Learning to Teach Better

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...

Readers' Theatre Here's a great resource I stumbled across for Readers' Theatre: http://www.teachingheart.net/readerstheater.htm In addition to a brief summary, it has free downloadables aimed at K-3 but may also be useful for some EFL contexts. For my 2nd year uni students in Japan, I let them choose their own stories to perform in groups of 3-5. They either chose excerpt from graded readers or movie scripts which were featured regularly (with plenty of L1 support) in the weekly, English student newspaper, The Japan Times ST (that our uni had a subscription to): http://st.japantimes.co.jp/ Although some students were initially reluctant, they could all find roles and most students had a lot of fun doing it. Like many new activities and tasks, however, it usually takes a couple of times before students (as well as the teacher) get into it so it's good to remember a former colleagues words, "I'll try anything twice!"

Error Correction (Sorry I forgot to post this earlier in the week) I started learning a new language a couple of years ago and it was really good to help me remember how learners feel, for example, with regards to error correction. There are times when after I'd been corrected that I still make the same mistake. Sometimes I'd forgotten but other times I knew I'd made a mistake. Having the teacher explain again what I did wrong and why in the latter case didn't help so much, and sometimes felt like a waste of time (which I politely and patiently smile through, admittedly with gritted teeth on occasion). So, it reminded me that it’s valuable to know, as a teacher, how to identify performance errors vs those due to a lack of language or developing knowledge/competence. Sometimes, it's just a matter of seeing how students react themselves, or noting if it's a one-off or recurring mistake.

ANONYMOUSLY IDENTIFYING KIDS IN NEED Although the following blog is from a few years back, it's one that I wish to return to, remember, and incorporate into my future classes once I have more students again. In the meantime, here's a good place to share: "... Every Friday afternoon Chase’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her. And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns. Who is not getting requested by anyone else? Who doesn’t even know who to request? Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated? Who had ...

I really enjoyed Tip 7 in how simple yet effective is to make everyday exercises more interesting, engaging, and memorable. Tip 8 is another great one. By chance, I saw Carolyn Graham once at ETJ Tokyo EXPO (English Teachers in Japan) where I was volunteering on tech support and she needed help setting up and cueing some things. I'd been wondering how to reach learners who'd felt they'd grown out of singing songs in class, her jazz chants seemed just the ticket I was looking for! However, it was a while before I had an opportunity to use them in class, but when I tried some motivation chants with 1st year uni students, it went over really well and much better than expected. So, it became 'a keeper'! I'm getting better You're getting better We're getting better now Step by step Day by day I introduced it orally first as a whole class choral listen and repeat, line by line, then building up. Teams of 4-5 then had to work together to recall and write it dow...

Sorry for joining a week late but very happy to be here now. The 1st week session looked excellent and it really helped to blow out some cobwebs, remind me of various things about teaching, and add new ideas. 1. Here's something I'd like to contribute on storytelling: DEEP IMPACT (SPLIT) STORYTELLING About 10 years ago, I first got introduced to split storytelling, basically telling part of a story at the beginning of a class then pausing on a cliffhanger to be returned to at the end of the class. Besides all the benefits of regular storytelling, it also helps to arouse curiosity and put students in a positive state for learning. It can also allow for greater engagement as students ponder and discuss what might happen next then share with each other. One of the most successful stories I've used was one that was split into 1-2 minute episodes and spread over a couple of classes. Since I was teaching a women's university class on research, discussion and debate in which w...

ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF PAIRING/GROUPING STUDENTS For the first few years, I used to pair students either by telling them to find a partner or make a group of 3 (which is what my teachers had done when I was kid). + learners self-select and may have a sense of autonomy - some kids may get left out or have trouble finding a partner/group. (I remember being THAT kid for a year or so - always the last to find someone) +/-Pairs/Groups may end up the same again and again which can result in very high functioning pairs/groups or create cliques. Later, I decided to 'count off students' then get them to count themselves off (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, ...) then find others with the same number. (This is another common technique teachers used when I was a student.) + learners get to work with different classmates and this builds a stronger community over time as well as exposes them to working with different types of people. Counting themselves off encourages them to pay attentio...

Dear fellow teachers, Like many others, I started teaching EFL in Japan in 2001 in what was going to be a 1-2 year experience(!) whilst working on my Japanese before heading back into the world of business/finance or law. But within a year, I realised that I loved my job so there was no reason to change. ;-) So, I ended up teaching in Japan until 2014 in various contexts from kindergarten, secondary school and university to private language schools, businesses, government ministries, and on Peace Boat. I've been volunteering as a Mentor for iTDi since 2012 and am currently working with Steven Herder on the forthcoming TESOL Certificate course and other exciting iTDi developments :-) Having role-swapped with my wife in 2014 as primary caregiver for our kids (now 2, 4, and 6 years old), I work part-time from home as a Tutor on the University of Birmingham’s MA TESOL and Applied Linguistics (distance learning) programmes, do some editing, and have just started private tuition classes...