Linguistics, the Internet +David Crystal

(translation key at bottom of post)

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

However, with the gr8st respkt,

xme cuz:

I must ?4u... 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DHNWHTB?

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

IztU?

.02, WDYT?

R u tchng txtspk 2 ur ELLs?


Karenne

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


Translation?
jes de important 1z: 

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


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

Common Courtesy and Conferences

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

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

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

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

To do so anyway, is nothing short of rude.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twitter is not Utopia.

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

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

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

The Greatest Master is HE who

makes the most masters.

This post is not an attempt to gazump Fogarty's brilliant blog, the Tao of Te(a)ching even if the quote is from his guru....

and, considering how many of my posts these days are dedicated to dogme, I wouldn't want to bore anyone with more of that, even if there is one particular post in the blogosphere which is indeed annoying me - in my opinion: another attempt to justify non-student-centered classrooms.

It's also not about a completely different yet equally controversial blog post in the 'sphere... despite being rushed off my feet these days, I have one eye cocked as I vaguely watch my screen unravel an embarrassing scramble of folks killing themselves to be listed or to get their best mates listed on the  so-called "TEFL:100 the list of "influencers..." 

Ya gotta wonder. 

Ya do.

Hallo, it's 

E

L

T...  

Oh.. for heaven's sake, we're in a bubble...a micro-sized niche of education.  Get a grip - it's not Shakespeare and no one is shaking the ground, earthquake style.   Sometimes when you read through the testosterone-driven fields of our profession, you'd almost think we were writing novels, movies and competing for Oscars...

Sigh.

Arrogance is such a big subject in my mind at the moment.  

Sidebar

I talked to a dear friend over the weekend... she was telling me she got accepted to IATEFL and was pretty excited - when she told me about her proposal, I said  

What a great idea! Sometimes it's better to be a big fish in a little pond because  if you'd gone for x...  well, you could pretty much disappear in that very big pond -

and with a smirk she retorted...  

OR you'd have to become a shark.

Sometimes, 

I wonder if that's what happened to some of these old guys... 

They just had to become reef dwellers.. you know the ones I mean, the ones that can not stop talking about themselves.    I wonder if they're afraid that the current and amazing PLN of talented teachers and presenters are going to clean come and eat them up.  So silly, there's sea enough for all of us.   

But I wonder if this will wind up being us, one day - today's explorers and adventurers today - are we going to wind up in twenty or thirty years time scared out of our wits of giving up the stage to the brighter sparks?

Somehow I don't think so, though, as for the most part we have another vision - we share and we care.  And like some of my favourite folks  out there in the 'verse (Harmer, Greenall, Thornbury, Wilson) we'll join in and like them, we'll support: we'll build and we'll continue learning.

Sidebar 2

All this.. you know the Greatest Master stuff... gotta say, it was certainly something to mull over on the way home from the very best conference I've ever attended: TESOL France - Kudos Ms Cagnol - there were just so many incredibly talented presenters there and boy, what an audience!    

Active, lively, interested teachers - filled with super questions, determined to get down to the pedagogy (andragogy) behind all the flash and dash of tech.  

Engaged with the content and profession.

Except... for one old guy.  

A "master"... who hogged the stage in the evening's entertainment event.  

How much more impressed we would have been with him if instead of doing the

GeeLook@Mi 

all night, 

instead,

he'd allowed the real talent to shine.

How much more impressed with him we would all have been if he'd help create masters...

By the way, did I ever tell you I've swum with sharks?  

Twice, actually, once by accident...  months and months later I was sitting in a pub telling some Aussies that I had loved swimming in Nara Inlet at 6 in the morning because I was the only one there at that hour and they said, you mean the place with the tiger sharks? 

And then once on purpose, off the coast of Sipadan...  and although I was initally fascinated by their focus and musculed mass I soon saw their greyness, their lack of intelligence and dead eyes,  and turned to concentrate on the incredibly beautiful turtles.  (That wasn't an analogy, btw, it's the way it was).

Hmmm... this is an convoluted post, isn't it.  I don't dare press draft though as it will disappear and become draft #53...

The horse you were riding on

 
Once you 

see the horse 

you were riding on

is dead:

get off.

Dakota tribal wisdom.


Previous posts you might find interesting:
Where are all the horseshoe makers now? 
8 radical technologies that rocked the world...
Blogging, chatting and discussions online

more...Technology in teaching English
Dogme ELT

Laugh a little:
http://www.pollsb.com/polls/p11735-beating_dead_horse_what

The culture of the DM inbox

For those of you who aren't sure what a DM is, the letters refer to the private messaging service on Twitter, the

Direct Message

For the most part, ever since I've been on the site, it's been mainly used for sending and receiving

• Thank yous for RTs
• Thank yous for other stuff :)
• Follow up messages on projects, conferences or activities
• Sending or receiving congratulatory messages when a Twitterer's done something great
• Giving/receiving feedback on typos or on anything that needs feedback
• Arranging to meet-up with friends/working colleagues
• Asking and answering questions related to blogging, tweeting, web2.0
• Sending or receiving links to examples of lessons using edtech
• Personal conversations with people I "know"/ have spent a lot of time with / like on Twitter or in real life

But recently I've been receiving links to people's blogs (completely out of context to any conversation and from total "strangers") sometimes out of niche, sometimes even asking me to RT it for them; questions on what my interests and activities are and basically stuff, well that, well, really... belongs either in the main twitter stream or in an email once we've gotten to know each other...

The DMs were vaguely bothering me until I realized that actually, it's culture, isn't it... different people and their different identities and their relationships to space and intimacy - so hmmm, while I now get it I have to admit that I'm also a bit culturally challenged to be honest - do I respond with a smart retort saying - um, like, you know, don't spam me...

Or do I say "hey, we don't know each other, not at all and as a general rule, what I do in my private time is hardly any of your business..."  but that feels awfully rude...

Do I ignore?

Do I unfollow?

Has this sort of thing happened to you too - how do you feel about the nature of conversations which occur in your DM inbox?  Do you have any communicative "borders" you don't like crossed?

What would you do in my shoes?

Useful links related to this posting: 
ELT Guide to Twitter
Paid to Tweet
Thnx 4 ur RTs
In the space of 140 characters

Best, Karenne
education

p.s the danger of doing a post like this, as I've learned in the past, is that when you don't name names and you don't give specifics, sometimes people think that you're personally criticizing them ... so, um, if you are one of my darling PLN and we've been friends for a while now or even if you're new and I've written you back/we've had a conversation then do understand please that obviously I'm not talking about you...  :-) (but you can DM me to check if you like, LOL)

Dogme meets Coca Cola

For anyone whose clicked on over here without really knowing or understanding what dogme is, you might enjoy reading the older posts first (linked above).  For the ELTers, who've heard me rabbit on and on before, let me tell you all about how I came to realize that dogme and Coke have something in common...

It kicked off in the dogme yahoo!group.   A long time member said  "anything 'online' has absolutely nothing to do with the materials-free ethos which is Dogme."

Now, I've heard this argument so often before that this time I couldn't even be bothered with the illogical bias against technology as every single other generation has been frightened of changes too... didn't stop them from coming though...  (yawn)

at the end of the day...

some people in the world have access to computers and some people don't  (yeah, and... are we expected to feel so sad for them that we should not move with the times but wait patiently for them to catch up or do we just get on with it  - I mean go work for or donate money to a charity  if the social conscience itches I say, that would be heaps more effective),  because let's face it,  in a few years, just like Coca Cola, most people will have a computer* just down the road or maybe even on their mobile phone...

some teachers use computers in their classroom
and
some teachers don't
(yawn!)...

I mean why bother pretending that life as we know it hasn't changed., draaaassssttttiiiicccalllllly in the last ten years, five years, three years...

personally, it's become so completely normalized in my own teaching practices that I could hardly give a hoot whether or not another teacher finds this a good thing or not.   I don't make value judgments of those who're still use whiteboards instead of laptops or IWBs - in fact blackboards are very much still around  in some German community colleges (along with the beamer on the wall) and chalk, well chalk is still a staple in any local stationers. 

I like computers.
(Your turn to yawn!)

I find them useful and supportive and they happen to suit my approach to teaching and those of lots of others but so what?

After all, my favorite chocolate is made of 80% cocoa beans, comes from Ecuador and has a cherry chili flavored nougat center. Does it matter than many other people would rather eat a flavored milk product  which only smiled at a cocoa bean for a micro-second before it was drowned in a vat of sugar?

Not a jot, it doesn't.

Anyway, I didn't start this article to talk about chocolate or have a dig at some guy who thinks that the computer is the end of civilization, but instead to compare Coca-Cola to Dogme.

Dear Scott and Luke, forgive me...

Regular Coke = 139 calories in a 33cl bottle.

Coke Light = 1.3 calories

Coke Zero = 0 calories.


The calories, while negligible, count.

Materials Lite 

is not 

Materials Zero.

The reason why we churn out students after 8 years of language lessons in English, still not speaking English, is because in class they're loaded up with a whole bunch of stuff they don't need and not given enough chance to express themselves about what they do need.

It's not the students.

Nope.

It's not the students.

It might, oooooh, dangerous territory, not be, indeed, just the book's fault, in part it might be the teacher's too.  Thing is, Meddings and Thornbury even included a section in Teaching Unplugged on working with coursebooks and I've heard many a teacher say they see parallels in dogme to many a methodology and of course,  Thornbury did acquiesce, somewhat, at SEETA last year on the issues of Dogme2.0.

If a teacher is personalizing a text to extract the students own thoughts on it, creating an environment of communication, enabling the emergence of new language and then scaffolding this process, then heck, the use of the book doesn't matter, what matters is it's been used lightly to go deeply...

see, the crux of the issue, the matter, the philosophy, the dogma, once the gold foil wrapper has been unwrapped and all that is that

Dogme

is 
not 
a

methodology,

it's 
an 

approach. 

It's the how you teach, not the what or the with what you teach.
It's keeping the classroom all about the participants within.


Useful links related to this posting:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/top25.htm

Best,
Karenne
image credit, by Lvklock on wikimedia commons

education

Bottom Up vs Top Down English Language Teaching

They're really not getting it.

They think coursebooks can be student-centered.

Well, let me see if I can make it the slightest bit clearer: 

• if you walk into class with an objective that is anything other than extracting language from students and then building on that (scaffolding) whether you've got a book in your hands or not - 

• if you walk into class with an aim that is anything other than working with your students' needs, wishes and wants and working the kinks out of their grammatical weaknesses - 

• if you're building a sort of random lexis, based on the unit of a book, and you've no actual idea whether or not they will be able to put that language to use -

• if you're spending more than 50% of your class time in activities that don't require your students to speak to each other about themselves and their lives then you're teaching top-down.

If that sits good with you, so be it.

But if you want to teach English from the bottom up: Join the dogme group, read Meddings and Thornbury's book Teaching Unplugged and/or read my previous posts on dogme and those of my esteemed colleagues around the globe, do a google search on dogme ELT.

Because of all the things it is or isn't, it's not a "style."

Best, Karenne
imagecredit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunface13/415520633/sizes/m/

Interesting link

(There's a poll going on the Lexiophiles site to determine a list of the best language blogs, see my post about that here so if you haven't yet voted and you don't this is really totally tacky of me to ask, do please click and visit the site to let them know :-) thanks muchly).

Facebook and the Edu-Marketers

Am I the only person out there in social-media-land who really, really does not want to be friended by companies on Facebook?

I get random invitations, quite frequently, popping up with the accompanying "34 mutual friends" peer-pressure type inspired messages.

So, what - how does the strategy go, exactly... did they comb through their profiles,  saw me flash up in their friends' friends lists and thought to themselves: oh hey, she's a blogger! 



If I friend her then she can promote my business for me because she just loves writing about education so she's bound to notice our wonderful amazing products and become just absolutely passionate about our company, and, and... and with a relative glee, clicked on that add as a friend button - with no need for any type of accompanying message.

But who are they: 

is it a Jennifer, Janey or Jeremy behind their logo?   

I presume that I won't suddenly be having some kind of level access to their own photo albums, movie genre preferences or their deep and darkest private thoughts.  They'll have individual private profiles for that sort of stuff or are they hoping to share great TED videos with me?  

Going to be sending me the latest rap songs, which they know I'll be loving?

Doubt it.

The upside: 

I probably won't have to scroll through their Mafia War, Farmville or Jewel-thingie transactions.

The downside:  

They'll get to see me having a whinge or a moan about whatever is going on in my life that isn't all roses on whatever day that it isn't all roses.  They'll see the music I like and if a friend (you know, a real friend) or a family member (you know, a real person who is connected to me via flesh and blood) is going through something and I comment on their lives' passing by then they'll see my thoughts in whatever comment it is that I want to leave behind.  In whatever way I openly communicate within my intimate circle they'll see...

OOOOOOOOh.  Nooooooo.....

This gives me the hiiii biii jiiiiibies and I don't doubt that would give my friends and families the hiiii biiii jiiiibies too if I were to allow this sort of access to these edu-marketers.  Eee-yuck.

Now, if the desire for the connect is not because I'm an edublogger, is it simply that I am just some random teacher especially selected to receive their spam..?  I mean why not simply invite me to an official group page 'cause Facebook is about 

a) friends 

b) family 

c) professional colleagues who I've allowed into my life and thoughts and intimate circle in order that we may become friends: real friends.   

It is not random.

Why are these companies opting for the "friend" route - why the let's have access to everything you think route?   Why haven't they opted for a page or a group?  I join Groups.  I don't mind groups, check on them too, sometimes, when I have time.

Please don't tell me that these educational companies don't or won't spam us via Facebook.  Let's face it, usually, as a general rule, on the whole, they have done absolutely no research into web2.0 best practices,  (they have a Ph.D in Marketing from 1972 so they don't need to read up on what the self-prescribed gurus have declared best practices) and aren't interested in how social-networking works at all... they've just seen the numbers amassing and gotten wind of that ephemeral concept with its esoteric acronym... and with tongues a-salivating and dollar-signs a-blinking have felt a temptation way too yummy to resist and have come on in a-braying as they enter. 

You think I'm just ranting?

In the last two weeks, one of my PLN decided to tag me in a painting, not of me, but basically, essentially this piece of her art would now show up as my face when someone decides to google  image search me.  I tried to explain this to the artist as I felt that it was not actually an intended offense but she simply couldn't see the problem because, basically, she is in love with her art and has absolutely no problem with my name lending her some kudos.   

I'm not stupid, she wanted my friends list to see her art.

I have a problem with that.

I think it is dishonest and blatant marketing within my private space.

I untagged myself.

One of my PLN befriended one of my real friends.   My real friend since I was 14, wrote to check if this person was  an okay person to become friends with...  so I told her that yes, I thought so but honestly, it does make me feel a little weird, silly and nervous.    I'm crossing my fingers that it was actually okay, that the interest is genuine and that they can become real friends too. 

One very dear person in my PLN wrote a blog article - a very good blog article - but she tagged  me in it and wrote as a header that read This Article is about You.   Now it wasn't about me.  It was about her and about  her development of her PLN which is great, but basically, by doing this, tagging me in this way drove my curious real friends and my  wanting-to-know-what's-going-on-in-my-life-real-family to her blog page to find out just what had been said about the Karenne they love. 

These people are not potential members of her PLN.  

These people aren't my 

Personal or Passionately Loving 

or 

my Professional Learning Network.

These people are my Friends and Family. 

Not cool.  

Seriously.  

I untagged myself.

So what's next:  Mr company-who-wants-to-be-my-friend?  What will you be tagging me in? 

Sigh, I guess, I suppose instead of ranting and whingeing about all this, with you on my blog page, I could of course, just click on the ignore button whenever I receive these requests.  Actually I do do this, but after seeing the 34-mutual-friends on the last one, I just really had to put it out there and ask:

Why would anyone let a random company 

have access to one's private 

photos and thoughts?

To The Wall?

Doesn't anyone else feel like this is a total invasion of privacy?



Update 31 May 2010
hat tip to Petra Pointer for sharing this with me on Facebook



Useful related links

• More of my blog postings on social networking
• Face on or face off 
• Death by PLN, Darren Ellliot 
• Sabrina de Vita on Facebook vs Twitter
• Janet Bianchini on Facebook Privacy Issues
• Graham Stanley on Private or Public
• Keyboard friends by Carl Robinson

Finding this blog on Facebook:
via Facebook, Networked Blogs
to receive regular updates on what I've been posting on this blog, go Kalinago Group
If you want to be my friend on Facebook, it is okay, just do a search on my name and write me a personal message saying who you are, don't just click on the add as a friend button and for blessed sake, respect my world, my life...  :)

Best,
Karenne
imagecredit: I want privacy by bejealousofme, flickr





(There's a poll going on the Lexiophiles site to determine a list of the best language blogs, see my post about that here so if you haven't yet voted and you don't this is really totally tacky of me to ask, do please click and visit the site to let them know :-) thanks muchly).

I'm Not Afraid: Banish the Word and U give it its Power

Ooooh, I'm musing on a Tuesday.

That's, in my editorial calendar, not allowed (did you know that I have one of those?  For a private edu-blog, yeah...) because I save my deep thinking for Sundays.

But, see... thing is, I tweeted out this fantastic link to Enimem's lastest video:

If you are reading my blog in a country where this youtube video is not accessible, 

the song I am discussing is I'm Not Afraid by Enimem

and many of the teachers who saw the link immediately saw it's potential because the song is so fuckin' rich: each line filled with delicious collocations and examples of real life and its real life street pronunciation; subliminal messages in idioms which almost make a joke of the listener.  

It's backed by a solid, deep, belly-hitting beat which is powered by rhythmic personal storytelling as Enimem begs his fans for their forgiveness, like a gambling man promising to never pick up the cards again.   There is so much here for teachers to exploit  (the language / the story of his past: his despair, depression, obsessions: predictions for his future; the business of fame and how it wears on those who reach it)  sparking off numerous authentic conversations.  

Can Shakespeare reach teenagers or young adults like this piece could?

Oh...wait, are you still reeling - did you stop to blush in horror at the use of my phrase above, the so fuckin' rich, each..?  Are you sitting in front of your computer gob-smacked, in shock, that OMG, you saw me just use that word, out-loud and in-public, on my blog? 

Why?

Don't worry, though, it's probably for exactly the same reason that this absolutely amazing poetic resource won't get used by many teachers and it sucks.  Really, it does....

Because if you listened to this song (and to the majority of Rap) and you don't ever use it because you're worried your students' parents and/or your DOS will raise wagging fingers at the inappropriate language - can I just say: please - you think they don't know those words anyway?  Check out Chaucer desalinated, take a good ole gander at Shakespeare's insults:

Our language may have been cleaned and spruced up around the 18th Century, but you know what, those words only attained power as a result.

Without a doubt, undoubtedly

And all those who look down on me

I'm tearing down your balcony

Enimen, 2010

Thoughts? 


Useful links related to this posting:

• Pinker: The Language of Swearing***
• The F-bomb by Anne Hodgson for Spotlight Magazine
• The origins of British Swear Words, BBC
• The history of American Swear Words, CBS
• Urban Dictionary see blog post by Chris Cattaneo
• Flocabulary: a new movement in teaching through Rap music (thanks Teresa)
• $trictly 4 my teacherz  (blog with rap songs)
• Shakespeare was, like, the ultimate rapper (thanks Nicky)
  

Best, Karenne
image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smileham/3543823314/sizes/m/

p.s. follow the hyperlinked links in the text too :-)
p.p.s see Practical English Usage, Swan, page 573-578
p.p.p.s. thanks to my bro' Martin for sharing the vid with me on Facebook

Face On or Face Off

Facebook =

a) close friends
b) family and family of family
c) teachers I know
d) teachers I don't know
e) people I went to school with
f) people I've met along my travels
g) students
h) people who began as tweeters but are now my friends





See a pattern?

My inner circle.

People I respect.



Seriously, so here it is. My Saturday Rant.

"Bob," "Angie" and "John" want to connect with me on Facebook using images they downloaded from Microsoft ClipArt. They look like:

• jungle animals
• inanimate objects
• sunset landscapes

Or, scandal of scandal, they came online as their

(don't gasp out loud if you're in a public place):

• their company logo

LinkedIn is like a CV on the internet, it contains the details of one's professional life.

Twitter is where one's PPLN resides: the personal and professional converge creating an awesome learning network.

Ning is the deepener of all those experiences.



But Facebook?

Facebook is where you are you.




And, for the most part, everyone in this new country understands this... the people I'm connected with there, are themselves. Their picture is of them, circa today, smiling or frowning or laughing.

Yes... there are a few exceptions: one of the teachers who used to work for me has a picture of her toes. One friend is currently sporting her newly born child (why do mothers do this?), another has up her wedding picture and she does look awfully pretty in it.

The ex-husband? He is dark-shaded, looking like he's Ecuador's answer to Al Pacino.

Recently an older family member got cold feet and took down all of her pictures returning to the Facebook silhouette. My sister's the surf she was riding last summer and a favorite professional colleague is a tea pot...

Yes, a tea pot.

My inner circle can wear and do whatever they like.


In the teaching field, one of my 'connections' is a logo on Twitter, however, knowing how I feel about logos in general decided to reach out and invite me into her life on FB.

When I got the invite, I didn't jet off to go check out all her photos (I tend not to when you're not someone I "know") however novelty did make me go take a look at her main wall. There I found the pic of her and her husband: you know what, they look like really "good folk" - it was nice to have the connect so now I have warm and fuzzy feelings about her, whether or not her bosses want her to be on Twitter in drag.

In fact, I have really warm feelings about her company simply because she's employed there.

A handful of lovely teachers and other edu-bloggers have also chosen to let me in and I've let them into mine.

It's nice knowing there are others just like me out there, interested in the same stuff, challenged by the same stuff... so if opening my world means they see my "private" sphere I don't mind: we come together as equals, from around the globe, are subject to the same revelations, frustrations, thoughts and status updates - our private and public lives meshed.

• How do you feel about the anonymous in web 2.0?
• Do you worry about your privacy?
• What sort of preventive measures do you use?
• Do you keep certain sites/profiles just for certain people?

But back to Bob, Angie, John and random Joe who all think it's cool to click on that "add as a friend" button while sporting some miscellaneous avatar (so they can keep, well, er, like you know their life private while they troll around)...

I've got just one thing to say:


Face on

or

Face off.


Best,
Karenne

Useful links related to this posting:

• ELT Guide to Twitter
• ELT Guide to LinkedIn
• ELT Guide to Delicious
• ELT Guide to Blogging
• BELTfree Ning

• Join us at the Kalinago English Facebook Group
  
• or Follow this blog via Networked Blogs
  

Medius bloggin'

I have these random thoughts...

Sometimes they're troubling questions or fascinating revelations - sometimes I decide a few days later that the idea was nothing more than a load of tosh... but sometimes those thoughts turn into full blown pieces, develop on into rants or even series of rants...

Sometimes, something I read in an ELT magazine or a business book or a PLN's tweet made me go 'huh?' and three hours later my head's still spinning... or I've suddenly clicked and realized how wrong I was about a blah, blah philosophy... sometimes these ideas turn into macro-sized posts... sometimes I send them out into the Twitterverse....

But sometimes I need a bit more space than the microblogging 140 character limitation to express these ponderings and sometimes I just don't have the time to put in 2 - 6 hours on fleshing something out, properly linking on etc (which is probably why I have so many drafts in the queue)... and sometimes I've read something that is just like wow! and I want to share it.

So I'm thinking I'm going to start daily media blogging...


Here's the first:

What's the thing with collecting numbers?

Each time I see someone tweeting out the number of followers they've got or the number of hits a blog (post) received or the number of members currently in their Ning yet no word on what the exact function of collecting the members is... or how many people attended a presentation on blah, blah or who've watched their youtube video...

I think: And?

Why do so many of us measure success by counting things?

Does it come from when we migrated to caves - when we counted the dug-up yams before the soil froze over in order to know exactly how many of us would survive? Or was it all about having the most bananas and attracting the prettiest ape ensuring the survival of our own gene pool?

Is it because quality itself is uncountable?

Counting the bananas and yams while not determining whether they'll ripen or poison still tells someone something?

Jes' wondering...

Best,
Karenne

Reasons I don't like most textbooks (7)

They're not about the learners.

So, er...mm.... why exactly are 2 billion people learning English?





To make their lives "better."

And er, what exactly must they do if they are to successfully achieve this goal?

They must learn how to talk in English.

About

• their lives.
• their jobs.
• their deals.
• their responsibilities.
  
• their interests.
• their hobbies.
• their families.
• their needs.
• their desires.
• their passions.
  
• their concerns.
• their ideas.
• their musings.
• their boundaries.
  

Anything else served up, which has an objective providing less than this, is less than enough.

Put the student in the book to get him out of the book.


Useful links related to this posting:
Reasons I don't like most textbooks, series 1-6
The dogma of dogme
F is for Fluency (Scott Thornbury)

Best,
Karenne

Reasons I don't like most textbooks (6)

They're too expensive.

Best,
Karenne

More reasons I don't like most textbooks?
(scroll past this one).


p.s. I'm going to do a Ken Wilson on you: there is a post... coming up quite soon, breaking down the real costs in the average production of the average course book and explaining how it all works... but in the meantime, d'ya think books are worth the price we pay for them? Why / why not?

How much do they cost in your country? How is this price determined? Do you or your school ever not buy books due to their cost?

An Unsung Hero in ELT: Sean Banville

Something really upset me a few days ago and I haven't been able to shake it off.

I tweeted my congratulations to Sean Banville on his Pecha Kucha (PK) presentation in the recent Virtual Round Table and then received a DM asking me why, that didn't I realize that Sean's PK was basically a self-promo.

Shocked at the audacity of this, I retorted with an example of someone else in the field of ELT - someone who like Sean I do not know personally, but who in my opinion, presents with an endless stream of "me, me, me."

This launched a defense of that person initially distracting me from the original DM telling me off.

The more I thought about it though, the more it annoyed me and despite the fact that these few weeks I am a busy hamster spinning in a cage of gridlocked deadlines, I'm taking five to write up this rant.

How many other people in the field of ELT work on a website, nay, 5 websites - consistently and constantly producing free materials for students and teachers for five years?

Not me, and I do my part ;-).

How many are there out there who contribute to this level without convenient connnections through their international institutions or paid publishing contracts? How many produce endless authentic lesson plans simply out of a love a sharing?

Not touring the conference circuit, without a sales and marketing staff, without a publisher to pave the way and get his work out there - and earning.. well, the money he makes from all this boils down to a handful of appreciative teachers who occasionally donate and click on his google ads.

That is to say, virtually nothing.

That someone who I respect highly could think the presentation of his websites shameless pisses me off: Sean is one our unsung heroes and for me, a true VIP.

Visit his sites and let me know what you think:

• Breaking News English
• ESL discussions
• ESL holiday lessons
• Famous people
• Listen a minute

Best,
Karenne

Reasons I don't like most textbooks (5)

Take a deep breath.

Go on, blow out hard.

I'm bringing a unicorn into the balloon factory.

Although many of you will have read the following before, some agreeing and some not, many of you haven't.

Many of you intuitively know what I'm about to say is so true, so spot on - you've felt it for years but haven't put a finger on what it was that was bothering you so.

And for all of those who've thought about this and totally disagree, I ask of you to do one thing:

Before responding, answer not as a language teacher, not as an educator of other language teachers, not as a linguist or someone doing a masters in Second Language Acquisition writing up essays based on other people's theories... I ask of you not to respond as a materials writer, not as an editor or publisher.

I ask you to respond as

A Language Learner.


What's wrong with most textbooks that teach languages?

Ever gone on a lovely vacation to a hot country and thought to yourself, as you desperately ravaged the pharmacy shelves for that product you need RIGHT now and wondered to yourself if, in a feeble attempt to describe your present debilitating condition to the pharmacist who is looking down at you in bemusement, that really before you open your mouth you'd better use the present perfect or would a present perfect continuous be more suitable in this case - oh lord, how to explain what you've taken the last time you were struck: the past simple or past perfect or now, wait - will you add one of those demonstratives, is the verb reflexive??? Heck, how do you conjugate it? You need the bathroom.

Ever thought as you negotiated your taxes with a tough looking bureaucrat that perhaps you should have used a mixed conditional instead of that 3rd?

Ever whispered one of those slippery modals to a lover then pondered, as you lay back in discontent, whether or not your sentence adequately communicated permission, suggestion, past ability, the potentiality of possibility... worth trying again?

No?

Really, no? Me neither.



Why do we teach language like it's math?

What's wrong with most textbooks?

The grammar based syllabus.

Best,
Karenne

More reasons I really don't like most coursebooks:

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four

Reasons I don't like most textbooks (4)

One size fits all?

• The reason you can not make the perfect textbook is because our students aren't perfect: they do not fit into boxes or packages.
  

• Our students differ in their ages, occupations, wants and needs and we pay attention to that.

If you are a publisher or textbook author stumbling across this blog... I have more to say:


If you please, why do you write:

This course is the ideal choice for anyone who needs to make
presentations in English.

When, actually, what you mean is:

This course has been designed for young adults, probably between the ages of 18 and 23, studying Business. It will help them learn, in our seven-step approach, to develop an authentic style and apply these skills later on in their future working lives.

You make me look like a fool when I walk in to my managers and CEOs with your amateurish guide... you make me waste my and their hard-earned cash when you tell me that it's for anyone who needs to make presentations and you send me combing the internet for real advice.

Please... in future, please make sure the back of your books carry an appropriate and adequate description of its intended audience.

Also, while you're here - what are you doing to the CEFR: you know, that standardized guide which was supposed to erase all the confusion you created in what is a false beginner, what is elementary vs. what is pre-intermediate and intermediate knowledge of English?

Any chance you could all have a little sit down together and hash out an agreement so that the one size fits all could actually apply here?

Thanks.

Best,
Karenne

Useful links related to this posting:
Reasons (1)
Reasons (2)
Reasons (3)

Reasons I don't like most textbooks (3)

You have to be in ELT to get this...

• Whenever I go to a conference book stand or book fair I'm not looking for the almost exact replica of the book I want to replace. I am looking for something better.
  

• It is not possible to recreate Headway. It is not possible to sell as many copies as the Soars did in their heyday.
  

• There is no such thing as brand loyalty when it comes to textbooks. Most TEFL teachers have no idea who publishes what or by whom they're written and we don't care.

• Originality goes a really long way. Like all the way to over here.
  

Useful links related to this posting:
Reasons I don't like most textbooks 1
Reasons I don't like most textbooks 2

Best,
Karenne

NOTE: Due to the fact that I have linked Clandfield's latest book. I would like to state for public record that not only do I not work for Macmillan, nor have I ever, my relationship to Clandfield is: he observed me teaching once, took my four page feedback on his Straightforward book with good humour and I've attended one of his workshops.

Reasons I don't like most text books (2)

• cultural incompatibility

If we were to do a demographic poll of all textbooks written for the TEFL industry in the last 25 years, then we would probably find out that an outstanding majority have been written by:


1. people who look like Mr Bean and who share gender
2. people from within Mr Bean's age group
3. people who actually think that Rowan Atkinson is funny


And yet, were we to do a demographic poll on all the learners of English we would discover...


Best,
Karenne

see also: reasons I don't like most textbooks (1)
reasons I don't like most textbooks(3)

Reasons I don't like coursebooks (1)

• crowded pages.

Best,
Karenne

2nd reason

The Dogma of Dogme

I still need to answer one of my reader's questions on what do with her problem class but as I'll be starting off my posting with

"As a dogmeist..."

I thought I'd better give you a heads up on what dogme actually is.

The term dogme is borrowed from a film movement initiated by Lars von Trier in a backlash against the overuse of the monomyth, Journey of the Hero, uncovered by Joseph Campbell and made famous by Chris Vogler.

Have you ever been watching a film and had a premoniton or two: the 'oh, right, everything in his natural world is just about to change, sigh. I bet he'll meet an old man right about now who'll tell him what he has to do.

Or, wait, time for some suffering - he probably won't win this fight, ah here's the pretty girl, they'll hook up - whoops, he's going to learn a lesson now and finally, everything will be right again.'


Done that?

Well, basically, that's because you've been subconsciously aware of the mythic structure all along.

Its plot points are the structure of most Hollywood movies, post 70's, and is the backbone of Matrix, Star Wars, The Terminator, The Pursuit of Happyness, Whale Rider, The Lion King or even American Quilt.


However, before I bore you, what does all of this have to do with textbooks, methodology and teaching English?



Er, pick up the nearest course book on your desk. Next time you're in the library, compare it against Headway and against just about anything produced since. Whether they've added a handful of unrealistic case studies or dilemmas, got gap fills or pointless vocabulary exercises, been jam-packed with grammar explanations or don't have any, they're all playing off a similar structure.

Somewhere in the deep dungeons of most ELT publishing houses, someone whose name we don't know, but at a random guess he's not a socio-linguist, has done some kind of very-necessary-to-show-on-the-page-so-it-feels-and-looks-like-Headway-because-the-teachers-might-be-afraid-if-it's-different kind of breakdown which goes -- well, if I knew the plot points I'd tell you.

Now there's no doubt in my mind that someone much cleverer out there than me is reading this and has figured out the structure of your average textbook so I'll just ask go on ahead and tell you: share it with us!

I mean do the publishers even care that the unit themes they've chosen have no direct relationship to the following one?

That they rarely have anything to do with our students' lives?

That the lexis presented on one page doesn't show up in the next unit or even the one after that?

That there's no space on the page to write?

That from one house to another they're parodies of each other?

More in kin with Howard the Duck, The Postman, Dumb & Dumberer than Citizen Kane.

Anyhoo, let me get on with talking about the alternative to all this.


Dogme in ELT

Back in '00, Scott Thornbury highjacked the phrase dogme to launch his, often accused-of-being-Luddite methodology, burn-the-books-and-talk-to-the-students message, based on frustration and an anti-wizardry battle yelp for teaching practices to become more student-centered.

Thornbury defined teaching without a course book as:

• conversation driven
• materials light and
• focusing on emergent language

Sharing subjects and themes, which

• are relevant to the learner
• provide a space for the voice of the learner
• scaffold, shape and support the students' conversations
  
• pay attention to features of the emergent language.

In his latest book, Teaching Unplugged, co-authored with Luke Meddings, they stress that teaching practices should

• encourage a dialogic process,
  
• acknowledge that knowledge is co-constructed
• empower the learner
  
• engage the learners and
• trigger the learning process which is already there

Basically adding a bit more of Before Sunrise to the classroom.

In the same way that Christopher Columbus was not the first to 'discover' the Caribbean and Alexander Graham Bell didn't invent the telephone, Thornbury and Meddings neither invented nor discovered the process of teaching without coursebooks.

Teachers all over the world have been working without textbooks for a very long time (probably as long as English teachers have been around) some because

• there is no choice nor access to materials
• their students have requested this
  
• they like supplementary materials, making their own stuff and others
  
• are simply not happy with the standardization, monomythic production of many an ELT publisher.

Are you one of these teachers?

In the way that Bell made the phone sexy (or was that Steve from Apple?) and Columbus renamed the islands and charted maps so we could all go have great vacations, Thornbury and Medding's explorations into this theme are turning teaching sans parachute into a very cool dialogic methodology so I, for one, am very happy referring to myself as a dogmeist.


Which makes it kind of difficult to answer S.F's question regarding what she should do with her runaway class.

Would you like to help me answer her?


What about you?

Want to join the 'movement'? Then follow the links below and/or buy Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching (Amazon UK / US here)
- with its in-depth analysis of the practice and relevancy of dogme in our modern classrooms: highly readable, packed with teaching tips and lesson ideas
(some new, some very 700 Classroom Activities
and some surprisingly innovative).

Or do you think this whole dogme thing is a load of tosh? Whatever your views, feel free to add in your 2c, nickels or dimes by clicking on the comments below.

Useful links related to this posting:

Dogme, the movement

• Dogme (film genre)
• Technology and culture, the film reader
  
• Interview with Lars von Trier (article)
• Interview with Lars von Trier (video)
  
• Dogme'00 in music (post Luddite parody)
  

Dogme in ELT

• What does a dogme classroom look like?
  
• Nik Peachey' interview with Scott Thornbury while in SecondLife
  
• Article by Scott Thornbury on Dogme
• Article by Luke Meddings on Dogme
  
• Article on Dogme 2.0 by Howard Vickers
• A teacher's view of Dogme (strict dogmeist in a way I'm not)
  
• The Dogme Yahoo Group
• Delta Publishing ELT methodology /contents+sample pages of Teaching Unplugged
  

Best,
Karenne
p.s. dogme is the danish word for dogma

n.b Most of the photographs on this page are by Pareerica on Flickr and a very special thanks must go to her for allowing these fabulous pics to be used under a creative commons license.


Update 13 May 2009

And now there's even Dogme ICT, spearheaded by Gavin Dudeney, looks rather tempting! More AI than Dogville!