..so let's kick it off with the presentation I gave at the EnglishUK teachers' conference last year. It's via Google docs, so I don't think the animation stuff works, meaning it'll look a bit messy.
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Tuesday, 11 March 2008
busy.
Deary me, I'm not keeping this as much up to date as I'd like, mainly because of work: I'm up to my eyeballs in exam arrangements (part of my job is to organise the Skills for Death exams and the Cambridge Main Suite one), and running round making sure certain other people do their jobs vis a vis looking after their own areas and getting data to me. Also, I'm embedded - no bogged down in - reading about the history of ELT and the various methodologies, approaches and theories, written by the kind of writer for whom a night watching paint dry would count as excitement beyond belief. However, write this I must, as I promised myself I would. Well, what's on the menu for me today? I'm startingh with an upper intermediate class, and we're visiting the wonderful world of homonyms and homophones; After a quick dash into town for an urgent bit of business, it's on to the Academic English class, and Language Comparison; then in the evening, an Advanced class, where I'll be looking at some reading skills and probably a bit of CAE related stuff. Excitement. And once I've got home, round about 9.30, it's aquick meal and some more dip work.
Tuesday, 19 February 2008
half term.
Half term holidays. Invented for the ease and convenience of the teacher, so that he or she may catch up with the mountain of marking from the previous six weeks and bin/set fire to all the stuff that was marked urgent a few weeks previously. In no other profession is it easier to understand how the tomorrow we worry about today will itself become today: In other words, if it really is urgent, it will make itself utterly bloody obvious, and the rest is just bollocks.
I have been in work today, and amazingly found myself with very little of the bin/burn variety. instead, I have been developing Blended Learning material using the Blackboard Platform - that is, gap fills via the interweb thingy - and pushing onwards with my studies. Actually, I am very much in favour of using IT in class, as it's engaging and fun, and means you can recycle tons of stuff ad nauseam once you've put the initial legwork in. I don't particularly like Blackboard, which is a very dated piece of software, but until my educational establishment stops paying for the licence, it's what we've got.
I have been in work today, and amazingly found myself with very little of the bin/burn variety. instead, I have been developing Blended Learning material using the Blackboard Platform - that is, gap fills via the interweb thingy - and pushing onwards with my studies. Actually, I am very much in favour of using IT in class, as it's engaging and fun, and means you can recycle tons of stuff ad nauseam once you've put the initial legwork in. I don't particularly like Blackboard, which is a very dated piece of software, but until my educational establishment stops paying for the licence, it's what we've got.
Thursday, 7 February 2008
I wouldn't say bad hair day...more flat hair day.
I had only the one lesson today, and while it was OK, I didn't really enjoy it. It hung off its foundations like a 20-year-old's clothes off a 70-year-old's body. It was my upper intermediate class, and we were looking at the perennial fun favourites of relative clauses and present and past participles. Whoo. I didn't do any pyrotechnics this time round - I just didn't feel up to any, for some reason.
The evening saw me handing out information and smiles to potential students, most of whom wanted either ESOL or something more intangible - something to remove their ennui, perhaps.
The evening saw me handing out information and smiles to potential students, most of whom wanted either ESOL or something more intangible - something to remove their ennui, perhaps.
Thursday, 31 January 2008
lesson idea: your life in the news
quick idea: your life in headlines
The aim of this exercise is focusing on key words within texts. The idea is to model one or more parts of your day on the board as headlines, e.g. Teacher in early morning no tea terror. Try to get students to guess what the story is. Students then write a headline for themselves and other students have to guess what the story behind the headline is. An exercise that can be done in conjunction with a reading exercise centred around looking at newspapers. It should be pointed out to students how headlines tend to use present simple in order to be dramatic and omit articles and auxiliary verbs. By getting students to deliberately omit these, it helps them focus on the reasons why they are used in the first place.
The aim of this exercise is focusing on key words within texts. The idea is to model one or more parts of your day on the board as headlines, e.g. Teacher in early morning no tea terror. Try to get students to guess what the story is. Students then write a headline for themselves and other students have to guess what the story behind the headline is. An exercise that can be done in conjunction with a reading exercise centred around looking at newspapers. It should be pointed out to students how headlines tend to use present simple in order to be dramatic and omit articles and auxiliary verbs. By getting students to deliberately omit these, it helps them focus on the reasons why they are used in the first place.
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
finding directions.
I'm still trying to find my feet with this journal, and identifying precisely what it is for. In part, this reflects my own doubts about my career: Is this what I really want to do till I retire? Or is it just the vague thrill I get from standing up in front of a load of people and making them believe in me? If that's the case, why not go on stage, do stand up, or get in a pulpit or on a soapbox? After all, it's all the same skill: making someone else believe in what you are saying, or confirming their beliefs.
Besides, I might get paid better.
It's a strange fact, and a sad one, but TEFLers are some of the most creative teachers, and the ones most willing to embrace new ideas, theories and technologies, although you'd be hard pressed to believe the latter if you saw my place of work. One teacher's idea of trying to understand the intricacies of logging on and reading his emails is to write everything down on grey pieces of cardboard cannibalized from cereal packets, and store it in a filing system in the bottom of a rather smelly, damp holdall. For all the TEFLer's enthusiasm however, we are amongst the poorest paid of teachers. An absolute top wage, for someone with a doctorate, is likely to be in the region of £40,000; In FE, you'd be lucky, after several years, to break the £30 k barrier; And the entry wages are shocking. In the private sector, things are even worse - I've heard of people earning as little as £7 per hour in London, even those with a diploma or higher. There's also the public persona of a typical TEFL teacher - lecherous, drunk student backpackers, or alcoholic runaways from the law, and the attitude of colleagues who teach other disciplines - namely, we are not seen as 'proper teachers'.
Is any of this fair? well, from the perspective of a long-term teacher with 15 years' experience, clearly not, but when you look at the TEFL certificate mills, there is justification. A four-week programme of study simply cannot prepare someone to teach. A lot of would-be teachers do the course as a way of paying for a year or two abroad, or to escape home for various reasons, then they go abroad, dragging their metaphysical baggage with them, and live up to the stereotypes. The rate of attrition in language schools is high - less, maybe, than it used to be, but still high. But still the TEFL mills continue to churn out neophytes clutching their TEFL Certs. The last time I bothered looking at the statistics, there were some million and a half TEFL Cert-ified teachers knocking about. Most of those do not last longer than a school year or two. It's no wonder, with such a glut of native speaker instructors knocking about, that schools feel they can get away with offering peanuts.
Besides, I might get paid better.
It's a strange fact, and a sad one, but TEFLers are some of the most creative teachers, and the ones most willing to embrace new ideas, theories and technologies, although you'd be hard pressed to believe the latter if you saw my place of work. One teacher's idea of trying to understand the intricacies of logging on and reading his emails is to write everything down on grey pieces of cardboard cannibalized from cereal packets, and store it in a filing system in the bottom of a rather smelly, damp holdall. For all the TEFLer's enthusiasm however, we are amongst the poorest paid of teachers. An absolute top wage, for someone with a doctorate, is likely to be in the region of £40,000; In FE, you'd be lucky, after several years, to break the £30 k barrier; And the entry wages are shocking. In the private sector, things are even worse - I've heard of people earning as little as £7 per hour in London, even those with a diploma or higher. There's also the public persona of a typical TEFL teacher - lecherous, drunk student backpackers, or alcoholic runaways from the law, and the attitude of colleagues who teach other disciplines - namely, we are not seen as 'proper teachers'.
Is any of this fair? well, from the perspective of a long-term teacher with 15 years' experience, clearly not, but when you look at the TEFL certificate mills, there is justification. A four-week programme of study simply cannot prepare someone to teach. A lot of would-be teachers do the course as a way of paying for a year or two abroad, or to escape home for various reasons, then they go abroad, dragging their metaphysical baggage with them, and live up to the stereotypes. The rate of attrition in language schools is high - less, maybe, than it used to be, but still high. But still the TEFL mills continue to churn out neophytes clutching their TEFL Certs. The last time I bothered looking at the statistics, there were some million and a half TEFL Cert-ified teachers knocking about. Most of those do not last longer than a school year or two. It's no wonder, with such a glut of native speaker instructors knocking about, that schools feel they can get away with offering peanuts.
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
'will' for predicting a current situation
I'm doing modals this morning, so here's a quick idea for showing the use of'will' to predict things currently happening:
on the board, draw two stick men. give them names - Dave and Gavin, or something. tell the students that one has just seen the other. What does he say? 'It's Gavin'. write it on the board. Now, draw a door between them. Can Dave see Gavin ('No'). wipe off 'It's Gavin'. Tell them that dave was expecting Gavin, and now he's knocking on the door. what does he say? 'That'll be Gavin'.
That's the idea, anyway.
on the board, draw two stick men. give them names - Dave and Gavin, or something. tell the students that one has just seen the other. What does he say? 'It's Gavin'. write it on the board. Now, draw a door between them. Can Dave see Gavin ('No'). wipe off 'It's Gavin'. Tell them that dave was expecting Gavin, and now he's knocking on the door. what does he say? 'That'll be Gavin'.
That's the idea, anyway.
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