Penny Mosavian

Penny Mosavian

Assistant Professor/Director of Studies @ Dept of Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick. Interests include Teacher Training & Educational Technology.

Location Coventry, United Kingdom

Achievements

Activity

  • I've had a lot of experience over the past few years (especially the pandemic) of producing video content for the department where I work, as well as filming the predicatable "cat falling off the sofa" stuff. But it's all been self taught, and I'd like content going forward - especially for teaching - to be more professional.

  • Penny Mosavian made a comment

    Hi all, really good to meet you!

  • Penny Mosavian made a comment

    Nice to meet you!

  • This is an interesting activity that I think would work well with adults too, especially EFL students. Are there virtual lego bricks available anywhere?? ...lol!

  • Penny Mosavian made a comment

    that's amazing!!!! ..

  • Hi, I'm Penny, pleased to meet you all, I'm currently involved in starting a children's play project, and I'm keen to find out more about collaborative and social skills in play. I'm pleased to be in such auspicious company, and to meet so many like minded professionals from around the globe!

  • I'm always suspicious of being approached by a company that is trying to sell something, before I've learned something about them. I think that it would be better to share content, draw your connections to your page, and then reach out. But I am not really a sales person, so I might have that completely wrong!

  • Hugely helpful, thank you!

  • I'm a member of several groups that are industry specific, for example

    https://www.linkedin.com/company/iatefl/

  • Very helpful overview, thank you for this.

  • Need to be more proactive on my personal LinkedIn - I don't use it enough. And like Louise below, I need to develop a strategy for posting regular content both on my personal page, as well as for work (thank you Louise!)

  • I'm focused on my full time role at a UK University to help develop the use of LinkedIn, as we move our specialist courses online. You can find me here:

    https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/people/mosavian/

    Nice to meet you!
    Penny

  • I'm Penny, and live in Coventry, UK. I'm here because I'm interested in developing online courses, and hope to share ideas and learn from like minded educators from around the globe. Pleased to meet you all!

  • Formative assessment using Kahoot, Quizlet, Moodle quizzes and more recently, H5P, has proven very effective. However, where the student is expecting some kind of tutor feedback, I've found Snagit and ScreencastOmatic helpful - using these recording tools, I've been able to comment on assignments, drafts etc. This has been really useful to support online...

  • I used Microsoft TEAMS for a poster conference with 140 undergraduates - in groups, they'd produced posters on different Aspects of British Culture. We set up a Poster Conference Team, and assigned a separate Channel to each group, named by their topic. The Groups went to their channels and started a meeting; a couple of group members stayed with their...

  • I've not been able to try any projects just yet - but these ideas are hugely helpful when planning to move our teaching online

  • What a great idea! It's quite likely that many of our students will not be able to attend on campus classes now, but will still be undertaking projects on English language learning and British culture - this would be a terrific research project, and could be shared on the Course support platform.

  • We did something similar with international students on short visits to the UK - they did cultural trips, and each produced a short film about the places they visited - Oxford, Stratford upon Avon, Liverpool, London, Bath. This became a useful resource for future cohorts.

  • I think the numerical brief refers to the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method of planning filming/videos - as detailed through the above and previous examples - 5 shots minimum, then you plan downwards according to your topic and aims. It's new for me too!

  • 5 shots
    4 challenges of learning in lockdown
    3 suggestions/ways to learn in lockdown
    2 pupils explaining 4 & 3
    1 area of focus - COVID 19

  • I didnt count as many shots as given in the answers - a real revelation!

  • Clear, well paced - could the Teacher have used a couple of small toy houses as props?

  • Great way to engage students in maths learning!

  • Hi, I've been making the transition to online teaching and learning. Ive come to the course to find ideas, tools and techniques to help them incorporate film making into my own teaching practice, and to meet like minded people to share ideas with.

  • Without a doubt, Barack Obama. I love his creativity, dignity and integrity. Other speakers I admire include David Attenborough, Oprah Winfrey and Steve Jobs.

  • @JonathanDixon oh yes, definitely, especially after 42 years of marriage - he doesn't hold back - which in many ways, is very helpful!!

  • thanks!

  • Thanks ! This is really helpful!

  • Absolutely key to have someone try it out - when I write exam questions, I often ask my husband - he's a E2L speaker - it's very helpful.

  • I haven't used portfolio assessment per se, but I have used Padlet to set up Reflection walls, where students comment on their learning and class activities - this has helped me to reflect on their progress, adjust activities and enrich further lessons. Padlet is brilliant for this https://padlet.com/

  • Definitely an improvement, thanks to the repetition of the key information - and it has become more realistic too.

  • My issue with this task is that it is targeting similar information - names of the School, and the address; the name of the school is tricky too for an A2. It might be better to have asked a different question, for example "What is the man organising?" (A: A school trip)

  • Yes, all very helpful and highly recommended!

  • abstract of an academic article - this might be of interest to a student preparing for study at a University, but they would have to have a high level of English, the lexis is quite specialised.
    A financial report - good for a Business student, but there are a lot of figures here, and not much to read!
    A hotel brochure - would be useful for someone learning...

  • I've read for pleasure, as well as for work - I regularly read text messages and visit social media sites, but I also need to read for work as well. This includes selecting texts for students to read, so I have to be careful about text difficulty, and what I want students to achieve by reading a text.

  • I recently enrolled for a high stakes teaching course, with a tutor who took ages to respond. In the end, the pressure of trying to meet the course requirements and assignment standards proved too much, and I had a complete mental blowout and withdrew - I never heard from him. It really put me off!

  • I think they all have potential, but VR stands out for me as it allows students to step into places, worlds situations that they may not normally access. This is particularly relevant to my teaching, I train overseas teachers of English - VR would give them the chance to experience the language classroom

  • Penny Mosavian made a comment

    This is so helpful as a refresher course - thank you!

  • How true Ana, and the guy based it purely on physical appearance too - he obviously wasn't listening at all, but had already made his judgements before even speaking to the girl. It's so important that we avoid falling into this trap and help our students to avoid it too!

  • Thanks Rob for reminding us of some great ideas, and also introducing some new ones (Barnga) - brilliant, I will certainly try this out.
    One of the most popular activities I use - especially in project work, and where listening and speaking is important - is based on the UK TV programme Dragons Den. Students have to work together in small groups to prepare...

  • Starting students off in pairs, then "snowballing" to groups of 4, 8, 12 and so on, is often a good way to build confidence (Think-Pair-Share activities) Mixing them up too is vital. With regard to classroom layout, teachers often highlight how difficult this is because of fixed furniture, but pairs can turn around and talk to a pair behind them, then join up...

  • Looking forward to learning more about raising teachers' intercultural awareness and, as Javier refers to, using that cultural diversity to build good classroom experiences.

  • Hi Shahram - thanks for your message, um would you agree that code-switching is a bit of a "fuzzy area"? Take a look at this https://www.dictionary.com/browse/code-switching. My comment regards non native speakers tending to speak louder in order to become more intelligible was more of an observation than a judgement, especially after hearing Rob talking about...

  • I work in a wide variety of settings, according to group/purpose etc, but I like to sometimes push my students and take them into what I call an "unexpected" space - a big room where they can move a lot, a drama studio, a big seminar room- it can really produce interesting results, depending on the cultural background and expectations! I am also, like many...

  • I'm really pleased to be learning so much from Mary and Rob, other colleagues and especially from the participants - their ideas are brilliant! All the input and ideas are helping me to understand EMI, the challenges, and especially the contexts - just happy to keep learning everything!

  • So many great ideas, I'd adopt most of them - and they really cover all the strategies that I currently use. I think with low level students, the idea of "flipped classroom" teaching really comes into its own here, using and adapting technology to help students to pre-access key vocabulary and other concepts, so they arrive prepared and to gain optimum...

  • What a great idea!

  • While I understood the speaker in both clips, in the second one, it's obvious that Joey was "code-switching" to sound more French! ? Obviously, his co-presenters found it amusing, but I agree that possibly he wasn't even aware of it! At least he changed his accent, I work alongside lots of monolingual colleagues who think the best way to become more...

  • Shahram, that is outrageous! I believe that many non-native speakers (teachers) have a much better command and control of the language than a lot of native speaker teachers!

  • I think Dr Hultgren makes a very valid - and very important - point. So many teachers I've worked with get really hung up on their level of English, despite me telling them exactly what Dr Hultgren says - that they are the subject expert, not the language expert.

  • Absolutely right Ana!

  • How true is this, that in the classroom or lecture theatre, there is an element of performance to be delivered. Reading through some of my colleagues' comments here, I agree wholeheartedly with the commentaries regarding pace, tone, etc., and find myself regularly adjusting how I speak to students according to their levels. I think all students enjoy their...

  • Thanks to everyone for sharing their lectures online - these are all amazing in their own way, and very informative.

  • Professor David Crystal giving a talk on Global Englishes - wonderful storyteller and narrator, and pulls the audience in simply by being so down to earth, and realistic!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=109&v=2_q9b9YqGRY
    David Crystal makes the story of English, the development of the language and its future accessible to everyone through clear...

  • Sorry if this is a little bit biased! https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/global-pad/
    This is also a super site, it's subscription based, but they offer loads of free resources too. https://www.academic-englishuk.com/.

  • Definitely learn more about strategies that teachers can use in the EMI classroom!

  • Penny Mosavian made a comment

    I think it's really encouraging to see, read and learn about so many people working in many different EMI settings, and I do look forward to learning more about these contexts as the course progresses (and as I catch up!!)

  • Well, I work with students who come to specifically study English, so I guess the answer is yes!

  • yes, I agree - there are some circumstances where grammatical accuracy would be essential, for example in medicine.

  • I havent experienced this myself, but what sound advice! I completely agree that reassuring people, whether students or teachers, 100% accuracy is not totally necessary 100% of the time. I often reflect on the fact that as a native speaker, I'm not always correct either!

  • I would rather my students simply communicate!

  • I think understanding the relation between ELF and EMI is hugely important, and I believe this message needs to be spread more widely. Many of the teachers I work with are required to deliver their modules in English, and get very hung up on the idea that they have to be 100% accurate in their use of English to deliver their subject. This detracts from their...

  • I'm optimistic - I believe that EMI provides the lingua franca for organisations to develop and, importantly, for people to connect.

  • I'm working closely with lecturers who are required to teach in English, and so knowing as much as I can about EMI, its development, its future, will be incredibly useful

  • Penny Mosavian made a comment

    I seem to be working with many teachers who need to teach through the medium of English - this is a very useful course for me to understand a whole lot more about this important phenomenon. Im looking forward to hearing about and from other people around the world who need to use English in their work, and professionaly

  • I'm here to learn more about EMI!

  • It's truly scary.

  • Goodness me, how naive I am - I agree with Grace below - no more password saving, and I am definitely going to start changing passwords often. But I simply can't reconcile the fact that there are so many people with such devious intentions. Very thought provoking, thank you

  • Thank you both very much for this very valuable advice. I tend to change my password regularly anyway, but will do so again. I'm really grateful, thank you. Best wishes, Penny

  • Very long Privacy Policy Future Learn!... It's like every time Apple updates something, they send their T&Cs and I just simply scroll to the bottom and click "I agree" - it's amazing that I simply place my trust in the company because of its reputation. Maybe I need to re-assess this practice.

  • Bizarre - Ive just Googled myself, and it's amazing what has emerged - in particularly, what showed in the images section - members of my family and work colleagues.

  • I have just found out my email account has been "pwned" up to 3 times - is this a serious breach of security or just someone getting hold of my email address to bombard me with annoying spam? Aaarrgghh!!

  • Thought provoking, and has provided some interesting insights into areas of storytelling that I had not considered...and it has been very interesting reading participants' comments, and many thanks for such incredibly helpful links. Looking forward to week 2!

  • Loved both of these - thank you for sharing

  • I just watched this Eduardo....!!! Very effective, I was watching with one eye open at the end...

  • Penny Mosavian made a comment

    Just added the term Infographic! Lots of terms I have never heard of... great resource!

  • I agree with everyone here..and I think that in order to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to enjoy whatever it is you are trying to do - because if you believe in what you are doing, the passion will shine through - so getting to your goals will be easier!

  • Penny Mosavian made a comment

    Thanks guys - interesting, and very useful - did you include Bruce Willis just to check if we were reading it properly??!!