Teacher Training

ELT - A Journey from A-Z: 'C' is for...

eltcommunitysupport@pearson.com — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 15:31:19 GMT

Following an intensive spell of travelling, this month’s instalment is a little belated I’m afraid. Still, better late than never, and to begin with once again, a couple of quick reminders:

1) My A-Z of areas is not meant to be definitive or exhaustive. Please feel free each month to add you own!

2) I will comment only briefly on each of my areas. Please expand on them or discuss them as you wish!

C is for…

Communicative Approach

In some ways, it’s a little surprising that ELT methodology took a while to get round to the notion of language being for communication. Beginning over a hundred years ago, grammar translation dwelt upon enabling learners to appreciate the written word more than to enable them to engage in spoken or written communication, and as we saw last month, behaviourism gave rise to the ‘drill and kill’ repetition approach to language instruction. In the late 70s, luminaries such as Chomsky, Krashen and Tyrell – and later still Willis and Willis (Task Based Learning) and Michael Lewis (The Lexical Apparoach) helped to popularise communicative language teaching. So how communicative is your classroom? Here’s a simple test. Ask yourself why we communicate in everyday life outside the classroom, then see if your classroom approaches and activities are preparing your students to do this. Here’s my list of reasons for ‘Everyday Communication’:

To give and receive information
For entertainment
To share opinions
To solve problems
For survival
For ‘social and emotional’ reasons (ie to create and maintain contacts and friendships)

Obviously, there is some overlap here, but that can be considered a good thing – there’s nothing wrong with killing two birds with one stone!

Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR)

At one time it was common to ask ‘What do your students know in English?’ but increasingly these days we are asking ‘What can they DO in English?’ ‘Can do’ statements relating to the various skills are of the course the centrepiece of the CEFR, and provide students and teachers alike with a way of measuring communicative ability, rather than counting the number of phrasal verbs that students ‘know’ (but can’t use). This shift towards describing students’ competence gained momentum with the creation of the CEFR by the Council of Europe back in the 1990s. As well as providing a means of describing competences through the ‘can do’ statements, the document also serves to provide a scale of level descriptors that can be used for all languages in all countries – thereby making it easier to understand a student’s level irrespective of where they have studied. Find more information online at www.pearsonlongman.com/ae/cef/cefguide.pdf

It’s interesting to note that despite the title containing the word ‘European’, through experience I have seen the influence of the CEFR spreading beyond the borders of Europe as far afield as South America and South East Asia.

To what extent has the existence of the CEFR affected your ELT classroom, and in what ways? It would be interesting to hear any thoughts on this.

Checking

My German teacher at school used to recite a lengthy list of grammar rules, then follow up with the ‘killer question’: “Do you understand?” An all pervading silence would follow, with a few barely perceptible nods from a bemused class. Clearly, ‘Do You Understand?’ is among the least useful of questions we could use in class, as few learners will ever say ‘no’, thereby exposing their weakness in front of their peers. Students need to be given the opportunity to demonstrate understanding, and this is where concept check questions come in. CCQs are usually closed questions about the target structure addressed to the class allowing the teacher to gauge how well the point has been grasped.

For me, the world of concept questions began sometime last century during my interview for the CTEFLA course at IH Hastings, when the interviewer, Mr Adrian Underhill, asked me to provide concept questions to ensure students understood the difference between the following pair of sentences: ‘I remembered to lock the door’ and ‘I remembered locking the door’. After 15 minutes of me not having the faintest idea, I recall the ease with which Adrian provided the following:

‘How many actions are there in each sentence?’ (2)
‘What are they?’ (remember and lock)
‘In the first sentence, which happened first?’ (remember)
‘In the second sentence, which happened first?’ (lock)

Wow, I thought. And a whole new window on the world of teaching opened up before me.

What means do you use to check meaning? Do you ever use straightforward translation?

Classroom Management

Discipline, interactions, involvement, instructions, timing… It seems there’s a lot to this vital area, so we’ll visit it bit at a time when we get to ‘D’, ‘I’ and ‘T’ respectively. It’s not that I’m shirking responsibility by not covering it all here, I promise.

Connected Speech

Conversely, there’s no need to wait for ‘P’ (for pronunciation) for this – connected speech is big enough to get an entry of its own here.

Following an input session on this topic, one CELTA course trainee once said to me ‘So we use connected speech because we’re lazy, then?’ That could be one way of putting it, in that the movement of the mouth and tongue from one word to another does sometimes produce certain phenomena that result from labour saving… Commonly, we refer to four kinds of connected speech:

Elision: Where a sound vanishes at the word boundary (eg the ‘d’ in fish and chips)
Assimilation: Where a sound changes at the word boundary (eg where ‘nd’ becomes ‘m’ in ‘hand bag’)
Intrusion: Where an extra sound appears at a word boundary (eg law (r) and order)
Catenation (My favourite) where a word boundary appears to shift, giving rise to word play such as ‘fork handles’ becoming ‘four candles.’ See this immortalised by the British comedy duo ‘The Two Ronnies’ here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz2-ukrd2VQ

What difficulties do you students have with connected speech, both receptively and productively? How do you help them with these issues?

Christmas (or Winter Holidays)

For those celebrating or simply taking a well earned break, make sure it’s a good one. Looking forward to hearing from you with your comments – and additional ‘C’s of your own. We’ll be back with ‘D’ at the end of January! Happy teaching.

ELT- A Journey from A-Z: 'B' is for...

eltcommunitysupport@pearson.com — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:35:23 GMT

As summer fades and autumn begins to make its presence felt (in Europe at least!!), it’s time to move from A to B in our trip through the alphabet…

A couple of quick reminders:

1) My A-Z of areas is not meant to be definitive or exhaustive. Please feel free each month to add you own!

2) I will comment only briefly on each of my areas. Please expand on them or discuss them as you wish!

So, B is for…

Balance

… of skills (Reading, writing, listening and speaking) and language (grammar and vocabulary)

All language and no skills makes for boring lessons and students who can’t communicate. All skills and no language often means lots of fun – but also students who make lots of mistakes – and who can’t communicate…

… of interactions and VAK intelligences

Pairwork, groupwork, individual, teacher fronted… Variety is the spice of the classroom. Balancing the visual with the auditory and kinaesthetic makes for a learning experience that touches all the senses – and in some way all the students.

… of learner support and learner autonomy

Put more simply, how much work should the teacher do and how much should the students do?? Of course our role is to provide support in areas of need, but do you remember Mark Van Doren? He said that “the art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery”, implying the need to get the students thinking for themselves now and then. Hence the inductive approach to language (guided discovery) that is common in so many of today’s course materials. They remember better that way…

… of fantasy, creativity and reality

Reading and writing stories, using films and songs, but remembering that at the end of the day, language is also for real everyday communication.

…of the familiar and the new

We all have our favourite ways of doing things (and so do the students!), and some of these ways may date back a long time. That may not be a bad thing, but new ways, including technology also play their part in teaching and learning today. In fact many students expect technology in their learning; after all they have it in all other aspects of their lives!

What other areas would you include in the balancing act that we are faced with in the classroom? How do you balance these seemingly opposing forces?

Boardwork

Whether interactive or conventional, in most classrooms the board is the focal point of the room (along with the teacher sometimes.) My first lesson in using this vital resource was to plan what I wrote on the board and to organise it. I especially like the idea of a ‘new vocabulary column’ at one side of the board, leading to a sense of achievement in the lesson as the list grows. Colour is a powerful tool when using the board – for example red for phonetic transcriptions and blue for annotating grammatical structures. Also, have you noticed how students often copy everything that you write on the board? Is that always the best thing for them to do? What do you think?

Behaviourism

Developed back in the 1940s, this scientific approach to language learning led to the direct and audiolingual approaches. It was suggested that if Pavlov could train dogs to salivate by ringing a bell, then it must be possible to get learners to speak foreign languages by providing a suitable stimulus. The key was therefore to train students to provide fixed answers to set questions – and this gave rise to all manner of language that was unique to the classroom… Although these approaches were largely discredited by Naom Chomsky and his ‘Cognitive Code’ in the 1960s, one important aspect of behaviourism lives on in the classroom of today – drilling – of which more when we get to ‘D’.

Blended Learning

If behaviourism has its roots in the past, than blended learning has its roots firmly in the present - and the future! Blended learning is essentially an integrated mix of conventional face to face learning complemented with an element of online learning. So why is blended learning such a CLEVER idea?

Complementary balance of the traditional and the new working together.

Learner Centred.

Extra practice opportunities.

Variety – of study modes and of materials.

Enhances learner progress and performance in class.

Reliable resource (Computers don’t get tired!)

Have you used any type of blended learning? Why not share your experiences?

That’s all for my list of ‘B’s. Looking forward to hearing from you with your comments – and additional ‘B’s of your own. Next month it’s ‘C’ – and the start of summer for those lucky people out there in the southern hemisphere. Happy teaching.

ELT - A Journey from A-Z

eltcommunitysupport@pearson.com — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 14:31:41 GMT

Welcome to the blog! Over the coming months we will be taking a trip through the alphabet of Teaching English, and discussing the elements that we need to consider to provide effective lessons.

Before we begin, a couple of important points:

1) My A-Z of areas is not meant to be definitive or exhaustive. Please feel free each month to add you own!

2) I will comment only briefly on each of my areas. Please expand on them or discuss them as you wish!

So the idea of the points I make are for them to be seeds of discussion, and for the blog to be truly interactive. I know there are many great teachers out there who will be able to contribute to make this a living dialogue with benefits for all!

A is for…

Aims

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it!” A good lesson – and indeed a sequence of lessons will have an overall linguistic and communicative aim. We need to think not just about the language we are going to introduce, but what the students are going to do with it by the end – debate something? Write a story? Make a presentation? Tell an anecdote? Within the lesson, each stage too should have an aim – in what way does the stage contribute to the overall outcome of the lesson?

- How do you plan a lesson and define your aims?

Assessment

This is a massive area, and one that we will revisit when we get to ‘E for Exams’ and ‘T for testing’. Here I would like to draw out the distinction between formal assessment (tests and exams) and informal assessment. We should be assessing our students informally all the time. So what does this mean and why should we do it? Taking a speaking activity as an example, keen monitoring by the teacher will reveal common areas of success and common areas of difficulty. An awareness of these is vital in influencing future teaching – and ensuring that we are really teaching the students and not just following the book.

- What means do you use to informally assess your students?

Attention span

A good rule of thumb is that the younger the learners, the shorter the attention span. Boredom can set in quickly with younger age groups, and of course boredom means disruptive behaviour… so short activities are the order of the day, longer activities becoming possible as the students get older.

- If you have any favourite short activities that you use with young learners, why not share them?

Attention – Getting It

My memories of primary school include the teacher always shouting to get us to listen. A tiring and stressful approach to getting silence if ever there was one! Silence itself is one of the greatest classroom management tools we have. To get the attention of a class, issue one clear instruction, then stand still, make strong eye contact and… wait. The energy level will fall rather than rise, and very soon the group will be silent. Shouting a) increases the energy and noise levels and b) leaves the teacher with nowhere to go when they really need to make a ‘special’ impact on the class!

- What other means have you successfully used to get the attention of a rowdy class?

Authentic Materials

Materials that were NOT written with ELT in mind can be a great motivator if used effectively. Thanks to the internet, as well as to the more traditional sources of authentic material like newspapers, video and songs; we are now totally surrounded with opportunities for authenticity in our classroom. How to use them and why? Many teachers are put off using authentic materials because of the potentially high content of ‘difficult’ language they contain, and the effort involved in exploiting them. An important point to remember is to gear the TASK to the level of the students rather than expect them to understand every word they contain. Authentic material such as DVD or YouTube footage can be used as a stimulus to get students to talk using language they know (they can discuss what they SEE rather than what they hear). In this instance, they need not understand a single word of the audio! Students get a real sense of achievement from successfully interacting with a piece of authentic material.

- It would be great to hear of success stories you have had in this area. Write and share them!

That’s it for this month and for my list of ‘A’s. What do you think? What ‘A’s have I missed? Let us know! Until next month, and the letter ‘B’, happy teaching!

From Our Man In Saudi Arabia

eltcommunitysupport@pearson.com — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:52:22 GMT

The last few weeks have been especially busy, with a memorable 6 day visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in late May.

Nothing prepares the first time visitor for the searing heat of the Middle East, with daily temperatures hitting 44 degrees (the night time being relatively ‘cool’ at just 32 degrees…) During my visit, I had the opportunity to visit two large schools in the capital, and met a large number of great teachers. One thing that made this trip special was spending several hours sitting in on classes. It was fascinating to see the teachers in action in a culturally unfamiliar setting, and truly encouraging to see such enthusiastic and responsive students, the ones I met being aged between 12 and 16. Their level of English was generally excellent, and they were keen to try it out on me, as I was repeatedly asked where I was from (Leeds UK but resident in Poland – that confused them!) and if I supported Manchester United. (I don’t…)

A striking memory from the classroom visits was how the schools had truly embraced technology in the classroom, and were using it to great effect. Many teachers I have met prefer to stick with what they already know and resist using new methods in their teaching. They see technology as frightening and complicated and constantly worry about it going wrong. The Riyadh teachers however had taken the leap of faith and discovered just how much work it can actually save, and how it can make classroom management and the learning experience that much more effective.

All the classrooms I visited were equipped with Interactive Whiteboards, projectors and sound systems, and even though not all used IWB software, all used laptops connected to the projector to great effect.

Classroom management was made so much easier when giving instructions. All the students were focussed on the coursebook page on the board as the teacher set up activities. The familiar alternative is for the students to bury their heads in their coursebook during instructions – often on the wrong page!
Feedback was quick and easy. Answers to exercises were flashed up on the board in exactly the right place. This made it easier for the students to check what they had written in their books.
Student participation was increased. Especially in some of the younger classes, the opportunity to come to the front and write on the board served as a great motivational tool – they clearly loved using the software, and were actively involved.
Teachers had used great creativity in sourcing material from the internet (for example photos), and this made the teaching of vocabulary quick and easy. In one lesson, which was about the advantages and disadvantages of living in cities, the teacher had downloaded pictures showing different aspects of life in Riyadh, thereby personalising the vocabulary input at the same time. This fitted in perfectly with the principle of starting with what was known to the students, before moving on to the new.
Cassette players have long been absent from many classrooms, but here even a separate CD player was nowhere to be seen. Controlling the audio directly from the computer saved the time and hassle involved in carry a separate CD / Cassette player – as well as that of rewinding tapes or finding the right track on the CD. One teacher had further personalised the audio track by adding a slide show of images from the web that were relevant to the recording.

The experience of seeing all this in action convinced me more than ever that technology has its place in the classroom – of course not to replace the teacher, but to supplement what we do in making our lives easier and the learning experience richer and more effective for the learners. What’s more, learners expect to interact with technology in all spheres of life nowadays, and it’s worth thinking about avoiding the situation where they feel as though going to school is like going back in time.

A final and compelling objection to technology of course is the cost. My feeling though is that just as it’s now possible to buy a DVD player for 10% of its 1995 purchase price, something similar could well happen with classroom technology – and it’s no doubt started already!

So that’s some of what the Great Teachers in Saudi Arabia are doing. More Great Teacher stories to follow soon!

My thanks go to the teachers and students of Al Rowad and Al Manahij Boys’ schools in Riyadh for their hospitality, good food and excellent coffee during my visit.

From Our Man In Ukraine, Russia and FYR Macedonia...

eltcommunitysupport@pearson.com — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:52:46 GMT

It’s been a busy few months with a few thousand more Airmiles added to the tally. If ‘Trainmiles’ had existed, I would have collected a few of those too on the journey back home from Skopje, when a certain geological feature in Iceland kept the planes on the ground…

One of the great things about the Pearson Longman teacher training events is the opportunity they present for teachers to get together and share problems, experiences and ideas, and not just to listen to the presenter! The total experience of all the attendees throughout these tours amounted to several thousand years, so it was little wonder that some quality ‘sharing’ went on at the events.

As usual, the focus of the sessions varied from city to city, but one recurring theme was primary teaching, and it’s an aspect of this area that I will focus on this month. Specifically, how we can use flashcards to help students acquire and practice vocabulary. The pack of flashcards that accompanies many courses is sometimes seen as an optional extra, but many teachers I met consider them to be central to the primary classroom – and I would agree. So here are a few practical ideas we shared in Ukraine, Russia and FYR Macedonia…

Step to the side

The teacher holds up a card and says either the correct corresponding word or an incorrect word. Students move to their left if the word you have said matches the card; if the word does not match, they move to their right. Students can take turns to play the role of the teacher.

Chain Drilling

Arrange the class in a circle where possible and get them to pass the cards round asking ‘What’s this?’ and answering accordingly for each card they receive. They then pass the card on, asking the next student to name it. As the teacher increases the number of cards in circulation – and moving in both directions – the activity becomes fun and energetic.

What’s missing?

The teacher puts the set of cards on the board and asks the class to close their eyes. S/he then removes one or more cards and asks the class to open their eyes and say which is missing.

Disappearing drill

The teacher puts the set of cards on the board, and points at them one at a time – the class chorally drills the word. The process continues by gradually removing the cards from the board one at a time until by the end of the activity the teacher is pointing at blank spaces where the cards were – the students continue to drill the words, remembering which card was where.

Guess the card

Divide the class into teams. The teacher holds the stack of cards so the students cannot see the pictures. In turns, the teams have to guess which card is on the top of the pile. The team who wins the most cards can play the role of ‘teacher’ for another round.

Cheat!

A fun game best played in small groups, and good for revising vocabulary at the end of term. You will need a lot of flashcards for this – if you do not have enough, get the students to draw some of their own. Each student (or pair) begins with at least five cards, and they take turns to put a card into the centre, face down. They can choose to say what the card really is, or to ‘lie’ (cheat). At any time, another student can challenge, by saying ‘cheat!’. If the challenge is valid (ie the student putting the card down did not tell the truth), then the one who cheated has to take all the cards from the centre. If the challenge is not valid, (ie the student who put the card down did tell the truth), then the challenger has to pick up all the cards. It is not essential to challenge after every turn; the students decide themselves how often and when to challenge. The winner is the first person / pair to get rid of all their cards.

Running anagrams

(with alphabet cards)

You will need multiple sets of alphabet flashcards for this game. Divide the class into teams – and ensure that each team has a complete set of alphabet cards – scattered on the floor (or on a desk) at the front of the room. Dictate the letters of a word in jumbled order, and get a member of each team in relay to pick up the appropriate letters from their flashcard set, and to place them on a desk. When you have dictated all the letters, the first group to unscramble the letters they have picked up and to spell the word is the winner. Remember that you may need multiple letters in the flashcard sets if you are going to practice words containing more than one of the same letter.

Body spelling

Put the flashcards up on the board, and put the students into pairs. One student chooses a card without telling their partner which one, and ‘writes’ the word with their finger on their partner’s back. That student must say what the word is. Swap over and repeat.

These activities provide variety in terms of intelligences (visual, auditory and kinaesthetic), energy level (settling and stirring), receptive vs productive, and in terms of pronunciation vs spelling. It’s important to remember that receptive activities should come before productive, and that word recognition and pronunciation should come before spelling. Also worth bearing in mind is to use group or pairwork whenever possible to allow stronger students to support the weaker ones.

That’s all for this month. Volcanoes permitting, I’ll soon be reporting back from meeting great teachers in Georgia, Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan. Until then, happy teaching!

From our man in Switzerland...

eltcommunitysupport@pearson.com — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:49:21 GMT

Last week I was on tour in Switzerland, where I had the pleasure of not only witnessing ‘Chocolate Box Scenery’ in the country where it was invented – but also of meeting a large number of great teachers with a variety of interests and backgrounds.

The workshops I ran were equally varied – covering topics from grammar to functions, task based learning to motivating teenagers. Diverse though the sessions were, one recurring theme was that of helping students to communicate in English in the classroom in readiness for using English in the outside world.

Many teachers commented that with a group of monolingual students getting students to complete group speaking tasks in English can be tricky, and I agreed, but some tips and ideas worthy of sharing did come out of discussions at a number of the workshops. Briefly, here they are:

Some students dominate an activity; Quieter students say nothing.

Some suggestions for dealing with this included

- grouping all the dominant students together (using the logic that eventually someone will have to let the other speak…) and similarly putting the quiet students together. This can have the effect of removing the perceived threat of the livelier ones (sometimes seen as the ‘better’ ones) and can provide a less threatening environment for the shy students to contribute.

- in situations where a chairperson or a secretary is needed in a group activity, quieter students can often respond well to this. They remain equally involved in the activity, but in a way that suits them better than having to say too much.

It is worth remembering that quiet students are sometimes quiet in their own language too, and that our job is not to change their personalities. We can create the right conditions for communication, or to quote the ancient metaphor: ‘You can lead the horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink.’

Another (more controlling suggestion) was from a workshop in St Gallen: Give each student a limited number of sweets, and each time they contribute to the discussion, they have to eat one. When they have run out of sweets, they have to wait until all the other group members have eaten all theirs before they are allowed to join in again. Make sure your students all like the kind of sweets you are giving them tough, or the whole idea will have the opposite effect!

Students doing the activities in their own language when they are meant to be done in English.

I’m sure that every English teacher on earth has experienced this at some time. One comment was that our coursebooks have such exciting speaking activities that the students (especially at lower levels) get carried away with the content of the activity more than with using English! It was generally agreed – and quite comforting to a number of teachers - that beyond ensuring that the activity is achievable and that the students are given adequate linguistic preparation and planning time, we have limited options when dealing with this.

- One comment was that we shouldn’t stop doing speaking activities because of this problem, but firstly rationalise the activity with the students in terms of what it is meant to achieve. Secondly, and importantly – always remember that as with anything in life, practice makes perfect, and as a student moves up from one level to the next, so should the amount of English they use in class.

That’s all for this month. Join me next month with an update of what Great Teachers are doing in Ukraine and Russia.

Until then, Happy Teaching!