Post Manchester Iatefl Reflections

My number one theme from the Conference

Two weeks have now slipped past since I came back from the Iatefl conference (How’s that for a Present Perfect?) and as time goes by certain things recur or fall into place in the somewhat fragmented jigsaw puzzle of my mind. I think the overall theme this year for me at the conference was the issue of where learning takes place, how muchof it is formal, tradional and how much, on the other hand, is informal, incidental, accidental if you like. The question that I keep asking myself is this: where does learning happen?

In fact incidental, informal learning was a theme that came up in the LTSig Pre Conference event where Agnes Kukulska-Hulme’s talked about it, describing the way some learners, who need to integrate themselves into new communities, with new languages, access the language they need for very specific contexts such as “going to a hospital appointment”. She discussed ways of encouraging this  technologically by means of various teaching apps being developed in the projects she is participating in.

The very first conference plenary also touched on this subject as Donald Freeman wondered whether we as teachers are “frozen in thought” driven by the myths of our profession, which, as he said, are not right or wrong but may be both useful in that they are th course we chart, but also limiting if we do not see that other things are going on outside that charted territory. He questioned two points related to the issue of learning in his presentation:

1) there is direct causality between teaching and learning: teaching causes learning;

2) The teacher has “sole” responsibility for the process;

Most of us would have our doubts about these, because we all see on a daily basis that what our students learn may be what we are attempting to teach, but very often is not. Most of us also subscribe to the idea of learner-centred teaching, but the point he was making is that what is taught is often chosen by the teacher, the course book, the programme or what is required to pass exams, and rarely by what the learner truly wants or needs to learn. Of course we all have to respect syllabi, and exam requirements but these could be our map and we can also keep our eyes open to see what is going on around us as we chart this course. Freeman talked about “managing what you can’t control” when you teach but perhaps we should go even further and explore what we can’t control or help the learners control what they want to.

In my Context

In my context, which is not one of learners seeking to integrate themselves into a new world, but rather one of large classes of university students doing lessons that are often held  in traditional classrooms, with a traditional syllabus and traditional expectations, I find myself increasingly asking the question I mentioned above: “Where is learning happening?”. Michael Wesch’s project in 2007 posed the same question in the YouTube video below, asking why learning was “up there” on the blackboard, rather than “down here” where the learners are actually sitting.

So much of what we do in class pays lip service to the notion of being learner centred, I think. But how learner-centred is it? Exams play a central role in the motivation and organisation of study in our university and, therefore, learning comes about often as a sort of by-product of exam preparation. In a world of continual cost cutting and shrinking course hours the focus is often on what is in the exam and what to do to prepare for it. This is almost inevitably a top-down process.

Added to this the belief in online self-access courses as a sort of general panacea and we are charting a route towards disaster rather than a real learning process. In my version of blended learning, as yoou probably already know, I believe in integrating the online work with the face to face work in what I hope is a smooth “blend”. Learners participate in the online classroom space developing online dialogues with each other and with me which help to direct our course along its charted path but without being afraid to stop and visit some fertile islands and sandy beaches along the way.

My own Beliefs

Despite the limitations of my own context I am a firm believer in learner centred classrooms and in empowering learners to help them towards autonomy, if that is what they want. One of the other things that I have brought back from the conference, for instance, is a renewed enthusiasm for the use of copora in class. My own learners often misunderstand why certain language choices just don’t work, and they will not always have their teacher there to explain things to them. To teach them how to be able to access a corpus, then, so that they can work these things out for themselves is an essential step in this journey towards autonomy and empowerment. This is easy to say but not so easy to explain so I’d now like to share one example of how we are doing this in class working on an error which is extremely widespread amony italian L1 speakers.

 

 

An example of Student/Teacher  Online Dialogue

In a recent piece of work, for instance one student wrote:

” If anyone had the possibility of choosing their dream house…”

I questioned the use of “had the possibility” and this was the exchange that followed. It was an asynchronous dialogue that was developed over two weeks in the chat box function of our digital classroom, which is, in itself, a step towards more learner centred work, I think:

 

Me:

Possibility is the wrong choice here both because of the meaning and the verb/noun collocation . Why?

‘Chance or opportunity’ would both work better here. Check the verb patterns for these too.

Student 

I do not know why.
to have the chance to do
to have the opportunity of doing

Me

Yes, those verb patterns work, but what about possibility?

Student 

I guess “possibility of doing” as I wrote. I cannot figure out why it is not correct.

Student 

Why is it incorrect?

 Me

Because the meaning of possibility is related to negative things that might happen. It does not collocate with the verb “have” but often with “there is” or “there might be” and intellectual or “thinking/discussing” verbs. 

The verb pattern afterwards is right: of + ing/ or a verbal phrase. So an appropriate use of “possibility” is, for example: “there is a strong possibility that it might rain this afternoon”.

Enabling Learners to Answer their own Questions

 

As I answered this last question I couldn’t help thinking that it would be so much more helpful if that student (and his classmates) knew how to analyse language in a corpus for themselves as all these things are quite easy to see if you examine examples of “possibility” for its meaning and usage. You need to know, however, what to look for. So that is what we did in class, integrating the need that had emerged online into classroom work that would, hopefully, empower some students to use this tool for themselves independently.

Using Concordance Lines in class

Concordance lines are the examples limited to a certain number of words on each side of the word or phrase you are analysing. They can easily be found by doing a search of the BNC or the American Corpus, both of which are freely accessible, but I actually created a worksheet based on examples from The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, which I include here:

Possibility Worksheet

Firstly we noticed that he had only really focused on the question of language forms and usage not on the meaning so we looked at what  “possibility” really means in English. This is a worksheet which guides learners through a series of questions to help them notice various aspects of the meanings and patternings related to “possibilty” and “possibilities” followed by the chance to make this Language their own, another crucial part of the process I think.

Some examples of the type of Language they produced after they had gone through this process were:

“There is a faint possibility that I might pass the French exam.”

“The government is considering the possibility of establishing diplomatic relations to solve …”

 “Nowadays, after recent events such as the Charlie Hebdo attacks, we can not ignore the possibility of an terrorist attacks happening everywhere.”

This is very impressive language use by any definition but what was almost more interesting was the fact that later on we were doing an activity which was not really linked to this but involved developing a questionnaire and interviewing different people in the classroom about their opinions. In this activity I noticed that quite a few people were asking questions like:

“Do you think there is a strong possibility that……….?”

It was one of those light bulb moments for me, when you think “Yes” and want to punch the air around you in triumph. I was fascinated what they were saying as it is not a pattern that these learners would normally use. I don’t know, of course, whether they were doing it intentionally because we had just studied this pattern or whether they will be able to use it this time next week, but I did feel that they had worked out their own meanings and were applying them to a common problem which had emerged from the needs of this particular group, and that the learning was swirling around the activities we were doing each person taking what they could or needed to from each part of the lesson.

Learning to Use Corpora Independently

 

 

The next step is to teach learners to use online corpora and to ask “their own questions” rather than mine. So we took some of their representative language problem areas from a recent discussion of social issues in our world and worked with a new site that I have already talked about in an earlier post: SkeLL, which is Sketch Engine’s latest very impressive English Language Learning site. This user-friendly site gives you 40 examples according to common meanings and provides a word sketch of common collocates (for single words) with syntax information as well. Here is the worksheet we used to learn how to use this resource:

Social Issues Discussion Language

What we found was that when it comes to understanding initial meaning dictionaries combined with the examples in the corpora are your best bet, but when it comes to looking at usage, collocations or patterns then SkeLL is a wonderful resource. We then went on to use it to look up kep words for an essay the students were going to write to find out useful language related to the register they needed as well as the lexical grammar of the single item. If you do a search for “government” for isntance you will find a completely different register to the one you would find if you search for “picturesque”.

We are in the middle of our jorney of discovery and I’m sure we’ll meet both limitations and insights along the way, but in any case it is a journey we are undetaking together as a group and in our group both the learners and the teacher are “learning” . Donald Freeman also cited George Pickering as saying “Minds work best like umbrellas, when they are open.” I hope that is what we are doing.

I still keep asking where learning is taking place but a glance at this photo of some of my students working together suggests that the learning is there with them and not up on an authoratative, scary blackboard. At any rate, I hope so 🙂

10 Ted Talks Every English Student Should Watch

Very useful post here on how to use TED talks at home 🙂

IELTS Advantage

TED is a series of informative, educational, inspiring and sometimes jaw-dropping talks that present ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’. Ted has attracted many of the world’s most important thinkers such as Larry Page, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Ken Robinson, and a few winners of the Nobel Prize.

There is an emphasis on informing, educating and opening people’s eyes to new ideas, making them perfect for the classroom. Students love these talks and really appreciate it when you take the time to make a lesson out of them. Teenagers, being the ‘YouTube generation’, also find them highly engaging and motivating. They come with transcriptions in most common languages, allowing students to read what they have listened to in English or their native tongue.

This post will list 10 TED talks I have found work particularly well in the classroom. I will also outline how students could use TED to improve their English at…

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Experimentation Day

Pre- and Post Speaking: what goes on in your mind?

Yesterday was Day 3 at Iatefl, well Day4 for those of is who were here for the PCE as well. , added to which I was speaking today but not until 5.25 pm so the tension gradually built during the day and I had to do something to take my mind off it. I find that when I’m giving a talk, even though I’ve done it before, I rehearse it continually in  the hours running up to it, taking bits out here and adding comments there in my mind and, of course, the actual event was different again, when we got to it. I had opted for a 30 minute slot, which in hindsight was much too short for what I wanted to say, but in any case it worked quite well and there was a lovely atmosphere  in the group. When I actually arrived at my room, though, I discovered that Iatefl had decided to reinvent me and had given me a completely new name, as you can see in the photo. This was a bit confusing for some people who had been looking for the “old Sharon Hartle” instead of which the notice proudly procliamed a talk by Shanon Harper! Apart from that there were very few little hitches though.  What is undeniable however is that, for some reason, no matter how many presentations you give you always feel nervous on the day of the event. I decided in the morning that , because of this continual rehearsal process of my own talk, that goes on all day in my mind, I probably couldn’t focus on taking in a lot of new ideas, so I throught it would be a good opportunity to “do other things”  like interview a few people at the conference or do things that were a bit different from simply going to a series of presentations.

Experimentation Day

So how did I set about “doing something different”? Well, I started bright and early in the morning by going to the 8.15 pre-plenary session on writing for ELT Journal. These are “How to…” sessions that deal with various aspects of conferences and are often related to things like writing for Conference Selections, the Iatefl publication, or could be sessions to help those who are new to the conference. This talk was very interesting as we went through the mechanics of peer review and Graham Hall gave is all a series of useful tips for publishing articles in various journals. He was generally extremely encouraging, urging us not to “give up” even if we have our articles rejected as this happens to everyone. Even though this had meant starting the day with no breakfast, I was glad I’d made the effort to go.

Then I gravitated to the exhibition centre where I looked in at the TELC stand. They were giving anti stress Telc men away (see photo) which I thought that was quite timely for me with my pre-speaker nerves. I used it all day, in fact. I talked to a few people who were relatively new to Iatefl and there were two main themes from these “interviews”. One or two said that they had been  struck by the international flavour of the conference, one, in fact, saying that she had expected native speakers and that it was incredible to be able to speak to professionals from all over the world, from Latin America to Nepal. Others said something that I found interesting which was that they would prefer generally not to do pairwork in talks, as they had come here to learn from the experts. I had been intending to a short pairwork slot in my own talk, but after this I decided to cut that, especially since my talk was at 5pm so people are generally quite tired by that stage. Anyway, it’s an interesting point which has come up before, so I was wondering what you think. Here is a short poll for people to vote on this:

Forum on Online Learning Platforms

I normally avoid events which last for more than one session as it means you miss all the parallel sessions from other speakers in two slots, but there was a very interesting forum on Moocs (Massive open online courses) which had come to my attention. This format included three speakers who spoke for 15 minutes each before taking questions which led to even more discussion. Peter Davidson gave us a short background of Moocs, Tam Connors-Sadek talked about managing a summer course from the administrational viewpoint using Google, and then Chris Cavey talked about the British Council Mooc “Exploring English:language and culture”. I have done quite a few Moocs, and I know that the quality varies considerably. One of the main questions is how to manage feedback and interactivity between intrusctors or moderators and the thousands of participants. Chris talked about how the participants supported each other showing examples of peer support in forums and the positive overall response that this had. This is something I have found too. On a good Mooc, if you ask a question in a forum the response comes from other participants and there are often varying degrees of expertise, so we all learn from each other, with the moderators interveining when they can. One of the questions from the audience was about feedback and peer reviews for writing skills on Moocs, and there again experiences vary, but it can be very rewarding for participants to beome reviewers, looking at each others’ writing from a different viewpoint and having their own work reviewed.

Designing Moocs is an ongoing learning process, though, and the downside is that it needs considerable motivation and drive to complete a Mooc so there is an enormous dropout rate. Gavin Dudeney raised the point that some are saying Moocs should become smaller and better moderator so could we not simply go back to calling them “online courses”? I don’t know that this is what matters particularly to me but what I think could be a good spin off effect is that universities may have to rethink their distance learning approaches and can learn a lot from some of the more successful Moocs.

Open Space

 

 

 

An Open Space event at Iatefl is a sort of “conference within the conference”. I had intended to go to this last year, but it lasts for two hours, which means that you miss other things, such as a session on lexis that I wanted to attend.  This year, however, I decided to take the plunge and go for it. This was also because I was wondering if we could use this format in the local TESOL Italy group we’ve set up for the Val d’Adige.  It is a self organisation approach to conferencing, developed by Harrison Owen, and in our format the participants organised themselves into groups and each person selected an ELT related theme that was “on their mind” and that they were particularly interested in knowing more about. Of these two were voted as being of most interest to the small group and then a list was compiled. This process continued until everyone in the group could see a topic that was of great interest to them. The groups then reformed according to the topic they had chosen (as long as there were enough people to make it viable) and then discussed it together for 25 minutes coming up with a short summary at the end which was then presented and further crystalised into one question. The discussion was held not as experts exchanging their ideas but rather with a spirit of inquiry so that we could start to ask questions and push our boundaries of knowledge further. Adrian Underhill, who was moderating with Susan Bardhun and Ros Wright, emphasised this aspect and said it should be something that you feel you are “on the edge of”. I chose lexis and we discussed ways of introducing vocabulary to learners of all levels asking “Whatever happened to Michael Lewis?” since we had the impression that lexis is often a poor relation to grammar, even now in the C21 and this it is a fuzzy area that coursebook writers and educators have difficulty organising and that the clarification exercises available in coursebooks are often more akin to tests than teaching tasks. Our final question was how it can be systematically taught going beyond the single word to help learners “put it all together”.

This was an enlightening experience because it is, as Adrian Underhill stressed and “emergent form” where what happens is that the content comes from the participants and the discussion is transformational rather than transactional. Everyone takes part in a discussion that is of vital importance to them and the topics ranged from “Should we intervene in fluency? If so when?” to “Social Justice: what is the role of the teacher?”. By choosing the topic and then speaking to likeminded professionals about it, you can transform (or at any rate get the cogs turning) your own thought. It is an interesting approach that I will definitely come back to.

And finally, lexis again!

After my own talk there was still what the graveyard slot and I went to Jane Templeton’s talk on bringing coprora activities into the classroom. She described her own process of transformation from being initially very enthusiastic about data driven learning to an increasing awarness of its difficulty for learners. She then moved towards developing corpus investigation skills for learners where the corpus is used as a reference tool. This is much easier nowadays than it was in the past with tools like the popular wordsandphrases tool, part of the bigger American Corpus (COCA), created by Mark Davies. Learners can easily use this tool to search for collocations, as well as lexical grammar , register and connotations. Incidentally, Mark Davies has just introduced a new tool based on the general world of Wikipedia which I think is worth investigating for all those interested and I am very excited about the SkeLL tool, part of Sketch Engine, which has been developed with English language learners in mind and actually provides collocates in useful grammatical categories. I heard about this one last Friday in James Thomas’ talk and it is one of my Iatefl “discoveries”.

So, another packed day at Iatefl rounded off by a glass of red wine with a few friends.

 

 

The Dark Matter, or themes at the Iatefl Conference

 

Post Method EFL: a theme for this year’s conference

As the sessions pass by and I go through the day at Iatefl I notice certain themes tend to emerge  within the conference, or perhaps what people say  simply reflects ideas I have somewhere in my own mind that are brought to the surface. Whatever the case it is a strange process that I notice happening every year, as one speaker takes ideas from another and weaves them into the fabric of his or her own presentation. As each day progresses I feel ideas and thoughts taking root and blossoming in the back of my mind behind any really conscious thought process. Anyway, this is starting to sound rather too esoteric so let’s get our feet back on the ground.

Going Beyond Limitations

On Friday, as I mentioned in a previous blog post, we rounded off the PCE session with a reflection on questions that may not be new but were related to our teaching practice as new technologies emerge. Diane Slaouti, whose focus was Theorising our Practice, cited Kumaravadivelu and his ideas about post method teaching and I would like to quote one idea from his 2003 publication Beyond Methods which is one of his goals to:

‘urge them [teachers] to go beyond the limited, and limiting, concept of method and consider the challenges and opportunities of an emerging postmethod era in language teaching.’ (p. 1.)

This is the idea I felt kept recurring today: the idea of going beyond limitations and exploiting opportunites. It began this morning with Donald Freeman’s plenary where he discussed the myths we believe  as teachers , and that may freeze our thinking. Our methods and beliefs, our instituational contraints our own fears, hopes and habits can all lead us to limit ourselves and the learning that might take place in our classrooms. He asked who takes responsibility for learning? Does the teacher take sole responsibility for learning? We were all thinking “Oh, no. My classes are learner centred” But how true is this? Who decides what is to be taught or focused on, when and how? How often do we think things to ourselves along the lines of: “Oh, I can’t do this. It won’t work with that class” which is a decision we are making as teachers rather than giving learning a chance to “happen”. So much of learning, which also came up several times on Friday, is informal or incidental, so it it worth asking where learning is happening and how we can leave space for it to happen in our own contexts.

What sort of question is a real question?

What Questions  do we ask?

 

This idea was taken up by Anrew Walkley who examined the questions we routinely ask in class, and who questioned the effectiveness of classic CCQs, in particular, both for grammar and lexis. Whilst I expressed my reservations about debunking these completely as these mechanisms grew out of a need to have feedback rather than simply asking “Do you understand?” before moving on as students smiled and nodded, even though some of them had not understood a thing! It is undeniable that when done badly CCQs or comprehention questions, as they were known initially, are worse than useless, and that they can only be used to check comprehension of a context for language use rather than focusing on the specific target language being clarified. Andrew illustrated this point very clearly with the use of nonsense language that he attempted to clarify to us. Here is my own invented example:

“Iatefl nisl Harrogate bret laa year.

CCQs

Is this the past?

Is this the present?

Is this the future?

Obviously you can only answer the question if you know the negative future form. The answer, for all those who want to know is “the future” as “nisl” is a negative auxiliary and “bret” is an infinitive so the translation is ” Iatefl won’t be in Harrogate next year. If you have already studied those forms, however, these questions may form a useful, quick check of comprehension. Andrew’s man point was that by asking and focusing on naturally ocurring questions in chat situations, and expanding learners’ repertoire of such questions, chat situations, which often pass under the radar in classes as teachers greet their classes with questions such as “What did you do at the weekend?” learners can focus on “real” referential questions (rather than questions designed simply for them to display their knowledge) and can develop the language they need to talk about topics that they choose, and that are relevant to them. Once again we come back to the idea of where learning is happening. Is it the teacher who decides the content or is it the learners?

Improvisation is not only in theatre and jazz

Looking at old things in new ways

Limitations also appear when we adhere too closely  to our own, safe, familiar methodology, and our lesson plan can become a straightjacket that limits both teachers and learners rather than acting as a springboard for teaching, providing learning opportunites. Adrian Underhill also talked about an aspect of this with his session on the ‘dark matter’ of teaching, of the energy that appears when teachers depart from their lesson plans and improvise, identifying the best point to leave the lesson plan and to go somewhere else, to listen to what our learners are saying or what they need and to follow their lead. Lesson plans, in this way, might be considered to be the map which points the way whilst the lesson itself is the actual journey with all its delays, smells, dialugues and unexpected events. Lessons are social events with human beings and all their interactions which is what makes them messy but what also makes them wonderful and unique as , people open up their own thoughts and worlds to each other, and invite each other in. This is the point at which, as one person, who was sitting next to me said, “the magic happens”.

 

 

 

 

Getting the Most out of a Great Conference

An Uplifting Moment in the Year

I’ve been attending the Iatefl  conference for quite a few years now and, as I said in an earlier post,  it is one of the most uplifting moments in my professional year, even when you wake up to grey skies and rain. When you’ve been teaching for a while, you need this sort of event to recharge your batteries and to help you keep up your enthusiasm. The conference is enormous, though, so it is important to have some kind of game plan before you even start, otherwise the wealth of parallel sessions, not to mention the evening events will overwhelm you. So here are a few tips for a great conference. (I’m writing them for myself, by the way, but I thought I’d share them with you too.

Tips for a Getting the most out of the Conference

1) First of all, if you can’t come physically, don’t despair. Iatefl, together with the British Coucil, stream many of the sessions and others are videod so you can watch them at your leisure. Go to Iatefl Manchester 2015 Online

2) Also the fact that so many sessions are videod means that you don’t need to panic if you can’t see everything. You can catch up later. So check which sessions are being filmed and if it clashes with something else, or, which sometimes happens, the room is full, don’t worry. You can see it later.

3) Use the programme well. It is an enormous publication with a wealth of information. This year it’s smaller than usual but is still quite heavy so if you don’t want to carry it around with you, pull the coloured pages out from the back for each day and use them as your working programme.

4) Don’t try to do everything. I generally have several criteria I apply to the sessions I attend. (Yours may well be different but the point is you need to have some 🙂

a) I look to see who is presenting to go to talks by people I’m interested in because I’ve read their books, know their blogs etc. and I try to see new people each year;

b) I restrict my sessions to fields I’m particularly interested in, such as lexis, e-learning and technology, learner autonomy. However, I don’t reject other things that may look interesting, and every conference seems to organically create a sort of intuitive “narrative thread” for me when I get there. I remember my thread in Harrogate 2010 was “Storytelling” and I seemed to see references to this all round me. In fact, I wrote a conference review that year, and it was based on Agatha Christie’s disappearance in Harrogate… It all went on from there.

c) Remember to take time out to relax, to have coffee and chat with people and to sleep, or just to walk around the city and have fun. I don’t know Manchester very well, but I’m enojying soaking up the atmosphere and looking at the architecture. Yesterday on my way back from the university I discovered Sackville Gardens, a lovely green space with a monument to Alan Turing, for instance.

There is also some lovely countryside around the city if you get the chance to go for a drive. Crossing the Pennines is still an exciting thing to do, there is something wild about the morrs that always humbles me. This time out is essential as it also gives your brain time to rest and process all the input you’re getting, and you often come back with ideas you hadn’t even realised you were developing.

d) Finally I think it is in the spirit of the conference to share what strikes you with others, with your colleagues who could not attend, with others via Social Networks and with learners, who often get left out, but who, let’s face it, are pretty central to the whole process.

So, I hope you have a great conference. I’m off to have a good breakfast now before heading to the Conference centre for Day One  🙂

Learning Technologies PCE

Looking at old things in new ways

Today I entered the hallowed halls of Manchester University, or to be more exact, the Ellen Wilkinson Building to be met by an abundance of coffee and cakes, Oh yes, and the LTSig organisers who had everything well under control. As we went into the lecture theatre, which true to the essence of technology had a sign up saying that it was equipped for “lecture capture” a new collocation that I hadn’t come across before, but then, we don’t do much capturing of lectures in my neck of the woods.

What followed was a whirlwind of “Mobile technology in action”, with three plenary speakers all of whom presented fascinating projects ranging from a project to assist language learning aspects of immigrant integration in the UK and other European countries, presented by Agnes Kukulska-Hulme from the Open University, to the “Digital Corner” project in Argentina and finally James Thomas introducing Hypal, software which he, with others, has developed at his university to annotate written work, to categorise errors and provide feedback and reflection.

The coffee continued to flow throughout and biscuits were readily available too, with the result that when lunchtime came I could hardly eat a thing, which was a crime as there was a buffet which can only be described as lavish. In the afternoon we had parallel 30 minute sessions where different people presented different technologies. I did a presentation on Socrative, which went down very well, particularly when we did a unicorn race. Iatefl participants are, of course, romantics at heart, shunning the rockets in favour of the more gentle, fabled beast.

I had the chance to go to another presentation by James Thomas on SkeLL which is the new software made available by Sketchengine, which is the well known corpus software, but the difference with SkeLL is that it is specifically for language learners, and can do single word or phrase searches. Its results are limited to 40 hits, but they are not simply the first 40 hits the programme finds but are sorted to provide different meanings and patternings. A fascinating tool which is well worth exploring. The final talk I went to was Vicky Saumell’s talk on Tellagami, a mobile technology tool I also use to send messages to learners on Facebook, from time to time, but she explored ways in which learners can use it and how inventive her learners are at “cracking the app” and making several short games, which can then be linked together into one longer video, as the free version limits you to 30 second recordings.

The day was rounded off by Diane Slaouti who works at Manchester University with Gary Motteram, thanks to whom we were able to be at the university, using the facilities. Diane provided us with a thought provoking end to the day asking if the questions we were asking were old ones or new ones, and whether the old ones need to be reassessed in the light of new technologies. For instance, one idea that emerged from Agnes Kukulska-Hulme’s presentation was the idea of “preparing learners for incidental learning” so the question that we need to ask is, perhaps how can we do this? How can we analyse learner needs so that we can prepare them well, with the language they need?

Another idea that struck me was the “mismatch between learner expectations and what teachers may want to do” which Diane mentioned with reference to Kumaravadivelu’s 2003 article Beyond Methods, which called for “principled pragmatism” in choosing what and how we teach. Not all, but some of our university learners, I feel, are not motivated to “learn” which is rather ironic since we call them “learners”. Some are, but many are motivated to get the piece of paper that says that they have completed a degree in the hope that it will help them find a job.

This is something, I think that we have to bear in mind, and the idea I took away with me, among others, was the importance of motivation, and how learning and therefore teaching starts with this. It is only be knowing our learners, talking to them and exploring their worlds that we can understand what is relevant for them and what we can do to help them want to learn. In our world incidental learning and informal learning are becoming increasingly common, so if we are the experts then the question is definitely how can we help learners use what is available to the best of their abilities in ways that will be fruitful for them. All in all, a lot of food for thought today, as well as the amazing food to eat. Well done LTSig 🙂

So, now, in a Shakespearian frame of mind I’ll just say: put out the light… because tomorrow is another fine day here at the Iatefl conference and the adventure continues.

Arrived in Manchester

Welcome to Manchester

Just a quick post to welcome all those who are coming to the PCE day today. I’m attending the LTSig so more about that later 🙂 The sun is shining and the coffee is flowing so, all in all, we’re set for an exhilerating day.

Follow this link for the slideshow

 

 

Welcome to Manchester IATEFL Conference

Feeling tired but enthusiastic after travelling all day yesterday. I don’t really know Manchester very well, even though I come from Yorkshire and nearly always fly into Manchester Airport when I’m in the UK. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but the initial impact is amazing. The weather was wonderful yesterday which helped matters, and getting here a day before the PCE was a really good ideas as I could wander round the city centre, watch the world go by in Picadilly Gardens and then walk along the canal area before going back to the Premier Inn near the station. I made a little film for you just to remind you that whilst there’s so much going on at a fantastic conference like Iatefl, it’s important to take time out too, to stop, take a deep breath, look around and appreciate the host city you are in.

In short, as they say,I’m really happy to be here in Manchester 🙂

See you soon.

Getting ready for Iatefl Manchester 2015

Gearing up for the annual Iatefl Conference

Click here for Manchester Online

Hi Everyone,

Are you going to the Iatefl  conference in Manchester this year? Well, as you probably know, it is one of the highlights of my year. I look forward to this concentrated period of time when you can absorb so much and return home energised and raring to go back to work with new teaching ideas, as well as having the chance to catch up with friend that are normally scattered all over the world, but come together for this event.

I personally find this time of year a bit daunting at work. Most people are feeling rather stressed and tired, students are all worried about the exams on the horizon so an injection of pure inspiration is exactly what I need. One of the great things about this conference, as well, is that even if you cannot attend physically so many of the sessions will be streamed and videos are made that are available for up to a year after the actual event. This is organised by the British Council every year and you can join in by going to this address

So don’t miss out. Join in the fun.

My Blogging Plan for this Year’s Conference

Last year I blogged as a registered blogger for the first time and looked at the conference from various different viewpoints. This year I’m planning to start from the viewpoint of someone who is going to speak at the conference. It’s quite a long journey preparing for a presentation, creating it and then delivering it. It can be stressful or it can be exhilerating (with some stress of course but hopefully eustress!)

I thought I’d write today, before everything begins to describe my preparation process in the hope that it will be useful for you too. So, here goes.

The Speaker’s Viewpoint

This year I’ve decided to blog about the conference from the point of view of a speaker, and preparation, if you are giving a presentation, begins long before the conference itself or even before your talk has been accepted. It begins with an idea, something that is playing in your mind perhaps, over and over again, like a haunting tune. It keeps coming back to you at the most unlikely moments and growing into something bigger. This idea then becomes a message that you would like to share with other people. That’s probably the point where you send in your speaker proposal. It could be something you’ve been working on for a while or simply something you feel strongly about or something that is your area of expertise. In my case it is a mixture of all these things.

The first step is the Idea

In any case the first step in the process of developing your talk is to develop your idea and then to decide which aspects to focus on, especially if the topic is broad like blended learning.

My second step is to create my slides

Some people like to write their whole presentation out at this stage as writing helps them develop their ideas, but I prefer to work on my slides next, as I don’t want to get bogged down in the written form. When I speak, I want to do just that: speak, in spoken language that “talks to the audience”. So I create my ideas in frames (usually on Prezi) and then sleep on it.

My third step

The third step is to write the proposal with the main points for Iatefl and to submit it. I won’t spend long on this because by this stage you’ve probably already done that.

My Fourth Step

A few months later I come back to the initial frames and change them being as ruthless as possible, eliminating anything that is not strictly connected to the main ideas. Then I work on timing: rehearsing the presentation to my captive audience “Haggis my pet cat” and recording a screen capture version that I can watch later to hone it down even more.

My Fifth Step

My fifth step is to produce a worksheet or a sheet with useful links etc. and contact details to give to participants at the conference. This is something I do before I leave because it’s generally easier to do photocopies etc. before you get to the conference venue itself. I also make sure that I have sceenshots of important web pages as you can’t always count on the Internet connection working and for my own peace of mind I like to be prepared. For the same reason I also make a portable prezi which can be downloaded and used offline as and when you need it.

Flying off to an enchanting time at Iatefl Manchester!

So, that’s about it. At this stage all I have to do is check in and fly!

See you there.

Motivation and Teaching with technology.

This year I’ve been doing quite a lot of teacher training both in university language centres and in secondary schools, here in Northern Italy and the topic I’ve been working on is training teachers to use blended learning in a principled way. This may not be new for those who are interested in technology but for many teachers it is still a bit like going into a dark forest where you’re not quite sure of the dangers or of where you might lose your footing.

Motivation

Motivation is a complicated thing, as we all know, and there are so many different things that come into play for teachers, but I would just like to mention a few of them, by relating them to a series of five questions about the use of technology in the classroom.

1) Intrinsic v. Extrinsic:

Do you want to use technology in class because you actually believe it enhances your teaching or is it an instituational imposition?

2) Identity

Do you see yourself as a teacher who is comfortable experimentinig with new technologies and learning how to use them?

3) Agency

Do you feel personally involved in the process of using technology with your classs, and are you investing youself in creating something meaningful for them and for you?

4) Competence

Do you feel able to use technological tools easily to help your learners?

5) Autnomy

Do you feel able to work autonomously with the tools or are you afraid that you are not using them as well as you might, or as well as some of the traditional tools you are more familiar with?

Changing your point of view

The power of investing your own self into discovering new ways of working.

These are important factors, I think, that are sometimes overlooked and teachers in training courses become learners and need to approach new skills with their eyes open. Our motivation, as Zoltan Dornyei says in his theory of L2 selves, is closely bound up with our sense of who we are.

A Fixed Idea of who we are or an openness to growth?

Making the most of texts: each one a world to discover

I recently read an article which described two frames of mind, which tie in very closely I think to the idea of identity. Some people have very fixed ideas of what they are and if you tell yourself you are a “X” teacher (substitute what you like for the “X” traditional, tolerant, innovative etc. etc.) then that is what you will be.

On the other hand there is also the “growth” mentality that does not see identity as being so fixed but sees life as an exploration of potential in whatever field you may be interested in.

In a recent session I asked teachers to think about 3 stages in lesson planning:

1. What can your learners do before the lesson?
2. What will you and your learners be ding during the lesson?
3. What can they do after the lesson?

The idea was to think about work that could be provided online for learners to do in advance, such as vocabulary preparation for a topic they would explore in the lesson. The “during” phase was designed to help participants think about what technological ools they could use in class such as images, polls, collaborative writing etc. etc. and the “after” phase was to think about work learners could do online after class such as discussions, writing, questionnaires.

One teacher, who was tryng to plan his online work said to me as I monitored their work:

“I don’t know how to do this. It’s not the way I work. I usually go into class and present my lesson. I wish I could do this and I’d like to see what others are doing.”

This showed me that the feeling of agency and competence were missing. This way of working, which to me seems very normal, was not at all normal to him and yet he was open to learning something new. He wanted to get to the stage where his identity was tied up with the lesson he was preparing, and that means, I think, being open to the “growth mentality”. I was quite humbled because it made me see that motivation and fear has to be taken into account much more than I had been doing.

Concluding thought

This all provided me with quite a lot of food for thought, anyway, and made me decide to talk about learners, teachers classrooms and materials in the Manchester Iatefl conference. I want to explore how technology used in a principled way can help us to  beyond our boundaries, both as learners and teachers. If you want to know more I will be speaking about this on Monday 13th at 5pm, so I hope to see you in Manchester.