R.I.Chalmers Passionate About English

I wrote on this blog last November that I hoped to have 6000 YouTube subscribers by November 2010. Well, today we passed the 10,000 subscriber mark, and it’s only August. Recent trends show that I should have 15,000 subscribers on YouTube by November 2010 – considerably more than I earlier predicted.

We also have 2063 Linguaspectrum members. And that is without any form of advertising. I am soon to launch my subscription service. I hope to turn a high proportion of my members into subscribers to the new Premium Content.

What I have learnt over the past few months is that hard work and more hard work eventually pays dividends and achieves your goals. Endless hours of work should see us with 30,000 YouTube subscribers by this time next year (August 16th 2011) and, I hope, 5,000 Linguaspectrum members.

The numbers seem fantastic, but they are only a tiny fraction of the people out there who want to learn English.

Posted under Teaching, Technology

This latest video English lesson deals with another 3 troublesome homophones – there, their and they’re. You only have to read the comments on any English online newspaper to see how even native English speaker have trouble with these. This video is also full of fiendishly difficult tongue-twisters designed to test your verbal dexterity. I defy you to say them all correctly.

Posted under Teaching

As an online English teacher, I am always looking for ways to make the learning process as effective as possible. One of my students, Ady, asked today if he could keep the audio from our lessons. I already give students the full notes that we make with screen sharing on Skype, but never considered recording the audio.

There are a couple of reasons for this. One, it would produce a huge file. 30 minutes of MP3 would run to several hundred megabytes. Two, this would be too big to send to the student by email. Most email services limit the size of the attachments you can send.

So I did a bit of research and found a very interesting program called CallGraph. This is a free download that allows you to record your Skype conversations on two channels. This is useful if you want to isolate the teacher or the student. It’s easy to download and install. I installed it to my system in minutes and was able to quickly make a test recording.

I am recommending all my online students to download the program from http://callgraph.biz/ and use if they want during our classes. Being able to relive a class as often as necessary will help students with particular points of grammar or pronunciation. By recording the audio themselves, they remove the need for me to send anything bigger than the PDF files I always send containing the class notes.

Posted under Writing

Skype 5, currently in Beta, has the capability to allow up to 5 users to share a conference call. For me as a an online teacher, this is exciting news indeed. It means that I can offer group classes to students who may be separated from each other by thousands of miles.
Many students, especially in the Far East, cannot afford even my low prices for classes. A class shared between four students, however, would be affordable to most.
Students could arrange with their friends to take group conversation classes with me online. All would then join the class at the appointed time and would enjoy a classroom type environment.
It will be very interesting to see how this works in practice.
On my wish-list for Skype is two-way screen sharing. I use screen sharing in my online classes every day. It makes teaching easier and learning is faster. What I would like to see is the ability for the student to also interact with the screen at the same time as me. Currently, the student has to initiate a screen share of their own, and thus screen sharing goes from one to the other, but never both at the same time.

Posted under Writing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNNEVDe98oI

This was by far the most difficult video I have yet made for YouTube. Some problems with the rendering at YouTube caused massive synchronization problems and the video was unusable as a teaching tool. I had to redo the whole thing in MPEG-2 and then spend 11 hours uploading. Thankfully, it finally rendered correctly at YouTube’s end. I hope this is not going to repeat itself.

Posted under Teaching

In November I wrote in this blog that we had passed the 700 subscriber mark in our YouTube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Linguaspectrum

I looked today and found that we now have over 4000 subscribers and almost 20,000 friends.

Linguaspectrum itself has over 1300 subscribing students.

YouTube just added the ability to send a news bulletin to every subscriber and friend. I also use mailing software on the Linguaspectrum site. Now when I make a new video I can send it instantly to over 25,000 students around the world.

My latest video has had the fastest increas in views and comments yet, thanks to the ability to reach so many people so quickly.

It hasn’t been an easy thing to achieve. I have been working 16 hour days, 7 days a week for the past 8 months or more. And there is still so much work to be done. We may now be on page 1 of the YouTube Gurus in Spain, and number 6 in the Educational Gurus in Spain, but I want us to be number 1 across the board.

Posted under Teaching

Visit My English Club

I’ve just joined some social networking sites. I’m new to it, but this might be fun. Please join me.

Posted under Society, Teaching

Valentine’s Day | Learn English | Love and Marriage

February 14th is Valentine’s Day.

Named after a 3rd Century Roman priest, Valentine’s Day is a celebration of romantic love. The day is an opportunity to show your feelings for someone you like. It is a day when flowers, and roses in particular, become move valuable than gold, and chocolates acquire bigger boxes and price tags.

Whether you intend to celebrate the day or not, this video will introduce you to some of the truths behind the fiction of St. Valentine’s Day. It will also provide you with lots of new vocabulary and the means to learn and practice your new found words.

Posted under Writing

Aquarius | Learn English | Astrology

This is one of a series of English lessons based on the theme of astrology.

They are designed to teach you vocabulary, and especially personal descriptive adjectives.

If you were born between January 20th and February 18th, then your star sign is Aquarius. The symbol of Aquarius is the water carrier. Aquarius’ element is air. Uranus rules Aquarius. Aquarians are individualists. They build their lives on their own inclinations and can have trouble relating to other people.

This English lesson will help you understand the vocabulary used to describe people in general and Aquarius in particular.

Posted under Lifestyle, Society

Capricorn | Learn English | Astrology

This is one of a series of English lessons based on the theme of astrology. They are designed to teach you vocabulary, and especially personal descriptive adjectives.

If you were born between December 22nd and January 19th, then your star sign is Capricorn. Capricorn’s element is Earth. Capricorn’s ruling planet is Saturn. Capricorn is loyal with a good sense of humour. Prone to pessimism, they need the support of family and friends, even if they don’t show it emotionally.

This English lesson will help you understand the vocabulary used to describe people in general and Capricorn in particular.

Posted under Lifestyle, Teaching