#ELTbehindthescenes of ClaresELTCompendium

Inspired by Joanna’s post and and this post by Tekhnologic, who have started using the Twitter hashtag #ELTbehindthescenes, I thought I’d share a little bit of background on

How I plan & write my blog posts

I’m not a super prolific blogger, I have to admit. My posts appear rather sporadically. I started my blog after recommendations from IATEFL colleagues, in a bid to ‘get my name known’ since I’m a budding ELT materials writer. So I use my blog to share materials that I have written and lesson plans and ideas for teaching English. These are the posts that the most thought and planning goes into. Having said that, the materials and ideas I share are not just invented for the blog – they are usually things I have developed for my own teaching, have tried out in my own classrooms, and think are worth sharing with other teachers.

When I write materials, I usually have a certain approach in mind, for example a new technique or theory that I have read about and want to apply in practice. I believe it is important for teachers to base their lessons on informed pedagogical decisions. Some of my posts, then, are more like summaries of published ideas and research, in an attempt to help other teachers understand why I do what I do in my materials. I also contribute to ELT Research Bites which provides bite-size summaries of published research in language teaching and applied linguistics. And then I post the materials. I put effort into formatting worksheets and other handouts so they are optically pleasing and also clear for learners. I spend time writing teachers’ notes with answers and suggested procedures for using my materials. This takes quite a lot of time, because I make an effort to write everything so that it will be clear for everyone, even novice teachers.I love reading comments from teachers who have tried out my materials, especially any feedback for potential edits.

Sometimes, though, I haven’t been writing any materials, for example during the semester break where I work. Often these are times when I’ve been more focussed on marking, planning or CPD. And so my posts sneakily deviate from what I originally intended for the blog, and include discussions or opinion pieces, book reviews, or posts on organisations I think other ELT teachers will benefit from. I’m glad, when I post this kind of thing, that I gave my blog a nicely broad title! Although, I do hope that teachers outside of ELT will be ‘lured’ to read these posts and not put off by the ‘ELT’ in the name! And I hope that readers aren’t disappointed when my posts do not provide useable materials, but rather more thought-provoking (hopefully!) pieces on other aspects of teaching!

I mostly share my posts on Twitter, since that’s why my PLN is concentrated. The posts do get automatically shared to Facebook, but I’m not sure my old school friends are so interested! On Twitter, I usually use the hashtags #ELT #EAP #teachers and also (for well-being and CPD stuff) #teacher5aday. I have to admit, I’m not really sure about how often it is good/OK to share posts, to raise the optimum amount of attention, but without bugging people by repeatedly spamming their feeds. I’m working on it! And I love it when people share my tweets, and comment on or re-blog my posts!  In general, I’m really excited when people engage with my blog; it makes it all a bit more worthwhile!

 

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The Expression of Present Time: Grammar Worksheet for Teachers / advanced EFL learners

 

This worksheet provides a systematic re-cap of the functions/uses of the simple present and present progressive.

Completing the exercises will lead to a list of functions/uses, with easily memorable and adaptable examples comparing the two verb forms, as well as time-lines to illustrate their meanings, and notes on differences in their implications. It is designed for EFL teachers /teacher trainees looking for a reminder or practice of explaining the functions/uses of these two verb forms explicitly, though no linguistic terminology is required – which also makes it useable with EFL learners in contexts where explicit grammar teaching is conducted.

The topics covered in the examples and exercises reflect everyday language usage and conversation topics, also including topics that are likely to be of interest to language learners or teachers, such as novels, or free-time language practice activities.

According to a CEFR profile analysis on http://www.vocabkitchen.com, the vocabulary in all of the examples and tasks is very straightforward; mostly of them are below B1 on the CEFR, with a number of B2 words, and a minimal number of C1 words in the blurb of the novel (Task 4). This basic vocabulary allows full focus on the verb structures and grammar.

Click here for the worksheet: Present Time

Click here for the answers: Present Time ANSWERS

Review: 50 Activities for the First Day of School

There are lots of websites full of ‘icebreakers’ out there. A simple Google search, though, shows me that they often compile activities taken from everywhere, including corporate training and party games. Clearly, not all of these ‘getting to know you’ games will work in a classroom to engage learners or fulfill a teacher’s aims for the first day of class. In this book, Walton Burns has therefore collected and written down activities that he has tried and tested in his own classrooms, and feels achieved their goals including learning student names, building rapport, or establishing classroom rules. You can find more of what Burns says about his book here. The information also includes his Author Bio:

Walton Burns is a teacher and award-winning materials writer from Connecticut who began his career in 2001, teaching in the Peace Corps in the South Pacific. Since then, he has taught in Central Asia and in his native country. His students have been a diverse group, including Russian oil executives, Afghan high school students, and Chinese video game champions. As a writer, he has been on the author team of two textbooks and written lesson plans and activities for private language schools. He is currently chair of the Materials Writing Interest Section of the TESOL Association, the international association for English language professionals. For more information, including projects he has worked on, go to Walton’s blog and his website.

The activities are good because they enable teachers to create positive atmospheres with their new classes whilst often also fulfilling some purpose and making some of the organisational aspects of a first lesson more interactive. Because of this, and despite what the book’s title says, many of the activities could also be used throughout the term, to re-energise the class group, strengthen the sense of community, or deal with organisational matters.They could also be used by substitute teachers jumping in to cover a class they’ve not taught before, as they often require very little preparation.

That said, the majority of the activities are of the ‘getting to know you’ type. To make these even more useful, I would suggest that the teacher makes notes about what the learners say, for example mistakes they make or their interests and goals, so that these can form the basis of a rough needs analysis at the beginning of a course. Within this section, there were no activities that were entirely new to me, although a few interesting variations. Still, for novice teachers the collection might contain new ideas, and for us more experienced teachers having all of these activities collected in one place is a good selling point for this book.

The instructions on how to set up and run the activities are formulated very clearly with illustrative examples, and also include ideas for possible adaptations or variations of the activities – so the book would be helpful for anyone new to teaching, as well as experienced teachers looking to re-jig their first-lesson activities.

The activities are specifically aimed at ELT classrooms, often beginner levels learners. Still, the adaptations and variation Walton Burns suggest allow teachers to use them with more advanced learners, too, and they’ve all been tested by Walton Burns in his various classes of English learners. A lot of them are probably more appropriate in classes of students from different countries and backgrounds, but again possible adaptations are explained so that teachers with mono-lingual groups can also employ the activities. Many of them would also be suitable for other subjects’ classrooms.

One or two of the activities here will need to be handled with care, such as English Names, and I Have Never, but this is also highlighted in small notes at the beginning of the instructions for the activity.

It is in the “Assessing and Evaluating” section of the book where activities with a clear classroom-organisation focus are presented. These cover matters such as needs analysis, goals, basic classroom vocabulary e.g. for items or instructions, class rules. Some of the ideas here seems less like ‘first-day’ activities, and fall more in the category of interesting ways to check and review language; though in the first lesson they could form part of a needs analysis.  The “Setting the Tone” section includes activities which are perhaps more suitable for the beginning of a course, and clearly have the purpose of establishing the class rules or lesson routines, encouraging self-study, or introducing the textbook or materials.  For me, these sections are the  most interesting in the book, as they all have a clear aim, which is more than just ‘having fun’ and ‘breaking the ice’.

Overall, for just ~€7, I’d say this book is well worth a look, and would be a worthwhile addition to any staffroom bookshelf!

Review: Oxford EAP (Upper-Intermediate/ B2)

With many thanks to my colleagues with whom I have had endless discussions about this textbook!

This series of attractively-designed textbooks piqued our interest as soon as we heard about it! My review focuses on: de Chazal, E & McCarter,S ( 2012) Oxford EAP A Course in English for Academic Purposes. Upper Intermediate/B2. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 

The books are divided into units, which are each further divided into four sections (reading, writing, speaking, listening) plus a vocabulary page. Each unit deals with one topic, and audio and video materials are provided on a DVD which accompanies the student’s book as standard. The student’s books also include a very useful language reference section, glossary, and a key to the exercises.

The official description of the series from the OUP website states that:

Oxford EAP provides a course that is inclusive and international with a strong focus on the core skills needed for academic study, catering for the needs of EAP teachers and students across the globe.

One issue we faced, though, was that the range of topics was really very wide, thus a number of sections dealt with topics too far off what our students study, so they were less able to engage with them to achieve good language-learning results. Nonetheless, the topics and materials are accessible to non-experts, and the reaction may be different with another cohort of learners. This may also be less of an issue in EAP groups preparing students for study in different disciplines. As a further note, some examples show conventions more acceptable in some fields than others (such as use of first person in writing, or explicit Thesis Statements), so tutors will need to highlight this for students.

The series sells itself on its modular structure, which OUP says will enable teachers (and learners) to be flexible in selecting the relevant units for their own goals and priorities. They also suggest that this flexibility makes the books appropriate for both pre-sessional and in-sessional EAP courses. In my experience, this is true only to a limited extent, depending on the context. Most university terms run for 15-20 weeks, and unless they are intensive courses I doubt that any group would manage to complete a book in this time. In my context, we used the listening & speaking sections in one term and the writing (and some reading) for another 15-week term. I personally felt quite pressured to get through the units I had chosen, since there are so many exercises, which often build on each other and cannot be omitted. And indeed, students won’t want to omit too much if they have paid out for a textbook!

That said, the exercises are on the whole very worthwhile and provide a straight-forward introduction to key academic skills, with the majority of the input being authentic materials from OUP’s other academic textbooks – a major selling point of this series! The skills, for example presenting, reading academic texts, listening in academic contexts, essay writing, and seminar speaking skills, are introduced and practised progressively throughout various units, and the language and skills are well integrated, for instance by using example sentences which pertain to the unit’s topic to demonstrate the language structures. The vocabulary pages seemed to be targeted accurately at the B2 level, and are ideal for self-study.

Our students have a pretty strong command of English (good upper intermediates) but need to cover the basics of academic working. With this goal in mind, my colleagues and I liked many of the listening activities, particularly listening to lectures in units 1 & 9. The sections on presentations and speaking on seminars were also all worthwhile. Some of the videos exemplifying presentations are held by other EFL students – this makes them highly authentic, but our students did notice some mistakes in their speech, and sometimes took them into their own language production. Therefore, it is important to note that these videos are not always a good model for language, though of the skill being trained (e.g. presenting). The language activities in the B2 book were sometimes a bit too easy for our students, though most probably benefited from the re-cap of previously learnt lexis and structures.  Indeed, one colleague commented:

It wasn’t really clear to me whether users of this book would be aiming for B2 on the CEFR, or whether the aim was to take them from B2 up to the linguistically dizzy heights of C1!

However, I’d say the skills presented are definitely appropriate for this level. In fact, the C1 (Advanced) book, in comparison, is more aimed at students entering doctoral programmes. (As for rest of the series, I’m not sure A2 learners need an EAP book! But that is a discussion for another time!) For undergraduates, the writing sections in this Upper Intermediate book do a commendable job of introducing and expanding on essay writing, particularly: starting the process, topic sentences, paragraphs, essay introductions, essay conclusions, comparison essays, citation and referencing, and argument essays. Some further practice on paraphrasing, or some longer example essays would also be helpful, though these are probably found in other levels within the series.

Overall, the Oxford EAP textbooks have a large number of good selling points, and the Upper Intermediate book ranks among the best I’ve seen for EAP at this level. In general, it does a good job at achieving its aim of preparing students for academic work in English at university. Nonetheless, the length and scope may turn out to be drawbacks for some contexts, and, as with any coursebook, working with it will require some pretty detailed planning and materials selection on the part of the teacher.

 

You can find other reviews of this book / series here:

de Chazal, E & McCarter,S ( 2012) Oxford EAP A Course in English for Academic Purposes. Upper Intermediate/B2. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=340359669608147;res=IELHSS

 

Critical Reading Skills & Academic Vocabulary – Authentic Text

Students’ worksheet: click here. .

Teacher’s notes: click here..

Summary:

A speaking warm-up activity that allows learners to speak about themselves provides the input for them to start analysing the difference between facts, opinions and stances. The analysis is prompted by guiding questions, which avoid a too theoretical approach. The three terms are then introduced explicitly and students asked to match then up with their own analysis of different types of information.  In the following task, this understanding is applied to a reading text – an authentic excerpt from an academic paper on English as a Lingua Franca, an interesting and relevant topic to most ESOL learners – where learners seek out facts and stance in a demonstration of their understanding of the terms and their critical reading ability.

As extension tasks, students are guided to decide which reporting verbs would be appropriate for reporting facts and stance information, and then find and correct mistakes with citing information from the English as a Lingua Franca text. (Note: These mistakes are taken from actual students’ work in my classes.) Finally, they are asked to paraphrase facts and stance statements from the ELF text, using reporting verbs appropriately.

Formulating Definitions & Discussing Prejudice

Student worksheet: click here.

Teacher’s notes: click here.
AIMS: By working through this worksheet, which can be done independently or in class, students will be guided to notice some key features of definitions, in terms of content and language, and be able to replicate these in producing their own definitions.  Through the specific examples in focus, students will also practise talking about prejudices in a neutral manner and further develop their intercultural communication skills.

 

RATIONALE:

1 – Particularly in EAP, students often need to define terms used in their field of study, usually in order to clarify the term’s meaning to non-experts or to indicate which definition they are working with, and sometimes also to demonstrate understanding to an examiner.

2 – Because prejudices and biases are controversies often discussed, and perhaps even faced, in academic contexts, the focus here has been consciously placed on defining and discussing potentially controversial/taboo topics, in order to increase intercultural communication competences.

 

LANGUAGE FOCUS: defining relative clauses, some vocabulary for prejudices with -ism, some vocabulary for definitions.

 

LEVEL: B1 upwards.  According to www.vocabkitchen.com profiling, the texts of the definitions should be easily understandable for learners at/above the B2 level on the CEFR; I would suggest they could also be used with B1-level learners if vocabulary support is given or dictionaries allowed. (Words above B1 level: belief, treatment, wealth, social standing, superior, arising.)

The Native Factor in ELT Materials

On the Materials Design itdi.pro course I’m currently doing, our tutor has prompted us to discuss:

When using an authentic audio or video it is important to use only English native speakers?

For me, the most problematic word here is ‘only‘. (Problem #2: Define ‘native speaker!) And so my answer would be a flat out No.

But that’s not much of a discussion! And so I’ve decided to re-formulate the question a bit, into: When should Non-Native Speakers be used in ELT audio & video materials?

And as with most things ELT… my answer is: It depends! 

And as always, it is important and interesting to look at what it depends on…

Students’ language level. Some commentators say that only NS (=Native Speaker) accents should be used with beginner students, as NNS (=Non-Native Speaker) accents can be harder to understand. I can see some value in the point that accents which are deemed harder to understand for a certain group of learners should maybe be introduced once a good level of grammatical and lexical understanding has been achieved and they have been well prepared for the listening task.. But, I think we have to remember that NS also have a huge variety of accents and don’t always speak clearly, so I’m not convinced that ‘hard to understand’ is a NS vs NNS difference….

Language Learning Goals & Motivations. For me, this is the key argument regarding listening comprehension: If the students are learning English (or whatever language, really!) in order to be able to communicate with native speakers, for example moving to live or study in a country where English is the main language spoken, then it makes sense to expose them mainly to NS accents and dialects through audio/video material. If they will mainly be communicating with other NNS, then it is rather more important to expose them to these when training listening skills. Indeed, in today’s globalised society, it is becoming less and less realistic to prepare English learners only to communicate with NS, as something like 75% of all interactions in English are between NNS (see Crystal 2003).

I believe students should learn by using materials that are authentic for the contexts in which they are going to need to use English. A case from my own experience: I teach EAP, and when I think about preparing students to participate in seminars at a university in the UK or USA, for example (most popular countries among my students), then I definitely need to prepare them for the fast-paced, messy, interrupted, overlapping discussion, which will probably also involve cultural norms of turn-taking, etc. And it seems to me that the best material for this kind of thing would be authentic recordings of speakers in exactly this kind of seminar setting. However; find me a British university seminar that doesn’t include at least one NNS… probably rather rare these days! So really, when I think about it, it’s probably the NS + NNS combination that makes most materials most authentic!

Having said that, simply exposing learners to different accents, dialects or varieties of English will probably not suffice to really help them learn and understand – they will need training in listening out for and understanding differences. Though, again, this is not an NS vs NNS point!

So far, I’ve mainly been coming at this topic from a focus on listening comprehension. But there is also another factor in this debate; the speech production side. With this in mind, there is the claim that …

Students’ need NS pronunciation model. I’ve recently heard several comments to this effect, and indeed I agree somehow intuitively with the feeling that an NS pronunciation model is better for beginner learners to learn to imitate. But then I do sometimes (when involved in discussions like this) wonder why?

As a basic and overarching goal of any language learning/teaching, I’d take communicative ability and intelligibility. For the sake of the latter, I think maybe learners should not learn to pronounce new vocabulary in their teacher’s accent; if this becomes combined with their own accent, it might render the words incomprehensible to speakers with other L1s! However, several researchers, especially in the area of ELF, have suggested that we shouldn’t necessarily take NS pronunciation/native-speaker-like-ness as the overarching goal of ELT anymore. Still, I do still think that many learners see this as their ultimate goal, and thus it may we what we’re paid for – our job to help them reach it? And besides, the question that then remains for me is How will NNS be mutually intelligible if they’re not taking some kind of vaguely common standard as their starting point? – But maybe I haven’t read enough ELF research to understand this…

(Also, I wonder what the ultimate goal of language learning would be if it’s not to be as competent in the L2  as in our own native language …?)

Review (part 1) – Keynote

I’ve recently been given two inspection copies of the “Keynote” series by National Geographic Learning / Cengage and am considering whether I should adopt it as a set text for my EAP classes. In case anyone else out there is thinking about using it, here are my first thoughts of a review!

The series, like Cengage’s other title “21st Century Reading”, takes TED talks as the basis for the topic of each unit. The “Keynote” books train all four skills, as well as pronunciation and grammar. They include authentic listening tasks and critical thinking exercises, which I think make them quite appropriate for university classes, but actually the series seems to be targeted at a rather broad audience, especially regarding topic choice. I’ve been informed that National Geographic won the tender to use TED talks commercially thanks to their previous materials based on authentic input, and I do think that “Keynote” continues this tradition of good work. Each book has 12 topic-based units, and the topics are based on TED talks.  The talks are mostly by native speakers of different varieties English, though in the more advanced books some talks by non-native speakers have been included. These all have very clear diction, and thus provide some (though rather limited for such advanced levels!) practice at understanding various accents. The talks are not slowed down at all, but they are sometimes abridged, especially for the lower-level books. My initial impression is that the talks and excerpts are well chosen and well prepared for use in this textbook series.

In what I’d describe as ‘classic textbook manner’, the units start off by focusing on the TED talk, and then develop the language beyond this. The structure of all units is the same, which may be good for learners who like to have a common routine, though could also become repetitive. The first section of any unit focuses on comprehending the main idea and supporting evidence from the TED talk. This is followed by grammar and language noticing and practice, with activities which work towards spoken production and include some well-conceived communicative practice. The third section of each unit focuses on extensive reading, which often incorporates critical thinking skills and vocabulary work. And finally, each unit closes with functional oral/aural exercises, which move towards writing skills with some nicely modern and motivating tasks such as writing blog posts or  online profiles. After every two units there is a review section, which usually takes a case-study approach. For my taste this is a few too many ‘review sections’, but this may be appropriate in other contexts. I think it’s important to mention here that only the first section of each unit really uses the TED talk – far less than I was expecting from the adverts for this series! The rest of the sections work with authentic materials adopted from National Geographic publications, in a similar manner to their other textbook “Life”.

What I like about the “Keynote” series is that every student’s book comes with a DVD containing all of the video and audio material, sometimes with sub-titles. This is definitely a bonus over other series where there is just one DVD included in a class-set of books, and makes the series particularly appealing for those of us teaching classes where the number of credits requires a substantial amount of work from learners beyond the lesson time. The tape-scripts are also included at the back of the books, as are some role cards for extension activities, and a brief grammar reference section. The textbooks really feel like textbooks and not like workbooks – so learners can’t really write their answers into their books, in contrast to other series such as “21st Century Reading”. For university classes and adult education I find this more appropriate anyway, though that might just be personal taste. “Keynote” is also available as an e-book, and there is also an interactive workbook and other additional e-materials which can be purchased separately (I think a licence is for 12 months). What I find frustrating with the teacher’s book is that the answers to tasks are interspersed with other input and instructions in the description of each unit, which makes them sometimes time-consuming to locate and not practical for photocopying to allow learners to check their own work.

Overall, the “Keynote” series has more of a feel of preparing learners for professional use of English, so I’m not convinced that it is the best choice for academic settings, though the skills and grammar practised are generally appropriate. The amount of time a class would need to complete one level of “Keynote” would probably be about a year, at one-two lessons per week, depending on the amount of homework given; sadly this is another factor making it impractical for use on one-semester university modules. I am also a little disappointed that the biggest selling point – working with TED talks – has turned out to make up only about a quarter of the textbook. So I think my initial decision will not be to adopt this as a set textbook, though for Part 2 of my review I plan to try out some of the units with different class groups, and perhaps the students will convince me to use “Keynote” after all! Watch this space!

Help! Overwhelmed by research!

This is a short, rather personal post; a bit of a call for help! In my head, thoughts are flying around: researching, compiling bibliographies, literature reviews, not having enough time in the day to read everything properly, wasting time reading the ‘wrong’ things, and feeling swapmed and out-of-touch with the latest state of affairs…. And this is going to (hopefully) be an outlet that gets these thoughts out of my head and onto “paper” so that I can concentrate… Oh, and maybe get some tips from readers while I’m at it!!

What my brain feels like. An art installation on the Moselle river made by Trier Art Academy (Kunstakademie) 2015. 

 

So, I like to think that I’m pretty good at keeping up with the research regarding my areas of ELT. I subscribe to a couple of journals, am active on twitter and I read lots of blogs, so I feel like I’m in touch with big debates and what’s generally going on in the ELT world. 

But now I’m trying to get together some of the ‘best’ literature on the topic of correcting (EAP) students’ writing. I want to summarise the main work and findings in this area. But there is JUST SO MUCH!! I’ve got some key names and some meta-study articles have also been helpful. But I feel like I might be missing out on some other definitive contributions, key strands of work, relevant studies, contaversial issues, etc.  When I search my university’s library databases, the lists are endless of articles on peer review, using technology, to correct or not to correct, learner autonomy, and so on and on and on.

I can’t possibly read everything. I thought about reading through the Works Cited lists and trying to find sources that seem to be cited a lot… but even that would be so much work. 

And I wonder how anyone ever manages to keep up with it all. Whenever I think I’ve “finished” and have a suitable bibliography together, so another blog post alerts me to a new perspective on the discussion, or Google Scholar pops up with a few hundred more published articles… When is enough enough? When can I stop? It’s never going to be  truly finished, is it?!

#BackToTheFutureDay Review of my past posts

Today is 21st October 2015. That means I am writing from the ‘future’ that Maty McFly wanted to get back to in Back to the Future! And since today is so important in time-travelling history/fiction, I’ve decided to look back over my posts on this blog and pick out a few of my favourites that I’d still be interested in discussing and hearing readers’ responses to!

In no particular order, here they are:

– The Role of Wikipedia in Academic Essays:  https://clareseltcompendium.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/the-role-of-wikipedia-in-eap-writing/ and the Take Two post on the same topic for EAP: https://clareseltcompendium.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/the-role-of-wikipedia-in-eap-take-two/

 

– Optimising Active Participation:  https://clareseltcompendium.wordpress.com/2015/05/23/optimising-active-participation-a-discussion/

 

– Why don’t students to their homework:  https://clareseltcompendium.wordpress.com/2015/06/02/todays-frustration-why-dont-students-do-their-homework/

 

– What I would tell my newly-qualified self:  https://clareseltcompendium.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/things-i-would-tell-my-newly-qualified-self/

 

I’d love for you to re-visit those posts and leave your comments and discussion!

Enjoy #Backtothefutureday !!