Issue 21: Autumn 2006
Transcripción
Issue 21: Autumn 2006
21 Autumn 2006 ih j o u r n a l o f e d u c a t i o n a nd de v e l op m e n t Life Before EFL IHCOLT … What is it? Why take it? Talking to Engineers at Parties: In Defence of TESOL as a 'Proper Job' Teaching and Training Sudanese Refugees in Egypt Beside Ourselves (Reflecting on TP Feedback) Language Philosophy and Language Teaching Life After EFL IHJOURN T The Long Wait (or The Approach without Method) N Learning About Ukraine, Pre and Post Chernobyl 10 Y E96A-2R00S6 19 E LO P M E Future Projections EV All change, please! ION AND Embracing Change - the 11th IH Portugal Symposium D IH Summer In England! (sic) or An Idiot’s Guide to Summer School AT OF EDUC L A Reflective Practice during Teacher Training Courses ih International House THE INTERNATIONAL HOUSE WORLD ORGANISATION 106 Piccadilly London W1J 7NL Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 7 5 1 8 6 9 0 0 F a x + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 7 5 1 8 6 9 2 1 E - m a i l i h j o u r n a l @ i h l o n d o n . c o . u k w w w. i h j o u r n a l . c o m w w w. i h l o n d o n . c o m w w w. i h w o r l d . c o m journal of education and development Issue 21 • Autumn 2006 Contents Editorial 2 Articles Life Before EFL - Jan Wright 3 IHCOLT … What is it? Why take it? - Mike Cattlin 4 Talking to Engineers at Parties: In Defence of TESOL as a 'Proper Job' - Phiona Stanley 6 Teaching and Training Sudanese Refugees in Egypt - Adrienne Radcliffe 7 Beside Ourselves (Reflecting on TP Feedback) - Rachel Ramsay 9 Language Philosophy and Language Teaching - Mark Lowe 11 Reflective Practice during Teacher Training Courses - Margaret Horrigan 15 Embracing Change - the 11th IH Portugal Symposium - Editor 18 All change, please! - Jenny Bartlett 21 Future Projections - Martin Heslop 24 Learning About Ukraine, Pre and Post Chernobyl - Kristina Gray 26 The Long Wait (or The Approach without Method) - Duncan MacKenzie 28 Life After EFL - Cambridge Calling to the EFL World - Angela Lilley, Brendan Wightman, Daniel Stunell and Roisin Vaughan, (Cambridge University Press) 29 IHWO News 31 Book Reviews 32 An A-Z of ELT - reviewed by Tamarzon Larner, Ana Calha and Brian Rey Face2face Elementary - reviewed by Sarah Williams Natural English Pre-Intermediate - reviewed by Camilla Mayhew, IH Buenos Aires Market Leader Advanced - reviewed by Christopher Holloway, IH Madrid Unlocking Self-expression through NLP - reviewed by Paula de Nagy, IH Lisbon A Concise Grammar for English Language Teachers - reviewed by Angela Richmond English Adventure - reviewed by Alex Bishop, IH Madrid Editor: Ian Berry [email protected] Editorial Board: Steve Brent, Pippa Bumstead, Michael Carrier, Roger Hunt, Jeremy Page, Scott Thornbury Advertising: Alex Monk [email protected] +44 (0)20 7394 2142 Subscriptions: Ania Ciesla [email protected] +44 (0)20 7394 2143 IH Journal, International House, Unity Wharf, 13 Mill Street, London SE1 2BH [email protected] +44 (0)20 7394 2143 Editorial E D I TO R I A L Alex Monk Advertising Ian Berry Editor adly, this will be my last editorial, as I will be stepping down as editor following this issue. This was not an easy decision for me to make, but a young family and an increasing workload (not to mention waistline) were influencing factors. With the help of Ania Ciesla and Alex Monk at IHWO, it has been my pleasure to bring you the last four issues of the IH Journal and I must say it has been a great experience. I felt particularly honoured to be at the helm for the 10th anniversary issue, and to be able to build on the legacy of founding editors Charles Lowe and Matthew Barnard, as Paul Roberts, Susanna Dammann and Rachel Clark had done before me. IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Ania Ciesla Subscriptions Duncan MacKenzie, Adrienne Radcliffe and Phiona Stanley. At the same time, we are also very pleased to welcome the return of Mike Cattlin, Kristina Gray, Martin Heslop, Mark Lowe, and Jan Wright to the pages of the Journal. Thank you, you can all take a bow! S Whilst thanking people, I would like to give praise to all those who have reviewed books for the Journal during my time. The role of book reviewer may appear secondary to article writer, but your contributions have been greatly appreciated. We have another crop of excellent reviews in this edition and I would like to give special thanks to Ana Calha, who, despite being straight off a CELTA course and in the middle of her first week as a teacher at IH Lisbon, took time out to contribute a review of Scott Thornbury’s An A-Z of ELT. Thank you for showing devotion beyond the call of duty! As editor of the Journal, I have been privileged enough to meet many interesting and highly talented individuals working both within, and outside, the IH network and have worked with many more who I will probably never get to meet. We live in a ‘Global Village’ where modern technology enables us to contact people half way around the world in a matter of seconds (time zones permitting!) and in putting this issue together I’ve been in contact with people as far flung as Cambridge, Budapest, Egypt, Kyiv, Rome, Bielsko-Biala (Poland) and Adelaide, to name but a few! Indeed Mark Lowe and I have been indulging in online ping-pong since I took over the editorship, batting emails to and fro between Tbilisi and Lisbon. One can only wonder how long all those correspondences would have taken to reach their destinations, say 20 years ago! One of the most gratifying comments I have received about the Journal, was that it had a great balance to it. Again, this was something I strived for and I think this issue is a fine example. It brings you articles on topics as diverse as Philosophy in ELT, personal reflection and development and ‘bigging up’ our profession. There are the Life Before and After EFL features, which have proven popular with readers, and it also carries a ‘3-in-1’ book review of An A-Z of ELT. Incidentally, I would strongly advise you have a copy of Scott’s book at hand when you read Duncan MacKenzie’s Mickey Spillaine style take on the DELTA. Definitely not for the faint-hearted! Whilst on the topic (technology/change), in this issue I have written an overview of the International House Portugal Symposium, which was held in Viseu in March, and was aptly named ‘Embracing Change’. Though obviously not restricted to new technology, but also including new teaching/training practices, the symposium focussed on aspects of this and IHWO’s Michael Carrier called on his technical know-how to give a comprehensive plenary session on the cutting-edge technology currently available in the ELT world. The piece also includes writeups on two of the sessions given. Before signing off, I must thank all those who have helped me bring the Journal to you over the last two years. A big thank you must go to the aforementioned Rachel Clark. Her knowledge and help, especially in the transitional stage, was priceless. I would also like to thank all the staff at IHWO for their help and support, with special mention to my ‘Editorial team’, Ania and Alex. Thanks guys! Thanks also to my director and colleagues at IH Lisbon for your support and finally, I would like to thank Peter Hooper at CK Litho for his time, expertise and patience. When I took on the role of editor I (you’ll be relieved to read) did have a few objectives in mind. One was to bring the IHWO organisation to the reader, in an attempt to put a few pieces of the IHWO puzzle on the board. Along the way, I like to feel we have achieved this and I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading articles in this issue on teaching and training Sudanese refugees in Egypt and reflecting on life in Ukraine. I hope you enjoy Issue 21 and that we can count on you for continued support of the IH Journal in the future. Keep those articles coming in - I look forward to reading them at leisure! Ian Berry - Editor Editorial Note: Another was to encourage readers to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by my predecessors, Suzanna and Rachel. They appealed for new writers to join the swelling ranks of professional ELTers contributing to the IHJ. Well the response at the time was great and I’m pleased to say that once again we have many first timers writing for us this time around, namely Jenny Bartlett, Margaret Horrigan, As Ian points out above, this is his last issue - many thanks to him for such sterling work editing the IHJ over the last two years. We are now taking applications for a new Editor, so if you are interested and haven't already seen the details on your school notice board, please contact Ania at the IHJ office for more information. —2— IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles ARTICLES Life Before EFL Jan Wright ne minute you’re standing by the side of the pitch at Stamford Bridge with Chelsea about to play Liverpool in the F.A. Cup, the ground is packed and the atmosphere is electric. You’re praying that your match sponsor’s advertising boards are picked up by the ‘Match of the Day’ cameras. There’s a star-struck 10 year-old by your side and you’re about to make his dream come true by introducing him to his all-time footballing heroes. It’s all part of the job. O With the certificate tucked under my belt, I headed off to Spain in October ‘84 to cover a teacher on three months’ maternity leave It was the early ‘80s, I was in my late 20s and I had just landed It was time to take stock - friends and family inevitably offered advice. Fortunately, I acted on one of those suggestions and signed myself up for a CTEFLA course at IH London in March 1984. To this day, I give thanks to Ruth Gairns, Jon Naunton and Jim Rose for four of the most enjoyable and stimulating weeks of my life! With the certificate tucked under my belt, I headed off to Spain in October ‘84 to cover a teacher on three months’ maternity leave. A good opportunity, I thought, to see how I felt about teaching abroad. Said teacher then decided to extend that leave so I stayed on, I was already hooked. And the rest is history, as they say. Basically, I never went home again! myself the near-perfect job which allowed me to indulge my love of sport You blink and the next minute you’re sitting in a classroom observing a CELTA trainee. The room is full of practice class students, more trainees and the Cambridge assessor. The atmosphere is a little tense. and you’re wondering how best to give constructive feedback on the lesson. It’s all part of the job. You blink again and realise, to your amazement, that some twenty years separate those two minutes in the film of your life. Basically, I never went So, rewind the tape. It was the early ‘80s, I was in my late 20s and I had just landed myself the near-perfect job which allowed me to indulge my love of sport. I was one half of the newlyformed two-man marketing and sponsorship department at Chelsea Football Club. At that time, Chelsea was in the doldrums on and off the pitch. Gone were the match-winning glory days of the ‘70s, gates were dropping drastically and the club was on the brink of financial ruin. As the history books show, Ken Bates came roaring in on his white charger to take control of the club in his own inimitable way! Throughout all this, our small marketing team beavered away on projects designed to bring additional income into the club. home again! Fast forward to the present and my colleagues and/or ‘heroes’ these days are unlikely to appear on the sports pages or in the gossip magazines – more likely their photos pop up on the back covers of ELT methodology books. And writing regular articles for the Chelsea match day programmes has been replaced by the occasional contribution to the IH Journal! I never thought I would say it, but “Thanks, Mr. Bates. You unwittingly did me a great favour.” Probably my favourite moment was that of staging a floodlit cricket match at Stamford Bridge, with Essex padded up against the West Indies. I was just like the star-struck ten-yearold when I met my personal cricketing hero, Viv Richards! Four years on and I unexpectedly and unwillingly found myself in the transfer market. We no longer figured in Mr. Bates’ greater scheme of things. For the record, Chelsea beat Liverpool that day. The little boy cried when he met Kenny Dalgliesh. And the trainee was awarded a Pass B. Jan Wright is a freelance CELTA trainer working mainly on courses at IH Palma de Mallorca. Since doing her CELTA (then CTEFLA) course at IH London in 1984, she has worked for International House in London, Reus, Valencia and Palma, plus CELTA at IH Portland. She is still passionate about football. —3— Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 IHCOLT… What is it? Why take it? Mike Cattlin, Academic Co-ordinator, IHWO o what is IHCOLT? In a nutshell, it’s the International House Certificate in Online Tutoring which, at the time of writing, is being run for the fifth time. So far, it has trained over 50 experienced English / Modern Languages teachers and trainers to transfer their face-to-face skills to an online environment. ‘Experienced’ here means two years in a classroom; it needs this kind of background to enable comparison and reflection on learning and teaching techniques. So far, the people who have taken the course have varied from school directors to Directors of Studies to co-ordinators to teacher trainers to teachers, some with just two years of classroom experience but some with many years of teaching, training and management behind them. It really does suit all sorts, as long as you have an interest in (or an open mind about) the possibilities of teaching and learning online, whether for the purposes of student education or teacher education. Shaun Wilden, a teacher trainer from Prague, who took the course in 2005, was quite sceptical about the whole thing until he took the course and realised the potential: “As I said in week one, I was a complete cynic as to the value and effect of online learning. From a practical application this course has changed my view completely on this – the tasks not only introduced me to skills needed to be an online tutor but also helped me learn how to use a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) and how to adapt tasks from face-to-face. I also enjoyed doing them.” S Like the best teacher training courses, it’s experiential. Participants don’t actually teach guinea-pig students on the course but rather they take part as learners in a Virtual Learning Environment courses for online use just as they create courses for classroom use. What COLT provides are the teachers to run whatever courses they or their schools create for online delivery, and that can open up a very big market indeed if exploited well. OK, so if you’ve read this far, I’ve probably got your interest. Let me tell you more about what you do on the course. Like the best teacher training courses, it’s experiential. Participants don’t actually teach guinea-pig students on the course but rather they take part as learners in a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Alex Tilbury from Katowice, a participant on COLT 2, said at the end of week 1, “The real value so far has definitely been experiential, learning what it’s like to study in an environment like this, the application required, the potential pitfalls, the importance of getting to know one’s colleagues.” Some key information about the course: • It’s flexible in the schedule of delivery, but so far the courses IHWO have run have taken around 5 weeks with a little extra-time afterwards for writing a reflection task. • In those 5 weeks, it is expected participants will be online for an average of 1-2 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, around 10 hours a week in total (although it is possible to get carried away with all the possible links and spend much more time on it). • The course is delivered entirely online; there is no face-toface component and people can participate from all over the globe, all on the one course. Most of the interaction is asynchronous and although some participants like to arrange synchronous meetings in the chat room, it is never actually necessary to be online at the same time as other people, nor at any specific times of the day / week. • All participants need, other than the experience and interest suggested above, is good access to the Internet on a regular, preferably daily, basis. • There is no assessment on the course but to get the certificate, participants have to complete a set number of tasks (a minimum of 20 out of 24, some of which are compulsory) plus the post-course reflection and feedback. These tasks vary in approximate length from 10 to 60 minutes. Just as in a face-to-face training environment, participants work collaboratively to develop their skills, in this case, transferring them from one context to another and comparing the differing (and similar) requirements of the two media. They learn about VLEs through using one and visiting and analysing others. Part of the course examines learning styles and how online learning can cater for different types. Above all, the course aims to practise and develop the skills necessary for managing online learners’ work and facilitating their interaction with each other including moderating discussions, providing support, climate setting, encouraging involvement, setting up and closing activities, and managing learner problems. Tony Duffy from San Sebastian, a participant on COLT 4 has this to say: “I thought the IHCOLT course was certainly useful and well worth doing. It wasn't just for the way in which you get right into the heart of online learning issues from the very outset but also that the interaction with other course participants gives you invaluable insights into how people with a different mindset to your own perceive the whole business of using the Internet for online learning.” The course also deals with other possible misconceptions. For example, Alex Tilbury noted in a subsequent reflection, “It's been brought home to me how important people skills are when tutoring online, perhaps even more so than face-to-face”; this is an observation which may come as a surprise to many before they actually take the course but it is something which most come to consider. What does it lead to? Good question! The course opens doors for participants and their schools to explore new markets. IHWO is in the process of writing teacher-focused courses which are designed for both face-to-face and online delivery; so far, other than COLT itself, only the One-to-One Methodology Course has actually been run online, significantly run by the sceptical tutor referred to above! Other courses will follow, but clearly IHWO does not have a pool of online jobs for successful participants to jump into. Schools have to create This is not the only online course on the market, although it is one of the few which specialise in online learning in the language teaching / training context. The course I originally took considered online education on a much broader scale —4— IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles which was less helpful to me in my specific context, although valuable in many ways. The insights provided by others were often not directly relevant to me at face value, but often triggered off chains of thought which were useful to me, even in my face-to-face training. Like many people, I felt a little lost in the early days, but the course builds a sense of community quickly both professionally and socially. It’s certainly true to say with COLT that most people, if not everyone who has taken the course so far, including the tutors, has learned from the online interaction as well as from the input and links provided. As a tutor on the two most recent courses, I can say that not only have I learned a lot from the participants, but have also established a similar rapport to that in face-to-face contexts and have genuinely enjoyed the interaction between people working in completely different places, in completely different time-zones and all with a lot to offer. Tasks are available in a separate index. Finally, let me take you through some of what happens on the course: Participants have to log on to the VLE (Blackboard) where they are presented with a welcome page with the latest announcements. And then on the Module Materials: For the input, simply click on the course documents. And answers are posted on the Discussion Board. Participants then give feedback to each other or start a ‘Discussion Thread’ which the tutor can either contribute to as it progresses, or can weave or summarise as it reaches a conclusion. courses scheduled to be run by IHWO in 2007, although individual International House schools can buy the course on CD-ROM and run it themselves, assuming they have at least one person who has already taken the course! If you are interested in the course, then please contact me at the address below for details of dates and costs. There are four Details and application [email protected] forms from Mike Cattlin is currently a Teacher Trainer with IH Budapest, having previously worked as a Director of Studies in Poland and Indonesia, and as a Trainer in Poland, England, Spain, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and Italy. He also works on the IH Distance Diploma in Educational Management (ELT). —5— Mike Cattlin: Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Talking to Engineers at Parties: In Defence of TESOL as a 'Proper Job' Phiona Stanley am a professional ESOL teacher. My partner is a professional engineer. Notice how 'professional engineer' sounds strange, a tautology, while 'professional' and 'ESOL' collocate only weakly. We are qualified in our respective fields (me more than him, actually), and we both earn decent money (him more than me, of course). We both have upwards of ten years' experience in various specialist areas within our field (he: marine engineering, diesel engines, hydraulics; me: teacher training, publishing, school management), and we both work longish hours. But our professions are not created equal. When we go to parties, and I talk to his engineering friends, a variation of the following conversation can be expected: Step One: Talk up your extreme experiences (we have incredible, enviable lives) • As ESOL teachers, we get into some pretty amazing situations. These are great, extreme experiences, for which engineers would have to pay adventure travel companies a lot of money, and yet we live these stories for free. You could tell these (true) tales, although you likely have a war chest of your own incredible stories to substitute. He (or, rarely, she): So, what do you do? • I taught Peruvian army cadets, and watched them go away to a border skirmish with Ecuador and, mostly, come back again. • I taught veiled Gulf women, was invited to their houses and weddings, and learned about how they deceive their chaperones and meet boyfriends anyway. • I taught the Warsaw forensic police, which included being shown around the bomb disposal department. There, I was handed a lunchbox-sized lump of Semtex, and had the following conversation further. Here's how to talk to engineers (and others) at parties, and convince them we are not overgrown backpackers or wannabe 'proper teachers', but educational professionals in our own. I Me: I'm a teacher. He: What, in a high school? What do you teach? Me: Well, I'm a teacher trainer, actually. I train English language teachers. So I teach them about methodology and language analysis and… He: What in a university? Me: Not really, it's a language school. He: Oh, is that like TEFL? Oh yeah, I did that for a while… Me: So, what could you blow up with this? Bomb-man: Erm, Palace of Culture! • When we talk to engineers (and others) at parties, let’s convince them we are not overgrown backpackers or wannabe 'proper I attended a Chinese banquet at which the speciality dish was a plate of shinbones. Everyone was solemnly handed a surgical glove and a straw, to extract the bone marrow. Other weird Chinese dishes I have been offered include: silk worms, jellyfish, starfish, snake, pigs' faces and scorpions. The two key questions at the interview for that job, managing a chain of Chinese language schools, were: You're not vegetarian are you? And: Can you drink? Step Two: Talk up your professionalism (there are proper jobs in TESOL) teachers', but educational I train on University of Cambridge CELTA courses, I used to work for Oxford University Press and I train freelance on the University of Sydney TESOL Masters course. I earn decent-ish money and I have a non-contributory pension fund. I got Australian residence as a skilled migrant on the basis of my TESOL experience, and I have two degrees and a diploma after my name. Who says this isn’t a proper job? professionals in our own right As Thornbury points out (2001: 391-396), TESOL is widely regarded as a "light" option: not a proper job, and certainly not a profession. This is because TESOL is "permeable" by nonteachers (Maley, 1992: 98). It is still entirely possible for unqualified native-English speakers to find work teaching English in many TESOL markets around the world: sad, but true. We can lament this soft underbelly of underqualified ‘teachers’ but, like it or not, they will continue to find work as long as there are students who believe in the "native speaker fallacy", that is, the mistaken notion that native speakers, regardless in/ability to teach, make the best teachers (Phillipson, 1992: 195). We may seek to change TESOL, and to impose restrictions and rulings as to who can or cannot teach, but in a market-driven industry we cannot effect change except by changing students' minds about the type of teacher they want. And that can be slow. And my story is far from unique. We TESOL people are a smart bunch (and this also means you meet great people in TESOL). The industry may be permeable by unqualified ‘teachers’ at entry level, but go higher up and TESOL is incredibly meritocratic. TESOL retains and promotes people who have ability, not those who have only paper qualifications or, God forbid, old school ties. So here's your script. Talk up your qualifications, talk up your experience. You teach, you're trained to do it, you do it well, and that's what you do for a large proportion of your working life. The paper-shuffling you do is minimal. At this point you sympathise: engineers, like state school teachers, can only dream of actually doing the job they are employed to do. Elicit the things your new engineer friend spends his working life doing, things other than engineering: he plays politics to get funding for his department's projects, he sits in meetings and he writes reports (reports which you, with your transferable But we can start solving this problem and repairing our professional self-esteem. When we meet other professionals, such as engineers, let's resolve to defend TESOL, not denigrate it —6— IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles language awareness skills, could proofread for him. Bless him, he can't necessarily write or spell very well). Ask him why he became an engineer: now compare this list to the things he actually does all day. Watch him wince. Step Three: Talk up the personal development opportunities of your job (our skills are very transferable, and we are confident in myriad situations*) As part of my working life in TESOL, I've addressed a stadium full of 2,000 schoolchildren, I've been on photo shoots and recording sessions with models and actors (how do you think they get those photos and voice recordings into course books?), I've cut ribbons to open new schools and I've appeared on British TV (Countdown have to get their lexicographers somewhere). Now imagine how much a confidence-building course like that would cost, if you could buy the type of confidence that comes from working in TESOL. As your new friend the engineer levered himself out of bed this morning before six, perhaps you dozed somewhat longer. • As he ironed a shirt today, maybe you decided which jeans to wear to work (although if you were doing some freelance editing or course book writing, or marking some exam papers, you probably did it in your pyjamas). • When his boss annoys him, he scours the paper looking for replacement jobs. When you get fed up with your job, you need only ask around among TESOL contacts, or get online, to find something new (and potentially something freelance, maybe part time, perhaps involving a bit of travel: yours is a portfolio lifestyle, with lots of things on the go at any one time). • If you tire of TESOL, you know you can always move sideways: friends of yours have moved into marketing, HR, management and other types of adult training, for example, while others work in publishing or for exam boards. The only thing remaining to tell your new-found engineer friend now is that our biggest freedom, as TESOLers, is that although we may choose to settle somewhere idyllic (and rare is the job that can be carried out equally on the Greek islands as in harbour-side Sydney) we can choose to work almost anywhere, and to move around at will. Make sure he knows this. After all, if the conversation has been going particularly well, and who knows, things work out with him (or her), you might need to relocate to be together. And, as a TESOLer, you can! Talk this confidence up, adding the ability to talk to almost anyone (you've taught some very varied students, haven't you?) about almost anything (it's amazing what you learn from course books. For the same reason, you're probably also pretty good at pub quizzes). Your pièce de résistance is the technical, very transferable ability to write well, to spell, to construct a text properly and, to boot, your ability to convey this knowledge to someone else. Plus, if you're a long-term TESOLer, you probably speak a couple of other languages, so throw this in as well. At this point, your engineer interlocutor should start looking a little envious, and may offer to buy you a drink to prove his/her economic superiority. At the bar, make sure you order something exotic, perhaps a Wódka Zubrówka, or a Dos Equis (using the correct pronunciation of course) and continue talking up TESOL. (And if you catch yourself burning with economic envy, you might mention that money comes and goes, but that time, once gone, is gone forever.) *we also know how to use the word myriad. References Maley, A. (1992). An open letter to 'the profession'. ELT Journal, 46(1): 96-99. Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Step four: Talk up the freedom (we have flexible working lives) • • Thornbury, S. (2001). The unbearable lightness of EFL. ELT Journal, 55(4): 391 As you've been saying, we TESOLers have so many freedoms. Phiona Stanley has recently relocated to Adelaide to be with her engineer boyfriend. She works freelance at the University of South Australia and Adelaide University, and offshore for the University of Sydney in China. Teaching and Training Sudanese Refugees in Egypt Adrienne Radcliffe resettlement, I was interested in becoming involved in English educational programs within Egypt that would help the refugees to integrate more successfully into English speaking countries. n June of 2005 I read an article in the ELnews entitled ‘Sudanese Strain Oz Schools’, which highlighted the problem of absorbing “over 11,000…Sudanese, half of which are less than nineteen years old and in need of schooling.” The article went on to explain, “…a further difficulty is that the Sudanese have very little experience of traditional written learning in what Australians would consider a school setting using desks, books and writing materials.” Living in Egypt, which is home to 3 million migrant Sudanese and at least 23,000 refugees who are seeking I I’d already had some experience in working with Sudanese children at IH Heliopolis, where the director, Barbara Trimpi, and I ran the IH Certificate in Teaching Young Learners (IHCYL) in 2005. International House and British Council teachers participating on the course taught two groups of Sudanese young learners. I’d heard from other trainers that on past courses the children had —7— Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 been similar to the ones mentioned in the ELnews article: they found it difficult to sit in desks and to even hold a pencil. They were often angry and could become volatile – a reflection of their experiences living during difficult times in Sudan. better educated Egyptian pre-teens could still be used successfully with the Sudanese children. Their reading and writing skills were much lower as well. Some children could write at the sentence level with clear penmanship while others struggled with forming letters. Some could read simple readers while others had difficulty sounding out letters. Clearly, teaching literacy skills and dealing with very mixed levels became more of an issue in this context. Overall though, they were extremely eager to learn and, although sometimes difficult to control, the trainee teachers found the Sudanese children to be a refreshing break from more jaded mainstream young learners. By the time we ran our course, it was obvious that the children were benefiting from services provided for refugees in Cairo. Christian organizations such as St. Andrews church and legal Overall they were extremely After the IHCYL course ended, one of the trainee teachers, Angelika Doebbelin, who has been involved in volunteer projects in Egypt in conjunction with Pro Ethnos International, a Christian nonprofit group based in Germany, introduced me to the African Hope Learning Center. This is a primary and secondary school founded by the Maadi Community Church for Sudanese children in Cairo. The teachers are all Sudanese refugees, the majority of whom had got the job simply because they spoke English. Angelika saw a need to offer training to all the teachers and asked Barbara and I to become involved. We agreed to start by doing some observation of classes to assess the training needs. eager to learn and the trainee teachers found the Sudanese children to be a refreshing break from more jaded mainstream young learners. During these observations, Angelika expressed concerns over the very teacher-centered approach implemented – having recently come off of CELTA and IHCYL courses she was familiar with a more communicative methodology. I agreed that workshops in using engaging activities would be useful as well as ones on classroom management. Teachers with no formal training struggled with controlling the students. As anyone who has taught young learners knows this must be dealt with before anything else. Teachers also asked for help motivating their students. They said that the students often came to class wound up by problems they were having outside the class. Another reason the teachers believed the students were not motivated was because the advocate, AMERA, have been offering basic services, education and legal help. The children were comfortable in a classroom environment and they behaved similarly to young Egyptians in class. Of course, there were still differences. The IHCYL participants remarked that the students were not as sophisticated as the Egyptian children they had been teaching. Topics and games that were considered to be too young by more affluent and —8— IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles to discuss problems the students faced in their daily lives. The students were already distracted by these problems and the teachers, being refugees themselves, were in a position to understand, sympathize and perhaps help them. children would be leaving shortly to resettle in other countries. We met with the Dutch director of the school, Lineke Buitendijk, to discuss running 4 initial workshops based on our assessment. Lineke asked that we also include a workshop on showing teachers how to teach reading skills lessons. It’s still common practice for teachers in Egypt to ‘teach’ reading skills by having each student read the same text aloud, which can eat up hours of class time. After agreeing that this would be the focus of the workshops, Lineke promised to rally the teachers together for the training. Our initial training program sparked off other ideas. Choosing a new course book suitable for the students’ level for next year was definitely a priority. Lineke continues to support her teachers, encouraging teamwork as well as individual responsibility. This is a challenge in itself, as the Sudanese teachers are also waiting to emigrate, which results in a frequently changing staffroom. To deal with the extreme mixed ability in the classrooms, Angelica is starting a new program this fall. It will take the children with limited educational background and weak literacy skills out of the classrooms and give them specific help so that they can catch up with their peers. Running the workshops was interesting and presented some challenges as well. The participants had varying degrees of English proficiency. Some of the teachers were reluctant to plan supplementary material and adamantly supported using a course book that was too difficult for the students (and often too difficult for the teachers, as Barbara discovered during her reading skills lesson where she used a text from the course book that the teachers had difficulty understanding). However, they were open to new ideas and after a workshop on involving students in communicative activities, they were spotted using these activities in their classes. I also brought up the idea of teachers personalizing their classes more, even to the extent of using the first part of class So slowly, but with commitment from volunteers, religious organizations and the motivated Sudanese teachers and students, progress is being made. Hopefully these programs will enable the refugees to be better equipped now to set up new lives in English speaking countries. Adrienne Radcliffe is a freelance teacher trainer currently based in Egypt. Beside Ourselves (Reflecting on TP Feedback) Rachel Ramsay Introduction educator ‘directs’ and the student ‘does as she is told’. The teacher educator sets the parameters – she decides the reason for the intervention and the points to work on. She comments on these points, based on observation, the student may or may not have some input and a discussion may or may not ensue. In February last year, I started training to be a CELTA tutor. This involved observing and shadowing experienced tutors on CELTA courses. In all I watched six tutors: marking assignments, grading lessons, writing reports, giving input sessions, tutorials and TP (teaching practice) feedback. Each tutor was uniform in terms of grading lessons and assignments and what was covered in tutorials and reports. They differed slightly in their teaching styles, but where the difference was most apparent was in their approach to giving feedback. The nondirective approach is a process by which the student’s need for ‘self-agency’ is protected and in which the educator maintains a productive role in the process. The relationship between student and educator must be such that the student is able to work through the teaching practice experience, without input or direction, and be allowed to come to her own conclusions and solutions. It must also enable the educator to play a part in the process, to contribute from knowledge and experience but not to direct the student to a particular conclusion or solution. Most tutors were quite humanistic and ‘touchy feely’ and seemed to have an amazing ability to very quickly pick up on the personalities and learning styles of the trainees. They seemed almost immediately to know who would be open to feedback, who might be more resistant, who might struggle as a result of past learning and ideas and experience of teaching etc. A few seemed very direct and brusque, others appeared a little vague, a little too ‘nice’. I found myself trying to imagine how I would feel in the trainees’ shoes. How would each style affect me? The role of the educator in the alternatives approach is to pick an action point from the practice teaching and look at it with the student. The student chooses or rejects the three or four alternatives offered by the educator. The two will then enter into a discussion as to why the student has made certain choices. Gebhard (1990) refers to feedback as supervision; he looks at 6 models of supervision adding collaborative, creative and selfhelp explorative to directive, nondirective and alternatives. The latter three are for all intents and purposes the same as those described by Freeman (outlined above); the former three need looking at in more detail. I was impressed at how standardised the CELTA was in all aspects: that anyone taking part in a CELTA in any part of the world would be assessed and graded in the same way. However, I kept coming back to this difference in approach to giving TP feedback. Aware that I had to develop my own style, I became interested in what approaches there were available to me. I was also keen to discover why tutors chose these approaches. What had experience taught them? Collaborative: The main aim of the collaborative approach is sharing: the aim is for the educator and the student to work together. The educator participates but does not direct the student; she works alongside the student addressing problems and sharing ideas. Together they identify action points and look at strategies to provide a solution. The educator is above all positive, interested and non-judgemental. Approaches Freeman (1990) refers to feedback as ‘intervention’; his three models of intervention are: directive, nondirective and alternatives. In directive intervention the roles are clearly defined – the teacher —9— Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Creative: Gebhard points out that working solely from one model of supervision can have its limitations. At times we need to draw on a combination of different models, depending on the situation. Firstly, it can be seen that a supervisor can begin a pre-service course giving very directive feedback; as the students become more aware of their own teaching, and more able to reflect on it, she can try an alternatives or nondirective approach. colleagues C, D, E and F and myself. Ethically there were some considerations. The tutors, not myself, approached the trainees. Together the tutors discussed who would be open to the idea and most able to ‘cope’ with it. It was explained to the trainees (again by the tutors) that it was entirely their choice and it had no bearing on the course. There was no discussion between the staff at the school and myself, regarding results or any data gathered, until after UCLES had approved the grades of the trainees. Self-help explorative: The self- help model of supervision is an extension of the creative method. This model sees the supervisor not as a ‘helper’ but as another teacher (possibly more experienced) who is interested in looking at ways of developing their own teaching and in this way inspires others to do the same. The Results: Interviews Both tutors appeared to have a similar approach to giving feedback. T1 sees her approach as ‘..very gentle, touchy feely’. She stressed that she varies her approach depending on the candidate: II had one trainee who was very resistant to checking instructions ... had just never done any checking ... this was becoming a recurring action point and coming up in every feedback. So I said to him for the final lesson, “Listen sunshine, you are going to do some checking of instructions in the next lesson so help me …” and he loved it and it worked … .but I knew that approach would work with him … .You learn who you can take the piss out of and who you can never take the piss out of. To my mind these various theories of intervention, all seemed rather neat. I wondered whether, in reality, a What is vital she feels, is trying to find out what is making it go wrong… some people are scared of a technique, others don’t know what is meant by a certain criteria. She feels also that her approach has changed over time. Based on past experience, she is now much more careful about my language, more explicit … I once described a lesson as ‘nice’ but the grading was ‘weak pass’ and the candidate, obviously, was thrown by this and my ‘nice’. She points out that this and the fact that tutors have only 40 minutes to feedback to three teachers has made her much more ‘direct’. She feels her approach is also affected by candidate request: what they want, what they need … many candidates appreciate ‘just tell me’. teacher/educator would stick rigidly to one approach regardless idea is that through observing others we gain self-knowledge and we produce alternatives for ourselves based on what we have seen. To my mind these various theories of intervention, supervision, call it what you will, all seemed rather neat. I wondered whether, in reality, a teacher/educator would stick rigidly to one approach regardless T2’s approach depends on the candidates … varies `(from) person to person on how receptive (they are) and what their learning style is. What they are seeing and not seeing. For someone who is perceptive she believes she is merely a resource, they can see it for themselves, it’s there in the evaluation; but for those who don’t listen or disagree you have to be more combative, you need data to back you up. She feels strongly that, Trainees need to leave with a strategy, a what to do next, to get towards a solution… . And if they are resistant you need them to tell you back what they are going to do. Research The data was collected during an intensive 4-week CELTA course. I interviewed, and observed, the two tutors running the course, and two trainees taking part. My aim was to look at the different approaches to TP feedback, why tutors chose to give feedback in a certain way and what affect this had on trainees. Both trainees, however, had very different reactions to the process. When asked how she feels about TP feedback, Trainee A stated, How do I feel? I actually get bored to be honest, everyone says the same thing. I looked around today and everyone is just staring at their feet ... me too … heard it all before. She feels that if she has had a bad lesson and everyone gives only positive feedback it is of no use to her. People say I am hard on myself but I want some recommendations … recommendations are more important than praise. She does not mind giving or receiving ‘recommendations’ or constructive criticism in front of her peers. She does acknowledge that it varies from person to person … (Trainee C) doesn’t really listen … . (Trainee E) gets upset and confused by criticism … so I make sure I sum up with positives. Semi-structured interviews were carried out (separately) with the two tutors responsible for running the CELTA course and two trainees (together) taking part in the CELTA. The CELTA had 12 trainees – divided into two TP (teaching practice) groups of 6 trainees. Trainees were A, B, C, D, E, F - with A, B and C teaching on the same day and receiving feedback the following day. Tutors would move between TP groups, spending approximately a week with each before changing. All in all trainees would have each tutor twice during the course, observing and giving feedback on both the higher and lower levels. Tutor 1 (T1) and Tutor 2 (T2) are both highly experienced CELTA tutors. Trainees A and B are both in their early twenties, with no prior teaching experience. Both tutors were interviewed shortly after the course was finished – due to pressures on their time during the course. The trainees, A and B, were interviewed at the end of week 2 and the end of week 4 (their last day on the course). Questions were written before the interviews but these were used in a flexible rather than rigid way. All these interviews were taped. Trainee B stated It’s o.k. if you’ve had a good lesson but if you’re upset and know it was bad. If you’ve had a shit lesson the last thing you want to hear is for people to be going mmm could’ve been better … You don’t want everyone to say it was great but you don’t want the focus on you for ages. I want to move on.’ Observations Trainees A and B were observed and taped receiving feedback from T1 in week 2, after teaching the lower level. This was repeated in week 3, with T2, after teaching the higher level. Therefore, present in the room were the tutor, trainees A and B, their T1 saw her approach to teaching practice feedback as ... very gentle, touchy feely. This was definitively reflected in her manner during feedback; she was very softly spoken and praised the trainees: “You have to admit though you remained calm. You must — 10 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles have been thinking ‘Oh God where is the place?’ I don’t think the students initially realised there was a problem. You stayed calm; a real strength.” She also stated that she changes her approach, based on the candidate and it can be noted that she was more direct with Trainee A and used more praise with Trainee B, who was less sure of her own teaching and felt uncomfortable with the whole process. Conclusion In this article I have looked at the literature available on the different approaches to TP feedback and seen that a number of approaches are available to tutors: directive, nondirective, alternatives, collaborative, creative and self-help explorative. I have seen a number of these approaches ‘in action’, namely: collaborative, directive and creative. Although they appear to fit very neatly into boxes, it is not realistic to expect a tutor to choose one approach and stick to it. In fact, this is what I have observed, having seen all three of these approaches in one feedback session. Indeed, tutors themselves feel that their approach changes depending on the circumstances: trainees’ needs, reactions, personalities, stage of the course etc. In interview, T2 stated also that her approach depends on the candidates… varies (from) person to person on how receptive (they are) and what their learning style is. What they are seeing and not seeing. This was evident in feedback: she encouraged A to try and separate the experience out for her and the learners. She was, also, very aware when a trainee was not receptive to what is being said: on a couple of occasions she double-checked trainees were taking in what she was saying, either by repeating herself in a slightly different way or by directly checking: but listen to what I am saying here … In terms of effects on trainees, it can be seen that different approaches and styles provoke different responses, with some trainees being more affected than others. What impresses me most, is what struck me when I was a tutor-in-training. The real skill is in being able to change your approach to suit the trainee. The tutors I most admired were those who were perceptive enough to very quickly pick up on the personalities and learning styles of each trainee. No small accomplishment, which I suspect (and hope) can improve with experience. Both tutors worked alongside the trainees, together they identified action points and looked at strategies to provide solutions: a collaborative approach. Although at times they did direct the trainees to certain action points that had not been picked up on. It would seem therefore, that a mixture of approaches is being used: the creative approach. As Gebhard (1990) stated a ‘supervisor’ might begin a pre-service course giving directive feedback, but as trainees become more able to reflect on their teaching, she can try different approaches. This, he believed, is why the creative method works so well as the teacher educator can be aware that what works for one trainee may not be appropriate for another. References Freeman, D. (2002) ‘The hidden side of the work: teacher knowledge and learning to teach. In Language Teacher 35.pp. 113. CUP However, both tutors pointed out that it cannot be forgotten that they are also the assessor, working with set criteria, as well as the tutor, this tallies with Freeman’s idea of a directive approach in which the teacher educator sets the parameters and decides the reason for ‘intervention’ and the points to work on. Freeman, D. (1990) ‘Intervening in practice teaching.’ In Richards, J.C. and Nunan. D. (Eds) Second Language Teacher Education. pp. 103-117. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gebhard, J.G. (1990) ‘Models of supervision: choices.’ In Richards, J.C. and Nunan. D. (Eds) Second Language Teacher Education. pp. 156-166. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. It does appear that my previous conclusion, in the review of literature, is sound: these various theories of intervention, supervision, call it what you will, are too neat. In reality the tutors did not stick rigidly to one approach. Rachel is a teacher and teacher trainer. She has worked for IH in Poland, the Basque Country and Newcastle. She has recently completed an MA in Applied Linguistics. She is also an actress, hence the mugshot. Language Philosophy and Language Teaching Mark Lowe e EFL teachers are accustomed to finding our big ideas about language in the work of applied linguists such as Scott Thornbury and Henry Widdowson. But there are other sources of big ideas about language, including language philosophy, the subject of this article. Whereas linguists are primarily interested in language as such, language philosophers are interested in wider questions such as how language relates to reality, language and the mind, and language and truth. This article discusses the ideas of four philosophers who have made important contributions to our understanding of language, and whose ideas have influenced language teaching theory and practice. They are Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Paul Grice and John Searle. wars, barbaric despotism and the decline of traditional religion: passionate, ruthless, driven and utterly original. To appreciate his philosophy, it is helpful to know something of his background. Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in 1889, the youngest son of a wealthy Viennese industrialist. The family mansion was an intellectual and artistic centre of Viennese society: Brahms’ clarinet quintet received its first performance at a musical soiree there: Freud, Mahler, Bruno Walter, Kokoschka and Klimt were frequent guests. There were seven grand pianos scattered round the mansion. This was the milieu in which the young Wittgenstein grew up, and which deeply influenced his philosophical development. W Originally, Ludwig was set to follow his father in the family business. After technical studies in Linz and Berlin, he went to Manchester University in England to study aeronautical Wittgenstein is, for many, the iconic philosopher of the 20th century, shoring up philosophy against the battering of world — 11 — Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 engineering. But while there, he developed a passionate interest in mathematics and logic, and heard about the work of Bertrand Russell. In 1911, he called on Russell in his rooms in Cambridge. Wittgensein abandoned philosophy in the 1920s. He worked as a gardener in a monastery, as a village primary school teacher, and as an architect. He was eventually persuaded to return to philosophy in 1929 by his Cambridge friends Bertrand Russell, the economist John Maynard Keynes and the mathematician Frank Ramsey. Back in Cambridge, Wittgenstein soon repudiated his first philosophy, and embarked on the development of a new set of ideas. They represent the most radical revolution in philosophy since Kant. They form the heart of this article. Russell was then a leading figure in the international movement to make philosophy more scientific and to clear away the clouds of Hegelian metaphysics which had dominated European philosophy for the previous 100 years. Russell believed this Hegelian philosophy to be pernicious nonsense. He and his friend and colleague Alfred North Whitehead had recently completed their monumental Principia Mathematica, which demonstrated the logical and scientific foundations of mathematics. Russell was working on his new philosophy of Logical Atomism, which sought no less than to describe the logical and scientific foundations of the world. He was looking for a gifted collaborator to work with him Two of Wittgenstein’s innovations have particular relevance to language teaching: (1) a new philosophy of language in which meaning is interpreted as ‘use’, rather than conformity to an abstract system (as in the Tractatus) and (2) a new conception of philosophy as a means of disentangling conceptual confusions caused by language muddles. Let us look at these innovations in more detail. Russell was immediately impressed by Wittgenstein’s intellectual ability. He had found his collaborator. Wittgenstein abandoned his engineering studies and settled in Cambridge as Russell’s student. He quite soon started work on his first masterpiece: the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He continued to work on it while on long holidays in Norway, and then while serving in the Austrian army in the First World War. He completed it while on active service fighting the Russians on the Galicia front. His traumatic war experience deeply influenced the final form of the Tractatus: what had started as a treatise on logic evolved into a kind of poem on life’s deepest truths. At the end of the war, Wittgenstein was taken prisoner by the Italian army, but he was able to smuggle the text of the Tractatus out to friends in Vienna and Cambridge. The book was finally published in German in 1921 and in an English translation (with a forward by Russell) in 1922. 1. The repudiation of his earlier concept of philosophical analysis. In the old system, language was conceived as a system founded on a calculus of strict rules. The propositions generated by these rules were thought to reveal (Wittgenstein) or to describe (Russell) the most general features of reality. The task of philosophy was to classify these propositions through analysis, thus laying bare the logical structure of the world. In Wittgenstein’s new philosophy of language, the meaning of a word is its use, not what it denotes. Language not only describes things: it also does things. Language is a toolbox which enables us to act in the world: it is not just a device for describing things. Language can also be interpreted, in a favourite analogy of Wittgenstein’s, as a collection of games. Games have rules. We do not follow the rules of chess when playing draughts, or soccer when playing cricket or rugby. To play language games, we need to know and follow the appropriate rules. These rules stem from life, and the use of language is inter-woven with the life of language-users. We master a language when we are closely involved with the life that underpins that language. Language training presupposes shared realities and shared ways of behaving within a language community. At one level, the philosophy of the Tractatus can be interpreted as a form of Logical Atomism. At this level, the aim of philosophy is to reveal scientific truths about the world of the most general kind. Ordinary language being inadequate to express such truths, it is necessary to develop a logically pure language in order to describe the world accurately and faithfully. Such a language generates a network of logically consistent propositions which mirror the logical structure of the world. The Tractatus presents a blueprint for such a logical language. At another level, the Tractatus is a meditation on the mystical. It is quite unlike most other works of philosophy. It is written in a series of aphorisms: ‘the world is what is the case’, ‘ethics and aesthetics are one’, ‘death is not an event in life’, ‘whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’. The book was enormously influential. It inspired much of the work of the scientific philosophers of the Vienna Circle in the 1920s and 1930s, for instance Rudolf Carnap’s The Logical Structure of Reality and A.J.Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic. The Tractatus became a bible for the scientific spirit in philosophy. Wittgenstein wrote: ‘if a lion could speak, we would not understand him’: not because his growls are unclear, but because his whole world is so different from ours that we cannot understand it. Russell made a similar point when he said: “if I could teach my dog to speak, he would never learn to say: ‘my father was poor but honest’ Dogs don’t think this way – they have no conception of honesty. Similar reasoning can perhaps sort out today’s muddled thinking about chimpanzee ‘language’ – to what extent do chimpanzees ‘really’ understand human language? Wittgenstein’s new ideas, originally developed in the 1930s, later played a crucial part in the evolution of communicative language teaching and its theoretical support in the 1960s and 1970s. Wittgenstein’s philosophy has 2. A new view of the purpose of philosophy. The purpose of philosophy is no longer to present sublime visions of ultimate truth and goodness, as in the work of Plato or Spinoza. It is simply to clarify our thinking. It is a handmaiden of understanding, rather than a creator of new truths. For Wittgenstein, many so-called philosophical problems are the result of language muddles: the relation of mind and body, the paradoxes of free will and determinism, and the nature of the soul – all these problems can be resolved by analysing how confusions in language cause confusions in our minds. Confusion usually arises when we try to use language that is appropriate for one kind of situation in a different situation for which it is not adapted. Once we see the confusions, all becomes clear. We have, to use Wittgenstein’s vivid image, let the fly out of the bottle. much to offer language teaching. If language is like a collection of games, we should teach our students to score linguistic goals and generally get the ball over the language tennis net — 12 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles Wittgenstein’s philosophy has much to offer language teaching. If language is a toolbox for doing things, we should focus on helping our students to use the tools effectively, with lots of practice at doing things with words. If language is like a collection of games, we should teach our students to score linguistic goals and hit language centuries and win language chess games and generally get the ball over the language tennis net. We should give our students plenty of practice at playing these language games, because no-one ever learned to score centuries or score goals without practice. bequeath my second best bed to my wife’ (leaving things to others in a will). The generic term ‘performative’ stands for all such functional expressions. Austin’s term ‘illocutionary force’ refers to the various kinds of performance, eg promising, warning, obeying, threatening etc. His term ‘perlocutionary force’ refers to the effect of the performance on other people. Thus, when I say ‘I do’ in the wedding ceremony, the illocutionary force is ‘promising to marry’, and the perlocutionary force is the effect of my words on the woman I marry. Austin divided performatives into five categories, as follows (with examples): And if language can sort out conceptual problems, let us apply philosophical analysis to unresolved issues in our field. Do we acquire language or do we learn language? What real mental processes, if any, do these words stand for? What, if any, is the relation between the two processes? Wittgenstein believed that the right procedure, when confronted with a puzzle like this, is to examine the ‘problem’ language as it is used in ordinary life. Ordinary language reflects centuries of experience and has survived, in a Darwinian manner, a great deal of criticism and tough use – it has proved its fitness. So how is the word acquisition used in ordinary language? In ordinary language there is usually a sense of getting something for nothing – something a bit disreputable - about acquiring things. ‘Have you heard? George has just acquired a nice new young wife…. The old devil....’ The term does not comfortably fit the process of mastering a language, and distorts our understanding of that process, causing intellectual cramp. Wittgenstein would surely have agreed with Michael Halliday, who advises us to avoid the loaded terms acquisition and learning, and to use the neutral term mastery instead. 1. Verdictives: judging, pronouncing, estimating, convicting, acquitting, diagnosing 2. Exercitives: I appoint, dismiss, excommunicate, order, urge, recommend, demand 3. Commissives: I promise, intend, plan, agree, disagree, oppose, swear, undertake 4. Behabatives: I apologise, thank, compliment, commiserate, bless, challenge, vote 5. Expositives: I mean, affirm, deny, state, identify, tell, ensure, object to, repudiate How to Do Things with Words was a seminal influence in the development of functional/notional language teaching theory and practice. It is also a rich source of excellent recipes for functional language lessons, containing many dishes not included in our normal fare. This little book can help us to teach not only how to request, apologise, thank and offer (common fare), but also how to convict and acquit, condemn and release, appoint and dismiss, oppose and undertake, to compliment and to complement, to ensure and insure, and to interpret and to query (less common fare). It is not only a major work of philosophy, but it is also full of imaginative and practical ideas which can enrich our classroom practice. What about conscious and unconscious learning? The debate rests on confusions in the use of these words, which lead to muddles in our understanding of what happens when we learn things, and a confused theory of how the mind actually works. The same is true of innate versus learned grammar, and deep and surface structures. In Wittgenstein’s philosophy, the troublesome words are analysed until the presuppositions underlying the words are exposed and sorted out, thus revealing the truth. His philosophy examines scientifically what really happens, and not what the distorting language leads us to suppose happens. In Wittgenstein’s philosophy, we discover the truth, we are not bewitched by beguiling words, and we avoid intellectual cramp. This kind of philosophy is as relevant to language learning theory and practice as it is to every other academic discipline. Let us now turn to Paul Grice. Grice was a Fellow and Tutor at St John’s College, Oxford from 1938 to 1967. He them moved to the USA, where he was Professor of Philosophy at Berkeley, University of California, until his death in 1988 at the age of 75. He made many important contributions to philosophy, including his famous analysis of what he called ‘the logic of conversation’. Logic and Conversation is a key text for language teaching. When we take part in a conversation, Grice maintained, we follow certain principles. The over-arching one is the Cooperative Principle. We agree to make such conversational contributions as are required by the accepted purpose of the talk exchange in which we are engaged. This cooperative principle may be subdivided into four subcategories: quantity, quality, relation and manner. Wittgenstein first formulated these ideas. They were later developed by Austin, Grice and Searle, among many others. Let us look now at the philosophy of J. L Austin. How to Do Things with Words is a The category of Quantity generates the following maxims: rich source of excellent recipes for functional language lessons, • Make your contribution as informative as required • Do not make your contribution more informative than is required The category of Quality generates the following maxims: containing many dishes not included in our normal fare • Say only what you believe to be true • Do not say that for which you lack evidence The category of Relation generates simply: • Be relevant The category of Manner generates: Austin was a leading Oxford philosopher and his most significant contribution to language philosophy was the notion of ‘performatives’, or expressions which do things rather than describing things. Here are three examples of performatives. ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’ (naming); ‘I do’, said in answer to the wedding ceremony question ‘do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?’ (marrying); and ‘I — 13 — • Avoid obscurity • Avoid ambiguity • Be brief • Be orderly Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 money’. In other words, ought can be derived from is. Searle’s explanation for what looks at first like sleight of hand – just a trivial trick – is that ethical judgements relate exclusively to human affairs – to human inventions and human institutions and organizations: to money and its obligations, to marriage, to government, to sport and to clubs and societies, for instance. The world of ethics is the world of people, not things or animals. The problem of is and ought derives from a confusion between the language proper to human affairs and the language proper to things. If this view is accepted, many philosophical problems are resolved. These principles and maxims were designed to explain how human conversation works. Some people found the explanation clear and enlightening, but others criticised it on the grounds that the maxims did not correspond with reality. Few people, they pointed out, conduct conversations in this admirably organized manner – perhaps they should, but they don’t. Critics pointed to the plays of Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, with their so-realistic dialogues full of non-sequiturs. These plays, they claimed, are a more accurate reflection of real conversation than Grice’s elegant model. Grice replied to these criticisms in an Epilogue written in 1986. The principles, he wrote, applied to ideal conversations, not to most real conversations as they are actually conducted. They are intended to supply a framework for understanding conversation and how it is linked to its context. The principles of conversation are also an example of Grice’s view of language as embedded in the flow of human life. These principles can help language teachers, because they provide a principled framework for teaching our students how to converse – not only in ordinary conversation, but also in business meetings and formal encounters like diplomatic negotiations. Grice’s theory of logic and conversation has also been influential in the development of the speaking examinations of the University of Cambridge examinations in English – a further point of intersection between language philosophy and language teaching. For instance, this theory explains why many apparent statements of fact have the illocutionary force of commands. Consider the following example, forever etched on my memory. When I was engaged to my future wife some years ago, we visited her Italian family, who lived in a small town near Verona. On Sunday morning, my fiancée, who was very advanced and liberal in her thinking, announced that she was not going to church. Her outraged father stood up and declared: ‘Domenica, la donna va in chiesa’. (On Sunday, women go to church). My fiancée went to church. A philosopher might have been puzzled by her action: no command was given, and my future father-in-law had only made a statement. However, my fiancée understood very well that her father’s statement had the force of a command, and, as a properly brought up Italian girl, she obeyed her father and went to church. Searle explains all this by saying that the full meaning of her father’s words can only be rightly interpreted in the context of the society in which he and his daughter lived. In that society, at that time, women went to church and obeyed their fathers, whatever may or may not have happened in Britain, America or other societies. In that society, her father’s statement had the illocutionary force of a command: his is had the effect of an ought, or rather a must. And the same principle is true, claims Searle, of all ethical statements. Ethical propositions have the force of commands within the system where they belong, whether they are formulated as statements or orders. They are also as true in their own way as scientific descriptions are in their different way: they are true within the context of the society to which they belong. This analysis offers a coherent and satisfying treatment of ethical expressions, unlike that of the Logical Positivists and the Vienna Circle, who declared all ethical statements to be merely expressions of feelings and devoid of scientific truth. Searle’s treatment of this topic has deeply influenced language teaching practice: we happily teach statements as commands, and logical inference as moral imperative. We teach language as it is actually used in society, not according to some preconceived theory that does not fit the facts. Grice gives us a framework for teaching the language of conversations and professional meetings Grice’s work is highly relevant to language teaching. He gives us a framework for teaching the language of conversations and professional meetings – we can modify the framework to reflect messy and Pinterian reality, but Grice gives us a starting point. He shows in detail how language links into the flow of life, and how to interpret the implications of what people say, as well as their surface meanings. Let us finally turn to the work of John Searle. An American, he studied with J.L Austin in Oxford, and then returned to America as Professor of Philosophy at Berkeley (with Grice), where he helped to disseminate the ideas of his teacher. He has made many important contributions to language philosophy, starting with his brilliant Speech Acts of 1969. Other key texts include: The Rediscovery of the Mind (1994), Consciousness and Language (2003) and The Mind (2004). He is still active today. Searle has deeply influenced Two aspects of Searle’s work are of particular importance to language teaching: (1) his analysis of ethical propositions, and (2) his theory of mind, which provides a coherent and scientific framework for his theories of language. Let us consider these in turn. language teaching practice: we teach language as it is actually used in society, not according to 1. Ethical propositions. In traditional philosophy, it was thought to be impossible to derive ought from is, because the worlds of fact and value are different. Searle famously demonstrates not only that ought can be derived from is, but that in practice we do it all the time. Consider the statement: ‘I promise to refund you this money’. This entails the proposition: ‘there is an obligation on me to refund you this money.’ This entails the further proposition: ‘I ought to refund you this some preconceived theory that does not fit the facts — 14 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles 2. Searle’s Theory of Mind. Searle provides an account of how the brain works that gives principled theoretical and scientific support for communicative language teaching methods. The subject is vast and complex and cannot be easily summarised. Let two references tell the essence of the story. how language works. Together with his analysis of speech acts and functional language, and his account of ethical statements, Searle’s theory of mind provides a scientific foundation for our work in teaching languages. Let us conclude. What does the philosophy of language offer to language teachers? It offers many things, including: a broad vision of the place of language in human affairs; principled support for the fundamentals of communicative language teaching and learning; fresh insights into language games, language rules, meaning and functions; deeper understanding of the language of conversation and professional meetings; new insight into old ideas; the stimulus of scintillating minds and a deeper understanding of how language really works. In The Rediscovery of the Mind, Searle writes: ‘In our skulls there is just the brain with all its intricacy, and consciousness with all its colour and variety. The brain produces the conscious states that are occurring in you and me right now, and it has the capacity to produce many others that are not now occurring. But that is it. Where the mind is concerned, that is the end of the story. There are brute, blind neurophysiological processes and there is consciousness, but there is nothing else. If we are looking for phenomena that are mental but inaccessible in principle to consciousness, there is nothing there: no rules, no rule following, no mental information processing, no unconscious inferences, no mental models… no LAD, and no universal or innate grammar’. To sum up, Searle paints a rigorously scientific picture of the mind, with no reliance on metaphysical entities. Searle has deeply influenced language teaching practice: we teach language as it is actually used in society, not according to some preconceived theory that does not fit the facts Suggested further reading: Austin,J.L How to Do Things with Words (OUP1962) Searle’s view of language and the mind is incompatible with the picture that Chomsky paints. Language philosophy has many criticisms of Chomsky’s theory of mind, with its innate and universal grammar, deep structures and so on. In 2002, Searle published The End of the Revolution, a review of Chomsky’s most recent book New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind. The review is sympathetic but highly critical. Many of the arguments used by Searle are similar to those which Wittgenstein employed to criticise his own Tractatus in the 1930s. ‘There is no logical structure underlying language’, ‘there is no ghost in the machine’, ‘grammar was made by man, not by God’ (Wittgenstein). ‘There is no universal grammar common to all languages; there is no Language Acquisition Device in the brain; grammar is not innate but mastered through experience of language and life; there are no deep structures in the brain; language has many functions other than describing things’ (Searle). Searle’s review provides additional insight into his theory of mind, and is also a notable contribution to critical thinking about Chomsky’s theories. (Searle is not the only philosopher to have doubts about Chomsky’s theories. Professor Norman Malcolm, a protégé of Wittgenstein, once wrote: Chomsky and his followers are a new tribe of philosophical savages….’) Ayer, J. Language, Truth and Logic (OUP 1936) Grice, Paul. Studies in the Way of Words (Harvard University Press1989) Hacker, P.M.S. Wittgenstein’s Place in 20th Century Analytical Philosophy (Blackwell 1996) Monk, Ray. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (Cape 1990) Searle, John. Speech Acts (CUP 1969) Searle. The Rediscovery of the Mind (MIT Press 1994) Searle. The End of the Revolution (Harvard Review of Books 2002) Searle. Consciousness and Language (CUP 2003) Searle. The Mind (CUP 2004) Wittgenstein. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (RKP, 1922) Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1953). Acknowledgement This is an abridged version of an article originally published in Modern English Teacher (MET) Searle’s theory of mind is important for language teachers because it provides a coherent and verifiable explanation for Mark Lowe has studied philosophy at Cambridge University, worked for the British Council in Iran and Argentina, written EFL materials for Longman and has been DoS in more countries than most of us have visited. He is currently DoS at IH Tbilisi, Georgia. Reflective Practice during Teacher Training Courses Margaret Horrigan Introduction opportunities to reflect on their practice. In order to illustrate how this might come about on training courses such as Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA) Certificate of English Language Teaching to Young Learners (CELTYL) and Diploma of English Language Teaching to Adults (DELTA) and why reflection is intrinsic to professional development, an account of various types of training formats is needed. The opportunities for trainees to reflect on their teaching practice during any assessed training course are, unfortunately, few and far between. This is due to the pressures that trainees face on a daily basis. Post lesson evaluation sheets (PLES) not only provide a written record of trainees’ growing awareness of their developing teaching skills but can also provide trainees with essential — 15 — Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Models of Education Schön identifies only two types of reflection, RIA and ROA. Teaching, however, is an anomalous profession in that considerable reflection occurs before practice during planning stages. Wallace (1991: 56) recognises this third type of reflection which occurs before action and it has been labelled by Greenwood (in Wilkinson 1999: 38) as “reflection before action” and by Van Manen as “anticipatory reflection” (1995: 34). This period of reflection is not accounted for in Schön’s works and is discussed here as reflection pre-action (RPA). The Craft Model (CM), or Competency Based Teacher Education CBTE (Roberts 1998: 16), views teaching as a “learned behaviour” (Willen et al. 2000: 3), achievable via observation and imitation. However, if the CM is a “tool kit of methods” (Roberts 1998: 17) a change in the teaching context may render this “toolkit” useless. It is also questionable whether the ‘master teachers’ are as informed as practising teachers. Thus, it could be argued that experience of craft does not equal knowledge of craft, an issue which the Applied Science model (ASM) attempts to address. The Theory Practice Divide The ASM gains its status from the achievements of empirical science (Wallace 1991: 8) and has been labelled “technical rationality” (Schön 1987: 3) or the Transmission Model (Sotto 1994: 113). Schön proposes that over emphasis of this model has distanced theory from practitioners where a hierarchy of “thinkers and “doers” (Wallace 1991: 10) has evolved and a theory practice gap has resulted. Expert practitioners tend to climb a hierarchical ladder particularly educators of practitioners who, in essence, are distancing themselves from practice. The reflective model attempts to resolve this divide. The RM relates to the andragogical process (Knowles 1996) highlighting adult learners’ knowledge application as problem centred-ness. Thus, the RM highlights the importance of craft and the theory practice gap that the ASM has created. Ur (1996:4), however, distinguishes between two types of theory: “espoused theory” and “theory in use”. The former we can describe and claim to believe in and may conflict with the latter which may be difficult to articulate as it is based on personal belief systems. This conflict can generate professional development as it may trigger the willing disorientation which is essential to reflective practice. This willing disorientation facilitates looking at our own practice “in a new light” (Schön 1987: 26) and subsequently we can glean insight from informed others. Thus, the RM attempts to enable the doers to become thinkers and can be illustrated as a middle point on a continuum of education models as illustrated in figure 1. The reflective model (RM) is directly linked to Schön who saw the need for an education model which replaced the ASM (Schön 1987: 8). He suggests a model that meets the needs of practitioners working in “divergent” contexts and challenged the convergent knowledge base by which practitioners are informed. This, he puts forward, can transpire through reflection in action and on action. Reflection Reflection in action (RIA) is linked to knowing in action (Schön 1987: 28), a knowledge which is publicly observable by phenomena that occurs during practice (Schön 1987: 25). During RIA the practitioner encounters an event which is not categorical. This occurrence results in a struggle to make sense of the event where the practitioner, Schön suggests, must be open to confusion. Gray (2004: 25) talks of conscious decision making during “points of crisis” where routine is “unexpectedly interrupted” or does not suffice in solving the issue and practitoners are jolted out of their smooth routine. Hence, a deepening insight into the nature of the profession can be achieved through RIA. Fig. 1. Continuum of Education Models This graph illustrates how novice practitioners may reflect on their craft if involved in a CM of education and how those involved in an ASM may reflect by projection on future craft. Hence, informal reflection, the author argues, is an unavoidable spin-off of both polar models of education. An attempt to link theory and practice is almost certainly inevitable in either case. Hence, the “doers” question why they do what they do while the “thinkers” project their knowledge to their impending professional experience. Thus, the author argues that this un-harnessed reflection, albeit to differing degrees based on individuals’ ability, is an innate consequence of professional learning which the reflective model has merely formalised. Although Schön (1987, 1983) never explicitly sets out a model whereby a practitioner might become more reflective, he does set out a process which occurs during reflective practice (Schön 1987: 26-28) and has been reiterated in more schematic models (Wallace 1991: 15, Boud and Knights 1996, Driscoll and Teh 2001: 101). Overlap occurs in these models and may be summarized as: i. Experiencing an event. ii. Returning to and reflecting on this experience. iii. Learning from and re-evaluating this experience. The Role of Experience iv. Applying new knowledge in a new event. Experience for adults has a defining feature in that adults have been moulded by it. Any adult learning process must account for experience as this focuses the new learning. However, experience may not always be an aid to learning as Knowles (1996: 60) suggests objectivity is required in order to free the mind from preconceptions and liberate learners from possible “learned helplessness” (Martinko 1981: 23) or what Dewy has termed “miseducative” (1996: 246) experiences. Teacher trainees have also been exposed to teaching as students for numerous years which Kennedy (1990: 17) suggests is “tremendously difficult to shake”, yet reflection may enable trainees to overcome such models. This overlap is recapped in constructivist psychology where “we engage, grapple and seek to make sense” of an event (Conner et al. 1996: 21) and can be likened to Gestalt therapy (Perls 1969) in that repetitive cycles of a single event can be halted by “begetting the ‘aha’ experience” (Woldt and Toman 2005: 158) whereby discovery is experienced. Reflection on action (ROA) is recognised by Schön as the intellectual part of reflection where dialogue with oneself or others is open and regards the action or more specifically the problem solving process which occurred during the action. How this dialogue evolves is crucial to effective ROA as it should enhance future practice and not result as a retrospective understanding of why something occurred and consequently, Loughran (2002: 42) suggests, “forward practice may remain uninformed”. Although experience is an important issue in adult learning, it is not the defining part. The learner must also be open to new approaches, examine their habits and biases and become more critically reflective in order to evaluate and analyse their practice in a manner which is conducive to professional growth. Thus, — 16 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles Feedback is deemed better as a group activity because on an individual level, as Hunt (2001: 280) suggests, trainees may “reinforce old habits and prejudices”. In these moments trainees are required to comment on their lessons in an open manner in the presence of peers and their tutor. However, tutors are also assessors and thus an imbalance of power exists regardless of the good intentions of all parties. It also assumes that group dynamics are healthy. However, without a public arena such as this how can trainees successfully harness their wheels to a forward moving vehicle, a developing profession? The compilation of PLES, the author suggests, are the only intimate reflective moments trainees share with their practice and, consequently, may harness reflection. PLES therefore need to be prioritised on teacher training courses. learners’ belief systems and perceptions may block the experience of the learning. Hence, effective reflection depends to a considerable degree on willing disorientation without which coping strategies may come to the fore. Ur (1996: 6) suggests that a “fully reflective model should make room for external as well as personal input”. Trainees previous experience cannot be considered as the sole source of reflection as experience is dynamic, not a static phenomenon, especially on teacher training courses due to inputs, feedback and informal peer discussion relating to teaching practice. How these external factors are internalised and related to action on a reflective level is where we now turn our attention. Reflection in Practice Hatton and Smith (1995: 9) set out three types of ROA which demonstrate deepening awareness of theoretical issues coming from action. These types of reflection were: Implementing Reflection Post lesson evaluation sheets (PLES) should act as frameworks conducive to ROA by harnessing trainees’ natural tendency to reflect whilst enabling them to avoid peripheral issues. PLES on pre-service teacher training courses need to account for a number of issues so that reflection takes place. During practice the “tool kit of methods” (Roberts 1998: 17) may have failed trainees and not having the right answer may result in confusion. Such disorientation can only be useful if trainees are open to it. Hence, willing disorientation needs to be created by attending to feelings which relate to practice. i. Descriptive reflection ii. Dialogic reflection iii. Critical reflection In their study the dominant type of reflection was descriptive reflection. It is not clear whether prior to verbalisation the participants were not reflecting at deeper levels and resorted to descriptive reflection as a summing up tactic during ROA. The verbalising of ‘thought’ can alter knowledge and result in a rationalisation of practice. This does not ensure that meaning is drawn from the experience nor that “understanding” is enhanced so that it impacts “on the development of one’s attitudes for reflection” (Loughran 2002: 36). Competent performers may provide poor accounts of their own performances, thus excellent RIA is not the same as ROA where an ability to reflect on RIA is essential. Previous experience although important needs to be viewed as being more dynamic as it is informed by theory from external sources on teacher training courses. This experience needs to be explicitly related to the theory informing trainees’ evolving practice in order to eradicate potentially flawed teaching models which trainees may have been exposed to up to now. Unexpected events during lesson planning, immediately prior to teaching and during lessons, whereby on the spot decisions are made, need to be accommodated on PLES. These events may help to alter belief systems and grant opportunity for interruption of routine practice to occur and thus, focus trainees on reflective cycles involved in RPA and RIA. Ideally such sheets should be filled in immediately after teaching by individual trainees and when possible, the author proposes, trainers should put trainees at ease regarding the ‘grade’ of the lesson prior to discussion so that trainees’ minds are freed up for effective ROA to take place. The risk of using one sheet consistently throughout a course is that the compilation of the sheet becomes mechanical and thus, no reflection whatsoever takes place. In order to avoid this the author proposes that a variety of PLES need to be created and gradually distributed during a course. The competent practitioner is not necessarily the more reflective one either, as an efficient practitioner can come to an appropriate solution in fewer cycles of reflection. Gray (2004: 25) suggests that over-reflection, in contrast, can result in “loss of fluency and paralysis”. In addition to this, pedagogical tact, the personal style or altruistic attitude “towards the good of the other” (Van Mannen 1995: 43), are not accounted for in the RM. The reflective model is not easily conceptualised. Ways in which reflection has been harnessed are documented with learning journals (Hoban 2000:168, Boud and Knights 1996), teaching logs (Thornbury 1991:140), learning partners, learning contracts (Boud and Knights 1996), picture metaphors (Hoban 2000:172, 174) and storytelling (Van Manen 1995: 39, Kubler La Boskey and Cline 2000, Langley and Senne 1997). Conclusion Reflection during teacher training courses Although trainees on CELTA, CELTYL and DELTA courses may be exposed to a reflective model of education, such exposure can over emphasise practice upon which trainees are not equipped to reflect. Issues of survival, well being with peers, meeting the grading system and attempting to learn how to teach in an effective manner can all undermine reflection. These issues need to be formally addressed in order to fully promote reflection on teacher training courses. During training courses trainees tend to pass through three stages of “fitting in, passing the test and exploring” (Calderhead 1988: 269) while the day to day concerns of trainees regard ‘passing’ their lessons. This far outweighs any other professional concerns that they might have. This, coupled with the grading system, can detract from the reflective process. In effect, reflective practice can only truly take place once issues of survival and coping have been solved. Reflective moments may be harnessed by appropriately designed post lesson evaluation sheets from which trainees might see “what they most need to see” (Schön 1987: 17). A reflective model of education must also account for external input, trainees’ feelings about their evolving practice whilst enabling them to question personal belief systems based on experience as a dynamic phenomenon. Moments where trainees reflect solo, as opposed to immediate group interaction, occur during the compilation of post lesson evaluation sheets and, consequently, cannot be overlooked as key moments for effective reflection to emerge. Reflection is problematic for trainees whose only reflective thoughts can be that of practice observed as learners. In these instances, RPA resorts to dipping into the toolkit which they are, in effect being equipped with and building up and adopting techniques to cope with lessons. Despite Dewey’s perplexity regarding instant skill at the expense of the “power to go on growing”, (in Roberts 1998: 212) such skill is necessary to free up the mind for effective reflection. Cheating novice teachers out of such skill, Van Manen (1995: 48) suggests, may effect negatively on “curricular thoughtfulness that good teachers learn to display”. — 17 — Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 References Boud, D. & Knights, S. (1996). Course design for reflective practice. in Gould, N & Taylor, I (eds.), Langley, D.J. and Senne, T. (1997). “Telling the Stories of Teaching: Reflective Writing for Preservice Teachers” . JOPERD--The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 68. (8): 56. Reflective Learning for Social Work: Research, Theory and Practice. Arena, Aldershot :23–34. Loughran, J.J. (2002). “Effective reflective practice: in search of meaning in learning about teaching”. Journal of Teacher Education, 53 (1): 33-43 Calderhead, J. (ed.) (1988). Teachers’ Professional Learning. Barcombe, Lewes: The Falmer Press. Martinko, M.J. (1981). Breaking the pattern of Learned Helplessness in Adult Learning in your classroom. London: Lakeland Publication. Conner, M.L., Wright, E., Curry, K., DeVries, L., Zeider, C., Wilmsmeyer, D. and Forman, D. (1996). Learning: The Critical Technology, (2nd edition). Missouri, USA : Wave Technologies Inc. learnativity.com/download/Learning International, whitepaper96.pdf (Accessed 12th Dec. 2005). Internet. Perls, F.S. (1969). Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Moab, CA: Real People Press. Roberts, J. (1998). Language Teacher Education. London: Arnold. Dewey, J. (1996). “Criteria of Experience” , John Dewey Selected Educational Writings. London: Schon, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner, How Professionals think in action. London: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Heineman Educational Books Ltd. Schon, D. A. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Driscoll, J. and Teh, B. (2001). “The potential of reflective practice to develop individual orthopaedic nurse practitioners and their practice”. Journal of Orthopaedic Nursing 5: 95-103. Sotto, E. (1994). When Teaching Becomes Learning, A Theory and Practice of Teaching. London: Continuum. Gray, J. (2004). “Exploring the Language Teacher’s mind – helping student teachers see beneath the surface”. Language Learning Journal, 29: 23-31. Thornbury, S. (1991). “Watching the whites of their eyes: The use of teaching practice logs”. English Language Teaching Journal 45 (2): 140-146. Hatton N. and Smith D. (1995) Reflection in Teacher Education: Towards Definition and Implementation. alex.edfac.usyd.edu.au/LocalResource/Study1/hattonart.html. Ur, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoban, G.(2000). “Using a Reflective Framework to Study TeachingLearning Relationships”. Reflective Practice, 1 (2): 165-182. Van Manen, M. (1995). “On the Epistemology of Reflective Practice “ Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 1 (1): 33-50. Hunt, C. (2001). “Shifting Shadows: metaphors and maps for facilitating reflective practice”. Reflective Practice, 2 (3): 275-287. Wallace, M. J. (1991). Training Foreign Language Teachers, a reflective approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kennedy, M. (1990). Policy Issues in Teacher Education. East Lansing, Mich.: National Center for Research on Teacher Learning. Willen, W, Ishler, M, Hutchison, J. and Kindsvatter, R. (2000). Dynamics of Effective Teaching. U.S.A.: Addison Wesley Longman Inc. Knowles, M. (1996). Andragogy – An Emerging Technology for Adult Learning in Boundaries of Adult Learning. Edwards, R., Hanson, A. and Raggart, P. (eds) London and New York: Routledge. Wilkinson, J. (1999). “Implementing reflective practice”. Nursing Standard, 13 (21): 36-40. Woldt, A. and Toman, S.M. (2005). Gestalt Therapy: History, Theory, and Practice. CA.: Sage Publications, Inc. Kubler LaBoskey, V. and Cline, S. (2000). “Behind the Mirror: inquiry-based storying in teacher education”. Reflective Practice 1 (3): 359-375. Margaret teaches adults, children, CELTA, DELTA and CELTYL courses at International House in Rome. She also teaches ESP at the Law Faculty in LUISS University in Rome. Embracing Change - the 11th IH Portugal Symposium The Editor In March this year, IH Viseu hosted the 11th IH Portugal Symposium. The theme for this year’s symposium, ‘Embracing Change’, struck a chord with me, as I had attended a succession of earlier symposiums as a teacher, but this would be my first as the Journal editor. As usual, a fine array of speakers had been assembled by chief organiser Gay Adamson, Director, IH Viseu, ably assisted by her DoS, Carol Crombie. Some 36 sessions were presented over the two days (Friday and Saturday) and they ran like clockwork. There were also some household names (ELT households at least) making guest appearances in the plenaries, including Young Learner expert, Annie Hughes, from the University of York, the evergreen Mario Rinvolucri, Mark Powell from Barcelona (who proved that ELT Symposiums can indeed be the vehicle for a stand up show) and IHWO Executive Director, Michael Carrier. historical perspective on the IH Portugal Symposium, I turned to Colin McMillan, Director, IH Lisbon. Where did the idea for the Symposium originally come from? The first Symposium in Portugal was held in '87 to celebrate 25 years of IH teacher training, which like many things in the life of the Organisation started in London in June 1962. The idea was to celebrate the occasion in IH schools abroad as well as in London and it seemed that an event dedicated to the teaching of English with well-known guest speakers would be appropriate. As it was, we managed to get, as plenary speakers, Louis Alexander, Robert O'Neil and Brian Abs, the TEFL gurus of that time, and organised a number of workshops which compared with later symposia was really quite modest. I questioned some of the people involved in the symposium, either actively or passively, to get their opinions. Firstly, to get an — 18 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles — 19 — Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Where was the first event held? How many people attended the Symposium this year and from what differing backgrounds? It was held in the Universidade Católica and attracted a fair crowd. The idea was that the Symposium should be opened by a dignitary and we invited Maria Barroso who was at that time the First Lady and had, during the dark days of Mário Soares's exile, been a student of ours. Unfortunately, affairs of State prevented her from being at the Symposium in person but she agreed to write an opening speech to be read in her name at the beginning of the opening ceremony which was to be at 6 p.m. By twenty past six, no speech had arrived and people were becoming restless, when finally the sound of sirens was heard and in rushed a breathless motor cycle cop with the speech in a folder embossed with the Portuguese coat of arms! The most dramatic start to any of the 11 IH Portugal Symposia which have now been held. 175 teachers attended, of which 35% were from International House schools in Portugal, whilst IH Spain was represented by three members of the IH Valladolid staff. 40% were teachers from other language schools but surprisingly only 25% were state school teachers. One reason for this may be the fact that the APPI Conference takes place a month later in April, so there is perhaps a case for moving the Symposium from mid-March to November. (See below) So for you, how successful was the Symposium? As far as I am concerned, it was a great success. The majority of the 36 workshops were given by DoSes and teachers from IH Portugal. About 85 feedback forms were returned and all but 5 of them considered the standard of the workshops to be good or excellent. Of course, it is also a social event and the dinner and entertainment on Friday evening was also highly praised. The first Symposium was very much based on the IH philosophy of learning through trial and error, always assuming that there would be an opportunity to repeat the experience and show that we'd actually learnt something from the mistakes. As it happened this first gathering of its kind in Portugal was a success thanks in some ways to the fascinating plenaries and the final debate organised for the three guest speakers, together with John Haycraft, none of whom could agree on a single issue and engaged in a veritable war of words which held the audience spellbound. I asked Michael Carrier how important he thought events of this nature were for IHWO. The IH Portugal Symposium was a very successful example of what IH wants to be involved in - reaching out to teachers beyond the IH group itself, and sharing ideas, new research and experiences. IH is a network of schools, but above all a network of teachers and teacher trainers who are passionate about raising educational standards and introducing new and creative ideas into the classroom. It's really important that teachers have the opportunity to come together, network and share their dedication and creativity with colleagues inside and outside the group in this kind of event. It's especially helpful to meet with colleagues from primary and secondary schools, and learn from them how to teach in a very different kind of context from a language school. The success of the first venture encouraged us in Lisbon to try to make the IH Portugal Symposium (as it came to be called) an annual event, feeling that it set us firmly apart from any other language school including the British Council. Seen from a purely marketing angle there was no visible spin-off in terms of student numbers although it acts, we feel, in many ways like the Teachers' Centre which attracts teachers who then often refer students to IH when asked by parents or students themselves to recommend a language school. When did the other schools within the IH Portugal network become involved? What impressed you about this particular Symposium? The people, the speakers, the content, the atmosphere - all were excellent and made for a very enjoyable and productive event. It was extremely well organised, with an innovative new design to all the posters and programmes, and was located in a very modern and well-equipped centre. Gay Adamson and her team from IH Viseu did a marvellous job and we are all very grateful for their hard work and dedication. After a string of four consecutive Symposia in Lisbon it was felt that the organisation of further events should pass to other schools in the organisation here in Portugal and that they should This was especially be held biennially rather than annually. important considering how these sessions had developed into undertakings requiring enormous preparation and work by the staff of a single school in order to set up an event with a minimum of 4 plenary sessions and up to 40 workshops all in the space of a day and a half. Janet Sinclair is DoS at IH Braga, and as usual, she ran an excellent workshop entitled Waking teens up to authentic material. Gay Adamson has been the director of IH Viseu since its inception in 1983 and this was her second experience of being event organiser, the Symposium having previously been held in Viseu, in 1994. As DoS, why do you encourage your teachers to attend the symposium? It’s good timing - coming at the end of the 2nd term, it provides a boost of enthusiasm. There’s a good range of workshops - some practical and others more theoretical. It also provides a chance to get an update on ELT trends & developments. Teachers get a buzz from it - it really feels like an ELT ‘event’. There are not many occasions for IH teachers to get an idea of IH as a worldwide organisation (or even national for that matter), but attending symposiums where there are speakers from IHWO, Pilgrims and different UK institutions helps them to feel part of a bigger organisation. It’s also a good opportunity for teachers to give workshops to a wider audience than their peers within IH Portugal a great professional development opportunity for teachers, especially those who for personal reasons are unlikely to move closer to bigger teacher training centres like Lisbon. There’s always lots of socialising with people you don't see very often and you also get the opportunity to meet and talk to teachers who work in different contexts and face different problems or have different priorities Why is it so important for you to run an event of this kind? The International House Portugal English Teaching Symposium is an extremely important event for several reasons. The only other event of its kind run in Portugal is the APPI (Portuguese Association of English Teachers) Conference, which tends to cater more for state school teachers. The Symposium is traditionally very well organised and is known for the workshops. It raises the profile of the organisation, making it stand out from other language schools and reinforces the idea that IH is a quality organisation. It is also a tremendous morale booster not only for the organizing school, but also for all IH Portugal teachers. — 20 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles What did you personally take away from this particular symposium? Did the IH Symposium effect your teaching either short or long term? If so, how? Again, it’s the buzz and the boost of enthusiasm, despite the best efforts of the weather to dampen our spirits! (It rained incessantly and it was unseasonably cold!) I have to admire how each symposium gets better and better in terms of organisation and professionalism and with reference to the sessions themselves there was an interesting review of YLs from Annie Hughes, especially the pitfalls of unwittingly making YLs too dependent on the teacher. Yes, I believe so. Short term - there were practical ideas I used in classes very soon after. Also a great abdominal workout if fortunate enough to experience one of Mark Powell's sessions. Long term - some of those ideas I continue to use. There were also some seemingly basic issues raised in a couple of sessions yet to which I ashamedly remained oblivious to prior to session. These made me examine my own habits and teaching methods and their effectiveness and usefulness. Overall, many an opportunity to see just how much fun EFL can potentially be. Joana Fernandes, IH Lisbon As Gay told us above, in addition to the many IH Portugal teaching staff that attend, symposiums also attract a large number of teachers from the Portuguese state school system. Ana Paula Carlão is a state school teacher from Viseu. How important is it for you to meet up with other IH people in contexts such as this? How was the event useful for you? I think it is very important. It’s always refreshing to learn about new ideas and techniques. Nicole Booher, IH Lisbon It was both important and useful, because I could see and check how things effectively work using technology. The 11th IH Symposium was considered a huge success from all quarters and everyone is looking forward to November 2007, when a special event will be staged to celebrate 40 years of IH in Coimbra. IH Portugal is to join forces with APPI to promote the symposium in an attempt to attract even more state school teachers to the event. As Michael Carrier put it, reaching out to teachers beyond the IH group itself. Did you try any of the ideas you saw in sessions with your own students? Yes, I tried two or three ideas. I've created a ‘Podcast’ with my students and I've worked with ‘Protopage’ with my 6th grade students. They were ‘super’ interested. You can check their work at www.anapcarlao.podomatic.com or www.protopage.com/anapcarlao On the following pages are articles based on presentations given in Viseu by Jenny Bartlett, DoS, IH Coimbra, and Martin Heslop, a teacher at IH Braga. Finally, I had two questions that I wanted to put to my fellow teachers in the IH Portugal network. All change, please! Jenny Bartlett hilst researching for the workshop I came across an article by Sam Intrator in Education Leadership in which he outlined research he has done by shadowing teens in school (Intrator 2004). He found out that, perhaps unsurprisingly, students, especially teenagers, often spend their time in class doing everything but focus on what is happening in the classroom. They are often disengaged and off-task whilst appearing to study and used adjectives such as ‘monotonous’, ‘predictable’ and ‘dull’ to describe the time they spent in the classroom. However, he did also observe ‘episodes of intense concentration’ which he describes as ‘engaged time’. In order to encourage more ‘engaged time’ I feel we need to challenge students at all points in the lesson. that students know much about each other. By personalising activities as much as possible students are given the opportunity to get to know the other members of the class, and their teacher, better. The following activity from Creative Questions is a good way to convert what is basically a drill into a more interesting task. W How long does it take? 1. Students make collective lists of everyday tasks. E.g. get ready for school in the morning, check e-mail, do homework. 2. Elicit group contributions and make a list on the board. 3. Write How long does it take you to….? on the board. 4. Each student looks over the list of activities and notes down how long it usually takes. Then ask each other in pairs. Studies have demonstrated that a factor as seemingly minor as seating affects classroom performance. Daley and Suite (1981) found that whilst younger children were included regardless of where they were sitting, with older children teachers tended to focus their attention among students at the front or middle of the classroom. Students sitting at the back of the classroom were often excluded from discussion. An interesting starting point for some classroom research would be to ask an observer to record the interaction patterns in one of your lessons and see how far this is true within your own teaching context. 5. In groups of four students compare notes and ask for advice from a student who seems to be particularly quick and efficient at performing a certain task. Energising Getting students up and moving will help to energise the classroom and allow them to interact with as many people in the classroom as possible. The following ideas are aimed at injecting some physical activity and an element of surprise into the practice and checking stages of the lesson. Bearing the above in mind, I focussed on presenting some practical activities to use in the classroom. Party conversations Getting to know each other better Preparation: Write out a number of questions and stick one under each student’s chair or desk before the class. These could be Simply spending time in a classroom does not necessarily mean — 21 — Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 topic based or be aimed at practising a particular language area. N.B. This is a good activity to do if you are preparing students for a Cambridge exam. 1. Tell students there is a surprise under their chair / desk. They should find their questions and check they understand them. Sponges and Fillers 2. Students stand up and mingle. They ask each other their questions, listen to answers, exchange slips of paper and move onto the next partner. Make sure students have open-ended activities / sponge activities to do when you are collecting homework or taking the register to ensure that students have something to do. This could be a daily challenge on the board or on laminated cards 3. When they have sat down ask them to tell you about any interesting information they found out or write down a few sentences to share. What if …? Put one of the following in a speech bubble and give students 2-3 minutes to complete with as many ideas as possible. Spell check This activity is a variation on a treasure hunt with the added challenge of recalling the sentences. What would happen if…. -schools did not exist? Preparation: Prepare slips of paper with the words in context, fold the paper in half and number them then stick around the room before students come into class. Example: - you didn’t have a name? • People usually complain about having to deal with too much bureaucracy. - it never rained? • We’re all becoming increasingly health-conscious nowadays. • He looked a bit embarrassed when I asked him what he was doing. Have a selection of activities on laminated cards ready for filling or leading-in to activities. Once again you can aim to personalise these as much as possible. • The Government will provide temporary accommodation for up to three thousand people. Example activities. • He didn’t expect an answer to his rhetorical question Name as many things as you can that you can wear on your head. • Your diaphragm is a muscle between your lungs and your stomach. Turn to your neighbour and tell him / her about an interesting experience you have had. • We tried to manoeuvre the canoe closer to the river bank. List all the places you can find sand. • You are going to have to forgive my pronunciation. List the ten largest things you know. • Drugs can make you do all kinds of weird things. - you never cleaned your bedroom? Sponge activities Name as many teachers at this school as you can. In short, if we aim to create the kind of classroom where students are immersed in learning we need to take the following factors into account when planning lessons. a. Tell students you are going to give them a spelling test – choose words that you have noticed they find difficulty with or vocabulary that has come up recently in class. b. Tell them to look around the room, find sentences and check their spelling – set a time limit, say 5 minutes. Pace – variety and adding an element of surprise and challenge helps keep students awake and interested. c. When they have sat down ask them to work with a partner and try to remember the sentences. d. You can then put the sentences up for them to check. Creativity – give students the opportunity to express their originality and encourage their involvement in their own learning process. Variation: Ask students to make the sentences true for them or write sentences about members of the class. Energize your teaching – students respond better to energetic & positive teaching. Personalisation – let the students see you as a person, get to know them and encourage them to get to know each other. Picture Challenge Listen to your students and value their opinions. Preparation: Find pictures of people - you need enough for one picture for each student. a) Give every student in the class a picture, ask them to tell their partner whether or not they like their picture. Above all enjoy the challenges and rewards of teaching teenage learners. b) Show the class your picture and tell them to find similarities and differences between their picture and yours. References c) If necessary, write up some sentence starters on the board. Both pictures…. S.Intrator. (2004). The Engaged Classroom. Educational Leadership, September 2004. My picture...... whereas that one….. Hess. N. & Pollard (1995). Creative Questions. Longman d) Elicit comments from students. Daley, John A & Amy Suite. Classroom Seating Choice and Teacher Perceptions of Students. Journal of Experimental Education,50, Winter 1981-82. pp64-69 Follow-up: Ask students to ‘be the character’ and write down some information about their daily routine / what they did last weekend etc depending on what language point you want them to practise. Gill. M. Open Classroom Communication: An Argument for a Re-Evaluation of teaching Strategies. Educational Leadership, ASCD, September 2004. www.ascd.org Or get them to role play a conversation between two / three of the people. Jenny has been working in Portugal since 1986, so is now celebrating her 20th year teaching. She worked as a teacher then DoS at IH Aveiro and recently made the move to be DoS in IH Santa Clara. — 22 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles — 23 — Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Future Projections Martin Heslop whole text or a picture, whatever material the teacher chooses. We have also noticed that the DP seems to exert a certain control over the students, quite possibly because their eyes are up, they are focused and our backs are not turned. Introduction The objective of this article is to introduce and discuss the use of laptops and data projectors (DPs) in the EFL classroom, as well as to suggest some practical ways in which this equipment can be used. The article is aimed at DoSes, Directors and teachers who are either considering investing in this technology or already have it and are looking for more ideas. Firstly, I would like to outline why we decided to use a DP. At IH Braga, like many IH schools, we are very keen on keeping up with developments in technology. One of the latest is, of course, the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) and we did initially consider trying one. However, we rejected the idea for the following reasons. Firstly, good quality IWBs are extremely expensive, so we would only be able to have one which would be fixed in one classroom. Secondly, we were concerned about the relative lack of EFL materials available for IWB use. It must be stressed that we have not entirely dismissed IWBs but we have decided to wait and see what developments occur in this area. Instead, we opted for a DP, which seemed to be a suitable choice for our needs. In the following section I will give a more specific description of the necessary equipment, as well as an overview of the main advantages and disadvantages of the DP. • MOTIVATION. Teachers have remarked that their learners have shown higher levels of motivation when the DP is used. Most of our learners are in the younger age group and are enthusiastic about technology in general so it could be that they respond positively to our use of it. • RECORD OF WORK. Any material created for use with the DP can easily be saved on the laptop for future use and printed as handouts for learners. All that is required is a clear filing system. … and against • SETTING UP. As a portable item, the equipment must be unpacked and set up and then dismantled and repacked at the end of the lesson, and this does take time. However, with a little practice it really only takes a few minutes. • POWERPOINT KNOWLEDGE. Not all teachers will be familiar with this program but it is such a useful presentation tool that I would urge everyone to develop their skills in this area. We ran a brief workshop on the basics and now all our teachers are at ease with using it. • FRAGILE. The equipment, particularly the bulb and lens of the DP are, of course, very fragile so care must be taken. We always try to arrange the DP and laptop so that it is impossible (for either the teacher or the learners) to trip over the cable connecting them, thus avoiding any possible damage or injury. • COST. The initial outlay for the equipment may seem to be a significant slice of the budget, particularly if you do not already have a laptop. Prices are coming down, however, and it is possible to pick up a laptop (in Portugal) for €500 and a DP for ¤ €700. A simple click can reveal or hide a word, a sentence, a whole text or a picture, whatever material the teacher chooses Equipment 1. LAPTOP. Unless you have a PC in the classroom, a laptop computer is necessary. Nowadays, many schools already have one, as do individual teachers. In the next section, some practical ideas for using the DP in class, all of which have been used by IH Braga teachers, will be described. 2. DP. This is a relatively simple piece of kit, which connects to the laptop and projects whatever is on the computer screen onto the chosen projection surface. We use our whiteboards (around 1.5m x 1.0m). In an average classroom this is big enough and we have not yet felt the need for a larger pull-down screen. Activities 3. SPEAKERS. In smaller classrooms the laptop’s inbuilt speakers are usually sufficient but in bigger rooms with larger classes we use additional speakers that connect to the laptop via the headphone socket. A. Using PowerPoint 1. Vocabulary development: positive and negative expressions. • 4. INTERNET. A wireless internet connection is a convenient way of making sure that the net can be accessed from any classroom. “I’ve been here a week and my first impressions are not very good. In fact they are terrible. The city is small and boring and the buildings are modern and unattractive.” (Inside Out Pre-Int p.12, Macmillan) For • • The learners are shown the first paragraph of a text from their coursebooks which describes a dreadful holiday. Here is an excerpt: CLARITY. Most of us will have witnessed a PowerPoint presentation and it is hard to deny that slides present information in an extremely clear manner. Like OHTs, however, slides must be well-designed: this means that they should not include too much text or colour and must use a font size that is large enough to be visible to learners at the back of the classroom. In pairs, the learners are encouraged to select the negative vocabulary. Feedback is given on the DP : each sentence is removed and then replaced with the negative vocabulary highlighted. When the paragraph is complete, the learners, change the negative expressions to positive ones. Feedback is given on the DP in a similar way to that described above. This time each sentence is revealed with the positive vocabulary highlighted. CONTROL. The DP, especially when using PowerPoint, gives the teacher total control over what material the learners focus on. A simple click can reveal or hide a word, a sentence, a — 24 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles Now that the first paragraph has been done as an example, the learners can change the rest of the text and the DP can be used for feedback at the end. • Level: this particular activity is Pre-Int but this use can be adapted for any level. • Advantages: PowerPoint can be used to give efficient feedback and a very clear demonstration of how to do an activity. learners use PowerPoint to make their slide shows. I advise grouping students according to their IT skills. Learners should also be encouraged not to put too much text on their slides as they should act as a basis for delivering a spoken presentation. The slides should not just be read out. The final stage is back in the classroom with the DP. In each group the learners give their presentations, sharing the speaking among them. A listening task for the other groups should be devised. 2. Writing letters: formal and informal • PowerPoint is used here in combination with material from the coursebook and with worksheets that the learners fill in and keep as a written record. • As this is quite a challenging task, it has so far only been used with Intermediate classes and above. However, if the requirements were simplified, it could work at lower levels too. • Advantages: this is a creative task that hands over a greater degree of control to the learners and also gives them the opportunity to combine other skills with their language work. PowerPoint is used to give clear instructions about what material the learners should be looking at and what their tasks are. It is also used to give clear feedback on the tasks. One of these is to decide where the different elements of a formal letter should be placed on the page (e.g. the date, the sender’s address, yours faithfully/sincerely). The learners do this task on a worksheet and then the DP is used for feedback, revealing the answers one by one. 5. Vocabulary revision game • A selection of words (10-15) from the past few lessons are put onto slides, one word or expression on each slide using a fairly large font size with a variety of colours for backgrounds and text. The slides are shown to the learners quickly, either by clicking to move on or by using PowerPoint’s automatic timing feature. The slides may be shown once or twice and the learners are asked to recall as many items as they can. This can be used at the start or at the end of the lesson or as a filler. • Level : any, depending on the items chosen. • Advantages : the slides are being used as flashcards really, but the modern technological aspect seems to focus and motivate the learners. This idea was developed on the basis that the DP may as well be used once it has been set up in the classroom. It is not intended to be used on its own but rather as a quick game incidental to the main DP presentation. The DP is also used in a similar way to activity 1: this time PowerPoint is used to highlight examples of formal and informal language in the sample letters. • This method is widely adaptable. • Advantages: clarity for instructions and feedback, particularly important with written work. I am not entirely sure why but when I did this, my teenage Pre-Int group stayed focused on writing tasks for a whole hour! 3. Picture stories • The pictures are scanned and put on individual PowerPoint slides. They are then shown one at a time to the learners. 6. Speed reading The first time the pictures are shown the focus is on brainstorming and noting down the necessary vocabulary. The second time, the slides include questions as well as pictures which aim to suggest the appropriate grammar (e.g. “Where were they?”, “What were they doing?”). Learners make a note of their answers. The pictures are shown a third time to give an overview of the whole story and the learners then write the story. • Level : we used this with YLs to give practice for the Cambridge ‘Flyers’ exam, but it is an adaptable format. • Advantages : this method has two advantages over a paper version in terms of control over the activity. Firstly, we were able to show the pictures and deal with the vocabulary and grammar one by one, and to focus on them as a class. Secondly, even if the pictures were photocopied and distributed individually, we felt that the focus on the language brainstorming tasks would not be so great. Furthermore, it would create a lot of paper that could get mixed up and lost. • Paragraphs of a text (in our case, a story) are put onto slides and shown to the learners. At the end of each slide there is a question asking the learners to predict what happens next. At the end, a skeleton version is provided and the learners retell the story. • Level: all, according to the text chosen. • Advantages: far easier to control than a paper version. All learners get to see the text at the same time and the teacher can control the reading time. Although it is true that all learners need different amounts of time to read, the aim here is to encourage all learners to read for essential information rather than get stuck with unknown but potentially unimportant items. B. Using DVDs, CD-ROMs etc. Here, the DP is basically used as a cinema projector, giving a much larger image than a TV. There is a huge variety of material available in this area, not forgetting that many coursebooks now come with a DVD or Multi-ROM, and all teachers will have their favourites. Here is a brief selection of some of the material we have used : 4. Presentations by learners • In this activity the learners are given the opportunity to design PowerPoint slide shows themselves. It consists of three stages which can be done over the course of two or three lessons. 1. ‘Cinemania’ Clips Quiz (Pre-Int+) • The first stage is to introduce the idea and give the learners time to plan their presentations. The topic we used was film reviews: the learners had already encountered much of the necessary vocabulary and seen examples of the genre as it was the current coursebook topic. ‘Cinemania’ is sadly no longer made, but I believe a ’97 or ’98 version is still available. The clips have the advantage of being short, motivating and challenging. 2. ‘Grumpy Old Men’ DVD (Advanced) • The next stage takes place in the computer room where the — 25 — This has proved very popular with higher levels. Its authentic and amusing nature has been a source of motivation. Subtitles may be used at the second viewing for language work. Articles 3. ‘Friends’: Phoebe tries to teach Joey French (Int+) • This was used to lead into a discussion about how to go about language learning and teaching and how to be a more successful language learner. C. Others Essay preparation using Word. (Int+) • The teacher opens a pre-prepared Word document which has an essay title at the top (e.g. “Sport is a waste of time, effort and money. Discuss.”) The learners are asked to discuss the topic in pairs. Meanwhile the teacher circulates and listens for any good points that are made and types them into the Word document. This has a motivating effect on the learners as they soon notice that the teacher is only typing sensible points that are made in English. The document can then be used as a basis for a process writing task which may be done in the PC Lab. D. Using the Internet This option naturally requires a wireless internet connection, as described above. The advantage is obvious: this is a way of bringing the virtually limitless resources of the internet into every classroom. It is a vast area that we have only begun to explore. We have used texts, video and audio clips, pictures and slideshows, picture stories and cartoons and games. Here is a brief list of material and URLs : IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Texts: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/ then click on ‘Words in the News’ Video and audio: http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/archive/ and http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/multimedia/ind ex.shtml Pictures: http://www.zara.com. Many company sites advertising their products have good pictures. Slideshows: http://nytimes.com/pages/multimedia/index.html. There is a choice of slideshows with commentaries and a useful search option. Stories: http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-stories.htm Games: http://www.ihworld.com/campus. Some of the IH Campus games can be used with the whole class. Conclusion The DP has proved to be very popular with our learners, increasing motivation and adding clarity and focus to their learning. Although we have only had the equipment for a year it is already becoming a regular feature of lessons and our aim now is to integrate its use as fully as possible, so that we no longer talk about ‘a DP lesson’ but think more of it in terms of just another resource available to us. Acknowledgements Although this article carries my name, I would like to stress that the development of the DP resource has been embraced by the entire staff of IH Braga and I would like to thank them for their efforts. Martin Heslop taught in Turkey before joining IH in Poland. He then transferred to IH Braga before moving to England to work at the University of Buckingham. He is now happy to be back with International House in Braga. Learning About Ukraine, Pre and Post Chernobyl Kristina Gray have had the privilege of working at International House and teaching English to eight Ukrainian professionals who have law degrees, or higher academic degrees in aviation, physics, high math and biology. The names of my students (in alphabetical order) are Ludmilla, Natasha, Olena, Olga, Tamara, Tanya, Victoria and Vyacheslav (or Slava, his name means ‘Glorious Forever’.) These eight individuals have special insights into their own Ukrainian history, their ancestor’s lives, the present Ukrainian government, but especially information about the Chernobyl accident, which happened twenty years ago (April 26, 1986). Lessons are being learned by this American teacher while talking around topics that come up in our English course book. group, had talked with an official who had been a part of the evacuation process days after the nuclear accident had happened. The hardest people to persuade to leave were those villagers who had cattle to feed. These common villagers had lived off the land for centuries and were not part of the nuclear experiment but merely lived in the wrong place at the wrong time, since Chernobyl nuclear power plant was built in the early 1970s. I Those organizing the evacuation told residents in the Chernobyl area that they would be gone only three days. They were permitted to bring only luggage for that amount of time. Each bag was measured according to the government’s specifications and those things that were possibly contaminated were thrown out. Many pictures and other precious family heirlooms were left behind, which they were never allowed to return for. Their hurried flight away from the nuclear disaster meant giving up everything they owned. As they soon learned, they had been lied to, as three days turned into permanently relocating elsewhere. Many of these adult students of English have visited the actual site of the accident at Chernobyl because their job deals with radioactive nuclear waste management. Ukraine will be memorializing those who died during the Chernobyl tragedy twenty years ago. Tanya, a student in my first — 26 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles Pripyat, a town close to Chernobyl, is also known now as the ‘Dead City.’ What now looms on the silent horizon is a huge carnival carousel that was to be inaugurated for the May 1st festivities, just days away from the disaster on April 26, 1986. No children ever enjoyed the rides at the Pripyat amusement park and it stands sadly as a monument to this silenced city. Tanya’s grandparents had worked at a collective but they never got a real salary. They said they were paid in sticks. “What did that mean?” I asked. Simply that all the hours they put in during a day meant there would be a hatch mark next to their name in the record book. No matter how many sticks they got, they were never paid. That is where the expression, “working for sticks” came from, essentially meaning to work for nothing. The ‘Exclusion Zone’ is where people are prohibited to enter, since not only are there still dangerous levels of radiation remaining in the surrounding area, but there are also many wolves that have created a problem for other territories close to the Zone. A forest, at the time of the accident, had its pine trees turn red because of the heat of the explosion and the radiation. The newly created (at the time) city of Slavutich for staff and families is a quiet town where there are also currently scientists and nuclear engineers from all over the world working on the different international projects implemented on the site. They are also continuing to monitor the situation at As far as expressions we talked about, Olga mentioned a proverb that relates to all the misfortune that has hit Ukrainians. “You can’t build your happiness on other peoples’ unhappiness.” As westerners, we share in expressions such as those Tamara recognized in our textbook of “not making ends meet” or “having to tighten your belt.” The Ukrainians have experienced poverty and they know what it is like to do without. Natasha said that most Ukrainians have been assimilated and that the Russian language has become so integrated into the Ukrainian way of life. However, Natasha says that no one is capable of understanding the Russian mentality. It has huge contrasts where there are very poor people and very rich people. The area of Ukraine that had the most authentic Ukrainian language, with official written Ukrainian, was the Poltavska region. That is where the Holodomor (Forced Famine of 1932-33) was particularly bad. According to Tamara, many older people were hesitant to tell the truth to the younger generation about what life was like before the revolution of 1917, as they knew their lives had been better than under communism. Tamara emphasized that there were two sides of life, life at school and life at home. What now looms on the silent horizon is a huge carnival carousel that was to be inaugurated for the May 1st festivities, just days away from the disaster on April 26, 1986 When talking about parenting, Olga had very firm opinions about how to raise children based on her own past experience being raised in a closed communist town where you needed special permission to enter. She believed that no parent should make their children feel under a heavy obligation about sacrificing so much for them. She believes it is the parents’ duty to raise children and give them what is expected. In Olga’s case, she felt forced to take music lessons against her will. Her parents said that they could have bought a car in the Soviet period with the money they spent on her for music. Cars back in the day of communism were very expensive. Olga deeply resented the music lessons then, but now regrets that she didn’t pursue it more. Chernobyl itself. Unfortunately Belarus, which borders northern Ukraine, was hit by the winds that carried the fall out north and west on those fateful days after the Chernobyl tragedy. Many of the people I teach have a Belarusian connection in some form or another. Ludmilla, a student from my second group, told of old traditions that used to exist in the villages. For example, how people did not use locks on their doors. If her grandmother left the house, she would put a very long stick propped up against the door so the wind could not blow it open and the animals would not come in. Ludmilla said it was generally observed that the stick meant “Nobody is home.” All that social tradition is gone now and people have 3-4 locks on their doors, even in the villages. About husbands, we could share some laughs because like my husband, Tanya said hers tells the same joke over and over again. Her father was the same way. Tanya’s husband is obsessed with fishing too. Tamara’s husband is obsessed with anything to do with Dynamo soccer but he will tell a story in great detail only ONCE. When Tamara asks him to tell it a second time, he says that once was enough. Olga and Ludmilla stated that there were many good rules in place before the Soviet system took over. People were afraid NOT to follow those rules. You wanted to follow the rules so as not to hurt the reputation or prestige of your family in the village. There were good habits among family members but they lamented that now, people have forgotten about that and what it means to work for life. During the Soviet period, people were given jobs with responsibilities that weren’t interesting to them. Even if they had more responsibility, they were given the same salary as those who didn’t do much work at all. Ludmilla’s husband had said, “If one works more, one should be getting more salary.” I think as TEFL educators we need to catch our students’ stories the first time and document what our adult learners tell us. These stories are gifts that should be unwrapped by other reading audiences across the world. I have enjoyed my teaching assignment with these eight individuals in Ukraine who have gone through so much. They continue to give me pleasure especially when we deviate a bit from our structured English course book. Kristina Gray is from Crookston, Minnesota (her hometown) where she spends her summers. During the academic school year, she teaches Ukrainian students in a westernized university in Kyiv, called Wisconsin International University-Ukraine. She also teaches part time at International House, Kyiv. — 27 — Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 The Long Wait (or The Approach without Method) A salutary tale for those awaiting their DELTA results Duncan MacKenzie performing a similar function to a barely heard weak form on a non-contextualised, elementary-learner desktop. He regretted kowtowing to the inductive: he needed straight, grammartranslation instruction, with none of that fancy cognitive guided discovery that had teachers scraping together misguided worksheets and pressing the photocopying machine’s green button like there was never a rainforest to destroy in the first place. Tell me what to do, he thought. He must have twitched. He couldn’t put this down as 100% certainty, thus the modal, but his powers of deduction led him to believe that it had almost certainly happened, given the sudden: “Don’t move!” Even though the pace was even and marked (one tone unit or two?), he noticed the elision of the /t/ and thanked God he’d learnt phonology. For a moment, he considered demaximising Grice and being flippant, but the conditions were infelicitous enough. “It’s the bleeding obvious you don’t need to state,” was what he wanted to reply, cleft-sentence emphatically, but he’d always found colloquialisms, not to say profanities, sounded unnatural even with Advanced learners like himself. What was he thinking? Why was he being so illogical? – a use of the past continuous that exemplified the dangers of overgeneralising rules about statives not being progressive, and had him repeating ‘tendency’ more often than a closed-option ccq. L1 interference was obviously meddling with his capacity to recognise himself as a native speaker, thereby putting another nail in the coffin of the discredited Behaviourist Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. Anyway, he discourse-marked silently, indicating that the digression was over even if the gun’s menace wasn’t, he was good at listening for the attitude of the speaker, so was fully aware of the fact that she was threatening, not just pleading ‘Don’t move’ like a partner (sensitively non-gender specific) telling him not to take up that ADoS-ship in Mongolia. “It’s just that...erm...well, you know...” she continued, using redundancies so common to interactional, authentic conversations that he hankered after the target-languagerepetitive perfection of coursebook recordings with all their non-phatic dovetailed turn-taking. “You see, the wait between finishing and getting the result is driving me mad!” The gun began to lose its focus, as if she were 35 minutes through an observed lesson. Seeing her menace evaporate (he’d witnessed it from beginning to end, thus the root form or bare infinitive), and pleased with the participle clauses (non-finite of course) that were beginning to occupy his thoughts, he suddenly felt the humanistic urge to touch her shoulder. He would draw the line at removing his brogues and puncturing a bean bag parked on the floor with the keys stashed in his back pocket. But touching – just for positive reinforcement’s sake. What was the harm? Not to mention in saving his skin – the ellipsis dwelling in his mind like ‘raining cats and dogs’ to a proud learner anywhere in the world, before the grammar-deficient yet idiomknowing native-language teacher got her own back by saying she’d never heard that expression uttered, except in jest, in her ambulatory, peripatetic life! “The wait is something up with which I cannot put!” she blurted, dropping the gun and bursting into tears that spilt homographically onto the tears in her jeans. The moderator sat glumly, like a candidate who’d sloppily guillotined in half her controlled (restrictive) practice exercise. Her gun-toting PLE might have saved the day, if only she hadn’t felt the need to mock the rule that prepositions can’t e was sweating as the candidate’s finger hovered over the trigger. Nor was it a discrete item – this trigger, the Cambridge moderator reiterated in his mind, searching in vain for a superordinate or near-synonym to give elegance to his temporarily non-cohesive thoughts. Trigger. His cultural schema summoned up Rogerian horses. And sit-coms and stupidity, although he had the good grace to realise stupidity was perhaps a lack of aptitude, and to couch his opinions in such diplomatic expressions as ‘disappointed that candidates consistently failed to identify the name of a life-long drinking companion’. The exaphoric referencing was clouding his mind, like a presentation on the contrastive use of present perfect simple and continuous. H He wished he could noun-convert more autonomously this frightful ‘trigger’, pondering over the transitiveness of ‘convert’ and its unlikely collocational coupling with ‘noun’ on the spectrum of likelihood. But he needed to do so, instrumentally, demonstratively referential, to trigger some kind of coherent This was a validly, reliably testing situation, and the sweat on his forehead plastered his hair back like negative backwash thought. Yet one man’s coherence was another’s lack of context – the context was alarming, which meant that he felt alarmed, alarmed at the logic of these affixes. Trigger! Not discrete at all. Nor discreet for that matter, brandished as it was. He allowed himself a moment to consider the homophone, and the pitfalls of computer spellchecks. Trigger. Just a meronym, a part of a real-life, facevalid gun which he scanned and skimmed holistically. This was a validly, reliably testing situation, and the sweat on his forehead plastered his hair back like negative backwash. Even if he had no experiential schematic knowledge to activate, the illocutionary force behind the pointed barrel had him picture brains splattered across his exam papers (not all respecting the word limit), like a bad case of syntax. Action was needed. He rued the fact he’s never relished kinaesthetic activities – his visual-spatial preference only made him see the reality of her rather beautiful gun, etched and crafted intricately like an action-plan boardwork appendix. If only he’d had more of an integrative motivation during running dictations (enjoying something of a loud-mouthed renaissance in the eclectic broad church of communicative methodology), he might have been able to get to the open window and jump to safety before she had time to utter a schwa. He’d never been sensible, he mused, reflecting on his false friend. This was no time to be thinking retrospectively – this was no perfect aspect! His life flashed before him, like a once-only specificinformation CAE listening. But at least the lexical chunk provided sequential justification for the next stage – chunks of brain, right and left hemisphere, dripping down his files before settling down into a blob of inconsequential learning-style questionnaires, the red blood punctuating the whole like a Cuisenaire rod stressed syllable, the glutinous milky slime — 28 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles with the sentence plagiarised above; Goodith White’s parents for the decision to continue with tradition and ring the changes on English spelling; Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada for finally putting vast Canada on the map; Earl Stevick for...for...sorry, I can’t remember; David Nunan, whose seminal work on syllabus planning cured my mid-winter insomnia; and Steven Krashen, naturally end a sentence, but to mock it in a way that had been done before. If only, if only. If only she hadn’t plagiarised! Acknowledgements are due to Michael Lewis for reminding bibliographers of Brighton football club’s binomial pairing; Mario Rinvolucri for being so established that my spellcheck has no problems with his surname; Winston Churchill for his wit Duncan is currently teaching at IH London having recently returned from Akcent IH Prague where he took the DELTA and became a CELTA teacher trainer. The imminent arrival of a first child is also occupying his thoughts! Life After EFL - Cambridge Calling to the EFL World For this issues’ ‘Life After’ we approached some of the multitalented staff of Cambridge University Press for our contributions and I have to thank Karen Momber, a Commissioning Editor (ELT), for coordinating the article. Angela Lilley is the Publishing Director and is a governor of the Bell Educational Trust, Brendan Wightman the e-Learning Content Manager, Daniel Stunell Market Research Coordinator, and Roisin Vaughan the Senior Marketing Manager. Here they give you an account of how they crossed over into the world of publishing. dictionaries. I am lucky enough to travel extensively, working with our other publishing and sales branches, and meeting authors, local partners and EFL practitioners worldwide. I am responsible for presenting our global publishing plans to the University Syndicate for approval every year. I enjoy both my EFL roles as Publishing Director and as a governor of the Bell because I am able to utilise all the skills and knowledge accumulated in 25 years of teaching, training, publishing and management (nearly finished the MBA!) The best part, however, is working with people who share those same values and beliefs that I first discovered and adopted at IH all those years ago. It is a great feeling to get paid for doing something you love and believe in. I count myself a very lucky person! Editor Angela Lilley Brendan Wightman, e-Learning Content Manager This piece is called ‘Life after EFL’ yet I still feel very much involved with the EFL world. I am privileged to work for one of the best and oldest publishing and printing houses in the world with a team of consummate ELT professionals creating EFL materials. I am also honoured to be a governor of the Bell Educational Trust, one of the world’s best EFL providers. I left teaching in 2002 after seven years in the classroom (five in Poland and two in Italy) to take up a new but related post developing software for the ELT market. Although I made the decision to leave Italy in a heart-breaking flash of a second, I had been edging towards a new challenge for at least eighteen months – designing online materials for my then employer, teaching myself web design and Flash programming skills, and, importantly, studying for a postgraduate certificate in Educational Technology through a distance learning programme. When I was asked to write this profile, I realised with some surprise that it was almost exactly 20 years ago that I joined IH London after a few years teaching abroad and in the UK. IH was a thriving EFL community at that time as it is today. The organization was led by John and Brita Haycraft with Tony Duff in London and the experience was to shape the rest of my career. The desire for new professional stimulation combined with the need to provide a solid financial platform for a young family meant that when the opportunity came to move back to England to work full-time on ELT software development, I jumped at it. The happy lateral career move, however, was tempered by one of the most difficult adjustment periods in my life: leaving the child-friendly and dream-like medieval and renaissance townscapes of Italy for a tiny, over-priced flat in England with its lager-fuelled, twenty-something culture provided the rudest of cultural shocks. It was a wonderful three years providing opportunities to meet and teach a wide range of students and work with some highly talented teacher/authors including Martin Parrott, John and Liz Soars, Gillian Lazar, Sue Mohammed, Ruth Gairns and Richard Acklam. I learned about teaching and learning, materials evaluation and creation and eventually became a teacher trainer. The sense of belonging to an exceptional community of practice with a deeply committed team of teachers and trainers has stayed with me ever since that time. The trade off looked a poor one at first, and - ironically - it wasn’t until the small company that I was working for went bust after 18 months that I realised how far I had come. With two months’ notice to find a new job and having just taken out a large mortgage, I sent out a few job application forms haunted by the received wisdom that lingered from University days: expect one job interview for every 25 application forms dispatched. In fact, I was invited to four interviews immediately after having completed as many forms, and all with prestigious organisations. It seems that the commixture of hands-on experience with technology, my teaching background and the postgraduate certificate (now finished) was enough to open a number of very interesting doors. After IH, I worked for Eurocentres where I was approached to write a book for Oxford and then asked to join the editorial team where I worked for a very happy 10 years. It was a chance to build on my teaching experience and knowledge to create new EFL books. I learned about market research, commercial publishing and editorial processes from the ground up. It was fascinating to work in a different but related profession and learn a whole new set of skills. The educational and ELT values remained the same. As Publishing Director for Cambridge ELT, I manage a team of 50+ staff all working towards creating new EFL materials ranging from Kindergarten to Adult and including Electronic learning materials and In the end I chose to take up a post with Cambridge-Hitachi, project managing interactive whiteboard software CD-ROMs for the UK state — 29 — Articles IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Roisin Vaughan schools market. The engagement with cutting edge software in a different education market provided a fantastic new experience and learning curve; however, when the opportunity arose a year later to move back into ELT with Cambridge University Press as the e-Learning Content Manager, I couldn’t resist – particularly as the job description seemed identical to what I had imagined would be my ideal job. In 1995 I found myself in a situation many TEFLers can relate to back in the UK after a 4 year stint of teaching EFL abroad, finally feeling ready to pursue a ‘career’, but with no clear idea of what exactly to do, or how to transfer the specialist skills I felt I had gained as a teacher into the more commercial world. After a series of demotivating interviews with recruitment consultants, and armed with my recently acquired DELTA from IH, I took the next logical step - working as an ADoS, then DoS and teacher trainer in London. Fifteen months into the job and I don’t think I could be happier – I work across lists, advising on electronic content options, I commission and collaborate on exciting new e-learning and multimedia projects, I carry out research and attend and present at conferences all around Europe, and I input directly into the long-term strategy for electronic products at Cambridge ELT. Moreover, I work with other ex-ELT professionals who are well-travelled, multilingual and – like me – have bicultural families. It really is an exceptional work environment. This time proved instrumental for my future career in marketing, as I acquired invaluable management skills and gained experience of working with a much greater range of nationalities than I had been exposed to TEFLing in Italy and Spain: a familiarity, which is essential when working in an international business context. During this time, I also developed an increasing interest in the role of multimedia in language learning which was just beginning to make its mark on the UK ELT industry. So, when I saw an advert for an ELT expert to work in a marketing role for a multi-media publisher, I leapt at the opportunity, and spent the next couple of years learning all about the content development of CD-ROMs for language learning and acquiring basic marketing skills, while studying for yet another postgraduate diploma – this time in marketing. Looking back now at my teaching days, I feel exceptionally privileged to have lived and worked in Poland and Italy, enjoying the close and meaningful relationships that are part of the teacher/student dynamic in ELT. Being able to build on those experiences to launch another rich and varied career has been quite incredible – I really do feel like I’ve been able to have my cake and eat it. Daniel Stunell My current role as Senior Marketing Manager for Cambridge University Press, draws on all these skills and is a really challenging career for anyone wanting to move out of the classroom but reluctant to lose touch with the knowledge and skills gained as a teacher. Marketing is all about communication and understanding trends, and good marketers tend to be highly creative with a natural flair for writing and a knowledge of what really appeals to teachers and learners and how to communicate convincingly with them. Knowledge of different geographic markets and sectors such as state or private language schools or further and higher educational institutes gained through teaching can be invaluable, as can an up-to-date understanding of the issues facing the teaching profession in different countries. It wasn’t actually me who found this job; a friend forwarded the advert saying “looks like they’re looking for you”. The advert specified “at least three years ELT teaching experience” and “a knowledge of research methods”. That’s not a usual editors’ job description, and although I’m working with editors every day, I no longer have to wrestle with the intricacies of grammar, task design, or pronunciation myself - or at least not directly. It’s my job to support and advise editors who are designing or conducting research, and also to make sure the right people know what they need to know, when they need to know it. Unlike editors, who often work on just a few projects in-depth for months at a time, I often work on several in the course of a day, perhaps ranging from primary ELT materials in the morning, to applied linguistics in the afternoon. So what does the job entail on a daily basis? I am involved in all aspects of the development process, from inputting into ideas for new publishing, attending focus groups with teachers/students, dreaming up new titles and cover designs, to the nitty-gritty of devising launch campaigns for new publishing which target teachers, students and booksellers. In otherwords, the complete marketing mix. Multi-tasking is essential as I am constantly juggling multiple projects at any one time: copywriting and designing brochures and websites; organising promotional photoshoots; writing press releases and adverts; setting up scholarships; working closely with authors on author promotions; conducting market research - all with short timescales, the key benefit being that no two projects will ever be the same. The challenge is remaining flexible enough to balance the conflicting priorities of multiple deadlines. What teaching skills do I use in the course of a day? Even though it’s an ELT publishing job, and an understanding of teaching as a field obviously comes in handy, it’s often the other skills I picked up while teaching that really help; skills that when teaching you take for granted, but are actually in high demand beyond the classroom. We do business all around the world, so the experience of teaching multinational classes in the UK is indispensable in terms of cultural awareness and understanding. It’s a really important skill, and I can’t even speak any foreign languages fluently (a year in Portugal has permanently scrambled my French, while I can now barely remember how to buy a coach ticket in Portuguese). There’s the communication skills: the ability to listen, to present information clearly, or to stand quite happily in front of a room of 15 adults and not feel nervous. These were all particularly useful two years ago when I went back to university to pick up that “knowledge of research methods” in the course of an International Politics master’s degree in Aberystwyth. The skills I developed as a teacher are regularly called upon, for example when I give talks at promotional events and conferences, or run sales training sessions. My knowledge of trends affecting the ELT industry feeds into content development and I work across the whole spectrum of ELT subject areas. Good team working and networking skills are indispensable in this role as I work closely with editors, designers and sales teams around the world as well as liaising with journalists, external suppliers and teachers on a regular basis. TEFL has also given me great organisational skills (planning materials a week, month, term or year ahead) along with the realworld knowledge that things are unlikely to ever follow the plan, and a literal ability to think on my feet. I think it is the life experience that I appreciate most from my time as a teacher; the people you meet and the understanding you gain about different places and people is a benefit in any job (or job interview) and gives you a very real, if hard to define, advantage. This is a job where I am constantly learning and adding to the knowledge acquired through years in the classroom. My work helps to put that knowledge into a wider perspective as I monitor issues affecting teachers and learners worldwide, not just within one institution or the country I happen to be resident in. My languages are useful too. International travel is indisputably one of the real pluses of this job and the fact that our sales teams are almost exclusively ex-teachers draws me constantly back into the teaching world but within a broader context – how often do you find yourself working with teachers from a dozen different countries? This is where cross-cultural awareness gained through teaching multi-lingual classes really comes in handy. Was it all planned? Not at all. I became a TEFL teacher because it looked interesting and offered an opportunity to travel; and four years later I did the Master’s degree because it looked like an interesting change (and a year living by the sea really appealed too). As for this job – well, thanks first to my friend (although why he saw it I still don’t know; his job is very much as a political scientist). Again it’s a job that offered a whole set of new challenges and experiences. I really enjoy it! — 30 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles IH WORLD NEWS Michael Carrier, Executive Director, IHWO IH Teacher Training At the end of 2006 IH London is moving out of its historic premises at 106 Piccadilly, to a new school in Covent Garden – you can find details on their website at www.ihlondon.com IH World is also moving – as we can't fill up the whole building in Piccadilly! IH World has bought an office near Tower Bridge, in the 'new' part of central London that is rapidly developing as the 21st century heart of London. The whole area is being regenerated – the new City Hall is here – and we have an office in a traditional 19th century warehouse, complete with bare brick walls, that has been stylishly converted to office space. The new contact details will be sent out shortly, as we are planning to move at the end of October. All the emails and web addresses will remain the same, but the phone numbers will change – watch out for the new details or download them from the website. Over the summer we launched two new teacher development courses for Business English, both of which are now available on CDROM. IH BET – the IH Certificate in Business English – is a parallel course to the IHCYL and is designed to provide teachers with the skills they need to teach Business English and prepares them for the LCCI FTBE examination. It can be run in-school, extensively or intensively, and we hope to provide an online version as well. In addition, schools can become test centres for LCCI – more info from IHWO. IH 121 - the IH Certificate in 1-to-1 Teaching is now available for schools to buy on CDROM and run independently. This has been piloted in an online version as well and we hope to make that available shortly as well. Growth The IH network continues to grow steadily as we identify new high-quality schools around the world. We are on track to meet our target of 140 schools by the end of 2006, and aim to have 150 schools by the end of 2007. New schools joining the IH family this summer include IH COLT The IH COLT training course for teachers who want to teach online is now being run regularly, and is available for schools who want to run it with their own trainers. The next courses are scheduled for: • Saturday October 21st to Sunday November 26th (plus a week for the final reflective task). • Saturday January 13th to Sunday February 18th (plus a week for the final reflective task). Turkey – IH Istanbul Spain – IH Valencia Mexico – IH Monterrey There are many other new schools with whom we are in discussion, and the network will continue to grow and bring the benefits of IH educational quality to new locations. Please help – if you hear about fantastic schools that friends have discovered, in a new location where IH is not represented, drop us a line and let us know about a potential new partner. The cost of the course, per participant, is £275. For IH school staff however it is reduced to £125. Information from [email protected] IH Resources IH Study Abroad The creativity of IH teachers is well-known, and each year more of them contribute to the shared resources of IHWO, made available to all schools, through our R&D projects. In the last months, we have published several more packs for the online Resource Bank. Helping students worldwide decide which IH school to study at is a major part of the job of IHWO. We now have a new updated version of the popular IH Study Abroad CDROM, which gives information and photo guides to the schools teaching 16 languages intensively around the world. You can get copies of this from the IHWO office – to give free to your students – but you can also download it (less than 100MB) from the website. ESP After the success of English for Marketing and English for Lawyers we hope to launch English for Vocational Training, developed by teachers in IH Riga, in early 2007. We are also preparing a Study Abroad DVD – a collection of promotional videos from IH schools worldwide – more news on this shortly. We are looking for authors for other ESP topics – to cover finance, accounting, aviation, tourism & hospitality, business skills and other areas. If you would like to get involved, please contact IHWO directly with your suggestions. The new IHWO Video is available on CD and DVD, and is a short video presentation introducing IHWO, for schools to use in conjunction with their own video promotions. YL Video Teachers have asked for a series of video examples of YL lessons, so those with less YL experience can see examples of best practice. Our creative colleagues at IH Huelva have created a DVD of 2 full length lessons, one Elementary and one Juniors, which show a whole lesson being set, started and finished. The DVD can be obtained from the IHWO office, and an order form will be sent to all DoSes. Calendar of IH events 2006-2007 Don't forget that there are already 3 other YL videos, created by IH Lisbon, showing extracts of YL and Pre-Primary lessons. These were originally on video cassettes – and a few are still available – but the set of 3 films are now available on one DVD – again available from the IHWO office. — 31 — Event Date Location IH Modern Languages Conference November 2-4, 2006 IH Berlin IH YL Conference November 23-25, 2006 IH Prague IH DOS Conference 2007 Jan 3-5, 2007 London IH Directors' Conference May 5-8, 2007 Prague IHWO News BOOK REVIEWS IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2005 Get it, read it, play sad EFL games with it (i.e. which entry comes before and after genre? gender and grammar, funnily enough - another book perhaps?) and if all else fails, cut out the swirling, meandering hills of the front cover and make a piece of artwork out of it, à la Changing Rooms. An A-Z of ELT Scott Thornbury Macmillan, 2006 Reviewed by Tamarzon Larner, IH Lisbon he introduction to this, the latest in the Macmillan Books for Teachers series, tells us - T Some books make us wish we had come across them at earlier times in our lives. In the case of Scott Thornbury’s ‘An A-Z of ELT’, three weeks would have been just perfect for me! Having just completed the CELTA course, it took me back to the many occasions when any one particular grammar book was too dense to give me (and other trainees) the precise information I was looking for on, let’s say, the at times oh so gruelling phrasal verbs. Then there were times when I just couldn’t find a straightforward enough methodology, linguistics or vocabulary manual on that new jargon we had just learnt in class that day and were too tired to take in. This is a book for teachers of English as a foreign or second language. It is for those who are involved in training or development, whether preservice or in-service, and whether informal or part of a certificated training course. Divided into three main areas – language, learning and teaching related topics – and with a series of subtopics with very nicely organized cross-references, here we find just the right amount of information we need for each term. At first, when reading through the introduction, I wondered if, since it covers such a broad variety of areas it would spread itself a little too thin. It doesn’t. In fact, it was surprising to find that it manages to give us a great amount of detail on each one, just enough that someone who is uncertain about a particular term can be clear about its meaning, use, and examples. With this in mind, we had a CELTA trainee, a practicing teacher and a teacher trainer review the book. Below are their impressions. Editor Taxi drivers have got the A-Z of London to gain access to The Knowledge. Now we have the A-Z of ELT to increase knowledge of our patch – ELT. It’s a fine trade manual to complement the rather aridly desiccated style of the Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, (Richards and Platt, Longman, 1992). There are 376 entries, which is a pleasingly, arbitrarily random number. Unsurprisingly, as with all A-Z formats, Z’s, Q’s, Y´s and X’s are a bit thin on the ground but there are lorry loads of A’s and P’s. There must be a book in that? The front cover is funky beyond; Laurence Llewelyn Bowen colours and design, much better than that sterile blue of About Language. Thornbury’s choice of words is perfectly clear for any beginner like myself, and when in doubt, the cross- references are always helpful. Personally, the areas that attracted my attention the most - maybe because these are the ones that stress me out - were grammar, methodology, and particularly, function. This last one is very well documented, which I found a great surprise in this type of book. I’d say this is one of those texts you want to have with you late at night while preparing for lessons during a CELTA course and pretty much throughout the next few months. Even though I myself am setting out as a first year teacher, I imagine ‘An A-Z of ELT’ could even be a useful tool in providing students with various examples of language use. I am now somewhere in the transition from jargon to terminology (see Thornbury’s definitions) - things are slowly starting to make sense. All the entries are cross-referenced by clear main headings of language-related, learning- related or teaching- related topics and then sub-divided into more precise categories. Finding your way around is easy, something trainees always complain is not the case when researching language areas in most grammar reference books, which tend to be more labyrinthine and inscrutable than the minotaur’s maze. Find me if you can? Reviewed by Ana Calha, IH Lisbon Having been in the trade for quite a while, I decided to give myself a test. I looked in the index, wrote down all the terms I didn´t know (more than would be wise to divulge) and then looked them up. I started with dyadic circles and catenative verbs, as they sounded quite fancy-schmancy and I´d never heard of them. Very illuminating, pages 238 and 152 respectively, if you’re interested. A quick glance through Thornbury’s recent backlog of titles, How to Teach Vocabulary, Longman , 2002, Beyond the Sentence, Macmillan, 2005, Uncovering Grammar, Macmillan, 2005 and Conversation: From Description to Pedagogy, with Diane Slade, Cambridge University Press, 2006, left me in no doubt that nobody was better qualified to compile this aptly named reference book. So that said, how useful is this to an EFL teacher with 18 years experience? Bearing in mind that this is a man who can get an hour long plenary out of a tea-bag sachet, you would expect a certain versatility and quirkiness in the examples he uses. I wasn´t disappointed. He uses, for citations and examples, a vast array of authentic sources, including New Zealand, Oscar Wilde and overheard conversations on buses. My personal favourite is the example for substitution. Well let me state to begin with that I think every language school of any repute should have at least one copy of this book on its resource book shelf! The first thing you notice is its clear A-Z format (containing 376 entries) and Index (terms and people referred to but not included as headwords) which make it very user friendly. As a seasoned teacher, I was keen to check out a few ‘known’ areas and to find a few entries that might especially interest me. I wasn’t disappointed. Old favourites such as multiple intelligences and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) PSYCHOLOGY are both there, as you would expect, as is Total Physical Response (TPR) METHODOLOGY. These entries are clear and concise and include cross references in bold to lead the reader to explore further. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his. The best entry of all, to my mind, is the one for noticing where he manages to include the immortal phrases, noticing the gap, being aware of a gap, filling the gap, representing a gap and, finally and most importantly, mind the gap, which brings us nicely back to London and its transport………….. — 32 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Articles interest and continuing a conversation. But for me of more interest was the wealth of recent ‘metalanguage’ or if you prefer ‘terminology’ (see entry p130 LINGUISTICS) or even ‘jargon’ (see Introduction). For example we have Dogme ELT METHADOLOGY - a Thornbury inspired term, no less. the name of a loose collective of teachers who challenge what they consider to be an over-reliance on materials, including published coursebooks, in current teaching. Then there’s Fossilization SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION (SLA). A fossilized error is one that has become a permanent feature of a learner’s interlanguage. Which in turn led me to the entry for Interlanguage SLA. the term used to describe the grammatical system that a learner creates in the course of learning another language. There’s a lovely conversation between two women talking about weddings to illustrate the use of vague language DISCOURSE and then there’s world Englishes SOCIOLINGUISTICS - varieties of English (also called ‘nativized varieties’) that are spoken in countries such as India, Nigeria and Singapore, where, for historical reasons , English plays an important second language role. Again, with this entry we have a useful crossreference to English as an international language. I especially liked the ‘Help with Listening’ sections found as little ‘bite-sized chunks’ dotted all the way through the student’s book. They encourage the student to ‘notice’ a certain phonological feature from a listening text such as word stress, linking and weak forms and the rules that apply to it. This then leads on to the students identifying examples in the listening text. I also found the reading and writing portfolio section of the workbook to be excellent. It incorporates a lot of discourse features, neglected by many course books, in an extremely engaging way. A good example of when it works well is the coverage of ellipsis using text messages. Students must sequence a set of text messages in order to decipher what arrangement two people have made. Students are then guided to ‘noticing’ what words have been taken out. The lesson culminates in the students writing their own text messages. Yet another feature I liked is the CD ROM, which comes free with the student’s book and includes mini video clips of some of the listening activities as well as loads of self-study exercises and tests, listed chapter by chapter, that students can complete in their own time. So in answer to the question I set myself above, this book should be of interest to anyone involved in ELT regardless of their qualification or experience. I found it especially useful in terms of clarifying terminology and I’m sure I will get a lot of use from my copy. The bitesized entries whet the appetite and the last page of the book is a Further Reading list for those who are inspired to learn more. Altogether, I’m hard pushed to say anything negative about this book, though perhaps the listening texts sound slightly wooden, a common failing for lower level listening materials. To sum up, if you’re looking for a bright, pacey, modern, accessible and relevant new course book then I certainly haven’t seen anything better. Reviewed by Brian Rey Reviewed by Sarah Williams Face2face Elementary Chris Redston and Gillie Cunningham Cambridge University Press, 2005 here is an abundance of course books on the EFL market in all kinds of shapes and sizes, with more coming out all the time, but there are not many that stand out. For me, Face2face Elementary did just that, in fact it jumped out and grabbed me. T Face2face is based on the communicative approach and uses the guided discovery method for its presentations of lexis and grammar, which are both given equal weighting. I found the layout to be very engaging and modern, with lots of photos, computer graphics and a great use of colour. Each lesson is set out on a two-page spread which in fact looks almost inviting. Another thing worth mentioning is that it has not fallen into the trap of putting too much onto one page, which is an instant recipe for putting off both students and teachers! Incorporated into every chapter is a section called ‘Real World’, which presents language in a way that can actually be used in a real life situation. There are lots of listening activities and role plays here, covering the usual topics such as shopping and giving directions but also branching out into features of discourse such as showing — 33 — Book Reviews IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 notably absent from the workbook. On balance, the book’s appeal goes much deeper than its superficial glossiness. It is easy to use for both students and teachers and the series provides ample supplementary material, including a website with level specific activities in case divine inspiration is lacking! Natural English Pre-Intermediate Ruth Gairns and Stuart Redman Oxford University Press, 2005 Reviewed by Camilla Mayhew, IH Buenos Aires he brilliantly blue sky and dazzling sun on the cover are enough to tempt students and teachers alike to dive into Natural English and merrily skip off down that celestial EFL path we all know and love. And the visual delights do not end there; angelic smiling faces jump from nearly every page of the student’s book along with a generous helping of photographs and various styles of cartoons. T Market Leader Advanced Iwonna Dubicka and Margaret O'Keeffe Longman, 2006 ll the staff gather around, management lay on c h a m p a g n e , a hush falls across the staffroom… A But aside from pleasing aesthetics, what can Natural English offer? The aim is to teach, “language which is used naturally by native speakers…but also sounds natural when used by foreign learners”. We’re truly over the moon about that! (is not what my students said). But they did learn hmm, just a moment, let me see…er. Fillers? Yeah, and how to sound interested. Really? Wow! The natural English boxes are dotted throughout the student’s book and usually address around four items, which means the language can be considered properly without becoming the sole focus of the lesson. Retirement of a respected colleague? MD's birthday? No. The long-awaited arrival of an advanced level business English Course book! At long last a publisher has produced a Business English course book which is not directly aimed at the BEC exams. Surrounding this novel feature is the usual fare of topics (food and drink, the weather, free time) and the language content is similar to that of other pre-int course books. Some of the texts are not overly engaging but my class very much enjoyed the touches of humour, in those on disastrous relationships in units one and two. There is also the occasional nod towards modern culture (speed dating, Friends Reunited) which match the book’s fresh-faced look. As you’d expect, the advanced level of Market Leader is everything you, well, expect from this highly successful series, though written by a different team of authors. The layout and design is exactly like the rest of the Market Leader books so there is a strong feeling of series continuity from one book to the next. The images are professional and either authentic or very convincing e.g. email or website screen shots. The colour-coded units make the student’s book easy to navigate whilst the verb tables and grammar references make up the typical final pages, where you might also expect the tape scripts to be lurking. Not so. Students are provided with a listening booklet, which provides additional vocabulary and pronunciation work and succeeds in making the texts more accessible both in class and as self-study. This focus on spoken English continues with the extended speaking sections, which invite students to activate their newly acquired knowledge from each unit in order to perform speaking tasks such as questionnaires, story telling, surveys and role-plays. The don’t forget! boxes prompt them to use some ‘Natural English’. Unfortunately, the decision to prioritise listening and speaking has meant that writing, and to some extent reading, skills have been squeezed out. The writing practice in the student’s book is tagged on to the extended speaking activities and does not feature at all in the workbook. I should mention that there is a separate book for reading and writing skills to complement the syllabus, but I can’t help feeling that this only confirms their exclusion. Real interviews and images and authentic texts from the FT and the Guardian contribute significantly to its content validity. A slight criticism: there is a strong Spanish focus, presumably because the authors are both based in Barcelona, which is fine if you look at an individual chapter, but could have the cumulative effect of alienating learners from other nations. Nevertheless, I have to admit that, being in Madrid, this has not happened to me. All the regular Market Leader features are there. The task-based case studies are as popular with students as always (though students still need to be forced into the writing parts). One of my favourite recurring features is the opening quotation. I find, that especially at this level, they generate lots of class discussion and it is especially nice to see them integrated into some of the chapter exercises. The useful (functional) language sections are appropriate for the topics skills and level. I have a slight quibble with some of the chapter titles and topics some of which, although essential to Business English, do not inspire or provoke enormous interest (finance and banking, project management) but scratch the surface and there is some very interesting material here. One chapter I didn't get on with was the ubiquitous ‘doing business online’ simply because I feel e-commerce is now taken as a given and is no longer a real issue for business people. Learner autonomy is really encouraged and there are plenty of opportunities for students to take the initiative and assess their progress. Each unit begins with a list of its contents and concludes by asking students to tick what they know and to do a short test on what has been covered. The review pages which appear after every two units provide useful recycling activities as does the workbook where the think back! exercises reinforce what has been covered by the student’s book and the expand your grammar/ vocabulary boxes provide some extension work. The key is much easier to consult than in many other workbooks as the answers are kept to one column per unit. Some students may miss the familiar end of unit tests which are All in all, definitely one for the set book list. Reviewed by Christopher Holloway, IH Madrid — 34 — IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 Book Reviews Unlocking Self-expression through NLP - Integrated skills activities Judith Baker and Mario Rinvolucri, Delta Publishing, 2005 A Concise Grammar for English Language Teachers Tony Penston TP Publications, 2005 s some of us are starting yet another academic year, what kind of resource books do we need to help us survive the first term? Most teachers will have a very busy first term getting to know their students, getting to know the course book (if using one) and trying to come to terms with the fact that, no matter how hard we work, it's difficult to get the right balance between the demands of the job and the demands of having a life outside of work. So, any book that claims to provide 'well over a hundred easy-to-use activities' in its blurb seems like a real winner for a busy teacher. Personally, the added attraction in looking at this book was that it claims that these are 'Integrated skills activities' as I find multi-skills lessons, the kind of lessons that really engage learners. his new edition of A Grammar Course for TEFL Certificate is a basic, concise and comprehensive A4 size grammar book that would fit neatly into any trainee teacher’s briefcase or school’s resource library. The new title, altered content, and layout aim to appeal to a wider audience and, although aimed at trainee English language teachers, it will also prove to be an invaluable reference tool for practicing teachers, teaching assistants and students. The user-friendly layout and content A T may also appeal to ELT trainers. The short chapters are well designed and each relates to a specific area of grammar such as ‘The simple sentence and its parts’, ‘Irregular verbs’ and ‘Error analysis’. Each chapter provides succinct definitions, clear timelines, and relevant extracts from popular EFL textbooks. Relevant tasks, comprehensive tables and teaching notes are included within the chapters. A key for the tasks is included at the back and a good index makes the material easy to locate for lesson planning and general reference. The book is divided into 5 sections: Warmers, The Five Skills, Writing, Vocabulary and Exams. The section on The Five Skills is the biggest and includes many useful activities divided into further sections like, introduction, questionnaires, role-play, introspection and storytelling. Some of the activities are really 'ready-to-go', require little preparation and could be slotted into practically any course. I particularly liked one of the questionnaires - 'On the Dot or Not?' where students are asked to reflect on the order in which they arrive in class, speculate/discuss why people might arrive in this order and then go on to discuss punctuality in general. A really useful activity for those of us working in Portugal where students tend to have a very flexible attitude to time, I thought! The writers have included another activity under the storytelling section which deals with the same theme but asks learners to sit in order of how punctual they usually are and then go on to discuss the cultural implications of this. A third 'time' activity under the introspection section asks students to complete sentence stems such as 'Being early is...Time is like...Being on time makes me feel...An example of a waste of time is...' Although the activities are all on a very similar theme, no one teacher would choose to do them all with one class and it's certainly useful to have a selection of different activities round the same topic. The activities are clearly explained and easy-to-use in the sense that they require little or no preparation. The level they're aimed at is identified and as the book is based on the principles of NLP (although the writers wisely point out that teachers don't need indepth understanding of NLP to use the activities), they should cater for a wide range of learning styles. Newly-qualified teachers may find it difficult to estimate how long to spend on each activity and whether all their learners in any one class will feel comfortable discussing some of these themes or revealing so much potentially personal information about themselves. But every teacher, irrespective of level of experience and the context they teach in, should be able to find a few activities here that will not only stimulate the learners but inspire the teacher to think about teaching and learning. Reviewed by Paula de Nagy, IH Lisbon, Portugall — 35 — Book Reviews IH Journal • Issue 21, Autumn 2006 layouts with an immediate hook to capture kids’ interest. Of particular interest to trainee teachers will be the three chapters at the start of the book dealing with the form and function of verb tenses. These include focused sample teaching material and deductive ‘Tense Situations’ which highlight contextualised grammar. The tables in these chapters list uses and examples of the various tenses whilst specific tasks test knowledge and clear sample timelines illustrate problem tenses. Several useful Teaching notes are also included which serve to provide tips and urge the reader to reflect on ways of teaching grammar. I looked at the Starter A, (1st year of Primary) and Book 1 (3rd year of Primary) of the series. Both books follow a fairly traditional 8 unit layout, interspersed with 4 review units. Each unit comprises 6 lessons. Both books have extra festival lessons for Christmas and Easter. English Adventure Starter A In the Starter A book, each lesson is designed to provide 30-45 minutes work, although on a first look this seems to be slightly ambitious, and plenty of supplementing would probably be needed. Totalling up the material provided, the course seems to give about 35 to 50 hours of class, and as with some of its competitors, needs padding out to use in a typical 60+ hour academic year course. The grammar is based on British English usage but at times, also provides examples of American English usage, although not consistently throughout the book. The grammar is prescriptive rather than descriptive. The correct forms are laid out and variations of actual English language usage are pointed out either as errors where native speakers break the grammar rules or as not widely accepted. It would be useful to see a more focused look at the way English is changing, including a table of variations in grammars based on British versus American grammar (e.g. “you (pl)” versus “you guys/y’all”, “Have you…” versus “Do you have…”, and offers such as “Would you like…” versus “Do you want…”). Other additions could include the grammar of formal versus informal English, and of spoken versus written English such as uses of phrasal verbs, contractions, past participles etc. The book covers areas such as my body, family, classroom, animals, etc that are sure to interest this age group and the link to familiar Disney characters is bound to draw them in. The level of the material seems well judged. One thing I would have liked to see is a workbook page for every lesson, as there are currently 4 for each 6-lesson unit, which could sometimes leave you short of table-based activities. Each unit consists of a recurring cycle of presentation, practice, (with stickers to help consolidate) a song, a story and speaking practice based on a model given by real English speaking children. Evaluation is through listening and speaking based worksheets, plus an on-going assessment sheet and stickers for students to indicate their feelings about the unit, and Donald Duck certificates to give them to take home. In the appendix, there is a basic level guideline, covering beginner to advanced levels, which highlights the grammatical content and a few communicative functions of some popular EFL course books. It varies somewhat from the level guideline in the Skills for Life ESOL Core Curriculum, but remains a useful tool for those teaching in private language schools. The DVD is fun and introduces the painfully happy Ted and Lucy. It is, however, useful and also includes nice sections with native-speaker kids and catchy songs. Overall this 124 page grammar book is a useful reference and resource for practicing teachers and ELT trainers, and as a self-study learning tool for trainees. Its size and content make it a welcome addition to any ELT library. The website covers the whole series and includes areas for teachers, students and parents, although large parts of it are still being made. There is a ‘Monthly Focus’ section, which this month was on working with values, which adds a cross-curricular or values based element to the course. Reviewed by Angela Richmond English Adventure Book 1 In English Adventure 1, the structure is the same, but the lessons are designed to be a bit longer, 45-60 minutes. Here the activity book exercises are part of the suggested lesson plans, rather than optional extras as in the Starter A book. English Adventure A Worrall, Anne Worrall, Cristiana Bruni, Izabella Hearn Pearson Longman, 2005 There is a new section at the end of the book ‘My World’ to give a socio-cultural focus, where students get a chance to see other cultures. nglish Adventure is the primary level series from Pearson/Longman, starting with English Adventure Starter A and B which corresponds to the first cycle of Primary and English Adventure 1-4 for the second and third cycles. E Each unit uses the same presentation, practice and extension cycle as Starter A. The pupil’s book includes nice mini-flashcards for each student to use in communicative activities. The DVD uses the same presenters and style as in Starter A, more smiles from Ted and Lucy. Evaluation in Book 1 adds reading and writing as well as listening activities. In conclusion, English Adventure is a colourful, attractively presented course book with a sure-fire method of interesting the pupils, through the use of Disney characters and films. The teacher is provided with a comprehensive set of resources and clear lesson plans in the teacher’s book. The only criticisms that could be made are that the lessons may not take up the time indicated in the book and that the activity book in the Starter A could include a page to correspond to each lesson. This book enters a marketplace which contains successful series such as Oxford’s Story Magic and Join In from Cambridge, so it has its work cut out. Longman’s USP (unique selling point) for this series is the use of characters and clips from Disney films to arouse interest. This makes for colourful, attractive Reviewed by Alex Bishop, IH Madrid, Spain — 36 —