Month: March 2014

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IATEFL Harrogate 2014: What *I’m* looking forward to…and how about you?

It’s nearly time for IATEFL 2014! I’m sure we’ve all been trawling through the programme pdf and the app, seeing what’s on and getting excited – well, I have anyway! I think anticipation is such a fun part of it all!  

Here are the workshops/talks/events going on that have caught my eye so far:

Wednesday

(Unfortunately I’m going to miss most of Wednesday, but if I were going to be there on Wednesday, my timetable might look like this…)

  • Plenary session by David Graddol: English and economic development [at least this I can catch the recording of… I wonder if I will be able to watch some of the live stream while travelling? Time will tell…]
  • Session 1: Either EAP writing: getting down and dirty by Richard Hillman [because I’m hoping to be teaching on a pre-sessional course at a university this summer] or Demand High and lost learning by Adrian Underhill [because who doesn’t like watching Adrian Underhill talk!]
  • Session 2: Global coursebooks: helpful scaffold or debilitating crutch by Heather Buchanan and Julie Norton [because I participated in the research that fed into this talk and and am curious about the outcome; also because Heather was my tutor and dissertation supervisor during my M.A. ELT at Leeds Met, so I know that what she has to say is good value!]
  • Session 3: More than just a worksheet: writing effective classroom materials by Rachael Roberts [because she has a great blog full of useful and interesting ideas, as well as lots of materials writing experience, so I could learn a lot from this session. Plus she’s involved with MaW SIG and has, in that capacity, already commented on some materials I’ve made, so I’m very interested to meet her! 14.05-14.50…will I have arrived yet? Will it be recorded? Have to wait and see…]
  • Session 4: Do materials writers have principles? by Jill Hadfield [Another MaW SIG SIG day speaker, and another person I’m interested to meet! Also because I read a lot about materials development during my M.A. and am interested in the topic and the process. The question is, will I make it in time?]
  • Session 5: Tech Hacks for classroom activities, materials writing and course design by Andy Johnson [because this workshop sounds really useful and practical and relates to technology AND teaching AND materials writing AND course design – what more could you want! 😉 Hmmm, I might actually have made it to the conference by this point! Here’s hoping!]
  • Session 6: Materials Writing Special Interest Group Open Forum  [Please let my flight/trains not be delayed, so I’m at least there in time to go to this session! Golden opportunity to meet other people who are interested in materials writing and the MaW SIG committee!]

Thursday

  • Session 1: How to get published in a refereed journal with Graham Hall (08.15 to 08.45) and Plenary session by Kathleen Graves [because I want to be published in a refereed journal at some point and Kathleen’s talk looks really interesting!]
  • Session 2: Academic writing materials: from research to online delivery [because this looks like a really interesting materials writing project, involving making and using a corpus.]
  • Session 3: A fresh approach to advanced listening practice by Sheila Thorn [because this sounds both interesting and directly useful – ideas to take into the classroom and try with my advanced gang as soon as I get back to Palermo!]
  • Session 4: Content, consumption and production: three types of ELT textbook research by Nigel Harwood [because I got to know his name during my studies and I’m intrigued to put a face to it… Also because the talk looks interesting!]
  • Session 5: Upgrade! Demand High to bring a grammar lesson alive by Jim Scrivener [because he’s always a pleasure to watch and generally sends you away armed with tons of ideas that you can try out next time you walk into a classroom!]
  • Session 6: Sit out – to remember what on earth it is I am going to say in Session 7…
  • Session 7: Bridging the gap between learning materials and an English-speaking environment by Lizzie Pinard. [Well, I had really better attend my own talk, hadn’t I!!]

Friday

  • Plenary session by Michael Hoey [because who’d miss it! Michael Hoey is awesome – I saw him present at MATSDA last year, never seen a more crazily energetic presenter: should be the perfect way to energise oneself for the day, better than a coffee!]
  • Session 1: How do engineers say that? Encouraging academic independence by Julie Moore [because this talk combines my future professional needs – how to EAP – and my current professional interests – how to help learners become more independent!]
  • Session 2: Teaching English for Academic Purposes: insights from experience by Penny Ur [because it sounds like it will be a very useful session, where I can hopefully learn from her and everybody else’s experiences, which will help me when I move into EAP teaching]

[Looking at my planner, the next few sessions are where it gets complicated! – read: multiple overlaps!]

  • Session 3: I need to choose between… i. Making the most of minimal material by Kate Evans [because personal experience of learning from her means I know what she says is worth hearing! Plus it looks interesting!]; ii. Professional development in the experimental practice jungle by Christina Rebuffet-Broadus and Jennie Wright [because it sounds like a lot of fun as well as useful take-away tips] iii Stepping into the real world: transitioning listening by Sandy Millin [because there will be lots of useful take away and Sandy does awesome stuff!]

Which to choose? Answers on a postcard… 

  • Session ? [getting confused now, lots of little numbers in the app!] but the tail-end of the creativity symposium that starts in Session 3 – I’d like to see Brian Tomlinson’s talk Creative use of the coursebook because I’ve discovered we share similar ideas with regards to the role of the teacher and the role of learning materials, and because it sounds like there will be some useful take-away that I can apply directly on my return and beyond.

Saturday

  • Session 1: How to move from being a teacher to becoming a teacher trainer with Silvana Richardson and Plenary session by Sugatra Mistry [the first because teacher training is an avenue I’m interesting in exploring in my career and then because Sugatra’s talk sounds intriguing!]
  • Session 2: Twenty things in twenty years: this much I know by Hugh Dellar [because his blog has inspired me a lot, as did the talk I saw him do at IATEFL last year. Am looking forward to seeing him talk again and hopefully meeting him this time.]
  • Session 3: Write here, write now by Fiona Johnston [because I’m using various online communication platforms with my learners, so this talk interests me as another potential avenue to explore within this.]
  • Session 4: Motivating students in the EFL classroom by Elizabeth Davies [because she motivated me hugely when I was a CELTA trainee at Sheffield ELTC and because the role of motivation in language learning is hugely interesting to me – I’ve read a lot about it during the last six months as well as studying it during my M.A.]
  • Closing plenary: session by Jackie Kay, to bring it all to an end for 2014. [Shhh, don’t think about that yet!]

What talks are you looking forward to?

Comment and see if you can convince me there’s something else I need to see too! 🙂 – Or help me decide between my clashes…!

Non-talk related things I’m looking forward to:

  • Meeting people! As in meeting new people and catching up with old friends/colleagues/various lovely ex-tutors… IATEFL is such a grand social occasion! So please say hi if you see me! 🙂 And all the talking that goes with it. Nothing like a good discussion!
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This is me! (I shall try and carry this turquoise scarf with horses on it around either on my neck(!) or tied to my bag so you can identify me! 😉 )

  • Leeds Met M.A. ELT/Delta Q and A: I shall be hanging out with the Leeds Met lot, in capacity of ex-student willing to answer questions about my experience, probably on Friday morning during the break. Come and see what it’s all about if you like! 🙂 [Exact time and location tbc – I will update this post with details of location once I know them, so check back if you are interested!]
  • The exhibition: When I’m not running like a headless chicken from talk to talk, I must make time to have a look round all the lovely, colourful stands and see what all the exhibitors are so keen to show us all! 🙂
  • Just…being part of it: Just being there, part of all the buzz, soaking up all the positive energy and idea-sharing going on – a recipe for motivation and renewed vigour if ever there was one! 🙂

What else have I missed? What are you looking forward to?

Tell me what you’re looking forward to, what you’re excited about,  by commenting on this post: The more excitement, the merrier!

See you in IATEFL in a few days! 🙂

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IATEFL 2014 – “Chain Reaction” interview with Mura Nava

In the lead up to the IATEFL 2014 Harrogate conference, Adam Simpson has started a ‘chain reaction‘ blog challenge:

“I choose two or three of this year’s registered bloggers and introduce them on my blog. These bloggers then in turn choose other registered bloggers and interview them… and so it goes on until you all have a good idea of who will be blogging about this years event.”  

I did my first chain reaction interview with Sandy Millin. This second one is with Mura Nava, who I discovered via my interest in and series of blog posts on wordandphrase.info (which is an interface for analysing a corpus – the COCA in this case) : Mura has a keen interest in corpus linguistics too. (For a list of the talks at IATEFL which are related to this area, see Mura’s first IATEFL 2014-related post .)

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Nearly time for IATEFL, wherever you are in the world! Click this image to find out how to follow online.

Here are Mura’s answers to the questions I got from Adam and adapted for use with Mura, who isn’t attending live but will be following avidly online:

Please introduce yourself

My name in Mura, I work as an English teacher in France. I have a soon to be 2 year old son who is at that age which is really interesting if you are into language learning. His current favourite word now (after ballon) is pantalon.

Which sessions are you looking forward to watching live or online this year? 

Well only the plenaries have been revealed as being filmed so for sure has to be Michael Hoey’s session. I have also heard that Russ Mayne’s (@ebefl) talk will be taped so will watch that.

I am hoping that Simon Smith’s session on Using lecture notes to create domain corpora will be taped, if not maybe one of your Harrogate-2014-going readers will cover it 🙂

Why are you interested in the areas represented by the talks/workshops you want to see?

I have seen Michael Hoey talk before and he is both informative and entertaining, I know Russ Mayne from twitter so be great to see him chat in real life and I am very interested in corpora and language learning/teaching so the session by Simon Smith suits me great.

What do you hope to learn from the sessions you plan to watch?

From Simon Smith’s session how to get students to build their own corpora as I am part of a project that will deal with similar issues.

Do you blog? Could you tell us about your blogs (s)?

Yes I do at eflnotes.wordpress.com though I am more active on the Google+ community for corpus linguistics – https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/101266284417587206243

What other aspects of the conference are you looking forward to?

The online forum discussions sometimes throws up good stuff.

Why did you sign up as an IATEFL registered blogger?

I have been doing it last 2 years and in fact in 2012 coincided with me launching my blog (properly, as I had written first post sometime before then) so I remember how it helped me with an instant audience.

Thanks, Mura! I hope you enjoy following IATEFL online and that lots of the talks you’ve ear-marked are covered via filming or blogging! 

 

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Edmodo Workshop: 28/3/2014 (A how-to for teachers…)

Today I did a workshop on using Edmodo, for my colleagues here at IH Palermo. It was a very practical workshop, with the goal of sending teachers away with the technical know-how necessary for using Edmodo and some ideas for integrating it into their classes. I thought I’d share what I did and the materials I made/used here, in case it’s of interest to anyone else who wants to run a similar workshop at their school – or anyone who wants to learn how to use Edmodo, themselves! (The handout with step-by-step instructions for teachers and students, and my power point slides with step-by-step screen shots, are at the end of this post.)

Edmodo home

Welcome to Edmodo! – A screenshot of Edmodo’s homepage!

This was the outline of my workshop:

  • What is Edmodo?
  • Edmodo as a teacher (“How do I…?”)
  • Edmodo as a learner (“How do they…?”)
  • Integrating Edmodo (Homework; autonomous use)
  • Potential issues (“But what about…?”)

What is Edmodo?

For the “what”,  I used Edmodo‘s own description of itself:

“a free and safe way for students and teachers to connect and collaborate”

– in combination with the way I explain it to  my learners:

“a space for this class to use English together at any time, to discuss, to share links, to share pictures, to share files. And sometimes, a space for homework!”

It isn’t a millstone, it’s not compulsory, it’s an opportunity. I think it’s important to put it like that, so that students feel they are getting something extra rather than being forced into doing something.

 “Edmodo as a teacher” 

This involved getting all the teachers registered and attached to our school, as well as exploring the Edmodo platform from a teacher’s point of view. I had prepared powerpoint slides with screen shots, which I used to take the teachers through these steps. Registering is a one-off process, so getting it done in the workshop meant that teachers didn’t have to fiddle about with it on their own later on, which might have been off-putting during an already busy day.

“Edmodo as a learner” 

For this part, I gave the teachers a group code, which was for a group I had set up in advance, getting them them to register as students in this group. This was to give them a flavour of Edmodo from the students’ perspective. As well as the powerpoint as a guide, I had my own Edmodo account open on the group page, so that they could see what happens on the teacher’s page, when a student joins a group and uses the page. I had set up a little poll and a quiz for them to do as students too. Hopefully having used Edmodo as a student will help them be better able to help their students, if it is needed.

“Integrating Edmodo”

Now that my colleagues had played with Edmodo, both as a teacher and as a learner, I got them to brainstorm ideas for using it with their learners. I also gave them links to my two blog posts, on using Edmodo to make homework more interesting and on using Edmodo for fostering learner autonomywhich each contain a series of ready-to-use ideas to experiment with. The goal of this part of the workshop was to arm them with ideas so that they could easily start to use Edmodo with their own learners. 

“But what about…?”

This section was to give teachers the opportunity voice their concerns about using Edmodo and hopefully to address these. I started with the slide of potential issues (though some had cropped up as the workshop progressed, of course):

  • But what if my students don’t like social media?
  • But what if my students don’t use Edmodo?
  • But what if my students think this is a stupid idea?
  • But I don’t have *time* for this!!
  • But how do I give feedback?
  • But I’m rubbish with technology!
  • …any more?

These listed I could address:

  • I’ve had students who hate Facebook but love Edmodo. The trick is avoid selling it as Facebook the second. It’s not. It’s a tool to support their language learning and to enable them to communicate in English more than they otherwise could.  They may not be too sure about it as first, but just give them time and don’t force it down their throats. It’s an opportunity not a millstone.
  • That’s ok. It’s not compulsory to use it. Also, hopefully, as they see course mates using it, and finding it useful, they will want in on the action too! Again, don’t force it. But allow a bit of class time for discussion about it (within discussion about activities using English outside the classroom), so that those who don’t use it are exposed to the experiences of those who have, which will be potentially motivating.
  • I haven’t had a student yet who’s thought it’s a stupid idea. Students tend to like things that have been made specially for them – it makes them feel special!
  • With regards to time, once you are registered, it’s quick and easy to use. If you use it for homework, then you are only using what time you would be using for marking.
  • Feedback can be done in a variety of ways: you can reply to posts with both response to content and corrections, if it’s a case of homework – I usually copy the sentence with the error, put it in quotation marks, then paste it again and correct it, with the corrections capitalised so that they are easier to spot. Alternatively, you could use it for delayed feedback in the classroom – it’s easy to copy and paste to a slide and project it in the classroom.
  • With regards to technological prowess,  very little is needed in order to use Edmodo. As long as you can type a message in a box where it says “Type your note here”, type in a group or student name where it says “Type the name of a group, student or teacher here” and click send, and as long as you can type a message under student’s note, where it says “type your reply here” and click send, you’re away! Anything else (polls, quizzes etc) is an optional extra. You also don’t need a Facebook account or an email address, or anything else, in order to use it.

The teachers then had time to voice any more, for discussion of how to deal with them.

Finally, I showed them some of my own class pages, so they could see it in action. I had even got some of my students to write a post for me to show the teachers, saying why they like Edmodo (and therefore why it’s good for teachers to use it with students!)

Here is the handout I made for extra reference (made for use in conjunction with the powerpoint, hence lack of screen-shots!)

Here is a copy of my slides (which are mostly step-by-step for how to use Edmodo)

To conclude this post, I’d like to say a big thank you to Sandy Millin, who introduced me to Edmodo, by essentially doing a mini-version of this workshop with me, when I visited her last year! (And also, when I mentioned this workshop to her, for reminding me of the value of an opportunity to play about with it, if you are a teacher coming to it for the first time!)

And thank you, of course, to my DoS, for giving me the opportunity to deliver a workshop to my colleagues, which was a rewarding learning experience.

 

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Holidays, a song (“Brighton in the Rain”) and the good ol’ present perfect!

I first learnt about “Brighton in the Rain”, by Robert Campbell and Jonathan Dykes, from my CELTA tutor at Sheffield University, many moons ago.

When I first used this song, I struggled to find a recording – lots of googling led me to a discussion thread/feed where it had been mentioned and emailing the person who mentioned it finally scored me a copy. (Thank you, whoever you are! I can’t remember your name or where I found that obscure thread, but it was good to get my hands on the song at last!) Of course, nowadays it’s freely available on youtube.com and various other websites – like so much else.

Anyway, faced with a grammar-heavy few pages of course book (present perfect central!), I dug it out – the first time in a while! – and used it with my pre-intermediate students to lighten it up for them a little. Topic-wise, it feeds nicely in to what comes next in the book, which is travelling-related (and a heap more present perfect information!).

Here is what I did with it:

Time: 

1hr 20 minutes

Materials: 

a recording of the song (now available here); cut-up lyrics; a handout of the complete song lyrics; this powerpoint (shared here minus the photos I used, as those were copyrighted – but all you need to do is a Google images search for pictures of Brighton in the rain and a picture of Brighton on a map !); this handout (based on the powerpoint – for the learners to have a take-away record); this empty rubric, which is based on the song.

Focus: 

Review of the present perfect for life experiences, use with “ever“/”never“/”always“/”only“, asking and answering questions using the form, using the form to discuss their own experiences; listening, speaking, writing.

Procedure:

Listening

  • Put learners in pairs/small groups and give them these questions to discuss:

  1. Tell your partner about some of the places where you have been on holiday.

  2. Do you usually go somewhere different or do you go back to the same place every year?

  3. What are the pros and cons of going to the same place every year and going to a different place every year?

  • Do a quick whole class feedback phase.
  • Show learners the pictures of Brighton, in the rain, ask if they can guess where it is (Brighton) and then what the pictures have in common (it’s raining!).
  • Ask learners if they have ever been to/heard of Brighton before. (If they haven’t, would they like to go?)
  • Play the recording of the song (if using the version I linked to, don’t show the learners the video; hide it and get them to listen only) and have learners listen for the answers to these two questions:

  1. Does the singer visit different places every year? (No!)

  2. Where has he been? (Only Brighton and the Isle of Mann! – but of course the learners will hear lots of places that he hasn’t been to…)

  • Give learners the cut-up lyrics (I like to make the lyrics a large font size and get learners to work together, using the floor space, to do this activity – but I’ve only done it with small classes!) and have them listen and put them in the correct order. (This worked really nicely today, the learners were very in to it. I paused the recording periodically to give them time to catch up and fed in some prompting questions to get them using linguistic and logical skills.)
  • Play the song again and get learners to sing along! (Mine were silly-dancing too!)
  • Put learners in pairs or small groups to discuss the following questions: (This we did briefly as a whole class, because we were a small group anyway, while still stood up around the lyrics – it was more of a quick chat!)
  1. Do you think the singer is happy? (No!)
  2. How do his travel experiences compare with yours?
  3. Have you ever done any of the things that he hasn’t done? Which?
  4. Would you like to do any of the things he hasn’t done? Which? Why?
Brighton_Pier,_East_Sussex_-_geograph.org.uk_-_707356

Brighton in the rain! (image taken from advanced Google images search, licensed for commercial reuse with modification, from commons.wikimedia.org)

Language focus

  • Keep learners in pairs/smalls groups (you could change groupings if you want to), give them each a copy of the full song, and get them to look at and discuss the present perfect form and meaning focus questions:

  1. What tense do we use to talk about life experiences?

  2. How do we form it? (positive sentence, negative sentence, question, short answers)

  3. Do we know when the experience happened?

  4. Does it matter when the experience happened?

  • Do a whole class feedback phase and then move onto the next questions:
  1. Look at these lines from the song. What do the words in bold mean? How would you translate them into your language?

– I’ve never been to Athens and I’ve never been to Rome.

– I’ve only seen the pyramids in picture books at home.

– I’ve always spent my holidays in Brighton, in the rain!

  1. Look at these questions based on the song. What do the words in bold mean? (This should be “2” but WordPress won’t let it be!)

– Have you ever been to Athens?

– Have you ever been to Rome?

  • Check their answers in a whole class phase, and give them time/space to ask any questions, and then let them move on to the next activity: in their pairs, they should make, ask and answer some more questions like the above examples, based on ideas from the song.

Speaking and Writing

  • Put learners in pairs. Give each learner a copy of the blank rubric of the song.
  • Get them to interview their partner about his or her life experiences, and complete the blank rubric using their partner’s answers. (You could do an initial brainstorming stage for possible topic areas/questions to ask, to help get learners’ creative juices flowing! It also really helps to demonstrate this activity with one of the learners before setting them off.) Encourage learners to ask interesting questions.*
  • Put learners in groups so that the above-mentioned pairs are split up. Ask them to take it in turns to tell their group about their partner, using the rubric (they will need to convert the sentences into the third person for this). Their group should ask, say, five questions about each person, which the learner whose partner it is should note down.
  • Put learners back in their original pairs and let them find out the answers to their group’s questions.
  • Regroup them into the same groups as above, for them to give their group the answers to their questions.

*Variation

If you run out of time (cough cough!) around the stage I marked with an asterisk, I recommend getting the learners to finish completing the rubric as their partner (so, as they have begun via interview but by guessing the information about their partners rather than doing it through questioning). At the beginning of next lesson, I plan to get them back in the same pairs again to see how near or far they were with their guesses!

Possible homework/follow-up

(If you use Edmodo) Get learners to write a few sentences about their experiences (encourage them to use experiences they have not yet discussed…) and send them directly to you (using that function on Edmodo!) and then you post all of their experiences onto the class page. They should then read and guess which experiences go with which classmates!

Thoughts:

I think this lesson worked well, to give the learners a bit of extra time to get their mouths and minds around the present perfect. In the book, a lot of information comes at them in a short space of time – for, since, ever, never, contrasting with past simple and so on, so this broke it up a bit and gave them extra opportunities to hear it used and use it themselves – as well as being a bit of fun to break up a very grammar-heavy unit a bit! 🙂

 

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IATEFL 2014 – “Chain Reaction” interview with Sandy Millin

In the lead up to the IATEFL 2014 Harrogate conference, Adam Simpson has started a ‘chain reaction‘ blog challenge:

“I choose two or three of this year’s registered bloggers and introduce them on my blog. These bloggers then in turn choose other registered bloggers and interview them… and so it goes on until you all have a good idea of who will be blogging about this years event.”  

I have firstly decided to interview Sandy Millin, with whom I attended my first IATEFL and who got me into things like blogging, using Edmodo and not using ten words where three will do when it comes to writing instructions! She’s an inspiration to teachers and students alike. For this interview, I used the same set of questions that Adam gave me.

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Follow all the conference goings on at IATEFL online!

Here are the questions and Sandy’s answers:

 

  • Please introduce yourself

My name’s Sandy Millin. I’ve been the Director of Studies at International House Sevastopol since September 2013. As I’m sure you’ve probably seen in the news, it’s in Crimea, which is probably now in Russia, although some people may argue with that! I’ve been teaching EFL for seven years, and have previously taught in Borneo, Paraguay, the Czech Republic and the UK.

 

  • Could you give us brief details about your session at IATEFL 2014?

My session is called ‘Stepping into the real world: transitioning listening’. It’s on Friday 4th April, 14:35-15:20 in Room R. It’ll also be available on my blog afterwards if you can’t make it: http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iatefl2014

 

  • What should your audience expect to learn?

It’s a workshop, so there’ll be practical activities showing how to help your students prepare for real-world listening, which can often be quite different from coursebook listening.

 

  • Why are you interested in the area you’ll be presenting on?

I got interested in this area while working in Newcastle in the UK. My students came from all over the world, and no matter how high their level was, they almost all had trouble with listening, both to other students in the class and people in the outside world.

During my Delta, I did one of my observed lessons on listening, and read John Field’s Listening in the Language Classroom at Lizzie Pinard’s recommendation. It was really useful, and completely changed the way I approach listening. I’d like to share some of that at IATEFL.

 

  • Do you blog? Could you tell us about your blog(s)?

I have three blogs, although two of them having been ‘sleeping’ for a year or so.

My main one is at http://sandymillin.wordpress.com. I normally write about teaching and share materials, although recently I’ve been writing a lot about the situation in Sevastopol and Crimea. That’s where I’ll be doing my IATEFL blogging too.

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Visit Sandy’s blog!

Independent English is designed for students. On it there are ideas for how to become a more autonomous learner.

Infinite ELT Ideas is a set of prompts. The idea is that people look at the prompts and leave comments suggesting how they would use them in class. This worked better when I first started the blog!

 

  • What other aspects of the conference are you looking forward to?

My favourite thing about IATEFL is the social side. I can honestly say that IATEFL Glasgow and IATEFL Liverpool were two of the best weeks of my life. It’s great to be surrounded by passionate educators, and people who really want to improve themselves, and I always go away on a huge high. I’ll particularly enjoy IATEFL Harrogate as it will probably be my last one for a while – it’s not so easy to get there now I live in Crimea!
This year I’ll also be adding two whole new experiences to my repertoire: I’ll be presenting at the Pecha Kucha evening on Friday 4th April. If you’ve never seen one, a Pecha Kucha is a presentation made up of 20 slides, each lasting 20 seconds. The presenter has no control over the slides, and just has to keep up with them for the 6 minutes and 40 seconds they run for. If the test runs I’ve done are anything to go by, I’ll be very out of breath by the end, but I’m really looking forward to it! The other new experience is the fact that it’ll be livestreamed, so you can watch it at IATEFL Harrogate Online  🙂

 

  • Why did you sign up as an IATEFL registered blogger?

I’ll be blogging a lot while I’m at IATEFL, so it makes sense to be a registered blogger! It also means you’re part of the patchwork of the IATEFL experience, and you can get a fuller picture of the whole event. Only a few days to go now…

 

Thank you Sandy! I hope you have a great IATEFL 2014 and am looking forward to seeing you there! 🙂 

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CPD and a cup of tea in the sunshine: go on, give it a go!

On Friday, we had a really fantastic CPD session. It was such a very simple idea, yet worked so effectively – well done, our DoS!

I really think all schools should incorporate this idea, or variations on it, if they can, from time to time (perhaps once or twice a term, depending on term length), so I thought I’d write about it here, for others to try.

Materials:

Sets of questions relating to teaching, professional development and career paths (e.g. about recent good lessons, bad lessons, favourite activities, recently used activities, memorable students, courses you’ve done, courses you’d like to do, how you got into ELT etc etc – the possibilities are endless!)

Time: 

As long as you have! – Whatever time allocation you have for workshops.

Procedure:

  • Put the kettle on. Allow teachers to get their tea/coffee and biscuits.
  • Put your teachers into small groups.
  • Let everybody sit around little tables (sunshine optional but much preferred!).
  • Give each group a set of questions and encourage them to discuss these together.
  • Change sets of questions periodically, change groupings periodically.
  • Repeat until questions/time have run out!

Yes, it’s that simple. 🙂

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CPD in the garden! 🙂 Photo taken from en.wikipedia.org via google search for images licensed for commercial reuse with modification.

Benefits:

  • Time to talk: never underestimate the value of time set aside for talking: though you could argue talking about classes etc happens in the staffroom, generally that is amidst lesson planning, admin and the usual 101 things to do. It was really nice to be able to just…talk! And learn from each other. The combined experience and knowledge in a team of staff is huge and varied, so time focused exclusively on tapping that was time well spent.
  • Increased motivation: we all felt rather up-lifted by the end! The atmosphere after the session was relaxed and happy, with us all feeling enthusiastic despite it being Friday and therefore the end of a long week – a real morale booster.
  • New ideas: talking to people about things they’ve done is a great way to collect some new things to try and to think about things you might not have thought about otherwise.
  • Reflection: Having to discuss your answers to the questions encourages you to reflect on them, and reflecting on your teaching/learning/development etc is always beneficial.

To all the DoS’s out there: It’s  well worth giving it a go! And a really good use of 1.5hrs of INSET training time.

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See you at IATEFL?

It’s that time of year again, nearly time for the 2014 IATEFL annual conference,this year to be held in Harrogate. Are you going?

I am – thanks to the kindness and support of my employers who are allowing me to attend! Also thanks to the generosity of Leeds Metropolitan University who are fully funding my attendance via a scholarship. And, this year, I shall be presenting for the very first time. (!!)

The title of my talk is:

“Bridging the gap between learning materials and an English-speaking environment”

Here is the abstract:

Private language schools often send their learners out to interview people in the streets, but could these learners get more out of this activity? This talk explores how task-based learning and an intercultural approach can be combined to develop materials that enable learners to benefit more fully from a potentially rich learning opportunity and develop their intercultural communication skills. 

My talk will take place on Thursday the 3rd April at 1745 and will last until 1815: 20 minutes of me talking (but don’t worry that includes you talking too!) and 10 minutes for questions/discussion. The room I’m in apparently holds 180 people – the more the merrier?! This talk is based on the approaches I used in my materials that I made for my dissertation project (which were recently shortlisted for one of the British Council ELTons). If you are at IATEFL and haven’t already tootled off to the pub by that point, it would be great to see you in the audience! (Am *really* hoping not to find myself presenting to an enormous room with about five people in it…)

Of course, if you aren’t able to make it to Liverpool, there will be lots of talks and interviews recorded, and some sessions streamed live. You can find all this and more on the British Council IATEFL Harrogate online website. (Click on the image below)

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Bring IATEFL Harrogate 2014 to your sofa! 🙂

I’ve also registered as an IATEFL Harrogate 2014 blogger and aim to upload a few posts based on the presentations I watch, as well as my conference experiences. I will also post a write-up of my talk and my references in due course. So, watch this space! 🙂

I’d love to meet any of you who read my blog, so do come and say hi if you happen to see me!

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Speaking and storytelling

In a recent post, I outlined a collaborative writing activity for consolidating past simple and past continuous tense use. In that post, I briefly mentioned a possible follow up activity, using learner generated content and focusing on selected elements of spoken narrative. Since then, I’ve done just that with my pre-intermediate learners, and found it worked well, so I thought I’d share what I did with it here…

Time: 45 minutes (depending on class size/group size)

Materials: Cut up structural elements of spoken narrative and their linguistic realisations. (See example here ) (With higher levels, previously, I’ve cut up all the chunks individually but with my pre-ints I cut the chunks up in groups, so they had to match groups of chunks with the function rather than individual chunks, to provide more scaffolding)

Focus: Chunks of language used to structure stories when told orally (rather than written).

As I mentioned, I did this as a follow up to a lesson focusing on consolidation of past simple and continuous. For homework, I asked learners to prepare a story to tell a small group of their classmates at the start of the next lesson. Some of them hadn’t done the homework, but I grouped them so that in each pair/small group, at least one person had done the homework, meaning there was student-generated content to work from.

  • Give learners a few minutes to tell their stories to their pair/group. Give some delayed feedback on language use.
  • Tell the learners that the aim of the next part of the lesson is to look at the language often used in storytelling.
  • Hand out the cut-up chunks of language and functions; ask learners to match them.
  • Give learners each a copy of the handout as it was before you chopped it all out.
  • Do some pronunciation work, so that they can get their mouths around the chunks and experiment with intonation.
  • Get them to think about how they could integrate the language into the stories they told at the start of the lesson.

(Some of my learners had written out their story, some hadn’t; the activity worked in both instances: learners were looking closely at their writing, or discussing what they had said, and matching parts of it to the various functions, to decide which chunks to include. I monitored and guided them if they were using a chunk inappropriately.)

  • Once learners have finished, either regroup them and let them re-tell their stories to a new group/partner, using that new language and follow that up by letting a few tell their stories to the whole class, or, as in the case of the second class I tried this with, if you only have a small number of students, if they have practiced their story in their groups, you can skip straight to the whole class stage and let all of them have the opportunity to show off!

(My students automatically gave each other questions to answer before re-telling their stories, in the first class which tickled me!)

The next part of the sequence uses Headway Pre-Int 4th edition’s picture story of a flight attendant, Stephen Slater, who gets hit over the head by a passenger taking their bag out of the overhead compartment before the plane had stopped moving. Slater goes crazy and opens the emergency exit/slide, slides down and is arrested. Based on a true story! The book sequence is a series of newspaper articles related to the story and the picture story forms part of an opening activity. However, any simple picture story would do here!

  • Get learners to tell the story in the pictures, using the storytelling language that they’ve just been working with.
  • Tell the learners that same story (in my case I did it from the point of view of one of the other passengers on the flight!), of course using some of the target chunks.
  • Learners listen and tick the chunks they hear used.
  • Follow up with a discussion about how the chunks can help them in listening/understanding as well as speaking, and how speakers use those chunks in storytelling to help the listener follow what is being said: when we tell stories, we want the listener to think it’s as funny/crazy/<insert adjective we feel the story is> as we do, so we want them to follow what’s happening.

As the sequence in the book uses newspaper articles (it’s a reading sequence), I might in the next lesson draw attention to how events are ordered in newspaper articles compared with telling stories orally…

It worked well, but of course it was also a bit back to front really – the learners heard me telling the story as one of the last parts of the sequence. It was a nice way to finish (I set the book reading activities – question answering – for homework) but logically it should have happened earlier in the lesson. But on the other hand, the learners got there successfully without it, using their own stories and the language/functions met in the lesson. They did upgrade their stories really well, and using the chunks helped them in terms of fluency. I could perhaps have told a story of my own earlier in the sequence, to illustrate the chunks in use – perhaps before getting the learners to edit their own stories. Perhaps next time I will! What order should you do it in? Up to you! 🙂

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MATSDA, here I come!

I’m delighted to have had my speaker proposal accepted for the MATSDA (Materials Development Association) 2 day conference on the last weekend  (28th/29th) in June, this year. The theme of the conference is Second Language Acquisition and Materials Development.

This is the abstract that I proposed:

What about the other 165 hours a week? Developing materials that scaffold and encourage out-of-class language acquisition, through their use as classroom tools.

Is this title a contradiction in terms? Perhaps not: the average language learner spends around 2-3 hours a week in the classroom, implying that for acquisition to take place, exposure to the target language shouldn’t be limited to classroom confines. Indeed, learner autonomy is somewhat of a buzzword in ELT – we recognise the inadequacy of classroom time with regards to acquisition, as well as the issue of syllabus structure often being at odds with learner ‘readiness’ to acquire, meaning that what learners do outside class time becomes of the utmost importance. However, there is often a gap between what we expect our learners to do outside the classroom and how we help them to do it. This talk looks at ways of helping learners harness the target language in their environment, real and/or virtual, effectively, and the role that learning materials, and their use in the classroom as well as beyond it, can play in scaffolding the process, in addition to stimulating and maintaining motivation, curiosity and the desire to acquire.

Last year, MATSDA was great fun – a friendly atmosphere full of banter and loads of interesting ideas to assimilate. I’m sure this year will be no different. I hope to see some of you there. For those who can’t make it, the usual write-up and references will follow – linked to on my Presentations page.

🙂

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British Council ELTon/”Macmillan Education award for new talent in writing” shortlisted!

Not long before the British Council ELTon application deadline last year, I submitted some of my materials for “The Macmillan Education Award for new talent in writing” (previously called the Award for Innovative Writing), deciding I had nothing to lose by doing so.

To quote from the British Council website,

“The ELTons, sponsored by Cambridge English, are the only international awards that recognise and celebrate innovation in English language teaching (ELT). They reward educational resources that help English language learners and teachers to achieve their goals.”

The Macmillan award is in its sixth year of running, while the ELTons as a whole are in their twelfth year.

I was delighted when I learnt I’d been long-listed, but didn’t dream I’d get any further than that; but, somehow or another, I have! I have now been shortlisted for the award, which means I’ve made the top five out of all the applications submitted. What an honour!

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Shortlisted!

The materials I submitted are not on my blog, but once the competition is over and I haven’t won (I can’t even begin to imagine that I will win, which is fine: I’m just jubilant to have got this far!), I’ll upload some samples. I made them while at Leeds Met : they, alongside a 5000 word rationale, were my dissertation project and represent hours upon hours upon hours of work. Not only the time spent on the project itself, but all the reading done and hours of classes attended for the Materials Development module, too. I won’t go into details about the content of the materials here and now, as my talk at IATEFL Harrogate in two weeks’ time, which will be written up here in due course, is based on them: I don’t want to steal my own thunder! 😉 But it was all those hours spent that nudged me to enter: having devoted all that time to working on something, the last thing you want to do is consign it to a dusty cupboard forever!

Anyway, for now, suffice to say, I feel extremely lucky to have got as far as the shortlist. And grateful that I had a dissertation supervisor who, having given me a solid foundation of knowledge from which to start (as my Materials Development tutor),  pushed me to do my absolute best with my dissertation materials, by asking hundreds of awkward questions (! 🙂 ) and giving unstinting time and support throughout the process. It was a very valuable experience for me.

Congratulations to all the other nominees – in my own and all the other categories! Let’s see what happens in May!