As some of you may know, I have a twitter feed (@pjgallantry, since you ask), and I follow plenty of my fellow educators through it. I'm also, as some of you may know, a bit of a tech geek - I love brand new shiny gadgets and websites and all sorts of electronic wotsittery. And I have a Vice-Principal in my institution who is eager, excited and and indeed deliriously delighted about all forms of e-learning. Putting all these things together, you would think I'd be happier than a dog with two dicks about being able to combine all the helpful ideas on Twitter, my own techno-enthusiasm, and having the support of a senior admin guy to help my students learn English, wouldn't you?
You couldn't be more wrong.
All I see is a hopeless mishmash of poorly joined-up enthusiasm with little actual thought of what it entails practically and pragmatically.
Let's start with the most fundamental of all - access. Not every student can afford an ipad, or an Android-driven tablet, or even a smartphone. Believe it or not, some students, especially older learners, don't even want a smartphone, or a tablet - and some find using computers difficult. Does this make them losers who don't deserve to learn? Hell it does. If learners are not at least beginning their learning from a level playing field, then neither true learning can occur, nor can the teacher honestly say they are teaching - all they are doing is playing at teaching.
point two: materials. The major publishers have, as we know, taken quite a long time to latch on to how e-materials can be produced. Some more tech-savvy teachers have produced decent materials that work on a variety of platforms, but even so, what is out there is horribly uneven in terms of quality and, pace the first point, accessiblilty. Currently, if any teacher is truly serious about offering equal opportunity of learning to all their learners, they need to have (near-) identical materials available online, as an app, in pdf, as a .doc or equivalent and as a good old bit of paper.
point three: just because we, as educators, get excited about a new piece of tech or a new website or whatever, it does not necesarily follow that a) our students will be equally excited or b) that the brand new shiny thing we have discovered is actually, genuinely useful or game-changing in the class. We might love Twitter or Vimeo or whatever, but unless we consider how pragmatic it is to use it, and how often, it is far too easy to overindulge ourselves to the detriment of learning - but because we're using the new tech or website, we can convince ourselves taht actually we're teaching well, or the students are learning well!
I'd like to suggest a few points that anyone who is getting excited about new tech/software should think about.
1) What does this do that the old method doesn't? If the answer to this is 'nothing' or 'I don't know', then don't use it. Either work out how it is different, or leave well alone. This applies to websites, software and hardware.
2) What does this do better than the old method? Answer as above, really
3) Will my learners benefit from some discovery that excites me? If the answer is 'no', the leave it out of class.
4) Do my learners have access to this online resource I want the class to use? If they don't, then you are the one disadvantaging them. Rethink your approach.
5) Can my students afford this piece of tech? If the answer is 'no', then why are you basing your lesson around it?
One thing I have noticed amid all the excitement over tablet technology - the students I have don't have tablets, but they are quite avid users of smartphones. However, it is glaringly obvious from their use that they see them as accessories to learning rather than necessarily portals for learning - in fact, they browse language sites and apps rather than rely on them. This is an important thing to note, as it means that they have do with language apps on their phones what they naturally do with the other software on it - use it in a casual, relaxed way. If I made them use their phones in a more concentrated 'LEARNING-STYLE' way, they probably wouldn't use them as effectively. Instead of making dedicated learning-rich apps, it might be better to create ones that encourage and support the natural way people browse their phones for information.
Friday, 16 March 2012
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
Now Podcasting!
I've decided to experiment with doing podcasts, and discovering that it's not quite as easy as I thought it might be. For a start, it's incredibly easy to fluff up what you're saying as you record. I was doing 8 or 9 takes before getting it right, so I decided to start scripting what I wanted to say BEFORE saying it. Well, duh!
And then I realised that trying to explain an idea in four minutes or thereabout requires spare, accurate conciseness, and that made me consider how I give explanations in class, especially as it took me ages to think about what I wanted to say, how to say it, and whether my explanation was sufficient enough.
Anyway, here it is: Paul's English Podcasts. Judge for yourself. It is still early days yet, so I'm sure I can get better!
And then I realised that trying to explain an idea in four minutes or thereabout requires spare, accurate conciseness, and that made me consider how I give explanations in class, especially as it took me ages to think about what I wanted to say, how to say it, and whether my explanation was sufficient enough.
Anyway, here it is: Paul's English Podcasts. Judge for yourself. It is still early days yet, so I'm sure I can get better!
Monday, 23 January 2012
mondaaaaaaaaaaay, part two
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)