Consciousness-raising - Using obscure grammar questions as a path to enlightenment, similar to the Zen Buddhist use of koan such as “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Content-based approaches- Doing anything that keeps your students happy
Corpora- (more…)
Dr Joseph Webbe (c. 1560-1633):
“no man can run speedily to the mark of language that is shackled and ingiv’d with grammar precepts”
(Webbe, 1622, cited in A History of English Language Teaching by A P R Howatt and Teacher Language Awareness by Stephen Andrews pg 50)
Having read that, I’ve made a promise never to ingiv’ my students with grammar precepts again. This link on Dr Joseph Webbe has a great quote suggesting that by learning grammar you can be liked by everyone, though, so maybe I am wrong… Anyhow, I’m not making on promises on shackling my students in the future.
Speaking seriously for a second (but just a second), it’s amazing to think that they have been arguing about the need or not for grammar since the 17th century.
Webbe’s book, btw, had the great title “An appeal to truth, in the controversies between art, and use; about the best, and most expedient course in languages. To be read fasting.” If only TEFL books had titles like that nowadays:
“On making Headway with the English tongue and other examples of the British superiority over our Virginian cousins” by the Most Honorable John and Liz Soars
or
“On being on the Cutting Edge of the learning of the Queen’s fair speech, by such radical ways as pretending you are buying garments. To be read yawning.”
Acquisition facilitator- A factor such as needing a good TOEIC for a promotion that will make it easier for a language school to separate a student and his or her money
Affordances- Student decisions on whether a teacher with an MA in Sociolinguistics is worth the extra cash or not
Applied Linguistics- from the Latin for “practical use of your tongue”
Classroom pigeon- The kind of lucky classroom distractions that teachers who have started an explanation of a language point they don’t know end up hoping will come and save them
CLT- Communicative Language Teaching- The idea that by communicating with your students you can avoid having to teach them
Cognitive code learning theory- The idea that writing textbooks with everything written in code, such as converting all the letters to numbers, was the best way of stimulating students’ logical-mathematical learning style
Coherence- The part of a teacher’s classroom language that gets worse as their grading and speaking speed get better
Cohesion- The tendency of students to get attached to teachers and complain if the teacher changes, even when they know they are learning nothing in his or her classes
Comprehensible input- Teachers making their classroom language understandable by only using terms from the BASIC programming language
Yup, according to the EL Gazette (which everyone now has the opportunity to sign up to read for free here), some TEFL teaching jobs in the UK are now under the official British poverty line. There is some hope, though- if from the other side of the world- as teachers for Kaplan in New Zealand got a pay rise after striking for just one day.
Other news of interest from this month’s edition:
- The wives of footballers to be forced to take an English test in the UK (lucky Posh and Becks went to the US then)
- Some schools in Saudi pay less than Italy
- Atlantic S.E.A.L in Cork aims to be the first school to specialize in students over 50
Just in case you came onto the site looking for something useful today (sorry, what can I say, it’s the weekend) if you click on the links you can get some non-alternative definitions too
Community Language Learning- The theory that students getting together at break time to bitch about British food and their teacher is the best way of drawing them together and increasing their motivation to learn
DoS- Director of Studies. Often confused with the similar word “dosser”
Flaps- Chairs with flaps rather than tables started as a Japanese S&M love hotel accesory, but has now become a standard part of the average language school. Influences that led to this change of purpose include: (a) Suggestopedia teachers patenting the use of comfortable chairs and, (b) Early Humanistic Language Teachers reading in a furniture catalogue that they “help you open up and show your vulnerabilities” and taking its meaning to be metaphorical
Pairwork- Getting students to work together. The expression “pairwork” is used to illustrate that double (”pair”) the effort (”work”) is needed by the teacher (to explain what he wants the students to do) and students (to understand what the hell is going on) as compared with just doing it as a whole class
Peer observations- When your DoS* tries to see what you are up to from outside your classroom without being seen by you
School Principal- In a school where the DoS* only has responsibility for academic matters, “School Principal” is often used as the title of the school’s business manager. Please note from the spelling of “principal” that the duties of this job should not be confused with “school manager with principles”, an outdated concept that died out in the early 90s
Silent Way (The)- A largely unsuccessful attempt to teach a language by spending the whole lesson standing at the front of the class with your arms crossed staring crossly at the students like your school teacher when he’d given up on yelling as a way of making the class shut up. As with its original inspiration, the only things a silent way teacher was allowed to say were “I can wait all day”, “It’s not my time you’re wasting, it’s your own” and “Whenever you’re ready, gentlemen”. Other even less successful attempts to turn school teacher disciplinary tricks into entire language learning methodologies include the Hysterical Hissy Fit Way, the Throwing the Board Eraser Way and the Throat-clearing Way.
Suggestopedia- This method of putting language learners into a hypnotic state through comfortable chairs and relaxing music was discredited in the late eighties when the teacher scripts were discovered to consist mainly of repeated phrases like “You will not get stressed about learning nothing” and “You can increase your TOEIC score by buying your teacher a drink”
See here for the full Alternative ELT Jargon Dictionary so far.
…a dash of realism, a big dollop of the painfully obvious and a side serving of hedging their bets:
“…for teachers, the distilled research finding that positive attitudes and motivation contribute to successful learning yields little useful insight into their day-to-day problems of how to motivate little Samantha in Class 2B and keep her motivated.
Fundamentally, two key principles seem crucial to the maintenance of motivation: first, motivation must emanate from the learner, rather than be externally regulated by the teacher;second, learners must see themselves as agents of the processes that shape their motivation.”
The first sentence is a breath of the fresh air of realism in the usually bs smelling world of applied linguistics. Not sure what to do with the information in the second sentence, in fact I’m half tempted to say it “yields little useful insight into…”.
And so the book goes on, telling us that (in my own simplistic words, based on my limited understanding):
-When they move to a foreign country kids are more likely to get a native or near native level than adults (but we don’t know if that tells us anything relevant about students studying a few hours a week in their own country) (Chapter 2- Age and Good Language Learners- Carol Griffiths)
- The students who are more likely to progress quickly, especially at lower levels, tend to be extrovert but the ones in the top classes tend to be people who are introverted but can look at the big picture and take guesses in an intuitive (i.e. not anally retentive) way. But again, we don’t know what that means for classroom practice,e.g. whether we should just use and try to reinforce students’ strengths or whether we should concentrate on developing their weaknesses (Chapter 4- Personality and Good Language Learners- Madeline Ehrman)
-Despite not being able to come up with any statistical evidence, the writer and we all know that the fact that fitting in for boys means not being seen to be studying too hard can be a problem for teachers. Boys also have different motivations and preferred ways of learning to girls (Chapter 5- Gender and Good Language Learners- Martha Nyikos)
- Students who are in higher level classes tend to use more strategies for language learning such as reading newspapers. It can be difficult to determine if they actually do some of these things because they have a high level rather than reach the level because they do these things, and even more difficult to determine if those study skills can and should be forced on students who don’t use them (Chapter 6-Strategies and Good Language Learners- Carol Griffiths again. Is she sleeping with the editor? Oh, she is the editor…)
- Etc
Etc. being a very useful word to hide the fact that I’m making comments about the book when I’ve only read a quarter of it. Oh well, surely that’s what blogs are for- half formed judgements and thinking aloud. The real review will be along in a month or so on TEFL.net reviews. Books I’ve been flicking through that I would highly recommend are:
The Experience of Language Teaching
And it is quite possible I will end up recommending Lessons from Language Learners in the end as well, now I’ve got that little rant off my chest…
…some other people, however, think this is enough:
“You do not need a teaching background or prior experience to become…an…ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) tutor….ESOL Tutor Certification Workshop: 6:30-9:30 p.m. Aug. 12, 13, and 14. ”
You’re thinking some guy in a beach hut in Thailand with an internet connection trying to make a quick buck, right? Nope, American public sector, which it seems is more underfunded than a typical UK summer camp…
“A recently retired schoolteacher, he spent his free time reading English dictionaries. ‘I read ten pages a day. So far, I have completed three lexicons of vocabulary. It keeps my mind busy and increases my abilities.’ It also explained the extensive, if somewhat eccentric, vocabulary.”
or alternatively (more…)
I found the top one of this page of Langwich scool quite funny. That fact that I didn’t laugh at all of them was almost a relief- means I haven’t turned into a complete TEFL otaku yet… I would, however, 100% recommend the Puzzle Time books by the same guy (Jon Marks), and a look at the other links on the page.
This post might just seem like a list of links, but actually this is the good stuff- TEFLtastic was started as a way of linking to my much more serious and useful stuff elsewhere on the web, and to be honest the actual blog entries just remain a bit of padding between the links. So, click away and see if you agree that I am capable of more than vaguely funny attempts at satire and self-indulgent musings on the meaning of TEFL:
On Usingenglish.com
Worksheets
Business English- Words that can and can’t be shortened
Articles for students (but hopefully of interest to teachers too)
Why does my teacher make me use an English-English dictionary?
Why does my teacher make me learn English grammar words?
On TEFL.net
Games and other practical teaching ideas in the Idea Thinktank
15 uses for guessing games in any pre-school English class
15 problems and solutions for large pre-school classes
15 variations on TPR for little kids
The 15 stages of teaching numbers- for everyone from 2 year olds to financial analysts
15 ways to simplify reading texts
15 ways to reproduce exam conditions
15 ways to make EFL exam tasks fun
15 ways to make EFL exam tasks easier
Slightly more general and theoretical stuff in the TEFL articles section
15 problems and solutions for large pre-school classes
15 ways to judge an EFL textbook for adults
15 criteria for a good pre-school English class
15 reasons why PPP is so unfashionable
And if all that ain’t enough for yer, here’s the link to all my publications on the Net since 1874.