Changing perspectives by Gerard Mc Loughlin

In this workshop, we looked at how we could change our learners perspective on image, culture and people.

-Looking at the News
Take 4 newspapers (2 American and 2 British). Ask students to compare.
Have students guess which headlines are American and which are British.
Then look at articles (each student gets a different article and should focus on how language is different). Then read an article on the same subject taken from a Spanish newspaper and compare that with the coverage in the Anglo-Saxon press.
- Blogs. Have a blog with your students. Use it to recycle vocabulary seen in class. To create one, you can either use 'blogger.com' or 'www.posterous.com'
In the blog, you can have invite a mystery guest from time to time and students can ask questions to him or her - This creates an element of surprise.
- Use 'Google maps' to get students to practice giving directions.
- Famous people. In class, show pictures of your favourite celebrities and hand out questions about them. Then, watch an interview and have students find the answers to the questions. You could also post these interviews (found on you-tube) on the blogs you have with your students. Then, they can watch these short clips as many times as they need.