April fools :)

Here are good cultural questions, Is April Fool celebrated worldwide? And where those it come from? I believe Mary langenback has a good answer for you, enjoy:

April fools day is an interesting holiday many nationalities celebrate. In England a fool is called a "gob" or "gobby". The victim of the prank is called a "noodle". In India there is a Huli festival (March 31st) to celebrate the coming of spring. In this festival people smear colors on each other. In Mexico, it is celebrated December 28, one of the main pranks is for a borrower not to return any money borrowed on that day, instead they send the lender a box of candies telling them that they have been fooled. These are just several of many different ways that different nationalities celebrate or use different terminology for what we call April Fools day. The custom of shouting "April Fool" was brought to America in the early 1600's. Today it is celebrated in many countries in addition to the United States, such as Germany, France, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Norway. Its origin is quite vague as there are several different claims to the origins. One of the traditions most often given states that it began in 1582 with the change of the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. According to this tradition in the Julian calendar the New Year was celebrated for 8 days from March 25th to April 1st. However, when the calendar was changed and the New Year began to be celebrated January 1st, there were people who didn't know about it for years because of the slow communication of the times, and others who stubbornly refused to believe it. These people continued to celebrate the old holiday on April 1st and began to be considered fools. They became the butt of jokes and thus the pranks began, which ranged from the simple ("your shoelaces are untied") to the more complex pranks of sending victims on ridiculous errands, or to search for something non-existent. However, the problem with this is that the calendar was changed in 1582, but the British didn't accept the Gregorian calendar until the mid-1700's; however, they were celebrating April Fools day long before that.

ESL teachers, I have discovered a blog that might interest many of you. It offers weekly culture lesson for ESL students. These weekly lessons include worksheets with teacher's notes and activities based around a recent news article. The activities focus on vocabulary and speaking. Here is its link:
http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?theme=mag&docid=145578
As you will see, the lessons worksheets and topics address themselves to an intermediate/advanced learning level which would be more appropriate for high school student. Enjoy!

Online Canadian culture

We often state it is important to learn about other cultures, but we somethings forget about ours. I have discovered a site which gives us access to quality Canadian cultural content of multiple resources on Canadian arts, heritage, nature, society, recreation and cultural tourism. This website is reliable and is update regularly by the Department of Canadian Heritage. We can learn a lot from this site and use its material to create class activities or discussions. Here is its link, http://www.culture.ca/. Enjoy!

St-Patrick's day

It is an extremely important date to anyone involved or part of the Irish community. Did you know that one out of five Canadian have Irish heritage. The Irish mainly immigrated to Canada in the 1800's. They have been a rich, colourful and positive contribution and an important and significant part of our history. They are part of the English speaking community of Quebec. If you want to learn more about the Irish in Canada you can visit http://gail25.tripod.com/untold.htm.

Why learn English?

I believe you will often get this question from elementary and high school students as an ESL teacher. What are your going to answer them? Lets try and answer their question. If we look at the statistics we might find interesting numbers on the question. One person out of five on earth speaks English and sixty to eighty percent of all of the e-mails send in the world are in English. I believe that the knowledge of the English language will be indispensable in the nere future. A learner of English, Jacky Lee, discusses why she needs to learn English in the topics-mag.com. Here is what she wrote on the suject:

Many people all over the world speak English as their second language. It is not too much to say that it has become an international language.
Studying English can make life fun. It enables you to watch American movies, read English books and listen to English songs. Moreover, as English is an international language, you will be able to communicate with foreigners when you are on a trip abroad. Traveling will be more interesting that way.
It is a good idea to make friends with foreigners. In my opinion, it is the best way to improve your English. In addition, it will be fun and it will expand your view of the world. If you make friends with a native speaker, you can practice your spoken English more often and then you can communicate with people around the world. You can also become familiar with the customs and habits of different cultures.
There are some people who are afraid to make friends with foreigners because they are not confident of their English. However, many foreigners do not care about grammar. They will get your key words in the sentence and figure out the whole meanings. Therefore, it is unnecessary to be afraid to make friends with them; just go head!
Learning English helps us meet different people and learn more about their culture, thus facilitating mutual understanding and harmony. Briefly said, English is so useful to us that we should all learn it.

Do you agree with her? Can this answer the students' question? Can you find other reasons why we should learn English.

Official Opening of Cultural ESL Teaching blog

Alright! The blog is finally open and here for you to enjoy.