Practical guidance on training students to cope with authentic spoken English

This was the title of a recent British Council Teaching English seminar presented by Sheila Thorn and what follows is a summary of what she had to say.




Sheila began with a question:

Why are listening comprehension exercises in coursebooks not representative of informal spoken English heard outside the classroom?

• They are scripted - usually because coursebook writers are trying to introduce a language point.
• They are outdated - language changes so quickly.
• The speed of delivery is artificially slow.
• Turn-taking - in authentic speech, people talk over each other all the time.  It's normal!  In coursebook listenings, everyone takes turns nicely!
• There's a lack of hesitation.  Generally, there are no pauses, no fillers, and everyone speaks in full, accurate sentences.
• The accent - coursebook listenings are usually delivered in standard English.  There isn't a range of accents.
• They are recorded in sound studios, so there is no background noise.
• The people speaking are often actors, so are not as natural as people off the street would be.
• They rarely use non-native speakers of English.
• Listening in coursebooks is mainly for modelling purposes so students hear clear examples of structures and vocabulary.

A quote from Michael Rost:

 

'There is a distinction between learning to listen in the L2 and learning the L2 through listening.'

 

Coursebooks are all about learning a language through listening, but it is better to learn to listen in an L2 as a specific skill.

 

Critique of the traditional listening comprehension approach

1. It's non-communicative.
2. It's teacher centred.

• A lot of listening comprehension is testing, not training.  You're seeing how much students understand, but you're not training them to listen any more effectively.
• It's negative reinforcement.  It's always the same students who get things right and the same students who get things wrong.  Students start to feel that they're just rubbish at listening and it's difficult to break through that.
• It's boring!  Just listen and answer questions - boring!!  The texts are bland; nobody dies, nobody's on drugs!
• Listening is intangible.  Unless you've got the tapescript, it's just in the air - you can't grab hold of it.  Therefore, it's difficult for the teacher to work out why a student found it difficult.  Even when students get the right answer, the teacher doesn't know if they got there for the right reasons.
• The focus in traditional listenings is on the product - the things that were said, not how they were said.  It's better to focus on the process of listening rather than the product.
• It's over-reliant on top-down processing.  Telling students just to listen to the main words doesn't really help because those small words give meaning about time, aspect, etc.
• Just exposing students to more listening doesn't really help, either.  They won't just pick it up through osmosis!

The challenges of spontaneous speech

 

Spontaneous speech is easy for us as native speakers.  It's automatic.  For language learners, though, it's rather more difficult.  As Gillian Brown says:

 

'Every consonant and every vowel will be affected by its neighbouring consonants and vowels and by the rhythmic structure in which it occurs.'

 

You don't get dictionary-like, carefully articulated words in a stream of speech.  Something happens to them.  Ellision causes problems for listeners.

 

Some solutions to the problem

• Use short, authentic listenings on a regular basis.
• Practise listening for word recognition - can students hear individual words in a stream of speech?
• Do lots of de-coding practice.
• Do intensive listening activities on short pieces, rather than extensive listening (traditional listening comprehension) on longer pieces.
• Even tracks just a few seconds in length can generate a lot of language activities.
• With both word recognition and de-coding, follow the communicative approach.  Get students in pairs or small groups to work collaboratively on authentic recordings.

Gapping

 

Gapping key lexical/content words in a stream of speech is highly effective. 

• Can students recognise words that you know they already know in a stream of speech?
• Can they recognise functional or grammatical words?  For example, even if they don't hear the ending of a word, can they work it out from context?  For instance, 'She promised to help her with her homework.'  Do students know from context that they need to put the 'd' ending on 'promise' even if they can't hear it?
• By gapping contractions, we can make students aware of how often they feature in natural speech.
• We can use gapping to practise real life minimal pair discrimination.
• We can gap unknown words whose sounds conform to spelling conventions.

Dictation

• We can dictate short authentic extracts and compare the citation form of a word with how that word sounds in a stream of speech.
• We can use instant dictation, as advocated by John Field.  Lots of listening comprehension tests a student's memory.  We are asking them if they can remember what they heard.  In fact, when we're listening, the last ten or so words are still in our active brains - they haven't been processed yet, they are still easily accessible.  So, with instant dictation, play an authentic listening, pause it at random and ask students to write down what they think the last four or five words were that they heard.  This way, we can see how effectively students are listening and they will improve with practice.

Free-style

• Take an authentic listening into class.
• Don't give any set-up or ask any questions.
• Play the listening.
• Ask students - 'How much did you understand?'
• Get them to give you a percentage.  (These percentages should be recorded by the students and used to show their progress over time.)
• Get them to tell you what they think they understood.
• Be non-committal.
• Write the points up on the board.
• Play the listening again.
• Ask students to write down all the words they heard which they think were important.
• Get students in pairs or small groups to construct meaning from the ideas and the word lists.
• Play the listening again and give feedback on how close they were to understanding the meaning.

 

 

 

 

You could go on to a traditional comprehension exercise if you like, but this kind of activity reflects what happens in authentic listening.

Observation and your teaching staff

This was the title of the fourth in a series of monthly CPD webinars hosted by the British Council.  You can read more about the programme here.

This webinar was presented by Gillian Davidson and what follows is a summary of what she had to say.




Observations - the traditional view

Observations are often seen mainly as a quality assurance/quality control tool used for performance management, sometimes in response to student complaints.  They are usually done twice a year and teachers dread them!  They are seen as a negative, or simply a 'tick-box' exercise.

Teacher objections

• Teachers might wonder, 'What right do you have to observe me?'
• Observations are seen as judgemental.
• They are seen as an intrusion into the teacher's space.

We need to break this vision.  The classroom is the domain of the students, not the teacher.  Everything we do should be to enhance the learning for the students.  It should not be primarily for the benefit of the teacher or the observer.

As observers, we should be reacting to and commenting on the effect of the activity on the learning of the students, not on the activity itself.

Tools and Rules

Observation types

• Management - used to check performance and maintain quality.  These can be done formally at a pre-determined time or as drop-in observations for 10 - 30 minutes at a time.  In a good school, QA/management observations can be developmental as well.  They just need to be kept separate from performance management observations which are done in response to a complaint or identified problem.  In these cases, teachers need to be told that it is a performance management issue.
• Peer - a really effective tool.  Teachers learn most from observing, and being observed by, their colleagues.
• Self - this should happen after every lesson in the form of reflective practice.
• Blind - observations done with a mentor's support.

Advantages and disadvantages of each type

 Observation sheets

Using observation sheets gives focus to the observation and makes it objective.  Before choosing an observation sheet, ask yourself what kind of teacher you're observing and why you're doing it.

Here is an example of a section of an observation sheet:

Using such sheets gives a detailed overview of your teachers and keeps feedback objective and non-judgemental.  It's a good place to start with a development plan and is particularly good for new teachers.

More experienced teachers who already have a development plan can choose a specific area that they would like feedback on.  Look at this example of part of an observation sheet for commenting on teaching lexis:

With more experienced teachers, then, we may need to focus on the detail of a lesson (lexis, a particular grammar point, the use of an IWB, etc.) and will therefore need different observation sheets for different purposes.

Rules

Here are some rules for making observations developmental:

• Make time - it's so easy to put off doing observations and reduce the time you give to teachers.  You must make time.  Put observations, feedback sessions and follow-up sessions in your diary.  Every time you do an observation, you're saying 'teaching is important'.
• Give warning
• Be objective - if more than one person is responsible for doing observations, it's important that you are all observing on the same criteria.
• Behave appropriately during observations -

1. stay quiet.
2. don't pull faces.
3. take notes, but pay attention to the lesson.
4. don't interfere.
5. don't take part in the lesson.
6. use an observation sheet to help you focus.
7. focus on the learning - what you like and don't like is irrelevant.  All that matters is whether the students like it and whether they are learning.  You are not watching the teacher as a person, but as how the teacher is affecting the learner.

• Feedback promptly - choose your language carefully during feedback.  Be as objective as possible.  Don't use 'I liked.....', 'I felt that.....', etc.  Instead, use 'I saw....', 'You did....', etc..
• Follow-up - the feedback should always include ideas and suggestions, things to do, an action plan.  So, the follow-up is very important - it is what makes an observation developmental.  The teacher needs to write something about what they did and how it worked out and then he needs to sit down and discuss it with the observer.
• Value the process!! - Don't let observations be a 'tick-box' exercise.

Giving feedback

• Make it useful - it's no good to say, 'yes, it's fine'. 
• Make it balanced - teachers can only take so much criticism at any one time.
• Make it reflective - reflection is one of the most difficult things to do and teachers need to be trained not to look at the lesson as a whole, but to break it down.
• In written feedback, use 'you', rather than 'the teacher' or 'Susan'!!
• Agree a development plan.
• Keep records.
• Follow-up.

The Observation Process

 

 

 

Promoting CPD in your schools

This was the title of the third in a series of monthly CPD webinars hosted by the British Council.  You can read more about the programme here.

This webinar was presented by Gillian Davidson and what follows is a summary of what she had to say.


 



Why do CPD?

Penny Ur said of CPD, 'It's the difference between five years' experience and a year's experience repeated five times.'

Some teachers never develop - they just keep repeating what they've always done. As educators we need to lead by example and keep on learning.

Benefits for teachers

• Increased job satisfaction; motivating and interesting.
• Broader knowledge, skills base and ability to self-analyse.
• Ability to take control of development and career planning.
• Develop transferable skills.

Benefits for the school

• Establish career paths, which make us more attractive employers.
• Enables us to respond to customer needs effectively and promptly.  This means that we can guide teachers in areas where students want changes.
• Improved student feedback and staff retention.
• Enhanced reputation leading to better staff recruitment.

What constitutes CPD?

• workshops
• seminars
• training
• conferences
• observations

We need to differentiate between training and development.  

 

Training is required when teachers need to learn a new technique or skill - when interactive whiteboards are introduced to a school, for example.  Training is what you need to be able to do your job.

Development, on the other hand, is what you need to continue to improve in your job.  If you have a school with lots of experienced teachers, training is not such an important part of CPD.

 

What prevents effective CPD?

1. Time - everyone is too busy!  We need to make time for CPD.
2. Money - conferences can be very expensive.  Some teachers are reluctant to do CPD if they consider it to be unpaid work.
3. Difficulty - genuine and effective self-reflection is very difficult!

CPD activities

• Teacher conferences (e.g. IATEFL)
• Local CPD groups
• In-house CPD sessions - attending and running them
• DOS observations - teachers working together with their DOS to identify areas for improvement
• Peer observations - one of the most effective ways to learn
• Pop-in observations - short observations to see a variety of lesson types
• Self-observation
• Reflection - via a lesson journal, for example
• Online support - blogs, portals, publisher sites
• Idea sharing groups - in school and online
• Mentor/buddy system
• Trial one day a week - find something new to try out in class one day a week and reflect on whether it worked or not
• Shared board in the teachers' room for lesson ideas - the one-page lesson synopses from the British Council, for example
• Reading
• New projects - courses, teaching a new level, etc.
• Action research
• Writing articles - if you write about something, you think about it more

Remember, a lot of the CPD is FREE!!!!

 

What do we need to make CPD happen?

 

Teachers need to feel excited about development.  We need to create an external culture of CPD in our institutions and, by doing so, we hope to create an internal culture within each of our teachers.  We can't force an internal culture, but we can create an environment which encourages it.

 

Creating the culture

 

We can do this by:

• Incentivising
• Creating a clear link between a teacher's performance plan and appraisal.  (CPD must be seen to be expected, not optional.)
• Showing the value of CPD
• Rewarding achievement (this reward doesn't have to be financial)
• Leading by example - the manager should be seen to be taking control of his or her own CPD
• Analysing the beliefs and behaviours of our teachers to help us to help them to make their plans
• Acknowledging and encouraging

Individual CPD needs

 

The desire for CPD needs to come from within.  Otherwise, it becomes a 'tick-box' exercise.

• Performance plans - teachers need to set their own goals.
• Self-directed - guided by the DOS, but the basis should come from what the teacher wants.
• Stage of career - a teacher will need more training early on in their career and more development later.
• Career goals and plans
• Stage of personal life - there are times when CPD needs to go on the back burner for a while.
• Feedback - needs to be structured and must acknowledge and recognise effort.

Classifying beliefs, behaviours and performance

If teachers lack confidence, they don't put the effort in because they fear failure. At the other end of the scale, teachers who are over-confident feel they know everything already so don't need to make an effort.  In both cases, performance is poor.  Effort is key to improving performance.  The harder you try, the more you move towards success.

 

We need to consider where our teachers lie on this bell curve and adjust our approach accordingly.  If teachers have no self-confidence, we need to boost it before setting them free with their CPD plan.  Equally, if a teacher is over-confident, we need to control that before allowing them to plan their own CPD.

 

Validity of CPD exercises and activities

 

Any CPD exercises and activities need to be seen to be contributing towards a teacher's CPD.  We can't expect a teacher with 20 years' experience to turn up to a workshop intended for post-CELTA recruits.  They won't see any value in it and they will be turned off when it comes to other CPD sessions.

 

We need to make sure that CPD plans are individual.  It's very unlikely that we'll run a workshop that every teacher in our school or department is expected to attend.  That would be like running an English class for elementary to advanced students.  We need to consider putting our teachers into 'levels' for their CPD, perhaps by using the British Council framework.

We also need to remember that our recognition as managers of a teacher's effort adds validity to any CPD activity.

 

Acknowledge and encourage

• Keep it simple - some teachers are happy to spend time writing self-reflection notes, but others aren't!  CPD should never be something a teacher resents.
• Give prompt feedback
• Recognise effort as well as results - not everything you try works! However, something that doesn't work can be just as valuable an aid to development as something that works really well.
• Reward - by asking a teacher to deliver seminars to the rest of the staff or to mentor a new teacher, for example.  Make sure, though, that this is considered to be a reward and not simply even more unpaid work!
• Check in regularly - write annual CPD plans, but meet with a teacher every three or four months to assess progress

Tips for implementing a CPD programme

• There should be something for everyone - one size does not fit all!
• There should be a system for aiding reflection.
• It should be teacher driven - the manager can feed in ideas, but the teacher must agree.
• Performance issues should be kept separate to CPD.  Once CPD is linked to performance, it becomes unattractive to the teacher.
• It needs to be linked to an appraisal system.
• There should be regular meetings between the teacher and line manager when they sit down together at an agreed time.

Classroom based teacher development

This is a summary of a webinar I attended recently.  It was presented by the wonderful Willy Cardoso (@willycard on Twitter).  You can read more on Willy’s blog: authenticteaching.wordpress.com.

So, how can we develop as teachers whilst we are actually doing our jobs?

Observation Tools

1.    Video recorder

Ø  Watch yourself teaching. 

Ø  Record your lesson, or ask someone else to. 

Ø  Give students the camera to record the lesson for you.  Get them to pass the camera around.

Ø  Record activities – group work and pair work, for example.

Ø  Develop a culture of having a camera in the classroom.

Ø  Watch the videos back with the students and talk about what’s happening.

2.   Audio recorder

Ø  Have a mini recorder in your pocket to record secretly.

Ø  Listen to yourself later.  Yes, your voice is horrible – get over it!!

3.   Colleagues

Ø  Peer observations – observe your peers and encourage them to observe you.

Ø  Describe, don’t evaluate.

Ø  Discuss later and ask/explain why things were done.

Ø  Could use these occasions to count things, e.g. number of corrections per student.

Involve Learners 

1.   Give them an observation task

Ø  Use questionnaires or set a specific question, e.g. How many times did the teacher correct me in this lesson?

Ø  Data can be used for learners’ reflection and development as well as the teachers’.  For example, ‘Was there little correction because I didn’t speak very much?’  ‘Am I too good for this class?’

Ø  From the teacher’s point of view, ‘Why did I correct this student more than the others?’  ‘Why does this student think I corrected him only three times when I know I did it six times?’  ‘Should I be more explicit with my error correction?’

2.   Discuss pedagogy

Ø  Everyone thinks they know how to teach!

Ø  Encourage learners to discuss how they’ve learned something other than English.

Ø  Find out what students think about teaching and learning and use the information to help with your own development.

Validity of Bottom-Up Knowledge

Documentation is very important.  Share the knowledge and make it available.

1.   Portfolio

Ø  As a teacher, you should build up a portfolio like an architect or a designer would have!

Ø  You should include – photos, lesson plans, student testimonials, blog articles, videos of your teaching, certificates of attendance, etc.

2.   Blog

Ø  A blog can be your best business card!

Ø  It doesn’t really matter whether it’s good or not, but it advertises the fact that you are a developing teacher.

Ø  You can use your blog to reflect on your lessons.

Ø  A good blog can also show what kind of knowledge you have.

Ø  Blogs bring teaching down to the chalk face – they reflect what is really happening in the classroom and contribute to the body of knowledge of our profession.

3.   Workshop

Ø  Start small – within your own institution or even just for yourself or a few colleagues.

Ø  Share things you find out.

Ø  Try to develop yourself by creating materials that can be useful for others.

Critical Teacher Development

1.   Uncover/unpack

Ø  What is behind what we do?

Ø  What principles and beliefs underlie the metaphors we use to talk about teaching and learning?

2.   Localise

Ø  Localise the lesson in its social and political context.

3.   Be self-critical

Ø  Beware of the Apprenticeship of Observation 

Ø  Our training and development as teachers began with the very first lesson we ever had as a learner.

Ø  Be critical of ourselves – the technology we use, the jargon, etc.

ELT Tomorrow - a summary of Jun Liu's IATEFL 2013 plenary

This is a summary of Dr Jun Liu's plenary on the future of ELT.  You can watch an interview with the man himself here and his presentation in full here.

To talk about the future of ELT, we need to look at the future in general:

The future is already here.  While machines will replace humans in some tasks, they'll also amplify us, enabling us to do things we never dreamed of doing before.  We'll enter a new kind of partnership - one that will shed light on the unique comparative advantages of humans: thinking, creativity, spontaneity, adaptability and improvisation.  Technology has enabled us to multi-task.  We do multiple things at the same time.  So, machines don't just replace what we do; they change the nature of what we do.  By expanding our capacities, they set new expectations about what is possible and set new performance standards.  Our tools change us.

These are the future changes predicted by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies:

For example, the population is increasing in developing countries and decreasing in developed countries.  Clearly, this will impact on English language teaching.
  Leadership Skills

In the past, teachers were responsible for their students only.  Now they need to consider what is going on in other levels and collaborate with their colleagues.

What is the future of education?

We are working in a global learning economy.

'The globalisation of open learning systems..... will change how educational institutions view their roles and will offer new forms of value in the global learning ecosystem.'

2020 Forecast: 6 major drivers of change

1. Altered bodies - experimenting at the intersection of environment and performance.
2. Amplified organisation - extended human capacity remakes the organisation.
3. Platforms for resilliance - creating flexibility and innovation amid system failures.
4. A new civic discourse - rearticulating identity and community in a global society.
5. The maker economy - personal fabrication technologies plus open-source principles democratise production and design.
6. Pattern recognition - an extremely visible world demands new sensemaking.

All of these changes will impact what we do as teachers.

The three domains of ELT

 

All of these fields will be globalised.

 

ELT as a profession

 

The community of skilled practitioners who are actively involved in TESL or TEFL:

• instructors
• researchers
• curriculum designers
• materials developers
• teacher trainers
• administrators
• tutors
• test developers
• policy specialists

Anyone who makes or influences pedagogical choices in the language classroom.

 

Attributes of a profession

 

From Elliott Judd's 40th anniversary TESOL presidential plenary:

1. Has a body of knowledge
2. Has a prescribed regime of licensing for members
3. Sets a code of ethics and standards
4. Has authority
5. Has autonomy
6. Has power
7. Has status and privilege
8. Is altruistic and serves the public
9. Is a full-time lifelong commitment
10. Forms professional associations

Not that long ago, most English language teachers had no training whatsoever.  Now, there's lots of training available.

 

What's affecting the future of ELT?

 

To try to predict the future of ELT, Jun Liu looked at more than 40 years' worth of articles published in the TESOL Quarterly journal and identified the top ten issues affecting our profession:

1. Language skills
2. Language knowledge (including grammar and pronunciation)
3. Methodology
4. Language learning and the learners
5. Language policy
6. Language use - sociolinguistics
7. Assessment
8. Teacher development and education
9. Curriculum and materials design
10. Second language acquisition



There are four recurrent themes which are all inter-related:

1. Language policy/standards
2. Language learners and learning
3. Curricula and teaching materials
4. Teacher learning and development

We are in a time of migration and globalisation.  We need to redefine the role of English and legitimise varieties of native English.  We need to consider intelligibility and cross-cultural appropriateness.

'The majority of human interactions do not involve an English native speaker.'

Graddal 2006

 

74% of communication in English is NNS to NNS.

 

Redefining English

 

We have so many types of English now as identified by the following acronyms:

• English as an international language (EIL)
• English as an world language (EWL)
• English as an global language (EGL)
• English as a lingua franca (ELF)
• English as an additional language (EAL)
• English as everyone's language (EEL)

The majority of English language teachers are NNSs.

English for young learners (EYL) is a growing area.  These students are digital natives and teachers need to adapt to this.  Learners often have no interest in activities that don't have the same excitement as a computer game.

We need to introduce varieties of English that teach global/inter-cultural competence.  We need to understand who our students will be communicating with.

The six abilities of a competent English teacher

1. Make constant and effective changes

We need to try new practices in order to question our beliefs and perhaps change our behaviour.

• Innovation will drive success
• The qualities and skills that define a successful language professional today may be entirely different by 2020
• Strive to cultivate adaptability and effectiveness
• Resist relying on practices and assumptions merely because they were acceptable in the past

English teachers are constantly challenged:





 

2. Learn and speak at least one other language

 

In the future, companies will employ more bilingual or multilingual employees so there's a threat to native speakers growing up in the USA or UK.  If they don't learn a second language, they might lose out to multilingual applicants from overseas.  So, there's a huge need for learners to know more than one language and it's useful for teachers, too.  Plus, learning another language puts you back in the role of learner and gives you more empathy for your students.

 

3. Teach less to maximise learning

 

'Learning is most effective when the learner is the initiator of the learning process.'

McLean 1980

 

Our role as a teacher will change to become a:

• scaffolder
• supporter
• facilitator
• conductor



We will help students to explore the learning process rather than teach them what to do.  Students find learner-centred teaching intrinsically motivating.  Teachers should gradually move towards more non-directive approaches.

 

4. Teach English in at least one subject area

 

We're not just language teachers anymore.  Teachers who are knowledgeable in at least one other subject will be more employable in an increasingly competitive job market.  We need to have an integrative perspective on the role of English in the classroom.  General English teachers at tertiary level might not have jobs in the future as high school students enter higher education with IELTS band 7+ already.

 

5. Familiarise oneself with new learning and teaching modes

 

We need to be technologically prepared to work with digital natives.  We need to reimagine ways of learning and teaching English:

• handheld learning
• e-learning
• classroom technology
• digital textbooks
• digital English - extensive exposure to English input
• net-based teaching
• digital teaching resources

6. Ensure learning outside the classroom

 

We need to break the association between learning and schooling and create learning opportunities for our students outside the classroom:

• online learning
• self-paced learning
• one-to-one learning
• handheld learning
• mobile learning
• collaborative learning
• time-shifted learning - any place, any time
• synchronous/asynchronous learning
• blended learning

 

#eltchatters discussed Jun Liu's 'Six abilities' on April 17th.  I summarised the chat here.

 

Final thoughts

 

Changes are inevitable - we need to prepare ourselves for them.  We need to turn our original pyramid upside down.  After all, teachers are leaders too!!