Learning to Teach Better

Slide p 59/64 Social media and literature have really played a significant role in my classes. I have also used both in tests. Please take a look at ex 3 below.

For error correction I tend to use the most frequent type of correction, recast. I believe I use it because it's quick and doesn't harm fluency and communication entirely. But like Penny Ur mentioned, this type of correction all the time may be ineffective and may I add fall on deaf ears most of the times. Research shows that the best correction methods are elicitation, metalinguistic feedback and explicit correction so I feel I need to use more of these methods when correcting my students. Also, sometimes I let errors go by uncorrected mostly because I consider them minor or unimportant errors but there are times when students notice them and correct them. Perhaps it's best the teacher corrects all errors and not the students because it could come across as if the teacher wasn't listening or doesn't care and because learners would rather be corrected by the their teacher than their peers as research shows.

I would like to comment on reading out loud and on guessing from the context tips. For the first one I would like to suggest my method. At first, me, the teacher read the text aloud so that students grasp the pronunciation. Then, I give time to students to read it silently in order to understand it and asnwer the clarification questions. In the end, I ask students to read it again aloud, play roles or change their voices in order to practice pronunciation too. This technique concerns younger students. As far as the guessing from the text is concerned, it is very amusing to let the students' imagination come in surface.

You can check the common usage of words using Google Ngram and trace its history since the 1800s until 2008. I hope they continue it to count the last 10 years, as I am sure there have been some significant declines and increases. My students often say "persons", so I have used this as an example. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=persons&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cpersons%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=persons&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share&direct_url=t1;,persons;,c0

Hi Penny and everyone, week 4 live session was also full of useful insights and interesting tips, I learned a lot! Reading aloud Most of my students like this activity. In some of my classes, most of the students are really enthusiastic when it comes to reading aloud, they would ask me if they could read the text for the class no matter whether it’s a new text or one that they had already been familiar with. And I always thought that reading aloud was more student-centered. So, whenever we had a reading lesson, I always asked students to take turns reading the text for the class. After Penny’s 4th session I came to realize that it doesn’t always work that way (student-centered). Asking students to read aloud a new text (doing sight-reading) may not be very helpful as they may make mistakes in pronunciation, intonation, etc, and therefore they may not be able to understand the passage very well and at the same time they may also make it difficult for others who listen to have a good gr...

This year I have face to face lessons with a 10 year old girl. I don’t believe I have ever had a student that is so eager to do speaking activities ! She enjoys them immensely! The grammar book we are using has many speaking exercises to practice specific grammatical structures one at a time. We sometimes pretend we are on tv interviewing each other about various things eg daily habits etc, future plans etc.. Great for accuracy and fluency practice. With some imagination and humor added we have a fun time. I’m quite lucky to have such a student!

Last week, I approached a grammatical exercise following Penny’s advice about giving the students all the answers and then I asked them if there was something unclear. For me, it was a new technique and the students were surprised because in our teaching culture, we are not used to do so

Since we are talking about L1 I would like to share my experince with you. I am a Greek teacher of English and when I used to teach grammar in my lessons, my students found very hard to undestand the causative form since it does not exist in their L1. So, in order to assist them understand the phenomenon I used examples of L1 otherwise almost no one could use the form. Thus, I believe that L1 in some cases in necessary.

Another website I have encouraged my students to use for writing practice is Write and Improve by Cambridge English. They choose a topic to write about - beginners, intermediate, advanced or Just for Fun, write their text then get instant feedback for how to improve it before submitting a final copy. There is also a section for IELTS. https://writeandimprove.com https://writeandimprove.com

For those of you teaching young learners and teens and you'd like to give your students some authentic writing and reading practice, we have used this digital pen pal website before. You can choose a course for your class to join then it matches them with other students from around the world who are similar in age and interests and can be as young as 8 and as old as 18. They then interact by responding to each other's comments and questions on the course. There is a great range of topics such as Fake News, Protecting the Planet, Robotics, Festivals and Cultures lasting from 1 to 6 weeks. One of our classes signed up to a course about Pakistan to tie in with Malala Yusafzai's book which they were going reading afterwards. https://www.penpalschools.com https://www.penpalschools.com

Teaching corporate students and THOUSANDS of PAs, I often come across the use of acronyms in emails or instant messaging. Today's session has provided a considerable number of inputs for my future lessons (eg. re-writing words in full or viceversa - turn a message in its 'sms' version). Thanks a lot, Penny! :)

Personally, I’m terrible at teaching stress and intonation! That’s why I found the video proposed by Penny totally inspiring. When I started learning English 26 years ago, learning dialogues by heart was a must! I can still recall the very first dialogue I had to memorize, it was a perfect tool to acquire the correct pronunciation of a foreign language. Unfortunately, learning stuff by heart, together with drilling and using L1 in class, has been rather neglected by the more modern, communicative teaching techniques. Wrong. Learning by heart chants and dialogues and using them as a basis for the students’ own speech, so they can reproduce pace and intonation without mistakes, is a gem of an idea I’m going to use soon. It’s morale-boosting not only for the students, but for me as well!

I’ve always supported the role of L1 in apprehending a foreign language, and, when possible, I try to use the students L1, especially to translate some vocab items. Some student’s books are accompanied by word lists downloadable from the Internet for free, where the students can record the translation of the key vocab of the unit, creating their own, personalized glossaries. Unfortunately the overuse (or misuse) of online dictionaries, easier and quicker, but not always reliable and often misleading, could jeopardize the outcome of the activity.

I've finally finished watching the video from Week 4 and I'm just so very happy to have done this course. Lots of food for thought, numerous practical tips and ideas and a fabulous constructive community. Huge thanks to Penny and all of the iTDi team! I'll certainly be recommending future courses to colleagues and trainees.

Hi Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto, I didn't receive the email with the PDF of the slides and the Text Chat from Week 3. Could you email it to me or tell me how to access it? I've really enjoyed the course. Thanks so much for all your help. Francesca

Thank you Penny for the great tips and for 4 weeks of information and ideas. I will be thinking about and implementing much of the advice as I'm sure the other participants will be doing as well. For me, this week had some interesting ideas about reading and check comprehension. For example, I really enjoyed reading out loud and guessing new words by context when I was a student because it was almost like a game. However, I also have vivid memories of some of my classmates painfully stumbling over words (even though we were all native speakers). I hadn't really thought about those kids before even though I am sure some of them exist in my classes now. While I wouldn't remove it altogether, I will think more carefully about when and how I ask students to read aloud. As for comprehension questions, I had the same experience when I was studying Japanese in university. I usually get around it with my students by asking them to perform some task based on the reading (usually deb...

Hi everyone, sorry for being so late, been really tied up these recent weeks. Anyway, week 3 live session was super! there are lots of takeaway points for me. Things that I’d been trying to find the answer and my doubts in making inappropriate decisions in teaching were addressed, explained and justified by Penny in the live session. Error Correction I like it when Penny elaborated on the aspects on how our teaching judgement should be taken into account when correcting students’ mistakes during fluent speech communication. I’ve been told, and also many people say, to never correct students’ mistakes during fluent-speech communication because that can disrupt the flow and the momentum of the ‘activity’ as well as discourage students and destroy their confidence. And I don’t always agree with this opinion. In some cases, I correct students’ mistakes during their fluent-speech. My biggest concern to this is I don’t feel like it’s right to let students get away with those mistakes, espec...

Hello everyone! I'm so sorry I couldn't be there live during the last couple of recordings. Just finished watching Week 4 and I had to stop myself from typing my thoughts and praise for all the fantastic ideas shared into the chat box, so here is my (lengthy) response to another excellent session! There were plenty of great activities to try out for teaching reading, some of which have confirmed my own beliefs, such as Tips 1 and 2, not letting students read a text aloud if they've never seen it before and pre-reading for them. It is incredibly daunting reading aloud in a foreign language anyway, let alone something they haven't come across previously, especially for weaker students. One of mine doesn't even like doing it in her own language, so much so that the school told us not to force her to read things aloud (English is ok though, apparently!) TTT is again called into question here, but these are incredibly useful tasks for our learners! I always let them hea...

Sorry for being soo late. Actually, I would like to share my experience with older classes. Of course for the young students it is amazing to use jazz songs and songs in general and that is the reason why I always teach the alphabet with a song, but also it is very very usuful with older students too. I made an experiment as I was not so sure if adults find childish to leran the alphabet through songs. So, in one group (A) I taught it with a song, whereas in the other (B) with cards mainly. The group A learnt it 4 times faster than the other group. Thus, I highly recommend songs!!!

I have not received an email with week 4 recordings/PDF. Can you please verify?

READING In the Reading section the ‘don’t do guessing from context’ is the most interesting point for me. I believe once upon a time I came across some research which claimed that it was not the most effective technique, so this idea has not come as a surprise for me. However, I think it might work at least partly, which can be enough when reading for gist. What I do not quite understand though is why asking which part of speech the word is doesn’t add to the comprehension. From my point of view, if a student doesn’t / can’t pinpoint the part of speech, they are not able to use even a bilingual dictionary correctly as the meaning quite often depends on the part of speech. Moreover, when it is time for them to use the word, they won’t be able to use it correctly in a sentence of their own. WRITING I really like the idea of brief writing tasks to do in class. Most of my students seem to find writing one of the most challenging types of activities (even more challenging than speaking), so...

Business Result series offer interactive online resources where you can work with texts. One of the activities is called a TEXT BUILDER, wher you can read the text, take some of the words out and write the missing words in again.

Session 4 was full of useful tips , I’d like to share my views and experience on reading aloud and guessing meaning from context as these two points resonated powerfully with me, my colleagues and other teachers in the community. READING ALOUD I have been dealing with reading aloud a lot in my teaching. On one hand a lot of students asked for reading aloud because they feel, as Penny mentioned in her talk, it’s part of their learning culture, they are used to it and like it. On the other hand, I clearly saw that reading aloud focuses on decoding and production rather than comprehension. I decided to accept the request from the students to read aloud in some situations showing understanding of their needs and preferences. I do believe that sometimes students are right and the teacher should follow their requirements to be student centered. However, I do explain a lot what is happening when they focus on reading and not comprehension. I show the logic behind reading for gist and detail,...

I think instead of commenting on the tips I just want to say that this online experience has been great!! I compare it to an all day workshop at a conference. In reflecting on what took place and how much learning took place I can honestly say that this gives F2F workshops at conferences some serious competition. I love going to conferences..... But - I found the extended time between sessions gave me time to reflect and think and try out and read other's posts -and communicate in a real way...I'm a little surprised at that. Of course the presenter is always key but I felt real communication, respect, appreciation happening between participants. The comments and replies were real - not just something that had to be done because of a requirement. Hmm - peer teaching. Of course!! Just like what happens in our classes. It was a privilege and joy to be part of this experience with you all. I wish you all happiness and success in your different places. Thank you for your generosi...

One useful way to teach is to use dominoes for different grammar/vocabulary items. The one attached is for echo questions, but it could be done for prepositions (I thought ...... about this and I prepared..... for the project), question tags, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms etc. It could be made easily at home and I personally like to laminate and cut the ones I know I would be using more than few times.

Hello everyone! So sorry for not writing earlier, it was a hectic week! I would like to comment on the first reading tip. I usually never ask students to read out loud with the exception of total beginners, since my goal there IS to practice pronunciation and text are usually quite short, so it doesn't take much time. Students in Serbia are used to reading out loud, so higher levels usually feel surprised if they read silently. The tip that really took me by surprise is number 3 - guessing from the context. I usually do Face 2 Face course books (huge fan, I must say) and they even have texts whose purpose is guessing from context. They do that with grammar as well and I am pretty used to it. I actually get two opposing ideas from my students - on one hand, they don't like to guess from context because it makes them think and reread and they prefer just to be given the words. On the other hand, higher levels have told me that they could read an unabridged English book with very ...

Does anyone know of any good activities to practice the past simple? I'm teaching a Syrian refugee who has been here for a few years but I'm stumped for how to approach this because usually it's related to personal stories and experiences and we don't know each other well enough yet to broach his past. One activity book at school featured a speaking game with bomb and military tanker cards with past tense verbs and questions on it. I wish I was making this up! I'm shocked at how Eurocentric and downright inappropriate some books can be! He likes reading so maybe I can base it around the last book he read?

Thank you Penny for another fantastic week. Tip 1 on not asking students to read aloud was a really good reminder and made me think of so many language classes where we'd squirmed as students when called upon! The first language school I worked at also had us ask students to read silently but themselves but this was mostly recommended for shyer students and/or those with less confidence. On the occasions where I did get students to read aloud, it was often with the (misguided?!) notion that it would help them to practice/improve pronunciation, as well as identify difficult/new words. It was really good therefore to see you spell out the dangers so clearly, and all issues often applied! "They may make mistakes in pronunciation • They find it difficult to get the prosody right (timing, pausing, stress) • They may not speak clearly • ... so they won’t help other students to understand." Tip 2 on getting students to follow while you read works well with my students, too. In a...

Hello, everyone! Just catching up with the last two weeks and I'm quite disappointed I couldn't get involved in the discussions on the day! Penny's Week 3 tips have really made me question my beliefs on error correction and the use of L1 a great deal in terms of what and when to correct. There is the tendency not to interrupt students or ask others to chime in for correction, and L1 is practically non-existent in my lessons as a rule except with beginners (and even then, I try to encourage students to help themselves because I'm not entirely confident using German for fear of citing the wrong word...French is somewhat easier, however) What to do with such conundrums? I am still mulling over the points made but Penny has without a doubt shown that despite what teacher training and research may believe, there are no rules and we should trust our professional judgement while ensuring that the methods implemented are suitable for our learners. Most points have resonated wit...

Hi, I would like to thank Penny for her tips. To be honest, I was teaching writing and reading in a wrong way. for instance, I used to ask my students to read the text aloud and guess meaning from the context. I will definitely use the tips for effective reading and writing teaching. In Tunisia, technology is not used in teaching. But, I like your idea of using texting messages to improve spelling.

Chants for grammar lessons are great! It helps learners to memorise rules especially the pronouns. If your L1 is like mine which we don’t have gender-specific pronoun, it’s challenging for learners to memorise pronouns what else to put them into use. I have always wanted to do chants. I even have my lyrics ready but the problem with me is that I am a bit tone-deaf. I have different rhythm in my head yet when I say it out loud, it turns out to be a total disaster. Can anyone suggest me a simple yet interesting way to chant for a tone-deaf?

The idea that learners do not like to be corrected by peers should be given more attention as it is often overlooked by teachers. Talking from my personal experience, when I was a student, I refused to participate in any whole class discussions or even share my opinions during group works in English lessons. The reason was because of my classmates who kept on correcting me. Honestly, I felt threatened ... and stupid. Unlike most of my classmates, both my parents weren’t well-educated thus English is an alien language at home. I learn English solely by reading hence my poor pronunciations and grammar. So when my classmates kept on correcting me, I was demotivated. Fast forward few years later, I went abroad and mixed with people of different nationalities. They have never corrected me and this helps me gain my confidence to use English. How did I improve? When I’ve gained my confidence to use English, I become aware with how the language is used and also its pronunciation. Hence it’s tr...

Thanks for all the insights and interactions everyone - it's been great to meet you all, even if it's 'virtual'. It'd be great to keep in touch and see how everyone progresses in their teaching and teacher development. I will be starting an MA in ELT in early 2018, so I've got some busy times ahead! In addition to that, I hope to keep my teaching blog updated (haven't had much time for it recently) and I'm looking at the conference schedule to see if there's anything worth attending next year. I presented at conferences for the first time this year (it's worth it if you've never done it before - it does help you to focus on your research), though I'll probably go back to being an active attendee for a while. On the non-teaching front, I'll be taking a short break with my family around Christmas to a spot in central Taiwan we really love, and I'm also training for a couple of half marathons. I've enjoyed the sessions - I think...