Anna Phillips

A very grey, cold and very wet Monday morning. Still no heating or hot water and part of the new roof is leaking.  That’s all I shall say about the building work for now as I will probably get depressed!

Today I am working on the TB notes for Theme 1 of the new edition. I am working on the listening lessons the main aim of which is listening for definitions and signpost language. As I was working I realised we had repeated very similar activities, though with different tapescripts, in Lessons, 2,3 and 4. This was annoying at first but I have now worked out a better set of activites for lesson 3, I think. In Lesson 3 we want the students to analyse the language used so there will always be a skills check and a grammar check box here. The problem is always to hiighlight the patterns but keeping the focus on lisetning. It is very easy to get sidetracked into one of the other skills at this point.

Terry is away today at a meeting in London but we have planned a full day’s work on the third edition tomorrow. I will put my ideas for Lesson 3 to him then and see what he thinks.

In the meantime keep your comments and suggestions coming so that we can incorporate them into the new edition. 

Hopefully both the weather and the building situation will have imporved by tomorrow!

Anna

Hi

Is anyone reading this I ask myself? Anyway, it is 0C today and guess what? No heating; the brand new boiler costing thousands has decided to stop working. We are waiting for a service engineer to come and fix it.  We have a little fan heater whirring away in the office which is helping to ward off the cold. However you tend to get boiling hot feet while your upper body is still frozen.

Never mind, we SIE authors are made of strong stuff and work continues on the 3rd edition despite all the chaos around us.  Currently I am working on the TB notes for theme 1; this is useful because when you write these notes it gives you much greater insight into the SB materials and if they work or not. So in fact when I write TB notes I also become a content editor as well.  These TB notes are also particularly interesting because I am having to add stuff about using the DVD which will accompany the new course.

That’s all for today.�

It’s quite a while since I last wrote anything; we went on holiday for a week and since we got back I’ve been (a) busy and (b) having lots of problems with my computer. It seems I need to get a new one.

Anyway we are still trying to write amidst the chaos of building work. We do have hot water and heating now but no bathrooms. The kitchen is half working - there is a useable sink but no electricity or cooking facilities. There is also no heating in the kitchen and as the temperature dropped to about 2C yesterday it is pretty much unusable.  Our home office is covered in quite a thick film of dust and there is still lots of banging and drilling so it’s quite difficult to concentrate.

However we have now finished the listening, speaking reading and writing sections for Theme 1 of level 1 for the 3rd edition of SIE.  Today we will be looking at the grammar section.

People often ask us how we organise the work. With this particular project it is going something like this; we have a general discussion about the lesson. We decide what was good about the old version and what we would like to change. Terry then rewrites the material according to what we have discussed. We then have another meeting and look at the new version. I will check it carefully to make sure there is a ‘flow’ through the lesson and also to make sure that the main objective is achieved. I also look at making sure we have achieved consistency of level. I usually suggest changing the order of activities or adding a new activity for example. Probably we will need to rewrite 3 or 4 times before we are happy with it. Another major consideration is always whether the lesson is interesting and enjoyable for the students.

Terry is now ready to look at the grammar pages with me so I will sign off now - more soon!Â

I work on the SIE course from our home in Bournemouth. Home at the moment is literally a building site as we are having a large extension built. We are now into week 8 of the build and it is due to be finished at the end of November. So I am trying to be creative to the background noise of debris being thrown into the skip and constant banging! There is no heating or hot water and no bathrooms so life is a bit stressful!

Anyway, to get back to the writing. At the moment Terry and I are hard at work revising SIE for the 3rd edition. We are using feedback from both the international editions and the UAE Skills course to hopefully create a really fantastic and user friendly course. So far we are half way through Theme 1 of level 1 - only another 29 and a half themes to go!

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