New Blogs on SGI

I'm now blogging regularly for the SGI blog, which is my old school in London, where I go back to teach every summer.

The school is fantastic for students learning English and for EFL teacher training.

There is a blog every day from a different member of staff on a whole variety of subjects, so it's an interesting read if you are studying English and looking for your daily 5 min English reading exercise!

If you are really looking to improve your English, but you can't afford the time to travel to London and you are thinking of learning English online, then check out English SKYPE Lessons, which might just be the perfect alternative for you.

Learn English when you are travelling

Learn English when you are travelling: Describing things – a simple and enjoyable mental challenge

It’s difficult to find time for studying English everyday. We all know that. But every little bit that you do will help. You probably have to travel somewhere everyday, so when you are commuting back and forth, look at the world around you and describe in your head everything that you can see in English. This is a really useful exercise to challenge yourself.

You could describe basic things: The man in the red t-shirt is reading the newspaper.

Or, if you are a higher level student, you should push yourself into using more advanced vocabulary and grammar: The man with the wrinkled face is probably reading the football report because he is a lifelong fan of Barcelona. He’s really gutted that he wasn’t at the match last night because Barcelona thrashed Real Madrid four – nil.

You can make your descriptions as easy, or as difficult as you like…depending on how tired you are.

The more you do this kind of exercise, the more inventive you will become. Then, of course you will need more vocabulary. Eventually, you will get to the point where you don’t have all the vocabulary you need and so you will want to check in a dictionary to get that perfect word.

So, a daily mental challenge on your way to work, or on your way home from school, has suddenly given you the inspiration to find out something for yourself (some vocabulary or grammar that you actually need). Using those 5 minutes on your daily travels has turned into something that makes you teach yourself some English…and that’s the best way to learn!

(This is one of my my posts that I write for the St George International Blog, which is my old school and where I return to work every summer)

Jeremy Harmer Lectures

I had quite a bit of spare time today (don't say, "Lucky you", because I've got 12 lessons tomorrow!) and I was watching some of Jeremy Harmer's conference speeches to try and pick up some tips from the "TEFL master".

Surely, you have all come across him before at some point, at least through the standard text 'The Practice of English Language Teaching', among others.

His speech on ideas for working with (and controlling) very large EFL classes were not new for me, but it was good to get a reminder of them, seeing as I haven't taught such big classes for a long time.

The lecture on motivating English students also contained lots of common sense stuff, that was put across in a very entertaining way. Again, good for just brushing up on methodological ideas.

If you've got an hour or two for some infotainment, then Jezza's your man!

Students! You are the teacher!

I have just listened to an interesting podcast (you don't have to download, sign up to anything etc, you can just listen without any commitment or passwords!) from Steve Kaufmann who is the king of LingQ.com (an excellent language learning site btw).

The subject is "What I would do if I were a teacher". He freely admits that he has never been a teacher and doesn't know how to teach, but he is giving his opinion merely as a language learner who has had lots of experience from the receiving end of L2 teaching.

It's interesting to get student feedback in this way, as perhaps teachers do not put themselves in the shoes of the learner often enough.

To paraphrase the podcast, he says that if he were a teacher he would outline to Ss in the first lesson that the onus of L2 learning responsibility lies completely on their shoulders. This is what he would say....

• My job is to make myself unnecessary.
• You (the Ss) must be independent of me.
• You should not expect ME to teach YOU the language.
• My job is to give you the habits and attitude for YOU to learn the language yourself.
• You cannot learn the L2 only in the classroom and I cannot teach it to you only in class

He also highlights the huge importance of reading when outside the classroom and dedicating the time needed.

I think that this is not only good advice, but would make all language teachers' jobs much more interesting (than they already are, of course). Imagine having a class of rabidly motivated students, that bring the lesson to you, in terms of new vocab, phrases, idioms etc etc.

My in-company business students could do with a little bit more of this student ideology!

Personalised vocabulary sentences

When we encounter new vocabulary in class, I get the students to make sentences about themselves that contain the new words.

However, Ss sometimes get stuck for inspiration when making a personalised sentence.

I had continued success with a TOEFL group by adopting a "Theme of the session for the personalised sentence". This did not have to be related to the lesson content.

For example, one day Ss had to write the sentence relating to 'summer holidays'. Another day it was 'winter'.

'Things I do at the office', 'Stuff I do at the weekend', 'Favourite films and actors' were other themes of the day.

This focus seemed to be a faster way of forcing a personalised sentence out of Ss.

...and they all got the TOEFL scores they needed in the end :-)

More free books!!!

Wow!!! More free downloadble TEFL books

Here's some from the OUP

And a whole raft from the British Council

Get reading fellow Dippers!

Free e-book: The Lexical Syllabus

Something free? Too good to be true?

Well, unbelievably the CELS at the University of Birmingham have The Lexical Syllabus: A new approach to language teaching by David Willis absolutely free to download on their website.

I've just scanned a couple of pages and it looks very useful if you are doing the TESOL Dip/DELTA or MA Applied Linguistics etc.

Download it while it's still up on the website. It says it's free for students (at Birmingham!).

Happy studying! :-)

Free language podcasts in 10 languages!!!

I came across a language site (sorry if it's old news for you!) that is superb!

Steve Kaufman's LingQ site is fantastic for teachers and awesome for L2 students. I am living in Berlin and probably about Intermemdiate German. There is a podcast of native people speaking the L2 naturally on a topic AND a transcription. This is the German podcast. Here is the Spanish one.
If you are an English teacher, then maybe your students would like to hear the English conversations.
There are 10 different language podcasts on Steve's site (they're on the right hand side, halfway down the page). Pretty incredible stuff! Thanks Steve!

Semantic clusters hinder adult beginners

Further to my post a couple of days ago re semantic clusters hindering learning, I found an interesting bit of research from the ELTJ March 2009.

The research concludes that....

adult beginners performed significantly better on the unrelated vocabulary test than on the related vocabulary test

children (intermediate level) showed no significant difference in test scores between related and unrelated vocabulary

This suggests tentatively that the presentation of unrelated vocabulary may assist learning of new L2 words more than related vocabulary only at beginners’ level (adults).

I am getting more and more interested in this subject, as it seems to buck the trend of vocab teaching and I have just started a new crop of courses of real / false starter adult beginners.
(Apology if this is old news to everyone and I've only just stumbled upon it!)

Has anyone out there (more knowledgeable and experienced than me) already changed the nature of their lessons in terms of giving vocab in non-related clusters?

If so, have you noticed any discernible improvement in Ss vocab recall after such a change??

I'd be very interested to get some feedback from anyone who has successfully taught vocab in this way and what the student reactions were?? Did the students think that there was no method and that they were suddenly presented with a load of random words???

Why TEFL?

Why make a blog about teaching English as a Foreign Language, when there are so many other good blogs out there??

1. I have just started studying the Trinity Diploma and I am getting into the nitty-gritty of the subject...or more so than when I began teaching about 5 years ago.
2. They say that one of the best ways to remember what you study is tell someone else about it. So, I hope to write down some of what I have learnt to lodge it in my brain.
3. Hopefully, other teachers will comment on what I have learnt to tell me if it is right/wrong/too simplified/impractical etc
4. It's good to get feedback from other teachers who might be in the same situation...i.e. struggling with the Trinity Diploma/DELTA
5. You've got to have someone to rant to about your students now and again, haven't you!
6. Reading other teachers' blogs has provided me with some excellent links for other informative sites/tips/books/vids etc. If I can keep on sharing and one other teacher finds something interesting or worthwhile, then I might start paying back my Karma debt.
   

Don't teach vocabs in associated groups!?!?!?!?

OK, so I've only just started studying the TESOL Diploma and maybe I should already know this, but I have just watched a lecture, where the speaker said that there is extensive research that shows that teaching associated vocab together is absolutely counter-productive to learning.

Here's the vid...

The lecture starts a bit slowly, but gets much better towards the middle and onwards.

When you go to any EFL lesson plans website, almost all of the beginners worksheets put vocab in related groups eg. fruit, family members, clothes etc

The speaker, Paul Nation, said that this info/research is from before 2000. SO maybe this is old news for more experienced teachers than me.
But this must surely be big news for a lot of teachers out there, who I think would teach vocab groups as the default method.

It seems incredible that this method of teaching can be 100% counter-productive to vocab memory recall (yep, that's what it says in the lecture) and I've emailed Paul Nation to get a link form him to be able to have a look at these research findings (which have been replicated a number of times with identical results apparently).

While I am eager to find out about this, I would think that it seems so ingrained in students' minds that you learn related vocab together that they might think that a teacher would not know what the hell they were doing if they only taught random words that had no interference with each other.

What would your students think?

Is it OK to use L1 in the classroom?

I have been wondering whether or not it is ok to use L1 in the classroom.

One of my teaching jobs is at a VHS (it's kind of a community college for those who don't know Germany), where the majority of Ss are middle-aged/'older' adults. The courses are very basic (Example course title - A1.1: mit Musse "At Leisure") with a mixture of REAL-starters and false-starters. Of course, the courses are monolingual and the school expects the teachers to use German in classes.

I try to keep my German use to an absolute minimum. If a student asks me a question in L1, then I always encourage them to ask me again and try to use English.
Ex from beginning of A1.2 lesson today (3rd session of a new course)....

Ss: Kannst du das an den Tafel schreiben?
Tt: Can you say that in English?
Ss: Write it!
Tt: Friendly? ....said with a :-)
Ss: Can you write that on the table, please?
Tt: Table? (touching a table)
Ss2: Board!
Ss: Can you write that on the board, please?
Tt: Perfect question! Yes, of course!

I also did a very quick drill of the Ss question.
Even though it looks long-winded when written out, this transaction only took a matter of seconds. I was pleased that 10 mins later, one of the lower level/confidence Ss used the same question absolutely perfectly.

That is just an example to illustrate how I always try to promote English usage above L1.

However, there are some occasions when a quick translation can save so much time and Ss frustration. I've been thinking that it would seem overly pedantic to insist on no L1 usage in these cases.
In another 'Mit Musse' A1.2 class last week, I was a bit annoyed that the coursebook CD suddenly threw up a 'Would you mind -ing...?' 'No, not at all'/'Sorry, I....' function.
Nothing wrong with that in principle, but this was a unit (and CD dialogue) based on 'Did....?'
Ex: Did you forget your friend's birthday? Yes, I did / No, I didn't

So, to have to deal with (what I would say is) the far more complex structure of, 'Would you mind -ing' and its seemingly negative response (No, not at all) for a positive answer was counterproductive, considering that we were dealing with something so basic as the 'Did...?' structure.
I attempted an explanation with 4 or 5 examples
Ex:
Tt: Would you mind sitting next to Martina?
Ss: No, not at all
Tt: Would you mind giving me your jacket until next Winter?
Ss: Sorry, I need it

...but there were still some blank faces and furrowed brows. I explained that this type of request is maybe overly formal and not so common, but I could still sense the Ss worry.

Next, I resorted to the German translation...
Tt: "Wären Sie so freundlich, die Tür aufzumachen?" 'Would you mind opening the door, please?

...and the penny finally dropped. Well actually, the rocks fell from the sky! The relief was as obvious as a hog roast at a Bar Mitzvah.

So, after being sold up the river by not entirely thought through textbook/CD materials, I saved a whole lot of duress by quickly codeswitching.

Is there anything wrong with that?