March

This was never meant to become a monthly thing.... but it seems to be becoming one. Oh well... time to get on with the writing.

First thing this month is that I've posted some materials on www.talent.ac.uk (or http://www.talent.ac.uk/dsearch_details.asp?DocumentID=1946 and http://www.talent.ac.uk/dsearch_details.asp?DocumentID=1945 to be more precise) I've been meaning to do it for ages but I needed to sort out some concerns that I've had about copyright... it's all Skills for Life stuff just tweaked for interactive whiteboards and powerpoint - so it's not like I wrote them or anything - it's just very useful. It is visually stronger than just using printed notes and allows for some kinaesthetic work to break up long lessons. Having the sound files embedded as MP3s is so much easier than having to faff about with tapes as well...

What I hadn't realised is how much easier it makes it for me to recap what I had covered in a previous lesson - I can easily show the content covered and play the recordings again for students to get further practice (also good for students with v.flaky attendance!). The only problem is that they take a while to produce.... hopefully by the end of this year I'll have a full set of files for E1 (though the first few need a lot of tweaking).

This month I have also been trying to implement a more student centred approach to my teaching and trying to identify individual targets for students, but in a practical way. It seems to be working - I'm still at the learner training stage of the trial at the moment.
Basically the approach I'm taking follows these steps:

• Ask students to identify interests/relevant areas from the front page of each Sfl unit.
• I identify SMART(ish) targets for each student for the unit and discuss this with the students.
• From these targets I extract the component skills ie. The ESOL Curriculum references.
• I compile a list of skills that are relevant to the targets of each student.
• Lessons are planned to include at least one skill from each student's target.
• An end of unit test is compiled to test each student's target.

It is practical and it is having some effect on how I plan my lessons, hopefully this will motivate the students more.... we'll see.


Today we had a session on the course about teaching the writing process (and other approaches) It was interesting and there was some stuff that I can work on there - especially with my E1s, I've done some similar stuff using the computer, but I should try some on paper.

The other session was on the lexical approach - This had some pointers which I should be able to include in my teaching:

• Always give contexts for words presented.
• Give extra collocations for words presented.
• Train students to look for collocations in texts.
• Train students to record new vocab with its collocates.
  
• Use authentic materials where possible.

Ok, I think I'll have to leave it here for now.... til next time.....

February at Last

February.....

Since I last posted here I've been playing with techonology - I've been able to use the MP3 player to record students during classes. I've used this to set up listening activities afterwards to allow Ss to listen to themselves and I've been able to post the recordings on to the Moodle VLE. This way the students are free to listen to themselves whenever they want.

Other practical uses that I've found for recording Students is in carrying out diagnostic tests and in exploring task-based learning.

That's been my BIG THING this term... task-based learning. One of the criticisms of an early lesson which I was observed teaching was that there was not a strong enough theoretical basis to my teaching. After reading a number of books I decided that Jane Willis' interpretation of Task based learning was practical. I first tried it out on a very "easy to teach" E2 group and then I tried it on a more 'difficult' E1 group. It seemed to go well - and I was observed in the E1 lesson I think this should help inform my teaching from now on.......

The most important thing that I'vew got to remember is to let the students use the language that they already know before I start trying to work on form - this gives the Students a chance to feel confident in what they know and a chance to contextualise their language. The form exercises then help them take it that bit further.

I've seen the opposite this weekend - I've just started studying on a language course and it has so far shown me the importance of the teacher being confident in what they do and allowing the students to dictate the pace of the lesson. Having been introduced to grammar grids straight after "learning" how to say "bonjour" didn't really help me. I feel that I would have felt much more comfortable seeing the grammar work after a good practice session. Oh well.... see how it goes from here.

The next thing that I've got to get my head round are diagnostics and schemes of work. I'm going to read "teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom" by Trisha Hedge to see if that gives me any clues

New Year

Ok, January starts and we're back into the swing of things.....

Term started with my induction and a couple of training days... To be honest there wasn't a huge amount of new stuff - we've still not managed to reach a decent point on ILPs. Though we are now going to try to get Students to stick them in the front of their folders so that they are at least a bit more prominent in their minds. I'm going to produce a nice clear targets document for my class file - that should help me give my planning a bit of direction.

You may be asking what's brought on all of this - well, there is a distinct possibility that OFSTED are going to come and inspect us this year, so we need to be able to scare them off with wads of paperwork.... Hmmm here goes.

It should have some value in terms of teaching and it should make my planning a bit more coherent, so I'm up for giving it a try.

We're also going to try and introduce some collaborative curriculum design with our students. I'm not sure how well it'll work with my E1s, but it should help give them some kind of ownership of the process.

We're going to try and link these procedures by taking our targets from the tasks suggested by the Ss - so the process should be a whole lot more coherent.

This also fitted well with the session that I had at Tower Hamlets - we were looking at designing schemes of work. The reality is that a scheme of work is much more useful if it is designed after you know the students reasonably well - thus taking into account their needs. Of course we don't do that at work, which makes my assignment a bit harder.... Hmmm. I have talked about this with my boss - but he pointed out that if classes all had different schemes of work then that would make it a bit more difficult to fit in with the rest of the institution.

We also looked at intonation, word stress and their importance for meaning - I need to get more of this into my teaching - I hate teaching pronuciation, I really hate it - just beacuse I can never do it naturally when I'm trying to say it... it just gets all unnatural. I guess I just need to practise this more before the lesson and then drill it. A useful technique would probably be drawing attention to differences in meaning caused buy changes in intonation - I'll try that a bit more.

Linked into a few of these things is my latest idea is to record my students more. I've resisted the idea for a while just because it gets so messy - you get loads of tapes whic you have to keep, edit, wrestle with the technology. I just haven't been bothered to deal with all that stuff. However now technology has offered some other solutions - from the Teaching English website from the BBC and the British Council I read about one teacher who recorded her Students on to MP3s and then emailed these back to them. It can all be done online very easily - it is far more convienient to access and store and it can very easily be copied giving the teacher and the student a permanent record of their ability at a particular point in time. I think it would probably fit very well into the diagnostic/ILP/tutorial cycle and help to motivate Ss as they hear the difference in their work.

Now the big question? What do I need to do this....? The software doesn't seem to be an issue - there are things that you can download as freeware, can't remember the name - but I'll add in a link as soon as I find it... It's just a question of hardware at work we've got these (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Q1) which are great but they seem to be 'technical overkill' if that's a word. They've got loads of bells and whistles and cost over £600. On the other hand most of our classrooms have a PC in them and we could use them with a microphone - there's a bit less flexibility there unless we get a long microphone cable, which certainly wouldn't be impossible. However my favourite idea at the moment is to get hold of a small personal MP3 player that can record. They start at about £20 - I just have no idea of the quality. I've got a nice shiny iPod, but mics are expensive, and I'm not sure how generally compatible they are with the simple software programs that I want to use.... Anyway I might start my experiments this week - then I'll put some of the results up here.

OK, I'll leave it here for now - that's plenty of writing for now........

Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching - Diane Larsen-Freeman

I've been reading "Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching by Diane Larsen-Freeman, Second Edition (Oxford university Press, 2000). I bought the book from amazon.co.uk

In this book Larsen-Freeman outlines a series of teaching methodologies and techniques in some detail. She outlines the techniques appropriate for each methodology and some of the theory and principles underpinning them.

The methods looked at are as follows:

1. The Grammar - Translation Method
2. The Direct Method
3. The Audio-Lingual Method
4. The Silent Way
5. Desuggestopedia (also known as Suggestopedia)
6. Community Language Learning
7. Total Physical Response
8. Communicative Language Teaching
9. Content-based, Task-based and Participatory Approaches
10. Learning Strategy Training, Co-operative Learning and Multiple Intelligences.

I would recommend this book for anyone who teaches languages - it does show different ways that it can be achieved.

As to my own personal reflections.... well:

I have probably included elements of the direct and audio-lingual methods in my teaching, Communicative Language teaching is probably the closest single method to my personal teaching.

Some of the principles of the Silent Way are interesting - I think learners would have to be 'trained' before they would respond to the 'pure' way of teaching silently in the book but I think that the idea that the teacher should let students work together to find answers before providing them - that the teacher should create a space for learners to 'perform'.

Desuggestopedia seems a little bit 'spaced-out' to convince Ss. It could perhaps work in a fairly pure form with Ss who have become somewhat disillusioned with other methods of language teaching - but probably wouldn't work for classes with discipline issues. I do like the idea of making the experience as comfortable as possible for learners and trying to activate students' peripheral learning. Playing music in the background of classes seems to help some Ss - I've certainly found that it helps me when I'm studying! Posters of different language items hung up in the classroom seems to be helpful. The use of interactive whiteboards in our college would seem to help us in this regard as it makes it easier to produce more visually-stimulating materials for use in the classroom.

Community language learning is a methodology made for an EFL classroom it would seem - being much more practical with monolingual students. I would find it hard to apply in my current contexts because a) classes tend to be multilingual and in those where there are few L1s they tend to be Lithuanian and Polish - languages which I don't speak. I could apply it if I had a class of Spanish and Portuguese speakers, but that seems to be unlikely within the present FE ESOL context. It is an interesting methodology because it goes against the training that I have had up to now, I would like to be able to try it in order to see it in operation. The reality is that when I worked in EFL I was a 'novelty' as a native speaker and so the institutions that I worked for wanted me to use as much 'realistic' English as possible - this method would appear to be easier for a non-native teacher in the contexts that I worked, mainly for the way the institutions viewed their native speaker resources.

Total Physical Response - This is a promising way to include kinaesthetic learners, I feel that I could include more of these elements in my teaching and should try to... First New Year's Resolution.

Content-based, Task-based and Participatory Approaches. These approaches seem to be in vogue at the moment and I feel that they are appropriate to my context. My second new year's resolution is to try and read as much as I can on these approaches and try to implement them successfully.

Learning Strategy Training, Cooperative Learning and Multiple Intelligences. These are other areas which I would like to develop further - I have used some learner-training exercises but I feel that I should try to use them in a more coherent fashion and include them clearly in a scheme of work. Following on from that Co-operative learner is a very interesting method which could be used to help classes gel better. We will have new students in our classes in January this could be a good way to bring them in to the groups. Howard Gardner's Multiple intelligence theory has been explained to me in loads of different places, however Larsen-Freeman does include an interesting lesson outline from Emmanuela Agostini that could use seven of Gardner's intelligences. I need to look at that and see if there was a way I could use something similar in my context.

Discourse and Content in Language Teaching

I have been reading "Discourse and Context in Language Teaching" by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Elite Olshtain.

The book shows how the choice of grammar and lexis is affected by the discourse level and the implications of this for language teaching.

Celce-Murcia & Olshtain talk about the importance of 'Pragmatics' and how the speaker's intention and context affects the meaning of what they say.

The affects of discourse on phonology are analysed (intonation, rhythm, etc.) as in the effect of discourse on grammatical forms.

Celce-Murcia & Olshtain make it clear that all new grammar forms must be presented and tested in context.

Complete texts can be used to present vocabulary, however the authors concede that there are different ways of teaching vocabulary.

The authors investigate the different skills and suggest that we use both top-down and bottom-up strategies in reading, listening, writing and speaking and suggests ways that all these strategies (particularly the top-down) can be taught.

The final part of the book suggests how this can be implemented in the design of syllabuses and curriculums.

Borrowed from the Library at Tower Hamlets College, Arbour Square, L0ndon E1

Letter to my MP

Dear Lyn Brown,

I am writing to you to draw attention to Early Day Motion 383 'English for Speakers of Other Language Funding' tabled on the 4th of December by Helen Jones. The motion expresses concern at the Government's plans to cut ESOL funding for migrant workers and asylum seekers.

As an ESOL lecturer, at Barking College, one may consider that I have a vested interest. I cannot deny that. However, I would also consider that I am also in a good position to see the effects of English-Language tuition on migrant workers and as a Newham resident - your constituent, and tutor for several Newham residents (including many who are looking to take UK citizenship - to become your constituents) I would like to state my concern over this issue.

English language skills are vital for integration in this country. It should be clear to you, as a representative of one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse areas of the country that this is vital for residents of West Ham - both those who wish to learn English and those who already speak English, or are British themselves.

Migrant workers are one of the most vulnerable sectors of the population, if they are unable to speak English it is far more likely that they can be exploited by unscrupulous employers. This will have a knock-on effect on the local population - if more people are being exploited at below the minimun wage it will be harder for all workers to earn a living wage. On a far more simplistic level the more migrant workers are able to speak English, the more money they will earn and the more tax they will pay.

As the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Communities minister Mr. Phil Woolas you will be aware that he has raised concerns over the amount of money spent on translation services and suggested that the balance should be shifted further towards English Language courses. Is it not then incoherent that this is being coupled with some of the biggest cuts to ESOL funding in recent history.

Also I note that you raised a written question over the EAL provision in Newham schools, which was answered in July of this year. Are you in agreement that for the same reasons that English as an additional language provision is vital, so is the ESOL provision offered by FE colleges.

I am writing to ask that you sign the above mentioned EDM and ask your colleagues to do the same. Your experience in Newham should make clear that role that English language learning plays in promoting community engagement, and how limiting a lack of English proficiency can be.

I await your reply with interest.

Yours Sincerely,


-Philip Bird

Tutorials....

This week we had our first lot of tutorials...... and there are a few things that I need to work on. I think I need to brush up a bit on methodology and develop my own style... which I don't have much of at the moment.

Hopefully that should lead my classes to be somewhat more effective - So that's a big load of teaching theory reading I need to do over Christmas.

Apart from that, the biggest thing we looked at today were ILPs - and the discussions which revolve around them. There really does seem to very little in terms of help with the practical problems around applying them - there's plenty of good theory around, but I really haven't seen anyone who can use them effectively. It's a big problem at work, so I'll feed in what I've found out and read and see if it helps. I get the feeling from Tower Hamlets that because they do such a detailed diagnostic, which clearly informs their planning the ILP becomes less relevant, but I need to find out more.

Anyway, I have to leave this now, as it's getting really late.