Dogme and the First Day of a New Class

 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

Beam their errors on to the wall

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.

Google Docs for Focusing on Form: dogme 2.0

Along with encouraging co-construction and emergent language, the practice of dogme calls for, via scaffolding, there be a focus a form and one of my favourite tools to help me meet this objective in the techno age is Google Docs.  

And although I've been meaning to do this post for ages, I reckon this might be one of those occasions where an explanation won't be anywhere near as effective simply showing you why:

Video 1: 

Backstory my student Y, would like to comment on G's summary blog post about mobile phone market share (based on an article and infographic from Mashable).  

He's nervous that his comment won't be written correctly so has drafted his response before clicking on add-a-comment.  We then imported this into our shared google doc in order to work on his text together.   As you can see in this video, we are working on separate computers - me showing him where he needs to make the changes and discussing the errors or mistakes while he corrects the problems himself.

His weaknesses remain his private domain at the end of the day as only the two of us have access to his page, however, at any time he can go through previous entries evaluating his written work and find patterns in his errors.   But while his English develops, he can still add his thoughts  and opinions to G's post and although they are at different levels of English they can effectively hold a conversation about a shared interest.

Video 2:

Backstory My student B, lives in another city and our classes are held over the telephone.  In this video I am showing how, over a series of lessons B can get a feel for the type of errors she makes most often via the colours.  As Google Docs don't work on pages, but instead a long running stream, she can go back and forth through her document reviewing whether or not she still remembers new vocabulary and phrases.   You can can also see how I link to other sites for reference and how I use the blog I write for them to review and scaffold language which emerges in our lessons.

Hope these were clear!   Don't hesitate to ask questions if not.

Please note that like everything I write on this blog, my work is creative-commons licensed so I am very excited when my readers try things out in class and then take ownership of a practice or material,  adapting it for their own purposes and so if you do adopt this practice too, I'm deeply honored... however, I would like to stress to you that working in this particular fashion, in terms of creating an e-space in order to focus on form, is my original concept and therefore if you write an article, a research paper, blog post or print article or give a presentation on google-docs and error correction that you do not forget to atttribute my work by referencing this post.  Imitation is flattery, plagiarism and copyright violation isn't.  Thanks so much!

Best,
Karenne
education


Useful links:
Learn more about Google Docs: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour1.html
More of my posts using Google Tools and Apps

S is for Scaffolding
Reformulation by Scott Thornbury
Giving language learners a voice in correction by Peter Watkins
Sometimes a prop is really the best thing by Mike Harrison
interesting...  John Truscott, disagreeing with L2 grammar correction in writing

The Easiest Speaking Game in the World

That's it really.

Draw this on the board or on a big piece of paper or click on the photograph and print that out....

The first few times you play this game, put a subject in the middle circle e.g. movies, jobs, current projects, holidays - whatever is topical at the time - elicit this from your students if you like.  Divide them up into groups and then encourage your students to ask each other questions.

Once you've played a few times your students can then choose the topic within each group themselves and no group has to be discussing the same topic as the other.

You circulate and provide feedback on the lexis and structure.

I, um, think this game is straightforward enough not to include any further instructions but don't hesitate to ask questions if you have them.

Best,
Karenne

update: THIS IS NOT A BRAINSTORMING EXERCISE.   Encourage your students to simply ask each other questions and talk to each other: no writing :-)

Let's sell a car...

I get it, I do, that in a lot of cultures this particular picture would be shocking.

So I'm not going to ask the ELT publishers to be so incredibly radical as to include something like this...

But I'm not a book publisher.

I'm an edu-blogger and I live in Germany and I teach adults.

And I like to get my students speaking.

And people here, like everywhere else, are sometimes straight, sometimes gay  and sometimes not anything at all...

- 0 -

But on to the teaching point, shall we?

The other day, I wrote that one of the problems in textbooks lies in having many a pair-work activity and not enough non-even-group activities... and although some of my readers did, quite rightly, point out that you as the teacher can take on the role of one of the people in the activity, I don't actually think this is good all the time - I tend to need to walk around and listen and give feedback on their English.

Yes, of course, sometimes you can get one of the class to help you monitor and feedback on speech, structure but that very much depends on the activity, for that to work, doesn't it?  In fact, to be honest the overall let's stick to an evenness of group sizes bugs me a bit - I just don't see why...  isn't it much more fun when they're not uniformed...

And isn't it better if the language they need to use is repeated several times...


I'll give you an example:

The book I'm currently using... 

(gasp! sometimes I have to and I like this one, gasp! and I can still dogme it, wink!)  

...with my group of intensive automotive students called for one person to sell a car and the other to be buying a car.   A was told he was at an auto fair and B was provided with details of a fictional car, size of the engine, mpg fuel consumption, number of cylinders that sort of thing.  

The standard textbook speaking activity.

But there are three problems with this sort of highly prescriptive activity: one, you really need an even number of students, two it's a bit spoon fed to be giving out random numbers about cars and their costs at random car fairs and it isn't exciting or motivating and finally, three, if you have a large class then they're all going to be talking about the same thing at the same time... and that's sort of naff.

But rather than just moan, I'll tell you how I 

two'd, 

three'd 

and 

four'd it...

I selected some of my students and asked them to think of the next car they'd most like to buy (in some cases if they could afford it) and then I told them that they were all now, officially, car-salespersons.   I asked them to jot down notes about this car, the one they liked so much - what was so special about it including things like how many miles to the gallon, the type of engine, the style...

While those students were busy working on that... I chose different students to "be:"

i) a modern business woman climbing to the top of her career - what car did she want to buy?

and...

ii) a young husband and wife with no thoughts of children in the near horizon
iii) a gay couple
iv) a father and son
v) an older husband and wife with their live-at-home son, who would be sharing their car

The mini-groups of different sizes then had to work together to decide if they were in agreement regarding what would be the best type of car for their personal circumstances and to talk about preferences of engine,  size, features and general style (lexis we'd covered in the units to date).

c) Lastly the purchasers went around the rooms in circles, talking to each salesperson one by one and deciding to buy.


It was super interactive, personalized, fun, the target language was practiced and repeated and yea, we didn't pretend that the entire world revolves around the two-by-twos.  :)

Best,
Karenne
education

I love hearing from you!  Have you ever introduced the topic homosexuality into the classroom or simply ever let it slide in?   Have you found ways to get out of the mould of pair-work?

Please add your thoughts if you enjoyed this piece and you feel like there's something you would like to question, add or say about it - don't worry about perfection or agreeing with me: it's always a pleasure to hear from you and know your own opinions. Worried about spamming me? Spam = you haven't read any of the discussion either in the post or by the other comments yet you want to come to my page in order to advertise yourself... (which probably means you won't have read this either :)). Your comment will be removed. Contribution = you've read the post and the discussion which has been added from other educators (or you want to start one off) and you would like to share your own thoughts, opinions, knowledge and experience. And by the way, have you already written about this specific subject or something similar? Do please add your link as I welcome the opportunity to participate in your conversations too! :-)

How's my job different from yours?

Sean Banville's excellent blog post questions the practice of teaching adverbs of frequency with things like how often do you brush your teeth or surf the 'net and for the most part I do agree with him that it's an oddity to combine this structure with questions of how often we do do our daily personal activities 

 

(can you imagine chatting someone up at a bar 

and asking him how often he combs his hair let

alone in a business situation)... 

And it is always presented this way in the coursebooks...

(see the thing is, as I've moaned about elsewhere,

lots of textbooks are just copycats of each other with 

little critical thinking into the "why" of an activity: basically PennyUr 

or Jill Hadfield suggested this way back when and voilá all textbooks now carry it ) 

But rather than me just moaning on again, the problem, is strictly in the nature of using the question "How often:" it is unnatural and can feel like an invasion of privacy.   However our students still need to  learn how to use these accurately and naturally, so  it is a relevant and necessary lexis so I'll just tell you what I usually do with my adult learners to personalize this teaching practice.

Step 1

After reviewing the presentation in the book on adverbs of frequency (or letting it come up  in class) go through the phrases commonly used to express how often we do things and then go to the board with markers in hand (type into a wordle while online in the classroom/Powerpoint if offline) and elicit activities which most people do as part of their regular work responsibilities.

• What's the first thing you always do when you walk into your office?
• What's the second thing?
• After you've checked your emails, is there anything you usually do?
• Do you do this all the time? 
• What else do you normally do?
• What's something you maybe do once a week or so?
• What don't you do very often - let's say rarely - but it's scheduled in your calendar?

Fill the board completely (e.g. check emails, answer the phone, make a cup of coffee, write reports, participate in department meetings, go out for drinks with colleagues.)

Step 2
Ask students individually, while you're still in front of the board/screen or circulating,  which ones they don't do regularly or not at all.

Ask why not.


Step 3

Ask students to then jot down notes (bullet points) on things they do every day/ week/ month/ year, and in particular, activities which they do that they think are DIFFERENT from their colleagues/classmates.

If they work for different companies, they can also prepare a list of things that their companies do to get new business/ promote their products - things which are probably different from what (they assume) other companies do.

Step 4

Put them in small groups and ask get them to share their work/company lives with each other (write blogs if you're working online) and explain that they should give each other reasons for what they do, how often  they do it and if relevant, how they feel about these activities.  

Once they have shared their own stories they should then ask their partners if any of the things they listed are things which their colleagues do do too.

The different adverbs will emerge naturally i.e. this model: 

I usually talk to my boss on Friday mornings to plan activities for the following week but sometimes we're both too busy.   I often have to go out to meet clients in Stuttgart in the afternoons but sometimes I wish I didn't have to as it really interrupts my day. 

I hardly ever go overseas to meet clients but last year I went to Africa and China.

Do any of you ever have to meet with clients too?

Encourage them to prompt each other for more details about what's said and ask one student in each group to act as a secretary.   Warn them ahead of time that one person will have to present what's been said by the rest of their group.

Step 5

Once they've all had a chance to tell each other about their days, bring them together as a class and elect a speaker from one of the groups to share the ways that his colleagues' work lives are the same and different from his own.

e.g. Tom and Mary always get to work around 7.30 because they have children so they want to go home early but I usually get in around 9.30; Jane and Alice sometimes have meetings with their bosses on Fridays and I normally have my meeting every Monday.   Tom and Mary never meet their boss and they feel angry about this as he hardly ever listens to them.   I have to write a report at the end of every month but no one else has to.  Jane usually goes to Switzerland and Austria three times a year.

Step 6

Ask the key speakers of each group to now compare what was been said against that group's report - basically responding on his own group's findings and adding (group members can help).

i.e.  No one in our group works at 7.30.   All of us, except for Bill, always arrive at work around 8am.   Rosie has to write reports every quarter but I prepare mine twice a year.  Michael always submits his yearly budget report in December.

No one ever goes overseas to meet with clients.

Step 7
Provide feedback on the structure, accurate use of the lexis, word order issues and alternative versions of what could have been communicated.




Notes

Why is this is a good activity?  It mirrors the sort of small-talk which ocurs when international members of the same company get together and have little in common to talk about except their company.

• What to do if you're working with teenagers?  Brainstorm out-of-school social activities, weekends and home responsibilities.   

• What to do if you're working with unemployed adults?  Brainstorm housecleaning tasks, child care responsibilities and social activities that have regular and irregular scheduling.   

• What to do if you're working with refugees/people integrating into a new society?  Brainstorm their problems, current life situations vs their life as it used to be: ask them to compare each others' then and now.

If you're working online, you can do step 4  in the chat function as a whole class and then ask them to blog about what they noticed regarding other people's daily responsibilities and activities.

Caution: go through each step clearly and patiently and provide good models of what you want to hear being spoken by them  - don't stress about how often you hear the "adverbs of frequency," stress about how natural the sentences sound.

To print this activity out, hover over the box which reads bookmark below (above the retweet button), one of the options on the right is a little icon that looks like a printer, click on that.

Best,
Karenne
education

I love hearing from you! Please add your thoughts if you enjoyed this piece and you feel like there's something you would like to question, add or say about it - don't worry about perfection or agreeing with me: it's always a pleasure to hear from you and getting to know your opinions.

Do you have another fun, conversational dogmeic approach lesson tip when teaching people how to talk about the real things they do regularly but don't feel silly talking about (repetition being the key to vocabulary acquisition and all, I'd love to add more feathers to my bow)...and feel free to drop a link if you've already blogged it.

Noodle Casserole

Carola's Vegetarian Casserole

I'm sure most of you already do this, especially if you're an ESOL teacher with lots of students from all over the world, but just in case you haven't yet - sharing students' recipes, even with Business English students can be great fun and an interesting way to check if they know the different words for types of food they like in English; phrases for food preparation  and giving instructions.   

I used to do this activity a lot in Ecuador when I lived there, it was part of our "Concentrating on Conversation" Friday course and once a month we'd have sessions in the kitchen together.  

(We also played Casino on other days, but that's another story)

Yum!Yum!

Now that I work online a great deal, I've also tried applying this activity to our community platform too and recently, Carola (who I've never met - she's a tele-student) wrote this incredibly easy and very delicious recipe for me:

For the recipe, you need the following ingredients:

250 g pasta (e.g. Penne)
2 bell peppers (I like the red and yellow ones best)
1 zucchini
1 onion
some olive oil
1 clove of garlic
250 g cream (perhaps you can use soy cream, here - I am sorry, but I have not found any noodle casserole recipe without cream...)
a tablespoonful of tomato puree
salt
pepper
chili
herbs (basil, thyme)
250 g cheese (slices or grated) (e.g. Gouda)

Cook the pasta (see instructions on the package for the exact cooking time).

Cut the onion, wash and cut the bell peppers and the zucchini. Heat some olive oil in a pan and fry the onion together with the zucchini and the bell peppers - just for a short time, the vegetables have to be "al dente".

For the sauce:
Mix the cream with a tablespoonful of tomato puree, add some salt, pepper, chili, and herbs (e.g. basil and thyme), and a clove of garlic cut in small pieces (or you can use a garlic press). You can also add an egg to the sauce, if you like.

Now put the pasta in the casserole, mix with the fried vegetables and the sauce and cover it all with some slices of cheese or grated cheese.

Put the casserole in the preheated oven (at a temperature of about 180 °C) for about 20 minutes.

Then enjoy your meal! :-)
I would say that the recipe is for about two to four persons (depending on the appetite..).   As I have already told you, what I like best about this recipe is that, when you have guests, you can prepare the casserole, put it in the oven, clean up the kitchen, and then all you have to do is wait till it's ready, i.e. you don't have to do much more cooking when your guests have arrived.

The other thing is that you can vary the recipe as you like, e.g. use some other vegetables (for example, leek or spinach). 

I hope you like the casserole! Looking forward to hearing from you! :-)

Cooking with students, whether it's in person or on a community/ blogging platform is a lot of fun , a good learning activity and a great sharing experience.

Silke's Cherry&ChocChip Cake

Some things I've noticed since turning this into a digital exercise is that my students get the chance to practice writing out instructions and reviewing their language mistakes and errors more than once (not quite the same as them bringing in the food to cook and telling us how to do it in person - although the benefit there is that a lot of emergent language occurs at the same time); looking up the English words for ingredients online, sharing preferences with each other and of course, adding photos afterward to show how their recipes turned out is a good bit of fun social-media silliness which can help them to remember the experience of the language!

Have you done any cooking with your (online) students?  How did it go?



Useful links related to this posting:
More lesson ideas

Best,
Karenne
education

A Love Story in TEFL by Nick Jaworski

Their eyes met across the crowded teacher’s room.  She had never seen him before.  He must be a new hire to replace Crazy Steve, she thought,  and boy, was he handsome. 

He smiled at her and she felt a few butterflies flitter in her stomach.  Smiling tentatively back, she gathered her collection of pens, freshly filled markers, worksheets and books and navigated through the mass of busy teachers making last minute preparations so she could introduce herself.


“Hi, I’m Kim, from Australia,” she said. 

“The name’s Sam.  I’m from South Africa.  Nice to meet you.”


“Nice to meet you, too.”


Looking at the table in front of him, she was surprised to see only a few blank sheets of paper and some pens and markers.  Lessons started in 5 minutes and he didn’t seem to have anything prepared.  “Well, I better leave you alone.  You probably have some last minute planning to do.”


“No, that’s alright.  I’m a Dogme teacher,” he said, “My lessons are conversation-driven.  I generally don’t bring a lot of materials to class.”


A bit taken aback, she asked, “But what do you do if the students have nothing to talk about?”


“There’s always something to talk about,” he responded with a little smile.


The butterflies kicked it up a notch in her stomach.  Wow, she thought as worlds of new possibilities began opening themselves up to her,  

No book.  

No worksheets. 

I mean, I’ve recently started trying to make some of my own materials  rather than use that stuffy old course book, but to simply leave them completely behind, to let the lesson move along at its own pace; the thought was scary but somehow very liberating, too.  

She imagined him striding confidently into the classroom, engaging the students with his presence and that devilish smile.  Unrestrained by an armful of materials, he could walk freely among the students, his long wavy hair bouncing as he moved around.  “Wow,” she said in a sort of awed whisper, “That’s really interesting.  I’ve never heard of a teacher doing that before.  I guess it‘s easier than planning a whole bunch of stuff for hours.”

“Well, it’s not as easy as it sounds.  There is a lot of thought and reflection that goes into it.  You also have to be really alert and know how to work with emergent language.”

“It really sounds fascinating.  I’m not sure I could do something like that.” 


“Oh, it just takes a little practice, like anything else.  Hey, I know.  Why don’t you come observe me sometime?  You know, get a feel for how it works.”


“Really?  Would that be alright?  I mean, I wouldn’t want to disturb your class or anything.”

“Oh no, it’s no problem at all.  I have another class at 9 on Thursday.  Are you free then?”

“Yes, actually I am.  That’d be really great.  I’ll be there.”


Her head was swimming.  She couldn’t believe he had invited her to watch him teach.  She barely knew him for crying out loud!  She wasn’t normally one to get so involved with another teacher so quickly.  She was more the nervous type, quietly planning lessons by herself in the corner, too embarrassed to ask other teachers for help.  But there was something about him, perhaps a certain twinkle in his eye, an aura of daring.  It inspired her and gave her the confidence to be a bit more forward.


“Well, we better get to class.  It was nice meeting you and I look forward to seeing you on Thursday,” he said.

“Same here.  See you later.”

“Have a good lesson Kim,” he called over his shoulder as he left the room.

“You too Sam,” she whispered to herself as she watched him walk away.

To be continued… 

Nick Jaworski is a Director of Studies at Oxford House College in Istanbul, Turkey where he lives with his beautiful wife Hande.

He blogs about ELT in Turkey at Turklish TEFL.






education

What's in the News?

"Pick a card, any card.

Share with us what you heard in the news today /this week/ this month..."

"Interesting!  I didn't hear about that, did you Frank?"

"No way!"

"He said what?  Anna, what do you think about people who do that sort of thing?"

"Uh huh, I agree."

"So what happened next- oh, the word you need for that is prejudice - preh.djew.dis - golly! Oh yes, Stefan, do write it down, it's spelt p-r-e... that is terrible and then what did they do?"

"Well done.  That was a very, very good story.  Thanks for sharing it with us, I hadn't followed the story myself... oh yes, you can put the card back on the table, yes face-up's fine.   By the way, Stefan, great grammar, I didn't hear you make more than one or two mistakes - perhaps you can work on your past perfect when you get home this evening - uh, huh, use link to the games I gave you last week.

So, who wants to go next?  Jakob?

Pick a card, any card..."


"Tiger, really - back, is he?  Funny."

~ ~


Best,
Karenne

p.s. Teaching dogme-style (or in any other communicative way) means that you put the student at the center of your classroom, or... let me see if I can say this in other words - Der Weg ist das Ziel (the journey is the reward) and not getting to page 65 by next Tuesday :-).  

It means your work is in the classroom, not before or after - but intensely paying attention to your students in TT focused listening; it means you encourage them and help make sure that the words that need to come out come out.

It means they spend most of the class time simply speaking.

Predictions 2010 - 2019 (Lesson Plan)

Probably one of the easiest, getting-back-in-the-groove, sans materials, dogmesque lesson I can think of:

Step 1

Write 2009 on the board

• Ask students to quickly jot down a list of the 5 most important things that happened to them (and/or their companies or families) over the course of the year.

• Put them in pairs and ask them compare and share.
  

Add 2000 - 2009

• Join some of the pairs of students to create mini-groups of 3 - 5 students. Without asking them to create lists, encourage them to share the significant events in their own lives and the world around us in the previous decade.
  

Step 2

Draw a table on the board and fill it in with some of the key words below - areas where one might expect to see change within the next decade - and elicit others from your learners:

- politics
- economy
- war
- sports
- weather-environment
- technology
- social media
- entertainment
- education
- can you suggest any other areas of change for your own specific students' interests?

Hand students large sheets of paper and in micro groups ask them to brainstorm, collaborate and make predictions. (Adding dates of when they expect these changes to occur).

Encourage them to agree and disagree, discussing fears and solutions, feelings and hypothesis. You can choose on whether or not to focus in on the use of the various futures which will naturally emerge as you circulate.

Change the members of groups after every 15 minutes or so in order to keep content, ideas and conversations dynamic. Their sheets should be completely filled.

Step 3

Post-task: get your students to take specific areas of responsibility and write these up in notebooks or blogs - they can also create posters, glogsters or simply powerpoint them.

Best,
Karenne

p.s. if you've got a "don't like to talk to each other group" - help kick off these conversations using a prediction based news article, Abba song, slideshare, video or last years' conversation prompts / change lesson from Eric Roth's Compelling Conversations.

Or tell them your own.

What is one thing you predict happening 2010-2019?

(I reckon they'll be a lot more edu- blogs and many more university lecturers online - but you'll have to pay for monthly access (some sort of i-tunes-like platform) and... I think there will be a whole lot less printed textbooks: 2016 on and hmmm... learning a 3rd language will suddenly become a fashionable trend - it somehow gets easier: brain implants probably :-).

Water Words (on using images in ESP: Financial English)

One of the absolute best supplementary books to use when teaching banking or financial types is Financial English by Ian MacKenzie.


However, despite the absolute wealth of vocabulary it contains, the exercises can be a bit difficult for students to do, especially if they've never seen the words before and also the book is, quite frankly, a wee dry.

If you've been reading my blog for a while then you've probably already gleaned by now that I like to have a bit of fun in my lessons... and I've noticed you do too... while still sticking to the core learning objectives.

So in this posting I'm going to hone in on two different approaches to working with lists of words, when presenting a visual lexis.

For this example, we'll look at the language in unit 2.10 of Financial English, Liquid Metaphors.

Step one:
Divide up the following words by the number of students you have:

2.10 includes:
channel, dry up, flood, flow, pour, run out of, swim, trickle down, drain, ebb and flow, pool, source, awash, crest, depth, under(water), fluid, sank, plug.

*To mix things up, I also brainstorm a list of related lexis with my students and provide extras before evenly distributing these amongst the students e.g. (water)fall, drop, river, cross that bridge, laundry, ocean, wave & drown.

Step two (the dogme version)

Hand out the vocabulary and ask your students to draw pictures matching each word.






As great masterpieces aren't expected, you'd be surprised how much 50+ year old bankers enjoy doing this type of activity, LOL!





For the words they have difficulty drawing (because they don't know them) either encourage them to help each other out, mime the words or allow them to use a dictionary.

OR

Step two (the techno-teacher version)

Give your students their share of the words and set image searching as their pre-task activity.

They can use Google images (use safe search), any photo based web 2.0 platform and/or my personal favorite, flickr. Remind them to look for images that are creative commons licensed.

Ask them to copy the pictures into Powerpoint, create slides & label if wished.

n.b. if you don't have a computer in the classroom this pre-task can be set as a home based activity.



Step three

Spread the pictures across the table or if you have one, pin them up on a corkboard.

Encourage your students to present their drawings or slides and to share their understanding of the words they've learned with each other.





Step four

Do the exercise provided by the book* - if feasible, get them working in pairs of groups discussing the different solutions applying the words to a financial context, referencing the pictures on the table.

*obviously although I'm using Financial English as the example here, you can do this activity with any vocabulary book.



Step five

Build awareness by highlighting and discussing the common expresssions i.e. trickle down, run out of, riding on the crest of a wave, pulling the plug on something, a huge pool of resources etc - encourage them to come up with alternative sentences using these.

Step six

Now ask your students to write up a short essay reusing the metaphors. For example, in this case, they could describe:

• their company's financial situation
• a project they're currently working on
• their country's economy
• the financial crisis and the global economy
• a current financial news item (e.g. a company heading toward bankruptcy or being listed on the stock exchange)
  

Step seven

Correct their pieces and get them to share what they wrote with each other - encourage further conversation on the opinions stated - reusing the collocative phrases as often as possible.

Best,
Karenne

Side note: I've done both of these methods with my learners and they all reported 1) increased awareness of the vocabulary and 2) a noticing of the lexis in later financial news articles.

For me, these approaches of working with images, while similar probably have different effects on memory.

I've been thinking about it and reckon that they probably trigger different learning processes (one involves some physical learning and discovery of the lexis, the image searching would result in immediate association between the word and image) however, honestly, as I'm not a scientist nor do I have a masters in second language acquisition, I'd really love to know your professional take on this issue.

Do you know of supportive texts that back these ideas up?

Have you/would you also do this type of activity with kids or teens? Why, why not?


Useful links related to this posting:

• Jeremy Day's excellent tips on using Imagery in Financial English
  
• Murder of a Superhero (using drama in the classroom)
• Other teaching tips with a dogme angle added
  
• Other vocabulary teaching tips

• Scott Thornbury on Repetition, great YouTube video!

• The Weboword Ning - for vocabulary enthusiasts, lovers and learners! This is the world's first community dedicated to Visual Vocabulary.

• Jamie Keddie's post: Reasons for buying flowers (grammar + images)
  
• Vicky Saumell on Using Phasr
  

A conversation about death, dying and the famous dead

Like all issues of great importance there are those who believe in one thing and there are those who believe in another.

Personally, I reckon that no ill should be spoken of the dead, especially not in their first week of passing.

I wonder if that's a general societal meme regarding the departure of the soul or if it's just something from my own culture?

What do you think?

How were you raised?

You know, while we're on the subject of culture and norms, death is so much a major part of our lives yet it is so rarely discussed in the English language classroom.

Is it because words like funeral, autopsy, grave, headstone, memorial and cancer are not important - that this lexis is a no-go area?

Or is it because it's so emotive and teachers may have to deal with tears?

I remember once, it was such an odd situation because although he was a part of a group, for three weeks straight P was my only student. I have no idea how we ended up talking about it - usually he was a happy, dynamic man who laughed and made the other students laugh - yet when we were alone, bit by bit, the very awful story of his young son's death came out.

The freaky part was that P's son had known he was dying a year before he actually did and it was this that was ripping my student's heart out. His son had actually said things like "I won't be here for that next year," "Klaus will miss me when I'm gone" and "You don't need to buy me a bicycle, I won't use it for long and it's a lot of money."

However, instead of going to see a medical specialist, his parents had taken him to see a psychologist to probe into the boy's death complex.

The autopsy later revealed a brain tumor.

He told me that he and his wife never discussed it anymore, that two years on they were just trying to put their lives back together again however he felt guilty that he hadn't done the 'right thing,' that he hadn't taken his boy seriously.

So I listened and gave him the vocabulary he needed to express himself adequately while helping him let go of some of his pain. And, yes, I corrected his English, throughout his tears.

Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett left us this week and if your students are in the 30 - 60 year old range, there's a real good chance they will want to talk about their passing with you.

So my tip is to do this lesson, dogme style.



You don't really need to prepare anything, it's pretty obvious what will come out in the conversation: Farah's beauty, Michael's skin condition, the controversies, the illnesses, the memory of how Princess Diana died in the same week as Mother Teresa ...if they bring it up, it's simply the most perfect opportunity to deal with teaching this type of lexis and expressions of sympathy and empathy, safely.

So go on ahead and let it RIP.

Best,
Karenne

p.s humor is allowed.

Useful links:

• 6 ways to teach conversation
• On Anger
• On Disappointment

Edu-bloggers on the same subject:
Larry Ferlazzo has put together a list of excellent sites you can use.
Jeffrey Hill has done a posting on using a cartoon of Michael Jackson
Anne Hodgson has typed out the lyrics for Dangerous (for students)

From the media:

Farah Fawcett

• New York Times
• Google videos
  

Michael Jackson

• Guardian
• Huffington Post
  
• Google videos
  

My favorite video of Michael Jackson is below. Which was your favorite? What do you most remember of Farah Fawcett?




Go in peace, Michael. Thank you so much for giving us the music, the dance and the memories.

Farah, may the Angels be charmed by your laughter but may they also send you quickly back.

Life is no bed of roses, disappointment as an EFL lesson

If you and your students have been following the Susan Boyle saga (and did the lesson plan) then you'll know that she didn't win the Britain's Got Talent contest last week.

It's disappointing to fail, however, in many respects perhaps it was for the best. Susan's suffering from exhaustion and the pressure may well have been too much if she'd won.

And I'm still very much looking forward to buying her CD!

Have your students ever failed at anything?

Have your students ever been horribly disappointed?

Do they know other people who've tried to do something, who put their whole hearts in but didn't reach their objective?

No doubt.

Life is not a bed of roses and we don't always achieve the goals we set for ourselves. In many respects, this might the reason the world loves Susan Boyle so much.

About 4 years ago I decided that I would finally get on with living my dream, since I was a kid, of being a movie-maker.

I told my bosses that I needed 3 months off work and went to live in a friend's cottage in Virginia, where I sat and typed 'til my fingers bled - from the crack of dawn to very, very late in the evenings.

Life on Purpose was the final product: a 120 page screenplay, action adventure - Matrix meets Von Trier - and was about a 40 year old man who was dissatisfied with life, wife and family. He ended up in a labyrinth World of the Gods and had to make his way out through a convoluted karmic untangling, ultimately discovering his destiny.

Despite interest, it didn't sell, sigh, so nowadays I teach dogme-style instead and write teaching materials and blogs, LOL!

Would you like to turn this theme of disappointment into a lesson with your students?

Pre-task
Ensure they've kept up2date on the Susan B saga - multiple links here. Send this link via email.

In-class
1. Write the word disappointment on the board. On 4 brainstorming branches, write

• ways we express disappointment and regret
• things that people fail at
• phrases of sympathy & empathy
  
• phrases of encouragement and motivation
  

Elicit as much as possible, supplying a few of your own.

2. Go into story-telling mode, sharing a personal story of your own failure at doing something important - don't supply too many details or wrap it up with the positive outcome. Stop short, perhaps 85% of the story and then let them ask you questions.

3. Accept your students' natural oh, I'm sorries, other empathy noises and their encouragements to fall down 7 times, get up 8.

Answer back naturally as if with a group of friends. You can occasionally glance at the board encouraging through your body language that they should be using some of the phrases and expressions there.

Don't overly correct their English at this stage.

4. Now ask your students what grammar structures you used to tell the story, list these on the board.

5. Then ask them to write the following lists:

• 3 personal, professional or academic disappointments
• 2 disappointments of someone in their friendship circle or families
• 2 disappointments of anyone famous (entertainer, movie star etc)

6. Divide your students into small intimate groups, 3 - 6 members each.

7. Encourage them to work in turns, choosing a disappointment they feel comfortable sharing with each other - they'll have ones that are private and others not connected directly to themselves so if you have students who'd, for personal or cultural reasons, prefer to talk in the 3rd person, they won't be left out.

In my own experience, however, students can easily fill a lesson just talking about themselves ;-).


8. Make sure they are using the phrases you brainstormed at the beginning of the lesson in natural context. Circulate, correcting language. Feedback.

To keep a copy of this lesson tip, simply click on the title (so that only this page is open) then go down to the green eco-safe badge and click to email or print it.

But before you dash off, now I've told you my terrible disappointment of not being an award winning screenwriter, want to share any of your own as-of-yet non achievements?

Useful links related to this posting:
The price of water in airports, anger in the EFL classroom
The role of pride in the classroom

Best,
Karenne
p.s. hat tip to woodcutter for prompting me to get on with writing a follow-up posting dealing with Susan B's loss.

Hit the Business Blogs, EFL Tech-tip 5

Do you know where I get a lot of my ideas for teaching Business English?

The blogs.

Nope, not the teaching English blogs, although they're full of handy tips and tricks (see my posting here with a great list) but the blogs actually written by business people and marketers.

They're an excellent resource as they're generally well written, authentic, up2date and short!

Most of the time the writers don't use a lot of wordy words but when you do find an interesting phrase or idiom, you can spend time exploring these too, discussing the relevance and why used.

Here's a list of super material, tried and true resources:


#1 - Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

It really doesn't get better than this one so I probably shouldn't have started with it!

I may actually read this blog too often as it's more interesting than Facebook. Seth has a way of writing one-liners that you and your students, no matter who they are, will enjoy discussing. I use him with secretaries, IT students and with bank board members.

Sometimes he's spot-on, many times he's very controversial, he goes totally against the mainstream and it's always a challenging, interesting read.

His books are great too, by the way, and I've had students reading parts of them.

#2 - Presentation Zen http://www.presentationzen.com/

If you're teaching students who have to give presentations, are interested in marketing or selling products then this is an amazing resource of topical, timely written, beautiful stories along with handy tips for making their presentations look professional and modern.

#3 - The Customer is not always right http://notalwaysright.com/

Quirky stories. You can't always take these in as they are written to your classes but whenever you find a good one, you'll have your business English students laughing their heads off, nodding in sympathy or frowning in disapproval.

#4 - Autoblog http://www.autoblog.com/

Their tag-line says it all "we obsessively cover the auto industry" - if you're based in Stuttgart, then you're no doubt teaching at Daimler, Porsche or for any number of their suppliers.

Visit this blog and raid it for the latest news that not even your students know yet!

#5 -Engadget http://www.engadget.com/
Engadget's great as a springboard to find real stories later. Their posts are short, sweet and often pre-story. Great for the IT and engineering sectors.


#6 - Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Mike Shedlock is not an economist by profession (he's an investment advisor) however his blog is full of economic observations and analyses on the ideas, projections, figures provided by the media, 'so-called' experts and government officials.

Great materials/ideas suitable for bankers and financial experts. As to whether or not he's right is for them to say. You can just sit back, lap it up and get them to explain to you, the jargon.

#7 - Personal MBA http://personalmba.com/

Here's another blog which is best used for getting a tip or smart idea.

Recently I found a posting on patterns with a youtube video of 36 songs in 4 chords; took the video in with me but simply wrote the concept of the posting on the board : you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Then, dogme style, asked my students to think up the patterns that successful businesses all have in common. (The post which inspired that lesson here).

#8 - Dumb Little Man http://www.dumblittleman.com/
Just about any topic under the sun. Often funny. Some greats include 40+ tips for improving your grammar (with lots of links, makes a good post-task activity) and 10 ways to make your boss think you're brilliant and indispensable.  Time management tips, issues in the workplace, business, entrepreneurship, web2.0... and more.

UPDATE May 2010

#9 - Mashable http://mashable.com
A must follow if you're teaching adult Business English students: filled with short bursts of genius, offering advise on social media, how-to guides, entrepreneurship; the latest developments in technology, news on major corporations; PR and advertising tips.


Not teaching Business English, feeling left-out?

Try PostSecret, especially with your older teens and housewives - be careful which stories you choose though. http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

An easy way to find blogs directly related to your students' interests (you've brainstormed this with them already, right) is by visiting http://www.blogcatalog.com/ or technorati http://technorati.com/ and doing a search from within their pages.

Do you have another good blog recommendation for teaching ESP, Business or General English? Do write with the URL address and let us know who it works best with, ta!


Best,
Karenne

More techie-type-tips here!
More Business English tips here.


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