A Post-script and an Invitation to a Future

Dear 2012 Fall STGers,

Now that the STG course is finished, it's time to wrap this blog up, too. I'll leave it on the internet as a relic of what has been, but there will no longer be any activity here.

That doens't mean reflective teaching stops with the site, though. I've decided to move my reflections to another address, partly to disassociate it from the particularities of our STG groups and begin a new slate as an ELT professional . My main reason, though, is that I really don't like blogger! I'm much more fond of Wordpress, and so my new page can be found at:

http://tomselt.wordpress.com/

If you're interested to keep reading and up to date with what I'm doing as a teacher (and researcher?) then that's the place to look!

If any of you guys plan to keep up your blogs in some form aswell I'd love to keep following you, and hopefully we can continue to help each other develop professionally. It's been great sharing and reading what you've written so far, and I look forward to reading about what all of you do in the future!

Now just to check out our grades in a couple of hours and attend our graduation ceremony on Thursday. Hope to see you there!

Week 14: The Final STG Blog Post

Here's my last official reflection during my time on the STG course! To make it clear what I'm talking about I'll begin by reposting the questions from Johnston (2003, p143).

4) Reflect for a moment on your career in ELT. What have been the major turning points and decisions in your professional life. How have these related to your personal life? What values have guided you in choosing your career path? What conflicts of values have you experienced, and how have you tried to resolve them?

5) Think about your own teaching situation. Do you consider that you are marginalized in any way? If so, what forms does this marginalization take? What forms of advocacy are or would be useful in your situation?

Let's Get Personal

Some of you may know I've only been teaching for three years. I graduated from a Drama and Theatre degree, and came over to Korea teach and to be with my then girlfriend (now wife, Emjay). I've never regretted that decision.

As with many teachers here, though, I had no teacher training and didn't view the job as lasting more than a year. I did it, in a way, to have a source of income while I worked out how serious my relationship with Emjay was. It turned out to be pretty serious, and it gave me a lot of direction. I found that I loved Korea and teaching, and began to consider teaching as not just a job, but a career.

How I proposed!

This change of mind was also brought about a lot by the excellent co-teachers I had. They were professionals in precisely the way Johnston describes: always changing, trying new things, developing dialogues with their students - the lot. They took me under their wing and showed me what it meant to be a professional teacher, even though I had no formal training. This wasn't just how these two teachers approached me either. I was surprised and embarrassed at how much I was trusted and esteemed by the school in general. My vice-principal asked for private lessons, and I was given a lot of freedom in my classrooms despite being so inexperienced.

I look at this experience in comparison to the horrible stories of marginalization I've heard from other non-Korean English teachers, and am very thankful. I really feel that as a young white British male I've been on the end of only positive discrimination, and have gained greatly from it. I seem to exactly fit the mold of what Koreans want to see in their English teachers.

I doubt that this will continue as I pursue professional development, however. Both my family and professional status have changed enough to ensure that. As both of these develop I have the same choices to make as Johnston did - I've talked frequently with Emjay about what we would do if my work, or even my study, took me to another country.

To support our international family my wife quit her job early this year to pursue her dream of being a translator. This will mean our family isn't tied to any one country - we could both work anywhere in the world. She's doing well, too, but still earns peanuts. That means that for now I earn for the both of us, and needed to take on an extra after school English job. This financial need will only grow as we work on growing our family!

My career could take me anywhere in the world!

Taking on this extra job, which I don't really enjoy, has meant a lot of adjustment for me. Before it I was very comfortable in my job and had more than enough time to prepare my lessons. With these extra classes I find I have little or no time to prepare, and have to make the most of every minute in my working day. It has meant that the overall quality of my classes has decreased (especially the after school ones I don't really want to be doing), and this has caused a moral dilemma. I really want to give my students the best classes possible, but my current working situation doesn't allow for it.

I could perhaps work on this in the evening, but my professional development on the STG course means I'm busy most evenings with homework, and I place importance on investiong the rest in my personal relationships, particularly with my wife. This course has also meant that I now truly feel like I could call myself a professional teacher, with great implications for my future. I've been inspired to work hard at self-development and the development of the teaching field in general.

It has also, however, opened up my eyes to many of the shortcomings of the Korean English education systems. I wasn't inspired to leave education as Rafal, the Polish teacher Johnston mentioned was though. Quite the opposite. I can't say for sure if I will go for it, but part of me would love to be a part of reforming Korean education, be it increasing the quality of Native teachers in Korean schools through developing some half-decent internal teacher training programs, or working as an advocate for Korean teachers of English and calling for less Native speakers in schools.

By considering this kind of career path I'm effectively opening myself up to many forms of potential marginalization - many people might rightly question my right to judge and comment on the system of a country not my own. Even if I don't work on the Korean system I have ideas for how I could develop my career, and none of them involve staying in my current job. I want out, and I want to push myself and whichever field I find myself working in as far as I can. I'm bound to meet some opposition on the way!

But I don't think I would see many of these things as marginalization as Johnston does. I don't think, for example, that Johnston's example of ESL teachers being viewed as unprofessional is a form of marginalization. It is, after all, based on some truth - just three years ago I too was an amateur doing a job I wasn't trained to do, and I too thought any native speaker could do it. To me this merely seems a natural progression of popular thought about a young field filled with unskilled workers which is on it's way to being recognized as a worthy professional career path.

Perhaps I'm just an optimist, but I try to see such "marginalizations" as opportunities. I don't deny that many examples of marginalization are very real and very difficult to deal with, but many times they mark areas which have room for development - they are places I, and all teachers, can be at work in, advocating good teaching, fairness and equality, and the practice of personal and corporate reflection and research.

I'm excited at the many opportunities the field of Second Language Teaching holds for my future!

Week 14: Writing With 3rd Graders

Given that we were headed up to a weekend all about Output, and specifically writing, I decided to have a go at a writing lesson so that I could analyse whether what I did was truly an output activity or not.

I was teaching my 3rd graders about the weather ("How's the weather?", "It's sunny" was our given TLC), and asked them to give me a weather report like the beautiful Korean ladies on TV. These ladies read from teleprompters, and so the students had to write the script they would be reading for their reports.

If you have the inclination to watch my video, the writing section begins at 27:20!

What I Did

This was the first chance for my students to produce some writing for this chapter. Up until this lesson everything had been speaking, listening and reading. For this reason I wanted to spend some time producing some kind of written output, and the activity I prepared reflected what I thought I knew.

I began the class by reviewing what we had already learned and by adding some new vocabulary trough repetition and actions. We even played a game where the students simply followed my instructions and we had fun performing the wrong weather in the wrong season (snow in summer?!). This got their bodies and minds warmed up and ready to talk and write about weather. A schema activation exercise, if you will.

When it was time to get to the writing we spent a lot of time building the context. First I had to get them to recognize the genre (a weather report), and create a weather map to write about. I chose to do this because I considered giving my students the option to choose the weather themselves as key to an output activity. However, this took a looong time! We spent about ten minutes gluing the map into their books and writing a title (my co-teacher had ignored my request to print this all on a separate worksheet to save time). We also had to send time teaching students where some of the big cities of Korea were on the map, which I hadn't anticipated needing to do. After that they spent another five minutes drawing weather symbols. All of this I considered necessary to engage the students and make the activity feel more real. It took a lot of time though!

When we finally got to the writing the students were required to write four sentences about their map based on the sentences written on the board, telling us the weather in each of the four cities. I tried to allow flexibility in this so that the higher students weren't bound by the rules, but had to allow a structure to allow my lower students something to build upon. (My lower students actually need practice with handwriting and phonics, but there is neither time nor opportunity for this. We compromise by giving very basic writing tasks during class time, though in reality this is far from ideal.) This meant that the class were actually doing a fill-in-the-blank activity, and adding whichever language matched the map they had made.

What I Should Have Done

I am now aware that this writing activity couldn't be classed as an Output activity. The students were given clear structures to use, and were guided down a narrow channel without much chance to get things wrong. The focus was accuracy, not production.

In order to create a real output activity I would have had to simply hand my students a map and tell them to write a weather report. I could've given them some examples or guidance before we started and during the activity, but the focus needs to be much more on the mere production of the TLC language without structured guidance.

The activity I provided was a "Practice" activity, and I think that this is what they needed. My students weren't at the point where they could have produced the language without clear guidelines, as this was the first time they had tried writing it. My mistake wasn't the choice of activity, but the label I put on it.

My question, given this, is if my third grade students are truly capable of an output activity the way I have been taught this week. My students found enough difficulty with the more structured activity above, and I worry that they'd just not know what to write given a truly output focused task. Maybe this depends a lot on what I set them to do. Maybe I just need to jump in the deep end and see what happens. But I'm really nervous about doing it.

At least I know now what I could and should be doing to fully teach my students. That's an accomplishment and encouragement in itself!

Week 14: ICC Microteaching Reflection

I've tried to mix both Methodology and ICC ideas into the following reflection, which first looks at what my aim was, and then to what extent I achieved that aim. The achievement aspect will be split further into the ICC and Methodology aspects of the lesson, both including aspects which could have been better and those I was more or less satisfied with.

My Aim - What I Was Trying To Do

I designed my micro-teaching on the basis of the misunderstanding of the words "see you later", which further opened up into the differences in peoples' concepts of time. This misunderstanding displays the importance of context on any language interaction, and thus fits neatly into both McConachy's SPEAKING framework and Schollon's "Grammar of Context".

These models illustrate well what a specific utterance might mean, for example, given any particular Setting, the differences in Participants' cultures, the Ends that each participant intends, and the Norms they bring into the situation. I planned to use this to serve up some intercultural understanding for the presentation side of the lesson, with this then opening up into resolving conflicts between people who see an event differently, a key element of the video I used in this lesson.

My Teaching - ICC

My main worry about this lesson was that the cultural aspect would be too shallow or non-existent, however I was pleased to see that my "students" interacted well with it. The video proved simple enough for them to follow what was going on, and they could identify the language which caused the problem. Not only this, but the content allowed for both discussion and explanation of culture which was largely manageable within their language proficiency.

This was demonstrated in the discussion about the video, which I felt was conducted largely productively. It could be said that I seemed to take a strong lead and guide the students too firmly, but given their age and level I think this was justified. The questions took small, clear steps forward through the video and the problem, and the students seemed to all have a good idea of what the problem was - a misunderstanding over time.

I then skipped over watching the video again so that I could teach more, and made an effective transition into talking about conflict resolution. This worked quite well, but by skipping the video I forgot to include another cultural aspect of the microteaching: asking the students about their ideas of time, and introducing how some other cultures view time. For example, I might've talked about the stereotypical view that Africans tend to be very late to events by mentioning a South African friend I have in Seoul. I would have tried to break these stereotypes by then asking the students for their opinions and experiences of people and time, and helping them to note that they themselves don't all fit into the stereotype I introduced in the preview stage of my lesson about Koreans being late whenever I meet them.

My Teaching - Methodology

Throughout the more culturally-focused part of the lesson mentioned above I noticed that I generally spoke too fast. I tend to notice this as I speak, and my attempts to balance this with slower repetition are observable in the video. I also tried hard to check the students' understanding by asking questions about what I expected of them, almost all of which seemed to be helpful.

A typical example of when this didn't work was when I asked Kyle "What was she doing?". This question includes the target language for this lesson which we hadn't yet studied; I'd introduced it a little too early meaning that Kyle, quite correctly, couldn't answer properly. Because I recognized that the mistake was on my side I didn't push Kyle to give a grammatically decent past tense answer (he produced a present tense verb), but I also didn't just push past it - I asked Jason L to repeat what he said! Naturally, he repeated the wrong answer, and I failed to correct it.

My thought at the time was that this would allow the students to notice that there was a necessary piece of grammar missing, in a similar way to how a Task-based lesson might ask students to complete an activity without giving them the grammar first. However since I hadn't yet identified or isolated this grammar I doubt my students would have noticed anything. They probably would've imagined they were right! In short, these were both utterances that I should've slowed down to notice and allow the students to fix.

During this part of the microteaching I also noticed that I have a tendency not to appear to be listening to my students. Watching my recording I felt as though I was occasionally giving half-answers to them as I was busy doing something else. I should focus on my students' answers to give them a sense of worth, otherwise the students will begin to see less value in answering at all. I need to stop what I'm doing and make efforts to show my interest in my students, even if this means taking a few more seconds of writing or thinking on my part later.

Everything mentioned so far formed the beginning of the presentation stage, which I think successfully followed a Top-down process. The top-down-bottom-up came next, when I asked the students to put my scrambled sentences into order. It was intentional that they didn't have the language skills to understand everything on the paper I gave them. This, along with a short time limit, was aimed at pushing them towards a achieving only rough understanding of the text. We didn't have time to do more than this, but after going through the answers we would then have moved onto identifying what the grammar point is and where it appears in the text, before progressing to the isolation stage.


Overall I was satisfied with this lesson, although there is clear room for improvement, particularly in my questioning and feedback moves. However, I'm happy to think that my students would probably have come away from this lesson with a better level of intercultural competence and the right groundwork to successfully and meaningfully complete the rest of my lesson about conflict resolution.

Week 13: Pronunciation and Teaching

I recorded a video to reflect on last Monday, but found myself doing everything but reflecting. I had the same students again this morning and they reminded me about many of the things I had thought about last week. So I've come back to it!

Despite the title of this post this lesson was not primarily about teaching pronunciation, as we were introducing the "Can I...." form of requesting for the first time. This means that the first part of my reflection "What We Did" talks mostly about, well, what we did, and also some reflections on my attempts at MIC and CI techniques during the lesson as a whole.

The second part reflects my main interest for this post, the pronunciation aspect of my lesson. Although the actual pronunciation teaching content of this lesson was very limited, there was certainly material worthy of reflection. Therefore, the section imaginatively titled "Pronunciation" is arguably more interesting. Skip over the first section if you came to this blog expecting to read about pronunciation!

What We Did

In introducing the how to make requests using the structure "Can you..." I aimed to catch my students interests by showing them that what they have learned until now is wrong (in the sense that "can" doesn't have one meaning). I elicited the usual ability focused "can" which my students are well acquainted with (along with a picture of a can) and challenged what they knew. Thinking again now this seems like quite an abstract way of motivating a group of uninterested 5th graders, but they seemed engaged.

It certainly allowed a stronger sense of interest in the listening activity I provided to teach them the structure. At this point in my teaching I'm still trying my best to consciously implement a Top Down --> Bottom Up strategy, as I find it doesn't yet come naturally. To do this here I first showed them the context of the listening activity (which also had a video), which was an old people's home where some students were volunteering. I successfully elicited this from the students, and gave them a clear focus for what to do in this activity - listen out for three sentences which use the word "can" and take a note of them if they can.

The first two sentences were easily elicited, and I mainly used short, simple recasts and WB use to try to help students reach the right answer without giving it away. The third one took some time, but we eventually got there. We then did the listening a second time the students had to listen for how the sentences were used and what they meant. This, too, seemed to work pretty well. A few of the smarter students quickly identified a rough Korean equivalent which didn't involve the idea of ability, and the others seemed to follow along.

At 18:00 I tried to make this really clear by talking about the absurdity of answering the question "Can you open the window?" with "Yes, I can", but I found I was largely talking to myself and assuming an understanding of the target language content. Not only did I not make what I was saying clear, but I kept answering my own questions and found myself thankful to the few students who followed me and proceeded to correctly display some excellent examples of how we should answer the TLC question. I put this down to a lack of thought and preparation in this area; I had noticed it might be helpful to mention it at the last minute!

When I felt the students had got the meaning I spent a lot of time emphasizing the importance of the structure by playing a version of Simon says. I used my over-acting skills to demonstrate the rudeness of telling someone to "OPEN THE WINDOW" in contrast to the positive feelings associated with asking someone "Can you open the window, please?". This question form effectively replaced the function of the "Simon says" structure, with students only doing the action when I was polite. The students found the game, aided by my over-acting, great fun, and I really think they picked up on what I was trying to get across.

There was one main problem with the way I approached this, however. Have you worked it out? Yup, it's...

Pronunciation

My pronunciation teaching in this lesson was meditated and intentional, but the actual time spent directly teaching it was fairly brief (see 18:47). This was my first ever attempt at teaching "natural" sounding English, and I decided to show my students the shortening of "can you" to "cnya". It didn't take long to get them to see what I was saying, and from the choral repetition I got I assumed that everyone had got it. However, looking back I now see that I didn't provide any opportunity to check individual students' pronunciation. I simply got a few loud choral repetitions and some obvious understanding from a few students, and moved onto the Simon says activity mentioned above - a listening activity (if that). I can't even say that everyone had tried the pronunciation out at that point in the lesson.

This wouldn't have been too much of an issue if I'd returned to lots of speaking practice later, but I didn't really do this. I instead aimed the activities on making sure the students understood the target language content. There was a speaking activity planned for the end of the lesson, but we ran out of time (we started it at 39:00!) and my students were so keen to go that the activity didn't really work. But I shouldn't blame this on them - I didn't prepare enough speaking time.

The biggest problem, however, wasn't my use of activities, but my lack of use of the pronunciation I was teaching. Because I'm used to changing the speed and level of my English in class I didn't expect this to be a problem, but I really failed to consistently pronounce the TLC the way I'd taught it. I found that I really do have a teacher voice! I think this is alright for my normal teaching, as it's important for the students to get to grips with what they are learning through my clear example, however given this all the time I'm in no doubt that my students won't have a way to understand real English outside the classroom. I say I don't mind giving clear, slow English a lot of the time because my learners are at such a low level and because I can potentially provide more varied and real speakers on listening tasks, but this lesson really highlighted the need for me to teach pronunciation, and consistently, to my students.

A really great thing, however, happened when I met this class again this morning (I only see them once a week). I was both shocked and delighted to find many of them coming out with the pronunciation I taught them last week without my prompting. The fact that they had remembered was a great start, but I was much more impressed at how much more natural their English sounded after such a short and simple change... Suddenly they didn't feel like my students any more!

I think it's not unreasonable to mark this as a big realization about how I've been teaching and what I need to teach in the future. The size and level of my classes is not a reason or excuse not to teach pronunciation, and nor is my ability to understand them. I would almost say I'm morally obliged to teach them natural pronunciation the way I have been learning to recently. If I don't they will finish four years of English education with me and not be able to go out into the world and speak English with anyone other than their classmates. That reality would be far from my recently formed aim of teaching them to communicate.

Is it time to get the rubber bands out, then?

Week 13: Practicing with Pronunciation

I just spent the morning teaching my fourth graders "How much is this?". We had a good time, and I thought it might be a good idea to get some imediate reflections on it down, even though I didn't record it.

I want to get an output reflection up soon, but all my output lessons will be coming next week. This week is strictly practice - the beginning of new material. But any reflection is better than none, so here we go.

Skip down to "What I Did" for the juicy CI and MIC details!

What We Did (Thoughts on the overall lesson)

We began our lesson with a culture section, where I elicited from students different currencies from the English speaking world. They all got US dollars pretty easily, but it took more work for them to get my native country's British Pounds Sterling. Many of them expected the UK to use Euros (being in Europe), but they now know better!

I did question the value of teaching them about UK currency, as it's not likely they will be needing it any time soon, if ever. However I think I can justify it as adding a personal touch to the classroom, and my students seemed interested to know more about where I'm from. I think we can stick this under a "motivation" label.

We also spent a few minutes talking about where the various symbols need to be written - I've noticed that my fourth graders usually write 8$ rather than $8, and today was no different. We fixed this together and hopefully came away with some cross-cultural knowledge!

The language learning was focused into two main areas. First we did a listening excercise where we looked at numbers (particularly the difference in pronunctiation between, for example, 30 and 13), and a practice speaking excercise where the students tried to guess the price of various items using the target language content "How much is the _____?" and "It's $____".

What I Did (Thoughts on the specifics of my teaching)

I was really happy to get a chance to teach some pronunciation in class today. We focused on how to tell the difference between numbers like 30 and 13 by both overexagerating the stress and writing it on the board: THIR-ty and THIR-TEEN. I modeled both words with a hand gesture (fist pump, anyone?) to emphasize where the stress goes, and encouraged the students to repeat with me. I think they could've done with some more speaking practice, but I skipped over to the listening part first. From the way they completed the listening activity, where they listened to a short dialogue where someone bought an item, the majority managed to identify the words correctly. Great start!

Unfortunately I didn't give them extra time to practice this specific pronunciation issue, but moved onto the practice activity. The first time I explained it I clearly didn't do a good job, as I soon had to stop the activity and explain it again. I believe the difficulty was the word "guess", which was pretty crucial to "guessing" the price. Though I did do comprehension checks and got students to re-explain what to do, I think the problem was that I chose the wrong parts to focus on. They understood, for example, that they had five seconds, but they didn't know what to do during those five seconds. This was clear from how a few groups just sat there without talking!

To clear this up I chose to give them a rough idea of the word "guess" very quickly in Korean - 가격을 마춰봐! This saved some explanation time and allowed us to focus on the target language. I think this was almost a moral choice I had to make on the spot. I wonder now if it was a cop-out on my part or if it was a sensible and useful teaching decision - after all, it allowed me to get the activity started quickly. I guess in this case it was a cop-out, since I had already given the activity a false start, though that's not to say I believe that Korean doesn't have a place in my classroom (as my SLA research presentation on L1 in the classroom displayed). I could've used the wasted time to demonstrate guessing a price - why do I keep forgetting that the best way to explain something is to show it?

One of the better asepcts of today's class was my attempts to get everyone speaking. It may have taken a little time, but I successfully got 16 different students to either ask or answer the target questions to confirm the answers to the listening activity, and during the main practice activity I asked each team to both ask and answer the question. This meant that one team guessed the price of the item, then asked the next team what they thought. Given that there are six teams, it didn't take too long to get around everybody for each item.

That was my ideal, at least. In reality I still find it hard to get everyone involved. I find students turning off and even when I try to motivate them with strategies such as "if everyone in your team doesn't speak you can't win" (not my actual words) they don't like to participate. I guess this must be down to my classroom atmosphere. I need to think of ways to encourage everyone to speak!

A Bonus Problem

One of the other problems I'm struggling to find an answer to recently is a number of students of various ages in different classes who are completely disinteresting in everything I do. I might offer them a game, but they claim it to be boring, or perhaps a song that they don't care about. The other students have a great time, and often if I manage to get these students involved they enjoy it too, but they come to my classes claiming that everything is boring. I don't like to think this is due to my teaching, as we play plenty of games and have lots of fun, there are just these few students... Am I too inconsistent? Did I let them down by not fulfilling my promises? I'm really not sure, but they tend to ruin the atmosphere! What on earth can I do with them?!

Week 11: ICC Reflective Video 2

This is the second of my ICC reflections which are due week 12. The last one, which employed CCDA around some Christmas adverts, can be found here: http://tomsteaching.blogspot.kr/2012/11/week-10-icc-reflective-video-1.html.

Gestures

After giving some thought to what would be most engaging and interesting to my 6^th grade students I eventually settled upon gesture. They know about this and use it a lot when they speak in Korean, but in English class they don’t have a set of gestures to go with what they say; most of the time they’re carrying their books, a card or some such. I was also aware that many of these kids are getting well into puberty and I have to spend copious time stopping them from fighting, resolving minor bullying issues or showing them that swearing is not ok (in the classroom at least).

My idea was to show them that different gestures can mean different things in different countries, and that they should be careful. I also wanted to encourage them to use gesture when they spoke English. The video clip below is from the first fifteen minutes of one of these classes, and focuses on the gestures part of the lesson. This was followed by some more focused language learning about “What would you like to ______?”, with the lesson culminating in a pair-finding activity in which I encouraged the use of gestures alongside the language.

From a methodological point of view I’m afraid this class seems a little teacher fronted. I spent a lot of time talking about what the different gestures meant rather than allowing the students to speak. I could have easily combated this by allowing them to talk in groups about what they thought each gesture meant before sharing with the class.I could also have better used my time by asking them to suggest situations in which we could use each gesture. My own example of this can be seen after 5:18, where I talk about using a certain gesture in France. If I had given them time to think more themselves then they could have personalized the ideas much more and may have come away with more intercultural understanding.

I was also a little worried about the moral content of the lesson – should I be teaching my 6^th graders how to swear in another language?! Before the class I justified this by telling myself that these kids are all swearing with each other anyway, and that there must be some value in being frank about such subjects. When the classes were finished, however, I was somewhat worried I might get a parent calling me and complaining about my teaching, but I got no such phone call.

Despite my worries I think there was enough value in letting them know to be careful how they use their hands in other countries, and they all seemed to leave with a good knowledge about other cultures being different, and this not only being acceptable but great news (perhaps because it allowed them to swear at their teachers without the teachers knowing what was going on…).

I like to think that there will be a few students who later travel to England and think twice about flashing a backwards “V” when they take photos!

Week 11: Teaching Vocabulary

Although the lesson I recorded wasn't specifically designed to show vocabulary teaching, I figured that, as I was planning to blog about it anyway, I might as well take the vocabulary teaching elements that happened to be included and blog about those. It's a shame that I won't be able to talk about the CI and MIC aspects of it, as I really tried to push it as far as I could with this lesson without too much planning - I want to see if these ideas are starting to seep into my subconscious! If you're reading this and have time I'd be interested to know how you think this lesson went. It gets a bit out of hand when the students are producing language at the end, though...

Anyhow, let's lay down the context. My lesson this week was about prepositions, specifically "There is a _______ on/in/under the ______." Most of my students have learnt these before, but quite a while ago. This lesson is designed to be partly review of what they know and more depth into the same subject. I believe last year they learned "Where is the cat? It's in the box." Pretty basic stuff.

This time around, then, we took the same simple prepositions and tried to expand their meaning beyond "on" meaning "on top of" and "in" meaning only "inside". My students have a very narrow view of these very widely used words. So what did I do to teach this vocabulary and how did it work? Have a look at the first ten minutes of this class if you have a moment:

I first began by eliciting the vocabulary by showing the students a situation - beginning with placing a rubber on my head. As well as getting some giggles and funny looks, my students correctly produced the word "on", and proceeded to complete the target sentence for the lesson (recycled from the previous lesson). While I didn't manage it in this video, in other classes I managed to expand the meaning of "on" to include anything that is "stuck" onto something - the clearest example being the location of the clock on our classroom wall, or a mark on someone's face.

In this way I managed to get students to construct and develop their own meaning for the word and show them how to produce it in a sentence. I did the same for "behind" by placing pencils behind my ears, and for "in" by holding the scissors in my hand. My students seem to find this kind of visual demonstration very clear, and in my observations of a similar production activity later I found that they had a thorough understanding of these prepositions in relation to the body.

There were also a couple of vocab items that came up during class which I hadn't predicted my students having a problem with. Each provided a chance to use a different kind of vocabulary explanation.

The first was how the word "scissors" is used in English, and how to place it into our target sentence correctly. My students weren't sure whether scissors are countable or not - thus whether they need to be used with "is" or "are". I tried to explain this quickly by showing them the two blades of the scissors and comparing them to a pair of glasses, a vocabulary item they are more familiar with. I then elicited the correct sentence form from the students, and even made sure they knew how to spell the word by eliciting it from them. It was clear that they weren't sure about the spelling, and I'm not sure if my teaching was effective - I merely wrote the word up as the correct letters were called out. Hopefully this provided the students with a chance to notice the spelling, though I think a chance to produce the spelling themselves would have been helpful.

The last vocabulary item also got the shortest attention, as it came up in the middle of my first presentation activity. As the students were reading the instructions off the interactive board and following them by decorating their human statues (you didn't watch the video? It's fun, go have a look :D) it became clear that not everyone knew the word "shoulders". To keep the activity flowing and to help those who were confused I quickly modeled the sound of the word, showed them the meaning by touching my shoulders and repeated the word in Korean when they had made the connection themselves.

I find these simple vocab items fairly easy to explain, and I feel that I do a good job of them along the lines that Nation suggested. However, if I were to teach harder vocabulary to an older, higher level group, I feel that I would have a lot more trouble. There is so much useful information about each word that I can't get across, and I feel I'd need a lot of preparation time to get it right. I think it would be valuable for me to try a lesson based purely on vocabulary and dictionary use, as at the moment I feel I would find myself flailing and unsure what to do. For now, though, I'll stick to adding in vocabulary items in opportune moments. This seems like the quickest and most useful way for my students' situation!

Week 10: ICC Reflective Video 1

This is the first of my ICC reflections which are due week 12. The second one, in which I try to teach about the intercultural usages of gesture, can be found here: http://tomsteaching.blogspot.kr/2012/11/week-11-icc-reflective-video-2.html.

Note: This post reflects on the CCDA parts of this lesson, which run from 9"32 to 28"57.

I understand what we’re supposed to be doing with Cross Cultural Discourse Analysis. It makes sense, and I can see the value in doing it. But actually trying to make it work in my classroom is a real struggle. Here’s the first attempt I made a couple of weeks ago.

Actually, this isn’t my first attempt at culture in the classroom. In the past I’ve done sections on holidays and customs, and occasionally even taught about table manners. However these were always me showing my students what other cultures are like. It was very much a presentation, with perhaps a couple of students trying things out. I never helped them engage with or think about the material, and I doubt they developed intercultural competence from what I taught.

My aim in this lesson, however, was to let the students work out more about other cultures for themselves with my lead. Let’s talk about how that went (I’ll give you a hint: not well!).

After a look at me showing the students the first video (about Paris Baguette) it was very clear that I was still dragging my students through the material and pointing out interesting things on the way. I asked them rather meaningless questions (Who is in the video? What are they doing?) and proceeded to tell them what this means for each culture. All my questions were very leading, and if the students didn’t give me the answer I was looking for I guided them to it.

The work we did around the second video was a bit better. Because the content was more unfamiliar to the students and the video was more interesting they seemed more engaged. They were genuinely trying to work out what the people in the video were doing. We managed to sort this out and identify who Christmas in the UK seems to be for, and the activity that followed afterwards was good for demonstrating this point. However I seem to have dropped the cultural significance of the video when I began the activity, and simply refocused on only the English. I think this was partly due to a lack of time, and partly because I felt I had pushed the cultural discourse as far as it could go with these students. They were losing focus again!

I can’t work out a way around this. For a start it is evident from the recording that I struggle to keep the class focused; I can get them to pay attention, but when I start asking questions and try to create a dialogue with them a dozen different conversations burst out (many in Korean, too). On top of this many of the students seem to understand my questions, but most of them aren’t really capable or motivated enough to answer them. Or perhaps they can answer, but their answers aren’t as meaningful as they would be in Korean. They say what they know rather than what they need to say to express a real opinion or observation. How can I develop a meaningful discussion of cultural differences in a large class who don’t have the language skill or focus to express anything helpful to the subject?

Perhaps I just chose the wrong type of activity. They’re just not ready for a discussion! But then what else do I do to encourage CCDA? My next idea for a lesson is to do an activity from this week’s reading – Activity H (cross cultural trivia) - but rather than reading them out like a quiz I would demonstrate each one and ask groups of students to assign a meaning to each one. I could then help them to see how different cultures have different forms of non–verbal communication. Might this work better? I’m hoping so, because I don’t want to try to work my way through another class like this one!

Week 10: Mircoteaching Reflection

NOTE: Due to human error about 5 minutes of this wasn’t recorded. This was an honest mistake and can’t be helped, so we’ll have to do our best based on the video we do have available and our memories. This should still allow for some positive self- and peer-reflection!

So, just how did my Presentation stage go this week? Take a journey into the lesson with me by watching the video before reading what I think went on.

Pre-video impressions

I felt very positive about my microteaching this time around. Not overjoyed or ecstatic, more of a “I think I’m on the right track” kind of feeling. It helped that I wasn’t too nervous, having tried this class out four times the previous day with my students. I think I kept my T-talk to a minimum (though I may have spoken a little fast) and I allowed my students plenty of time to speak or think through their answers. I think the atmosphere seemed fairly relaxed (I certainly felt relaxed), and while Ss were not entirely forthcoming with their answers, it didn’t seem to be down to the atmosphere. The biggest interruption I spotted was the lack of connection between the speaking and reading activities – it was quite sudden, and may have thrown some Ss off. But overall? I was quite pleased with this assignment.

Post-video reflection:

In comparing this video with my previous microteaching I can spot a few improvements in style. Firstly, I am much more relaxed. I walked around the room and interacted physically a lot better than before (I wasn’t stuck to the podium this time), and my verbal interactions were much less evaluative; I was able to hold more of a conversation with the students. This could also be seen in how I monitored the pair work activity, where before I spent my time waiting for the activity to end by reviewing my lesson plan.

Despite these extra expressions of interest in what my students have to say, it was very interesting to see that when wrapping up the main activity I looked rather uninterested and even impatient. In my mind I was listening carefully and working out what to do, but it clearly didn’t come across this way. I’m really curious to see if I can do this part of an activity without giving this impression. It’d probably be a good start to stop folding my arms and moving around the room restlessly. However, this doesn’t come naturally to me and is hard to spot without a recording. Lots of recording to be done, then. And maybe some time spent in front of the mirror in the mornings.

That said, overall the atmosphere seemed very positive. Ss made good points, and we had fun interacting and coming up with gift ideas (though this may have had something to do with cows!). One point for concern in this area is that I seemed to be cutting off my student’s voices during interaction. While my feedback was largely communicative, I noticed that I occasionally went to one student for an answer, and another would jump in. Rather than giving the first time to complete their answer or to interact with the other student, I jumped on the new interaction and changed the focus to the next student. My intention was to help the first student answer, but I didn’t move back to them to help them produce the answer. I was too keen to move on instead of allowing the S their voice.

In terms of MIC, my whiteboard work seemed excellent. I did exactly what I had planned, and managed to use it as a tool to reduce T-talk, scaffold answers with Ss and even elicit new sentences. I also used the WB to correct errors, helping Ss to identify where the problem was and letting them fix it themselves. I also did this verbally a number of times - only ever helping the S to identify the problems and fix them themselves.

A lot of my other MIC techniques were on the positive side, too. This could be seen well when I explained the reading activity, where I used plenty of gesture and clear speech. Though I got the impression my Ss understood me, I could have made sure of this by getting them to rephrase the instructions or explain what they had to do. Also, to make things really clear I could have shuffled the actual paper rather than using a gesture. Using real examples is usually simpler to understand!

My last worry is that I didn’t give enough time for all of my Ss to interact. They all had a chance to talk during the pair work, but I find that getting one student to speak takes so long that I both forget who has spoken and run out of time to get everyone to speak before the class. I wonder if there is a solution to this or if I will have to use choral repetition to make sure that everyone gets to speak rather than spending the majority of their time listening and watching.

Conclusions

I was very pleased with my microteaching, but have identified areas that need some work. I need to look more engaged and interested in class, and need to make sure I give every student time to use their voice. While I’m using the whiteboard and MIC techniques pretty well, I am still speaking too fast when not using the TLC. These aren’t problems that can’t be fixed, though; I’m confident that I will be able to do something about these and the future issues I spot thanks to this tool of self-reflection. To a brighter future and better reflection!

Week 9: Wrapping Up Activities

One of the great advantages of trying to teach communicative lessons is that it opens up so many more opportunities to just have fun in class. My attempts to give non-corrective feedback are getting much better, and though my students aren't there yet they're getting the idea of our classroom time being a conversation rather than a monologue.

But we want specifics, right? Let's start on the positive side.

My favourite moment from this lesson was my explanation of the first part of the reading activity (from 7:30). I really thought about this and tried to get both the actions and the language as clear as possible, and I think I pulled it off. I told them that:

there is a conversation on the paper (wave of paper),
but that it was mixed up (rolling hands as though mixing).
They had to put it in order (mixing hands now go down in ordered steps)in pairs (two fingers together).
To make sure they understood I gave them another way to understand in telling them:
what the first (one hand at top)and last (other hand at bottom) sentences should be.

I only wish that I have made it a little more communicative by getting the students to either repeat what I was saying or to work out what we had to do. I didn't quite check the comprehension enough, and this showed when I had to go and help a couple of pairs understand what to do after the activity started.

Continuing with the more critical air, I'm feeling the need to work out a better way to wrap up activities. This is something I felt about my micro-teaching assignments so far, too. I find that I can begin and run an activity pretty well, but when everyone comes back together my analysis, guidance, and language focus seem vague and unhelpful. It doesn't help that I can't seem to get my classes to re-focus after communicative activities.

(See 11:45) My first mistake in this class was to choose a couple of boys who probably represent the lowest level English speakers in the class. My aim was to get them involved (because I knew they had the right answer), but they struggled to read it and I was distracted by other students not listening. In order to solve both problems of these I let another pair continue the dialogue. I hadn't, however, considered that they might have different dialogues, and we soon got confused about who was wrong and right. Rather than let the students sort this out I told them outright that one team was wrong, and moved on to one I knew was right.

To avoid this situation I think I needed to get one pair to read their entire dialogue and then get other teams to agree or disagree about the order. This would avoid confusion and allow some more productive dialogue.

I really need to work out how to keep my students engaged when an activity is over, partly through my classroom management but more importantly through being confident and useful when giving my students feedback.

Week 8.1: Setting Up Pair Work

I didn't get far through my video before I found plenty to talk about. The following reflection covers the section of the following video from 0:28 to 3:24.

Before I get into MIC though, I want to make three personal notes. Skip over the bullets if you want pure MIC!

• I didn't realize how much I over-act during my classes. I intend this to show enthusiasm and keep the kids interested, but perhaps it doesn't seem genuine… Perhaps just strange? When I do it to this extent at least.  Maybe I’m just over-reacting to try to make up for lack of control of the class?
• How can I get this class to stop speaking Korean?! And so loudly! Actually, I feel like it’s more important to get them listening first, and I really struggle with this. I can get them quiet and focused for a writing or listening activity, but any time they’re encouraged to speak, the classroom explodes with noise! Anyhow, I need to work on this.
• I found that I spent a lot of time trying to elicit answers from my students. This wasn't helped with phrases designed to elicit answers such as “How can I answer?”, though at least now this is made more clear through my use of the white board (I wrote the start of the answer and pointed to it to provide a scaffold). I feel like I shouldn’t be spending this much time only eliciting answers for a simple greeting (as seen from 0:50-2:08), although it was a part of the TLC for this lesson. Should I just tell them more of the answers to get through it faster? Was it just that I use too many examples? My main worry is that taking this much time will cause my students to lose whatever attention they have left.

Moving on to MIC, then.

The first and most obvious problem with my MIC for this lesson came when trying to get the students to ask each other “How was your weekend?” in pairs. It went wrong from the moment I started suggesting pair work. I remember making an effort to speak slowly, make gestures and paraphrase to make it really clear. Watching the video I’m not sure if I managed this.

First of all, I only used one gesture that even suggested pair work! The rest were me flailing my arms about in very fluid, but completely incomprehensible, gestures. I guess it’s good that I’m moving, but I need to consider ways I can better convey the idea of pair work through gesture. At least doing the same gesture more than once might be a start!

I also made sure to paraphrase my explanation of pair work, too. Unfortunately it was using language my students probably didn’t know, and didn’t come with any other MIC techniques. This is where my extra (helpful) gesturing should have been. Also, I could have perhaps asked one pair to demonstrate what to do.

Another problem with my explanation was that I only implied that the students should start the pair work through my language. Most of them need a clearer starting moment. This meant that the students with better English spoke, but much of the rest of the class looked like lost sheep who gathered they had to do something, but not what. Though it’s not a good idea to interrupt an activity, I felt it necessary to get everyone on track and so continued to give instructions. This gave me a chance to use some much better gesturing, including pointing my hands at two students, then pointing my hands together. My language was still unhelpful though and didn’t point much towards pair work: “together, the girls, the boys…” (my intention being for the two boys and two girls to make pairs in one team).

The most spectacular part of my teacher talk demonstrated to my students just how much I knew what I was doing, and how much I cared about what was going on. At around 2:37 I threw down my hands before me and threw out an offhand comment: “Just talk please”. My attitude in this brief moment demonstrates my frustration with struggling to explain something simple and trying to get the whole class to follow (and listen to) me for once. However I can see how it could have displayed to my students a sense of annoyance or lack of care for the class. Such moments must be detrimental to the classroom atmosphere, and will work against me much more than my over-acted upbeat performance will work for it.

I mustn't let this happen! Classroom atmosphere is everything!

But I really have my work cut out for me with this class. I guess I’ll have to reconsider my approach to teaching them.

Week 8: Focusing on What's Important (CIs and MIC)

I spent the last couple of weeks not recording my lessons with the argument that I don’t have time to prepare a lesson well enough to justify recording them. Sure, I’ve been thinking about CIs and MIC but not enough to make a good, watchable video. Turns out I was missing the point.

This week I subscribed to an alternate philosophy and just record my damn lessons, whatever my level of preparation. That means that when I turned up to work this morning with no lesson plan I recorded the lesson anyway. I had about twenty minutes to think up a lesson about the past tense and the language I’d use to help my students out as much as possible. And so here we have an example of a teacher on the back foot, and a real glimpse at how I teach these days:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUHKNJFjm0A&feature=g-upl

The biggest shock I had after considering my lessons today (I did the same one four times) was the amount of language I assumed my students would remember. At one point I had a list of eight letters on the whiteboard which were supposed to give the students a clue about the past tense verbs we used last Monday. Even though I got them to discuss the answers in groups before I called on students most of them found this activity really hard; I hadn’t made the input comprehensible! I duly changed this in later lessons by giving them an example along with the full present tense verb which they had to change to the past tense.

Must make... input... comprehensible...

Following this, I think I am generally doing a better job of making input comprehensible. I noticed that I’m consciously trying to slow the heck down. I’m using much more gesture, though still not enough. I’m also using the whiteboard much more effectively.

For example, not so long ago I would open the class with the same greeting and answering sequence in the hope that the repetition would allow students to get the hang of it. But at no point had I made it clear how they could answer or what we were saying; I just assumed they would get it. Some of them, it would seem, hadn’t got it. So today I wrote up an introductory question on the board, took them through it (with some choral repetition and comprehension checks here and there to help them out) and then got them to ask each other in pairs before calling on them individually and getting them to ask each other questions in front of the class. They seemed to get it more easily.

Hopefully these techniques will mean there’s more chance the language will stick this time around!

 

Week 5: Clearing Up A Lesson Cut Short

There was a lot left unsaid today, and it seemed as though many of us left class in confusion, irritation or apathy. While I can't claim to answer every question that was left partially answered, I thought it would be valuable to continue the conversation and make sure everyone's on the same page. That's what this post is for!

First, let's quickly go over what we learned, and the context of the last activity:

We have a micro-teaching assignment due in week 6 in which we have to design the Preview section of a lesson based on either reading or listening (receptive skills). We had gotten through all the information about how to write out a lesson plan, and were discussing exactly what the Preview section of a PPP lesson plan focused on reading and listening should entail. We eventually concluded, thanks to Tom's eliciting skills and the combination of our Multiple Intelligences, that a preview needs to include the following elements:

1. Greeting / Relaxing our students
2. Recycling (not reviewing) the TLC from previous lessons
3. Focusing on the topic (aka activating schema)
4. Establishing context (giving the students a reason to listen to / read the material)

I felt that the first two were fairly well covered and understood by the whole group, so will move onto the harder points and the confusion we got into around Jason and Kyle's presentation.

In their presentation of a Preview exercise it was generally concluded that they did an excellent job of activating our schema. We were encouraged to talk about what we were doing these days, and Kyle teacher got to share with us that he is moving house. This led to a natural discussion about our experiences moving house, the things we had to do and what we had to pack. Given the listening dialogue they were given, which I gathered was about someone moving house and a neighbor offering to help out, such questions are a great way of activating students' schema. We were all genuinely engaged and sharing our experiences, and Tom rightly complimented Jason and Kyle's skill in doing this. It's certainly something that my group forgot to include in our plan, and I was very thankful to have had that discussion. I might've missed an important part of the Preview process had it not been brought up.

However, the confusion arose when Tom tried to explain that our Jason and Kyle had not managed to establish the context. It was explained that they had given their students no reason to be overhearing a conversation about moving house in English. Perhaps the confusion arose because the students clearly did have a reason to speak English - the teachers had told them to! This is where we missed the point. The students aren't supposed to be speaking the dialogue or be part of it, they are only going to be listening to the dialogue. It's because they can only hear the dialogue once in real English situations that we really need to activate the schema and establish a context; it gives them a much better chance of understanding and engaging with the conversation.

Let's make sure we've really pinned down what it means to establish context.

We're left with a problem when presenting a listening or reading dialogue in class, namely that language is always used in real situations, and giving our students a dialogue to read or listen to is a completely unrealistic language situation. In reality we almost never simply overhear or eavesdrop on a conversation, but in English classes this is a common occurrence. The challenge is to take an unnatural situation and put it into a real context. In other words, we need to situate the student into the scene as a listener. This will allow students to participate in situated learning.

This was demonstrated by Tom's drawing of an office space on the board. He led us from our desk to the water cooler, where, lone behold! our boss's door was open and we found ourselves in a situation where we could naturally overhear him conversing with someone; this overheard conversation the listening dialogue that we would have listened to had we continued to the next stage of the lesson. It's important to note here that we didn't just jump straight into the situation, we were led to it, and that the students were not a part of the conversation going on, they were merely overhearing it.

Putting our students into a situation in which they could overhear a dialogue without contributing to it was something our group really struggled to do, as we were dealing with a phone call. We spent a number of minutes talking about how the student could be one side of the conversation, as we had forgotten that the student is only going to be listening to it, not speaking. But how can we overhear both sides of the conversation? They're talking on the phone, an activity which by nature only allows an eavesdropper to hear one side of what's being said. So we were faced with the challenge of putting our students into a real situation in which they could hear both sides of the phone call.

I think we managed to come up with a doable idea, and I want to share it to make sure we've really got the idea of establishing context driven home.

The phone call was a conversation between a man and his wife, in which the man was on his way to an important meeting and had left his USB stick at home. The USB stick was the only place he had saved the presentation for this meeting, which he had to attend in half an hour. Since there was no time to bring him the USB stick he gave instructions about where it was, how to access the file and how to email it to him.

How on earth can we get someone to listen in to both sides of this conversation?

The best solution we could come up with was that a boss or team leader was being driven to the same meeting by his personal assistant/team member. This assistant is the man who makes the phone call, who also happens to be in charge of his boss's affairs and therefore has responsibility over preparing the meeting materials. When the boss is double checking that everything is in order, it transpires that the assistant has left the vital USB stick at home, and is forced to call his wife to get the file sent to him. Here's the crucial part: because he is driving he can't simply answer the phone as his hands should be busy keeping the car on the road; he has to put it on speaker phone, and the boss happens to overhear the whole exchange.

How do the students fit into this? They are the boss!

We could begin our Preview by telling the students that today they are the boss (which they are bound to enjoy) and slowly build the situation with them. They have a meeting today. What kind of meeting might they be having? How will they get to the meeting? If you're a boss you no doubt get driven there. If we're going to a meeting we should check everything's in order, so we build a checklist to go through with the personal assistant. Did you bring my suitcase? Is everyone due to arrive on time? Did you prepare the presentation?

And suddenly, in a similar way to how Tom led us to overhear our boss's conversation by the water cooler, our students are imagining themselves in a real situation in which they overhear both sides of a phone call. We have established context with them!

Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, we completely failed to include activation of our students' schema. What is written above is almost all we had time to talk about, so I am very thankful for Jason and Kyle's example.

I hope the thoughts our group had have made exactly what we were trying to pin down in the whirlwind conclusion to yesterday's lesson really clear. I'll summarize it one more time for luck:

When Previewing a listening or reading activity - which I have written in bold font throughout this blog post to really make sure everyone understands that we have to do just this for our micro-teaching assignment - when previewing a listening or reading activity it is vital to activate our students' schema, as demonstrated wonderfully by Jason and Kyle, and also to establish context and make the situation real, as Tom showed us once at the water cooler and I have tried to demonstrate again with the boss overhearing a phone call above.

I think we got there! Thanks for getting to the end of another long post. If I've missed the point or forgotten something important, let's hash it out in the comments. What we didn't have time for in class can continue here!

Week 4: Activating Schema With 3rd Graders

Over my last three years as a teacher I have noticed a couple of things that teachers will do that made no sense to me. For example, the first thing one of my old co-teachers used to do every class was to show her students a plan of the lesson, including the target language and the activity that they could expect. I was silently in opposition to this, as I wanted to surprise the kids with my activities, and create an element of excitement at what may be coming later in the lesson. I might also admit to a fear that telling them to expect something boring (writing, tests etc) would instantly have disengaged them.

I knew another teacher who really liked using books during her lessons. She would choose something related to the target language, and read it with the students. Before doing this, she would show them the cover of the book and ask them questions about it. What's the title, who's it by, what can you see on the front cover, what do you think the book is about... Again, I was impatient and silently wondered why we couldn't just get into the book. After all, the students will find out what's coming soon enough anyway!

Then this last week we learned about schema. And I thought:

Ooooooooooooh....!

I can now see what they were trying to do (though whether it was effective or not is another question altogether) and was instantly persuaded to practice some of this myself. The best opportunity to do so came with my 3rd grade class who are studying how to make simple adjective and noun sentences (It's big. It's an elephant). 

Whatever he sees, he sure looks hungry...

I was very happy when looking through our English department's book collection to find that the teacher mentioned above had left behind 15 copies of the book "Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?". The book is a great demonstration of combining adjectives and nouns in sentences, and is illustrated to match the sentences which follow the pattern of "Blue horse, blue horse, what do you see?", "I see a yellow duck looking at me."

I was pumped to get into teaching the book, and convinced my students would love it, but I couldn't work out how on earth to activate my students' schema before whipping the book and the target language out. I understand how you could discuss daily routines, opinions about an issue or students' experiences before doing a reading activity with an intermediate class, but again and again I feel that these ideas are designed for teaching students how to swim when my students are still splashing around in the bathtub.

Unfortunately I couldn't come to a decision about how best to do this before my class started, so I just went for it and tried out whatever came to mind as I went along. We tried asking students what they could see in the classroom, talking about our favorite animals, and even asking what books they've read.  I also found that just showing them the book got them engaged. Some of them had read it before, others were just interested to see what was inside. Asking them what they thought the bear could see got them thinking in the target language from the previous lessons, and I could see them trying to work it out. They were really engaging with it, and were much readier to receive what the book had to say when we finally got to it.

Awesome!

Every page I tried to get the students to guess what the next animal would be, and they had great fun guessing colours and animals in the context of the target language. I even managed to get around the problem of only the smarter students raising their hands to participate by some crafty tweaks to our classroom points system. The quieter students just needed some encouragement to participate in the classroom arena with the higher-level English speakers.

In just discussing what happened in class yesterday I can see a big difference in my teaching. Almost everything I described above fits into a dialogic discourse model in which I encourage the students' participation and interaction. We're getting somewhere, people!

Now if only I had planned the lesson enough and had the foresight to bring my camera to work with me to see just how different my teaching looks these days. That'll have to be an aim for next week!

Week 3.1: Settling on a Reflective Research Question

This week I chose not to dive straight into choosing my Module 1 paper topic. Instead I wanted to spend the week reflecting further on my classes and making sure I had a good grasp of the CI techniques as lain out by Xie. It’s proving quite a challenge!

The class I recorded for my week 1 assignment, which is due to be the focus of the paper, is full of what I thought CI techniques to be before I read Walsh and Xie. This means that I gave the techniques we learned for our week 2 test a full run, and felt I had been very successful at it; after all, I had included a good percentage of them within a 12 minute clip.

Xie revealed to me, however, that almost everything I did in that class was unadulterated monologic IRF discourse. This was a big shock, hence the overflow of regret in my most recent post. It’s not that I consider the use of monologic discourse entirely unhelpful, but it often compromised the entirety of my classes!

Since then I’ve been doing my best to discover just what dialogic discourse could look like in my elementary classes to varying degrees of success. It is these changes that are causing me problems with the paper; the difference between the video and my classes now is just so large!

I would like to be able to tie my current practices with the contents of that video, but have had difficulty coming up with a reflective research question that ties them all together. Whatever route I consider taking the conclusions seem a little removed from the original purpose.

The best I have come up with until now is the following: To what extent can using a variety of CI techniques within a purely monologic IRF discourse aid L2 learning?

I would set out my attempt to engage the students with the techniques learned for the week 2 quiz, cover a couple of specific instances where the techniques didn’t work, and demonstrate the strengths of drilling language in the context of large classes. The conclusion might be that while the technique is useful to an extent, its overuse results in learners with a very narrow language proficiency characterized by asking and answering a set of questions rather than developing the ability to communicate fluently. Action to be taken would include the things I’ve been trying in my classes since then.

Looking over this post again my proposal doesn’t sound too bad. Then again, lots of the things I think look good on paper until I try discussing them out loud. Maybe I should read Xie one last time just to make sure I’ve got this down…

Week 3: Reactions to Meth

This evening's Meth class was totally defeating. It felt like wave upon wave of oppressive undermining of my teaching. I guess that's the point.

My classes, and in particular the class I recorded for homework, are the epitome of every IRF technique we discussed. Almost everything word I said was a monologic, closed display question. Most of what my students said was exactly what I wanted from them, and when one of my higher lever students offered a good English sentence I squeezed her back into the mould of my lesson. There was no room for dialogue in my class, and there was no need for my students to really engage with or make the language their own. It was mindless rote repetition.

It's not that I wasn't interested in creating dialogue or good classroom discourse; it was rather the attempt of an untrained teacher to help his students get to grips with the language presented in his textbooks.

Again, I suppose that's the point.

Now that I've recognised the ways in which my teaching isn't up to scratch, I can work on it. There's a long way to go, and the view from the bottom of this steepest of learning curves is a depressing sight.

Rather than get down about it though, it's time to be positive.

This is my opportunity to really reform my teaching, taking the parts which are good (for as sure as I have a lot to learn my adeptness at IRF has its uses) and forming them into a truly effective platform for my students to learn to communicate in English.

It also means that I have a heck of a lot to be writing about and learning about, and when I've finally conquered this mountain I will revel in the sense of triumph at having reached the new perspective being at the top of a mountain gives you.

To get to that point I have a lot to work out. Putting everything I learned today into my elementary school context is a daunting task, and I've no idea how I'm going to approach it. But I know that I have to, and that I will get there. Hopefully with your help. God knows I need it!