Shrinking and linking (shrinkin_n_linkin) - practical techniques for teaching stress and reduced speech

Jason R Levine

This was the title of a webinar presented by Jason R Levine (@FluencyMC) as part of the recent ELT Techniques MOOC on Listening and Pronunciation.  What follows is a summary of what Jason had to say.

English is a stress-timed language.  This isn't common - most languages are syllable-timed.  We want our students to feel the stress (rhythm) of the language, and can draw their attention to it by using a bold font to show stress, for example.  However,

There's a fine line between raising awareness of pronunciation issues and raising stress (the other meaning!).

We need to raise awareness sufficiently to motivate students and follow up with loads of practice.  We shouldn't fill their heads with loads of rules.  It's usually best to follow the three Rs:

RELAX, REPEAT, REMEMBER

 

The rhythm of English is best described as 3/4, as in a waltz:

123

223

323

423

This is the beat of the language.  For example:

 

Students feel stressed.   (4 syllables)

     S         V       O/C

     1         2         3

 

The students feel stressed.   (5 syllables)

Th' students feel stressed.

 

The students are feeling stressed.   (7 syllables)

Th' students_r feelin' stressed.

 

The students have been feeling stressed.   (8 syllables)

Th' students've bin feelin' stressed.

The word order of subject, verb, object is common in English.  There are times when the word order is different, but these are exceptions - questions, passive structures, for emphasis, negative adverbials, etc.  There is a connection between the almost fixed word order in English and the rhythm of the language.  Because English gravitates to this word order, the rhythm has become 1,2,3.  This doesn't mean that every sentence is 1, 2, 3, but it does mean that this rhythm is always there.  It's in the background.

schwa

In English, unlike most other languages, each word which has more than one syllable, has a syllable which is stressed.  It's important to get learners very familiar with where the stress is - from dictionary use, from listening, and from your instruction.  Don't worry about trying to teach the more complex issues of secondary and tertiary stress.  Once students know where the stress is, the other syllables automatically become unstressed - hence the schwa everywhere!  Syllables reduce to the /ǝ/ and /ı/ sounds all the time.  It's important not to panic students about how they're going to remember all this - just make them familiar with it so that they know what sounds right and what sounds wrong.

Going back to our 'students feel stressed' example, we add in syllables to every sentence and yet the rhythm stays the same.  Just like in music, speed doesn't affect the rhythm.  You can play/say something fast or slowly, but if the time signature is 3/4, then the rhythm stays the same.

In English, when the grammar structures get more complex, they're harder to hear because the grammatical words aren't stressed.  We need to give students much more practice at listening to these kinds of sentences.  We can slow them down, but we must make sure the rhythm is maintained.  To be a fluent listener, we often tell our students they don't need to understand every word - they should focus on the content (stressed) words because they carry the meaning.  This is true, but, in order to be able to speak and write well, they also need to know the grammar words.

 

When teaching pronunciation, we shouldn't really highlight the shrinking and linking.  We should concentrate on the stressed words and, with familiarity with the rhythm of English, the reduced forms automatically become reduced.

 

Some learners think that stress changes according to how formal a situation is.  This is not true!  Stress and intonation are not the same thing. 

 

How many people are there in your family?

How many people_r there_in yr family?

 

What are you going to do on Friday?

What're ya gonna do_on Friday?

 

In these sentences, the stress or rhythm is the same, but the intonation isn't.  Intonation in informal speech (with friends) is very flat and we speak with a lower tone.  In formal situations, we usually speak with a higher tone and more intonation.  The key determiner as to whether someone sounds formal or informal, rude or polite, is INTONATION.

 

Techniques to use in the classroom

 

1.  Highlight word and sentence stress.

 

2.  Have students mark the stress after a listening task.  They already know the vocabulary and have understood the text.  Then they can listen again and mark the stress.

 

3.  Have students mark the stress before a listening task.  They try to predict where it's going to be.  Then they listen to check.

 

4.  Focus on stress in dictations:

• Dictate five sentences of authentic English - read them yourself or use a recording.
• Repeat each sentence at least three times, giving students time to write.  Do not change the speed or stress patterns.
• Ask students to write down the stressed words first.
• Pair students to compare their work and reconstruct the sentences as best they can.
• Elicit the sentences from the students or have them write them on the board.
• Ask students to highlight the word or sentence stress.
• As an extension activity, have students write responses and create dialogues or stories.

Sample dictation

1. What's the weather supposed to be like today?
2. Where do you feel like going for lunch?
3. Tell her we'll meet her around two.
4. Actually, I think I'll stay at home tonight and watch TV.
5. Do you want to meet at the library tomorrow?

Number 3 is particularly difficult - the shrinking and linking is blatant!

 

5.  Use meaningful shadowing and repetition.  Try scenes from movies and TV shows, music videos, commercials, roleplays created by students, scenes from plays and musicals, famous speeches, karaoke, poetry, limericks, jokes, tongue twisters, songs, etc.  When teaching pronunciation, we need to use repetition more as actors would when learning their lines.  Practice makes perfect!!



The 38th ELT Blog Carnival - Resolutions

Welcome to the 38th ELT Blog Carnival and the first of 2014.  As is wholly appropriate as we begin the new year, our theme is 'Resolutions'.

I'd like to thank all the participants in this carnival and all the terrific members of my PLN who spread the news about it on Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Please enjoy all the great posts!

1.  Lizzie Pinard

Lizzie is such an inspirational member of my PLN and I wasn't at all surprised when she was the first to send me an entry for this carnival.  She had an amazing year and I'm sure 2014 will be equally exciting.  Read her post here.

2.  Vicky Loras

This post from the amazingly supportive Vicky Loras has some timely advice for new teachers as we enter the new year.

3.  Eva Buyuksimkesyan

We have two contributions from Eva.  The first is a post first published in January 2012, entitled 'New Year, New Beginnings', which outlines a great lesson plan to use with students in one of your first lessons of 2014.  The second is a description of five tech tools that Eva intends to use with her classes in the new year.  Read it here.

4.  Ellen Pham

Ellen gives us a link to a New Year resolutions generator which we can use with our students.  Find it here.

5.  David Deubelbeiss

Here, David urges us all to make teaching resolutions as part of our own professional development.  For 2014, his pledge is to 'make it real'.  We also have this post from David, via EFL Teaching Recipes, describing a lesson plan on New Year's Resolutions.

6.  Sharon Hartle

Sharon shares a great lesson plan based on New Year resolutions.  Read all about it here.

7.  Jennifer Nichols

Jennifer gives us 'Five resolutions to modernize your teaching in 2014'.  There are some really good ideas here which should give us all pause for thought.

8.  Larry Ferlazzo

In this post, Larry tells us about the best ways to help make your new year’s resolutions succeed.

So, that's it!  I hope you enjoy reading the posts and please make sure you check out the next carnival which is being hosted by Anita Jankovic on her blog.

Footnote

Some readers may wonder how I can host a carnival and have no contributions of my own.  I assure you my intention was always to have a couple of posts, but, unfortunately, since flying to the UK on New Year's Eve, I have had some serious family issues to deal with and have had no time to write.  I wanted to publish the carnival on time and hope to be able to add my posts later.









 

Warmers, coolers and lesson-planning for teenagers

This was the title of a presentation given by Dave Spencer as part of the recent Macmillan Online Conference.  What follows is a summary of what he had to say.

Typical qualities of a warmer

• Short - 'against the clock'
• Interactive (pairs, small groups)
• Competitive
• Fun
• Gets students thinking in English
• Recycles/revises vocabulary
• Gets students speaking - noisy!
• Raises energy levels

Warmer - the 3-letter game

Put 3 letters on the board and tell students they have two minutes to think of as many words as they can which contain those letters (in any order).  Encourage students to think about word formation in order to increase the number of words they get.  For example,

R        T         N

train       return      north     present      presentation      presenter    presented

turn       ration       restrain  rating        nature               natural, etc.

 

This is a very simple warmer which can be done with every level.

 

Warmer - alphabet cards

 

Have a series of A4 size cards with the letters of the alphabet on them available for a range of activities such as these two:

 

1.  Class spelling - give each student a letter.  Dictate words to the class.  Students have to come to the front of the class and arrange themselves in the correct order to spell out the word.  This is physical and a good way to get students moving.

 

2.  Category scramble - put the cards on the floor in any order.  Shout out a category.  Students grab a card and must be ready to give a word in the category that starts with that letter. The last student to grab a letter, or a student who can't think of a word, loses a life.  This is an 'extreme warmer' with lots of movement and lots of noise!

 

Warmer - running dictation

 

The classic activity where students are in pairs.  One of them is inside the classroom, writing.  The other runs outside to read a text.  They have to remember as much of it as possible and run back to their partner who writes it down.  The first pair to reproduce the text correctly, wins.

 

Typical qualities of a cooler

• Individual work
• Involves concentration
• Gets students thinking in English
• Practises listening and/or writing
• Is quiet, or even silent
• Is slow - has a calming effect on students

Cooler - opposites dictation

 

Students have to write down the opposite of what you dictate.  It is up to them what they write, as long as the sentences are grammatically correct.  For example, you say:

 

'There was a young woman.'

 

The students write:

 

'There was an old woman.'

'There was a young man.'

'There is a young woman.'

 

This is a quiet activity which involves students concentrating.  When they've finished, they compare their texts - they'll be similar, but different.  You could then ask students to re-convert their text so that it matches the original.  You could use a text from the coursebook.

 

Cooler - DIY word search or crossword

 

Give students an empty word search or crossword grid and a topic and ask them to make their own puzzle.  They could just list the hidden words, give definitions, or draw picture clues.  Students can swap with a partner or they can be copied for the whole class.  Empty grids can be found online.  These are great activities as the students are doing all the work!

 

Some considerations in lesson-planning for teens

1. The topics need to be relevant, but not so relevant that they'll discuss them in their L1!  Students need to be interested and focussed.
2. There should be a variety of skills work.
3. There needs to be a variety of interaction.
4. You need to consider pace and timing.
5. Include warmers and coolers.
6. Balance - this is the key to everything!



 

Using grammar to create a good relationship

Michael McCarthy

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Cambridge English Teacher and presented by Michael McCarthy.  He should have been joined by Anne O'Keefe, but unfortunately technical issues meant she was unable to connect.  What follows is a summary of what Michael had to say.

Grammar is more than just a set of abstract rules - it can be used to create appropriate relationships:

• Forms of address (sir, madam, mate, etc.)
• Formal vocabulary (e.g. we wish to advise you....)
• Hedging and vagueness (e.g. a bit hungry, hungry-ish)
• Indirectness (e.g. one shouldn't worry, it is hoped that....)
• Using tense, aspect and modality (e.g. I wondered..., I should be grateful...)
• Involvement strategies/use of pronouns - ways of making the person you're talking to feel more part of the topic of conversation
• Ellipsis (e.g. want some coffee? you ready?)

Corpus evidence

• Cambridge English Corpus - 2 billion words
• CANCODE Spoken Corpus - 5 million words (mostly informal speech)
• Cambridge Learner Corpus - 5 million words
• CANBEC Spoken Business English Corpus - 1 million words
• CLAS Spoken Professional/Academic Corpus - 1 million words taken from a hotel management context in Ireland

These corpora give us the evidence to understand how grammar is used.  Where grammar gives us choices, the choice you make affects how your spoken or written word is received.  Look at this example which goes from direct to less direct and, therefore, more polite:

• Where's the key?
• I hope you've got the key.
• I was hoping you had the key.

Or this example:

• I wonder if you can help me?
• I'm wondering if you could help me?
• I was wondering if you could help me?

All of these sentences are grammatically correct, but small changes affect the degree of politeness.

Some verbs are more polite and less direct when used in the continuous form (present or past).  For example:

• Are you needing something?
• I was wondering if I could ask you a question?
• I was hoping you'd come to visit.
• We were thinking we should finish this by Friday.

Look at this example in context:

 

or this one:

Customers and servers work hard from the beginning to set an appropriate relationship.

 

Use of pronouns (we versus you)

 

Choice of pronouns can create closeness or distance.  In this example, the salesperson uses 'you' and 'your' to make the customer feel involved - almost as if he owns the item already:

 



In this example, we see the pronoun of involvement used in an academic setting - a hotel and catering college:

Modality

 

Modality can express degrees of formality and degrees of imposition.

 

Looking at corpora for incidences of 'can I ...?' and 'could I ...?', we see a huge difference in the number of times these are used in spoken informal English.  We can also see that there are no examples in Cancode of 'might I ...?' being used.  Corpus enables us to see the degree of formality these forms express, but also in what context they're used.

 

Ellipsis

 

Ellipsis, the non-use of items normally considered obligatory, in conversation reinforces directness and closeness.  For example:

To conclude:

 

Incorrect choices can project the wrong relationship in terms of the degrees of directness and imposition.  The grammar discussed in this webinar is all very common and is normally taught at low levels, but we need to look at it again at higher levels to explore the subtleties.  Good teaching materials should include this grammar of choice to enable students to communicate effectively.

 





 

Joined up listening – how to understand natural speech

Johanna Stirling

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Cambridge University Press and presented by Johanna Stirling.  What follows is a summary of what she had to say.

Why don’t students understand natural speech?

·         It’s too fast for them to process.

·         The words aren’t spoken clearly.

·         They aren’t listening properly.

·         They don’t know all the words.

·         They panic.

The first two are probably the main reasons for non-comprehension.

How do we teach listening?

1. Skills development:

·         predicting

·         listening for gist

·         listening for specific information

·         inferring

2. Practise

These are important, but they are not enough.  Following on from practice, we need to analyse the wrong answers.  We need to find out why students got the answers wrong. 

Micro-listening – receptive pronunciation

It's important to focus on specific parts of what the students have already listened to, as in this example from Face2Face:

Pronunciation is normally associated with speaking, but receptive pronunciation is vital for listening.

Difficulties when listening

1. Ellipsis - incomplete sentences, which are very common in spoken English, are extremely difficult for learners to cope with.  We can give students conversations like this:

 

and ask them to supply what's missing, or give them the whole conversation, listen and cross out what they don't hear:

 

2.  Weak forms - where we have strong stress on one word and the others all get squashed, it is very problematic for learners.  We need to show students weak forms to help with their comprehension.  They don't necessarily have to say it that way themselves, but they need to recognise it.

 





 

 

 

3.  Elision - when we put words together, we often lose the last phoneme.  We need to raise students' awareness of this.

 

 

4.  Linking - it's often difficult to tell where one word ends and another starts - mad_idea_about, for example.  Look at how these combinations can sound to an untrained ear:

 

We should introduce linking to our students at pre-intermediate level at the latest.  It's really never too early to show students what's happening in joined-up speaking.

 

5.  Assimilation - some sounds change when they're near other sounds.  For example, 'sunbathing' sounds like 'some bathing', 'sandwich' becomes 'samwich', and 'handbag' sounds more like 'hambag'.

 

To conclude:

 

We need to make our students aware of all of these anomalies in spoken English through the practice of micro-listening and receptive pronunciation.

 

Reference

 

Listening in the Language Classroom by John Field.







 

 

What makes a good coursebook?

Robin Walker

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Oxford University Press and presented by Robin Walker.  What follows is a summary of what he had to say.




What makes a good coursebook?

According to Tomlinson and Masuhara in an article published in the ELT Journal (67/2), a good coursebook must:

• engage the learner effectively
• engage learners cognitively
• help learners to make discoveries about how English is typically used
• help learners to use English after the course has finished
• help learners to use English as a lingua franca

Four main criteria that make a good coursebook

• Input texts (reading and listening)
• Grammar syllabus
• Pronunciation
• Language as communication

1.  Input texts

Informative - a good coursebook tells you things that you don't know.  You are improving your general knowledge as well as learning English.

Engaging - good coursebooks have texts which are relevant to students.  Students are therefore engaged and want to listen and read.  Engagement should be way beyond a linguistic level.  Students must participate in the text and discuss the issues raised as they would do in their mother tongue.  Texts need to stimulate our students.

Authentically sourced - texts should be adapted from newspapers, magazines, etc.  Totally authentic texts, with no editing whatsoever, are often impenetrable for learners, so adapted texts are a perfect compromise.  They make the text accessible and introduce the quality learning we're looking for.

THINK ------------- READ -------------- (EXPLORE) -------------- REACT

 

2.  Grammar syllabus

 

Pedagogical - a good coursebook needs to bring existing grammar knowledge out.  Students need to be able to test themselves.  If the whole class already knows a particular aspect of grammar, the teacher doesn't need to waste time - he or she can go straight on to the output exercises.  If, on the other hand, students discover that they can't do the exercises, then the teacher can spend more time presenting the grammar.

 

Communicative - there need to be exercises that allow students to use the grammar in an engaging way - to generate genuine communication.  Learning grammar and using grammar need to go hand-in-hand.

 

3.  Pronunciation

 

Pronunciation should be integrated into a coursebook, so that students can communicate.  If students can't pronounce words correctly, they can't use them effectively.  The pronunciation part of a coursebook should lead on to a speaking activity.  It should be a facilitating tool to allow students to speak.  There should be good coverage of pronunciation in any coursebook.  From the lowest levels, we need to practise not just sounds, but linking, sentence stress, connected speech, etc.

The English File app

 

A good coursebook needs to deal with sounds in contrast.  For example, /ʊ/ versus /u:/.  Also, classifying sounds and associating sounds with different things - pictures, symbols, colours, etc. - are very useful ways of helping students to learn pronunciation.  New English File does these things very well.

 

A coursebook also needs software to help students practise pronunciation in their own time - particularly, in these days of mobile devices, an app.

 

 

 

 

 

4.  Language as communication

 

Personal - the output activities in coursebooks should be personal.  Students need to be able to talk about themselves and people they know.  Teachers need to be careful, though.  Some students, particularly teens or business people, may not want to talk openly about personal matters.  In these cases, teachers need to ensure that students work in pairs or small groups.

 

Possible - output tasks should be possible.  There needs to be enough structure so that students aren't intimidated about getting into the task - give them 'useful phrases' to use, for example.  There needs to be enough for them to say.  Don't give students a too open-ended task.

 

Purposeful - output tasks need to have an outcome.  If there's no end point, it's difficult to know when the task is finished!

 

Summary

• Input texts - informative, engaging and authentically sourced.
• Grammar - flexible, pedagogical, meaningful.
• Pronunciation - integrated, thorough, varied, mobile.
• Communication - personal, possible, purposeful.

 

Teaching online

Nicky Hockley

This is a summary of a video featuring Nicky Hockley, made in her capacity as consultant for the Cambridge English teacher website.

Blended learning can be:

• only a small part of the course online
• half online
• most online
• the whole course online

Whichever it is, there are five main things to bear in mind:

1.  Which platform?

The most important factor here is to establish the aims of your course because these will inform the method of delivery.  For example, if you're teaching writing online, it would make sense to use a blog, whereas if you're teaching speaking, you might want to use a synchronous tool such as Skype.  If you're offering the entire course online, you should probably use a VLE.

2.  The livewire

The livewire are the people.  As an online teacher, you need to be present and helpful online.  You need to respond to students' comments in a forum, or written work submitted, in a timely manner.  Twelve hours is a good target to aim for.  You need to praise and encourage students as you would in a face-to-face situation.  In the beginning, you need to respond to all forum posts by students, but as the course goes on, you can respond less and less as students begin to support and help each other.  Even then, though, you should still aim to reply to about one in three posts.  If you're not going to reply to posts, you need to tell students at the beginning, so that they're not waiting for you to do so.

3.  Socialisation

Here, we're talking about getting to know each other online.  This is vital for creating a group dynamic.  You need to have specific socialising activities early on - 'My top 5', for example, where each student posts their top 5 of something.  Such socialising activities need to continue throughout a course.  Also, make sure you include pairwork and groupwork in your online course.

4.  Variety

It's important to use a variety of media - images, audio, video, etc. - and a variety of activity types - quizzes, forum discussions, getting students to produce things, etc.

5.  Start small

Start with one class as a pilot course.  Get feedback from students and evaluate yourself as you go.

Planning for the future and how we deal with it

This was the title of the first in the series of 'Jeremy Harmer Lectures' hosted by Pearson.  What follows is a summary of what Jeremy had to say.

The planning pyramid

AIMS

 

CLASS DESCRIPTION

 

 

ADDITIONAL         TIMETABLE           OUTCOMES

                 POSSIBILITIES             FIT                                                    

         

            ACTIVITIES     TIMINGS         PROCEDURES      INTERACTIONS       

 

      LANGUAGE EXPONENTS    LANGUAGE SKILLS   PERSONAL AIMS     AIDS 

   

Aims 

What students will be better able to do.

 

Class description

It's important to know who you're teaching - the size of the class, age, level, type of learner, etc. in order to be better able to anticipate problems.  Think yourself into the mind of the student, be problem ready and have solutions available.

 

Additional possibilities

Extra staff - just in case!

 

Timetable fit

How your lesson fits into the scheme of work, curriculum and syllabus.

 

Outcomes

These are difficult to plan for as we don't know what's going on inside our students' heads, but it is important to have measurable outcomes.  When the students have done the activity, what will have changed for them?

 

Activities

What will you do?  You need to vary and balance the activities to engage and motivate students.

 

Timings

Very difficult to plan accurately, though it gets easier with experience and through knowing your students well.

 

Procedures

How are you going to do something?

 

Interactions

S-S, T-S, etc.  The best lessons have a variety of interactions.  Don't worry about having too much TTT - TTT is a rich source for students' listening comprehension.  It's the quality of the TTT which is important.

 

Language exponents

Grammar, etc. - what you plan to teach isn't necessarily what ends up emerging in the lesson.

 

Language skills

What do we want students to work on?  The best lessons are often those which integrate all the skills.

 

Personal aims

It's important that the teacher has aims for him/herself, as well as for the students - action research, for example.

 

Aids

Classroom technology - whiteboard, coursebook, computer, projector, pens, IWB, etc.  It's not what you've got that matters - it's what you do with it.  Think carefully in planning about what students will use, not just you as the teacher.  Think about BYOD - using mobiles in class, for example.

 

Planning for a series of lessons using topics and themes

 

Look at this example of a series of lessons for young learners, using the topic of bananas!

 

 

 

Planning

 

How we think about a lesson (what metaphor we use) affects how we plan for it.  For example, if we think of a lesson as a journey, we plan for how we're going to get to the destination.  If it's a meal, we think about how to combine the best ingredients for maximum enjoyment.

 

The planning paradox - if you plan too much, you stifle the creativity every classroom should have.  If you don't plan enough, you lose sight of the aims.

 

Teaching unplugged (dogme) - this is where you don't plan very much - rather, you use the emergent language from the students to teach with.

 

Some say a compromise would be to plan your door into the lesson and a door out and not to worry too much about what's going to happen in the middle.

 

The planning pyramid is vital, especially for trainee teachers, but perhaps the door analogy is best for experienced teachers.  Moreover, it could be argued that the door out is more important than the door in.  People always remember more what happens at the end of something.  A teacher needs to be able to summarise what has happened in the lesson so that students take away the right message.  We need to end our lessons in different ways in order to engage and amuse students and make them want to come back.



 

 



Let's go with the first ELT Blog Carnival of 2014!!

 

Everyone is welcome to join the next ELT Blog Carnival which will be hosted here on my blog.  The theme of the 38th carnival will be 'New Year Resolutions'.  It will be published during the first week of January, 2014.

Before you get too involved in all the lovely festivities which are coming up, please take the time to share your posts on anything and everything to do with new year resolutions - lesson plans, reflections on past resolutions (successful or otherwise!), or your teaching resolutions for 2014.  Let's make the first carnival of the year a huge success!!

If you want to participate, you can use the easy submission form and send me your blog list or you can contact me from here or twitter (I’m @worldteacher) if the form doesn’t work.  If you don’t blog, you can still join in. I’ll be happy to host your posts on my blog.  I look forward to reading all your submissions!

Please make sure you visit the 37th Blog Carnival hosted by the wonderful Eva Buyuksimkesyan.

I wish you all a very happy Christmas and I'll see you back here in the New Year!



Photo by hdwallpapersinn.com

 

Teachers as writers

Tessa Woodward

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Cambridge English Teacher and presented by Tessa Woodward.  What follows is a summary of what she had to say.

As teachers, we need to make sure that all of our writing is clear and accurate.  We need to proof-read everything we write and be strict about self-editing.  As good writers, we need to use lexical variation and avoid repetition.

These are some of the types of writing that teachers do:

Writing on the board

 

We can be creative even with the most basic writing we do, as in the example above where the lesson plan is displayed as a menu, with homework as a takeaway!  We can use colour to highlight information.

 

Comments on students' work

 

We need to vary our praise words and not use 'good' all the time!

 

Lesson plans

 

These are usually written just for ourselves (unless for observation purposes), so we tend to develop our own idiosyncratic ways of writing.

 

Logs, reflective diaries and journals

 

These are indubitable proof of your own CPD and should be written in such a way that they can be referred to by others.  You can use the Cambridge English Teacher website to keep your journal.  Critical Incidents in Teaching by David Tripp is a good reference source for this topic.

 

Writing with our students

 

Here, we are talking about interactive dialogue journals, where each student has a notebook in which the teacher writes a letter to him or her.  The student replies with a letter of their own written in the notebook.  This is an ongoing conversation and serves as a record of your learning relationship.  You can read more about this in Joy Peyton's book.

 

Materials creation

• Adapting coursebook exercises - making examples more relevant to your students, for example.
• Writing your own reading texts.
• Adapting authentic texts.

Check out eltteacher2writer.co.uk.

Writing for other teachers

• Get an idea first.
• Pilot it with your students.
• Think it through and read around the topic.
• Write it down as if you were explaining to a colleague (clear and informal).
• Read it out loud to yourself and others.
• Change any muddled parts and make them better.
• Spell check, grammar check, and note the word count.
• Look around at local, regional, national and international periodicals for language teachers - look at websites for teachers, too.
• Read their guidelines as to readership, length, style, format, etc.
• Edit your piece to make it fit the periodical you've chosen.
• Send it in with a pleasant cover note.
• Expect your idea to be edited!

Remember:

• Idea first
• Then write
• Then think about publishing

It's important that your motivation to write is clear.  You should be writing for you and for your students first and foremost.  Then, you want to share your ideas with colleagues and then the wider industry.  If this is the case, then rejection doesn't matter.

 

Conclusion

 

We write a lot as teachers and we learn incredibly useful writing skills by doing it.  We already are writers!