money.

Withdrawal – when you take money out of your account, you are making a withdrawal. You can make a withdrawal at the bank with a teller, or you can make a withdrawal at an ATM machine.

Checks – A check is a slip of paper with your account number on it. When you make a purchase, you write on the check the amount of the purchase and who the check is for. When the person or store deposits the check, it will be subtracted from your checking account.

Credit Card – A credit card is a plastic card you can use instead of cash or checks to make purchases. At the end of the month, you will receive a statement that shows all the purchases you made with the card. You will have to pay the bank for these purchases.

Debit Card – A debit card is a plastic card you can also use to make purchases. When you use your debit card, the amount of the purchase will be subtracted from your account balance- just like a check.





Next, listen to the podcast:

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http://blschmid.podbean.com/





Now it’s your turn. Use the Internet to search for banks in your community. What kinds of accounts do these banks offer? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each type of account? At the next class, you will report what you have found to your classmates.

Here are some banks to explore:



http://www.53.com/
http://www.chase.com/
http://www.usbank.com/

Blog #7 Writing Correction/Feedback

I thought the Savignon and Chiu article had a lot of good ideas. Most of them could be done with paper as well as online, but were beneficial either way. One idea I thought was particularly helpful and specific to online was the idea of having the students change the highlighted portion to a different color. I know when I was learning a foreign language I would only correct about 95% of the revisions. There were always some that I left, usually because I didn't understand and didn't want to put the effort into figuring it out. I know this sounds slack, but I don't think it's totally uncommon. If I would have had to turn in the next draft with a visual representation pointing to the areas I didn't revise, I would have worked harder to fix everything. As far as which to revise first, form or content, I do think it makes the most sense to focus on content first. In addition to the evidence showing that students do more revisions when content is focused on first, there is also just the practical side of it. If you have a student fix all their content first and then look at their grammar, they only have to revise each portion once. If you have them fix their grammar mistakes though, they are only going to have new ones after they've revised their content. I feel like they would end up doing grammar, and then content, and then grammar again.

Blog #6 Restaurant Podcast

Restaurant Lingo For Beginners

This podcast is designed for mid-level beginning ESL students. It focuses on vocabulary and questions commonly used in restaurants.

How to listen:
Before listening, review the following vocab list:


Appetizer- a small sized meal you eat before your main meal.

Side- small amount of food you eat with the main meal

Dessert- a sweet food you eat after your main meal

Specials- meals on sale

Bill- amount of money you owe for your meal

Server- man or woman who asks what you want and brings your food



A Few Common Questions

What do you have to drink?

Do you have any specials today?



Next listen to the podcast.


http://blschmid.podbean.com/


Now it's your turn! After listening, choose a restaurant and try out your new vocabulary.
Blog about your experience.

Blog #5 Voicethread

I think voice thread is a nice idea and something I could see myself using in the classroom. I think it can increase the students' uptake. One way is if the teacher posts the first comment using L+1 language. This way, the students will have to listen many times and hopefully look up a few words up in order to respond appropriately. There could even be comprehension questions coupled with the listening assignment. When it's the students' turn to respond, I would let them work in partners for their first one. This way, they could figure out the logistics together and would not have all of the responsibility, which would hopefully reduce output anxiety.



After the first run through, when it's time for the students to post the initial thread, I would make it like a contest, so they would experiment with the language. I would let them work in partners and challenge them to use language that their classmates will have to look up. I would not use it as an accuracy lesson or a pronunciation lesson. I would have them focus on fluency and using new vocabulary.

Blog #4 Italian and ESL podcasts

I listened to an Italian lesson, but I wasn't very impressed. First of all, most of the podcast was in English and the first two minutes and the last two minutes were spent more on advertising for their other products than it was on teaching Italian. The actual lesson was on the ten most common verbs in Italian. The speaker would explain what the verb meant and then give two example sentences. Sometimes the sentences were in the past, sometimes the present and he also switched from first, second and third person. This made everything a little more confusing. I think it would have been a better idea to focus in on a few verbs and gone through the conjugations more thoroughly. Overall, it wasn't great.

http://www.learnitalianpod.com/

For the English lesson, I listened to a podcast off of ESL pod. It was number 227. The nice thing about this podcast is that whenever the speaker came across a difficult word, he would stop and explain it and give other examples. Also, it was about vampires, which at the moment, might be a common topic since many vampire movies and books have recently came out. The bad side of this podcast is that it was 25 minutes long. That's way too long to keep my interest and I'll admit now I didn't listen to the whole thing. Also, he used some slang that I think is outdated, such as "get a life." I'm pretty sure I haven't heard that since junior high. Overall, I think this podcast was only OK, its length being its major downside.


http://www.eslpod.com/website/show_all.php#

Blog #3 Learning Vocabulary Fun

The Learning Vocabulary Fun is an OK website for smaller children. I think it would be fun for them, which is always beneficial when working with small children. Plus, there are many game options on the same page, so it would keep their interest for awhile. Small children are in class because their parents put them there, so if the work isn’t entertaining, it is likely it will loose their interest. So, in that respect, this website is good. On the other hand, it doesn’t give a lot of opportunity for production, and some of the games are not even related to vocabulary, but matching pictures. Many of the games are about guessing or fill-in the blank. Also, it is not conducive for collaborative work. The students would be interacting with the computer, but not with each other. It might be a good reward exercise, but I wouldn’t use it as a major source.

Blog #2 Reading Matrix

The Reading Matrix has many great resources for students ranging from young beginners to advanced adult learners. All of the readings are interactive and some of the beginner stories are animated, which is fun for younger readers. For the purpose of this assignment, I am going to focus on the section labeled Reading Comprehension Advanced. In this section, there is a CNN web page. It has multiple articles from many different themes and there are three versions of every article: an outline, a short version, and the whole article. The teacher could use the outline as schema activation and get the class discussing what the article is going to be about. Then the students could read the short version and think of questions they are left with. Finally, they could read the whole article. Each article is also accompanied with activities including multiple choice quizzes to check for comprehension and vocabulary work. These could be used as post reading activities. All in all, I think it's a great online reading resource!