• “Nice to meet you” when we meet someone for the first time, and “Nice meeting you” when we then say goodbye.
• “Nice meeting you” when we meet someone for the first time, and “Nice to meet you” when we then say goodbye.

˙noʎ ʇǝǝɯ oʇ ǝɔıu (s,ʇı) :ǝuoǝɯos ʇǝǝɯ
˙noʎ ƃuıʇǝǝɯ ǝɔıu (sɐʍ ʇı) :ǝʎqpooƃ ʎɐs

The difference is very subtle, and perhaps not everyone will agree with me, but it really sounds wrong to me when someone mixes up the two. I think it’s because we also say “(I’m) pleased to meet you” (which doesn’t work grammatically with the -ing) and “It was nice meeting you” (which seems to refer more to the whole event rather than just the act of meeting).

Socializing is my own main topic this week! I’m very honored to be a guest blogger on Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto’s blog, Teaching Village. She’s the co-author of a children’s English textbook series called Let’s Go, teaches children and adults in Japan, and you can “meet” her here in Darren Elliott’s video interview:

Barbara Hoskins-Sakamoto Interview from darren elliott on Vimeo.

Her blog subtitle says it all: “We’re better when we work together”. The blog has been gaining momentum as more and more people from our PLN (professional learning network) join as guest authors. Her latest venture is a series of quizzes on blogposts written by different members of the network, a great way to zone in on what these people are “all about”.

My contribution is on a socializing game I did recently and will repeat this coming week. It’s a variation on one I learned from Jo Westcombe, who is just full of great teaching ideas.

Markus, Karenne, Barbara and Shelly did really well, which is splendid, and a huge number of bloggers in Karenne’s BELTfree are in that list, teacher colleagues who have become friends even if we’ve never met… which once again proves the power of social networking.

“Language blogs” are clearly a Good Thing. But what are they, and what are they for? It’s all a bit of an experiment. The kind person who nominated this blog wrote that this was a blog by a teacher who has some good grammar tips. That made me grin. As far as I’m concerned, we’re simply carrying on a conversation here, and that attracts people with similar interests.

Blogging is like hanging out at the bar, or at your local market. A blogger follows her natural inclinations. I happen to like my students, and Germans, so I write that grammar guru bit and pick up on what’s going on in the world mainly for them.

My thoughts migrate towards the everyday grammar issues I stumble across in the course of my work, and how to deal with them so my students will get it. But as I ramble on, I find more teachers and fellow ramblers and bloggers leaving comments. This guides the direction I’m heading. When connected teachers start doing show and tell about their work, I join in.

I’m a method blogger, I depart from the script. That does make it difficult to say where we’re going.

Thank you for walking with me.

Karenne Sylvester wrote about disappointment as a topic for an EFL lesson in “Life is no bed of roses“, building around student input. An excellent business English lesson for managers. I’d update the intro using Luis van Gaal bringing home the visibly dejected Bayern München after Saturday’s loss against Inter Milan, and being overwhelmed by the fans’ showering them with love, which the team hadn’t been expecting.

Shelly Terrell was writing about Alfie Kohn and competition vs. cooperation when we met online. The post we met over contains great tips on cooperative games. Very inspiring.

• written by EFL teachers and related to teaching
• but not among the 10 blogs I listed to look at recently
• and all written over or about a year ago

Did you miss Nick Whitley’s lesson plan on the 2nd conditional using Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy” on Strictly 4 my Teacherz? Not sure this is actually a #hiddengem, must have been hugely popular. I don’t expressly teach grammar with songs, but with this one it pops out at you painlessly.

I loved Larry Ferlazzo’s inspirational  When A “Good” Class Goes “Bad” (And Back To “Good” Again!). It’s one of his own favorites, too.

We do poetry for pronunciation in many of my classes, and Nik Peachey introduced great resources for taking that activity online.

Jamie Keddie has written lots on using the Internet as a corpus. His ideas start bouncing around in my head and suddenly, bingo, a new lesson is born. Thank you, Jamie! Check out this post on using YouTube as a musical corpus.

What were the six jobs you had before your current job that gave you your work/life skills?

So about me: I’ve always needed money, so there have been far more than six jobs. I’ll skip the IT company I worked at to earn money for college, and the other IT company I worked for when I was considering giving up teaching, and the bit jobs, to tell you about the ones most closely related to what I do today:

1. Perhaps I was most successful at being a babysitter. I got an early start at 11 and basically owned the neighborhood. My grandfather had carved beautiful wooden puppets that my mother had sewn clothes for, and I’d put on puppet shows with the children. Or we’d go down to the Smithsonian to see the bees. We’d romp and go swimming and play games. No TV on my watch, but we acted out every cartoon character in the book. I told them stories that they’d have to help me finish. So I never really stopped being a babysitter.
2. When I hit 16 and was able to move on to minimum wage jobs (to support my expensive record-buying habit), I went into catering. First an icecream parlor that served sundaes with a political theme, called The Ice Cream Lobby. Then a deli. I branched out and did weddings on my own. During college I waitressed, the most challenging place being a football clubhouse just south of the border in Switzerland. Excellent prep for teaching, keeping a cool head among fans speaking Swizzerdütsch!
3. As a teen, I volunteered in France for two summers restoring monuments and sites with ICOMOS/ REMPART. I tell anyone who still has their life ahead of them: You haven’t lived if you haven’t volunteered abroad. I learned how to really learn a language. Obvious connection to teaching English there.
4. At college I was a research assistant (political science). Very heady. I loved it, but in time became skeptical about the value of academic learning. That kept me from getting yet another degree when I parachuted into EFL. I keep toying with the idea, to open the door to a more established teaching position, but…
5. After my MA, I became a coordinator/curator of exhibitions and educational programs at various museums. At the German Museum of Hygiene in Dresden I was involved in exhibitions devoted to Odol (a mouthwash) and Darwin and Darwinism, travelling to the US to research history and artifacts connected to genetics, immigration, racism, the Scopes Trial… Later I ran an exhibition project on the experience of migration at an archaeological museum, with an after-school program for teenagers from migrant families, along with community events, from a panel discussion to a street festival. Or: In Konstanz I worked with artist Rune Mields to develop a tour of her paintings depicting the myths of how the world came into being. Marvellous, life-changing years. Being interested in such a wide range of ideas, and learning to use artifacts to relate them, was probably the most valuable source of inspiration for what I do today.
6. Being bilingual, I’ve worked as a translator and interpreter ever since I came to Germany in 1981. Once, in Berlin in the mid 80s when I was working for the Museum at Checkpoint Charlie, I translated a talk Johan Galtung was giving in English into German and got it all wrong when I paraphrased in English “What he means is…”

Over to you! Now, please, don’t be shy!

Now I am to continue the chain by naming 10 more such blogs that haven’t been mentioned yet. That means I can’t mention Chris Adam’s Bits n Bobs/ Show n Tell blog, though it reminds me every day how much more there is to life than lesson plans and deadlines. Or Karenne Sylvester’s Kalinago English blog, by one of the most authentic, articulate and unabashed pullers of strings. Or Darren Elliott’s The Lives of Teachers, one of my very favorite blogs. Or Jamie Keddie, whose infectious love of teaching jumps off his blog. Or Nicky Whitley, whose lesson plans and approach are fresh. Or Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto’s Teaching Village, Lindsay Clandfield’s Six Things, Sue Lyons Jones’s PLN Staff Lounge, the great PLN collecting around Shelley Terrell and co., or Eva Simkesyan. None of those. Others in the close-knit blogging teachers’ circuit have listed them. Sheeeesh.

Well, ok, can it be that the following marvellous, wonderful blogs have yet to be mentioned?

• Vicki Hollett: Learning to speak ‘merican – The lady who injected fun and humor into teaching English for Business writes on pragmatics, mostly
• Stan Carey: Sentence First – On language, one of the esteemed authors at the Macmillan Dictionary Blog (don’t miss his blogroll!)

For learners:

• Jeffrey Hill: The English Blog – My first recommendation to learners, he finds excellent cartoons and topical videos
• Markus Brendel: Der Englisch Blog – Providing videos with language pointers, games and a forum to German learners of English
• Stew Tunnicliff (”theLingoGuy”): goodopenenglish – Doing community TEFL at the grassroots level, including creative writing

Two of Spotlight’s “corporate” blogs, written for learners of English:

• Dagmar Taylor at Spotlight – Telling very funny, original stories about her children’s bilingual language acquisition
• Ian McMaster at Business Spotlight – I’m starting to understand economics better thanks to his Economics for Amateurs series

And here are some delightful blogs I read for inspiration of various kinds:

• Scot W. Stevenson: USA Erklärt – My favorite blog about US culture in review, explained to Germans in German. Scot lives in Berlin
• S. Abbas Raza et al.: 3 Quarks Daily – My daily dose of global enlightenment, a digest of science, art and literature
• Ze Frank: Ze’s page – My eye-opener. A web mover and shaker whose blog was introduced to me by Lucy Mellersh

Dear bloggers, you can carry on the flame and copy the badge and recommend ten more blogs – perhaps ones not all that well known to your readers.

And dear reader, have you got a favorite blog you can recommend? Also have a look at my blogroll and tell me which ones you like.

Target group: Adult education, Business English (group and one-to-one)

Level: multilevel, ca. B2

Language goals: 1. Speaking 2. report writing 3. spy/ thriller vocabulary (a one-to-one student is reading Le Carré) 4. predictions; 5. could/ coudn’t/ was able to (describing general ability vs. single achievements)

Material/ preparation: Go online to www.pigeonimpossible.com. Watch film online. If not possible, download video “Pigeon: Impossible” (use www.savevid.com). Download Press Kit pdf to show film stills on screen. No handouts. Save those trees!

Procedure:

Pre 1: Present title of video “Pigeon: Impossible.” Predict genre. Revisit Mission: Impossible series 1966-1973; 1988-1990; film series with Tom Cruise. Use soundtrack or poster if necessary to help recall.

Pre 2: Hypothesize content of film. Brainstorm spy and Cold War vocabulary (e.g. for reference: to gather intelligence, secret agent, espionage, operation, operative, screen someone, be in disguise, conceal your identity, code/decode, crack codes, cypher/decypher, wiretap, detect surveillance, brief/debrief; Cold War, Berlin Wall, Iron Curtain, Star Wars, rocket, target, cruise missile, explosives)

During: Watch film, and stop at likely places to ask “What will happen next?”

Watch film to about 1:50. Look at still of pigeon inside the briefcase. Collect and write up predictions (note grammar: I think, will probably, is likely to). (If teaching a group, let separate groups develop and present their scenarios.)

Watch to about 2:32 (pigeon has discovered that the suitcase can fly and is armed; man finds bagel again). Again, predict.

Watch to 4:04 (bagel has hit red button, Washington Monument turns into launching pad, rocket is underway to Russia). Again, predict.

Post 1: Reconstruct and summarize what happened: Contrast outcomes with predictions “I/we thought he would… and/but he…”

Post 2: Write “Incident on F Street” on the board. Make three columns. Headers: pigeon could,  man couldn’t, man was able to

Tell students they are the man and will have to write a report to their line manager about the unforseen incident with the pigeon. (If you’re teaching a group, do this in pairs.) Tell them to concentrate on describing what the pigeon

• could do with the additional powers at its disposal,
• what they (as the man) couldn’t do to interfere and
• what they (as the man) were ultimately able to do to stop pigeon and end the incident

Note grammar: contrast “could” for general ability with “was able to” for ability in a specific situation; couldn’t is more natural for negatives.

Have them use the film stills as guides. If they ask for it, watch the whole film again as they finalize their notes. Then they write reports. They pair up with another group to read each other their reports.

At least that’s what I’m planning to do. This is an action enquiry. I’ll let you know how it went later on this week in the comments. If you’re using this film in a different way, or have other ideas about how you would, I’d be delighted to read about it.