My First Lessons - Learning Curve

Long after memory of the actual lesson contents has faded, I can still vividly recollect the circumstances of my first lessons after qualifying as an English teacher.  Namely, I was in the middle of planning for my wedding, which was then only 3 months away.  I had actually been looking forward to a little bit of unemployment after finishing my CELTA, hoping that I would be able to devote myself to such pressing matters as the cake, the decorations and the entertainment at the reception.  Some chance, as it proved.

Although my ears were ringing with Cassandraic predictions that it was near-impossible for newly-qualified CELTA-ites to find employment in a British language college, I managed to do so less than a week after qualifying, after sending out only one CV: sometimes, the timing works out just right.  I was engaged immediately, to do cover work over the summer, with the possibility of being taken on as regular staff at the start of the next term.

Summer being the peak time for holidays, I covered just about every class in the college over the next few months.  It's probably just as well that I don't remember clearly what I taught, because I don't believe that much of it was very good. But here's some of what I learnt:

Lesson Length
On a CELTA course, you spend hours planning a 30- or 60-minute lesson segment, and then get feedback in minute detail.  You teach for 6 hours in total.  This seems like a lot.

That first week of cover, I taught for 6 hours every day.  So after the first day, my teaching experience had doubled.  I had a short feedback conversation during the first day, and also at the end of the week.  Other than that I was on my own.

Lesson Content
Teaching practice on a CELTA is like performing tricks.  It's all about you, and you want to show off all the techniques you've just learned.  You have a short time, so you keep the activities short in order to cram everything in.  Your lesson plans are insanely detailed, with everything timed to the last second.  Your demonstration class never get to sit still as you are constantly moving them to new partners, stand up, sit down, run to the other side of the room, pick things up off the floor...  Boy are they well drilled.  But what they actually take from the lesson after all of that is anyone's guess.

A three-hour lesson is long.  Loooooooong.  You can't approach it in the same way.  Also, 'real' students (sorry) don't want just games: they want, and need, to learn real, solid, meaty language.  It's all about them.

The Dreaded Textbook
We used textbooks in my CELTA classes, kind of.  They were the springboard for our own ideas (see above), which always seemed to involve cutting up paper into tiny tiny pieces.

Having a whole book to teach was a whole other matter.  After realising that my technique would have to change from the CELTA method, I at first swung too far the other way.  I stuck too closely to whichever book that week's class had been inflicted with, teaching without imagination or adaptation to students' needs.  (OK, with little experience and only a few days with them I was unlikely to work out what their needs actually were, so maybe I shouldn't be too hard on myself here.)
 

I could go on: I had to learn about homework, exam levels and preparation, about what students should be able to do at different levels (but can't always), and about paperwork, paperwork, paperwork.  The learning curve was incredibly steep, but that's the way it should be.  I know I'm a better teacher now than I was a year ago, and a much better one than I was two years ago.  And I know I'm still learning.  A year from now I hope to look back with horror at my present teaching (and blogging?!), because I will be able to see yet again how much I've learned in the interim.

In the early period, I think I learned most from the bad times.  It took 3 months to lose the feeling of dread at the start of every day.  I've been bullied by a member of staff and by a malicious student.  There's been stress, self-doubt and a bereavement that was like a punch in the gut.  There was a staffroom feud that poisoned the atmosphere for weeks.  You keep going.

Now, I get to learn from the good times as well.  How the atmosphere improves when those negative people leave.  How positive people can transform a working culture.  How a college that's willing to take a chance on a newly qualified teacher can be a great place to grow.  How students can be exasperating, contrary, inspiring, hilarious, diverse and marvelous.  How you can make contact with amazing educators through blogging and social media, and continually be inspired and challenged by them.

This is only the beginning - always.

Oh, and one more thing: I've learned that I love being married to my husband!

Receptive Skills - Going Beyond the Textbook

Part 2 of my teacher development session moves on from Communication Games (see previous post) to Receptive Skills, in particular the sub-skills that students may miss out on developing if you just 'teach the book.'  Again, for experienced teachers this will not be earth-shattering material, but for newer teachers I hope it will be a useful recap, and maybe even give some new ideas.

First of all, Listening

Most textbooks include listening activities where students listen to a recording repeatedly, answer questions, then check the correct answers.  What they do not teach is listening skills.  And how often in real life do you get the chance to hear every word of something 2 or 3 times over, with exactly the same pace, intonation and emphasis, until you capture every nuance of it?  Book listening activities, however useful they may be in preparing for an exam (where you also typically hear everything twice) are a very poor imitation of real-world listening.

So how can students be helped to bridge the gap between graded recordings made by actors, and real-life speech with all its variety, not to mention messiness?  What skills do they need to practise?

Active Listening is one important area.  Imagine the difference between a classroom of students listening to a recording because they have to in order to complete a worksheet, and a group of people listening to something that interests, enrages, entertains, enthralls, or provokes them.  Which group is listening better?  Imagine also two conversations between friends: one in which A talks while B is silent and has a blank expression, and one where B responds to A constantly, with words, facial expressions, non-verbal expressions, but above all with their clear attention.  Which friendship is likely to grow stronger?

In this video from Ted.com, Julian Treasure discusses why we all fail to listen, and recommends tactics to improve listening skills.





















This video works well with high level classes to get them to think about how they listen, but even Elementary students can be taught the acronym RASA (Receive Appreciate Summarise Ask), and learn to apply these steps both when they listen to recordings, and in conversation.

Receive - Take it in
Appreciate - Think about it, absorb it, what does it mean to me? do I agree? / Hmm, Really? - ways that we show we are listening
Summarise - So you mean...
Ask - Find a question to ask about what you've heard.  (When teaching this method to students, there is no such thing as a stupid question.  A tiny step in developing Active Listening skills is still a step.)

I've touched on Social and Emotional Cues above, which is another key area where students need practice if they are to be able to talk with native speakers without causing unintentional amusement or offence.  Authentic resources are much better for this than textbook recordings made by actors, which typically have exaggerated intonation, and very few interjections or hesitations.  Try using video of real conversations, such as this excerpt from the BBC documentary The British Family.

I showed this to a Pre-Intermediate class, without any preparation other than telling them that they would see two people being interviewed.  After watching it, I asked them how the man and woman felt during the interview.  The students were unanimous that in the first section of the interview, the man disagreed or was angry with what the woman was saying, because he was completely silent, and stood with his arms folded and a frown on his face, not looking at her.  In the second section, he was still silent, but you could tell that now he agreed with her, because he smiles and makes eye contact with her, and at the end of the section he laughs.  In the final section, they both speak, overlapping and interrupting each other, and both are smiling, so you know that these are positive interruptions, not rudeness.  In other words, they understood a great deal from the recording, without even looking at the language.

Another area where textbook listening exercises fall down, is that they ask you to listen for 6 things during a recording, which will probably be spaced at fairly regular intervals.  In real life however, we frequently have to listen to a long spiel of information, most of which is not relevant to us, without drifting off sufficiently that we miss the One Detail that is not only relevant, but frequently vital.  Train announcements are an excellent example of this, such as the one below. 

Which platform is this train going to be at?  Is this the train for Arundel?  If it is the train to Arundel, where in the train do I need to sit?

(OK, so the visuals aren't great, mostly it's someone's finger, but the audio is useful - you get some background noise, a lot of unfamiliar station names, and the answer you want towards the end of a long list.  And if you get it wrong, maybe you won't get home tonight!)

I hope that some of the above has been useful - next time: Reading Skills!


(NB - I did not create any of the videos linked or embedded here, all rights remain with the creators.)

The Whys and Wherefores of Communication Games

The following is based on my contribution to a staff development meeting at my college last night, if I had had more time, and if the IT equipment hadn't taken exception.  There will be several parts - Part 1 focuses on Communication Games, while later entries will move onto using authentic resources to stretch students' Receptive Skills, and finally to using ICT for professional development and in the classroom.  (It was a busy session - believe it or not I squeezed most of this into 40 minutes on the night, including the afore-mentioned IT trouble!)

I'm taking the opportunity now to expand my ideas a bit...

Part 1 - Communication Game

Learning should be fun, but it's all too easy for fun to become a higher priority than learning.  Especially when we start out, we can think that the nuts and bolts of grammar - let alone spelling, paragraphing or register - are 'boring,' and 'too difficult' for our students.  We want them to like us and enjoy the lessons, so consciously or otherwise, we skimp on the boring stuff, and pile on the fun.  The result?  Unchallenged, unmotivated students who are poorly prepared for using English in the real world, and may even end up complaining about our teaching style.  "So and so's classes are fun, but I need to improve my English."

It's not that games are bad, but they do need to have a clear purpose - and some students will need to understand that purpose before they see any value in the game.  So, what are some valid purposes?

First, the Warmer - for the beginning of the term, to help a new class to gel.
Everyone has their favourites, and one of mine is the Number Game.  Every student thinks of a number that has some personal significance to them (try to steer them away from just choosing their age as it's so obvious).  It might be their house number, their lucky number, the year their country got independence, or anything really.  In small groups, students tell  their numbers, and the group has to guess the reason.  This game is good for giving students practice in asking questions and speculating (you could use it to gauge current ability before a relevant grammar lesson), and also because the students have totally free choice over what personal information they reveal, so it is less pressurised for them in a new class situation.

Next, games can be focused around producing particular Target Language.
A great example for this is the Blindfold Obstacle Course.  A student is blindfolded, then the class and teacher arrange an obstacle course for them, using whatever is available in the room (pieces of paper on the floor that they must avoid treading on would be a minimalist version).  The class then has to direct the blindfolded student on a particular route through the room.  To avoid the louder students monopolising the directions, you could have a rule that each class member can only speak once, then has to wait their turn till everyone has given one direction.
This game of course practises the imperative and vocabulary for direction, but also could be used for prepositions (crawl under the tablecloth), phrasal verbs (pick up the hoop) and speaking with precision (shuffle forwards 3 inches, then turn 90 degrees to your left).

Another valid purpose for games is to enhance students' Confidence.
If you have a class with one or more very quiet students, try a Shouted Dictation. Divide the class so that half are at each end of the classroom, facing the opposite group.  Each student is then paired with the one opposite them.  One group are the readers, the other group are the writers.  You then need to give each reader a different short text to read, which they have to dictate to their partner.  If you want to make it more difficult, you can play music, or radio static if you're feeling really mean!
The readers are dictating different texts simultaneously, so it gets loud pretty quickly.  The writers have to accurately transcribe the entire passage (including punctuation), so they will start shouting too, asking for repetition, spelling, and clarification.  I have done this activity with a class which included a nearly inaudible student, and the results were impressive.  For more confident students it can also be very beneficial in terms of pronunciation and clarity.

The activity above is helpful for students who feel underconfident in the classroom.  However, sometimes there is the opposite problem: the classroom is too safe.  Students produce language happily in front of their teacher and classmates, but freeze up in a shop, at work, or in a speaking test.  So sometimes we need activities to help students Produce Language Under Stress, strange though that may sound.
For this, I like to use two Backwards Interview games.  The first one is based on a classic Two Ronnies sketch:

In the EFL classroom version, the answers will probably not align so perfectly, but you get the idea!  Students stand or sit in a circle, and ask questions around the circle.  A asks B a question, B doesn't answer.  B asks C a new question, C answers A's question.  C asks D a new question, D answers B's question and so on.  What usually happens is that someone takes a while to answer, by which time the next player has forgotten the previous question.
The second interview game is loosely based on the quiz show Jeopardy.  Time A gives B an answer, which B has to think of a question for.  Then B gives C an answer, C responds with a matching question, and so on.  This is another game that's useful for practising question forms, and it can lead to some lively debate about whether a particular question and answer really go together.

Of course these are by no means the only possible learning purposes for games, but I hope that they are useful as examples.  Please do comment if you would like to add any more game purposes for the EFL classroom, or suggest any tried and tested games.