Highly trained, respected and free: why Finland's teachers are different.

In a quiet classroom adorned with the joyful creations of small children, Ville Sallinen is learning what makes Finland’s schools the envy of the world.

Sallinen, 22, is teaching a handful of eight-year-olds how to read. He is nearing the end of a short placement in the school during his five-year master’s degree in primary school teaching.

Viikki teacher training school in eastern Helsinki describes itself as a laboratory for student teachers. Here, Sallinen can try out the theories he has learned at the university to which the school is affiliated. It’s the equivalent of university teaching hospitals for medical students.

The school’s principal, Kimmo Koskinen, says: “This is one of the ways we show how much we respect teaching. It is as important as training doctors.”

Welcome to a country where teaching is a highly prized profession. Finland’s teachers have kept the nation near the top of the influential Pisa performance rankings since they were first published in 2001, leading to an influx of educational tourists as other teachers have endeavoured to learn from the Finnish experience.

Finland is going through a deep economic crisis, and there are financial pressures on schools, just as there are on the rest of the public sector. But the five-year master’s degree for primary school teachers is not in question. Competition is fierce – only 7% of applicants in Helsinki were accepted this year, leaving more than 1,400 disappointed.

LESS or FEWER?

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And…Action: 4 Reasons You Should Make Original Videos in Class.

Are your students movie junkies?

Lots of ESL students like to watch films when they have the chance. It’s an entertaining way for them to practice their receptive language skills. And if movies are a weekend event for your students, and they probably are, have you tried making original movies in class? Having students film their own flicks has lots of benefits, and there are lots of different ways you can create original videos with your students. Here are some ideas if you are ready to give in class filming a try as well as the reasons why you should give them a try.

4 Reasons You Should Make Original Videos in Class

·   1

ORIGINAL INTERVIEWS

Low on the entertainment scale but high on the benefits scale are recorded interviews with your students. If you do regular speaking evaluations through interviews, you are 99% of the way to making interview videos with your students. All you have to do it prop up a smartphone where it can film your student and hit record. If possible, use your student’s phone rather than your own, but don’t hesitate to use yours if they don’t have one. After your interview, you will grade your students based on certain criteria. Give your students that same criteria and have them evaluate their own video as well. Then see how closely your scores match. Throughout the process, your students will become more aware of their pronunciation and fluency. As a bonus, you can show them an early video at the end of the year and they can see how much they have improved.

·   2

MONSTER MOVIE MARATHON

This video production will take more time, but your students should be able to complete the project in a few hours. And your class will be talking about this project for the rest of the year. Start by giving them a general script for a typical monster movie. You can include the following scenes.

·         Movie title and credits

·         The creation of the monster

·         Introduction of the main characters including the hero

·         The destruction of the city

·         The failed attempt to destroy the monster

·         The hero figuring out how to kill the monster

·         The destruction of the monster

·         The end where everything is back to normal

Feel free to give as many or as few specifics for each scene as you like. Then put your students in groups of five or six students and give them free reign to make their own movies using whatever props you have available in class. Once everyone has completed their videos, pop some popcorn, dim the lights, and project the movies on the big screen. (Make sure you have all the necessary cables ahead of time.) When you see the movies, you will know how well your students’ followed the written directions for each scene their movie should have included. In other words, you will get a measure of their reading comprehension. As they watch, your students will be able to see themselves on camera and evaluate their English skills that way, too. Most of all, it’s a great event and lots of fun for everyone in class.

·   3

SKIT ON TAPE

Skits are always fun for ESL classes. When you have your students compose an original skit, even if you assign the topic, both you and your students reap the benefits. Your students get to be creative when they come up with the skit specifics. You get to see their grammar skills in action when you judge the accuracy of the dialogue. More outgoing students get to take more prominent roles while quieter students still contribute even if they don’t say much in the skit itself. And everyone is entertained when they see their classmates in front of the room putting their all in to the final performance. You can increase the benefits if you also video the skit while your students perform it. Because it is being recorded, the stress on your students will increase. In this case, stress is a good thing because it will cause your students to use English more naturally, and you will get a more authentic read on how well they speak English sentences and pronounce English words. Like other videos, your students can also do self-evaluation when they watch their performance later. And you will have something fun to screen at the end of the school year.

·   4

CLASS NEWS TONIGHT

Do your students watch the nightly news? If they haven’t, you might want to screen a typical program in class. When you do, point out to your students how the newscasters make eye contact with the camera and use a more formal manner of speaking. You may even want to point out that newscasters use a neutral accent (called newscasterese). Once you have watched a news program with your students, have them record their own news program. Divide your class into groups of three to five students. Two students will be the anchors in their video. One person will be the camera operator. And other students can be the weather forecaster and sports reporter. Let your students make up their own stories (either true or fictional) and then record their news program. You might want to encourage them to dress appropriately for their roles and to keep notes on sheets of paper on their desk in front of them like many newscasters do. Once your students have recorded their own news programs, play them for the class. It will be entertaining to the entire class, but you will also have the chance to evaluate your students’ formal use of English, something you probably don’t have much opportunity for in class.

You probably use videos all the time in class, but how many original videos do your students produce?

If you haven’t tired video production with your students, give it a shot. You might be surprised at how much fun it is and how many benefits it offers.

 From: BusyTeacher

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Roman Jakobson - On Linguistic Aspects of Translation - full text

Roman Jakobson (1959) (LINK)

On linguistic Aspects of Translation

According to Bertrand Russell, “no one can understand the word ‘cheese’ unless he has a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheese.”¹ If, however, we follow Russell’s fundamental precept and place our “emphasis upon the linguistic aspects of traditional philosophical problems,” then we are obliged to state that no one can understand the word “cheese” unless he has an acquaintance with the meaning assigned to this word in the lexical code of English. Any representative of a cheese-less culinary culture will understand the English word “cheese” if he is aware that in this language it means “food made of pressed curds” and if he has at least a linguistic acquaintance with “curds.” We never consumed ambrosia or nectar and have only a linguistic acquaintance with the words “ambrosia,” “nectar,” and “gods” - the name of their mythical users; nonetheless, we understand these words and know in what contexts each of them may be used.

The meaning of the words “cheese,” “apple,” “nectar,” “acquaintance,” “but,” “mere,” and of any word or phrase whatsoever is definitely a linguistic - or to be more precise and less narrow - a semiotic fact. Against those who assign meaning (signatum) not to the sign, but to the thing itself, the simplest and truest argument would be that nobody has ever smelled or tasted the meaning of “cheese” or of “apple.” There is no signatum without signum. The meaning of the word “cheese” cannot be inferred from a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheddar or with camembert without the assistance of the verbal code. An array of linguistic signs is needed to introduce an unfamiliar word. Mere pointing will not teach us whether “cheese” is the name of the given specimen, or of any box of camembert, or of camembert in general or of any cheese, any milk product, any food, any refreshment, or perhaps any box irrespective of contents. Finally, does a word simply name the thing in question, or does it imply a meaning such as offering, sale, prohibition, or malediction? (Pointing actually may mean malediction; in some cultures, particularly in Africa, it is an ominous gesture.)

For us, both as linguists and as ordinary word-users, the meaning of any linguistic sign is its translation into some further, alternative sign, especially a sign “in which it is more fully developed” as Peirce, the deepest inquirer into the essence of signs, insistently stated.² The term “bachelor” may be converted into a more explicit designation, “unmarried man,” whenever higher explicitness is required. We distinguish three ways of interpreting a verbal sign: it may be translated into other signs of the same language, into another language, or into another, nonverbal system of symbols. These three kinds of translation are to be differently labeled:

1          Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language.

2          Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language.

3          Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.

The intralingual translation of a word uses either another, more or less synonymous, word or resorts to a circumlocution. Yet synonymy, as a rule, is not complete equivalence: for example, “every celibate is a bachelor, but not every bachelor is a celibate.” A word or an idiomatic phrase-word, briefly a code-unit of the highest level, may be fully interpreted only by means of an equivalent combination of code-units, i.e., a message referring to this code-unit: “every bachelor is an unmarried man, and every unmarried man is a bachelor,” or “every celibate is bound not to marry, and everyone who is bound not to marry is a celibate.”

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell.

“Tired of their servitude to man, a group of farm animals revolt and establish their own society, only to be betrayed into worse servitude by their leaders, the pigs, whose slogan becomes: ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ This 1945 satire addresses the socialist/communist philosophy of Stalin in the Soviet Union.”

I am reading this book for the second time, this time in English (I have read it in Portuguese). It is an incredible one.

What about you? What are you reading at the moment?

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25 Life Lessons from Albert Einstein

Here are 25 life lessons from Albert Einstein:

1. Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

2. Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

3. Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

4. If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

5. A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.

6. Love is a better teacher than duty.

7. If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

8. No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

9. Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

10. Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.

11. It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

12. Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.

13. Force always attracts men of low morality.

14. Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.

15. A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

16. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

17. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

18. It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

19. Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

20. Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

21. Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

22. Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

23. Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

24. Information is not knowledge.

25. Never lose a holy curiosity.

h/t: AvMedia

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Adult or aDULT?