I was at a meeting of EFL Teachers last month, which was really interesting. I learnt some cool things and I’ll post them here for you when I get a chance. At the end of the session we were broken into groups to discuss our own context and then workshop any challenges we face.
In my group, we hit the problem of engagement. One of the other teachers whose name I forget now, let’s call her Yoshimura-Sensei, was saying she has trouble getting students involved in the lesson. There was something very striking in her description of the problem that I’ll come back to at the end of this post, but for the moment let me outline the gist of my response to her.
We’d been put into groups with a simple exercise involving picture cards that I’ll describe in the following post (probably tomorrow; it’s late). My picture was of a kabuki performance (a traditional type of Japanese theatre). This is a paraphrase of what I suggested:
Okay, let’s say the lesson is about kabuki or rakugo… one of the textbooks I use, for example, has a text about rakugo. So I’d find some pictures… not spending too long, of course! Google Image Search is great (And if you’re worried about copyright issues, try Wikipedia or Flikr Creative Commons).
And I’d bring them into class and whack them up on the board. “What’s this? What can you see? You’ve got 10 seconds each to tell your partner…” (Where, of course, I’d give them about 30 seconds each in reality!)
Feedback. Should be pretty obvious.
Okay, next… I’d write the following question on the board: “Have you ever been to a live kabuki performance?” (and in a monolingual context just get a translation, in a multilingual context do some concept-checking)
Sidenote: This level of language is clearly NOT going to work in a multilingual context at low levels… BUT… you aren’t likely to have the same degree of motivation issues that junior high and high school teachers have in monolingual settings. Nevertheless, you will encounter problems like that from time to time in the average EFL college in Australia or England or the US or wherever… so you need to come up with a simpler question. For example “Do you like kabuki?” or “Do you know kabuki?” “Do you like live theatre?” etc.
Then… “Okay, in groups of 3 (or 4), you’ve got 3 or 4 minutes to answer the question and tell your group what you know, if anything, about kabuki…. Go.”
Feedback.
The next step would depend on the actual nature of the text I was leading into and what kind of lesson I wanted to do. But the basic thrust would be along these lines:
- find the main theme of the text (In relation to kabuki, for this example. So… What particular thing about kabuki is it talking about? Is it a general overview? Does it discuss particular aspects? Does it contrast kabuki with rakugo and noh and other forms of Japanese theatre? Etcetera.)
- Think of how to frame the text is such a way that the students could make some preliminary prediction questions. And then get them to do so!
An example might go something like this:Okay, we’re going to read / listen to something about kabuki. It’s a general overview of kabuki and the history of kabuki (I’d be saying this in Japanese, obviously! But in a monolingual setting, I would just make it really, really simple if I were at low levels and concept check… and make it as simple as needs be at higher levels… and concept-check)… So, um, what kind of things would you expect it to cover? make a list of at least 5 things in your group.Feedback ALL answers to the board.
- Let’s say it’s a reading task. Give them a time-limited first read-through to determine whether or not the text covered the points they suggested and/or answered their questions. They can just tick or cross.
- This covers the main points, probably. Not necessarily. But probably. Then it’s just a matter of setting my own questions (in addition to any they didn’t find the answer for in the first read-through and check with their partner) and setting a more generous time-limit (as well as allowing dictionaries this time) for the second, more detailed read-through.
By this time, you’re well into the lesson and you’ve probably got the vast majority of students engaged with it—without their even realising it! It would only be the most hardcore “I hate [insert foreign language]!” students who would still be snoozing or goofing off.
Sidenote: When I say “…without their even realising it“, I don’t mean that literally. Of course they know they’re doing the lesson. The point is that they’re just that little bit more motivated to find the answers to their own prediction questions. And they’ve been given a chance to personally express themselves at the outset, even if it is just “Don’t know nuffin bout it” (which can be turned to your advantage at the prediction questions stage by getting them to write what they’d like to know about it, or even what, for example, their grandparents would expect or want them to know about it, etc. You get the idea, right? The “Don’t know nuffin” should never be accepted as a checkmate. It’s not. It’s just a cocky Queen to K-1 with no knight in the wings. You can still rook.
So, as I said to Yoshimura-Sensei, I think a lot of teachers are probably worried about or scared of doing this sort of thing at the beginning of the lesson because it seems like “a waste of time”; they “have the textbook to get through” and blah blah blah…
The way I look at it is this:
I’d rather spend 10 minutes at the start of the lesson engaging the majority of the class and “getting them on board” for the remaining 40 minutes than spend 50 minutes pulling teeth.
This is a simple way to engage them: Ask them about the topic and get them to share their experiences with it—briefly (because you will want to hold off on some of that for the “Respond to the text” phase of the lesson).
The more you do this, the more they get in the habit of doing it. And the more they realise, “Hey, this [foreign language] thing maybe ain’t as dull or difficult as I’d thought. Maybe I can do it…”
This is not a change that’s going to happen in a week. Or two. Or even three. But after a couple of months, your classes will mostly come around to this point of view, I think.
Not ONLY from doing this particular exercise at the start of the class, naturally, but by integrating this attitude into everything you do and the way you actually manage your classroom.
A perfect example of this is Yoshimura-Sensei’s comment that I said I’d return to.
She was explaining her predicament and in doing so she described the way she stands at the front of the room and watches the chaos unfold. I can’t remember exactly how she described it now, but I recall thinking (not in a nasty way either, that) “Hmm… I’m not surprised the students don’t feel engaged with the lesson if you’re demarcating the ‘teacher space’ and the ’student space’ and not crossing that bridge. You’re setting up a ‘Right, I’m going to tell you what to do and you’re just going to do it’ kind of context, which no one likes to be part of…”
Something as simple as setting up the lesson very, very quickly by engaging them with some prompts (doesn’t need to be pictures; could be a video excerpt or a piece of music or a real-live object (I won’t use the “R” word here!)) and then asking them to respond to it and offer their own ideas… and then mingling around for that 3 or 4 minutes and listening and/or commenting on what they’re discussing and then getting their feedback and allowing comments… and THEN taking “centre stage” for the 5 minutes it might take you to roll out the main focus of the lesson…
… this sort of thing is going to work wonders, I think.
But I could be wrong.
Whaddayathink?
What do you do?
Okay, okay, hiatus, hi-schamtus…
Apologies, eh?
I dug up one of those things I was rabbiting on about in my previous post. It’s a hardcore linguistics research program so as I said previously, I’m not sure I’d use it tons in class. But for what it’s worth…
Check it out: Sound Comparisons
Look in the right-hand column and you’ll see a list of example words. You’ll want to click one of these. This will bring up a grid with examples from a staggering set of English accents (both current and historic).
Hovering your mouse over the hyperlink should activate the audiofile example.
Now, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the Super-Linguistics-Nerds’ phonemic script
attached (yeah, um… that’s the official, academic nomenclature, incidentally)…
And I certainly wouldn’t be discussing it with students if you do decide to send them here.
But where I find this site potentially applicable is in dismissing the notion that you can learn “American English” or “British English” or “Australian English” and so on.
Now, I don’t deny that these varieties of English exist, of course. Nor do I deny that there are distinct differences in accent.
It has been my experience, though, that students seem to think that there’s “a” British accent, or “an” American accent–when clearly if they thought about it for more than 10-freakin’ seconds they’d realise that this is not the case.
So showing them “in living color” (to grossly and unashamedly butcher and expression) might well assist in dispelling that myth.
Somewhat.
Maybe.
On a more practical level…
If you actually work in ESL, as opposed to EFL, as I assume most readers of this blog do, you may well be able to find a set of very useful examples from the local-ish accent and use these in class with your (presumably migrant) students.
You might also use this website to contrast what they hear everyday in their workplaces, for example, with what they hear in textbooks and in movies.
Simply being able to hear the differences between the sounds and then “compartmentalise” them may well help them cope better in their everyday interactions with locals.
Dunno. I’m an EFL teacher.
And I wouldn’t think to use this site extensively in an EFL classroom. It would simply be an awareness-raising tool for me.
I would, however, love to know how you’d use it or, indeed, whether you think it’s useful at all!
Cheers,
P.S. Will post again in a couple of days regarding the brief chat I had with the teacher who was having trouble getting her students involved in lessons. Til then!
Heya everyone!
I’m back from my little hiatus. Hope you’re all well.
I’m VERY happy to say that I turned in the final assignment on my Masters Degree on Friday. **phew!**
Hoping it’s all A-OK and that said degree is conferred upon me come September ** YAY! (Fingers crossed!) **
I’m moving back to Australia at the beginning of August (from Japan) so I expect to be off the air again for a little while around that time, but for now I have a wee bit more free time in my week so I can post some things I’ve come across recently.
I found a neat little site last week that I’ll need to go and dig the link up for again. It has tons of examples of different accents amongst English speakers from all around the world. Very interesting. Not sure I’d use it extensively in the classroom, but I can think of a couple of ideas (which I’ll write up when I get the chance).
I also went to a workshop on Saturday afternoon (primarily for Japanese Teachers of English ahead of big conference–for which they’re planning and preparing) and got some really nice ideas, which I’ll share with you over the next couple of weeks.
And I talked with one of the teachers about what I think is a very common problem: How to get students interested in your lessons. So I’ll post up my thoughts regarding that for comment, too.
Sorry there’s no real “meat” to this post! 
I just thought I’d drop a brief line to say “I’m baaa-aack” and to see who’s still out there.
Feel free to leave me a “Hello” in the comments, eh?
k. Talk soon,
This is a quick post to let you know that I’ve changed my mailing list service provider.
If you have signed up for the mailing list in the last week or you signed up a long time ago and didn’t get the message I sent out letting you know about the change, then please just pop your name and email in the box to the right again.
I’m really sorry for the inconvenience! 
Things should be all hunky-dory from here on in, though.
As you will notice from the dates between the last post and this one, I’ve been away from this blog for a while.
I’m likely to be away from it for a while longer. Apologies.
I’m finishing up my MA this semester.
And my current contract finishes in July so I’m in the process of making plans for moving on from this job, which most likely involves moving country.
And I’ve got a couple of other things going on at present.
As I’ve outlined in the “About” post and on the homepage, this blog was a bit premature given my other obligations and time constraints, and was really just an extension of the delivery mechanism for the Halloween and Christmas packs.
I have a lot of ideas and things I’d like to share here, but I haven’t had much time these last 6 months, and I’ve done hardly anything to “get the word out”.
The feedback has been more than a little thin on the ground as well (I think I know why) so when I come back I’ll be changing a few things there.
I’m also having a few back-end technical issues at the moment. For example, I’m going to change my mailing service provider very soon. And I noticed today that the survey database has been corrupted in some way. (Thanks again to the folks who took the time to fill it out. There weren’t actually many of you, but the information was useful to me. More data would, of course, be nice) So, I’ll try and fix it. And failing that look into redoing it somehow. But I’m not a php-programmer so I’m not really sure where to start diagnosing… which is another story.
Please feel free to take a look around the site; there are a few articles that I think you’ll find useful.
If you’re on the mailing list you’ll get an email soon outlining the changes to come.
I’ll be back later in the year. The site may or may not be the same. The articles currently here might be moved or even removed. I’m really not sure yet.
I’ve been spreading myself far too thin and I haven’t been able to post the sort of content I’d like to, as often as I’d like to.
So I’m going to take a little leave of absence.
If you like the (few) articles here and/or you used the Halloween and/or Christmas packs, then make sure you check back to see how it’s going in a few months.
In the meantime, all comments and emails will still reach me via all the same channels so feel free to contact me with questions or comments.
Till then!
Last week I was at the mid-year conference for JET participants. This is an annual 3-day gab-fest where we get a keynote lecture from some eminent person about some aspect of teaching, there are some workshops by guest presenters, and there are other workshops and seminars conducted by JETs.
It’s a good thing, I think, as most JETs have little or no previous teaching experience or qualifications. So it’s a good opportunity to learn some basic theory and get some practical tips to take back to school.
One girl I was talking with made the point that CLAIR (the governing body for the JET Program) should think about perhaps doing, say, a week-long basic teaching skills course when we first arrive in Tokyo. Not a bad idea, but I don’t think anyone’s going to be holding their breath for that one!
I gave a presentation with one of the JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English) I work with, Fukudome-Sensei, on making what we referred to as an “Assessment Framework” for the entire term, before the term has started.
When I have time to format our notes, I’ll post a link to where you can get a copy if you’re interested in that kind of thing. It’s basically where testing meets curriculum planning. How to take the textbook and make an outline for what you’re going to test, when, and how in a fairly broad-brushstrokes kind of way.
Please leave a comment if you’d be interested in that. If no one comments, I know that I don’t need to spend any of my time preparing and formatting it. If you let me know you’re interested, I’m more than happy to share it with you! 
I’ve had my attention dragged away from this blog the last couple of weeks because I’ve been working on a site that I hope will be helpful to ALTs. That is, people who work as Assistant Language Teachers.
I’m currently on the JET Program so I’ve put together a site I’m hoping will help to bridge the communication gap between:
1. ALTs in different prefectures
2. ALTs & JTEs (the Japanese Teachers of English to whom we are the assistants)
3. JTEs from different schools and prefectures
And… will provide a place to share resources and worksheets.
If you are an Assistant Language Teacher, you will probably want to take a look. The site is called The TT Forum, where the “TT” stands for Team Teaching.
Cheers,
I hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year break.
Even though I’m in Japan I was lucky enough to be invited to a traditional (Australian) Christmas dinner for about 20 people; with the turkey, the roast veggies, the whole nine yards… even brandy pudding, which was set on fire! Andrew Wallace from Kochi (check out his SUPER cool story here) and all of his helpers really put in a sterling effort (they were in the kitchen for a loooooong time!) and it was a dead set ripper!
The pudding was melt in your mouth stuff! Honestly. Puttin good ol’ Grandma to shame!
And, to boot, there were some awesome musoes playing and a wild collection of instruments: taiko of all sizes, djembe, guitars players a plenty (acoustic, electric, jazz, blues, bass), singers a plenty, bells, didgeridoo, sitar, that Chinese instrument with the single string and a bow, a shamisen, and probably a few I’ve forgotten! It was really quite a night.
I hope you did something just as fun.
I thought New Year was going to be quieter, but,… ah… no. Dancing till 3 and then fried chicken and more beer on the way home. If only I coulda gotten a kebab! Man do I miss a decent kebab: lamb, lettuce, onion, tabouli, sour cream, cheese, garlic sauce, BBQ sauce, and a splash of chilli; toasted of course. OH!
Anyway… now I’m back at work, putting together a workshop that I’ll be presenting in a couple of weeks. I expect you’re back at work by now too. Hopefully the break cleared your head and gave you the zoom-zoom-zoom to tackle another year!
>>>
A few people emailed me about the Christmas Pack and offered their thanks and some feedback–which I appreciate greatly! 
I also spoke to a few folks over the break who downloaded it, but either didn’t have time to use it or had already planned their Christmas stuff for this year. That’s okay, if that was the case for you, too, you can always use it next year. I realise that its release was very, very late in the season; like I said, it just kept growing and growing! And testing my skills with technology at every step! Ha!
I’m going to leave the Christmas Pack up for just one more week so if you didn’t get the chance to tell all your colleagues about it in the end-of-year madness, do them the favour now because in a week it’ll be gone. (Yeah, really)
Also, I could do with your opinion. (Not only about the Christmas Pack, feedback for which is most welcome <<click here>> but…)
You see, I’m not really sure in which direction to take the blog and the articles this year, to be entirely honest. There are at least thirty-seven dozen topics I think are worth writing about (!) and I guess I’ll get around to writing about them all at SOME point.
But what I’d really like is for you–as one of my valued readers!–to tell me what kinds of things YOU are most interested in and that YOU would most benefit from.
I don’t profess to know all the answers and, indeed, 100 people might write me back and nominate an area that I don’t have much (or any!) expertise in. And if that’s the case, then I’ll either learn it or find people more knowledgeable than I am and try to convince them to maybe do some “guest articles” or something.
Anyway, what I’ve done is put together a simple survey to find out a little bit about your background, along with what you’re interested in (re: EFL) and what you’d like to learn more about. Or if not learn, what you would get the most benefit from.
It should take about 10-15 minutes, I guess. I don’t know. If you write one-word answers, probably 2 minutes, but that wouldn’t be very helpful to either of us, really, would it? If you get called away, there is a “Save” option and you can come back and reload your answers later. But you shouldn’t need this; I don’t expect it’ll take you too long at all.
Also, I’m afraid I don’t have any “sweets” or “shiny things” to offer you for taking time out of your schedule to do the survey. I’m kinda hoping that you’ll see how this directly benefits YOU. I mean, I could just rave on about whatever I like on this blog, but that may or may not be what you’re interested in. And I can only know what my readers are interested in if they let me know!
So, click here to have Your Say
I look forward to your insights.
Best regards and here’s to a terrific 2008!
That’s the precisely quantifiable number of people who have downloaded the Christmas Pack in the last few days.
Which makes me really happy! I hope you got some good mileage out of it.
Your comments, suggestions, funny stories, etcetera are all most welcome.
Just leave a comment below.
And if you came up with any interesting alternative ways of using the materials, please leave a comment so we can all learn! 
Cheers!
I hope you have a fun and safe holiday.
Talk soon,
Well, the Christmas Pack is… *groan!* …FINALLY ready!
Much blood, sweat and tears, let me tells ya.
I can only offer my (admittedly rather lame) apologies for being so ridiculously behind schedule. You have, no doubt, prepared all your Christmas lessons for this year.
Still, the Pack will probably come in handy in years to come. 
I think I sent an email out to the folks on the mailing list about a week or 10 days ago saying that things were taking longer than expected and that the project had grown into this gargantuan thing (You’ll see what I mean when you download the sucker! The zip file is 22MB!)… and that I had been sick, and that I had a bit of a weird, unexpected thing happen to me… and blah blah blah…
…and that it was going to be ready Saturday 15th.
Excuse, excuses.
Well, there were even more surprised to come this weekend. Let me count the ways…
* my internet connection running at 51kb (that’s slower than a regular dial-up modem)
* the router throwing a wobbly on me and needing the drivers reinstalled
* not being able to get any help from tech-support over the weekend
* the graphics card on my computer bowing under the pressure of loading all the images…
…and subsequently crashing my machine several times!
* installing new software to try and combat this (with pretty unimpressive results)
* running all my adware, spyware, and virus programs to see if there was problem (there wasn’t)
* pausing or unistalling RAM-hungry background applications
* defragging and cleaning up the hard-disk
* checking the registry for errors
* transferring it all to my memory stick and uploading it onto another computer…
…only to crash that one a couple of times too!
Then discovering (when it did finally open) that all the Christmassy fonts weren’t loaded on that machine, which meant going out and finding them all again and installing them and rebooting… *sigh*
* saving the document and then converting it to pdf only to find that hyperlinks had randomly mysteriously disappeared (and therefore having to do it again! Several times! And checking them all. Again. Aaaahh! Who knows if they’ll work in the pdfs you get?)
* installing a tell-a-friend script and mis-writing my .htaccess file resulting in all the pages on the site being parsed as php (okay for the blog, but it made a total mess of everything else!)…
…so being on Live-Chat with the tech support of my hosting provider (I’ve only been with them for about 6 months–because, well, that’s as long as I’ve been twiddling about with HTML and stuff… and several times I’ve destroyed something or gotten lost and every time they’ve had me up and running again quick smart! The Live-Chat support feature really is a Godsend if you live in a different time-zone to the US (like I do).
Want good hosting support? Go here.
* realising that there were a bunch of things in the Christmas Pack that needed some kind of explanation (like, pelmanism and karuta. I’ll try and do a video soon for my “Hello” & “Goodbye” songs, as well as the “Name Song”… sleep would be nice, though) … and therefore needing to write half a dozen blog posts with that information so the links in the pdf actually led to something!
* and finally… getting some sort of mystery interference in the way the images were being read on the large flashcards which resulted in this ridiculous blue-ish background, which I couldn’t do anything about. So I had to reinstall some stuff there to fix that.
* then realising what a dumb-arse I’d been the whole weekend by not just splitting the damn thing into smaller documents! THAT is what was causing all the problems! My computer just couldn’t handle the graphics load.
I think I know why it happened: I had this idea that the Christmas Pack would be kinda like the Halloween Pack, y’know about 15 or 20 pages of stuff and links to other resources.
But it just kept growing and growing…!
And I guess I’ve just been too tired and run down and under the hammer to see that I needed to re-assess the project and say “Hey, it’s not the same thing you started out doing, bucko. Better make some changes here.”
But instead, I just kept pressing on, trying to shoehorn this semi-trailer load of graphics and layers and weird fonts and formatting into this poor little garden variety OpenOffice document!
I can’t help but think of that great Australianism “She’ll be right, mate!”
Invariably used when we know things are highly unlikely to be alright at all. Love it.
Anyway, as soon as I realised this (at 5pm this afternoon!) I thought “Oh no! What if there are folks out there with slower computers than me? Eeek!”
So after dinner, a beer, and a brief brain-break/catch-up phone call with a friend this evening, I then sat down and cut the document into FOUR different parts!
* then I went through and edited it as best I could. If you find any mistakes like referring to XYZ and not finding it in the main document, that’s why! Ha!
* then uploading it and checking that the download worked okay. And that the download link points to the right place, etc.
**Phew!**
It’s been a loooooooong weekend!
(And I’m writing this at 1am Monday morning. Once I post this I’m off to check that the mailing system is working smoothly. Aaahh!)
In fact, how’s this for a festy confession: Yesterday (Sunday), I didn’t even shower or shave. I just got up, switched on the computer and worked through till 2:30am this morning in my (very same) pyjamas and then went back to bed again for about 3 hours. I felt SO gross this morning! Euuwww! I think I spent an extra 10 minutes in the shower! 
Anyway, you have probably already received the email with the download link if you’re on the mailing list.
(If you’re not on the mailing list, get over there right away and get the download link because this special resource pack offer will be taken down after Christmas!)
So… all I can say is ENJOY! and Merry Christmazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….
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