Film in Action Nominated in ESU Awards

I’m delighted to announce that my latest book Film in Action: Using Moving Images to Teach Language (Delta Publishing) has been shortlisted in the prestigious English-Speaking Union English Language Awards in the  Resources for Teacher category.

The ESU’s English Language Awards help to celebrate and reward innovation and good practice in the field of English Language and English Language teaching. The awards focus on resources which aim to improve oracy skills in the English Language.

The winners of be announced and presented by HRH Princess Anne at an awards ceremony at Dartmouth House, Mayfair, London on the 28^th of November.

Fingers crossed!

 

For more information about Film in Action watch this brief trailer.

 

 

For more information on the awards, check out the ELA programme page here or the full press release with images.

from Film Lessons – Film English http://film-english.com/2016/10/18/film-in-action-nominated-in-esu-awards/

A Few Thoughts on Quitting Your Job and Going Freelance

A little over a year ago I quit my job at a publishing house and went freelance full time. Freelance writing, that is. Which has also meant some freelance PR and some speaking and some other ways that I found out I can be “freelance.”

My overall thought on being a freelance writer is that 1. I really love it and 2. it’s really hard.

It’s not for everybody, I don’t think, and there were many times this year that I thought it wasn’t for me. Like the time in January when I had been working from a desk in my living room for four months, and I thought I was going insane, and then it turned out I just wasn’t around people enough. So in March I found an office listed on Craigslist in a building with other actual people, and I decided that my sanity was worth the extra cost per month to rent it. That turned out to be a really good decision.

There was also the time that I took on too much work. In the spring I said yes to four things, and then in the fall when all four things were under contract and happening, I thought I was going to die. It was great to have the money, but it was not great to be working at night and on weekends. I am not really one of those work-all-the-time kind of people, so I have learned to think about my calendar in advance and only say yes if I know it won’t make me crazy or want to die.

So there have been times that I didn’t feel cut out for this, and I haven’t even mentioned all of the times I’ve been in Excel, and looking at my taxes, and trying to do math and attempting all the business-y things that I am not naturally good at. I especially doubt my freelance abilities on my “get your finances in order” days.

But there have been some really good days too. Like when my sole task for an entire morning or afternoon or both is writing, just writing. I don’t have to be on email constantly or go to a meeting or feel pulled here and there because this is my job now, and my boss isn’t really a person anymore so much as it is a deadline, and deadlines? Well, I like them, and I can meet them, so they are just fine for me as a boss. That’s when I feel cut out for the freelance life.

There have been other times too when an opportunity came out of nowhere that let me work with former colleagues of mine but in a totally different capacity, and I think, “I never could have done this or had the time do this if I wasn’t a freelancer.”

And, there are perks. I can adjust my working hours so that I can grocery shop at 11am when Kroger isn’t a madhouse. I can wear whatever I want, though I do try and wear real clothes most days instead of yoga pants every day. But I have had weeks… And I have my office, but I can work at a coffee shop or on my couch or on a plane or just about anywhere else if I want to or need to.

The biggest thing for me though, the thing that makes me feel deep down that I am on the right track, has been how I feel at the end of the day. When the work is done, and I close my computer, I’m not zapped. I feel energized. I feel like I can go to the gym and to dinner with a friend instead of picking just one. I feel at peace in a way that work never made me feel before. I guess this it what it feels like to do what you’re supposed to do.

I didn’t know what that felt like before or that it was possible. I grew accustomed to the frenzy and the stress and the dread. I thought that was what work was supposed to be. But now, I don’t think that anymore.

One of my biggest emotions this year has been gratitude. If that’s an emotion. I am so grateful to get to do what I do. I think gratitude and peace are probably pretty good indicators that you’ve chosen a good career for yourself. You won’t feel grateful and peaceful all the time of course, that’s just ridiculous, but underneath the less desirable feelings you have on any given day, you will be saying thank you under your breath, instead of saying obscenities, and you will feel a rest in your soul that’s assuring.

I am thankful. So thankful for this past year, even the insane lonely months in my living room, and the headache I had from January to April doing taxes. I am even grateful for the stacks of un-filed, important documents lying around my office. They are a sign that I’m getting to do what I love, and that is a rare, rare opportunity for most.

I don’t think everyone should be a freelancer, or a writer. I certainly don’t. But I do think and hope that what you do brings you some gratitude and some peace, and if it doesn’t, I hope you challenge yourself to find something that will.

 

Psst! After writing this, I decided I might turn some of these paragraphs into longer articles, like “should you be a freelancer?” “what is it really like to be a ‘writer’” “how to know when it’s time to quit your job” “how to never miss a deadline again!” (haha) etc etc. I have thoughts on these things. Lots of thoughts. So be on the lookout for some more focused pieces on freelancing, writing and quitting your job. And shoot me a note to let me know some questions you have on these topics. There might be a Q&A session in our future.

The post A Few Thoughts on Quitting Your Job and Going Freelance appeared first on Andrea Lucado.

from Andrea Lucado http://andrealucado.com/2016/10/18/a-few-thoughts-on-quitting-your-job-and-going-freelance/

My earliest childhood memory…

This ELT lesson plan is designed around a short film by 19-year old filmmaker Bethany titled My Earliest Childhood Memory, and, the theme of childhood memories. Students describe their earliest childhood memory and listen to other students describe theirs, watch a short film and reconstruct the narration, and talk about other childhood memories.

 

 

I would ask all teachers who use Film English to consider buying my book Film in Action as the royalties which I receive from sales help to keep the website completely free.

 

 

Language level: Pre-intermediate (A2) – Intermediate (B1)

Learner type: Teens and adults

Time: 60 minutes

Activity: Watching a short film, reconstructing a narration, speaking and writing
Topic: Childhood memories
Language: Vocabulary related to childhood and past simple tense
Materials: Short film

Downloadable materials: my earliest childhood memory lesson instructions

Support Film English

Film English remains ad-free and takes many hours a month to research and write, and hundreds of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy or value in it, please consider supporting Film English with a monthly subscription, or by contributing a one-off payment.

Monthly subscription

€7,00 EUR – monthly €3,00 EUR – monthly €10,00 EUR – monthly €25,00 EUR – monthly

One-off payment

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Step 1
Write ‘my earliest childhood memory’ on the board. Tell your students one of your earliest childhood memories. For example, I tell my students the following memory:
“I remember being on the beach in Weston-super-Mare, England with my mother, father, and older sister and brother. It was a beautiful sunny day. I remember walking into the sea and trying to swim.”
Encourage your students to ask you questions about your memory.

 

Step 2
Ask your students to tell their partner one of their earliest childhood memories. Their partner asks them questions about their memory.

 

Step 3
Ask students who feel comfortable to tell the rest of the class about their memories and invite questions.

 

Step 4
Tell your students they are going to watch a short film titled My Earliest Childhood Memory in which 3 people describe their earliest childhood memories. Tell them the they are going to watch but not hear the first memory. As they watch they should imagine what the narrator is saying.
Show the film until 00:20.

 

 

Step 5
Pair your students and ask them to discuss what they think the narrator is saying.

 

Step 6
Ask the whole class what they think the narrator is saying.

 

Step 7
Show the film with sound and ask students to compare their narration with what the narrators says.

 

Step 8
Repeat the same procedure for the second memory. Pause at 00:33.

 

Step 9
Repeat the same procedure for the third memory. Pause at 01:20.

 

Step 10
Ask your students if they think the 3 memories are typical of childhood memories.

 

Step 11
Dictate the following questions:
1. What is your most vivid childhood memory?
2. What is your happiest childhood memory?
3. What is your funniest childhood memory?
4. Do you remember your first day at school?
5. Do you have a good memory about a school
friend?
6. Do you have a good memory about a school
teacher?
7. Do you remember when a brother or sister was
born?
8.Are there any smells that bring back a
childhood memory strongly?
9.Are there any songs that bring back a
childhood memory strongly?
10.Do you have any photos which bring back good
childhood memories?

 

Step 12
Students compare their questions. Check that students have written down the correct questions.

 

Step 13
Pair your students. Ask them to choose 6 of the questions to discuss. Students discuss the questions.

 

Step 14
Hold a plenary discussion based on the questions.

 

Homework
Ask students to describe their earliest/most vivid/happiest/funniest childhood memory. Encourage them to use adjectives and adverbs to bring the description to life.

 

I hope you enjoy this ESL lesson.

Support Film English

Film English remains ad-free and takes many hours a month to research and write, and hundreds of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy or value in it, please consider supporting Film English with a monthly subscription, or by contributing a one-off payment.

Monthly subscription

€7,00 EUR – monthly €3,00 EUR – monthly €10,00 EUR – monthly €25,00 EUR – monthly

One-off payment

€10,00 EUR €20,00 EUR €30,00 EUR €40,00 EUR €50,00 EUR €100,00 EUR

from Film Lessons – Film English http://film-english.com/2016/10/14/my-earliest-childhood-memory/

Support Film English by Buying Film in Action

As many of you already my latest book Film in Action in the DELTA Teacher Development Series was published just over a year ago and is available to buy at book stores or on Amazon UK, Amazon Spain, Amazon Germany, Amazon Italy, Amazon Japan, or Amazon USA.

You can find out more about Film in Action by watching this video trailer.

 

 

I would ask all teachers who use Film English to consider buying the book as the royalties which I will receive from sales will help to keep the website completely free. Writing the lessons takes up a lot of my time (every lesson takes approximately 10 hours to write and there are over 160 lessons), and maintaining the site is very expensive. I don’t charge anything for the lessons and I don’t accept adverts, and I would very much like to continue doing so, but I rely on the royalties I receive from the book and generous donations to keep the site completely free and ad free.  If you can’t afford to buy the book yourself, you could ask your school to buy a copy for your staffroom.

Although over 3,000 teachers a day use the lessons on the site but only a tiny proportion donate, so I would ask teachers to consider donating or asking their school or institution to donate. I know of many schools where a large proportion of the teachers use the lessons on a regular basis, so it only seems fair to ask schools and institutions to donate.

 

I would also ask teachers who buy the book and find it useful to write a short review of it on Amazon.

Here are some sample materials from the book

Film In Action From the Author and Contents

Film In Action_PartB_Introduction and Sample Activitiess

Film In Action_PartC_Introduction

I hope you enjoy the book. Thank you for your support.

Kieran

from Film Lessons – Film English http://film-english.com/2016/10/02/support-film-english-by-buying-film-in-action/

Vocabulary 1

This ELT lesson plan is designed around a short film called Vocabulary 1 by Becky James. In the lesson students write and tell a story, watch a short film and reconstruct the story it tells.

 

 

I would ask all teachers who use Film English to consider buying my book Film in Action as the royalties which I receive from sales help to keep the website completely free.

 

 

Language level: Elementary (A1)– Intermediate (B1)

Learner type: All ages

Time: 60 minutes

Activity: Writing and telling a story, watching a short film, speaking and writing

Topic: Storytelling

Language: Vocabulary related to houses, past simple tense

Materials: Short film

Downloadable materials: vocabulary 1 lesson instructions

Support Film English

Film English remains ad-free and takes many hours a month to research and write, and hundreds of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy or value in it, please consider supporting Film English with a monthly subscription, or by contributing a one-off payment.

Vocabulary 1 from Becky James on Vimeo.

 

Step 7

In their pairs students try to retell the story.

 

Step 8

Ask the whole class to reconstruct the story.

 

Step 9

Tell your students they are going to watch the film again. This time they should check if their reconstructed story was correct.

 

Step 10

Get your students to retell the story again.

 

Step 11

Ask your students if there were any similarities between their stories and the story shown in the film.

 

Homework

If you use a coursebook which has pages of vocabulary with illustrations or photos of the target vocabulary, choose 2 pages at random and select 10 words from each page. Dictate the 20 words and tell your students that their homework is to write a story which uses all the items of vocabulary. If you don’t use a coursebook with pages of illustrated vocabulary, choose 10 words from one subject area you are going to study and 10 from another, and follow the same procedure outlined above.

 

I hope you enjoy this ESL lesson.

 

Support Film English

Film English remains ad-free and takes many hours a month to research and write, and hundreds of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy or value in it, please consider supporting Film English with a monthly subscription, or by contributing a one-off payment.

Monthly subscription

€7,00 EUR – monthly €3,00 EUR – monthly €10,00 EUR – monthly €25,00 EUR – monthly

One-off payment

€10,00 EUR €20,00 EUR €30,00 EUR €40,00 EUR €50,00 EUR €100,00 EUR

from Film Lessons – Film English http://film-english.com/2016/09/26/vocabulary-1/

Penelope in the Treehouse

This ELT lesson plan is designed around a short film by Disney and the theme of families. In the lesson students watch but don’t hear the start of a short film, decide what is happening and what the characters are saying, predict the rest of the story and write a story.

 

 

I would ask all teachers who use Film English to consider buying my book Film in Action as the royalties which I receive from sales help to keep the website completely free.

 

 

Language level: Intermediate (B1) – Upper Intermediate (B2)

Learner type: All ages

Time: 90 minutes

Activity: Watching a short film, predicting and writing a story, discussing a film

Topic: Families

Language: Vocabulary related to families, past simple tense

Materials: Short film

Downloadable materials: my earliest childhood memory lesson instructions

Support Film English

Film English remains ad-free and takes many hours a month to research and write, and hundreds of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy or value in it, please consider supporting Film English with a monthly subscription, or by contributing a one-off payment.

 

Step 3

Pair your students. Ask them to discuss the story and what the characters are saying and thinking.

 

Step 4

Get feedback from the whole class on the story and what the characters are saying and thinking. It’s likely that they will understand that the girl’s mother has remarried and she now has a step-father, step-brother and 2 step-sisters. As some languages don’t have words to distinguish a step-brother/sister, and a half-brother/sister, you might like to elicit or explain the difference.

 

Step 5

Tell your students they are going to see and hear the start of the film. As they watch and listen they should check their understanding of the story and what the characters say and think. Show the film again, this time with sound, and pause at 02:53.

 

Step 6            

Get feedback from the whole class on the story and what the characters say and think.

 

Step 7

Put your students into small groups and ask them to imagine they are the young girl, Penelope, and to predict how she will survive in the treehouse. Give them 10 minutes to write the next part of the story.

 

Step 8

Get feedback from the whole class on how Penelope will survive in the treehouse.

 

Step 9

Tell your students they are going to watch how Penelope gets on in the treehouse. They should compare what they see with their predictions. Show the film until 06:42.

 

Step 10

In their groups, ask your students to summarise the story so far.

 

Step 11

In their groups, ask your students to discuss the following questions:

• How would you feel in Penelope’s situation?
• What would you do if you were Penelope?
• How do you think Penelope will try to get down from the treehouse?
• What do you think will happen in the rest of the story?

 

Step 12

Get feedback from each group on their answers to the questions.

 

Step 13

Tell your students they are going to watch the rest of the film. As they watch they should compare their stories with the one shown in the film. Show the rest of the film.

 

Step 14

In their pairs, ask your students to discuss the following questions:

• Do you like the ending?
• Do you like the film?
• What words would you use to describe the film?
• How does the film make you feel?
• Does the film have a message?
• In what ways is the film a typical Disney film?

 

Step 15

Hold a plenary discussion based on the questions in the previous stage.

 

Homework

Give your students a link to the film, ask them to watch it again at home and write a story using the past simple tense based on the film.

I hope you enjoy this ESL lesson.

Support Film English

Film English remains ad-free and takes many hours a month to research and write, and hundreds of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy or value in it, please consider supporting Film English with a monthly subscription, or by contributing a one-off payment.

Monthly subscription

€7,00 EUR – monthly €3,00 EUR – monthly €10,00 EUR – monthly €25,00 EUR – monthly

One-off payment

€10,00 EUR €20,00 EUR €30,00 EUR €40,00 EUR €50,00 EUR €100,00 EUR

from Film Lessons – Film English http://film-english.com/2016/09/05/penelope-in-the-treehouse/

Turning 30 and My “Secret Soul”

This summer, I turned 30. In the weeks and days leading up to the big 3-0, I began to feel very contemplative about my life. Where have I been? What have I done? Where am I going? That kind of thing.

I was also in a hard spot work-wise. I needed more hours but felt paralyzed in my pursuit of them. What types of things do I want to write? Who do I want to write for? What kind of writer do I want to be? I wasn’t sure, and I was spinning my wheels. I needed to do something.

Around this time, I came across this blog post by Hanna Seymour. In it she encourages you to envision how you want your life to look 10 years from now. She wrote this post in light of a job transition she was considering, and while I wasn’t exactly in the midst of a job transition, 30 somehow felt like a transition in and of itself, and my stuck-ness in work needed some un-sticking.

So it felt like the perfect time to, for the first time ever, actually sit down and envision my life 10 years from now, something I’m usually very averse to doing. But with the need for more work and a monumental birthday looming, suddenly thinking about my future and where I wanted to be felt important. I began to wonder if there was something to me I didn’t know, if I had dreams I hadn’t let surface.

What turned up surprised me.

I sat down with my journal, closed my eyes, prayed a little and began to write. I expected great career goals to emerge. I expected dollar signs to appear, speaking engagements, articles in specific publications, numbers, followers—that sort of thing. As someone who’s always dreamed about her writing career, since she was about five years old, I thought I would want to have achieved many things in 10 years’ time. It turns out, I don’t.

Instead of book sales, tour dates and fame, this is what I wrote:

In 10 years, I hope to…

have a family

have traveled to the other side of the world

have forgiven the people I haven’t forgiven yet

be more intentional in my friendships

have a deeper knowledge and hunger for the Word

be teaching in some capacity

be known for my message of grace and truth

be living near a big city, but not in the middle of one

be healthy and active

maybe have three more books under my belt

have a good relationship with Rosie (my niece)

have a deeper relationship with Jenna and Sara (my sisters)

have a looser hold on the world

be living a slow pace of life that I’m comfortable with

have a novel or children’s book series underway

be spending less time on social media

be spending more time outdoors, appreciating nature

have a deeper more intimate prayer life in which I can spend extended periods of time with God, rather than five minutes

be making a decent living, but not too much

be living near water

be home with my family a good amount

Then I went on and on about this house I want to live in that will have this room in it where I write and a garden outside of it where I walk. Toward the end of my 10-year plan I wrote, “I don’t want to climb. I don’t want to race. I don’t want to run. I want to just be.”

I didn’t know this about myself.

I didn’t expect this to be what I wrote at 30, after working hard toward my academic and career goals. But I have to say, it has been one of the most freeing realizations of my life, to know that deep down I really care more about the type of person that I am becoming and the people in my life than I do about what I do.

I had always worried a little that I cared too much about achieving and performance, that I would just keep reaching at the expense of other things. But apparently, this isn’t what I want at all. And I am so, so glad.

I just finished reading Shauna Niequist’s book Present Over Perfect. In it, she talks about this idea of a “secret soul.” The person you really are outside of the person you think you should be.

Maybe I’ve been unearthing some parts of my secret soul lately. Moving toward who I truly am and away from who I thought I wanted to be. It’s funny how we can’t even know the difference, within our own selves.

The post Turning 30 and My “Secret Soul” appeared first on Andrea Lucado.

from Andrea Lucado http://andrealucado.com/2016/08/30/turning-30-secret-soul/