Archive for the ‘Classroom dynamics’ Category

“Our profession is notorious for exploiting its most valuable asset – language teachers – for financial gain. I remember a teacher recalling taking a summer job where he and his fellow teachers struggled to teach competently in a school with sub-standard facilities and scant resources. He had a vivid memory of the owner arriving in a Rolls Royce and announcing that further cost-cutting measures were necessary. I think that says it all.”

Sounds like TEFLtrade is back on the case… (more…)

…Why does no one ever listen to me??

Rather than a complaint about how your friends back home ask about your experiences abroad for 10 seconds and then get back to gossiping about Britney, I’m talking here about students who meet your top-spec up-to-date grammar explanations (gathered through nightly use of the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English for alternate reading and weights practice) with skeptical looks, “my other teacher said…”, “Yeah, riiiight!”, “No, that’s wrong” and/ or spitting out of chewing tobacco. Reasons include: (more…)

Following my own advice for automated teachers, I’ve been trying to use my search for something to write about Japan and or teaching English on my blog as a way of expanding my horizons rather than shrinking them. Recent semi-successful attempts include:

I’ve been dipping back into Eastern Standard Time, which was my bible to accessible Japanese culture when I first arrived in Japan (more serious guides to ikebana and what have you might have put me off for life) . Eastern Standard Time is a guide to Asian influence on American culture that has taught me just as much about America as it has about Japan and the rest of Asia, but anyway is highly recommended and is a great way of making sure that the things you learn about Japan are things you can actually talk about and interest people with when you go back home- a difficult task, believe me…

I’ve also just started Culture Matters, a debunking of Guns, Germs and Steel that is considerably more difficult to read but a bit more relevant to those living abroad and wanting to understand and talk about what they see around them and compare to other places. More about this soon now that I’ve remember that I’m reading it.

In exactly the same way, I can’t remember how Orientalism by Edward W.Said made it back from my bedside into my bookshelves, but will have to start reading again soon and let you know if it’s worth struggling through or not.

So, finally to a book I have actually finished recently- “Summerhill School- A New View of Childhood” by A.S.Neill.  A.S.Neill was one of the most famous proponents of free schools- at Summerhill students don’t have to come to lessons and can decide on most of the school rules in school meetings three times a week, where every student has an equal vote with every member of staff. Despite the fact that he supported the child raising theories of Dr (not Mr) Spock (something that Dr Spock himself later said he didn’t if I remember correctly) and had some very odd friends, from his book Neill (as all the staff and students called him) seems to be a genuinely undogmatic and questioning guy who was just trying to do the best for the kids he taught on a day to day basis, and who came up with what seemed to be radical ways of teaching at the time just because he had seen everything else he had tried fail- a genuinely humble approach that is as rare in education as it is in every other field.

The fact that he developed his theories in very particular circumstances means that you have to be very careful when trying to generalise that as principles for education at all, let alone taking it into entirely different fields and using Summerhill as support for changing EFL- but here are some thoughts of how A.S.Neill might have done the TEFL thing anyway:

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According to this Daily Yomiuri article, 40% of new Japanese university students surveyed only reached the English level expected of 15 year olds! There is hope, though, and it comes from the fact that the university mentioned realises they have a crisis on their hands and has been forced to employ someone who can teach rather than just someone with a string of letters after their name. And she really does seem to know her public, because low level Japanese adult learners do love miming. They really can’t get enough of it, which is why I have a miming worksheets bonanza tried and tested in Japan over the years for you here:

 http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-air-travel-mimes-collocations/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-body-idioms-mimes-pictionary/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-food-and-drink-mimes-present-continuous-culture/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-medical-english-mimes/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-noises-mimes-linking-words/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-technical-english-mimes/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-travel-english-mimes-past-continuous/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-business-english-sounds-and-mimes-present-continuous-present-simple/

So many uses for TPR, so little time…

In a moment of inspiration fueled by low tolerance to the stimulating effects of real British “builders’ tea”, have come up with:

The pairwork magic formula

I have yet to teach a class that wouldn’t do and enjoy pairwork eventually. If the magic formula below doesn’t work, then you do indeed know to give up on working in groups. The magic formula is:

1. Make sure there are props and a game factor so you and they can easily see if they are doing nothing at all
2. Make sure there is a clear winner, e.g. the person who guesses their partner is lying more often, so that they know if they have completed the task successfully
3. Make sure some of the prompts are written in English, so that there is not a possibility of playing the game just in L1, e.g. cards with the answers they have to elicit from their partners written on
4. Try a simple, repetitive use of a grammatical formbut leave part of the form blank for students to add their own ideas if they wish, such as chain of First Conditionals that they have to try and make finish with the sentence ending they have been given
5. Try to give them preparation time before they start speaking sometimes, e.g. get them to write 5 pieces of information about themselves that their partner has to guess the questions for
6. If it is one or two students in the class that ruin their groups all the time by pausing too long etc, do pairwork activities as two teams of twos instead

*Well, actually it started with a comment of mine on http://insights-into-tefl.blogspot.com/, but that fact for some reason got the “classic” (i.e. horribly dated) Hot Chocolate song “It started with a kiss” stuck in my head and I could only get rid of it through the magical use of a meaningless blog title. Ah, relief…

“It has been found…that CMC (computer-mediated communication) allows a more balanced participation than in traditional classroom settings [and] that its language displays greater complexity and lexical density than… face-to-face conversation” Scott Thornbury

Could “Conversation Classes” become “Chat Classes” in the near future? Personally, I am very dubious…

For many more, click on the “Quotes about teaching” page on the right

Dear Auntie Alex

As a TEFL teacher, I like to feel I am doing my bit for international understanding every day. However, as my interest in issues of global poverty etc. grows, teaching a language starts to seem a bit trivial. Is it perhaps possible to use the techniques I have picked up as a language teacher in the fight against starvation in the third world?

Yours

Philosophical in Peking

 Dear Philosophical

Although you are right that knowing the Present Perfect Continuous is not likely to help save anyone’s life, the ultimate solution to global poverty does indeed lie in a technique from the TEFL classroom.

In class, if we have some students who are stronger and some who are weaker we pair them up so the higher level ones can help the lower level ones. Take the world as our classroom, and by doing the same we can achieve the same thing. Each rich country takes on the responsibility of giving special help to one or more of the poorest countries. The people from this country who help with their money and their time can then take pride in their progress of ‘their’ developing country and even feel competitive against the development of other countries that are the responsibility of others.

Easy as organising pairwork, I think you’d agree.

Keep the questions coming, readers

ATB
Auntie Alex

The rainy season (tsuyu) is completely screwed this year. In fact, every year since I got to Japan I’ve been told that “The weather this year is strange”, same as “The cherry blossom this year is early/late”. This may well be true, but I think it is much more a case of the Japanese wanting the weather to be as predictable as the train timetable. At times the whole country seems set up to make sure there are no surprises- I wonder how many Japanese people would be able to tell that Radiohead are being sarcastic in the “No Surprises” song (but then again, how many Americans thought The One I Love by REM was a love song??)

And the same most assuredly goes for lessons. With anything less than a year of careful learner training, skipping around in the textbook is likely to cause something between a mild flurry and complete panic depending on the age of the students.

Primary school students are generally fine for the first few years, taking surprises and new stuff as all part of the fun. Then the Japanese education system gets to work and the idea of skipping reading the instructions and just doing what your teacher says brings on increasing incomprehension and stress. One theory has it that the Japanese establishment has decided to keep kanji (Chinese characters) mainly because learning it means learning this unquestioning approach. The good news is that as my teenage college students are learning to cope with all this new and unexpected stuff in class, I really think I am teaching them a skill they are going to need when they get to Australia, NZ and the UK.