June 2009
1 post
Side-project
Not a proper post, this - just a note to let anyone intereted that I’m going to be undertaking a project with my Young Learner classes over the next few weeks, to create a wiki which will be filled with lots of interesting videos, slideshows, presentations etc.; with these “products” being the end product of tasks which will make up the syllabus.
If that doesn’t make...
May 2009
3 posts
Power and ELT
Had a great conversation with a class of three Indian and Pakistani business students last night. We came back after a break and drifted into a chat about IELTS. From there, the conversation moved through prices of language courses and onto discrimination. The students began to tell me about their jobs and how their white colleagues are paid more than them. One day, a Filipino colleague of...
Alternative (?) principles for teaching grammar
There’s still no more divisive word in ELT (especially for novice teachers) than the “G” word. “How much”, “how often”, “how discretely”… or just plain “how” are questions for which there are plenty of answers from academia… but are still being answered in a million different ways at the chalkface.
So, in the spirit of...
On Teaching Well
In untypically symphonic fashion, I’m going to attempt to tie together a heap of random thoughts that have come to me over the past few weeks. Hopefully this doesn’t get too messy…
I’m going to start with Norbert Schmitt. You may remember that a few posts ago I wrote about the degree to which it’s helpful/necessary to control the input of vocabulary in class. Well,...
April 2009
3 posts
Chaos and control
I’ve been reading about the history of vocabulary teaching as part of the latest module on my MA; and there I’ve encountered all these interesting ideas about vocabulary control. There was a whole movement, 60 years or so back, which led to the formation of basic English, and the General Service List - two attempts to control the vocabulary which students of English were exposed...
Researching the classroom atmosphere
A question Neil Forrest, IH Barcelona DELTA tutor, always asks his new recruits:
Which of these teacher roles is the most important - social, educational, or organizational?
At the beginning of the course, most groups are divided about this; but Neil takes pride in the fact that by the end of the course, most are unanimous that the social role is the key one. During my DELTA, Neil backed up his...
Error Correction
Nick Bilbrough posted this video about error correction onto the dogme list, so I watched it. It reminded me so strongly of Neil Forrest, my DELTA tutor (and also the presenter’s) that I posted this to the dogme site myself.
I’m interested in error correction. Neil Forrest was so hot on it, insisting that we corrected students immediately and clearly, before putting students back onto...
March 2009
3 posts
2 tags
The Willises Visit
Earlier this week we were lucky enough to get a visit from Jane and Dave Willis, who came to do a session on task based methodology. An excellent session, with lots of material from one of Dave’s books - Rules, Patterns, and Words (itself an excellent book).
Even better than the session, though, was the chance to chat with Jane over lunch, and that’ll stay with me much longer than the...
3 tags
Research, Theory, Practice
Which of the above words is the odd one out?
Van Lier reckons that 9 out of 10 people choose “practice”.
Why? Did you? I did.
Perhaps we assume that theories derive from research, or vice versa, with practice being the possible (but not essential) result of these two processes. Scientists make their theories, they do their research… meanwhile those of us practicing on the...
