FREE ENGLISH CLASS!

FREE ENGLISH CLASS!

Dear Students of the International Center in New York,

You are all welcome to attend my "English Communications Skills" class on

SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012

12:30-2pm

Meet at the outside entrance to the International Center building at 50 23rd Street at 12:30pm. We will proceed to a park or other place for the lesson.

Hope to see you on Saturday!

Ellen Baird

MADAME BAIRD'S FAVORITE LEA L1 L2 VIDEOS

The following are videos produced by first and second year language students in my oral presentation courses at the University of Cergy-Pontoise, France. The students were asked to create a television show or movie on the topic of their choice. I encouraged them to engage in parodies, but many students created videos about serious topics. The videos linked below are my favorites. They are categorized into groups according to theme: 1. Human Relationships, 2. Zombies, 3. News Shows, 4. Reality TV and 5. "Other".

HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS

L1 G8
David Diankanguila, Igor Nkodia, Fatimata Wane, Sarah Boudouh and Lovelyn Baur

TV Show on Romantic Relationships

“The Fati Kayah Wayne Show” part one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXCQQD9cOPA

part two:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgNUMlF2vPY

L2 G5
Mixed couples.
Sarah Pécout & Aminata Kaloga.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKjJLkpgoQc

L2 G7
Video about Racism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY5jt1Sh4iI
Rakotomanga.R Mirana, Duboisy Richard, Berry Ismaël

ZOMBIES

L1 G10 – Zombies of the French Suburbs
Edward DeCaen and Alizee Laffitau
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFg1rdff0X8

L2 G8– “Residems Evil”
LAKMALI Ahmed, LOURINI Yasmine, GENEST Fany
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y55aXjWJDGs

TV NEWS SHOWS

L2 G1 News Report from 1969: the Hippie Movement and the Woodstock Festival

Aly Nadia ,Escaich Althéa et Alunni-Pierucci Cédric.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ju7jhxnTPU

L1 G10
M&M TV News: The murder of Hello Kitty and other news. Melanie Morgado and Mathilde Lay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ms9JT7GIM0

L2 G6

"Killing of Reuters journalists in Iraq by US troops"

Alexander Burkel, Emilie Sahakian & Morgan Potrel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ebmS4UFCwo&feature=youtube_gdata

L2 Group 6

Ban of Mephedrone

LEDOUX Coralie, ROQUEFORT Clémence, CORIZZI Mélissa
Link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOEW-6Oy6xc

REALITY TV
L1 Group 1
"Jerk-Lanta" Clemence Alaime, Jeff Blondeau
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWspsJ6X0_Y

L1 Gr 10
Star People with Pam Anderson
-Elise Lagravière
-Elodie De Mesquita

Link : http://www.youtube.com/user/elise78france#p/a/u/0/7w6Ic6krBak

L1 G5

The Andy Queen Show: Reality TV Stars

http://www.wat.tv/video/andy-queen-show-final-job-2fi41_2fi43_.html

Emilie Franzo , Christopher Tussy, Marion El Kaim, Marine

Peroni, Adelaide Hennequin and Alexandre Touron.

"OTHER"

L2 G8
The End of the World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWDAyeaV4Nc
by Ivo Ricardo (Vaz), Douwes Arthur, and Devilliers Nicolas

L2 G7
Perversion in Japan
Valentine DeFossez and Kumiko Tanaka
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcy9nf_nfgomg938_school

L1G5
Raphael Kalfa
Documentary on "The Lazy Man"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OoQpsEvPg0

L1 G11
Guided Tour of Cergy-Pontoise University
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36VgqpkEHkU
Maxime Bertrand, Cédric Cariou, Manosanh Vasaspathy, Jean-Jacques Tebily

Practice Collocations

Collocations - An arrangement or juxtaposition of words or other elements, especially those that commonly co-occur, as rancid butter, bosom buddy, or dead serious.
They are collections of words that occur together in discourse.

Below are two sites to practice collocations in English.

http://www.ccym.edu.hk/english/Hkcee/Collocation.htm

http://www.better-english.com/strongcoll.htm

Americans and Food - Listening Comprehension

Voice of America News Online (www.voanews.com) has a Special English section where you can listen to podcasts online and read the written transcripts that accompany them.

Here's an interesting podcast on Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma which deals with America's unhealthy and destructive relationship with food.
Click here to access the audio file and the transcript: http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/2009-02-17-voa1.cfm

I suggest you read the transcript first, then listen to the podcast, then listen again with the transcript in front of you. If this topic doesn't interest you, check out the many other podcasts listed on the Voice of America website.

North American English Vowel Chart

ManyThings.org features several webpages for practicing your spoken English. For Italian speakers, please go to the "Minimal Pair Practice and Quizzes" page and focus on Lessons #3, 5, 7, 11, 15, 17, 19, 21, and 23.

MICASE Spoken Academic English Resource

(Michigan Corpus of Spoken Academic English) is a online search engine where you can enter words or phrases and see them as they are used in authentic academic speech. I highly recommend this site for those of you struggling with academic phrases in English and when and how to use them.

Below I have pasted 3 of the 66 results in MICASE for the phrase "on the other hand" to give you a sense of how this works.

"...formed by western by notions of form, sound quality and harmony. Jarrett the improvising solo pianist, on the other hand, applies principles of formal construction, remarkably similar to North Indian raga performance..."

"... it's a picture of weeds it's a painting of weeds, she set her easel up and painted some weeds uh, on the other hand you can just ignore that title and and, think of it, as pure design this is, uh this is the, that kind..."

"...is a very strong strand of voluntarism in the scriptural tradition, that they're coming out of. Um, on the other hand, there are also things in that scriptural tradition which seem to be pointing in a somewhat differe

I also recommend the MICASE English Self Study page which features sound files and interactive quizzes and such for the advanced English learner.

Online LISTENING PRACTICE!

Voice of America's Special English page offers free downloads of audio broadcasts along with written transcripts of the broadcasts which you can read along as you listen.

This is a GREAT way to improve your listening skills in English because you can use the transcript to catch unfamiliar or hard to hear words and you can listen to the broadcasts as many times as you like.


http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/index.cfm