Well, the second session went somewhat better. The students had been grumbling about connecting their smart phones to the College wireless network, so I demonstrated how to do it to them - a bit of faffing, but, as it turned out, extremely useful faffing. We were doing a section on holidays and, in particular, city breaks - form filling, asking for information in a tourist information office etc. I then decided to change tack from the rather worthy, but somewhat dull task about to heave into view, and wrote the following up on the board:
Imagine someone is coming to visit Reading for a couple of days. Where can they stay? What can they do?
We brainstormed a few suggestions, then I told them to whip out their smartphones and research things to do in Reading, places to stay, restaurants etc, organising them into groups of 3/4. They wrote their ideas down on flipchart paper, and, with minimal intervention from me, researched and organised their ideas. They then presented these to the other groups, and the class as a whole voted for the best places to stay, eat in, go to etc.
Good, eh?
It didn't finish there. While they were doing that, I went to Page O Rama, and set up a web page, which I then added to the college intranet for all to gawp it. It isn't finished yet, but the whole lesson finished with a satisfying zing.
Monday, 23 January 2012
mondaaaaaaaaaaay
A very quick inter-lesson posting. My Entry 3 (pre-int/int level ESOL) class are like zombies this morning. There's absolutely no energy whatsoever in the room. It's a shame, as they're normally pretty sparky. However, I have to say that I also feel out of sorts - edgy, a bit worried, somewhat distracted. So the question is, is it me influencing them or them influencing me? Is it just my own perception that's faulty? Or is it just because it's a grey monday in January?
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Blimey! A post!
Apologies for the long lay-off. A catenation of foul circumstances has hit me, making it difficult to keep my blogs on track at the moment. Since one of these foulnesses is a legal issue, I've felt it better to keep out of sight for the time being.
I'm going to post, as soon as possible, my presentation on Global Englishes and the Language City Paradigm to the English UK Teachers' Conference in November, but it'll take a little time to do the blurb I want to add to it, so I'll leave that for later. I'll also say what I thought about this year's conference, but for now I'll just limit myself to saying that I saw Luke Meddings, looking incredibly grumpy in a duffel coat, heading towards the exit after his presentation.
For today, I just wanted to add an interesting thought about classroom interaction I've just had. Does classroom interaction follow a power law distribution? I read this fascinating article by Alok Jha in The Guardian about it, and it has got me wondering - does the 80/20 law (i.e. 20 % of the participants contribute 80% of the output) also work in 'meaningful' oral exchanges in class?
In theory, of course, it shouldn't. We should expect each and every student to make an equal amount of contribution. In an ideal world, were we to plot every student's contribution, we should expect a graph to exhibit a nearly straight horizontal line, showing equal distribution. However, in reality, I suspect this is not the case. We all know that certain students try to hog all the speaking time and attention, and it is one of the TEFLer's skills in classroom management that curtails this. But when you factor in Teacher Talk Time as well, what happens?
I would anticipate that with a newbie teacher, the Power Law Distribution holds up pretty well as a reliable way of showing the distribution of who contributes most. By the way, I'm limiting myself to oral interactions here, rather than reading and writing, as with these there's far more likely to be an equal distribution of 'meaningful' work. With an experienced teacher, one would expect the distribution of who contributes what to be a much flatter line.
There's only one way to find out however: you'd need to video a series of classes, at different levels, with different instructors, over the course of, say, 150 hours of instruction, or the amount we'd expect students to progress a level in their language comprehension - let's say A2 to B1, as that's a good level to monitor, along with a B2 to C1 control group. You would then need to transcribe and time each and every student's oral interactions as well as every time the teacher speaks, then plot it on a power distribution curve. I bet you get a classic power distribution with new teachers and a flatter line with better classroom managers. I suspect that different methodologies and approaches may also yield different results.
Who'd like to try it?
I'm going to post, as soon as possible, my presentation on Global Englishes and the Language City Paradigm to the English UK Teachers' Conference in November, but it'll take a little time to do the blurb I want to add to it, so I'll leave that for later. I'll also say what I thought about this year's conference, but for now I'll just limit myself to saying that I saw Luke Meddings, looking incredibly grumpy in a duffel coat, heading towards the exit after his presentation.
For today, I just wanted to add an interesting thought about classroom interaction I've just had. Does classroom interaction follow a power law distribution? I read this fascinating article by Alok Jha in The Guardian about it, and it has got me wondering - does the 80/20 law (i.e. 20 % of the participants contribute 80% of the output) also work in 'meaningful' oral exchanges in class?
In theory, of course, it shouldn't. We should expect each and every student to make an equal amount of contribution. In an ideal world, were we to plot every student's contribution, we should expect a graph to exhibit a nearly straight horizontal line, showing equal distribution. However, in reality, I suspect this is not the case. We all know that certain students try to hog all the speaking time and attention, and it is one of the TEFLer's skills in classroom management that curtails this. But when you factor in Teacher Talk Time as well, what happens?
I would anticipate that with a newbie teacher, the Power Law Distribution holds up pretty well as a reliable way of showing the distribution of who contributes most. By the way, I'm limiting myself to oral interactions here, rather than reading and writing, as with these there's far more likely to be an equal distribution of 'meaningful' work. With an experienced teacher, one would expect the distribution of who contributes what to be a much flatter line.
There's only one way to find out however: you'd need to video a series of classes, at different levels, with different instructors, over the course of, say, 150 hours of instruction, or the amount we'd expect students to progress a level in their language comprehension - let's say A2 to B1, as that's a good level to monitor, along with a B2 to C1 control group. You would then need to transcribe and time each and every student's oral interactions as well as every time the teacher speaks, then plot it on a power distribution curve. I bet you get a classic power distribution with new teachers and a flatter line with better classroom managers. I suspect that different methodologies and approaches may also yield different results.
Who'd like to try it?
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Citizens, Denizens, Commuters and Tourists
What's the difference between the above-mentioned groups of people? Think about London on a busy day: Let's say somewhere just off Leicester Square or something. A native Londoner might scoot through confidently, knowing his or her own way, more or less on autopilot. A denizen might behave in a similar way, or avoid certain roads, streets, alleys, and paths; A Commuter will confidently negotiate their way to work, but put them just one street along and suddenly they're lost. A Tourist, however, wanders around, gawping, taking photos, and paying attention to the things that are pointed out to them.
Yes?
OK, let's talk about World Englishes.
It's now very late in the evening, and I may come back to edit this post or write it bigger and better later, so I'm going to keep this brief. As starters, I'll point you to this short but decent overview of World Englishes on Wikipedia. The one particular model of the different types of world English I'll point out is Kachru's Model of Circles of English. Basically, he says you have an 'Inner circle' of English - that is, the 'original model', followed by the second and third circles. Can you see the problem with this? Yes, totally elitist, isn't it? It raises the uncomfortable assumption that the 'Inner Circle' is the 'purest', 'best' form of English.
Unfortunately, other models of World Englishes that have been proposed don't particularly help matters - they still tend to imply that British or American English are somehow the best, most proper types of the language. Certainly, language learners can feel extremely anxious about their language knowledge when interacting with someone they consider to have a 'better' kind of English than they do, even if they have passed exam after exam in the language.
So, here's my model of World Englishes, or indeed, any language: The Language City Model
The key point of a Language City is that there are four basic ways that people interact with it. They are:
Citizens are people for whom English is either their L1 or one they use commonly and, importantly, comfortably. An Indian who uses Indian English is a Citizen, because they use this form of English with ease and communicate effectively. However, the Citizens of English do not always necessarily understand each other - just as a person who lives in one part of a city may be entirely comfortable in his or her local area, but somewhat uncomfortable in a street on theother side of town. They're still citizens of the same place, but they don't always recognise all the features of the place they live in.
Let me skip over Denizens for a moment.
Commuters are people who use English for professional purposes - they 'enter' the city, and work within it, but withdraw from it once the task they are employed in has been completed. A typical Commuter could be a student working towards a Cambridge exam, or someone who needs to use academic English, What is comsidered to be a typical EFL student could be seen as a commuter.
Tourists are those people who have only a passing interest in or need of English. A schoolchild might be a tourist, especially if they're learning Englsih in a large class with poor resources. It could be someone who decides to study English for a term or two at a language school, but doesn't pursue it further. It could be the seller of tourist souvenirs who needs only a few phrases.
Denizens are the most interesting group. These are the people who, for one reason or another, have to use English because they are required to function within it. This could be immigrants living in the UK, for example, or a student who has to study in English ( notice that a commuter can become a denizen - there is some degree of flexibility in these descriptions). Whatever, these language users have some kind of compunction - they are not citizens of the Language City, even though they might have been using it for a long, long, time: They are still an outsider in many ways.
I'm going to write more about this later, but I hope I've got my main idea across. It's far too late to write down everything yet.
Yes?
OK, let's talk about World Englishes.
It's now very late in the evening, and I may come back to edit this post or write it bigger and better later, so I'm going to keep this brief. As starters, I'll point you to this short but decent overview of World Englishes on Wikipedia. The one particular model of the different types of world English I'll point out is Kachru's Model of Circles of English. Basically, he says you have an 'Inner circle' of English - that is, the 'original model', followed by the second and third circles. Can you see the problem with this? Yes, totally elitist, isn't it? It raises the uncomfortable assumption that the 'Inner Circle' is the 'purest', 'best' form of English.
Unfortunately, other models of World Englishes that have been proposed don't particularly help matters - they still tend to imply that British or American English are somehow the best, most proper types of the language. Certainly, language learners can feel extremely anxious about their language knowledge when interacting with someone they consider to have a 'better' kind of English than they do, even if they have passed exam after exam in the language.
So, here's my model of World Englishes, or indeed, any language: The Language City Model
The key point of a Language City is that there are four basic ways that people interact with it. They are:
- Language Citizens
- Language Denizens
- Language Commuters
- Language Tourists
Citizens are people for whom English is either their L1 or one they use commonly and, importantly, comfortably. An Indian who uses Indian English is a Citizen, because they use this form of English with ease and communicate effectively. However, the Citizens of English do not always necessarily understand each other - just as a person who lives in one part of a city may be entirely comfortable in his or her local area, but somewhat uncomfortable in a street on theother side of town. They're still citizens of the same place, but they don't always recognise all the features of the place they live in.
Let me skip over Denizens for a moment.
Commuters are people who use English for professional purposes - they 'enter' the city, and work within it, but withdraw from it once the task they are employed in has been completed. A typical Commuter could be a student working towards a Cambridge exam, or someone who needs to use academic English, What is comsidered to be a typical EFL student could be seen as a commuter.
Tourists are those people who have only a passing interest in or need of English. A schoolchild might be a tourist, especially if they're learning Englsih in a large class with poor resources. It could be someone who decides to study English for a term or two at a language school, but doesn't pursue it further. It could be the seller of tourist souvenirs who needs only a few phrases.
Denizens are the most interesting group. These are the people who, for one reason or another, have to use English because they are required to function within it. This could be immigrants living in the UK, for example, or a student who has to study in English ( notice that a commuter can become a denizen - there is some degree of flexibility in these descriptions). Whatever, these language users have some kind of compunction - they are not citizens of the Language City, even though they might have been using it for a long, long, time: They are still an outsider in many ways.
I'm going to write more about this later, but I hope I've got my main idea across. It's far too late to write down everything yet.
Thursday, 7 July 2011
mini lightbulb moment
...and a mini entry. I'll write something more substantial soon, honest! I was just talking with a colleague about how you end up not noticing half the things you do in your job once you've been doing the same thing for ages. You know what it's like - you automatically fill in forms, give enrolments, write up stuff, and virtually forget that you've done it at all.
It suddenly struck me that this is precisely what happens in acculturation and fossilization in adults in an L2 environment. It is not merely that they are 'stuck' in their language learning: rather, they have acculturized and fossilized to their entire lifestyle. This would explain why adult learners tend not to progress with language learning - they've simply got used to doing the same old things in the same old way, just because the same old things in the same old way work well enough for them in the way of life they've got used to!
So, what approach could we take to rouse them from their slumbersome routines? Something like a Buddhist bell might work - a sudden 'chime' to bring somoeone back to mindfulness.
Personally, I favour cattle prods.
More on this later.
It suddenly struck me that this is precisely what happens in acculturation and fossilization in adults in an L2 environment. It is not merely that they are 'stuck' in their language learning: rather, they have acculturized and fossilized to their entire lifestyle. This would explain why adult learners tend not to progress with language learning - they've simply got used to doing the same old things in the same old way, just because the same old things in the same old way work well enough for them in the way of life they've got used to!
So, what approach could we take to rouse them from their slumbersome routines? Something like a Buddhist bell might work - a sudden 'chime' to bring somoeone back to mindfulness.
Personally, I favour cattle prods.
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
By Popular Demand...
My English Tense Poem!
TENSION
I’m really feeling rather tense.
These English verbs - they make no sense!
I know there are these grammar rules,
But the speaker always seems to choose
How he or she sees the action,
I’m afraid it’s giving me a nasty reaction.
Look at the future, please do!
Can you explain it to me, you?
These strange tenses, all snaky and sinuous,
Don’t get me started on the future continuous!
I understand ‘will have been’,
But what’s this ‘will have been being’
I’m seeing?
You think the present’s easy?
I tell you, it makes me queasy!
I think ‘I get up at 6 every day’
Is alright, it’s OK,
But ‘I arrive at 6 tomorrow’?
No, no, no –no way!
The present perfect leaves me confused.
Have you ever seen all the rules?
I know I saw him yesterday.
So why can I say
‘I’ve seen him’, eh?
Now, modal verbs – you must be joking!
Must, may and might leave me choking.
I can write, ‘He could be home’,
But ‘He can be home’
Only makes my teacher groan.
‘But ‘could’ is past, isn’t that right?’
‘We can use ‘could’ to be polite!’
As for conditionals-well, I’d like to explain
But honestly, they’re a right pain:
So ask me, please don’t:
I would if I could, but I can’t, so I won’t.
So now I’m going to do what I should have done first –
Learn French – I’m sure it can be no worse….
Copyright © Paul Gallantry 2005.
Monday, 6 June 2011
Provider or Manager?
This post was originally going to be about using authentic texts with Intermediate/Upper Intermediate students, but after some reflection, I'm going to extend it somewhat, although it'll still be anchored in reading skills.
I've been doing some research and refreshment over the past few weeks on reading skills, and how to make text-based lessons more interesting to our learners. A lot of students don't really enjoy doing reading in class, as they think it's something that doesn't actually teach them any English per se. In fact, I suspect quite a few teachers think the same - it's quite a tempting thought when students have their heads down in a text, reading silently (or possibly dozing and dribbling onto the page) - there doesn't appear to be anything going on, and both the instructor and learner end up having the same uneasy sensation, that possibly there should be something apparently happening. The chances are that our students don't actually do as much text-based work as they should, and this is a shame - research shows pretty conclusively that language learners who read more are better and faster at language learning.
However, this also suggests two things - first, that the students who read more are more likely to be avid readers and, importantly, readers of a wide range of things, in their L1, and that they are motivated to do language-based activities outside the classroom. What we don't, or possibly can't, know is whether the reading drives the motivation or vice-versa, or there's some weird feedback loop thingy going on. Anyway, it seems clear that we should motivate students to practise their English outside the classroom, doesn't it? After all, if we motivate them, they will seek down each and every opportunity to use their ninja-like English skills in new and exciting ways, yes?
Or, possibly, there's something else going on, and it very much depends on the context in which we teach, and how we teach it - hence the title of this post.
I've taught in both a monolingual environment - in this case, a private language school in Turkey - and in a native English speaker context, i.e. my current job in an FE college in Deepest Berkshire. Let's imagine that we have the same student going to both places, learning broadly the same syllabus, and moderately motivated. We'll also imagine, for the sake of things, that he's had some kind of ghastly accident involving a copy of Jeremy Harmer's finest, causing him to lose his memory of his previous English learning, and he wakes up in an ESOL class in Reading at the same level he started off in in Turkey. Well, it could be worse: he could have woken up in Slough. Anyway. Our Turkish student in Turkey, if he is sincere about learning English outside the classroom, must actively seek down opportunities to speak, read, write and listen to the language. Now, of course it is relatively easy these days to do that, but our learner, being an average chap, has a thousand and one things to do outside class as well, and to be honest, English studies are really going to drop down the list unless he is a) motivated and, crucially, b) his teacher is motivated enough to be on his case, and does things such as actively suggest where to find information, things to study, where, how and when to practise etc.
Now our hapless student has his bizarre mishap with Mr Harmer, and suddenly he's in the UK, and doing the same kind of studies. And the difference? He doesn't have to actively seek English: He's totally inundated by it. I use 'inundated' correctly, I believe: it's an uncontrollable, unstoppable, tumbling, reaving, crushing, horrid tsunami of words, phrases, attitudes, assumptions of prior knowledge, in-jokes, requests, demands, persuasions, dissuasions and god knows what else. So what is the teacher's duty in all this? After all, we don't need to persuade the learner to hunt out opportunities when they are all around.
In fact, we should first consider it from the learner's point of view. It is natural, in this context, to not engage with the language: it's so overwhelming, that you just want to run away somehow - culture shock, anyone? Look at ELT practitioners the world over - how many of them form expat groups? there you go, it's the running away from the language and culture. Of course, culture shock covers more than language, but from an ELT view it's something we should be clearly aware of, even when the student has been living in the UK/USA or wherever for years and years. A lot of their language engagement may actually be embedded in avoidance strategies - and if you're an ESOL/ESL practitioner,I bet you've seen that more than once, haven't you?
The point I'm trying to make in my roundabout way is this. Depending on our teaching context, we have to deploy different language motivation strategies. If you work in a monolingual/NNES environment, you have to be a language provider - that is, you need to give the materials in class, and provide ways, methods, links, techniques through which the learner can step outside the classroom and actively use English. In a Native English speaking context, however, the teacher is not so much the provider as the manager. In other words, we need to contextualise, parse and manage the flow of information that the learner has to deal with, and render it in such a way as to make it manageable for the student, who after all has to deal with it anyway, regardless of how many lessons he or she has. Only by showing the student that the information is actually manageable can we hope to motivate them, otherwise they will reach a point where they simply switch off, and just don't want to engage with the world around them.
So, are you a provider or a manager, or both? And what do you do to motivate your learners beyond the classroom's Fourth Wall?
I'll deal with methods and practice behind this in another post, as it's getting on the late side now, and I still have to motivate myself through a torrent of student essays.
I've been doing some research and refreshment over the past few weeks on reading skills, and how to make text-based lessons more interesting to our learners. A lot of students don't really enjoy doing reading in class, as they think it's something that doesn't actually teach them any English per se. In fact, I suspect quite a few teachers think the same - it's quite a tempting thought when students have their heads down in a text, reading silently (or possibly dozing and dribbling onto the page) - there doesn't appear to be anything going on, and both the instructor and learner end up having the same uneasy sensation, that possibly there should be something apparently happening. The chances are that our students don't actually do as much text-based work as they should, and this is a shame - research shows pretty conclusively that language learners who read more are better and faster at language learning.
However, this also suggests two things - first, that the students who read more are more likely to be avid readers and, importantly, readers of a wide range of things, in their L1, and that they are motivated to do language-based activities outside the classroom. What we don't, or possibly can't, know is whether the reading drives the motivation or vice-versa, or there's some weird feedback loop thingy going on. Anyway, it seems clear that we should motivate students to practise their English outside the classroom, doesn't it? After all, if we motivate them, they will seek down each and every opportunity to use their ninja-like English skills in new and exciting ways, yes?
Or, possibly, there's something else going on, and it very much depends on the context in which we teach, and how we teach it - hence the title of this post.
I've taught in both a monolingual environment - in this case, a private language school in Turkey - and in a native English speaker context, i.e. my current job in an FE college in Deepest Berkshire. Let's imagine that we have the same student going to both places, learning broadly the same syllabus, and moderately motivated. We'll also imagine, for the sake of things, that he's had some kind of ghastly accident involving a copy of Jeremy Harmer's finest, causing him to lose his memory of his previous English learning, and he wakes up in an ESOL class in Reading at the same level he started off in in Turkey. Well, it could be worse: he could have woken up in Slough. Anyway. Our Turkish student in Turkey, if he is sincere about learning English outside the classroom, must actively seek down opportunities to speak, read, write and listen to the language. Now, of course it is relatively easy these days to do that, but our learner, being an average chap, has a thousand and one things to do outside class as well, and to be honest, English studies are really going to drop down the list unless he is a) motivated and, crucially, b) his teacher is motivated enough to be on his case, and does things such as actively suggest where to find information, things to study, where, how and when to practise etc.
Now our hapless student has his bizarre mishap with Mr Harmer, and suddenly he's in the UK, and doing the same kind of studies. And the difference? He doesn't have to actively seek English: He's totally inundated by it. I use 'inundated' correctly, I believe: it's an uncontrollable, unstoppable, tumbling, reaving, crushing, horrid tsunami of words, phrases, attitudes, assumptions of prior knowledge, in-jokes, requests, demands, persuasions, dissuasions and god knows what else. So what is the teacher's duty in all this? After all, we don't need to persuade the learner to hunt out opportunities when they are all around.
In fact, we should first consider it from the learner's point of view. It is natural, in this context, to not engage with the language: it's so overwhelming, that you just want to run away somehow - culture shock, anyone? Look at ELT practitioners the world over - how many of them form expat groups? there you go, it's the running away from the language and culture. Of course, culture shock covers more than language, but from an ELT view it's something we should be clearly aware of, even when the student has been living in the UK/USA or wherever for years and years. A lot of their language engagement may actually be embedded in avoidance strategies - and if you're an ESOL/ESL practitioner,I bet you've seen that more than once, haven't you?
The point I'm trying to make in my roundabout way is this. Depending on our teaching context, we have to deploy different language motivation strategies. If you work in a monolingual/NNES environment, you have to be a language provider - that is, you need to give the materials in class, and provide ways, methods, links, techniques through which the learner can step outside the classroom and actively use English. In a Native English speaking context, however, the teacher is not so much the provider as the manager. In other words, we need to contextualise, parse and manage the flow of information that the learner has to deal with, and render it in such a way as to make it manageable for the student, who after all has to deal with it anyway, regardless of how many lessons he or she has. Only by showing the student that the information is actually manageable can we hope to motivate them, otherwise they will reach a point where they simply switch off, and just don't want to engage with the world around them.
So, are you a provider or a manager, or both? And what do you do to motivate your learners beyond the classroom's Fourth Wall?
I'll deal with methods and practice behind this in another post, as it's getting on the late side now, and I still have to motivate myself through a torrent of student essays.
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