Learning to Teach Better

There are two points I would like to make a comment on. The first is about correcting mistakes. We often hear that the best / most natural (I know Penny's reservations about "authenticity") way of learning a language is the way it is acquired in L1. But during the thousands of hours of meaningful, contextual input, there is also an immense amount of correction taking place, as anyone could testify who has ever listened to the "motherese" going on between a 3-year-old and their mum on the tram... The second comment concerns translation. I think that, especially for languages that are close to English, for example, Spanish, it would be a shame not to point out the similarities: "This is my house" - "Esta es mi casa." Obviously, as soon as we insert an adjective, the word order does not correspond to each other (is "to each other" a tautology or just redundancy, Penny?) any more, but that is not a reason why we should not alert student...

A student who volunteers to do this activity has their eyes covered. I remove things item by item from my handbag and let the student feel and guess what the items are. The student practically does a "think aloud" (which can be recorded for reflection on accuracy) and asks questions and/or guesses the nature of the object. The rest of the students, who can see the item, answer the questions and cheer him/her on. Time is set (2 min should be OK). Similar items may require more detailed questions (ID cards and bus passes are the same size and material). Since I have everything under the sun in my handbag (except for a dead German soldier, as we say in Hungarian), this activity can be quite engaging (wouldn't you love to know what your teacher has in her bag?). For the purposes of teacher training (to demonstrate think aloud techniques), I've done this activity with more complicated items, like my granny's ancient, manual walnut grinder (taken to pieces, to make it m...

Making students ask more questions I heard this story the other day and I thought it could be turned into a fun (higher order thinking skills) activity: an international company that was selling washing liquid in the Middle East had the following images on the box: dirty shirt + washing liquid poured on the shirt + clean shirt. The washing liquid was a disaster in all countries of the region except Turkey. What could have been the reason? Give it a couple of days if you know the answer, just so that we don't spoil it for the others :-) In similar activities, students have to ask Yes / No questions from the teacher. It's like 20 questions, but the aim is to figure out the explanation for a puzzling situation.

Hi, Steven, I can see only 4 posts for Week 2. Considering the upsurge of activity after the first webinar, this seems odd. Am I doing something wrong?

How do you get them to talk when they can't speak (English)? I had high hopes for my first Film Club event, lovely handouts and all, three more facilitators lined up to help with the activities related to the screening of Pay It Forward (I know, but I won't go down that road). On the day, one of my facilitators lost her keys to the gate of her rented apartment and could not come AT ALL. In the auditorium, the regular bleeping of the alarm could not be turned off unless we were prepared to shut down the entire system across the whole campus. Halfway through the film two dozen students started a vigorous aerobics routine right outside the auditorium with a ghetto blaster on. But in the auditorium, they there were: 21 of them, out of 1241 non-English degree teacher trainees. The day before I went to do a test run and when I was not able to understand much of the first five minutes of the film I decided I would put the English subtitles on (in Ethiopia, I banned them for the first ...

Hi, Steven, what does this mean? "Commenting is disabled for this post." Thanks, Elizabeth

Just a small point on hangman: when I took guests from the neighbouring eco-lodge to the jungle school to observe my lessons and engage with my students on a one-to-one basis, I used to play hangman: the students needed to find out the country where the tourists came from. This was a warm up activity that focussed on a limited list of words and it meant that the guests were supplying simple Yes/No answers that the students were able to understand easily.

I work in an EFL context (Ecuador) and I am an NNEST (en-NEST), namely, a non-native English speaker teacher, so I always do my best to provide comprehensible input as well as expose my students to other speakers of English. Recently, I have done the following (apart from teaching members of an indigenous community in the Amazonian jungle): I recruited volunteers from among the ten thousand expats living in my town (Cuenca) to come to my classes at the university and work with my students in small groups while the other half of the class was working in the language lab. As soon as the students came back from their 20-minute session with the American / Canadian speakers of English, I asked them to provide written feedback about their experience. Sometimes they misinterpreted what the guests were saying, so I asked the volunteers to provide their autobiographies and we matched the facts with what the students assumed to be the case. We had fun. I am also giving English lessons in a day c...

I love the fact that so many of us are prepared to put into practice a lot of the things that Penny suggested on Sunday. Many of you tried out something the day after! What stayed with me is the power of storytelling. I am retired, but I do a lot of volunteer English teaching. This Saturday I am starting a Film Club at the only public teacher training university in Ecuador. We will be watching Pay It Forward and (as a pre-screening activity) the facilitators will ask the students to tell us if they have done any "good deeds" recently. We had a planning session today and decided that we will all tell them about one of our good deeds. My facilitators are dedicated, pay-back-to-the-community expats / Peace Corps volunteers, so it'll be easy for them to give an example and allow the students a little time to think. I already have my story: I worked in a refugee camp in Greece in May at a school for children from Afghanistan. Don't ask me why, but the camp and the school w...

Hi, everyone, great meeting you in this virtual space. I've been teaching English for about 40 years; I haven't got a paid job right now, but I do quite a bit of volunteering that always involves teaching English: in a week I'm starting an English Film Club at the only state teacher training university in Ecuador. They've got 1241 non-English degree students with various levels of English proficiency. I signed up for the course because I enjoy Penny Ur's presentations: her advice is rooted in practice, it is measured and sensible. I'll be happy for her to address any issues related to ELT, especially how our priorities may have to change now that English has emerged as a truly international language.