How those special effects in 'Day of the Doctor' were made!

Day of the Doctor!

BBC News review of 'Day of the Doctor'
Day of the Doctor reviews

Fans' opinions

Doctor Who 50th celebrations at Excel

Doctor Who at Excel

Ten things to expect at Doctor Who 50th celebrations at Excel

Video intro to Doctor Who at Excel

some photos from the Excel event

Matt Smith gives his support to new Doctor Who Peter Capaldi

Back in England for a Week

Well not too cold in England.
Tunis Air was delayed by two hours as usual with no announcement/explanation/apology or compensatory drink given.Typical! Also long passport queues more queues thna usual and much longer waiting period. In addition there were the farcial queues for the scanner security; people were queue jumping as they were getting panicky about missing their plane. In any case most planes were delayed.Meanwhile in the passport queue I'd met two women who told me about their 5-day adventure in Antartica. Later on I also met Emmanuel,an IT sort-of consultant, who works for a small IT company 'Joseph ...burger something '.

I bumped into Kristin whose plane to Italy was also delayed; she vowed never to fly with Air Tunis again.

At Heathrow there was no Piccadilly line connection into London but instead a bus service to Hammersmith tube station.Finally got to Tony's flat at 8pm.

Watched 'The Science of Doctor Who' on Tony's laptop.

Well,this is all for now.

Premier Skills Female Referee Course in Tunis

Premier Skills Female Referee Course in Tunis!
This afternoon I did a Premier Skills English session for over 40 female Tunisian female referees. The girls were very enthusiastic! One of the Premier Skills coaches, Sarah, also helped with some parts of the session.

'You're in the wrong job! '

At Nigel's update meeting on Friday re his recent travels he mentioned my role on the Teaching English Radio programme and said ' I had a 'good radio voice'  and that I should be an actor .
'You're in the wrong job!' he also added.

Van Gogh

How did Van Gogh find colour?

 

Paul McCartney on the Graham Norton Show

Partial Solar Eclipe in Tunisia

partial solar eclipse in Tunisia

Teaching English Radio is back!

Series 3 of Teaching English Radio has kicked off!

Today's topic was 'Getting the most from the course book ' and among today's guests were Hada,Primary School Teacher Trainer,Latifa,Primary school teacher,Maaouia,Secondary Teacher Inspector,Lamia ,University teacher and Teacher Inspector,Patric Fawcett,Teacher Trainer and ELT/ICT Coordinator at British Council Tunis.

Course books can provide an English teaching syllabus and give structure to a lesson as well as having
useful recyling and revision activities.

Not all the materials in a coursebook are relevant to the students so the teacher can adapt ideas from a book to use with their own materials.Teachers need not be independent on the coursebook and can try many different ways to present language and engage their students during the lesson.

At the beginning of the discussion the key points were:
that the course book can be used as a reference/record of the language items that have been taught,
and that it can be used as a source of inspiration for instance an interesting picture or topic in the course book to engage the students's interest.Maamouia said that the course books in Tunisia need to be updated and there are ongoing plans to resolve this issue.Lamia mentioned that she uses a lot of her own material for her university classes and that students' involvement is important.

The topic of fun and enjoyable activities are an important element of learning a language;Maamouia stated
' You cannot teach English with out fun!'.

The needs of the learner also need to be considered when using the coursebook and selecting the most relevant sections.

Re the question of what makes a good coursebook: Patric mentioned that his students at the British Coucil had told him that the most important sections were grammar and vocabalary whilst Maaouia and Hada said that ' a course book should be appealing to the learners and it also needs to be updated '.

Later on Patric emphasised the importance of the students having plenty of time to practice the language and mentioned that his young learners had done a poster on the topic of theme parks with a follow up activity of a poster presentation to their classmates; thus ensuring practice of speaking as well as their writing.

click http://www.radiotunisienne.tn/rtci/sounds/anglais/ang01112013.mp3
to listen to the programme.

By the way don't miss the next programme of series 3 on the 6th December!