Archive for the ‘Teaching pronunciation’ Category

Hopefully it’s just Mayday bank holiday rather than my lack of effort TEFLtasticwise recently that has seen a sudden drop in my number of views, but if only to make myself feel better I thought I’d give a list of where I’ve been making much more effort elsewhere, with links:

TEFL.net Idea Thinktank

15 fun ways to switch students onto graded readers

15 fun gapfill tasks

15 fun job application practice tasks- CV writing, cover letter, interview practice, HR vocabulary etc.

TEFL.net articles

15 common misconceptions about Business English and ESP

15 cultural differences in the Japanese classroom

15 more cultural differences in the Japanese classroom

15 criteria for a good cultural training lesson

15 more criteria for good cultural training lesson

15 important cultural differences in the classroom

15 more important cultural differences in the classroom

Onestopenglish (Macmillan) articles

Motivating teachers whose Business English students miss class

UsingEnglish articles for teachers

Why your students overuse their dictionaries- with solutions

70 characteristics of a good grammar presentation- possibly the longest article on this subject ever!

Why your students don’t want to do pairwork- with solutions and some pondering about whether they might not sometimes be right

Why your students still make mistakes with grammar they know well- with solutions and a call to relax when there are no solutions

The advantages and disadvantages of peer observations- with how to exploit the advantages and avoid the disadvantages

Things to put in a Self-Access Centre or Student Library- with tips on how to do it on the cheap

Why do my students question me?- with solutions

Why your students have problems with listening comprehension- with solutions

UsingEnglish.com articles for students (teachers might also want to have a look at what I am writing about them)

Why does my teacher make me read silently?

Why doesn’t my teacher correct all my mistakes when I’m speaking?

Why does my teacher make me learn the phonemic script?

UsingEnglish photocopiable PDF worksheets

Travel English pairwork B and V

Business and technical English easily confused words

CAE Reading Part Two match the quotes

TEFLtastic worksheets (pain in the arse to print out but worth the effort)

English for job applications/ HR worksheets

Cultural training worksheets for EFL classes

Requests and offers functional language review

The Roots of Medical English LP and 4 worksheets

And that’s it for TEFL stuff. The other thing I’ve been busy with is my wedding speech for the day after tomorrow, which could well mean that May will be an even less busy month in TEFLtasticland. Anyone fancy writing a guest piece or feeding me a story to keep the 1700 viewers I get on a good day entertained until I get back into the flow? If so, try the “Contact me” link on the right…

As a blogger and writer of articles on the internet whose technical knowledge stops at Word, as usual I feel half chuffed at churning out so many articles, including a good one here and there, and half guilty at creating so much work for those who can name a programming language more recent than BASIC. So, with many thanks to the tech sorts who made this possible and without further ado, here are the new bits and pieces on the web that I’ve been associated with:

The TEFL.net review pages I edit now allow comments on any of the titles reviewed there, which is a fabulous idea which I wish had been mine.

On TEFL.net too, there is a new Idea Thinktank of practical teaching games etc, on which I have about 12 (!) articles including 15 Fun Things to do with a Whiteboard (yes, that’s a whiteboard rather than an interactive whiteboard- showing my age??) and the 15 Most Fun Pronunciation Games.

As if that wasn’t enough, I’ve also got some slightly more weighty ones up on the rejigged TEFL.net TEFL Articles Page, including Easy Ways to Improve Your TEFL Career.

And on Usingenglish.com in March:

Election- Second Conditionals speaking practice

101 IELTS Speaking Part Two Tasks about sports and hobbies

Why your students speak L1 in class

Why your students don’t do their homework

101 IELTS Speaking Part Two tasks about people, places, actions, things and times

Setting up workshops for teachers

Business English tense review

Business English silent letters and syllables

The language of trends spot the difference

I also had a review of a couple of BULATS books out in MET magazine this month, should you have a copy handy and fancy a look.

“No children, you are not seeing things. This, my little friends, is a schwa!” (more…)

“Only half of the activations in the brain were to do with the speech and language areas. The voice is not just coming from your lips. It’s coming from the whole body and you need to think about that when you’re trying to change aspects of it.” (more…)

Thought I’d pass these tongue twisters onto everyone, because that is after all what the internet is for… With translations in Italian left in, just to prove that all TEFL teachers are exactly the kind of cultured, sophisticated people that would get invited to the Ambassador’s party :

(more…)

Just in case anyone thinks I am overdoing it on slagging off native speaker English teachers in Japan, here’s another reminder how being a TEFL teacher (even a shite one) isn’t the worst thing in the world. At least we don’t work for pharmaceutical companies:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/09/america/NA-GEN-US-Red-Cross-Lawsuit.php

Although, having said that, I actually have taught in two pharmaceutical companies in Japan. And it was exactly articles like this about dodgy business practices, dangerous drugs, marketing that doubles as bribery etc. that made my job so difficult. I simply could not find an interesting neutral article or book on the pharmaceutical industry, and nothing in Japan is more likely to produce blank stares than slagging off someone’s industry.

If anyone else is having the same problems, here are some links to my Medical and Pharmaceutical English materials here and elsewhere:

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

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-and-game-medical-breakthoughs-dominoes-passives/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-medical-english-difficult-sounds-pairwork/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-medical-moral-dilemmas-2nd-conditionals/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-medical-problems-and-symptoms-guessing/

Onestopenglish ESP Medical English section:

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?sectionType=listsummary&catid=58034&docid=144627

After training, recruiting, observing and chatting with English teachers and students in Turkey, Thailand, Spain, Italy, the UK (meaning teachers and students from everywhere) and spending 4 years in Japan, I have come to the conclusion that the average level of teaching ability of native English speaking teachers is lower in Japan than almost anywhere. Evidence:

• The lack of materials written by teachers based in Japan published by international publishers, compared to say teachers based in Spain
• Lack of progress and high drop out rate of Japanese students
• My language school in London had a system of taking ten points off the written test score of only Japanese students before they placed them in classes, as they had a special lack of ability to turn theoretical knowledge into a practical ability to read, write, listen and speak. Other nationalities lacked some of these skills, but rarely all four!
• Classes I have taken over in other countries have often known the basics of how to do pairwork, classroom language in English, the phonemic script, word and sentence stress, listening and reading micro-skills, and/ or understanding unstressed forms. That is rarely the case in Japan.
• When I have done teacher training INSET workshops in other countries I have always had to add an original twist, such as “How to use songs in new ways” about not always doing gap fills. When I tried that in Japan, I always had to go back to absolute basics- using songs at all is the original twist!
• The comparative lack of interest in learning Japanese, shows a lack of understanding of what the students are going through trying to learn a language and means the teacher can give no advice to students on how a language can be learnt well
• Student comments such as “You are the first teacher in this school to use the phonemic script, I haven’t seen that since high school”.
• Lots of other subjective feedback and feelings

Am I wrong? Do you know other countries where it is just as bad? And if it is true, why is it so? (Have just realised that is my original question which I haven’t answered at all, coming up in Part Two…)

Originally inspired by this post on My So Called Japanese Life blog.

This is the one simple recipe that teachers all over Japan are using to raise the level of their students’ English:

• Take one copy of the Japan Times that you were going to read anyway
• Cut out one topical and/ or cultural article that might interest your students
• Photocopy
• Make up some comprehension and discussion questions, either before or on the spot
• Explain the 20 or 30 pieces of vocabulary you think they don’t understand while they tap away at their electronic dictionaries at the same time
• Send them home happy that they have ’learnt’ said vocab and read a real newspaper article
• Repeat next week

And really, the punters do love it- because they get the impression of having done something authentic and difficult. However, due to the fact that there are no real comprehension or vocabulary questions and that they can talk about the article using as easy language as they like, they haven’t actually been pushed at all. Just like watching an educational programme on NHK television, the illusion of learning is complete and the actual learning is almost zero. Evidence for the prosecution:

• Students who study this way get no practice of day to day functional questions and linked speech, and so whatever their level they will need to ask a native speaker to repeat social chit chat questions several times before they can reply
• Students almost never use the vocabulary in the texts in that or subsequent lessons, and even less in the rest of their lives
• Such as lesson covers almost none of the language and skills needed to move up to the next level as described in the Common European Framework
• Any approach that is being used a lot in Japan obviously isn’t working, or the Japanese wouldn’t have such a low level of English

Maybe these joker teachers don’t care. Maybe they are just looking for a justification to read the newspaper (I’ve found mine- start a blog!). I do care, and for a perfectly selfish reason. I am sick and tired of getting a student or class of students in Japan that I have to teach pairwork, phonemic script, linked speech pronunciation, basic chit chat and functional language questions, basics of telephoning and emailing, classroom language questions etc. etc. from absolute scratch. And there is only one solution. I hereby ban the use of authentic newspaper articles in class in Japan- no exceptions! And that includes Breaking News English!

Rant over