Single White Weirdo: Authentic Texts with Lower Levels

Would you share a flat with this person?

I often use authentic texts with my intermediate learners. In recent lessons we have read a newspaper article from The Guardian, listened to poetry on The Poetry Channel, watched news reports on Youtube and searched for jobs on the Internet. The benefits of using authentic texts are evident: the teacher can select up- to- the- minute texts relevant to the interests and needs of the learners. What’s more, authentic texts are potentially far richer in new lexis than those found in your average course book: many of which contain texts abridged and adapted to ram home particular language points. 

 Up until reading Kyra Beguiristain’s article on using authentic texts with lower level learners, I had assumed that anyone below intermediate level would find authentic texts too linguistically complex to fathom. I was also worried that unabridged texts would ultimately have a demotivating effect on those struggling to come to grips with the basics of the language.

Yet, as Beguiristain points out, authentic doesn’t necessarily mean complex. There are many simple authentic texts out there: ranging from menus to street signs. Slightly longer texts can activate important scan and skim reading skills, which will in turn help learners on their journey towards autonomy. 

 Beguiristain suggests using flat share advertisements, as they provide such a rich source of lexis: words to describe houses, furniture, domestic appliances, and character, and I decided to try this out for myself with a low pre-intermediate class, as it seemed a  task which would help learners in their everyday lives.  

My next task, then, was to source some good ads. I went straight to www.flatshare.com, a brilliant website which has thousands of ads posted by flat hunters and flatmate hunters. The snag was this: in order to view the ads I had to masquerade as a flat hunter. This presented an ethical dilemma, as I did not want to waste other people’s time. So I wrote a profile as quickly as I could, taking care to make myself sound as weird as possible. I wrote that I required a room in East London with a sea view and professed a love of cat fish. Nobody, I assured myself, was going to bother following an ad like that up.

Later that evening, I was most surprised to receive a deluge of responses, two of which commented on my zany sense of humor! I guess I had not managed to sound quite weird enough... The messages were so friendly, and my potential flat mates sounded such fun, that for a moment I was seriously tempted to relocate to the East end of London and drink wine on the sofa with them.  But that might have been taking my research a little bit too far…

I quickly removed myself from the site after that, but had managed to find some good ads, which contained really useful language, which I might not have thought of teaching. I chose one flat hunter and then I found two flats: one sounded fun but filthy: the other clean but dull, with a strict sounding cleaning rota ( and some scary BLOCK CAPITALS) 

The learners had to read the adverts and choose the flat which they felt was best for the flat hunter. They were helped in this task by a fair bit of lexical input at the beginning (we discussed what we thought was important/unimportant when flat hunting and spoke about the kind of people we would like to live with) and I had prepared tables, so the learners were able to tick boxes describing what the flat hunter was looking for, and what points the two flats possessed.

This class have been learning about comparatives and superlatives recently, and this task provided the perfect opportunity for some revision of this language point. Finally, the learners wrote their own advertisements.  All in all, a successful exercise, and one which I plan to repeat with this class, using another example of an authentic text. 

References: Beguiristain, K. Using Authentic Texts at Lower Levels (IH Journal of Education and Development, September 2001)

Diary of a film project

There are so many reasons why I love working with film in my class. For one thing, a film project provides the class with a tangible end product which they can enjoy sharing with their friends in a way that they may be less likely to do with an essay or even a story they have written.  Film project work can involve and enthuse a range of learner intelligences:  musical (choosing the soundtrack) verbal (writing the script) kinaesthetic (choreographing), visual (designing the set and the costumes, story boarding) and interpersonal (directing, casting and providing constructive feedback). Furthermore, it provides the learners and teachers with a record of language spoken, making it easier to pin point areas for improvement in language and features of pronunciation.

Much of the time I use video cameras in class to practice language points. In this short film project, learners worked in groups to film news reports and interviews.  The rest of the class watched their peers' reports, and wrote up newspaper reports based on what they had seen and heard.

We are now keen to progress to the next level, and produce a film which really reflects the range of talents and abilities in the class. For the past week or so, the class have been working on developing characters and writing monologues for the film which rose out of the “Strange Wedding Guests” text book photograph (see previous post). 

The class have arrived at central characters: the bride (nice but dim with a hidden secret), the groom (nice but dim with a hidden secret of his own), the groom’s father (evil oil baron determined to put a stop the marriage) and finally, the bride’s ex boyfriend (jealous photographer, who has accepted payment from the father to secure photographic evidence of the bride’s unsuitability.)

We are lucky enough to have Clint Watt helping us on this project. Clint is a local playwright and film maker (check out Vycky on http://vimeo.com/clintie) and will be tutoring the learners in film and editing techniques. With Clint’s film expertise we hope to be able to produce a film we can be proud of. 

Tonight Clint visited the class for the first time. The learners described their characters’ motivations and personalities with conviction and I am looking forward to next Thursday’s lesson, when we will record the characters’ monologues. This will be excellent way of providing some intensive pronunciation coaching for the learners. Meanwhile the rest of the class will work with the scripts, adding stage directions and story boarding the action.

End of an era

The Old Library Centre, Lerwick

Tonight I taught my last ever lesson in the building where I have worked for the past three years.  Since 2009 I‘ve been based at what is locally referred to as “The Old Library” a slightly dilapidated nineteen sixties style building on the windiest street in Lerwick. The whole building has a welcoming, informal ambience, from the kettles and mugs in the vestibule to the cosy classrooms.  I have felt at home here since day one, and my learners have often expressed similar feelings.

Next week we’re moving to a brand new, custom built building down at the docks, which is beside our almost completed arts centre, and along from our award winning museum. There is a lot of light reflecting glass, and everything is shiny and freshly painted. Yet it all seems a bit impersonal, more imposing and less relaxed than the classrooms where we have been so happy.

Before leaving my house, I packed a garden trowel and a steel tin in my briefcase.  I felt that this valedictory lesson could provide a way of reflecting on what the class had learned since arriving in Shetland and enrolling on this English course.  I am also aware that we may well be approaching the end of an era: this is a class who have, in three years, made outstanding progress. Who knows if they will choose to brave the longer walk to class in the driving wind and rain of a Shetland winter night to an English class on which they are no longer utterly dependent?  I guess time will tell…

I unpacked the earth begrimed trowel and tin from my brief case and asked the class what we might use them for. Someone suggested that we might plant a flower, while others looked pretty blank.  I wrote time capsule on the board: and everyone started nodding in recognition.

We began by reflecting on our experiences in the building, and discussing what people digging up our capsule in fifty years time might find interesting. The class came up with the following questions:

·        
      When did you first come here?

·         What were your first impressions of this place?

·         How has your life changed since coming here?

·         What do you think life will be like in 2062?

The class then split into groups and discussed these questions for eight minutes, while I circulated, offering language input and facilitating the discussion. Learners then took it in turns to report back on one other learner’s answers, while someone else wrote down one of the sentences, using a reporting verb. Before long, we had a sentence for everyone:  Karmen said coming here was nerve wracking at first, while Rita thought that people would no longer read paper books in 2062. These sentences were placed in the capsule.

We emptied our pockets and filled our time capsule with coins, tickets, lists and a diary page. (It became clear that a latecomer to the class had not quite understood the time capsule concept when he placed his house keys in the tin!)

Finally we ventured out into the evening chill and buried our time capsule. The exact location of the time capsule, and its dig-up date, will be framed along with a photo of the class, and displayed in the new building: a reminder of a box of very happy memories. 

After the burial...

X marks the spot...

Way to Go - an approach to teaching directions...

It was the last half hour of tonight’s lesson with my multi lingual pre-intermediate class. We had finished a challenging reading text, the class was tired and the room was hot. Glancing at the course book I saw that the next page “Asking Directions” would fit perfectly into this time slot.  But we needed a break from reading and we needed to get moving. This is what we did.

1. I divided the group into pairs. I asked each person to write a short note to his/her partner. My only stipulations were that it had to be friendly, platonic and short (they had two minutes).

2. I took one half of each pair out of the room. Tonight I was teaching upstairs: I gestured downstairs and told them they could hide their note anywhere in the building. Urging them to remember where they had hidden their partner’s note I ran up the stairs to the second half of the group.

3. While we were waiting for the rest of the group to return I drew a diagram of a road on the board with left and right turns branching out and a stick man walking up the road. I started to brainstorm phrases such as go straight ahead, turn right, take the second on your left etc.

4. The first group returned and I repeated step two with the second half of the group. Meanwhile I ran back and repeated step three with the first half of the group.

5. I asked one learner to close her eyes.  I hid a magic marker under a book at the other side of the room (it was a fairly large room) while the others watched. The other learners then gave her directions to get to the pen.

6. Finally, the learners worked in their pairs to direct each other to their letters.   I observed them listening really carefully to each other’s directions. If they didn’t manage to find their letter the first time, I allowed them to try again with their partner’s help on the condition that there would be no gesturing, only spoken directions.

This worked well for a number of reasons. Firstly, the learners welcomed having the opportunity to move from their seats. Secondly, they were clearly very eager to find and read their notes! The building where I teach is fairly large (and empty at nights) and there are many nooks and crannies, which make it perfect for a spot of “hunt the note”.  However, I’m pretty sure that those working in less windy teaching contexts could even take this lesson outside!

One year on: My post Delta life

Board Work: Must dust down my action plan...

Last April, I embarked on a nine month journey towards ELT enlightenment: the DELTA course. Just over a year later seems as good a moment as any to reflect on how this experience has shaped me and my teaching.

Last April, I travelled to London to take part in the two week DELTA distance learning orientation course at International House. I have never felt as much of a yokel as I did on that sweltering spring evening at  Kings Cross Underground Station, tears welling up in my eyes as I struggled to figure out the Oyster card vending machine. 

I remained on the verge of tears throughout that first day in International House, as my cohort and I were subjected to what seemed like an endless barrage of acronyms: none of which I’d met before. LSAs, RSAs, LPs all sounded meaninglessly in my head. Everyone else seemed to be nodding knowingly, and making erudite contributions which hinted at years of experience in exotic locations at prestigious institutions.  Oh, what had I done? 

Day Two was an improvement. Although the many acronyms still baffled me, I began to feel the benefit of all the pre-course reading I had done before leaving Shetland. My cohort was fantastic, and the small teaching group I worked with, asides from being great fun, were the most supportive and generous people I could have hoped to meet. By the time my first observed lesson was in the bag, I was beginning to think that I might just get through the two weeks alive. Unfortunately, it was not just a case of surviving the fortnight.  What came next was infinitely harder: returning to “real life” in Shetland, and suddenly being faced with the task of reconciling an almost weekly deadline to family life and my day job (well, evening job in my case.) When I closed my eyes at the end of a long hard day, the course time table seemed stamped behind my eyelids: deadlines looming large and stretching to infinity. 

The distance diploma course is equivalent in length to a pregnancy, and the Delta was similar in many ways to my own ante natal experience. In the first three months I felt sick and fairly crabbit for a lot of the time. In my second DELTA trimester, I worried constantly and scanned the forums anxiously, seeking consolation in airing and sharing my doubts with peers.  Sleep eluded me, and I got into the habit of fixing myself midnight snacks.  On the homeward run, December the 7^th (my exam date) assumed a mythical significance in my brain: it would be the end of a journey, but also the beginning of a new one. Afterwards, there were cards and flowers and people telling me my life would never be the same again. 

Well, I can honestly say that embarking on the DELTA journey was well worth the effort despite the curve it has added to my spine, courtesy of all these hours spent hunched over a computer.  When I started out, I’m not sure if I realised how life changing it would be. My teaching has improved immeasurably: my lessons have a focus that was missing before, and my ability to answer learners’ questions on language has increased ten fold. Most importantly, my DELTA year afforded me the opportunity to assess my teaching values. The year enabled me to pin point not only the areas in which I needed to improve, but to recognise my strengths, and to affirm my belief in the whys of my teaching practice.

While I am one hundred per cent convinced of the many benefits that the DELTA has afforded me, I have to be wary of what Thornbury has termed as returning to my “default setting.” I am an untidy, chaotic person, and this is reflected in my board work. My local tutor repeatedly flagged this up in observations, and I smiled, nodded, and in the heat of the next  lesson,  forgot all about it- until the final (scary) external lesson observation where I concentrated on the board work to such an extent that I was almost in danger of ignoring what was going on in the class! 

One year on is, indeed, a good time to take stock of all I have learned. It may also be time to blow the dust off my final RSA and revisit these targets!

She was like...yeah, whatever....

It’s happened again.  I have ploughed my way through the pages on reported speech in the course book, watched my learners grind to a stand still as they struggled with backshift and deictic reference (“I’m fed up with this” → she said she was fed up with it) and dreamed up practice activities that were as close to everyday usage as I could imagine. Only to be hit with the thought : hold on, why have I not covered the (far simpler) contemporary way of reporting on conversations -  using direct speech with reporting expressions such as “like” and “goes”?

My children (age four and six) frequently recount entire conversations using “was like”. On the rare occasions they do use reported speech it is to upbraid me on promises I have broken: “But you said we could go swimming!”

“So she goes, don’t do that and I was like why not? And then she was like, yeah…whatever…” Exchanges such as this one can be heard everyday, and for the teacher and learner of English they have great appeal.  To paraphrase Phil Collins, no backshift required. 

This does not mean to say we should not teach reported speech to our learners. It is commonly found in written English (particularly newspaper reports) and used in spoken English by large numbers of  people who would regard expressions such as “like” and “go” to be sloppy, incorrect English.

However, like them or not, these expressions have become part of our language, and I believe we need to make sure our learners are able to use and understand them.

Strange Wedding Guests

It all started last night. Wednesday nights are usually Headway nights with my intermediate group of learners and we had just started Unit 12. This unit is entitled “Life’s Great Events” and begins by looking at reported speech through a dialogue in which a woman gets chatting to a rather smooth talking man at a wedding. It turns out later on that the man has been economical with the truth on a few counts, and that’s where the reported speech comes in: “But he said he was thirty!  He told me he’d never been married!” etc.

Anyway, as is usually the case, this rather inconsequential scenario is illustrated by a large photograph of a wedding scene.  However,  the photograph does not appear to have anything to do with the three characters in the dialogue I have just described.  On first glance, it looks like a typical course book photo peopled by smiling white teethed models with inoffensive facial features.  My learners and I looked at the picture and I elicited the usual vocabulary: bride, groom, confetti etc. Then someone pointed out the eerie figures standing in the cemetery, looking on.  A youth with a camera.  A middle aged man so pale he is almost transparent, standing  among the tomb stones and far removed from the rest of the party. And finally, a white clad woman in her fifties, watching the wedding party with a most curious look of rage and bitterness.

If you have access to this book, please do look at it closely so you will know I do not exaggerate. And then ask yourself: why? Is this the work of an ambitious course book photographer with secret ambitions to be the next Cartier Bresson? Or a disillusioned course book photographer who has failed to get into film school and amuses himself by injecting subversive elements into his photographs?

We may never know. I would, however, like to thank whoever took this photograph for providing such excellent inspiration for tonight’s lesson.  My learners chose the five most interesting people from it (the five people above, actually) and as a class we wrote detailed character profiles for each one, and created a story around the central relationships.  Each learner chose a character to write a dramatic monologue about, and we will continue these monologues next week.