Kalinago English

Sweet Words vs Monstrosities

2012-01-29T20:03:00.001+01:00

More than a century ago, Henry Sweet wrote The Practical Study of Languages and through it, criticized the existing methods of the day, much as we still do now. The book's myth-busting objectives reviews phonetics, alphabets and pronunciation issues before diving into methods, grammar, vocabulary and texts.

In fact, while scanning through the text, I honestly couldn't help but think I bet he'd have been a blogger if he were around today. His prose is tight, easy to read and the language direct.

His obvious annoyance at the 'insufficient knowledge of the science of language' (1899:3) like my own, literally jumps off the page. Given that this post is part 2 of No Evidence for a Fixed Aquisition Order, I'll hone in on this one quote which I wanted to share with you, for reflection, as it neatly wraps up the debate on authenticity vs manufactured texts:

...the dilemma is that if we try to make our texts embody certain definite grammatical categories, the texts cease to be natural: they become either trivial, tedious and long-winded, or else they become more or less monstrosities' (1899:192).

Really sounds like he was describing Headway long before it ever arrived to influence all the other copy-cat productions from then on and into today. The question is though, will it influence tomorrow's or can we teachers at least try to stop it before it does?

Best,
Karenne

Image credit
Wikimedia commons, wolf in sheep's clothing

Reference
Sweet, H. (1899). The Practical Study of Languages. London, UK. J.M. Dent & Co.
(Available for free online from Google Books)

Fixed Acquisition Order? = No Evidence

2012-01-23T22:55:00.000+01:00

I'm busily packing up the stack of books I used for my MA assignment on Methods and Approaches while looking into authentic materials, yet before I take them on back to the library, I thought I'd share a little snippet I came across.

It's this:

"Very briefly, there is substantial research evidence to support the use in language learning of the linguistically rich, culturally faithful and potentially emotive input supplied by authentic texts. What is more, there is little evidence of a fixed acquisition order, which is the rationale for the use of phased language instruction and which is often used to repudiate the use of authentic texts for language learning. (Mishan, 2005:11)

So not to harp on about all this again but what gets me when I read this is if publishers and textbook authors aren't simply churning out carbon copies of each other, albeit with ever glossier, shinier pictures than the last lot, then why do these tomes always start off and carry on virtually the same way?

Why do teachers teach the verb to be, there is/there are, present-tense followed by present-continuous, question words, prepositions of time and place and adverbs of frequency* and so on and so forth, ad infinitum?

And to top it all off, horror of all horrors, why do so many students think this must be the way to learn a language?

Did we come to this ideology because the holy books have logos on them, thus convincing us that there were at some point, a bunch of wise and saintly academic authorities who like monks in monasteries, researched language acquisition before writing up their commandments? Who made this "order" - who publicized it? Who pushed it? Where did it come from?

Have our beloved and not so loved at all textbook authors ever done any research into whether this "order" works or not, feel free to state your claim if so, or have they too assumed it to be so because their editor (or his boss) said so? I do really want to know... if this phased language instruction has ever been tested scientifically, systemically, qualitatively, quantitatively, longitudinally and by whom because I'll happily eat my hat if you can prove it so. Show me, please, where are the peer-reviewed research articles documenting the processes that occur and don't occur - why folks must learn just so? Surely, truly, it can not be that with almost one third of the world now learning English and millions of others learning other languages that we still can't answer this rather simple and professional question?

Or is our industry made up of snake-oil salesmen dancing in pale moonlight?

Of course not. But nonetheless, I'm not kidding, be it down to good intentions or not, this billion-dollar grossing industry can not really have just been compiled on good faith alone, or can it?

Because it seems so.

Today, despite that I now have access to fields of journals I will tell you that not for a want of trying can I find one single verified report showing brain scans done on language learners proving on any kind of level that the brain receives and organizes grammatical structures this way. Countless snoringly dull case studies and endless fascinating assessments to wade through that go into the depths of our practices and into what makes a good language learner and what doesn't, what strategies teachers can get students to employ, the effects of motivation, aptitude, age and gender studies and how there really is no best method, no there isn't... and yet, nope, nary a word on this so called fixed acquisition order, stage by stage and step by step, despite the fact that so many of us somehow continue to hail the god of grammar.

Were we sold a Brooklyn Bridge and made to sell it on classroom by classroom?

Time to wise up, folks, methinks.

K

Image credit:
The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City by Webfan29 at en.wikipedia

References:

Mishan, F. (2005). Designing authenticity into language learning materials. Bristol, UK: intellect.
Prabu, N. (1990). There Is No Best Method - Why? TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 24, no.2. 161-176.

Other posts
Reasons I don't like textbooks

How did English become the Global Language?

2011-10-30T17:22:00.000+01:00

One of the things I did today was comment on Scott Thornbury's blog post, O is for Ownership... and in my ramblings I talked about how sometimes ideas are out there, floating about in the greater Universe, simply lurking, waiting to be captured by he who listens and is prepared to act. (It's that sort of day).

Those sorts of thoughts come, I guess though, from my youth when I was a NewAger and instead of being a reflective English teacher and practitioner or even a student, I wrote NewAge articles philosophizing on the questions of one's path through life - instead of

"How do we learn?" "What is motivation?"
"How can the new technologies help us teach Speaking?' I wondered how we transformed from monkeys to... well, whatever we are now.

Even though it was a long, long, long, long time ago and many years have passed since those days of adventure, climbing up into volcanoes and knocking back beers while lying on Asian sandy beaches, curled up around men with long wise beards in front of dimming fires while arguing over the very nature of our beingness, the story, no matter how fantastical, of the 100th Monkey never really left me.

So today, through the rambling stroll of a streaming mind, the philosophy that we learn from those around us, consciously, subconsciously and through the trawling of multi-dimensional layered communications recorded in the shared higher consciousness, I am led to only this question:

How did English become today's one Global Language?

Okay, it's not completely, yet it surely is on the way. By 2020, a prediction not a fact, a greater majority will speak it than those who don't, right? It isn't the easiest language. Nor the prettiest. It is instead a messy code, made up of archaic irregularities, tortuous, nonsensical rules and ridiculous tongue-defying pronunciations.

So what on earth, or beyond earth, happened to set this particular meme into play?

When did the Tipping Point occur?

Who were the players, who washed the first sweet potato, who made washing it important? Who decided that English should take the place of Esperanto? Was it life itself? Was it a bunch of academics studying applied linguistics unraveling the codices of the brain and because they happened to be English speaking, while sharing the nature of our brains ability to learn, the onus was on English to prove the hypotheses... or was it the availability of native English speakers racing across a globe to have an adventure while earning a little cash?

Was it a curtain coming down or a wall falling down? Was it the Almighty Dollar or Nike's abuse of children in factories? Was it Coca-cola's fault or a legion of British soldiers conquering a New World?

How did it all happen so fast?

We talk about our students' needs to learn English but somehow we don't ask how that need arose in the first place.

Does anyone have thoughts or theories?

Best,
Karenne
image credit: colobus monkey by garthimage

Does Gender-Segregation in Classroom Lower Second Language Acquisition?

2011-10-27T21:18:00.000+02:00

(Guest post by Brittany Lyons)

For decades, proponents of gender-segregation in classrooms have argued that separation of children by gender fosters a successful learning atmosphere. However, recent studies have shown that segregating classrooms by gender impacts student learning negatively.

The negative effects of separate classrooms are apparent in linguistics especially, where girls tend to develop strong academic abilities earlier than boys. Establishing gender-segregated classrooms denies boys and girls the opportunity to learn from each other, and reinforces the long-ago debunked idea that "separate but equal" is effective in institutions of learning.

Research conducted at Tel Aviv University suggests that girls help foster a stronger learning atmosphere in classrooms, and that both boys and girls benefit from being in mixed gender classes. The study found that test scores were higher overall in many areas, including reading comprehension, science and math, when boys and girls were in mixed classes. Test scores increased for both genders, and a high ratio of girls was linked to enhanced learning.

This data is supported by older education studies, which found that girls tend to excel in language arts as young children, while boys consistently develop later. This difference is true of children in many countries, and from many different linguistic backgrounds—not just in English-speaking high-income families with parents who can afford the cost of further education, be this at home, sending their children abroad or even via a distance learning program such as an online PhD education.

Whether the disparities in language acquisition are based in the brain or in upbringing, marked differences do exist between boys and girls, especially in elementary school classrooms. Listening to their female peers speak and interacting with them during classroom and playground activities helps boys to develop stronger language arts skills.

Schools who have attempted to institute gender-segregated classrooms have often seen an overall decrease in test scores, which shows that gender-segregation in schools is not effective for either boys or girls.

Another chief drawback of segregated classrooms is that they do not allow children to share their knowledge and experience with each other, but rather perpetuate gender-based cultural disparities. Learning how to interact with different people is seen as a key goal of education, especially in early childhood. Children who are deprived of the chance to interact with peers of different genders may have trouble relating to or communicating with individuals of the opposite gender later in life.

Many psychologists who focus on child and adolescent development have voiced concern that gender-segregated classrooms impact the social skills of students well into adulthood. They perpetuate unfounded stereotypes about how men and women are different, and contribute to gender-based prejudice.

The effects of gender-segregated teaching can have an impact on older students as well. Decreases in test scores occur in single-gender classrooms in both middle and high school, and grade point averages in general fall. This decrease in GPA can adversely affect students as they apply for college and scholarship opportunities. Depriving students of their best chances to enter excellent colleges and secure funding does them a disservice. The goal of public education should be to prepare individuals for successful careers and successful relationships, both of which are harmed by gender segregation.

Many of the ideas that proponents of gender-segregated classrooms have introduced into public discourse are nothing but old prejudices in new forms. These individuals argue that boys and girls are inherently different, and that they should thus be separated in classrooms. They argue that boys are more aggressive than girls, and that girls can only learn in cooperative environments. As the American Civil Liberties Union has noted in lawsuits against school districts with sex-segregated classrooms, none of these beliefs have been substantiated by science.

But what do you think - should boys and girls be separated? Why or why not?

Have you noticed any differences in the way that males and females learn languages?

Blog post author
Brittany Lyons aspires to be a psychology professor, but decided to take some time off from grad school to help people learn to navigate the academic lifestyle. She currently lives in Spokane, Washington, where she spends her time reading science fiction and walking her dog.

Image credit
Wikimedia commons, Daytona School

#Twitterspam works because...

2011-10-23T15:02:00.000+02:00

most people are actually,
deep-down,

narcissists?

To be a spammer in 2011, you have to major in Human Psychology?

Practice makes perfect?

I mean there is a sort of cleverness in their approach, isn't there?

I seen a real bad blog about you. http://link2avirus

Have you seen this photo of you? http://going2wreckhavoconURcomputer

Check out this video with you in it! http://love2spam

Given the amount of people who spam me each week, because their accounts have been hacked BECAUSE they were silly enough to click through on one of these.. I think I've got to stop wondering how/why people are silly enough to fall for this trap and got to start slapping some kudos on the devious as they definitely know how to get folks caught in their webs.

If I can apply this to anything in terms of my professional development as an educator, then I'd have to say it really emphasizes my belief that learning has to be personal to prick, to stick.

But anyway, folks, seriously, read and take note:

If you get this sort of message from someone you don't know, don't click on it.

Wise up!

Karenne

Imagecredit
Narcissus by Archimadrill

Fossilization and then some Krashen

2011-10-19T01:08:00.000+02:00

This morning's walk to classes was a half-hour battle with an umbrella against icy rain and I can safely say that winter is now upon us here in Manchester but at the moment, as the night closes in, I'm sitting in front of my computer with a nice hot-water bottle on my lap, my toes firmly ensconced in last year's Christmas present of sheepskin bed slipper boots.

I hate cold so it's a good thing with all the articles the professors cook up for us to read that the heating's been turned up in my brain.

One of the tasks last week, for this week, was to think of what makes "a good speaker of a foreign language" and then to think of a particular challenge that you currently face or have faced when teaching Speaking.

We had to research the issue, select an article from Google Scholar and then come back into class to share what we learned.

I chose to look at fossilized errors, a subject I've written about before (but one also swallowed into the

dark-world-of-lost-posts-don't-even-ask-where-Google-put-it, I'll have to repost it soon)

because it's a subject that utterly fascinates me.

I mean why do some learners, despite a significant amount of comprehensible input, say the wrong thing over and over again, even when they are corrected over and over again? Even when they are repeatedly exposed to the correct form via media, conversations with native speakers.

You know the sort of errors I mean?

e.g

"I stand up" instead of "I wake up"

The a - e - i mix up

Trouble with filler words like, "well"

I suppose, at the end of the day, it comes down to L1 interference (first language getting in the way when producing speech in the second language) but why do some of our learners never go through this while others hit major stumbling blocks? It isn't an age thing, if we're honest, now is it? It isn't a gender thing... and sometimes, though not always, they are undoable...

e.g.

a) placing a picture of the difference between standing up and waking up on the table as a cue card

b) teaching a mnemonic device, Send Emails with your iPad from Apple

with others, only practice seems to do the trick, with others it doesn't matter what you do, that error has been fossilized like an insect stuck in amber.

So, thus with my interest pricked, I set off on a trawl through Google scholar. The first article I came to was by a young lady in China who pretty much put it down to not enough concentration on form in the beginner levels of classes. I pretty much agreed with her so moved on to see if I could get something juicier.

This one led to one of those

"oh.my.goodness.how.come.I.never.thought.about.this?"

experiences.

Dr Han has compiled a list of the Five Central Issues in Fossilization in an article for the International Journal of Applied Linguistics and in it, along with discussing the sort of errors I'd been noticing, she also discussed the fossilization of level. When the student ceases to make any further progress in the level attained.

Have you ever come across this sort of thing in your classes - when your learners, week upon week, year upon year, stay at more or less the exact same level?

To be honest, I would probably name this state "stagnation" because I don't think it's necessarily permanent, it is very contextually and situationally dependent, don't you think?

Her article was a really good overview and a really good springboard to digging deeper, but like so many scholarly articles, there aren't concrete suggestions on how to deal with these issues.

Which brings me to the psychology module, where we had to read some Krashen. For all you die-hard-the-man-is-a-god-folks, sorry... the article we had to read was, sorry-to-say-out-loud, rubbish.

Obviously he's contributed greatly, enormously, to the field of Second Language Acquisition, but in Comprehensible Output? for System in 1998, he seemed to suggest that Comprehensible Output (CO) is too rare to make any real contribution to linguistic competence... (CO is when learners notice that they don't know how to say something correctly in the L2 or they've tried to say something meaningful but it all went pear-shaped and no one knew what they were saying, so they change it - make it simple/ ask for help and in modifying the intended phrase/structure learn something new about the language)..

In this article, Krashen suggested that students don't enjoy being pushed to speak (hogwash, mine did... the issue is so level dependent - so culturally dependent - so classroom dynamically dependent -so why-they're-learning-English dependent - so how-did-they-learn-English-before-influenced etc) and then he went on to say that high levels of linguistic competence are possible without output - that basically, input is all a language learner needs!

Raised my blood pressure that article did - I mean - by golly, at least a million students all across the world who've studied languages, whatever language, were made to do so through readings and listening, year upon year, but did not get the opportunity to speak and, blanket statement of mine, they would disagree with this viewpoint. I wonder, is it Krashen's fault that they are now mute because some textbooks authors thought he was right? Hmm...

Also, I think I'd even go so far as to say: if fossilization occurs at any one particular stage in the learning process, then I'd be very tempted to pick a time when new language is obviously received, in that moment, the brain makes a use-it-or-lose-it-decision... and I'd lay the blame of error/level fossilization at not having enough freedom moments in class - at not being able to say things wrong in order to learn how to say them right.

But then, whadda-I-kno',

Best,
Karenne

Useful links
Scott Thornbury's written a cracking post with rich comments on F is Focus on Form

References (because I have to work out how to do them and even though this is not an academic paper, and merely just an opinion based personal blog post, I'm trying to be a good girl now and should...)

Han, Z. (2004) Fossilization: five central issues, International Journal of Applied Linguistics Vol14 no.2 pp. 212-239
Krashen, S. (1998) Comprehensible Output? System 26, pp 175-182

ImageCredit
Insects in Amber by Mila Zinkova

"The Dog Ate My Internet"

2011-10-05T00:14:00.000+02:00

...was the smart retort from one of my professors, Gary, today when I gave a reason for not being able to do my required Blackboard discussion homework on top of the articles we had to read.

In the last few weeks I've been using a pay-as-you-go-dongle and its bytes were being chewed up at a very costly rate... which, on top of the life-changing move, is why I've not been around much in the last couple of weeks: not on the 'net, not writing emails, not FBing and all that. It was all quick in and quick out. Also, alas, my grandfather died recently and I'll be heading to his funeral on Friday.

But anyway, yay! The Internet is now installed at home, I have finally got my bed from Ikea although I haven't put it together yet, I have curtains up instead of propped up pieces of cardboard, I have a schedule, I have lightbulbs... I know where my highlighter pens are although I think I may have lost my glasses.

The course tutors have been piling on the work, reams and reams of articles, 25 - 50 pages long plus book chapters to read and I swear that when they list out what else they recommend reading that there could well be an evil-grin-glint in their eyes.

That part, because I'm so keen :-) you know, trying to read it all, (even some referenced articles mentioned at the bottom of assigned) ... all wound up becoming a bit overwhelming and on Monday I ran on over to the disability office (I'm dyslexic) to say I was freaking out.

Nice counselor there told me it was normal to freak out and I instantly stopped freaking out.

I think I need to take a more eclectic approach - but oh,oh, it's so hard to choose - what if I miss out on something truly groundbreaking... complain as I might about pages of stuff to read, the truth is by golly, even with the articles I don't really like, that I want to simplify and break down into you know, English, teach so much.

This old dog is definitely picking up some new tricks.

Beyond Approaches, Methods and Techniques

The most interesting work for this module that I read last week was perhaps Diane Larsen Freeman's concluding chapter of Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. She has a really good voice - easy and clear, and warming - she's a really-have-been-there-and-done-that-author. In this chapter she discussed the changes in methodology over the years and provided a really good overview of the different approaches.

I found this particularly interesting laid out, like this, as I can't say that before now I have never actually thought about how much the way that an adult learner might have been taught previously might well affect the way he learns now or how he wants to learn now.

I thought her statement "What makes a method successful for some teachers is their investment in it" particularly interesting - I wonder if dogme works in my classroom because I simply believe it does.

Two other phrases which really caught my eye were "learners are very versatile and can learn well sometimes despite a given method rather than because of it" and "teachers who teach as if their practice causes learning, while recognizing that they are not in control of all the relevant factors, and that at the least they are in partnership with their students in this enterprise, can be true managers of learning."

I am not fond of the term, managers, managers are a little too much like a throw-back to the top-down boss effect. I like coaches better. I wonder if that's a sign of the times, of these times, 2011 influenced as we are by the Business gurus and their pop psychology. But, I tend to think that a coach encourages, motivates, builds his team. And a classroom pulling together needs a strong, warm lead.

Psychology of Language Learning

I'm auditing this class which means I participate as a guest and have to do the assignments but won't get assessed at the end.

I really would wish it could be one of my core modules but I'm planning on doing an ISS in year two and I need to save the credits. Our Dutch professor is a very interesting character... a coach.

He gave us an article by Susana V. Rivera Mills and Luke Plonsky called Empowering students with language learning strategies. This is probably the most marked up of all the texts I had to read last week and the only one I read through more than once and then reread the comments in the margins again, prior to class.

In class this morning, Juup had us critique and analyze some of her core points and terminology and it was jolly good fun to give it a (respectful) bashing. I highly recommend reading it, looking out for phrases like "instructors whose students posses misconstrued notions about language learning need to provide guidance to avoid their tendency to use less effective strategies" but don't expect any real practical advice on how to do that.

In her introduction she repeated a vital question raised by Dick Allwright in 1984 - a question I have been asking for years "Why don't learners learn what teachers teach?" But her article was pretty theoretical, so I didn't walk away with any 'a-ha' moments.

Still it discussed things like how good strategies affect motivation and wound up reminding me of my own questionings on whether or not, the term I probably incorrectly refer to as "peer-induced-motivation," has any influence over the end-"product."

Evaluation and Design of Educational Courseware

I thought I was going to wind up in the quagmire... blinded by statistics and non-educational examples and too-much-for-the-brain-to-take-in-lists of principles, on printer-costly chapters from Dix and Norman, in the random pursuit of a main point or two.

However, the briefer Wilson, in Raising the bar for instructional outcomes, did serve one up and that is this:

e-materials need to be

efficient,

effective

and engaging.

He also talked about mythic story structure in e-design, referencing Joseph Campbell's journey of the hero (usually used in Hollywood -see my dogme post).

I really suspect I'll be reading more of his work and that I may well have more to say on this subject in the coming weeks/months.

Best,
Karenne

p.s. For the next two years, Tuesdays are now going to be taken up with my self-reflective, what did I learn on my MA-EdTech&TESOL. I hope you don't mind the diary style sort of entries and I might well waffle on a bit... if you want to skip these, then Thursdays will be for the more lesson oriented stuff and Sundays will be the EdTech-SocialMedia comments/tips posts.

p.p.s. For all you amazing folk who've sent your good wishes via blog and FB and Twitter and for your interesting comments here on the blog last week, so sorry - the dog ate my internet - I'll respond this week :-).

References
Freeman-Larsen, D. (2000) Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ch.12.
Rivera-Mills, S.V & Plonsky, L. (2007) Empowering students with language learning strategies: a critical review of current issues. Foreign Language Annals, 40(3):535-548
Wilson, B. Parrish, P. & Veletsianos, G (2008). Raising the bar for instructional outcomes: Towards transformative learning experiences. Educational Technology. 48(3), 39-44

Image credit
Caught surfing flickr by derekGavey on Flickr.com

How to Avoid Overseas EFL Teaching Job Scams

2011-09-29T21:58:00.001+02:00

(guest post by Susan Taylor)

Vacationing in a foreign country is wonderful, but it isn't always fulfilling enough. You may visit a new place, completely fall in love with the land, the people, even the food, and want to experience those things on at least a semi-permanent basis. Teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) is one way to do that.

Unfortunately, many EFL teachers can find themselves victims of job scams, which can not only cause them to lose a lot of money, but can sour them on the entire overseas experience, causing them to speak out about their negative experiences. Complaints like this are especially frustrating because language instruction can be a wonderful experience, especially overseas. If you decide to pursue an overseas EFL teaching job, be on the lookout for these red flags.

Up Front Payment Required

It's very rare that you should have to pay any kind of fee for any kind of job, let alone an EFL job. You're the one applying to do the work in order to be paid. Why should you have to pay anything before you get there? Disreputable employers, or scammers posing as EFL employers, will tell you the payment is to cover your travel costs, or for an orientation you must attend before you can begin teaching.

Sadly, this very thing happens to many hopeful job seekers. One such story involved a woman who lost $2,500 when she wired money via Western Union for travel costs and rent fees with the promise she’d be reimbursed by the employer. When they received it and then asked her for more money, she became suspicious, and found out it was a scam.

Huffington Post columnist and author, Julie Gray, wrote an article about a very similar experience in which she described how even though she considers herself quite savvy, she still fell for a scam. It can happen to anyone. As the instances above illustrate, if you pay that money, you'll likely never see it again. And you’ll still have to cover your travel. Be suspicious of any company that requires payment up front when you apply for a job with them.

It's Too Good To Be True

It's not difficult to find out the average pay for an EFL teacher in your country of interest. That information is available from multiple sites on the Internet, such as EFL businesses, and EFL support sites and forums. Just like most other teachers of any subject, EFL teachers don't go into that career field to become rich.

Part of the compensation is the opportunity to live in a foreign country, and to interact with the culture and people there. If an EFL company offers you what seems like an outrageous salary, or one that's much higher than what other companies are offering in the same area, it's probably a scam.

Questionable Web Sites

Just about anyone can build a Web site these days with just a little know-how and a Web host. In the cases of Internet scams, it's become the equivalent of a layperson hanging out a shingle that claims they're a physician. Fortunately, there are some things to look for that will help you identify EFL scam sites.

First, look at the URL. Does it end with an unusual extension you've never seen before? Not to say that all sites with those extensions are questionable, but it's definitely a something to examine a little more closely.

Also, is the site well designed? Are there a lot of spelling and grammar errors? Is the domain name unrelated to EFL? Any or all of these factors should tell you all you need to know about that supposed EFL employer.

Poor English

Think about it. You're applying to English schools to teach English. Doesn't it stand to reason that the people who work there would be very familiar with the language, and would have excellent English skills? One or two mistakes are probably nothing to be alarmed about. You can find errors on a lot of Web sites or advertisements written by people for whom English is their first language. But if the materials you're looking at are rife with errors, there's something wrong.

It may also help for you to be more familiar with the native language of the country you’re attempting to teach in. For example, if you’re talking with a school in Spain and are worried about the reputation of the program, send out some tweets to people in the area and check teaching groups on Facebook for more information. If you’re rusty on the language of the country, audio-based programs help quite a bit. In this scenario, brushing up on Spanish will help you communicate, be more aware and maybe even help your instruction.

What other advice would you give to a newbie TEFLer?

Thinking and Doing, Comparing and Contrasting

2011-09-28T00:39:00.000+02:00

Today was a beautiful day in Manchester: the trees are just beginning to add touches of yellow in their edges and the sun battles to provide us with some last warmth.

In between classes, I sat on a park bench with a thermos of brought-on-over-from-Germany, sage and honey tea, to reflect on the learning provided in the morning session with our Dutch professor Juup Stelma. He started off the course, Psychology of Language Learning, with one of those very popular psychometric questionnaires.

The problem with this sort of test is they force you into answering YES/NO -and well, if you, like me, have lived, then you know that being forced into black and white answers can intimidate and perhaps irritate - too much of what we do and think is grey; too much is

'MAYBE,'

'it DEPends,'

'er, when I'm hungry' &

'aye, when I'm in a grand mood.'

Or, worse, if you've any intelligence then you quickly notice the relationships between the different questions separated out by a few lines and despite the valiant attempt to be "honest and truthful to oneself" you wind up wondering if you may be being tricked (why do we so distrust the psychological) and thus, forced by the pressure and the immediacy laying in wait behind the stopwatch, the demanding YES or NO, you attempt to reply in exactly the same way each time, whether or not it is the "truest" answer.

Anyway, the resulting results are that I am a pragmatist-activist.

Oddly enough, true.

But not surprising news.   Of course, I like life and learning to be practical (I'm a teacher!) and to be immediately applicable (tick-tock!), that's why out of all the MAs in the world, I wound up here, doing this one TESOL with real-life applicable educational and technological aims!

Juup then acknowledged the lack of contextual reference presented through the questionnaire and wrapped up the exercise with a drawing made up of stick figures walking across the whiteboard, challenging us to think about what and who we, as people, as learners, interact with and how those things directly influence our learning.

The interpersonal and intrapersonal aspects.

He provoked us into thinking about how the results of this non-contextual questionnaire, by Honey and Mumford, could ultimately provide a teacher with enough data to then create contextual materials and hinted at the potentiality of separating learners according to 'type.'

I'm intrigued by this idea but not sure.

In fact, it forces me to mull back over the whole concept of individual learner types - you know the now tossed out, theory of folks being auditory/kinestic/visual learners?   (gotta admit I still subscribe in part,as I know I always learn so much more from a picture than a droned lecture) but I actually tried separating out my students this way and it never really worked.   Even in the small classes.   Noticing was one thing but preparing, presenting, teaching, working together, another.   What about you?

And what do you do if you're teaching 30 or even 60 as some of my Asian colleagues need to?

Apart from the feasibility, is it practical or even worth the effort, to divide up students into theorists, pragmatists, activists and reflectors? Aren't we all different because it is through the cooperation and collaboration of our differing skills that we make the better, more dynamic whole?   If we separate our learners into groups, won't they become flat and one dimensional?

But then, later, as I walked home, crisping my way through the first batch of dead leaves which rustle in oranges on the concrete lanes, after my class with Gary Motteram, on the Evaluation and design of Digital Software, I began reflecting once more on the infinite potentiality for well-designed computer programs to cater to these issues - whether on the surface level or deep within our id, in areas we don't even know about yet… and how this potentiality may soon be within the reach of technology - to teach and treat each individual learner individually while we work collectively.

Best,
Karenne

Useful links related to this posting:

COMPARE AND CONTRASTING
I received an invitation from Anne to take part in her blog challenge, of finding two similar pictures. Why did I choose these two and how do you think they discuss the text above?

image credits:
Buddhist monk in Sirikit Dam by Tevaprapas Makklay
Sri Mariamman Temple, Singapore by AngMoKio

education

Back to school at the age of 42

2011-09-26T00:50:00.000+02:00

"Sleep with one eye open" was the quickly emailed advice from my Dad the night before Jake, my internet procured van driver, turned up on my doorstep along with my younger brother.

My parents were freaking (as parents do)

but I...

a) knew everything would be alright because statistically life usually is
b) trust the MyHammer website
c) had his email details and the van number
d) hitchhiked my way across Sumbawa on the back of an onion truck when I was 25 - if nothing happened then...

Of course, when Jake and Martin actually turned up, all of Jake's mates were furiously emailing and texting, worried that he'd arrived in Stuttgart and had his liver and kidneys taken out. Ah, you gotta just love the way that television and general overhyped media resources have created such a nervous world.

My adventure did have its ups and downs, more because a jinn attached itself to my journey, probably attracted by all the worrying family members and friends.

He, the jinn that is, decided to infiltrate my bank account and managed to stop it from working on the very day I was leaving. Despite frantic calls to the bank at 9am on Saturday, being able to view my money but not touch it, it was a no-go and all information given by the call centre pointed to an apology on Monday (which I got but seriously, it doesn't help to know that technical problems happen). I was worried and stressed out enough that day, already nervous about packing up my whole life and cancelling numerous jobs and contacts and saying goodbye to students and friends and throwing out garbage bag after garbage bag of stuff not needed anymore... and trying to fit the rest of nigh-on 7 years into one van.

I recounted and recounted the pounds and Euros I'd taken out during the week, crossed my fingers that my budget based on GoogleMaps information was correct.

It wasn't...

The jinn, you see, he'd also managed to persuade a neighbour to park his Ford 4x4 in front of the van, thus blocking the driveway. Manic calls at 2am put me in touch with the efficient German police who promised to tow it away if they couldn't contact the owners. They turned up bleary eyed and in their pyjamas, leaving us an hour off-schedule.

Jake tapped on some keys on the GPS which then prompted "Do you want to avoid tolls?"

We clicked no - we had to try and make the ferry in time - we left, speeding away through Germany and into France.

Sure enough, it was a badly clicked decision, as French toll after toll after toll ate away at those Euros in my pocket, in trickles of €3, €6, €24, €36 and thus, fearing not having enough to pay the final toll... a quick math calculation at the last gas station on the European side to get us just enough until we were in Ole Blighty, proved to be our undoing... 10 minutes away from Calais, 25 minutes away from our afternoon ferry, we wound up with the van parked on the side of the road and a whopping bill to pay for. No gas.

Also, of course, because I had been super-super careful to tie up all loose ends, I'd remembered TWO DAYS BEFORE to report that I no longer knew the PIN number to my credit card (because I use it only for emergencies and internet transactions)...they'd said no problem and that they'd get a new one sent to me in the UK...

I hadn't reckoned on the jinn...

and thus, I didn't even have a credit card to take care of the breakdown on the side of the road. It took some persuasion and desperation to convince the French-uber-expensive-fix it man (€186) to take the British currency. He huffed, he puffed. It's money.

So...

Nevermind....

Finally, after paying a fine for missing the right ferry and making our way through the south of the UK with nary a pee-stop, we got here around 10 in the evening and were met by my friendly landlord who'd brought round bread, tea and cookies in case we were hungry.

And so, oh-my-god, I am here. In Manchester, in a super-super-super friendly city where people talk to me for absolutely no reason. I am sharing a flat with lovely young postgraduates who, so far, don't mind/know that I'm an old lady.

I am sleeping on the floor because I was outbid on e-bay on the bed I wanted.

There are still boxes which haven't been opened and unpacked yet.

I'm relearning how to cook soup from scratch, put together spaghetti bolognese, tuna-fish pasta and other cheap dishes (send me your student-food recipes!)

I've met my tutors and some of the onsite participants and they're all very friendly and interesting. I'm also looking forward to hooking up with the off-site distance folk.

The University is amazing, the library is wonderful (although lots of the books I want are on one-week-only-loans so will have to reach deep into the coffers to purchase some).

I have a student card and can get cheap tickets to movies and stuff. Yippeeee! Lars von Trier here I come.

My course modules look RIDICULOUSLY UBER COOL (for an edtech tesol geek like me) and it's hard to decide for sure which ones to do, but I've worked out a good plan for the next two years and I am ridiculously, ridiculously excited to learn.

So, tomorrow, at the age of 42, wearing jeans which have already been laid out plus brand-new-shiny polished up DrMartens, me, after 15+ years in the classroom, I shall be walking in not as teacher but as learner.

Best,
Karenne
p.s. Thanks Anne Hodgson for introducing me to MyHammer!
p.p.s nervous as all get-out, so wish me luck!
image credit:Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

10 Speaking English Activities using TED.com

2011-09-04T13:08:00.000+02:00

Many English Language teachers, when deciding to work with a video clip in their classrooms, make a false assumption that for an activity to be considered as really teaching, then prior to showing it, they'd better sit down for a few hours, prepare an extensive worksheet filled with vocabulary and grammar questions and what-not...in order to turn it into a good pedagogical exercise, you know to ensure it's really not just glorified babysitting. ;-)

Personally, I don't agree and I really don't think that extensive worksheets provide a particularly authentic experience - such a thing mainly just erodes the power of the message within the video, takes away the inherent pleasure in learning from TED speakers.

I'm fond of using TED with my adult language learners (+ similar sites - see here for a list of others) for the ingenuity and its realistic relevance and because I know that whenever I visit TED I'll always find short, topical talks which can be used to kick-off real discussions within my classroom: stuff my adult students want to know and talk more about... speeches that will either captivate their interest or through understanding, even with lower students at only 50%, will encourage them to feel a greater motivation about where their English is going.

Here are a few simple activities you can do with the video clip you're about to show/ are showing/ have shown to your students without designing a full worksheet :

1. Prediction: what's the video going to be about?

Using the search bar function on TED, choose an interesting video (possibly related to the industry your students are currently working in) and then tell your students that they are going to watch a video with xyz talking about abc.

Ask them what they think the speaker will be discussing and why they think this. Do they have any pre-formed opinions on the subject matter? After watching, get them to talk about whether or not the video met their expectations. Why, why not?

Examples:

2. Vocabulary Collection

Give students a piece of paper with the numbers 1 - 10 written on it. While watching, any video you've chosen, ask them to write ten words they found most interesting / or ten words they didn't understand / or ten words which they think would summarize the story.

After watching, encourage students to share the words they've collected and to tell each other why these words were the ones they recorded.

Best with short TED videos: (see here)

3. Debate

While browsing TED, look for a video which the community has marked as persuasive. Show the video and ask your students what the main points discussed in the video were. Ask them to choose sides on these - to take an opposing view from others in the classroom and to debate it.

Examples:

4. Post-speech interview

Ask students to pretend that they are journalists at a TED talk.

Watch one of videos marked as informative and get them to write down questions while-watching and post-viewing. Get one student to pretend to be the TED speaker, and encourage him/her to sit in the center of the classroom (aim to pick a student who's most likely to know about the ESP subject matter) and then get the other students to read out and ask their questions.

Works with any informative TED video, examples:

5a. Critique Presentation Style

Give students a piece of paper and divide it to 2 parts:

+ / -

Tell students to analyze a 3- 6 minute speech: to think about the presenter's style of delivery and ask them to write pluses and minuses, things like: she spoke too quickly; she flaps her hands about; she loves her subject material; she used good slides.

Examples:

5b. Compare body-language

Choose two very short videos on similar subjects less than 4 minutes (or use the first few minutes of a longer video) and turn these on without using sound.

Ask your students to pay attention to the speakers' body language and facial expressions while giving their talks and to compare these. How many times do they move around the stage? How do they stand, where do they keep their hands? Who looks more convinced and thus convincing?

After this discussion, play the videos again with sound, do they still think the same way? What role does body language play in the audience's reception of the content of a talk?

Examples:

6. Wh-

Write on the board/flipchart the wh-questions:

who/what/where/when/why/how

Show the video you've (or one of your students') chosen and tell them they shouldn't write anything down while they're watching. After the video is finished, ask students to sit in groups and discuss what they watched, who was the presenter, why did she make this speech, how effective was it: encourage them to ask each other questions and share opinions.

Works with any TED video.

7. Critical Thinking - Who's the target audience?

Take one of the videos marked as most-emailed and watch it with your students.

Show or tell them that out of the thousands of videos on the site, this was one of the most-shared with others via email and social networks. Ask them to think about what sort of people found this video so interesting they sent it on to family members/ friends/ co-workers/ members of their online communities. Was the speech designed to go viral?

Will they send it on too? Why or why not?

Get them to practice writing a "FB status update or a Tweet" summarizing the video in less that 140 characters!

Examples:

8. Will this idea fly?

Choose a video marked as ingenious, in a subject matter your students have expressed a clear interest in or is connected to their work.

Watch the video with them and then ask them to discuss in groups whether or not they think the idea has merit; if they've already heard of something similar or if they disagree with its potentiality.

Examples:

9. In his/her shoes...

Review the videos marked as courageous and try to choose a video outside the scope of your students' normal interests and responsibilities. Encourage a group discussion on whether or not, they could have done what was shown in the presentation; how they may have done things differently; who they know in their own lives/ read about who has done something like this?

Examples:

10. Rank my TED video!

Encourage students to find a TED video based on something they are personally interested in.

It doesn't need to be about work, it can be a poem/song - it can be about glowing underwater fish!
Whatever they like and while they watch - possibly as homework (using the interactive transcripts in their own language if they need to) they can take brief notes about the subject matter.

In the next lesson, get students to share with each other what they watched. Encourage them to "rank" each person's suggestion in order of interest and at the end of the session, as a group watch the one that sounded the most fascinating.

11. What else?

Have you got any zero-preparation/ great tips to share with fellow English Language Teachers on using TED in the classroom? Do let me know your favorite videos, how you use them or any other ideas and experiences.

Best,
Karenne
education

image credit: European Parliment

Useful Links

TED videos for Business English
Larry Ferlazzo's links for teaching with TED
Douglas Evan's TED ESL Lessons Blog
I also found Adam Simpson's post filled with 3 useful ideas however you'll need to get your vids from TEDtalks on Youtube.
Teaching with TED wiki (via Glennie)

THIS POST IS A RE-POSTING OF AN ACCIDENTALLY DELETED ARTICLE DATED BACK TO JANUARY 2011 (the first lot of comments below are copies of those posted between 26 Jan and ...)
update 050911: actually, it looks like Blogger/Blogspot has been losing posts (in general, not just my own :( ... re the link to other sites which is also no longer here - will repost these up as well!)

Edu-Blogging Tip: Subscribe to your own blog...

2011-09-03T11:53:00.000+02:00

by email.

I recently discovered one of my "best" articles (Speaking Tips for Teaching with TED) had disappeared... probably at some point I was deleting a spam-comment but accidentally deleted the full post!

However a quick search through my googlemail account led to the whole thing and I'll put it up again tomorrow.

So, edu-bloggers, if you haven't set up this back-up procedure yet, do!

How to subscribe to your own blog:
Wordpress has various useful plug-ins
I use Google's FeedBurner

Useful links related to this posting:
7 useful reminders when edu-blogging
Looking backwards to look forwards
Thoughts on being an edu-blogger
Carnival - 24+ tips for being an edu-blogger by edu-bloggers

Glossary of EduBlogging Terms, Mike Harrison's Blog
Glossary of phrases and expresssions based on the word blog, Sue Lyon Jones's blog
The Dogma of Edublogging, Nick Jaworksi's blog

The Best Kept Secrets of Highly Successful Edubloggers
Part 1 on Shelly Terrell's blog
Part 2 on Janet Bianchini's blog
Part 3 on Berni Wall's blog
Part 4 on Monika Hardy's blog

Best,
Karenne
image credit Email by Sean MacEntee

p.s. It looks like the problem was not my own fault, but blogger's! A number of my posts are now missing in action and I will have to do a series of updates. Don't hesitate to let me know if one of your favorites is missing!

Aprenda Inglês - Voxy for Portuguese Speakers

2011-09-01T20:27:00.001+02:00

Super excited to relay that in less than a month, Voxy for Portuguese-speaking English-language-learners is the number #1 education app in Brazil and has been downloaded a whopping 30,800 times!

If you're a English Language Teacher based in Brazil, do check it out and share with your students:

http://www.voxy.com

Aprenda Inglês - Voxy

What is Voxy?

Voxy uses web-based and mobile technologies to create a fun, flexible, contextual and convenient learning environment, providing interesting supplementary materials which support the language learning experience.

Why use Voxy?

It's free... and all lessons are based on current real-world news stories. Learners have full control over the pacing and frequency of use and simple repetition games ensure students review the words they've encountered within articles they've read.

Geo-location based phrases provide relevant expressions they want in the moment they need to use them and camera flashcards help students to stay on top of words they're interested in knowing.

How can teachers use Voxy in the classroom?

1. Predict the Story

Choose a few words related to one of the articles on the Voxy website and put these up on the board/ IWB.
Before reading, ask students to guess what the story might be about.

2. Predict the Vocabulary

Choose one of the most recent Voxy stories that has been popular in the local media.
Before reading, get students to brainstorm the vocabulary which the story may contain.
After reading, ask students how many had guessed correctly and what words could also have been added.

3. What's the Grammar?

Choose one of the Voxy articles.
Ask students to analyze the different tenses used and discuss the reasons why these were chosen.
Can they rewrite the story using other tenses?

4. Choose a new picture!

Get students to browse through current Voxy stories and to choose one they are most interested in.
Can they find a different creative-commons licensed picture to go with this story?
Ask them to explain why they prefer the picture they chose.

5. Rewrite the headlines!

Get students to browse through current Voxy stories and to choose one they are most interested in.
Can they write a better headline for the story they chose?

6. Where in the world?

Using a world map in your classroom, encourage students to pin-up printed out Voxy stories which have taken place all over the world.

7. Track and update stories

Get students to browse through current Voxy stories and to choose one they are most interested in.
Can they create a timeline and continually update the story as it unfolds or develops?

8. Discuss and debate

Choose a controversial article and then divide up your class into two teams.
Tell one half they believe in one side of an argument and the other half believes something else.
Encourage them to debate the issue(s).

9. Roleplay

Choose a story with multiple roles
Encourage students to pick roles and to write up a dialogue (e.g. an interview, a conversation)
Get them to practice and role play the various events surrounding the situation in the article.

Have you got any other great suggestions on how teachers can use Voxy in their language-learning classrooms?

If you've already used Voxy in your classroom - what do your students think of our site?

Best,
Karenne
Disclaimer: I am an ELT-Academic Consultant for Voxy

Useful links

Dogme and the First Day of a New Class

2011-08-30T22:40:00.006+02:00

Recently, after teaching a group of teachers with another teacher, I had some not-so-great feedback:

"The 2nd teacher didn't give us no papers. I didn't learn with her."

Despite that she got a solid 2hr lesson of intense speaking practice with me and her group, three times a week, based on subjects they all chose at the beginning of the course, she was unhappy. And although the feedback from the other students/group ranging from happy to very happy, it was her feedback which taught me the most.

Because I failed.

Not in teaching her, but in properly communicating what was actually happening in the classroom. I learned a very valuable lesson and thought I'd share it with you and that is if you're going to teach with minimal resources then for many students, especially if you're teaching adults, you do really need to do the following:

1. On the first day of class, explain what dogme is and tell the students ahead of time why you will not be providing photocopied sheets of paper or why you aren't using a textbook.

Discuss the benefits of a student-centered curriculum. Talk to them about why you need them to be doing the work - what the reasons are for asking them bringing in the real-life emails and documents they use or need to understand.

Don't forget that many people, across a wide range of cultures, have grown up with the viewpoint that the classroom is a place to be spoon-fed, so do make sure that they understand that you are going to be treating them like the adults they are!

2. Do do a very thorough "wants" analysis. i.e. find out exactly what their needs are before creating your course curriculum around these. Add dates for on-the-spot flexibility. Type it up as an outline to ensure they understand your professionalism and hand this out to your students - the more they know that you are on top of things the better.

The more they know that they are on top of the content of their learning, the better.

Go back to this sheet/table often during the course - get them to think about where they are at different intervals and ask if they are still happy with the direction they are heading in or if they would like to make any changes to their goals and learning targets.

3. Do a "what are your personal expectations" exercise - i.e. encourage them to write a paragraph about the level of English they expect to have by the end of the course.

Whenever you are reviewing your outline at various steps, ask them to also review their own expectations at the same time. Obviously, set aside time for a discussion about this at the end of the course. (This is what I'd failed to do!)

If not, if they haven't realized by the end of the course, that they have in fact received what they needed and wanted to learn and that they have in fact, significantly improved their speaking and listening skills, that their notebooks are now chock-filled with contextual emergent vocabulary and language... then you may wind up with a few folks in your class who think you were just winging it.

Keeping all adult learners happy isn't an easy task by any means but good communication is one of the tricks to making it a little more so!

Do you have any other tips for the first days/week when running Dogme classes?

Useful links related to this posting:

What is Dogme ELT?
Dogme Blog Challenge 10: The questions that continue to niggle
Dogme style tips
The sins of assumption: motivation in adult learning
also see Mel's comment on Speed Dating as Vocabulary Review - for needs analysis

Best,
Karenne
education

photocredit: Wikimedia Commons, Manjith Kainickara

Speed Dating as Vocabulary Review

2011-08-28T14:03:00.000+02:00

This fun and useful exercise really works well as a filler or after you've taught a number of lessons and want to check your students have learned the vocabulary taught - either the emerged lexis if you're a dogme teacher, or with items from textbook exercises.

If you're teaching a group of regular students who are coming back after a long break, this activity works as a nice warmer-upper.

SET UP

Ask your students to write down 5 - 7 words that they've recently learned.

Instruct them that they shouldn't write the explanations or translations on this paper/ phones/ laptops - however they should know these - so as they write, do allow them to use (e)dictionaries.

If you've been working with a textbook, you can also get different students to go through different units. If you're working dogme, then get them to go through their notes. If you've been working online, get them to browse through their blogs/flashcards/google.docs.

Set up the classroom's chairs like this:

PROCESS

Give students around 5 minutes to tell each other the meaning of the words they wrote down. After this time (using a buzzer or bell), get your students to switch pairs/mini-groups.

Continue doing this until each student has talked to a maximum number of other students.

Feedback

Once you have your students back in the room/ back to the original classroom set up, ask each to tell you the most interesting word(s) they learned and to also create a sentence using this word.

Variations
On a nice day, it's really fun to do this activity outside/ in another area of your school/ courtyard or on rainy days in the hallway and obviously they can also do it while standing up!

Useful links related to this posting:
What does it mean to know a word?
What do you do with emergent language?
Complicated Vocabulary, Make Cartoons!
Powerpointing me

Best,
Karenne

Have you ever done this activity, how well did it work? Have you got another variant or perhaps an extra suggestion to add - please don't hesitate to let us know your ideas on how to expand this. If you like, don't hesitate to print this exercise out/email it and share it with colleagues- see the buttons below.

Pocket Money Writing 4 Pearson ELT

2011-08-09T21:02:00.002+02:00

The other day, while eating lunch, I asked a fellow teacher what she would do about all this Pearson trouble... what she'd do if she'd just worked for over 400 hours yet after receiving a series of simply unacceptable clauses in a long awaited, finally received contract... would she fight back after her project had suddenly been aborted post completion of the entire first draft of the actual work...?

She said,

"It wouldn't ever happen to me because I wouldn't do all that work without being paid."

I was paid. Or was I? Does less than minimum wage count as being paid?

I guess so, huh.

After about 4 months into the project, after several phone calls and sending urgent reminders (I had a tax bill to pay) and then sending demanding emails, I did receive a cheque of £1000 as part of the "advance" - but technically, as they so oft reminded me, not paid - because, for those of you who don't know this, "an advance is not a payment, it is a loan against earnings - you have to pay this back to Pearson through your royalities."

I was told this several times because I was simply shocked that anyone could imagine anyone writing for such a low fee. And that was before realizing how much work it would all be. And that was post negotiations to get the double of the initial offer.

Now, if all had gone according to plan and I had been a good girl who would agree to everything they wanted, then I would have received a further £1000 for finishing the first draft and another £1000 if the book had been published plus 6% in royalties.

But now it won't come to even that mere pittance...*

And although my question to my colleague centered around the hours I have lost, to the sheer incredible creative effort I have lost - I simply don't know if I am brave enough or have enough strength left to turn this work into an e-book... the fact is that it wasn't 400 hours of work. Without sounding like a pity-me girl, whining away on her blog to anyone who might care enough to care, the truth is that the energy that I poured into this project while staying away from writing on my blog, breaks down into this:

10-15 hours in emails and negotiations for a contract which they wouldn't give me or let me see up front because "their legal department was busy, you do have to understand, don't you..." Said by a seemingly kindly grandfatherly type editor who'd gotten on the phone to appease my fears "We're Pearson." he said. You can trust us, he implied. And well, when a company gets to that size and you never hear about any trouble, you think why would there be trouble with me, I can write.

80 hours in developing an agreed upon outline based on an agreed upon target group *which as I mentioned in the previous post, changed dramatically to a) IT students who don't have access to computers and b)... the addition of a further target group - more on this in the next posting on this theme.

320+ hours in writing

50+ hours in research
?+ hours finding photos for the copy (you have to submit suggestions and have a list of cultural things to watch out for. Not easy).

BUT... I guess you're probably wondering, why on god's green earth, did I say 'yes' to such a ridiculous low offer? After all, as you know I don't even like textbooks... Well, it's not because I like working for nothing - payment is sometimes not only financial...

a) I met the first editor at the BESIG conference and I felt he knew what he was talking about. He'd been an editor of Business English materials in the past - a series I liked - so I trusted him and his opinions. The book was to be an ESP material, which meant they would be a good deal more research into needs. (Ha* if these were done they weren't shared with me despite asking for this.)

However, unfortunately, my very nice, very experienced editor was then transferred to another country and replaced by someone who has very little if any Specialized English teaching/ textbook knowledge.

Someone who despite demanding a unit every 2 weeks took over a month to send me back feedback, thus not telling me until unit 4 that my reading texts were too long...

you'd think by now, as course books vary so much that they'd have a "standard" list or some copy guidelines to follow, pre-written up, wouldn't you?

Did what she asked though. However the real problem: she had next to zero knowledge of IT, no idea exactly what was wrong with her suggestion to change my realia description to this...

an OHP. Not a Smartboard? Not BlueScreen? Not on Youtube?

b) The Series Editor assigned to the material was someone whose work I do respect - I felt extremely motivated by his in-depth requests during the process of creating the outline - wanting always much more - things like specific vocabulary lists, grammar and functions, topics for each sub-section and I was happy overall with these and felt that his criticisms could only be beneficial to the project.

I was strongly convinced that I would be able to learn and develop from working with someone of his experience. I had no idea that he would soon be 'hands off' post this stage and soon I would left to deal with someone who thinks that:

"people in social media don't talk to people they don't know."

adverbs of frequency idea (cc)

I had no idea then that items to this agreed-upon-outline could be added magically post termination of the first draft of the work or that elements we had agreed upon could then be decided on as not belonging without any discussion with me directly. Na ja.

c) Even though Pearson would be taking 94% of the monies made from the book, I calculated that, given the size of the global IT market I could probably break-even within 6 months after publication - especially given that I had received such a ridiculously low advance - and probably within a year make back the money I had lost in giving up classes. Post that, I would get an income that would help me financially with the 2nd year of studies in my UK Masters.

It seems, what educational book publishers like Pearson seem to forget is that an author's time writing doesn't come from nowhere but is, in fact, a loan from an author to the publisher, that in this "gentlemanly" educational business you don't take a risk like this based on "air and love" -you do anticipate that you will be treated with respect and fairness... that you will earn an income from your work. And that it's very obvious that if you take this much time off to write then you are not earning the same income, from teaching, during this period.

And okay, let's face it...

I thought I'd be able to add a voice to this market. Ego, reputation. It was tempting. Lots of voices, why not add mine in an area I know a lot about: IT? Alas, that be the dreams of a silly girl who should have known better.

Pride falls.

Anyway, finances, huh... I guess a company that makes 3,075,000,000 in profit has really got to get this from somewhere... so why not from naive authors - after all, yachts and chauffeurs do really need to paid for.

No point in crying over spilt milk, no point in feeling

Conned.

Anxious.

A little lost.

Embarrassed.

Doubtful of my abilities to write.

Scared.

Hurt.

At the end of the day, I guess, I was the one who agreed to do the work without having a contract to sign prior to work, something binding them to pay me...

for their failures, for their lack of research or knowledge regarding the target market and for their total and complete project mismanagement...

I thought they'd do me right when I told them as early as possible that my new editor wasn't capable... and when it came to digital rights...

C'est la vie.

p.s. as I'm aware that many of my readers are global and 1000 pounds might sound like a lot of money... so you can work out what this means in your own currency- add up your rent, health insurance and bills for one month. 1000 is less than that.

Learner Autonomy in Language Learning: A Myth?

2011-08-07T22:14:00.000+02:00

Does language learning have to be teacher-led in order to work?

Is the very concept of learner autonomy simply a very fancy way of describing will-power, and thus, limited to those who have already have this - i.e it's not something achievable by the mere masses of students which go through our hands but instead belongs to an elite body of super-motivated learners?

Hmm...

Is it theoretical possibility... but not realistic probability? Hmm....

Can a teacher ever "teach" it?
Can a learner ever "learn" it?

What do you think?
Best,
Karenne

The sin of assumption: motivation in adult learning

2011-08-02T17:29:00.010+02:00

I've really been meaning to post up this presentation, done at TESOL Spain earlier this year, and finally have had a chance to run through the slides and update them slightly so that they make sense - without my voice giving instructions or explanations!

Here they are:

To scroll through the slides, use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation:

What do you think?

Are textbooks too pedagogically based?
Is it important to design materials that take in the differences between adults and children? Why?
Do you think that children can also benefit from an "andragogical* approach"?

Do let me know what you think, and/or don't hesitate to ask questions if you have them!

Best,
Karenne

p.s. one of my teacher-trainees in a professional development course last week thought that the term shouldn't really be called andragogy because it really means "man-leading" and instead should have a term that refers more to "adult-age-learning/leading." Google and Wikipedia haven't been too helpful on finding sources for these differences however - thoughts, ideas?

Pearson's English 4 IT = No URLs, No Web-work!!

2011-07-29T21:32:00.006+02:00

Boy Doll by Misocrazy on flickr

When writing, even freelance, for a company whose size might just rival Rupert Murdoch's one needs to keep both eyes wide open.

Pearson is moving extremely aggressively into digital media - through sites like LiveMocha, ELLIS , LanguageLab and others* and in this world of I-WANT-FREE-FREE-FREE, authors may well soon find themselves with nary a penny if their materials are placed up on these sites without prior financial agreement.

Therefore the digital rights of my work had always been a top priority to lock down - I might blog and share materials for free (because u're my peeps) but writing is part of my income and rent and food must be paid for.    We live not in a Utopia.

Before the deep writing really began I expressed my concerns and an agreement was made between the Senior editor and myself that this would be dealt with separately, once the signing contract stage was entered into.

That however, was not the case, when the Pearson contract did eventually land in my inbox... More on this in the next posts on this theme.   Because...

I really have to first go backwards.

My baby has indeed been aborted, removed from its "safe" womb, :-(, but I do have to say that there were niggles and complications early on that should have warned me.   Things like stalling on providing an advance or a proper contract.   And while the issue of e-rights may have been the straw that broke the camel's back in this relationship, the day I absolutely flipped out, demanding my youthful editor be replaced with someone better qualified was when I was suddenly told I couldn't create any activities that would require the students to use their computers or the internet.

With the greatest respect, I replied, are you 404?

No URLs, baby, I was told because, see they die.
Apparently once upon a time when they did allow URLs one of these led to a "dodgy" site.

Pearson, you see, you know the company which used to be called Longman Pearson - whích used to be Longman ...has um, um, um... never... um, um, seen companies featured in their textbooks which have gone bankrupt post print run nor any pop stars who've popped themselves off after being the main highlight of an inane present simple exercise?

We never know what might happen to websites like wikipedia, duck-duck-go, Linkedin!
But that's all irrelevant, to be honest. The "ruling" might have merit in a book aimed at general learners, but

according to the senior editor I complained to (begged for assistance),
(insert a quite proper but patronizing British accent)
while he impatiently swatted away my concern, apparently

English for IT

will be used to learn English by

some people

who don't have

access to computers.

Seriously...

Seriously...

You couldn't make this sheeeeeeet up.

*More on Pearson's digital empire
TechCrunch: Digital Joint Venture Nokia and Pearson
Bookseller: Pearson buys WallStreet Institute
Financial Times: Pearson's digital growth
Telegraph: Keep hold of Pearson as it goes for online expansion

Internet
UN declares access to the internet a human right

When I refer to the editors, in order to protect their digital footprints I am not mentioning their names. As upset as I am I don't want to hurt anyone on a personal level - however the handling of this project was not professional and at the very least some of the posts within this series may well serve as a list of things to watch-out for to those entering the profession of ELT writing.

However, by not mentioning names it also puts me in a slightly difficult position as while I have strong criticisms of some of the editorial team, I also want to be very clear that the series editor of this project is in particular someone I have a deep admiration for and I was very grateful for his red pen which bloodied my textbook's content outline until we reached an agreement and had gotten it "right". Thanks, D.

A fire in my belly

2011-07-26T23:24:00.001+02:00

This is my blog and I am back.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/64615651/sizes/o/in/faves-kalinagoenglish/

Where was I?

Head down, working on new materials for Voxy - by the way, we're now >>> INCREDIBLY<<< at 250,000+ users! Excellent, interesting, challenging work. But then, I am working with a seriously talented team of thinkers and doers plus a brilliant, innovative boss I've never actually met but talk to weekly!

Head down, writing a book aimed at IT students for Pearson. But that's pretty much now over as despite finishing a week ago, after refusing to sign a ridiculous contract that would soon render me without the mere pennies promised we are parting ways... too many unacceptable clauses, editorial digital illiteracy - a long story - so much more on signing away your creativity to publishing houses, book contracts, minimum-wage advances, the effect of global markets on royalties and oh, digital rights - coming soon.

Dance with the devil, get burned?

Think Wikileaks.

Where am I?

Working at a great school with a wonderful team of teachers in the UK - we're working together in face-to-face sessions (so much more personal than the virtual), on professional development for European teachers.

Wonderful site and great students. Having a super time, more on that later.

But! My various sites have informed me there's a great set of virtual sessions on this weekend at the The Reform Symposium. Although I'm busy up to my gills, am going to try to change around my schedule and catch some of these, tho' luckily they'll also be recorded.

Where am I headed?

I'm off to do a Masters in September, gently easing out of social-media and other than Switzerland they'll be no more presenting at conferences for a while (though I do have a kick-a**e idea for IATEFL...hmm....hmmm €€€) but I do really have to turn my focus and attention towards the psychology of language learning, motivation and gaming mechanics. It is a digital future after all.

So folks, to sum up, I'll be here, on the page, sharing whatever I learn with you. I hope you'll still pop on over every now and then to say hey.

Talk soon,
Karenne

p.s I missed you all muchly and if you missed me, am sorry for being away so long! I'm back and boy, watch-out, do I ever have a fire in my belly.

Kalinago English Goes "On hold"

2011-04-04T21:07:00.003+02:00

So...

There comes a time when there is no more time... or well, significantly less.

motto4earth by vanhookc on flickr.com

Rick's wonderful guest post and analysis of my site touched me hugely but it also confirmed a niggling doubt that I really haven't been covering enough of ELT, haven't been posting up enough lessons and links and defintitely haven't really been covering teaching speaking using technology.

The truth is, I simply can't blog as often as I used to, while writing an ESP textbook, getting ready for a symposium at IATEFL, volunteering on a global edu site and advising an mLearning company.

Iz all a bit much really - I've had to start facing up to fact that if I don't stop working until 2am then I'm going to dive straight into burn-out.

Also, once the symposium at IATEFL is over and the book is written, I will probably be crossing the ocean for the Americas, and probably even going home to Grenada for good. I'm hoping I can continue working on my online projects while living by the seaside with a nice big dog.

At this stage of my life, especially after something I lived through devastated me last year, I really want to be closer to my family, to the people who can see into my heart, choices and actions - who really know who I am and love me.

Anyway, before this turns all sad, mushy and gooey - I have so very much loved talking to you all - while I work away like a demon for the next few months, tidying up some loose ends and thinking about a new life in another country, Business English in 5 mins and Kalinago English are going to go on hold.

Of course, I'm not quitting blogging entirely... you know I get my daily buzz from writing so I'll be diversifying into more micro-blogging:

Still on Twitter, I'll be sending my favorite tweets and the best of the blog posts I read to Karenne's 42.

Random things I notice, brief musings, reviews, interviews and notes based on the conference and workshops I attend, things I come across in the wonderful world of TEFL, will all now be posted on... The Wonderful World of TEFL.

Rants about how I'm frequently left pfaffing about as I traverse Life in the EduWeb plus quick links to the super tools I stumble on, will be put up on the blog of the same name.

Oh, and for my fellow blogger readers - I'll be visiting you much more frequently and once dust settles I might even finish up that batch of guest-posts I started last year. :-).

Thank you for visiting me as often as you did, for all of the wonderful words and thoughts you've generously shared with me, thank you for sharing my posts on FB, for the RTs, thank you for passing along my posts via email to your colleagues, but thank you most of all for inspiring me, for laughing and learning with me.

But...hopefully, this is not goodbye and only so long.

Until we meet again,

Karenne

Kalinago English in the Cloud (guest post by Henrick Oprea)

2011-04-03T19:39:00.000+02:00

What was I thinking when I decided to accept Karenne’s ice-cream-topped invitation to create a word cloud from her blog for her and quickly analyse it? Just in case you don’t know, Karenne was one of the main motivators I had to start blogging, and she didn’t have to do anything for that – her sharing and caring for other teachers did it for her. She’s well known as the über-blogger in ELT, and, if she allows for the geek in me to say it, “Quite a challenge it is to analyse a word cloud from her blog!”

Looking on the bright side, it’s also a chance for me to play around with the words from one of my favourite blogs, and probably the very first one I started following on a regular basis. Let’s get down to business then, shall we?
The big words come as no surprise at all.

If you’ve been on twitter for a while, you knowKarenne loves helping new people. Let’s face it, folks, pretty much all English teachers out there will benefit immensely from having Karenne in his or her PLN. Now, if we have a closer look at the bits and pieces of the cloud, this is what we have:

If you’ve ever had the idea to start your PLN, you may start off by thinking about the number of your followers. However, you’ll soon find out that having many followers is not the right way to go. The idea of having a PLN requires a network of connected educators if it is to be successful. And if you need something to help you get started, look no further! Have a look at what the next bit has got to tell you:

We all sometimes need a little help to come across interesting people from our field, and we all certainly enjoy doing so. We are all social beings. Fortunately, instead of trying hard to find these people on our own, WW (or, better, #WW) has just been introduced to us. All you have to do is recommend and welcome a new teacher you happen to see on twitterville.

Now, this is something that those who have been on twitter for a while probably know – building a reliable PLN is difficult. Well, at least I think it’s difficult.

It took me a while to finally build one for myself – but don’t lose focus. Just like when you try to learn new words, you should know that practice is required (who was born knowing how to express his or her thoughts in 140 characters???).

But suddenly you’ll realise that less may, at times, be way more.

Use fewer characters and write a post (in this case a tweet) that means something rather than waffle on and on and communicate nothing. In education, content matters more than big words – being concise and straightforward is sometimes the best thing you can do.

But why should we use our free time to participate in talks with those from our PLNs? Well, as a teacher I think all who do it want to go from good to great. We engage in talks on education bearing our students and their interests in mind. We take our time to tweet because we strive to be better teachers.

Just have no doubt that you need to work for your eCommunities to be worth the while. And this is one of the best things about PLNs – they are what you make of them. If you look for a virtual PLN because your real PLN is not fruitful to your professional development, there is hope for you – you’ll actually see there’s a lot of people out there just like you – people who are looking for ways to grow professionally.

With time you probably want to say more than twitter allows you to – that’s the time less won’t mean more. Then it’s possible you’ll turn to blogs, and perhaps will even feel like writing your own blog. This doesn’t mean that your writing will never be bad, but only if you’re a fool you’ll assume you can only write if you’re an expert. One of the reasons we blog is because it’s a way we, as a community, have found to share our experiences and have someone commenting on them.

It’s a way for us to keep connected with a network of like-minded educators. Of course we all disagree on this or that, but this is what makes it all so real. We all have our styles – just quickly read the other posts on this blog to see how my style and Karenne’s are different. This, however, doesn’t mean we cannot learn from one another. And boy, oh, have we been a helping hand to one another.

Karenne’s word cloud is a reflection of her latest posts, folks. There are many teachers we meet in real life who feel they’ve got no one to talk to. This is the beauty of online PLNs for me: we’re all willing to share and help other educators in need.

No, it’s not all a bed of roses and it’s not what’s going to bring home the bacon, but it can certainly help you in what you do.

Many, many thanks, Karenne, for helping me reflect a bit more on PLNs, all based on your latest blog posts that generated such a word cloud. Thanks also to David Dodgson, who actually was the one who posed this challenge. It’s been a fun ride so far, and, even if nothing had come out of it, this has helped me think of yet a different way to use word clouds in my lessons. Another example of how your PLN may help you.

This post was written by Henrick Oprea of one of the most reflective ELT blogs in the 'sphere, Doing Some Thinking. Rick is a teacher in Brazil and you can become a part of his PLN on Twitter by clicking here.

Thank you so much Rick for doing this for me, you really made my day! And you also gave me much to reflect on, so much so that I'll have an announcement to make tomorrow. I also think this incredible exercise of going deeper and deeper into a wordle would make a brilliant activity for EAP or ESP students with articles or weighty texts.

#ttww Twitter Welcome Wednesday - "Guidelines"

2011-03-29T13:30:00.055+02:00

this post was updated 29 April 2011

As mentioned at the bottom of a really rather long post regarding the current situation of PLNs or eCoPs, I mentioned that Richard Whiteside of I'd like to think I help peole learn English has had a seriouly awesome, very smart and totally innovative idea:

Let's help the newbie tweeters find other great folks on Twitter!

Here are the "loose" guidelines based on what we hashed out via Skype:

1. Each week look through your new followers and choose one -to five people you either know personally, professionally or who genuinely look interesting and worth following - folks you think your network might enjoy meeting too.

As much as possible aim to recommend folks

who have less than 100 followers

or who are newbies

.

As a general rule it's probably best not to recommend those who haven't bothered to add a real photo or listed a bio as they may well be spammers and do be very careful about those who've set their profiles on to "private" as they may not want to be listed publicly - some people truly only want to be connected to 20-50 people. **

2. Follow them back and if you want to, DM for permission to feature them in #WW - it could be rather confusing as a newbie to see your name lit up but not know why.

3. Send out personalized tweets - not lists - based on what they've written in their profiles. Add as many relevant hashtags to your tweet to help your PLN determine whether or not to follow them too.

For example, do this
#TTWW welcome @Craig an English Language Teacher based in Dubai, #ELT ~ interested in #dogme and chocolate. #TEFL
#TTWW @Jenny - she's a Teen Fiction author based in Ireland. Open to being interviewed by your students. #fiction #ireland #education #younglearners
#TTWW shout out 2 @Bob a good buddy of mine, help me welcome him! - #mlearning evangelist #edublogger and head of #edtech at @UniversityofMiami

But please don't do this:
#TTWW @Jenny @Craig @Bob @June @Alice @TomatoHead @eLearningGuru
as this is unhelpful to everyone.

If you want to recommend someone with more than 100+ followers, no problem - but how about doing this on #FF or #TT as the goal of this hashtag is to help newbies.

4. Set up a stream for the #hashtags which reflect your own interests within your Twitter client, if you haven't already done so. Whenever new folks with the same interests you have pop up there on a Wednesday, follow 'em if they sound interesting /you'd like to help them build their own eCommunities of Practice.

But I'd also generally advise that it's probably not worth the bother of watching the #WW stream itself as within the first weeks of this taking off properly, no doubt very soon after that, the salesmen and marketers will move on in.

Let's help Richard and the other folks who want to make this happen! And by the way, have yourself an awesome day, y' hear.
Karenne

**The pros and cons regarding the best size of a PLN is subjective and based on what you want from being connected with other people. In my opinion, following less than 100 folks means that you don't get access to enough information to make the Twitter experience worthwhile yet after following around 1000 it starts to become incredibly difficult to filter...and you wind up spending a lot of time creating different streams to catch people's thoughts, musings, blog posts. There are also those (I sometimes fall into this category) who tweet non-stop and it may look like there's no one else there! Also, I have to say honestly, that after you start reaching 3000 followers, you can wind up mostly hurting people's feelings because you can no longer see what all your friends are saying - well, that is unless you're logged in 24/7 and don't have a real life!

Note to Newbies: you can participate in this activity obviously, by RTng the #WW you see in your field of interest and why not share your own new followers with others too but whatever you do, please do not ask someone to feature you in #WW unless, of course, you know them quite well.

For those of you who are specifically in the field of ELT or interested in edtech and would like to have some suggestions on who to follow, the following lists are my own, but may well serve as a good starting point:

Note to CompanyTweeters: of course, you can participate in this activity - just keep it about others ~about helping Newbies to Twitter so they can find their way around the 'verse, rather than seeing this as a great opp to discuss your products.

No doubt, you'll earn you much more respect and 'hits' in the long run rather than if you fill our stream with inanities for a day or so!

Finding out more about Twitter

The English Language Teachers' Guide to Twitter
Using Hootsuite
How to use Tweetdeck by Russell Stannard
Learn English on Twitter
Other posts I've written about Twitter and social networking
10 Twitter turn-offs by Sue Lyon Jones
Other Links I've saved on Delicious

Resources on PLNs

PLN - what does it mean to you? by Richard Whiteside
Existential crisis by Darren Elliot
Is joining a PLN bad for morale? by Steve Dembo
The stages of PLN adoption by Jeff Utecht
An excellent presentation on PLNs by Corinne Weisgerber
How are PLNs affecting Education - an edchat summary of Berni Wall's blog
Video on what is a PLN by Skip Via
Video on PLNs + working with students by Will Richardson
Other links I've saved on Delicious

NOTE: update 31.03.2011 - it turns out that #WW is weight-watchers, wine on wednesday, weddings on wednesday and a bunch of other stuff. We POLLED folks and wound up with #TTWW

Calling all Educational Bloggers who're on Blogspot

2011-03-29T09:50:00.001+02:00

Turkey has put a ban on Google's Blogspot and our readers there are (temporarily) unable to read our posts.

If you're an educational blogger, would you like to join me in circumventing this ruling by becoming a contributor on an emergency Posterous blog?

Here's the site:
http://emergencyblogspace.posterous.com/

Details
If you use blogspot (not EduBlogs, Posterous, WordPress etc) and you would like to keep your Turkish readers in the loop (as no doubt along the merry way of life, they'll be other countries which arise with similar bright ideas) then zap me with a quick Tweet/DM (or email me at kalinagoenglishblog at googlemail dot com) ~

I'll check out your blog, check that you are a serious blogger* and if you are, I'll make you a contributor.

Then all you'll have to do is add a "share on posterous button" on your desktop and after posting on your own blog, you can send whole or partial posts to this site so our Turkish readers aren't left out in the cold...

Join me!

Karenne

* No edubloggers with less than 10 articles - sorry, it's not personal, just have to make sure you're not a scam-artist as they do exist
** Obviously if you're an Edublogger in Turkey using Blogspot, just drop me a line.

#WW Welcome Wednesday - New Twitter Hashtag + Musings about PLNs

2011-03-27T22:40:00.006+02:00

Disclaimer: this post is not so much just about educational social media best-practices but instead a general comment about social networking overall plus a call to help a few fellow twitterites kick off a movement aimed at helping those new to the medium find other folks.

Yesterday I had a lovely day-off. I spent it with a friend I've known here for at least seven years. It was such a different day from the way most of my days have been since the start of this year, not just because I finally took some time off for me (I'm writing a book and consulting an e-company) but because after all this time she let me into one of her secret pleasures...

we went to a field near the airport and we watched planes land.

And this crazy-never-done-before-in-my-life before was one of the best days ever.

Namely because I had no idea that watching planes land from underneath their bellies is awesome fun and some planes are.. in her words... sexy but also because it was so incredibly refreshing to spend time talking about something not related to teaching!

Sometimes living and breathing education... can all be a bit much.

Networked Teacher by Langwitches on Flickr

Today, like a lot of other folks, I've been thinking a lot about personal, professional and online personal/ professional communities. One of the chief issues which has been niggling at me recently, is about the use of hashtags on Twitter and how often they get taken over and misused.

Sometimes this is only accidentally -

(even I once tried to participate in a twitter edu-group,

without understanding the rules,

and wound up upseting someone

who took something I'd linked to -

a bit of a laugh - but instead it was taken personally

which mostly left me thinking "oh, grow up"

and yet folks...
I probably was partly in the wrong)

I understand, I do.

As... let's face it, sometimes hashtags are grossly abused by idjets who jump with joy the very second they see a new hashtag - seeing it solely as an opportunity to sell or reach as many people as possible with information about their products.

(Good folks normally but they don't know

even the basic social-media rules and norms and

god save you if you point this out -

their egos can't take it!).

It's difficult to say that this is really a no-no no-go area though, because sometimes that information, even when it's just a product pitch, is actually awfully useful but hey, doesn't it make Twitter feel like being stuck in the middle of a great big Moroccan market at times?

It's the nature of the beast, Twitter, being an open platform and all.

And different people are on Twitter for vastly different reasons - sometimes people are excessively territorial about their ideas and hashtag movements because they've um, assumed that all their followers are well, clones of themselves and joined Twitter for the exact same reason - whatever that may be. Sometimes folks believe that they've earned the right to do and say what they please because they, um, can.

Sometimes if you dare to criticize something you don't like but that other people do you know the way you'd comfortably complain about x or y without really giving a toss about x or y with your real-life mates then you may well be suddenly flamed for daring to call out, publicly, for saying that crap is crap.

However those of us with our brains still screwed on know that just because something's created by someone who's as nice as pie, doesn't make it "good." And just because someone "popular" says something's bad doesn't mean that it is.

Good and Bad, I trust and hope, will always remain subjective.

Yet sometimes I confess I am utterly astounded by how the masses respond to the most unoriginal sound-bite as if it were actually a quote from the Dalai Lama.

"The orange is a round fruit. It can be used to make juice but you can eat it too."

Why, yes.

Sigh. Cringe.

And after all, while it may not have been new to me, being fond of oranges and all, it doesn't mean it didn't teach someone else... probably. I suppose that statement could be considered profound. But then that's the thing about crowds and wisdom and crowds and their um, how can I be polite, their potential for non-wisdom...

All part of us being human. Right?

All a part of the that that makes us special and unique and fun and alive.

On that subject, humanity, one of the reasons a vast number of us - right across the Blogosphere and Twitterverse, those who've been on Twitter for some time, have begun having "existential" crises about the whole only-sunshine+utopia-allowed-here within our online PLN is that it's

not human.

For many of us, it feels absolutely super to log on whenever you like and be greeted by the wide smiles and hugs of others but for others of us, those with PLNs which are also made up of folks who are not on Facebook or Twitter - the ones who we communicate with regularly face2face and do real life stuff with - you know like watch videos about deepwater flourescent octopi - then we also know that, deep down, actually, what makes communities strong is not just our shared laughter and our shared stories but our ability to be there for each other: when we've been disagreed with, stabbed in the back or when we've been imperfect.

When we're around for the cloudy as well as the fair.

Chirping may be good for birds (and digital footprints) but who wants to hang out every single day with folks just making noise. Not me. I'm busy. We know, don't we - from the experience of actually having real lives that contain real-life friendships too - that folks who pretend to be happy all the time are in fact not; that those who talk non-stop are pretty much just vampire-airheads; that liars, false prophets and politicians abound... and that those who would you sell you the keys to changing your life for-ever... well they are, wait for it, selling snake oil.

We also know that gangs and cliques emerge in any new city discovered or settled on - whether we're Bonobo apes or edtech geeks; we know that fierce arguments spring up between folks who've never met each other yet tomorrow they'll turn around and give each other a tip about a great job; that flirting occurs between married folk who should really know better; that there are people who think it's okay to use their "influence" to browbeat you into adding themselves to your blog and when you don't, you're labelled evil; that folks who profess to have excellent critical thinking skills find themselves in situations that cause them to completely lose the ability to rationally think but instead emotionally react - we watch as they cease to search for truth or meaning, cease to use the vital "why" but instead spread propaganda... like telling thousands a website's closing before verifying the facts, finding out whether or not it's really happening; that bullying goes on right across all of the various platforms - and we also know that the best way to spot these folks is to watch out for their lieutenants because those that bully, no matter their own pearly white charm, never ever work alone; that sometimes we overreact to criticism and name it agression rather than simply take it on the chin and attempt to learn something from that experience; that sometimes narcissm is just that; that ego-stroking and brown-nosing has the ability to spread at almost plague-like proportions not out of genuine respect but because many people simply look out for only number one; that normally sane folks can wind up getting their feelings hurt whenever they've not been paid the attention they think they deserve; that jealousy, cowardly actions, one-upness, greed, sloth and ... whatever the other bad stuff is that exists in all of life... lives amongst us; that solid, potentially life-long friendships can develop out of the inanity of liking the same book author - a person no one in your local village or even city has ever heard of; that relationships end or shift in value; that tweepl decide who's worth paying attention to based solely on the numbers of followers they have instead of what they tweet in the space of 140 characters and of course, that rather ill-thought-through judgements made when tipsy can be set in stone forever...

In short, online life is just like real life...

So why do we pretend it's not?

Maybe, sigh, we need a Moan on Monday, #MMs anyone?

Nah, not really.

Rant aside, the top level of all of that, our humanity ... I think... is that no matter how much crap we all have to live through daily, shocking events which zing at us from nowhere, suspecting others of the gravest of crimes while being unable to speak out from fear... the best thing about the things which drive us - is our will to keep on trucking on, communicating and making friends, sharing and loving and learning, it is in fact, having the inbuilt mental agility and ability to help the communities we reside in.

In April 2009, Aniya Adly in Italy came up with the concept of #TeacherTuesday #TT and that simple idea completely exploded as educators who had previously been entirely unconnected were suddenly able to find each other and talk to each other in real-time.

The idea moved right across the world, and almost two years later her simple idea which was based on #FollowFriday enabled tens of thousands of educators to form and participate in what we nowadays generally refer to as our PLNs (Professionl/personal Learning Networks) or the label I prefer - eCommunities of Practice.

All of this "connectedness" that you see today - the follow-on concepts which arose - #edchat, #ellchat #eltchat and all the rest of it - if it hadn't been for Aniya's call then none of this would have ever come into play and a lot of us would have probably abandoned Twitter early on or still be left on isolated islands thinking that it was a silly-waste-of-time.

Yet, the reality is that today, for many of us, unfortunately nowadays #TT and #FF are no longer as affective as they once were.

In part because the "marketing folk" moved on in, so there's no point in reading the stream anymore to find other teachers.

Also many of us have already connected with so many other educators and whenever we need folks' sage advice then we pretty much know how to reach them...

The fact is we actually don't need to be recommended ourselves anymore (but thanks guys for having done this, it was always appreciated) and... most of the folks we wind up recommending ourselves to other people are folks which also don't really need to be recommended anymore either!

(Well, unless they're keeping score points or something)

But if you were a newbie, an outsider looking in, then it might all remind you of HighSchool with lots of predefined and impossible-to-break-into cliques. Cheerleaders, football coaches, chipper girls with blond ponytails and chipper boys in polo shirts and matching boat shoes.

Yeek...

(obviously I was a geek all the way through school...

"popularity" is not something I take seriously

nor give a shit about,

I got followers... I think,

by just writing a lot about stuff

people in my field care about).
I think.

Anyway, wow - this blog post is getting long - it really is time for me get to the point.

We need to fix this...

Enter Richard Whiteside of I'd like to think that I help people learn English who has come up with a brilliant plan for those of us who've been on Twitter a while and who have already developed our PLNs:

made on Wondersay - Animate text with style
(If you don't have JavaScript the Wondersay reads: let's help our new followers create their own PLNs)

Instead of getting new folks to figure out where the gold is hidden in the mountain (when new they don't even know what #TT #FF means), instead let's try bringing the gold to them.

Let's help them right from the get go on how to meet other great tweepl.

Richard's idea is to work with a new hashtag:

#WW - Welcome Wednesday

We had a quick chat on Skype and here's how it'll work:

1. Each week look through your new followers and choose one - five people you either know personally, professionally or who genuinely look interesting and worth following - folks you think your network might enjoy meeting too.

As much as possible aim to recommend folks who have less than 100 followers.

As a general rule it's probably best not to recommend those who haven't bothered to add a real photo/ listed a bio as they may well be spammers and do be very careful about those who've set their profiles on to "private" as they may not want to be listed publicly - some people truly only want to be connected to 20-50 people. **

2. Follow them back and if you want to, DM for permission to feature them in #WW

3. Send out personalized tweets - not lists - based on what they've written in their profiles. Add as many relevant hashtags to your tweet to help your PLN determine whether or not to follow them too.

For example, do this
#WW welcome @Craig an English Language Teacher based in Dubai, #ELT ~ interested in #dogme and chocolate. #TEFL
#WW @Jenny - she's a Teen Fiction author based in Ireland. Open to being interviewed by your students. #fiction #ireland #education #younglearners
#WW shout out 2 @Bob a good buddy of mine, help me welcome him! - #mlearning evangelist #edublogger and head of #edtech at @UniversityofMiami

But please don't do this:
#WW @Jenny @Craig @Bob @June @Alice @TomatoHead @eLearningGuru
as this is unhelpful to everyone.

4. Set up a stream for the #hashtags which reflect your own interests within your Twitter client, if you haven't already done so. Whenever new folks with the same interests you have pop up there on a Wednesday, follow 'em if they sound interesting /you'd like to help them build their own eCommunities of Practice.

But I'd also generally advise that it's probably not worth the bother of watching the #WW stream itself as within the first weeks of this taking off properly, no doubt very soon after that, the salesmen and marketers will move on in.

What do you think, shall we use some of our time on Twitter to help others connect?

Best,
Karenne

**The pros and cons regarding the best size of a PLN is subjective and based on what you want from being connected with other people. In my opinion, following less than 100 folks means that you don't get access to enough information to make the Twitter experience worthwhile yet after following around 1000 it starts to become incredibly difficult to filter...and you wind up spending a lot of time creating different streams to catch people's thoughts, musings, blog posts and also, I have to say honestly, that after you start reaching 3000 followers, you can wind up mostly hurting people's feelings because you forget to follow people back (or when they initially followed you they had no bio/photo so you ignored them)... and you can no longer see what all your friends are saying - well, that is unless you're logged in 24/7 and don't have a real life!

Finding out more Twitter

The English Language Teachers' Guide to Twitter
Using Hootsuite
How to use Tweetdeck by Russell Stannard
Learn English on Twitter
Other posts I've written about Twitter and social networking
10 Twitter turn-offs by Sue Lyon Jones
Other Links I've saved on Delicious

Resources on PLNs

PLN - what does it mean to you? by Richard Whiteside
Existential crisis by Darren Elliot
Is joining a PLN bad for morale? by Steve Dembo
The stages of PLN adoption by Jeff Utecht
An excellent presentation on PLNs by Corinne Weisgerber
How are PLNs affecting Education - an edchat summary of Berni Wall's blog
Video on what is a PLN by Skip Via
Video on PLNs + working with students by Will Richardson
Other links I've saved on Delicious

The History of English

2011-03-22T13:01:00.005+01:00

Have you ever wondered where our language came from? The following poem which I've been asked to post up so very many times... was done as a pechua kucha at IATEFL 2010. I hope you'll enjoy it:

The History of English
Karenne Joy Sylvester
(cc-sa-nc-nd) 2010

I'm going to take you on a journey through time
from the shores of Friesland
to Norway, Normandy and Ireland.
Raiding Latin, Greek & French
adding new words from new worlds
I'm going to take you on a journey through history
to tell you the story
of our global language.

4000 years ago a movement of people began
travelling west from India
crossing Eurasia
and settling on a cold, wet island.
But it was not these people
nor their language which determined English's fate.
In fact, they left us with few words with which to perpetuate.

In the fifth century,
Germanic warrior tribes arrived
- like a fury from hell
divvying up the spoils of the departed Roman Empire,
battling the Celts for a hundred years.
In the end,
it was they who made the language theirs.

But Rome came back
this time with a cross instead of spears.
and the missionaries' alphabet
unleashed on us
an intellectual fire
Random signs and symbols
suddenly gave us
voices
and stories
histories
and philosophies
and pushed our imaginations ever higher.

It was English's first
but not its last invader of thought.
There lies a hidden power in words:
they create visual maps in the mind
provide hope, leave memories behind.
In emotions bought
they tell where fears are fought
and lessons taught.

Just as English
had come from over the seas
in the late eighth century, a destroyer gathered his ships
and armies
The Viking warriors tore through our manuscripts
ripping out their jewels
and in multiple raids
threatened to wipe out the languages of this age.

It took a young king -
Alfred the Great -
to defeat the Danes.
He intuitively understood
Guerrilla tactics are no good
and set out to teach the English
English
sure that unified
they would flourish
When Guthrum came again in 878
the Vikings were made to subjugate.

But some of them stayed
to indulge in trade
leaving us their names in
towns, villages and valleys.
Most of all, they caused
the Great Grammar Shift:
Word endings fell away
Word order in disarray
Prepositions had come to play.

Although Alfred's victory had saved English
Harold's defeat almost annihilated it.
After William was crowned in 1066,
three centuries of French rule followed:
their language
their culture
English spoken by
only those under indenture.

In 1348
a ship docked in Weymouth.
On board, the most unlikely savior
it's cargo
the deadliest of plagues.
The rats scurried East
then North
killing a third
of England's population
Priests, politicians and princes could not be cured.

Those untouched by the Black Death suddenly had leverage.
Wages rose.
Properties fell.
Serfs moved into farms and abandoned mansions.
By the late 14th century, English was the language of the classrooms
appeared before the magistrate,
when Henry the fourth took his crown
the home language was finally resurrected,

yet
the Bible was still in Latin.
A philosopher and theologian
who believed that knowledge belongs to the people
and not to a religion
started his translation
transforming Oxford into
the most dangerous place in all the nation.

The Holy Roman Catholic Church
struck a heavy hand.
Wycliffe's Bible damned.
All were banned.
Were it not for the greatest technological advance of all time:
The Printing Press.
Now even God was on English's side.

A renaissance swept across Europe
bringing with it
a tide of immigrant words.
Zealots arose to protect her
to keep her pure.

But language is a woman who knows no master
and she refused to obey.
Instead, painting herself in the tapestries of thought
she gave birth to a honey-tongued bard.
Shakespeare slammed his words together:
synonyms and antonyms forever to be wed.

But darkness lay ahead.
The American continent conquered,
the people humbled
their lands adopted.
The masters were those of religious philosophies
which condoned the sacrifice of human dignities.
Nothing so singularly characterizes English's abilities
as the absorption of those
they traded and sold.

The rise of the novel began to influence our sense and sensibility.
Suddenly everyone wanted to tell English how to be.
Dictionaries compiled
Grammars written
Coarse words removed
Body parts forbidden.
The language of the street
locked out
Spelling and pronunciation locked in.
Telling others of your class
and the status of your kin.

But then
Sound began to travel through the air
Lights shone brightly
Nightly
The industrial revolution
put Greek and Latin in cahoots
as new words sprung out from old roots.

English didn't only look backwards,
it reached outwards
Hungry navies trawled the oceans
from Malaysia to Australia
bringing home an Empire's devotions
and... Hong Kong's magic potions.
After colonization grew globalization.

And now,
just as in Alfred's day
we are united
by common words recited.
Through Hollywood, Radio and Television we are delighted.
Poetry reignited
by men who make up words to fit their beats -
the rappers are the Shakespeares of our streets.

Today we google, text
we send out tweets.
We blog and surf on waves
so there are those who fear
who think English will disappear
but
English is a survivor.
She is a traveller
a trader
a writer
a poet -

English is a warrior.

And if you feel that your students would enjoy reading this and would like to use it in class, here's the link! The slides, if you'd like to do this as a digital storytelling exercise, can be downloaded from here.

Best,
Karenne

TED videos for Business English, Part III (Motivation)

2011-03-04T21:37:00.005+01:00

What gives you your buzz? Your spark, your joie de vivre?

Why do we do the things we do?

Do you know? Sometimes I think I do, sometimes I think I don't. The other day I had a fascinating discussion with over 50 global students in the weekly live-chat session I host on MyEC.

Almost all of them started off by putting money on the top of the list of things that are highly motivational...

...yet the more we explored the phenomena, the more we thought through things like the fact that we all come together every week on a Thursday evening even though no one's paid to be there (them or me) and somehow that fact's part of the reason why no matter how busy I am, no matter what else is going on in my life, I turn up...

and we thought about

... things like how people do things for their friends and families unconditionally and how despite that, sometimes they then destroy their favorite people in the whole wide world...

how

some people study alone... yet some need a rod, a deadline to meet

And later on, I started thinking of how people write textbooks for really low advances and royalities...

some for the reverse

how people write blogs... some start them and then some stop them, some write for years

... and about how people cheerfully lose sleep and work their butts off for eduational start-ups with no guarantee of success, just the thrill of potentiality, of upsetting apple-carts... but how most would rather stay locked down within the walls of tradtional institutions...

It makes you think, doesn't it?

For many, it's responsibility that determines priority: their children need the clothes on their backs, food in their bellies and a sick parent needs medicine. Priorities differ. For others, the iphone, ipad and flatscreen movie theatre have got to be paid for this month so the next new tech gadget that comes out to market can also get bought.

For many, spending time with mates down the pub tops tweeting or working any day...

For many, the opportunity to be the sage on the stage is a call way to loud to resist. And as I mentioned on Harmer's blog, demotivation is an equally fascinating topic because they are, most surely, not always the flip of the same coin.

We're all such very different people, aren't we?

Am willing to bet our/my list didn't even touch your own list, right? As a person deeply fascinated by beingness and what drives us... I'll say this: anyone who thinks they know the one single motivational factor of any one other person is arrogantly deluding themselves.

We are complex.

We do not know each other.

We know each other so incredibly well.

I'll also, rather arrogantly, suggest that the why of the what we do cannot ever be set down in a pyramid nor carved into tomes for all eternity. But we sure as heck can have some fun trying to get our fingers on that pulse.

So, anyway, anyhoo... along with Friday evening musings while I distract myself from the slides I need to write for next week's TESOL Spain... here's a list of my all-time favorite TED videos on motivation. These can be used to spark off critical-thinking discussions with your adult and almost-adult students!

You can use this short YouTube video with Victor Frankl as the intro / backup to a discussion you've been having with your learnes and get students to individually choose which of the following TEDs they'd like to watch autonomously, reporting on their thoughts later...

TEDs...

Why we do what we do (21mins)
http://www.ted.com/talks/tony_robbins_asks_why_we_do_what_we_do.html

Tony Robbins makes it his business to know why we do the things we do. The pioneering life coach has spoken to millions of people through his best-selling books and three-day seminars and here discusses the "invisible forces" that motivate everyone's actions.

The surprising science of motivation (19mins)
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.

The riddle of experience vs. memory (20 mins)
http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html

Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy -- and our own self-awareness.

Our mistaken expectations
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_researches_happiness.html

Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong -- a premise he supports with intriguing research. Here he presents data from his exploration of happiness -- sharing some surprising tests and experiments that you can also try on yourself.

Why we love + cheat
http://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_tells_us_why_we_love_cheat.html

Anthropologist Helen Fisher takes on a tricky topic -- love –- and explains its evolution, its biochemical foundations and its social importance. She closes with a warning about the potential disaster inherent in antidepressant abuse.

Life at 30,000 feet
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/richard_branson_s_life_at_30_000_feet.html

Richard Branson talks to TED's Chris Anderson about the ups and the downs of his career, from his multibillionaire success to his multiple near-death experiences -- and reveals some of his (very surprising) motivations.

Which was your favourite?

CHALLENGE

Write a lesson plan based on using one or all of these videos (or any other that refers to the subject of motivation) and post this up on your own website or blog. Alternatively, upload the LP into a document sharing site (e.g scribd/ slideshare/ google docs) and let us all know the URL in the comments below.

See also:
Part I: TED videos + decision-making
Part II: TED videos + success/failure
Speaking activities for teaching English with TED + other important links
Best video websites for teaching adult Business English learners

Other videos discussing motivation:

Nick Vujicic: Life without limits

What does it mean to "know" a word?

2011-03-01T14:07:00.009+01:00

The other day I was in the middle of a conversation with someone...

the person I was speaking to suddenly said

"then how do you know if someone
knows something or not?

The question came because I'd been ranting that standardized testing was mainly just a test of memory skills or the ability to regurgitate somone else's information without fully understanding it, verifying it for a real truth and that more often than not, tests don't test knowledge.

So I deserved this question flying back at me to test my own knowledge.

Big, deep breath as the flood of everything I've learned or experienced about learning, everything I disagree with and everything, thought-through, everything I've experimented with and found merit in... all these other-people's-ideas jostling around for top priority

(pick me! pick me!)

...in the end, leaving me paralyzed and unable to answer. I mean, if you've ever been there too, you know the dilemma right? My god, my god: there's literally a theory for everything under the sun when it comes down to pedagogy (and andragogy) and whoa, this trails all the way back to Socrates and beyond.

I mean what to answer with first?

There isn't a one right answer.

There are many.

Which probably isn't terribly useful for you... so I should probably leave this post alone except for the fact that my fingers ache from not having blogged for so long and I've gotta share with you - you give me my buzz and keep me thinkin'...

My life has recently turned into this time-consuming, exciting, brain challenging world

of creating e-learning and m-learning products and we

(Voxy - I'm their academic consultant, if you missed that update)

are radically changing the status quo of language learning autonomously
~what we're working on producing next is seriously going to blow your minds :-)

...and, actually, I drafted this post out so very long ago and then never published it.

This is part of the H2LE (How-to-learn-English) posts and is a guide for learners on vocabulary acquistion. I've been working on it since 2003 and have used it for training teachers on the use of dictionaries in Ecuador and here in Germany use it as a learning-to-learn doc for adult language learners:

I can cheerfully add that everytime I learn something new, it'll change!

To view in full-screen, see the icon on the right of the black box with slide numbers.
To embed it on your own site, click on menu to grab the code.
To embed in a Ning or other learning platform save your own copy and upload into the GoogleDocs app.
To share this blog post with colleagues, tap on "bookmark" button at the bottom of this post - above the retweet button - and click on the social-networking/envelope/print icon.
To send just the document to your students, right click over THIS LINK and select the option to copy the link-address then insert this into an email.

Useful links:

Previous posts on vocabulary

N is for Noah Webster by Adam Simpson on Vicki Hollett's blog
Repetition video with Scott Thornbury
Larry Ferlazzo Student-Created Online Content (many, many, many posts!)
Voxy's word nerds
Ozge Karaoglu's alphabet of web2.0 tools
Nik Peachey's daily activities (web 2.0 tools for students to explore!)

But going back to my original opening...

What does it mean to know something?

You know it when you can apply it in a different context,

at a different time and place.

You know it when you own it.

Agree?

As always anything to add or share with me - please do! If you've written a post or two about this subject, don't hesitate to add the link.

Karenne

Beam their errors on to the wall

2011-02-15T21:23:00.002+01:00

Type up a list of your students' most common errors into a word or googledoc, project on to the wall and get them to have a gander.

Don't write the names of the author's beside the mistakes, leave them as anonymous...

Stand at the back of the room so that they can't ask you for help.

After a short period has passed, encourage your students to analyze the problems they see and to talk to each other about what they think each correction should be and why...

Switch groups and get them to share their thoughts with their new partners.

Then sit back down in front of computer and get them to call out the corrections to you - your same-time changes should be visible to them. Discuss any issues that arise at this point.

Finally, you can get them to sit back down and they can either type up their own list or make notes on the errors they found most difficult to correct - or perhaps even the ones they recognize as their own/ that they find themselves making frequently.

That's it!

Karenne

Useful links
What do you do with emergent language?
Use it, don't let them lose it.

7 silly things you really shouldn't forget to do... (EduBlogging)

2011-02-13T22:51:00.002+01:00

Traveling through the 'sphere this afternoon, while foraging about for a guest-post I'll be writing for the ELT Blogathon, I noticed some very basic errors made by a number of bloggers, both the newbies and the oldies...

Here's my list of common things you really shouldn't forget to have on your main blog page:

1. RSS feed or email subscription option

Many people don't have the time to enter in your URL each time they want to read one of your posts. Most of the time they can't remember it anyway. :-)

Providing a link to these enables your readers to either read your blog posts within their readers comfortably (e.g. with GoogleReader) or within their inboxes via Feedburner or the like.

Place the button to this on the top of your page and again at the side to ensure that your readers can find it easily and subscribe. Set it to "full" so that they can read the entire post via this or even their i-googles before deciding if the post is worth popping over to in order to comment, bookmark for later perusal or perhaps even share with friends.

There's nothing quite so annoying, however, as someone who has put the RSS button on their page but has limited the reading to just the headlines. To be honest, when this happens, I usually unsubscribe.

If you're on Facebook, consider joining NetworkedBlogs and adding this badge to your page so that your readers can follow you there.

2. An "About Me" page

If it's not immediately obvious who you are and what you do, your readers generally want to get an idea of whether or not you really do know what you are talking about! This is not to be mean, it's just that there are folks out there who are basically not even educators, don't know much about teaching English or who are scammers just jumping-on-the-English-is-a-global-language-bandwagon-let-me-see-if-I-can-make-some-money-with-Google-Ads...

As the internet expands exponentially, it is increasingly becoming very important to apply critical thinking and to check up on authority.

Therefore, consider writing a short summary of your background, add a photo if you're not too shy, embed slides from old presentations (load into a document sharing site like Scribd/Slideshare or GoogleDocs) and provide links to your LinkedIn profile or wherever else you are located within the Social Media realm.

3. A tag-line or short description of what you blog about

What do you usually write about? Is it immediately obvious?

Like the About Me page, a sentence or two describing the sort of topics you write about (or don't write about) is very useful for targetting the sort of people who will be sincerely interested in regularly reading and subscribing to what you have to say.

4. My top posts or favorite posts widget

What were your most visited pages? Which did you receive the most comments on? There is a good chance that those posts will also be enjoyed by new visitors so be sure to provide a way for them to easily get to the best of your work.

Regularly check your Google Analytics for these statistics or use a Post-rank widget

5. A menu bar or side-bar links

If you write on a variety of topics you may well be missing out on the opportunity to reach certain readers.

Having a navigational bar along the top or on the side which clearly indicates the range of your entire body of work is very important. Some of your readers will not know how to get around a blog and they may want to: it's your responsibility to make this as easy as possible for them to do so.

Also, the first time they visit your blog it's actually possible that it was on a day you'd published an article on a topic they're simply not that interested in. Don't forget that you can use the labels, tags or categories that you normally use to organize your posts to create a list of special links they can get to easily - this practice also helps to hold a variety of posts written over a long stretch of time together.

Above all, don't forget to leave a way for readers to get back to your HOME page.

6. Link your like-posts
Remember that your visitors via Google will probably have no idea how to find these older posts and there's nothing worse than reading that this is #5 of a series of 8 and them not being able to find post 2 or post 6.

Whenever you write a series of posts or you're following up on something you had written about two or three or even six months ago, don't forget to tie them all together.

You should be doing this anyway using the tags (labels/categories) function however many of your readers won't know that they can click on these. One of my favorite widgets in "LinkedWithin" which unfortunately I can no longer use with this template!

p.s Going back and linking the newer posts to these older posts is an area I have to work on too!

7. The Search Bar
Whatever else is missing on your blog, this is probably the most important that you should not forget to add. After a reader has enjoyed reading something you've written, there's a good chance they may:

a) want to know what else you've written. The link they had followed on to your page was a direct link from Twitter or LinkedIn. They aren't bloggers so they don't know how to hit the title of your blog and get back to the Home Page. They don't know how to find the rest of your stuff (see all above tips)... they don't know how to find out if you're ever mentioned something they are really interested in knowing more about, like the Present Perfect... The search bar will help clear up these issues.

b) want to find a post you wrote about a year ago. They're in the staff-room having a chat with colleagues and a subject you'd spent some time on crops up... they hit the internet, with a hey "JaneX wrote a funny piece... let me just find it... " but alas, now there's no way of finding those words again - they have disappeared into the nethersphere and Google's feeling cranky today - who has time to go 10 pages in... Having a search bar directly on your page will help them get back to your golden gems!

I'm not sure if I've covered it all but in summary try to keep your reading audience in the forefront of your mind and remember that they may need your help at times!

What have you noticed as missing from other bloggers' pages?
What makes it difficult for you when trying to follow someone's (or my) work regularly?
Share your thoughts with us whether you are a blogger yourself or a reader!

Thanks,
Karenne

Useful links to previous posts on EduBlogging

Google Alerts - get notified anytime a blogger mentions your work!
Carnival! (27 ELT bloggers share their thoughts on EduBlogging)
My thoughts on being an Edu-blogger
Musings about blog rolls
How to keep track of all the TEFL blogs
Blogging, chatting, discussions online: (we're still just writing on cave walls)
IATEFL 2011: The ELT blogosphere symposium
Recorded Presentation on Edublogging at the Reform Symposium July 31st, 2010

Guest Posts

Glossary of EduBlogging Terms, Mike Harrison's Blog
Glossary of phrases and expresssions based on the word blog, Sue Lyon Jones's blog

Series: The Best Kept Secrets of Highly Successful Edubloggers

Intro Nick Jaworksi's blog
Part 1 Shelly Terrell's blog
Part 2 Janet Bianchini's blog
Part 3 Berni Wall's blog
Part 4 Monika Hardy's blog
Part 5 Anne Hodgson's blog (still coming soon)

Linguistics, the Internet +David Crystal

2011-02-07T19:25:00.005+01:00

(translation key at bottom of post)

Anyone who is any1 in the 'sphere of English Language Teaching or in the outer 'verse of Applied Linguistics knows hu Prof David Crystal is... and in hushed tones he is revered as, well, god-like.

However, with the gr8st respkt,

xme cuz:

I must ?4u...

why izit valid 4 1 2 write bout a medium 1 doesn't ackuli particip8 in...

@TEOTD, 1DR what cd b sincerely Z ina bk by some1 not in this medium?

I mean... cmon, u no all those things that go on in ur head when u r sendng-out a twt, the uncountable microseconds of deep-thinking-soaked-in-shallow-thinking accompanying de process when u hit the red -numbers (red on HootSuite) + u hav 2 shorten de twt bk2 140...   (Not on FB status upd8s tho').

How izit poss 4 1 2 sincerely analyze alladat linguistically if 1 isn't actually there, u no, on Twitter, via the various different web clients, suffering w/ those decisions - - by jes rdng tweets?? Na.

After all, if hz lkg @ or 4 rules chng or not.... or, let's go so far as 2 say, if hz searching 4 de very grammar of it all & chkng all de lexical decisions we r mkg whn communic8ng, how can he possbli valid8 them? 2 talk about this, 12nt 1 really hav 2 understand what 1 is tlkng about?

U hav 2 spk Spanish 2 discuss Spanish, Russian 2 write bout Russian? Rite? If the linguist has no personal need 2 communic8 in the lizt poss amt of charaktrs via SMS, how can he comment or understand the adoption of certain acronyms but not others: + globally?

The decision of which 2 cut iz ultimately up2 each individual.   A mix of wot 1 cz othr ppl dng + the cost of de mobile/cell provider's rate and specs.

DHNWHTB?

1DR, I do, iz all this the start of a new Eng.? It wd b interesting 2 kno. But frm some1 who knos. some1 on the grnd flr.   Some1 hu feels the lang.

IztU?

.02, WDYT?

R u tchng txtspk 2 ur ELLs?

Karenne

Useful links:
Webopedia
13mins Video lecture on internet linguistics with David Crystal
Review of Txtng the gr8 db8
David Crystal's Blog

Translation?
jes de important 1z:

.02 = my two cents
1 = one
12t =doesn't
140 = refers to the number of characters you can write in a tweet
1DR = I wonder
8 (used to shorten anything that ends with an "eight" sound e.g. w8 =wait, appreci8=appreciate)
?4u = I ask you
@TEOTD = at the end of the day
DHNWHTB = does he know what he is talking about
IztU? = is it you?
WDYT = what do you think?
xme = excuse me
Z = said

p.s the pix a joke, alright...

Best-of-ELT-Blog-Posts (Karenne's picks) January 2011

2011-02-06T19:24:00.013+01:00

What was really "hot" this month

Dave Dodgson kicked off a bit of controversy, striking a nerve when he asked why he should have to pay to present at conferences; George Vassilakis explores their commercialization; Adam Simpson delves into the costs and effort that goes into hosting a conference and explains why he thinks that yes, in fact, you should pay for the privilege and Sharon explains that, from her perspective, by paying a fee you are actually permitting a fellow educator to sit down at the same conference table as you, thereby contributing to the democratization of education. What do you think?

Although unconnected to the discussion, Anna Varna pipes up with how a presentation she attended didn't live up to her expectations and ends with a touching recall of what keeps us teachers teaching!

Teacher training

In Unplugging Teacher Development, Willy Cardoso challenges us to think about the value of staffroom discussions with peers over workshops and conferences. I think he's touched on a major point on why so few teachers do pursue professional development. He also describes what he would like to see in teacher-training programs. Although I didn't quite catch the connection to rugby, David Warr then provides ideas on teacher-training-unplugged that are worth reflecting on.

John Hughes, in a very practical series on the management issues involved in teacher training, presents a tick-off list for recruting and managing teacher trainers and Alex Case, ever taking the piss, suggests 25 different ways to get away with being a crap English teacher.

Adam Simpson lays out a more serious and very helpful list of 10 motivation theories and thinks about why our students are "just not into it... " Professor Baker has started an interesting series of posts entitled "Explain it to me like I'm an 8yr old" and his post: Connectivism and Connected Knowledge is a must-read.

Scott Thornbury creates a video conversation laying out the history and criticisms of PPP in ELT - sparking off a highly dynamic discussion: it's worth watching the vlog but especially reading the ensuing points of view of his contributing commenters. In the knowledge sharing marketplace, Phillip Towndrow explores ICT and pedagogy: should it be teacher-centered, technology-centered or learner-centered?

Language & linguistics

Voxy's Theresa Dold shares 15 insightful language and culture infographics. Beautifully presented and interesting particularly the one made up of the demographics of English on Planet Earth. Gabe Doyle shares a story about the need for linguistic humility and thinks about the culture of the words we use, a lesson we can all learn from! Vicki Hollett unveils an ad for the British television show, Law and Order, and discusses translations from UK English-to-US English. (p.s. Vicki, you really must see The Wire: finger-nail-biting-brilliant!)

Key Dogmeist and YahooGroupMod, Fiona Mauchline, writes up a guest post for Ceri Jones on ways translation can have a valid position in language learning and shares some excellent tips. Mark Liberman, in another humorous piece shares with us a bit of grammar's history relating to the emergence of progressive passive (passive continous) and how it replaced the passival. Bet you didn't know that!

On being in the classroom

Cecilia Coelho reveals a personal error in the way she communicated with a student in her post, the power of the words we say. Debate opens on the position of the educator vs the intrinsic beingness of teachers' humanity, responding spontaneously to difficult classroom situations. Also on her blog, she hosts a post from Dave Dodgson who reflects on his life as language learner.

In his quintessentially philosophical style, albeit that I think I disagree with him... Diarmuid Fogarty suggests that the deeper we move into getting students to understand and analyze language, the less they learn. Candy von Olst faces the word "unless" head on and winds up with a headache, leading me to laugh and speculate that hmmm... perhaps, Fogarty's on to something.

Lessons

Eva Buyuksimkesyan shares an extremely clever idea of listening to music in another language while trying to guess at the lyrics and writing poems in English; Mike Harrison collaborates with David Warr to create a language plant of Martin Niemöller's poem: First they came; Claudio Azevedo shows us how to use the film, Did you hear about the Morgans, as a way to practice imperatives.

And then on the way to work one day, Paul Braddock spontaneously snaps pics of a rather unpleasant lad cutting his nails which leads to him dreaming up an extremely clever lesson tip for using camera-phones with our digital students. David Vincent found a funny picture he recommends using as a conversation starter and Ceri Jones closes in on translations in a truly inspired lesson plan comparing literature texts.

ELT EdTech

On the DELTA blog, Nik Peachey lays out the advantages and disadvantages of iPads in the classroom; Angela Maiers shares a very interesting infographic on cell phone usage - worth exploring with adult Business English language-learners: how are mobile phones affecting their industries or responsibilities? David Reed, of the best ELT mobile learning blog out there in the 'sphere, shows us how students can blog directly from their phones to the platform, Posterous.

Ozge continues her alphabetized analysis of Web tools - very useful, I love this series! Tyson Seburnt presents SoundCloud - a very interesting way to work with authentic listening materials; Ana Maria Mendes shows us a cool way to share youtube videos and Jen Verschoor shares with us how she lost a job due to the fact she teaches with technology in her classroom :-(

The business of teaching

Larry Ferlazzo discusses Merit Pay and provides links supporting why he thinks it is a bad idea: Jason Renshaw worries about the ELT industry and questions whether or not a superpower is emerging and how we might be feeling about that.

And finally, David Truss neatly presents a case for educators being in the learning business not the teaching business and asks why time for professional development can't be embeded into our paid responsibities.

Well, that's it... my wrap up of do-read-these-they're-top-notch-articles written in January, if you'd like to read what else has been circulating the 'sphere, visit this link. To read what I wrote about in January, come here.

Hope you've now found many new articles to enjoy reading at your leisure,
Karenne

p.s. also, do visit this month's ESL Carnival by Alice Mercer, it contains an absolutely superb list of posts!

TED videos for Business English, Part II (Success and Failure)

2011-02-04T22:11:00.007+01:00

Often, whether we admit it or not, we measure a person by how successful they are... but what exactly is success?

It's not how much money someone has, is it?

It's not whether or not they have a family and friends... as good as all that may be, it's something else, it's something much more illusive. How do we decide? What leads us to this sort of judgement... to saying "oh, don't bother with him, he's a loser" or "Wow, that woman is so amazing, gifted, she's really made it to the top of her profession." Is it our own culture that defines this or do these assumptions, opinions, ideas transfer globally?

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Anyway, here are my recommended TED videos for whenever the subjects of success and failure arise in your adult English classrooms. I've also stuck up a SimplyConversations lesson on Achievements and Ambitions into Google Docs. which you can use as a pre-task or follow-up activity.

A kinder, gentler philosophy of success
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy_of_success.html (17mins)

Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure -- and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work.

Measuring what makes life worthwhile
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/chip_conley_measuring_what_makes_life_worthwhile.html (18mins)

When the dotcom bubble burst, hotelier Chip Conley went in search of a business model based on happiness. In an old friendship with an employee and in the wisdom of a Buddhist king, he learned that success comes from what you count. Fascinating!!

8 secrets of success
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/richard_st_john_s_8_secrets_of_success.html (3mins)

Why do people succeed? Is it because they're smart? Or are they just lucky? Neither. Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success.

True success
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/john_wooden_on_the_difference_between_winning_and_success.html (18mins)

With profound simplicity, Coach John Wooden redefines success and urges us all to pursue the best in ourselves. In this inspiring talk he shares the advice he gave his players at UCLA, quotes poetry and remembers his father's wisdom.

Keep your goals to yourself
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself.html (3mins)

After hitting on a brilliant new life plan, our first instinct is to tell someone, but Derek Sivers says it's better to keep goals secret. He presents research stretching as far back as the 1920s to show why people who talk about their ambitions may be less likely to achieve them.

Success is a continuous journey
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/richard_st_john_success_is_a_continuous_journey.html (4mins)

In his typically candid style, Richard St. John reminds us that success is not a one-way street, but a constant journey. He uses the story of his business' rise and fall to illustrate a valuable lesson -- when we stop trying, we fail.

Don't eat the marshmallow yet
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/joachim_de_posada_says_don_t_eat_the_marshmallow_yet.html (7mins)
In this short talk from TED U, Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification -- and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat the marshmallow.

Hope you enjoyed these as much as we did!

Which was your favourite?

CHALLENGE

Write a lesson plan based on using one of these videos (or any other that refers to the subject of success and failure) and post this up on your own website or blog. Alternatively, upload the LP into a document sharing site (e.g scribd/ slideshare/ google docs) and let us all know the URL in the comments below.

Other great videos on this theme, via YouTube

J.K Rowlings, The fringe benefits of failure
Jeff Bezos, What matters more than talents
Gary Vaynerchuk, Do what you love (no excuses!)
Steve Jobs, How to live before you die

See also:
Part I: TED videos + decision-making
Part III: TED videos + motivation
Speaking activities for teaching English with TED
Best video websites for teaching adult Business English learners

The Horror of Teaching English Abroad...

2011-02-02T10:49:00.025+01:00

This request came in via email - is there anyone out there who would like to help answer it?

I always wanted to teach English abroad but I heard some horror stories.

Can you tell me the real deal about teaching English outside of the US?

Which companies are good to obtain the TEFL and which companies should I avoid?

What a minefield... not really sure where to even try giving good advice (after all, he's right - there's the good side of teaching overseas and there's the bad side... in abundance) so if you've got some tips to share on shifting wheat from chaff, avoiding parasitic chains, finding a good school, getting a qualification that turns into a liveable wage... then please don't hesitate to tell them below in the comments and/or if you're a blogger (not a commercial TEFL enterprise selling any of the above), and you've already written a useful post on this very subject then please don't hesitate to add the URL and I'll be sure to email it on.

Best,
Karenne

How I became an TEFL teacher... (part i)

2011-02-01T11:38:00.006+01:00

The other day, Sean Banville wrote about his journey into TEFL and Scott Thornbury reflected on his path to writing and also asked if our profession is indeed a profession... and I thought, well, hey, I'll share parts of my own road here too.

I've changed names, reordered some of the places and omitted a mention of dates to ensure the privacy of those involved who may one day stumble upon my blog...

He placed the pear-shaped, slightly yellowed, diamond ring on the table in front of me.

"It could still be yours."

I glanced at it briefly, this thing I had so desired for four years, and then looked briefly into his eyes noting the tear in the corner of the eyes of the only man I had ever slept with.

"And Andrea?"

Six months ago, he had come from a two-week vacation deeply in love. He was twelve years older, I hadn't gone along on this trip because I'd final exams to study for and thought we would do well for having a break from each other. When he came back with stars in his eyes and a spring in his step, everything in my life fell apart. Everything we had co-created: our beautiful home, our wonderful cat, everything I'd held secure was turned into an illusion.

"You can not run away."

I sighed. I wanted nothing more in the world to be angry and bitter but I had found my own solution and could no longer care.

"I'm going tomorrow, Jack. It's a little late for all this, don't you think?" I shook my head at the ring, the ring I had chosen, the ring his new soul-mate would wear soon enough.

"What will you do? What about your job?"

"I hate it." I replied.

And I did. By then I had felt so entirely suffocated by every choice I had made to be different and the only single thought I was still capable of thinking was that I wanted to be someone else in another, different world.

The next day, I climbed aboard a plane headed to Australia with a ten-day stopover in Thailand that turned into three months of exploring. There are many stories I could stop here now to tell, but unfortunately they would take up an entire book and as this is just a blog post, I shall skip on ahead - past the meditation retreat in a Buddhist monastery where I learned to be silent for ten days; past riding through a jungle on the back on an elephant, race through finally reaching Oz and swimming there with sharks, falling to my death off a waterfall and escaping to have an ephiphany that my life should be about serving... surviving crossing a dessert and walking around a mystical red rock.

I shall jump in time from boarding a plane and arriving on an island filled with multi-coloured lakes with tribes one can only imagine meeting in a National Geographic magazine, skip hitch-hiking on the back of an onion truck and narrowly avoiding rape; only hint at the potential of prison because I'd allowed someone to use my loose tobacco pouch to roll something other than cigarettes and shall arrive back in Thailand where I had officially signed out from ever having anything resembling a normal, sensible life.

"Can I borrow some cash for a couple of days?" She asked.

"How much do you need?" She answered and I gasped. It was almost all the money I had still left.

She explained the emergency, a family member was dying and she had to pay the travel agent today - the money would be transfered from Canada in the next couple of days so she would be able to pay me back however the only way to reserve the flight now was to borrow this quantity of cash now.

I knew her very well, we'd shared a flat for four months in Australia and although we'd split paths in Indonesia we were now, co-incidentally on the same island in Thailand. I lent her the money and she disappeared into India. I would never see or hear from her again.

It took weeks for me to fully realize that I had been conned. By then I was running very short of money and the embarrassment of it all was too much for me to make a call for help. I could handle this, I thought. I've got to get to somewhere I can work. Brief chats on beaches told me that I had two options: Japan, sitting in bars talking to Japanese businessmen plying them with drinks or Hong Kong, normal bar work.

I went to the travel agent, flipped a coin, Hong Kong won.

When I arrived, I had twenty pounds to my name. I asked the taxi driver to take me to the absolute cheapest, cheapest, cheapest backpackers' hostal. He dropped me off at ChungKing Mansions: located just south-southwest of the end of the road of humanity...

Looking backwards to go forwards (EduBlogging)

2011-01-30T13:34:00.003+01:00

updated 31Jan2011

ALTERNATIVE TITLE FOR THIS POSTING...
Staring into one's navel to remove lint...

If you've not set up Google Analytics and Webmaster tools for your blog, do do this as soon as possible.

This is immeasurably important: it helps you get real insight into your work, offers the opportunity to understand better what your readers are interested in, shows where your readers are mostly coming in from, how they find your blog and in general, what other bloggers mostly link to.

It also helps you to keep track of your progresss in attracting new readers.

For those of you who have it already /those with another analytical plug-in, this post is a reminder to look backwards, every now and then: to analyze your content.

Why?

Here are some examples based on my own experience

Webmaster Tools

1. I found out that one of my blog posts which had very, very few comments, is, in fact, one of my most popular posts with over 3000 links leading to it from external sources. This lesson had nothing to do with what I generally write about and now knowing this, I recognize that I must dedicate time to doing a follow-up. (And do more of this ilk).

If you're an educational blogger, what blog posts have been linked to most often? What does this teach you about the usefulness of your work?

2. Two of the keywords which I use in the back-end of my blog are very effective for leading readers to my blog, however some words which one would expect to have more relevance to my work, don't (e.g. TEFL!) - this teaches me that while I refer to English language teachers and teaching in my writing, clearly I don't use some of the core phrases enough within my posts - the words people type into Google to look for content.

If you're an educational blogger, what keywords should you using in your posts to attract Google to list your blog?

Google Analytics

1. Printing out a list of my blog posts in order of popularity has showed me that

a) there is no relationship, it seems, between number of comments and people reading posts. Some posts don't inspire conversation. I'm not sure what to do with this information, but it's something for me to take note of and learn from.

b) it looks like many of my readers are mostly interested in practical tips and lessons that they can take into class, rather than my side-bar musings on teaching practices (seen based on time spent on pages)... although the rants on coursebooks and the posts on dogme, blogging and twitter best practices were also popular (but not in top 10).

c) dips in visits tend to occur in all holiday times - a good suggestion for me to take time off then too :-)

If you're an educational blogger, what blog posts have been visited and remarked on most often? What does this teach you about the type of posts you should be writing and when?

2. I also found out that there are overwhelming differences in popularity of certain posts, e.g few have been visited 25,000+ times, a lot of others 1-3000 times, some 500-1000 with others at less than a hundred times.

So like the webmaster tools, this teaches me a lot in what my readers are really interested in. However, in my opinion, analyzing the unpopular posts was ALSO very effective practice.

In some cases, they were simply very badly written. This offers me an opportunity to cover this ground again, better.

In some cases, they were posts when I had first started out blogging and didn't have a wide readership. This offers me the opportunity to either rewrite or to start marketing these (either by tweeting them out again now; creating a post or a new sidebar widget of "hidden gems" or importantly back-linking to them in newer posts based on similar topics.

In some cases, they were actually well-written posts. Some of these were released in holiday periods when not many teachers were reading or looking for this sort of post. And, guessing, only, but in some cases, it's also possible that they were released when killer topics of higher interest were around the same time in another corner of the edu-elt-blogosphere and everyone was over there at that party. As above, these posts are worth me looking at again, reviewing, updating and then sending out again.

If you're an educational blogger, what blog posts haven't been visited or remarked on? What can you do now to bring more attention to these older posts?

Do you have any other tips for EduBloggers on looking backwards to go forwards? Let us know your thoughts and experiences.

Are you a regular reader of my blog? Do you have any other tips or sugggestions regarding the direction or content you would like to see more often on my pages? Don't hesitate to share your thoughts and give me your advice, it will be much appreciated.

Best,
Karenne

Useful links
Nik Peachey: how to track your site; webmaster tools

TED videos for Business English, Part I (Making Decisions)

2011-01-28T22:53:00.015+01:00

Vicki Hollett recently mentioned a trouble I often hear being voiced by teachers who are trying to source samples of high quality, authentic Non-Native-English-Speakers speaking English and my tip, of course, is that you can usually find quite a number of these on the adult-educational-deeper thinking-video-sites.

The other day, I finally finished putting together a post which had been lying around in draft for absolutely ages: Speaking Tips for using TED videos in class, conversation prompters, and so given Vicki's question, I thought, along with these dogme2.0-type suggestions I really should get around to organizing all the videos I've downloaded in the past, stored on my computer, used in classes, set as homework~put up as online discussion topics on my Ning(s), watched alongside students... and share with you the ones we've liked best!

I've sorted them into related topics to make it easier for you to share them with your own adult languge learners. As often as I can - each Thursday/Friday - I'll load up more of them, in a series of posts. If you've any suggestions or recommendations from other sources on the same themes, don't hesitate to provide us with the links!

I recommend either printing out a copy of this post , using the addthis/bookmark button at the bottom of this post, saving/ bookmarking / emailing yourself this page... (to find the links again later on in TED.com).

This week's Business English themes include:

Choices, Decision-making, Negotiating, Strategic-thinking

The art of choosing
http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing.html
Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. She talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.

The paradox of choice
http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html
Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.

Are we in control of our own decisions?
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we're not as rational as we think when we make decisions.

A monkey economy as irrational as ours
http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos.html
Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in "monkeynomics" shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too.

How we read each other's minds
http://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_saxe_how_brains_make_moral_judgments.html
Sensing the motives and feelings of others is a natural talent for humans. But how do we do it? Here, Rebecca Saxe shares fascinating lab work that uncovers how the brain thinks about other peoples' thoughts -- and judges their actions.

See also blog post and discussion on Vicki Hollett's blog regarding theories of the mind and issues related to this video - both post and comments hold potentially good conversation starter-type questions.

The walk from "no" to "yes"
http://www.ted.com/talks/william_ury.html
William Ury, author of "Getting to Yes," offers an elegant, simple (but not easy) way to create agreement in even the most difficult situations -- from family conflict to, perhaps, the Middle East.

Carl Honore praises slowness
http://www.ted.com/talks/carl_honore_praises_slowness.html
Journalist Carl Honore believes the Western world's emphasis on speed erodes health, productivity and quality of life. But there's a backlash brewing, as everyday people start putting the brakes on their all-too-modern lives.

Hope you enjoyed these as much as we did!

Which was your favourite?

CHALLENGE

Write a lesson plan based on using one of these videos (or any other that refers to the subject of decision making) and post this up on your own website or blog. Alternatively, upload the LP into a document sharing site (e.g scribd/ slideshare/ google docs) and let us all know the URL in the comments below.

Part II, TED videos: success / failure
Part III, TED videos: motivation

Why I use Premium HootSuite for Twitter

2011-01-24T15:40:00.003+01:00

There are major advantages and major disadvantages to being followed on Twitter by a large audience.

There was a time, when I first began tweeting, that I thought the ideal number of people to interact with probably lay in Dunbar's one-hundred-and-fifty... however, once I'd passed that I still felt the value of connecting with other teachers... so reckoned, okay, maybe double that would be okay but then as time went by, that number kept growing exponentially to the point where now, to be honest, it sometimes scares me!

These days I am followed by over 3500 people and follow back over 2000 (my primary focus is on educators as generally I don't really need to have any contact with marketers/ socialmedia-Xperts/ pornspammers/ movie-politics-music fans/ coffee-tea-bathroom-activity-sharers) - and while this number, if you're not a regular on Twitter, might sound like "holy-kaow!" perhaps even something to aspire to... the truth is, I should warn you, is that sometimes the mentions list lists and lists... and with all that comes a sinking feeling of "yikes-how on earth can I possibly answer or acknowledge all this - personally?

There have been days when there were so many DMS that it would have taken well over an hour to respond.

They have been days of Information Overload.

And on those days, when I felt I couldn't answer all the mentions or the DMs or thank folks for the RTs personally, for sending on the right posts by people I respect... that instead of feeling good about being so globally connected, I would commit one of the deadly sins of Twitter and look at others who have managed to manage all this so much better than I do and then I would feel jealous, or inadequate or impossibly guilty... going to bed with the feeling that I've been impolite - catholic guilt - worrying that somewhere out there, there is a teacher who now thinks that I think I am too good to answer her/him back... That thinks I'm a snob. Or not interested in his or her words.

To be honest, at several points when I felt overwhelmed, misunderstood... I thought I would simply have to give up being on Twitter. Of course, I tried to balance that feeling - knowing that that person does not see the same page that I see - that s/he simply has no idea what it's like to try and follow 2000 people's tweets and get it right.

Sometime after the summer as more and more tasks (slippery frogs) piled on, I wound up with the conundrum of how on earth could I balance my real work, my quality of life (going to the gym, talking to friends & family) with setting aside time for social-media and networking with this amazing global edcuational community.

Ages ago, I saw a tweet sent out by Val360 saying that she loved HootSuite and I wandered over to the site, couldn't figure it out and gave up: way too complex, I thought. However, I decided I really needed to find a way to better manage my Social-Media life.

I went back to Val's recommendation and had a deeper look.

HootSuite lets you manage everything although unfortunately it doesn't make cups of coffee - but since using it, I found that I only spend about a half hour a day on Twitter and sometimes even less - I can quickly chat with my PLN -whoever's online at the moment /but also who was around earlier - I can check out if there's anything urgent I need to help out with; say hey to the general universe, answer the important DMs, favourite the posts I want to read later on or that I think may be worth RTing during the week.

I am also able to set up multiple organizational tabs e.g - EDTECH or ELT, and then I can divide each of these into streams (columns) ~ which is pretty much one of the chief reasons I prefer this tool over Tweetdeck. In each of these columns, I can even manage tweets according to specific feeds, keyword searches or look up specific twitter-lists (private/public) and quickly - it resembles scanning a control panel in an airplane or something - I can see what's hot and what's not, or can help make something important be seen by more people.

Once a week, I tend to go in for longer, quietly lurking while I check on what I've favorited, decide whether or not to schedule RTs and follow-back the other educators who've found me during the week.

I can even manage more than one account: the BELTfree account which I mentioned on Thursday, this is set to automatically feed blog posts (why I have the Premium version) from ELT Bloggers without logging on and off all the time, (part of my personal contribution to the community I belong to and my strong belief in democratization of education) ~ I can also organize Re-Tweets not to occur at exactly the same time as everyone else's (to guarantee that excellent links/info/call to action can be seen by a wider audience across time zones).

The premium version also comes with the ability to tweet in teams (if you're a company that may be useful), you can manage your Facebook and LinkedIn updates and you get some pretty powerful analytics on how effective your tweets are or aren't!

Anyway, there's much, much more -stuff I haven't even got around to using yet - so my techtip for teachers and professional educators interested in social-networking is definitely check out HootSuite!

Hope that was useful, don't hesitate to ask questions if you've got any!

Karenne

Useful links

Twitterfeed by Mike Harrsion
Hootsuite is Mashable's best social-media tool

Wondering how to keep on top of all the #TEFL blog posts??

2011-01-20T20:39:00.002+01:00

Follow @BloggersELT on Twitter

Become a Fan of BloggersELT on Facebook

Read through the archived posts and tweets on Delicious

That's how!

This feed includes blogs about all issues involved in the practice of English Language Teaching including Teaching with Technology, Business English, Young Learners, General & much, much more and also includes (for the bloggers) tips on blogging.

Reasons your English Language Teaching blogs may not be feeding in:

the majority of your work is plagiarized
the majority of your posts are just embeded videos or mentions of other people's work
your blog isn't actually about English Language Teaching
you've just started, i.e. you've only one or two posts up (when I first checked)
your blog's only about you/ your personal or professional life and it serves no real purpose to ELT :-)

however being completely human... it is possible that I have not managed to feed in your blog because I typed in the wrong address or I completely bypassed on the fact you now have a new address or that you got serious about blogging and write loads of post all the time... or I completely forgot to do it the day I found your blog or despite the fact we've been connected forever I simply didn't notice that you were/ have now become a blogger(!) so hmm, if any of those is the case, please don't hesitate to write and let me know (see email on the side or DM me on Twitter/Facebook). :-)

Karenne

p.s. I also try to feed in older blog posts from some of the best blogs - hashtage #fromhisarchives etc however have got seriously behind on this task, if you'd like to help with this and /or have a good idea on how to do it efficiently (after all, these excellent articles shouldn't just disappear into the netherspere, then do let me know!)

Compliments, Praise and Insincerity

2011-01-18T22:59:00.006+01:00

I was reading through Cool Cat's great post on the fact, it seems, according to New York Times, that college students these days would rather have a compliment than a pizza or... get this, sex.

Now, on the surface, I guess I do agree with Cool Cat about the boost we all need (whether as the educated or the educator) to our self-esteems... except that last night as I was heading off, sniffling (got the worst cold and cough ever) I started wondering...

The reason that Pizza is no longer a treat is that it's so accessible.

You can get a pizza anytime day or night. You can buy them at the Supermarket.

I remember, growing up in Antigua, that there was only one Pizza place on the opposite side of the island and it was about a 45 mins drive away. We had to beg and beg Daddy to take us there - maybe he agreed around three times a year and once we got there and got out of the car, we ordered our very own pizzas and cokes... Wow, it was all so incredibly tasty! My mouth even still waters for that particular Pizza though truth be told that nowadays due to all the Carbs+Chemicals, I actually don't eat Pizza very often or even want to... but ah, that Pizza...

Except it's not the Pizza, is it?

It's the longing and the delay in getting what I wanted.

Like Cool Cat, I agree that cheap compliments aren't helpful and that kids can spot a fake however I really wasn't comfortable with her call to give out sincere compliments once every class period/ once a day to a colleague... because the very adding of a time to this makes it a task and not a spontaneous truism.

The point I guess I'm trying to make is that sincere praise takes time and energy and real thought. It must mean something. Compliments shouldn't be abused and made smaller through frequency and over-indulgence.

They should, I reckon, be given out when they say in their subtexts:

I watched you for a while you know and I noticed what you've done and how you improved; You know what, I saw you grow; I saw you change and how you have very much blossomed. You made me proud; I learned from you.

Personally, in general, I'm just not a big fan of people who tell me how great I am, especially if they do this repeatedly, as inevitably (through hard-experience) I know that's what really happening is that they've read and made their bible: How To Win Friends and Influence People and now they've got some kind of warped mental database of standardized compliments which they pay to people - anyone at all - because, pretty much, they're just trying to get something from them.

(And it works (80%?) of the time! )

Oooh!
How cynical is that?
Sorry.

Are we all suckers
or is it that as we get older
we lose the ability to spot fakes?! :-((.

Also, I tend to find... how do I say this, I tend to find that people who have been over-complimented by parents/ school-friends and then, if having achieved any sort of postion in life (boss, actor, etc)... they can then wind up generally having a very displaced view of themselves, their importance in the world and they can/may use this self-view to abuse others they deem as lesser.

Over-self-esteem is almost as bad as low self-esteem.

Anyway, I'll wrap this post up by saying that I do hope we don't make the next generation of students cynical of compliments by praising them too much, too often, too insincerely only because this sort of research may leave us feeling that we're not good teachers if we don't do it often enough.

I really hope we can be balanced, as some things in life, in my opinion, really should remain worth working for.

Worth desiring.

Useful links

How important is the web 2.0 for your career in education?

2011-01-16T19:41:00.001+01:00

A wee spot of fun last night wound up leading to some really rather interesting results... and one has to ask, given the almost sku-wiff nature of these, if these statistics are really only due to these people's presence on blogs, twitter and all-a-that?

And if it is, what does this mean today? Tomorrow?

Five years from now, or even... twenty years from now?

Watch this:

Graham Stanley = Blogger, Author
Graham Davies = Emeritus Professor of Computer Assisted Language Learning, Tweeter (protected)

Shelly Terrell = Prolific Tweeter, Social Media Consultant, Blogger
Nicky Hockly = Author, EdTech Consultant, Blogger

John Hughes = Blogger, Tweeter, Author
Paul Emmerson = Author, Website

Jason Renshaw = Blogger, Tweeter, Author
Mario Rinvolucri = Author

Jeremy Harmer = Author, Blogger, Tweeter
Earl Stevick = Author

Alex Case = Prolific blogger, Twitter-antagonist, Edu-journalist
Jeremy Harmer = Blogger, Tweeter, Author

Alan Maley = Author
Ken Wilson = Author, Singer, Actor, Blogger, Tweeter

Larry Ferlazzo = Prolific Blogger, Author, Tweeter
Scott Thornubry = Author, Blogger, Tweeter

Scott Thornbury = Author, Blogger, Tweeter
Stephen Krashen = Author

For those of you hitting this page who know who all of these people are, i.e. famous folks in the field of English Language Teaching, were the results shocking or to be expected?

Do you think that being easily found on Google is important to your career? Today it really may be worth thinking about things like what your digital footprint is like, do you have any kind of social media presence, at all? Do you currently feel it's a collossal waste of time?

If so you've probably little to worry about however if you're an educational professional who may be checked up on, you know - googled, then you never know... before that next conference someone may well be checking you out because, although your talk sounds good in the blurb, fact is no one really knows you, and as a result choices might now be made that may not have been made B.G...

Perhaps, after glancing at these results, there may be some things to consider: like is it possible that someone else may wind up getting that writing job - you know the one you wanted - and it was only because nowadays they were more well known than you are? Can they now pull in the bums on the chairs that you can't, because nowadays it seems you only belong to the last decade's group of DELTA students? :-(

But please don't fuss and panic... all this social media stuff is actually, really, only a few years on and if you ever needed a really good reason to join/set aside some time to become active soon, this might be it, mightn't it!

Karenne

Useful links:

Google Fight

A really funny posting by Luke Meddings on more or less the same subject but with a different angle.

Guido Europeaantje's excellent webinar on joining and using Twitter, particularly for newbies.

Disclaimer: The erratic nature of Google's ranking may well yield different results on different days in different countries. Different keywords after names will affect search results... Do your own Google-Fight if you don't agree!

I'm Baaa-ck

2011-01-12T20:47:00.001+01:00

Did ya miss me? Hope so :-). This was post was supposed to go out yesterday but I had a peruse through the 'verse and 'spere and ended up with a rant instead...

Soz where have I been? Well, I had a super holiday sleeping mostly on the floor of my sister's and hanging out with her and my baby brother in the UK, watched the fireworks over the Thames on TV, watched endless reality TV and dull comedians... and went to my cousin's wedding in Wales - she was a gorgeous bride! Ate loads of Marmite and Branston Pickle and was dismayed by Cadbury's - hmm, perhaps too long in Europe with real chocolate... was relegated chief chef and fed my family, read lots and lots of throwaway-after-reading-don't-remember-their-names-novels, finally got around to seeing Inception (um, um, what was the fuss about exactly?) and also watched the entire four seasons of Heroes.

Sidebar: Hiro Nakumura was my favorite character so I was totally gutted when the love-of-his-life, Charlie got lost in the space-time continum by the very bad Butterfly Man a.k.a earthmover Samuel Sullivan - wasn't that just awful? Thought Claire terribly naive for coming out to the Brave New World about her superpowers - the world will never accept nor understand them, sigh, and of course wasn't completely convinced of Sylar's final act of goodness.

I mean evil is as evil is. N'est pas? Still, it was a great show...

So, um, aside from pure nothingness in my break (recharging batteries and creativity after 3 years of non-stop work), I've also been reflecting on what's on the agenda for 2011:

Possibly beginning work on a new coursebook - yeah, dogme me... we'll see tho', so don't start calling me hypocrite just yet - at the moment I'm very much not happy with their offer.

Started doing some consultancy work for Voxy - remember I wrote about them as being the most impressive mobile learning start-up around? Well, I'll be mainly advising them on the academic side as well as helping build brand awareness and also helping to develop the games aspect of the product. I'm so incredibly psyched to have the opportunity to work with a bunch of young and very tech-savvy entrepreneurs in an entirely new and radically developing area of educational technology - more about this later but in the meantime check out their new i-phone app!

I've decided that I really must load up more of my SimplyConversationsTM conversation prompts directly on to this blog for free as my website is still down and I just don't seem to find the energy to set it up again!

I've enrolled for the digital storytelling course with EVO and the Webheads and am very excited to be part of this and to participate in all the activities and learning! Oops, that'll mean homework!

From next week on, when I'm officially finished with my "vacation," I'll be putting Business English in 5mins back into motion again and I'll also be back to working on my MyEC with the wonderful global students I work with there...as well as returning to face-to-face teaching.

As much as I can, I also, knock-on-wood, still hope to blog 3 days a week... (Sundays for the SocialMedia stuff, Thursdays LessonTips/Plans & Tuesdays for the rest of my educational musings... except when I get distracted.. and it's also my number one resolution to comment much more too on other people's blogs as lately I've slipped into a pattern of reading and bookmarking them into delicous however, honestly, I really used to like all the global conversations with other teachers and miss the real discussions we used to have there!

What else? Lemme see.. I'll be at Spain's TESOL (talking on From Ink to I-pads: motivation in language learning) and in the UK in April will be hosting IATEFL's first ELT blog symposium (featuring Tara Benwell, Berni Wall & Peter Ryley) - am very much looking forward to hooking up with you at one of these!

Hmm... there's probably more ahead, and heaps more on my tooooo-do list but in the meantime, let me wish you all a Happy New Year and I truly hope it brings you everything you want and need!!

Best,
Karenne

Common Courtesy and Conferences

2011-01-11T21:53:00.000+01:00

Well, it's all spinning off again in the Blogosphere and this first post since back from holiday was supposed to be all gooey and soft and all about how I really missed y'all while I chilled out and relaxed and also, what I'll be getting up to in the next few months...

But there it is, smack-bang: a lack of basic, common courtesy.

A while back I drafted a post including Lindsay Clandfield's incredibly useful tweeting during a conference he attended in Japan and then later a cracking summary of Hollett's plenary (which although I had attended in person earlier, found to be a brilliant review in tweets) but in particular, what I really wanted to highlight was the fact that he asked permission before doing so.

Back then, as now, all I really have to say is about this boiling-over situation on Harmer's blog, is that if you implicitly know that a presenter does not want his session tweeted or live-streamed (and in 18months, Scott Thornbury has been very clear on his views) then do not do it.

To do so anyway, is nothing short of rude.

To have done so accidentally because you did not know his views prior to noticing others doing so and thought you'd join in the fun is understandable, however it still requires an apology and a backing down off the topic.

Or just because you happen to own a smartphone bang-out-the-window-go-your-manners?

To have done this, despite knowing how he feels about this issue and exactly how clear he has been regarding the issues involved begs the question why. Why didn't you just go to a different speech and simply not attended?

To carry on this discussion on Twitter ad nauseum - what will be gained? By whom?

Does it prove that no matter if a presenter specifically states a preference for limited viewing of that which brings in his bread and butter, we have a right to violate that privacy? That we, the Twitterati, can force our educating educators into situations where they have zero control over our personal respresentation of their knowledge - are we really that arrogant?

Has the intrinsic narcissistic nature of Social-Media warped an adherece to social mores?

Don't get me wrong, I have learned a great deal from reading through the tweporting and I even enjoy the challenge of summarizing someone else's text into 140 characters however I wouldn't enjoy this if I knew the presenter felt uncomfortable about it.

The fear of an eventual misrepresentation of educational statements made by our field's leaders, by one of the Twitter "reporters," is valid and dare I say, inevitable.

Twitter is not Utopia.

People will, as they have always been, whether with ink or with i-pads, will be people. And people often have their own agendas. If a misleading statement is twublished by a competitor or adversary (something which may not be clear to the rest of the Twitter stream) then that statement could potentially cause long-running professional damage because, even though edu-Twitter is currently a small bubble, it is one that is growing and one that seems to have a far-reaching public impact.

The decision on whether or not a conference, workshop or plenary can be tweeted or not must be the presenter's choice: it must be their decision on whether or not to take that risk: not the Twitterazzi's.

Na ja, I'll write my NewYearsRes's tomorrow, especially as one of those is to write less about Social-Media and more about lessons... hmm...