Newspaper

Ever wondered what to do with all those old copies of newspapers that just seem to pile up? Michele Gray, a British Council teacher and Young Learner coordinator, gives us a tried and tested idea for using copies of 'Vietnam News' in the classroom.

Before the Lesson:
You need to get hold of a selection of English language newspapers. There should be one between five students, if possible. Don't forget that many newspapers are accessible on the internet!

Brainstorm: What's going on in the world?
This can be done as a whole class activity or as a group competition. Ask students to think of all the news stories they have read or seen on the TV news recently. They write them down in English. For example, The Olympic Games, the American election etc. If it's a competition, set a time limit and the group with the most news stories is the winner.

This activity fosters cooperation and allows students to bring outside knowledge into the classroom that is not linguistic.

Reading: Choose an article from a newspaper with a strange title that will inspire the students' imagination. E.g. 'Man bites Dog', 'Letter found after a hundred years'.

• Take a long headline, cut up and jumble the words. With a short headline play hangman – students must find the headline.

• Ask students what questions they have about the story. Write about 8 of their questions on the board. Ask them to guess what the answers are.

• Students then read the article and underline the parts that answer the questions they set and discover if their predictions were true.

Follow-up:
• As a follow-up speaking activity, identify the protagonist in the article – i.e. the man whose dog was stolen, the burglar who got caught etc. Students in groups write questions to ask that person and then act out TV or newspaper interviews with them.
• As a writing follow-up, students write the protagonist's confession/diary/e-mail message about the event to a friend.

These stages provide an opportunity for integrated skills work and allow for creativity rather than grammatical analysis of a text.

Hornby trust regional school,
East Asia Vietnam 2004

'Primary Matters'

After two weeks of intensive input on 'Primary Matters', the 33 participants from Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, Myanmar and
South Korea let their hair down in a display of both cultural diversity and togetherness.

This was the second Hornby School in Vietnam organised by the British Council and supported by the Ministry of Education and Training. The aim, like the previous year, was to develop both teacher training and trainer training skills and knowledge among school teachers. However this year, the focus was on primary teachers – an often neglected group when it comes to high quality training, not just in Vietnam, but all over the world.

Thanks to a highly dedicated training team, Laurence Kinsella from the UK, Itje Chodidjah from Indonesia and Nguyen Hoai An from Vietnam, 33 teachers have returned home better equipped to deliver training to their colleagues – a small but significant impact on the capacity building of primary teacher training and the learning of English in the region.

In Vietnam, the best of the Hornby participants will have the opportunity to become active trainers in VTTN – through primary ELT workshops and a Primary Teachers' Club in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Our VTTN members from Yen Bai and Hue also benefited from the Hornby School and will be using some of the new ideas in the next round of workshops.

There are a number of new Primary VTTN initiatives happening this year in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and in the next issue of English Now, we'll be including a primary page.

VTTN National ELT Conference,
Vietnam 2004

'Change and Innovations in English Language Teaching'

Following on from the impact and success of the first National ELT conference in Vietnam in March 2004, The British Council will be holding a second major conference and networking event on Thursday 9 and Friday 10 December 2004 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam at the New World Hotel.

The overall aim of this year's conference is to explore issues of change and innovation in English language teaching and how they relate to the Vietnamese and regional ELT context.

For those of you who remember Mario Rinvolucri from previous VTTN conferences, you'll be pleased to hear that he is coming back! Mario is a very strong supporter of our VTTN and is delighted to have another opportunity to work with all of you again as a plenary speaker at the conference.
Everyone at the British Council is really looking forward to the conference, despite the mountains of administration involved! We hope that we'll see many VTTN faces at this event. For those of you unable to attend, we'll be including a conference section in the next issue of English Now.

For those of you who remember Mario Rinvolucri from previous VTTN conferences, you'll be pleased to hear that he is coming back! Mario is a very strong supporter of our VTTN and is delighted to have another opportunity to work with all of you again as a plenary speaker at the conference.
Everyone at the British Council is really looking forward to the conference, despite the mountains of administration involved! We hope that we'll see many VTTN faces at this event. For those of you unable to attend, we'll be including a conference section in the next issue of English Now.

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