IATEFL Hungary 2023 conference – Saturday talks I attended

From 6th to 8th October 2023 I attended the IATEFL Hungary 2023 conference, the 33rd annual conference. I presented a plenary and ran a workshop, which you can find the details of here (published on 7th).

In this post you’ll find summaries of talks I attended at the conference on Saturday 7th. I tried to pick sessions on areas I don’t know much about, or where the titles intrigued me. Any errors are my own.

Topics include: media literacy, wellbeing, engagement, and the website ‘5 Perc Angol’.

Rebecca Svetina – #TRACES – A media literacy mystery

(Rebecca has postcard sized profiles of different characters which she is shuffling at the start of the presentation – intriguing!)

Rebecca started by setting up a situation: Suzy is popular on social media, but a fake photo means she might get kicked out of the conference. Our job is to work out who took the fake photo – they’re at the conference, and we need to find them. We get a card to become a new character. When we mingle with others we can’t lie, but we can elaborate. Here’s mine:

We had to mingle and to find out names, motives and alibis of all of the suspects and make notes about them.

They then showed us a QR code to take us to some evidence to help us decide who did it.

We voted on social media to say who we thought had done it. The top three people who we thought had done it then had to defend themselves against the accusation.

Finally they revealed who was guilty, but I’ll keep it a secret!

In a classroom, after the game they’d focus on vocabulary afterwards, then discuss the media literacy topics with the students, for example about posting altered images on social media, legal and emotional consequences, and whether this has ever happened to them.

This is the game we were playing:

In the box there are instructions for the game, four different colour coded scenarios and a guilty card to reveal who is guilty in that scenario at the end. There are 24 character cards, six of which are essential to the scenario. The game can be played in 45 minutes with all of the cards, but it can be rushed. It can be a mingle or a speed dating scenario where they talk to everyone.

Online there is an extra evidence sheet they can print out to add notes to.

Follow IATEFL Slovenia social media to find out more about the game – it’s not for sale at the moment. It was created as part of a grant from the US Embassy Ljubljana and they plan to keep working on it in the future, and news about how they do this will be on their social media in the future.

Boglarka Koch and Eniko Takacs – How can boundaries lead you to your wellbeing?

We have a psychological immune system, just like our physical immune system. We can’t avoid stress, so it’s important to learn how to cope with it.

There are 5 pillars to this immune system:

• Optimism: faith that you can deal with problems
• EQ (Emotional Intelligence): dividing up what is about you and what is about others
• Confidence: knowing that you can control your life
• Self awareness: knowing what is and isn’t good for you
• Resilience

Focussing on resilience, this is the ability to adapt and recover from challenges. It includes flexibility and being able to bounce back from setbacks. Consider a tree in a storm, which can bend and then bounce back. We can develop our resilience.

Being resilient helps prevent burnout, set boundaries, manage relationships more efficiently, and more.

Here are four questions to develop resilience:

What are you proud of? Remembering these situations can boost your confidence when you realise that you’ve got through difficult situations in the past, and therefore you can again.

Who can support you? Different people can help you in different situations.

How can you relax? If you know what can give you energy and recharge you, this can help you.

What are your goals for this year? Just considering this year can feel more achievable, which then gives you energy to work towards longer term goals.

To build your resilience:

• Don’t compare yourself to others
• Try multiple perspectives (thinking about situations from different angles)
• Use relaxation techniques
• Keep a thank you diary / a gratefulness diary (helps you to focus on positives)
• Remind yourself about when you coped with difficulties in the past
• Get professional support

Setting boundaries is one of the most important things you can do for your mental well-being. Set clear and healthy limits, defining what you’re comfortable with. You can try creating a ‘role cake’:

Roles might include teacher, partner, parent, colleague, friend, etc. Each slice should be the size of how big that role is in your current life. Then create a second version: what is your dream ‘role cake’? How big would your ideal roles be? Roles might appear and disappear. Compare the two versions: it should show which roles you would like to invest more in, and how to set better boundaries in those roles.

To help you set boundaries:

• Self reflect: what made you feel stressed? Frustrated? (Don’t argue with emotions, because you can’t! But let them guide you)
• Identify your boundaries
• Be clear and direct – tell others what your boundaries are. We can’t expect others to know without us telling them [Nobody can read your mind!] If you do ___, it makes me feel ____.
• Set limits – if we don’t, our bodies will tell us! [This happened to me!] Make sure you can say no. If you’re worried about how others will feel if you say no, think about how bad it would really be if you say no – how would you genuinely feel if you were in the shoes of the person you said no to? Would you be understanding? We’re much stricter with ourselves than with others.
• Self-care
• Practice, and don’t give up. Change isn’t easy!
• Adjust needs. Be patient with yourself and with others – you might need to do it gradually.
• Boundary journaling. Note situations where you set boundaries and whether it was a positive or negative situation. Perhaps you’ll realise that setting boundaries isn’t as difficult as you think.

Remember that we can’t change everything, but we can change how we think about things.

The QR code will take you to a booklet of ideas:

Andreja Mandeljc – Focus and manage your classroom through infinite drawings

The table we were sitting at:

This is a psychological tool Andreja learnt to support her with a learner who lashed out whenever he was frustrated. They are based on fractal drawings.

Fractals are complex geometric shapes that follow rules. You can find them in the leaves of trees, in snowflakes etc. In drawings, it can be considered as drawing with a purpose.

There is a similar principle to colouring mandalas, but you create the basis yourself as well.

Why use them? They improve emotional health. They enhance focus in the classroom environment and when doing longer tasks.

For example, before doing a test Andreja asked the students to arrive a few minutes before a test to do this drawing. They then performed better on the test. She thinks this is because they were more centred and mentally present in the room, without worrying about anything else.

There is a process with doing these drawings for therapy, which would be done over a number of sessions. We did three drawings.

Start in the middle, cover two thirds of the page. Close your eyes. Draw without leaving the page, doodling however you like. 60 seconds

After one minute I had:

Then connect the start and end of the line with a wavy line.

We did this 3 times.

Choose one, then grab a colour and colour the spaces, not with any particular colours. You’re not searching for any particular patterns. You can’t have spaces next to each other in the same colour . Use 5-6 colours in total.

In class, Andreja does this with smaller pieces of paper and drawing for less time. Even when it was 20 seconds, some students were still finished too fast.

First session: any colours.

Second session: contrasting colours e.g. yellow and blue, but you can use different shades / brands of those colours. This helps children to realise that things are not always stark contrasts, but there can be shades.

Another way of colouring it: try to find a pattern in it using two colours.

Students who struggle with focus they press the pencils really hard. They learn to be more gentle with time.

After 25 minutes we compared our drawings and they were very different, which was a great discussion point. We all wanted to carry on at the end of the session!

10 minutes after the session, mine looked like this:

Nora Szalai – The history of ‘5 Perc Angol’

5 Perc Angol is a hugely successful  Hungarian site for learning English. 5 Perc Angol translates as 5-minute English. These are magazines they produce.

Nora started with a language school, which grew into an online portal, a publishing house, and an online language school.

They started in 1999 with Millennium Language Centre. At the end of the 1990s, there were more than 400 language schools in Budapest, most using the same teaching methods and the same kind of books. Peter started the school, and Nora was the first teacher to be accepted, and ended up marrying Peter 🙂 They built the brand together.

To promote their brand, they reached out to Hungarian celebrities and pop stars across the country and asked them to mention the name of the school. This worked and they ended up with 80 teachers and 22 classrooms. They created course materials based on what the students wanted. They wanted to give the learners extra materials, so they started to send 5-minute lessons to the learners’. Learners liked them and sent them to their friends, and today they have over 130,000 registered users. They send a lesson every single day that lasts for 5 minutes, and have done for 20 years. Nora writes the materials for those lessons.

They started sending a newsletter to their students in 2003, then created a website in 2005 which was originally a newsletter archive. They now have an Italian version of the site too.

The lessons are based on weekly topics, are completely free and suitable for all ages and levels. They get advertising from some companies which can be incorporated in the content.

They have also created lots of grammar books, other books, and cards with different situations on them.

EVE-LAC TESOL Mentorship Program (final presentations)

Having participated in one EVE mentoring program, working with teachers from Africa, I was very happy when the opportunity came up to do it again. This time there are 8 teachers from across Latin America, presenting on a range of different topics. My mentee was first to present.

[I will add a link to the recordings when they become available]

#Memes: preparing EFL learners for intercultural communication on social media – Jessica Rivas (Venezuela)

Jessica started by reminding us that memes can be offensive and not for everybody. Not every meme we see is one we can identify with.

Do we prepare our studenst to face intercultural communication on social media? To understand that social media is a bridge between different cultures? It comes with risks, challenges and threats like those of memes above.

Here are some ideas you can use to help our students to understand this:

• Discuss. What are the characteristics of memes? What is the process of their creation? What is their relationship with culture? What concepts are involved in the meme?
• Reflect. What is the purpose of the meme? Who is the intended audience? Who created it?
• Introduce. What memes are related to the learners’ culture? What stereotypes or prejudices might they be sharing?
• Compare. How does this meme relate to memes from similar or other topics? How does it relate to real life? How does it relate to other people’s lives?

This could also be a starting point for research done by students about memes they have seen.

An English teacher in a Honduran town with limited resources – Luz Milda Bohorquez Paz (Honduras)

This map shows were Luz lives in Honduras.

As English teachers, Luz says that we need to be empathic, adaptable, creative and tolerant. Love and passion should also be part of our job.

She works in an incredibly challenging context, with 620 students in public school, with only 2 x 45-minute lessons with her students each week. There are limited resources, no books, no copies, and a lack of government support. There are high levels of poverty, and many learners work in agriculture and go to school as well. There is limited connectivity. Luz has a high workload, and there isn’t enough practice time for her students. She has to find resources on her own, and be creative to design engaging lessons. She aims to empower learners so they know English is useful, and sometimes uses her phone to provide an internet connection. Luz encourages her students to create project work and work on topics.

In the future, Luz would like to create an audiovisual lab for her students. She is hoping to apply for grants and/or work with her learners to bring technology closer to her learners, engaging them more, exposing them to innovation, and providing access to opportunities with learners in other parts of the country of the world.

Prioritising Mental Health in a University Context – Patricia Gomez (Paraguay)

This is a definition of mental health. Patricia believes this is vital for university students to have, particularly to stop them from quitting their courses. At the university where Patricia works, only 10% of students graduate. Only 1% of the health budget in Paraguay is dedicated to mental health.

Patricia studied at the same university and felt very supported by her professors and classmates, but she felt the need for institutional support too. When she started her research she discovered that a Bienestar Estudiantil (student wellbeing) department exists, for wellbeing, but the office is 6km away from their faculty, and it’s hard to get around! The service has existed since around 2009, offering support with academic and administrative processes, and helping disabled students with access.

She interviewed some of her students in the English language program to find out what they knew about it. More than half of the students didn’t know it existed, and 94% of the 18 students didn’t know how to access the department. These are some things students said in her survey:

This is what the students wanted from the department:

Most of these things are actually provided by the service, apart from mental health professionals, but there is only one person responsible for a whole department.

Patricia suggests:

• Create a wellbeing hub. She recognises it might not be possible to build an office or hire more staff. The University of Oxford describes this as “an online gateway that makes it easier for all to find and access wellbeing and support services.”
• Build peer support networks. Train students to volunteer to be good listeners and help those who are struggling, and how to redirect students if they need professional help.
• Promote wellbeing activities. For example sports, exercise and recreation, as well as socialising.

These should have a positive impact on our students.

Intentional teaching: engaging students with ADHD – Anabell Rodriguez (El Salvador)

Classroom management is often a challenge, especially for new teachers, and many teachers have little or no training for working with students with special educational needs. This can be discouraging for both students and teachers.

Before we start, Anabell reminded us that all our students have superpowers. We should see them with eyes that see what they CAN do, not what they can’t. We also need to work with other people in our organisation, and in our networks to learner more about strategies to help us work with our students. We need to work from the heart, and remind students that we love them and we want the best for them.

What happens in our classrooms and why?

• Obtain adult attention. Students want adults to talk to them or look at them. Criticism and yelling are also attention, though it’s for negative reasons. We need to provide them attention for things that are positive, for example praising them for opening their books and being prepared for the lesson. They get a boost for this, and we reinforce positive behaviours. Students will then tend to perform these positive behaviours more.
• Obtain peer attention. Students want other students to talk to them or look at them. Laughing, touching and fighting are also kinds of attention. Ask the students to do things which play to their strengths. For example, if a student is great at drawing, ask them to draw flashcards for you, then tell the other students who did it. In Anabell’s experience, that meant that a student was then asked to draw things for other students, and became much more engaged in the whole classroom environment.
• Avoid or escape. The student doesn’t want to do the work or be in the room. They may also not want to be with certain peers. Students don’t have intrinsic motivation, so we need to work with extrinsic motivations. Encourage them based on what you know they like. For example, tell them that they can listen to some of their favourite music at the end of the lesson if they’ve worked successfully. Or let students work alone rather than making them work with peers.

Functional Behavioural Assessment and Behaviour Support Plans:

• A: Antecedent e.g. when Maria is asked to do work in a group…
• B: Behaviour e.g. …she gets out of her seat and walks around the classroom…
• C: Consequence e.g. …As a result, she does not work with the group.

The hypothetical function of her behaviour is avoiding group work. Here are some possible solutions people came up with for this situation:

• Ask her how she prefers to work, for example individually.
• Assign people roles within the groups, so they are all clear what to do. Make sure she understands that she is needed in the group too.
• Let her monitor the class with a specific role during the activity.

It’s important for us to identify the antecedents and consequences, not just the behaviours, to help us come up with alternative solutions.

The highlights of my teaching experience with young learners at Escuala Vera Angelita in Nicaragua – Fernanda Polanco (Nicaragua)

Fernanda’s school is in a rural area, and is a sustainable school, the first in Nicaragua. They are aiming to integrate all of the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals. It’s located within a farm, producing organic food, which is used to feed the students and teachers, some of whom live at the school. There are also donors from the USA who provide things for the school. All of the students are girls who live on campus, who receive everything they need at the school, including food, clothes and healthcare.

Fernanda works to create classroom routines, including using technology like QR codes regularly. She uses a lot of collaborative work to promote interdependence between students. She makes use of the space in the classroom and the outdoor areas of the school to vary lessons.

To help students adjust to the classroom, she uses a ‘sandwich’ of English / Spanish / English. Later she reduces the amount of Spanish she uses once she knows that students feel comfortable.

Own languages are used by learners, regardless of what teachers do or say and they can also be used productively when children / teenagers work together in pairs or groups.

Ellis, 2021

There have been other challenges. Some of her students are complete beginners in English, and some don’t have Spanish either as they come from indigenous groups.

Practical ideas for pure beginners:

• Story telling
• Role plays
• Guessing games (like mime)
• Recording – students like to listen to their recordings, and this serves as self-assessment
• Interviews
• Board games – online and in-person
• Real-life speaking

These are some of the resources Fernanda uses:

The use of social media in education – Larissa Nunez (Paraguay)

Larissa started by reminding us of some potential disadvantages of social media:

• Can facilitate cyber-bullying
• Can promote laziness
• Can distract learners

Larissa talked about using TikTok for education. She started creating TikTok videos when working with a teenager, and this improved their relationship. There are lots of people using social media for education, including giving live online lessons.

We need to be as curious and innovate as we want our students to be.

She started to promote interesting tips to support her students, first on Instagram, and then on TikTok.

Direct app interaction activities:

• Making videos – creating short videos using the target language
• Duetting teacher’s videos, dialogues
• Recording steps of a project
• Putting math problems on video and asking to comment on the answers
• Answering questions via the app

Indirect app interaction activities:

• Researching a topic and writing a paragraph
• Critical thinking – using videos for discussion or debate after watching videos
• Telling the teacher about a TikTok that was funny, interesting, inspiring, that taught you something new, etc. (rather than ‘How was your weekend?’ as an opening question!)
• ‘TikTok moments’ in the classroom: students can share a TikTok video for other students to see, e.g. study techniques, words they’ve learnt, or something fun in English.

TikTok is also somewhere teachers can learn tips and ideas. Jordan Cotten was one person Larissa found it useful to follow. She also found other teachers from Paraguay, sharing tips relevant to her context.

Advantages of using social media:

• Communication and collaboration
• Finding tips, ideas and resources created by other students – students are more likely to listen to each other than to their teacher!
• Distance learning opportunities

On Instagram, Larissa is @misslarinf.

Teaching with magic – Krissia Diaz (El Salvador)

This was a very fun presentation, featuring puppets and magic tricks 🙂

Kris tries to make use of painting, singing, dancing and magic to motivate and engage her students. She was highlighted as an outstanding teching by the Ministerio de Educacion in 2021. Now she’s an instructor for Platzi, helping public school teachers.

Using magic tricks can help students to realise that it’s OK make mistakes. It fosters their imagination, boosts their self-confidence, and can help with content explanation. It encourages students to explain outcomes, going beyond surface explanations.

Professor Richard Wiseman, Jody Greig, Miss Nan, and Xuxo Ruiz are all teachers you can find online who talk about teaching with magic. Xuxo Ruiz has written a book called Educando con Magia.

[It’s best to watch the video of this one, as that will make the tricks and ideas clearer!]

Webcomics: in the EFL classroom – Analys Milano (Venezuela)

A webcomic is the younger sibling of comics. There is a sequence of frames with narrative development, with a link between images and text, in both. But webcomics are mainly made to be viewed via apps or websites and consistently published.

Why webcomics?

• Vocabulary is learnt in context.
• They are visually attractive, including having distinctive styles according to the authors.
• They can motivate and inspire through their stories.
• Students can relate to the stories and talk about their own related stories.
• They promote reading comprehension.
• They provide meaningful input.

Webcomics require intensive and extensive reading skills. They require critical reading, and understanding the relationship between context and experience. They also promote critical thinking.

How can you integrate webcomics into your classroom?

• Focus on grammar: Find a grammar point within the comic and explain it to your classmates – why was it used there?
• Complete the story: Missing frames, missing lines. Who got the closest to the original story?
• Fandub: Take a part of the story and ask students to voice the characters themselves. They have to understand the feelings too, not just the words.
• Translations: [I missed this one]
• Focus on comprehension: You can link comics to other media, like related videos.

On Webtoon, there’s a comic called ‘Let’s play’, which Analys uses to help students understand social media influence:

We need to take our students’ interests into account – there are many different genres of webcomics. We can create webcomics to create reading habits. Comics can also help with mental health and self-awareness, for example as distraction during the pandemic.

Here are some helpful websites:

[Here’s an extra resource: https://ciell.eu/app/#/home if this is an area you’re interested in.]

Attention, please!

I’ve just finished working on a CELTA course in Strasbourg, and one of the things some trainees had trouble with was getting and maintaining the attention of their students. Here are some of the questions I asked them and tips I gave in feedback after the lessons.

Do they know what signal you will give them when you want them to pay attention?

If you tell the students what signal to expect before the activity, they are more likely to notice. For example, you could tell them that you will:

• Clap your hands.
• Say ‘stop’.
• Press a buzzer.
• Ring a bell.
• Switch the light off and on again.
• Use a call and response signal, for example: Teacher: ‘Macaroni cheese.’ Students: ‘Everybody freeze!’ (Thanks Rose!)
• Put your hand up and wait for them to put theirs up too.
• Countdown from 5, starting quietly, and getting louder as you reach 1. (Particularly good for speaking activities.)
• When the background music finishes playing, the activity ends.
• Stand in a particular place.

It’s good to get into routines with this, and always use the same signal for the same kind of activity. For example, I normally put my hand up to signal the end of a pair discussion.

Did you give everyone time to respond?

After you’ve given the signal to pay attention, make sure that you pause for a few seconds to let them stop before you start speaking. Wait for attention from everybody – don’t just start with the next instructions or feedback, as you’ll only end up repeating it!

Try praising students who are paying attention, rather than picking out those who aren’t, especially with young learners: ‘Thank you, Sandy.’ rather than ‘Sandy, stop talking please!’

Is the signal visible/audible to everyone?

If you’re giving an audio signal, make sure it is loud enough. If you’re speaking, you don’t need to shout, but do project your voice over the volume.

If you’re giving a visual signal, make sure all students can see you.

Are they deeply involved in the activity they are doing? Are they ready to finish? 

Monitor closely to find out how students are progressing with the activity. If they’ve only done half of the activity, they are unlikely to want to stop when you try to get their attention.

If you know that timing will be a problem before you start, try to change how you set up the activity. For example, tell the students to do as many questions as they can in 3 minutes, rather than making them finish the exercise. Getting them to check in pairs can help them to fill in the gaps in their answers.

Have short extension tasks available for students who finish very quickly, preferably ones that don’t require too much extra input from you! For example, ask students to:

• Read a sentence from the exercise, remember it, turn over your paper, write it from memory, then check whether you’ve got it right.
• Change the sentences so they’re true for you.
• Turn over the paper and remember as many of the words from the exercise as possible, either speaking or writing them. Then look and check.
• Start saying the sentences/words to practise pronunciation.
• Decide what was the most interesting thing your partner said, ready to report it to the class.

Is there a valid reason for them to need to pay attention to you or the other students who are talking? (i.e. Why should they care?)

For example, some teachers interrupt speaking activities to get everybody’s attention to try to elicit a single word from the group that one student asked for. This is unnecessary, as you could just give them the word without stopping all of the other conversations.

During feedback stages, students might pay attention at the beginning, but drift off if the stage gets too long or boring. Think of how to keep feedback concise, and try to give them a real reason to listen to the other students.

How long have you required their attention for? Can they maintain focus for that long?

It’s difficult to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time without drifting off and losing attention. Vary the activities and the interaction in the lesson, so that students aren’t just listening to you for long periods of time. Give them clear things to do and keep them active.

Do you truly believe that you have the right to their attention at this point in the lesson?

This may sound quite odd, but I’ve noticed that a lot of teachers feel like they’re being rude when they interrupt students, especially if the students are older than them, and/or if they’re inexperienced teachers. I think if you don’t believe that you need students’ attention right now, then there is less conviction in your voice, and they are less likely to listen to you.

What would you add to the list?

The EU Parliament in Strasbourg, which I visited during the course

Boardwork (guest post)

This is the second time I have had the pleasure of hosting a post by Amy Blanchard on my blog. The first time, it was all about Peace Boat, a Japanese scheme to promote peace and cultivate a wider understanding of different cultures. This time Amy is talking about her first conference presentation, which she did at this year’s InnovateELT conference. Over to Amy…

(photo by Innovate ELT photographer)

Last weekend I had the opportunity to present at the third annual InnovateELT conference in Barcelona. The brainchild of the lovely people at ELTJam and hosted by Oxford TEFL, it’s become famous for a diverse and friendly crowd, relaxed and productive atmosphere, and innovative format: 10-minute plenaries in the garden, sessions involving learners, and 30-minute talks. I delivered one of these short sessions on the topic of using the whiteboard. No, not interactive, just the act of writing with a pen on the board. As a CELTA tutor, observing lessons and boardwork is a key part of my role. It’s something that frequently comes up in feedback. Yet there is no dedicated session on boardwork, nor did I have one on my initial training course.

Is boardwork still considered relevant in this era of technology, projectors and digital books? I think so, and attendance showed I wasn’t the only one, with a good mix of teachers and trainers alike.

The session began with a short discussion between the attendees: what do they write on their board? The following were all discussed as possibilities. Ultimately, teachers who know their students can make the best decision about which of the following might be useful to have on the board for their particular classes.

A menu

Seeing the content of the class in advance can be motivating for learners. Knowing what is coming up can make them feel more comfortable and give a sense of achievement when it’s done. Personally I use it more with my younger classes than with adults. My YLs often need to know that there’s something more appetising on the horizon, and they feel more secure knowing the routine of the class.

Aims

Again, this is not compulsory but can motivate students, especially if they are phrased in a way that makes the menu content make sense. So ‘telling anecdotes’ rather than ‘practising past simple’.

Admin

A few people used their board to highlight information for their students: course dates, exam dates, instructions to tasks, page numbers, and homework. Set homework immediately after the lesson component it refers to, and try to avoid leaving it to the end of the class; this makes it seem like an afterthought.*

Points system

Some teachers have a separate chart for this, or many now use Class Dojo or a similar system. Either way, seeing a visual representation of behaviour can be useful for YLs.

Errors for delayed correction

The majority of attendees use their board for noting down errors and give corrective feedback. One important thing to note – if you do write an error on the board, make sure you cross it out clearly. Leaving it on the board can reinforce it in students’ minds, even if you’ve told them it’s incorrect.

As we discussed these points, I drew areas on the board for each section. Have a system and be consistent in where you put this information. Learners find what they need more quickly if they know where to look.

Emergent language

The majority of the talk focussed on what all teachers said they use their board for: emergent language. This is ‘unplanned’ vocabulary which emerges during the lesson due to students’ needs. Giving students language when they need it is a huge part of our job and it’s important that we help them to the best of our ability. In order to clarify and consolidate this language, it’s vital we put it on the board. Remember that the students’ notebooks typically reflect what we put on the board. We need to consider what information we can add to the vocabulary to make it most useful for students.

One of the morning plenaries at Innovate was given by a polyglot, Lýdia Machová, who shared her tips for language learning. One of these was to learn vocabulary in context. Recording vocabulary with co-text (i.e the language with which it appeared) can help our students remember the meaning and give them a better idea about how it is used. Highlighting difficult phonemes, stress and features of connected speech helps them remember the pronunciation long after the lesson has finished. Using different colours to highlight dependent prepositions or the separability of phrasal verbs helps them learn even more, or – as Duncan Foord put it in his plenary, What Have Teachers Ever Done For Us? – helps resolve their doubts before they even appear. I demonstrated these points with the words photography, photograph and photographer. 

One of my favourite ways of exploiting and developing new language is through vertical extension. By eliciting more examples from students, we can check their understanding and help students to use the word by highlighting common collocations. It can also be useful to point out things that do not collocate, as this is often a problem for students. I demonstrated this technique using the phrasal verb call off.

If our board is systematic and informative, hopefully our students’ notes will be, too. It’s very important to give students time to copy, so that they can concentrate while the language is being discussed. I recommend monitoring to ensure they copy accurately. This also gives shyer students the chance to ask questions.

Colours are important too. Personally, I’m a stickler for writing in black. Although everything looks clear when you’re stood up at the board, if you’re sitting at the back of the class, or have problems with your vision, red and green pens can be really hard to read.

By the end of the lesson, the board should be covered in lovely new language. Use the last 5 minutes of the class to review it, either through some extra drilling practice, or a game of Backs to the Boards/Hot Seat that just requires you to point at the language.

Encourage students to take a photo of the board. If you have an online platform or whatsapp group, they can share it (great for absent students!) or just keep them on their phone to flick through next time they’re bored on the bus. It’s also useful for the teacher to take a photo; an easy way of keeping a record of new vocabulary to recycle and consolidate in future lessons. Furthermore, taking a photo of your board is a wonderful way of reflecting on the lesson, and on your board work. You’ll see things you could have added or expanded, and ways to make things clearer.

Teachers are also sharing pictures of their boards on twitter, using the hashtag #ELTwhiteboard. It’s a wonderful place to connect with other teachers, to ask for advice and to pick up some great ideas for lessons. Get involved!

This was a 30-minute, streamlined talk that only had time to focus on a few aspects of using the board. The biggest omission is the issue of who writes on the board. Do your students write on the board? Let me know in the comments below or tweet me @admiralwamy

* Ur, P. 100 Teaching Tips (Cambridge 2016) p.6 [affiliate link]

Amy has taught English all over the world including many years in Spain for International House. She is now a freelance CELTA tutor and can be contacted at: amybtesol@gmail.com

“Teacher, teacher, finish!”

This will be a familiar refrain to anyone who’s ever worked at a summer school*, and is coming back to haunt me now that I’m working (semi-)permanently at a private language school in the UK. I’m currently teaching an Elementary level group 20 hours a week, with various of the students having been in the same class for the last 2+ months and getting very impatient about going up a level.

The first thing I always do with this phrase is teach the students that the correct word is in fact “FinishED”, and if they ask we talk about the fact that it’s short for “I have finished.” At least that hurts my ears less 😉

The next thing to do is work out how to deal with this situation. My ultimate aim is to train the students out of saying “Finished” at the end of every task, particularly at the end of a speaking task (how can you ever be ‘finished’ with a speaking task?) These are not students who are particularly shy or quiet in their L1s, and they’re not so short of English that they struggle to find things to say. I’ve been trying to work on question forms a lot over the last couple of weeks, and one of the nine students has got the hang of asking extra questions to continue a conversation, partly because she is the student most desperate to go up a level and she’s trying to prove she’s ready (more on that in a later post), but also because we discussed how she converses in Arabic, including whether she says “Finished” at the end of every conversation in her native language.

For more finite tasks, there is generally a much clearer ‘finish point’, but I find the idea that the students feel the need to tell me they’ve finished when it’s pretty obvious I can see that a little depressing. Don’t know if that’s just me though? When doing the IHCYL about how to teach young learners, there was much discussion about what to do with fast finishers, but most of the time these (adult) students finish within a few seconds of each other so the idea of extra activities (maybe) doesn’t apply. Should I just ignore the ‘finished’s or is there a way to harness this enthusiasm? I often extend the task a little, but find these extensions can sometimes end up doubling or even tripling the length of an activity.

Apologies for the stream of consciousness nature of this post – it’s late and I really needed to get it out of my system! All solutions/thoughts gratefully accepted…

By @ayearinthelifeof from #eltpics on Flickr

*I don’t know if it was/is just my classes, but I never noticed students doing this in Brno, when I was teaching them for a whole year. Either that, or I complained at them and have now forgotten about it 😉