I am *super* impressed! (guest post)

This post appeared in my facebook news feed yesterday, and I immediately asked if Tereza would let me share it on my blog. In it, she questions the value of positive feedback.

Today I received my evaluation of the final project in my sports class and it motivated me for a little contemplation on one of the differences between American and Czech (or even European in this respect) culture. The task was to create my own workout and lead my classmates for the fraction of the lecture. Eventually, due to time reasons, it was ONLY 5 MINUTES. So basically, all I did was I came up with 6 exercises, explained and demonstrated them to my classmates and then we performed them for 40s each with 5s break in between. The whole time I commented into the microphone like ’15 seconds, almost there, you can do it!’ because that was one of the requirements. You can see my evaluation below. My teacher was SUPER impressed, I looked like a professional, I should be an instructor.

Tereza’s feedback

And here comes my point – really? I did not do anything impressive, I have never led a sport lecture before so I definitely have no motivation or other techniques developed and yet, based on 5 mins of doing stuff we have been doing in almost every class this semester, I should be an instructor! Americans are just always mega super trooper supportive to students, to kids, to each other, to everyone. Whatever you do, no matter how good or bad, it’s amazing. If you ask a question, however dumb one, teachers always start their answer with ‘That was an excellent question! I’m so glad you’re asking that.’ Whatever you do, it’s awesome, whatever you say, it’s so smart, whatever you wear, it looks cute and wonderful on you. One might think that there is everything perfect in America and everybody is talented and smart here. And that’s exactly mine (and not just mine) observation – people here really do think that. People are convinced that they are all brilliant at everything they do and look great in everything they wear. This might be a too big generalization, I admit. However, I can see evidence that it is mostly true every day.

My boyfriend teaches a calculus class at university in Missouri and his students, all future engineers by the way, are used to being praised their whole lives, getting excellent grades for everything and being told they can do everything and they are the best and the like as you could see on my evaluation. So those students are all shocked when they don’t get partial credit for accidentally guessing the right result, they are all surprised that there is someone who wants them to work hard for excellent grades and does not tell them ‘great job’ if the job is actually not that great. Instead of feeling ashamed they did not learn something or did not do the homework and therefore could not solve some exam problems, they go to him to complain, to accuse him that it is actually his fault they could not solve it and beg for extra points because they are used to always do great. Some time ago I posted here a ‘proof’ which one of my classmates did in a graduate-level math class. It almost made me cry, in short, she factored ‘x’ out of the integral which depended on ‘x’, they would not have let me finish high school if I had done that in the Czech Republic. So this girl still happily attends the class and I got the honor to read one of her papers we had to turn it. It was a complete disaster, she copied every single thing from the paper which it was based on, she not just copied it but also made a lot of mistakes in copying it, her sentences did not make sense, you could not call her proofs ‘proofs’ even if you were drunk and for all that she got 15 points out of 20. I wouldn’t give her even 10. However, that might probably touch her self-esteem and that’s not desired here.

I am not saying that being supportive and appreciating someone is bad. Especially with kids you should do that a lot. However, here it is led to extreme and moreover, college students are not kids anymore. Or at least they should not be. I have already lost the sense of what is meant honestly and what is just ‘American-like’. I basically have no measure whether I did well or bad because I always get a perfect evaluation. You have no idea whether people like you or how high they think of you because they always say you did a fantastic job. At the beginning, it makes you feel good, like you are really special, you do really so well. But with time, you get tired of that because you already see through it. Again, don’t get me wrong, I do not think teachers should be harsh on students, it is good to give someone encouragement and ‘push’ but not the fake one. In the Czech Republic or Germany where I got a chance to study, or even in my family, we do not flatter each other all the time. I know my parents love me and are proud of me but they do not tell me how amazing and talented and extraordinary I am every time I do something. Therefore, when they do tell me that, when they appreciate something I achieved or succeeded in, I can be sure they mean it and I value it very much then.

Tereza Eliášová is from the Czech Republic, and is currently studying for a semester in the United States. She was one of my students in Brno. 

Drawing dictations

I have no idea who I stole this idea from, but it worked really well so I’m going to share it here!

I used it with elementary students. They had done this exercise for homework:

New English File Elementary Workbook, page 53, Unit 6C

We checked the answers in class, and they were fine, but I wanted them to really notice the language. One student drew a picture for each idea in the text, numbering them from 1 to 10 to help her. (She was early and this was a way to help her before the other students arrived!) These are the final five pictures:

She’s a much better artist than me! By the time she had finished, the rest of the class had arrived. They used the pictures to reconstruct the text on the board. It’s a small group, so using the board enables them to easily change their mind about the text. Students could also use mini whiteboards, tablets/phones, or good old-fashioned pen and paper!

Once they were happy with their version of the text, they compared it to the original and asked me questions about differences they didn’t understand, particularly why ‘three-month-old’ had no ‘s’. They spoke a mix of English and Russian, and were engaged and motivated, arguing about whose memory of the text was better.

IH Journal Spring 2014 – IH certificates

The latest IH Journal is now available, featuring the Developing Teachers column by yours truly. This time the topic is International House certificates, for example qualifications in teaching young learners or business English.

The journal features articles by IH staff from around the world, covering topics as diverse as teaching teaching spelling to young learners, speaking activities with teenagers and management tips. The contents page is here, and the whole journal is here. You can also read past issues of the journal.

 

Captain Len Holder

Captain Len Holder worked in the British Merchant Navy for ten years in the 1950s and 1960s. He travelled all over the world, principally in Asia and Australasia, as well as around the UK.

He subsequently studied and researched at Liverpool Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores University), where he also trained sailors from around the world. He was Head of Department there from 1977 to 1988 and then Director of the School of Engineering and Technology Management. He became an expert in maritime safety.

He was the Chairman of Videotel Marine International, a company which he helped to set up in the 1970s, and which provides training videos and other materials for shipping companies around the world.

From May 2000 to May 2001 Captain Holder was the Master of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners, a London Livery Company. Their role is to provide education and training to mariners and maintain professional standards, all as a charity. Len joined the Honourable Company in 1953, and took an active part in the organisation. He set up their apprenticeship scheme, designed to help guide mariners through the process of becoming a Master Mariner.

He was President of the Nautical Institute from 1993 to 1996, having been a founder member in 1971. The aim of the organisation is similar to the Master Mariners in terms of training and education, but on an international scale. It also publishes research and journals, which Len regularly contributed to.

In addition, he was also a member of the Mersey Mission to Seafarers.

In November 2012, Captain Holder was awarded the Merchant Navy Medal in recognition for his services to the Nautical Institute and marine safety training.

Len Holder with his wife Ann, after receiving the Merchant Navy Medal, November 2012

Captain Holder was regularly asked to give lectures around the world. As he got older, he also gave talks on a wide variety of topics connected to his life, as well as on research into his family tree done with his wife, Ann. The British National Archives recorded one of these talks, entitled Three Generations of Master Mariners, about his ancestor, his uncle and himself.

He was a consummate storyteller, and it was rare for him to go for long without telling a story. He collected many, but by no means all, of his stories, all of them short and quick to tell, into two books: A Lighthearted Look at Seafaring and Other Stories and More of Len’s Stories. All of the profits are donated to seafarers’ charities and the National Association for Colitis and Crohn’s Disease. Over £5,000 had been raised by November 2012, and more has been donated since. If you’d like a copy of the books, please contact katemillin at gmail dot com.

Len was also a member of Lions International, and did a lot of fundraising for them, with money going to a lot of local charities. He also sang in choirs throughout his life and had a beautiful singing voice.

Len fundraising for Lions

Above and beyond all of this, Len Holder was a family man, with a loving wife, five children, and eight grandchildren, of whom I am the oldest.

Grandy with my grandma and two of my cousins

We are a close family, including my extended family (Grandy’s sister and brother and their children and grandchildren).

Grandma and Grandy, with Grandy’s brother and his wife, December 2013

Grandy was supportive of all of us, and took a huge interest in everything we did. I am immensely proud to be his granddaughter, and I know that I owe a lot of who I am to him, not least my love of travel, my teaching genes and my enjoyment of giving presentations. Although he never learnt to speak another language fluently, I owe this gene to him too: he knew bits and pieces of many languages, and enjoyed testing them out.

Some of the family gathered together, including most of the grandchildren

When the end came, it was very quick. Having never really been ill in his life, Grandy started to get sick in February this year, and was taken into hospital in March, where he was diagnosed with cancer, which had already spread quite a lot. The ward he stayed in was one of the places which had benefitted from his fundraising efforts. He had started chemotherapy, and the doctors were impressed at how strong he was, but a combination of other infections, including pneumonia, meant that recovery was not to be. The last time I saw him, just before I went to the IATEFL conference, he was telling stories and being cheeky, just like always, despite being in a hospital bed. He passed away in his sleep last night.

Grandma, Grandy and mum

Goodbye, Grandy. You will be missed by the many hundreds of people whose lives you touched, and especially by your family. Things won’t be the same without you.

Crisis at Clifton – Richmond Mazes

Richmond have recently released a series of readers with a difference, called ‘Richmond Mazes’, written by Alastair Lane and James Styring. They are:

• based on the idea of choose your own adventure, where you make choices that determine what happens next in the story.
• available as a book or an app. If you choose the book, you can download the audio to accompany it.
• aimed at young adults and adults learning English, with the first four titles set in work situations.
• currently available at elementary and intermediate levels. There are two books at the moment:
  Escape from Pizza Palace (Elementary) – book / app
  Crisis at Clifton (Intermediate) – book / app

I was given a code to try the app version of ‘Crisis at Clifton‘ out, thanks to Ela Wassell. This is how Richmond describe the story:

You have just started a new job at a fashionable advertising agency in Sydney. From the first day you learn that the company is in crisis. If your client doesn’t sign a new contract, the company will go bankrupt. You must create a successful new advertising campaign, keep your client happy, deal with your colleagues… and save the Clifton Creative Agency! You will find lots of useful business vocabulary presented in a natural context in this maze. As well as improving your English, you will learn lots of interesting things about the advertising industry. Good luck finding your way through the maze!

It took me about an hour to go through the whole story, and I found a lot of things I liked about the format, not least the fact that even though it was quite late, I kept reading because I wanted to know what would happen next. I used to love choose-your-own-adventure books as a child for exactly this reason!

The story is illustrated throughout, with characters looking straight out at the reader, so it seems like they’re talking to you. This is the first page, which sets the scene for the story. It’s one of the longest texts in the version of the maze I went through, with never more than a single iPad screen’s worth of text before you make a decision or click on ‘continue’.

At the end of most sections, there is a box offering you a variety of choices about what should happen next. This means students have to think about what they’ve read to be able to make the right choice, instead of just reading passively. They have to pay attention to key language to help them understand. You click to go to the next section, and you can click ‘back’ at any point.

If you make a different decision after clicking ‘back’, the app notifies you and asks if you’re sure. You can see all the decisions you’ve made in a handy summary by clicking on ‘My route’ at the bottom of the screen. You can go back to any of these decisions by clicking on it.

The stars show bonus points, which are available in every chapter for making the best decisions. In the book there are special pages where you can record any information you need to, including your bonus points and extra information that will help you later.

If you make a bad decision which will cause problems for the company, you see a message which tells you the problem, and takes you back to the start of the chapter.

I only got 5 bonus points through the whole story (out of a possible 16), so when I got to the end I was told “To improve the ending you have to win more bonus points”. This takes you back to the start, so you can try the story again.

I like the fact that you can try the story again and again and it will give you a different outcome each time. I think it would be quite a challenge to find all of the bonus points, and could be motivating for students.

Words which could cause problems are all clickable, with simple definitions appearing. They are underlined throughout the story, not just the first time they appear.

All communication which is referred to is presented in the relevant format. For example, an email looks like an email:

There are also newspaper articles, memos, and other text types business English students might expect to encounter. Voice messages are recorded, not written out as text. There is also the option to show a tapescript if students need extra support.

The voices are a mixture of Australian and other accents, including German. It’s refreshing to hear voices which aren’t just standard British or standard American pronunciation.

The story is written in the second person (‘you’), but I didn’t notice until I was on chapter 4, meaning it was very natural.

My only reservation is that the title and style of the story may not seem serious enough for some professionals. I think it would be particularly suitable for business English students who are still training, for example at university.

Overall, I enjoyed using the app, and I think it would be a motivating way for students to practise without realising that they’re working and learning at the same time. I’d really like to see something similar for general English students in the future.

Update (in response to a question): the app is £4.99 from the Apple store. I’m not sure if it’s available on Android.

Pre-teens aren’t stupid

A slightly depressing thought.

I spoke to my students yesterday about why we talk about a reading passage after reading it, and don’t just move on. There are 3 of them, aged 12-13, in that class.

Their comments, and the order they came out with them, were quite telling:

• because we’re going to study future continuous (the grammar point on the facing page)
• because we need it later (i.e. as adults)
• just because
• because it’s about the environment and we need to know about that

When I suggested it might be to help me see how much of the text and the ideas in it they understood, they seemed quite surprised. They certainly weren’t particularly engaged in the topic itself (changes a boy and his family were making to their life to be more environmentally friendly).

[And yes, I know I shouldn’t necessarily have just done the next page in the book, but I’d been at home all morning because there’d been a small fire in my flat!]

The book in question, and by no means the only one at fault…

One month on

One month ago today, on the 16th March 2014, there was a referendum in Crimea to decide whether it would remain part of Ukraine or ask to part of the Russian Federation. I’ve blogged extensively about the whole process of what has been happening in Sevastopol, and will continue to do so for as long as there seems to be something to say.

Today in Ukraine

As I write this, Ukraine has launched ‘anti-terrorist’ action against protestors in the Donetsk region. In the last couple of hours, Putin has warned that Ukraine is ‘on the brink of civil war‘. Some suggest that Russia have forced Ukraine’s hand by sending people into the area to incite violence and will use this as an excuse to send in their own troops. I have no idea if this is true or not, or how comparable this is to what happened in Crimea (as has been discussed), but I don’t believe the Ukrainian government is entirely blameless either. As I’ve said before, their unwillingness to accept Russian as an official language or to seek closer relationships with those in the east has inevitably alienated people. There have been attempts in the last week or so to remedy this, but I feel it’s too little, too late.

The Guardian has set out five possible scenarios for what might happen next. As with the whole process, the problem is that nobody really knows how this will all unfold. And that uncertainty is the overriding problem with life in Sevastopol now…

Travel

My worries about getting back to Sevastopol were completely unfounded. My train journey from Kiev to Sevastopol was uneventful. The only difference between the journey out and the journey in was one extra passport check: on the way out only the Ukrainian border guards checked, on the way in both Ukrainians and Russians checked, about an hour apart. No comment was made about my Ukrainian visa, and I was asked no questions at all, unlike when I flew into Simferopol at Christmas.

The train was as busy as one might expect for a mid-week one, and the BBC video about people leaving Crimea on the train did not reflect the fact that people are still travelling in both directions. The man I shared my compartment with was from Kiev, but works in Dzhankoy in Crimea. The train still seems to be a viable travel option, for now at least.

People boarding the Kiev to Sevastopol train, Kiev station, Tuesday 8th April 2014

Soldiers and sailors

In the week before I went to the UK, and the week since I came back, I’ve seen more military in Sevastopol than I had done for the previous six weeks. Yesterday seven or eight military trucks drove past me, a sight which was fairly common until the start of February when they all disappeared. On Monday I saw 17 buses (helpfully numbered) drive past in convoy, all full of military personnel – I guess there must have been over 400 of them. I assume that means they’ve all come back to their bases. It feels like things are largely back to normal here in terms of military presence.

Time zones

I’m a big fan of the new GMT +4 time zone, although I was assured it’s not actually new and is what Crimea (and all of Ukraine?) used to be on until 1998. Now I’m being woken by the sun at 07:00 instead of 05:00, and it’s still light when I finish work at 20:00, and for about an hour afterwards, instead of being dark at 18:00. It seems to make a lot more sense, although whether that will be true all year round with no change for winter remains to be seen.

Post

For two weeks, no post arrived at the school. I was told that the Ukrainian postal services were no longer operating, and when I got something yesterday I don’t know who it was delivered by. I want to go to the post office, but I’ll be waiting for a while until it’s clearer whether the postal system is still functioning or not. It’s not clear what will happen to any backlog of post that might build up in the meantime.

Pensions

Another thing that Ukraine have stopped providing is support to pensioners. The money now all comes from Russia. Because the exchange rate that pensioners are paid in is different to the one on the street, they apparently get the money in roubles, then change the money into hryvnia and end up with more to spend!

Registration plates

A sticker to make your car Russian? (and some bonus Sevastopol car art – very popular here)

The picture above shows a fairly typical sight now – stickers are on sale all over the city so people can change the country on their registration plates. I estimate about 15-20% of cars in Sevastopol have some form of Russian flag on the number plate now, and over 50% of them have Russian flags in or on them somewhere, like the one on the dashboard here. A lot of the buses have small flags attached to their wing mirrors.

Documents

Queuing for Russian passports

I don’t know how many different places people can go to get a Russian passport, but these people were queuing at one in the centre, and I know this is not unusual. The people on the left-hand side of the street are reading information about what they need to do to get their passport. Apparently while I was in the UK there were big queues at photo studios for people to get their new passport photos, although those seem to have disappeared now.

One teen student came to class a bit late because she’d just spent three hours in the queue to submit her documents, but was really excited because that meant she was going to get her Russian passport. The same 16-year-old has the Russian national anthem as her ring tone.

Another student has just turned 16, and a couple of weeks ago wasn’t sure what to do about getting her ID, which here is also confusingly called a passport. As far as I know you have two passports – an ID document and one for international travel, although I may be wrong! In Russia you get official ID from the age of 14, but in Ukraine it’s 16. Now she’ll definitely get Russian ID, and her grandma said they would have a special dinner and champagne to celebrate because it proved she was officially an adult. I love this idea!

Others are waiting until the rush dies down to get their new passports. Ukrainian passports will still be valid for a while, although as with everything else I have no idea how long for.

Roubles and hryvnia

I’ve seen roubles now, but they’re still not particularly common. I’ve had a couple of coins given to me as examples, but haven’t used them in transactions yet. Some of the coins have the coats of arms of cities across Russia on them, and a friend was excited that Sevastopol would soon be on the coins too.

I managed to get money out of the bank again the other day, and was given the option of having it in roubles of hryvnia, but decided on the latter as I think it’s still more useful. However, the exchange rate is going up against the pound/euro/dollar in both currencies, and I’ve exchanged some of my pay into pounds to try and protect my money a bit. I know this is the kind of thing that doesn’t help, but I need to make sure the money doesn’t all disappear.

Tablets which I currently have to buy every 25 days have gone up drastically in price, from 642UAH last time I bought them to 802UAH a few days ago. I’m lucky because I have a comfortable salary, and I don’t know how people manage who aren’t – they must have to go without, which will ultimately add more strain to the system.

The money that Russia has promised to spend on Crimea and Sevastopol is already worrying them, and could be adversely affecting the GDP. I wonder whether it will ever come through?

Banks

Queues outside the bank

Queues are still quite normal outside banks. I think this one was caused because there were rumours that roubles had arrived there, although I’m not really sure.

Banks are not doing international transfers, and some Ukrainian banks have stopped working here completely. Large Russian banks don’t seem to want to open branches here in case they are hit by sanctions, which paves the way for smaller banks. However, the smaller banks are also having trouble making international transfers which is causing the school some problems. This is the area where uncertainty seems to be greatest: the banks don’t know if they will be there from one day to the next, making it very difficult to plan for the future. The problems with the banks also don’t help with paying taxes – it’s not clear how these transactions can be made.

Feelings

I know people who are still thinking about leaving Crimea, and I know others who were going to leave but have now decided to stay. Those who are staying are still pretty positive about the whole change to being Russian, although the uncertainty, particularly about money, can be wearing. People are moving around a lot more, and I feel safe enough to hopefully start exploring Crimea a bit more from this weekend.

On a final note, the signs below were all along one of the main streets in the centre of the city by the weekend, and today have appeared all along my street. I’ve been told they are quite rude, although Google Translate isn’t very helpful with this. No idea who’s paying for them all, but on the plus side a lot of the referendum ones seem to have disappeared, although unfortunately not the one I can see from my window. I wonder how long these ones will last for?

Sevastopol/Nato

CELTA at IH Sevastopol

What is CELTA?

CELTA stands for ‘Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults’. It is a four-week full-time initial teacher training course, designed to introduce you to the basics of teaching English as a foreign language.

It is suitable for native English speakers, and non-natives who have achieved an English level of at least C1 on the CEFR.

Why do CELTA?

CELTA is internationally recognised as an introductory qualification for English teachers, and opens the door to good quality schools around the world.

For those who have already been teaching for a while, it is a good introduction to Communicative Language Teaching.

What does CELTA involve?

During the four-week course, you will do a total of six hours of observed teaching practice, where you try out what you are learning in a real classroom situation.

From theory to practice

To help you do this successfully, you will receive 120 hours of input covering a wide range of topics. including how to teach grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and the four language skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking), as well as how to plan your lessons, use materials effectively and manage the classroom, among many other things. You will be introduced to a wide range of activties which you can take straight into the classroom.

Before and after each observed lesson you will work with tutors and your peers to ensure that you improve as much as possible over the course of your CELTA.
There are also four short written assignments during the course, one per week. There is no exam: assessment is based on your written assignments and your observed teaching practice.

How much is it?

Anyone who registers for our courses before 1st June 2014 will get a 15% discount, meaning the whole four-week CELTA will only cost you £850, including Cambridge registration fees, considerably cheaper than it is in most places, where it can cost up to £1300! Even with travel costs and accommodation, you will pay considerably less than at many other centres.

If you register after 1st June, it will still only cost £1000.

IH Sevastopol can help you to arrange travel and accommodation, and anything else you may require during your stay.

Why do CELTA at IH Sevastopol?

Every summer International House Sevastopol runs two CELTA courses: one in July and one in August. In 2014 the dates are:

• June 30th-July 25th
• July 28th-August 23rd

The course is run by two experienced trainers, Olga Stolbova, the Director of IH Sevastopol, and a guest trainer from Kharkiv, Ukraine. In July 2014, I will be training as a CELTA tutor, so I will be there as a third trainer if you decide to join the first course.

You will be teaching students in a private language school in a classroom setting much like you might expect to go into once you have finished your CELTA course.

International House has affiliates all over the world, and while we cannot guarantee you a job, we can offer advice on where to apply for work once your course has finished.

Sevastopol itself is a fascinating city, and at the weekends when you have finished planning and writing assignments, you can explore its history or go out into beautiful Crimea. Sevastopol and Crimea have been in the news a lot recently, and this is your chance to discover what it’s like here first-hand! You can read a lot more about Sevastopol on our site, and see pictures and videos of the city, including BBC Top Gear‘s visit in November 2013.

Here’s what Ryan Williams, a Canadian who trained on our 2013 CELTA, said about the course:

I left the Canadian oil field and started my teaching career with a TESOL certification. Within my first year of teaching it was clear that I wanted more education to fall back on. The decision to take a CELTA course was an easy one and based on some key factors, career advancement, stability, self-confidence and professionalism played a key role.

IH Sevastopol offers a great experience in a city rich with culture and history. Also, the early schedule for the course gives you a competitive edge when interviewing for September start. The tutors are top notch and committed to providing you with the tools needed in a modern teaching environment in order to be successful in the classroom. A four week course is intense, no question. However, by applying yourself the rewards are fantastic. I can attest by saying that a CELTA certification has opened doors for me that we’re not achievable in the past and I am now enjoying a fruitful career with teaching English.

You can read more about the CELTA course on our website, and download an application form.

Happy students and trainees at the end of the July 2013 course

So what are you waiting for? Contact us and find out how you can take the first step of an exciting new stage in your life!

Drawing challenge

At IATEFL Harrogate 2014, many of us were very impressed by the artistic endeavours of Christina Rebuffet-Broadus, who introduced us to the idea of sketchnoting.

I have to admit that her beautiful, and beautifully-organised, notebook made me a bit jealous, since my artistic skills are somewhat lacking. Carol Goodey and James Taylor seconded this, and I thought it would be fun to make us all feel a bit better by setting a drawing challenge, and proving we can all make our artwork understandable! Maybe it will be the first step towards out own sketchnoting at future webinars and conferences 😉

The rules

1. Choose four things you often have to draw in the classroom, or that you’ve had bad experiences drawing in the past (!). I suggest a person doing a particular action or job, an animal, a vehicle, and a miscellanous object, but you can draw whatever you like.
2. Draw them in any way you see fit (on a board, on paper, on a tablet…) but don’t spend any more time on it than you would in a lesson.
3. Share the results for us to guess what they are. 🙂

My offerings

 

After that, I think you’ll agree, it’s a good job I’m a teacher, not an artist, as I often tell my students!

I look forward to seeing your artwork. 🙂

Challenge accepted!

David Harbinson was the first to take up the challenge, and has also shared his version of sketchnotes from a recent webinar.

Martin Sketchley shared his version of a skeleton from his YL classroom, and added four drawings for you to guess.

Maria Theologidou added a twist to her contribution by sharing a great activity for practising past simple and past continuous through drawing.

19 things I’ve learnt as an EFL teacher

On Friday 4th April, I did my first ever Pecha Kucha (and no, I don’t know how to pronounce it either – PK!). If you’ve never heard of a PK, it’s 20 slides, each on screen for 20 seconds, giving a total of six minutes and forty seconds. The speaker has no control over the slides, and just has to keep up!

There were eight presenters, all of whom were very entertaining:

• Valeria Benevolo Franca (the host): Keep Calm and Pecha Kucha
• James Taylor: Just say yes!
• Bita Rezaei: A manifesto for teachers
• Damian Williams: Linguistic Landscapes
• me
• Thom Jones:
• Cecilia Lemos: The Ten Commandments of ELT
• Lindsay Clandfield: memes

The whole event was recorded, and you can watch it by following this link. I’d highly recommend watching the whole thing (it’s an hour), but if you just want to see mine, it starts at 33:15.

As well as being my first PK, it was my first presentation on a stage, or with a microphone.  It was a great experience, and something I hope I can do again in the future!

Other perspectives

Lizzie Pinard blogged throughout the PK evening – I have no idea how she kept up!

Stepping into the real world: transitioning listening

This is the recorded version of a presentation which originally took place on Friday 4th April 2014 at IATEFL Harrogate 2014.

The abstract

“I’ve studied English for years, but I can’t understand anyone!” This was a common complaint from my students on arrival in the UK. This workshop aims to introduce you to practical activities and materials you can use to help students transition from understanding scripted listening materials to feeling comfortable with real-world English.

The summary

Listening is the skill we use most in a second language. We have to understand speakers in many different contexts, of different ages, genders, levels of education, and with a range of accents, both native and non-native. However, this is rarely reflected in the classroom, where listening tends to be focussed on other students in class or on scripted coursebook recordings in ‘standard’ forms of English, mostly spoken by young to middle-aged adults (or overly excited children in the case of young learner materials!). Teachers also tend to focus on testing comprehension, rather than on teaching better listening skills. This results in students lacking confidence in their listening abilities and/or lacking knowledge of how to approach listening in the real world.

The aim of this workshop is to introduce and try out a range of activities and materials which you can use in your classroom to teach listening, rather than testing it. Some of the principles discussed will be based on John Field’s Listening in the Language Classroom (Cambridge 2008), as well as my own experience in the classroom and as a second language learner. The workshop will also look at how you can make the listening you use in the classroom reflect the real world as much as possible. Finally, participants will be given the chance to share activities and materials which have worked for them, as well as discussing how to apply the activities from the workshop to their own contexts.

The presentation

You can watch the full presentation in this video:

The books I recommended are:

• Collins English for Life: Listening A2 by Chris Flint and Jamie Flockhart
• Listening in the Language Classroom by John Field

(These are affiliate links, so if you buy them or anything else after clicking on these links I will get a little money. Thank you!)

I also recommend showing your students how to make the most of podcasts. I wrote a post on my Independent English blog which you can use as an introduction or to find links to some podcasts I recommend.

I’ve previously shared resources related to weak forms, including more word clouds like the one in the presentation.

The audio tracks are not included in the presentation, so I’ve uploaded them to audioboo so you can listen to them and/or use them in class. No copyright infringement is intended.

Slide 6, audio 1

Slide 6, audio 2

Slide 12

Slide 13, audio 1

Slide 13, audio 2

Slide 16

From another perspective

Lizzie Pinard wrote a summary of my talk as it was happening

Andrea at Anglolang including a summary of my talk in her review of IATEFL 2014

Laura Patsko and Katy Simpson look at the talk from the perspective of English as a Lingua Franca

James Taylor wrote a one-sentence summary which made me laugh 🙂

What makes a successful blog?

Adam Simpson and I were interviewed by Paul Braddock and Ann Foreman from the British Council, as part of the IATEFL Harrogate online coverage. It was a great privilege to be asked to do this.

We were asked about what makes a successful blog and how we go about blogging. The interview is just under 8 minutes, and I hope there are some useful tips in there.

Adam’s blog is www.teachthemenglish.com, and if you’re not already following it, you should be.

Shortly afterwards James Taylor, Katherine Bilsborough and Willy Cardoso were asked about ‘the benefits of blogging, growing the confidence to blog, and how it enables a different level of communication with peers around the world.’

Paul and Ann run the highly successful TeachingEnglish facebook page, which is a treasure trove of resources. All five of us have benefitted from it, and it’s great to be able to give something back.

Follow the conference and watch recordings of sessions and interviews by clicking the image!

Be the DoS you want to be – Josh Round (IATEFL Harrogate 2014)

Josh’s session was part of the Leadership and Management Special Interest Group day.

He has a blog: www.bethedos.wordpress.com.

Josh became a DoS because the previous one left, and that DoS was his only reference point. He started by copying that style, and it took him a few years to develop his own style.

Josh is the chair of LonDoSA, the London DoS association, and that’s also part of what has helped him to develop as a DoS. Part of the session is about meeting other DoSes too, because that can be difficult to do.

Manage Yourself

He starts by asking:

1. What kind of manager are you?
2. What kind of manager do you aspire to be?
3. What prevents you?
4. What gets in the way?

Time management

Time management is all about conscious control of our time. Having an awareness of what we’re doing, when, and how effectively.

Prioritisation is key. You need to decide what is urgent/not urgent and what is important/not important. You can make a quadrant:

We want to be in ‘The Zone’, and according to Stephen Covey, the best-performing managers operate mostly in this place, but it can be very difficult to do that. Tips on how to be in ‘The Zone’:

• Don’t open your emails until at least 10a.m. You often do your best work first thing in the day.
• Block off times when you’re available. Everybody needs to know this for it to work.
• Divide up to do lists. Laura Patsko suggested dividing it by length of task: 15 minutes, 60 minutes, 2 hours plus.
• Work in different places: go to a different room if there’s too much noise.
• Give yourself motivational rewards. We all get some form of satisfaction from crossing things off lists.

Delegation

What stops us from delegating?

• I can do it better. Maybe we’re control freaks!
• I can do it faster. Training will take too long. But maybe this will be a long-term investment.
• I like doing it. I’ll keep it.
• What if they do it better?

Why delegate?

• To build expertise in your team.
• It gives you time.

How to delegate

• Look actively for tasks you can hand over.
• Identify the right person.
• Define the task clearly.
• Monitor but get out of the way.
• Let them do it their way. Your way might not be the only way.
• Encourage and give praise.
• Don’t just delegate tasks you don’t like doing.

Managing your team

Josh shows us a video called ‘Harry and Paul’ about football management. Brilliant video 🙂 Football managers are not always friends with everyone in their team.

Managing teachers

Best practice points

• Treat everyone as I wish to be treated.
• Be consistent.
• Set compelling goals and objectives. Provide challenges.
• Keep your promises.
• Be visible and approachable. MBWA: Manage By Walking About.
• Choose to communicate.
• Hold regular one-to-ones with staff.
• Be self aware: know what’s expected of you, and remember what you expected of your DoS when you were a teacher.
• Inject fun. Being enthuasiastic and positive are contagious.
• Be a role model. Make your goals transparent.

Really like this suggestion from Kevin Spiteri at their school in Malta: a ‘good news corner’ where everything positive goes: positive feedback, babies born, birthdays, great things that are happening at the school.

That’s the ideal, but sometimes that doesn’t happen. People are messy: they respond in different ways. It helps if you have a clear idea of your aims as a manager.

Grow a positive school culture

Josh refers us to Hertzberg: hygiene factors (things which demotivate) and motivators.
Hygiene factors include pay, lack of team morale, admin, work conditions, job security and lack of autonomy.
Motivators include job variety, team morale, freedom to be creative, recognition, challenge and opportunities for growth.
As a DoS, we can help with these factors. For example, change the classes they teach to give them variety.

Be a Developing DoS

What development opportunities exist for ELT managers? You can look for local associations like LonDoSA, or the LAMSIG through IATEFL. These allow us to connect with other DoSes and share best practice.

Leaping before you look – Danny Norrington-Davies (IATEFL Harrogate 2014)

Danny was a tutor on my Distance Delta course, and his presentation at IATEFL Glasgow was one of the most useful I went to all week. I’m hoping to be trained as a CELTA tutor in the near future, so this was an ideal talk to go to.

There are three main strands to Danny’s talk:

1. Encouraging trainees on pre-service courses to work with emerging language during observed lessons.
2. Exploring how trainees feel before going into a lesson like this…
3. …and after (both after the lesson, and after the course).

Some issues (from trainees)

• They don’t believe they can do it.
• They worry about being put on the spot.
• They worry about losing control.
• They like the security of pre-planned input (however much they might moan about planning!)
• They don’t notice emerging language or “can’t hear it”.
• They can’t decide what’s important.
• They worry about putting students on the spot.

Danny believes from this that trainees think emerging language means ‘error’. He says that it’s also about questions students might have, like “What’s the word for ____?”

How do we encourage trainees to work with emerging language

On day 2 of Danny’s courses, they look at the meaning of language from a text he uses. They look at the questions students have in relation to that text. It helps the trainees to notice that they know more than the people they’re teaching – it’s not just about meta-language,

On day 4, they explore the kind of questions learners might have when setting up activities and giving feedback.

On day 6, they look at a coursebook double-page and how five different teachers interpret them. One of those interpretations is task-based learning, another is using emergent language,

On day 9, they have a session on TBL and working with emerging language. They think about what is likely to emerge from the interaction.

Day 9 then has the correction and reformulation slot, after emerging language has been dealt with.

Other parts of course design include:

• observation tasks which include a focus on emerging language. It’s better as an observation task than as input.
• no language analysis form in the lesson plan.
• retrospective language analysis forms, after the lesson.

The data is mostly drawn from students who have done this once from eight teaching practice sessions.

Danny also doesn’t mind if trainees ask for help during their teaching practice, if they get stuck.

Lesson planning

When trainees come to him with these questions:

• When should I deal with language?
• What language should I focus on?
• What problems will the students have?

… he used to help a lot with this, but now he asks ‘Why don’t you see what happens?’

This helps to build up the trainees’ confidence with dealing with language.

Feelings beforehand

“I felt quite nervous about it, not having specifically practised how to do it.” (Elizabeth)
“I’m not sure I’ve planned enough.” (Stefano)
“I was worried about only going into the lesson with a piece of an A4 and an anecdote and every other lesson took a lot longer to prepare, so I was more nervous.” (Neil)

Praise what your trainees are putting in front of you.

How did new language emerge?

From six or seven candidates’ lessons, they came up in questions about texts, Q&As…

How was the experience different?

• It felt like it went better than when I planned it.
• I felt like I was really present in the lesson.
• I felt like I was teaching the students, not the plan.
• I didn’t concentrate on one particular point, so I felt less constricted.
• I felt for the first time like I’d actually been teaching, rather than presenting. [this can often be a problem on Celta courses]
• I felt like a real teacher. (she felt like stuff would happen in the class – students would ask questions, she would answer them)

New techniques and skills

• “I learnt to listen and help them say what they want to say, rather than make them use a grammar point.” (Ros)
• “I realised I could take my time, which allowed me to use some techniques I’d learnt on the course.” (Joanna)
• “I realised I can answer questions about meaning if I know what they want.” (anon)
• “I realised it was just like monitoring, but to everyone.” (anon)

Planning for future lessons

• “It was nice not to have to guess what all the problems were going to be.” (Ros)
• I didn’t have to plan for 24 hours.
• I don’t need to overplan – if I leave spaces, things will emerge.

Some significant impacts

• It didn’t really impact the course, but now I do it all the time. (Elizabeth)
• It gave me more confidence in addressing students and braking down barriers. (Neil)
• It taight me I quite enjoyed teaching, which came as quite a shock. (Neil)

Suggestions

• You have to encourage trainees. They don’t trust themselves.
• They need to be reminded that they do have time.
• They will notice what emerges if they have to. They won’t if they’re teaching their plan.
• Feed it in early, demystify it.
• Make sure they know it’s not all about errors and jargon.
• Encourage them to look at teachers working with emerging language in observations.

Don’t believe in fairy tales: critical thinking in teacher development – Damian Williams (IATEFL Harrogate 2014)

Damian Williams was a tutor on the Distance Delta while I was doing it, and he has also recently published a book called How To Pass Delta on The Round, in which he mentioned my Delta Quizlet sets. Going to his talk was my first chance to meet him, so I definitely couldn’t miss it!

Damian was given a very useful piece of advice by Howard Smith. We think we’re aware of the world around us, but it’s quite easy to miss things. The advice is ‘Be aware’: of different methodologies, of the language, of your students, of other teachers… As teachers there are a lot of things that we take for granted, or take as a given, like the fish who don’t notice the water around them. There are also a lot of things we do in ELT which are not based on evidence or fact. ‘The plural of anecdote is not data.’

Here are some ELT mantras Damian has used, which he’s going to look at in this talk:

ICQs and CCQs

If you feel like they’re patronising, it’s probably not the best way to do it. Damian is on a one-man mission to get rid of the term ICQ [good man!] – he says it’s better to do it another way, like working through the example, demonstrating or just checking they’re doing it. There are lots of ways to check: get examples, get opposites, rank things, use translation, show you how to do it (like tiptoe), draw timelines.

Visual learners/auditory learners

There are lots of different definitions of learning styles, but there’s no real evidence for the theory that people learn better by doing things in certain ways.

Damian recommends looking at Daniel Willingham’s website, where there is a lot of information debunking the idea of learning styles.

Tenses

There are only two! Tenses are about distance (time, reality, register) not time. They can be ‘close’ or ‘remote’. There are no exceptions to this, and Damian presents it to his students from intermediate level.

Grade the task, not the text

Authentic texts are what learners will come across in real life, but they can create anxiety for teachers and learners. There are problems with inauthentic texts though. Here are some examples from a Japanese book:

Damian recommends www.elt-resourceful.com by Rachael Roberts. She bases things on authentic materials, but uses places like http://www.readability-score.com to work out what might be more difficult.

Don’t correct everything

Damian has never heard students complain about being corrected too much, but they have complained about not being corrected enough.

There’s an idea that with fluency we don’t want to interrupt, but we can intervene by waiting until they’ve finished and then correcting them. This can really help with fossilized errors.

Using lots of quotes in my writing makes it sound more convincing

This is something Damian comes across a lot when he’s marking Delta assignments. You need to back up what you’re quoting to show that you’ve processed the quote and understood it, for example by paraphrasing and adding your own experience. This is an element of critical thinking: you have to process it and pull things together, and see things with your own eyes.

Conclusion

Even if you’re not a very experienced teacher, you can still reflect and apply critical thinking.

Damian talks about ‘The Humans’ by Matt Hait, which sounds like an intriguing book. At the end of the book there are 87 pieces of advice for humans. Damian picked out three which reflected his talk nicely, one of which was ‘Question everything’, but I wasn’t quick enough to share the others. You’ll have to ask him what they were!

For a bit more…

Damian writes at www.tmenglish.org and is on Twitter: @DRichW.

He has been looking at the mantras in a bit more depth over at the Richmond Share blog.

Revisiting ELT Mantras #1: Using CCQs and ICQs
Revisiting ELT Mantras #2: Don’t give, elicit.
Revisiting ELT Mantras #3: Visual learners need to see things, kinaesthetic learners need to do things.
Revisiting ELT Mantras #4: Exceptions to the rule

Developing ‘Teaching English’ – Ann Foreman and Paul Braddock (IATEFL Harrogate 2014)

I love the TeachingEnglish facebook page because it has helped my blog a lot, so I really wanted to see Ann and Paul talk about how they do it. I’m also a TeachingEnglish associate blogger for the website, which is a great opportunity.

Paul and Ann are talking about how they are hoping to reshape the TeachingEnglish website to offer better resources for CPD.

Paul starts by sharing the CPD framework the British Council developed. On the site at the moment, you can click on your level of development and that will give resources specific to your stage in your career. They suggest what skills you should have at that level and give you ideas on how to develop them. For example, starter teachers have resources on pairwork or developing rapport, whereas higher-level teachers have resources on things like materials development.

Ann talks about their huge success on facebook. They have over 2.2million likes and a 1.5million weekly reach [which is phenomenal!] They started it with the idea that it is not just to promote British Council materials, but a place for people to see what is available in the teaching world in general. The facebook page has it’s biggest audience in India, then Egypt. A lot of people follow it from South-East Asia and Latin America. The people who share resources tend to be European-based, but the discussions are international.

They tried to learn from what is successful in CPD today. Here’s what they focussed on:

• social media and blogs: it’s crowdsourced, and the validity is from how useful ideas are and how much they’re shared.
• action research groups: people often go to a workshop given by an expert, but this is only effective up to a point. Paul’s teaching centre set up action research groups where teachers worked with others who were interested in the same areas. They found it was far more motivating for the teachers.
• free and paid-for online training opportunities: for example MOOCs.
• government-/institute-funded projects: for example in Malaysia, where there are teacher-led projects.

They compared this with what was offered on the TeachingEnglish website, and found it quite different.

The words in the image above show what people are looking for.
The notion of ‘experts’ is changing, and now there are many of them, in the form of bloggers sharing their experience in class, for example.
Voluntary participation allows teachers to decide to what extent they want to be involved, how much work they want to do, etc.

They decided that organising things into career paths might be a more useful way of organising the information. For example, you want to develop your ability to teach teenagers or to write materials. You use the site as a scaffold to work towards your goal, through a series of challenges and goals and expertise to get you there. There may also be an element of gamification to help make it more interesting.

They have come up with a system of four different rooms, with a series of challenges. Here’s a slightly blurry example of the ‘research’ room:

You start off with the ‘research’ room to develop your goals, followed by the ‘classroom’ room where you try them out. The ‘classroom’ is not just for teachers: for example, if you’re a manager it might be about how you observe lessons and experiment with this. As you complete the challenges, you collect badges which show how much you’ve done. Then you have the ‘training’ room and the ‘research’ room, which collates all the resources you might need for that topic, since it can be a bit difficult to find what you need on the TeachingEnglish website at the moment. You’re encouraged to reflect on and share what you’re doing.

The idea is that it will work like a good staffroom, but in a virtual context. It’s trying to make the best of what comes from social media, but draw it together in a way that social media might not do. It’s big challenge, but it’s worth us trying to do it as Ann and Paul said.

It’s not up yet, but will be started small and developed over time. They would like feedback on the idea so feel free to contact them.

I think this looks like a fascinating initiative, and I look forward to seeing how it develops.

Update: here’s an excellent illustrated post about an interview Ann and Paul did during the conference where they also talk about their ideas.