Dear Teacher,
The school year is about to begin – I hope you all feel refreshed after the summer break.
The all-new Tune Into English Roadshow is currently in preparation, and I would be delighted to visit your school to present it to your students. A letter with full details has been mailed to Italian schools – this is online here. You can watch a 45-second video of the Secondary show here, a longer version here, as well as a presentation of the Primary show.
It will come as no surprise at all that the first of this month’s additions to the Downloadable Worksheets section of the Teachers’ Area of www.tuneintoenglish.com will feature in this year’s Roadshow: Get Lucky by Daft Punk has been dominant on radio playlists for the last few months. Mena Bianco from Naples has prepared a low level worksheet, ideal for the beginning of the school year.
Wish You Were Here is an expression commonly used on holiday postcards, but is also one of Pink Floyd’s best known songs. Pedro Urbano, from Manaus, Brazil has contributed a phonetic activity based on the 1975 classic.
The beginning of the new academic year is always difficult, so the third addition is the optimistic Have A Nice Day by Bon Jovi, who toured Europe this summer. Contributed by Maria Gulczynska, Ancona, this focuses on opposites and listening for specific words.
Thank you to all teachers who have contributed to the website – I look forward to receiving your future worksheets.
You can sing along with the UK Top 10 Charts on the Speak Up site – updated weekly, there is a link on the Tune Home page too.
The Karaoke page of Tune Into English now features over 8,500 songs as well as all of this summer’s top hits – why not organise a classroom singing session with your students to ease them into the new year?
Tune Into English also works with schools in the UK and Ireland to promote study tours and teacher refresher courses there. Further details are here – note that these can be funded through the Comenius/Grundtvig scheme.
We would like to thank Dr Carmen Fonseca-Mora of the University of Huelva for including an activity from the Tune Into English Roadshow in her presentation at the III Forum Nebrija in Bilingual Teaching this summer. Check out her website Symphony which explores Music Perception and Reading Skills in Foreign Language Learning.
Finally, a personal “well done!” to my brother Owen Dara, whose film Choosing Signs has won a number of awards in the last few months, including Best Feature in New York and Best Foreign Feature in Los Angeles – congratulations!
I look forward to meeting you and your students in the coming months,
Best wishes, and indeed Buon Lavoro!
Fergal Kavanagh
Tune Into English
www.tuneintoenglish.com