Live by tepid spirit*
Friday, October 17th, 2008I write my “15 ways…” articles and teaching ideas in the spirit that even if what I put in there is painfully obvious, sometimes seeing something written down can help clarify an idea that was floating round somewhere at the back of your brain. A case in point is this description of two kinds of teachers who I’ve never consciously thought about, read about, written about or written for but have probably come across while only half realising it:
“There are two kinds of teachers here in Korea that really make me wince. One is the native-speaker who has been here for six or nine months, acknowledges that he was lost for three months but now ‘has it all figured out’
No help, no study, no reading, no questions to other teachers, he just somehow found a way to get through his classes without bosses, parents or students complaining..
He no longer feels uncomfortable in class, so he no longer feels the need to grow, change, develop or learn. Maybe he’s hit on one or two good activities, but I sort of doubt it.
The other kind is the Korean teacher who has studied modern teaching ideas and techniques, who does know what exciting things she could and should be doing in class, but who doesn’t do those things because she is afraid her boss or the other teachers or the parents won’t like them…”
Phil Owen, Korea TESOL President in The Korea Times, Thursday 16 October 2008
And after all the teaching and reading about teaching and writing about teaching and studying about teaching over the last 13 years, reading something that was only half remembered or half conscious is about the best you can hope for most of the time. It’s certainly the best you can hope from Complex Systems in Applied Linguistics, a brand new title from OUP. In summary, it says something like “a complex system is a mathematical concept that is different from just a complicated system and often involves techniques like computer modelling. However, because most of you studied English Lit at uni, we are going to deal with this subject without using a single mathematical formula and instead look at complex systems as some kind of metaphor of language, SLA and teaching. This basically means that we have to stop pretending that these things are easy to predict”
Or as a very short summary “complex systems are complex, but we think they are interesting and you will too (hopefully, because we’ve spent an awful long time researching them!)”
Not sure I ever thought any of those things were easy to predict, and am totally certain that more computer modelling and less metaphor is what has made complex systems interesting and useful, but did prompt a few minutes of musing and a tiny bit of “Oh yer, hadn’t thought about that recently”. Here’s hoping that Language Learner Strategies, which arrived in the same package from OUP, turns out to actually have something new to me in it. I’m on page 25, and it’s looking more hopeful so far.
Getting more or less back on topic, here are some other TEFL related bits and pieces in the same edition of The Korea Times:
“As ETS is a non-profit organisation, we don’t care about an alternative test organizer”
Well if you really don’t mind people doing other people’s tests, ETS, might I suggest you recommend BULATS and IELTS to all your candidates and stick to doing GRE?
And a fundamental misunderstanding of action research:
“This lead to my action research… I applied my research to develop the Pronunciation Rhythm Control Method (PRCM), which has proven to dramatically improve English speaking and listening skills for both students and teachers”
The whole point of Action Research is that it is to develop and adapt methodologies for use in a practical teaching situation, and coming up with a Method with a big M demands entirely another approach- one that the so-fine-you-could-easily-miss-it distinction between ‘has proven’ and ‘has been proven’ suggests this person has not gone through. Doesn’t mean I’m not open to her ideas, though, and I will be seeking out a workshop on PRCM if I can.
*I was going to call this post “The best you can expect in TEFL”, but this message I saw on a T shirt in Seoul today seemed to say it much more poetically…