Grammar Doesn't Have to be Grey......

........so says Michael Swan, so it must be true!!

I was lucky enough to be able to attend a seminar Michael gave in Venice on Wednesday, 15th June, 2011 and have blogged about my meeting with the man himself -When Andrea Met Michael.  This post is a summary of his presentation, the title of which was 'Grammar Doesn't Have to be Grey' with the byline, 'Designing Effective Grammar Teaching & Practice Materials'.

Introduction

When it comes to incorporating grammar into our EFL lessons, we need to strike the right balance.  Non-native teachers tend to do too much grammar as it puts them in control of the class, especially if their sudents know more vocabulary than they do or if they have better pronunciation.  On the other hand, native teachers tend to do insufficient grammar, often because they don't know it!

Grammar teaching should be made up of the 'three x's' - explanations, examples and exercises with the emphasis always being on the latter because students learn by what they do, not what they are told.

Explanations

• Keep them short - 3 lines maximum
• Remember that you don't need to tell students the whole truth - students need to understand from the outset that there are always exceptions
• Make them clear - an example of how not to do it found in an English grammar book published in France: 'Modality is the coloured filter of our subjectivity through which we perceive reality.'!!
• Use L1 especially at lower levels
• Give visual support - use colour to highlight and use diagrams and timelines
• The discovery method has only limited use when explaining grammar (for example, when teaching the use of for/since with present perfect).  In most cases, students want to be told!

Examples

• Make them realistic - we have all seen ridiculous examples in text books over the years - these classics found in books used in Italy and France, for example:

                                   Birds fly high.
                                   The oxen are stepping on my feet. (To illustrate irregular plurals!)
                                   Come down from that tree so that I may kiss you.

•  Examples do not have to be illustrated in texts - you can just use simple sentences
• Texts are useful for certain grammar points - for example, in contextualising present perfect versus past simple.
• Texts don't have to have something done to them - you don't always need comprehension questions or other activities - often, a no-hassle listening or reading is enough to illustrate the point.
• Use the outside world:

                                   Signs - for example, to illustrate determiners:

                                                           Good Food Served Here
                                                           All Day.  Every Day.

                                                           Look Both Ways

                                                           No Cycles

                                   Cartoons - e.g., for negative imperative:

                                                           Marriage Guidance
                                                           Don't!!

                                   Quotations - these are memorable for reinforcing grammar points. e.g.:

                                                          Power corrupts - absolute power corrupts absolutely.
                                                                                                                       (Lord Acton)

                                   Poetry    

Exercises

• There is a place for non-communicative exercises to concept check, particularly when you first present a point of grammar.
• Exercises should be personalised - for example, when practising reported speech, ask the students, 'What did you think when you were small?'
• Use bits of real text for gap fill exercises.
• Use arrows and pictures to make students think
• Get students to use their imagination - 'Imagine a situation............... what is being done/what is not being done.'
• Ask student to write captions for cartoons.
• Use the internet - both to practise a grammar point (e.g. Find some information about a person and write sentences in simple present to describe his or her daily routine) and to check what the teacher has said (e.g. Use a search engine to check which is the more normal form, 'beautifuller' or 'more beautiful').
• Use humour up to a point - for instance, to practise will for future prediction, read some horoscopes and then get students to write their own for each other - the funnier, the better.  If students can make each other laugh in L2, it's very motivating.
• If you are forced to use a boring textbook, hi-jack it! - for example, get students to re-write boring dialogues.
• Use drawings - for example, to illustrate 'supposed to', get students to draw something (it doesn't matter how bad it is) and their classmates have to decide what it's supposed to be!
• Exercises need to be a platform for more personalised and creative work by students.

Grammar and.........

Don't think of grammar in isolation.  Think of it in conjunction with other things:

• Grammar and Culture - use poetry in the classroom.
• Grammar and Thinking - do interesting, challenging exercises which make the students use their brains logically.
• Grammar and Imagination - allow students to be creative.
• Grammar and Vocabulary - how can we help students by teaching lexical chunks?
• Grammar and Writing - for example, give students a text which uses a mixture of active and passive and get them to re-write it twice, firstly using only active and then using only passive.
• Grammar and Reading - give sentence restructuring exercises.
• Grammar and Informality - remember that informal and formal grammar is different and, if appropriate, teach both.
• Grammar and Speech - highlight the differences between spoken and written English.
• Grammar and Pronunciation - grammar consists of a lot of unstressed words - auxialiaries, prepositions, to of infinitive, etc. - which are difficult to hear, so don't forget to do lots of grammar listenings.

Conclusion

Grammar teaching should consist of:

• 25% input (explanations & examples)
• 75% output (exercises)

So, I hope I have done justice to Michael Swan's presentation.  I wanted to write up my notes for my own reference and hope that others will find them useful, too.

When Andrea met Michael

First, I must give credit to @sandymillin from whom I nicked the idea for the title of this post!   See here for her recent, memorable interview with @LizziePinard, 'When Sandy met Lizzie'.   Wait, perhaps I should also be giving credit to a much earlier movie which may well have inspired Sandy??!!  But no, let's keep this in the 'ELT' family!

So, back to 'When Andrea met Michael'..... If there is such a thing as an EFL groupie, then I'm not ashamed to say that I was one the other day.  Michael Swan, whose book, 'Practical English Usage', has been my constant companion throughout many years of teaching, came to Venice to give a seminar.   As soon as I heard about it, several months ago, I made up my mind to be there.   So it was that I was up at the crack of dawn and less than 40 minutes later, I was at the station berating my colleague for being five minutes late to meet me.   After a half-hour train journey and a 35 minute power walk across the city (allowing my colleague precisely 2 minutes to stop for a coffee and brioche en route!), we arrived at the venue.

We were greeted at the door by a smiling Robert McLarty, who was to be the second speaker on the programme. I'm ashamed to say that I was somewhat curt in my haste to get upstairs and into the seminar room so as not to miss the start of Michael's presentation!

It is often said that you should never meet your heroes as they can disappoint. So, was that the case for me today? No, on the contrary, as I am sure many of the readers of this blog who have met him before would confirm, Michael Swan is an unassuming, knowledgeable, personable, accommodating, thoroughly pleasant man! His presentation was entertaining and informative and the subject of a separate post, Grammar Doesn't Have to be Grey.

When his talk was over, all seminar attendees were given a copy of Michael's latest book, 'Oxford English Grammar Course - Intermediate', which he agreed to sign.   In the queue waiting for my moment with Michael, I heard several people musing on the incongruity of waiting to get a grammar book signed, but no-one walked away!   My (male) colleague chose not to have his copy signed, but he did kindly agree to be my photographer to record my moment for posterity!

After the whole seminar had ended (and Robert's part was equally valuable, as I have written about here), we again had the opportunity to speak with Michael and he wished me luck in my new job in Shanghai (more about that later!) and I left smiling, despite the 35 degree heat and the numerous bridges I had to cross to get back to the station.

Advanced Conversation Class - Piercings

As I tried to read my book on the bus on my way home yesterday evening, I was constantly distracted by the girl sitting in front of me. In 21st century Europe people with piercings through various parts of their anatomies are a common enough sight and, until last night, I have to say that I've been pretty ambivalent about them. Even the spectacle, many years ago, of a young male member of my staff showing off his newly pierced nipples to his colleagues, evoked in me a mere raised eyebrow and the unvoiced question as to what purpose the chain linking the two nipple rings could possibly have! (Answers on a postcard, please!) So, my opinion on this matter, as on many others, has always been, 'live and let live' - what people choose to do to their own bodies is their affair. Which is why I am surprised at my reaction to the girl on the bus!

I had seen her as I boarded the bus. I had registered the fact that she had several piercings on her face - through her nose, her lip, her ears, her eyebrow and her cheek - but had made no conscious judgement about her based on these body adornments. It wasn't until I sat down behind her and saw the piercing through the back of her neck that I found myself unable to concentrate on my reading and, more than that, found myself questioning what her motives could be for violating her body in such a way. What business is it of mine? Absolutely none, but I couldn't help myself!

Her piercing was like none I have ever seen before. It looked like a very thick  old-fashioned hatpin with a large cabochon depicting the Virgin Mary on one end, a protective stopper on the other, and a good 5 or 6 centimetres of metal hidden under her skin between the two. I wondered at first whether the 'ends' were simply stuck on her skin to give the illusion of a piercing, but no - the girl kept reaching behind her, fiddling with the pin and demonstrating quite clearly that it did indeed go under her skin.

I honestly don't know why I felt such a strong reaction against this girl's 'body art'. Was it the size of the thing? Was it a matter of where it was on her body? Was it the religious image (I'm not a particularly religious person)? I just don't know! I questioned myself as much as the girl's reasons for having it and, ever the teacher on the lookout for a lesson idea, took a surreptitious photo of it to use in my advanced conversation class! (I haven't reproduced it here because, though I doubt the girl in question would be identified through it, I didn't ask her permission and my action could quite rightly be construed as an invasion of privacy!!)

 

Thus, today, we had a discussion lesson on the pros & cons of piercings.  To encourage debate, I presented my picture, hidden in a selection of photos of piercings (one of which is reproduced here), to my class of young(ish) students and elicited their responses.  I asked them to arrange the photos on the table: firstly, in order of how socially acceptable they thought the piercings were; secondly, in order of how likely they would be to have each type of piercing themselves; and thirdly, in order of how upset they would be if their younger brother or sister came home with such a piercing.  As you can imagine, the discussion was lively, to say the least, especially as I had insisted that they reach a consensus within their groups. 

 

The results were very interesting.  There was a general feeling that the whole question was outside of their experience and that no piercing, other than through the earlobes, would ever be appropriate (I do live & teach in a very conservative northern Italian town!).  So what about the 'bolt' through the back of the neck?  Well, using reason & logic, the students generally thought that this was probably one of the most socially acceptable piercings because, as they pointed out, it wouldn't be immediately visable & it could be hidden quite easily under clothing.  However, in terms of initial shock reactions & in answer to the final question, all the groups agreed that the neck piercing was the worst.  And they were doubly shocked when I revealed that I had seen it on a local bus.........!!

 

I have to say, I felt somewhat vindicated!!

To Intermediate and Beyond...... #eltchat Summary

This is a summary of the #eltchat which took place on Twitter at 12 noon BST on Wednesday 4th May, 2011. The topic was:

What stops many adult learners from progressing beyond intermediate level?  Is there a barrier?

(Or, as the question was posed by @pjgallantry, 'Is there some kind of linguistic 'glass ceiling' which some students simply can't get through?') 

As usual, it was a fast & furious chat, but, on this occasion, it separated quite neatly in to two parts:

1. The answer to the original question

2. What can we do to motivate and help   students who want to progress, but who are finding it difficult?

Reasons why students stop at intermediate level

• Intermediate level is simply good enough for most people's needs
• Students run out of time
• There's a realisation that it's just too difficult beyond intermediate level (e.g. the exam expectations for PET & FCE are markedly different) 
• When learners hit intermediate level, they can get by in most situations & sometimes decide they don't need to improve
• Learning English becomes more tricky & time-consuming after this level
• Spiky profiles can be a barrier, e.g. poor writing skills can hold some students back
• A lack of motivation & interest
• Some students are put off by having to do more writing at advanced levels
• Some people have a propensity for languages & some don't 
• It's human nature - we start new things with a lot of interest & gradually the interest wanes
• The jump from intermediate is seen as being too high, especially when using course books
• It is much harder to sense (from the student's point of view) and to measure (from the teacher's viewpoint) progress from intermediate to advanced than it is in the lower levels
• A sense of frustration - of 'getting nowhere fast'
• Government funding for migrant English courses runs out at intermediate level leading to a big drop-out after that (this from @cioccas in Australia)
• Students are learning English for a particular reason (e.g. driving lessons) & this need is met by reaching intermediate level
• Learners have other responsibilities (e.g. work & children) which prevent them from continuing their English studies
• It's difficult for students to progress beyond intermediate level if they don't live in an English-speaking country (this was disputed!)
• Students are unable to afford private language tuition & funded upper-intermediate & advanced courses aren't easy to come by
• Many advanced level courses are exam based & this isn't always relevant/appropriate for students
• Intermediate level is often good enough to get a job, even jobs teaching English in some cases!
• Learners become demotivated due to a focus on grammar rather than on communication
• Real proficiency in a language requires a breadth of knowledge (language & culture) that many adults don't have time to invest in
• The internet is influencing drop out rates - students feel they have learned enough to be able to progress online on their own
• Students don't understand that their learning needs to 'expand' rather than progress in a 'linear' fashion during the upper levels
• Perhaps teachers need to question themselves as to whether they are to blame for students not continuing?
• @englishraven reminded us not to assume that learners just 'stop' - perhaps they stop taking classes and progress well enough without them

At the end of the first 'half' of the chat, the question was asked as to whether teachers were superfluous beyond intermediate level.  Having established that we still had a role to play (thanks, @theteacherjames!), we went on to discuss:

What can we do to help students to progress?

• Motivation is the key! (@Thamesville told us about the samurai students in Japan who truly want to master the language!)
• Perhaps our intermediate courses should inspire students to continue to the upper levels
• Aim for fluency rather than communicative ability to excite students who have reached a plateau
• One-to-one attention is important as all learners have different 'plateaus' (clearly, this is easier when teaching individuals rather than  groups
• Make an effort to make students realise that they are progressing, despite how it feels to them
• Offer non-exam based upper level courses using authentic materials rather than course books
• Compare students' work at the beginning & the end of their course to show them their progress, through a written task, a presentation, or by recording them
• Use language in as realistic scenarios & settings as possible
• Move beyond the coursebook (back to dogme again!)
• Encourage students to see English as the medium through which things are learned, rather than as a subject to be learned.  We can do this through offering courses in art, cookery, English literature, history, etc in English (CLIL in action?) As @sandymillin told us, 'What helps me is an interest in the cultural side of things... language is secondary - the way I find out more about the culture'
• Encourage students to use their English outside the classroom
• More portfolio work so that students see an improvement & can go back & mark their own work
• Give learners more say in developing materials & lesson ideas 
• Encourage self-directed & reflective learning with the classroom acting as much more of a meeting place
• Develop extensive reading or a love of music or film to motivate students to go further (the extensive reading idea proved very popular & might well be the topic of a future #eltchat!)
• Take more of a task-based, experiential approach with upper levels
• Get students to teach each other a lot more by rotating leadership in class
• Suggest that students set up their own 'English club' where they can meet & chat in English, preferably over a glass or two - we all agreed that most students' levels improve after a drop of the hard stuff!

Other points

• From @hartle - some learners are happy with intermediate level and want to maintain it (@rliberni 'if you don't use it, you'll surely lose it!'), so then we need to look at maintenance courses focusing on discussion groups with skills & some language work, but with a greater social element
• @englishraven pointed out that coursebook sales taper off sharply after intermediate level 
• It's difficult to get good teachers for upper levels - many don't do well under the spotlight & are afraid of getting caught out by difficult questions. Also, with ELT Taylorism & wage structures, the good & experienced professionals have disincentives to hang about
• @englishraven suggested that coursebooks for upper levels should be more like magazines with more content & fewer exercises. @rliberni proposed an adaptable print on demand book.
• @legyened reminded us that we should also celebrate the fact that so many students manage to get to intermediate level unscathed & with their love for English intact!
• The move from intermediate to upper levels was expressed in a metaphor by @LizziePinard - 'rather than being like a river, it becomes more like an expanding lake .... and with no current moving them along, they get sluggish to keep swimming!' I think quite a few of us enjoyed this analogy!!

In conclusion, the consensus was that many students stop at intermediate level simply because they don't need to go on and we, as teachers, need to accept this and to be there for them if and when they have a need for higher level English.  For those learners who want to continue to improve, but are finding it difficult for whatever reason, we have to be needs aware and be in a position to offer alternative learning strategies to enable them to reach their goals.

Links:

Via @cioccas 'Moving Beyond the Plateau' by Jack C. Richards - video and PDF

Via @theteacherjames - Some practical ideas to help students in this situation
Via @cybraryman1 - My motivating students page

Via @rliberni - A post about language propensity

Via @sandymillin - My attitude to learning languages

Via @pjgallantry - Research into students moving from intermediate to upper

MobiMOOC - Reflections on Week One

Well, week one of the mobiMOOC course has been inspiring, interesting, baffling, frustrating, absorbing, time-consuming, and thought-provoking - probably all in equal measure!

I have learned a lot and have found some of the links really useful.   For example, I am now fully conversant with Evernote and have become one of its most vociferous advocates almost overnight.  I have also learned (finally!) how to correctly place a link in a blog post (see previous link to Evernote!).  I am also getting to grips with QR codes, although I have to say that I am not yet fully 'au fait' with these!  I think I'm beginning to understand a lot of the terminology associated with m-learning, and I have made some useful contacts in my field of EFL teaching.  I have also been mightily impressed with Inge 'Ignatia' de Waard in her role as facilitator for week one - I don't believe she can have slept at all this week judging by her almost continuous online presence!

So, it's all been good then?  Well, no, not really!  I feel like I've had to plough through a lot of irrelevant or repetitive material to get to the useful nuggets.  As an ardent supporter of the 'Plain English Campaign', I have found some of the jargon incomprehensible.  A glossary which explained the numerous acronyms and other specialist vocabulary would have been quite useful.  This is why I was drawn to and commented on, the post by Jenni Parker when she attempted to define the terms.  She blogged about it here. 

For me, speaking as a teacher, the first rule of learning is that it should be fun.  Don't get me wrong, I take my job very seriously, but see the key to my success as a teacher as being my ability to engage my students by making their lessons enjoyable for them.  Fun has been a little lacking for me in week one of mobiMOOC.  The contributions from participants have been commendable - informative and stimulating - and yet somewhat earnest.  So, I have to say that a highlight of the week for me was watching the recording of the Elluminate Live session (I was unable to participate on Monday night due to teaching committments).  One of the contributors, John, popped up centre screen and started eating his supper, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we could all see him!  Inge made reference to the fact and John, rather than switching his webcam off, simply angled it to give us all a view of the top of his head and the ceiling.  I know I could have closed the window, but I kept it open just in case John had any other tricks up his sleeve!  Thanks, John, for giving me a laugh!!

So, am I disheartened after the first week of mobiMOOC?  No!  I will continue and I am sure I will learn more as the weeks go on.  I'm no nearer to deciding on my mlearning project, but, as this is the topic for week two, I am confident that will change.

I'll let you know this time next week!

MobiMOOC 2 April - 14 May 2011

I signed up for this free MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) about mobile learning a few days ago, having seen a link during an #eltchat about the subject on Twitter on Wednesday evening. During the said chat, I felt like I was missing something - like I wasn't really part of the gang. I was ashamed of my own ignorance, so I decided to do something about it and registered for the course.

What on earth is a MOOC? This was my first question, so I turned to the oracle that is YouTube & found several videos including this one which gave me the answer:



Having established what a MOOC was, I now had to get to grips with what mlearning was. I lurked around the mobiMOOC wiki (http://mobimooc.wikispaces.com/a+MobiMOOC+hello%21) and the group discussion pages (http://groups.google.com/group/mobimooc?hl=en). I read all the information provided by the facilitators and the posts from course participants. And then came the revelation! I'm not as ignorant as I thought I was! Unfamiliar with the jargon certainly, but not totally clueless in reality.

You see, I already engage in mlearning every day. I just didn't know I was doing it! I use my mobile phone to talk, to send & receive messages, and to take photos which I sometimes use in class. I use my i-Pod Touch to access the internet via wi-fi, to manage my contacts and my diary, to keep notes, and to listen to podcasts and share them with my students. I use my laptop to do everything else, including to write my blog. All of these things, I now understand, are mlearning!

Forgive me for being a bit late to the party, but I'm here now and I won't be lurking behind the curtains any more! I'm starting to go through the course materials and following up on links provided by my fellow participants. I'm hugely encouraged by what I have seen so far and I'm really looking forward to being more actively involved over the next few weeks.

Field Trips for EFL Students

Obviously, if you are teaching EFL in an English speaking country, then the opportunities for your students to use their newly acquired language skills are endless. Every time they leave the classroom they have the chance to practise – whether that is when shopping, eating out, travelling on public transport, socialising with fellow students of different nationalities, eavesdropping on the conversations of others, or simply walking the streets. The teacher can turn such experiences into more formal learning activities by organising field trips to the supermarket, a café, or to the cinema, for example.

The situation for students studying EFL in their own countries, however, is very different. Their classes are monolingual, so the temptation is always to lapse into their native tongue with their classmates. Outside of the classroom, students have little opportunity to speak English. As an EFL teacher in this situation, you have to be a little more creative, but if, like me, you are fortunate enough to live and teach in a place which attracts large numbers of English-speaking tourists, then you have a solution.

Taking groups of students to a popular tourist attraction and getting them to speak to tourists is a great confidence booster for them, but to get the most benefit requires some preparation. It is not enough merely to accost total strangers in the street; you need to have a plan.

For lower level students, having a questionnaire is always a good idea. That way they know what they are going to say to people, and are less likely to get tongue-tied and nervous. Writing the questionnaire is a useful classroom activity in itself, and the students can practise on each other, or on students in other classes, before venturing outside. Subjects for the questionnaires should be innocuous – reasons for visit, length of stay, country of origin, etc. Controversial topics, like religion and politics, should be avoided.

For more advanced students, general conversations with tourists should be encouraged. To this end, a range of open-ended questions should be explored and practised in class beforehand. Again, subjects which may cause controversy should be discouraged. When rehearsing the use of these questions, it is important that the teacher highlights any cultural differences which may arise between the students and the people they are talking to; which questions are inappropriate and why?; what misunderstandings could cause problems?.

Whichever level students you are dealing with, you need to role-play conversation openers before you let them loose on the public. Get them to write possible introductions and try them out on each other in front of the group. Encourage feedback – what works and what doesn’t work? I live and work in Istanbul, where tourists are often approached by strangers in the street who invariably want to sell them something. Consequently, they walk around constantly on their guard, ready to rebuff the advances of anyone who comes near. So, in the preparation for a field trip, we have to discuss ways to overcome that suspicion. It is also important to tell students not to be disheartened if they suffer rejection. This makes for a fun-filled activity with some students playing themselves, earnestly trying to engage someone in conversation, and others acting the reluctant tourist!

Having prepared thoroughly, you can launch your students onto the public! If possible, choose a location with plenty of seating – somewhere where tourists are likely to take a breather to consult their maps and guidebooks. In Istanbul, we have the perfect location – an area between the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia, where there are plenty of public benches.

In my experience, students are always nervous at first, unwilling to make that first move, but, once they have and have had their first successful encounter, particularly if it is with a native speaker, then they are delighted and want to do it again and again. Field trips such as this have, in my time in Istanbul, given the students the confidence to repeat the exercise at a later date without me being present. They have also led to friendships being made with tourists agreeing to maintain contact with students via Skype after they return home. To those people, and to all those who have had conversations with my students in Istanbul over the last two years, I offer my heartfelt thanks.

And to all tourists in foreign parts in the future, if a student approaches you and asks you to spare five minutes to help them practise their English, then please say yes. If they try to sell you a carpet, you have my permission to be as rude as you need to be to get rid of them!