What's the key to social mobility? Being creative. (Given-New Principle)

Students got stuck into the second and third forums of the Hong Kong Outstanding Students' Association's Hong Kong Youth Summit 2015 (HKYS 15) this month at the University of Hong Kong.

a. Vocabulary

b. How is the “Given – New Principle” applied throughout the section entitled 'Creativity can lead to success'?

Understanding the Given-New Principle can help you in Paper 1 as well. For example, it can help you answer the following types of questions.

• Reference:
  • The Given-New Principle relies heavily on referencing to avoid repetition.
  • Being familiar with the Given-New Principle will help you appreciate the importance of tracking references.
  • Don't fall into the trap of not knowing what you don't know.
    • You know when you don't know a difficult word but do you know when you don't know a reference?
    • You fall into this trap when you skip over seemingly easy words like "it", "this", "that", "they" etc.
    • Make sure you trace references as you read.
• Vocabulary:
  • The Given-New Principle relies heavily on synonyms, umbrella words (hypernyms) and examples to avoid repetition.
  • Understanding this will allow you to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words, especially if they appear at the beginning of a sentence.
• Development of arguments:
  • Awareness of the Given-New Principle should help you understand the importance of understanding a text as a whole.
  • It should also help you figure out gaps in your understanding since good writers don't have giant leaps in logic.
  • The ability to follow the development of an argument builds on the skills of referencing and guessing the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary.

Word Cloud - more than just a decoration

As you can see from above, it is just a bunch of words created by this tool. There is nothing really complicated. It can be a piece of artwork, can be a reminder of memories and can also potentially be a means for ELT.

What is Wordle?

The program is a free and user-friendly program that allows people to create "Word Clouds". It is an image made of words where the word sizing is based on the frequency of the word appeared in the source given. It allows users to save and print the picture just by clicking the buttons. If you like your own cloud, you can even save and share to the Wordle community so that everyone can appreciate it. There is a forum for Wordle users to create a community sharing their works and solving encountered problems while using the program. FAQ section is also included on the website to answer the common requests from the users.

Instagram - the most popular ELT tool for teens and tweens

Lately, all the teenagers seem to be highly active and addicted to the social networking app called Instagram. It is so popular that it tops the app store most popular chat all the time. In view of the prevalent photos and videos sharing community, teachers can integrate Instagram in ELT and interact with students' updates to get them interested in English and practice more with the unique format of Instagram. So English teachers who are interested in bringing a refreshing experience to their students by using Instagram in ELT, I will tell you more about how to make good use of the "InstaFever" as an ELT tool.

What is Instagram?

It is a social networking app for sharing videos and photos from a smartphone. Users have their own profile and will receive news feed of the users they have followed. They can set their account to be public or private which means only the approved subscribers can see their new posts.

Users have to upload either a photo or a video together with some texts in order to create a new post. The limit of each video is 15 seconds whereas there is no word limit. 

Screencast-O-Matic: Flipping the language classroom

In the previous posts, I have introduced a few education tools like Nearpod, Blendspace and Voicethread with which students can learn at home at their own pace. But all of them have the same problem - students feel rather distant with the teacher/ tutor as they can't really feel the existence of him/her. The tool that I'm introducing this time, Screencast-O-Matic, will totally solve this problem!

What is Screencast-O-Matic?

It is basically a presentation recording tool which allows users to record all of the actions on their computer as well as audio commentary and save the recording for sharing or future playback.

Nearpod - When ELT meets smart phones

When everybody literally can't live without a smart phone, what's better than incorporating smart phones with ELT? I recently encountered an amazing educational tool, Nearpod, which works fantastically both on a computer and a smartphone to make lessons more interactive than ever!