"Life is for deep kisses, strange adventures, midnight swims and rambling conversations." I can only offer the latter here.
Here is a free PowerPoint presentation I made in collaboration with Riccardo Chiappini. As the title suggests, we talk about how to get students to notice language, why it’s important, and why personalising the language, helps students to retain what they have noticed.
All comments welcome.
I wrote this last week, on LinkedIn. I thought it might be worth sharing here.
Many of us in the ELT world are now preparing to switch to online teaching due to COVID-19, trying to maintain client satisfaction and continued learning for our students. This makes sense and will be easier for some than others. However, the idea that things will simply go back to normal in a few weeks or even a month may be misguided.
I am willing to bet that this will be the beginning of a dramatic shift in ELT. I have often wondered about how long the brick and mortar mode of delivering English teaching would last for. Now, I believe that we are about to see a huge sea change in the industry and within 5 years time, I predict the more established of the larger flagship schools will fall by the wayside, with many other schools, unfortunately, failing to survive what we are currently experiencing.
As with all large scale disruptions, a period of reflection and investigation will begin. My advice, for what it is worth, is to look at how to create a lot more flexibility in the delivery of classes. Invest in the right technology, future-proof yourselves with the right training. The physical schools that we know now are drawing their last breath and there will be a large gap for freelancers and well-organised Co-operatives to exploit.
Here is a quick lesson idea that I tried out earlier today and went down very well with my C1/C2 class of lawyers.
I try to listen to a variety of podcasts when I have the time and one that has provided me with food for thought recently has been the Big think/Think again podcast which you can find here. Alternatively, you can listen here;
Other ways to listen:
The premise is quite straightforward. In every episode a guest (professors, artists, actors, poets, writers and leaders in a wide range of fields) is interviewed and asked to react to several audio excerpts picked at random by the podcast producers. The topics are excellent for generating debates and pushing you to think a little bit more outside of the box.
Here is what I did with my class;
2. In the classroom I presented the statement to the class and asked them to discuss whether or not they agreed or what they thought about the statement/question. We discussed it as an open group and immediately they were interested. At this point I realised that in another class it would be a good opportunity to practice turn-taking and language for agreeing/disagreeing.
3. Once everyone had spoken and the arguments and discussion died down, I played the audio of the person who proposed the statement/question and why they took this particular stance.
4. Once the audio had finished I asked the class to react to what they heard. Did it confirm what they had already said? Was it completely different to what they thought it would be? Did they agree/disagree with this persons argument? etc. Again, there was a lot more talking and discussion.
5. As an extension and further listening, you could also play the audio of the how the guest reacted to the audio and further talk about whether the students agree with the response or not.
This is a simple activity which produced a large amount of discussion and opportunities for slightly lower Advanced levels to practice there speaking and listening skills. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any audio scripts for the episodes but the audio doesn’t tend to last any longer than 2 – 3 minutes.
Enjoy the lesson and let me know how it goes.
Here is a quick writing lesson idea which I recently put together. I received some really good feedback from my students about it so I thought it was only fair to share it with you.
The lesson was originally designed for my ILEC (International Legal English Cert) students and the task rubric takes the form of part 1 of the writing exam. The recommended level for this material is Strong upper-intermediate (B2+) and above.
The text for the lesson is a set of lyrics by Scroobius Pip from the UK hip hop duo Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip. A link to the YouTube video can be found here.
The main theme of the lesson is God, religion and what you would say to him if you had the chance. Clearly, this is a difficult subject for some students, so think carefully about whether it can be used in your classroom.
The lead in is entirely up to you. I simply began by asking who believed in God and who didn’t. I then announced that God had written a letter to mankind and that I had a copy. The reason I had a copy was because the people in the room had been tasked with the job of replying to him.
I then distributed a copy of the task rubric to each student;
God has recently contacted the people of Earth and he is not happy with us.
There has been much debate as to who should reply and how to answer. The world’s leaders have elected you to respond, therefore creating a buffer zone between them and any potential blame for the onset of Armageddon if it all goes wrong.
Choose your words carefully.
Read the letter carefully, on which you have made some notes. Then using all the information in your notes, write a letter to God on behalf of the entire population of the Earth.
Good luck.
Write a letter of between 150 –180words in an appropriate style. Do not write a postal address.
Once the students had read the rubric and were clear on what they had to do, I showed them the letter and the notes that had been made. Click here to open the word document. A copy of the rubric is on the second page.
We dealt with any unknown vocabulary and then talked about how the students might respond. I mentioned that they might want to think about their own relationship with God and how this might affect their response, as well as the register they think would be most appropriate.
The students really enjoyed the process and their finished letters were funny, touching and cleverly done. They commented on how difficult it was to begin the letter and how they had to think a lot more about the style they wanted to use, compared to that of the normal coursebook tasks. Overall, it was a successful departure from the standard course material and a fun writing exercise.
Please feel free to edit the word document as you see fit. The comments I made were appropriate to the class and the time, but you may feel the need to change them.
Please comment on the lesson if you used it and let me know how it went. Enjoy!
We’ve all got them. We all use them. Most of the time without thinking. But how do you use them in your classroom?
On Friday night, I found myself teaching a 3 hour one-to-one with an A1 student. Almost immediately, my fingers began taking on a life of their own. Every time I asked my student a question, I would use a finger to represent each of the words in the question. Nothing ground breaking and I had done it before with my YLs but in this lesson I took it to a whole new level. All my questions were accompanied by my fingers, often bringing them together to indicate a possible contraction. When we reformulated my student’s responses to the questions, again the fingers were used to help the student along. I would keep them hanging there, and waggle the finger to indicate that the student hadn’t pronounced it correctly or that they had missed it out. I could see the student following my fingers as they came up and I genuinely believe that their employment was useful and I hope to continue using this in the subsequent classes. More importantly, I will ask my student if the fingers are useful or if she thinks I’m mad.
Does anyone else do the same thing? If so, what’s your reasoning behind it? Have you discussed it with your students? Do you have any tips? (pun intended)
This lesson idea is based around a funny and thought provoking TED talk by Nigel Marsh. The talk is titled; How to make work-life balance work.
I have used the class with C1.3 and Proficiency students and each time the talk prompts different conversations within my groups, leading to good language work and exposure to authentic listening.
Here is the link to the talk – Nigel Marsh; How to make work-life balance work. (link will open in a new tab)
Here is what I did
there are thousands and thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet, screaming desperation, where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hateto enable them to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.
commercial companies are inherently designed to get as much out of you [as] they can get away with. It’s in their nature; it’s in their DNA; it’s what they do — even the good, well-intentioned companies.
We have to be responsible for setting and enforcing the boundaries that we want in our life.
I hope the lesson is useful. As always, please feel free to comment and let me know how it goes. Remember that with all TED talks you can activate subtitles and also access an interactive transcript of the talk.
It’s been a ridiculously long time since I wrote anything on here. In order to blow off the blogging cobwebs I am going to try something different for the month of October. The idea is very simple. At the end of each of my lessons I am going to record my immediate thoughts, feelings and reflections on each lesson and upload the audio. To accompany each audio file I will hopefully have a photo of my board work, in order to provide a little more insight into the lesson. I am hoping to keep the audio short, although I will apologise now if I ramble. Let me know what you think and leave a comment below. The link for the first lesson is below.
Lesson 1 – This will take you to Soundcloud.com
Own photo
Lesson 2 – Link will send you to soundcloud.com
Lesson 3 – Link will send you to soundcloud.com
Lesson 4 – Link will send you to souncloud.com
Lesson 5 – Link will send you to souncloud.com
Here is a link to the article/summary I did for the ELTjam website, about the excellent Innovate ELT conference that was recently held in Barcelona. A thoroughly enjoyable and very different way to do a conference.
On Saturday morning, before attending the Innovate conference I tweeted this:
Would it be innovative to stop using the word ‘industry’ with ELT and start using the word ‘profession’?
#iELT15#innovate#ELT
While I’m well aware this is not particularly innovative, I still think it is a question worth investigation. In fact, it produced some interesting responses;
The word ‘industry‘ conjures up certain images in my mind. Workers churning out products to be sold to the masses, low paid workers and high paid owners, profit over working conditions and a top-down hierarchical structure. The connotation is a negative one and if you look carefully on the Macmillan dictionary website, one of the definitions states;
an activity or business that has become very successful, especially one that you think makes an unfair profit or is not necessary (macmillandictionary.com)
While the ELT profession is necessary, the point of this post is not to call for a dismantling of the ‘industry‘ and the toppling of big name publishers in order to distribute the wealth. What I would simply advise is this; stop using the word ‘industry’ among ourselves. Stop using it in conversations, conferences, blog posts and books. Instead, replace it with the word, profession. Look at yourselves as professionals and as individuals who serve yourself and your students. If we want to be taken seriously, to be given the respect we deserve and be a part of more than just another ‘industry’, we must change how we are viewed. A change of mindset and vocabulary can do wonderful things.
a job that you need special skills and qualifications to do, especially one with high social status
Definition of ‘Profession‘ taken from macmillandictionary.com
Five against one: Teaching against the odds. 