Thursday, February 19, 2015

Chinese New Year

People around the world are preparing to welcome in the Year of the Goat on Thursday. We’ll be celebrating Chinese New Year in my YL classes this weekend by making paper lanterns. And thanks to the British Council Learn English Kids site, it’ll also be a chance to raise the children’s awareness of accent variation. The craft section of the website features a video of a Chinese boy explaining, step by step, how to make a paper lantern. Since most coursebooks still feature mostly native speaker accents, this video provides a useful opportunity to focus students on a potentially unfamiliar accent. It also serves as a springboard for discussion to encourage students to reflect on how they can respond to unfamChinese lanterns for sale in Chiang Mai, Thailand, ahead of Chinese New Year.iliar accents