Guess who...

...just bagged an 'Outstanding' from an OFSTED inspector?

Except he wasn't working for OFSTED, but in a private capacity, hired by TVU as part of a team to check that all us lecturers are standing on our best tippytoes while balancing the tutorial equivalent of a ball on our noses.
However, it was a bloody good lesson, and one forged out of rather unpromising materials. One thing that worked especially well, and which I pass on free: Speed Dating Information exchange.
the students in this class were split into two groups, reading two different texts, but answering the same questions. After they had finished the texts and answered the questions in their groups, I had them sit down in two rows facing each other. They then began to ask their partners questions in order to elicit information from each other. After a minute, I got one group to move chairs so that they talked to a new partner, and change again after another minute and so on, until each person in the first group had talked to evfery member of the second group. It worked wonderfully well, especially as students had to generate new questions in order to fill in their gaps in the knowledge they had obtained from a previous partner.

The English UK Teachers' Conference

The day didn't start too auspiciously. Actually, the whole week hadn't started auspiciously. My prsentation was still in a parlous raw state, and the dry run I'd given clearly hadn't worked. However, thanks to the advice, criticism and suggestions of my colleagues and the support and encouragment of others, I could clearly see where and why it was going wrong, so got down to the task, or at least trying to. Come thursday, however, it was still only distinctly three-quarters baked. I tried to work on it during the day, and late into the night, hoping that I'd have a few colleagues willing to give it a dry run through with me again the next day.
Fat bloody chance. Our regular team meeting went on, and on, and on, and - guess what? - on, and on a bit more, until half past ten had come and gone, and everyone said, sorry, we've got other things to do - with the exception of a couple of teachers, who graciously gave up their time to watch. It still wasn't ready, but I took on the advice proffered. Later on, after lessons, another colleague patiently sat through it and offered her ideas. To add to the stress and tension, an email came through from EnglishUK detailing which rooms we'd be in, and it appeared that I had swapped sessions with Adrian Underhill, so he'd be giving my presentation! I emailed them back to tell them of the mistake.
Anyway, picture me slaving away late on friday night, when I suddenly nailed the words and ideas that I exactly needed and rapidly made up a couple of class activities to go along with them just for good measure.
The trip up to London was uneventful, and I found Prospero House, where the conference was taking place, easily. It's billed as a state-of-the art conference venue, but it's not that wonderful, being a long, linear structure with the main hall to the back of the building, smaller - no, tiny - meeting rooms facing onto the main road, and a large hall for dining. I checked in and introduced myself to Mark Rendell, the organiser from EnglishUK, He gave me a copy of the programme, now billing me with the right programme. It was to take place in one of the largest of the rooms, with a bloody huge projection screen: The room itself was created by the nifty use of heavy wooden dividers in the main hall.
Anyway, after a quick scoot around the publishers' stands, it was time for the opening plenary. This was delivered by Paul Seligson, on the theme of spontaneity in the classroom. It was a neat, entertaining session, but it wasn't, for me anyway, anything new, apart from a good summation of techniques to allow spontaneity to occur in lessons. I was a bit surprised he didn't mention Dogme. However, for a neophyte TEFLer, and there were quite a few in attendance (there were 170+ delegates), I think it would have provided an interesting and encouraging summation of ideas.
Following that, I went along to a session on using dictionaries more effectively. If only. It was a pleasant presentation by a pleant presenter, but I learnt nothing new. More importantly, it was overrunning, and I had to make my excuses in order to get myself set up. I quickly went to the loo, and saw the huge queue for Adrian Underhill. By now, it would be fair to say I was bricking it. I took a deep breath, and went into my room. There were about fifteen people already sat down. I went up to the podium, found the computer, plugged in my portable hard drive, briefly panicked when I thought the computer couldn't find it, relaxed when it did, waited a minute and made a bit of manic patter, and watched as all of a sudden another thirty delegates walked in, most of them young teachers. And I began.

One hour later, as I walked among the crowd chowing down on the rather magnificent lunch buffet, I realised that a) people were telling colleagues about my presentation and b) I so, so, so NAILED it! My point about how the full infinitive in English has a specific function in certain contexts - namely, it suggests incipience - had experienced teachers giving out an audible gasp of understanding. Damn, I felt good.

This lasted until fifteen minutes into a spectacularly bad presentation I decided to join, and which was nothing more than an extended plea by the author to buy his book, when I had a sudden colossal headache and I just had to get out of the place.

All in all though, I felt I'd done a good job.

Ouch!

that was a bit painful - giving a dry run of my English UK presentation, I mean. However, it was a useful exercise, as it has helped me to see where the whole thing is flabby and needs trimming, toning and excising. It's also helped me realise, thanks to colleagues' comments, that it also needs to be more focused on what happens in the classroom and not so didactic.

I'm currently halfway through a pig-slow upper intermediate lesson: plodding boggily through past tenses, with the prospect of an hour and a half of reading to come.
Yesterday, I had a moment of inspiration regarding time/place lines, and in particular one of Michael Lewis' ideas, something that I think will make the final version of my presentation. I now have only three days to get the raw version complete.

Ready, Steady, Teach!

What's the fastest you've ever put a lesson together from scratch? And no, I don't mean just turning to pages 42-48 in Headway Intermediate. How long do you think it takes?
Watching the execrable wasteland that is daytime TV in the UK, one of teh brighter moments was 'Ready, Steady, Cook' on BBC2. For those who don't know it, the idea is that two cooks have to make several dishes from a bag of ingredients given to them by members of the studio audience. Of course, they also have a fridge and larder stuffed with the basics, but it requires imagination.
So why not do it ourselves when it comes to lesson prep? I think it is possible to create a one and a half hour lesson, from scratch, in about 20 minutes. Here are the rules:
1) there are clear aims and objectives to the lesson.
2) you are allowed to use any 'off-the-shelf' ingredients, but you cannot use more than one page from a standard textbook and nothing directly from a workbook
3) there must be at least two skills practised, one as a main focus, one as subsidiary - so, for example, listening and speaking/pronunciation
4) there must be at least one original piece of work - this can be an adaptation of 'off-the shelf' materials or techniques, or an entirely new piece.
5) you get extra points for the relevant use of realia or current new items.

Sure, this is what we're meant to be doing, but in reality, I think we either overplan (if we're beginners, or doing a Dip.) or we just reach for the safety and convenience of a textbook. The latter is all very well and fine - after all, they're the product of people with years of classroom experience - but they are designed with an idealised, generic class in mind. Without wanting to be rude, they are McLessons - the pedagogical equivalent of fast food. When we know our students and their needs, it is clearly not enough to give them this fare all the time.

getting nervous.

Despite years of standing up in front of various strangers who understand me to varying degrees and making a total tool of myself, I am now starting to feel extremely apprehensive about standing up in front of my peers, who will understand me only too well, and possibly making a complete arse of myself. I will be giving the presentation, which currently is residing in bits and notes all over the place, a dry run next friday, then the real thing on the 17th. Even as I write it and ponder over the idea, new thoughts have crowded forward, sometimes making what I want to say clearer, sometimes more complex, and sometimes I feel that all I'm trying to do is reinvent the wheel. However, I'm absolutely certain I'm on to something: by seeing verb forms and tenses in terms of being 'here' or 'there', it makes certain structures, in particular future forms and conditionals, much more accessible. What is going to be controversial, however, is what I'm going to suggest about 'going to'. I'm not about to say any more right now: I want it to be a surprise.

on the work front, I had a rather tedious afternoon session with The Group That Think They're Better At English Than They Actually Are. How can one make reading sessions more interesting?

thinking between lessons ruins your appetite.

A very quick post, as I'm in a break between classes. Yesterday turned, once more, into one of those where a whole lot of paperwork gets done and not much else. So, once again, I didn't get much of mty presentation completed. I'm still tussling with a couple of the key ideas relating to the whole distance thing, but I'm about to try a notion in class and see what the students make of it. Probably a shed load of confusion, but what the hey. They've already been shown the way that we can concieve of past forms as being notionally 'there'; what we're going to do now is compare narrative tenses and see what happens. How is the third form of the verb more apart from the second form? are the past simple and the past continous in the same 'there'? does the past perfect occupy a space that is best described as 'beyond there' and how does this relate to the notion that the present perfect occupies a space inbetween the present and the past?
let's see how they deal with these.

bits and pieces.

This has been one of those frustrating days when I don't seem to have achieved much, apart from wade through paperwork and little bits and pieces. The writing retake exams seemed to have gone without a hitch, and the entries for the speaking and listening exams in december appear to be all on course, so I'm happy on that count. As for preparations for the conference - hmm, slower than I want. It's all started to appear far more real now and I can feel the slow dread hand of panic starting to creep over me.

deixis midnight runners?

Have you ever heard of deixis? no, neither had I until yesterday.
A quick question for Irish or Scottish readers out there:is the phrase 'will you have/be having a cup of tea?' more polite than 'do you want a cup of tea?' Is it preferred to 'Would you like a cup of tea?', and does it have the same connotation of politeness?

lost time

I hadn't realised how much time had elapsed since my last posting on this site. This is partly due to being so damn busy at the beginning of term, and partly to lassitude in filling it in. In all honesty however, I haven't been doing much since then in terms of study or research. It's getting the opportunity to do some that has been the problem.
anyway, here's some information about what I'll be doing next month at the EnglishUK Teachers' conference. I'm up against Adrian Underhill, so I suspect I'll be playing to the TEFL equivalent of one man and a dog called Colin. I will be dealing with Tenses in English and the Notion of Distance. My key idea is that we can understand the English Tense system by visualising it in terms of relative proximity to the speaker's point of view; That is, we can deal with tenses by seeing them as being 'here', 'there', or 'in between', and that by using this process we can give answers to the reasons why we choose particular forms to express concepts relating to futurity; explain why certain conditionals and polite forms choose to use'past' forms of the verb; and why we need to use 'to' in order to create the full infinitive in English, and how the full infinitive has a consistent, single and remarkably simple function when used in verb patterns (but not with certain adjectives); And also to suggest that one particular piece of grammar has been presented inaccurately since God Knows When.
That's the idea, anyway.

Today has felt like a series of lost opportunities, thanks to several external factors. However, I did some further work on the material I'll be presenting at the English UK conference and produced an initial PPT that I'm going to do with my students. The aim is to see how they react to a different way of seeing tenses and verb structures in English. I discussed it with Liz, one of my colleagues, and it helped me crystallize a few concepts. Interestingly, it has almost confirmed a suspicion I had that my hypothesis is very difficult for people to understand regarding their own language, yet becomes crystal clear when they think about a language acquired later in life.
I'm sorry I'm being a bit cagey: It's just that I want to get the explanation of this idea right before I discuss it. Suffice to say, it builds on some of Michael Lewis' stuff, and is apparently mirrored by Stephen Pinker in his new book, which I have yet to read.

Induction day

Two new classes today - an upper intermediate group in the morning, an advanced group in th evening, the lesson virtually identical in every aspect, as we have to give an induction to each and every class we give on their first day. This, I suspect, leaves students feeling 'Jeez, is it going to be like this for the next year?', and possibly leaving forthwith. I made a generic PPT for all the part time cohort to use this year, which seemed to do the trick - it certainly soaked up the teaching time.
In the morning, walking Angus to school, I reflected on how there is a direct cognate between going to/will and have to/must; the first in each pair operate as 'false modals', and imply a certain external point of view, or rather one that is not as immediate and personal as the second in each pair.
No time for any reading today, as rather hectic.

Right, a new blog, but this one is to be about my work, study and research in EFL/ELT.