Archive for the ‘Learner training’ Category

Continuing my occasional series (as occasional as reality coming into TEFL theory):

“…it is relatively rare for language teachers to negotiate overall learning goals with their classes at the beginning of courses in an open, direct manner. However… it is commonplace for language teachers to adjust their lesson goals in accordance with student needs in a subtle, ongoing way.”

The Experience of Language Teaching pg 164

Thank the Lord (and Lady Rose M Senior of TEFL) for this book, which is turning out to be more readable than the “popular” linguistics book “Lost for Words” by John Humphreys. 

The question that a whole book of TEFL reality checks has posed to me more than any other is, why does the DELTA take none of this reality of what good teachers do into account? Understood with the CELTA as it’s all about basics, but if most experienced teachers don’t stick to lesson plans and rely on instinct, how is one supposed to put that on a Diploma lesson plan?? And looking at it another way, what is the chance of them saying “Yes, your impeccably planned lesson to produce self motivated learners was fine in theory, but if you were a really experienced teacher you just would’ve been slipping that in as the best times came up”?

Again, if you want to learn Korean or try this vocab learning trick out, try to guess each word from your knowledge and the hints before scrolling down to check.

komun - it’s the most COMMON colour for a little dress
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Read the Korean and my attempt to turn it into a picture based on the closest English sounds, see if you can guess the English meaning and then scroll down and check. Hopefully worth a look for people who are learning other languages and want to check this method out too, and a few of them are amusing (or at least amused me, which is the main point when I am learning vocab!) I’ll be putting some tips on how to use this method at the end of the posts too. Some of the Korean words are repeated, which is tip 1- do as many versions of each one as you can.

chongmaek - if you CHOMp on someone’s arm you will MAKE this bleed =
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I must be the least likely blogger of all time, being neither technically savvy nor generally interested in online content- I’d never read a blog before I started this one, and I still reckon most of the best stuff is still in books. Anything from Zoltan available on the web? I thought not.

Once in a while though, I do stumble upon some good stuff. As that gives me even more stuff I want to read, I usually don’t find time to even mention it here, so here goes while I still feel a little recharged from my summer hols:

The Linguist Blogger

Some very thought provoking stuff, and perhaps a lesson to me that blogging less frequently produces greater quality… Two recent ones that particularly took my fancy:

Building Nations with the Cunning Use of Foreign Languages

Language Learning and Weight Lifting

Back in the world of TEFL, the other Dave is going through some highlights from his articles and he has chosen well, particularly:

In Search of a Word: Can Ambition Survive in TEFL?

When is it too late to get out of TEFL?

If like me you were stimulated by the ELT World articles but irritated by having to have a Google ID to comment, feel free to leave your comments here instead:

While I’m on the subject and have to make the most of Favourites on this PC (it’s staying in Japan when I go to Korea), here is a list of TEFL, linguistics and Japan related sites I most often end up at, in approximate order:

1. Dave’s ESL Cafe international job forums (the pointless bitching makes it more memorable somehow, maybe it’s the Dynasty of TEFL sites)

2. The TESall.com TEFL news ticker (including links to the forum discussions that are actually worthwhile)

3. The TEFL tradesman (as foul-mouthed and crusading as we’d all like to be)

4. The TEFL Blacklist (does exactly what it says in the title)

5. EL Gazette digital (a real TEFL newspaper. Click on the link on the main page to subscribe for free)

6. An Englishman in Osaka (just very funny, and so beats all the much more informative Japan blogs, of which there are many, in competing for my online time…)

7. Guardian TEFL (some real journalism would be nice- see EL Gazette for that- but a good way of keeping up with TEFL press releases anyway)

8. The Life of Mike (some odd changes of direction, but some thought provoking and entertaining posts)

9. Notes from the TEFL graveyard (hits the funny yet practical, cynical yet enjoying the life balance that I struggle with on my blog)

10. Teacher in Development (would probably be around number 2 if there were more posts)

11. Metatesol (pithy, to the point and almost inactive- this one would also be higher if this little bit of prompting results in more posts)

If I was a better person the list would probably be different, and Rave’s ESL Au Lait wouldn’t even be in the list let alone at the top and Insights into TEFL , Humanising Language Teaching  and Developing Teachers would be in there, but like my irrational desire to eat cheap gyudon, that is where I really end up. End of confession- how many Hail Mario’s for absolution?

As mentioned in a comment or two below (and in every other sentence in my real life conversation), I am off on my reasonably well deserved hols from Friday and won’t even be looking at a computer screen for the next 10 days. For those of you who can’t live without an opinionated TEFL rant until I get back, I’m sure there must be something in my 458 posts over the last 14 months that you must have missed, so have a little trawl through the archives here- I’m sure there must be something there to entertain and/ or offend you!

For those of you still here for the serious stuff that I was supposed to have set this blog up for, here are the links to bits and pieces I have been involved in elsewhere in the world on TEFL. The top two are my own particular favourites from the last few months:

15 ways to help your students forget

15 ways to help your students dream in English

15 games for the language of describing people

15 real life situations for the language of describing people

15 typical textbook activities you can personalize

15 difficulties in teaching the language of describing people

15 ways to write a TEFL review

Office vocabulary compound noun stress

Why does my teacher make us work in pairs?

Talking about your job and company first class

Business English prepositions

Present Simple/ Continuous and Tense Review Guessing Game

Complaints prepositions practice

“While many teachers may attend to the questions ‘Do you like this language? Do you like this class?’, perhaps the more fundamental question for a student is ‘Do I like myself in this class?’”

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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 people searching for Xmas themed lessons seems to finally be over, here comes the New Year worksheets to ease yourself back into your classes with: (more…)

Don’t know how and when it happened, but no kids’ classes at all this year so had no chance to see their happy and snotty little faces when doing the lessons below, but WiseHat lessons are usually very stimulating for both teacher and students, very occassionally in a slightly odd way! (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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