Not yet, but let's hope they speak English up there when we do make it. Anyway, that is by the by and there is a lot to catch up on since the last entry.
Anyone can do it (?)
I've held three teacher-training courses since then, in three different schools in three different countries and three different sets of circumstances (the most recent was here in Verona so I was on home turf).
Taking SpeakYourMind out there into the wide world is a new and challenging experience but the hard work that has gone into it is paying off and we are learning good lessons along the way.
I have got a lot of pleasure out of getting to know and working with dedicated long-term TEFL professionals who have been open-minded and keen to look at something new. It's been interesteing too to meet and have long discussions with long-experienced teachers who could only see teaching in terms of their own vision of what that involves and could not take on board the basic premises of SyM. At the other end of the scale there have also been bright, interested trainees with no formal teaching experience. Yes, and there were lots of people in the middle - the silent army of TEFL: CELTA and a year or three's experience, keen and conscientous but with half an eye on a different career elsewhere in future.
Two main things have emerged from these experiences. A lot of teachers with long classroom experience have really liked SyM's 'directness'; the fact that the whole lesson is active, focussed and immediate. Getting across the importance of freeing the lesson of 'books and board' takes time, but when new teachers see the point and see how their skills are really challenged as a result, they enjoyed the direct, person-to-person nature of lessons.
They also really appreciated the fact that they could rely on the course material and that lesson-planning and gathering from resources would no longer be part of their busy working days.
The other thing that emerged is that SpeakYourMind makes teaching and learning look so simple. When trainee teachers observed lessons either in-person or on video they tended to think (so they told me afterwards) 'Well, that looks pretty straightforward.' The lessons flow easily and everything seems natural and friendly.
In reality, trainees often got a unexpectedly rude awakening when training got under way. The training programme is a pretty intensive 5 days including (normally) 2 hours teaching practice daily from day 2 (and homework!). What seemed so 'simple' as observers, is, they soon began to find out, the product of a combination of practical teaching skills, classroom techniques, understanding of the design and intricacies of the material, quick-thinking, intuition, and 'experience'. Walking is simple - almost everyone does it pretty often. But not on a tightrope, juggling and whistling a jaunty tune. Teachers began to see that the greater the 'familarity' with classroom procedure and material, the freer they were to teach and to enjoy their students. That 'familiarity' comes with preparation, concentration, practice and feedback.
As trainers, we don't expect people to run before they can walk, but 5 days is not long and the programme is no leisurely stroll. Each day sees ups and downs, learning is no steady straight line on a graph, but on all courses Day 5 saw breakthroughs and satisfaction.
This aspect - the apparent simplicity of lessons and learning - is something that has begun to really sink in. I think now, that this is probably the most important point of all in SpeakYourMind, that it addresses the complexities of learning and of language and arranges or models them into a form and a means of presentation that is straightforward, accessible and (very often) enjoyable.
Simplicity is a good thing - we want it in the things we use and the things we do - and if SyM seems 'simple' that is to its credit. Just remember not to judge things on appearance.
Sep 30, 2009
Apr 15, 2009
tech-knowledge
There's a lot of excitement about the potential for teaching that new technologies can bring to language classrooms. There's also the voice of reason that warns putting snazzy new bandwagons before the horse and jumping onto them.
I must admit I've never used an interactive whiteboard but I've seen them used and they are extremely impressive. If you need to keep a class's minds occupied they must be a godsend.
Technology is a means rather than the end: it allows access to learning possibilities that otherwise wouldn't exist - an interactive whiteboard can summon up, in an instant, examples and applications of relevant language in relevant contexts, and can actively involve students in the moment-to-moment procedures of the lesson.
Google or on-line corpora allow learners to look at words and find out about them in a way that goes vastly beyond the limits of the dictionary.
Podcasts make thousands of listening exercises available to learners. The range of topics, difficulty and length mean that everyone can find something of real use to listen to whenever and wherever they want.
Whenever and wherever they want: this is a key point in my mind. A lot has been made of 'authenticity' and 'the real world' when it comes to language teaching and a large amount of many teachers' time and effort has been put into attempts to bring them into the classroom.
Whereas until recently this 'real world' was, for the great majority of students who learn a foreign language in their own countries, a rare commodity, now it is easily and readily accessible through the internet. The teacher is no longer the sole provider of 'the real language': language is there - far more of it and far more real - for learners to immerse themselves in and to discover. I see this as a liberation. Learners are free of their reliance on the classroom when it comes to having access to 'real language' and are free to supplement their lessons through the scores of 'learning english' web-sites that are present on the internet. And teachers are freer to get on with teaching. Instead of focussing on creating 'real worlds' in their classooms they can focus their attention on students 'learning realities'. They can focus on teaching what is 'teachable' and 'teachworthy' and is clearly geared towards helping students along the way towards increased autonomy and competence in dealing with the world that is 'out there' for them to easily so engage in.
The classroom has its own separate and legitimate reality; a reality that technology can legitimise further. As teachers, our responsibilty is to point out to learners how to best make use of what is 'out there' by themselves. We need to learn enough about the technology and become familiar enough with what is out there on the internet to be good guides through the jungle of red herrings and trash that otherwise might soak up all the interest and enthusiasm that many unaccompanied adventurers set off with.
Learners will end up learning best what they want to learn, and not all of that will happen in even the most organised and receptive of classrooms. As teachers, we can do the best we can in our lessons to prime our learners for the learning opportunities they will find by themselves and that will not necessarily mean making the tools that learners have at home or in their handbags the centre of the classroom.
I must admit I've never used an interactive whiteboard but I've seen them used and they are extremely impressive. If you need to keep a class's minds occupied they must be a godsend.
Of course, as the warners rightly point out, what matters is that the technology fits into a programme of content and principled teaching rather than becoming the content and the teaching. The teacher still looks after the teaching; the whiteboard is a further aid at the informed teachers' disposal.
Presented well, technology can be a great Trojan horse: it can attract reluctant or bored minds into at least 'doing things' in English and maybe discovering along the way that learning English can be personally beneficial.
Technology is a means rather than the end: it allows access to learning possibilities that otherwise wouldn't exist - an interactive whiteboard can summon up, in an instant, examples and applications of relevant language in relevant contexts, and can actively involve students in the moment-to-moment procedures of the lesson.
Google or on-line corpora allow learners to look at words and find out about them in a way that goes vastly beyond the limits of the dictionary.
Podcasts make thousands of listening exercises available to learners. The range of topics, difficulty and length mean that everyone can find something of real use to listen to whenever and wherever they want.
Whenever and wherever they want: this is a key point in my mind. A lot has been made of 'authenticity' and 'the real world' when it comes to language teaching and a large amount of many teachers' time and effort has been put into attempts to bring them into the classroom.
Whereas until recently this 'real world' was, for the great majority of students who learn a foreign language in their own countries, a rare commodity, now it is easily and readily accessible through the internet. The teacher is no longer the sole provider of 'the real language': language is there - far more of it and far more real - for learners to immerse themselves in and to discover. I see this as a liberation. Learners are free of their reliance on the classroom when it comes to having access to 'real language' and are free to supplement their lessons through the scores of 'learning english' web-sites that are present on the internet. And teachers are freer to get on with teaching. Instead of focussing on creating 'real worlds' in their classooms they can focus their attention on students 'learning realities'. They can focus on teaching what is 'teachable' and 'teachworthy' and is clearly geared towards helping students along the way towards increased autonomy and competence in dealing with the world that is 'out there' for them to easily so engage in.
The classroom has its own separate and legitimate reality; a reality that technology can legitimise further. As teachers, our responsibilty is to point out to learners how to best make use of what is 'out there' by themselves. We need to learn enough about the technology and become familiar enough with what is out there on the internet to be good guides through the jungle of red herrings and trash that otherwise might soak up all the interest and enthusiasm that many unaccompanied adventurers set off with.
Learners will end up learning best what they want to learn, and not all of that will happen in even the most organised and receptive of classrooms. As teachers, we can do the best we can in our lessons to prime our learners for the learning opportunities they will find by themselves and that will not necessarily mean making the tools that learners have at home or in their handbags the centre of the classroom.
Mar 23, 2009
learning styles
"Learning style" is big. In the old days, 'learners' were 'students' or even 'pupils' and they didn't have learning styles: they were either functional or faulty. Possibly there are still teachers around who think that 'learning style' is just another aspect of modern do-goodying mumbo-jumbo and that teachers should just get on with teaching instead of pandering to weak-willed softies who don't know the meaning of hard work.
Certainly there are teaching methods still around which are based on the premise that all minds are alike - sorry - all 'brains' are alike; blank pages on which to indelibly scratch the new language, or, changing metaphor, empty vessels into which knowledge (language) can be poured.
Far more frequent in modern TEFL circles is the acknowledgent that learners are uniquely individual beings and thus learning is a uniquely individual experience. So far so good. Elsewhere in the article quoted below we read that there are "127 factors" that go towards individual learning styles. Is a 'good' teacher supposed to be trained in recognising all of them and then devise 127 ways of presenting 'comparatives' or 'the present perfect'? Fortunately the same article goes on to provide some more reassuring news:
"Just as it is rare to find someone who thinks totally in one form or another (verbal or image) so too it is rare to find someone who can only learn via one perceptual channel. By adulthood, most of us are a combination of learning styles and thinking styles. We have our preferences but we can usually "make-do" with the others. Some recent studies found that college students actually scored higher in coursework where the teacher's teaching style did not match the students' preferred learning style, e.g. the course was lecture based and the student preferred textbooks. This does not appear to hold in grades K-12; students in those grades appear to do best when the teaching method matches their preferred learning style."*
So, we have our preferences but we can usually 'make do' with other learning and thinking styles. That could be an excuse for the 'good old days bunch' to say 'I told you so!' and carry on scratching and pouring regardless of how unpleasant pupils might find things. It can also mean that a teacher can be as accommodating as is reasonably possible in terms of how they approach a class of learners in the knowledge that they are not going to exclude, harm or offend anyone. Teachers, with an easy conscience, can now spend less time bending over backwards in 127 positions and more time on comparatives!
http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Learning_Thinking/
Certainly there are teaching methods still around which are based on the premise that all minds are alike - sorry - all 'brains' are alike; blank pages on which to indelibly scratch the new language, or, changing metaphor, empty vessels into which knowledge (language) can be poured.
Far more frequent in modern TEFL circles is the acknowledgent that learners are uniquely individual beings and thus learning is a uniquely individual experience. So far so good. Elsewhere in the article quoted below we read that there are "127 factors" that go towards individual learning styles. Is a 'good' teacher supposed to be trained in recognising all of them and then devise 127 ways of presenting 'comparatives' or 'the present perfect'? Fortunately the same article goes on to provide some more reassuring news:
"Just as it is rare to find someone who thinks totally in one form or another (verbal or image) so too it is rare to find someone who can only learn via one perceptual channel. By adulthood, most of us are a combination of learning styles and thinking styles. We have our preferences but we can usually "make-do" with the others. Some recent studies found that college students actually scored higher in coursework where the teacher's teaching style did not match the students' preferred learning style, e.g. the course was lecture based and the student preferred textbooks. This does not appear to hold in grades K-12; students in those grades appear to do best when the teaching method matches their preferred learning style."*
So, we have our preferences but we can usually 'make do' with other learning and thinking styles. That could be an excuse for the 'good old days bunch' to say 'I told you so!' and carry on scratching and pouring regardless of how unpleasant pupils might find things. It can also mean that a teacher can be as accommodating as is reasonably possible in terms of how they approach a class of learners in the knowledge that they are not going to exclude, harm or offend anyone. Teachers, with an easy conscience, can now spend less time bending over backwards in 127 positions and more time on comparatives!
http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Learning_Thinking/
Mar 17, 2009
SyM gets Obama approval
"I be confident that we can overcoming the present crisis", claims Ishi Obama, newly elected president of the USA (Unworn Sunglasses Association) in last week's summit in Tokyo. 
student centred
This is a very important and very sensitive issue. I totally agree that where classrooms run on consensus things will work out more successfully and enjoyably. However ...... practical restrictions mean a teacher should think very carefully beforehand: it's not great to ask everyone's opinion on how things should be conducted and what the various roles are, only to have to say later that you are not allowed or not able to make the desired changes.
At our school we have regular 'forums' with each class as well as end-of-course questionnaires, so we can keep in touch with learners' feelings. We teach mainly adults so the kind of things we ask (and often the way we teach) is different from in a school-system context. Adults tend to know what they want (kids may not really understand why they are bothering learning) and are more concerned with moving towards a result rather than 'the experience of discovery'. The points of major interest in our situation tend to be about priorities, given that learning-time is very limited and that students don't want to spend years and years getting, for example, from A-D or from E-K. Does the pace of the course seem right? Is the balance between speaking and writing OK? Does the degree of correction suit? Is there anything we're not doing that you'd like us to do?
Having said that, at our school we offer a teaching programme that has clear guidelines, clear aims and is very 'transparent'. We know that it may not suit everyone so we don't promise that it's going to be right for everyone. Students try the course and can withdraw if they don't feel comfortable with the teaching approach. I know this is not what is usually meant by 'learner-centred' but in practical terms, in an adult teaching situation, it probably is.
At our school we have regular 'forums' with each class as well as end-of-course questionnaires, so we can keep in touch with learners' feelings. We teach mainly adults so the kind of things we ask (and often the way we teach) is different from in a school-system context. Adults tend to know what they want (kids may not really understand why they are bothering learning) and are more concerned with moving towards a result rather than 'the experience of discovery'. The points of major interest in our situation tend to be about priorities, given that learning-time is very limited and that students don't want to spend years and years getting, for example, from A-D or from E-K. Does the pace of the course seem right? Is the balance between speaking and writing OK? Does the degree of correction suit? Is there anything we're not doing that you'd like us to do?
Having said that, at our school we offer a teaching programme that has clear guidelines, clear aims and is very 'transparent'. We know that it may not suit everyone so we don't promise that it's going to be right for everyone. Students try the course and can withdraw if they don't feel comfortable with the teaching approach. I know this is not what is usually meant by 'learner-centred' but in practical terms, in an adult teaching situation, it probably is.
Mar 16, 2009
aimless teaching
"Japanese learners, who otherwise seem to be stuck with a choice between schools offering either grammar-cramming or largely aimless (and endless) conversation lessons." Hmmmmm, could aimless be a code word for callan? (comments 'long distance interview")
George Machlan
Hi, GeorgeGood to hear from you again: you sound like you've been pretty active in the meantime. Just to qickly address a couple of points you make.
Firstly, 'aimless' was in no way a reference to the Callan Method; in fact 'aimless' is one thing it is definitely not, although how well-aimed it is is open to serious doubt.
I think if you talk to students on EFL courses in general, one of the most common complaints would be a sense of aimlessness. I think this is largely a result of the wishy-washy thinking that seems to pervade the influential circles in global EFL, especially among teacher-trainers, and as a result becomes standard in classrooms where Communicative teaching is the orthodox approach. This is an overgeneralisation but a lot of 'trained' teachers come out of their four-week TEFL course with a veneer of basic grammar and a set of principles about teaching which are presented by their trainers as 'truths'. As far as I have been able to see, some major practical issues are simply not addressed: they are trained to teach in a little bubble. Teaching mono-lingual classes is seldom given more than a brief nod, although it's where many teachers will end up. From what I can gather, the difference between teaching working students on part-time courses, rather than students on full-time courses is not an issue that is addressed but again, many teachers will be encountering this reality and are not prepared for the different demands or expectations.
To cut things short (as you can see, this is an issue I think counts), many teachers' focus is on the 'single lesson' as a self-contained entity, whose success comes down largely to how much communication was prompted. How beneficial (or interesting) those communication acts were and how they fitted into a broader strategy of 'learning' are points that are often not in the foreground of the teacher's mind but they may be very much what the learners feel are important. This separate-episode approach that can, if things work out, make for an 'entertaining' lesson today, is what I mean by 'aimless' teaching.
While in Japan I heard about a popular type of course (and very profitable for the organisations that run them). The student phones the 'school' and arranges a rendez-vous with a 'teacher' (often untrained and unqualified) at, usually, a cafè for a 45-minute 'lesson'. The 'schools' arrange it so that the student gets a different teacher each time. This assures that the student gets to talk to different people (good) but also allows the teacher to not have to teach anything, as with a bit of practice they become quite skilled at stretching the introductions out to cover most of the lesson-time. This is important because your student might ask you about some tricky point of grammar and that could be a place you don't want to end up going.
Teaching is often aimless because teachers like to think that learning is such an unpredicably personal and creative experience that imposing aims and frameworks and so on is for narrow-minded, bean-counting philistines. I have a feeling this is a topic we may touch on again.
Iain
Feb 18, 2009
long-distance interviews
I feel very aware of being about twenty-seven steps behind the times when it comes to the wonders of the web but I'm just about able to hang on in there. Luckily lots of people are pretty agile in these matters; one of whom has managed to find us from thousands of miles away in Indiana and whose curiosity prompted him into making contact, intially by e-mail, then by phone, later on (only a day or two) through a blog link-up with us and lastly in the context of a youtube video interview. It's great. It's great that this can all happen in the first place and it's great to get to know, in a virtual sort of manner, people with good intentions and open minds who you would never have had the chance to encounter without all this beneficial progress. George - a fine English name -seems to be a man with an active mind and his feet on the ground - just the kind of person teaching needs. On the youtube conversation he probably asks just the kind of questions a lot of other people would want to ask about what SpeakYourMind is all about. I hope you will take a look for yourselves and maybe even join in. The more the merrier.
George's blog: http//:myeslfriends.blogspot.com
For the youtube interview, search 'speak your mind english'
George's blog: http//:myeslfriends.blogspot.com
For the youtube interview, search 'speak your mind english'
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)