SpeakYourMind

behind Bars: English lessons for inmates: part 4

2012-01-24T13:15:00.002+01:00

Lesson four
For every up there is a down lying in wait, and today was really frustrating all-round - no buzz in the air and spring in my step after this lesson. Again - all down to unfavourable circumstances. I made my way to the ‘good’ classroom but it was taken. Two of my students had now arrived and we found another room that seemed reasonable and began to move the chairs and tables to the way we wanted them only to be then told that this classroom was booked too. So, and by now there were four of five of us we had to go to the only free room left, a long narrow room with paper-thin walls.
Last year I taught at lunchtime and finding a decent room wasn't a problem, however this year I’m teaching in the mornings at the same time as other programmes take place (I’d managed to get the ‘good’ room for the last two lessons because these other courses were suspended for the Christmas holidays). For example, there are literacy courses mainly for North African and Asian inmates, and apparently prisons are obliged to provide education to Italian inmates who don’t have minimum academic qualifications, which is the middle school diploma (Italian school-students normally change from middle school to high school at the age of 14), so there are regular school subjects being taught too. Anyway as our lessons involve a lot of talking and the lesson next door evidently requires a lot of silence, the paper thin walls were not great. When there was talking from next door we could hardly hear what we were saying and we must have been disturbing them quite a lot, to the point that there were frequent bangs and knocks from the other side.
Again, the simple fact of students not being able to turn up to the lesson on time was a major problem -- one man was only able to arrive five minutes before the end of the lesson. To make things even more unsettled, on two occasions guards came in to call out inmates (to their surprise and with no explanations offered).
It's still not clear exactly who or how many are on the course -- the intense guy who hadn't appeared since lesson one was back and seemed relaxed and friendly. Another man who I had only seen for the last 20 minutes of the second day's lesson was back as well: he was a complete beginner but looked very keen and earnest and nodded a lot as he followed what we were trying to do. I was able to give him limited dedicated attention but among the general confusion, not enough. Anyway, the good news is that I have permission to do two lessons a week from now onwards -- everyone seemed very pleased to hear it. Let's hope that internal communications work a bit better so that the students get out of their cells in time for their lessons. I spoke to the duty guide about getting a quieter room, but as I've learnt is the case it is not something that any individual can decide – “I’m afraid you have to do make an official request”.

Behind Bars - English for inmates, Part 3

2012-01-17T15:32:00.003+01:00

Lesson 3
Again a good lesson – everyone left in high spirits. The students turned up in dribs and drabs – they all need to be let out from their cells in the different sections of the prison, so time-keeping is out of their hands. As I soon found out last year, when the guards are busy, the students arrive late and sometimes they can be very late.
Once half a dozen had turned up I got things going by inviting the students to tell me what they could recall from the last lesson – virtually everything as it turned out - which set a positive note. This ‘prelude’ allows a few insights. Apart from seeing how much of last lesson's content made an impression, I also get to see some of the class dynamics: I can better see who is more outgoing or likely to be more dominant in the group and who is a little bit more hesitant and I get a few little hints as to the relationships between the group members. It's still very early days and we all need to get to know each other -- not the details of each other's private lives, but as individuals in the context of this classroom.
In the meantime one or two more students had turned up and the lesson could begin. My major aim here is to try to establish that we have a cooperative working group that can happily accommodate individuals: and that working within a common format towards a common goal does not require uniformity of knowledge or performance. Anyway, these are still early days as I said, and laying the basis for the sense of complicity and mutual trust is largely down to lots of small examples and episodes, perhaps meaningless in themselves but which together create the right kind of environment and ‘ethic’.
Starting each lesson with revision conforms to most students common sense and intuition – it assures things don’t get ‘lost’ and gives students the chance to see that they can rely on their memory and that they can get things right – enough new ‘difficult’ things will come up later on, so this helps balance things out: why jump in at the deep end?
There is another practical advantage too: it makes it easier for late-comers to join the lesson without missing out too much. In this particular lesson there were several late-comers, all of them new students and all of them arriving at five-minute intervals. In a ‘normal’ classroom on a ‘normal’ language course, this sort of thing is usually really annoying: it could have been annoying here, but we all knew that no one was late because they decided to stop for a coffee on the way or had been on the phone. In fact, each of them apologised and explained that they hadn't even known the course had started - or even that they had been allowed on it - until they were summoned from their cells. As it turns out we have a dozen students in the class and quite an interesting group and they promise to be. This is certainly the only possible place where any of us could ever have met: we are or no one's home turf here. This is neutral territory for everyone, and we all start out from scratch as people. We will be perceived as we are in this room and during these encounters.

P.S. We have gained four students but we had two missing today. The man who appeared rather intense in the first lesson was not here for the second lesson either -- I actually bumped into him as I was making my way to the classroom, he gave me a very warm smile and told me that he had a visitor and would not be able to come to the lesson. Maybe his visiting hours coincide with class -- I don't know. At the end of the lesson I asked his fellow Romanians on the assumption they might know something. “Who cares” they said: “he speaks too much anyway”. The other man who missed had come across in the previous two lessons as the quietest in the group and I was aware he didn't really feel at ease. Maybe he'll be back next lesson but unaccounted absences always worry you. When you're teaching a group in any context it's always a balancing act -- you need to create an accommodating space where everyone feels involved and everyone feels a benefit from the teaching, yet you can only stretch so far to accommodate specific needs or specific personality issues.

Behind bars - English for inmates part 2

2012-01-10T09:39:00.002+01:00

Lesson 2
Things went very well today - more ice must have got broken than I thought on the first day. The wariness seems to have evaporated and everyone seemed more at ease about being (at least partly) themselves. A huge help came from the improved physical teaching environment. Of course, ‘comfortable’ is a relative concept, but this time I was able to get the best room available. It's an oblong room, which means I can have the whole class sitting in a kind of shallow horseshoe, rather than sit in rows behind each other - they can all see and hear each other too, so it’s pretty open and even. The room has solid walls, so there’s not much noise disturbance and it’s fairly bright – it’s on an outside corner so there are windows on two walls – admittedly about 12 ft above floor level and only about 18 inches high with bars, but it’s enough to make a difference. We also have three maps on the walls, which add a bit of colour and variety, and there’s a black-board too - and it’s warm.
And there’s us – no aids or equipment to get in the way and not even any books (official application for the use and distribution of student books has been made but not yet authorised). Never mind – we’re going to get things off to a pretty practical and direct start and I don’t rely on books anyway for the first couple of lessons; but with just one lesson a week and a break for Christmas holidays (for me, not for them) it would certainly be good for the students to have something to read through (in last year’s course I was pleased to see most books tatty and dog-eared after a month or so).
We all know that this can’t possibly be the ‘ideal’ English course, but if we all take it seriously enough and everyone is patient enough when their own needs are not at the centre of that minute’s attention, we can all come out of this with real benefits. In the meantime – it’s down to business! SpeakYourMind is designed to be able to work in 'worst-case scenarios', including these very ‘essential’ circumstances: it’s speaking-based, structured (so the students get a clear sense of moving forward, which in turn can maintain motivation) and active – there needs to be focus and vibrancy in the classroom, especially at this level. There’s going to be plenty of revision and recycling in class – these students will have no access to any English between lessons, unless those who share a cell feel like revising together, but at near beginner level that does not offer up a wide scope of intriguing prospects.
Consensus and trust lies at the base of any kind of shared project if things are to last the distance: students need to trust a teacher’s intentions and ability and understand and approve of how the course will work for them. Students come into the classroom with all sorts of ideas and experiences and it’s important to hear these – the things they think are most important, the things they found difficult and the things they liked and didn’t like about previous language courses. This is not in-depth discussion or analysis, it’s a way of establishing the ‘centre’ of things – learning English which is a single ‘neutral’ centre, rather than multiple ‘personal’ centres, which would be hardly appropriate in a situation such as this where learners are naturally reluctant to reveal too much of their histories and selves. The lesson can become a safe space for equals – everyone can participate fully without any pressure to enter into private worlds.

We have to start off from the beginning – those who already know a bit claim to be happy to go back and revise through – but keeping the right pace will be key to holding an acceptable balance, within each lesson and over the duration of the course. Starting off with words for the things we see around us (not that many in this classroom) gets vocab-learning under way: of course, it’s important to explain what you’re aiming at, and that you aren’t starting with ‘wall’, ‘door’, ‘light’ and so on because they are supposed to be the most interesting possible things to learn – they are just handy because they are there (I have pictures of some things that aren’t) – you can see them and touch them, or point to them you know what colour they are, where they are, if they’re big or small, open or closed; and this will be the basis of basic sentences. We can work on sounds – we encounter virtually all phonemes very soon – and stress (one-syllable words first (clock, bin, pen) and longer words later (pencil, window, table, calendar, radiator). It’s useful to raise awareness of this from the outset, and it’s something that the non-beginners often find useful as pronunciation was often neglected at school.
Even here at this very basic level, lots of things are happening – it’s not the accuracy-at-all-cost drilling of structures that this kind of lesson-activity has traditionally been associated with – there are different dimensions and different areas of emphasis. The whole thing can actually become surprisingly engaging and even playful once you sense how to balance out achievement and challenge and can nudge things forwards little by little. Anyway – everyone seemed to enjoy it, time passed quickly and there was a general feeling that they had begun to learn things and it been worthwhile. Of course – this was not ‘real world’ communication as is often understood in teaching, but it was a ‘real’ classroom we were in, and the learning activity we were engaged in was certainly ‘real’ enough too.

Back to Prison

2011-12-13T09:53:00.002+01:00

Today it's back to prison -- I think I’ve missed the place. If you put a lot into your lessons it takes a lot out of you and I must say that when I finished last year's course it actually left me feeling more than a little drained. I wasn't really aware of it until the times I thought about starting again, and then I really wondered “Am I ready for it yet?”
Nonetheless, it was certainly one of the most important teaching experiences in my rather long career, immensely rewarding on different levels - but I suppose that as in other things, the reward is in proportion to the challenge.
So, a new challenge today. In half an hour from now it will be ID checks, metal detectors, steel gates, echoes and cages. And -- my students: 16 of them apparently. Who knows how things will turn out?

Later ……….
The usual suspects – the pen-pushers got things off to a poor start. At the post metal-detector stage one of the guards who I often saw last year - and was never the most enthusiastically co-operative - recognised me and mentioned with a wry smile that he thought that when I reached the library section I would find no-one waiting for me: he thought that the official papers were not there. He was right. I was greeted by the duty warden’s blank expressions followed by lots of flicking through ledgers and stacks of photocopies – all to no avail. Fortunately, with some friendly pressure from the man who co-ordinates all voluntary programmes, phone calls were made and , yes, the course was authorised and due to start today.
Half an hour later a couple of my students showed up and we were ushered to our classroom – old school-desks and bare browny-grey partition walls which are as sound-proof as a stain. There wasn’t really time to do that much – and I wanted to wait for any others to turn up, which happened in dribs and drabs.
First lessons with new groups are always testing – as a teacher you need to make lots of inviting space for your students to feel at ease about stepping into. You need to see and hear as much as you can – the people you are teaching are probably strangers to each other and they want to sound things out too. In a normal classroom it requires intuition and experience to handle these situations in a way that creates enough space for information to transmit without putting people on the spot. In a prison the pressures are probably significantly greater - in any group of young(ish) males who meet for the first time there is going to be a lot of sizing each other up and a degree of wariness. Basically what you want to achieve is a sense of ‘respect’: you are there to do a job and do it seriously. You take the task at hand seriously, and you take the people who are there seriously, and you want to walk away feeling you’ve all achieved something worthwhile. What you need is to engender ‘consensus’ – that’s the vehicle that will carry everything forward.
In the end I had seven students: two Italians, three Romanians, one Colombian and one young man from North Africa, I think – the acoustic interference from the next room was too much and I had already asked people to repeat things so often that I got a serious glimpse of what it means to be hard-of-hearing.
From what I learned we have a big range of levels – there’s a 19-year-old Romanian whose English seems excellent: he says he started learning when he was three. “That’s unusual” I said, “I’m not a usual guy” he replied. One of the Italians speaks reasonable English too: I asked those who knew a few words to introduce themselves, and invited the others to tell me what – if anything - they had understood or guessed. The Italian man had studied English at High School and university and had used English in his work in Zurich where he was in the financial field. The rest are – or claim to be – beginners, although one of the Romanian men understood everything. He also came across as rather intense: “We have to get a lot from this course,” he told the others, “we mustn’t waste time with simple things – we must do this intensively if we want results.” Hmmm.
Next lesson I hope to have the full group – apparently down to twelve now - and the real challenge will begin. Things are not helped by circumstances: I had asked for two one-hour lessons weekly, like last year, but they can only let me do one 90-minute lesson a week, which, in addition to the extreme range of levels, I’m seriously worried might reduce all our efforts to little more than enjoyable time-killing. Mind you, with these guys often spending 22 hours a day in a cell the size of a caravan with three others, enjoyable time-killing could even be all right.

TESOL conference Rome: Mr Perez, pens and Tunbridge Wells

2011-11-24T10:52:00.000+01:00

TESOL conference Rome: Mr Perez, pens and Tunbridge Wells

Last week I went to the TESOL conference in Rome: probably the major teaching event in the annual calendar. Attended primarily by English teachers at high school and middle school, there are nonetheless a fair number of representatives from private schools (PLS’s to use publisher’s jargon as I learnt). Over the two days there is a wide and varied programme of presentations and workshops -- around 60 in all.
We were present with a stand in the exhibition area, along with the big-boy publishers and examination boards. It was our first public outing and although attendance at this conference was worryingly down on previous years, it proved to be a useful experience.

On the whole it was very encouraging to see so many teachers’ curiosity and interest in something different. There was fairly general acknowledgement among teachers that, for several all too well known reasons, getting a good job done in prevailing circumstances proves arduous and elusive far too often. We had to point out that SpeakYourMind is currently available only through associate private schools: not because teachers at private schools are ‘better’ than those with in the education system, but simply because, in theory at least, private schools are able to establish better conditions for successful learning - primarily in terms of class size and in terms of streaming classes for level and, ideally, ability.
Talking there to teachers I did perceive a sense of predictability: the publisher's new products tended to be not much more than new marketing. New ideas were only new to the people who hadn't encountered them yet: certainly in the few presentations I was able to attend there was nothing particularly original. Corpus linguistics is extremely revealing and helpful but it’s also a popular and spacious bandwagon: some of the conclusions I heard drawn from corpus ‘evidence’ were open to different interpretations, and I think that reliance on these sources can be distracting to teachers in the front line. ‘Authenticity’ and ‘motivation’ were other popular themes, although it’s disappointing when speakers and writers cook up the evidence to suit their own menus – such as presenting examples from out-of-date Peruvian course-books to highlight the demotivating effects of ‘artificial’ language (“I am Mr Perez – are you Mrs Perez?”) and therefore the advantages of using ‘authentic’ language (“… and she’s like, ‘why did you do that?”).

Back to the exhibition area and our encounters with teachers: among the interest and curiosity there was naturally enough a more critical voice. I had been expecting this but was surprised by the vehemence when it happened. I can't help thinking of this teacher as ‘disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ – she did rather fit the stereotype. As we spoke (spoken preliminaries, rather than ‘discussion’) and I was looking for a student book to illustrate how the course was organised and the content presented, I could see her eyes guiding her towards the beginner’s course-book - and instinct guided me towards deflecting this move: I had a premonition of the ensuing confrontation. “This looks like a Berlitz book from the 50s,”' she scoffed. She had me at an unfair advantage here, not having taught then myself. I began to explain that the course incorporated ideas and procedures from different traditions and approaches and reworked them in the light of newer thinking, but she would have none of it.
Flicking to the opening pages she found the food required to fill her outrage: “Pen, clock, table! Haven't you people heard of communicative teaching?”. “Yes of course - and we have moved on from there.”
“Have you indeed! How can you teach ‘pen’ and ‘book’?” “It depends what you have in mind - in a classroom teaching situation it can be a useful way to get things started.” I tried to engage her in an exchange of views but her raised hackles got in the way. “I'm not interested, I'm not interested”, and off she marched, her sensibilities thoroughly offended.
Well, being addressed as ' you people ' hardly creates the rapport that allows the kind of communication that this teacher was such a stern proponent of in the classroom. Also the suggestion that ‘we people’ had been living in some sort of cave for the last thirty years was a bit objectionable too.
However, I knew where she was coming from. I am not a diehard fan of pens, pencils, clocks, phones, doors and windows; but at the same time this long-standing Situationalist approach to teaching beginners is not as harmful as some teachers believe. They formed the basis of drills used to ‘imprint’ structures in the 50’s - because structures were the key to language, so the thinking went. Of course, now we know that mastery of structures does not automatically lead to communicative autonomy, but that, in turn, does not mean that structures or sentence patterns have no place in language learning.
In the SpeakYourMind course we are very clear about recognising the limitations as well as the uses of starting in this way. There are advantages of teaching the words for the things that occur in your physical surroundings, learners can see them and touch them - it's very direct and immediate. In the initial set of objects and words that our beginner learners encounter they come across almost the complete range of phonemes, as well as beginning to learn about stress patterns - so important in English – so it’s not just ‘structures’.
Teachers and students are aware that starting in the classroom with classroom objects is purely a convenient way to get going – it kick-starts the language learning. As language quickly grows, the confines of the physical classroom dissolve, and more likely and plausible interaction can emerge. Even the very early lessons involving pens, watches, phones, switches, tables and so on can, in reality, become challenging and fun in the hands of a talented and informed teacher - it's not a question of some brutal taskmaster squeezing the life out of language and chipping away at the poor learners’ brains to engrave words and structures indelibly and inalterably.

But I think the most important point to dispel is the idea - common among many teachers - that when we are teaching language we are in some way reliving the learning experience that occurs in growing individuals as they learn a language.
Of course, no one would set about teaching their toddler in such a formal restrictive and disciplined way. Children ‘discover’ language in all its complexities and subtleties, and learn over the course of years and through hundreds of thousands of different types of experiences and encounters.
We cannot try to replicate this experience - and we certainly don't have the time to do so - in the classroom. When adult or teenage learners come to a classroom, they come with the benefit of many learning experiences with different degrees of formality and modality, and are well equipped to cope with learning strategies that do not correspond exactly to what might be described as ‘natural’ or ‘real’. But of course, a classroom is a classroom and not the ‘natural world’ or the ‘real world’ (but ‘real worlds’ have classrooms too).
To assume that an approach which is evidently contrived and artificial will somehow necessarily impair learners’ receptiveness, or ‘damage’ them in some way, is to do little justice to their intelligence.
Of course if a teaching programme continues to present a language in a lifeless and implausible way, learners will lose interest and motivation, and as experience has shown, will not provide learners with the skills required to become confident and effective language users.

Yes, we have heard of the communicative approach and we well appreciate and approve of its aims, and we recognise the advances and benefits that it has brought. Communication is at the heart of what we teach, although we would make a distinction between communication as the exclusive ‘means’ and as the ‘end’. Communication is a consequence of what happens in the classroom more than being the starting point of what happens at all costs.
This is what I meant when I said to disgusted of Tunbridge Wells that we can move beyond CLT, which so often seems to end up becoming trapped in a hall of mirrors. So I am genuinely sorry that pens and books figure in our first lessons, but we do not live in caves and we do not use the pens to club our students into submission.

4 generations

2011-06-08T20:42:00.002+02:00

in 2011 we're now in the 4th generation of SpeakYourMind course books!

Are you this kind of person?

2011-05-25T12:14:00.004+02:00

Why I like my coach

"Back to my tennis.
I’ve started lessons with a new coach and I’m pretty pleased. I’ve been watching and noticing how he manages things and he’s got qualities that apply to most teaching situations.

First of all, he knows just what I’m capable of and he seems to keep me working just at the edge of my limits. He also sees when I’m beginning to get frustrated and when I’m simply beginning to tire. The pace suits me. I’m breaking sweat pretty much straight away – he’s hitting the ball hard enough and just far way enough to keep me stretched but without leaving me doubled up on the ground panting for breath – something he could easily do if he wanted to (he could also bore me stiff like a previous coach who didn’t seem to be interested enough in me to notice how good I could be and just did everything on ‘auto-instructor’ mode).

We start with a warm-up. He gets me to practice strokes that I can already handle pretty well but he ups the pace from session to session to make sure that it’s challenging - I certainly couldn’t have coped a couple of weeks ago with the pace we’re working at now. I’m improving my basics and feeling more confident and becoming more adventurous.

He makes sure there’s variety. He’ll introduce a new exercise each session to work on a new stroke but he doesn’t spend too long on this. I get more wrong than right at the beginning and he doesn’t let me reach the stage where I lose heart. He stops when he reckons I’ve had enough, not because I’ve finished learning the new stroke – we’ve just completed the first step. We’ll go back to it again next time and the following time and sooner or later he’ll incorporate it into the repertoire of our warm-up.

I certainly get more upset about my mistakes than he does and he makes sure he gives me plenty of encouragement by praising shots that really deserve it and not commenting on every single bad shot, limiting himself to identifying the cause of a problem when I make the same kind of mistake several times. The thing is I know that he sees everything and that he sees everything in a broad context – where I started from and where we’d like to get to.

We’re “playing tennis”, which makes me feel great. But I know that really he’s “playing” – not “playing a match”. He’s working on improving me. That’s why I’m here."

It's probably true that all of us transfer our own preferences, tastes and styles (How can you not like pasta? Don't you realise it's fantastic?!) into our students and as teachers "do to others as we would like others to do to us" Teachers who like grammar teach lots of it.
Teachers who like poetry incorporte poetry into their lessons.
Teachers who don't like organisation like to improvise.
Teachers who like the sound of their own voices assume everyone else does too.
Teachers who feel uncomfortable about correcting people don't like to correct mistakes.
Teachers who are laid back don't expect too much effort from students.

Please add others at will:

Six Months Jail Over for SpeakYourMind author

2011-04-18T12:06:00.003+02:00

Six months’ prison over for SpeakYourMind author. Getting out was always easier than getting in. That’s one big difference between volunteer visitors and the inmates. Tomorrow I’ll be going in through the check-points and all the steel gates, down the long corridors and past the cages to my ‘classroom’ for the last time this ‘term’. It was an idea that had been burying away into my mind for a while and it was this time last year when I made the first approach to Verona Sociale – a voluntary organisation that also covers Progetto Carcere an organisation that oversees a range of activities inside Verona’s prison at Montorio. Things take time where officialdom is concerned but by the end of October the papers and authorisations were all in place. I was going to teach a group of inmates English. The wonderful thing is that it worked. I’ve been asked by the organisers to stop for ‘administrative’ reasons but I can honestly say that all of us are very sorry that this has reached its end. The group of participants – all male – have been great to teach: they’ve taken things seriously from the start and have always been courteous, positive, and good-humoured – far more than could be reasonably expected given the circumstances. Whether they enrolled on the course simply to break the monotony – inmates spend twenty-two hours a day in their cells – or to take the opportunity to learn a new skill soon became irrelevant: no-one turned up just to pass the time of day and the rewards I got as a teacher have been huge. As in any teaching situation, your first job is to establish a sense of ‘group’ and of a shared objective – everyone is on the same side working towards a common aim. This could have been much harder to achieve than actually turned out – this wasn’t a group of friends or colleagues and what they all had in common was not a consequence of choice. Most were beginners – three or four zero-beginners and another five or six who had a smattering of English. Two had a bit more English behind them – one a Libyan with a brother in the US, and another Italian in his late thirties. Later in the course a young Pole joined – he has a girlfriend in the States and his English is pretty fluent. In just under forty lessons (two one-hour lessons a week) we have managed to complete the first course-book; something that classes in far more favourable conditions don’t always manage. We have quite an interesting nationality mix – apart from the Libyan and the Pole, there were two young men from Morocco (one of whom dropped out over Christmas – one of three ‘desertions’ during the course, including one who was released) - and a young German who spoke no Italian and was seriously disorientated but who was taken under everyone’s wing (including many of the guards) in an admirable and moving way. The young Moroccan in particular has been a brilliant student and he is rightly pleased with himself. He’s told me that now he can add some English to his French and Italian he plans to get a job in tourism when he returns to the outside world. I suppose everyone who does any kind of voluntary work hopes that this kind of result can happen – the chance to make a single real difference to someone’s life. Two others told me last lesson that they are hoping to be released soon and asked if they could carry on at our school later – it would be a shame to get so far and then have to stop. Of course – students need a certain type of resilience and humour – more than is normally called for in English classrooms. “What time do you get up / have breakfast etc?” inspire no curiosity (the fact they eat rice five times a week for lunch doesn’t make questions about meals and food all that interesting either.) “Where do you go after lessons?” “What do you do in the evenings / weekends?” – all the standard kinds of elementary questions are sadly pointless, as are most questions related to their jobs or even homes (some have had theirs confiscated by Court). Despite all this - and the fact that we are in a classroom with no pictures or the things you’d normally have (and with windows ten feet up the walls) the classroom dynamics are just the same as they could be in any classroom anywhere. “Marco” is Marco and “Ali” is Ali – but from outside all these people are, to too many of us, often just “Prisoners”.

what is a book?

2011-03-15T08:29:00.004+01:00

This was actually written as a reply to an enquiry we received from a teacher in Turkey who has become interested in SpeakYourMind and has been in contact with us for a while now. Having seen sample copies of Student Books he wrote back to ask us about the book itself, in terms of its design, layout and - ultimately its role.

"By the way, the books have no colour or pictures ........... Don't mis understand I think the lexical-interactive approach is great. But I would need some supporting arguments ............. explaining the system to potential buyers and their teaching staff."

WHAT IS A BOOK?

Why do we need books? Does the book teach us, or does it simply record what the ‘teacher’ teaches us? Is a book the content or the container?

With the main aim of SpeakYourMind being to teach English as spoken language, the Student Book is, in reality, an option – students could learn (and I know those who have) only with their lessons at school and without ever opening their book. SpeakYourMind is designed to be effective in this way, but – naturally enough – most students want to learn to read and write as part of the course, so the book becomes a requirement rather than an option. The book is also a valuable support for those students who want to help themselves by revising in their own time – this may apply to a majority of students but evidence shows that there are learners who have neither the time nor the inclination.
Homework and / or self-study is a bit of a grey area when it comes to TEFL for adults. There are many teachers who feel that homework and self-study are a necessary part of a course and that students are reasonably expected to do their fair share of study in their own time. Those that don’t (such goes the argument) are not serious about learning and will, naturally and deservedly, not achieve satisfactory results. Worse still, they will jeopardise the success of the course, make life difficult for the teacher and make lessons wasteful for their more conscientious classmates. Our stance on this is that self-study is a recommended option – students can learn without, but they will make things easier for themselves by finding ten or fifteen minutes as regularly as they can to look through their lessons in the student book. And with this type of use in mind, the SpeakYourMind Student books are very much designed for simplicity. They follow the teaching programme step-by-step, which means students know exactly where they are, and they can quickly find today’s or yesterday’s lesson content.

Speaking-centred learning
During lessons students speak, and when they are not speaking they are listening and following the teacher-student conversation, ready to take part at any moment. The lesson ‘follows the book’ (the content the teacher works with and moves within) but it is ‘book-free’ in that books are closed and the conversation and the language it evokes is very much the centre of attention. The ‘book’ does not need to create interest – the energy and the interest is in the air, and students’ eyes (and ears) are focussed on the speakers and not resting on a page of an open book. Likewise, the CDs that accompany the Student Books are designed for self-study and not for classroom use (although there may be cases, such as in full-time language courses, where this could be integrated into lesson-plans). The CDs, like the books, are best used when students do not have access to a teacher.
Conventional book-based lessons are suited to teaching situations where there are large mixed-level classes – a situation that is widely accepted as being ‘a fact of life’ but which we identify as being the biggest single obstacle to successful learning and teaching. Working with level-matched classes with level-specific material greatly benefits students and teachers alike, but it shifts a lot of the hard work onto the course administrators rather than the teachers in the classroom – probably the main reason most conventional language schools continue to apply a very loose interpretation of ‘graded’ classes.

Content: plain and simple
As mentioned in reference to home-study, the book is designed for simplicity – it provides students with quick and easy access to relevant content. I can see why teachers who are used to working with orthodox materials published by the multi-nationals will find the SpeakYourMind student books very plain by comparison.
The student books do, nonetheless, contain all that students need in order to follow the course: explanations and examples of new vocabulary, along with dialogues which place new language in a range of recognisable situations (social, family, travel, professional). These dialogues are ‘multi-functional’ – they can be used for the oral introduction of new words in class by the teacher, they can be used for self-study reading, they can be used for pronunciation and intonation activities in class, as well as for the basis of short ‘role-play’ activities in lessons. The student books also contain clear and comprehensive grammar sections as they appear, step-by-step – students do not need a separate grammar book. Likewise, exercises and other activities are all part of the same volume – students don’t need to have separate ‘course-books’ and ‘work-books’.
All student books contain an index of all new words, as well as lists of irregular verbs, British and American English charts, and in the first three course books, a basic grammar guide. In other words, the whole SpeakYourMind course is designed to be compact and self-contained – both in terms of the lessons themselves and the material that accompanies them.

Returning to the visual aspect of the Student Books, they are black-and-white, text-only. This is in clear contrast to the array of colours, photos, and fonts that fill the pages of the standard course-books, but I don’t think that this in itself need be seen as a weakness. Firstly, I don’t think that learners need all the, what is by now, predictable visual ‘stimulus’ that can end up cluttering pages and seems, very often, designed for teenagers by people who are not teenagers. This is bound to be largely a question of personal taste and preference, but some of the EFL books that I like most are free of decorative visuals – they give the impression they are matter-of-fact about the job in hand, and the simple layout means that all relevant information is easily identifiable (I’m talking about the LTP professional English series and exam preparation series – now published by Heinle). It was in the mid-eighties that the current ‘magazine’ style of TEFL publications took off, largely to satisfy the needs of learners to see ‘realistic’ material that they would otherwise not have easy access to. The internet has made this need largely redundant (as it has brought the relevance and usefulness of many other aspects of conventional TEFL into question – but this is another topic).

I’m not going to defend our own published material at all costs, and I really don’t want to make ‘simplicity’ too much of a virtue. Now that the new-generation SpeakYourMind series is finally complete and the content is all in place, looking at improvements in layout and design is already a project for future editions.

On the whole, students seem to approve of the size of the SpeakYourMind student books – they fit easily into most bags. The main font is Times Roman – hardly trendy but nonetheless a font still widely used in newspapers, news magazines and books. As such, it is probably the most useful font for learners, specifically for those whose alphabets are different, to become accustomed to.

In the end, as schools and teachers we set out to be providers of learning, and with SpeakYourMind ‘the lessons’, not ‘the book’ as a product, is central to this.

got it right by mistake?

2010-11-10T14:49:00.006+01:00

The other day a student came up to me with a question - or more of an observation, really. She told me that when she'd been talking to her husband about how her English was coming along, she'd confessed that when she spoke English she 'cheated'. She didn't refer to a rule of grammar - she relied on her intuition, and this clashed with her ideas about what learning and studying another language involved (she's a retired school-teacher).
A lot of people would probably love to be able to follow their intuition rather than have to halt and re-call rules (and maybe opt to say nothing if their recollection is unsure) but if she felt that this was somehow 'cheating' it might mean that the course she was doing was in a way cheating her.
Here is a section from the Teacher's Notes in the new edition of Unit5 (it accompanies a section on 'articles') which addresses this very point.

The following explanation is very important as it addresses one of the main aspects of SpeakYourMind – that students learn grammar through:

a) A focussed introduction of one defined area
b) Plenty of useful practice through examples and questions spaced over an interval of time
c) A successive introduction that takes the grammar a bit further (this is then followed by plenty of practice before the next bit comes along).

The most important part (and the one that learners may need most ‘educating’ on) is the ‘plenty of useful practice’. The SpeakYourMind course basically provides learners with a 'good language experience’. When we talk about something ‘sounding right’ or ‘sounding bad’ we are relying on our ‘language experience’ – an accumulated store of evidence of language which allows us to decide if a piece of language ‘conforms’ (we have heard it many times) or not.

As native speakers we all have a highly developed ‘language experience’ of our own language, but as learners of a new language what we can rely on ?
Grammar books provide ‘concepts’ but little in the way of ‘experience’. At the other end of the spectrum, exposure to unfiltered flows of 'natural' native speech is a highly baffling experience and can turn out to be a very long and unreliable process in terms of ‘learning’.

SpeakYourMind creates, in lessons and over the course as a whole, a ‘language-learning environment’ which exposes learners to (and invites them to use) constantly accessible ‘good language’ – and a constantly expanding environment of ‘good language’.
Of course – learners will make errors as they begin to learn new things, but this is not ‘harmful’ in any way, as long as they are made aware of the mis-match between their trials and the ‘model’ as provided by the teacher, through correction and ‘highlighting’, as well as through reading the course material.
Many learners will ‘want the rules’ – and SpeakYourMind doesn’t deny them explicit explanations of grammar. However, all learners benefit from ‘plenty of useful examples’ which, over time, will build up and blend in to form their ‘good language experience’.

train

2010-09-22T07:35:00.003+02:00

It's back to school again. September - at least here- is a long, long month that starts out in sunny summer and slowly pushes you into into the colder and shorter days of autumn. September seems to take ages. For a school it's the time when you know how things are going to be for the coming school year. Will the crisis bite this time round? It's all a bit nerve-racking.
One thing that we do not have to deal with this year is training and integrating new teachers (so far anyway). With a full return from last year and a return to full-time teaching of an ex-teacher of ours we're probably sorted. So - no training session. Actually, yes.
As has become a tradition, Hugo from Tokyo came over with a smal group of his students. Hugo enjoys being involved with training here and his students enjoy a trip to Verona and also very much enjoy being our 'practice students' on training courses for new teachers. This time round they were practice students on a rather different programme.
It was a good opportunity to get all our teachers together for a week of serious 'advanced' training. The newest teachers have eight months experience with SpeakYourMind but the overall average is four to five years.
The interest in taking part and being able to learn and to contribute was there, which made for a very positive mood. I was able to introduce the new books - both updates and upcoming new editions and the implications these changes will have in the classroom.
Working in small groups which changed from day to day, we all taught our Japanese guests students, sometimes together with some of our own students. This made for an interesting contrast of styles - careful, accurate Japanese learners with more spontaneous and erratic Italians - at least in these cases. They got on well and probably benefitted from theirt own observations of this different approach.

At the end of each shared lesson, teacher-groups would comment and analyse any points of interest before re-assembling as a full group to discuss aspects of general interest further. It was all very open - everyone seemed unworried about having their say.
In the course of the five days, everyone got to work with and to observe everyone else and I think we all feel that it has been a very worthwhile experience.

Of course the hard thing is to keep that ball rolling. When schedules get busy, training tends to move out the way for more pressing priorities. It's like going for a run after work - you know it's good for you but you soon end up needing to do other, more urgent, things instead.

Anyway - it's done. I'm pleased with the way things went and the things I've been able to learn about and from our teachers. Hugo seems happy and his students thanked us most kindly when things came to a close. There wasn't the tension that ther can be an an intitial training course for new teachers but nonethless it was pretty demanding in its own way. Ultimately, the greatest satisfaction comes from being able to work with a group of teachers who stay with you, in many cases for many years, and who continue to be responsive, curious and enthusiastic and who express real confidence in what we are doing and how we do it and in how we are moving things forward.

the secret could be in the beans

2010-06-09T11:16:00.003+02:00

I've had a couple of talks with interesting people who are interested in TESOL and are good speakers of English, having studied it for much of their lives (including courses in the UK).
On several occasions we talked about English courses in the UK or the US and they immediately and resolutley expressed the view that you can't make any useful observations or assessments on the effectiveness of these courses, as anyone studying in the UK or the US was bound to learn English anyway - what happened inside the classroom was pretty much incidental.

Now - this surprised me, as (as I pointed out to them) they almost certainly knew foreign people living in their own countries whose language skills were poor, even after a considerable period of time (and I'm not talking just about people living in disadvantaged circumstances). They didn't really accept this argument as sound. It occurred to me that this resistance could be due to a form of 'cultural experience' - people who go to study abroad tend to be well-educated and highly motivated and are better placed to achieve the good results that provide the evidence for the view that my companions in conversation held.

As a teacher in London I certainly came across plenty of cases of people who, after months and even years, seemed to have a huge barrier between their minds or brains and the English language that surrounded them. I wonder if these people in any way resisted adapting or submitting to the foreign experience in general. Maybe they saw living in the UK as a kind of exile to an outpost of their own land and saw everything new as an inadequate and somehow undesirable version of the real and right thing.
Did they want to eat baked beans? Did they sunbathe when it was 17°C?

well then?

2010-05-28T13:41:00.002+02:00

What we know as “Communicative Language Teaching” does not have exclusive rights over ‘communication’ as an aim, just as ‘communicating’ does not necessarily involve ‘teaching’ or lead to 'learning'.

Anyway - to what extent does what happens in classrooms depend on the tastes and preferences of?
a) the teacher
b) the learners

and ..... how often do (or should) the two sets of tastes and preferences coincide?
plus ..... how often do we know?

I'm not talking about the school system here, I'm referring to adult TESOL courses.

Protect our English!

2010-01-27T12:38:00.005+01:00

I have had an interesting encounter with a group of teachers who all come from a similar teaching background. The topic under discussion was 'correction' - no minor issue. They were very much of the view that one of a teacher's prime responsibilities in lessons is to correct mistakes; all mistakes (at least the ones that don't slip by unnoticed).
A lot has been said and written on the effectiveness and the appropriateness of correction and I don't intend to go down that road right now. What struck me in this discussion, however, was the overall view of language and learning that lay below their belief in the importance of correction (and, whenever possible, the use of error-avoidance strategies). As we spoke I had this image: what these teachers were doing was to shield a statue from attack. Language was a complete and perfectly-formed body - the version of language as they presented it to students. Mistakes were like hostile arrows or stones that would chip away at this perfect work - too many mistakes and the statue would become too damaged to be any longer recognisable, something the teacher had to attemot to stop at all cost.
Mistakes cause damage: it is a very 'static' vision - and it sees learning as a purely external rather than personal activity that involves the imitation or reproduction of 'perfection'. Learners' language can only get worse: it can't get better than perfect.

It was an interesting encounter and it didn't finish here. But that is for another time.

Teaching beginners with SpeakYourMind

2010-01-26T17:40:00.002+01:00

man lands on mars

2009-09-30T08:57:00.003+02:00

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.

tech-knowledge

2009-04-15T13:56:00.012+02:00

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.

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.

learning styles

2009-03-23T14:23:00.004+01:00

"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/

SyM gets Obama approval

2009-03-17T12:17:00.002+01:00

"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

2009-03-17T08:42:00.001+01:00

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.

aimless teaching

2009-03-16T10:02:00.007+01:00

"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

long-distance interviews

2009-02-18T12:53:00.004+01:00

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'

how we teach grammar

2008-12-24T11:54:00.003+01:00

taken from "SpeakYourMind: an Introduction and Practical Teaching Guide."

"You can’t communicate successfully without grammar but you certainly can without knowing about it. Everyone probably knows instinctively (but possibly doesn’t believe) that mistakes in grammar are much less serious than mistakes in words. Which mistake is ‘worse’: ‘Your husband look great!’, or, ‘Your husband looks gross!’?
Nonetheless, grammar is an integral part of communicative competence, and an inadequate grasp will often leave learners stranded in their attempts to communicate. With communicative competence as the overall aim of the course, teaching grammar has a fundamental role in SyM. Learning major grammatical structures is set as a prime general objective of the course and more specific grammatical accuracy is a constant aim and as such, the presentation of ‘correct’ target language and correction of mistakes are among the teacher’s priorities in the classroom.
Learners approach learning a language with a range of preconceptions, worries and beliefs about grammar. Some may hate its very mention and switch off the moment they hear something like ‘preposition’, ‘article’ or ‘past tense’. Others are convinced that a clear and complete knowledge of a set of abstract rules, together with the specialised terminology, are indispensable. Many people are in awe of ‘grammar’ even if they know or remember very little about it. It’s also true that many learners arrive in the classroom with their heads full of wrong or half-remembered ‘rules’ that often cause a real obstacle to learning."

"Just as words are always presented in context, new grammar is presented in easy-to-grasp contexts and is usually contrasted with existing related structures or notions in order to allow learners further opportunities to recognise and understand when and how to use it.
Grammar, like vocabulary, is not mastered as it is met, but is incorporated into the learner’s own English over time. Whereas memorising vocabulary can be, in many cases, a relatively straightforward process, the learning of grammar is far more unpredictable.
Although many learners memorise rules or memorise examples, ‘grammar’ is not memorisable in the same way that words (‘blue’, ‘book’, ‘big’) or lexical chunks (‘by the way’, ‘at the moment’, ‘knife and fork’) can be, even though memorised chunks can be useful indicators or clues as to how underlying grammar works, (‘I don’t know’, ‘I’ll see you later’, ‘How do you say?’)‘.
Grammar is usually less translatable than ‘words’. While it’s possible for learners to find a roughly direct translation in their own language for words like ‘shoe’, ‘write’, ‘tomorrow’ or ‘slowly’, or, less directly, for chunks (which is often more useful) ‘strong wind’, ‘hang on a moment’ or ‘have you got a light?’, learners who look for equivalents in their own grammar may make wrong assumptions."

"SyM adopts a mixed approach when dealing with grammar and structures. While many structures are learnt implicitly through frequent contextualised use, other grammatical features are presented explicitly, in terms of ‘guidelines’ (‘we usually say’), or where applicable, ‘rules’ (‘we have to say this when ……’)."
"Some learners may benefit from grammatical instruction but all learners benefit from regular exposure and use. Whenever grammar is taught explicitly, the syllabus is designed to place new grammar in a rich learning-opportunity environment. Preceding material may anticipate the need or usefulness of new grammar and, since 'words’ more than ‘grammar’ make language interesting to learners, the following sections that present new vocabulary will provide plenty of scope for relevant practice.

thoughts on authenticity

2008-12-24T11:28:00.002+01:00

taken from "SpeakYourMind: an introduction and practical teaching guide."

"CLT has appropriated the good words. The word ‘communicative’ itself is a good example; one implication somehow being that any other method either doesn’t aim to, or fails to, teach people how to communicate. ‘Authentic’ is another powerfully persuasive word. It is another ‘good’ word. If you go to a Moroccan restaurant you’d expect ‘authentic’ Moroccan food and if you spend a lot of money on an antique chair you want to be sure it is ‘authentic’. In our own experience of the world, if something is not ‘authentic’ it is ‘fake’ or ‘pretend’, in other words ‘bad’.
The notion of ‘authenticity’ in EFL has gained a considerable and enthusiastic following. The goals of many CLT teachers are to teach ‘authentic’ language, to foster ‘authentic’ relationships and, in lessons and replicate ‘authentic’ situations.
This all sounds reassuringly good: let’s face it who would want to learn or teach ‘unauthentic’ language? But there are objections.
Firstly, the value of authenticity is in proportion to its availability. You can’t find authentic Moroccan cooking on every street corner (outside Morocco) and authentic antique chairs are hard to find and are set to become harder to find as time passes. Language is different: you don’t need to be a trained cook or a long-dead craftsman to produce it. All of us produce and are exposed to authentic language in authentic situations almost constantly. ‘Authentic language’ is not a rare commodity and we are all experienced experts in the authentic communication field.
There was a recent thread on an internet ESL forum by a teacher who was asking for help and advice: he was having trouble finding useful samples of ‘authentic language’ that he could use in classes at beginner and elementary levels. He could find samples of authentic language that contained elementary structures but in term of lexis and/or style were too inaccessible to low-level learners. What could he do? The reasoning behind this search was that the materials and texts used in published course-books are not ‘authentic’: it all is specially written for a specific teaching situation. Being ‘unauthentic’ they lose their value and their use in teaching is therefore illegitimate."

some thoughts on 'reality' in the classroom.

2008-12-24T11:08:00.003+01:00

"The extent to which L1 acquisition resembles and differs from L2 acquisition is not wholly understood. One obvious difference is that when we learn a foreign language we already have another language to refer back to and make comparisons with – something that is inevitable and which can be both helpful (when this heightens awareness of language or triggers ‘ring bells’, especially in recalling lexis) and distracting (when this leads to word-for-word translation, especially with grammar).
One other fundamental difference is clear: for most people (the ones that interest us), the fact of learning a second language is a conscious decision and effort, and the process of learning is conscious as well as unconscious. Students do not need to be immersed in a ‘real English world’ for effective learning to occur. Learners know they are in an "artificial" environment once they enter the classroom and they often have expectations about how learning should take place, but although they will normally prefer to learn language that they really need and prefer to learn language in a way that they will really use, they are prepared for and equipped to deal with the strategies (and constraints) they encounter in a real classroom environment."

"No matter how ‘natural’ lessons are in terms of recreating the conditions and processes where acquisition occurs, there is always a filter –and however much what happens in the classroom can resemble ‘real’ communication it remains essentially pseudo-communication. Would that group of people meet through spontaneous and free choice? Would they really to choose to talk about this rather than that? Would they defer to the person who happens to be the teacher? Would they even speak in English?"

teacher

2008-10-15T11:57:00.004+02:00

It's back to school and/or back to work. For many schools that means a new intake of teachers and the trials and the pleasures that involves. Here at our school we ran a training course for new (and hopeful) staff and what an experience that turned out to be. I think (and hope) I learned a couple of important lessons. Seeing new teachers' response to the method on these courses is always enlightening. Most have already observed lessons as part of the selection process and have read introductory material on the methodology and approve of what they have seen. However, learning to work with it comes, to some, as an unexpected effort; like with many things, it looks easy when you see it being done well but that 'ease' is the result of experience, intuition and attention.
On this training course were two teachers (from a total of five) who came from a relatively long backround in TEFL (the others all had between six months and two years experience) and who both seemed keen to work with a method that was new to them (all credit to them). What soon transpired was the difficulty they had working in lessons where there is a tight focus on language and learning, and where any issues that emerge need to be faced and addressed. They were both happier in the kind of classroom environment they were used to: a kind of self-created space which allowed them to move in any direction that seemed to lead towards least 'trouble'. In our classroom practice sessions, 'trouble' emerged most evidently in the awkwardness there was with dealing with some areas of grammar. Teachers don't need to be 'authorities' on grammar but they do need to know more than the people they are likely to teach: when this is not the case the ice they tread on is horribly thin and I saw it break. I was frankly appalled - and the trainee in this case saw so (and dropped out the following day). Both teachers showed remarkably little awareness of 'language accessibility' - how to make yourself understood to learners at different levels, and they seemed irritated when this aspect of classroom teaching was mentioned (possibly for the first time in their teaching careers).
What amazed me was that these teachers had been teaching for years. I can just think that they had become 'teachers' simply because that is what they had been called for so long. In some schools the role of teacher seems to be virtually 'sacred'; teachers expect autonomy and school owners and students alike need to take it on trust that their much vaunted 'creativity' will see things through to a satisfactory conclusion. These two teachers were used to working in a vacuum with no objective and observable standards. Pleasant manner and good intentions are enough. We were not asking them simply to 'conform to the method' thoughtlessly, we were asking them to apply their skills, knowledge and experience within the framework that the course provides. The training course was no leisurely stroll I admit, and when push came to shove, they simply didn't have the knowledge or the skills - and they didn't like that being touched on either. I hope the students of the respectable school that one of these trainees is now working for don't press too hard on 'troublesome' language issues (like conditionals or the present perfect).

Reading through teaching forums the question 'what is a 'teacher' in TEFL?' occasionally crops up. Any contributions?

ome

Easy

2008-05-30T16:20:00.003+02:00

I was at a miserably attended conference a short while ago on the mind-shattering theme "Why foreign languages are important." This was taking place in the most prosperous region of Italy, where international links are possibly at their strongest; not in a village in the tundra a century ago. The mainly teenage audience were barely stifling their yawns (they'd been forced to be there, I think) - it was something that didn't really seem to relate to them directly.

The speaker pointed out the huge advantages there would be in their future working lives, as well as their personal lives, if they were to spend six months or so in a foreign country once they graduate from High School. They would make genuine improvement in their knowledge of a foreign language (the speaker was dealing specifically with English) and they would make the kind of friendships that would broaden their horizons and deepen their understanding of 'life'.
At the end of this, an older woman (I suspect a teacher) stood up and made the point: if after 10 years of studying English at school they know next to nothing, how are they expected to even survive abroad? What kind of job could they get and what kind of social contacts could they make? You need at least a reasonable base to launch from - a base they didn't have.
"What's the solution?" she asked. Private language schools are too expensive for most families and the cheap courses organised by the town council or other organisations ivariably turned out to be a waste of time. 'Ah', said the speaker, and went on to say that the trouble was that schoolkids these days are simply not prepared to make the effort. In his day, (possibly twenty-five years ago?) he and his friends would spend hours listening to their favourite rock bands, writing down lyrics and working away with dictionaries until they made some sense of things. It was hard work but so what? Was there any alternative? And it was all so worthwhile too.
Is it, then, that these teenagers listening to this just don't care enough about learning a language? Is it that they would like to learn as long as it didn't require any extra effort and time? Is it maybe that after years of tedious and pointless English lessons they had come to the conclusion that either English was too difficult or that they simply weren't cut out for learning?
Blimey!

does the world need beer goggles?

2008-05-09T19:14:00.003+02:00

We recently got a mail from Cambridge University Press presenting their latest publications, including Face2Face. As proof of what an up-to-date and relevant course this is, they show a sample of text in which the word 'beer-goggles' is introduced.
There are definitely places and times for entertaining little insights into 'real english' but why choose 'beer-goggles' to represent a course? I was a bit bemused by this: who are Cambridge University Press trying to impress? Is it like a when you're a kid and your dad puts 'pop music' on the radio to show what a trendy chap he is?
Maybe they were trying to lend a hand to the pub trade which is a bit in the doldrums by attracting to Britain lots of youths who are unable to drink enough beer in their own countries.
Or am I being a fuddy-duddy by thinking that those students who do need to know 'beer-goggles' will probably find out for themselves.

miracles

2008-02-29T20:56:00.001+01:00

I bumped into an old acquaintance in Verona the other day and we started talking about English - suprise, surprise.
It turns out that she's now a journalist and she was telling me that some of her colleagues are in a real state because they are due to go to China to cover the Olympic Games and they can't speak English! How will they cope?
Since Italy was never even a candidate for the 2008 Olympics, the fact that a foreign language would be useful should come as no big surprise but nonetheless, less than four months before the event, here they are fretting and possible making plans for a 'crash course'. Of course, even if they do get round to doing a course they will never learn as much as they want, and dissatisfied with their meagre results, will give up rather than carry on only to re-live the same scene in four years' time: when the Olympics are being held in London.
I know the British are not exactly champions of language learning, so I'm aware this could sound like it's coming from the wrong pulpit, but why do so many people still seem to regard learning a language (primarily we're talking about English here) as an optional extra rather than the essential business?
Some (not few) intelligent adults seem appalled by the idea that learning English up to a decent level will take them years of part-time study. They need it in weeks!! And this despite the fact that as school-kids they learnt next to nothing in eight or ten years of English study.
Maybe it's because they see learning as drudgery and schools as unreliable.
They do have apoint there - and that is what we at SyM really set out to disprove.

Can learning be fun? Yes, but remember that it won't be sheer pleasure every single minute.
Can learning be effective? Yes, learning and improvement will surely come as a result of commitment.
Can learning be fast? Yes - but not as fast as lot of unrealistically hope for. Is seventy or a hundred hours a lot to reach a level that will get you by in most 'travel' contexts and be able to get to know people a bit? I certainly don't think so.
Can a school be fair and professional? Yes - and I modestly (or proudly) place ours among the many that are (it's a serious shame the market gets such a bad name as a result of unprofessional or unscrupulous operators).
Iain McInally 1 March 2008

most of the verona staff

2008-01-24T19:13:00.000+01:00

2008-01-24T17:41:00.000+01:00

The only blogs I've really dealt with so far have been of the Joe variety, so this is going to be a new and wonderful adventure for all (both?) of us.

For the sake of simplicity I will start with the day before yesterday and our latest staff training encounter. These are regular four-weekly occasions and, to everyone's credit, are a very enjoyable and productive part of our working schedule.
What were the themes? It was a back-to-basics talk: are we meeting our students expectations, not in terms of providing rewarding and enjoyable 'lessons', but in terms of ensuring a 'course' that delivers the hoped-for goods?
Primarily: are we maybe conducting lessons at a pace which we as teachers find congenial but which might not match the potential (or preference) of learners whose priority could be to get as much as possible from the investement they've put into this six or eight months? Do we want our students to be thinking 'well that was very good but I think I should have learnt more'? Of course we don't.
Clearly this is a many-sided and many-shaded theme and there was no attempt to find 'the answer', other than to perhaps shake up our thoughts a wee bit and check if our priorities are in tune with our students' each time we walk into a classroom.
We have already agreed to discuss with each class what they preceive as 'progress' or 'improvement'. Is it simply 'quantity' i.e. to learn as many words as possible? Is it increased accuracy which they can measure in terms of making fewer and fewer mistakes? Or does it mean the growing sense of feeling 'at ease' in speaking English? I'm looking forward to hearing what teachers report back from these talks.
This is not what is usually meant by the misleadingly enticing title 'learner-centred teaching' but it is, in practical terms, largely what I see it as. But more of this at a future point.

the books and some Christmas cheer

2008-01-17T11:33:00.000+01:00

SyM on Forums

2008-01-17T11:12:00.000+01:00

some interesting discussion on http://www.antimoon.com/forum/f1.htm under the subject of "what do you think about the Callan method?"

1st post

2008-01-17T09:46:00.000+01:00

SpeakYourMind - what is it? Who is it? Where is it? Why is it?????

All this and more, coming soon!