JOBS AND INTERVIEWS - PART TWO

This is part of a series of lesson plans for teaching basic English to refugees with elementary to intermediate English language skills. The plans are in twos, each pair focusing on a particular thematic point, rather than an area of grammar, function or vocabulary. 

JOBS AND INTERVIEWS - PART TWO

For part one click here.

AIM - This is designed to introduce the names of various jobs and occupations, vocabulary associated with them and works on practicing for job interviews.

MATERIALS - Photocopies of a  job interview dialogue, small pieces of paper with names of jobs written on them, sellotape.

LEVEL - Elementary/intermediate


LESSON PLAN

1 - Remind students that you asked them to find out some details of their dream/perfect job in the previous lesson. 

Ask them to write this on a piece of paper (you may need to give them time to look up the name of this job on their smart phones). Ask them not to share this information with anyone else yet.

2 - Ask them to think of the perfect job for you the teacher (if you were not a teacher) and if possible explain why.

3 - Write the names of the jobs on the board and ask the students to say who they thought chose which job (and why, if possible).

4 - Ask some students to explain what is the perfect job for them, this is quite difficult so get the more confident students to do this to the whole class or get others to say why to each other or in small groups..

5 - Now explain to students they are going to do a job interview. Ask if anyone has done one, what was the job they wanted and what questions people usually ask in a job interview.

6 - Write down the questions on the board.

e.g Where did you study?

       Do you speak foreign languages?

       Do you have experience?

With the help of the students solve any language difficulties.

7 Hand out the photocopy of the job interview. You may have to adapt this to your own particular teaching situation. Also putting on their phones as a PDF file is an option, if photocopies are unavailable and wi-fi is,

8 - Ask students to read through this and find any words/phrases/ideas they are not familiar with. Encourage students to use Google Translate on their smart phones to help, if this is an option where you teach.

9 - Ask one of the quicker/more confident students to help you with the dialogue, if they wish to. Ask them to choose a role and read through it together to the side and deal with any pronunciation issues.

10 - Read aloud the dialogue for the class. Deal with any pronunciation issues.

11 - Ask students to do the interview together in pairs. Students then swap roles.

12 - If time permits, students use this dialogue to write their own version with their dream/perfect job. Otherwise set it for the next lesson.

I'm a Mac, I'm a PC - Some EFL/ESL teaching ideas

Over the last few days I've been watching the series of ads Apple has put out to show the difference between Macs and PC's running Windows. The clips are short, witty and visually straight forward which got me thinking abut how I could use them in lessons.



One idea would be to compare the ads from US and UK and ask students what would need to be changed to make the spots more suitable for their own countries.

Another idea which I am currently trying out is students making their own videos using the same format but instead of talking about other pairs such football teams, sports, fashion brands etc. The format, however, would be the same i.e. 30 second clip using two people against a neutral background. Video cameras, digital cameras, mobile phones or webcams could all be used to create this. The editing could be done with Windows Movie Maker which comes as standard with every copies of Windows.

The benefits of doing this include students trying to write a script which sounds like natural spoken English, practicing speaking skills and getting instant feedback on their performance. And it's fun, by the way.

Making an EFL/ESL video

I thought I'd share some teaching ideas that I have tried with you. They have worked for me but they may need to be amended to fit in with your learning situation.

Lesson plan

1 Ask you students if they have heard of any weird, strange or odd stories in the media.



2 Now explain to them that they will watch BBC's Odd Box broadcast which has 10 unusual stories every week. Put them in groups of two - four and show them the clip (about 4-5 minutes long), first without sound and ask them to guess what they story might be about.

3 Students then discuss their guesses and write a sentence for each.

4 Show the sequence again, this time with sound.

5 Student work together as groups then as a class in order to come up with a definitive answer.

6 Now tell learners that they will make their own version of Odd Box using stories and video on the internet.

First phase - Finding stories.

A useful starting places include the BBC's Also in the News page, Yahoo's Odd News, Reuter's Oddly Enough etc.

Second Phase -Finding footage.

Ask students to choose five stories that would be interesting for a Greek TV audience. Next stage involves finding video that goes with the story on Youtube or Google Video.

Third phase - Editing video

In order to use download and edit the videos I would recommend Real Player (which allows you to download and convert videos) and Windows Movie Maker (which comes as standards with every copy of Windows) to edit the videos and add titles and voice over. Both programs are free and relatively easy to use, though the more you familiarise yourself with them the more comfortable you'll feel when teaching.

The students then work in groups so as to edit a two minute video with their own voiceover. Alternatively, student add their own video presentation segments which can be recorded with mobile/cell phones, vieo camera or a digital camera.

Fourth phase - Presenting the video

We screen the videos and decide which one would be best for a class blog/web page etc.


Of course such exercises have all kinds of potential pit falls which may ruin the lesson but I feel that the learning payoff involved is worth the risk. How long can we go on using 19th century technology to promote medieval learning paradigms?

Learning through doing

I thought I'd share this with you as I'm deeply impressed by the effort my student put into creating this poster and by the quality of the final result. In a way it represents everything we do in our lessons as I have come to the realisation that for many language learners the years following the intermediate stage are spent treading water, endlessly repeating lessons already learnt with less and less effect.

Instead of employing what their students already know teachers insist on treating them like automatons who must be spoon feed yet more grammar, vocabulary etc. The result is dissatisfaction, active rebellion and an enormous waste of creative energy which could be used more productively.

I have been moving away from this failed model to something which combines learning in its widest sense and the realisation that languages are such complex systems that simply using a rule based method of teaching is a recipe for disaster. If languages were just about learning a list of rules and words we'd have dumped our keyboards and have been chatting away to our PC years ago.

The poster you see is the latest in a series of projects I have set my student and have involved photography, videography, design and advanced writing skills. No mean feat for anyone, least of all a bright but easily distracted 14 year old. Instead of teaching English as English we have been using the language simply as a means of communicating in order to achieve other goals. The results have been fabulous as we have had the chance to engage our interests, passions and intellects so as to produce something special.

One of the reasons I decided to give up teaching in language schools was the absolute lack of faith in creativity, the assumption that that utilising anything other than our analytical skills was an utter waste of time. I watched class after class of students struggle with material which was insipid, narrow and ultimately ineffective before I finally realised that the whole thing didn't work for many, if not most of those I was teaching.

The poster was made using GIMP an open source version of Photoshop which can be downloaded from here. It can used on Windows, Mac and Linux.

For more ideas and practical suggestions check out my Wikispace - EFL/ESL and web 2.0.

EFL/ESL mash ups

No, its not time for us to chow down but rather use existing media and programs to make something new. This could mean using our own videos and photos along with stuff we find on the internet.

So what has this got to do with teaching English? Recently, I have been working with my students on different projects in which they use video as an extension of their writing assignmments. We work on traditional skills such as writing a discursive essay or story telling then use turn these formats into something more visual such as a mini - documentary.

In every such case I've tried to adhere to these rules.

1 - The project has to be connected with some more traditional language learning skill and/or be useful in getting them ready for external exams (e.g. essay writing, interview skills, debating etc).

2 - The technology has to be easy to learn and use.

3 - All programs have to either free and/or open source. Nobody is going to pay me hundreds of euros to buy software.

4 - Personalise the project in order to suit the students' interests and level of competence in English.

My most recent venture has involved using video taking off the internet from sites such as YouTube so that students have footage to use in their projects. This forms background to their narratives which are either recorded using a microphone or done straight - to - camera.

This doesn't require specialised equipment just access to a PC, a microphone and a video camera/webcam or cell phone. The software used was Real Player (which allows you to download videos off the net), Winff which converts .flv video files (that is the format used on sites such as Youtube) to AVI or WMV format (which can be edited). Finally, we used Windows Movie Maker which comes as standard with every copy of Windows.

Taken all togther this sound like an imposing list however the programs are easy to use and I think that an hour ir two is all you need to invest in getting the hang of them. It's time worth investing as the skills you pick up can used endlessly in lessons.

I would love to show you some of my student's work but they choose not to put their videos on the net. For more of my teaching ideas using video, internet etc. click here.

Sci - Fi Friday (delayed)

A little late, I know but yesterday was quite hectic, what between writing articles, editing videos, processing photos, having an interview and teaching. But without further ado is this week's addition to Sci-Fi Friday, Howard Hawk's 1951 classic The Thing from Another World. As IMDB puts it;

"Scientist at an Arctic research station discover a spacecraft buried in the ice. Upon closer examination, they discover the frozen pilot. All hell breaks loose when they take him back to their station and he is accidentally thawed out!"





What makes this movie stand out from its "guy in a monster suit" contemporaries is the witty dialogue and interesting ideas.

For other classics such as Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and The Brain That Wouldn't Die check out Classic Cinema Online.

Kicking the essay in the 21st century

I have a student who is a classic example of a brilliant learner who is ill served by traditional teaching methods. A mercurial but easily distracted mind capable of absorbing huge amounts of information but at the same time one which finds it hard to stick to the determinedly linear classroom process.

Of course, we are all bound by the system we are part of and this means that we have to prepare people for exams, teach skills which as essay writing and the like. However, this doesn't mean we don't have some say in the way we do this and I think that the following idea is a good example of how we can twist the demands of the curriculum into a different shape.

Basically, the idea is that we work on our essay writing skills in a more conventional way and then use the essay as the basis for something more meaningful i.e present our ideas and arguments in the form of a video. On the most unimaginative level this could involvs just reading it to camera (yawn, yawn) but I think that using clips from Youtube, pictures off the internet and editing applications such as Windows Movie Maker (if you own a PC you already have it) to turn it into a mini - documentary complete with voice over, quotes and text.

As you can imagine the possibilities are endless. I have already done this with my students and was pleasantly surprised by the imagination and sophistication employed to convey his message. Best of all, the exercise combines the intellectual rigour involved in discursive writing with opportunities for creativity and self - expression.

Re-imagining the essay

One of the beauties of using web 2.0 tools is that you can re-invent more traditional learning exercises. A case in point is the discursive essay which most students have to master at some point during their EFL/ESL careers. For most this will be a boring grind which they will struggle with. However, we can sugar the pill be using the possibilities offered by the internet in order to awaken their interest and also get them to practice other language skills.

Basically, the idea is that we after working on the essay we then present it using pictures, video, music etc. in the form of an online presentation. There are a number of free tools that allow students to do this. The most widely available is Windows Movie Maker which comes with every copy of Windows. With it you can add photographs, video, titles, music, and voice over. In essence what you are asking students to do is turn their essay into a documentary. See the video tutorial below.



While this may sound ambitious it does not require much in the way of fancy equipment or technical skills. Video can be provided via a cheap web cam, digital camera or the student's mobile phone. The program is pretty simple to use and teaching students how to use it is a pretty good language learning opportnity in itself.



A simpler version might include just pictures downloaded from the internet - the Life archieve on Google has some great ones or you could used Flickr and a voice over which can be captured via a cheap microphone (mine cost three euros and works just fine). you could also use Movie Maker but Microsoft's Photostory 3 or the internet based application, Voicethread.


Whatever approach you use the emphasis here is on creativity and making what you wrote as interesting as possible. To give your student some ideas of the possibilities show them the Magnum photo agencies collection of photo essays here.

As well as knuckling down to the discipline of putting their thoughts on paper in essay form they get to work on speaking and presentation skills all of which will probably feature in any exam they are likely to take.

Disruptive technologies

photo from gandhiji40

Over the last few weeks I have had the chance to see the way technology is being received here in Greece in two very different areas. Just over two weeks ago I attended a conference on participatory journalism (blogging, citizen journalism etc) and its connection with more traditional media (click here) and currently I'm following an interesting SEETA online course on applying new technologies in the classroom held by Gavin Dudeney.

At first there seems to be little in common with teaching and journalism yet the interesting thing was seeing how the internet is starting to make itself felt in Greece and how that growing influence is being fiercely fought against by the old guard and its young supporters.

In the case of teaching the internet is marginal in Greek education. Although schools have been linked up to it for some years the quality of the infrastructure is so poor in most cases that it is practically non-existent. In addition the use of internet and IT in general has yet to break out of its computer lab ghetto. Quarantined, lest it infect the serious business of learning from books.

Similarly, EFL/ESL (teaching of English as a Foreign/Second language) classrooms have, for the main part, struggled successfully against the menace of technology to a such an extent that we still use audio and VHS cassettes. They have resisted the siren call of such diabolical distractions such as the CD and DVD.

Even when such heresies have been permitted every effort has been made to neutralise the effects by treating the new innovations as little more than an electronic book or a simple 80's style arcade game.

Wikis, Moodles, blogs, Ning, podcasts, vlogs, Second Life, Skypecasts are virtually unknown here in educational circles. When they somehow get raised in conversation or discussion they are roundly denounced as mere distractions, or worse. The critics trot out a collection of well - worn cliches that have been polished to perfection by an endless stream of moral panics seen on TV or published in newspapers. You know the ones; the internet isolates people, we need teachers not machines in the classroom, the internet is too dangerous for young people etc.

Hidden behind the obvious technophobia lies, I think I deeper, more worrying cause. The rise of the internet and the ability to not just access information but add our own thoughts and ideas to a global debate has as a consequence the questioning of the authority of the teacher and school book as sole arbiters of what is right and wrong in the classroom. With a few minutes on Google we can double check any claim made.

Of course there are still many who claim that on the net anyone is free to write anything and so we never sure of how accurate our sources are. True, but even school books are not without this problem Indeed the latest high school ones published here in Greece included whoppers such as the Second World War ended in 1949(!) and that one of Greece's leading writers, Stratis Tsirkas published work at the age of three (pushy parents, I guess).

A healthy skepticism towards all sources, including officially sanctioned ones is, however,a deeply subversive idea and especially so in educational systems which reward conformity, and view knowledge as a never changing list of facts to be remembered but not questioned.

I saw exactly the same attitudes displayed at the Participatory Journalism: Blog and New Media
conference held at the Aristotelion university here last month. The same ideas concerning validity of sources, the same fear that if you give people a chance to reply, they will, the same distrust of people in general. Underneath all the cliches the lurking terror that the professor's / journalist's role will be undermined and that their days of being able to monopolise debate are drawing to a close.

The interesting thing is that none of what they say matters. Like passengers on the Titanic arguing over who gets to dine at the captain's table they cannot stop what is about to happen. The changes brought on by the internet are already taking hold with those Greek teenagers who are going online now for the first time. They are the first generation of digital natives swimmingly effortlessly through a sea of data and information.

How long will the old guard be able to teach or report using the technology from the forties and ideas from the nineteenth century? In the end the next generation will exercise their power to simply tune them out.

Here is a TED Talk video by creativity expert, Ken Robinson which challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types.

Snakes and ladders and young EFL/ESL learners

Snakes and ladders, originally uploaded by deebeeandswivel :D.

Over the last couple of years I have been doing more lessons with younger learners of English. It makes a welcome change from the usual exam obsessed classes I teach. However, it does involve approaching the subject from a completely different angle.

Here is a teaching idea that you might find interesting as it can be used to recycle/revise a whole range of ideas using snakes and ladders. Currently I'm using it to help revise numbers 1 - 100 but that is just the beginning (click here to play online).

1 Some alternatives might include creating questions for each ladder or snake. When you land on a snake or ladder to go up or avoid dropping down you have to answer a question correctly. This could be anything that you have already covered.

E.g. What is this (showing a picture of a pen/chair/notebook etc)

or

Count up to ten.

2 When you throw a six you answer a question. Get it right you double your score. Get it wrong you do not move.

3 Every time you throw you get the chance to double your score if you answer a question correctly.

As you can see the questions can be about anything so the possibilities are endless.

To involve the students more you could get them to write their own questions or vote on the rules they want to play by. In addition younger learners could make their own boards.

Using L1 in the EFL/ESLClassroom

Classroom, originally uploaded by SM Photo.

As part of the SEETA (South East European Teacher's Association) moodle discussion on the uses of L1 in the EFL/ESL classroom, Penny Ur made a call for teaching ideas that allowed students to use their own language in the classroom but allowed them to learn English more effectively. At first this may seem like a contradiction in terms as the more students use English the better they become. However, to ask learners to totally abandon something as important as their mother tongue is neither practical nor desirable when teaching.

So here are some ideas to integrate both L1 and L2 in ways that encourage learning.

1 - Play Telephone. Give a short passage in English, either spoken or written to a student.They then translate it into their own language and then pass it on to the next student. This student then translates it into English and then passes onto the next person in line who translate it into their own language and so own and so forth until the message ends up back at the beginning with the teacher.

You could then discuss what happened to the message and why perhaps it changed in meaning.

2 Use comic strips (I talked about this exercise on my blog previously, click here to see). The basic idea is to get students to attempt to translate the humour in comic strips such as Doonesbury. Can it be done? Are the obstacles cultural, linguistic or is there something else?

Then ask them to translate a cartoon or comic from their own language into English. Check out Arkas as an example in Greek. If possible compare their examples with other official translations. Is it faithful to the original? Is it still funny? Can it be improved?

3 Watch a short part of a film on DVD without sound but with the subtitles in the students own language. The students then translate into English the dialogue, utterence by utterence. This could be down by students working on their own at first. Then they get into groups and compare their versions and agree on a common translation.

4 The students then watch the film (with or without English subtitles, depending on the level) and discuss why their versions are different. Is it a matter of right and wrong? Or are there other matters at issue such as the inability to translate between languages without losing some of the original meaning?

In this particular activity a badly translated movie is just as useful as a well translated one.

SEETA and Penny Ur

Today I took part in a very interesting forum discussion on the uses of L1 (mother tongue to those who are unfamiliar with EFL/ESL jargon) with Penny Ur, one of the biggest names in teaching English as a foreign language. Ur has challenged the prevailing wisdom that in the ideal language classroom everything should be in English.

"The only really valid argument, in my opinion, in favour of minimizing (not banishing) L1 use is that over-use of L1 lessens the time available for English use in the classroom. Obviously we want our students to have maximum exposure to English in our lessons. But this means limiting L1 use, not banishing it altogether. Insisting on keeping to English even when students don’t understand what is being said may lead to the message ‘it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand’, or the morale-lowering assumption by learners ‘I don’t understand English’."

It was also great to see EFL/ESL practitioners in Greece and the wider Eastern Mediterranean area embracing web 2.0 technologies such as moodles in order to come together and exchange ideas.

To take part in this debate and next Sunday's discussion click on the SEETA moodle. Register and enjoy.

Teaching English using mobile phones

A couple of days ago I mentioned an idea for using audio tours as the basis for an efl/esl lesson. The actual lesson plan was for more advanced students and perhaps would not be useful for many teaching situations. So here is another idea which can be used for post beginners/intermediate students and can be more easily organised in a classroom context.

Lesson plan

1 Explain what a audio tour is. Ideally, have one ready top play on your mp3 player/mobile/PC etc. Click here to see a list of Lonely Planet Travelcasts to get some ideas.

2 Students listen to a short, easy section and then ask them in groups to discuss how this could help a tourist or visitor to their country.

3 Now explain that they are going to do their own mini audio tour/podcast/travelcast. However, this is not going to be about historic sites or landmarks but about their own home.

4 To help them with this work on the kind of vocabulary needed to describe the outside of somebody's home. Elicit ideas for categories;. For example;


type: flat, two bedroomed semi, etc.
size: small, huge, square metres, etc.
location: in the centre, next to a park, on the corner, etc.
other: old, modern, etc.


5 Students then write a short description (2 to 3 sentences) and check it with each other. the teacher quickly has a look to help or correct student work.

6 Now ask students about ways in which they can describe the inside of their home. What would we need to know?

rooms: kitchen, living room etc
colours, light yellow, bright white,
shape: square narrow, low,
atmosphere: friendly, cosy etc.

7 Explain to students that they are going to give a tour of their home and record it. The easiest way to do this is to use a mobile phone. Most models now have the ability to record audio which can then be transferred to a PC (though this is not necessary).

8 To help students oragnise their thoughts get them to draw a floor plan of their home. It maybe necessay to draw one of your own on the board to make sure they get the right idea.

9 Students then outline the route the tour will take on the plan.

10 Help them with useful phrases such as;

On the left you can see....
straight ahead is the......
just opposite......
etc.

11 Students write out their descriptions, either in full or in note form. Remind them that they are going to talk for just a few minutes and that they do not need to describe everything in too much detail. However, do get them to add a few personal details such as;

"This is my study where I revise for my exams etc."

12 Students record their descriptions on their mobile phones. Encourage them to repeat the process until they are happy with their presentation.

13 The descriptions can be posted on a class/personal blog along with either pictures or video if the students wish . Once again the mobile phone is an ideal way of doing this.

As you can see this lesson allows students to revise many areas of vocabulary such as shapes, colours, rooms, housing vocabulary, adjectives describing personal feelings etc. In addition it allows them to personalise their learning experience and finally, the act of recording and listening is a wonderful way to improve speaking skills.

For more teaching ideas using mobile - cell phones click here.

Looking forward to summer

At long last the exam frenzy is over. The alphabet soup of FCE/CPE/CAE/ECCE and ECPE that we have every year has come to an end. My students have taken their exams all we can do is simply wait for the results over the summer. I was thinking about what to do over the next few months there are so many things I wanted to achieved over the winter but didn't have didn't have time. So here is my summer wish list. If I finish just one of them I'll be happy;

- Write a movie script. I know it's a crazy idea but going around the city photographing various weird and spooky places an idea came to mind which I'd love to develop.

- Learn how to Moodle. I'd love to develop a place where all my private students could come together and share ideas.

- Learn more about journalism. I've been writing stuff for NowPublic.com for a while and I'd like to do it better.

- Put on my own underground photography exhibition. I know I said I would a few months back but then I ran into all kinds of practical problems which meant I put the idea on the back burner.

- Write a Wikispace guide on how to use blogs to promote political causes and promote your particular cause. The idea came when somebody asked me for my help to let people know about a ecological disaster near Mount Olympus.

- Come up with some more weird and wonderful teaching ideas. It's been a while since I last posted stuff. Now that I have some time to think rather than act I hope to come up with some more interesting lesson plans.

Stuff for your blog

Today I came across two interesting widgets/sites that could prove very useful in teaching EFL/ESL. Thanks to Theodora, I found out about Snapvine's nifty little application which allows you add voice/video to your blog. A great idea for those students whose typing skills are weak or who hate writing in general. You can even start a video/voice blog.

The other application is Voicethread which also allows you to add the spoken word to your blog. I haven't tried it out yet but it looks very interesting and beautifully designed. Thanks to Joe Dale for that. As he says;

"Jo Rhys-Jones creator of the Ning network Talkabout Primary MFL has written a great post on ideas for using VoiceThread for teaching primary languages which beautifully exemplifies some of the potential of this powerful tool.

e.g.

• using the doodler feature to label, annotate, trace a route on a town plan and play games such as noughts and crosses
• differentiating according to ability
• encouraging independent work in the target language
• reinforcing adjectival agreement
• creating evidence of pupils' work
• engaging pupils with technology
• encouraging pupils to leave comments in a moderated environment
• singing a rhyme using a picture prompt
• using authentic digital photos from the country whose language you are learning
• as a prompt for discussion
• describing the weather using an authentic image from the net
• creating a dialogue or open ended text from a picture prompt
• inviting your partner school to comment on a protected VoiceThread
• letting pupils choose the images that appear in the VoiceThread
• scanning in or photographing images pupils create themselves."

EFL/ESL teaching and web 2.0 - an introductory course

emile, originally uploaded by smallcaps.

As the new school year is nearly upon us I would like to repost something I did last year. Basically, it is an introductory course in the form of a Wiki for teachers wishing to use web 2.0 tools in the classroom. Although designed primarily for EFL/ESL it has ideas that could quite happily be used teaching any language. Click here to see the course in full.

An Introduction

The aim of this site is to provide EFL or ESL students with enough technical knowledge to use the internet independently to study. It covers a range of skills from basic file management to producing podcasts. It is aimed at those with limited or minimal computer skills and so often deals with very basic issues which may put off more advanced users. However, in classes with mixed levels of competence in computing the more knowledgeable can quite happily be used by the teacher as a learning resource.

In terms of linguistic competence, I would argue that the course is pitched at upper intermediate students and above. (Common European Framework B2 to C2 levels). However, with enough linguistic support, it could be used with students at lower levels.

The course could also be used to introduce L2 teachers to the use of technology in their lessons.

The lessons are designed to be as "hands-on" as possible. In every lesson the learner has to produce something tangible at the end of the time, be it a blog entry, short podcast, a Wiki etc. In addition group and pair work is absolutely vital if the skills taught are to be mastered. At every turn I have made every effort to make the exercises collaborative, taking as much responsibility for learning out of the hands of the teacher and putting it into those of the learners.Click here to see the whole course.

If you need any help you can email me.

Special thanks to Vicky Davis (Cool Cat Teacher) for making the Wiki space look as good as it does.

Teaching

Soon I'll be starting back and so I have to get back into teaching mode. One of the things I've decided to do at the beginning of the new school year with my new classes is do a lesson on how to use mobile phones in the classroom. Over the last few years I have been doing something similar with the uses of technology in order to learn English outside the classroom (see here) with DVDs, Wikis, blogs, podcasts etc.

However, this has had mixed results in the classroom as we don't have PCs and often students don't have internet at home. As a result they see such activities as an optional extra which can easily be discarded. I can't say I blame as the ideas are new, often difficult to understand, at least in the beginning and add to their already overloaded timetable.

Ideally, I would be able to teach and supervise such learning in lesson time, but that is not possible. The educational system I work in seems to loathe and reject any form of technology or innovation. Instead of new approaches we simply introduce yet more exam practice materials. i.e. yet more books filled with mock tests thinly disguised as course books.

I think a good analogy would be that of a runner preparing for say, 100m sprint. The person does nothing other than sprint 100m for a year. There is no stamina training, no weights, no special diet.In fact their only training is running the same distance over and over again.

Many parents teachers and students are convinced that unless you do activities which are in the final exams then you're wasting your time. So, for example, the only way to prepare for a cloze test is to do hundreds of other cloze test. It doesn't matter that the test is different each time or that you're ignoring the underlying skills and knowledge required to do the exercise succesfully.No, if the test has this form what you have to do is blindly repeat it endlessly.

50 different web 2.0 ways to tell a story

It's a sign that the holidays are gradually drawing to a close that I have started to have some more teaching ideas. After a three month hiatus from all things teacher orientated I am now starting to get in gear for the coming school year.



Anyway, one of the things I experimented with last year was digital story telling (see here and here) and it seemed to be something that my private students enjoyed (see here) since it allowed them to produce videos that could be put on their blogs. As well as getting them to practice their English it also gave them the chance to become comfortable with the technology (never a given).

Yesterday, I happened to come across a great post in Joe Dale's blog which links to a great site which has 50 different web 2.0 ways to tell a story. It includes ideas of how to tell a story, how to find tools to use and where to get pictures if you don't wish to use your own.

With the widespread adoption of mobile phones with camera and recording capabilities mean that students are now in the position to produce their own videos/photo stories with the one thing you can guarantee they'll have with them.

For more story telling tools click here.

My teaching year

The school year has more or less finished for me here in Thessaloniki. My students have taken their exams and the language school where i work has closed down till the summer courses begin in June. So, I suppose this is as good a time as any to look back at what the year like was for me in teaching terms. Think of it as a State of the Union address for EFL/ESL in Greece.

In many respects this year has been just like last one. Although I have learnt an enormous amount about using internet an computers in teaching my ability to translate these skills into practical classroom practices has been hampered by a number of problems which haven't disappeared since May 2006. Technophobia, lack of equipment and a widespread ignorance of computers and internet has meant that in school my attempts at introducing new computer based ideas into the classroom stalled.

It's very hard to teach using the internet if there are no PCs or indeed any kind of technology that wasn't invented in the 70's. Audio cassettes and the occasional VHS video are about the limits of what is acceptable. This meant that that I was reliant on students being able to have access to a PC and internet at home. Yet even using this as a means of teaching was frowned upon and it was made very clear to me that it was not approved of. It distracted from the more serious goal of getting students their certificates.

Once again the lack of control over what I teach in class meant that integrating more up - date methodologies was limited and this, of course included the use of "new" technology. Exam practice, endless discreet grammar exercises, long word lists were once again the order of the day.The fact that students do well in their exams is, I suspect, despite all this not because of it.

On the other hand the students I tutor privately benefitted from using technology in a more creative way. I used blogging, vlogging, DVDs, digital photography, video and social networking tools to allow them them to use their language skills in real life situations. I think that their blogs alone (see here and here) show how much fun they found this. So much so, that Some of them have been teaching friends how to blog.

Using an ordinary digital camera's ability to record video has also been a major boon to me at all levels, whether it be preparing an CPE candidate for an interview or allowing nine year olds record themselves singing in order to improve their performance.

As far as next year is concerned I think that I'm not going to use the internet in school. The obstacles are too many and the resistance to innovation too fierce. I work too hard and my commitments too many to waste my energies on battles I cannot win. This is such a pity as I really wanted to explore the possibilities that things such as the Horizon project offer school. However, without the backing of the administration this is not feasible.

I will continue using the internet with my private students as I do believe it has really made a difference in many situations, especially with learners who have become bored with more traditional teaching approaches. I have seen disaffected teenage boys who loathe learning English work their butts off to improve, simply because we started doing activities on the computer that were based on their own particular hobbies and interests, be they football, cars or Star Wars.

The teaching year is almost over

The exam season is almost over. The English learning alphabet soup of CPE, FCE, ECCE etc, has once again taken place and I wish my students the best of luck with their results. They deserve to pass as they have worked hard to prepare. It has been a long, gruelling year for everyone and I'm looking forward to taking time off.

Unfortunately, my students don't have such a luxury as they are embarking on other exams at either school or university. June is going to tough considering their work load.

As the more astute of you have noticed my EFL/ESL content has dropped off recently, reflecting both the need to concentrate on more mundane skills such as revision and the fact that I've been been having lots of fun re-discovering my love of photography. Don't worry, once I've recharged my batteries I'm sure that many classroom ideas will follow. Sometimes you have to take a break in order to retain your love of teaching.