Photos from our last lesson

Creating your own Kahoot! quiz

Sign in to use Kahoot!

Lesson on 14 May 2014

We met for the last actual lesson on 14 May, and devoted a lot of the meeting to fun and games! We had a Kahoot! quiz, which is an interactive quiz application that participants play with PCs, tablets or smartphones.


We also had group discussions about everybody's experiences on this course.  The discussions were taped for future reference.


The participants also made their own Kahoot! quizzes. If you want to learn more about Kahoot!, go to https://getkahoot.com/

Lesson on 16 April

We met on April 16 and our main topic was the use of the YouTube video management tool. We learned how to make videos using photos, music, text etc.

We also talked about Easter and made a Quizlet exercise with Easter words.

The groups discussed their working plans for the final period of the course.

See you in May!

Lesson on 26 March

We met again just after the trip to Turkey. We spent some time on discussing the trip, the meeting and the workshops and what everybody had learned during the trip.  We also looked at the exercises created in Quizlet.

The topics for the lesson included
1) sharing photos using Picasa web albums, and
2) uploading and editing videos on YouTube.

We have inserted the basic instructions for YouTube on the Instructions page of this blog. We will continue to work on YouTube in our next meeting in April.

Homework for next lesson: do the new Quizlet exercises, try out some of the listening activities on http://esl-lab.com, and experiment with videos on YouTube.

Basic video editing on YouTube

Uploading videos to YouTube

Listening task for March 12

We will work on our listening skills today. Here is the task:

1. Go to http://esl-lab.com/

2. Select one of the following exercises:
    Easy
    Hotel reservations

    Medium
    Airline safety  OR New York travel

    Difficult
    Hotel check-in  OR  Taxi ride

3. Listen on your own and answer the questions. You can listen as many times as you want.

4. Listen again with the transcript.

5. Join a partner/partners and work on the vocabulary exercises. (If you need to, use http://www.sanakirja.org/ to help you with the words.)

6. Finally, do the "Post-listening exercise" with your partner/partners.

Travel itinerary for Turkey

Here's our updated travel itinerary:

Travel itinerary, Turkey

Course evaluation

We'd like to know what you think about the course so far. Please click on the link below and fill in the course evaluation form:

Improve Your English With PEOPLE course evaluation

Thanks!

In, on, at...

On January 22 we talked about prepositions. Here's a simple "rule of thumb" about the prepositions of time:

Reeta, who has a brain for mathematics, came up with these formulas:

in  m

on = d

(m = month, d = day)

Do these formulas help you remember the rules?

Lesson 22 January 2014

Happy New Year to everyone! This was our first lesson this year, so it took some time to talk about what we did during the Christmas holidays and how our studies are going.

All the groups had been working on their Google presentations, and they presented the drafts to the rest of the class. We heard presentations about English studies, hobbies, Finnish seasons and Finnish culture. All the presentations were really interesting, and it would be great if all participants could present something when we travel to Turkey in March.

We also devoted some time to language problems, especially the use of prepositions in English, which is one of the hardest things for a Finnish speaker to learn. I'll make a separate posting about the prepositions of time, which was one of the problems we discussed.

During the next period, the groups will continue to study English according to their plan and work on their presentations.

Remember to keep your blogs updated!

Google Drive

Here is how you can start a joint presentation using Google Drive:

Class on 27 November

We met for the last time this year on Wednesday, 27 November. The topics were:

• Group discussions: What was your plan during the past four weeks? What did you do and what did you learn? Which tools have you used and how do you feel about them? Each group selected a "secretary" who wrote down the group's opinions and reported back to the class.
• We learned to use Skype for group discussions
• Reeta told us how to make a joint presentation using Google Drive.
• Groups made a working plan for the next two months.  One of the tasks for all groups is to start a joint presentation about their chosen topic.  Next time we will hopefully see some of them.
• Next lesson will be on January 22, 2014.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everybody!

Quizlet

You can access the Quizlet application via this link: http://quizlet.com

• Log in with your Google ID
• Browse ready-made exercises or
• Create your own exercise (instructions below and on the Instructions page)
• If you have joined the "Improve Your English with PEOPLE" class, it is visible in the left-hand column. There you will find all the exercises done by class members and added to the class.
• If you are not yet a member, you can click "Join or create a class", type the class name and click "Join".

Instructions:

Meeting on 30 October

The course met again yesterday, 30 October.  We discussed what the participants had done in the four-week period between meetings. The groups made learning plans for the next four weeks and posted them in their group blogs. Some work needed to be done on the blogs, so groups concentrated on that for a while.

There were requests to discuss the use of Skype and Google Drive for group meetings and collaboration, so we briefly looked at those.  Johanna and Reeta also presented a free online tool for vocabulary work: http://quizlet.com.

Homework:

• Continue studying according to your group's plan
• Study the use of Quizlet and try to make a vocabulary exercise. Add your exercise to the "Improve Your English with PEOPLE" class. The instructions for Quizlet are on the "Instructions" page in the course blog.

Join our class in Quizlet!

I have created a class for us in Quizlet. This will make it easy to share vocabulary exercises with other class members. Try it!

You can join the class via this link:
http://quizlet.com/join/PVqVbke2V

Third lesson

We met again on 2 October.  The lesson contained
- short reports from our study visit to Poland
- a discussion about some words and expressions in English
- a discussion about copyright regulations and adding material to your blog
- Blogger workshop: adding links to articles, structuring your blog, pages and posts, tagging
- a discussion about useful links to study English
- making a plan for the next four weeks of independent study

Homework

Just a small reminder: during the next four weeks

- study the links to exercises, news etc. in the course blog
- share some exercises/news with others in your group blog by posting a link
- try the news at http://breakingnewsenglish.com
- keep working with your group according to your plan

If you have questions and/or problems, please post them in your group blog.

*********
 Pienenä muistutuksena: seuraavien neljän viikon aikana

- tutki kurssin blogista löytyviä linkkejä harjoituksiin, uutisiin jne.
- jaa joitakin harjoituksia/uutisia muille ryhmäsi jäsenille linkittämällä ne blogiartikkeliin
- kokeile http://breakingnewsenglish.com -sivuston uutisia
- jatka työskentelyä ryhmäsi kanssa suunnitelmanne mukaisesti

Jos sinulla on kysymyksiä/ongelmia, postaa ne ryhmänne blogiin.

Good Exercise

I found a good exercise