My very first IATEFL talk!
Date: Thursday 3rd April 2014
Time: 17.45-18.15
After introducing myself and my three invisible hats (teacher of English, learner of language/teaching, ex-student of the Leeds Met M.A. ELT/Delta – the origin of the ideas on which this talk was based), I provided the following talk outline:
- Over to you! (A few questions…)
- Student-led interviews (benefits and issues)
- My materials
- Using the framework
Attendees then discussed the following questions:
- What context do you teach in?
- What materials do you use?
Which led to these:
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Do the materials exploit the rich resources of language outside the classroom?
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Do the materials encourage students to exploit it?
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Do materials scaffold students to exploit it?
Following this discussion, I revealed two quotes by Tomlinson (2008, 2013):
“None of the books seem to really help learners to make use of the English which is in the out of school environment everywhere.” (Tomlinson, 2008)“Little[No] attempt is made to encourage the learners to make use of English in their actual or virtual environments outside the classroom.” (Tomlinson, 2013)
One way in which language schools try to encourage learners to engage with the language in the out-of-classroom environment in English-speaking places is to send learners out to interview members of the public. I asked attendees to consider the benefits and potential issues with this activity, before providing some of my own:
The question of how to guide learners across the murky waters of the potential issues to reap the possible benefits is where my materials come in. The next part of the talk discussed the influences that informed the development of my materials:
And then revealed the basic framework I’d created using Task-Based Learning (Ellis, 2003; Willis and Willis, 2007), Language Awareness Approach (Svalberg, 2007) and the Intercultural Approach (Corbett, 2003):
Of course this bare frame doesn’t demonstrate how those theories were woven in, and does give rise to possible questions/issues. So at this point I predicted some possible questions that might have been forming in the audience’s mind:
But…
- Won’t they get bored?
- Is it a good use of so much time?
- What about linguistic development?
- Isn’t it a cop out? Mucking about instead of learning language?
And then explored how I used the approaches I’d chosen, to address these issues and to maximise learning and learner engagement, and how I’d addressed issues that critics have raised with regards to the theories. The result was this framework:
(F.L. stands for functional language and S.E. stands for students’ experiences.)
The final part of the talk dealt with using this framework and exemplified this with a task from my own materials. The initial steps of using the framework have much in common with a genre-based approach:
- Think about how you want your ss. to use language
- Find texts produced in that genre/those genres. (Or make your own with your colleagues!)
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Identify common generic features (language, structure, organisation, appearance etc)
To this I add:
- Pinpoint interesting/engaging non-linguistic outcomes.
- Consider scaffolding.
- Pick out linguistic and cultural dynamism.
- Build in reflection.
Obviously the first bullet point of part 2 of the list is in keeping with TBL tenets. The second refers to how the tasks are going to feed into each other, how the activities within each task are going to feed into each other and how the whole is going to enable learners to be able to do something by the end of it. The third is in keeping with the Intercultural Approach and the Language Awareness approach. The final bullet point, opportunities for reflection, is crucial to all three approaches as well as being the key to turning experiences into learning, and connecting learning to experiences.
To exemplify this, I used the third task of my materials:
I discussed how content generated by students in the second task fed into the pre-task activity, in which students collaborate and exchange information, in preparation for the main task of this third task. The main task requires learners to synthesise the information they’ve collected between them, and use it as the basis for their question preparation. They are then helped to analyse these questions by considering cultural and pragmatic issues, before moving on in the post-task activities to engaging with input in the form of a real interview, which leads to language focus and speaking skills development. Throughout the task, learners are encouraged to reflect and connect their own experiences and knowledge with what they are learning, and to identify similarities and differences between their own culture, other learners’ cultures and the target language culture.
Being a twenty minute talk (plus ten minutes for questions), I had to bring it to an end pretty swiftly by this point, by thanking International House, Palermo, for allowing me to attend IATEFL 2014, and the Leeds Met M.A. ELT department (and especially Heather Buchanan, who was my supervisor for the dissertation project in which I made these materials) for all the guidance and support that I was given in my learning and in realising my ideas, because without the course I most definitely wouldn’t have been giving this talk today. And the final thank you, of course, to everybody who attended!
Here is a list of references for my talk:
Svalberg, A. (2007) Language Awareness and Language Learning in Language Teaching vol. 40/4. Cambridge Journals
Moran, P. (2001) Teaching Culture: Perspectives in Practice Heinle and Heinle. Canada
Murray, N. (2012) English as a lingua franca and the development of pragmatic competence in ELT Journal Volume 66/3 Oxford University Press
Corbett, J. (2003) An Intercultural Approach to Language Teaching Multilingual Matters. Clevedon
Ellis, R. (2003) Task-based Language Learning and Teaching Oxford University Press Oxford.
Willis D. and Willis J. (2007) Doing Task-based Teaching Oxford University Press, Oxford
Tomlinson, B. (2008) English Language Learning Materials: A Critical Review Continuum London
Tomlinson, B. and Masuhara, H. (2013) Survey Review: Adult course books in ELT Journal Volume 67/2. Oxford University Press Oxford
Lizzie Pinard 
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