Tense Buster Online. An overview of Tense Buster Online. What's new in Tense Buster Online?

Transcription

1 An overview of Tense Buster Online Tense Buster is an ESL online program which focuses on helping students improve their reading, writing, listening, vocabulary and grammar skills. Each unit begins with a presentation of a grammar topic based on a dialogue, a newspaper article, a radio broadcast or an extract from a story. In this introductory phase, learners are encouraged to form theories about how the grammar works. Next come concept checking questions focusing on key areas of difficulty, and a grammar rule which enables learners to confirm or correct their theories. Students move on to practice and testing activities in which the language is contextualised and key aspects of form and function are highlighted. They might, for example, find and correct errors in a text about McDonald's or examine the use of modals in an authentic report about a robbery in Nigeria. Finally, each unit includes a vocabulary session and ends by suggesting extension activities. Tense Buster Online is flexible and non-prescriptive: it is designed to fit into your course rather than the other way round. The teacher support site at provides ideas on how Tense Buster can be integrated into a variety of lessons. Tense Buster Online is also ideal for selfaccess, especially now that the program is web-based and can be accessed from anywhere in the world. What's new in Tense Buster Online? The principal difference is one of flexibility. With Tense Buster 2001, the network version, students had to be in the centre to use the program. Computer labs had to be booked, or self access work in the library depended on computers being free. It was not often not practical to set Tense Buster activities for homework. Tense Buster Online runs on the Internet and can be accessed by students from home, the library, a friend's house, the office anywhere they can get onto the Web. As with all Web resources, the program runs best with broadband, but Tense Buster Online will run fine on a dial-up connection with only the initial download and the longer audio clips taking a little time. There's more, though. You can personalise the access page of the program to your own institution. Many of the exercises have been updated and all the audio files are in the process of being rerecorded. We will shortly be adding 1500 test questions, enabling students to design custom tests for themselves by choosing the grammar areas and the number of questions they want. These and the many other upgrades planned come free - included in the price of your subscription. The Results Manager has been completely redesigned, making it much easier for teachers to track student activity (more below). For the first time you can edit the existing Tense Buster Online activities using the Author Plus Online authoring tool. This means, for example, that you could change the location of one of the stories in Tense Buster to your town, or could add an activity focusing on your students' particular difficulties.

2 Can I change the Tense Buster Online activities? If you subscribe to a Dedicated Licence, you can add to or adapt the activities in Tense Buster using (optional) Author Plus Teacher. This program enables you to open up the exercises in the standard version of Tense Buster and change them in any way you like: you might change the context for example, to fit in with a local place or situation. You might alter the focus slightly to cater to specific problems your students have been having with a grammar area. You might want to create brand new interactive activities to fit in with a project your class is working on. The program includes a range of exercise types including: gapfill multiple choice drag and drop listening comprehension reading comprehension true/false proofreading target spotting dropdown All these exercises can be created quickly and easily, and all can be enhanced by feedback, hints, graphics, sound files and summary screens - just like the original Tense Buster Online. Once you have created your new activity, it is quick and easy to upload it to the Tense Buster site using the Author Plus Upload program. Once this is installed, no knowledge of Internet protocols is required! Facts and figures Tense Buster... is being used by thousands of schools and colleges in more than 110 countries around the world from New Zealand to Rwanda, Scotland to Argentina. includes more than 280 individual activities and, with Author Plus, the facility to add an unlimited number of your own. was described by IATEFL Journal as "effective, easy to use and systematic in its approach". includes detailed feedback in exercises to help students understand where they went wrong so they can avoid making the same mistakes in future. enables students not only to read the target language but also to listen to it. integrates easily into most English language curriculums as a supplementary resource. comes with an optional Results Manager, enabling teachers to monitor student activity and progress. is Clarity's first and most popular program and has been continuously upgraded, developed, expanded and enhanced since Distributed by: NAS Software Inc. Canada's Largest Distributor of ESL, Literacy and other language software. Tel: (905) Fax: (905) info@nas.ca Web:

3 Contents The contexts of the activities are set in different locations and cultures around the world. Almost all the exercises include an audio component to set the scene or provide additional reinforcement to correct answers. All activities are illustrated. Level 1: Elementary how to use am, is, are in the context of the language of greetings; to use to be with adjectives; contractions; statements, negatives and questions. to use the simple present. This unit focuses on when we use the simple present, on how to form the third person singular and on adverbs of frequency. to form questions in the simple present using do and does. Students use different wh- question words and practise using short answers. to use negatives in statements and short answers. Students have to distinguish between forming negatives with do/does, and with am/is/are. the underlying principles of articles: a vs the and a vs an. This is tackled in the contexts of simple stories and jobs. the use of pronouns. In this unit students practise recognising and using subject and object pronouns and possessive adjectives, I, my, me. the concept of countable and uncountable nouns initially presented in the context of food. The unit includes practice and testing activities. how to use some and any in questions, negatives and offers. when we use have got in statements, negatives and questions. This unit also covers contractions. Level 2: Lower Intermediate how to form the simple present and when to use it. We look at statements, questions and negatives, and contrast the simple present with the continuous. form and function of the present continuous for statements, questions and negatives. Students have to distinguish between use of the present continuous and the simple present in recognition and production activities. prepositions of time. We look at the use of in, on and at with days, months, years, important days, and so on. prepositions of place. We look at the use of in, on and at with countries, cities, addresses, floors of a building, and so on. how to form the simple past and when to use it. In this unit students look at time markers such as yesterday, nowadays and contrast present and past. how to compare two or more items using the comparative and superlative. There are practice exercises on forming these structures and students learn to avoid common mistakes. Level 3: Intermediate how to use the first and second conditional. They learn the key concept that it is the speaker's perception of the likelihood of an event that is important rather than its intrinsic likelihood when to use will and when to use be going to. Students practise using these two ways of talking about the future in the context of predictions and intentions. about the wh- words that introduce relative clauses. We look at how the relative clause relates to the main clause and consider typical mistakes and how to avoid them. to talk about equality and inequality using as as and how these concepts can be qualified. Students practise talking about equality in statements, questions and negatives. when we use the passive, how we form the passive in different tenses, and to use by to introduce the agent. There is a focus on the different reasons for using the passive.

4 Level 4: Upper Intermediate to distinguish between the present perfect simple and continuous. They learn when to use each form, and practise using for, since, yet, already and so on. the form and function of the past continuous. This is presented in the context of story telling. Students also look at the use of the past continuous with verbs of sensory perception (She could smell. vs She was smelling.) to use the third conditional, I wish and If only. They practise distinguishing between I had and I would, practise forming the structure and consider typical mistakes. the future perfect and future continuous, including using yet, just and already with the future. Students relate events to a time table according to whether they will happen, will be happening or will have happened how to use modals of deduction, must, might and can't. Students practise using these modals in the present and past, simple and continuous Level 5: Advanced the past perfect simple and continuous as "the past in the past". Students learn how we use this structure with time phrases and have to show they can discriminate between simple past and past perfect. how to report speech. They learn about "backshifting" and how pronouns, determiners and other words change according to the perspective of the person reporting. Focus on reporting verbs, eg tell, inform, persuade the underlying concepts for the use of articles. There is also extensive work on usage in particular areas, eg countries, geographical features, time and so on. the use of passives in specific areas. Students practise forming the passive in different tenses and consider how and why it is used in particular situations such as newspapers and hotel signs. phrasal verbs. Students learn to distinguish phrasal verbs from verb + preposition. They learn, by looking at different contexts, that phrasal verbs often have more formal equivalents. There is lots of work on word order. In addition to grammar, Tense Buster includes a vocabulary focus as well as helping students to develop their learning strategies. Here are just a few examples in each area Vocabulary development Each unit of Tense Buster includes one or more vocabulary development activities. These include: 1. Phrasal verbs 2. Idioms 3. Associating new words with known words 4. Collocations 5. Relating new words to your daily life 6. Word building using affixes 7. Using example sentences 8. Linking words 9. Choosing the right dictionary 10. Synonyms and virtual synonyms and lots more! Learner training Learners are encouraged to develop their learning strategies. Examples include: 1. Effective timetabling for learning 2. Considering useful learning "equipment", eg vocab book, dictionary, Internet 3. Evaluating learning activities 4. The value of learning by heart 5. Using newspapers 6. Vocabulary strategies 7. Prioritising learning objectives 8. Working with a partner 9. Relating English to a student's own language 10. Creating your own activities and lots more!

5 How does the licensing work? Tense Buster Online Tense Buster Online offers two forms of licensing. With a Dedicated Licence, NAS will set up a site specifically for your school - or you can host Tense Buster Online yourself. Either of these options means that you can: personalise the site to your institution; use Author Plus Teacher to add to or adapt the contents (optional); use Results Manager to track student activity (optional). Prices are per named student per year, with a minimum of fifty students. Prices start at $15.50 per user. You can change student names as the year progresses provided you have Results Manager Online and there is no limit to the total number of students who use the program over the year. Let's look at an example where you run three courses per year with 50 students in each course. You buy a licence for 50 students. Either you input their names and passwords, or you can allow the students to do this themselves, the first time they use the program. At the end of the first course, you delete the students' names and begin the process again with the second group of students. Over the year you therefore give 150 students access with no more than 50 registered at any one time. Alternatively, you may opt for a Shared Licence. In this case, we host Tense Buster Online and you cannot track student activity or add to or adapt the activities. However, there is no requirement for you to register student names, and you can get simultaneous access for up to 50 students. A good example of when a Shared Licence is suitable is a language support department in a university. You may have 1,200 students any of which may at one time or another access the program. You do not know which of them will use it or when, but you are pretty sure that no more than 20 of them will be using it at any one time. You can therefore purchase a Shared Licence for 20 concurrent users. Should you discover that more than 20 regularly want to use Tense Buster at the same time, you can simply extend your licence up to a maximum of 50. For a price list for these options, visit. How do I track student activity? Results Manager enables teachers and administrators to see exactly what their students have done, when and how much time they spent completing the exercise. We have recently published a brand new version of the software which provides the following main functions. Student management. You can organise your students into groups and subgroups (eg year groups and classes) so that you can see the performance of a whole class in a single report. You can also paste in or import groups of students to save data entry time, or enable students to register themselves. Login options. Results Manager allows you to decide which students can use the program (making sure you get the best use of your licences) and how they log in, for example whether they need to enter a password. When students forget their password, you can retrieve it! Reports The central function of Results Manager is to provide reports on student activity. You can generate three main types of report (all with a number of variations). 1. Student reports focus on the performance of individual students. This report will tell you which activities a student has completed, the scores and the time spent. 2. Group reports focus on the performance of all the students within a group, additionally providing summaries and averages. 3. Content reports display the performance of all students who have attempted the exercises or units specified. All reports can be printed.