Personalized Video Feedback on Speaking Skills

I'm back....missed me?

Hope so, I missed writing this blog and talking to you all very much.  I thought I'd kick things off by joining in Vicki Hollet's ELT Blog Carnival on Teaching and Learning with Video as this little tip is incredibly effective and something I often do within my own language classes, so know it works well.

In the examples I'll show you below, we are practising for the IELTS speaking exam, but you can use this edtech method of giving personalized video feedback for general speaking practice, as well as for any other type of exam.  It also works nicely for business learners practising presentations. Although it may sound a wee bit fiddly in the write-up, it actually is really simple to set up and do and takes up very little time to share with students - providing, of course, you have the right tools and equipment!

What you need:

• A flipcam (or similar device)
• An IWB 

Optional* but effective

• A Student Blog
• Smartphones 
• Your blogging software's app downloaded on to your students' smartphones

Step 1
Record your students speaking using a FlipCam instead of an audio recorder.

Step 2
Plug your Flipcam, or alternative device, into the computer in your classroom and play this video on the IWB via your media player or other software.  (Note this doesn't work playing from YouTube - if you try to write on the video it pauses so you really need to play the video directly using what you've stored on the flipcam or via your computer's media player).

Pause frequently to discuss their communicative successes and weaknesses.  Additionally, with more serious mistakes or common errors, write these up directly on to the IWB screen and encourage your learners to collaboratively correct these with you.

You can choose to focus on either pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary issues or as I do, work on all of these, it depends on your objectives - don't forget you can colour-code your corrections if you like with the IWB pens.


Step 3
Get students who were featured in the individual videos to open up their blogger app, this allows them to click to open a new post, and to use the camera function in Blogger to take a picture of your IWB screen. They can then publish this new post directly into their student blog.

Step 4
Open up your individual student's blog post(s) to edit it the post, change the photo size if necessary and you can now upload their videos into their blog posts directly.   Alternatively, you can also load up the videos to youtube (keep them unlisted!) and then embed them into each blog post.

Now, both you and they have a permanent record of their speaking which can be reviewed for practice at their leisure or can be used to demonstrate progress over time!


What to do if you don't have a FlipCam
- you could also use your phone, but in my experience, it takes too long to upload to the computer/youtube etc.  FlipCams are really cheap (also try EBay and Amazon for secondhand ones) and they are dead simple to use, especially in class, so actually I would just recommend getting one - one of the most important functionalities is the ability to simply plug directly into the computer's USB and play right away.

What to do if you don't have an IWB
- you could upload the video into a Google Drive Presentation, and type up notes beside the video but these are extra steps that would mean not doing it in the classroom with your language learners in real-time.
- if you have a data projector, you could instead beam the video directly on to a whiteboard and then follow the same steps as above.

What to do if not all of your students have Smartphones
- get the student who does have one to be in charge of posting to Blogger/ taking the picture and uploading it to the blog.  If none of them do, take a picture with a normal digital camera and upload to a shared space you have set up for them.

What to do if you don't have a student blog
- just get the students to take a picture with their smartphones anyway, they can store the picture within their picture galleries.  However, this isn't as effective as being able to watch the video again, which is what you get by permanently storing it in a blog, so actually I would just recommend setting one up.  Blogger is really easy and as the settings allow for privacy, students have a special non-threatening place where you can store samples of their writing, set extra listening and reading tasks, along with doing nifty things like the above!


Enjoy!

p.s. if you have any questions, or something wasn't clear in the write up, please don't hesitate to comment below - if you try this out and find this useful do feel free to share with your classroom teaching colleagues and there is no need to credit this post, simply share how to do it - however, if you are writing up an essay, article, blog post, doing a webinar, how-to video, giving a conference presentation or even creating a book of edtech activities, then please understand this blog post is a creative commons copyrighted material, therefore in all  of these cases, please provide proper citation to me as the originator and author. Thanks!

Pinboards and Timelines - talking our way through their lives

The other day I promised Jason to take part in his meeting of the boards' challenge for English language teachers all over the world to share their white/black boards but in fact, while browsing through my photograph albums, found this one  of pinboards instead and as it's a real favourite for getting students talking and talking, thought I'd post it for you.  It's called ... the wonderous Pinboards & Timelines game.  And by the way, this is one of those games that really works whether you're dogme with virtually no materials or if you're a let's step out of that-coursebook-for-a-bit-shall-we teacher...on the hunt for a speaking activity to supplement the coursebook's review of the pasts or futures.

Step 1
Grab some coloured paper and write a set of dates or time periods on it (you can decide how many and which you want based on the mean age of your group).

Put these up on the pinboard* in order.

Step 2
Ask your students to write down bullet points or one-word answers to the things they've done or anticipate doing in their lives, using matching coloured card.

Step 3
Get them to pin their own cards up on the board.

Step 4
Once it's  full, encourage them to circulate around the room finding pairs or working in small groups to tell each other about their lives.  You circulate listening, correcting, providing feedback and encouraging them to focus on form and structures.

Step 5

thank you Andrew Wright for teaching me 
to draw stick figures :) in error correction

Once they are re-seated, then ask four or five random students: what was the most interesting thing you heard about one of your colleagues?  

Feedback consciously and emotionally (i.e. wow, that is interesting) and ask further questions or challenge them to say why it was shocking/interesting/just like them.


Write a list of the most common errors and elicit / provide correction.

That's it! Easy as pie...

Best,
Karenne
education

p.s. **An alternative when working with very large groups is instead of using a pinboard you can use blu-tak to temporarily stick the coloured cards to the walls - encourage the students to start at different points of the timeline...and circulate.


Interesting articles related to this posting:  

• Cecilia Coelho, What comes out of unsuspecting students
  
• Michelle Worgan, Babbling Blackboards
• Shelly Terrell, Unplugged student-interaction whiteboards
• Emma Herrod, All aboard the board-train
• Mike Harrison, How do you scaffold?
• Luciana Podschun,  The wanderous whiteboard
• Dave Dodgson, Additon to a board meeting

I love hearing from you! Please add your thoughts if you enjoyed this piece or 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.

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 :-)

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.

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.

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.

Controlling the Conversation

The art of teaching conversation, part 3

Talking with your students is great fun, isn't it - especially when it's spontaneous and authentic, made up of real discussions regarding current issues.


As much as possible, as an EFL language teacher, you really want to steer your students away from the tired textbooks and encourage natural and fluent communication.

So why is this post called controlling the conversation?

All too frequently, students in wonderfully exciting dogme classes or Just Talking groups end up with the ability to converse comfortably - however after a while some cracks begin to show up.

• The students are fluent but their actual vocabulary/ grammar range is limited
  
• The students don't seem to be retaining the new vocabulary
  
• The students have become fluent but still make numerous mistakes and errors in accuracy

Has this happened to you too?


While breaking out of the book is important and teaching speaking is absolutely, in my mind and my students', the most important reason you're there with them physically, rather than handing over self-study books - the grammar and vocabulary which you can extract from the course books are the essential foundations of the house you're building, so mustn't be ignored.


A while back, I created a set of Conversation Control sheets (named by my students -control as in Quality Control) one for me and one for each student, prompting them to selectively record their own areas of weakness, concentrate on the vocabulary they want to retain and generally become more aware of their language development.


As you already know, it's a good idea to keep records, to have a tangible document which everyone can refer back to frequently over time, especially if you have to provide HR or your institute bosses with measurable data and want to acknowledge progress.



You can download them for free from this page:

Conversation Control Sheets

Here's a video I made explaining how to use these:




Tip: Binding up a stack of these easily turns them into a language journal.

Enjoy!

Useful links related to this posting:

• The role of pride in the language classroom
• Dealing with fossilized errors
• The role of anger in the language classroom
• Brainstorming topics for conversation classes

Great material for inspiring conversation in the classroom:
My website and those of my brilliant competitors, Jason West and Eric Roth:
Languages Out There and Compelling Conversations.

Best,
Karenne

The Price of Water in Airports - Using Anger to Create Discussion in an EFL Classroom

So there I was in Stuttgart Airport, minding my own business, dipping in and out of the book on randomness (The Black Swan) recommended to me by a banking student, waiting to board my flight to London.

An announcement interrupted the silence with the message that the flight was delayed.

Not being in a real rush, this didn't bother me.

Hmmm... felt a bit thirsty.

Walked on over to the big shiny drink dispenser where I was met by Coca-Cola's demand for €2.50.

€2.50
for what's essentially tap water and it struck me, as everything does these days, that aside from the fact this is annoying as all get out, it's the basis for a lesson with my EFL students and a blog posting.

It's these fundamental, ridiculous, all too prevalent, little ways that the world has changed into a dog-eat-dog society -something we all notice but aren't doing squat about, that I'm both blowing a fuse and showing you it's this very kind of thing that can initiate interesting conversations with your language learners.

• Nothing feels better than the occasional gripe, whinge and moan.

• Can your students complain, bitch and say what sucks, in English?

• Can they decry humanity?

Have they got the language skills to do this?

Seriously, discussing the things that piss us off is a very vital part of the way we communicate - and generally, this lexical set isn't featured in your textbooks, is it?

We wouldn't want to upset anyone.

• 'It annoys me when' is sorry, not 'It drives me up the wall'

• 'I can't stand it when' is not 'I've had it up to here'

• 'It frustrates me when' is not 'It gets on my nerves' or 'It makes me madder than a tick on a cow's back' (I think that's Caribbean) and it's not 'It makes my blood boil.'

For heaven's sake, let's treat our students like the adults they are.

Personally, I'm fed up to my back teeth of companies that think that it's okay to make €2.49 in profit out of one of my basic human rights. What if I was an old lady who needed to take a pill? What if I was a poor student who had to go home to visit a dying relative, using up my last pennies to catch a flight? I should just go without a drop to drink unless I fork over my hard earned cash to buy some kingpin yet another yacht?

I tell ya, I'd like to give Coca Cola a piece of my mind.



Feels great to have a good rant and blow off some steam, vent a bit, doesn't it?

I have a theory.

If any of you can back it up with a sweet SLA (2nd Language Acquistion) quote, that'd be great - Scott Thornbury, you're a wonderful walking quotapedia, got anything for me?

This is my not an academic theory:

Expressing anger appropriately (i.e. not always politely) and effectively (i.e. not the F word, Mr Pinker), is excessively difficult and in my opinion, it could well be one of the last steps to successfully mastering another language.

I know that this task would not be easy for me to do in Spanish and near on impossible in German. But what about when I need to? What if I'm meeting up with a group of colleagues and I want to tell them that something in our project is driving me nuts?

What do you think?

How would you use this lesson tip in a class? Would you tell a story like this first (using your own pet peeve or niggling issue - you need the passion) giving your students a list of idioms to follow along with?

Or would you present the lexis first (see bold vocabulary) and ask your learners to make a list of things that bother them then share your own story as part of the conversation?

Do let me know your thoughts and tips for using Anger in an EFL lesson.

Best,
Karenne

Teaching Speaking - Summary of Posts March 2009

Got students who repetitively make the same mistakes over and over and over?
Read this posting: Dealing with fossilized errors

Is ego affecting your students' abilities to communicate?
Pride in the classroom

Get your students talking about the things they're interested in talking about.
Student-centered teaching practices

Does learner style and intelligence affect students' communication abilities?
Your style, my style

How I got into student-centered teaching, kind of a travelogue:
Personally speaking

The Role of Pride in the Business English Classroom

At the British School in Tumbaco, I once had the brief and unfortunate experience of working for an arrogant pig (no longer employed there and no other word could describe this person) who thought that the Ecuadorian students and their parents were all stupid because they couldn’t speak to him in fluent English.

I remember very clearly his nose stuck about 100 meters in the air as he decried the entire Quiteño population devoid of intelligence while he himself, of course, could barely manage the words Cerveza or Baño.  Idiots aside, one of the things stopping communication from emerging in your adult language classrooms is fear.

Not just the fear of speaking but the fear of sounding stupid.

When teaching adults there is an extra, realistic, element: their fear of being judged as being inferior simply because they don’t know the right words nor how to use them appropriately.

So, today’s posting, part 3 on the art of teaching conversation is all about PRIDE.

As it’s probably this issue that accounts for the majority of students who end up quitting their lessons. Do you agree?

We've all got ego and those at the top have even more. I'm willing to bet you've all heard the following from your learners:

“I sounds unprofessional when I answer the phone. I speak not good so if no one help me, I put down the phone.” Croatian secretarial student.

“Sometimes my brain goes dead. The words I know go away completely and I suddenly don’t know what to say. When I remember it is too late, they are discussing something else.

I feel angry when this happens because in my language I can control the conversation, in English the people I am talking to control me.” German Business executive.

“Words are my life, my work. When I cannot use words I am not me.” Ecuadorian journalist.

Put yourself in their shoes!

Can you imagine what it must feel like to suddenly become that inadequate? 

Earlier that day they perhaps closed a €1.5million deal, are the kings and queens of their worlds yet when they swaggered into your English class they were suddenly unable to construct a simple sentence.

Pay special attention to your students’ lives, their prides about their lives and professions.

Think a little about the non-physical environment you create in the classroom and make efforts to keep it a safe, non-judgmental place: one where it is okay to try new challenges, make errors, be again five year old children or thirteen year old know-it-all-dummies. 

Your role as their English teacher is to nurture, to coach them, to give them the tools which will allow them to express themselves

as themselves

within a foreign language.

One of the things I often do, especially with my captains of Industry is reminding them that I wouldn’t have a job if they were already perfect in English.   No job, no money, no life. We laugh when I say “Come on, please make lots of mistakes so that I can buy more chocolate/ pay my rent/ go on holiday!”

Do you have any useful tricks up your sleeve - things you do or say to make sure your students are comfortable with their errors?

Think about what else you can do to help your students keep their egos intact while extracting and encouraging their English conversational abilities.

Do you praise them often? How?

Are you, yourself, busy learning something new so that you can remind yourself often about what it feels like to be the ‘idiot’ in the room?

Don’t hesitate to let us know your own tips and strategies for managing pride in the adult Business English classroom

To read part one: knowing who your learners are, come here.

To read part two: finding out what your students are interested in discussing, come here.

Conversation materials and activities: www.kalinago-english.com

Where’s the love, y’all?

Part 2 of the Art of Teaching Conversation To Language Learners. To read part 1 first come here.

Last night, after a tough day presenting a educational proposal to a rather tough crowd, I met up with some mates and had a brilliant night listening to a rock band in an off-the-beaten-track club in Marienplatz.

The rockers were Germans, all between the ages of 50 and 60, singing in English and they were shockingly good. In no time at all, we were thrown back in time, belting out the Eye of the Tiger at the top of our voices and all cares and worries were instantly gone.

The passion of these white-haired geezers rubbed off on us and we had the time of our lives.

Enough about me,

are your students comfortable speaking English?

In part one of this series, I mentioned that to effectively teach speaking, you need to know who your students are and how they learn, however, you also need to know what it is that makes them tick as human beings. You need to know what their passions are.

There are several factors which prevent communication and fluency from occurring in your classroom.

One of these is motivation.

What are your students in to?

What makes them wake up in the morning, what do they look forward to, who have they been, what hard stuff have they had to live through?

What makes them mad or frustrated, what do they hope will happen before the end of the year?

What knowledge do they have that they just can’t wait to tell you?

Don’t know?

Find out!

ASK because it is this emotional stuff that drives most of us human beings to be humans.

No one cares to talk about things they don’t care about.

Am I telling it to simply?

Seriously, are you in the mood to discuss HTML and blog design with me?

Okay, maybe if you’re a fellow blogger who landed on this page you and I could have a good old chinwag.

But the rest of you (I know because I can see the snores in my friends’ eyes or hear them down the phone) are not going to sit through a discussion like this, right? This is pretty much what handing over a textbook to your students and then following through from page 1 to page 112 sequentially does.

It’s also what happens when you make photocopies of Spotlight on topics not relevant to their lives or download news articles from the net that are based on your interests, not theirs.

Er, BORING!

Your students have their own

• 
  
  hobbies
• 
  
  families
• 
  
  interests
• 
  
  concerns
• 
  
  ambitions
• 
  
  responsibilities
• 
  
  stories
• 
  
  lives!

Of course, sometimes it can be all about you and your interests. Sometimes that’s interesting as it’s motivating to them to learn about who you are and how you tick because you’re the teacher and they’re curious.

But not all the time.

When you’re working with a textbook or other learning material, personalize it, make it about them, turn each topic around so that it has something to do with their lives and interests.

If you’re lucky enough not to be in a situation which requires a set course book then you can make your entire curriculum entirely about your students needs and interests.

Ask them what these are.

I couldn’t answer or participate in class because although I wanted to speak in English, I wasn’t interested. I didn’t know what to say, I had no relationship to the topic presented.
Beatrix W., Mercedes Bank, 2007 discussing why she didn’t participate in previous English lessons.

For students whose affective filter (the emotional reason a person doesn’t learn) is based on fear or low self-esteem, your very paying attention to their needs will break this down.

Be a little patient with them, consistently show that you care: enjoy their triumphs, compliment their successes and show that you are interested in their lives.

In Scott Thornbury’s excellent book, How To Teach Speaking, he suggests that

‘the conditions in which speaking occurs play a crucial role in determining the degree of fluency achievable.’

He goes on to lay these out as:

Cognitive – familiarity with the topic, the genre, the other people you are talking to, shared knowledge and processing demands.

Affective – feelings towards the topics and participants and self-consciousness.

Performance – being able to monitor your fellow speakers’ responses, opportunities to use gesture and eye-contact, degree of collaboration, planning and rehearsal time, time pressure and environmental conditions.

Find out what your students are in to.

To do this, here’s the link to grab a simple brainstorming sheet from my website.

And here’s a video of me (How embarrassing –a very bad hair day but decided to show it to y’all anyway).

In it, I’m in the final steps of a brainstorming session with my students – I do these every 8 to 10 weeks and it gets easier and more interesting each time.

I hope it helps you out with your own elicitation of topics.

Do let me know how it goes, plus of course, don’t hesitate to ask if you’ve got any questions.


Best,
Karenne
Read part one here or a related article here.


Watch the video we did when we were discussing the Sundance Film Festival, here.

Your style, my style - our ways of speaking

Part one: the art of teaching conversation to language learners

Starting off with the basics is probably a very good place to kick off this series (of at least 7 parts).

Do you know who your students are?

Do you know what they like? Do you know their learning styles and how they learn?

Knowing a little bit about the way people learn anything at all is one part of being a really great conversation teacher.

In general, it's one of those essential life skills, however, when used for teaching English it can help you to unlock your students' great gabbing skills.

Because let's face it, despite the fact that when they are sitting in your classroom they may appear to be all quiet and shy, nervous and uncommunicative, when they're out there with their friends, families, across the boardroom table or with their lovers they probably aren't so very quiet.

In their own language.

And this is probably true, more or less, across cultures.

Okay, okay, maybe some of them are always quiet. But here are some reasons they might not be talking a lot in their English lessons:

* the subject you brought to class isn't interesting.
* they don't like you.
* you aren't teaching them in the way they want you to.

There are many more reasons than the above - hence this is only part 1 - more in the next postings.


For now let's have a look at:

“you aren't teaching them in the way they want you to.”

Don’t switch off the computer just yet, it’s not an attack of your teaching habits. We’ve all been there. The thing is, we teachers, sorry - we humans, often think that the way we do something is the way it is always done, and if not, it should be!

So be honest:

Are you teaching in a way that is

like how they learn,

or like how you learn?

Read through this list of learner styles and have a think, not only about your learners and where they fall into this list, but also yourself and the way that you teach. There is a doorway into getting your students actively conversing, this is one of the approaches that just might work for you:

Visual learners

learn most from things they see.

They love making pictures of new words & phrases and are happy organizing their new vocabulary into little card boxes (color-coded, of course) with little drawings or diagrams to help remember what the words mean.

They enjoy photography and art. Usually they have a good sense of direction and can read maps. When they explain something to someone else, they use a piece of paper so that they can show you what they are trying to say.

Auditory/Aural learners

learn best from the things they hear.

They love music and often can sing well.

They listen to what other people have to say, enjoy audio books and when they are learning a language, they often hear the subtle differences in accents and pronunciation.

They use i-tunes to help them study, especially all the great podcasts.

Kinesthetic/ physical learners

learn most effectively when they use their hands and body, when they touch something.

Usually this type of learner also really enjoys sports and exercise and is very active.

They often talk with their hands - are physically very expressive people and learn from doing.

Activity and movement are what gets these students fired up and interested.

Verbal people

enjoy words.

They like writing things down, increasing and using their vocabulary. They like stories and storytelling.

And boy, do they ever love talking!





They enjoy making speeches and listening to other people's ideas, expressing opinions.

They like words that rhyme, idioms and puns and usually they make an effort to really know the meaning of words they’re using.

Logical people

really need life to make sense. They feel comfortable with security, with rules and systems and actually enjoy learning grammar – it helps them to understand the language and put it into a format.

They think about the placement of words.

They like knowing what’s coming next and being able to prepare –they need to know that what they’re learning is something they can use again in the future.

It goes without saying, right, that you can have visual learners who are verbal and visual learners who are logical.

The logical audio guys love Beethoven, the verbal audio guys like rap.

The next thing we'll have a look at is interpersonal and intrapersonal skills or attitudes. Here we’ll call them social learners and solitary learners:

Solitary learners prefer to study at home and feel good when they achieve something by themselves. They don't mind doing homework, actually like self-study books, think independently, enjoy quiet.

They are pretty good at self-analysis (if they used this blog posting as an activity it would be pretty easy for them, they know their learning styles already).

It’s always a good idea to let them know in advance what you want from them and allow them time to prepare an answer.

Usually, if you hang on for a bit after asking a question, they will surprise you with very well-thought out answers.

Social learners love hanging out in groups and learning together, being a part of a class or community where they can share what they know.

They pay attention to other people's feelings, enjoy making others laugh and learn. They love playing games and activities, doing projects where several people have to create something new, together.

More in the next postings:

Knowing about your students' styles can help you prepare dynamic and interesting lessons. You can get them chatting about the things they care about simply by paying attention to where the key fits and how to turn it.

I’ll be writing about activities to do with each style, discussing motivation in speaking, giving you a list of phrases inherent, making questions and having in-depth conversations, talking a little about cultural norms and how to provide good, measurable feedback to your language learners.

In the meantime don’t hesitate to give me your own feedback and help steer the direction of these postings by asking questions.

Best,
Karenne

p.s Would you like your students to have a look at this and think about some of the issues presented?
Student version: here


Part 2 on the art of teaching conversation to language learners, here.

More information:

See article that prompted this posting (by Jason West of Languages out there), here

Websites on learning styles:

Vark, a guide to learning styles
Learning styles online
Kolb’s learning styles on business balls.com

Books on learning styles:

Knowing Me, Knowing You: An Integrated Sociopsychology Guide to Personal Fulfilment & Better Relationships: An Integrated Socio-psychology Guide to Personal Fulfilment and Better Relationships



Knowing Me, Knowing You: Exploring Personality Type and Temperament

Helping Learners Learn: Exploring Strategy Instruction in Language Classrooms Across Europe (Language Learning (Ecml, Graz))

The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners (Merrill Education/ASCD College Textbooks)

Learner-Centered Classroom Practices and Assessments: Maximizing Student Motivation, Learning, and Achievement