Dead class

Posted in Uncategorized on 05/31/2009 06:59 pm by David-Overton

I love an audience. That’s definitely one of the best parts of teaching. I talk to my students basically the same way I talk to my friends: casually, informally, personally. Yeah, there’s some risk because there’s real communication; I don’t see eye to eye with everyone, but it’s good to hear other views, and I learn. Teaching really is a two-way street: I learn as well. If not, teaching would be dead boring.

 

Also, teacher talk does involve the challenge and creativity of continuously recycling the language that comes up in class. For example, in a recent class we came across the expression “it cracks me up”, and now I use it every chance I get.

 

Anyway, it can be a bit disconcerting having a class that doesn’t respond to you. That’s the case of a largish advanced class I have at the academy where I work. This definitely isn’t the first non-forthcoming class I’ve had in my life, so it doesn’t like stop me dead in my tracks. It does, however, make me wonder why they’re this way.

 

I generally assume it’s because that’s just they way they are. Every class has its personality. It’s a very curious thing how the combination of personalities in a group make up a personality for the whole group, and it could be that, just like people, you get on better with some groups than with others.

 

On the other hand, it may be a sign of a weak group. Students sometimes work up through the levels and get into an advanced class, but really their level is lower and I’m talking over their heads; or they have a complex and don’t want to say anything in front of the whole class for fear of looking bad.

 

Yet another possibility is the group isn’t “jelling”. Sometimes the students just haven’t really bonded and don’t feel much trust, which is decidedly unhelpful when having whole class discussions.

 

Or I could take it personally and think they don’t really appreciate my sense of humor or my teacher talk and would rather be doing something else. I think there really is something to the idea that some groups have chemistry and some don’t. I’ve been around the block a few times and have experienced both, and everything in between.

 

Nobody is immune. I remember I was once substituting for my boss for a week or so, and the class complained to me about this person. This has actually happened to me more than once. It’s a weird role reversal. What am I supposed to do, have a “chat” with my boss? I think you’ve got to take this sort of thing in stride: you just can’t make everyone happy all the time.

 

The way I see it, one thing a teacher can always do is make sure they’re learning. Even if the chemistry is not there, they should never be able to say they’re not progressing. I personally wouldn’t be caught dead without having clear lesson aims.

 

So for me good teaching means everybody’s learning, the teacher as well as the students. It means you and your students are taking a trip in your car. You’re going somewhere and steering clear of dead-end streets. If your air-conditioner isn’t working, it’s less comfortable, but role down the windows and make the best of it, and make sure you get to where you’re going.

 

What students want

Posted in Methodology on 05/31/2009 06:57 pm by David-Overton

The other day one of my students, a girl from South America, came up to me after class and asked if she could “make a suggestion”, and she got the collocation right!; though I suppose a native speaker might have said something like, “David, I was wondering if I could have a word with you”. Then I’d have known I was in trouble. Anyway, she suggested we spend less time on fluency activities and more on grammar. OK, I have to admit I wasn’t expecting that: I was nonplussed, dumbfounded and flabbergasted.

 

But maybe I shouldn’t have been. I’ve been seeing more non-Spaniards trickling into my classrooms of late, especially South Americans. In that continent they seem to have an abundance of original version films and TV series, and many tell me they’ve been to the States to visit friends or go shopping (they tend to be from the upper-crust of their society). And I imagine their English classes are more skills focused and less grammar oriented than here in Spain, because they don’t tend to do so well on written level tests, but their fluency and vocabulary are obviously significantly better. You know, they get by quite well with basic English, but they don’t put in the auxiliary verbs and other fine points (which show up like a sore thumb on exams like First Certificate, which focuses quite heavily on accuracy), so many of them want to plug up holes and do Murphy type exercises.

 

Facing a classroom of Spaniards and South Americans gives the teacher an extra challenge because their needs are so different. Often Spaniards want to put into practice what they’ve already studied to pass exams in school. And they really enjoy it if these activities are bouncy and fun, along the lines of debates, role plays and songs.

 

But I’ll never forget a class I had years ago, back when you rarely saw foreigners in Spain (except for tourists), which had basically turned into a bouncy fun conversation class. They were smiling and having fun, but one day they took me off guard by telling me they didn’t think they were progressing. I think they meant they were  putting into practice what they already knew, but they wanted to learn more as well!

 

That class shaped the way I teach to this day because now I make sure that, no matter what, they feel they come away from the class with something. I want them to be able to say something like “today I learnt some useful vocabulary” or “now I understand the use of gerunds and infinitives a little better”. This is besides the more skillsy stuff like listening and speaking.

 

So when I teach a class, the first thing is to make sure they learn something. This is the language exposure phase which often involves a reading where we notice some characteristics of the language. After that I try to squeeze in a listening in every class (which usually involves a language focus as well), and finally a speaking stage.

 

So teaching becomes a game of constantly making little adjustments to keep your students as happy as possible. And sometimes their needs and wants can vary quite a bit, as my Latin American student mentioned above. In her class I’ll do my best to slot in some grammar work, and hope she appreciates the rest. Teaching means catering to everybody’s needs.

 

Second edition

Posted in Free lance teaching on 05/31/2009 06:55 pm by David-Overton

Another little surprise today. We’re using In Company intermediate for one of my classes and the company is buying a copy for all the students. As it was sold out at the local English bookshop, the company ordered copies and they came in today, and surprise surprise!, it’s a “new edition”. It’s been changed around enough to make it awkward for me to keep on using the old recording.

 

I checked at the bookshop and they still haven’t got the updated CD, so this puts me in a bind: my students have new books but I can’t get the listenings for it. They couldn’t tell me how much it costs either, but I imagine it’ll be in the ballpark of 50 euros along with a teacher’s book (which I don’t really need). The course book costs 32 euros, so looks like the damages will be upwards of 80 euros for the whole shebang. Oh well, I guess this is my little stimulus package to help reactivate the economy, though I may have to do some deficit spending. So much for thrift.

 

The teaching game

Posted in The teacher's lot on 05/31/2009 06:53 pm by David-Overton

For me the incident below where I came up with my own lead-in for a reading shows one of the best parts of being an EFL teacher: the creativity! This helps stave off teacher burnout and keeps things interesting.

 

The downside of course is that you’ll never get rich teaching English; in fact the truth is that it’s a low-paying, dead-end job, though I’d venture to say many jobs are. Also as a free-lance teacher (autónomo), and in many academies, your pay fluctuates according to how many hours you work, so holidays are periods of unemployment which you have to try and save up for. This means if you don’t play your cards right, at Christmas, Easter and August instead of letting your hair down, you may be tightening your belt. And good luck trying to move up the totem pole, that’s about as likely as snow in Madrid. Well, it does happen, but the competition is fierce for the few good positions available.

 

The other side of the coin is that TEFL teachers are normally able to find work even in fairly dark economic times. I’m certainly grateful I’ve got a job now, even living on a shoestring budget. And my experience is that most TEFL teachers are vocational, at least those who have stuck it out and been doing it for a while.

 

It’s really nice finding people who love their work. I do, yet I’d hesitate to recommend it to anybody who needs to make ends meet. In fact, I know teachers who don’t consider it “a real job”. It actually does sometimes feel more like a hobby. What you need is a sugar daddy (or a sugar momma), a partner who’s pulling in fat paychecks while you’re teaching for some extra money, the contact with people, and for fun. Yes, teaching English is fun!

 

Gadgets and gizmos

Posted in Free lance teaching, Methodology on 05/31/2009 06:51 pm by David-Overton

To be truthful I’ve never felt any special inclination to have the latest gadgets and gizmos. In fact I think I was the last kid on the block to get a mobile phone. Now usually if you’ve got a class in a company they’ve got a CD player around somewhere you can use, but not this company where I taught today, so I bring along these portable speakers and, get this, a CD player. Gasp! I hope you’re not shocked, this obviously being ancient, caveman technology. It actually belongs to my daughter, who of course now wouldn’t be caught dead with it. So I thought, what the heck, I’ll use it in my class. But I guess it had already expired, reached its planned obsolescence, because today it sort of moaned, closed its LED eyes, and went on to a better life.

 

Luckily I was saved by the abundant supplementary material I lug around with me everywhere I go, this would be photocopied supplementary material, happily not dependent on transistors and laser beams. I do try to keep things simple.

 

After this class I had about an hour and a half free before my next class, and being a beautiful sunny day, I was walking around the streets of Madrid and popped into an electronics shop. On all of the screens there was some cartoon movie with, I guess they’re called, synthetic people along the lines of toy story. It was amazing.

 

So off I go to the academy where I teach, which as it happens has computers with internet access in the classrooms and projectors. So I start thinking that today we’re doing a reading on the use of technology in the cinema, and I realize a film like the one I just saw would be a perfect lead-in. I kick myself for not asking the shop assistant what the film was.

 

But I think, no problem. I’ll get to class a few minutes early and see what I can find on youtube. So I find something that looks pretty cool. Some woman is running along a planet and gets to what I suppose is her spaceship-like home. But it’s really impressive, very realistic looking, but I only have a chance to watch the first minute of it. So class starts and finally it’s time to show the film. So the woman gets to her home and starts talking to the others, in French! It was a French cartoon!

 

Well, that was just a little embarrassing, but I guess it served the purpose of reminding the students of the changes brought about by technology in the field of animation, especially the introduction, but the French was embarrassing. In any case, with youtube you can just click on something else, which I did. It didn’t really go that badly, it just must have been obvious to the students I was improvising. In any case, I believe in living dangerously. What I did was much more entertaining than just going straight to the reading if I’d been too chicken to do something more imaginative because I wasn’t a hundred percent sure of myself.

 

Super students

Posted in Free lance teaching, The Lexical Approach on 05/31/2009 06:49 pm by David-Overton

I always kick off my classes with revision cards. On slips of paper I write sentences in which I have underlined the target lexical item. Students cover the underlined word with their finger and try to elicit the word from their partner, a bit like taboo. I really like it: you pick several flowers with one cut (a humanistic variation of the more violent two-birds-with-one-stone idiom). Students warm up and revise, and it gives you (the teacher) a chance to settle in. Anyway, today my students had their homework out and immediate starting commenting on it. And I wondered, is this a coincidence or are they trying to tell me something?

 

This is an hour long class with two proficiency students; I mean they’ve already passed that IQ test, so they’re awesome language learners, lexical superstars, testimony of what hours of effective language teaching can do. Or did they reach these linguistics heights in spite of us? Maybe I should ask them.

 

Anyway, they always ace the lexis because they’re such responsible, conscientious, hardworking students: homework’s always done, lexis revised, they’re primed and ready to go: for an hour. By the way, don’t get me wrong. I don’t even take hour-long classes unless they’re back-to-back with another class, which is the case here.

 

Anyway, maybe these two super students don’t really need my lexis cards. Besides, in an hour class you have to move right along if you want to give them language work, a listening, and some fluency work. When it comes to the ABCs of language teaching, I think the A could be “adapt”. I’ll try to think of something for B and C.

 

 

Mixed-abilities

Posted in Free lance teaching on 05/31/2009 06:46 pm by David-Overton

Today I taught a mixed-ability class in a company, but not the same one I wrote about before: this is as common as sunshine in the desert! Anyway, their levels range from pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate, and attendance is pretty irregular, in fact sometimes just one comes, which was the case today. At a solid upper-intermediate level, today’s student’s probably the strongest.

 

Luckily when I teach these classes I bring about five different class plans, or more accurately, material for five different classes, often from Instant Ideas. If something goes well in a class, I’ll keep a photocopy of it in my folder, and in an emergency or an unexpected situation, out it comes, just like from Mary Poppins’ bag.

 

I mainly use the book when several people come: it’s an intermediate business English book so it’s an average of their levels. But if you just get one, it’s nice to give them somewhat of a tailor-made class. This invariably includes a nice chat with ongoing friendly feedback (correction), which is a real luxury for them, not easy to come by, so they’re appreciative. And as they say, the bottom line is always happy students.

 

 

Response

 

Thanks for your insights about freelance teaching! One question, with these kinds of mixed-level classes, don’t you find that it is very hard to keep a sort of continuity within the class? The students have different levels to start with, and then half of them never come or each one comes very irregularly. How do you deal with this when looking at your class as a whole (rather than looking at each day individually)?

 

My response

 

You’re absolutely right: continuity is hard to come by, though in the end there are two that actually come fairly regularly to this particur class, which I still have by the way, so logically the class is aimed at them. By the way, they have different levels, one being intermediate while the other actually is probably post First Certificate, that is, advanced.

 

But luckily business books today tend to have a broad scope, which makes them ideal for mixed abitility classes. In this case I’m using In Company intermediate, which I’m happy with. The students are presented with a broad range of language and each student “notices” what he or she is ready to notice. My more advanced student is reinforcing her knowledge and picking up business collocations, while the other is focussing on more general lexis.

 

Again, this sort of broad focus, that is, exposing students to lexically rich texts, means that everyone gets something out of the class, though the poor attenders will have much less contact with the language and so progress less. Actually for them it’s not about progressing but not losing what they already have.

 

I hope I’ve answered your question.

 

Speaking of dictionaries

Posted in Uncategorized on 05/31/2009 06:41 pm by David-Overton

Speaking of dictionaries, I corrected some of my students writing today where they had to talk about where they live, and some of them said things like “I live in a residential quarter of Madrid”. Now I would never say that. I’d say “I live in a residential neighborhood in Madrid”, yet the dictionary supports the students’ meaning, so I can’t “correct” it. I’ll try to remember to ask my British colleagues if that sounds right to them.

 

Speaking of this sort of thing, I remember once a student came up with some sort of bizarre expression which I piously corrected. “No no, that’s not right” I said. But she told me she’d just gotten back from Australia and that that was the most normal expression there. Oops. Put my foot into, didn’t I. “Correcting” (feedback) can be tricky business. Oh well, we’ve all got to be wrong sometimes, don’t we?

 

Blindsided

Posted in Uncategorized on 05/31/2009 06:39 pm by David-Overton

I’ve been zapped, thrown a curve ball, blindsided. Today I was teaching a class in the academy where I work, which is my base, my home, where I mingle with other English teaching professions like myself; and where I get my hands on extra material and teacher’s books and the like I don’t want to shell out my own money on. It’s not a bad deal.

 

Anyway, we were doing a quick homework check, so I said something like, “You’ve got the answers in your book, so just ask me any questions you have about vocabulary or whatever, but make it snappy, we’ve got a lot of material to get through today.” Now advance lazy teachers like myself rarely actually go through the workbooks to see everything the students have toiled long and hard over. So a student asks me, “What does “balaclava” mean? Now I very much hate to admit this, but I’ve never heard this term before and was in fact half wondering if she was taking the piss out of me as the Brits so charmingly say. But she was serious. And I was in trouble.

 

Now as an advanced teacher this is not the first time I’ve been faced with a baffling query whilst facing a class full of students eagerly awaiting my enlightening words. I tried to maintain a facade of composure, but I think they must have sensed my befuddlement when I stammered, “Uh…what?!!” But luckily this timid girl meekly said, “I looked it up. It means “pasamontaña” in Spanish.”

 

Saved by the brainy girl! And of course! When asked a question like that, you should look sternly at your students and say, “Does anybody know?” If nobody does, you look at them as if it were their fault for not looking it up, give the offending student a dictionary (happily available in all the classrooms where I work) and demand she look it up.

 

Dictionaries are great: they’re my friend. I wish I had an electronic one for my private classes, but alas they’re too dear for my pocketbook, at least the good ones are. Maybe one day the God of English teachers will deign to bestow one upon me.

 

Thy classes shalt be lively and dynamic

Posted in Free lance teaching, Methodology on 05/31/2009 06:38 pm by David-Overton

Beep, beep, danger, danger: one of my classes today was a drudgery. I’ve violated one of the cardinal rules of English language teaching: thy classes shalt be lively and dynamic, at least a good bit of it.

 

Lets start from the beginning. This is a new class I got in a good company, which basically offered English classes to its employees, so I suppose they asked them, “Who wants English classes?” Five of them signed up, they found me on Madrid Teacher, the pay is pretty reasonable, definitely better than through an academy, it’s not too far from my home, so viola, I’m on it, I meet them, they seem like nice people, and now I’m their “profe”.

 

They said their level was basically intermediate, and that in fact is a pretty good average, because their skills range from pre-intermediate to upper intermediate. Therein lies the main difficulty. The weaker students have a bit of a complex, in fact one of them spends most of the time furiously taking notes and is reluctant to surface to answer questions and participate. The stronger ones end up dominating so I have to “nominate” the weaker ones to force them to participate. I also find myself slowing down for them, so things take longer than I anticipate. In fact in today’s class the main problem was I didn’t get to the fluency activity at the end.

 

This is actually a pretty good group in the sense that when they told me what they wanted they said mainly vocabulary, listening comprehension and speaking. That sounds pretty good to me, but again the problem is getting bogged down in the language input phase of things; that’s the part that ends up a drudgery. But at least they understand the importance of that phase. Yet here in Spain opportunities to put your English into practice are not abundant, so the fluency stages are important.

 

The way I see it, the upshot here is that I’m not really going to be able to use the book “properly”; that is, the group goes too slowly to get to the fluency activity in the book, so I’ll have to bring in my own, which may not necessarily always tie in with the book thematically, grammatically or lexically. But supplementing is as old as the hills, or as old as English teaching.

 
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