l_missbossy's ELT playground

ELT Spain

2011-11-14T15:54:00.000+01:00

I began looking for events or teachers' associations the moment I started living in Spain.
The problem is... it's all kind of chaotic in here!

There's TESOL Spain that organizes a conference once a year but unless you live in Madrid or Barcelona, your chances of being close to any form of professional development are rather slim. If you don't specifically look for an event, there is no way you'll find it.

That is why I've decided to create a ELT Spain page on Facebook. It's a site for any enthusiastic EFL teachers based in Spain (and not only!). I created it as a meeting place - hopefully, it'll become a great sharing and developing centre in the future.
Anyone can post on the ELT Spain wall, as long as you're going to tell us something related to ELT of course :)

Do you want to share an interesting idea?
Have you heard of an ELT event organized in your area?

Feel free to contribute and join in!

Where have you been?

2011-08-28T21:27:00.000+02:00

Dear all,

I’ve been planning to blog again and/or explain my absence so many times, that, to be honest, I lost count.

Having a blog IS like having a baby and, I ‘m very sorry for my readers and my blog – I HAVE neglected you.

The thing is – I was never planning to do so. But... it happened. Somehow.

New country, new city, new job, new working hours, new people… and a language I didn’t know (and still struggle with).

So suddenly it was either, or…

It’s a cliché to say I didn’t have time but that’s exactly what it was like. Coming home around 8 or 9 p.m. (lucky me!) definitely didn’t contribute to the success of this blog. And at the weekend – there was so much to read and so much to catch up with that after a few weeks, I had to give up. Either do your job well or don’t do it at all.

The consequences have been grave indeed.

Apart from feeling completely left out and pretty much clueless about the most recent events and scandals of ELT, my blog has disappeared from quite a few blogrolls.

A few days ago, my Twitter account has been hacked and had it not been for Vicky Loras, I wouldn’t have even realized. That was a shock.

And me?

I’ve read, travelled a bit, tried teaching myself Spanish, made friends.

Am I happy?

Very much indeed :) But I miss Istanbul terribly.

So now what?

Having spent a year in Pamplona working for the local IH, I have recently moved to Zaragoza where I’ll also work for IH.

Will I have time to blog?

I do hope so!

Keep your fingers crossed for me (again)!

It was a dark and stormy night - story writing

2011-03-16T10:57:00.000+01:00

A few years ago I stumbled upon a wonderful activity to practise story writing - it was called ‘It was a dark and stormy night’. The main idea behind it was to have students sit in a circle and after dictating the first sentence (‘It was a dark and stormy night’) engage them in collaborative one student-one sentence type of writing.

I’ve used this activity many times and students loved it. The only problem was that I was gradually getting bored with it and felt the need to adjust and improve it. What is more, the students’ stories sometimes lacked a proper structure and were often senseless or monotonous.

So here’s how I’ve decided to make the activity more fun!

Before writing:

Ask students for examples of traditional stories/ tales. Try to elicit stories such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Three Little Pigs etc.

Elicit typical features of a well written sorry:

each story has a title
a story has a pretty simple plot and not many main characters (show examples from the traditional tales)
a well written story has a beginning, middle and ending – out of the three the middle part should be the longest, the beginning should introduce the story, the ending should be short and provide a conclusion

Copy an example of a short story from any coursebook (FCE coursebooks should have some good examples), cut into pieces and let students unscramble it.

Analyze it and make students notice all the features you have discussed before.

point to examples of direct speech (‘I love you’, Cinderella said) which often appear in stories
look for adjectives and adverbs used for description and dramatization

Tell your students that they are going to write a story. Get ready for moaning and groaning!

Make them sit in a circle, each student with an A4 sized piece of paper.

Tell them to choose a name of the main character of their story and draw a small photo-sized picture of him/her on the top left hand corner. Next to it, the students can write: three adjectives describing that person, what she/he likes, who she/he lives with, their relationship status etc.

Dictate the following sentences:

It was a dark and stormy night and ________ (students write the name of their character) was in/on/at ________ (students write a place name e.g a church, a beach, the street).

S/he was feeling really ________ (students write an adjective). S/he really wanted to ________ (students write a verb e.g. to drink water, to pee, to call his mom).

Suddenly a phone rang. It was ________ (students write a name of a person e.g. Santa, the Queen of England, her sister).

Ask students what they have just written and elicit that it is an introduction.

Now tell them to pass the paper to the person on their right and continue with the story.

I guess that in the original version every student was supposed to write one sentence and pass the paper. As I have said before I have decided to improve it.

Imagine you have 10 students in class.

Student 1 begins the story.

Student 2 adds 1 sentence.

Student 3 adds an element of romance.

Student 4 adds 2 sentences.

Student 5 adds an element of crime.

Student 6 adds 1 sentence.

Student 7 introduces a new character.

Student 8 adds 2 sentences.

Student 9 adds an element of mystery.

Student 10 ends the story.

Obviously, all of the above suggestion can be altered and modified. You might want to add a fun/surprise element, introduce new places or change the order of what I have come up with.

Some students always finish their task earlier than others, so I have stuck to a slow countdown after a minute or two to make them all finish on time and pass the paper at the same time. Just say something like ’10-9…1. Time’s up. Pass the paper. Now add a new character.’

An alternative idea involves bringing a bag of different objects e.g. a postcard, a spoon, a scarf etc. to the classroom. Before writing, each student draws an object and later includes it in the story.

As a follow up, collect all the papers, number them and stick on the walls of the classroom.

Tell the students to walk around, read the stories and choose one they like best.

Have secret voting for the best story and read it aloud.

Ask students why they chose it and check whether it has features of a well-written story that you have discussed before.

Coming up next – samples of my students’ writing!

Do you have any interesting ideas for story writing? Would love to hear some!

My TESOL France experience

2010-12-12T14:52:00.000+01:00

It’s been two weeks and I finally managed to find time to blog about the best ELT conference I’ve attended so far. The 2010 TESOL France event that took place in late November was simply fantastic.

I have blogged about the power of Twitter before, having met Anna and Guido while travelling but it was in Paris that I understood how great my PLN is. Although I arrived in

France

on my own I didn’t feel lonely for a second. From the moment I entered the venue it felt like being among family though some of us were meeting for the first time in real life.

Obviously, it wasn’t only the Twitterati that made the conference a spectacular event.

The sessions I attended after a very long and careful selection (as I wanted to attend so many!) were all a hit.

Lindsay Clandfield’s ‘Captured on video’ explored the possibilities of using and creating videos with students.

Anna Musielak’s ‘Drama: is it never too much of a good thing’ woke us up, gave a shot of positive energy and left with tons of inspiring ideas.

Russel Stannard’s ‘Gems on the Web’ showed us all the goodies one can find at TeacherTrainingVideos and now we know it’s all easy J

Katerina Martincova and her ‘Drama-based pedagogy for nursery and primary learners’ made us see how beneficial using drama with Young Learners is.

And then there was my session about documentaries in the midst of these. Thank you all for coming! I hope you enjoyed it despite the little technical difficulties. A big THANK you and a hug go now to @eannegrenoble who helped me fix the problem and saved my presentation J

Last but not least, thank you Beth for being such a wonderful host!

I will definitely be back next year!

Virtual Round Table and...

2010-10-17T16:02:00.000+02:00

I love conferences. I love listening to interesting people and sharing ideas. I love learning new things.

But conferences are expensive and it’s usually very difficult for a regular teacher, like myself, to attend them. Also because our employers frown at the idea of giving us a day or two off.

That’s why the Virtual Round Table Conferences are so incredibly awesome. The only thing you need is a computer with access to the Internet, some free time and willingness to learn.

All the sessions I virtually attended last weekend were motivating, well prepared and super informative so let me thank the members of my PLN that made my participation in the conference a worthwhile experience :)

Thank you Janet for sharing so many sites and tips on how to make students enjoy learning Phrasal Verbs!

Janet Bianchini Fun with Phrasal Verbs!

Thank you Mike for showing us how to start Faceblogging!

Mike Harrison Getting some Facebook time with your colleagues

Thank you Miguel for reminding me that I have a Flip and I should get busy making good use of it!

Miguel Mendoza Flip Cameras in the ELT Classroom

Thank you Guido for the best session about Twitter I’ve ever attended – it was great to see you again!

Guido Europeaantje Twitter: Turn 140 Characters into a Virtual Staffroom

Thank you Heike, Shelly and Berni for all the hard work you put into organizing the conference.

Great, great job ladies!

Last but not least, I’ve recently realized that on the 6th of October my blog turned 1 year old.

So Happy Birthday L_missbossy’s Playground!

Thank you Lindsay for the inspiring session about blogging in Budapest last year and thank you PLN for stopping by, reading and commenting! Hadn’t it been for you, I definitely would’t be here!

You may also read Barbara Sakamoto’s fantastic account of the 3rd Virtual Round Table conference here.

From Spain about Spain

2010-10-10T13:11:00.000+02:00

It’s so good to be back on track!

I finally got the Internet at home and have so much to catch up with! So many new posts, a new version of Twitter and the Virtual Round Table conference!

Almost everyone has been asking me what happened (‘You said you were staying in Poland!’) and where I ended up – so here we go :)

Where I live now

I’m currently working at Clen College IH Pamplona in Spain. I never actually planned to work in Spain but… it sort of happened. It’s been almost a month since I got here and I slowly started settling in. The decision to leave Poland and work abroad again was pretty sudden. As in the case of leaving Turkey, there are tons of reasons behind my decision which I don’t really feel like discussing here.

In order to avoid confusion and to answer all the questions, I’ve divided all my musing into a few categories. Enjoy!

Work

-I teach 22.5 hours a week (1 hour=60 min) and my timetable consists of YL, teenage and adult classes

-As I live very close to the Medebaldea center (the school has 2 more), most of my classes were scheduled to take place there. It takes me 5min to get to work on foot which is awesome especially after travelling to school for more than an hour in Istanbul.

-I also get to teach in a public Catholic school called Larraona and Ikastola San Fermin (Ikastola means school in Basque as I was told)

-Every Tuesday and Thursday I walk for 25 min to get to Mutua Navarra for my 7.30 off site company class - don’t mind the walk though – the students are great there!

-My biggest challenge will be the, already famous on Twitter, 3 year olds. As I have never taught such small kids, it’s going to be tough. During my first class one girl started crying and I had no idea why. I’ll update you on how things go :)

-After a two year break – I got three adult groups – all on a Pre-Intermediate level. How I enjoy these classes!

-Some of my classes are in blocks and the longest one is 4.5 hours without any breaks. By no breaks I mean no breaks. The classes are scheduled as follows: 16-18, 18-19, 19-20.30. No comment.

-We were all handed cheap MP3 players in order to download all the tracks we need. There are no CDs available to use so everyone has to carry the MP3 player and the speakers all day long to every school they teach in. Interesting.

Spain and Pamplona – first impressions and observations

-Trying to get the Internet at home is a pain. That’s all I have to say about it. Eventually you end up buying one of these ridiculously expensive USB sticks or whatever they are called or knock on the neighbours’ doors asking for their password offering money in return.

-Shops close on Sundays. Only bars and cinemas are open. If you want to buy bread on Sunday – fat chance!

-Dubbing in cinemas will drive me mad. Apparently there is no chance to watch films with subtitles in Pamplona.

-It seems impossible to pay with a 500Euro banknote – none of the shops or restaurants want to accept it.

-People jog a lot, even at 7 am when I go to work.

-You can buy cigarettes either in special tobacco shops or from vending machines in bars.

-There are tons of twins around – is that a Pamplona thing?

-Wines here are awesome and food is great – people who were telling me that the pintxos in Pamplona are delicious were 100% right!

-It seems impossible to buy a prepaid sim card without buying a phone – the shop assistants always say they have just run of them so everyone ends up buying the phone as well.

-The siesta. From around 14 till 16 shops, banks, offices etc close down. Every day. Why didn’t we have it in Turkey I wonder?

-I simply love entering supermarkets and seeing the jamón after living without pork products for three years :)

Life

-Life is OK now - it was harder at the beginning without the Internet but now things are fine. It’s not paradise though – starting your life from scratch in a foreign country is always tough at the beginning. Once you’ve experienced it, you know it takes time to make friends and start feeling comfortable.

-Thanks to Couch Surfing I managed to meet some very nice people who took me around and gave some useful tips concerning Pamplona and life in Spain in general – in case you’re reading this – thanks a bunch!

-I still don’t know where exactly my apartment is located. Seems like its somewhere between Medebaldea and Barañain. But then again there is Etxabakoitz which is close as well. No, I haven’t misspelled that – Etxabakoitz. It’s gonna take me weeks to learn how to pronounce that so don’t worry if you can’t.

-I live with a lovely Hungarian couple – Katalin and Peter. Katalin works at Clen College as well and I’ve just learned that her CELTA tutor in Hungary was working with me in Poland 4 years ago. Small world!

-People keep calling me Ana which I will probably have to accept soon :)

Spanish students and teaching in Spain

-I was warned many times that they can be naughty and talkative, misbehaving and nasty. So far, I haven’t really noticed that.

-The first thing I realized having entered the classroom was the students’ pronunciation – sometimes I have no idea what they are saying. The sound /g/ is the biggest issue as it almost always gets pronounced as /h/. There seems to be an issue with /s/ and / ʃ/ as well but I have yet to figure out why.

-Some students here don’t think of themselves as Spanish. They say they speak Euskera (not Basque) and feel very proud of that. Sensitive issue?

-Teaching English seems so much easier than back in Poland in Turkey. So many words in Spanish are similar to their English equivalents that you end up saving a lot of precious classroom time for explanations.

-Last week one of my teenage students asked for a translation in Spanish and didn’t get one. What followed was a 10 min discussion – the students simply couldn’t understand how one can decide to live in a foreign country without speaking the language spoken there. Does that mean I’m crazy having made such a decision?

Learning Spanish

-So far my knowledge of Spanish consists of random words and phrases such as ‘una caña’ ‘si’ and ‘cafe con leche’ :)

-I should be starting classes after 19th Oct but so far I’ve been using this wonderful site to learn the basics (The Mi Vida Loca series is fantastic!)

-After Turkey, it’s pretty easy to figure out what people are saying even without knowing the language so, well...

Plans

Where I'm going soon

-The only thing planned for now is a trip to Zaragoza on the 12th October but it has absolutely nothing to do with blogging or ELT. It’s going to be pure fun, inşallah :) I’m planning to visit the Virgen Del Pilar as, believe it or not, she seems to be one responsible for me being where I am now :)

-I definitely have to learn Spanish.

-I'm waiting impatiently for some of my friends to come and visit and I do hope to meet some other bloggers from Spain soon!

I'm really sorry I wasn't able to make it to the IATEFL Poland in Bydgoszcz this year but there is TESOL France coming up in November. I've already bought the tickets and booked a hotel so hope to meet some of you in Paris!

A very quick update

2010-09-18T18:37:00.000+02:00

I´m terribly sorry for not posting anything in a very long while but there has been so many changes in my life that I found it difficult to catch up at times.

Anyway, as some of you may have already heard, I ended up in Pamplona, Spain.

We´ll see how things will work out here but I'm pretty positive about this experience :)

The main issue is - I have no Internet access at home so until I get it, I will have to stay away from blogging, Twitter and my PLN. I´m doing everything I can to fix this problem asap but god knows how long it´s going to last.

Who said life in Spain will be easy...

Keep your fingers crossed everyone! :)

Twitter Connecting People

2010-08-08T17:07:00.000+02:00

Having travelled quite a lot during the past few years, I have always chosen places with rich historical past or ones that my guidebook recommended. Since the birth of my blog and my joining Twitter though – there has been one more criterion that helps me plan trips.

This July, I have spent 12 wonderful days travelling around Portugal. I may have never visited Braga, hadn’t it been for Anna Pires who took her time to show me and my friends around. And how do I know Anna? From Twitter, of course!

The best thing when you travel is to meet locals and having a gang of fellow Twitterati, it has never been more fun!

One can say that people can always meet at conferences so why bother travelling around meeting folks you knows from Twitter. But conferences are not the same. People are busy, someone has a presentation, there are tons of teachers you want to talk to and little time. Meeting in a neutral environment is a totally different ball game. You have time to talk, feel relaxed and the topics for conversation are plentiful.

Now why am I writing this?

First of all to thank Anna Pires again J

Second of all, I’m going to travel around Spain at the beginning of September (3-12.09.2010). Having spent days planning the route, me and my friend have decided to stay in Madrid for two days and then travel south to Seville, Malaga, Granada and … hmm… Murcia/ Valencia/ Toledo?

If anyone reading this is into a little get-together somewhere in Spain - let me know! :)

With Anna and my friend Sasha in Braga :)

How to get a job abroad - my advice to non NESTs

2010-07-23T10:55:00.000+02:00

I’ve been asked a couple of times how I (a non NEST) managed to get a job as an EFL teacher abroad. I'd lie if I said it was easy. It took me a year to get ready and still many things went unplanned. I had to take risks, count on people I hardly knew and experienced things that are better left forgotten. Nevertheless, it was worth all the time, money and effort.

So, if you are a non NEST who’s dreaming of working outside of your country, read my tips and get inspired!

Get certified – CELTA or TEFL might be expensive but they’re totally worth the money. You may have a Master’s from your local university but the employers need an internationally recognized document proving that you’re a teacher. It will simply make your life easier though it certainly is possible to get a job abroad without CELTA / TEFL. I wouldn't recommend doing the courses online though - good schools won't accept that!
Look for a job on reputable websites – this one has worked for me.
Send out tons of resumes – don’t get discouraged if you get hardly any replies. Send more and more and more!
Try to get some international experience – short summer courses are a good option. Summer schools need plenty of teachers every year so your chances are a lot higher.
Don’t be fussy – most likely you will have to teach kids, business English and/or 1 to 1 classes. Take what they give, you can get picky later on.
Do a thorough research – there are plenty of forums and message boards – get to know people who have worked in a country you want to work in. Check out the visa regulations and the local market requirements.
Be realistic – if you’re not and EU citizen, your chances of getting a job in Europe might be slim. Some countries employ only NESTs and you won’t be considered at all. Sad but true.
Save some money. You might need it for the flight, flat deposit, first rent, getting a new phone etc.
Once you’ve been offered a job, check out the employer. Google the school and check whether they have a website. Look for reviews and opinions.
Be cautious – if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Use your common sense!

Alternatively, you can do what I did:

Choose a country you want to work in.
Find a CELTA course there.
Save some money.
Do the country/ visa/ local market research.
While you do your CELTA a) ask the local teachers for help and advice b) start looking for a job and a flat.

Don’t give up! If I did it, you can do it too J

Any questions? Bring it on!

Announcement

2010-07-01T11:45:00.000+02:00

It’s the first day of a month and I haven’t posted anything new in a while. That’s why I owe you all an explanation.

Life has been pretty hectic recently and I have found myself packing and looking for a new job.

Having lived in Istanbul for three years, the time has come say goodbye to that amazing city. There are many reasons behind my decision most of which I don’t want to discuss here.

So here I am – back in Poland, not really ready for a new start. But there’s no choice.

I’ve met some fantastic people here and the future, though largely uncertain, seems bright again.

I’ll be in Istanbul at the end of August but otherwise you’ll be able to find me in and around the beautiful TriCity in Poland. If you’re planning to attend the 2010 IATEFL Poland conference, I’ll see you there!

Eight Enjoyable Games

2010-06-14T15:31:00.000+02:00

The school year is coming to an end at least here in

Turkey

. It’s hot, some students no longer feel the need to attend classes and the rest… Let’s say, they also deserve to have some fun J

Following my successful (seventeen times tweeted!) post about simple blackboard games, I have decided to share some of my favourite non-blackboard games.

1. Drawings on the floor - Teacher puts large pieces of paper (ideally A4) on the floor (one for each student) and tells students what will be drawn (e.g. a monster). Music is played and students walk or dance around the classroom. When the teacher says stop/pauses the music students are told to draw something on one of the pieces of paper e.g. if you a drawing a monster – two eyes, seven noses etc. Students should choose a different paper each time they stop and mustn’t pick them up. Eventually you’ll have a nice collection of pictures and a class vote for the best one may be organized.

The game may be modified depending on what are working on. The students can draw, for example:

- a picnic basket ( two apples, one banana etc)

- a kitchen ( a table, two chairs, a fridge etc)

- a student’s school bag ( three books, a pencil case, two erasers etc)

- a clothes’ shop ( one dress, three pairs of shoes etc)

- on ocean ( thee sharks, one big whale, an octopus etc)

2. The Dolmuş game – a dolmuş is a share taxi. Once you get in, you have to pay the driver which is complicated if you sit somewhere at the back. So what people in

Turkey

(and elsewhere, I guess) do is pat the person sitting if front of them on the shoulder and ask to pass the money forward.

During the game, students sit in rows, one student behind the other facing the board. Each student has a pen and the ones sitting at the end of the rows hold a piece of paper. The teacher then calls out a category e.g. words beginning with S, animals, past tense verb forms etc. Each student writes one word belonging to the given category and passes the paper forward. The team that hands the paper to the teacher first, wins. Extra points may be given to the team that wrote the longest/ most sophisticated word.

3. Hot seats - The class is divided into two teams. A member of each team sits facing the class, with his or her back to the board. The teacher writes a word on the blackboard and the team must define the word or give examples of its use – without saying the actual word itself. If the student guesses, the team gets a point. I always subtract points if the student speak their mother tongue.

4. Stand up if you... – students sit in a circle, the teacher stands in the middle of the circle and says: ‘Stand up if you have brushed your teeth today’. Once students stand up, teacher sits down on the nearest chair and students quickly do the same (no need for explanation, they just get the idea!) but one is left standing. S/he must now say ‘Stand if you have...’ and sit down on the nearest seat available. There is no winner in this game and it may continue for as long as one wishes.

You can play this game to practise a number of things:

- past tense e.g. ‘Stand up if you watched a film yesterday.’

- like/ hate etc +V ing e.g. ‘Stand up if you like swimming.’

- describing appearance e.g. ‘Stand up if you have blue eyes.’ (this is my Turkish students’ favourite :)

5. I went to the market and bought... - Everyone sits in a circle. One student or the teacher starts by saying ‘I went to the market and bought apples’. The next person repeats the sentence and adds another word following the pattern given e.g. ‘I went to the market and bought apples and bananas’. The game continues and everyone adds something new repeating what has been said before. The students that cannot remember all the words are out.

The game might be used for practising vocabulary as well as grammatical structures e.g.

* like/hate (verb) + ing I like sailing, reading, dancing…

* past simple Yesterday I went to the cinema, bought a newspaper, drank tea…

* conditionals (e.g. If I had a lot of money) I would buy a Porsche, I would go to

China

…

* there is/are In a kitchen there is a table, there are chairs, there is a lamp…

* a/an/ some (C/U nouns) I’m having a party so I need: a list of guests, some invitations…

* vocabulary e.g.

- clothes In my wardrobe I have: a dress, trousers...

- animals In a zoo there are monkeys, lions…

The game may also be played at the beginning of the year when everyone has to learn each other’s names.

6. Call my bluff - Students are put into teams and given dictionaries, one for each team. The teams choose a few difficult words from the dictionary. They have to create definitions for each word only one of which should be correct. The other teams must decide which definition is correct and which ones are wrong.

For example: A protractor is:

a. an extremely infectious disease

b. a device used for measuring and drawing angles

c. a character in a book, play, film, etc. who harms other people

The students may also use free online dictionaries, e.g. this one or that one.

7. Envelopes - On small pieces of paper the teacher writes words belonging to one category e.g. food, professions, love, S-words, T-words or words from a unit you wish to revise. The cards are put in envelopes. The class is divided into pairs. Each pair is given an envelope; the students’ task is to explain all the words from the envelope to their partners.

You may also ask the students to prepare the envelopes as homework. It's pretty useful before an exam! I've tried it once as a revision - the students brought the envelopes having chosen the categories themselves so we had e.g. T-words, Unit 6 words, Adjectives. Some students chose the same categories but it isn't an issue - the words inside the envelopes are never exactly the same!

8. Who am I? – The teacher prepares small cards with famous people’s/ film/ book character’s names – one for each student. Each card is pinned to the students’ backs. Students walk around asking questions to find out who they are e.g. ‘Am I an actor?’, ‘Do I have long hair?’.

Many thanks to all the teachers from whom I learned J

Six simple blackboard games

2010-06-04T10:23:00.000+02:00

I like games that require little or no preparation, ones that you can always adapt and adjust.

With races to the board in large classes, experience taught me to tell students to sit instead of waiting in a line. Otherwise, the ones at the back get bored and start fidgeting, shouting and doing things they’re not supposed to. I always let the teams choose a name and give them 5 extra points for a good start. If they speak their mother tongue, misbehave or cheat, the points are subtracted.

Here are my favourite blackboard games:

1. The Spelling Race – students line up in 2 rows facing the board. The teacher calls out a word. Students have to write it down letter by letter i.e. each letter is written by one student. Every student has one move – s/he can write down a letter or make one correction if a mistake has been made. The team that finishes first wins (provided that they spelt a word correctly!). Perfect for a revision before an exam!

2. The longest word – students line up in 2 rows facing the board. The teacher writes a long word horizontally on the board twice (there should be one word for each group). The students run to the board one by one and write down words beginning with one of the letters in the word written by the teacher. It’s good as a filler or an ice-breaker. The team that finishes first, wins. Extra point may be given to the team that writes the longest word.

3. A-Z race – students line up in 2 rows facing the board. The teacher writes all (or some) letters of the alphabet on the board twice (there should be set of letters for each group). The teacher chooses a category e.g. clothes, food, animals, sports etc. The students run to the board one by one and write words beginning with one of the letters of alphabet. The tam that finishes first wins.

4. Swat the fly – students line up in 2 rows facing the board. The teacher places flashcards on the board in random order. Once a word is called out, a student from each team has to run to board and touch a corresponding picture. To avoid confusion, my students are allowed to touch one picture only. Otherwise, they may keep on touching all the pictures until they find the right one! The student that touches the right picture first wins and gains a point for his/ her team.

Variations involve writing down words in English and calling them out or calling out the words’ equivalents in the students’ mother tongue.

5. Draw the word, guess the word - students gather in 2 groups in front of the board. Two students (one from each group) approach the board with a marker/ chalk in their hand. The teacher secretly shows them a word which they have to draw on the board. Their team’s job is to guess the word. The team that guesses first wins.

6. Tick-tack-toe (Noughts and crosses) – divide the class into two groups. Draw the grid on the board and fill it in with e.g. new words you’ve taught. Each team has to make a correct sentence using a word from the grid until they get three X's or O’s in a row (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal).

You may also:

- put verbs in the grid and ask the students to make sentences in e.g. past simple tense

- put adjectives in the grid and ask the students to make sentences using the comparative /superlative

- put words (that go with a preposition e.g. ‘jealous of’) without the preposition and ask the students to make sentences using both

A more advanced version of the game involves making a bigger grid (with 5 rows for instance). Before a class, prepare a question/ task for each square in the grid e.g. What’s the opposite of ‘cold’?, ‘What do you call a person who looks after animals?’ etc.

If you have your favourites – do drop me line!

My first student

2010-05-28T08:15:00.000+02:00

I started giving private lessons during my first year of university. Not that I knew a lot about teaching at that time. Like most students I simply wanted some extra cash and since I studied English, teaching English was the easiest option available.

My first (an only) student that year was my cousin, Kamila. We used to meet every Friday and the poor thing had to cope with my lack of experience and obsession with grammar and vocabulary. I was, apparently, a very strict teacher, getting very angry had she forgotten anything we had covered the week before.

Sometimes we would simply sit and chat, half Polish, half English about a number of issues – old age, money, parents, environment and the future. Gosh, how many dreams we had. It did feel weird and unnatural to speak English to a member of your Polish family but once we started talking, all inhibitions were left behind. And then we talked for hours which I considered, at that time, a waste of time.

Kamila was a very bright and hard-working student, always doing her homework and picking up things very quickly. No wonder that in due time, she got the highest grade form her oral Matura (end-of-high school) exam. How proud it made me feel!

Now, a couple years later, I can’t help wondering. What does a student’s success depend on? The student or the teacher?

Is it his/ her intelligence and motivation or the teachings skills and attitude of a teacher that matter?

My mum used to say that a bright student will learn anyway regardless of how good or bad a teacher is. Can we hold that true?

My first student, Kamila, lives with her husband Paul in Brisbane, Australia.

How about your first student?

Kamila and Paul :)

Shadow Puppet Theatre by Claire Bingham

2010-05-23T14:22:00.002+02:00

I attended Claire’s Shadow Puppet Theatre session at the Istek conference with a bunch of misgivings. The Shadow Puppet idea was very appealing but the preparation and the amount of work involved, I thought, would be the biggest problem. I was wrong.

Over to Claire, who at my request, decided to share her brilliant ideas with you.

Shadow Puppet Theatre

Materials required:

· Cardboard

· Scissors

· Pencils

· Sellotape

· Thin wooden sticks

· Light source, e.g. torches, lamps (NB: In rooms with plenty of natural light position the screen in front of the window as the sun can be used)

· Material for the screen, e.g. thin white table cloth, white tissue paper.

· Envelopes including job descriptions

· Target language to be included in dialogues.

Shadow Puppet Theatre is an engaging activity that uses simple techniques to make the process of learning about new characters more enjoyable and rewarding. This hands on approach allows learners to develop their speaking and writing skills, as well as giving an opportunity to use real language in a positive student centred environment. It is suitable for use with primary students but can also be adapted to suit higher levels. Shadow puppet theatre can be used to introduce characters from readers and main course books or to support general language learning in the classroom.

The basis of this technique is very simple. Students should be in groups of 4-6 students for the duration of the project. Groups could be friendship based, teacher chosen or randomly chosen. A useful way to organize groups is to give each child a colour and then ask all the reds to group, all the blues.. etc. Once the groups are formed, students should be provided with a number of characters, ideally projected onto a whiteboard. These characters could be from material used in class or totally fictional. As a starter activity, learners should describe two characters in a set time and note down their groups ideas on a post-it. During feedback students can stick their post-its next to the characters on the board so that the teacher can share and elicit sentences from the material provided.

After feeding back to the class, the outline of the task should be shared with the group. The teacher should reveal that groups choose at least two characters and create a short shadow puppet sketch. A good way to organize this is to hand out envelopes containing a matching activity of job descriptions and roles to the groups. The learners then complete the activity before the teacher shares the answers on the board. Students can then be asked to choose a role. To ensure success, these roles should be clear and a realistic time frame should be given. The jobs should include:
• Script writers- write the story and narrate during the performance.
• Puppet makers- make the puppets and read the dialogue during the performance.

A group size of 4 is ideal for this activity as 2 students can be assigned to each job, so the learners feel supported by working in pairs. Larger groups can be given more characters to work with and the extra students can help by holding the screens or being responsible for the light source during the show. Groups are then assigned a target language to include in the production as a focus point. The target language should be used occasionally within the dialogue to make communication more natural. Using the target language exclusively could lead to unrealistic dialogues with limited meaning.

The script writers should write a short dialogue including the target language for the performance. It is important to remind learners to include some background information before the dialogue begins, e.g. One day Homer and Bart were in the kitchen…
The puppet makers should draw and cut out the characters on the cardboard provided- cutting holes for eyes and other features creates a great effect. They can then stick the character to a pencil or wooden stick to complete the puppet. It is a good idea to give time to experiment for both script writers and puppet makers- creating an opportunity for peer assessment within the group before the performance.

The final product can be presented either in front of the whole class or between two groups. Before the performance it is a good idea to explain where students are expected to sit or stand during each show. This will allow a smooth transition between groups. During the performances there is an opportunity for peer (audience) assessment and students should complete feedback forms accordingly. The criteria used could be discussed and agreed on with the class, or created by the teacher and shared before the performance. Alongside assessment for learning, filming is a valuable tool to be used with learners. In fact, it has a double effect, firstly learners really strive to achieve their best (and often ask for two takes!) and secondly, it gives a chance to revisit the material in the future for further analysis in the class.

When using new activities it is important to know how the strategy will benefit learners and how much time should be devoted to the process in its entirety. This technique can be extended or reduced to suit the needs of a variety of language learners and language teachers. When time is restricted it can be completed in as few as three lessons, one for set up, the second for dialogue writing and puppet making and the final for the performances. However, students can get a great deal from the sessions and a longer time period would be preferable to allow for trial and error during the developmental stages. Shadow puppet theatre can be used as an example of CLIL in the language classroom and as such be extended to include a number of subject areas, e.g.
• Learners could research ideal screen materials in Science, learning keywords such as transparent, translucent and opaque. They could also investigate light sources alongside screen materials to produce the optimum environment for their puppets to be show cased.
• In Design Technology, students could use the design process to make screens
• In History traditional puppet shows could be explored- this would be of particular interest in countries such as Turkey as shadow puppet theatre was used for entertainment in the past.
• Voice projection and intonation could be explored in the Drama class.
• Scenes could be created in the Art class.

In fact planning time with other subject areas would be a fantastic way of incorporating a real cross curricular approach.

In conclusion, this technique is a flexible activity that can be altered to suit a variety of situations. It engages learners and allows freedom of thought in the EFL classroom. The roles and time restrictions given support learners by keeping them focused allowing the language teacher time to advise students as and when required. Therefore the teacher is facilitating the learning process while students take ownership of their projects, improving their self esteem as they strive to achieve their potential.

Claire Bingham, currently working at Özel Bodrum Marmara Koleji as a teacher of English, has taught in the United Kingdom for a number of years and recently relocated to the warmer Turkish climate. Her personal interests include cross curricular activities and task based learning. She has a background of experience in the teaching of English Language, Science and Physical Education.

Thank you Claire!

SEETA Week Day 7

2010-05-20T09:06:00.000+02:00

Today is my last day with SEETA.

I would like to thank everybody for taking their time and joining my discussion forum :)

SEETA Week Day 6

2010-05-19T07:34:00.000+02:00

Today is my SEETA week Day 6 and the issue discussed is NESTs and NonNESTs.

Click here to join in :)

SEETA week Day 5

2010-05-18T07:41:00.000+02:00

Today is my SEETA week Day 5 and we'll discuss Pair and Group Work in EFL classes.

Click here to join in :)

SEETA Week Day 3 and 4

2010-05-17T19:47:00.000+02:00

My SEETA week Day 3 - Rules, Procedures and Routines

My SEETA week Day 4 - Fast Finishers

Click here to join in :)

SEETA week Day 2 - To praise or to punish?

2010-05-15T02:35:00.000+02:00

Today is my Classroom Management SEETA week Day 2 and the issue I'm going to discuss is: To praise or to punish?

If you want to share your ideas, click here to join.

*Coming up tomorrow - Rules, procedures and routines.

SEETA week Day 1 - Getting students' attention

2010-05-14T05:39:00.000+02:00

As you may remember I'll be hosting a SEETA week from 14th till 20th of May with the topic Classroom Management.

Today is Day 1 and the issue discussed is getting students' attention.

If you feel like sharing ideas or leaving a comment, join in now!

*Coming up tomorrow - To praise or to punish?

My students' adventure with Dvolver

2010-05-07T09:49:00.000+02:00

Some time ago, inspired by Nicky Hockley's talk at the Istek conference, I decided to introduce my 3rd grade students to Dvolver.

I showed them how to use the movie maker in the classroom and off we went to the computer lab.
Did they enjoy making their own movies? Absolutely!

I could wait for some time and show you polished and corrected versions of what they came up with. But how authentic would that be?

So here we are - below you can watch three movies created by my nine-year-old students without any help. They were allowed to use online dictionaries if necessary but I stayed away and observed.

Enjoy!
(All the movies will probably start at the same time, so you might want to wait a minute and then choose the 'play again' option to watch them separately)

Movie 1:

Movie 2:

Movie 3:

Shall we continue making more movies?

Which one did you like best?

Thank you Nicky!

Ten Blogs

2010-05-02T18:18:00.000+02:00

I simply hate duplicating patterns and doing the same things other people do.

Yet what I’ve been doing here has been appreciated by people I both like and respect so I have no choice but to thank them and follow suit :)

I was tagged by two of my Great Men - Mike Harrison and Lindsay Clandfield and one Great Lady whom I have yet to meet - Marta Mrozik.

I wish I could choose people who tagged me but I cannot so here are the ten blogs I find worth taking a look at:

(NB I guess everyone in the blogosphere knows this and that blog so I didn't include them on purpose)

Carol Read's blog
Kalinago English - Karenne Sylvester's blog
Good morning from... - Laura Ponting's blog
Authentic Teaching - Willy C.Cardoso's blog
The Lives of Teachers - Darren Elliott's blog
Turklish tefl - Nick Jaworski's blog
Janet's Abruzzo edublog - Janet Bianchini's blog
Teaching Village - Barbara Sakamoto' blog
Early EFL - Leahn Stanhope's blog
Vicky Loras's blog

If you haven't checked these blogs out yet, you definitely should :)

Blowing my own trumpet

2010-04-27T16:54:00.000+02:00

A few months ago, Zarina Markova, whom I met at the BETA Bulgaria conference in May 2009, asked me to host a SEETA week.

For those of you who have never heard of it, SEETA is a collaborative on-line community of eleven Teachers' Associations in SE Europe run by volunteers.

I feel honoured as some of the former hosts invited to share their ideas on the website were Scott Thornbury, Jamie Keddie, Nik Peachey and Philip Kerr among others.

From 14th to 20th of May 2010 I'll be there discussing all possible issues related to Classroom Management.

Hoping that some of you will find time to join me :)

How I learned your language – part 4 Turkish

2010-04-19T15:48:00.000+02:00

Turkish, from my point of view, is a pretty exotic language. Unlike any language I'd been learning before, it has amazing characteristics such as vowel harmony and a whole complex system of agglutination.

Prior to my settling down in

Turkey

I spend a year learning the basics from a self study book called ‘Teach Yourself Beginner’s Turkish’. And I did learn only very simple stuff – numbers, colours, days of the week and basic grammar rules. Needless to say, it wasn't enough to get by.

Looking back, I learned most of what I know during my first year in Istanbul. In my former workplace nobody except for the three other language teachers knew English and the students... let’s say they spoke Turkish most of the time. They were my first teachers.

And Turkish surrounded me and swallowed me up.

Without much effort I caught myself picking up words and phrases, occasionally asking for definitions or clarification but most of the time simply guessing. Quite often I had to handle important matters entirely on my own therefore my Turkish phrasebook consists of largely unrelated words such as ‘vergi numarası’ (tax number), ‘fesleğen’ (basil) or ‘duş perdesı’ (shower curtain). The peculiar situations I was in obviously forced me to speak the language without hesitation. I also developed my miming skills to a near perfection.

During my second year I decided to enroll on a course designed for foreigners living in

Turkey

. It was a disaster. We had 3 classes in a row: 1 – students took turns to talk about what they did last week (speaking – 3min, listening – 47 min), 2 – we checked homework, 3 – we learned a new grammar rule e.g. ‘can’ which was followed by hundreds of mindless gap fills.

I paid for 5 weeks and left. The classes were boring, frustrating and felt like a waste of time.

But there were some bright moments. I realized, for example, that compared to other students that were studying in that school from the very beginning, I was much better at speaking and listening. Sure my grammar was imperfect at times but I covered it up by gesticulation and always got my message across. The only serious problem I faced was writing – I still have a very vague idea about how to write anything in Turkish.

It’s my third year now and I feel like I should know a lot more. I would compare my current knowledge of Turkish to a colourful patchwork. Some patches look nice, some don't but you can still cover yourself up with it when you're cold. Maybe I would have learned a lot more if I had attended courses, maybe not.

Summing up, there are a few things that struck me when I was reflecting on writing this post.

There is/ must be/ should be a clear division between T(x)SL and T(x)FL in terms of curriculum development to start with.
Any language teacher should experience learning a given language in a native speaking environment first and foremost to understand the students better.
It seems like the current trend in today’s ELT is to mirror the kind of ‘natural’ learning I described in regular classrooms. Yet is it actually possible considering the dissimilar nature of both worlds?

Now here's another chance to win something. Below you can see a photo of a popular Polish brand of vodka.
If you tell me what the connection between the brand and Turkey is, you can claim your prize!
If you are Polish, please give other people a chance to guess :)

Me and my Men - a list of 10 great men in my life

2010-04-14T20:03:00.000+02:00

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single educated woman in possession of a good sense of humour must be in want of inspiration.’*

‘Me and My Men’ was supposed to be the topic of my first Pecha Kucha. Those of you who have actually seen my Pechachka at Istek know that I was eventually talking about something else ;)

I might not have the chance to do this particular PK and it might be too personal so I have decided to blog about the men of ELT who are a constant source of inspiration for me and without whom I certainly wouldn’t be here. Some of them I’ve met and some I haven’t and the selection was hard as I had to choose only 10 names.

Why 10 men and not women?

Why not!

If you are male but I haven’t included you on that list, don’t worry, I’m currently preparing more lists J

Hebert Puchta (@herbertpuchta) – What a gentlemen he is – charming, super intelligent and very kind. He’s recently joined Twitter so if you haven’t started following him yet, you should! Btw, have you realized that his belt always matches his shoes or is it just me?

Jeremy Harmer (@Harmerj) – Meeting him at the Istek conference was one of the most pleasant experiences as he’s such a warm and modest person J Jeremy’s responsible for introducing me to high quality teaching. Hadn’t it been for his ‘Practice of ELT’ I would probably consider Grammar Translation a very useful teaching method.

Ken Wilson (@kenwilsonlondon) – A volcano full of energy, wit and ideas. There’s no way you can get bored having him around. He’s the one who made me see the benefits of using drama in ELT for which I’m eternally grateful.

Scott Thornbury (@thornburyscott) – I have never met this gentleman but would love to do so one day. I love reading his blog as it gives me plenty of food for thought. He replies to every single comment even if it’s not written by an ELT VIP and has my full respect for that.

Gavin Dudeney (@dudeneyge) – An edutech guru that was very surprised with the way I look like in real life. It must have been truly shocking as he even tweeted about it. If you’re reading this by any chance Gavin – I have finally read your book and am willing to pay for everything once we meet again ;)

Nick Jaworski (@Turklishtefl) – I have to say I know him best of all the men here as we both live and teach in Istanbul. We tend to either totally agree or totally disagree. Nick’s also known for his love of debates of all sorts and has the rare ability to set fire to any discussion heating it up to a maximum.

Mike Harrison (@harrisonmike) – I’ve never met him but hope it’ll change soon. Mike seems to be one of the friendliest and most active people I’ve met on Twitter. His enthusiasm is very contagious so whenever I feel down, Mike’s there to cheer me up. Thanks for that!

Mark Andrews (@marekandrews) – His blog focusing on culture is one of its kind in the blogosphere. I’ve always considered it a brother of L_missbossy’s ELT playground as both blogs were born after one memorable session at the IATEFL Hungary 2009 conference.

Jamie Keddie (@cheimi10) – He’s young, smart and full of amazing, original ideas related usually to pictures and drawing, something that I find particularly appealing. I adore his accent as it always reminds me that I have to visit Scotland.

Last but not least, the Godfather of my blog, Lindsay Clandfield (@lclandfield). I could devote a whole post for expressing my thank-yous but let’s leave it for a different occasion. What I really appreciate about him is his rationality combined with immense creativity. Plus a great deal of sense of humour of course. I can listen to him for hours and there aren't many men out there who can make me do that. Lindsay, I do owe you!

*The first person to guess where the original quote comes from can claim his or her prize!

I’m terrible at cooking and have already promised a guided tour of Istanbul to Mike so please use your imagination, ask for something else and you shall be given J

On a final note, thanks again for keeping your fingers crossed during my PK at Istek!
It wasn't that bad after all :)

No Title

2010-04-12T09:22:00.001+02:00

Some of you may have noticed that I've been recently absent from Twitter and my posts have become infrequent.

To those of you who read my blog I owe a few words of explanation.

In the past couple of weeks my world has turned upside down more than once.

At the end of March my father was diagnosed with cancer and last Saturday my country lost not only its president but

Poland

's most influential intellectual elite.

I still have plenty of things to write but cannot concentrate on anything these days.

I do have hope but for now, I'm simply very sad.

My thanks go to all the people who have expressed words of sympathy and support.

Thank you once again!

I will be back - just need some time for reflection.

How I Learned Your Language – Spanish by Mike Harrison

2010-04-04T15:59:00.000+02:00

A potted history of my language learning life – like many, I started learning languages at secondary school. The first was German, followed a year later by French. I had ditched German and I added Spanish when I started university. Each of those languages has been my favourite at a particular time, and in fact, each became my favourite in turn (German, French, then Spanish) – I really am fickle with my languages. I studied German for a total of 7 years, and have studied French for 14 and Spanish for 10 (though my formal education for those two finished in 2006).

Anyway, on to the main part of my post. There have been things in common with all of my language learning experiences (location, teaching styles, learning environments) but I think I have had by far the most success with Spanish, and I want to find out why, in particular why I succeeded more than with either French or German. Come on a journey with me.

First steps in language learning – German and French 1995-2002
I learned both German and French at school. My teachers were not native speakers, but British. There were the usual activities – grammar gap-fills, listening/reading comprehension, role plays, dictation, spelling – all quite normal, and we did work from text books. Despite not being native speakers, both my German and French teachers spoke a lot in the language they were teaching, right from the start. I thrived in that environment and got As for both languages in my GCSEs (exams you do in the UK aged 16). But after that I started to get confused between French and German and also between the different cases in German (possibly the most difficult thing I have ever studied). I fell out of love with German and eventually dropped it aged 17. I continued with French and went on to study it at university.
The absolute best thing about studying both languages at school was the chance to go on exchange trips (twice to Aachen in Germany and once on a work experience trip to Nantes in France).

Next steps in language learning – French and Spanish 2002-2006
When applying to go to uni, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, and ended u applying for languages because I was good at them (despite the break up with German). However, I did know that didn’t want to do just French. I toyed with French and War Studies (don’t know where that came from); French and Italian; French, Italian and Spanish at Bangor, and what I ended up doing – French and Spanish.
I really enjoyed the shift in how I studied at university. The onus is more on the student than at school. You have to put in the work in your own time or you won’t improve. I found studying a new language stimulating. All the while surrounded by highly educated people teaching about matters related to the language (literature, film, geography, history...) and native speakers (part of the key to REAL progress here) for conversation and grammar classes.
The best bit was being able to live in Spain for a year, which I did working as a language assistant. I had a room in a flat just down the road from the beach, and not 10 minutes walk from the school I worked at.

Learning on my own – Spanish 2006 onwards
I don’t think I’ve stopped learning my languages, and I was lucky to be able to make use of my Spanish language skills fairly soon after graduating. I moved to Pamplona in 2007 and worked there for a year teaching EFL. My French to some extent, and certainly my German, have fallen a bit behind and I think I know why. The language I have lived more is Spanish. Living and working in Spain has meant that I have had to use the language and also I have had to learn new things about the language (more conversational, more idioms, more vocab.) and I’ve been able to do that in a native speaker environment. I also had an Argentinean girlfriend which helped motivate me! If you’re not sure about that, check out Ken Wilson’s comment at the end of this video by Lindsay Clandfield:

So there you have it. My tips for language learning are:
be motivated or find an environment that motivates you
living the language is key – if you have to use the language in your day-to-day life it will become part of you

Mike Harrison is an ESOL teacher in London, in the UK. In his spare time he tries not to fall over while doing capoeira. He is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/harrisonmike and blogs at http://mikeharrison.edublogs.org

Guess and win ;)

2010-03-30T18:59:00.000+02:00

Two weeks ago my 1st graders were learning about farm animals.

I prepared a little cut and paste activity and they were all busy trying to finish as soon as possible to get a star and a hug from their teacher.

At some point a very cute little boy called Uğur placed a small, folded piece of paper in my hand. I thought it was rubbish and told him to throw it away twice.

He declined and lingered around me mumbling something in Turkish. Finally, he pulled my head down, grabbed my hand again and whispered to my ear: ‘Teacher, is hediye (gift)’.

I looked at the piece of paper and asked what it was. The boy said ‘It’s ................... ‘.

Question 1: can you guess what he created i.e what the gift actually was?

Question 2: whose face can you see in the background of the picture?

The winner of this little contest is free to claim his/ her prize J

(A guided tour around Istanbul, a dinner or a special teacher’s hug, for example ;)

How I Learned Your Language – part 3 Russian

2010-03-25T17:36:00.000+01:00

This is going be to be the saddest and shortest of my posts in the series. Despite many of the similarities between my mother tongue, Polish, and Russian, I never learned to speak that beautiful language.

I started my Russian classes in grade 5, just because the school couldn’t find an English teacher. I don’t remember a lot from that period – we learned the Cyrillic alphabet, the teacher was strict and we dreamed of learning English.

Russian returned in high school. As the majority of students were total beginners, we learned the alphabet again and the teacher, hmm... For three years she was constantly watering the flowers in the classroom making us, at the same time, create various dialogues in pairs. I don’t remember learning anything more than the present tense.

The classes, as you can imagine, were identical and dull. It was very easy to get the highest grade as the very rare tests she had been preparing were extremely easy, not to say banal. Consequently, none of us made any attempt to study or revise the language at home and our level of motivation to learn Russian at that time was close to zero.

Looking back, what an utter waste of time it was.

I came across on opinion once. The person who expressed it claimed that students’ motivation is inherent and the teacher cannot influence or change it no matter how hard s/he tries.

What are your opinions on this matter?

How I Learned Your Language – part 2 French

2010-03-18T20:58:00.000+01:00

Although French is typically seen as the most romantic language, my journey with the mother tongue of Balzac and Hugo was not romantic at all. My intentions, on the other hand, were of a very passionate nature. It was my second year at university and a guy I had a crush on chose French as a second language to study. Needless to say that was my initial motivation to take up that particular course.

Here are some basic facts for you understand what I'm writing about:

- the teacher was Polish but spoke French 95% of the time

- we had four 45min classes a week

- the group consisted of real and false beginners

- we used a book called ‘Tempo’ from time to time relying mostly on some photocopied worksheets

- the teacher never used miming, pictures or realia to set up contexts or explain vocabulary

- he spoke most of the time and constantly urged us to do so

- the most difficult areas of French for me were: the pronunciation and the tenses (not really the usage but verb forms)

- the most difficult skills: writing (as we spoke most of the time I had no clue how to write in French) and listening (I was able to figure out which verb someone used but had no idea in which tense)

Without further ado, I’ll simply say that I hated these classes.

The teacher talked. We listened. He would then choose a person he wanted to talk to. In the meantime he would write some words or grammar items on the board, explaining it all in French. We would note it down, guessing we had just learned passive voice or reported speech. Then he would choose someone else to talk to and ‘teach’ us some other things. If you asked you clarification – you got it, in French.

Looking back, the main problem was combining real and false beginners. The false beginners very quickly remembered what they had lost and became the stars of the class. The rest of the people, including me, were sitting with their mouths wide open most of the time trying to figure out what was going on. You can’t imagine how frustrating it felt.

And then there was the end-of-the-course exam. I nearly failed the grammar and writing part. But, as I was told, I almost reached level B1 in speaking. Some people might say that the teacher was doing a great job then! Fluency triumphed over accuracy.

Yet prior to the test, I had spent weeks learning vocabulary and basic grammar with the help of a computer programme called ‘Learn basic French in 4 weeks’. It gave me an opportunity to systematize what I had acquired and take some control over the chaos.

Maybe I’m an exception but I like to know exactly when and how to use a language. Guessing and uncertainty are a nightmare. That’s why I believe that it makes sense to introduce things gradually and practise them long enough to ensure retention. Otherwise, even if students are ready to get the meaning and usage of something ‘beyond’ their level, they will not be able to or willing to use it. Why?

a) because they won’t remember it

b) because they will remember only the narrow context in which it was explained

c) because they will be struggling to formulate it accurately

Obviously you can throw, let’s say 3^rd conditional, at beginners occasionally but not all the time and as matter of principle.

On a final note:

- I have never spoken to a native French speaker and have always dreaded doing so

- The best part of the course was watching the musical Notre Dame de Paris and guessing what the people in it were singing about

- My level of French now is most likely A0

- A LEARNER wrote that post, not a teacher

- That cute guy I mentioned at the beginning eventually chose Spanish so we never studied together L

So, how shall we interpret that?

How I Learned Your Language – part 1 Kashubian

2010-03-14T19:27:00.001+01:00

This is going to be an interesting post for two reasons:

a) most of you have never heard of Kashubian

b) I myself don’t remember learning the language so it kind of doesn't fit into the series

To begin with, in order to raise your interest, here are some little-known facts about Kashubian(s) :)

Kashubians are believed to have black palates
A typical Kashubian wedding lasts 3 days. Day 1 (usually Friday) – on a wedding day's eve everyone gathers in the bride’s house and breaks empty bottles on the doorstep and drinks vodka. Day 2 (usually Saturday) – the actual wedding takes place and everyone drinks vodka. Day 3 (usually Sunday) – everyone has fun at the after-the-wedding party and drinks vodka (in shots).
Kashubians have always felt Polish and never strove for independence
There is a Kashubian community in Canada

And here is my story:

Until recently, Kashubian has been considered a dialect of Polish, spoken in the north of the country in a region called Pomerelia. A few years ago it has been granted the status of an official regional language and nowadays students can learn it at school. There are many sites dedicated to spreading Kashubian culture, language and traditions. You can even listen to Radio Kaszebe.

Years ago, on the other hand, the situation was totally different. My parents’ generation was picked on and punished for speaking Kashubian at school. They spoke Kashubian at home but never learned to read or write in it. Obviously they know Polish as well so I guess they might be called bilingual.

I grew up in a village (crucial factor - that’s where the language is usually spoken) and all the people in my family know Kashubian. I always thought it’s almost the same as Polish but apparently speakers of Polish, who don’t know it, can’t understand it at all.

My parents talk to each other, their siblings and parents in this very language. Yet they never spoke it to me. Even when my grandma asked me questions in Kashubian I always answered in Polish and nobody saw anything strange in it. As a result, me and my cousins i.e. the younger generation fully understand Kashubian but can’t speak it.

By ‘can’t speak it’ I mean produce extended stretches of utterance without hesitation causing strain. To be honest, any real ‘Kaszeba’ will immediately figure out that I’m not a ‘native’.

Who am I then?

Can I consider myself bilingual?

I always thought of myself as a weirdo but maybe that’s what happens to children brought up in bilingual families?

What do you think? Have you had similar experiences?

As always, I'd love to hear your stories :)

New series: How I Learned Your Language

2010-03-10T17:51:00.000+01:00

Many recent posts (especially this one and that one) made me think a lot about learning languages and how the process affects teaching. Many books have been written about SLA but I haven’t come across one written by a nonNEST discussing how he/she learned English.

That’s why I’ve decided to start my first series called ‘How I Learned your Language’.

Although my teaching experience is limited, I’ve been learning languages for more than 20 years. First came Russian, then English, French and Turkish. And there has always been Kashubian.

I have enough material for at least 5 posts but I’d love to hear your stories. If you want to share your experiences please contact me using the button in the top left hand corner or email me directly.

Here are a few things you might consider:

is the language you have been learning similar to your mother tongue?
how old were you when you started learning?
did you learn it as EFL or ESL i.e. in a native speaking environment or not?
was you teacher a native speaker or not?
which methods did he/she use?
what was the language of instruction?
which coursebooks did you use (if any)?
what was the most difficult/ easiest part of the language to master?
what is your preferred learning style?

Now which language should I start with? Any suggestions?

Tale of an Expat

2010-03-06T10:29:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I read Alan Maley’s wonderful article in ETP. The article called ‘Over the Wall...’ was about four novels discussing the issue of immigration to the

Contrary to thousands of Poles, I didn’t choose

England

to settle in. Yet the stories and plights of immigrants in the article sounded very familiar.

Most of my close friends know that I came to

Turkey

in 2007 with a credit waiting to be paid. I guess you might say I sort of escaped from

Poland

leaving the credit behind. But I had to do it – the money was necessary for my first months in Istanbul.

And then all the problems began.

During my first week while eating lahmacun, my tooth broke and I had to visit a dentist (80YTL with the help of my Turkish friend whose uncle was a dentist).
The Euro rate at that time was very low and I ended up having a lot less money than I expected. Having paid the deposit and rent for the apartment (plus an extra 500 YTL for the furniture) I was left with around 300 TL for a month and a half.
As my turist visa was valid for month only I had to get myself a residence permit for which my school refused to pay. We ended up spending the whole day in the Aksaray Yabanci Şubesi in exactly one hundered queues not knowing how the whole process was going to end. Mind you, I didn’t have the 570 YTL to pay for my Ikamet or the 3000$ in my account which was required. To cut a long story short, the school was taking the 570 YTL from my salary in installments. How generous.
I had to save as I wanted to pay off the credit by Christmas so I was eating lots during lunch at school so as not to spend money on food later. The result was even worse – I probably gained around 10 kg that year.
Somehow, I expected Istanbul to be warm so I had taken mostly summer clothes from home. Obviously it wasn’t so I had to wear layers of T-shirts and tops in winter as it was, actually, pretty cold that year.
The food sold in stores was a lot different from home. It took me a few months and a lot of experimenting to find Turkish equivalents of what I was used to eat. After 2 years I can find bread similar to the one we have in Poland but a) some other things are not sold here at all, b) the ones you manage to find are usually outrageously expensive.
In the area where I lived hardly anyone spoke English – my Turkish friend had to accompany me to the hairdresser’s every time and, what a surprise, I always had a different haircut and hair colour that I wanted. Apparently Turkish hairdressers do it to everyone lol J
I met some people during CELTA and ended up working with one but most of the time I felt extremely lonely. I didn’t have a laptop, there were no English books around and I did my share of sightseeing before. During a Christmas party my South African friend told me how to switch the language to original on the Digiturk remote control. That was awesome! I became a fan of Crime&Investigation Network as finally, there was something on TV that I could understand!
So many times I got into the wrong bus in the morning and had to catch a taxi to be at school on time. If you have ever used Istanbul’s public transport in the morning, you know what I mean. Traffic, dolmuşes, minibuses, service buses, green buses and blues buses, taxis and people. LOOOts of people running to get on something that will take them to work.
I had the unfortunate chance of learning the word fortçuluk and that was not nice especially that the fortçuluk took place more than once. I guess it happens in many countries but it has never happened to me back home.

Yeah, immigration is tough and definitely not for the faint-hearted. Despite all my hardships here in Istanbul I haven never regretted my decision to work there. I’ve learned a lot about

Turkey

, Turks and myself. Although I had to start everything from scratch again, it was worth all what I’d been through.

How about you expat teachers?

What was the most difficult thing for you to accept or deal with in your new countries?

Would love to hear your stories!

Alphabet, Spelling and Young Learners

2010-02-28T15:57:00.001+01:00

Being able to spell in English belongs to the ELT basics category. Kids and adults alike learn the English alphabet with the help of the many alphabet songs, practise spelling their names and that’s usually all. They are expected to remember how to spell as it’s considred to be easy. Besides there are so many other important and interesting things to focus on.

I’ve been teaching 1^st graders for 7 years now and admittedly, I have never paid much attention to spelling.

My 1^st graders have 8 hours of English every week – 4 with me, 4 with my Turkish colleague. My partner teacher uses a coursebook with the students; my job is to supplement and provide opportunities for extra practice. That leaves us plenty of time for some fun.

Together with my American colleague, who teaches 1C (I teach 1A and B), we decided to spend 1 class a week focusing on a letter of the alphabet (starting with A). It’s been a few months now and this week, for example, we will be talking about the letter N.

Every time a new letter is introduced, the children learn a few words beginning with it. They also complete tasks to distinguish the new letter and practise using it. These include lettersearches where they have to circle e.g. all Bs, giving students pictures and asking which letter things shown in them start with, tracing, races to the board (each team member has to write / touch or circle a letter the teacher says) and so on.

We had a few reservations before conducting our experiment:

our students were learning the Turkish alphabet at the same time (not starting with A though) so we were scared they might somehow confuse both alphabets. It does happen but very rarely.
they learn how to write in cursive whereas most of the books for kids and the handouts we had were written using the so called ‘the ball and the stick’. Students should be familiar with both styles. They sometimes call writing in cursive writing in Turkish and ‘the ball and the stick’ – writing in English. We observed no problems with students being unable to use both styles.
we thought it might be too hard and too boring for the students and we were wrong. Spelling is very challenging and my students can’t wait until we learn new letters.

Our main aim was to teach the English alphabet, giving the children an opportunity to pick up some new words, practice reading and writing.

Yet what has been taking place exceeded my expectations. One day, having reached letter H, I decided to give it a try and asked the students to write down a few words I was spelling. The words were DAD, BED, CAT. To my surprise, the students had no major problems with this activity. The following week I showed the kids some new words and asked them to spell these for me. They raised their hands immediately and spelled everything they were supposed to. That was a WOW.

So here we are – spending 40 min a week with 6-7 year olds exposing them to a new letter and a few words beginning with it. After a few months, most students spell a lot better than the students in High School.

Don’t you think it’s an achievement? I do J

Corrective feedback

2010-02-22T18:17:00.000+01:00

I’m currently preparing for an ELT conference in Vienna where I’m going to talk about error correction and feedback. To cut a long story short - I need your help to prove that what I’m planning to say is not sheer theory.

Here are some basic, immediate ways of correcting students’ utterances. You may or may not like them but the truth is we all use them, from time to time and sometimes automatically, during out classes.

My request is for you to spend a few minutes and let me know which technique(s) you use most often to correct your students. Are there some you never use? Can you think of other ways that I, in my ignorance, haven’t mentioned?

I’ll be extremely grateful for your replies J

Explicit Correction – Teacher provides the correct form and clearly indicates that what the student had said was wrong.

e.g.

S ‘Yesterday I go to the cinema’

T ‘Yesterday I went to the cinema’. went is the past form of go. If you talk about yesterday you have to use went not go.

Recasts – Teacher reformulates all or part of the student’s utterance.

e.g.

S1 ‘Are you agree with me?’

T ‘Do you agree with me?’

S2 ‘Yes, I agree.

Clarification requests – indicate to students that what they said has been misunderstood by the teacher or that the utterance is incorrect in some way. Repetition or reformulation is required from the student and the teacher may use phrases such as: ‘Pardon?’ ‘Excuse me?’

e.g.

T. ‘What did you do yesterday?’

S ‘I play football’

T ‘Excuse me?’

S ‘I played football’

Metalinguistic feedback – contains comments and information about the student’s utterance without providing the correct form. Metalinguistic comments indicate that there is an error somewhere but they are also an attempt to elicit the information from the student. Teacher may use grammatical terminology or a word definition.

e.g.

S. She like bananas.

T. What’s the ending of the 3rd person singular when we use Present Simple?

Repetition - Teacher repeats student’s erroneous utterance typically by adjusting the intonation to highlight the error.

e.g.

S. I watch TV in Monday.

T. IN Monday? (rising intonation)

Please, don’t be a lurker and drop me a line :) If you have more time you can also mention the level and age of your students.

Thanks a million!

Why I like teaching kids

2010-02-20T16:39:00.001+01:00

Many EFL teachers say that they hate teaching children. Some even dread entering the classroom as they are scared the monsters will sooner or later overtake and create chaos impossible to control.

Although there surely are disadvantages of teaching Young Learners, I want to focus on all the good points today. So here we go, teaching children is fun because:

· They are honest and always tell u the truth, no matter how harsh it can be (Teacher, my grandma has the same scarf as you. Teacher you smell funny. Teacher…)

· They find it very difficult to keep a secret and as a result you may have the opportunity to learn a lot about their parents (My dad NEVER brushes his teeth in the morning.)

· They are largely unpredictable and you never know what they are up to

· They are not afraid of making mistakes and try speaking TL as much as they can

· You never know how the lesson with YLs will end. Somebody crying, somebody climbing up the walls, somebody looking for something in the garbage…

· They are extremely observant (Teacher - today you are wearing green eye shadow. Why?)

· Kids are curious of the world and eager to learn. My students, for example, love to learn where certain animals come from (So koalas come from

Australia

??? Not Africa???)

· They are fascinated with facts about the world and love sharing their knowledge with the teacher (Did you know that ‘fire brigade’ begins with ‘f’? No! Really?)

· Kids would be the best journalists as they are not scared to ask any questions (Are you pregnant? How much do you earn?)

· They are easy to convince (If you are naughty, you’re gonna get a terrible stomach ache! Ok, I don’t say that but feel tempted very often.)

· They like sharing their secrets with you so you end up knowing who has a crush on who and that one of your students got a message from Hanna Montana on Facebook. Wow!

· They easily make you laugh. Most of the time.

· They give you a daily portion of exercise and help you keep fit – if you teach YLs, count how much of the classroom time you can actually spend sitting down!

I'd love to hear some nice stories from you as well :)
See, even writing about kids makes me smile :)

Why I hate teaching kids

2010-02-17T16:24:00.000+01:00

I really enjoy teaching Young Learners. They are funny, open for new ideas, full of energy and usually more motivated than their older friends. Largely unpredictable, kids can always surprise you which adds this interesting flavour to your teaching.

Yet there is one thing that I hate about teaching children – their parents.

During parents’ meeting, only the mommies and daddies of well behaved students are willing to meet you. The naughty kids’ parents never pay you a visit even if they are asked to do so.

Some of them are obsessed with their children’s progress. You have to constantly ensure them that their kids are doing fine, otherwise –

they demand extra classes, supplementary worksheets, more effort on your part because you – the teacher - are the one to blame.

They rarely want to take responsibility for their child’s behaviour. If little Xyz curses in class or hits his friends, it is definitely your fault.

They question your qualifications. If a child fails a test, you didn’t teach him/her right. Where did you learn how to teach then, hmm?

If a child is one of the best in class, they keep coming and asking how he/she is doing just to hear more praise every time.

They love visiting you unexpectedly during your 5/10 min or lunch breaks. They always promise they’ll take just a minute of your precious time. Right.

They call you any time they wish to ask about their child’s homework for the next day or test results (and why they are so low).

I’m done. Feeling better now having let it all out.

Have you had any other pleasant encounters with parents?

How should we deal with them?

I’m not a parent myself and would really appreciate if one wrote something here from a different perspective than mine. Might be interesting :)

Music is the soul of language

2010-02-13T21:14:00.000+01:00

When I was a kid my parents kept the radio on even at night. Even this day I can see this old Dorota in front of my eyes. It was a wedding gift they got from my uncle. During communism such gift was a treat of great value. And they did make use of it.

Music has always been around although I have never been able to play any musical instruments or sing. I got used to having it around and music became a part of my life.

Although it may sound the opposite, this post isn’t about how much I like it.

It’s about how useful and beneficial listening to music may be in the ELT classroom.

You see, back at school I was always better at English than other kids. We all had the same start in grade 6 but I somehow knew more. Never had serious problems with pronunciation and grammar... Well, some sentences simply sounded either good or bad.

I took me some time to figure out why I succeeded in learning English whereas some of my friends did not. I’m sure you already know what I’m hinting at – it was all because of the music.

On the Polish radio (and that’s my guess) around 10% of music played is in Polish and the rest is in English. That’s a generalization, of course, but most commercial stations arrange it this way. Hence, subconsciously, I was exposed to the English language most of the time. I didn’t focus on form or meaning. I used to hum songs to myself just because I liked how they sounded.

Some three years ago I decided to give it a try and started using background music in my classes. The results were not miraculous – eventually a few hours of listening to music in English was not enough to expect some radical changes.

To begin with, I managed to get a pretty good rapport with my teenage students as I let them bring music of their own and asked what they liked. All the hip-hop or whatever it was turned out to be slightly tiring but they thought I was cool. Fair enough.

It also became easier to get the students’ attention. When the music was suddenly turned off or simply faded away, they knew that it was time for something new and were instantly ready for it.

Students appeared to be calmer when exposed to soft music in the background. When I wanted them to discuss important issues I chose, for instance, Dido or Sting. They were more involved in the conversation and listened to each other more carefully. On the other hand, when I played lively and energetic songs, the students were having more energy and fun but the class was a lot louder.

They seemed to enjoy taking part in activities lot more and with greater enthusiasm when their favorite music was played

My 2nd graders really liked ‘Accidentally in love’ (aka the 'Shrek song') and asked for it all the time. A few weeks after I started using background music my colleague asked them to prepare mini dialogues between two animals. She had a lot of fun but couldn’t understand how the kids learned all the phrases they used. The dialogue one of the pairs created went something like this:

‘Hello! What’s your name?’

‘Hello! My name is horse Debbie!

‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine, thanks, and you?

‘I’m fine. What’s the problem baby?’

‘Dog Jake is speaking Turkish and swinging on the chair!’*

‘Ok, bye bye.’

‘See you later’

Silly as it looks, if you know the song I mentioned, you should realize that ‘What’s the problem baby’ was a phrase they picked up just by listening and enjoying the music I brought to the classroom. To me, the dialogues my kids created were amazing and I couldn’t have felt more proud!

My little experiment also proved that children can be exposed to any kind of music even if it’s music for adults where they sing faster and use more complicated vocabulary.

Now here is the conclusion.

I’m not claiming that my success in learning English should be attributed solely to the radio I listened to as a kid. I’m also not saying that background music will magically transform your students into fluent English speakers. It may help though so why not use it?

Has anyone of you tried?

*Obviously the ‘speaking Turkish’, ‘swinging on the chair’ and other phrases from the mini dialogues were what the students picked up from their teachers ;)

Thanks Mike for the inspiration! J

That's more or less what our old radio looked like btw :)

Some secrets revealed

2010-02-07T15:32:00.000+01:00

Whenever I think about the big names of ELT or fellow bloggers, the only thing that comes to my mind is what they have achieved being teachers, teacher trainers or authors. There are very few things you can learn about a person behind an ELT bestseller or an amazing blog for teachers unless you’re actually friends with them.

Obviously, in certain cases, it’s a conscious choice. Some people simply don’t want others to invade their privacy and we all have to respect that.

But I’m curious. Yeah, I know what killed the cat but can’t help it.

What are you into APART FROM teaching? What can’t you live without? What’s this something about you that not many people know?

Guess I have to come out first, so here we go:

I love traveling. The best gift for me is a guidebook focusing on a place I haven’t visited yet.
I buy tons of books and then have no time to read them.
I’m into films of all sorts and Pedro Almodovar is my all time favourite.
My childhood heroine was Anne Shirley and I dream of flying to PEI one day.
I’m a true fan of Harry Potter. Surely because he's an only child like me.
Three years ago I was working on the musical Cats with my students. Since then I’ve been a huge fan of musicals and face painting.
I have a collection of necklaces and had to buy special hangers to keep them.
I love shopping. I get crazy when I see the words SALES, DISCOUNT or SPECIAL PRICES.
I’ve lived by the sea all my life. Maybe that’s why my favourite sport is trekking in the mountains.
I always have fruit and vodka in my refrigerator. Fruit for myself, vodka for guests.
I definitely kiss better than I cook. Actually, I probably do everything better than that.

Why was I called l_missbossy? If you attend the Pecha Kucha night at the ISTEK conference in March, you might get a chance to find out. If not, you might try guessing now J

Can't wait to hear from you!

5 problems and 5 solutions

2010-01-21T17:58:00.001+01:00

I hate instructing or advising people without being asked to do so. If I don’t like what I see I usually keep quiet but this time I could not.

Three weeks ago I attended a few workshops run by experienced teachers new to the art of public presentation. The content of their presentations was fine but they had some serious problems when it came to dealing with the participants. I imagine similar things happen in their classrooms so if THEY had difficulties, how about regular teachers?

Here’s an outline of the problems I’ve observed with the solution that work for me.

Problem one: Teacher asks an open-ended question to the students e.g. ‘What are the advantages of using computers in class? Students look at each other, one of them replies, the rest is quiet. Teacher asks ‘Anyone else? No one else replies. The discussion is abandoned.

Solution: Give students a few minutes to work in pairs/groups and discuss the issue you’ve chosen. Then proceed to whole class feedback.

Problem two: Teacher wants the students to wander around the classroom asking each other questions e.g as in Find Someone Who. S/he distributes the handouts but the students don’t feel like moving and continue sitting.

Solution: Stand still and make the students come to you to get the handouts.

Problem three: Teacher wants the students to work in groups and make a list of five important people from their country. After a few minutes students work in pairs and make lists of ten famous musicians.

Solution: Check your instructions by saying ‘What are you going to do now?’ It might become slightly annoying but it’s definitely worth the effort. More importantly, the students will get used to paying more careful attention to what you’re saying because they’ll remember you’ll ask for a recap.

Problem four: Teacher asks ‘Do you understand’? Students say they do. Really? How do you know that?

Solution: Ask students to repeat what they’ve heard from you to their partner or yourself and in case of any misunderstandings, allow more time for further explanations.

Problem five: Teacher wants the students to talk about the effects of global warming and gives them some questions to discuss. After some time s/he realizes the students are talking about the causes of the problem. They forgot what exactly they were supposed to talk about.

Solution: Write the subject of the discussion and possibly related questions on the board so that the students can refer to them while talking. Elicit or provide students with task language.

If you have different solutions and/or find mine inappropriate/useful, feel invited to comment :)

All about Poland

2010-01-19T18:13:00.000+01:00

Some time ago Jason Renshaw wrote a memorable post called ‘Tell me about

Turkey

’.

Actually, it wasn’t the post but the comments that created a major storm in the blogosphere. Some people got offended, the others had only positive impressions to share.

On the whole, what I’ve read gave me a lot of food for thought. One of the conclusions I came to was that we all seem to glorify our own motherland, especially having immigrated to a different country.

Poland

is a nice place to live in or visit but it surely isn’t heaven. I’d also risk saying that the state of ELT is pretty good there. You can’t teach English without qualifications, for instance.

Yet my opinions will always be subjective. That’s why I’d like to know what you think about it.

What’s you first impression of

Poland

Are there any stereotypes about

Poland

in the place you come from?

What’s it like to be a teacher there? What are Polish students and schools like?

How about Poles themselves?

Both positive and negative comments are most welcome J

2 kinds of teachers

2010-01-15T20:54:00.001+01:00

Some time ago I wrote a guest post for Nick Jaworski, the author of Turklish TEFL, called ‘3 kinds of teachers’. To keep it short: type 1 – one who doesn’t know the students’ mother tongue, type 2 – one whose mother tongue is the same as the students’, type 3 – one who knows the students’ mother tongue more or less. Nick’s comment to my previous post generated another idea.

Looking at EFL/ESL teachers from a different perspective we might as well say that there are two kinds of educators: type 1 – teachers who were trained to become teachers and have worked only as such and type 2 – teachers who joined ELT having experienced doing something different for a living.

I’m a teacher type 1. For the past seven years the only thing I've done is teaching English. One advantage of being a teacher type 1 is that I’ve taught kids, teenagers and adults and thus gained pretty much experience. I’ve used a number of course books and have my own library of photocopied materials and ready to use lessons back home. I might be thrown into a classroom and teach a great lesson without any preparation or stress if required.

Yet sometimes I cannot get rid of this nasty, subtle feeling of inferiority. Teachers type 2 are familiar with such a bunch of other issues. They can bring a great deal of their non ELT related experience into the classroom and that makes a huge difference.

The only things I know about are the ones I studied – British/American Literature, Phonology, Descriptive and Historical Grammar, Linguistics… Needless to say, it surely isn’t something students would fancy discussing.

There are of course personal interests and passions. I’ve always been into travelling, ethnography and films. (If you are planning to take part in the ISTEK ELT conference in March, feel invited to attend my workshop about using documentaries in the classroom J )

I'm really curious about the rest of you in the blogosphere.

What kind of teachers are you?

Can one type of teachers claim superiority over the other?

What are some other advantages/ disadvantages of being teachers type 1 and 2?

Thanks Nick for the inspiration btw!

Is personal satisfaction included?

2010-01-12T20:55:00.001+01:00

I guess it wouldn’t be too far fetched to say that everybody wants to get satisfaction from what he or she does for a living. Yet so few of us actually manage to gain it.

Low salaries, classroom management problems or bad attitude are among the main issues that we all have to face most of the time. These nasty feelings of discontent and disappointment pretty often lead to burnout which we have discussed before.

Being a teacher is not easy and a wise man who compared teaching to acting had a point. Performing in front of an audience a couple of hours a day is incredibly strenuous. It requires preparation a quite a lot of thinking involved so what to do if your students simply do not care? This issue is probably very familiar to those of you who have experienced teaching teenagers – they are by far the hardest to please and deal with.

Imagine your salary is more than reasonable but the satisfaction you get is minimal. You are fed up with teaching at XYZ. What would you do?

Look for a job with a lower salary but giving more satisfaction (hopefully).
Continue working for the same institution. It’s all about the money these days, right?
Change your profession and do something not connected with teaching. Gardening? McDonalds?

Are there any other options?

New Year, New Look

2010-01-10T14:16:00.002+01:00

I have been thinking of changing the template of my blog for quite a long time but I had no idea how hard it would be. Actually, installing a new theme is a piece of cake but keeping your widgets intact while choosing a new template proved to be an achievement worth a Nobel Prize at least.

Although I was racking my brains and had a bunch of sleepless nights thinking, I succeeded!

I’ve also installed a few new widgets to my blog: Contact Button , Top Commenters, Blogumus and Related Posts.

This site was very useful and this one had great templates but I could not figure out how to deal with the installation and widgets problem. Thank you Karenne for your help and advice!

I hope you like the L_missbossy’s ELT Playground’s revamped look J

7 signs it is time for a new job

2010-01-06T17:16:00.000+01:00

Last month I wrote a guest post for Ken Wilson about my burnout experience. The overall message emerging from the post was largely positive – I did manage to fight my burnout and opted for a huge change, starting everything from scratch in a new country.

It’s been my third year in Istanbul and I’m afraid the big B might start knocking on my door pretty soon. To be on the safe side and just because I believe in teacher cooperation, here are my

7 signs it is time for a new job:

Your life is boring and you truly hate it
You have nothing in common with your colleagues and / or secretly despise them
You start thinking that even working at McDonald’s is a lot more fun than teaching
You secretly devise ways of doing something very bad to your DOS/ Head of Department
Your laryngologist advises you to change the profession – teaching is surely not worth losing your voice, is it?
You see no point in preparing for your classes – sitting and chatting with your students still means they practise listening and speaking, right?
You stop putting on makeup in the morning – who cares about the way you look anyway?

Just wondering - has anyone experienced that or am I the only one coming out?

Seven Common Deadly Sins of EFL teachers

2010-01-02T15:45:00.001+01:00

For the past three years I have been working with a number of trainees doing their best to become good EFL teachers. Having observed their classes and being repeatedly asked to pinpoint typical mistakes they make, here is my list of the Seven Common Deadly Sins of EFL teachers.

They don’t set up contexts to introduce new topics
Their TTT dominates the classroom making it largely teacher centred
They teach/ practise grammar without drawing students’ attention to meaning
They provide students with (usually) one form of (negative) feedback
They believe in the power of worksheets as the best source of practice
They make students sit most of the time
They provide students with a written form of a word before modelling pronunciation

Sounds familiar?

R&R - recap and resolutions

2009-12-29T17:59:00.002+01:00

2009 has been a wonderful year for me because:

I travelled a lot and visited Amsterdam, Bulgaria, Malaysia, Singapore, Budapest, Denmark and Rome. Still dreaming of India, Japan, Portugal, New Zealand...

I realised that PLN is not actually PLN having joined Twitter

I started DELTA and read one million books about teaching and learning (more or less ;)

My blog was born in October!

Thanks to Videojug, I began experimenting with Indian cuisine and can now make delicious Chicken Tikka Masala

I spoke at two ELT conferences - in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria and Budapest, Hungary and met some fantastic people there

I wrote 3 guest posts for Ken Wilson, Lindsay Clandfield and Nick Jaworski and talked about my experiences in Poland on Barbara Sakamoto’s blog

After months of struggle I finally got a credit card and became a proud member of IATEFL

Lindsay Clandfield wrote a guest post for me

I finally bought ‘How to teach English with technology’ and started getting prepared for future debates with Gavin Dudeney

Many people found my ideas interesting enough and posted comments on my blog so here are my thanks to: Darren Elliott, Karenne Sylvester, Ken Wilson, Alan Tait, Marisa Constantinides, Nick Jaworski, Rupert (Videojug Director), Agata Zgarda, Alex Case, Lindsay Clandfield, Prof. Nelba Quintana, Nicky, Julian Gilbert, Samccoy, Victro Hugo Rojas, Peter Fenton, Miss Shonah, Vicky Loras, Shelly Terrell, Callie Wilkinson, Melania Paduraru, The TEFL Tradesman... and all of you who stop by at my blog from time to time!

Last but not least, I spent way too much on new shoes. Has it become a dangerous addiction?

My New Year's Resolutions and wishes for 2010 are below, disguised in a Wordle cloud.

Hope they will all come true and wish the same to you :)

20 Xmas Cartoons

2009-12-21T08:56:00.000+01:00

There might be a teaching point in most of the cartoons but...

Because it's Christmas just scroll down and enjoy! :)

Warning - adult content ;)

Which one is your favourite?

Nostalgically about Christmas

2009-12-18T08:56:00.001+01:00

I fell in love with

Turkey

the first time I visited it in summer 2006.

A year later, I was doing my CELTA in Istanbul and got my first job there. Although I had a chance to work in Shanghai and Madrid something was dragging me to Anatolia.

Living the life of an expat is a very enriching experience. You make new friends, get to know different cultures and opinions, learn the mother tongue of the locals.

Having lived in Istanbul for over two years now I’ve done it all. Yet there is something I miss here most – Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong. Turkish people know about Christmas. You can see Xmas decorations in shops while you stroll along the malls looking for presents to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells’. You even start praising Americans for building Starbucks. The majority of Turks I know decorate Christmas trees, called here ‘the New Year’s Trees’ and give each other presents on December 31st.

Still the most important thing is generally missing – the Christmas spirit. Those of you who are Christians or were raised in a Christian country should get my point. The feeling of anxiety, the desire to be kind to people, the shopping frenzy and the overeating I disliked before are all absent. The worst thing is that it is a regular working day for a great majority of people.

I don’t blame Turks for that. In the end, Christmas is not part of their culture. It reminds of my own attitude to Halloween – a tradition absent from Polish culture. No matter how hard I try, I simply cannot start getting excited about it.

A South African colleague of mine has been living in Istanbul for over 14 years with a Turkish husband and two daughters. One of them is 13, the other - 11 years old. Believe it or not, these two girls still think Santa is real J Although all the kids in their school have been telling them that it is parents who actually buy the presents, Aybüke and Kardelen refuse to accept. Surprising?

My friend Yolanda is a wise lady. ‘Your friends don’t get presents from Santa because they don’t believe in him. Santa comes to you because you wait for him’, she always says. In a country where Christmas spirit is rare, the one you can find melts even the coldest hearts.

Merry Christmas everyone J

Bringing out the beast by Lindsay Clandfield

2009-12-12T16:01:00.002+01:00

Dear Readers,

It is my honour to invite you to read my first guest post written by Lindsay Clandfield.

Bringing out the beast

I’ve been a part of the ELT blogosphere and twitterverse for only a year now, so perhaps I’m not making a new point here, but I wonder if this medium doesn’t make us act in occasionally extreme ways. Okay, well maybe extreme is an extreme word but I’ve come across some pretty intense blogposts and comments (both on my blog and on others) that are, at times, rather aggressive and contain thinly veiled character attacks. What’s stranger is that sometimes they are from people who, face to face, are nowhere near like that. I’ve also felt myself get the urge to rant about something too (and no doubt I have, both on my blog and elsewhere).

One argument for this because people experience more disinhibition on the Internet, and feel free of adverse consequences of their words. You could say that the internet brings out the beast in some of us.

But this is only one side of the story. There is another characteristic of this social media which is precisely the opposite: that of extreme affection. On twitter, blogs and other social media I see lots of verbal stroking, encouragement, “you’re the best!” type stuff as well. Sometimes it looks like a veritable love-fest. And yes, before you ask, I’ve also caught myself getting carried away with what one colleague cynically called the “happy-clappy” spirit of it all.

Has anyone else noticed this or is it my imagination? Is there an explanation for it? Is it a man-thing or woman-thing? Does all this web 2.0 stuff give us all bipolar tendencies?

This is a little post I’ve been meaning to write for some time, and it never managed to fit into my six things format I set for myself on my other blog. So I’m glad that Anita invited me here to do a blog post for her.

Lindsay Clandfield is a teacher, teacher trainer and author. He is also a fan of lists and a godfather of L_missbossy's ELT playground. Lindsay's blog Six Things is, in my humble opinion, one of the best in the blogosphere.

Do I have an accent?

2009-12-07T21:37:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago, a very funny thing happened to me. It was late in the evening and I was coming back home by dolmuş (shared taxi) with a friend of mine. Suddenly a girl looked back saying ‘Are you Polish?’. ‘Yes’, I said, ‘How do you know that?’. ‘You speak with a Polish accent. I worked with Poles in the

, that’s why I can tell’.

The look on my face was probably priceless as in the MasterCard commercial.

You see, for a non NEST, that’s like a slap on the face.

Not that I care. Honestly. Those of you, who have actually talked to me, may voice their opinion if desired.

The dolmuş incident made me think about accents a great deal.

Is having a native speaker-like accent really that important?

Like many non NESTs I was brought up on the Grammar Translation method and I’m a living proof that it works, regardless of the bad press it has received. If you ask me about the accents of my former teachers, however, I have to say I do not recall, as they did not really speak any English during classes.

Actually, I started speaking English and paying attention to pronunciation at university when we started a phonetics class. The aim was to make us speak with an RP accent and I can still remember the ridiculous dialogues from ‘How now, brown cow’ by Mimi Ponsonby. Apparently I was very prone to drilling as, surprisingly, my score at the end of the course was pretty high.

Anyhow, one of best English teachers I had before entering the university spoke with a very heavy Polish accent. Yet she managed to prepare me (at that time a high school student from the middle of nowhere) for the English Philology entry exam well enough to pass it without major problems.

Did her accent bother us? Sure.

Was she a successful teacher? Absolutely!

How do you feel about that? Both NESTs and non NESTs are welcome to share ideas!

P.S. Having spent hours thinking and analyzing, I know why that girl in the dolmuş thought I was Polish. But I guess I am going to keep it a secret ;)