Indian e-tutors teach British children maths

Last week we posted the video Indian e-tutors teach British children maths as a visual support to our talking point Numbers. Some students have asked for a listening activity on the video clip, so here it is with the corresponding transcription.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below about it.



1. How far away from London is Ludhiana?
2. What two pieces of equipment are used for students and tutors to communicate?
3. How much money do online tutors make in Ludhiana?
4. How many students are there on the online class?
5. What is the main disadvantage of the programme, according to the teachers union representative?

Now school in Britain has taken outsourcing to a whole new level by using call centre staff in India to help with math lessons here.
Children at a national primary school in North London have one-to-one computer sessions with tutors in the Punjab to supplement their school work.
The BBC's Howard Johnson's travelled to Ludhiana in India to find out how the long-distance lessons actually work.
(1) 4,000 miles away from London in North India's industrial heartland is Ludhiana, a city best known for its knitwear factories and manufacturing plants. But now it provides a new export: online tutorials in maths…
If I asked you what’s fifteen times 3…
…delivered straight into British homes and classrooms.
45.
Pupils and tutors communicate with each other (2) using headsets and an interactive whiteboard. Lessons are designed to cover UK primary and secondary school curricula and can be arranged 24 hours a day.
(3) Tutors here in Ludhiana earn around seven pounds an hour, that’s roughly three times a local minimum wage. Now the British-based company that offers the services says that all have been security checked and must be from a maths teachers or graduates.
Ashmount Primary in North London became the first school in Britain to use the service. But what do their pupils make of their e-tutors.
It’s fun because it’s on a computer, not doing it down in your book.
When you’re in class doing maths, you don't really want to pay attention because the teacher is right in front of you, but now it’s on the computer and you, you’re speaking to somebody in India and you don’t want to waste the opportunity.
It’s fun because you’re talking to someone from somewhere else.
Ashmount teachers say the service is cost-effective but is of a high standard.
The biggest advantage is that it's affordable and, you know, we can get more children getting (4) one-to-one tuition and within the national curriculum framework, and so we know they're making progress and also the children really enjoy it, they like using the computer and, you know, they’re enthusiastic about the lessons.
But a teachers’ union says there are downsides to using the service.
These sorts of methods (5) wouldn't give you any sort of emotional connection between the teacher and the child, and we think that's a vital part of learning. Teaching isn't just about having maths knowledge. It's about having that connection with the child, knowing how to enthuse them. It's also about reporting back to their class teacher, so we don't think this method will work very well for children.
Despite criticism, Brightspark Education hope that by joining on the country’s shared history and language its service will expand into more British classrooms soon.
Howard Johnson, BBC News, Ludhiana.

Talking point: Numbers

This week's talking point is numbers. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below so that ideas flow more easily when you meet up with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand.

• What are important numbers in your life? (vg. '2' the number of children you have)
• Do you have a head for numbers?
• Do you find maths fun and easy?
• What do you use numbers for in your everyday life?
• Do you know anyone who's hopeless/excels at numbers?
• What do you remember about your maths teachers at school?
• Why do you think maths is often unpopular as a school subject?
• How would you make the subject more accessible and popular?
• Have you got a lucky number and why is it lucky?
• Talk about a time when an ability or lack of ability to do maths helped you or caused problems for you.
• Do you agree with Benjamin Disraeli's idea that "There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics"?

Answer these questions which all have idiomatic expressions with numbers:
1 On what occasions do you go out dressed to the nines?
2 Do you often leave things to the eleventh hour, or do you prefer to be well-prepared?
3 Do you know anyone who only looks after number one? Describe them.
4 Do you really think life begins at 40?
5 Can you think of real-life examples for the expression 'a stitch in time saves nine'?

To illustrate the topic you can watch this BBC report on the latest trend of maths tuition in the UK.

Real English series: Numbers, age, days and dates

This week's the Real English video series focuses on the topic of numbers from very different perspectives.

First of all, we revise cardinal numbers. You can find some exercises on the Real English site here.

Then we move on to ordinal numbers. You can find some exercises on ordinal numbers on the Real English site here.

Next, it is the age. People on the street answer the question How old are you? You can find some exercises on the age on the Real English site here.

The fourth video to do with numbers is about dates and days. People on the street answer questions like When's your birthday? What day is Christmas? How old are you? How do you spell your name? You can find some exercises on dates and days on the Real English site here.

Finally, it is turn of telephone numbers and the question What's your telephone humber? You can find some exercises on telephone numbers on the Real English site here.

Seconds

Self-study activity:
Watch this video, which might help you to improve your listening ability for numbers, and complete the gaps in the transcript with the missing numbers.



One day consists of (1) ... seconds, each one containing countless options, possibilities and decisions of which only one can emerge. (1) ...  seconds. This is one of them.

One week consists of (2) ...  . One month, (3) ... seconds. One year, (4) ... seconds.

One lifetime (5) ... seconds, each one containing countless options, possibilities and decisions of which only one can emerge, each with the ability to create one life and erase another.

One day consists of (1) ...  seconds. This is one of them.

Now that we have all our seconds right, perhaps we could think about the video more carefully. Try and give an answer to these questions:

What happens in the supermarket?
What does the man decide to do in a single second?
In the house, what is the couple eating?
How does the couple’s relationship change?
What happens at the end of the story?
What is the main idea of the video?

I found this video and activity in ESL Writing.

Key:
(1) 86,400 (2) 604,800 (3) 2,629,746 (4) 31,556,926 (5) 2,366,820,000

How do you pronounce 2012?

"How do you say 2012? It was still quite common to hear 'two thousand and eleven' during the past year, but it is my guess that you won't hear 'two thousand and twelve' very much this year. Instead, most people will say 'twenty twelve' - in the UK, anyway."

This is the beginning of the 1st January post by The Virtual Linguist. Click on the link or on the picture below to read his prediction about the way 2012 will be pronounced by most native English speakers.

And since we are dealing with numbers, you can read Jane Straus's Rules for Writing Numbers and do the accompanying quiz.

Occupy protesters say it is 99%

Self-study activity:
How do you pronounce these figures?

99%
120 million
0.3%
0.01%
1928 (year)
2000 (year)
3.1m
$131bn
2011 (year)
$26,487
$270.5m
1970s (decade)
$100,000
99.99%

Now watch this The Guardian video Occupy protesters say it is 99% which I discovered through Larry Ferlazzo and check whether you got the pronunciation of these figures right while you learn more details about the Occupy movement in the US.

Although the level of the video is high, Básico 2 students can watch it to revise the pronunciation of numbers in English.



You can read the transcript here.

Heathrow Transport Pods

Self-study activity:
Watch this short ITN video clip about the new way of getting around in Heathrow and fill in the blanks in the transcript below with the missing numbers.

The task is suitable for Básico 2 students.



Meet the future, say the designers of public transport. This 30 million pound pod network has replaced (1) ... thousand annual airport bus journeys between Heathrow Terminal 5 and its car parks. Each is battery-powered and entirely computer-controlled. They arrive on demand and make a (2) ... kilometre journey in just five minutes. It took the airport buses up to (3) ... minutes in addition to the 10-15 minute average waiting time.
Your personal pod with four seats will arrive to collect you and your family in around (4) ... seconds and will whisk you non-stop to your destination. The twenty-one vehicle is (5) ... more efficient than a car and automatically-clocked to recharge their batteries when no-one is using them.
It is estimated these cute little private trains will carry some (6) ... passengers a year, a promising start to a novel idea which could just revolutionise transport.

Key:
(1) 50,000 (2) 3.8 (3) 15 (4) 30 (5) 70% (6) half a million

The Burj Dubai -Number dictation

Self-study activity:
Watch this video clip on The Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world, and complete the gaps in the transcript with the missing figures.



The Burj Dubai is now the tallest building in the world. At (1) ... meters, it now beats the (2) ...-meter-tall Taipei (3) ... tower. Developer Emaar refuses to reveal what the tower's final height will be. But figures released by one contractor suggest around (4) ... meters. Other sources suggest it could end up over (5) ... kilometer high. The number of floors also isn't known, but elevator plans show at least (6) ... floors.

TheBurj Dubai has grown at a rapid pace, as these photographs show. Here, we are superimposing some helicopter shots from early May (7) ..., with shots from July taken just (8) ... days ago.

So Dubai is now home to the world's tallest tower. But the Burj Dubai might not keep this title for long. Just a few miles away, rival developer Nakheel is building the Al-Burj Tower. Some reports say it will be (9) ... meters tall.

But for now, this vast concrete spire is the tallest structure on planet Earth. Lisa Creffield, AME Info Broadcast.

Key:
(1) 512 (2) 508 (3) 101 (4) 808 (5) 1 (6) 195 (7) 2007 (8) 2 (9) 1200

How to say numbers

Watch this video from Rebecca ESL, who is going to remind us how to say long difficult numbers in English.



This other video from Teacher Melanie is also very interesting, as it shows more complex aspects of the pronunciation of numbers:

-How to tell times (digital and analogical).
-How to pronounce the number 0.
-How to pronounce money figures.
-How to pronunce telephone numbers.
-How to read numbers in addresses.
-How to read large numbers in populations.



A word of warning, though. Teacher Melanie is a Canadian teacher and she explains numbers the way they are pronounced in America. But most of us are used to British English and a few things (not many) are different. So take into account the following:
-The analogical time is completely different in British English (see several entries on this blog).
-Using zero for 0 is quite safe in most situations, but British English uses nought very often.
-In sports, American English uses nothing (2-0=two nothing), but British English uses nil (2-0=two-nil).

Birth year inflation

Compare today's prices with the prices of the year when you were born or the year of your choice with birth year inflation.

Self-study activity:

You can use birth year inflation to practise modifying comparisons. Example:

In 1970 the price of petrol was a lot/much cheaper than today.

Today the price of meat is three times as expensive as in 1975.

At lower level you can use birth year inflation to revise how to say the numbers in English.

H/T to Larry Ferlazzo.

Seven Billion

Seven billion is a light-hearted video by The National Geographic which tries to raise awareness about the problems of overpopulation on earth.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say what the following figures refer to:

seven billion / two or three / six / 1,500 / 500

You can check the answers to the activity with the transcript here.

You can complement the information with this other clip.

Self-study activity for Básico 1 and Básico 2 students:
Go over the video below and freeze the screen whenever a figure comes us. How do you say that figure in English?

Remember that in English, 1 billion = 1,000 million.

H/T to Free Technology for Teachers.

Calculations, numbers and maths

Math TV can be an interesting site for English learners as it can show us how to say some terminology in English, from easy calculations to really complicated ones.

On top of that, there are lots of videos for us to practise our listening skills.