Category Archives: Language

CELTA: Day 5; TP 3

Posted by on January 19, 2012 No comments

I got the first chance to observe an experienced teacher on Tuesday. It was only the first two hours of a four-hour class, but it exhibited in reality what we’ve been dwelling on the theory of quite well.

Yesterday, I had quite some difficulty with my third practice. It all boils down to a microscopic level of planning that I just didn’t have. The problems I anticipated were not the problems that occurred and that threw my timing off and made the planned activities impossible to complete. The tutor’s words really strike home now as I’m preparing for my lesson for next week: “The lesson plan must read like a recipe that anyone could pick up, immediately understand, and be able to perform.”

In the real world, my lesson would have been quite adequate, but for the CELTA program there must be a somewhat unnatural level of exaggerated clarity. It stuck me that the course is just like a driving test. You may be a good driver and check your mirrors, but during the test you must be seen to visibly demonstrate that you are checking, pronouncedly crane your neck to look at the blind spots, etc. Even if your actions in the class are understood by everyone in the class, it’s still necessary to check off all the boxes for every element of a “good” lesson.

CELTA: Day 3-4; TP 2

Posted by on January 15, 2012 No comments

Last week was quite something. I taught my first 40 minute skill class on gist and detail reading. It went quite well but I need to work on time management and my own voice projection. After doing the reading class in the morning we had a tutorial on how to do a reading class. The reverse planning there was not such a bad thing.

Having the chance to observe the other trainees on Wednesday was almost a more valuable learning experience than the regular “learning” sessions. The afternoon session covered learner focused activities.

Coming up this week will be my first “professional” observation, my third day , the submission of assignment one on grammar and language analysis, and an interview with a student in preparation for assignment two on learner style and motivation and how those traits inform effective lesson planning.

 

CELTA: Day 2; TP 1

Posted by on January 7, 2012 No comments

This first week of CELTA (yes, I know this is the second day but my particular on-site class sessions are on Wednesdays and Fridays) has been quite a whirlwind of activity. The class philosophy is on reflective learning rather than traditional knowledge transfer. This means rather than talking about and observing teachers, we were immediately dumped into actual (TP = Teaching Practice). They were at least kind enough to allow us a short time slot for the first time in the deep end, though I suspect that this was simply because it made sense for the new students and the new term rather than for any particular interest in my well-being.

Thursday I tried to figure out what exactly a lesson plan should be: the language, aims, stages, procedures, tests, and evidence. I cobbled together some forms (which was admittedly a slight procrastination-based-on-fear diversionary experimentation with the Pages app).

My “lesson” was a “running dictation” in which the grouped students would write up a one page description of a restaurant by individually running outside to read a text and repeating what could be remembered for a scribe to record. It went quite well considering I was frightened to death. I just started with a basic self-introduction before going into the activity and observed the other trainees after my slot. The new students in the class were amazingly good and came from all over the world (Singapore, Russia, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, China, Spain, Thailand, France, Myanmar).

Coming away from the class there were quite a few areas in which I need to improve: I need to vary my voice volume and project, to ensure that I stand centrally when facilitating feedback (and facilitate better), and to inject more of a pace or time-sensitivity to this type of lesson to make it more of a competition. On the positive side, the feedback I received noted a pleasant, friendly manner and voice, good use of student names, crisp and minimal teacher talk, clear instructions, good expression and eye contact, and good management in keeping the students on task and engaged.

From my observation of the rest of the class time I noticed how drastically the students changed from beginning to end. They started out very shy, but so steadily warmed up to each other they looked like friends as they left. I noticed the importance of standing front and center when asking and answering questions. My tutor pointed out that we must avoid the natural tendency to move closer when speaking to someone, preferring to move away from them so that everyone is forced to speak across the room so that everyone can hear the interaction. I saw how easy it can be to forget about physical positioning in the classroom when I saw the students confused at an instruction given as an afterthought from the side of the room. I was very impressed at the monitoring done by another teacher when she quietly moved around the room and wrote a few sentences on the board. At the end of her slot she asked the class how they might improve the sentences, thereby getting excellent class involvement and avoiding attributing any mistake to any individual. I need to make sure that all instructions really are unmistakably clear and set out in my lesson plans since I found myself confused by some of what I heard. The set of slots ended on a letter writing task which seemed to bring the mood of the group down from their earlier exuberance, but I suppose not every moment can be “up.”

I’d like to explore ways to maintain a consistent level of involvement from each student since some are naturally quiet and some loquacious. Also, what might be the best way to ensure that everyone stays on task rather than just chatting away at every opportunity when they are in smaller groups? As far as input from the tutor, it was mentioned that the energy of the teacher equates to the energy level of the class so that can be used to best advantage by gearing the energy level to one appropriate for the specific activity. Additionally, always “chunk” instructions and ask specific questions to check for understanding of given instructions (“Are we working alone, or in groups? How long do we have? What do we do when we’re finished?”). We also talked about fluency does not have very much to do with accuracy as far as the modern world is concerned since we are striving for communication and not rote perfection.

TUTORIAL NOTES:

Presentation – Practice – Production

Lead-in: Topic introduction, set a context/situation, pre-teach/check essential vocab if needed.

Creating a Marker Sentence (MS): Use one from your lean-in or elicit one from the students.

Presentation: Check meaning and use of MS with concept checking questions (CCQ), encourage students to discover rules and patterns for themselves, elicit and highlight the form on the board, focus on pronunciation and accuracy by modeling and drilling the MS.

Controlled Practice: Elicit other examples from the contxt, students (Ss) repeat and practice MS using target language (TL), teacher provides immediate feedback and leads written and oral exercises while moving steadily towards less and less controlled practice.

Production (freer practice): Students practice role play/dialogue/discussion/writing/etc to freely experiment with the language. While this is happening the teacher will monitor, facilitate and wait until the task is complete before correcting any mistakes that were noticed.

Some other ways to demonstrate new language include verbally, pictorially, in a text (perhaps two versions with the same meaning to compare), in contrast to known language, in a task (test it, teach it, test it), with incorrect sentences for students to correct, or by matching events with a timeline.

Never ask if someone understands. Always encourage active learning and teach to the appropriate level.

Analyze language by looking to the meaning, form, pronunciation, use, and assumptions involved.

Example: Language Item: “used to”

Marker Sentence: “I used to smoke.”

Meaning: An action in the past that was done more than once but is no longer.

Form (as you will write it for the class): (+) subject + used to + bare infinitive(-) subject + didn’t + use to + bare infinitive(Q) did + subject + use to + bare infinitive

Use: Explaining repeated actions in the past.

Assumptions: I assume students are familiar with past and present simple.

Problem (meaning/form/pronunciation): “I used to smoking.” (form)

Solution: Only the bare infinitive is used and not the gerund form. Demonstrate by asking “Can we say … “

Problem: used to … ‘youzta?’ The “to” is not enunciated but uses the schwa from the phonemic alphabet (the upside down e would be written on the board to make this clear).

Always remember to repeatedly check and check and check for understanding with leading questions. Use the board and voice and motions to make everything clear. Don’t be afraid to do silly things to bring the point across.

CELTA: Day 1

Posted by on January 4, 2012 No comments

The posts coming up will likely be of even less interest to anyone but myself than usual, but I need to keep a record of the events of the next few months for myself so this is where that will be. The writing may be marginally readable, but the intent here is to preserve my notes for my own recollection (just because, and also just because a future assignment asks for an overview of my experiences). This will eventually evolve into a more reflective journal, but it will begin quite tediously while hopefully becoming less so …

Today was the first day of my first formal teacher training and development class: CELTA. I was not only concerned about the class, but also the transportation logistics. These fears were unfounded, as the tutors and fellow trainees are delightful, and the MRT to the Toa Payoh branch of the British Council actually had seats available since the direction I have to travel is opposite to that of most of the human mass during my commute time.

The class will have written assignments (4) and actual (9 observed classes). The will be in the mornings and the afternoons will be filled with input, tutoring, and planning. The evaluation of, and feedback upon, our progress will be continuous so there’s no chance of being caught suddenly unaware of impending failure.

We started out with a mingling activity where we were given a list of questions and had to talk to people individually, asking up to three questions, to determine who had stated life experiences such as having “met the Prince of Wales.” We then went into a session where one tutor asked us to talk about our hands after describing different aspects of his own. This sort of activity is low resource with easy setup and allows lateral (unique) expression of commonalities in the past (memories and experience), the present (facts), and the future (use of conditionals). The spontaneous use of adjectives, comparisons, and likes/dislikes creates a good atmosphere and acts as an ice breaker. The activity works well for every level of speaker and makes use of a personalized classroom since “the best resource is the student himself.”

We then moved on to techniques: individual/choral (circle) drilling, visual aids, context setting, gestures, picture prompts (to stop students from reading), self/student miming, demonstration, praise, role play, and error correction. It was constantly stressed that TTT (teacher talking time) should be absolutely minimal – hight student focus and not teacher centered. I learned about the communicative approach, which never translates (since language works in different ways), and never explains. An explanation is a sort of failure and one should always elicit information and clarify it before explaining (only as a last resort). It was interesting to put a name to the process whereby students learn the language of the classroom (as opposed to the focus language) such as “open your books to page 63″ through speech and gesture – incidental learning. It can be beneficial to use the same language for all of these incidental utterances, but also useful to vary the wording for different levels of learner ability (good, great, excellent, perfect, wonderful, etc). Basically all student interaction should be fluid and involve speaking, movement, and imagery to activate different thinking patterns (whether a student is a visual or a kinesthetic learner).

A framework for lesson focus would be to be sure to have a clear aim: “By the end of the session the students will be able to _________.” Planning is important to maintain focus, know the target language, maintain proper flow/structure, for time management, to be organized, to meet expectations, to educate oneself, and to anticipate and prepare solutions to any foreseeable problems. In planning, it’s important to take into account the activities, timing, and the motivation and characteristics of the students. One way to gauge the level of a new group of students would be to have a look at the language level of the course book.

At the end of class I was assigned slot two of a series of 20 minute lessons with a mingle activity before me, and a group planning of deciding what type of restaurant one would open after. My task is to create a lesson plan with complete staging for a running dialogue where the students will be grouped and asked to read a posted text (mine is about Wild Honey restaurant on Orchard Road), relate it to the other group members, write down what is remembered, and compare their text with the original. The purpose here is to provide practice in reading, speaking, listening, and writing.

Siri-ously?

Posted by on November 18, 2011 Comments Off

I understand that Siri is still in beta, but it can still be extremely irritating how it interprets some things so oddly. I asked “How far is it from Singapore to Amsterdam” with Siri just insisting that it “cannot give directions in Singapore.” I’m sure everyone knows already, but it’s often best to prefix whatever you want to ask with “Wolfram” to increase your chances of getting some sort of sensible response. I suppose this would be much less important in the US … and have anecdotally heard that some Australians are having trouble getting the word “wolfram” itself to be recognized. <Giggle>

Before it’s suggested that SingTel has def!nd out now as a localized Siri, def!nd works fine to search for local things, but is and never was intended to be a drop-in Siri replacement despite what some deluded reporters like to put in their headlines.