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Back in the classroom
In this post, Stephen reflects on returning to the classroom after a substantial break. What did he learnt from the experience?
Returning to regular full-time EFL teaching after an extended hiatus unsurprisingly threw up a few questions. Chief among them was the question of whether my being in the classroom could make a positive difference for the students. That, after all, had always been my barometer of good teaching. In other words, were my setups, interventions and support directed towards helping learners actually learn (or even, perhaps just as importantly, learn how to learn). Among my concerns were things like activities, materials, resources and attitudes towards collaborative tasks in the post(ish)-Covid landscape.
To help get a sense of what was going on, I decided to keep a journal of sorts, focusing on things that I had either forgotten about after a year out of the classroom or that the break had given me a better opportunity to appreciate. Keeping a journal has rightly been seen as a key aspect of reflective teaching (Richards 1991; Foord 2009). After a month of regular teaching, these were the three key takeaways from my journal.
Be clear, be flexible, be open
From listening to feedback, it quickly became clear that students appreciate knowing what the point of the lesson is. The level of detail is not always important. Some learners just like to know if the lesson is mainly going to focus on listening skills (as opposed to, say, writing), while others like to know the lexical or grammatical fields that will be explored. Not everyone gets it when things like this are kept subtle or even undeclared in order to be discussed later.At the same time, however, you have to be honest with yourself and the learners. There’s no point in working through a plan – whether a formal document or a checklist in your head – that obviously isn’t paying off or ending an activity abruptly just when it was generating both interest and language. For example, if the time limit assigned for a discussion activity was five minutes, but the learners are still on-task and on-topic, extend it. Likewise, if only a minute has passed and silence fills the classroom, feel confident about exploring why with the learners. Perhaps the instructions were unclear? Maybe they were not motivated by the theme? Either way, ignoring the fact that things haven’t gone to plan is unlikely to be the best step forward. I’ve found that having both an ‘in’ and an ‘out’ to a task, a way of extending or shortening it as needed, can be really helpful.
Negotiate with learners
If you are in the fortunate position to have some degree of autonomy, no matter how small, over the materials, content or aims of your lessons, it pays off to involve the learners in the decision-making process. The reading text in their coursebook may inspire or cause eyes to roll just as much as the approach to completing the exercise may make them confident or uncomfortable. I’ve found that presenting learners with options such as “Read this text, or, if it doesn’t appeal, try one of these instead,” and offering links to online alternatives or other books can help learners feel like they are active participants in the classroom rather than passive recipients. Similarly, small things like suggesting that they work in pairs to complete an exercise but can do it solo if they prefer can foster a sense of ownership over the work taking place.Build in regular reviews
Spaced repetition is one of the reasons that apps like Duolingo prove so popular and, whisper it, successful in helping people acquire rudimentary aspects of a language. You might be lucky and be teaching on a well-designed course that has recap or review sessions prescribed. However, in many of the schools I have worked in around the world, there always seems to be a desperate desire to move on relentlessly, covering as much language as possible.On more than one occasion since returning to the classroom, however, I’ve had students acknowledge and show their appreciation for the time and space to explore or ask about previously studied language. It is, of course, one of the great fallacies of our profession that learners can be exposed to a language point and simply do a few exercises (not forgetting that all-important ‘freer practice’ that CELTA-trainees always run out of time for!) to tick off another verb tense or other Grammar McNugget (Thornbury 2006, page numbers). It is also easy for teachers on General English courses to simply dismiss revision as something the learners need to do in their own time.
Instead, precious classroom time can and should be devoted to recall and re-application of language previously studied. This can take many forms, such as learners creating their own quizzes for their classmates or the teacher presenting error-filled versions of a text containing the language from last week’s lesson. And, if like our school, your institution runs on a rolling intake, this need not be an insurmountable hurdle. Having ‘old’ students teach a previous lesson’s lexis to their ‘new’ classmates can make for a challenging and learner-centred stage of any lesson.
Conclusion
While all the above were part of my teaching repertoire prior to taking a sideways move into other areas of ELT, it has become very clear since my return that they are perhaps more valuable components of good teaching than for which I had previously given them credit. Of course, the need to have the fundamentals of knowing your subject – such as researching grammar points and lexical use prior to lessons – as well as having a range of motivating activities ready to use cannot be overlooked. Nonetheless, the recurring thread that runs through the three points raised above is that we need to take our learners and their classroom experiences as central to how we think about our classes and courses. It’s not the case that teachers that don’t do these things are somehow neglecting their learners, but rather that we can all do with taking stock from time to time in order to consider how we are going about achieving this as supportive teachers.References
Foord, D. (2009) The Developing Teacher (Delta Publishing).
Richards, J.C. (1991) Towards Reflective Teaching. The Teacher Trainer, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 4-8.
Thornbury, S. (2006) An A-Z of ELT (Macmillan). -
What I learnt from doing a CELTA as an experienced teacher
We are back!
In this guest post, Calum Craig reflects on his experience of doing a CELTA, not as his first step into EFL, but as someone already with teaching experience – as well as wide knowledge of several languages.
I started in TEFL in the way that I suspect many do: trying to put off the onerous decision of what to do with my life after university by living in another country for a year or two. TEFL seemed like a reasonable way to fund that lifestyle, and as luck would have it, I turned out to both enjoy it and be a reasonable teacher. However, before I could discover that, I needed a piece of paper I could show to prospective employers to assure them that I had acquired the basic notions of the profession.
When looking for a course, the main consideration was price. I don’t quite remember now, but the name “CELTA” must have come up at some point in my research, but at around £1000, it probably barely registered as a possibility. I had no idea of the industry, and the weight that the qualification carries. Had I known, I would probably have opted for the CELTA as my initiation into TEFL. Instead, I went with a considerably cheaper option that involved three sweaty days in a Jury’s Inn in Glasgow, and months of picking away at online coursework. I ended up with a piece of paper, but what followed was six months of demoralising, fruitless job-hunting. In hindsight, I clearly had the wrong piece of paper.
Eventually, I was offered a job in Spain, and I packed my bags. My first class was terrifying, of course, but I quickly became accustomed to the job, and no class since has ever been as terrifying. The wealth of experience I acquired there and in my subsequent jobs in Portugal and the UK have been invaluable, and the teachers I have met along the way have all made me a much better teacher. I began to feel more at home in the industry, learning about its intricacies, conventions, jargon, and politics, yet I never quite felt that I totally belonged. The question of my TEFL qualification followed me to every job interview, and it usually required some eloquent explaining and proof of my experience and ability to land a position. The industry certainly expects a CELTA, and I never quite understood why.
This year, thanks to the British Council, my luck with jobs ran out, and I was delivered an ultimatum: either I could become CELTA qualified, or it would not be possible to continue working at the language school where I’m currently teaching. Given my nine years of experience and proven ability, the idea of going straight to the postgraduate-level DELTA was floated, but I opted for the more achievable, and more affordable, CELTA (at least for now).
Looking at the course description, it seemed like a walk in the park – this was, after all, a course designed to serve as an introduction to TEFL, and I’d been doing all these things for years. While it can be an initiation to teaching English, what I’ve found is that it is of huge value to anyone in the industry, regardless of their years of service.
The course was offered wholly online, through Zoom, which brings its own unique host of potential obstacles to teaching, but also a surprising share of upsides. Having experience with Zoom proved to be an advantage, but there was still no way to account for connectivity issues, students’ family members in the background, and even some students starting the lesson from their car. Despite this rather modern environment, with which we’ve all become intimately familiar over the last few years, the teaching on the course felt relevant to TEFL no matter the setting. The course teaches the basic principles of language teaching, to people who perhaps have never considered the grammar of their own language. There were, however, some parts which were not taught due to the online nature of the course – board usage was notably absent, although referred to in the literature, as was classroom management.
The course forced me to re-evaluate my own practices in the classroom, and to break down and analyse stages of teaching that I have been (more or less) successfully carrying out for years. Content feedback, emergent language feedback, breaking vocabulary down into Meaning-Form-Pronunciation and presenting it as such: these were all concepts I was familiar with, but didn’t necessarily have a name for. Learning about the different lesson frameworks, and the idea of giving tasks with real-world context, have already informed my day-to-day teaching and made lesson planning quicker. Elicitation and integrated feedback are skills which can only be developed through years of practice, and this was certainly an advantage I had on this course. But already I can see that my ability to come up with and use concept checking questions improved vastly over the duration of the course, by dint of being forced to think about them.
I was far from the only experienced teacher on my CELTA course – there were some with far longer records than me – yet we all benefited from it. It seems to be a good idea for teachers to take this course for the same reason we recommend that students with an ostensibly advanced level take English lessons: correcting fossilised bad habits, targeting areas of weakness, and the simple fact that there’s always something new to learn.
The cost of the CELTA, and ignorance of its significance, was probably the main factor that put me off doing it when I first wanted to become an EFL teacher, my logic being: “Why spend a grand on this when I don’t even think I’ll be doing this job for more than a couple of years?” Here I am, nine years later, with a tangible sense of improvement, a newfound feeling of belonging, enjoying the job more than ever.
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EFL journaling extracts (1)
In previous posts on the blog we’ve recommended that teachers reflect on their teaching through note keeping and journaling. We believe that it can be both a cathartic experience but also help track our evolution as a teacher. As Jen Tan commented in her guest blog, ‘reflections give us tangible evidence of how we have grown’. Getting into the habit of journaling on a regular basis is not that easy but many find it profitable. In his Learning Teaching Jim Scrivener recommends that teachers regularly carry out ‘Lesson self-assessment’. His book (pp397-388) includes a list of useful prompts such as:
Recall one moment in the lesson when you had a clear decision to make between one option and another. What were the options you chose and rejected? Which part of the lesson involved the students most completely? If you taught the lesson again, what would you do differently?
Often it’s the lessons which are out of the ordinary which we recall when reflecting back. Journaling on a regular basis removes the ‘drama’ from the situation. It reminds us that most lessons are neither disasters or unalloyed triumphs. Even uneventful lessons will teach us something. On the basis that we should practice what we preach, here are some excerpts from some recent EFL journaling.
A return to face to face teaching (September 2020).
Teaching in the era of social distancing, face coverings etc definitely has a different feel but it has been nice to get away from Zoom. Teaching online worked better than I expected but good, reliable tech is required. I’ve certainly felt a degree of rustiness with my teaching since returning to the classroom. It’s also been a bit of a challenge to cope with the fluid situation – with classes chopping and changing far more than would normally be the case. Here are some extracts from my EFL journal over the first couple of weeks back in class. It’s only been lightly edited. I’ve removed some of the more egregious typos and some of the references to to students’ names and identities.
Photo by Daria Shevtsova on Unsplash Friday feeling
Why do students come for their only lesson of the week on Friday afternoon? Basically it’s the fag end of the week with energy levels dropping and most people looking keenly ahead to the weekend.
As too often, the final lesson of the week wasn’t the best. It wasn’t helped by some of my Mediterranean students mentioning that they struggled to understand their Chinese classmate. The clear implication being that he had a particular issue with his pronunciation.. The truth is that they all have significant issues with their pronunciation (one of my students has recently started her new ‘yob’). Anyway, it created a slight atmosphere in the class. I feel that I should have addressed this with my students- instead I rather let it pass.
It was a pity to end the week on a slight low note as my morning class had been a joy with students who brought a lot of energy to the class – and a genuine interest in their classmates. Teaching such students is a true pleasure. But I suppose the real test (as a teacher) is engendering the same sort of positivity with students less ‘full of beans’.
Pair problems
It was probably a week in which my teaching was little bit inconsistent. I was relying too much on having naturally engaged students. I’m also struggling a bit to do pair work effectively in the new environment in which students can’t move around the classroom and work with different partners. It’s difficult to avoid then being stuck with the same partners throughout the lesson. Given that I often like students to repeat a particular task (after having had some language input), I’ll have to rethink things a bit it.
I had a nice moment in one of my classes when one of my students asked whether we could do an activity as a whole class, rather than in pairs. In my early days in teaching I might have considered this something of an affront. These days, I generally find that allowing students some say in how we carry out activities really helps to build rapport and improve the level of engagement- the students are not passive in the class.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash Authentic but..
One of the great things about ELT is the way you can draw energy from your class. I was feeling rotten this morning but was soon uplifted by my students.
However, that energy didn’t quite last through the 2 hours of my 2nd lesson. One of my students expressed scepticism about the phrase ‘up to‘, as in ‘what have you been up to?/ what are you up to? She said ‘if I know the question what are you doing?, why do I need to know this- what’s the point?’. Quite a thought provoking question and it was a pity that I was feeling under the weather. My basic answer to her was that it was about receptive skills- that she wouldn’t want to feel lost if someone asked her this question.
Of course, this raises the question of which students such language is useful to. For those who will use English as a Lingua Franca and will only really converse in English with other non-native speakers, the usefulness is very much limited. Indeed, it may lead to more confusion- people she speaks to may well find the question confusing. On the other hand, those intending to live in an English speaking country would find such a phrase very useful; they would slowly realise that it’s very common. What are you up to? / What have you been up to? is I believe a piece of high frequency, authentic English
But it’s good to have students with this sort of engaged and critical mind, not just passively accepting what they are being taught. For example, the student also had some issues with present perfect- and the fact that it can be used to describe things in the past. As she put it, it ‘surely the past is the past not the present’. It’s good to have such engaged students- if not when you’re feeling under the weather and your explanations suffer from that!
Were we not born to wander?
A nice moment in my class today when the word ‘wander’ cropped up. I had said that I might go for a wander after lunch. One of my students recognised the word from her phone case (which had W. B. Yeats’s quote on it) – which she had had for over 3 years. Only at that point did she discover what it actually meant! It’s nice when students suddenly realise what things mean. In the same lesson the verb bake appeared in one of the activities. One of the students had seen the word bakery on the shop front and made the connection. It’s nice to see such attentiveness. When students make these connections it also builds their confidence as they see concrete of them expanding their vocabulary and language awareness.
Conclusions
In his essay ‘Towards Reflective Teaching’, Jack C. Richards relates that journaling has become ‘more widely acknowledged as a valuable tool for developing critical reflection’. This is something I want to develop through my journaling. I want to see what patterns emerge and what particular issues might need addressing. In time I’d like to become more analytical in my journaling, not simply reflective.
- Have you recently returned to face to face teaching? -how’s it going?
- Have you been doing any EFL journaling recently?
- Does journaling tend to lead us to emphasising the negative?
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How to use board games for ELT (part 1)
Games are a common feature in ELT classrooms. They are often an engaging way to present and practise new language. There are a number of excellent books of EFL games which will be found, well-thumbed, in most staff rooms. Classics include Grammar Games by Mario Rinvolucri and Games for Grammar Practice by Maria Lucia Zaorob and Elizabeth Chin. The internet is awash with pages devoted to EFL games – some of the games are great, some deeply ordinary.
In addition there are a number of board games which have been designed specifically with the ELT in mind – games such as Absolutely English.
Some teachers have taken this a bit further and found ways of using pre-existing games in the classroom – discovering what ELT potential there is in board games. Board games have seen something of a renaissance in recent years. Board game cafes have sprung up in many cities in recent years. The renaissance is in part due to more interesting and sophisticated games being created and perhaps also a general desire to switch off from our screens and devices. The tactile quality of board games is a significant part of their appeal.
I’ve attempted to use board games in class with mixed results. I generally find that with games designed for proficient and native speakers of English there is a mismatch. Games designed for children may have the right level of English but are unsuitable as games – they are childish. When I have used games, it tends to be emergent language which dominates – I’ve found it difficult to teach a particular language point through such games.
Learning from others
Hence, I was keen to hear how other teachers make use of board games in class. How did they use board games for ELT?
In this interview, Tom Nelson discusses his extensive use of board games in the classroom, what ELT potential they have and some of the difficulties he has faced in using them.
Can you say a little bit about your background and how you got into ELT?
Whilst travelling around Europe volunteering on farms and festivals a fellow volunteer from France told me I should teach English. According to him I had a gift for communicating with non-native English speakers and, being suggestible, I followed his advice. When I settled down in Edinburgh I enrolled on a CELTA course and began teaching straight after that.
What was your first experience of using games in the classroom- can you recall which games you started with? Were they games specifically designed for ELT or games did you adapt them for the classroom?
My first experiences with games were usually negative. Working from text books such as Inside Out I would be caught off guard by a game-like activity in the corner of the page. Games that had half a page of rules attached to it in the teacher’s resource book. Even when I had worked out the rules I found the activities difficult to convey to the class, such was the “rules grit” involved. Not completely understanding their purpose, the games often fell flat or I skipped them completely.
The other type of game would be something like snakes and ladders*. Here, a grammar point would be wrapped in the guise of a ‘fun’ activity. However, it led to students shuffling plastic counters round a piece of paper for half an hour or so.
There were good moments too though. Folk games such as “Stop the Bus” were passed around from teacher to teacher as a great way to ‘kill time’ at the end of a lesson and they often got a good reaction and reinforced a smattering of vocabulary.
Photo by Ryan Wallace on Unsplash You began your ELT career teaching teenagers. Did you use many games with them? Or, was it when you moved to teaching adults that you developed your use of board games?
I wish I could go back to those days of teaching teenagers and infuse my lessons with games. Sadly I hadn’t found board games at that point. The clues were there though, for example one evening I observed a group leader sitting in a circle with a dozen enraptured teens. They were talking in French, involved in something mysterious which brought out a fluid stream of discussion amongst all of them.
They listened attentively as one member spoke their piece and then the debate would erupt again. I found out afterwards that they were playing a game called Loup Garou, known in the UK as Werewolf. You need to listen to each other and state your case because there are werewolves killing off villagers. Only through interrogation and teamwork you can save yourself and each other. Meanwhile the werewolf players have to deceive the village by throwing suspicion as far away from themselves as possible.
The level of engagement was something that I could only dream of in my lessons up to that point. I had used role-plays to good effect in lessons before. But this was role-playing as if your life depended on it, which inside the magic circle that the game created for those students, it really did.
What type of games do you feel were most successful in your classes? What are the best games for ELT?
For me, the most important attribute of a game is that it is relevant to the student’s learning and offers them a shortcut to better English. I play Unusual Suspects in class because I know no better way of drilling the 3rd person singular and getting it to stick. If the class can see the point underlying the game then there will be less resistance to it and the game can work its effect on the class. There needs to be a communicative element to the game that is compelling to the group.
A side point I’d like to make here is that one big advantage that most modern board games have over your average ELT activity is they are designed to appeal to a mass-market audience. A stunning game such as Mysterium, where we are psychics unravelling a murder mystery set in a creepy old mansion would be an example. This entices students far more than the photocopied verb table ever could. Just turning over the pieces of this game in your hand and looking at the cards can unlock a childlike delight in people.
What reactions did you get from students?
The suggestion of playing a game in class time can cause a mixture of emotions to arise in students. This depends on their past experiences and how much they enjoy competition, role play etc. There are very valid reasons for disliking games and playing games in general. However, modern board games have moved a million miles on from Monopoly and the like. To their credit I never had a student flat out refuse to at least try the game.
I guess that’s where being the teacher comes in handy. Once you’ve reached the stage of presenting a game to the group the real work begins. The biggest barrier to entry is understanding the rules, which can seem arbitrary and convoluted if handled badly. To counter this I have found that I needed to be totally clear and confident when describing a game. I ran an after school games group to hone new material and practice my technique. As a rule of thumb, a first game with a group should be simple. Party games are great for this, or an ice breaker with a gamey twist.
What about academic management- did you get any resistance from them regarding your use of games in the classroom?
I was fortunate in the school where I taught for the last four years of my teaching career in that they valued my approach as a different way to engage the students. Having said that, there was the odd comment and perhaps a sense among some other teachers that games are essentially trivial things. There’s an element of truth to that of course.
However, it’s also increasingly understood that games can be highly effective learning tools. The military will play a war game to model a possible conflict. The New Yorker modelled the recent U.S election in a game to see ahead of time what might happen. We model situations in class all the time and to my mind, games are the most effective way of modelling much of human interaction. By creating an environment of play and focusing attention with specific rules, games are life in miniature.
Photo by Sophie Elvis on Unsplash What language did you attempt to teach through games?
To answer this question I’d like to take one game as an example. Timeline is a game where you are trying to put moments of history in sequential order. The game becomes progressively difficult as more points are added to the timeline. It is a rich mix of functional language of assertions, opinions and guesses. Disagreements occur often. Debates ensue and then when you flip the card to find out if you were right or wrong congratulations or commiserations are offered. This game encapsulates the best of communication: to dispute, to persuade, to concede, to learn from each other.
Putting up target phrases before the game begins in these areas can help tie the game to something concrete that the group will learn to use. I have also used it to examine the passive tense or to practise comparative language. This game creates opportunities for the teacher (or perhaps facilitator is a better term) to guide in whichever direction they feel is most beneficial. So in short, I’m confident games can teach all aspects of language.
Did you focus on a particular, defined target language in such lessons? – or was emergent language what you focused on?
The first couple of times I put a game in front of a class I want to see what language emerges naturally. Reflecting on this I come up with potential avenues of learning to look at. The ultimate goal is to know all the paths leading from the game that will upgrade and widen the students’ language. Rate It is a game where students give a rating out of ten to something in secret. They then try to guess what the total rating of the group will be i.e. If there are 5 players the total will be out of 50. Having played this game a lot I know there to be a lot of discussion around preferences.
Maybe the question here is why make this activity a game? Do we really need the added complication of the game’s mechanism? Well we don’t, but for me it elevates the activity. The game structure gives the activity focus and those moments of drama when the ratings are revealed. Students can compare each other’s perceptive abilities and a weak language student can trump a strong one by winning the game. There’s one more delicious aspect that I love; the student also has a fair chance of beating the teacher, a dynamic that can be played with endlessly!
- Do you use board games in class?
- Do you use them to teach particular language points?
- Which board games are the most effective?
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*A definition of what a game is that I like is is that it’s an activity that stimulates interesting decisions. By this definition Snakes and Ladders is not a game as the only interesting decision it offers is whether to play it in the first place. The rest of the activity is controlled by dice. The history of Snakes and Ladders is fascinating though. It was first devised as a learning tool in ancient India. It is still working its moral message magic in classrooms today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_and_ladders
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How to teach an overconfident student
In this blog, Stephen discusses his experience of working with an overconfident student, and suggests four ideas for working with such learners. Leave a comment if you have any other advice to share on working with an overconfident student.
What happened
I had been working with Zhang, an overconfident student who bluffed his way through errors, for a couple of months when it happened. He put his pen down and picked up the little electronic translator gadget (the first iPhone was still a few months away). Typing furiously, he finished his message and then handed the device to me. His Chinese characters had been translated as, My English is good. You told me this. Why can I not understand this text or my colleagues in America? Why does my work always have so many red marks?
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash It prompted one of those long, dark nights of the soul that plagued my early teaching career.
Looking back, it became clear what had gone wrong. Zhang, a suave and gregarious manager in a telecoms company, had convinced himself that his English only needed to be fine-tuned. The reality was that his level was barely pre-intermediate. He simply couldn’t see that his English was nowhere near as good as he thought it was. And I, trying to be a supportive teacher, hadn’t been clear enough in our initial lessons that his English was way short of his own estimation.
What I learned
Don’t be afraid to tell students you cannot understand them
When learners say something unclear during class, we will generally make the effort to interpret what they mean. This is especially common during communicative fluency activities, sometimes reformulating what was said into comprehensible English and then immediately responding. Something like:
Learner: To weekend I go do football.
Teacher: At the weekend you played football. Great! Was it a good game?
Learner: Yes.
In my role as a teacher trainer, I have seen this type of exchange countless times. However, what might start out as well-intentioned support from the teacher can lead to the learner gaining a false sense of their communicative capabilities. Moreover, the overconfident student may be confused as to why the teacher is actually driving at. Likewise, with written work, we might have to decide to let some errors slide. It saves us having to buy a new red pen every time a particular student hands in their essay!
Nevertheless, if they have written something that is so unclear as to cause a breakdown in communication, they need to know this. It will give you a reference for future corrections as well as, hopefully, prevent them making similar errors. And, above all, it prevents them from becoming overconfident in their abilities when you need them to pay attention to their errors.
Of course, we should be supportive with our overconfident students when we tell them they are not communcating clearly enough. The effect of telling someone – often repeatedly – that we cannot understand them is a powerful one. In the right environment, it pushes them to reformulate what they have said or written. It pushes them to the edge of their current linguistic boundaries. In turn, this creates the space for a discussion of where their ability really lies.
It helps if you have a repertoire of phrases that you can deploy in such situations. While I don’t understand you may be clear and to the point, it can get repetitive if you have someone making frequent mistakes!
Instead, try:
- Sorry, you need to say that in a different way. It’s not clear.
- I’m not clear on what you mean.
- I’m afraid I can’t understand that last sentence/bit.
- What do you mean?
- That’s not very clear English. Could you try again?
Make error correction focused, frequent, and consistent
This brings us nicely on to a hugely important part of our teaching: error correction. In every language school I’ve worked in, learners always ask for more of it.
One tip I learned while working at the British Council in Tunisia was to tell learners before an activity what you would be giving them feedback (i.e. error correction) on. For example, tell learners that, during a task in which they are discussing future plans, you will focus on the use of going to and will. This gives you licence to avoid correcting absolutely everything (typical things such as missed third person -s endings, or mix ups with present perfect and past simple).
However, as you monitor their discussions, you can also make a note of mistakes that cause communication breakdown, especially from some of the more dominant learners. A colleague of mine once told me that learner errors are the syllabus! While that may be an extreme position to adopt, it pays off to collect examples of your learners’ errors and build in activities that address these.
Photo by Edouard Dognin on Unsplash For example, if your learners are always having issues with countable and uncountable nouns but these are not language points on your syllabus, it doesn’t hurt to introduce a refresher lesson or activity now and again.
The effect of this is two-fold. It shows the learners that you are listening carefully to what is said (not just listening for the grammar) and, at the same time, you are aware that dominant learners are not necessarily the best!
Overconfident studens tend to dominate classroom discussions and can get frustrated with weaker learners. What they may not realise is that their errors are impeding communication, not the other learners’ abilities! It pays to politely identify these learners’ errors in open class. It serves a dual-purpose: the weaker learners appreciate that you are not just focusing on their mistakes. At the same time, stronger learner, hearing their name in relation to misuse of language, pays attention to what follows.
Having frequent error correction spots throughout a lesson will enable you to draw attention to some of the consistent communication breakdowns, especially if they come from an overconfident student. While I wouldn’t go as far to say as it is imporant to ‘bring them down a peg or two’, noticing, highlighting and improving these errors is the only way that progress can be made.
If you are looking for some error correction inspiration and ideas, Chris’ post on making corrections ‘stick’ is a great starting point.
Provide plenty of input
I think I was always guilty of this in my early years as a teacher. I felt impelled to get learners speaking and writing as quickly as possible. However, just as good conversation only occurs when both participants actually listen to each other, language learning requires noticing to take place.
If your overconfident student feels that they are communicating well, let them listen to or read more competent users (not necessarily native speakers) communicating effectively. Help your learners notice the words, phrases and non-verbal signals that competent users employ to start, maintain and close interactions.
It helps here if you can identify what exactly your learner is overconfident with. If they have phonological issues that they make no attempt to work on, let them hear someone from their own language community speaking to others and being understood.
One of my top ELT sites of all-time, ELLLO, has recordings with speakers communicating clearly from a huge range of countries. Record your learner and ask them to compare the sounds. On the other hand, if your learner frequently makes ‘word salad’ kinds of written sentences, with word order all over the place, show them how a more capable writer would produce the same message. Use this as a model for future work.
You could even go as far as Jamie Keddie’s wonderful activity in which he drew pictures of what his learners utterances actually meant. It provides some hilarious but effective reminders to students that, unless they work to be understood, they run the risk of being dangerously misunderstood. By way of illustration, imagine the picture for the Spanish student who declared, “My car is a s**t.”
Work together to set goals
Sometimes, an overconfident student can end up coming to class expecting to learn advanced grammar and vocabulary. They then get quite demotivated when you are correcting them on basics like plurals, simple past tense and using the verb ‘to be’. Part of this can be carefully managed by conducting a thorough needs analysis at the outset and subsequently revisiting the document and updating.
I recently worked with a band 4 IELTS student who declared himself ready for band 7 material. Eventually, through negotiation and discussion we agreed to focus on his needs, not the level he seemed to think he was at. He took a fair bit of convincing and became frustrated at one point. However, it was only through consistently highlighting communication errors that he agreed to work on the basics that were hindering him. We agreed that he would, for the time being, focus on the simple forms that were causing the confusion.
You could use our needs analysis form to develop some – hopefully realistic! – goals with your own learners.
Photo by Andrew Ridley on Unsplash Conclusion
Overconfident learners are part of the great range of students you will encounter as a teacher. Ensuring that you listen to them, that they listen to you, and that you work methodically and politely to help them understand where they are in their own language learning journey can help to make a potentially tricky learner type more manageable.
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101 Interesting ESL Conversation Topics
Charlie’s recent post about Nick Robinson’s appearance on a podcast got me thinking about how radio has influenced my teaching. In fact, one of my favourite ELT resources is not from a textbook, but my 101 Interesting ESL Conversation Topics, adapted from a list on a late-night radio show.
The Questions We Tend To Ask
If you flick around your radio dial, you’ll often find radio stations that want their listeners to call in and talk on the air about something. Very often, I find these programmes quite dull, as they ask questions that provoke rather uninteresting responses. Things like ‘What’s Your Favourite Biscuit’ are a staple of unimaginative radio presenters up and down the nation. Why anyone would care to listen about a stanger’s biscuit choice is a mystery to me. However, it does have the advantage that almost everyone listening feels able to participate, and so if you want to guarantee that everyone can contribute, perhaps that kind of question makes sense.
Questions in language textbooks are often of this type, like ‘What’s your favourite fruit?’ or ‘Do you ever shop online?’ – everyone has an answer, but who really cares? Ultimately, formulaic questions tend to generate formulaic answers and are unlikely to push your learners outside of their comfort zone. To be clear, I’m not saying these types of questions have no place in a classroom, but we should acknowledge their limitations.
An Alternative Type of Question
However, many years ago I stumbled upon a late-night radio programme that, rather relying on using a few questions that everyone could answer, had 101 conversion topics to choose from! The topics were all a bit quirky and some downright strange, but all of them were interesting. Sure, almost nobody would have an answer to every one of the questions, but with 101 to choose from there would be something you could contribute. Not only would I be interested in sharing a story about one of these topics, I’d be interested in listening to someone else’s, even a stranger’s!
Example Topics
Here are a few from the list, all of which could be good ESL conversation topics. The full list is at the bottom of this page.
- Your unique way of eating something
- I’ve only just realised that……. Am I stupid?
- I don’t know if I am being paranoid but …
- I believe my pet has special powers
- Shop names/road signs/people’s names that make you sing a little song in your head
Note that if you were only given 5 options, you might have none that apply to you – but fear not, when there are 101, you’ll find something that does!
Geoff Lloyd, whose radio show had a list of topics which became the 101 Interesting ESL Topics list. Photo credit: Absolute Radio Using The Topics in a Lesson
I recently did a lesson with my learners to practice active listening (using words like ‘hmm’, ‘OK’, ‘right’ and ‘really’ when listening to others) and gave them the list of topics to choose from. Each student had to choose 2-3 topics from the list of ESL conversation topics to share in small groups.
Some were hesitant at first, but, given some time to look at the list and find something relevant to them, they all got on board. Some of the highlights were:
- What’s your brilliant idea/invention?
- A student shared his story of deciding to combining shower gel and shampoo in the same bottle and ending up with a disgusting looking brown-coloured liquid
- Shop names/road signs/people’s names that make you sing a little song in your head
- One student told us about a street in Madrid that features in a musical, how she sings it to herself every time she sees the street and even gave us a short rendition
- Have you experienced a weird coincidence?
- A student running into a friend from home unexpectedly in a foreign city
We even got into quite sensitive topics that would never have otherwise come up in class
- I know this may not be a fashionable thing to say, but?
- A student shared their story about their transgender friend and, despite considering herself socially liberal, struggling to adapt to the change
Tips for Using the ESL Conversation Topics in your lessons
- Make sure you give your learners sufficient time to read the list and plan what they want to say. I’d suggest letting them make notes (I usually insist on writing a maximum of 5 words so they’re just notes for their memory).
- You could prepare your own answer to a topic and model the activity to your students.
- They’re probably good for strong B1 levels and above, but you could make a simplified version for lower levels.
- Even strong learners might not understand every word of every topic (e.g. quaint, betrayed, fainting). Encourage them not to worry too much and focus on the many they can understand. Learning to deal with authentic material is an important skill to foster.
- 101 questions might be overwhelming, so you may want to cut down to 25 or 50, depending on your students. That means you can keep the rest for another day!
- Think about your lesson aim – this list could be good for freer practice activities for active listening, intonation, narrative tenses, coherence, use of adverbs… the possibilities are (almost!) endless.
- To really promote listening, you could have learners tell each other a story, then later share their original partner’s story with a new partner (more ways to make your lessons more student-centred).
Download the List of 101 ESL Conversation Topics (PDF)
The Full List of 101 ESL Conversation Topics
- Stories about getting stuck
- Has your pet had a second life?
- Do you own something that used to belong to a celebrity?
- Revolting behaviour in public (revolting = disgusting)
- I have managed to turn a whole room against me (I have made everyone in a room dislike me)
- I have embarrassed myself in public
- I have seen a celebrity being told off (told off = told you are doing something wrong)
- What have you found in your food?
- What is the smallest, most innocent thing that has caused you the greatest amount of pain?
- Small cause, huge row (row = argument)
- Tales of extreme laziness
- What the previous owner of your home left behind
- Tales of mistaking one celebrity for another
- Why would you name your child that?
- I’ve been inside a famous person’s house
- The pain you have been through to protect your pride
- Have you visited your parents recently to find they have started doing something odd? (odd = strange)
- Your unique way of eating something
- Shops that are clearly a front for something else (a front = a place that seems legitimate, but really doessomething illegal)
- Does this make me a bad person?
- We went to the zoo/safari park/on an exotic holiday and guess what we saw a monkey do
- I’ve got a question that nobody’s ever been able to answer properly
- The humiliation of rejection – Romantic knock-backs and the lengths I have gone to preserve my dignity
- I’ve got freckles/a birthmark and if you stare hard enough, it looks just like?
- How did that get there: strange unexplained happenings
- I worked in a photo developing lab and guess what I once saw
- My claim to fame / fifteen minutes of fame
- I know this may not be a fashionable thing to say, but?
- I spotted a celebrity today (spotted = saw)
- I lied to my child
- My parents lied to me
- Things are better abroad. e.g. they get to have two birthdays in Poland
- I don’t know if this is true but someone told me something brilliant today
- I was attacked by an animal
- I’ve only just realised that……. Am I stupid?
- Other people’s weird houses
- I’ve been on a quiz show/reality show
- I can’t throw it away, I just can’t
- I told a lie which spiralled out of control
- Shop names/road signs/people’s names that make you sing a little song in your head
- If you like it they will take it away – you’ve found a perfect product then they go and discontinue it
- How I nearly managed to kill myself
- Nonsense I’ve talked at a job interview
- I don’t know if I am being paranoid but …
- Strange/disgusting food combinations that you love
- Weird coincidences
- My teenage love, my teenage love letters/love poetry
- Celebrities I irrationally hate
- I believe my pet has special powers
- My brilliant idea/invention
- My freaky body
- Trade secrets (things that only people that have done a specific job know)
- I’m a teacher and I behaved badly today
- My connection to a famous person
- My local shopkeeper
- My terrible faux pas
- I have formed a friendship with an inanimate object
- I’ve never…… but most people have
- I have special powers
- I know a doctor/nurse with some good casualty stories (casualty = the part of a hospital for accidents andemergencies)
- My own unique conspiracy theory
- I can do something that not many people can do
- I performed surgery/dentistry on myself
- My weird neighbours
- Sleepwalking/sleeptalking stories
- Fainting stories
- Getting things for free/cheating the system
- I’ve worked in a hotel and I can tell you a few things…
- Things that you could only do at your school
- Ways in which you have made your parents ashamed of you in adult life (ashamed = very embarrassed)
- Weird things that freak you out
- Naughty things done on the last day of a job
- I have a great story involving a monk/nun/vicar/rabbi/cleric/other religious leader
- Want to annoy big business (bank managers/call centres etc.) here’s how:
- I once wrote to someone famous and got a personal reply
- Things you’ve caught yourself doing or saying whilst you’re alone (caught yourself = realised that you did)
- Here’s the opening line to my novel/song? It’ll make me a million, I tell you!
- I assumed someone else’s identity
- Quaint and peculiar local shops and their eccentric managers
- I was betrayed by my computer
- What is wrong with people?
- My parents read my teenage diary
- A brilliant daydream you regularly have
- My most unromantic moment/accidentally ruining someone else’s romantic moment
- I’ve worked at a call centre and have spoken to a celebrity
- Words that you are under confident in saying
- Things your pet ate that it really shouldn’t have
- I realised as an adult that my parents are weird
- My unusual hobby
- I fell for a scam (fall for = be deceived by)
- Nobody believes me, but I once saw …… on TV
- My homemade remedies (remedies = cures)
- I’ll probably never start a business, but if I did …
- My school teacher once taught us ….. , but I don’t think it was on the curriculum
- I can’t believe nobody was watching me when…
- I have one YouTube video / tweet / Instagram post with a lot of views.
- My morning routine is a bit unusual
- I can’t go to bed until …
- I’ve seen the movie / TV show ….. more times than is normal
- I can never tell me friends/family that I was the one who …
- Stories about being very shy
Adapted from The Geoff Show, Virgin Radio UK (https://web.archive.org/web/20080616123807/http://www.virginradio.co.uk/djs_shows/shows/geoff/topics.html)
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Connected Speech in English: Examples and Explanations
There are several features of connected speech in English. It’s important for you to understand them as a teacher so you can help your learners understand when listening to fast speech, and perhaps to produce it too. Your learners don’t need to know the technical names for these, but our connected speech examples and rules on how they work should help you be able to teach them effectively!
Want ideas about how to teach pronunciation and connected speech? Check out our blog on How to really teach pronunciation
Consonant-Vowel Linking (Catenation)
When one word finishes with a consonant sound and the next word starts with a vowel sound, they usually link. Here are some typical connected speech examples of catenation:
He’s a good boy
The last sound of he’s is a consonant, (in this case /z/) and the next word a starts with a vowel sound (in this case the weak vowel, /ə/). You could write the sentences as “He za good boy” or “Heza good boy” to highlight this feature.
She looks up to her mum
This time, looks finishes with a consonant sound, /s/, and up starts with a vowel sound, /ʌ/, so they link. Again, you could try writing the sentence as “She loo ksup to…” or ‘She looksup to…” to highlight this.
I’ll have to put it off
Finally, this is a nice example of catenation happening multiple times together. As put ends in a consonant sound and it starts with a vowel sound, they link, but it also links to off for the same reason, resulting in something which sounds like “I’ll have to pu ti toff” or “I’ll have to putitoff”
Note that consonant-vowel linking doesn’t happen in these examples:
It’s your tea! Drink it!
You might expect linking between tea and drink, but the punctuation leads to a pause between them and so they don’t link! (drink and it do though!)
Wednesday is my favourite day
You might expect consonant-vowel linking between Wednesday and is, but be careful! Wednesday finishes with a ‘y’ when written, but the final sound is actually a vowel sound (/eɪ/). However, you can find a different type of linking here – ‘intrusion’.
Read more about teaching catenation and how to teach it on this blog and see a video explanation at BBC Learning English
Vowel-Vowel Linking (Intrusion)
Sometimes, we add extra sounds to make it easier to link between two words, one finishing with a vowel sound and the next one starting with a vowel sound. Notice that some of these can depend on accents and aren’t always universal. Here are some connected speech examples for intrusion.
Intrusive /w/
I saw you in the park. Say this quickly and listen to yourself… it probably sounds very similar, if not identical, to I saw you win the park. That’s because we add an extra /w/ sound to make it easier to pronounce! Say it slowly and notice how the /w/ helps you say it quickly, and how strange it is to avoid it! Try writing it as “I saw youwin the park” to help your learners or use some symbols like this:
Other examples of using a /w/ sound in vowel-vowel linking are
- What do you want to eat (toweat)
- He does it so often (sowoften)
Notice that the first word finishes with a ‘oh’ or ‘oo’ sound (/əʊ/ or /uː/).
Intrusive /j/
We eat pizza. Try saying this slowly and notice how you ‘glide’ between the last sound of we and the first of eat. It sounds a bit like ‘weyeat’. Again, a linking sound is helping us transition between two sounds. Notice that we use the symbol /j/ for the sound normally produced by the letter ‘y’, like the sound at the start of ‘yellow’.
Other examples with a linking /j/ include
- I want to see all the countries in Europe (seeyall)
- I cry every time I watch Titanic (cryevery)
- Can I stay up late tonight (stay-yup)
Notice that the first word ends with a sound like ‘ee’, ‘ay’, ‘ai’ (/iː/, /eɪ/, /aɪ/)
Intrusive /r/
Law and order. How you say this really depends on your accent. Some people with English accents will pronounce it with an ‘r’ sound, like ‘lawran dorder’. Don’t believe me? Have a look at some examples of British speakers saying it on YouTube via this YouGlish link.
Other examples where some speakers may add a linking /r/ include
- I saw him yesterday (sawrim)
- Can I have a tuna and egg sandwich? (tunarand)
Note that there is a related phenomenon, where people with some English accents (especially Received Pronunciation) will add an ‘r’ to a word that they usually don’t pronounce it for connected speech! For example, they would normally not pronounce the final ‘r’ in computer, but add it in when the next word starts with a vowel (the computer is off). In other accents, like American and Scottish, the ‘r’ is always pronounced.
Read more: DialectBlog on intrusive ‘r’, linking and intrusive r at Wikipedia, videos for learners at BBC Learning English (/j/, /w/, /r/)
Disappearing Sounds (Elision)
It must be time to go! Which letter disappears? Do you really pronounce the t in must? Most people don’t. It’s elided, which just means that it disappears. Often ‘d’ and ‘t’ sounds at the end of words disappear in the same way. Here are some connected speech examples of elision:
- I need to send back the parcel (sen
d) - You should sleep more (shoul
d) - It’s black and white (an
d)
There are some fixed expressions with more dramatic changes, like ‘want to‘ becoming ‘wanna‘, ‘going to‘ becoming ‘gonna‘ and ‘don’t know‘ transforming to ‘dunno‘.
Read more at ThoughtCo
Changing Sounds (Assimilation)
Assimilation is when sounds change when two words come together. For example, try saying the sentence “What do you want?’. Say it again quickly, like you would when talking to a friend. You’ll notice that ‘do you‘ sounds more like ‘ji‘ or ‘chi‘. This is an example of assimilation.
Sometimes it’s more subtle. For example, try saying ‘ten percent‘. Say it quickly, maybe in a sentence like ‘Ten percent of people are allergic to nuts*”. You might notice that you pronounce ten pence as tem pence. It’s like our mouth is getting ready for the ‘p’ sound and so this influences the word before.
*statistic totally invented
Other connected speech examples relative to assimilation are:
- good guy (goog guy)
- white paper (whipe paper)
Find even more examples at BBC Learning English, Baruch College and English Pronunciation Madrid.
Now that you know about the features, learn more about teaching them on Stephen’s blog. Got questions? Leave a comment below!
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What I learnt from political interviewer Nick Robinson about teaching
While listening to the recent edition of Matt Forde’s excellent The Political Party podcast with the BBC’s Nick Robinson I was struck by how much of it resonated with my life in ELT.
Nick Robinson has been a prominent British broadcaster for over 25 years and is currently one of the main presenters of BBC Radio 4’s ‘flagship’ Today programme. Robinson also presents his own podcast, Political Thinking, which consists of lengthy, reflective interviews with leading political figures.
Though the podcast was focused on the role of the media in politics and the art of political interviewing, many of the points he made seem highly relevant to English language teaching. I could see clear parallels in the way he prepares for interviews, how he adapts to his style during an interview and how he reflects on his interviews.
Here are 6 themes from the interview with particular relevance to ELT.
‘plans are useless but planning is invaluable’
In terms of pre-interview preparation, Robinson adopts this American army dictum. As he relates, If you just ask pre-prepared question after question after question, it will lead to ‘utter disaster… catastrophe’. This approach neglects the ‘whole point that it’s a conversation’ – a proper interview must be full of genuine interaction. On the other hand, those who have no questions or themes prepared ‘end up using a big part of their brain…thinking about where they are going next’.
So, at both ends of the spectrum, the interviewee is not actually listening – that is the number one mistake. This is hugely relevant to teaching. For me, a key breakthrough was in being relaxed enough in class to really listen attentively to the students. Only by doing this can you really start to grasp what sort of fundamental issues your students have and what they really need assistance with.
In terms of planning a lesson, Robinson’s advice regarding interviews would suggest a style of lesson planning which is somewhat open ended and flexible, in which you are constantly revising during the lesson.
Robinson tends to have ‘a sheet of scrap paper with a few notes on’ . This helps him keep track of what topics he has covered what things he may have forgotten about during the course of the interview.
This reminds me of several experienced colleagues whose written lesson plans are very much minimalistic but contain the key things that they want to cover during the lesson. In short, they are not the detailed lesson plans associated with EFL teacher training courses such as the CELTA. In some ways such flexible, open-ended lesson plans have something in common with the dogme approach to teaching.
What’s the kernel?
For Robinson, the key stage of pre-interview planning is asking himself prior to the interview; ‘If you had to say, in a sentence, what’s this interview about?’
This is a key aspect of EFL teaching. Namely, that it’s wise to have one fundamental aim for the lesson (for example, ways to express confusion) – one thing you want your students to be able to do better due to this lesson, rather than an ambitious list of aims. It’s also about coherence; if you are clear in your mind prior to the lesson what the central theme is, the lesson is likely to have far more coherence. This is certainly true in my case. If I feel the aim is clear, it puts me in the right frame of mind to give a good lesson.
Photo by Fringer Cat on Unsplash Embrace the adrenaline flow
Often political interviewers have to interview ‘on the hoof’ with minimal time to prepare. On the Radio 4 Today Programme, some guests may appear with just a few minutes’ notice.
Robinson admits that one of the things which he enjoys about live broadcasting is the ‘adrenaline flow’ you get. This is partly what drew him away from the production side of broadcasting to being in front of the camera or microphone. He admits that he is something of an ‘adrenaline junkie’ who enjoys the unexpected and ‘not knowing what is going to happen next’. This forces you to ‘operate off the top of your head’ though in truth you ‘are not really operating off the top of your head’ as you have built up knowledge and experience over the years which you can use in these slightly chaotic moments. So, when he’s not on air he’s building up knowledge of the political scene. His mind is not empty when he goes into the studio.
In the same way, teachers have, through study and experience, explanations at their fingertips ready to deploy. There may well be unexpected questions but these will be, after a few years’ experience, relatively rare and may add interest to the job. This is a point made by Kip Webster (in a previous blog) who believes that receiving questions which are difficult to answer is part of what keeps you alive as a teacher. They stop you from getting stale.
‘In theory’, Robinson believes, you should be able to do a coherent interview with no forewarning as to who you are interviewing, as you know your stuff. When he has to do this (as with a recent interview regarding the death of Peter Sutcliffe, the notorious serial killer) he comes off air elated. For Robinson, ‘the great joy’ of live broadcasting is that once it’s gone out ‘it’s gone’, and you don’t need to sit and worry about it. It is also what makes it scary.
The parallels with ELT are clear. It’s very common for teachers to be asked to cover classes at very short notice but teachers should embrace this . They may also get an adrenaline buzz from pulling it off. More broadly, some teachers find that using a Task Based Learning or unplugged approach means they are fuelled by the adrenaline of uncertainty. Not knowing exactly what routes your lesson may take is risky but can be energising.
‘tone is massively important in all communication’.
Robinson stated that these days he ‘very rarely’ listens back to his interviews. However, he does spend a lot of time listening to his colleagues’ interviews and tries to learn from them as they all have different strengths. This also reminds us of the importance of peer observation in ELT. There is much that both the observer and observee can learn from such a process.
Robinson has discovered more effective ways of interrupting through observing his peers in action. What he’s discovered is the vital importance of tone. So, ‘you’ve got to find a way of stopping them’ but starting your interruption with a positive word tends to lead to a better exchange. For example, phrases such as ‘yes that’s true but’. As he summarises it, ‘yes makes you feel good’ while ‘no gets your back up’. In the same way, couching your error correction in a more positive way may elicit a better response from your students.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash The great tightrope
He admits he is hard on himself and regularly ‘beats himself up’ after interviews. What is foremost in his mind is ‘the great tightrope’ he is walking as an interviewer between those who feel he should be more severe on the interviewee (‘why the hell didn’t you ask that?, why didn’t you pick up on that?’) and those who wish he interrupted less and let the interviewee express their point of view (‘will you shut up!’). After most interviews he wonders to himself whether he got the ‘balance’ right.
This feels very familiar to me as a language teacher. I feel I am constantly trying to find the right balance between allowing students to get on with the tasks I’ve given them, while at the same time giving them sufficient feedback in terms of error correction and assistance (recasting, scaffolding etc). There are lessons in which I feel I intervened too much and others where I felt that I let activities go on for too long. I do feel it’s a constant balance. Clearly, one way of helping you achieve this balance is to focus on things such as delayed correction. In general, I probably intervene far less often than I did when I began teaching (when I was prone to ‘jump in’ too readily). Hopefully I now do so when it really is required. Like Robinson, this question of ‘balance’ is something I constantly reflect on after lessons -such as when doing some journaling after classes.
Cut the jargon
Robinson feels that many people make politics ‘unnecessarily complicated’ and that ‘they sometimes do so in order ‘to make themselves sound clever’. This tendency to pepper their analysis with jargon is ‘usually because they don’t know that much’. In contrast, those who really know what is going on rarely use such jargon and are able to explain things in a comprehensible way to those outside the political realm.
This makes me think of an ex-colleague who had a real in depth knowledge of language and linguistics. Though he used the specialist meta language with colleagues, when explaining things to students he tended to eschew this and speak to them in ways they would understand. An example would be avoiding terms such as ‘gerund’ and ‘present participle’ and instead of just saying ‘ing form’.
- What do you think of Robinson’s points and their relevance to ELT?
- What other professions can those in ELT learn from?
- Have you heard points relevant made to ELT in non ELT podcasts?
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How to livestream English classes
We’re really excited to bring you this guest post which Clare Courtney from Heart & Parcel, an informal ESOL project, has shared with us. Read on to find out her tips for an innovative way of teaching large ESOL classes in the Covid era: by livestreaming English classes!
With the devastating effects of COVID on the world in 2020, the education and third sector, like many industries have had to drastically alter entire operations to fit the restrictions that COVID19 has brought on the world.
Among many institutions affected, informal ESOL projects like ours, Heart & Parcel, were no exception. Based in Manchester, our project works with English language learners to develop their English language skills whilst cooking, eating and sharing recipes together (for more information see: www.heartandparcel.org). Our learners mostly belong to communities in the UK in which COVID19 has shown to disproportionately impact physically, financially, and socio-economically.
Our immediate response was to move online to keep our learners safe. We put all our efforts and resource into creating From Home to Home, weekly livestreamed Cooking & English classes, where learners could learn a recipe from start to finish in English, whilst getting support from volunteers and teachers in the live chat. We developed the programme by distributing weekly homework via google form and set up a whatsapp discussion group to share stories, recipes, photos and practise conversational English.
This really was Emergency Response Teaching at its core, rapidly migrating all our learners, materials, aims, and projects ready for delivery online. We needed to use existing software for learners and staff to navigate quickly and easily. The biggest challenge was reducing the digital admin that learners might have to go through, whilst at the same time, keeping compliant with our safeguarding procedures. Video streaming (live streams) seemed to be the best option for our context.
Live Streaming is a great way to widen your impact, to share your teaching practice and to reach more learners and users. As the main teacher for this project, it was a great experience for me to challenge my practice and develop it in ways I never thought I would focus on. Despite the positives, it was a complete change to my usual teaching experiences that I have had over the years. This was a rapid learning curve for us, and one that I feel is worth sharing as we move into even more uncertainty for the education industry in the year ahead.
In this blog, I share my top tips for using live streams as a platform for your English language classes. I’ve managed to streamline them into five pieces of advice that I hope that individual teachers, volunteers, practitioners in the English language teaching world will find useful.
1. Course Design & Purpose
Think about the reason for these livestreams. Are you wishing to reach a wider, more general audience? Or is this a closed session for your regular students? What numbers are you expecting to reach? Think about your levels of interaction. Are you wanting these to be just a standalone livestream where learners can join in at any point? Or is this going to be part of a wider project with homework, smaller classes and discussion groups? By considering these questions, you can find the best platform for your classes. There are many video streaming platforms available.
We chose YouTube Live as it was good for storing classes and videos in one place, and our video conferencing account (Zoom) offered a live streaming service directly onto YouTube. YouTube was also the platform our learners were most familiar with. But there are plenty more video streaming platforms that could serve the purposes of your class better. Once you think you have found the right one, make sure you do a few test runs as well to check you understand the functions, and most importantly how it will look to your students.
2. Camera angles & lighting
We were very lucky to have a professional three camera setup for our sessions in the summer. However, in the Autumn we set up a learner-led cookalong project where learners had to create their own camera set ups – and we realized we could do the same on a shoestring budget!
Here’s how to do it: Get 2-3 devices and log them into the same Zoom account. Then all you’ll need is a willing volunteer to ‘spotlight’ the squares as you turn to them. You can see how we did this for our project livestream teaching Syrian sweets to the public here:
Make sure that you position lamps and artificial lighting around you so you are not backlit or have too much light coming from the main source.
3. Content & Lesson Prep
Take the initial questions from the first tip, and answer them to help you determine your lesson content. With your lessons, will you refer back and forth to each one like a series, or will these be standalone lessons that learners can pick and choose in any order? From here you could sketch out a scheme of work that would work for your purpose.
The other point to bear in mind when preparing the lesson is to consider the audience. In our experience, we found that shorter, faster paced activities were better for learners tuning in online, you can lose concentration easily on a screen. Where possible, try to build in as much interaction as possible, with activities and visuals where possible. We found this engaged learners with our lessons and their aims. Finally, when thinking about your lesson plans, build in stage directions and actual script if you have any other helpers or volunteers with you. It helps them to follow the class and to know when they are needed.
You can see an example lesson plan here:
4. Teaching Style & Presentation
I would say I changed my teaching style quite a bit for these livestreams. I had to adopt more of a media focused approach in order to match the kind of platform we were now using. I have to admit, these are small superficial points but they had a big difference as to whether someone would continue to tune into our classes or not. The following things for me changed:
- I had to keep energetic throughout the hour. We noticed when we watched back that any slight drop in energy intensifies on the camera.
- The same went for keeping upbeat and positive. Smiling through talking really helps as it lifts the tone of the voice and keeps the audio and visuals inviting.
- Increase your teacher talking time… . yes really. Just like a broadcaster, you need to make sure you have no ‘dead air’ – no long silences. Unlike in a classroom, you do not have student voices to fill in the atmosphere. The only interactions will be via live stream chat so make sure you are constantly talking or leaving questions for learners.
This is where media training could definitely come in handy! I found I repeated things a lot more often, and allowed for more casual digression when making the food, although this may depend on the content of your lesson. The final golden rule for presentation is make sure you rehearse at least once through, there are always things that pop up when you least expect it, and unlike a normal class, we found that being unprepared tended to show up much more on the camera! There is nowhere to hide and you cannot correct your mistakes…
5. Get Support
If you can, try to enlist some help for the livestream chat. We had a group of volunteers moderating the livestream, making sure that learners were abiding by our classroom rules. The moderators could be regular trustworthy students or someone who wants more responsibility. If you are in a small organisation, this could be volunteers who are willing to help out. Make sure everyone does a few run throughs, and that they are inducted properly as to what their roles are.
For example, in Heart & Parcel we divided the students alphabetically so each moderator was responsible for different lettered groups (e.g. names beginning with A-E / F – I ) and would comment and respond to those learners on the livestream. We also had a moderator who was in charge of writing the questions on the live chat that I would want the learners to answer.
Clare Courtney is a practitioner teaching for over 10 years in the UK and in China. She has delivered ESOL/EAP/EFL provision to a range of learners from different backgrounds and communities. She runs a food based initiative in Manchester called Heart & Parcel, bringing communities together by making different food from around the world whilst developing English language skills.
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How to really teach pronunciation
Pronunciation plays such a major role in understanding and being understood. In this post, Stephen looks at both how and why we work on pronunciation in the classroom.
What happened
For many years my pronunciation teaching repertoire consisted of the usual minimal pair sort of exercises offered in coursebooks and handouts. You’ve probably seen them; ship v sheep and beer v bear drills, modelled by the teacher and then parroted by the learners.
Now, I’m not saying that these activities are completely without merit (I’m sure we’re all acquainted with the confused Italian who has a few phonemic issues on his trip to Malta – warning, link NSFW!). I also remember getting a good few hours of class out of some material produced by a Canadian college to help their increasing numbers of learners coming from East Asia. Again, these mostly consisted of vowel discrimination exercises and tongue-twisters. They provide useful, granular-level work on individual sounds.
However, it was work on my Trinity DipTESOL several years ago that really opened my eyes up to what pronunciation teaching can do for our learners. Working with connected speech (for example, catenation) and chunks of language several words long, I was amazed at how much nuance there was and how much I had ignored it up to then in my teaching. My teaching changed to incorporate a more regular and consistent focus on pronunciation – or more properly, phonology – giving it equal weighting alongside the more common grammar and vocabulary. As a result, I developed a wider repertoire of activities and found my learners appreciated the change.
What I learned
The issue I, and many teachers I have both observed and worked with over my fifteen years in ELT, had with phoneme and/or word level teaching is that it seems to stand alone, almost separate from the hustle and bustle of genuine, two-way communication. Yes, it is important to be able to hear and say the word ‘sheet’, but failure to do so in an otherwise reasonably produced utterance isn’t usually likely to lead to being accused of wanting to defecate on a hotel bed (see the video in the introduction above if this makes no sense!).
Which brings me onto what I would consider to be the real reason for pronunciation teaching: understanding streams of speech and building confidence within our learners to produce similar, natural-sounding language spontaneously. There has, thankfully, been a move in recent years to view phonology teaching as something other than forcing RP accents on unsuspecting foreign learners. Books such as Richard Cauldwell’s Phonology for Listening have done a great job in capturing this shift and/or opening up teachers’ minds as to what can, and some might say should, be achieved in the classroom.
Top 5 tips for really teaching pronunciation
Put yourself in the learners’ shoes
Very simply, stop and consider what it is you would want from a pronunciation activity if you were a language learner. If you have previous experience of learning a language, lean on this.
Personally, I have little trouble imitating the sounds of the foreign languages I use regularly (Chinese and Spanish). In fact, sometimes my ability to produce phonemes similar to the native model means people think I am better than my actual level! However, I do find following longer stretches of discourse at conversational speed quite difficult. Therefore, I would like some guidance as to how speakers use pronunciation to signal things like turn taking conventions, or where they might cut corners with certain things in relation to the written form. Most of all, I just want guided exposure to the target language so that I can get used to hearing it in a natural context. I think Stephen Krashen might agree.
Make regular use of recording scripts
This is especially valuable if you are working with authentic material or less formulaic recordings such as the unscripted ELLLO audio. Working alongside the scripts, you could ask the learners to identify which words run together to form a sound chunk. In fact, it’s a useful exercise for teachers themselves to do. You could also ask your learners to listen out for features of connected speech, or, if they are already well acquainted with them, to preview the script and predict where these features might occur.
One of the struggles in listening in a foreign language is being able to predict both the content and the patterns of speech heard. If learners are trained to ‘get their ear in’ for this, then they will feel more confident in authentic interactions. In the same way that a word you might not have known before suddenly pops up with surprising frequency, the same happens with features of phonology.
Work with students when their pronunciation causes issues
One of the most regular feedback that language schools and managers receive about their teachers is that they don’t offer enough correction to their learners.
Whatever their target, it is essential that you expose learners to genuine language and push them to communicate clearly when it comes to understanding and speaking at a target level. I’ve perhaps been guilty in the past of ‘understanding’ my learners a little too easily, letting things that people outside the classroom might not understand, especially if I’ve been in the country a long time and am aware of the learners’ L1. But for learners to develop their own pronunciation and, crucially, be understood by others, then there will be times they need to be corrected and supported.
These corrections could be in relation to individual phonemes but, as we rise through the levels, it is much more likely that it is the flow of language that causes issues. For example, learners may maintain a flat, uninterested-sounding tone due to shyness or influence from their L1. Similarly, learners may wish to pronounce each word distinctly and clearly, causing essential meaning in the form of stress, intonation and nuance to be missed.
The solution to this is to be a teacher! Listen, make notes, and teach! Encourage learners to repeat with you when you recast, not just nod passively. Record yourself (for example, giving task instructions) in a flat, careful way and then in a more natural, connected way. Ask the learners which one they would prefer and expect to hear! While they may prefer the flat, slow approach, they are much less likely to hear that when they leave the comfort of the classroom.
Justification for this approach came from a recent student whose feedback contained one of my favourite ever comments. She said, You didn’t teach us what to say, but how to say it. The learner went on to express gratitude for such an approach, as it had given her the confidence to believe that she was expressing herself in a way that would be understood and her contributions appreciated in her work context.
Give pronunciation equal time and weight in the classroom
You may have heard the expression Pronunciation is the Cinderella of ELT. For many years, judging by materials and anecdotal evidence, this was certainly the case. There is often a lack of integration between the target language (in terms of grammar and vocabulary) and any pronunciation section.
Relegated to a peripheral position, and with vocabulary and grammar so often stealing the limelight, it is little wonder that both learners and teachers can overlook the impact of pronunciation work and how much it can support learners – both receptively and productively.
And yet, for courses which advertise themselves as communicative, the absence of consistent pronunciation is sadly all too common. Any and all languages introduced to learners should be thoroughly examined for phonology. One way of doing this is to avoid, as far as practicable, the written form of the language. This enables learners to encounter the language in it’s ‘wild’ form first. The opposite – seeing written examples – can lead to unrealistic expectations of how the words or phrases might sound. Although not always the most fashionable approach, a ‘listen first’ style of lesson is more likely to result in learners who don’t fear the contractions in perfect tenses and weak forms in function words.
Don’t be scared of drills – but make them fun
Confidently hearing and producing connected speech in a foreign language is hard work for most learners. One common for for teachers to help their learners develop their skills in dealing with this is through repetition drills. A regular feature of language classrooms in the past, and making something of a comeback, drills enable learners to practice chunks of speech with the safety net of choral repetition and a teacher who can make decisions on how long, how fast, and how much fun the drill can be.
The last of those three points – making drills fun and engaging – is something I would encourage all teachers to focus on. Unfortunately, drills have a reputation for being dry and monotonous.
One way around this is to modify them to become jazz chants, or, at the very least, adding a lot of emphasis and exaggeration. In my experience, learners very rarely match a teacher’s enthusiasm 100% when participating in drills, especially longer utterances. They are often concerned about forgetting words, or making mistakes. The beauty of drills that focus on sounds, not words, is that learners can develop a sort of sonic picture of the language, its rhythm and flow. And if you exaggerate the drill, and your learners at least meet you halfway, then they are likely to sound much more natural than the staccato-like word-at-a-time producing unfluent speakers that people find difficult to listen to.
A final thought…
Don’t make the mistake of conflating pronunciation teaching with forcing your learners to adopt all the phonological features native speakers use and abuse! Language – and the way we speak it – goes a long way towards shaping our identity. The ideas above are compatible with an ELF model, appreciating that English is a vehicle for communication first and foremost, and often between two non-native speakers.
The best example I have ever seen of this in action was a six-person meeting between two Englishmen, two Spaniards and two Dutchmen. The meeting, conducted entirely in high-level English, only broke down when the two Englishmen made their contributions. They did not take into account the fact that the other four attendees – while certainly capable of communicating in the modern day lingua franca – found their unfiltered streams of speech difficult.
The goal, I believe, is to equip our learners with the ability to decode streams of speech from a variety of speakers and across different contexts. Whether or not they will wish to incorporate these features into their own output will depend heavily on their own circumstances.
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What They Don't Teach You On The CELTA 