The IHJournal o f e d u c a t i o n a n d d e v e l o p m e n t

I S S U E N U M B E R 3 A P R I L 1 9 9 7

C O N T E N T S

Editor ial Matthew Barnard 3

SET Responses for Giving Oral Feedback Derrin Kent 5

Communicative Methodologies: Are They Always Appropriate? Carrie Priestley 9

Genre Analysis: A Way Out of the Cul­de­Sac Paul Roberts 12

Colourful Correction: Action Research into Error Correction Vilja Wheatcroft 15

Tuning In ­ Dealing With Authentic Listening Mark Lloyd 17

Using Concordances Philip Kerr 21

What’s Hot on the WEB Gavin Dudeney 23

Questions and Answers 24

Implementing a Task­Based Approach Without Task­Based Materials Peter Moor 25

The Ben Warren IH Trust Prize Short List 1997 29

Readings in Teacher Development: Interview With Pauline Taylor Philip Kerr 30

It Wasn’t Like That in My Day: CELTA Quiz Answers Wendy Coleby 32

International House London 1997 Published by International House London Edited by Matthew Barnard Design by Matthew Barnard ISSN 1368­3292

2

3

Editor ial

What’s your approach been recently?

I was a DOS in Hungary for a time, some years back, and I remember interviewing a student who was considering moving to IH from another school in Budapest. It was one of those occasions when a student asks you what your approach is, and to justify it to them before they have experienced it. Always a tricky one because you can never be absolutely sure that you are speaking for your colleagues when it comes to saying exactly what will happen in the class. I came out with all the usual, safe stuff, but the prospective client was insistent about finding out what a student­centred, communicatively­based course might entail. ‘I don’t...’ he said ‘want mumbo­ jumbo English teaching like in...’ (another school in the city, I couldn’t possibly mention here).

It sometimes takes an experience like that for you to be reminded of how important it is to make a point of re­evaluating your teaching from the client’s point of view every now and then. Trying out new ideas in class can be very stimulating and productive, but is it equally so for the student as for the teacher?

There’s a time for innovation and there’s a time for reflection. The trouble is knowing when the one has finished and the other started. It seems, in our sphere of teaching, that we are always expected to be pushing forward the frontiers, developing ourselves and coming up with new theories, approaches and acronyms. There always seems to be another approach on the horizon for us to try out, one that seems to suggest that what we are doing at the moment is completely wrong (how else could they expect any of us to try Brand X?). I wonder if we allow ourselves enough time to reflect sufficiently on what and how we are teaching at any given moment without reference to outside trends. Perhaps we could look more to our own classroom experience for rationale and direction rather than the latest published papers from academia.

As James Thurber once said: ‘scepticism is a useful tool of the inquisitive mind, but it is scarcely a method of investigation’, so I am not suggesting that we ignore what is going on outside our schools, merely that perhaps we could learn as much from looking again at what is going on inside them. This Journal provides us with an opportunity to do just that, and, judging from the contributions which have been coming in, there seems to be plenty of food for thought.

In this issue we have articles with practical ideas for the classroom (including ways of correcting students, of using authentic listening material and concordances, for example) as well as more theoretical perspectives, with Carrie Priestley’s piece on communicative methodologies and Paul Roberts’ discussion of syllabus design. Peter Moor follows up his article in the last issue with advice on how to adapt materials to a task­based approach, Derrin Kent looks at ways of giving oral feedback (drawing on an article in a women’s magazine for his inspiration) and we have an interview with Pauline Taylor, who discusses TD with PK.

I hope you enjoy the read, and that you will soon be contributing to these pages yourself. Meanwhile, I’m steering clear of discussions on the latest theories for fear that when I mention a teaching approach, someone will turn round and say: ‘Pah! That went out with the ARC’.

Matthew Barnard Director of Studies, IH London

4

The IHJournal o f e duc a t io n a nd d e ve lopmen t

Need extra copies of TheIHJournal for your school? Do you have colleagues in other schools who would

like copies?

TheIHJournal can now be bought, price £2.75, from: The BEBC Bookshop, 106 Piccadilly, LONDON W1V 9FL

INTERNATIONAL HOUSE TEACHER TRAINING V I D E O S E R I E S

The International House Video Collection continues to grow! New titles coming out this year include:

• Lexical Approaches • Task­Based Learning • Teaching Beginners • Pronunciation work

All videofilms (ELT, Executives, Modern Languages, Trainer Development) have accompanying materials for private study or group work.

From £44.00 (plus P&P)including VAT (PAL VHS only)

For information contact: J im Blackman, The Video Depar tment,

International House London, 106 Piccadilly,

LONDON W1V 9FL

the

THE REVISED INDEX OF ELT MATER IALS

Richard Acklam

The long awaited revised edition of the Index of EFL Materials has arrived! Lovingly updated and extended by its original

compiler, Richard Acklam, The Index will prove more useful to teachers, trainers and trainees than ever!

An easy­to­use index of the most popular ELT materials, enabling you to find the right piece of material from a range of coursebooks and supplementary books to present and practise

language.

An International House London publication, price £8.99, available

from The BEBC Bookshop,

106 Piccadilly, LONDON W1V 9FL

5

SET RESPONSES FOR GIVING ORAL FEEDBACK How SET are you in your ways? Derrin Kent, from International House Heliopolis, discusses what it takes to be at giving feedback

I’m called a TIT at work. I’m a trainer­in­training. As somebody new to the job I have frequently felt the need for somebody to give me some direction as to how I can give effective oral feedback to teachers in a training or development situation. It isn’t easy to pinpoint exactly what it takes to be ‘good’ at giving oral feedback, and I find myself making all sorts of errors of judgement as to what works best in specific situations in the same way as I might when I teach, or when I’m learning a new language. What follows is an outline of an approach I have been using to determine what to say to the teachers I work with when giving oral feedback. I’m not saying that it’s easy to get it right ­ I’m only putting forward a way of analysing what we need to do.

SET responses for “poisonous people”

As a cigarette­smoking, beer­swilling, football fan type of a male, I’m a bit embarrassed to confess that my thoughts here stemmed from an article in a women’s magazine. I haven’t been able to find the magazine to quote directly from it but, suffice to say the article suggested using “SET responses” to deal with what they referred to as “poisonous people”. A “poisonous person” is one that gets on your nerves and generally hassles you in your everyday life. They could be subdivided into: “poisonous parents”, “poisonous friends”, “poisonous bosses” and so on. The article intimated that these people generally interfere as a result of their goodwill, and that the reason they do not communicate well with you is that they generally feel insecure in their own position. It suggested using formulaic SET responses (Support, Empathy, then Truth) in order to diffuse the awkward feelings we have in our relationships with such people. For example, to the poisonous parent you might say: You’re a wonderfully caring father (support) and I know it must be difficult for you to see me making mistakes (empathy) but I need to feel I can make my own decisions (truth); to the poisonous friend: You’re a really good friend to me (support) and I know you’re feeling low at the moment (empathy) but right now I have to get on with my work (truth); and to the poisonous boss: I’ve learned so much from you (support) and I know you love to see people making progress

(empathy) but I just can’t absorb this amount of information in this amount of time (truth).

SET responses in a teacher training context

Being one of those tedious TEFLers who gets obsessive about their work, I began thinking about how we could apply this model to a teacher training situation. After all, observed teachers in an oral feedback situation, while rarely being poisonous, are often insecure and difficult to communicate with.

Many people in teacher training have talked to me about ‘non­ judgemental teacher observation’ and similar concepts. My current feeling is that lesson observation feedback is intrinsically judgemental and, in fact, that it is best when the trainer does make some informed judgement on the teacher’s teaching. Why not be openly judgemental with teachers? Why not tell teachers the truth as you perceive it? So long as you heartily support the work of the person you are working with, and genuinely empathise with their perspective, my belief is that honesty is the best policy.

I believe that a trainer who genuinely feels and conveys support, empathy and truth for teachers is a trainer who will find it easy to give ‘good’ and effective oral feedback. The competent trainer will confidently advise a teacher with truth which is relevant to the teacher, specific to the situation, timely for the teacher and, most importantly, true (for

6

the trainer at least). Let me expand a little on the way we might apply the concepts of support, empathy and truth in the context of giving post­lesson observation feedback in ELT teacher training.

SUPPORT

You really need to be genuine about the support if it is to be of any value. You need to want that teacher to improve in some way and to feel convinced that this teacher is worth all the diplomacy, tact and effort you can offer. Should you believe that a teacher will, for example, never stop blocking or just hasn’t got what it takes, you will not be able to support the teacher effectively. You must actually believe that the teacher is worth your time and energy, and that some impact on the teacher’s teaching will result from the work you are doing together.

EMPATHY

Empathy is not about predicting another’s viewpoint; trying to guess the ideas of another person can actually prevent the trainer from being able to genuinely empathise with the teacher they’re working with. Real empathy comes from the ability to elicit, listen to and understand what the teacher is saying to you. This involves lowering your predictive shield far enough to be able to hear the teacher’s perspective and being really tuned into the comments the trainee makes in response to what is said. Empathy is the ability to listen intensively to what the teacher says and to understand why they think that way. Nobody is by nature illogical, so the teacher must have reached their conclusion or belief by means of a logical thought process. If it does not seem so, if your truth appears to come as a complete revelation, it may just be because they have never applied (or heard of?) your particular teaching perspective. Being empathetic means being able to elicit and to follow the teacher’s line of logic and to echo it accurately. You can then allow your empathy to inform the decisions you make as to how and when to deliver your truth. TRUTH

Truth needs to be relevant. A trainer who really empathises with the teacher will know the angle they are coming from. Only then can you know what it is in their line of thinking which needs to be focused on in order to improve their teaching. The truth that sinks in is the truth that the teacher needs to think about at that particular stage in their development. Blinding them with the most insightful reflection to have hit ELT in the last century will be futile if the teacher’s mind is not engaged in the line of thought from which that idea comes. The pair of you need to be thinking about the same thing. Successful empathy with the teacher will inform you as to how to choose a truth which is relevant to them at that point. The extent to which the trainee will take on board your truth as relevant can depend on the depth of your support. If the teacher perceives support and relevance they will be open to truth.

Truth needs to be specific. The teacher needs to fully understand that what you are saying will usually remain true only in the specific circumstances you are both talking about. It is often unwise for a teacher to generalise a comment of yours to other situations. If the teacher isn’t aware of this it can cause them to be frustrated and to perceive the advice you (or other trainers) give them as contradictory when, in fact, it isn’t. It may be true, for example, that it is wise to cut down on teacher­talking­time in one context, while it may be productive to encourage teacher­talk in another.

Truth needs to be timely. There is no point in telling a person some clearly true fact if you haven’t got them in the right mood to hear it. If the teacher is feeling defensive, nervous, tired physically or mentally (from having been hammered with too much truth?!) you will get nowhere fast. Consideration of these situational factors, combined with the long­ term development of trust and mutual respect in your relationship with the trainee, will help you to judge wisely as to when to deliver your truth and when not to.

7

Truth needs to be true (for you at least). This means, for example, not trotting out ideas from books, RSA DTEFLA seminars, articles in ELTJ, MET (the IH Journal? ­ ed.) etc. if you don’t have genuine faith in what you are saying. In the introduction to her novel The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing writes about a time when she realised the truth of an idea she had had:

“ I know this sort of vision has been written about, it’s something one has read, but for a moment it wasn’t words, ideas, but something I felt, in the substance of my flesh and nerves as true”

That’s the kind of depth with which a trainer needs to feel the truth they share with teachers. It is, however, also important to remember that this truth you hold is no more, nor less valid than the truth perceived by another. Think of the colour blind person who perceives an orange to be indigo­coloured. As far as he’s concerned it’s indigo, that’s the truth. Only if you are fully convinced that the perception of an orange as being orange is the wisest one will your truth have any chance of getting through. Only if the colour blind person can be persuaded that their perception may be impaired will they allow you to challenge their own truth.

Here’s a recent experience of my own. I was observing an extremely talented teacher who vehemently rejected all types of drilling out of hand. She felt that drills were a manifestation of a ‘habit formation’ theory of language instruction which she believed to be dated and wholly ineffective. In a freer controlled practice activity she set her students, I noticed that the students had difficulty getting their mouths around the structure she had presented. Now I had been drilled in a structure in my Arabic lesson a few days previously. I had noticed then that with each attempt it became easier and more automatic for me to articulate the various combinations of the new structure. I had also had space during the drill work to cognitively dissect and analyse the structure phonetically and grammatically. I had also noted similarities

between the new words and words in English which provided me with pegs to hang the new language onto and thereby aid my memorisation. You could say that I was convinced by the utility of the drill ­ certainly by the utility of that sort of very controlled practice work ­ which allowed the time and space for all that cognitive and ‘habit­forming’ work to take place. This experience is what we talked about and I felt that the discussion with the teacher was successful because both of us made some realisations about the teaching and learning process. Maybe you don’t sympathise with my perspective on drill work. Maybe you could convince me otherwise. Fine. My point here is that, as a trainer you need always to state a truth that is true for you, in the way Doris Lessing understood something to be true, at the moment you are saying it.

Getting the SET balance right

Even though the response you give a teacher as a trainer may be heartfelt and genuine, it is a simple fact that different people respond to the same comment in different ways. Pragmatically, it has to be acknowledged that knowing what to say, and when to say it, is no easy task. A variety of factors are involved in getting the balance of this type of response right in the conditions and circumstances which confront (maybe even confine?) us as teacher trainers/ developers. (See table below for some examples of situational factors we may need to consider).

What’s best to do when facing such situational variables can only be addressed when referring to specific cases ­ and, I suspect, only experience can teach us. I find myself getting my responses wrong all the time. Empathise with me: perhaps you feel you do, too. I hope you support me, though, in the use of SET responses as a guiding framework for deciding how to respond to teachers in the oral feedback situation.

8

Situational factors affecting feedback

Personality type of teacher: insecure ↔ overconfident? cheerful ↔ depressive? etc.

Current mood of teacher: distracted? disillusioned? hung over? etc.

Time available with teacher: urgent need for improvement? next stage in an ongoing developmental process? etc.

Personal relationship with teacher: friend? someone you hardly know? etc.

Professional relationship: peer? unequal? mutual respect? etc.

Format of response: would some (S, E or T) responses have more impact in written feedback rather than oral?

The extent of professional experience/ training of the teacher in relation to you as the trainer:

Where do you pitch the complexity of your truth? What level of ‘jargon’/ academic reference can you get away with? It is true, also, that the relatively inexperienced are very capable of opening the eyes of the more experienced.

and finally...

A concluding observation: don’t let SET responses become set responses. Don’t deliver them with the formulaic patter proposed by that women’s magazine article I was telling you about. Never let self­analysis cause you to lose your empathy with what you are really doing. I don’t speak from a background of extensive teacher training experience, and you will have observed that I take my inspiration from just about anywhere I can get it (!). Let me, though, be so bold as to make one final assertion: teacher training and development isn’t about being clever, it’s about enjoying what we do and loving to see it done well.

9

COMMUNICATIVE METHODOLOGIES: ARE THEY ALWAYS APPROPRIATE? Carrie Priestley, teacher and teacher trainer at IH London, questions our assumptions about the ways students learn and suggests that teacher training courses may be too Eurocentric.

Who said the following, about whom, and why?

Answers below...

ncreasingly, CELTA trainees are finding jobs in non­European countries where they may encounter classroom situations for which they feel or seem ill­prepared. The

comments above were made either by newly trained teachers or, alternatively, they were written on observation reports by Directors of Studies. These comments can be seen to reflect a discrepancy between teachers’ expectations and their initial classroom experiences in teaching situations abroad.

It seems clear that the attitudes or behaviour of the learners being described above, perceived by the teachers as problematic, can to a large part be attributed to one of two causes: the individuals’ previous learning experience or cultural factors. Both of these will influence learners’ expectations regarding teachers’ roles and classroom practice. These comments also seem to indicate that certain aspects of methodology which we encourage trainees to use can appear culturally very foreign and disconcerting to the learners, a fact which, if

we accept the existence of the ‘affective filter’, may hinder rather than foster learning.

In helping teachers to understand why learners may react against or resist certain techniques or activities, the research done by Geert Hofstede into cultural variables can prove of great use. Hofstede identified four ‘axes’ against which he measured different countries. Two of these seem particularly useful in unravelling the comments above. The first of these, power distance, relates to the way in which differences in status are interpreted within a culture. In the classroom, power distance manifests itself in the relationship between the teacher and the learner. According to Hofstede, in cultures or contexts where there is a small power distance, teachers and learners will tend to regard one another as equals, and teachers will expect and encourage initiatives from learners. In large power distance cultures, learners will tend to treat their teachers with distance and respect, and will expect the teacher to initiate all that

I

‘It’s no use trying to elicit from these students ­ they just won’t

say anything.’

‘The students always want to read aloud, but I thought we weren’t

supposed to do that.’

‘Whenever I try to use pair or groupwork, there’s chaos.’

‘Don’t expect these students to listen to each other. They just won’t.’

a b

c d

10

happens in the classroom. The second axis is

11

uncertainty avoidance, which denotes the degree to which the individuals in a culture are comfortable with uncertainty or indeterminacy. Learners in cultures which display strong uncertainty avoidance tendencies will feel comfortable with very structured learning situations, where tasks are clearly controlled and activities have a quantifiable outcome. Learners will tend to be concerned with getting the ‘right answers’ to tasks and may feel dissatisfied if these are not evident at the end of an activity. They may feel uncomfortable with having to say publicly that they do not know something. They may find guessing or being asked to be imaginative or creative unfamiliar and disconcerting. Moreover, the expectation is that teachers should know all the answers ­ they will lose credibility if they do not appear to know, or if there is no correct answer to a task because it asks for a personal opinion. By contrast, in cultures in which uncertainty avoidance is weak, learners will tend to be comfortable in open­ended learning situations, ones where there is no correct solution or where creativity, guessing and imagination are involved. In these cultures, teachers may say ‘I don’t know’ without losing face.

Not only does this research help to explain the reasons for the learners’ apparent recalcitrance, it also encourages acknowledgement of the specific cultural context in which the CELTA course developed, which in turn determines the classroom practices we expect and therefore condone as well as those which we may condemn due to unfamiliarity. Underlying assumptions about teaching, learning and classroom practice which inform the procedures and techniques encouraged on CELTA courses include the following:

• co­operation is preferable to competition in learning, and learners can gain from peers as well as from the teacher

• engagement of learners’ imagination and creativity is useful and motivating

• maximising learners’ practice will result in their ability to use language

• there is no large power distance which divides teachers and learners

• mistakes can and should be learnt from rather than regarded as a source of shame

These assumptions are reflected in techniques related to classroom management such as elicitation, pairwork and groupwork, which are intended to maximise students’ active involvement in lessons and their practice opportunities.

As regards the teaching of the reading skill on CELTA courses, reading aloud is often discouraged in favour of silent reading and attempting to train learners in the use of sub­ skills (skimming, scanning, inferring, guessing or ignoring unknown vocabulary) which they supposedly use when reading their first language. The apparent unpopularity of reading aloud does have valid pedagogical reasons: it may not be the most productive use of classroom time; it does not necessarily indicate comprehension; there is a danger that the rest of the class may ‘switch off’, etc. But what is significant is that trainees may emerge from a CELTA course holding fast to the idea that this technique is intrinsically bad, rather than fully appreciating the context or the underlying assumptions which mitigate against its use.

It would therefore seem appropriate for teacher training courses to include consideration of various activity types and techniques from the perspective of cultural appropriacy and of how to adapt these to suit different learners’ expectations. Directors of Studies could also brief new teachers on information specific to their environment.

Perhaps we should be less concerned with inculcating techniques which may promote inflexible or intolerant views of learning, and more concerned to send teachers out into the world believing that, to paraphrase von Humboldt, a primary role of teachers is to create the appropriate conditions under which learners can learn.

12

Who said the following, about whom, and why...

The Answers

a) This comment was made by a newly trained teacher about her class of Japanese learners. Japanese culture tends towards high uncertainty avoidance: people are reluctant to make mistakes or concede that they do not know an answer in front of other Japanese people as this would involve loss of face. Similarly, guessing or inventing activities, for instance when a teacher asks learners to make up a name for a character, may initially appear alien and disconcerting.

b) This was said by a newly trained teacher in Jordan. In many Arabic cultures, a lot of learning involves memorisation and repetition of facts or texts, rather than interpretation of these. People’s attitudes to texts derive from their view of the Koran, which is seen as the word of God and which is to be memorised and recited rather than interpreted. Furthermore, the mechanics of reading, which include deciphering script, identification of word boundaries and sense groups, often need practice and these learners may feel familiar and secure with reading aloud activity types. On the other hand, being asked to infer from or interpret texts may appear alien or even blasphemous.

c) This comment was made by Jordanian teachers of English on a training course in Amman aimed at introducing them to communicative methodology. This course was part of a wider government initiative to introduce notions of student­centred learning and critical thinking into the education system. Teachers were, however, encountering resistance from learners, parents and school heads, partly due to the fact that Jordan is a culture which tends towards a large power distance, whereas student­centred learning grew out of cultures which display a smaller power distance. It was established on the course that possibly the best way to introduce communicative methods into classrooms was very gradually and sensitively

d) This comment was made by a Director of Studies to a newly trained teacher, again in Jordan. It reflects the degree of power distance of Jordanian culture, in which teachers are expected to be the sole source of knowledge. (I would argue though that learners can be encouraged to listen to each other if the teacher believes it is useful and introduces activity types such as information gaps gradually and sensitively).

Bibliography:

Hofstede, Geert (1991) Cultures and Organisations: Software of the Mind, McGraw Hill Hofstede, Geert (1980) Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work­Related

Values, SAGE Publications

13

GENRE ANALYSIS: A WAY OUT OF THE CUL­DE­SAC Paul Roberts, from IH London, looks at an alternative to structural analysis for lesson planning and course design.

The Failure of Structural Analysis

tructural analysis eventually led me to a dead end in my teaching: like many of my colleagues, I found that students

could go perfectly through the motions of a grammar presentation and controlled practice, could, under considerable duress, even produce structures to order during freer production, but could not, or would not, use what I had taught them in their own spontaneous speech or writing.

Rather than provide a thoroughgoing ‘bottom up’ or ‘top down’ view of language, a structural approach seemed, if any thing, to be a ‘middle out’ approach. The ‘bottom up’ view would allow us, for example, to look carefully at, and understand, the meaning of ‘would’ (where a ‘structural’ view hides the meaning under the smokescreen vagueness of ‘Conditional Type II’). It might also free us from the tyranny of the present perfect continuous, allowing our students to engage in more normal conversations of the type: ‘Where have you been?’ ­ ‘Visiting my friend’.

Attractive as it seems, for me the rigorously ‘bottom up’ approach has yet to be properly worked through into my teaching. Instead, for the moment, I am working on a thoroughgoing ‘top down’ view ­ a ‘genre’ approach to language analysis which has been informing my teaching for the last couple of years. Such a view has liberated me from the chore of trying to find texts which illustrated the grammar I was familiar with and I am no longer subject to the trainspotter­like excitement of finding a text full of a repeated, familiar grammatical structure. Now all I have to do is look for

texts, spoken and written, which are good examples of a particular genre. Good sources of written genres are all around us: newspapers, magazines, manuals, fiction books, notices, etc. So are spoken genres (though they may be harder to get hold of): television (and, to a lesser extent, radio) is an excellent source and I have quickly been able to collect examples of news broadcasts, conversations, discussions, storytelling, etc.

What is Genre?

As can be seen by the list of texts I have started collecting, the great beauty of genre labels in language analysis is that everyone knows what they mean. Below is a list (by no means a complete one) of genres, or text types, which, as you will see, contains not one obscure term, comparing very favourably with lists of grammatical structures.

It’s also easy to identify the features which characterise particular genres. Try reading the following, made up text and using the list of genres to identify where one genre ends and the next begins.

Sieve 4oz of flour together with a pinch of sodium chloride extracted by the evaporation process. Make a well by swirling the flour round to form dunes into which, oasis­like, a yellow egg will slither,, along with its albumin­free companion. Then add ¼ pint of milk and beat thoroughly. If small curdly lumps you see, whisk it till it free shall be. The mixture is then further enriched by the addition of a tablespoon of olive oil and thinned with a further ¼ pint of mil. The best way of mix this all together is to whisk it. Got that then, Jen? Hope it turns out all right. Letter to follow. Stop.

Example text types Compiled from: Halliday, 1989, Spoken and Written Language, Oxford; Mumby, 1978, Communicative Syllabus Design, Cambridge

recipe article advert chat manual discussion poem argument review essay pamphlet speech message manual joke quarrel dictionary ticket novel prescription letter cheque anecdote quiz conversation graffito note telegram manifesto subtitle sign phone book notice instructions biography newspaper bill magazine brochure agreement label report song sermon debate story lecture interview

S

14

Genres not only have names that everyone recognises, they are also instantly recognisable for what they are by their use of words and lexical phrases, by their grammar and even by specific phonological features. Incidentally, a good test of whether or not the language examples in ELT text books are natural ones is to apply the genre test: if you can’t identify the genre of, for example: ‘if you didn’t take the keys you might not be able to get into the car’ (taken from a coursebook), then the chances are that the example is not worth using for language practice.

Genre, needs analysis and lesson aims

Most of my teaching has been and continues to be in General English. Like many other teachers and institutions, I have been directed

towards the obvious benefit of involving students in some sort of needs analysis near the beginning of their course. Typically, General English students have only a vague idea of what they need; also typically, coursebooks are not organised with headings responding to specific learner needs. True, some students say they want to get a handle on articles and many will declare an interest in the topic of, say, fashion, without necessarily having a need in that area. But most students can identify needs when faced with a list of genres because, as I have said, genre headings tend to be familiar vocabulary items in themselves.

I use the following list to help students identify their needs:

Plan for Needs Analysis 1. What would you like to be able to read more efficiently?

recipe magazine cheque sign advert report play instructions story novel notice poem text book menu essay article message review bill interview manual biography letter pamphlet newspaper graffito speech note dictionary brochure

2. What would you like to be able to write more efficiently?

3. What would you like to be able to listen to more efficiently?

recipe notice joke lecture conversation note bill chat advert speech instructions report story song seminar letter essay interview debate presentation cheque brochure anecdote argument radio

programme review message discussion play quiz

4. What would you like to be able to do in speaking more efficiently?

joke interview conversation chat argument discussion speech story lecture presentation

Having identified needs, it is an easy task to set aims:

Example lesson aims:

to improve students’ ability to read manuals to improve students’ ability to listen to the news to improve students’ ability to write reports to improve students’ ability to tell stories

Genre analysis and lesson preparation

I have already explained how I find materials for my lessons. In order to break materials down into teachable parts, I have used a modification of ‘Factors in Genre’ from ‘Discourse’ by G. Cook and in order to use the analysis for teaching purposes, I use a solid, unashamed PPP procedure: P ­ presentation, or if you prefer to see things from the learners’ point of view, observation, hypothesis and clarification; P ­ practice, or restricted use; P ­ production, or authentic use. I sometimes invert the order of Ps, depending on the make up of the class. The only difference between my procedure and the traditional PPP is what I pee and how students pee.

Here is a list of factors in genre, along with teaching procedures:

FACTORS IN GENRE (Fr om Cook)

sender receiver relationship example task: discuss who is writing/speaking and to whom

situation example task: discuss where you would read/hear this

overt introductions PPP phrases: I’m writing this letter....”

presequence PPP phrases “Once upon a time....” /”Have you heard the one about.....” ) “ I must tell you what happened last night....” )

internal structure PPP structuring e.g. for a story: Presequence, background, events, climax, post sequence, comments

grammar PPP headline grammar, postcard grammar, news grammar, etc.

vocabulary PPP genre­specific items/vocabulary uses e.g. puns for adverts

phonology PPP genre­specific items e.g. story: rising tone for background, slow speed/wide range for important events in narrative, rapid speech and narrow band for unimportant fill in.

How I use genre analysis in my teaching

A typical series of lessons on, say, storytelling might follow procedures:

1. Presentation (Observation and Hypothesis forming) ­ students listen to a story and are guided towards picking out the stages (a: involving the listener; b: preparing the background; c: leading up to the main events; d: the main events; e: storyteller’s comments.

2. Presentation (Clarification) ­ students identify set phrases (Have I ever told you about the time.....?; it’s funny telling you this now but it wasn’t funny at the time....), past perfect to give reasons (I was driving quite fast because I’d been held up for a while in traffic), wide voice range and slow delivery for importance events, narrow voice range and rapid delivery for unimportant events.

3. Practice (Restricted use) ­ students drill set phrases, match reasons to events, drill intonation, etc.

4. Production (Authentic Use) ­ students rehearse, then tell their own stories, things which have happened to them, using the same genre structure.

I am aware that I have used a structural category, past perfect, as part of this procedure. As I said at the beginning, my ‘bottom up’ analysis has not yet really got off the ground. Watch this space!

Paul Roberts is currently working on an Advanced General English coursebook based on a genre syllabus.

16

COLOURFUL CORRECTION: action research into error correction. Vilja Wheatcroft, of IH Aveiro, finds a role for Post­It notes in correction.

For many of us, as teachers, error correction is often rather ad­hoc because learner errors, by their very nature, are like bad lovers: unpredictable, gone in an instant and hard to remember afterwards. More often then not, when concentrating on fluency objectives, we just try to forget them.

Being thrown in at the deep end with a large FCE ‘conversation’ group, I decided to dust off the back pages of my Diploma material (the ones that I’d never read because they sent me to sleep ­ the ones with coffee stains on them) and do a bit of my own action research into error correction methods.

The group were eager for instant and constant oral correction but understood that the price for this was fluency. A compromise had to be reached. I allowed them to choose their own method of correction from a given list:

1. teacher immediately correcting all errors orally

2. teacher providing a list of common errors at the end of the lesson

3. teacher recording conversations and analysing them during a later session

4. teacher videoing conversations for later analysis

5. teacher silently providing students with a written transcript of the errors as they occurred

6. teacher ignoring errors for the sake of fluency

They overwhelmingly objected to being videoed or taped, feeling that their conversations would become self conscious and stilted. Many of them said that they hated the sound of their own voices in their native language let alone a second language (let’s

face it, how many teachers would readily agree to this). I agreed with the class (contrary to received error correction wisdom), feeling that with 16

students split into small discussion groups, any recorded material would have been just a morass of noise. Neither did I have the luxury of available classrooms for moving smaller groups into.

The students also felt that a list at the end of the lesson (or the end of a lesson section) would be of little use, as by that time many of them would have forgotten the exact context of their errors. Therefore, the group overwhelmingly settled for option 5.

Handing out written transcripts of all errors as they are made, meant that I would have spent the majority of my time writing and not listening. In order to overcome this, I told the students which area of language I would be correcting at the beginning of each lesson. This provided both the students and myself with a very clear focus. Next, I devised a system where the students could keep a record of the errors made. I used small sticky ‘post­it notes’ with a transcript of the error and passed it silently to the student as they finished their ‘turn’. In most cases, when presented with a written transcript of the error, students were immediately able to see why they’d made the error and therefore make an immediate mental note of how it could be corrected. A session at the end of each lesson was given over to the few students who were unable to correct the errors they had made.

After about four lessons the students started collecting their notes and randomly sticking them into the back of their notebooks without any system of organisation. For homework, I asked them to develop a simple system for filing these errors. Most of them devised a grid with headings for different language areas. In their grids they stuck the transcript of their error. By looking at each section on the grid, they were able to see their weak areas (lots of yellow stickers) and gear self­ study to these areas.

Eventually, I introduced the students to the idea of different coloured ‘post­its’ for different types of error ­ blue for form, yellow for lexis, pink for pronunciation etc. This helped them further with their system of organisation and gave an immediate visual indicator of areas which needed looking at.

learner errors are like bad lovers: unpredictable, gone in an instant and hard to remember afterwards

17

I was working with a group of monolingual Portuguese students whose errors in all areas of language were fairly universal. The system

18

I have described above would have particular relevance to a multi­lingual group where errors are more diverse. With many different language groups in the multi­lingual classroom it’s impossible to concentrate fully on specific error analysis and by using the method suggested above, students are given the chance to record, analyse and eliminate their most common errors independently.

A NEW KID ON THE BLOCK

Central Depar tment has another key player these days. Ingrid Standen, Research and Information Officer , is all clued­up and tuned­in when it comes to communication technology. She’s the per son to go to if you want news spread.

So what does she do exactly?

As Central Department’s new Research and Information Officer, my main objective is to collect information from the affiliated schools and effectively manage and disseminate this information within the world organisation.

This involves obtaining a range of information from general to specific project information such as marketing activities and conference/workshop participation by the affiliates. Working towards this objective, an ‘information contact network’ has been set up whereby each affiliated school has been asked to appoint an ‘information contact’ with whom I can liaise directly.

Having obtained the information, the next stage is to collate and catalogue it. Files, databases and spreadsheets are currently being compiled with interesting, relevant and up­to­date facts and figures about International House schools. This ‘information bank’ already catalogues the variety of courses taught at each International House school, and provides information on schools’ special interest groups, such as Younger Learners.

The effectiveness of the information service is, of course, dependent on smooth

communication lines between all of us in the information network. The internet is one tool which we already use in our communication flows, through e­mail and the World Wide Web sites. A World Wide Web intranet facility is currently in its development phase. Once operational, all who have access to the World Wide Web will be able to enter a password­protected site for the latest news and events in International House.

International House visitors will also be able to post messages and read replies on the International House intranet site.

If you have any ideas or suggestions on information which could be of value world­ wide, please do contact me either through your schools’ information contact, or directly at Central Department. I look forward to hearing from you ­ whether requesting or giving information!

Ingrid Standen

19

TUNING IN ­ DEALING WITH AUTHENTIC LISTENING Mark Lloyd of IH Serrano describes a delightfully simple action research project into learners’ difficulties dealing with authentic spoken English, and suggests a simple exercise to help them out.

Having taught monolingual classes in Portugal, I couldn’t help noticing when I moved to Spain a considerable gap between the level of comprehension of authentic spoken English among upper intermediate learners in the two countries. Portuguese students, it seemed to me, generally found tasks based on authentic listening material (drawn from coursebook cassettes, feature films, TV programmes recorded in the UK, songs or extracts from radio programmes, for example) much easier to handle than their Spanish peers. Being aware that cinema films and imported TV programmes in Portugal are invariably shown in their original language with subtitles, and knowing Portuguese people in general to be avid cinema­goers, I concluded that listening skills are greatly improved by regular exposure to authentic English outside the classroom. In order to test my hypothesis, I came up with a simple experiment with two specific aims in mind:

1. In the class: to collect data which would reveal both the extent to which comprehension increased as a result of regular exposure to spoken English, and whether any such increase in comprehension was derived from:

a) the acquisition of new vocabulary b) unconscious development of listening

strategies (listening for gist, specific information etc.)

c) increased confidence stemming from familiarity with the sound of English spoken by native speakers for native speakers.

2. Outside the class: to motivate the students to look out for opportunities to hear authentic English outside the classroom, having seen how the failure to understand every word

need not prevent general comprehension, and how listening comprehension can increase rapidly through regular exposure to a particular genre.

In my experience, Spanish students frequently complain about a lack of opportunities to practise any aspect of their English outside their academy. Their reluctance to make use of the opportunities which do exist however (original language subtitled films being the most obvious example), suggests a lack of motivation to really make an effort.

The experiment was conducted in three stages:

1. The students were issued with an initial questionnaire (see Appendix One) in order to obtain their opinions of their general progress and relative competences in the primary skills, and to ascertain their attitude to natural English.

2. A recording of a complete Radio One Newsbeat programme lasting 1­2 minutes was played once, without pausing. (The programme was recorded from a television via a satellite dish at 8.30 the previous evening, making the news very much up­to­date). This process was repeated on five consecutive days with the same class, with the students being given the simple instructions to write down any words they understood. The lists of words were immediately collected and later cross­referenced with the broadcasts.

3. The students were given a second, follow­ up questionnaire (see Appendix Two) asking them to identify any improvements in their listening skills and to give their opinions of the experiment as a whole.

20

Results

Initial Questionnaire

a) Almost all the students said they were “relatively happy” with their progress, whilst admitting that they could still understand very little “natural” English.

b) Eleven out of twelve regarded listening as the most important skill for them personally (although in four cases listening and speaking were rated equally). This was generally because it was deemed to be most useful skill in their present or future line of work.

c) Ten students said they did not receive much exposure to spoken English (from native speakers or other nationalities) outside the classroom. Sources of authentic English which were mentioned were BBC World Service, VO films on Canal Plus (the Spanish subscription terrestrial TV channel), Sky News and CNN (through a satellite dish), and VO films in the cinema, although only four mentioned this, confirming my suspicion that despite the increasing ease of access to VO films in Spanish cinemas, the habit even amongst advanced level students was still to watch dubbed versions instead, at least when paying to see it in the cinema.

Data

Without exception there was a big increase in the number of words written down (the two biggest increases being from 29 to 85 words and from 37 to 97 words). In general, each student wrote more words on each successive day, suggesting a gradual increase in comprehension. It is very unlikely that the students’ absolute listening comprehension improved so dramatically in only five days. I attributed the increases to students:

a) developing their own strategies for approaching the task. They began by including non­content words ­ pronouns and auxiliaries ­ which meant they missed many content words which carried meaning and provided context. After only two

days, though, non­content words were largely ignored, allowing more time to identify and transcribe “key” words.

b) becoming accustomed to the structure of the programme and therefore approaching the task in an increasingly confident and relaxed manner.

c) becoming accustomed to the accent of the presenter and to the use of weak forms, enabling them to recognise words.

d) becoming more adept at recognising words linked together by catenation.

e) becoming increasingly familiar with on­ going news items, such as the security problems surrounding a demonstration in Belfast, and a pregnant woman expecting eight babies. Being already aware of the content from previous days, they would be able to “decode” more of the discourse as the stories developed.

Regarding the actual words which were identified, schemata were clearly a factor, with all the students recognising key words in stories which were also prominent in Spanish news items either at the time (such as the defusing of a bomb in a hotel in Cordoba, or the discovery that there had once been life on Mars), or items which were related to stories which had previously been newsworthy in Spain (such as the arrest of a security guard in connection with the bomb a few weeks previously at the Olympics). Words from stories with no relevance to Spain were identified less often, although there was some interesting guesswork: “Charity Shield” was wrongly identified as “Turkey Shield” (“Shield” was presumably identified from the sporting context, whereas “Charity” could not be guessed from context alone, leaving students to rely only on phonological clues), and “RUC” as “he’s”. One student correctly identified “Newcastle United” as a participant in the Charity Shield, but wrote “Tottenham Hotspurs” instead of “Manchester United” as the opponents, which seemed to be a complete guess based on a schematic knowledge of English football! Cricket had them completely bemused ­ ten

21

QUESTIONNAIRE 1

1 How many years have you been learning English?

2 How do you feel about it at the moment?

• I’m very happy with my progress • OK, but I’m not improving as quickly as I would like • OK in the classroom, but I still understand very little natural English outside the classroom • I’m not making any progress at all

3 Which of these do you feel happiest about? writing reading listening speaking

4 Which do you think is your weakest skill? writing reading listening speaking

5 Which of the four skills is most important for you, and why?

6 How much of your English is learned outside the classroom? none 25% 50% more than 50%

7 How often do you hear English outside the classroom? never occasionally very often (from what sources?)

8 How much ‘natural’ English do you think you understand? 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% 100%

9 What sources of ‘natural’ English do you have access to? (films, radio etc.)

Appendix One

FOLLOW­UP QUESTIONNAIRE

1 Which news stories can you remember? (Please write down a few words for each one so that I can identify the stories).

2 Have you learned any newvocabulary? If so, write them down.

3 How did your level of comprehension change from day to day?

improved a lot improved slightly no change decreased

4 What explanations can you think of for your answer to question 3?

Appendix Two

22

students identified only “England” from the report on the Second Test, and only two identified “Pakistan” as the opponents. One student managed a significant number of details (“innings”, “53 runs”, “batsman”), but he had recently returned from ten months living in England, where he presumably acquired some basic knowledge of the sport to provide him with some contextual clues. Interestingly, the same student also wrote down “cricket”, even though the word itself did not actually appear in the broadcast, which suggests both an ability to extract meaning even if the exact words used prove elusive and a tendency for the brain to fill in “gaps” in the discourse, with guesses drawn from an awareness of the context.

Follow­up questionnaire

The students were asked to recall as many news items as they could from the five bulletins (and a total of approximately twenty separate news items). The number recalled was between seven and ten per student. Closer analysis revealed two characteristics of memory:

• It is aided by recapping and reviewing ­ many of the items recalled would also have appeared in Spanish news programmes (a volcanic eruption in the Philippines; developments in the Olympic bomb story).

• The brain tends to cling on to “oddities” (incidents which are particularly unusual) ­ the only story recalled by everyone was about a British woman pregnant with eight babies, whilst many also remembered the Charity Shield even though the teams involved were generally unfamiliar.

Only one student provided evidence of the learning of new vocabulary (draw and nil, in the context of sport, were two words he claimed to have ‘learned’), with most complaining that the speaking was too fast to allow them to take in new words. In contrast, the majority felt their comprehension had increased, and the following explanations were offered:

• “with these kinds of things we can train our ears...”

• “if you listen... you’ll learn to distinguish/separate the words...”

• “you cannot pay much attention to all the words but only the really important ones.”

• “I’ve got used to the accent little by little and I know how [the programme] works.”

Conclusions

1. There is some evidence (the ease with which the themes of many items were recalled) that meaning is processed ahead of form, with students perhaps predicting what would come next once they have identified a context.

2. Students appear to be capable of applying sub­skills and strategies for listening (guessing words from contextual or phonological clues; hazarding a guess at unknown words; predicting; and activating personal schematic knowledge), without direct prompting to do so.

From the students’ point of view, the principal effect of the project was the raising of awareness of the benefits to be gained from searching for opportunities to hear authentic English, namely, an almost immediately noticeable improvement in their listening sub­ skills. It is my opinion that teachers have a responsibility to promote learner autonomy by encouraging their students to take advantage of any such opportunities, however scarce they may be, and this type of experiment might be one way to do this whilst taking up no more than 2 ­3 minutes of any one class, and 10 ­ 15 minutes of the teacher’s time afterwards. I am convinced that a project along these lines, even if adapted for an extensive, three hours a week class, would be both interesting for teachers (as this one was for me) and motivating for students, particularly those at an upper­intermediate level who feel that they have stopped progressing or that their learning is focused too much around exams rather than the “real world” outside their academy.

23

USING CONCORDANCES Philip Kerr, Director of Studies at IH London, looks at practical classroom applications of the concordanced language data that is now widely available in print and on the Net.

The history of technological innovation in language teaching has not been a spectacular success story. For most language teachers around the world, the language laboratory has gone the way of the record player and the box of slides. The computer has dramatically affected the quality of presentation of teaching material, but advances in software have yet to be fully exploited in most classrooms.

The biggest technological impact on our classrooms in recent years has arguably come from an unexpected source: the development of computer technology to record and analyse large amounts of real language use. This has profoundly altered our understanding of language, and a new generation of dictionaries has emerged as a result. These databases, or corpora, consist of millions of words of written and spoken language and can be analysed in a variety of ways. One of the most widely known analytical tools is a concordancer ­ a device which lines up instances of particular words or patterns so that the language items which co­occur can be identified.

Concordanced data can be accessed in a variety of ways. HarperCollins have published Concordance Samplers under the Cobuild imprint ­ the first in the series was devoted to prepositions (Annette Capel, 1993). Schools

and individuals can subscribe to the Cobuild Bank of English, but for most teachers the free sampling that Cobuild offers on the Net is more than enough. This provides up to 40 lines of text for any word that you want to concordance. It can be accessed at the Cobuild Website at: http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk

The ideas which follow in this article are largely taken from the work of Gill Francis, one of the Cobuild staff members. A detailed bibliography of her work and that of other Cobuild researchers can also be found at the Website.

There are a number of strong reasons to make use of this data in the classroom. The data illustrates actual language use rather than uninformed prescriptions (see the example on the next page, which may help us to decide whether data should be singular or plural) and it demonstrates clearly how differences in sense involve differences in syntax, and how language patterns are inextricably both syntactic and lexical. Moreover, concordanced data provide(s) the learner with opportunities to discover the foreign language in a way that is focussed and limited, and potentially, therefore, confidence­building.

GUESS THE CONCORDANCED WORD Plans for a season of success, but a ? decision by the referee, a dodgy things go wrong? A pinnacle in the ? car stakes in 1973 which helped

when he said he’d got Julie up the ? . But he was really angry about it the present for my mother seems a ? idea: since she can’t even bear to moments just about outweigh the ? ones and it’s harmless enough for

If a football manager has a ? player, he drops him. If an

24

DATA ­ singular or plural? A sample from the COBUILD Website.

mounted on vehicle dashboards. The data also indicates the speed and birth parents. At the same time, the data also show a genetic effect, because

therapeutics, little systematic data has been collected on sexual aspects the British Journal of Cancer: ‘Our data suggests that there is a protection had monitored hate crimes. In 1994, data was released from law enforcement

Analytical / consciousness­raising activities in the classroom for language learners and teacher trainees consist essentially of the following:

Classroom ideas

The examples which follow can be used with the very small concordance samples printed on the next page, but once you get going with this kind of work you will want to give students / trainees more data to look at. Intermediate and lower level students will benefit from exploring collocations and other real patterns. Get students to identify the Tippexed­out concordanced word, the words that come before or after this word, or to complete the word at the beginning or end of the entry. Advanced level students will enjoy looking at and analysing concordanced taboo words, neologisms and words whose meanings shift over short periods of time. For teacher trainees, concordanced data provides invaluable support in lesson planning, anticipating problems, analysing target language. For language analysis work, no more dubious examples from Discover English ­ illuminate your seminars with the

real thing. And have you ever come across a trainee who argues until you’re both blue in the face that ‘we don’t say that’? Get him to find out from the data!

Examples (using the concordances below):

1. Exploring syntactical / lexical patterns (TAKE + time expression)

• Ask students to identify the word class of the word following TAKE.

• Ask students to arrange the time expressions on a cline.

2. Exploring syntactical / lexical patterns #2 (THERE’S SOMETHING +adj+ ABOUT)

• Ask students to decide what the adjectives following SOMETHING have in common.

3. Exploring the relationship between syntax and meaning (RESOLVE)

• Ask students to divide the concordanced examples into two groups of meaning. Ask students to identify the grammatical patterns associated with each group.

4. Exploring grammatical ‘rules’ (PERFUME, CHEESE, BEER)

• Ask students to differentiate the instances of countable and uncountable usage.

• Ask students to account for these differences.

For more ideas on using concordances in the classroom, see Concordances In The Classroom by Chris Tribble and Glyn Jones, Longman 1990.

analysing differentiating

connecting

SEMANTIC or SYNTACTIC LEXICAL PATTERNS

25

CONCORDANCE SAMPLES

ht become a lesbian. It took her a full year to digest the infor dden and shrill that it took her a moment to realise what it was

ing down. Even then, it took her while to realise the naviga ed feeling about it. It took him forever to get the colour out:

ing on someone else. It took me some time to get used to that, b fell ill. But it didn’t take me two seconds to say yes, ‘Murray

aces. Even so, there is something disconcerting about its humour cold as ice. There was something eerie and foreboding about the

the days when there was something fishy about all of us. It must I always think there’s something macabre about bright sunlight

Carmina Burana. There’s something nasty about it. Attention tran apparatus and there was something odd about the uncomplaining d to her that there was something ominous about it, almost sinis

have stopped trying to resolve domestic issues. And yet, he s while such matters are resolved, efforts by the United Nations

however, I have recently resolved to put my financial affairs in Such problems might be resolved if there were someone clearly i they are worthless. We resolve to forge a common front in order r Clinton said. ‘Let us resolve to reform our politics so that p

may wear only rose­water perfume and no nail varnish. yet the sh lusive. Genny Shine is a perfume that captures the brilliance of

might even buy expensive perfumes at duty­free shops outside the two droplets of a French perfume behind each of her ear and bet

in sandwiches. Opt for a cheese with less fat than cheddar (35g y of meats, seafood, and cheeses offered, plus a fruit dessert. l shop dispenses some 50 cheeses, most of them French. Over the

pleasure of cycling and beer , but we do hope you’ll toast the s raumeisters Ltd. tests a beer brewed with oat bran, rather than enetically, to deliver a beer with more taste but less likely to

which Franklin enjoyed a beer or two. When he and Clark returned te at night. After a few beers to work up the courage, he put th

WHAT’S HOT ON THE WEB?

If you decide to surf the Net to find ideas and materials that might be of help to you in the classroom, the easiest approach is through a Browser such as Yahoo. Go into Education and then ESL, and you’ll find what looks like a fairly impressive menu of sites. You begin to surf and reality looms ­ most are strictly for nerds! There’s plenty of stuff that might be useful for language learners, but little that could be of value to a teacher. To save you time, Gavin Dudeney, Webmaster for International House Barcelona, gives his hot tips.

Dave’s ESL Cafe On The Web http://www.specialeffects.com/~sperling/ eslcafe.html One of the first truly interactive sites with a personal, friendly touch to it. Great resources for both students and teachers, and a good starting point for finding other related sites on the Web.

It’s On­Line http://its­online.com Dave’s main competitor. It has a different flavour since it’s one of the few EFL/ESL sites based in Europe. Plenty of fresh new ideas on a weekly basis, and a good place for students to find penpals.

The Electronic Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk Probably the best electronic edition of a newspaper, the ET has a searchable database of all the Net editions since it started (nearly two years ago), and is a rich source of material for higher levels. Teachers can also enjoy the crossword every day.

Crayon http://www.crayon.net/ Crayon allows users to create their own daily newspaper by selecting various Net sources of news, current affairs, cartoons etc. it’s an ideal tool for teachers to collect together useful information for use in class.

Download http://www.download.com The place for finding up­to­the­ minute software. Apart from the mixed bag from the homepage, it’s also possible to search through various categories including: games, education, internet, etc.

26

Questions & Answers The column for people with something on their minds…

A chance to air the questions that have vexed you, and help out others in a state of vexation. Please address all correspondence to: Q&A, The Editor, IH Journal etc. etc.. The Editor accepts no responsibility for the content or accuracy of what follows.

Before going to the new batch, there was an outstanding enquiry from the last issue:

Dear Anxieous, There is a very simple solution to your problem concerning the inclusion or otherwise of the letter ‘e’

in courageous and famous. The letter ‘g’, when followed by ‘e’ or ‘i’, is pronounced /d™/ . The same letter, on the other hand, when followed by ‘a’, ‘o’, or ‘u’ is normally pronounced /g/ . (Admittedly this does not account for those who employ the /™/ sound in garage, but there may simply be no accounting for them in any event). Therefore if you were to drop the ‘e’ from courageous, you would get /k•’r‡g•s/ which wouldn’t sound right at all. As for dropping the ‘e’ in famous, it may be that dropping e’s, very much the thing to do in Britain, is not such a recent phenomenon after all.

Before you ask about that get in there, let me just say that that little one is all to do with positioning ­ initial, medial or terminal. Here is an instance where giving and getting are remarkably similar, initially. Even that does not explain the pronunciation of, say, gesture, however. For now, though, perhaps we should leave you to ponder cat, cup and cottage as opposed to city centre. Regards, Arfer, Georgia

The other day I was trying to teach a class of intermediate students the future perfect, as in ‘I’ll have done it

by Friday’. One of the students kept insisting that this was the past, however many time lines I drew. It turns out that she had offered to clean the bathroom for her landlady and she, the landlady, had said: “Don’t worry now. Sarah will have done it yesterday” . Where do you go from there?

Looking forward to having heard from you, A. Spect.

Was the host family after being Irish at all? Ed.

Being an itinerant unreconstructed bachelor teacher of English, I have never had access to a cookbook.

Consequently, whenever I have had to make a meal for friends, I have had to resort to ELT coursebooks for inspiration. They’ve seen me through this far but, frankly, I’m sick of Tomato Soup, Mushroom Salad, DANISH POTATO SALAD and even Toad in the Hole. Does anyone know of a coursebook with a decent recipe for curry? (Ideally, vindaloo).

P.S. Is there actually any pedagogic reason for these recipes in books, or are they just there for the likes of me?

Yours, Marco W. Hungary

If ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’, whence reign, deign, feign and seize? To what extent is it useful to teach

students spelling rules when there are always so many exceptions, often in high frequency words (their, science etc.)?

Yours, Keith IH Aveiro

A

Q

A Q

Q

27

IMPLEMENTING A TASK­BASED APPROACH WITHOUT TASK­BASED MATERIALS Peter Moor, of IH London, follows up his article on a task­based approach to oral work, published in the last issue of this journal, with a look at ways of adapting readily available materials to this approach.

In my last article (IHJED No.2 November 1996), I defined an oral task as “a spoken activity which leads to some kind of recognisable outcome or product” . As well as having intrinsic interest, the activity should provide opportunities for language input, and opportunities for planned and spontaneous speech. The definition can be extended to written tasks, and differentiated from project work in that the entire task cycle should take place within 60 ­ 90 minute lesson (with possibilities for extension into further lessons) without recourse to resources not readily available in the classroom. I outlined the basic MODEL­PLANNING/INPUT/REHEARSAL­TASK cycle as a means of structuring a task­basked lesson and suggested a number of ways in which oral tasks can be implemented more effectively. In this second article, after examining some more implications of a task­based approach, and pointing out some of the difficulties in finding appropriate task­based materials, I will suggest ways in which ‘non­task­ based’ ELT materials can be adapted to suit the approach.

Implementing a task­based approach: who, ME??

1. ‘I think it’s just as valid to decide what the students want or need to do and provide them with the language to do it, as it is to select a particular language point for presentation and then look for ways to practise it.’

2. ‘At certain points in the lesson, I prefer to “go with the flow” and respond to language students produce or ask for, rather than have a pre­ordained set of language which they’re going to learn.’

3. ‘I/my students like a “hands­on” approach in lessons, giving short talks, conducting surveys and questionnaires, designing posters or texts to be stuck on the wall, writing or recording class magazines, videos etc.’

If you find yourself agreeing ­ at least in part ­ with any of the statements above, you may have a task­based approach to teaching, at least some of the time! Point 1 above highlights what is, to me, a fundamental tenet of task­based learning, one which sharply differentiates it from the Presentation and Practice approach: that the language flows from the task and not vice­versa. Not even in my wilder moments would I suggest that we abandon grammatical/ lexical syllabuses altogether ­ it’s my belief that a task­based

approach should operate alongside the comforting familiarity of presentation and practice of grammar, vocabulary and functions, as a contrasting but necessary complement to it.

In a task­based lesson, Point 2 refers to the stage where students have time to plan, prepare and possibly rehearse their task, and are encouraged to ask for language and seek feedback as they do so. This stage is essential if the students are to stretch themselves linguistically and not just use any old language to achieve the task (the problem of so­called strategic competence was discussed more fully in my previous article). The approach seems genuinely learner­centred in that it makes greater use of learner­generated language, but it can provide some bizarre moments, as when a French student asked ‘How do I say zis?” and proceeded to impersonate a mussel ­ a tricky little vocab item of vital importance in describing her local culinary speciality. It does however provide teachers with useful training in dealing with the unexpected (a welcome change to the still distressingly prevalent “I am going to teach you these 12 items of furniture vocabulary whether you need them or not” approach) and I have a feeling that a learner will remember an item she has asked for more readily than one which the teacher has chosen for her.

28

Point 3 reflects the now well established popularity among teachers of getting students to do things rather than sit on their hands. The ‘hands on’ approach is one that seems very widespread nowadays if classroom walls are anything to go by. At the end of the lesson, many students (not all, but a significant number) like to feel they’ve done something, and this is a trend which I feel lends itself particularly well to a task­based approach.

Finding task­based materials

But whether you are a convert to task­based teaching or merely a curious onlooker, you are confronted with the need for actual task­ based materials to take into the classroom. So where are these materials? Scan the back cover of any mainstream ELT textbook and you can be sure to find certain things: that the grammar sections will be ‘clear’ and ‘step­by­ step’; the topics will be ‘motivating’, ‘up­to­ date’ and, most likely, ‘universal’. Interestingly, you will also increasingly find the word task, although what is meant by this is not always entirely clear ­ does it refer to just anything you do in the classroom or to something more specific? A quick look at a couple of books currently in use in IH London, reveals their tasks to be ‘highly original’, ‘involving’, ‘stimulating’, ‘relevant’, ‘stimulating’ again (no wonder our students look tired), and ‘enjoyable’. (Thinks... One day a rogue ELT editor will describe the grammar section of the book as ‘impenetrable’, the topics ‘frankly tedious’

and the approach to vocabulary as ‘haphazard’. It will probably sell by the million). What you will not find at present is a book which describes itself as “task­based”. There could be a variety of reasons for this, one of which might be that no­one seems to really know what the term means. However, this does not mean that a teacher looking to implement a task­based approach needs to sit up till the small hours preparing lessons from scratch. Mainstream ELT course books can provide a rich source of task­based material if you are prepared to adapt what is on the page and use a little imagination. In the rest of this article, I will look at four ways in which a teacher can adapt published materials to a more task­based approach. Before doing this it might be useful to recall the basic cycle which I proposed in my previous article (see chart below).

1. From language practice to task ELT textbooks nowadays usually have plenty of good ideas for practising specific language points ­ sometimes so good that they can almost overshadow the language points themselves. A familiar case in point is the old favourite ‘Alibi’ game ­ a sure­fire winner and usually much more successful than the actual presentation of past continuous and past simple. However, for such activities to be seen as tasks rather than further freer language practice, some adaptation and supplementation may be needed, particularly since the MODEL and PLANNING/ INPUT/REHEARSAL stages may be lacking. Often upgrading language practice into a task

The basic task cycle MODEL PLANNING/REHEARSAL

INPUT TASK

This is a short model of the what the students will be asked to do later; it could be given by the teacher, or in the form of a listening or reading text.

The students are given time to plan their version of the task, either singly or in groups. During this time, students are encouraged to ask about how to say things or check if their language is correct. If time, the students may have a chance to rehearse their task (or supply a rough draft in the case of a written task) and seek peer or teacher correction.

Here the students “go public”, either in speech or in writing, and present their task either in groups or to the rest of the class. The element of public performance of the task seems to give students a greater concern for accuracy at the planning stage.

29

is a question of providing a model, giving the students time to plan, and making the final task into more of an event. Look out for language practice activities which can be expanded in this way: Language in Use Intermediate (1) features an engaging idea for freer practice of superlative adjectives ­ students are asked to think who or what they would nominate for a series of awards (such as “Musician of the Year”, “Best Night Spot” etc.) and choose a winner: although intended as freer practice of language, it is obvious that the potential of the activity would be more fully realised ­ and the activity would take longer! ­ if the students were given a model of a nomination speech (which the teacher could do live, or record prior to the lesson), and the students were given time to plan what they were going to say and check for linguistic and factual correctness.

Other ideas

There are a number of classic activities, like alibi, which always seem to work and yet always seem to be linked to the practice of a particular structure rather than left to stand alone, recognised as having enough intrinsic interest in themselves to be tasks and not just language practice. Drawing and verbalising a life­line representing your personal biography is a good example of a task which can easily proceed from a teacher model to a student­ centred stage, where there is ample opportunity for the teacher to feed in language as the students request it in preparing their own biographies, and where there is clear product at the end.

2. Fluency activities into tasks Some of the questions designed to create interest in lessons with a receptive skills focus, particularly those which begin ‘What do you know about...’, can lead to unanimated discussions of up to fifteen seconds with some classes: on other occasions, however, it has often struck me that this lead­in/interest­ creation chat at the beginning was actually the best part of the lesson, making the actual text come as a distinct let­down, leading me, in some cases, to abandon it altogether. Look

out for sections labelled ‘Speaking’ or ‘Discussion’ which can be adapted to the a task­based model. One simple way of extending an activity where the students are asked to talk about questions like “What are the age laws for smoking/alcohol etc. in your country? Do you agree with them?” (as in Pre­Intermediate Choice (2)) is first to briefly answer the questions yourself, thereby providing a model for students of what they will have to do, then to give them some time to collect their thoughts, perhaps make some notes and ask you for useful words and phrases, before comparing in pairs/groups. You might finally choose one or two students to “go public” in front of the whole class. More ambitious discussion lessons seem to benefit from students being recorded or having to present some kind of public summary at the end.

Other ideas

In a number of books, for example. Reflections (3), students are asked to write a class newspaper, or record a short film or audio tape. Although it may take longer than a single lesson for the students to produce their final product, this is a good example of how a task can go beyond mere ‘fluency’ practice and be geared towards a product which students can actually take home with them. The language that the students will require is also highly unpredictable, making the input/planning stage particularly important. Examples done with previous classes can provide a model here, and the admonition “I’m sure you can do better than this” can be quite effective!

3. Texts as models for written tasks The use of reading texts as models for a subsequent writing activity is a familiar one. Clearly not all texts can easily be imitated by students (the extract from Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ in Headway Upper Intermediate (4) as a model for the students to write twenty­eight lines of their own blank verse on ‘Seven Ages of Man’, for example). But there are many which are suitable. One example is the ‘Tour of your country’ idea. A

30

suitable model text is available in Think Ahead to First Certificate (5); the text on ‘Australia in 14 days’ is only used for comprehension work, but it is an excellent springboard for students (particularly in a multi­lingual class with students working in nationality groups for once) to produce a 5­day tour of their own country for other members of the class. Each group produces a map of their country (an atlas can prove useful here for the less geographically­gifted students) with a suggested itinerary and a short text about the places to visit ­ this usually produces lively discussion and awakens intense regional rivalries which should (if possible) be resolved in English. The tours can then be presented to the rest of the class as a whole, or in smaller groups. With monolingual groups, the task works better if the students are given either a region of their country other than the place where they are studying, or they are given a specified group to design the tour for (the teacher’s family for instance).

Other ideas Less ambitious reading text­types which might lend themselves to students producing a parallel text are questionnaires and quizzes. There is a very simple example in Headway Elementary (6) which could be used as a model at almost any level ­ just bring in a couple of encyclopaedias, do the quiz quickly, then tell the students to produce a similar quiz for another class of the same level in the school and get ready to feed in language as requested. There is often scope for incorporating other elements from reading texts in order to produce a more effective written task. Use can also be made of the visual elements of a text, such as use of colour, layout, organisation and pictures ­ all these can be exploited to give the final product a more satisfying appearance. Once you have built up a collection of previous written tasks from students (such as the 5­day tours of a country mentioned above, which have a strong intrinsic interest and are often visually attractive) these can be used as models for future students to work from.

4. Ready­made tasks

There are several books I have used time and time again as sources for ready­made tasks which seen to require little or nothing in the way of adaptation to produce a task­based lesson. Here is a short selection:

• Many of the ‘English into Action’ sections at the end of each unit of Pre­Intermediate Choice (7) provide excellent ideas for task­ based lessons: particularly in line with the approach outlined above are ‘Conducting a Survey about Relationships’ (p16) and ‘Talking about a hobby’ (p38).

• The Non Stop Discussion Workbook (8) provides some good oral tasks for Intermediate and Advanced students, but supplementation is needed in terms of models.

• The Q Book (9), although ostensibly a book for practising questions, contains a great variety of questionnaire/survey activities which can be extended into tasks.

Bibliography:

(1) Doff & Jones (1994) Language In Use: Intermediate (Cambridge) p62

(2) Mohamed & Acklam (1993) The Pre­Intermediate Choice (Longman) p87

(3) Farthing & Pulverness (1993) Reflections: The Macmillan Short Course Programme, Level 3 (Macmillan) p63

(4) Soars & Soars (1987) Headway: Upper Intermediate (OUP) p11 (5) Naunton (1997) Think Ahead to First Certificate (Longman) p98 (6) Soars & Soars (1993) Headway Elementary (OUP) p92 (7) Mohamed & Acklam (1993) The Pre­Intermediate Choice

(Longman) pp16,38 (8) Rooks (1981) The Non­Stop Discussion Workbook (Newbury

House) (9) Morgan & Rinvolucri (1988) The Q Book (Longman)

Peter Moor is currently working on task­based materials with Sarah Cunningham for Addison­ Wesley Longman.

31

BEN WARREN INTERNATIONAL HOUSE TRUST PRIZE SHORT LIST 1997 The Ben Warren International House Trust Prize has been established in memory of Ben Warren, founder of the International House group of schools in Catalunya, who died in tragic circumstances in 1991. This prize of £2,000, which will be awarded for the first time at this year’s Directors’ Conference in London on May 6th., will be awarded for outstanding work in the field of language teacher education.

The panel of judges is made up of: Jeremy Harmer, best selling ELT author Jonathan Dykes, Barcelona

Tony Duff, Central Department Elaine Smith, Central Department

There are five publications on the short list:

READINGS IN TEACHER DEVELOPMENT Katie Head & Pauline Taylor , Heinemann 1997

Selections from writers in the field of teacher development and related disciplines with accompanying activities and commentaries, designed to help you reflect on how your attitude and awareness affect your teaching and how change is

possible.

WRITING Chr istopher Tr ibble, from the series Language Teaching ­ A Scheme for Teacher Education, edited

by C.N. Candlin & H.G. Widdowson, OUP 1996

An introduction to both traditional and more recent approaches to the teaching of writing. This book encourages readers to think about the reasons for teaching this skill, and provides ideas on teaching different types of writing.

PSYCHOLOGY FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS Mar ion Williams & Rober t Burdon, CUP 1997

This book brings together some of the most recent developments and thinking in the field of educational psychology. As well as presenting an overview of educational psychology and its influence on language teaching methodology, the book identifies four themes: the learner, the teacher, the task and the learning context, discussing recent psychological developments in each

and their implications for language teaching.

A FRAMEWORK FOR TASK­BASED LEARNING Jane Willis, Addison Wesley Longman 1996

A complete guide to the methodology and practice of task­based language teaching, this book offers an alternative framework to the ‘presentation, practice, production’ model. It combines the best insights from communicative language teaching with a

systematic focus on language form, explaining and exemplifying each component in a typical task­based lesson.

CHALLENGE AND CHANGE IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

edited by Jane Willis & Dave Willis, Heinemann 1996

A collection of papers for foreign and second language teachers and trainers who want to explore and develop alternatives to teacher­ and trainer­led ‘presentation’ methods. It combines theoretical grounding and practical classroom approaches.

All the above are strong contenders for the prize and the panel of judges will be continuing its difficult deliberations during the next few weeks to find the winner, although no Booker­style disagreements are anticipated!

Ben Warren

32

READINGS IN TEACHER DEVELOPMENT Pauline Taylor, former events co­ordinator of the IATEFL Teacher Development Special Interest Group, has just published (with her co­author, Katie Head) Readings in Teacher Development. This book, part of the Heinemann Teacher Development series, has been short­listed for the Ben Warren International House Trust Prize. Philip Kerr, of IH London, had a few, characteristically frank questions to ask about the book and Teacher Development in general.

PK The Teacher Development Special Interest Group is viewed by some within the ELT profession as a group of rather eccentric ‘feely­feely’ humanists. This, combined with the historical definition of TD by the founders of the SIG as ‘something in contradistinction to teacher training’, has led to a certain marginalisation of Teacher Development within ELT. What do you think about this?

PT In the first chapter of our book we acknowledge that in trying to define development and training people have often listed the respective merits of each in terms of polar opposites. But, as we are unhappy with this polaristation, we also quote Tessa Woodward on the subject, who says that comparisons of this kind, while perhaps helpful in drawing attention to some differences of emphasis between types of teacher learning, can also separate and polarise approaches rather than help to build a fuller, more complete picture.

I guess the views of the ELT professionals you mention are based on their background and experience. If their model of development is based on one approach, they may well find another approach ‘eccentric’. Who knows? We personally don’t wish to foster any distinctions or eccentricities. We all work within our own paradigms and according to our own beliefs, so there is bound to be difference.

As far as being marginalised is concerned, I suppose I feel a bit sad that this may prevent some people from seeing beyond this and their preconception about person­centredness. When working in the UK on the themes in our book, many people, especially men, have described how their upbringing and education within society taught them to focus on the intellect as the only legitimate model for

development, and often in order to survive, particularly in some schools, they had to shut down on their emotional side. This left them feeling quite critical or fearful of anything to do with feelings until something allowed them to open up to this side of themselves. Others have spoken of their encounter with some humanistic exercises which may have been handled with or without skill or awareness, and they have found it a bad experience, sometimes because they are not ready.

I also feel quite phlegmatic, as this marginalisation tends to happen. It is very human. There are different views of Teacher Development anyway, and perhaps marginalisation happens when there is a different approach from the one the ‘marginaliser’ is used to. As language teachers we also know that definitions depend on the attitude of the speaker, and one person’s ‘feely­feely’ humanist might be another person’s well­balanced individual, in touch with their feelings!

Groups are judged both from inside and outside, particularly as a group tries to define itself and becomes visible. Perhaps this judgement is based on partial experience or information and on the particular outlook of the judge. While the Teacher Development Special Interest Group has had a profound influence on many of us, I think Teacher Development as such is both wider and bigger than any Special Interest Group in any one phase of its development, or people’s view or experience of it, and we hope the book reflects this. What is important to us is that people do change and develop, and we write about the changing nature of groups and people in our book. My own experience and study of groups leaves me feeling relaxed about what happens in and around groups.

33

Most people are wise enough to keep updating any views they have and this is particularly useful as teachers and teachers’ groups around the world are changing all the time. Teacher Development is about being continually aware and open to change when it is needed.

PK In the introduction to your book you caution that your selection of texts will reflect a bias towards your own particular understanding of what Teacher Development is. It is a view which is centred on the teacher’s own awareness of himself or herself as a person as well as a teacher. Doesn’t this imply an understanding of individuality separate from social context, and that individuality is given rather than constructed?

PT Certainly this is not my understanding of Teacher Development. In our book we have included a reading called ‘The Ghost Instrument’ which is an account of a teacher talking about a teacher of hers she dreaded, and the sudden realisation that she too employed some of these dreaded methods to motivate her students. While many teachers are conscious of this and strive to teach differently, or to copy those they loved, others do not, perhaps precisely because they are individuals enmeshed in their own social context, and other ways of being a teacher just do not seem possible, or even desirable.

One of the reasons for this might possibly be that the common model for teacher education has, in the past, involved a close look at methodology and content and, while there has been some discussion of personal qualities, many, but by no means all, of the teacher trainers I have talked to have either ignored the personality altogether or have felt that you can’t develop in this area ­ that individuality is a ‘given’ as you say.

I see a teacher’s personal development as being very much a product of the many

complex factors that make up an individual and this includes background, culture, expectations and education, including teacher education, and the context in which he or she lives and works. What we hope to do in our book is to invite that complex individual, who is continually in the process of being constructed, to shine the light of awareness on areas that they may or may not have looked at before, and to use that awareness to shape their development as a teacher.

Unlike the trainers who feel you can’t work on the personal, I have discovered a wealth of information on personal change and this is as important to learning and developing as all the other ‘knowledge’ the teacher has. In fact I feel we are ignoring a large part of ourselves and depriving our students of a very rich and important dimension if we do not pay attention to it. The exercises in the book can be done in groups and we include a lot of suggestions for collaborative development throughout the book so that the focus is not only on the individual, but also on the development of awareness within a group of teachers and a context where possible.

34

IT WASN’T LIKE THAT IN MY DAY... Wendy Coleby, Director of Studies for Teacher Training in IH London, heralded the coming of the new CELTA course in the last issue of this journal with a quiz. Here, as promised, are the answers. (We’ve reprinted the questions just in case you can’t put your hands on a copy of the last journal for some reason).

April 1997 sees IH London in its fifth month of running CELTA courses and, as each month passes, it is getting easier to remember and implement the changes which make CELTA different. Many of these are highly welcome, particularly the stronger emphasis given by the syllabus on the learner and on professional development. Although these featured previously on our CTEFLA courses, they are now approached much more systematically and fully on our CELTA course programmes in an interesting series of input sessions. A positive result is that the course participants are focussing more closely on the students they teach and attempting to address their needs more closely rather than being quite so coursebook/TP points driven ­ which can only be a good thing in my opinion. There has been a number of innovations in how tutors approach their course, including a successful task­based approach run here in London this February. These pages might be a very good place to exchange ideas on what teacher trainers are doing in the various IH schools around the world ­ any takers?

Meanwhile, here are the answers to the CELTA Quiz from the last issue of the Journal:

1. What two new pieces of information must you give to candidates at the start of the course? Where can you find these pieces of information? Candidates must be informed about the CELTA Job Placement Service and about the Candidate Enquir ies on Results and Complaints Procedure. These both form par t of the CELTA Candidate Profile document issued by UCLES to all candidates via the Centre.

2. What is the CELTA Candidate profile? A questionnair e which provides a background profile on all CELTA candidates for UCLES.

3. What is the UCLES designed record sheet? How is it used? CELTA/5 is a r ecord of all the assessed components of the cour se (wr itten assignments, progress r epor ts, summary tutor ial r ecord, r ecord of TP, r ecord of attendance and observation). It is completed by tutor s and/or candidates (with tutor supervision) dur ing the cour se and signed by both at the end of the cour se. The or iginal is r etained by the Centre (with the candidate r etaining a copy if they wish) and the final grade is added to the box marked “for office use”. Some Centres, including IH London, use their own ver sion of CELTA/5. However , these must contain all the information listed above.

4. Who is responsible for keeping all the “evidence” supporting the final assessment? What does this “evidence” consist of and how long should it be kept?

The “evidence” is all the candidate’s work leading to the final assessment. This is listed on page 5 of the booklet Guidelines and Regulations for Centres, Course Tutors and Assessors for the Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults produced by UCLES, who ask that Centres keep all cour se r ecords for one year after the cour se.

5. What are the F word and the B word? Who should use them? “Fail” and “Border line” ­ tutor s should use these words explicitly at tutor ials and make sure that they appear , if r elevant, on CELTA/5.

6. What kind of record should be kept of tutorials? A summary of tutor ials is included on CELTA/5. Any additional “official” comments can be inser ted in this on a separate page.

7. What attendance requirement is set by Cambridge/RSA? 100% .

8. How many hours of TP must each candidate do? Six hour s of supervised teaching practice.

9. How many hours of observation of classes in the school must each candidate do? Eight hour s.

10.What is the required minimum total number of course hours? One hundred contact hour s between the candidate(s) and the cour se tutor (s) which involve input, tutor ial suppor t, feedback etc.,

35

the six hour s TP and eight hour s observation mentioned above (see page 1 of the UCLES booklet Guidelines and Regulations for Centres, Course Tutors and Assessors for the Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults)

11.How will the Assessor’s role change? When will the changes be introduced and the new role implemented? The Assessor ’s visit will consist of one day only at most Centres and will be concerned with moderating the work of the candidates r ather than inspecting the Centre, the latter taking place only once a year on a separate occasion. Information is being introduced at Assessor s’ Br iefing Meetings taking place ear ly in 1997 and the changes are likely to be introduced in the ear ly summer of this year .

12. For what reason must you contact your Assessor at the end of your course? When do you arrange this? Assessor s must now always be contacted at the end of your cour se to confirm all the grades with them (not only grades that differ from the provisional ones, as used to be the case).

13.What changes are happening with regard to selection procedures? None at the moment.

14.How many topics areas does the CELTA syllabus include? What are they? The six syllabus areas are: • Language awareness • The learner , the teacher and the

teaching/learning context • Planning for effective teaching of adult

learner s of English • Classroom management and teaching skills

for teaching English to adults • Resources and mater ials for teaching

English to adults • Professional development for teacher s of

English to adults

15.How do these differ from the former CTEFLA? Topics 2 (The learner , the teacher and the teaching/learning context) and 6 (Professional development for teacher s of English to adults) give explicit weight to areas that were, usually, only touched upon in the CTEFLA.

16.How many written assignments must you set? On what topics? Four wr itten assignments must be set (some of these may be broken up into smaller modules) on the following: • Lessons from the classroom • Language r elated tasks

• Evaluation of teaching/learning mater ials • Focus on the learner

17. Candidates are now allowed to resubmit written assignments. What does this mean? If a wr itten assignment appear s to be a fail or border line, tutor s can advise the candidate of this and encourage them to r ework the assignment as necessary, giving some guidance for this. The candidate can then r esubmit the work for the formal assessment. It is up to individual centr es to decide how many times a candidate is allowed to r esubmit a piece of work.

18.What does SLP stand for? Supervised Lesson Preparation/Planning

19.What does LA stand for? Language awareness (c.f. former language analysis)

20.What is final grading based on? Three components: • Teaching practice • Wr itten assignments • Professional development

The IHC W H E R E N O W ?

he International House Certificate has always been closely linked with the CTEFLA course, following a similar format and syllabus. With the recent

changes that CELTA has brought, perhaps this is the time to consider modifying our own training certificate.

If you run IHC courses and have thoughts on if/how we should bring them more in line with CELTA, please drop a line to Wendy Coleby or Roger Hunt at International House London. As Mrs. Merton would say: ‘Let’s have a heated debate!’

T

36

Funny you should say that... readers respond to things they’ve read in the journal

Jenny Johnson runs the Teacher Training Department in IH Barcelona, but, like so many others in the organisation, somehow manages to write books, too.

I read with great interest the article about Teamwork and its authors in the last issue of the IHJ. This time last year a fax landed on my desk which I replied to with the answer “Yes, OK, I’ll do it”. Consequently, for the last year I have been balancing running the largest IH TT Department outside the UK, with all that that involves in terms of filling courses, publicising, staffing, budgeting etc. etc., with writing the fourth book in the series “Teaching English in...” published by In Print Publications in collaboration with International House.

I certainly didn’t realise when I said “yes” quite what is involved in writing a book of this kind. I have followed the “Italy” model, from the book written by Martin Penner, covering much of the same ground, in more or less the same order, but of course tailoring everything to Spain and the Spanish. The book, as all the books in the series (Italy, Central & Eastern Europe, Japan, SE Asia) is aimed at prospective teachers with an interest in living and working in a particular country. Like the ELT Guide and Susan Griffith’s Teaching English Abroad, the books include information about courses, schools, conditions etc.. But much more specific information on how do you go about renting a flat? where can you expect to find work? how do you go about finding work? how much can you expect to earn? what’s it like teaching children? what do people eat? where can

you meet people? what does it mean when a Spaniard taps his cheek with his hand? is there central heating? how much is a Mars bar in Spain? and a thousand other questions that teachers with the idea of living and working in Spain many want to ask. The first section is all about working in Spain, section two covers Spain and the Spanish, and the last section is all about teaching English to Spaniards. It is a very complete book.

During this last year I have made visits to Sevilla (there was a TESOL conference there in May, so I gave a talk there and took advantage of the trip to include research), to

Madrid (I love Madrid and another visit was long overdue), as well as being in contact frequently with Mark Wilson of IH San Sebastian, Richard Johnson of ELI Sevilla and Peter Bakisa and Steve Haysham of IH Madrid. The deadline has come, gone and been extended, the book is

reaching its final stage, it’s written, the information, addresses, phone numbers are all there, all it needs is a couple of final readings and some revising. So with any luck it will hit the book shops around the summer or autumn of 1997.

Would I advise writing a book? It is very time­consuming, but at the same time very satisfying to see it grow and start to take shape, and I’m sure, even more rewarding to see it complete, with covers, on a bookshelf somewhere. All I can say is, I’m looking forward to the day when I can get home and watch the TV or read a book without having to feel guilty that I haven’t switched on the computer!

what does it mean when a Spaniard taps his cheek with his hand?

37

WANTED! Contributions for the next issue...... .....

articles information about new

courses up­to­date information about authors in all of

our schools news on what’s good

on the WEB questions...

and answers

personal interest articles, talking about living and working where you do bir ths, mar r iages and... gossip interesting statistics people on the move new educational projects new courses etc.

All ar ticles and information gratefully r eceived. Please send hard copy, and preferably copy on disk: Word for Windows 2, 6

or 7 (PC or Mac) ANY TIME (but by Monday 1st September 1997 for inclusion in

the next issue) to:

The Editor , The IH Journal of Education and Development, International House London, 106, Piccadilly, London W1V 9FL

Fax: + 44 (0) 171 495 0698 e­mail: 100733.511@compuserve.com