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Cambridge Delta: all that Module 2/3 feedback, all that reading…

In February this year, I revisited Leeds (was Metropolitan now) Beckett University (where I did my Delta and M.A. in the one crazy yet incredibly awesome year that was academic year 2012-2013) to deliver a workshop on Blogging to teach and to learn for the Multimedia and Independent Learning component of the M.A. in ELT. (This post is not about that but if you want to know more, you can read about it here.) This visit and workshop gave me the opportunity to meet this year’s cohort. During the practical element, when I was moving around the room helping students to set up their blogs, one of them asked me why I didn’t upload samples of my work e.g. LSA essays, lesson plans, module 3 sections and the like, as everyone is always desperate to see “a model” to make it clearer what they are aiming towards. The truth is, as I explained to that student, for better or worse, the Cambridge view is that this creates the potential for plagiarism issues to arise and so is best avoided.

In accordance with the Cambridge stance, Sandy Millin has offered a very useful alternative: on her ever-popular Delta page she shares a summary of the feedback she received for each essay and lesson plan of her 4 LSAs, together with the grades she got. I recommend having a look. Upon hearing my explanation of the Cambridge stance, the student I talked to at Leeds Beckett suggested that in that case it could still be very useful for Delta people if I shared my reference lists for each LSA and my Module 3 essay. I can’t see a problem with doing that as the same sources can be used to build up support for any number of arguments – and truth be told, it won’t narrow things down *that* much as I had access to a fabulous university library so was able to get my hands on a lot of resources!

Since that visit to Leeds Beckett, the conversation with that student has been in the back of my mind and finally I am going to do something about it – bit by bit!  I thought perhaps a good plan would be to use both the above alternatives combined into one: share my reference list and a summary of feedback I received for each of my assignments. This will hopefully complement Sandy’s post as I got a smattering of passes, merits and distinctions across 4 LSAs, coming out with a distinction overall. I was thinking of doing one post per LSA to make for four less cumbersome/lengthy posts rather than one ridiculously long one, and link to them from my M.A. ELT/Delta page, for ease of access. I might try to do one for the Module 2 PDA/Experimental Practice and Module 3 post as well, if it turns out to be useful. All in good time.

I hope this will be helpful to people, though I would still emphasise the importance of making full use of whatever drafting/feedback process you have in your institute (for example, I found it useful to go through the Delta 5a form and highlight all the suggestions made for the essay/plan/teaching components so that I could refer back to them as I worked on my next LSA., as well as using the in-text comments in my draft essays and lesson plans, and asking a million questions during tutorials) – this is where the real learning takes place and everybody’s trajectory is different.

The benefit for me, meanwhile, the way I see it, is that in doing these posts a few years down the line (time flies!!!), I get to re-visit all that learning (yay!), which is never a bad thing. (What a deeply influential learning journey it was, especially in combination with the M.A…) – Of course, I *am* working full-time so it won’t all happen at once… Watch this space!

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Teacher Education Circle 4

For the more astute amongst you, you will notice that I have gone straight from TE Circle 1 and TE Circle 2 to TE Circle 4. This was deliberate rather than a slip – I sadly missed TE Circle 3 because I (not so sadly!) had already gone off on Easter holiday when it happened (it had been supposed to happen a couple of weeks earlier than it did but was delayed due to illness). This post is, as ever, slightly delayed – TE Circle 4 actually took place on Thursday 21st April 2016. Somehow it now seems to be already May. Not sure how that happened…!

I arrived a little late because I was teaching a class when it started – fortunately that class took place in the same general location as the meeting so I was able to get to it swiftly after. Normally I am a good twenty minutes away (door to door, using the bike) over on a different site. Nevertheless, it was a interesting meeting so I’m glad I was able to make some of it!

Work has continued apace on the “Teaching Advisory Service (TAS)” – an idea thought of and developed during and in between TE Circles. It is now ready to be trialled, which is rather exciting! Teachers will have the possibility to do various developmental activities, facilitated by a mentor. So, for example, a teacher could simply observe a colleague for 10-30 minutes and the mentor would facilitate by covering their class for the duration of this. Other options include:

  • team-teaching with a mentor
  • finding materials with a mentor
  • bouncing ideas for lesson plans/observations off a mentor
  • being observed by a mentor, with positive feedback/skill development in mind
  • discussion of classroom issues, teaching methods or personal goals with a mentor

Everything done within this service would be confidential rather than part of a management-led formal process. The trialling process will take place during the rest of this term and then it will be evaluated and tweaked, based on feedback from participants in the trial (mentors and teachers alike) to then be rolled out fully next academic year – if it is successful. It will be interesting to see what happens. I quite fancy the team-teaching option, personally. Team teaching is not something I’ve done a lot of. In fact, I don’t think I’ve done any since my first job in Lampung, where it was part of the induction process.

In TE Circle 4, we also discussed a framework and some slides that had been brought back from IATEFL talks relating to them. One of these was a British Council framework for CPD:

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One of the talks was the Cambridge English Signature Event (Observations and Reflections – Tensions between best practice and reality), available to watch on the IATEFL 2016 online page and on my list (that I am steadily working my way through) of post-IATEFL catching up to be done!

We discussed other frameworks we were aware of, for example the BALEAP one which is specifically aimed at teachers of EAP (see here). This brought up the issue of how the frameworks are used and how teacher educators can help teachers use them. There is the question of whether teachers are institutionally obliged to use them, whether there is assessment of that. So, for example, in the research part of the university there is a framework that researchers get judged against and in order to get funding they  have to demonstrate that they are worth that funding according to that framework. A sort of quality assurance. We are accredited to BALEAP and British Council so we are inspected by them, according to their frameworks. Then, apparently there is a framework that will be brought into use by universities for teaching staff but what is yet unknown is how they will be used. It could turn into an OFSTED for universities potentially. Perhaps helping teachers to use the frameworks (rather than have the frameworks used on them so to speak) is something the Teaching Advisory Service could also do.

The question of reflection also came up, in relation to the above talk. It was suggested that if reflection is required then it needs to be taught/trained as it doesn’t come naturally to everybody. Indeed, some people are actively opposed to doing it.

In my opinion one of the issue that arises with requiring it is that it is difficult to do at the drop of a hat and some things take longer to reflect on effectively than others. I think requiring it to be done within a certain time frame and with a particular outcome, e.g. as part of a training course between teaching a lesson and getting feedback on it, makes it another box to tick/hoop to jump through, and so there is a shift from genuine reflection/evaluation to something more contrived to produce the desired outcome. Yet, is this a problem? You learn how to reflect and evaluate by doing it, then perhaps once you have finished with the hoops, it can shift back towards being something more genuine and developmental. Then, every so often (e.g. with formal observations), you (may) have to prove that you can still do it! So maybe, then, in training courses, rather than getting rid of the reflective element, there needs to be more focus on how to reflect effectively, and on helping people learn how that is for them (as everyone’s process is a bit different) rather than treating it as a box ticking exercise where if you don’t do x, y or z in your post-lesson reflection you will fail that teaching practice. Otherwise you might end up trying to get square pegs into round holes.

During the TE circle I was asked who I think of as my audience when I write reflectively on this blog. Magnificent as ever when put on the spot I responded with the greatly insightful…”errrm my readers?”  Thinking about it, I don’t write with a particular audience in mind, other than “people who are interested in ELT, from whatever perspective” – teachers, teacher trainers, DoS’s, publishers, whoever you are you, whatever you do, you are welcome to read what I write of course! I figure that just as I enjoy other peoples’ blog posts, there are people out there who get something out of reading mine!

My blog is busier some days than others. During IATEFL it is particularly busy, of course – in April I had 6,293 visitors and 12, 940 views. This is where they were from:

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These were the top ten countries:

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Less anonymously, I know Sandy Millin reads my blog posts (she comments on them and shares them) as do Rachel Daw and Naomi Epstein. (Hi guys! 🙂 ) To give a collective term to these three and others, my PLN (personal learning network) aka the people I interact with online via Twitter, my blog and their blogs. Some people read some posts, some people read other posts. 884 poor sods get an email every time I publish something! Audience aside, I think the act of communicating something to someone else, in speaking or in writing, but particularly in writing, requires a deeper processing of that something than keeping it to yourself/just thinking about it. It forces you to make those thoughts more coherent. I’m really glad that the folk on Twitter/#ELTChat encouraged me to start blogging moreorless 5 years ago now, happy to have been part of an online teaching community for that long and long may it continue.

Back to TE Circle, our attention was drawn to a free sample chapter from Jack Richards’ book Key issues in Language Teaching, published by Cambridge. It was the chapter on professional development. On my to-do list still is a review of this book and the Cambridge Bookshelf app as they let me have a free copy in exchange for doing that. Fortunately they have been patient and their patience is soon to be rewarded! Watch this space…

The circle came to an end, and as usual I felt privileged to be able to take part in the discussion and learnt a lot from it, but also felt rather out of my depth as everyone else there was about a gazillion times more experience than me(!). I hope I can attend the next one and look forward to seeing what happens with the advisory service. You can be sure that if I do manage to try out the team teaching thing, there will be a blog post in it!

 

 

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IATEFL 2016 – Q and A follow-up to David Crystal’s plenary

Thank you British Council/IATEFL Online for enabling me to catch up with the follow up Q and A session for David Crystal’s fantastic opening plenary. Seeing David talk is always a treat.

I am not going to write up the whole session – I recommend that you instead spend half an hour watching it here. You might want to watch the recording of his plenary here first, though, to contextualise the Q and A!

Instead, I am just going to pick out a few things and comment on them:

  • Language play is taking place in all languages not just English – students are aware of that, whatever their age. They know that people play with language. The teacher’s job is to somehow grade their encounters with variety in both spoken and written environments. This enhances the standard learning experience: standard is standard because it is not non-standard and vice versa. The two things are always playfully interacting with each other. A teacher doesn’t teach standard English alone, or non-standard English as a separate subject, but somehow the interplay between the two so that one learns when one is learning a standard feature of the language that there are also non-standard variants.

I love this idea of teaching the interplay between the two! I think it’s important too – teaching standard English alone wouldn’t prepare students for the reality of English as it is used in the world today. 

  • The most popular component of the A-Level English Language course is language change. Both dimensions: language development (in the sense of a child learning to speak) and the deterioration at the other end of the spectrum, but also the change in trends of usage through the centuries and through living memory. The students love it because it gives them a sense of ownership of the language. They can discover for themselves the changes that are taking place. Last week’s cool words are not this week’s cool words. E.g. text messaging, of the “C U L8R” variety. Used to be popular, in 2003/4/5, messages were full of abbreviations. It was fashionable. (David always gets the teacher to get the students to collect text message data in advance of his visits). Last year, there wasn’t a single abbreviation to be seen. Not even an “lol” to be seen. They are not cool anymore. Why? Because adults started doing it! “I stopped doing it when my dad started” David predicts the same thing will happen to emojis. He gives them five years. Language change is happening now, as well as being something that has happened.

I feel old… Also, for anyone who, I was, is unsure about the difference between emoticons and emojis, here is a Guardian article that explains it! I wonder what will come after emojis? Am I old if I still use emoticons rather than emojis unless they auto-convert? For example, in WhatsApp you can select from a menu of emojis but if you put : – ) (without the spaces) then it stays that way rather than auto-converting into the relevant emoji. The only reason I really use emojis is because they have appeared as conversions of my emoticons. I don’t tend to bother selecting them from emoji menus. I must definitely be old!

Anyway, I love the idea of students collecting and analysing their message data!

  • Language doesn’t have an independent existence from society. It is explained by what is going on elsewhere. E.g. in the UK, breaking down of social class system, increase in cultural diversity, things to do with gender, race and stereotyping. We have become a more egalitarian society. You would expect language to reflect those trends. So, once upon a time certain accents were considered subservient because RP developed at the end of the 18th century into upper class English. Then came the middle class, the nouveau riche, build the railways, made textile machines, built roads etc. One day, the Duke invites the industrialist to dinner and suddenly the industrialist realises he does not know how to behave. So books on etiquette and elocution appear, with the elocution movement. Elocutionists became millionaires in those days. The people writing the manuals on pronunciation use words like “horrible” and “vile” to describe other accents. RP developed as a contrast with the regional accents of the time. As soon as the class distinction starts to break down, so attitudes change, the accent changes and people would modify their RP accent to sound ‘less posh’. However, not all regional accents have gone up-market equally. Some accents are considered positively but some inner city accents have got a long way to go before they achieve a complete range of positive responses. But give it time.

Isn’t the history of language/society fascinating?! And accent/attitudes to accent as well. I love non-‘BANA’ country English accents. And regional accents. With regards to my own accent, whenever people delve into the “where are you from?” question with me, they always go something like “aha! I thought you didn’t sound English” (as in England English)! When my sister and I were young and we (as in the family rather than us two personally!) got our first telephone with an inbuilt answering machine (very exciting! It was able to send and receive faxes too!!!), my sister had a great time recording variations of the message that people would get if they rang and we didn’t pick up. Amongst others, she took off to perfection a posh English accent, saying we were back home in the UK and had gone to London Zoo! Which was all the funnier because neither of us thought of the UK as home, of course. For me, Botswana English accents as well as some other African country English accents sound warm and homely, because they remind me of my childhood I suppose. 

  • You can never predict the future when it comes to language. Who, 1000 years ago, would have predicted that no one would know Latin? What will we be speaking in 1000 years? Could be Martian, if they have landed. One of the penalties of success – i.e. if a language becomes a global language – is that the language becomes owned by everybody. Then you get two forces – the need for intelligibility and the need for identity. In many parts of the world, you have standard English taught in schools and a non-standard English spoken on the streets. Language is messy, though, and things start to overlap. Things start to creep from one to the other and vice versa. The important thing is: when you encounter this problem, don’t think of it as a language learning problem, it’s just an issue inherent in a global language. You go backwards and forwards between standard and non-standard English.

I wonder if Martians would use emojis too… Anyway, I love the image of the back-and-forth-ing between standard English and peoples’ own varieties of English the world over, as intelligibility breaks down and is restored and stabilised then breaks down again. But rather than “breaks down” which has negative connotations, I want a more neutral word for it. I think there’s a lot of fun to be had in trying to build meaning with different people from different places, as long as everyone is aware that it may occasionally go astray! 

Anyway, as I said at the beginning, I highly recommend that you watch the full recording of both the plenary and this little Q and A session!

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A few useful things I have learnt about using Microsoft Word for materials writing and academic writing

You know when you learn something and you wish you had known it sooner? Microsoft Word has made me feel that way on more than one occasion. Here are a couple of things I wish I had known well before I actually wound up learning them:

1. ‘Split screen’ function

In first place by a long way, I give you the ‘Split screen‘ function. ‘Split screen‘ really is nothing short of magical. I (like to) forget how much time I have spent scrolling up and down between various parts of a document to add things in, to make changes to things before I discovered it was possible with the mere click or two of a button to split the document and half so that I could keep one bit still and move the other bit!

How?

In Word for Apple, you click on “Window” in the tool bar and select “Split” – simple as that! In the version for Windows, you will find “Split” nestled in the “View” tab.

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Mac

When you click it, the magic happens:

 

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You can drag the bar up and down to make one or the other portions bigger, as you need to.

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Windows sufferers

When?

I’ve found it useful (read: a Godsend!) in the following situations:

  • Materials writing: when editing a document containing both teachers notes and a student hand-out. It is much easier to make sure that teachers’ notes and student hand-outs correspond correctly if you can see both at once. You also save a lot of time by not scrolling up and down the document between the two!
  • Materials writing: when editing a document containing both student activities/tasks and answer keys. You can add the answers as you go, again with no scrolling required, and actually SEE the tasks as you write the answers rather than try to memorise/go back and check/repeat.
  • Academic writing: adding references as you go is much easier if you can have the reference section right there to add to as you use new references in the main body of the document. Again, no tedious scrolling required! (This becomes increasingly beneficial, the longer your document grows!)

Right-click shortcuts

How

When you right-click anywhere on your document, a list of options appear:

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Hopefully you won’t need the Cut/Copy/Paste options as you will be using ctrl/cmd + X/C/V respectively, but if you prefer using the mouse, then there they are to use – just do your right-click over the portion of text you have just highlighted to move around (rather than moving your mouse All The Way to Edit!)

The Font/Paragraph/Bullets and Numbering options I think are a bit redundant given they are right there in the Home tab above the document (in both Apple and Windows versions).

The hyperlink option, however, is quite useful for inserting links quickly. (Alternatively you have to go to Insert and then scroll down to the bottom of a long list to “hyperlink”)

I like the synonyms option – if you highlight a word in your text, and right-click then select synonyms, Word will, funnily enough, show you some synonyms of that word. Could be useful for those times when you are lacking in inspiration…

There is also a dictionary option and a translator option that you can use if you can’t be bothered to open a web browser and go to a web-based tool!

When

When you want to do things more quickly!

Keyboard shortcuts 

How

So, remember I explained at great length how to find the “Split” option? Well, rather than go clicking around to do it, you could also use a keyboard shortcut. The default one on the Mac version is cmd+alt+s

How do you know what all the keyboard shortcuts are? (Other than cut/copy/paste which everyone knows!) Well, in the Apple version, quite a few of them are helpfully listed alongside their function within the menu bar drop-down menus:

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If you take against one of the shortcuts assigned, or you want to add a shortcut for something else, you can change it by going to Tools -> Customise Keyboard:

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All the potential commands are listed by category, and where there is a shortcut you will be told what it is in the Current keys. In the above example, for Insert Symbol there isn’t a shortcut so I am assigning one by making the shortcut while the cursor is in the Press new keyboard shortcut box. Once I click Assign, it will move into the Current keys box. Now when I press Command+Option+Shift+S, I will be able to insert a symbol! Don’t worry, if the shortcut you choose is already assigned to something else, you will be told next to where it says “Currently assigned to”. As you can see, my new shortcut is as yet unused. (I had to try a couple of options before I found this one!)

Shortcut keys are your friend – learn the shortcuts for the things you do most often, and if there isn’t a shortcut key, add one! (This link tells you how to do it for Windows versions)

When

The sooner the better! Make Word work for you, rather than the other way round.

What’s your favourite Word time-saving trick?

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IATEFL 2016 Online: Self-marketing for English teachers – use your strengths for competitive advantage

Now that IATEFL 2016 is over, I am prolonging the enjoyment and learning by catching up with all the recordings of sessions I missed. I plan to work through the list of recordings in the order they appear, picking out and watching any titles that grab my attention (or that had grabbed my attention while I was at IATEFL!). 

This first one – Self-marketing for English teachers: use your strengths for competitive advantage, by Jenny Giambalvo Rode, intrigued me for several reasons. Firstly, at IATEFL this year, Sandy Millin was giving me tips on “branding” myself better (and given everyone knows who she is, it seemed worth listening to those!), such as slightly altering the name of my blog (did you notice the change?), so this idea of ‘self-marketing’ has been on my radar. Secondly, I recently watched Kirsten Holt (of Macmillan)’s webinar on networking, which I had been meaning to do since she did at the end of March. I’m pretty sure that, prior to this year, I’ve never noticed there being a webinar devoted to networking and similarly a conference session devoted to ELT teacher self-marketing. (I could be wrong though! Anyone care to correct me?!) Of course in itself it’s not a new concept – freelancers have long had to think about how best to, well, get work(!). My perception, though, is that this ‘marketing oneself’ aspect of being an English Language Teacher is becoming more mainstream. Look at this description of Kirsten’s recent webinar:

“This webinar is aimed at ELT teachers and professionals working in all sectors and settings.”

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You will notice, too, that the title for Jenny’s talk is “Self-marketing for English teachers” not “freelance teachers” or “freelance online teachers” but ‘English teachers’ – in general. As the job market becomes more competitive, and work is harder to come by, perhaps it IS something that all teachers need to think more about? What do you think? 

Self-marketing for English teachers – use your strengths for competitive advantage

Jenny, the head of department at an adult education centre and a bilingual German and Italian speaker, says as teachers we are a one-person company and our students are consumers. She wants to help us work on our self-marketing strategies.

Of your soft skills and professional skills, what one would you choose as being the one that would make the difference between getting a job or not? Examples are flexibility, networking, connections, empathy, people knowledge, creativity… She asks the audience to keep this in mind as we proceed. Next we have to look at the market – the schools, universities, businesses around you, in your area. Are you living in a small village? A big town? And where would you like to work? Is the institution you want to work at in your location?

This is all part of a SWOT analysis. These are used to make the current situation clear, in terms of you and your market. We’ve looked at strengths but think about what could be the weakness of what you consider to be your strength. E.g. friendly – you can make a connection with the kids, but too friendly and maybe they will just do what they want. With opportunities, you need to think about what you can do. How can you increase your skills? When you think about weaknesses, strengths and opportunities, you have to think about time. Distinguish between short, middle and long-term action. A short-term action for getting a job might be going down to the job market and submitting your CV. A middle-term action would be like Jenny making a year long plan to speak at IATEFL this year, including improving English and submitting a proposal. A long-term action would be thinking about where you want to be in 5 years and then thinking about a plan of how to get there, using your strengths and building on them. You need something to make you stand out from your colleagues in a positive way. Think about yourself as a one person business, with a business profile in your head.

Now think about your target group, i.e. the type of students you would like to teach. Business people? Children? What is your target group? Your business profile should fit with your target group. One of the most important things in marketing is finding your niche. It’s a simple marketing strategy. The smaller the niche is, the greater your opportunity and your advantage because there is less competition. Identify your opportunities, based on your location and your goals. For example, you could become an examiner.

Once you have your profile and your strategies, you need to get them out there. You need to be visible online, for your audience/future bosses etc. For example, you could join the TELC community. In Europe, Twitter and Facebook are good for networking, worldwide there are other platforms and social media that are more important. (I suppose LinkedIn fits in here too!) You make your own business profile and you need to decide if you will have two separate accounts for private and business or only one for both) and use it to connect with different people and places. Networking is what marketing needs and does. Use conferences not only to improve skills but also to network. You never know what it might lead to.

Give yourself deadlines. When you set goals, give yourself a completion date. Jenny concludes by inviting us to a webinar about SWOT analysis that she is planning to deliver in May.

My first reaction is that it all sounds so business-y what with all the SWOT analysis and every teacher is a one-person company and students as consumers etc! (I recommend you watch the session though, and form your own opinions…)

I suppose, though, jargon aside, that it’s always useful to be reminded to think about short, medium and long term career goals. That said, I am in less of a hurry than I used to be career-wise. I think this is possibly because I have already done a lot in a short time: I feel I’m now in a position to build on that more steadily rather than continue to be in the haring hurry that I was in previously. (Hopefully this means I will grow steadily and avoid burn-out!) So, I absolutely still have goals (for example I really want to do a PhD or Ed Doc at some point and I would also like to become a teacher trainer) but they don’t have time-limits attached currently. (Hence, “at some point”) That said, there are plenty of projects in the pipeline now/in the near future (some research I want to do, a book I’m supposed to be co-writing etc) and of course there are the most pressing short-term goals of all which are doing the best job I can in my current job (including learning how to teach EAP better!) and securing work somewhere come September when my current contract finishes!

Would be interested to hear your thoughts on this session! Have you done a swot analysis recently? Do you consider yourself a one-person company? (If yes, are you freelance or do you work for someone else?) What do you do to “market” yourself?

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Happy Birthday, Blog…??

So, today this popped up in my comment notifications:

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Whoop whoop! Except…erm…

Seems like last year they sent me this message on the 1st May?! So, really, who knows. I published my first ever blog post on the 8th May 2011, so maybe I should make that my blog’s birthday? Either which way, I can’t believe how old my blog is getting. It’s seen a whole five IATEFL’s, for goodness sake! (Seems strange to think that I have too, come to it. It feels like no time since I won a scholarship to my first one in 2012. And yet…lifetimes too!)

Another year gone (più o meno anyway!) and like all its predecessors, it’s been fairly jam-packed! Being a teacher may be many things – dull is certainly not one of them.

Anyway, Happy (un?)Birthday, Blog! Here’s to another exciting year! 🙂

 

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ELTC: Vocabulary review workshop

This is a very delayed write-up of a Vocabulary Review workshop that I did at the ELTC last term. It’s taken me this long because I have been reflecting on and off since, and now finally feel ready to publish it! It’s a reflective post divided into ‘before’ and ‘after’ with the former focusing on my preparations and the latter focusing on what actually happened!

Before

Tomorrow I am going to be running a workshop for my colleagues at the ELTC. The focus is vocabulary review activities. This year, so far, I have already done two other workshops for them: one on helping learners become more autonomous (part of the training day at the start of term) and one whose aim was to encourage reflection on career turning points and glean ideas for further developmental possibilities. I’ve also done a practical workshop on blogging (both with learners and as a means of professional development), at Leeds Beckett University, on the Multimedia and Independent Learning module, as well as an online session also about career turning points for the recent TD SIG web carnival. Coming up, as well as tomorrow’s session on Vocabulary Review, I have another session with Leeds Beckett University, this time online, about developing learner autonomy, a British Council webinar also about learner autonomy tools/tips and my IATEFL presentation in April, which will form part of a forum on listening and focuses on helping learners become more autonomous listeners in an EAP pre-sessional context.

The reason I mention all these commitments is that (not so coincidentally!) I have recently(ish) been reflecting on my short, mid-term and longer term goals, now that I have achieved the long-term goal that I set out with after I finished my CELTA, which was to gain some experience and then in due course work at Sheffield University. Of course I also squeezed in my M.A. in ELT and my Delta in the interim, which was handy and part of the plan for getting university work. Teacher training is one of my areas of interest, so it follows logically that, if one of my goals is to become a teacher trainer, doing as many workshops as I can, in various contexts, would be a useful way of gaining experience and working on my techniques for working with teachers rather than students. Initially, I started doing workshops as a means of developing myself as a teacher, and I will admit the main personal goal early on was survival. Happily, as you can tell since I am sitting here writing this, I achieved that! Since then, goals have included sharing what I’ve learnt through my experimentation, becoming more confident in my delivering, including more interaction in my sessions and so on.

This vocabulary workshop, however, is the first one I will do since reading “A Practical Introduction to Teacher Training in ELT” written John Hughes and published by Pavillion, borrowed from the ELTC’s library.

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It is also the first workshop I have volunteered to do in response to topics requested by teachers via survey and shared with everybody by our professional development team. I did a workshop on Error Correction at IH Palermo, with the topic suggested by the DoS, as planning a workshop was one of the tasks for the Tutor in training certificate I did while at IH. It seemed logical that if I had to plan a workshop, I might as well deliver it! For that workshop, I had help from my DoS and from my ex-Delta module 1+2 tutor who shared some materials with me via email. I also had the memory of an error correction workshop I had done during Delta (hence contacting aforementioned tutor!), on which I based the workshop. Of course, this time, for the vocabulary workshop, I’ve done all the preparation unsupported, starting from scratch. I think I should do more sessions like these. I’ve already signed up to do one on pronunciation so hopefully I can use what I learn from doing this session in planning that one. I shall be team-teaching it with one of my colleagues, which also be interesting! 🙂

Hughes suggests thinking of a training session as a triangle shape, divided into three. The smallest part at the top of the triangle is “What?”, the next segment, which goes until half-way down the triangle is “Why?” and the rest of the triangle is “How?” So this is the structure I have applied to my vocabulary workshop. The “what” and “why” section will be taken care of via discussion of some quiz questions relating to the topic of vocabulary review (and by extension learning). The bulk of the session, the “how”, is going to be a game of bingo! I will ask groups to brainstorm a grid of 9 vocabulary review activities that they have used before and then I will share 9 activities of my own with them. I plan to do this by having them participate (briefly!) in each activity using Delta module 1-style terminology (particularly relating to Lexis) as the target vocabulary. If the activity corresponds with any on their grid (regardless of the name, as these activities tend to go by several names), then they get to tick it off and we’ll see if anyone gets Bingo! The remaining time will be used to allow groups to share any leftover activities on their grids. I have also prepared a handout summarising the activity procedures so that the teachers don’t need to make notes as well as participate.

I anticipate that timing is going to be tight, as I will only have an hour to play with. However, I recognise that we do not need to complete each activity, teachers just need to have a taster of it in order to make sense of how it works. As per the triangle, the “what” and “why” quiz should not take up too much time. If time does run out, then I’ll make a google doc and invite teachers to write a brief summary of the outstanding activities on their list. One of my goals is to maintain a good pace and really keep track of the timing. I suppose, in the circumstances, it is also going to be a good test of classroom management and instruction-giving! (The better these are, the better the timing will be!)

After

Well, the good news is that my colleagues responded positively to this workshop. I had 6 attendees and they all had plenty to contribute to the discussion element (!) as well as being willing to get involved in the game-playing element.

As I predicted, time WAS an issue. Or, was it less the timing that was an issue and more my confidence in managing the discussion element, which I allowed to take up too much time?They had a lot to say and I didn’t want to cut it too short! (Perhaps I should have had fewer discussion questions, though I think they were all useful…) Actually I just wish I had had a longer session to play with – in the event we started slightly late and some attendees had to leave early due to other commitments, and even that aside it wasn’t the longest time slot! That’s not an excuse though – I did know roughly how long I would have. Perhaps I should have included fewer activities to try out?

However, on the plus side, this time issue was mitigated by my carefully prepared hand-out which meant that although we couldn’t have a stab at playing all of the games, teachers did take away instructions for all of them so that content wasn’t lost. Perhaps it didn’t matter that there were left over activities. It just gave the teachers a greater take-away for future experimentation. Perhaps, then, what I needed to do was stop trying the activities at a given point when there was still enough time for a constructive closing. I think that is what really got lost, as we had to come to a halt rather abruptly as teachers had to leave to get to other things.

For me, another positive was that within the game playing, we were able to refer back to the discussion element and build on it. The games illustrated the points made through the discussion questions, making them that much clearer. I think this was important because it made the workshop more cohesive and less of a ‘discussion with a few activities tacked on’ which perhaps it was in danger of becoming, given its nature. It was intended to be a practical session, with lots of ideas for teachers to try out, rather than a theoretical session, but the discussion element allowed for the practical ideas to be rooted in theory. So even though my first thought at the end of the workshop was that I had let it go on for too long, I now feel that that wasn’t the issue, rather it was how I managed the remaining time.

I would say the main drawback was that although I identified time as a potential issue in my planning, and recognised that not every activity needed to be completed, I didn’t recognise that the teachers didn’t actually even need to do every activity, thanks to the hand-out I had prepared, and therefore wasn’t prepared in the session to stop going through my set of activities in time for a strong closing. This is something that will definitely be a consideration in future workshops.

At the end of the session, I felt disappointed that it hadn’t gone quite as I might have liked it to, but on reflection I think it had a lot of positives and, importantly, I learnt some useful things from how it did go:

  • hand-outs are really useful!
  • make a decision with regards to how long an activity should run for and be firmer in bringing it to a close, if needs be. (Alternatively, if it needs to go on longer than planned, revise plans for the timings for the rest of the session!)
  • recognise when all the material is not going to be got through and ensure that there is nevertheless time for a suitable closing element to wrap everything up
  • in planning, if there is clearly too much material, either cut it down or ensure that nothing will be lost from the session if all the material isn’t covered. (In other words plan so that no core material will be lost)

I think that’s a useful set of points for me to consider next time I plan and deliver a workshop! So, all in all, it was a successful learning and developmental experience for me in my quest to become a teacher trainer at some point! I look forward to building on it. 🙂

If you are interested, here is the powerpoint I used and here is my handout.

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IATEFL 2016: “A hundred thousand things to see!”

The title of this post is a somewhat obscure reference to a ten-minute talk I did last year at IHTOC (IH Teachers Online Conference) in which I used the lyrics of Aladdin to try and persuade my audience of the benefits of attending a conference! It also reflects the reason for this post. The truth is, even though I did manage to see over 20 talks  for every one I saw, there was at least another I also wanted to see and missed! Too many things to see… 🙂

Fortunately, the British Council IATEFL Online 2016 site means I (and many others) can play catch-up! The conference lives on a little while longer. 🙂 Thank you, British Council folk and IATEFL folk involved, for making this possible!

Here are a few of the talks I plan to have a look at:

  • Self-marketing for English Teachers – use your strengths for competitive advantage
  • Q and A session relating to David Crystal’s plenary session
  • Enhancing speaking and writing outcomes using Google Apps
  • Forum on special educational needs – creating positive inclusive learning opportunities
  • The ELTJ debate – “This house believes that teacher training is a waste of time”
  • Forum on encouraging teacher reflection
  • National Geographic Learning Signature Event – What does it mean to be a Global Citizen?
  • Chatting in the academy – exploring spoken English for academic purposes
  • Reviewing qualifications and CPD: helping meet teachers’ training needs
  • ELT Conversation
  •  Visual literacy in creating classroom materials
  • Catering for trainee diversity on CELTA courses

All of these recordings can be found on the Sessions page of the British Council IATEFL Online website. What a valuable resource!

I also want to have a look at some of the interviews that were conducted during the conference, all of which can be found on the Interviews page of the British Council IATEFL Online website. For example:

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In addition to the sessions collected on the British Council IATEFL Online website, you can also watch sessions done and recorded by Macmillan, which will be available on their page here. The two I most want to catch up with are:

  • Flourish not flounder: using teaching competences for professional development
  • The teacher of tomorrow: professional development through informal learning

Plenty to wade through, then, but that’s ok – I’ve got nearly a whole year to finish before IATEFL rolls round again and this particular list gets topped up again! Similar to my newly made language learning contract, this is a mini CPD contract – the difference is, though, that the language learning one accounts for the sum total of my language learning while this one doesn’t account for the sum total of my CPD!

How about you, which IATEFL online talks and interviews do you want to catch up with?!

 

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Pronunciation tweaks for familiar activities

I wrote this post during the summer of 2015, when I was working on the 1o week pre-sessional programme at Sheffield University. (However, it is relevant for for anyone who does regular vocabulary review and wants to integrate pronunciation into such activities.) I have finally got round to publishing it some 8 months later! Better late than never…!

I’ve been doing a lot of pronunciation work with my Social English students recently. (Social English class is a class for students on the 10 week pre-sessional programme at Sheffield University, who have unconditional offers from their departments for degree courses starting in September-October this year.) I’ve also been doing quite a bit of vocabulary work. (Spaced) review is a regular feature of our classes, so I am constantly on the look-out for different ways of doing this, in order to keep things interesting. Part of the pronunciation work done with these students was an introduction to the phonemic chart, which I reviewed in a subsequent lesson using a phonemic chart version of Connect 4. Since then, I’ve also been trying to integrate review of the sounds into vocabulary review activities. This has the benefits of linking the work done on sounds to our target vocabulary and of making vocabulary review that slight bit more interesting and challenging. Here are a few familiar activities that I have tweaked, in order of increasing level of challenge…

Board Race

In board races, learners race to write something on the board in response to a prompt from the teacher (e.g. a clue for a target word as vocabulary review.) Here are a few pronunciation based board races. For all these races, learners are put in teams and team members take turns to race to the board.

(The more complex versions may  be kept for when learners are more comfortable with the sounds and symbols in recognition and production.)

  • The phonemic chart is projected onto the whiteboard. The teacher makes sounds and one learner from each team races to touch the correct sound on the chart. First person to touch the correct sound wins the point.
  • The teacher calls a sound and one learner from each team races to write that sound on the board.
  • The teacher gives a clue for learners to guess an item of target vocabulary; learners race to write it on the board in phonemes.
  • The teacher gives a clue for learners to guess an item of target vocabulary and they race to write the word AND stress pattern on the board.

The letters game

In its traditional form, I was introduced to this game during my CELTA course at Sheffield Uni. Each group of learners has a set of letters (multiple examples of each letter) and the idea is that the teacher provides clues to elicit a target word, which the learners must race to spell out using their letters. Turns out it works equally well using sounds instead of letters! And once you have made your sets of sounds, of course they are a resource you can use over and over, with different groups etc, meaning that after one job lot of preparation, it becomes a zero prep game. To warm learners up with an easier start, make sounds for the learners to find, before calling out words for them to sound out, and then graduating to clues for words.

Two sets of sounds

Two sets of sounds, ready to go!

Hangman

Nothing new to anybody about Hangman, it can safely be assumed, in fact I think it has mostly gone out of fashion as a waste of time. However, it does work quite well if instead of using letters, you use sounds. So, instead of each __ __ __ being for individual letters of target words, they are for individual sounds (which of course won’t necessarily be the same number as the number of letters in a given word). I had my students in two teams, and the teams took it in turns to make the sound they wanted to guess. Within the teams, students took it in turns to be the one who made the sound but they collaborated first in deciding which sound they wanted. Once learners are familiar with the game, you could round it off in a later class by doing an utterance and then once it is on the board, in symbols, perhaps write the words underneath and then in a different colour pick out what happens in connected speech vs. in individually pronounced words.

Backs to the board

Instead of writing a target word on the board in letters, write it on the board in phonemic script. Teams have to decide what the word is before helping their teammates at the board to guess what it is. Once those at the board have guessed the word, you could award bonus points if they can write it on a mini-whiteboard in phonemic script.

 Target

The teacher draws a target on the board (or you could pre-prepare and project onto the whiteboard to save time) and puts sounds in all the gaps. Students are in two teams, and take it in turns to throw the ball at the board (1-4 times per go, depending how challenging you want to make it) and should then try to use the 1-4 sounds hit in a single word. You could add even more limitations, e.g. it can only be words that you have studied this week or something, to bring in an added vocabulary element. (In my case, the teacher did prepare a target but she left out a couple of sounds – no problem, the students identified the missing ones and the teacher drew those on in board marker. 🙂 ) (Can you see which sounds are missing?)

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Banana dictations

In this activity, traditionally learners, in pairs or small groups, have a mini whiteboard between them and the teacher says a sentence with a word gapped out – the ‘banana’ word – which the learners race to write on their mini-whiteboard. To bring in sounds as well as vocabulary, why not ask them to write the word in phonemic script? To do this, in their groups, they will be sounding out the word and looking at the chart for help, so it reviews sound-symbol relationships.

… This is clearly not an exhaustive list! Can you think of any more to add?

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Networking Macmillan style (Or, my very delayed summary of Kirsten Holt’s webinar!)

I had intended to watch this webinar live, but it turned out that I was away at the time (Easter holiday!) so couldn’t. Thanks to the wonders of technology, and the fact that it is only 45 minutes long, I got to catch up with it during my lunch hour at work! I decided it was worth writing up as Networking is something all us professionals have to do at some point and Kirsten had some useful suggestions for how to do it better…)

Networking

When I think of networking, what immediately comes to mind are the ELT publisher networking events at IATEFL conference and, I will confess, a slight shudder runs through me. Being in a big room full of people I don’t know (or only know by sight/name e.g. the Scott Thornburys’ of this world) with the apparent purpose of making conversation is something that thoroughly daunts me. More specifically, the going up to people and starting up the conversation. (Does anyone else feel the same?!) When I think of networking, I think of something I ought to do but would rather avoid. When I think of networking, I think “it’s just not my thing”! So, my hope was that Kirsten Holt (who has taught, trained teachers, been a director of studies and currently works at Macmillan) would give me some ideas for getting over this dread.

First she talked about why.

Why indeed… 😉 

  • It can help you develop outside normal teaching day
  • You can share ideas, knowledge, best practice
  • Because a problem shared is a problem halved: for example, you can discuss what is going on in your classroom etc. with other professionals.
  • It gives you an outward facing ELT profile, enables other people to see your capabilities
  • It can help you develop business relationships (Kirsten has often applied for jobs having met the person in advance)
  • It’s interesting! (hear about opportunities that other people don’t know about)

Where?

Start small and develop as you go through. Can be nerve-wracking but is easy to get to grips with. Lots of events from ELT organisations and publishers. (hahaha!)

Go online!

For me, this is interesting! I had never thought of all my online activity as networking until IATEFL this year when I discussed the Cambridge event and my ‘fish-out-of-water’ feelings towards it with one of my old course mates from my M.A. at Leeds Met, and she suggested that I should play to my strengths by avoiding such events and continuing to do what I’m good at doing online e.g. connecting with people via my Blog and Twitter, for example. Kirsten’s suggestions in this area seem to build on that conversation, as far as I am concerned!

Kirsten suggests:

  • FB pages e.g. IATEFL and Macmillan, if someone says something interesting in a comment, send them a message on FB alluding to the comment and asking for more info about it.
  • LinkedIn, also groups like the ELT technologies that you can join. (More information about LinkedIn below)

You can push yourself beyond the norm, beyond your social group. That’s what’s useful about these online resources.

Of course, conferences and other such events put on by Teaching Associations, or events at work where guests also attend, are all potential opportunities for networking too.

Key part of networking: Preparation

Do your research – about the online group (is it right for you, does it match what you want form it) or the event you are planning to attend; plan what you will say to the people you introduce yourself to. Think about the type of people and companies you’d like to  make contact with and do some research. If there is someone you really want to meet, search for them on LinkedIn or for profiles on company websites. It doesn’t work all the time – people might not have their picture up there for example. However, if you’ve seen their face you know who you are looking for and can say, “Hi. You’re blabla” etc. (Hence the earlier point re avoiding dog and flower type profile pictures!)

Make business cards that stand out

(There was I thinking I was doing well by actually having a business card – not to mention, remembering to take them with me to whichever event! Turns out there’s a whole other layer of things to consider!)

  • shape
  • something unsual (Top Trumps style, Bitesize with a bite taken out out…)
  • extra thick

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  • Personalised touch: e.g. editing the card based on what was being talked about at the event.
  • Don’t let the other side of the card go to waste. (E.g. Macmillan have a quote on one side and details on the other)

Vistaprint and Moo are apparently good – you can play around with the design online.

LinkedIn

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Keep your LinkedIn profile up to date. It’s basically a glorified CV online. It’s also a good idea to adapt it depending where you are headed to so that it is relevant to the areas you are planning to network about. On LinkedIn you can also access groups such as ELT Technologies.  (Hint from me: If you go to your ‘My Groups’ which you can find under ‘Interests’, and go to ‘Discover’ it will show you a ream of groups based on those your contacts are members of. You can then request to join them!) Avoid profile pictures of flowers or dogs!

This year Kirsten is talking a lot about developing teachers so her profile shows what she has done in that area.

Another thing to consider: does it showcase your talents? Use it for self-promotion. Do you have any testimonials? Look at Kirsten’s profile on LinkedIn for an example of this.

Conferences

If you are catching someone in a brief break between sessions, bear in mind they may be after a comfort break or tea, so keep it snappy (90 seconds to 2 mins tops – if people want to follow up on you later, they will – on LinkedIn etc). What you do, who you work with, what’s your teaching situation. Say what you want to do. “Hi Im Kirsten I work as a publisher in teacher development, I’m interested in teachers who will help me with reviewing material” is the example Kirsten gives. Also try and give a sense of who you are. It’s sharing your personality as much as sharing your life. If you can, have a one-liner, can make you stand out. Practice with your friends and family. Even on your own. Do a little recording of yourself and play it back. Or use a mirror. Kirsten discovered how much she used her hands and now keeps them more contained!

Be aware of how the other person is reacting. If they look bored/disinterested, stop! Don’t waste time talking to people who aren’t interested. Thank them for their time and leave it there. Move on to someone else. Not everybody will be your friend, that’s fine. Don’t take it personally, it’s not meant personally!

General Tips

  • Kirsten says volunteering is good if you find networking daunting. Setting up, marshalling, helping people register – it’s a great way to meet people without taking too much on yourself. Can create more ‘natural’ ways of networking.
  • Show up early – before everyone arrives – there are fewer people to deal with. If you arrive very early and the speaker is setting up, allow them to set up, leave them be, meet other people. If you meet people early on, you might be more memorable.
  • Introduce yourself to the organiser (the person you corresponded with in order to attend the event etc.) and they can introduce you to other people if they have the time. This could help you get going.
  • Have a special number in mind, particularly for larger events like conferences. E.g for the first time maybe 10 people. And then when you achieve it, reward yourself. Or if you are at a talk, the two people next to you is even enough. It’s your special number. Your personal number of how many people you’d like to meet.
  • Be engaged. As you are meeting people, think about your handshake. It stays with you if someone doesn’t have a very good one! Firm and dry is good… And look at the person as you meet them. Show that you are interested. Don’t nod at EVERYTHING but show that you are listening. Building this rapport helps you develop the relationship further. Just as you would with your students, but this time with business contacts.
  • Don’t assume! Think about what you are saying and who you are saying it to. E.g. If you are meeting someone, don’t assume it’s their first time at the event just because it is yours. Or if a person is in work or out of work. “How’s work going?” could be a nonstarter… Wait to hear them describe their job before asking this question. Of course next time you meet them, you could refer back to what they say.
  • Don’t say “do you remember me?”. Think how many students you meet in a term. Teachers. Teacher trainers. People at conferences. People in your personal life. Hundreds of people. So it can be a difficult question to be put on the spot with. In a sea of faces it’s hard to stand out. So if you know the person, remind them how you know each other “I was at x with you, a, b and c were also there, we did y”. A clue is very helpful!
  • Be interested not interesting. Ask the other person questions, don’t just talk about yourself. At the same time, be thinking about what you can offer this person and what you want from them. Remember that they might know another 10 people, one of whom might be the person you really need to speak to.
  • Use your time wisely. If it’s not working with a person you are speaking to, don’t give your card out willy nilly, only give it to appropriate people.
  • Be very specific about who you are, what you do and what you are looking for.
  • Take notes. On the back of their business card is a good place – something to remember them for, something from the conversation. It takes seconds. E.g. “Met at x event, date, interested in y”

What happens after you network?

Log your contacts so that you can remember them. Connect with them on LinkedIn straight away. There is a 48hr window. Don’t let cards sit in the draw in your office or in your conference bag. Make a little contact. I met you at event x and it was interesting to talk about y. You mentioned z and I’d really like to hear more about that. It’s a way to open a conversation and remind them who you are after the event. If it is a large event like IATEFL, up to a week is fine. Once you’ve made contact, don’t bombard them. Don’t send hundreds of emails. A little bit of contact is a follow-up, don’t move into the area of stalking!

Kirsten finishes by saying networking is not a competition, not about numbers, quality is more important than quantity. It’s about using your contacts wisely and having enjoyable conversations with people, sharing ideas and knowledge. (See, this actually sounds more like fun! Maybe this is what I need to remember next time I find myself at an ELT publisher event or similar so that I can enjoy it instead of feeling slightly queasy…)

Thank you, Macmillan and Kirsten! If you are interested in this topic, then I would highly recommend watching the complete webinar here  on the Macmillan Website, it’s freely available and Kirsten is a good speaker, so why not?! Oh, and do feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn! 😉 )