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 Printable Lesson Plans Genki English CDs:  Volume 1  Volume 2  Volume 3  Volume 4  Volume 5  Volume 6   New CD Vol. 7   MP3 Songs |
Take any problem in the World and it's invariably caused ( or made worse)
by a lack of education. Too many kids hate school because it's too boring.
The aim of Genki Learning is to have all subjects in all countries taught
in a fun, engaging and effective way. There are already a few million kids
benefiting from this, and even a whole country where the government has
put it in all their schools. But there's still a long way to go!
While I'm on the road you'll hear about my travels & workshops, and
when I'm doing studio work I'll keep you up to date with ideas, updates
to the site and some of my favourite teaching resources. So if you want
to find out what's it's like behind the scenes or how & why I do what
I do or even if you're just nosey or a bit bored, have a read.
I'll update the diary as often as I can, so keep coming back. And of course
whilst I'm away, the office staff are always ready to send off your CD orders just as soon as you send them in!
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A couple of weeks ago I recorded a podcast (basically a half hour radio show you can download) for EslTeacherTalk.com. The host was Mark from Mes-English.com (and www.123certificates.com) and we seemed to have packed a lot of stuff in, from how I started teaching, to how Genki English came about to a load of teaching hints and ideas, especially about songs.
It was very interesting to hear Mark’s questions, especially about how to teach songs and things. Plus my games of the month were “Mingle” and “Gorilla”. If you want a recap on the Genki English story, how to use the songs (and why it’s probably better to be a bad singer rather than a good one!) or just want a fun half hour’s listening then check it out at EslTeacherTalk.com!
Italy is fantastic, everywhere you go there are famous buildings, the food is fantastic and people dress so well. If you go over there you’ll probably want to pick up a bit of the lingo…
So, how to learn Italian?
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For any European language the course I always 100% totally most absolutely recommend is Michel Thomas Speak Italian for Beginners. It is that good. As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews his 8 hour system does take some will power to get through, but amazes you as so come out with super mega long phrases in a very short time. He tells you not to try to learn anything, just relax, all the responsibility for learning is with the him, not with the you. Then he shows you how you already know thousands of Italian words, and adds in things like “I think that ..”, “but”, “and” etc. so you can make some impressive long sentences.
The only slight problem with Michel Thomas is the lack of vocab, he very often gets you to make sentences like “I think that I would like to try it but I don’t think I am ready yet”, using “it” instead of words. The easiest way to fix this, I find, is to pick up the Living Language Italian series
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The other big main course I always recommend is the Pimsleur series
In university we used the BBC’s Italianissimo series. That was OK, but had the usual textbook faults of being too “bookish” and not really a wonderful way to learn. If you do decide to do it, get the videos as they are probably the best bit.
This year I also bought the Michel Thomas Speak Italian Advanced Course
There are also lots of other “learn on the plane” style phrase books around, but as someone who learns a lot of languages I’d really recommend the courses above as they are really do seem magical in how quickly they get you speaking, and speaking well!
One of the other great things is that unlike a lot of other places I found that even if your Italian isn’t perfect many people in Italy will answer back in Italian, rather than English, which is great for letting you try and try again till you get it right.
So pick up a few of these, put in the time before you go to listen (on the way to work or before you fall asleep), pluck up the courage to use them in Italy and you’ll have a great time. I always said that Italian was my favourite language as you just can’t help but smile when you speak it!
I’ve just got back from Rome, amazing place, amazing time. I’m way behind on my emails, please be patient I’ll try and get caught up by the end of the week!
It’s newsletter day today, this time with a Halloween special. The “Game of the Month” is “I saw a scary …” for vocab + memory practice, and there are a few simple games including the “Pesky Hound - Build a Skeleton” game!
If you haven’t signed up for the newsletter yet it’s a great way to get a new game every month plus you get to keep up with what’s new in the world of Genki English. Mind you it’s probably quicker to if you just keep reading the blog everyday!
I was on the plane the other week listening to a podcast with Joe Sugarman. At the end he was asked the single most important piece of advice he could give. He said the best thing a marketer could possibly do is to offer a 100% guarantee on their product. Straight away I figured I could really easily do this on the Download Pack page. People could try it in class with no worries, then in the unlikely event that their kids didn’t like it and they wanted their money back it’s easy to do and there’s no problem with sending CDs back etc. So I tried it. And you know what, sales went way down!
Today I took the guarantee off the page and sales are back up to normal. Very strange!
I like it when people change games in a good way, natural evolution!
For the Lesson Plans book I re-wrote the Doctor, Doctor game to make it so the kids speak more English.
Then in one of the Summer workshops one of the teachers changed it again to get in even more English, and have less preparation work - always a good thing for busy teachers!
First of all do the Doctor, Doctor! song then …
1. Give each kid a load of toilet paper.
2. The kids go round and make pairs.
3. They “rock, paper, scissors”
4. The winner then asks the loser “Are you OK?”.
5. The loser replies with “No, my …. hurts”.
6. The winner then wraps up this body part on the loser!
7. Continue from step 2.
The way you get everyone motivated to try many, many times is to say that at the end there will be a prize for the best mummy in the class! It works great, I tired it myself as a student and it is really fun, and you really have to use the correct English.
In step 5 the kids have to say a body part that hasn’t already been bandaged. For more advanced classes you can add in left & right for “My left arm hurts” etc.
Some people have expressed that they feel this game is a waste of toilet paper, but as was mentioned on the forum a while back, what better use could anything be put to than making kids happy and helping them learn. It certainly beats what toilet paper is usually used for!
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