Learn English with Teacher Joe

In my teaching, I show students a lot of videos. I think there is so much to learn from videos. We can learn English words, expressions and sentences, while at the same time learning about other cultures. I am starting to put some videos on my webpage. These are videos that I think are both interesting and useful. You can go to www.teacherjoe.us/Learn.html and you will see the videos in the column on the right.

 The first video is a song that was on television when I was a kid. (Click here to watch.) The second one gives a really good example of how to pronounce “R” in English. (Click here to watch.) The second one is quite difficult to understand, but that is not so important. If you don’t understand the humor now, you will certainly get it some day.

I plan to add all kinds of videos in the future, hopefully several each week, so keep checking in to learn more English from videos!

Would you like to live in a city that is cloudy more than 300 days a year and has many snowstorms every winter? Neither do I! That is why I left my hometown, Rochester. I have to say that Rochester has many good points. It’s quiet, making it a good place to raise a family. I, however, have no interest in raising a family! There are few traffic jams there, even during the so-called “rush hour”. And there’s lots of nature - beautiful parks, a canal and a river running through the city, with Lake Ontario and several beaches to the north. But in the end, Rochester is simply too cold for me.

Since leaving Rochester, I have lived in Paris, France (as a student), in Osaka, Japan, briefly in San Jose, Costa Rica, and now in Beijing, China. I’ve enjoyed all of these places but the best city for me, at least right now, is Beijing. Here’s why:

First of all, there are plenty of jobs for me in Beijing! I have worked in a university, in a high school, in several companies both big and small, and I am now working in one of the fastest-growing private schools for adults who want to learn English. Second, there are lots of things here that I enjoy doing, including visiting historical sites, listening to live music on the weekends, or eating delicious - and cheap! - Chinese food.

My absolute favorite place in the whole world is Hawaii, but it’s far too expensive for me to live there now. Someday I DO hope to live in a warmer location, someplace with a beach. In the coming year I hope to visit the south of China in search of a warm place near the beach where I can live in the future. But for me, right now, Beijing is the best place to live.

How about you? What do you think is the best city to live in? Write your opinion in the comment box below. I’m looking foward to reading your thoughts!

I have mentioned in previous blog posts that I believe it is important to learn sentences. As I often say to my students, “words are knowledge but sentences are fluency”. Knowledge is certainly important, but our main goal in learning a language is to speak fluently, so sentences should be our focus rather than learning vocabulary.

The big question, then, is how can we learn sentences, especially when we have trouble. When I was learning how to teach, my professor taught us an interesting technique for helping students learn long sentences. I describe this technique, called “Backwards Recitation“, in an article which you can read by clicking here.  When my students struggle in class, I use this technique, and it really seems to help. Please read my article and tell me what you think…

Some readers have asked me about my new job. Yes, I am still teaching English. My new students are adults working in Beijing. They are highly motivated so every day, though busy, is also very interesting. The best thing for me is that my students really appreciate my lessons.

One unique feature of my school (better called a “learning center”, actually) is that there are many clubs and activities where students can practice English in a variety of situations. We have cooking clubs, a karaoke club for singing songs, a photography club, a philosophy club, and even a poker club!

 I think some of you know that I am a member of a public speaking club called Toastmasters. To help the more advanced students, I plan to start a new Toastmasters club in our schools soon. One idea I have is to write some articles giving all kinds of practical advice for becoming a better public speaker. I would hope to write these articles especially for non-native English speakers, but the advice would be appropriate for anyone who wants to give better speeches and presentations.

 What do you think about such articles? Good idea or not?

Hi Everybody,

The Olympics have finally come to Beijing! I watched the opening ceremony on a large-screen TV in one of Beijing’s biggest parks. It was quite spectacular. China has already won two gold medals, in weightlifting and shooting. The games are off to a great start.

I just remembered that I made a list of some Olympic vocabulary (click here to see the article) about a month ago. I think some things could have been better. For example, I wrote that running sports are refered to as “track and field”, which is the usual expression in the U.S., but they are more often called “athletics” in the Olympics. I will have to change that in future versions.

Let me know if the article was useful for you or not. If you have any other suggestions, including words or expressions to include, please let me know. We can discuss all kinds of improvements in the comments section, if there is interest.

This week we talked about reading and writing with our students. I did some writing exercises in a couple of classes, but in my current school I never know who will show up to class, so it’s hard to build on previous classes. I gave them some advice on organizing our writing and we practiced writing clear sentences that focus on successful communication. I then remembered my old suggestion for a very common way to organize written paragraphs (click here to read) which is very general advice but you can use it in so many situations.

It’s too bad we did not have enough time to discuss writing in detail. I have no idea what I will be required to teach next week, but if I have a chance to continue with writing, I will certainly do it, even if it’s just one small exercise. It takes quite a bit of attention to write well, but anyone who tries can succeed. If you want to know all of the best advice I give to students, click here now!

I think I promised this video to students a long time ago. It’s an example of how to learn natural English rhythm and pronunciation using a song. Click on the link below to watch the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRHGFyfAXes

Please let me know what you think!

I was teaching a pronunciation class in my new job yesterday and some idioms were included in the lesson. Another teacher told me that she accidentally found some sayings on a website with MY PICTURE on it, which reminded me that I made some lessons for students a few years ago. So, after teaching my students the textbook idioms, I went to my old page:  http://www.teacherjoe.us/Wisdom.html  and students could learn a few more expressions. They could also listen to all of my pages on their own time. For me, I was happy that the audio worked! If you’re interested in improving your pronunciation as well as learning some good “conversation starters”, go to that page and try for yourself.

On my website I suggested to students that they learn vocabulary by reading the captions under newspaper photos.  (Click here to read the original article.) That is one way I used when I was a student to learn many French words. The pictures help you to understand the meaning of the captions (the words under or next to a newspaper photo) and they can be very interesting too.

Just now I saw some interesting photos from my “second hometown”, Beijing. Things have changed a lot since I came here almost six years ago. You can see lots of interesting photos on Yahoo right now (Click here to view.) and learn English by reading the captions. Also, you can see where I live and some of the interesting things that are going on here.

I’m going to try to find some tickets to Olympic events in the next few weeks and I’ll let you know if I am able to see anything interesting. Probably, though, I’ll just be watching most of the Olympics on TV, just like you! (^_^)  Until then, I hope you go to Yahoo and learn some new words by reading!

 Hello Everybody,

I just finished the first week at my new job and I’ve been thinking about how important it is to enjoy your work. I can’t say I enjoyed the first week because I spent most of it either in meetings or observing other teachers to learn about the school’s approach to teaching. Next week I will actually start teaching, which will be much more interesting and fun for me.

I found two fascinating, but conflicting, quotes about work on the Internet this evening. First, writer David McCullough wrote, “Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love“.  This seems true, but how possible is it find work that you really love? More than 2000 years ago, Aristotle said “All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind“.   This ALSO seems true to me at times because, even though I love teaching, I don’t love working for someone else who tells me what to do and how to do it.

How do you feel about work? Is it something you love to do or something you just need to do? I’m looking forward to reading your comments!