August 5

Spending Time with Language

This post is related to a post from a while back on the urgency of some learners to gain an official qualification in English.  In the other post, I mentioned university students who are desperate to get their B1, but in this post I’m thinking more about mainstream teachers who are frantically scrabbling to get a B2.

Our school works in a number of state schools which have recently implemented bilingual projects, which require their teachers to have a B2 qualification in the second language being taught and as such over recent years we have had a number of courses working with those teachers.  In some cases, the teachers started the year with a B2 or even C1 level and were perfectly able to achieve their objective of passing B2 in June.

What has unfortunately happened though is that those teachers who started in lower-level courses are increasingly being pushed through the levels at an alarming rate, with the expectation being that they’ll be able to jump from A2 to B1 or B1 to B2 in a year.  Whilst some learners are able to make that leap, with a great deal of effort on their part, others are struggling – often taking an exam against our recommendation and ultimately feeling despondent about their English level.

One of the factors which I think affects a learner’s ability to jump through levels is the amount of time they spend with the language which I believe affects their confidence in both production and comprehension.  Some learners are so concerned with jumping through the examining body’s hoops that they spend little time looking outside the exam syllabus and hence lack the fluency and confidence of others.

How would you suggest learners spend more time with language?  Here are some of my ideas:

  • Watch your favourite TV series and films in original version
  • Find a conversation exchange
  • Read for pleasure in English and focus on understanding gist
  • Use lyricstraining.com to practise listening for detail
  • Try to use English in your everyday life: write your shopping list in English or write a quick diary entry of what you’ve done that day

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June 25

“genuine and meaningful communication”

Genuine and meaningful communication between learners takes place

This is one of the criteria in the DipTESOL assessed teaching unit – what does this mean and how can we ensure it occurs in our lessons?

Perhaps we should first look at the two adjectives used in the criterion: genuine and meaningful.  By genuine, I understand natural, honest and authentic communication; by meaningful, I understand that there is a purpose for communication.

The question is whether the communication which takes place in our classes is genuine and meaningful.  It could be argued that communication which takes place in the EFL classroom is meaningful as we are practising TL, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that the language being produced is genuine.

The key is to find ways of personalising the TL and context of our lessons.  Here are some ideas:

  • In grammar activities, such as Las Vegas Grammar, use the learners’ names in the sentences – this increases their engagement in the activity and you can extend the task by guessing whether the sentences are correct or not after correcting them.
  • Provide identifiable contexts for language – a group of Spanish teenagers may not be interested in what Japanese teenagers like listening to in their free time, so either change the context or allow the learners space and time to give their opinions or contrast the context to their own.
  • Make all TL personal – this is easier than you may think.  Whatever the TL, you can generally ask one of the following questions: “Do you have…?”, “Do you like…?” or “What do you think about…?”

A second aspect of the DipTESOL criterion worth mentioning is the word between – depending on the age of your learners, there may be more or less interaction between them and I do know people who have chosen YL groups for their DipTESOL assessed lessons.  It would be interesting to know whether classroom language qualifies as “genuine and meaningful communication between learners” as there may be more natural communication in this respect than in practising the TL of the lesson.  This also leads on from my previous post on making the class less teacher-centred as by encouraging communication between learners we can give them more of a voice and more responsibility for their learning.

Here are a couple of other blogposts worth reading on the topic of personalisation:

A Matter of Confidence – Personalising

P is for Personalization

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June 24

The teacher-centred classroom

A focus for next year is how I can make my classes less teacher-centred.  It’s something I’ve been thinking about this year, especially around the adult GESE group which I had as I found that they were perfectly capable of extended, interactive exchanges in pairs, but that they were less likely to interact as naturally when conversing with me (irrespective of it being in a one-on-one situation or in a whole-group setting).

I like this quote from an article in The Guardian with a tip for Demanding High:

The teacher gets students to listen and comment on each other’s answers, rather than designating any as correct or incorrect herself, at least until it is useful to do so.

It speaks to me on a number of levels: the idea of moving away from a teacher-centred classroom and passing more responsibility to learners for response and extension, the effect of over-affect or perhaps the advantage of distancing myself from the conversation and finally, the importance of focused, appropriate error correction.

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March 9

Desperate Conversations

This post has been brewing for a while now as over the past couple of years in Spain there have unfortunately been more and more of these desperate conversations.

I need my B1, pero ya. (right now)

I’m graduating in two months, if I get my B1 by then.

If I don’t get my B2, schools won’t even look at my CV.

She failed her teaching exam, but got a job because she had a B2 in English.  How can that be fair?

Changes to the European education system and the implementation of the Plan Bolonia mean that most university graduates are required to have proof of a B1 level in a second language.  Reform to the Spanish education system mean that many schools are now implementing bilingual streams, requiring their teachers to have a minimum of a B2 level.

Whilst in the long-term I believe that this has a number of benefits, it means that during this period of adjusting to the new demands, many people are suddenly finding themselves in desperate need of an official qualification in English, leading to an increase in learners who are learning the language taking classes for all the wrong reasons and as such struggling to improve.

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March 6

Dealing with difficult classes

Most of us have had a difficult class at some point in our careers.  And by class, I really do mean class, rather than a tough learner within a class.  I’ve had a couple of difficult classes over the past few years, most of which were comprised of wonderful individuals who just didn’t work well when in the room together at the same time.

Last year, I took on a group which had been difficult the previous year and had actually reduced one of their teachers to tears.  This year, they’re with a teacher who is new to our academy and it made me think about how we decide who teaches those difficult groups.

At the same time, I’ve recently discovered a new brainstorming site, which allows you to collaborate in an online brainstorm.  So, feel free to add your ideas below…

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