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CELTA: Day 5; TP 3

randall — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:08:37 +0000

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

randall — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:28:23 +0000

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 teaching, 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.

SingTel Mystery Fail

randall — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 10:59:01 +0000

I was humming along on the internet last Tuesday when the ‘next page’ link didn’t work for some reason. That’s not so unusual so I tried another site. Nothing. I rebooted. Nothing. I rebooted the router/etc. Nothing. I repeated this for hours. Nothing. I tried my mobile phone internet to see if there was some reported problem with SingTel. There was no internet there either. I tried calling support and the call failed. After dozens of attempts the call connected but the line sounded like a modem from days gone by. I finally had to borrow a Starhub phone from a friend to get through to SingTel support to be told that there is no problem with anything. Of course we had to reboot everything again and again to have a tech sent out … on Saturday! This was my first week of a class that is incredibly dependent upon being able to connect to the net!

On the side of the mobile phone at least, it suddenly started working around lunchtime on Wednesday. According to the Strait’s Times the SingTel 3G network was out for most of the country for a day and a half. And the “customer support” line just lied. On a hilariously infuriating note, after getting through for a few seconds and being disconnected, I got an immediate SMS asking me to kindly rate their service! It would have been considerably less slimy if the largest and most stable phone company in this country would have thought to send some sort of notice to their subscribers (by SMS which worked through everything) rather than lying and causing everyone somehow suddenly out of communication to try reinstalling their phone and other destructive behaviors.

Back to the internet. We have high speed fiber. All of the router lights were green. I would have been happier if they were red since that would be more believable. The tech confirmed, what they didn’t want to believe when speaking to them, that even the admin interface to the router was inaccessible when directly connected to it while all lights still happily smirked green. He replaced the router and it worked. Then it didn’t. Replug. Reboot. Works. Doesn’t. Hard-Reset. Okay. Happiness. I feel a bit bad for the tech since we still don’t know what was wrong, why it was wrong, and how on earth the lights were green despite everything being wrong. He promised to write up the whole situation in their records to that if (when?) this happens again someone might believe me. I somehow doubt they will.

For now, the lifeblood flows …

CELTA: Day 2; TP 1

randall — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 02:21:39 +0000

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 teaching and observing teachers, we were immediately dumped into actual teaching (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

randall — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:54:42 +0000

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 teaching (9 observed classes). The teaching 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.

Closing Out

randall — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 06:23:55 +0000

The year is finally at at end! I’ve been reading and enjoying a bit of Skyrim lately. It is really the most impressive game I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s quite a treat on the PS3.

I also had a chance to visit Bangkok for a few days and did little but eat the entire time. Thai food is just heavenly. The hotel on Suriwong Road was new to me and quite comfortable, with friendly staff. It would have been nice to know that the stairs are for people, and the elevator for luggage, though I suppose the trudge up them did me no harm.

I’m looking forward to a much better 2012. It will begin with a teacher training program that is quite intense, yet invaluable for both personal proficiency and an internationally recognized certification.

Leaving the past behind …

July24-27 BKK Tarntawan

An App Shopper Wish List

randall — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 04:03:45 +0000

Apps for iOS abound to an almost insane extent. You want a camera app? Well, here are 150 of them. Per page. Just click next. Figure it out. So, you look at the icons, the star ratings, and read all the reviews. You’ve picked one out and buy it. If you don’t, you have to keep some mental list of which ones you were interested in lest having to do the search all over again. Let’s see, was that Pro Camera, Camera+ Pro Camera Pro+, Camera Plus, or just Camera Pro you liked before?

This was the muddled situation before I came across AppShopper. It’s universal and let’s you look through what’s available and filter it all by paid or free, by device or category, by date or popularity, and by type of update. That would be great if it ended there, but the real value of the app is that last criteria coupled with the “Want it” button. If you are browsing and come upon an app you’d like to consider, just click it. You will then have an entry in your Wish List to refer to. You could have just written this down to consider. You are, however, quite unlikely to chart price changes and updates unless you’re gifted with some serious compulsion issues. AppShopper can notify you of these types of changes. Perhaps you might like to get The Professional Chef but find that $49.99 is ridiculous for a glorified cookbook app. This is not the best example, only a personal one, because the only activity for this in AppShopper is Oct 25, ’11 – New App: $49.99. If someday the notification comes in that there has been a price drop, I would certainly reconsider the app. Many apps have a sale for a few days only, and the notifier dutifully reports: Price Drop: 14.99 -> Free. Oh, joy! Of course, the feeling is not so great when you get that notice a while after your own purchase, but thus is life.

I noticed recently that they also have a website with all of this functionality that syncs with your other devices, as was always the case (it also has some features for the Mac App Store), but it also has a utility for Mac and Windows that uploads the names of the apps from your local iTunes folder to your My Apps tab so that you don’t have to do a session of search and mass Own it jabs if you want to know what you already have. Of course, Apple added the Purchased link in the iTunes store for an unabridged picture, and this is a necessity, but scrolling through years of purchases can be an onerously frustrating task.

AppShopper is quite a necessity for me in my quest to impose some sort of order to the wild app landscape.

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WordPress 3.3 White Editor

randall — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:56:07 +0000

You’ve rushed ahead and upgraded to WP3.3 and all looks well. All except that the menus don’t work and when you try to edit a post, everything appears to be gone. You notice that your writing is there, but that it is white text on a white background (and there are not buttons and you cannot get out of Visual mode). For me at least this was the solution: (1) clear your cache (2) install the Hotfix 0.8 (currently labeled development version) plugin from here.

On my end, I scoured the forum, followed the official word, cleared my cache, tried Hotfix 0.7, re-upgraded, killed all my themes and plugins, re-upgraded manually, read post after post telling people to just read the FAQ and rejoice. There was no joy in any of that for me. Glory be for the good fellow over at the WordPress Genius Bar, for the divine led me to his post: WordPress 3.3 Upgrade Problem: Toolbar Disappears in Page/Post Editor.

What a long road. Overall, you should just stay where you are until 3.3.1 pops out. If you weren’t so lucky, I hope this helps.

New WordPress

iCloud & Contacts Disappear

randall — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 08:34:01 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

I decided to do a mass cleanup of my contacts. Being prudent, I made a backup before, and after, using the “Address Book Archive” option as we’ve been told. Then, all of the contacts disappeared. Fine, no problem, I restored from the backup. Everything looked good but a few seconds later everything was gone again. Fine, I restored from a Time Machine backup. Things went just as badly. I frantically searched for a solution and was relieved to find a post from Richard L. on MacRumours. It was an horrific experience for us to have to share. I’m posting the steps I was forced into due to this obvious near fatal bug from our dearest Apple.

1. Completely sign out of iCloud.
2. If there are somehow any remnants of your contacts in Address Book, delete them.
3. Import your “Address Book Archive File” that didn’t work for long before.
4. Make any edits and clean things up. (some were obscenely mis-alphabetized - a likely corrupted cause of the problem in the first place)
5. Drag each address book entry out of AB individually to a folder somewhere.
6. Delete everything in AB.
7. Drag the mess of vCards back into AB.
8. Log back into iCloud. (You will notice you still have contacts – that don’t sync)
9. Turn off Contacts sync in the iCloud pref pane, keeping your local contacts.
10. Turn it back on. It will kindly “merge” your contacts with iCloud.

At this point you should have a complete Address Book on your mac as well as the nicely synced data on your mac/phone/pad/pod.

Oh, Apple! It “just works,” until it doesn’t. Hopefully those good folks will fix this quite traumatic situation soon.

iOS 5- Device Not Eligible Error

Siri-ously?

randall — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 02:12:10 +0000

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.

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.

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