What does it mean to "know" a word?

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

the person I was speaking to suddenly said  

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

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

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

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

(pick me! pick me!) 

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

I mean what to answer with first? 

There isn't a one right answer.

There are many.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Useful links:

• Previous posts on vocabulary

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

But going back to my original opening... 

What does it mean to know something?

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

at a different time and place.  

You know it when you own it.

Agree?

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

Karenne

Let's sell a car...

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

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

But I'm not a book publisher.

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

And I like to get my students speaking.

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

- 0 -

But on to the teaching point, shall we?

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

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

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


I'll give you an example:

The book I'm currently using... 

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

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

The standard textbook speaking activity.

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

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

two'd, 

three'd 

and 

four'd it...

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

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

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

and...

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

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

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


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

Best,
Karenne
education

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

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

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.

The History and The Future of the Internet -supplementing your business English textbook with video

As a Business English teacher, you've definitely stumbled across units in textbooks which use the history of the Internet as their introductory theme.

However, they're not always up-2-date or interactive, are they?

Not their fault - history isn't always that interesting especially when it's a subject which is still evolving.

But if you've been looking ahead, racking your brain, thinking about just how to jazz up your next lesson on the internet - yet keep the content and language you've got to teach - then here's an amazing documentary video produced by Melih Bilgil.

Mr Bilgil is a German freelance graphic designer - he made the video (using PICOL icons which he also created) for his diploma in graphic design at FH-Mainz University of Applied Sciences. You can pick up your own copy here (not sure how to download, come here).

One of the complaints revolving around this video is that it only goes up to the 1990's. See article on Time (which you can read yourself to help brief you so you can spice up the discussion with your students) :Brief history of the Internet


My rough lesson plan/ tips for a lesson on the History of the Internet would be:

• Use the video as a pre-task activity before working with the textbook. There's a lot of great jargon which you can extract (or better yet, get your students to note down key business and IT words and phrases themselves).

• Do the exercises in your textbook, possibly skipping what's now out-of-date or redundant.

• Write the words "The Future of the Internet" on the board and challenge your students to fill in the blanks by talking about web2.0, web3.0 and web3D plus the developments they anticipate.
  

• Present this slideshow from Slideshare:

Future Web Trends - at Innovation series with Jimmy Wales

View more presentations from matthewbuckland. (tags: wales jimmy)

• Discuss the ideas presented - what do your students think - do they agree, disagree? Do they have any examples to put forth, opinions, fears?

Business English Textbooks that have internet related units:

• InCompany, Intermediate, unit 13: Technology
• InCompany, Intermediate, 2ndEdition, unit 13: Entering the blogosphere
• InCompany, Upper Intermediate, unit 7: Information age
• InCompany, Upper Intermediate, unit 18: Shaping the future
• Intelligent Business, Upper Intermediate, unit 4: Information
• International Express, Upper Intermediate, Unit 5: The Internet
• IT Matters, Unit 4: The Internet
• Market Leader, Upper Intermediate, unit 7: E-commerce
• Market Leader, Intermediate, unit 13: Innovation
• The Business, Upper Intermediate, Unit 2: IT Solutions
• Technical English, Unit 12: Innovations

• Do you know of any other books/units? Add them in the comments section.
  

If you're not using a textbook and would like to do this as a lesson:
***for IT students mainly, your normal groups might seriously go to sleep if you try doing this with them.
Upper Int/B2

• Wikipedia, The Internet
• Internet society

• Download and then split up the text you've chosen to use.
  

• Divide students into pairs or groups, handing out different sections to different students to read - encourage them to highlight difficult vocabulary and check meanings.
  

• While they're reading, put some or all of the following categories on the board:
  

~ Dates:
1957-1973 / 1974 - 1983 / 1984-1990 /
1991 - 1995 / 1996 +today
~ Uses of the internet
~ Global impact and cultural implications
~ Difficult terminology
~ Your own idea here

• Get your students to walk around the room telling each other what they did/ learned about and what happened in those events.

• Show the video.

• Discuss.
  

• Elicit answers on where the future of the internet's leading.
  

• Show the slideshare.

• Discuss - what was new, interesting?
  

Extending this lesson:

• Watch the video in detail, pausing often, looking for all collocations that go with the word: network. Then get your students to explain what the differences are between the phrases - basically teaching you the terminology!
  

• Create a mural depicting the time-line/ evolution of the internet using items they learned from the video, using the language taught in the textbook and vocabulary and ideas from the slideshare. (Group activity, project work).

• Use my SimplyConversationsTM and SimplyQuestTM material - question prompt cards and post-task activity: shop here
  

Technology - €1.99 (individual trainers) and €4,99 (institutes)
Email and the Internet - €1.49 and €3.99

Do you have another idea for exploiting these materials and turning them into a really effective and interesting lesson?

Share your tips with all of us by clicking on the comments button - if you've already created a great worksheet of your own (or stumbled across one on the 'net) and you'd like to pass on the details, link it here, (even if it's commercial) no problem, am happy for you to share!

Best,
Karenne

p.s More blended learning/TwIT tips here (scroll down). More lesson tips, here
To print only this page, click on the title and then scroll down to the Eco-safe button and hit print as .pdf.