This is a very quick post about an enjoyable and interesting lesson I recently did with my teenage FCE class.
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The lesson begins with a challenging authentic listening from the BBC about smart phone addiction based around part 4 of the listening exam.
The lesson then moves on to quite a long text about ‘Digital detox’ which is based around part 1 of the reading exam.
To finish, my esteemed colleague Matt Ellman (@mattellman) has contributed a Use of English exercise focusing on word transformation, taken from a Telegraph article on the effects of Ipad use by toddlers.
Here is a quick overview of what I did in my class, but feel free to use the worksheets provided however you wish.
We had been talking about shopping addiction in the previous classes so the lead in was a simple recap of that. I asked the class how much they used their smartphones, what they used them for, what did they download the most, apps or songs and so on. I asked how much time they spent on their phones and whether they thought it was too much or acceptable. Finally, I asked if it was possible to become addicted to a phone.
I introduced the listening and played the recording twice as per the exam. I made the questions a little bit easier as the listening itself is perhaps a little bit harder than the class were used to, so if you want to change the questions on the provided work sheet, feel free to do so. The class found the listening challenging and commented on how the different accents and the speed at which the speakers talked made it more difficult than the normal course book listening.
After the listening I asked the students what they would do if I took their phones away from them? They said they wouldn’t be happy but they could use their home computers. I asked them what would happen if they couldn’t use the internet? They responded by saying they would use their home phones. The questions continued along the same lines, until eventually the students had no way of communicating or receiving information. I told them that they were in effect going ‘cold turkey’. We discussed the meaning and I gave examples and then boarded ‘digital detox’ and asked the students to discuss its meaning. This lead nicely into the next reading exercise. Again, feel free to change the questions as well as the pre reading vocabulary.
To finish the class, I gave the students an article to read for homework about Ipad addiction in toddlers as young as 4yrs old, taken from the Telegraph. Matt found the article and prepared a Use of English exercise as a follow-up for the next lesson, to revise some of the vocabulary and to provide further discussion on the topic.
I have been wanting to write this blog post for some time, but I wasn’t quite sure how to frame exactly what I wanted to say, so I just sat down in front of the computer and started to write. I hope, by the end, it makes some sort of sense.
Google images
Working in a bigger school means I come in to contact with more teachers and inevitably leads to more discussion about lessons, students and what’s going right and wrong in the classroom.
Recently we had our mid-term exam period. Different classes going through all sorts of exams and then the inevitable marking period and report writing that teachers have to go through. It was during the exam marking part that I suddenly started to think about expectations. More importantly, teacher’s expectations and it was exasperated phrases such as the ones below that got me started.
We’ve just done this in class! Why aren´t they using it correctly!
We´ve covered the present perfect a million times and they are still using the past simple.
We covered all this in the revision lesson. Why can´t they just get it right!
This continued for the whole week. Teachers shaking their head´s, tutting loudly and furiously scribbling red pen over their student´s exams.
I remember being like this when I first started teaching. Constantly worrying as to why conditionals or the passive weren’t being produced by my student´s even though we had covered them several times that term. Getting worked up at every little mistake and then leaving the class blaming myself, then the students and at times the coursebook.
It wasn´t until I started teaching proficiency students last year that I realised I was looking at it all wrong. In every proficiency coursebook there is always a review of some of the most basic grammar building blocks. Past tense, future forms, conditionals, the passive and so on. Sometimes it´s really basic stuff, but the students still make mistakes with it. Even if they have been studying English for many years. It was then that I realised I needed to play the long game. I needed to lower my expectations. My expectations of what it is actually capable of teaching a student, who you only teach for an average of 2 or 3 hours a week. I needed to lower the expectations of the students, who had been sold a course that guaranteed improvement in the their English, without fail. I was being too hard on myself and on the students.
Let´s face it. It takes a native speaker until they are about 18 yrs old to be a truly proficient speaker of their own language. I´m basing this purely on my own thought process and experience by the way. No research or Google searches. This obviously depends on educational background and other varying factors. You then go on to university or into the working world and you are faced with a whole new world of language. Whether it is based around your studies or the area of work you have gone into. You grow older and pass through a multitude of different experiences that you have never encountered and you have to learn new functional language, lexical sets and ways of using all of this new language input correctly. In effect, you never truly stop learning language.
So, should we really expect our students to absorb a coursebook over a nine month period and then instantaneously regurgitate it perfectly, either through the medium of paper based exams or during pair work?
Of course not! Take the pressure off yourself, enjoy the process of learning and stop worrying about learning the past simple in two weeks so that you can then move onto the next unit and start worrying about the past continuous.
Teachers must be patient, unafraid of contrasting “difficult” examples, and not expect too much too soon. (Michael Lewis, The English Verb, 2002)
Your worry and stress will only carry over into your classroom and the student´s will pick up on it. Although, this is easier said than done when you have pressure from other sources.
The fact that we have to test/assess/evaluate our students every term doesn´t help us in this matter. Targets. It´s all about hitting bloody targets! Showing results, showing progress, getting return on investment. The culture we live in breeds this kind of need/want. The constant strive to get ahead, be the best and get the top job. It´s putting teachers in a pressure cooker and who only knows what pressure the kids are under.
Parents have expectations of both the child and the teacher. Unfortunately, it is the teacher that takes the brunt of things when the child isn’t performing well. I’m sure we have all had to deal with the angry parent laying blame at your door because the report you wrote was actually an honest portrayal of their child rather than the standard “make it sound good, so we can get more money out of them next term” rhetoric. Yet, I also feel that the schools themselves help to feed these expectations by assuring students and parents alike, that after one year of hard study at a particular level, they will be ready to move up to the next level. Of course this depends on whether they pass the exams they have each term. The exams that are based exactly on the work covered in the book, heavily grammar based and have a low pass mark that basically ensures even the weakest student can scrape through and feel as though they are progressing.
I appreciate that the above is a generalisation and not all schools work like this but I imagine there are a few people thinking they work in a school/business that does operate in this way.
What I’d like to see is ‘Slow Teaching’. You’ve heard of ‘Slow food’, right? Anyone who has taught from a B1 coursebook and above, must have come across it!
Slow Food is an international movement founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986. Promoted as an alternative to fast food, it strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and
encourages farming of plants, seeds and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem. (wikipedia, 2013)
I would love teaching to adapt this thinking. Away with the rush and tear of pacing schedules, making sure you complete 75% of the coursebook and ensuring you give homework every lesson so that the students use the activity book and we can justify asking the parents to fork out an extra £20 for it. Instead of welcoming the students on the first day and telling them that by the end of the course they would have covered x,y and z. Tell them that what ever happens, happens. What comes up in class is what’s taught. (Promoted as an alternative to fast food) Don’t lie to them by saying if they do all the exercises and homework they will instantly become a better student and speaker of English. Be honest! Tell them that learning a language can be a long, hard road. It’s not easy. It can be fun, it can be rewarding and is worth the effort, but that effort must come from within.(encourages farming of plants, seeds) Step away from the coursebook, do something different, try a new approach and make it relevant to the students. (characteristic of the local ecosystem)
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It’s just a thought. It might just work. At the very least it might make your life a little less stressful.
The site was first brought to my attention by Graham Stanley (@grahamstanley), who talked about using the game at a small British Council conference, last year. Graham is one half of the team behind the site, digitalplay, so I knew it would be worth checking it out.
The game was designed to raise awareness of about poverty. The basic premise is that you have $1000 to see you through until the end of the month and you have to make a variety of different choices based on a range of different situations that crop up, along with finding a job, keeping a roof over your head and looking after your young child.
The game itself is very simple to play and you don’t need to be a gaming geek to play along. It’s just a matter of clicking on the option you want and reading what happens next. To help, some very kind people have developed a walk-through guide to teach you about the game, how to play it and what to expect.
The game deals with lots of issues from homelessness, workers unions, obesity and doing the weekly shop to name a few. This means there are ample opportunities to use authentic materials to expand on the areas that come up in the game. Obviously, you need to play the game and see what comes up frequently, depending on the option that is taken, but it is easy to plan ahead and prepare the materials before the lesson and bring them up when the time is right.
Authentic materials – Google images
I think that the lesson would be suitable for upper intermediate and above and mature teens at FCE.
I introduced the topic by getting the students to think about what they would spend £1000 on in a month if they had no real responsibilities and no bills to pay. After feedback, I asked them how they would spend the money if they were a single parent with no job and nowhere to live. This worked well as a lead in and got the groups discussing from the very beginning.
One of the first options is to decide where to live. This is determined by distance to where you work, cost of housing depending on distance from the city and how much you spend on petrol to get to work. This in itself promotes lots of debate, but usually results in the students choosing to live quite a way out of the city and this then leads to some information about the rate of homelessness in the US. This lead me to ask the students about homelessness in Spain, if it has got worse, has the crisis made it worse and if they had known anyone affected by it. I then introduced this article, which i found in the NY times.
The article also had a slide show of photos to accompany it and I used these too. Below are some files, showing how I used the article and photos. They are designed to fit with parts of the Cambridge exam but can be easily adapted.
Another part of the game involves the students deciding how much to spend on the weekly shopping trip and the exact items to put in the trolley. This again gets the student talking and leads nicely into the next article, which I found on the Guardian website.
This was one of a dozen articles on the subject and this is what is so good about this lesson. You can pick and choose your authentic materials depending on level and age and there is bound to be something related to the issue you are searching for. Below is what I did with the article.
Another one of the scenarios that came up in the game was whether to buy a $5 salad or save money and get a burger from the dollar menu. This topic was actually touched upon when we talked about the shopping article above so it was another good place to introduce another text. This was an article about obesity in Spain, caused by the psychological effects of the crisis.
I think the above is just scratching the surface and that the lesson is full of possibilities for a variety of different activities and resources to be exploited. It provided a lot of speaking practice and opportunities for correction and highlighting of emergent language.
If you use the lesson or any of the ideas, I would love to hear how it goes.
I just wanted to quickly write about a class I did on Monday with my proficiency group.
We are currently in-between books, so I am trying to use authentic texts and other supplementary material before we crack on with the exam preparation.
In the previous lesson, I introduced my students to TED talks - http://www.ted.com/talks and showed them one of my favourite talks – Birth of a word by Deb Roy. A must for anyone who is interested in linguistics or general language learning/acquisition.
I went through the website and its functions and also pointed out the subtitle feature and generally praised it as a very useful learning tool.
I left them with a piece of homework. They had to explore the site, find a video of interest and then plan a 2 minute introduction and summary of the talk itself. This would work as good practice for part 3 of the CPE speaking exam. I asked the students to email the videos before the class so I could watch them and be prepared with any related materials and follow-up questions.
Of the three students present (class of four) one of them emailed me their chosen video. It was a short presentation on how You Tube works together with copyright holders to create a win win situation for all involved.
After watching the video I searched for some articles that were related to the same theme or in a similar vein. I got lucky and found an article in the Guardian newspaper that pretty much went hand in hand with what the video was talking about but further extended the example of music videos. -
I then went on to find another article in the Guardian related to Youtube, but this article went in an altogether different direction. It spoke about the dangers facing children who used Youtube and how they were just “3 clicks from explicit material.”
I went into the class with just the video, two articles and a vague idea of where I wanted the class to go. Luckily, one of the other students had found a TED talk he wanted to watch and by chance it was loosely related to the You Tube talk. It was entitled, Tracking the trackers.
I asked the student to introduce the video and we then spoke briefly about internet security and how one search on the internet can lead to a multitude of advertisements for related websites and offers popping up on your websites.
We watched the video and spoke about what was said, whether the programme was a good idea and the pros and cons of the internet as a whole. This built up some nice vocabulary and worked well as a warmer, getting the students focused on thinking about the internet and so on.
I asked the next student to introduce her video. She did this by practising part 3 of the CPE speaking exam. A two-minute talk to introduce and summarise what we were about to watch. I asked a few questions about YouTube, how often they use it, what do they normally watch and we spoke about how videos can go viral and I showed them the latest craze, the Harlem shake.
After the video, we discussed some of the language that came up and talked about the general theme of the video and who was affected by it. We then moved on to the first text.
Before the class, I took the first article and cut the paragraphs out and made a simple text jumble exercise. This simulated part 6 of the new Reading and Use of English exam for the CPE. If I had had time, I would have written an extra paragraph that didn´t fit into the text, but seeing as the text was quite long anyway, I focussed on getting the students to concentrate on the reference words and ordering the information.
This proved to be quite difficult but it got the students working and they were pointing out why each paragraph went where and giving reasons, and it proved to be a good workout for them. I gave them the original article and they checked their work and then I asked them to read the article, highlighting collocations and any language they wanted to ask about. At the end of the reading I asked them to discuss who they thought really benefitted from the copyright agreement.
After feedback we moved onto the next text. I had written the title of the text on the board and left out the last two words and asked the students to discuss what they thought the article might be referring to. Eventually they worked it out and we talked about the dangers of the internet and who was most at risk and how this could be prevented.
Before the class, I had gone through the text and tippexed out some of the phrasal verbs and important collocations (part 2 of the Reading and U of E exam) and asked the students to read through, complete the gaps and then discuss who was responsible for what children can and cannot see on the internet.
We now had two texts, which were kind of connected. I split the class into pairs and gave each pair one of the texts. I asked them to look for the main points of each article, no more than three, and then to summarise the article into one paragraph. The results are below;
With the arrival of the internet and websites such as YouTube, the music business has changed. Streaming accounts for a bigger slice of the cake than buying records through downloading . Therefore, labels and musicians need to rely on advertising. This is a new relationship between the music industry, advertising agencies and streaming providers. the ultimate aim is to generate revenue for all the stakeholders involved.
Children surfing on the internet are surprisingly close to explicit material. For instance, on YouTube a child can easily end up watching pornographic or violent content from the innocent act of watching a sesame street video due to the “suggested videos” feature. Even though these platforms have their own systems to prevent these baleful consequences they admit they´re defenceless against this situation.
However, the bright side of the story is that great strides have been taken during the last year in order to provide children with a safer internet experience.
We now had two summary paragraphs and all we needed was a question to tie them both together and complete the writing task and the students homework.
I asked them to look in a copy of the new course book and see how the authors had written out the part 3 speaking exam questions and then to work together to come up with their own question. After some debate as to what the focus of the question and corresponding exam response should be, they finally came up with this;
“Which is more important? Our children’s safety or the interests of the You Tube stakeholders?”
I was really happy with this lesson and the way that it developed, as well as the way the students responded to working without the course book. I made sure that they were aware we were still working towards the exam and continuously referred to the part of the exam that each task was testing or going to test.
If I had the chance, I think I would exploit both of the texts more and perhaps have a few more structured speaking activities to really milk the topic, but the lesson flowed well and it was very natural. The timing worked well too, as the 3hr class finished just after the exam question was put on the board.
Now I’m just waiting for the student’s responses and I will be interested to see if the fact that they themselves created the task will have any bearing on the quality of their writing and the answer they provide in their essay’s.
I thought I would come out of my self-imposed exile to write about something that happened a couple of weeks ago.
I had chosen a film to watch with my girlfriend. My Blue Valentine, starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. See the trailer here -
It´s a brilliant film. A great portrayal of how even the best relationships, no matter how much in love the couple are, can suffer from the slow erosion of daily life. A great script, combined with great acting allowed the film to have the appropriate effect on the viewer. My girlfriend was in tears and I was left feeling angry at the two main characters, for not being able to see the problems and deal with it in an adult way.
Don´t worry, I haven´t hijacked this blog to start writing film reviews. I wanted to write about one of the scenes that really stuck with me after the film had ended, which was a short piece of dialogue between the two main characters, Cindy and Dean.
CINDY
I’d like to see you have a job where you
didn’t have to start drinking at 8
o’clock in the morning to go to it.
DEAN
No, I have a job that I can drink at 8
o’clock in the morning. What a luxury,
you know. I get up for work, I have a
beer, I go to work, I paint somebody’s
house, they’re excited about it. I come
home, I get to be with you. That’s
like… this is the dream!
CINDY
It doesn’t ever disappoint you?
DEAN
Why? Why would it disappoint me?
CINDY
Because you have all this potential.
DEAN
So what! Why do you have to make money
off your potential?
CINDY
Look, I’m not even saying you have to
make money off it. Don’t you miss it?
DEAN
What does potential even mean? What does
that mean, potential? Potential for what?
To turn it into what?
Okay. I´m not about to admit that I´m drinking at work, but I instantly associated this way of thinking/feeling to my current teaching year. At first, I was going to say that you should replace the drinking for a coursebook and that would be that. But the more I thought about it the more I realised that I was being unfair towards coursebooks. Undoubtedly, the drinking/coursebook takes the edge of. It makes life easier and keeps you cocooned in your comfort zone.
It was this part that hit home;
CINDY
It doesn’t ever disappoint you?
DEAN
Why? Why would it disappoint me?
CINDY
Because you have all this potential.
Then I knew I was stuck in a rut, content in my comfort zone and happy just to make it to the weekend. It made me look at everything I had done this year or should I say, haven´t done. I´ve ghosted through the year, telling myself that I deserved a break from the previous year`s exertions.Yet, deep down I´m bored. Bored of the coursebook, bored with not challenging myself or my students.
I feel that it´s time to get back out there, integrate myself back into the amazing PLN I built up during last year´s teaching. I´ve missed the interactions on twitter, the blog comments, the conferences and generally being part of something awesome. I owe it to myself to push the boundaries and to simply see what happens. (And of course blog about it) I owe it to my students to make them realise that there isn´t just one way to do something, be it learn, read, write or speak.
Okay, nearly 4 weeks in and I had a bad day. I shouldn’t complain really, but I had prepared, I had planned, I had made notes, yet for all three lessons I seemed to be scrambling to keep my head above water, for one reason or another.
I was wondering whether it was how I had planned. Did I give myself enough time? Did I think about their needs? Did I write my lesson plan out in such a way that I could easy snatch a glance and see exactly what was coming next? Should I be more explicit with my timing? The questions are endless. I know more or less what went wrong and what I need to do and I’m sure that some of it comes down to how I plan, but the idea of how we plan and how much time we spend planning has been something I have been thinking about for a while. So, I’m going to throw the question out there; How do you plan? Is there a special place you go to? Is there a set amount of time? Is there a specific set of procedures you work through?
So, a new school, a new start and a new teaching year. Also, a new topic to write about this year. Coursebooks. After a year of teaching without one, it seems like the obvious choice, right?
Well, my new school has issued me with coursebooks for all levels, pacing schedules and exam deadlines. There feels like very little freedom and space for experimentation. I don’t particularly want to rock the boat, well not just yet, so I am going to tow the line and confine my ramblings on the blog for my experience with the coursebooks.
Teaching is like climbing a mountain. Preparation is key. Like a class of learners the mountain and its environment can be unpredictable. Always take the correct equipment (materials), check the weather report (post lesson reflection+lesson planning) and tell someone where you’re going (observation). Don’t over pack, this will mean you have too much to carry and tire yourself out (think about your materials, are they necessary?) Keep your equipment in good condition, maintain it and upgrade when necessary. (Personal and professional development through courses like DELTA, in-house training, blogging, Twitter, further reading, action research)
All packed and ready to climb Mt Huayna Potosi. 6,088m
Respect the mountain and its surroundings. (Respect your students and make their surroundings the materials you need, they have lives and a lot to say. Give them the chance to say it.) Pace yourself when climbing the mountain, it’s a marathon not a sprint. Why rush to the top and back down again? Enjoy the journey and wonder at the beauty of it all. (It takes time to become a good teacher. Take the rough with the smooth, learn from your mistakes and turn those experiences into learning points.)
When you reach the top, take time to enjoy the view and take lots of pictures. It will be a one-off and every peak will have a different view, as will the journey to get there. ( Document your teaching experiences, be it with a blog, a personal diary or just continuous feedback with your peers. This will keep it fresh, provide other avenues through which to receive feedback and allow other people to feel as though they were there with you.)
On top of Mt Illimani, Bolivia. 6438m
Don’t be complacent on the way down. 80% of all accidents that occur on Mt Everest happen on the way down. ( Maintain classroom management, keep your standards high and this will reflect upon your students, maintain motivation for yourself and your students by pushing yourself that little bit extra to make sure concentration is sustained.)
When you get to the bottom and your legs, back and shoulders ache, take pride in what you have achieved. Not everyone has the courage, determination and willingness to accomplish what you have just done. (Teachers are awesome)
The second challenge was to talk about something that wasn’t teacher related but has brought something to the classroom more than anything else.
For me, it isn’t just one event in my life that has sculpted the way I am in class. It has been a lifetime of experiences, ups and downs, good times, bad times and luck that allows me to bring something personal and unique to the classroom.
I recently read another great post from Dave Dodgson (http://www.davedodgson.com/2012/05/loss-of-momentum.html) about the slow and gradual decline of learner enthusiasm, as exams become the main focus and learning fatigue takes hold after a long school year. I had certainly started to notice this in my own classes, but more worryingly I have started to notice it in the staff room, too. This is especially true of my own approach to planning and general attitude to classes.
It’s not just the learners who are struggling towards the end of the year. As teachers, we have worked late, worked weekends, marked homework, set up mock exams, blogged, spoken to parents, attended PD sessions and conferences and genuinely gone out of our way to make our lessons positive learning experiences.
This decline in motivation is only a recent one, but on Monday I spent an hour and a half staring at a course book, devoid of inspiration. I had no clue what I was going to do, no new ideas, no energy to search through the library and source some materials or scour the Internet for lesson plans that would probably need adapting anyway. I was lethargic and tired of the same old routine and material. When I was in the lesson, everything was fine. I got the usual buzz, which I hope never leaves, but the before and after seems like a slow and cheerless grind towards the end of term. Is this normal? Is it just me, or do other teachers get this feeling?
Now, don’t get me wrong, I care about my students and their learning, but when they have that feeling of apathy in class it’s hard not to get sucked into that depressing atmosphere yourself and it requires even more energy to get the class enthused and excited about the lesson. Energy that I no longer have. Energy that is propped up on coffee and the thought of the weekend.
A colleague said to me today that work seems to be getting in the way of life at the moment. I completely understood where she was coming from. We immerse ourselves so deeply in our work at times (I certainly know I have this year) that when we come up for air and take a look around we realise we have a life to lead. At times, I have felt guilty about having a life and often felt that I should be doing some sort of planning or reading up about a particular language point to make sure I could give my students the best lesson I could. This train of thought lead to the end of my last relationship and I’m damn sure I won’t allow it to affect my next one. A healthy balance, like anything in life, is of vital importance. A lesson certainly learned this year.
I’m pretty sure it’s not just me. Staff room talk is no longer about up coming projects and future lessons, but the summer and where to go on holiday. There seems to be a lull in the blogosphere at the moment (unless your name is Chia Suan Chong) and as Phil Wade has pointed out, a large part of our PLN has gone underground and all is quiet on the twitter front. Is it expected that teachers should be highly motivated and giving the normal 100% effort 24hrs a day? We are human after all, we have our limits, we have our needs.
