Article January 15th, 2010

…… A few days ago, during the International House DOS conference, the talks were made available online and there was a somewhat heated discussion about Hugh Dellar’s presentation which came under the title of “The Curse of Creativity”

You can watch the whole presentation if you follow this link. The talk lasts for about an hour and I did sit through the whole of it.

On the same day, another talk on creativity was retweeted, one of the TED talks which most of my readers will have heard. The title is “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” and it is a much shorter talk, about 20 minutes, by Sir Ken Robinson. But the length of this talk is not why I would recommend it so warmly to everyone in my PLN and not recommend the previous one.  You may wish to listen to both before proceeding further.

Here are some of the tweets from the day I wrote this post and some from the day when the talk was first “aired”.

tweets

I do seem to have been terribly annoyed with Mr Dellar, don’t I?

The two speakers represent two extremes for me both in terms of what I think of their views on creativity as well as in other ways.

Hugh Dellar and his Curse of Creativity talk

Hugh Dellar’s talk promotes a highly negative attitude towards the need for any teacher to be creative. To support his argument, he draws a lot of what he considers to be evidence of the lack of necessity for creativity from various trainee teacher observations, most of which, always in my view of course, provide evidence of misinterpreting some principle of planning or a misunderstanding about materials design. This is what trainee teachers often do, that is why they are called trainees and not expert practitioners or teacher educators or materials writers, like Mr Dellar.

And yet, he seems to believe that on the basis of this rather shaky evidence, which his audience accepts with great mirth and over which they all have a rather good laugh, the rest of the world has to buy the idea that teachers do not need to develop or enhance their creative thinking skills and that the call for being creative, has made your average poor teacher go bananas when they plan lessons and in their desperate pursuit of creative activities, well, they will use just about anything.

Sir Ken Robinson and his Do Schools Kill Creativity talk

Over on the other side, Ken Robinson, presents a completely different stance towards the need for creativity. His talk is not about the need for teachers to be creative; what he talks about is the absolute necessity for equipping learners with creative thinking skills since, as he suggests, as educators, we are preparing them for a future none of us can foresee.

His talk does not deal with quite the same angle  – i.e. on whether teachers need to be creative or not.  He talks about all students today whom we are preparing to be adults in an unknown tomorrow.

But it is not very difficult for anyone with brains other that pea-size to extrapolate from this and understand why everyone, including educators, needs to develop or enhance their creative thinking potential, for dealing with the unpredictable and new, a task which educators have to face on an every day and every minute of teaching basis in every class they teach.

Other Reactions to both presenters

There are other reasons why Mr Dellar annoys me beyond telling as a speaker. Apart from being totally uninformed as to what constitutes creativity and what we need it for in our daily lives, let alone in the demanding profession of being an educator and apart from using examples which do not prove his points, he commits another faux pas, that of having a very good laugh at the expense of his trainee teachers. OK, we got it that he is a great teacher educator and that he works for a particular teacher education centre which he is probably marketing in some way.

Personally, and if I were in need of some training, I would not touch this centre with a bargepole for fear of having my teaching endeavours ridiculed in all his future talks.

Mr Dellar also fails to laugh at himself entirely. When he is not laughing at his ex or current trainee teachers, he is being quite perscriptive and serious about how useless it is to be a creative teacher. I suppose he is hopeful that all need for creativity is satisfied if only we were to use the coursebooks he has authored.

Contrary to this rather smug and self-satisfied style, Ken Robinson, presents a short and very pithy talk in which most of the jokes are directed against himself and no one else.

I find this extremely refreshing. He not only drives the point home about how important it is to be creative but he also gains the sympathy of his audience by exhibiting his great sense of  humour – a type of humour that I am certain most of my readers will appreaciate a lot. He has other great qualities, of pausing for just the right amount of time, of having a great sense of rhythm and pace, etc.. etc… I think it was also my musician’s ear that loved this talk and the same ear which cringed at the other one….

On the “day of the tweets” above, I  must say I was not the only one to exhibit this very negative reaction towards Mr Dellar. Many others expressed similar views and some, even worse.

So may be we should start thinking about being good presenters and speakers already!  The conference season has started and some of us will be going here and there presenting papers, workshops etc.

So, what are the qualities of a good speaker?

I am inviting the members of my PLN to express their views here of what are some of the qualities of a great or very good presenter/speaker. It would also be great if we could put together a red hot list of people we should all try to go and listen to, whether they are native or non native speakers, whether they are male or female.

It would also be nice to know who to avoid.

I already have one on my list – Mr. Dellar – but there are others, too, and not for exactly the same reasons. For example, although I have great respect for what David Nunan has written, after having listened to him speak at the most recent TESOL Greece conference, I would never ever attempt to sit through one of his talks again.

Please come forth and declare your preferences.  I could use the advice!

P.S.  I have opted not to discuss the concept of teachers needing to be creative in this post at any great depth or length. My interest was in commenting two different styles of presentation and their impact on me.

If interested in reading more about this topic, may I ask you to read an article I wrote quite a while ago about the why’s and how’s of teachers being creative. The title is “The Art of Being Creative” and in my talk in April 2010 at IATEFL in Harrogate, I will be talking about activities that will help our learners develop their creative thinking abilities.

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 32 Comments to “The art of being a good speaker” .

(Note – these have been copied from the web archive, the wayback machine. It’s interesting to see how some people think Hugh is a great speaker. Oh well, he is still being invited to keynote and is fawned upon by numerous fans – but that’ s a completely different discussion) 

  1.   Ken Wilson | January 15th, 2010 at 8:22 pm     Reply
    Hi Marisa..well, I think you know where I stand re your article. It was you who drew my attention to the vid of Hugh’s talk.Whilst I agree most emphatically with you on
    all your points, Hugh’s talk does raise certain important issues about what we can draw on for examples of teaching when we talk about suspect
    methodology.Hugh chose to give two examples – one a trainee
    and the other a practising teacher, wasn’t she?

    Whatever, the point is – it was seeing the two
    lessons that made Hugh want to talk about it in
    the way he did. How would he have been able to
    make the points if he didn’t give the examples?

    Having said that, I certainly wouldn’t want to
    have my teaching method dissected, even anonymously,
    in this way.

    Keep on fighting the good fight!

    Ken

  2.   Marisa Constantinides | January 15th, 2010 at 9:11 pm     Reply
    Ken,There are other ways to talk about teacher practices less personally, less pointedly, less offensively, nore objectively, not trying to be amusing and cute – although I cannot imagine how this particular person might have this particular ambition.I also do not accept that on the basis of two examples and one worry we develop a whole theory which is totally unsubstantiated, but I guess that here, I am asking for a wee bit too much – after all most teacher trainer talks (and I belong to the same ilk, if you like)as well as quite a few author talks are not based on research but on hearsay and a bit of noticing this an’ that.This desire to be amusing, funny at any cost, puts me off on occasion, especially if there is very little substance and quite a lot of ego involved.

    I am prepared to go back and listen to the whole thing, if you think I should and if there are valid points.

    But my understanding of this is this: that teacher trainers tell their trainees to be creative and they misunderstand this instruction. Well, perhaps it was not clear to begin with. And perhaps it was but still they got it wrong.

    So what else is new? How often is everything fully understood by everyone? Teachers may need time to assimilate and fully understand something. This does not negate the need of its existence. Perhaps it signals the need for a deeper look into things and not just a bit of surface paint methodology.

  3.   Nick Bilbrough | January 15th, 2010 at 10:17 pm     Reply
    Hi Marisa,Very interesting post. Just lost my reply that took me an hour to write because I forgot to type in the security word;-)!
    Anyway here is the gist of it…I think Hugh Dellar is a great speaker. I saw this very same talk at IATEFL Cardiff in 2005 and I thought his delivery was excellent and it was a beautifully crafted talk, even though I disagreed with most of what he was saying. Something about it just stuck in my head for ages afterwards. Paradoxically I think it helped me to reaffirm, and to structure, my own beliefs in the power of creativity (very much looking forward to your talk in Harrogate;-))When I heard he was going to talk at the IH conference I was keen to hear it again, partly to see if his ideas had changed at all, and also to see how I would react second time around. This time I think I disagreed with it even more but I still enjoyed it and still sat right through the entire hour!

    He’s very well prepared, he constantly relates the points he’s trying to make back to real examples from the classroom, he’s passionate, and he’s witty (though I admit I also cringed at his jokes at the expense of trainee teachers) These are all qualities of a good speaker, I’d say.

    This is not to say that I think that these qualities are essential. In fact I think that the very best speakers are often those who manage to be well prepared and know their stuff, but still make it look like they’re delivering the talk for the first time in their lives, and are thinking on their feet as they talk – like its a conversation with the audience.

    BTW – One thing I did find I agreed with Hugh about second time around was the importance of learning by heart, and how students need to do some leg work in memorising new language, though I would argue that this, in itself, is a creative process.

    All the best,

    Nick

  4.   Karenne Sylvester | January 15th, 2010 at 11:29 pm     Reply
    I think I need to go listen to this again…I just sat through the whole 50 odd minutes leading from Shaun’s post and link and shame on me, I enjoyed it!!! Oops, I was multi-tasking though, hmmmm… dippin in and out I guess, doing dull work… but anyway, then clicked on my google reader to go back and comment on SW blog and saw you’d posted on the subject.I’ll have to come back, after I figure out why it was so bad… I sort of thought he’d made some good points about nonsensical activities just for the sake of doing them (which honestly, drives me up the wall… I kept thinking of the itty bits of paper for no pedagogical reason at all but to have ss sort them out into itty bits of groups… (way too many business English trainers seem to think er, er, …is a way to teach adult business people)…Hmmm,
    Karenne
  5.   Shelly Terrell | January 16th, 2010 at 12:08 pm     Reply
    I’d like to address your question: what are the qualities of a good speaker? I believe good speakers have passion in what they are speaking about and believe in the message. They know their audience and receive feedback. They are comfortable presenting usually because they have practiced, practiced, and practiced. They find what they are good at- spontaneity, humor, and so forth! Although, I don’t agree with Hugh’s points I do think he appealed to his audience. He had great humor and believed in his message. I believe Sir Ken Robinson also had a great presentation and is inspirational. Many people will be good speakers but few are inspirational.
  6.   Martin | January 16th, 2010 at 12:23 pm     Reply
    “…although I have great respect for what David Nunan has written, after having listened to him speak at the most recent TESOL Greece conference, I would never ever attempt to sit through one of his talks again.”It is interesting what you said here about David Nunan. I have also heard him speak and while doing so observed the audience. It seemed at certain points mine and their eyes kind of glassed over. At times it seemed information was being given more as providing filler rather than providing insight.Sometimes it seems these great experts are unable to focus on a needed point and drive it home.
  7.   Helen Strong | January 16th, 2010 at 4:50 pm     Reply
    Marissa,Thanks for posting this and I know you wanted to direct your debate to presenting styles, but I feel I’d like to contribute something on the topic of “creative teaching”, and in particular the definition of the term. Hugh says in his talk that when he asked the audience at the beginning if they thought they were creative teachers, they probably all answered “Yes” because to admit that you’re not a creative teacher is a no-no. Similarly, if you were to ask many world presidents if they felt they were running a democracy, most would answer “Yes” because that’s the current widely-accepted model. But do we all have the same interpretation of what a democracy is, and what creative teaching is? Perhaps the gravest mistake that Hugh made was that he didn’t define what he understood by creative teaching and, perhaps as important, *what creative teaching isn’t*, giving concrete examples of what he deems creative teaching and what not. In fact, throughout his talk he seems to switch between talking about creative teaching and creative learning, which in my mind are two separate issues. Slides would have been helpful (the presentation itself wasn’t particularly visual) which could have clarified these points at the beginning, then people would be able to gauge whether they were even on Hugh’s wavelength.To contribute to your discussion on presenting styles, although I don’t agree with everything that Hugh says, I don’t find his presentation style sooo bad. Among the good points, he speaks clearly (if a little fast), uses intonation well, has reasonable body language and eye contact, and tries to use humour (always a tricky point in presentations anyway), and although I can appreciate that his style may be annoying for some, it seems many in the audience enjoyed his talk. On the down side, the absence of a definition and a “contents page” resulted in the talk lacking structure for me. However, perhaps presentation style, like teaching style, is so much a matter of the presenter’s own personality, that’s it’s impossible to dictate a one-size-fits-all model.On the other hand, I have to say that I could watch (and already have watched) Ken Robinson’s talk many, many times as I find his presenting style extremely pleasurable, for the reasons you’ve already stated. It’s amazing how he’s able to say so much in so few words.

    Helen

  8.   sharon noseley | January 16th, 2010 at 8:35 pm     Reply
    I am with you on this one Marissa. Hugh came across as a self-centered, may I add egoistic teacher trainer, which meant I didn’t even want to suffer the whole hour of listening to his thoughts and the putting down of his trainees..who sounded to me to be quiet creative! Maybe he senses he lacks creativity himself – i didn’t notice anything visual/stimulating about his speech! Also it was disappointing to hear his audience laughing along with him at the expense of hard working, eager and caring trainees. Give me Ken any day..he is a true speaker and creates inspiration in us all…
  9.   Glennie | January 17th, 2010 at 10:40 am     Reply
    Have only watched first 10 minutes,but still…Where is the contradiction between creativity and repetition?
    If we accept that students often become more involved in activities if they involve some creativity on their part, then designing a creative activity to enable students to re-visit a target structure would seem to be ideal.
    Of course, if the activity is not actually very creative or is badly set-up, everything falls to pieces. But that’s pretty obvious anyway – a bad activity is a bad activity.
  10.   Glennie | January 17th, 2010 at 11:07 am     Reply
    To continue,,,
    Sorry this is in bits and bobs…There is something very nasty about the tone of this presentation.
    Why mention the fact that the lady who stood up and made a comment from the audience was wearing…what was it ‘a tweed suit and pearls’? To pre-dispose the audience to find her ridiculous?And that terrible remark about feedback sessions. Something about hanging the trainee or giving them them rope to do it themselves. I’m glad Hugh Dellar did not train me! Those students may very well have sat late into the night desperately trying to come up with an activity which would be useful and enjoyable for their students. Perhaps they have got it all wrong and the activity has been a disaster(and if so, what have you been teaching them Mr Dellar?), but that is no reason to ridicule them or the process of giving them feedback. It’s very easy to take candy from a baby.
  11.   Marisa Constantinides | January 17th, 2010 at 7:29 pm     Reply
    Thank you all for dropping by here to leave your comment onto what now looks like a little bit of a rant – it isn’t truly!Ken, Nick, Karenne, Shelly, Martin, Helen, Shaz and Glennie, I hope you will forgive me if I just write one general response to all your comments. I was a tad lazy this weekend and now it looks like a better tactic to me. So here goes.
    ___________________________________________________________Aah! I thought this post was going to go pretty much unnoticed, but did feel I had to get it off my chest and here you are all of you with loads of comments and agreeing on this, disagreeing on that….So ….

    You all made me sit through the whole 55 minutes again. Watched it all over, just to make sure I was not being unfair. I must say, my face muscles hurt just the same second time round. I don’t know whether this is because I have absolutely no sense of humour, which may well be true, or because I am a non-native speaker with little appreciation of the finest subtleties of British humour, which is also probably true.

    I still find Mr Dellar pretty objectionable – in this talk. He may be a wonderful speaker and here he was on a bad hair day, as it were, but that is all I have to go by and it is a good sample to talk about in terms of drawing some points regarding what makes a good speaker.

    Ken suggested that he has experiences and examples he draws upon and he may well have some – but let us look at the specific examples.

    Example 1 comes from a novice trainee teacher on her SECOND ever teaching practice, which means, to anyone who knows the structure of a CELTA course, rather early on during the course, possible end of week One or early Week Two – not sufficient input has sunk in or has, indeed been presented.

    So, really the first example comes from someone who is not even properly trained yet!

    After the activity “the students looked bemused” – Students often look bemused and this may mean any number of things, from not understanding what to do to having had eaten something bad the day before!

    In the feedback “ the moment when you wonder will they hang themselves or will you have to force them to the gallows….” I really do not know what to say about this comment. I have by now employed several CELTA tutors but I have never, ever heard anyone talk about trainees in quite this way.

    The poor trainee said something to the tune, “I read it in Scrivener”, so now Scrivener of course is also to blame. No question as to whether this is half digested knowledge, or some misunderstanding of the text. No.

    Example 2 – About the teacher in “the second sinister occurrence” we do not know much, but on the basis of some misplaced student’s production, Nelson, we are led to believe that the activity was wrong. The teacher has clearly some kind of misunderstanding about the role of correction, what constitutes creativity or what is a fluency activity. But again, according to the speaker, this implies that teachers (in the British context) have been suckered into is powerful, seductive but misguided notion that they must be creative. Wow.

    Edward de Bono is put on the spot for suggesting that creativity is an important aspect of human intellect.

    There is a lot more written on creativity and especially as related to language production but perhaps Mr Dellar’s reading is limited to “Lateral thinking”?

    He then goes on to praise the value and importance of repetition, especially of chunks of language, which is actually a good point and a very valid one. He suggests that “repeating the same patterns & collocations is the key to progress” and I have not contest with this concept AT ALL.

    Then he takes us to Japan to explore the notion of shu-ha-ri which I actually find quite interesting; how you reach mastery and there are three steps

    1/ shu = precise imitation of a master
    2/ ha = coming to an understanding
    3/ ri = breaking away and doing your own thing

    Serious Omission

    In explaining shu-ha-ri Mr Dellar highlights well the “debt to mimicry”

    So, we only get to hear about the value of imitation, repetition and correction as reformulation. Shu only in fact. Nothing about the ha and almost certainly not a single mention of the ri – I suppose students get up there one day by osmosis, the bugles call, the clouds part and they achieve ri status.

    There is a whole discussion about the value of the tasks this speaker considers less than important and I am not interested in starting it here although some of my readers have already mentioned it. Those types of tasks he calls a “state of untutoredness” a nice neologism for declaring that teachers have abdicated their responsibility to teach and correct.

    I must admit I kind of lost him when he goes into Charlie Mingus mode of “making the complicated sound simple”

    This particular comment is of cosmic implicature. Whether or not Mingus said this, is not the point. The point is that an expert performer can make the complex look simple, but that does now mean that it necessarily is simple.

    So it is with teaching. Really good teachers make their lessons look as if they are very simple and natural and just the right way to do things, but this does not mean they were in fact simple.

    Then there is another example of some lesson with lovely visuals, narrated with lots of sharp intakes of breath and little dramatic exclamations – this is to make us all understand that this was a lesson which should be trashed really.

    Self directed humour

    I take this back – in minute 19 and for 3 whole minutes he does have a good laugh against himself as a young teacher trying out different things, which maybe did not work, cos they were all PPP, wouldn’t you know! Penny Ur is also to blame for this…. But, aaah…. Now that he is into the lexical approach and into chunking and holophrasing and free of PPP, well, he obviously is a perfect teacher – this lapse lasts up to minute 22, not a very long time I’m afraid.

    CELTA Courses are obviously to blame!!!!

    Why is the CELTA a “faking it” qualification? I teach the CELTA and don’t talk such rubbish! Perhaps he did, as a CELTA tutor, but I do take great exception to this attitude which dismisses everyone who teaches such courses…. Some members of my PLN have done this as well in the past, suggesting that a CELTA course is like an ati-technology missile, and I take exception to their comments too!

    It’s the fault of every other coursebook, not his own!

    Then he takes a few odd jabs at some coursebooks, obviously not his own…. I find that quite inappropriate, despite the fact that the activity he describes is a rather silly one. He is an author himself and that’s hitting below the belt.

    In a nutshell, after having listened to this talk again I still find Mr Dellar a speaker I would avoid.

    I also now think this talk had the express aim of plugging his coursebooks which are based on repetition and memorization of fixed little dialogues and phrases.

    So to summarise, I didn’t like him

    – for ridiculing his own trainees

    – for providing examples which do not support his arguments

    – for displaying a half baked understanding of his topic

    – for selling his coursebooks by slagging the coursebooks of others

    And I actually HATED his intonation and delivery but as a NonNEST what do I know?

  12.   Shelly Terrell | January 17th, 2010 at 9:26 pm     Reply
    Marisa,I believe you know quite a bit! I admire your work and feel you are an incredible presenter from the few instances I’ve seen your work online. I can’t wait to see you live in Greece. You outlined your arguments well and after reading many of the comments I do feel offense is substantiated. Personally, I’d hate to be one of those trainees and fear anyone making an example of me. I did not find the presentation funny and once again I did not agree with the message. However, the audience did laugh and seemed to respond to him. It would be interesting to have read feedback from the audience and gather their true feelings. Also, I do agree that picking on a person’s outfit like Glennie mentioned is offensive. Thank you for giving us a lot to think about as far as the message of what we deliver.
  13.   Amanda | January 18th, 2010 at 1:12 am     Reply
    Hi Marisa,I could only watch 10 minutes of Mr Dellar’s talk, because for some reason, my computer would not let it roll after that. I am wondering how I would have felt if I hadn’t been aware of other people’s reactions beforehand.Anyhow, I did feel uncomfortable mainly for the following reasons. Although I thought the speaker was confident and eloquent, the actual content created an enormous sense of fear and failure within me. The initial trap was like a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing, leading lambs to slaughter. It created the idea that the audience was totally wrong to think that fostering creativity could ever be useful and that they were stupid to have ever thought such a thing. My feelings of fear were further intensified with the comments regarding the terrible failings of actual trainees. It was all very black and white; you’re wrong and I’m right.Also, high-rising terminals in a British accent always make me feel uncomfortable, but maybe that’s just me and I would never hang someone for it.

    In a nutshell, I think a great educational speaker should make the audience question their beliefs but should never make them feel foolish for having them. They should also empathise with the audience and empower them to improve. These are things you have already done with me, Marisa, and I’m sure the effect will be 10 fold when I actually hear you speak!!

    Over and out for now!

    Best Wishes

    Amanda ;-)

  14.   Marisa Constantinides | January 18th, 2010 at 11:17 am     Reply
    Dear Shelly,Thank you so much for your kind comments. The subtext of this post is not to prove what a good speaker I am – I have tested the waters on several occasions and have made many mistakes too. Not quite the same ones as this speaker, but enough to be interested to improve and that is why I thought it would be good for me to reflect on this by writing about it.Amanda makes a great point about the speaker creating a sense of failure and fear in her, which is perhaps why they all laughed at his jokes? I do not know if this is right, of course, but I would hate to think that a group of intelligent DoS’s can be led in quite this way.But maybe they can. May be that is what happens when you are an audience and someone stands up there and you don’t want to be shown up as not having a sense of humour or you are led by one strong titter in the pack?

    Am wondering if this is a possible explanation.

    Amanda,

    What a great comment you have written – “a great speaker should make the audience question their beliefs but should never make them feel foolish for having them.”

    Yes! And isn’t that also a trait of a good educator?

    But I think maybe it’s time to turn away from the first speaker and perhaps analyse a little more what it was that we thought made the second talk receive such positive comments.

    After all, it’s the second model I would hope to learn something from…

    Thank you both for commenting.

    Marisa

  15.   Anne Hodgson | January 18th, 2010 at 1:26 pm     Reply
    Very nasty business, this Mr Dellar. Singular lack of humor, though he doesn’t notice it. Sir Ken is universally loved and revered. Full stop. Hope International House learns from its mistakes.
  16.   Duncan Trout | January 18th, 2010 at 2:51 pm     Reply
    Why didn’t he define “creativity” from the opening, rather than pushing the insulting assumption that we all subscribe to a very shallow perception of the creative process? If he had a strong thesis statement such as “Creativity has become a buzzword used to justify some flawed teaching philosophies and practices,” then he might not have needed the juvenile sarcasm to carry us through the first 35+ minutes.
    His ending is strong but the points he made should have organized the entire speech: the importance of motivation and play and of repetition and rote learning and how creativity grows out of a structured and rather mundane lesson plan.
    “Mundane?” Nice cheap shot at us Yanks, but we’re not so shallow we can’t spot a snake oil salesman.
  17.   Marisa Constantinides | January 18th, 2010 at 3:14 pm     Reply
    Hey Anne, thanks for comment – short and sharp!Duncan,You are absolutely right – he didn’t not in fact have to attack creativity but misconceptions of it and he would have been all right, actually.Good point about this ‘mundane’, but have commented on it already.

    Since you’re a Yank, what do you make of his frequent incantation re British TEFL tradition? What does the man mean?

  18.   duncan | January 19th, 2010 at 3:45 am     Reply
    This dialogue you’ve created is, as we Yanks would say, ‘like totally awesome.’And I’m pleased by your quick response to my comment.
    I wish I could answer your question, but my understanding of any TEFL tradition, British or American, is limited to my CELTA training, to resource like Scrivener and the web, and to conferences. Pretty superficial.I did find that his cheap shots had nothing to do with the CELTA course that I took in 2007. When my tutors explained methods and activities, they always explained why they worked. Every point they made had been considered, examined, and tested. No speculation, no cute theories, and no fad-driven nonsense. Every idea proposed was followed up with a practical application.The CELTA tutors had a good sense of balance between play and work. Creativity was used to enliven the necessary repetition and rote-learning activities; ie, you could always disguise a drill as a game and get them enthused over the business of repetition. This makes the speaker’s indefensible comments seem like a straw man fallacy: maybe somebody embodies the judgments he’s making, but I don’t know who that is. Such an American style of politicizing. Reminds me of the noise pollution of televised political pundits that I won’t name.

    Maybe we should initiate a dialogue on shame, guilt, and other forms of bullying in education. I think you touch on it in your earlier discussion on creativity.

  19.   Jeremy Harmer | January 19th, 2010 at 1:00 pm     Reply
    Well, I’ll try again and leave a comment!!What makes a good plenary speaker? I wish I knew – and that’s what I talk about, mostly, on my blog of course.It is clear that you disagreed fundamentally with a lot of what Hugh Dellar said in the talk that was filmed on HMS Belfast at the IHDOS conference a few days ago. And you wondered why the audience seemed to enjoy it so much!I’d like to comment on that last point first. I was listening to a live performance on Mendelessohn’s string octet on the radio the other day. I thought it was disjointed, uneven, rather wild. But the audience at the live gig cheered and cheered. So what I heard – via the radio – clearly wasn’t what they heard or saw. And the same is true even for film, I think. In the words of one of my favourite Janis Ian songs, “Guess you hadto be there!” (I wasn’t!)

    But onto the question of style. HD’s style is fairly unique and is immenseley popular with some people, I can assure you. He is, often, a polarising speaker and can feel satisfied, I think, with precisely the fact that he doesn’t leave people ‘cold’ or ‘disengaged’. He is not a ‘male’ speaker, in my opinion (you have commented on my gender blogpost!), but he is a ‘Hugh’ speaker. The reason that I could never speak like him is not cause I am a woman – clearly I am not – but because I am me, and me has a completely different style from him. I could never speak like that – nor would I want to.

    Do I like the message in his talk? He’s got a point, but he is frequently a straw-man burner, as in this case, I believe. But some interesting stuff in there.

    But (a last final comment about speaking styles – and encapsulates a certain kind of presenter who pops up from time to time), can you be a giant-killer AND a giant at the same time?!! Because that’s what some people seem to want.

    Jeremy

  20.   Marisa Constantinides | January 19th, 2010 at 9:55 pm     Reply
    Duncan,It was never my intention to initiate such a dialogue but there are, indeed, people who sail around conferences and spread gems of unfounded wisdom, or who bore people to tears, or who bully their audiences into uneasy (or easy) titters, simply because they had a coursebook or two published.And teachers listen and believe.
  21.   Lindsay Clandfield | January 19th, 2010 at 10:48 pm     Reply
    This is the third time I’ve tried to leave a comment, so this one will be a bit shorter I’m afraid.I don’t want to comment on a particular person’s style, but here are some thoughts about speaking.- Cheap jokes about bad students or trainees is not a good idea. It can make you look mean.- Jokes about someone’s bad English can also go badly wrong and make you look pretty insensitive.

    – Cheap shots, jokes and generalisations about coursebooks, materials or grammar (or technology for that matter) are boring (well, to me at least).

    – Personal, named attacks on other speakers, authors, teacher trainers or other figures is just asking for trouble and bad karma.

  22.   Marisa Constantinides | January 19th, 2010 at 11:35 pm     Reply
    Jeremy,I appreciate you making the effort and fighting the jungle beasties which chewed up your first comment. Isn’t it awful… the first one, the one we lost, always seems to be the best.But, nevertheless, you have raised some very interesting points here.First of all, let me clarify that I am talking about any speaker, not necessarily a plenary speaker, which is what you are usually invited to be. Comments include a teacher or teacher educator such as myself who may be presenting a talk or workshop for the first time.

    Being there; yes, I take your point that there may be some loss of detail, of atmosphere, of special rapport between speaker and audience which I may have not been able to experience. But, in fact, it does not matter. I am looking at this as is and, although I accept what you say, this is no symphony orchestra where the sound levels and the acoustics of the hall do matter. We are talking about words, attitude, content and presentation style and I do not think that there would be a great difference for me if I was physically present. Perhaps I would be mellower? Is that what you are suggesting?

    Yes, Ok, some interesting stuff, but not enough, as far as I am concerned. The value of repeated practice – of automatization – is not exactly new or earthshaking. It is only people who do not understand skills acquisition who still think drill and kill and that deliberate practice means the 40’s or the 60’s, or something passe.

    On another level, I do acknowledge that education never moved forward because everyone repeated what everyone else said and that a healthy arguing out of points is what has often shaken people out of a comfortable stupor. In that sense, a good speaker is not necessarily someone who strokes the audience making them feel good about everything they do, but often someone who presents old things in a new way, new things in a new way, new things in an old way, etc. etc.

    But a good speaker does this in a way that does not offend anyone.

    Let me suggest another thought to you, Jeremy. You don’t know if I am a good speaker. You yourself are a one of the best known speakers around conferences and have a lot of experience of what it is that makes a talk good, what is a good speaker or not. And yet, here you are, sitting down and chewing the virtual fat with some unknown, exploring ideas, acknowledging a thought here and there, disagreeing with me, and yet, not making me feel bad about what I have written which may be a lot of hot air.

    It is the rules of discourse that govern this interaction that you are taking up with me, I believe, that make you a good speaker, and if you are not perfect now – you are sure to get better every single time because you worry about stuff like what we are talking about now.

    Quality – Speak the truth
    Relation – Be relevant
    Quantity – Be as brief or explicit as necessary
    Manner – Avoid wordiness; use the appropriate tenor

    Grice said it all and in his “manner” maxim we can subsume the politeness principle (Lakoff)

    Make your receiver feel good
    Do not impose
    Give options

    There are other interpretations of this, a very interesting one here – worth following some of the links, too.

    There are considerable lessons in this and perhaps it would be an interesting exercise to analyze these particular discourses, since we now have the means to save and watch and listen at leisure, all those things which went by and were then forgotten.

    But there was a loooot of flouting of various maxims in this particular piece.

    And it does occur to me that this response is a tad too long.

    :-)

  23.   Marisa Constantinides | January 19th, 2010 at 11:49 pm     Reply
    Dear Lindsay,Apologies for my unruly blog which seems to have both you and Jeremy so much trouble to put up your posts.“This is the third time I’ve tried to leave a comment, so this one will be a bit shorter I’m afraid.” May be I need to unload some widgets? Who knows? I shall ask the expert!I fully agree with all the points you have made and in fact, the name of the particular person is not so relevant in the discussion which has developed, is it.

    This is not a personal thing, in fact I had never heard the particular presenter before and I had not attitudes of any kind before I heard this talk.

    But naming names was inevitable since there was this sample. Still, thank you for summarizing some of the points we all so long windedly chatted about here into a neat list.

    One more item and it would have been…guess what?

    Six Things!!!!

  24.   Mohammed Rhalmi | January 20th, 2010 at 12:06 pm     Reply
    I hate people who laugh at other people. It just shows that the speaker is mean. One can easily make a point without hurting others.
  25.   Nicky | January 20th, 2010 at 1:42 pm     Reply
    Wow, excellent post, judging from the number of comments and the fervor behind them!I just watched both presentations and agree with you on the key elements of the presentation style of both. Sir Ken’s laidback, self-deprecating sense of humor wins a lot more points that Mr. Dellar’s more snarky, scabrous style–and is funnier in fact; I laughed a lot more in 20 minutes with Robinson than in 55 mins with Dellar (though he did get a couple of snickers out of me).Beyond that, two main problems with the “Curse of Creativity” talk:
    1) the title – I’ve no idea really, but I imagine this came to him in a burst of inspiration (or creativity, if you will), and he liked the provocative nature of the title (and the alliteration of the hard C’s), and set out to make an hour long talk out of it.What he’s really criticizing isn’t “creativity” per se on the part of teachers but rather “poorly considered decision making”. That’s all. However, subsuming the use of poorly designed tasks of teachers trying to be creative and making excessive demands on student creativity allows him to use that oh-so-provocative title.

    In a word, marketing. (Sure this example(or one like it) came up in J. Harmer’s blog post on titles of plenary talks, etc. And it seems like the marketing works!

    2 – Somebody get this man a projector and some slides.

    All that having been said, Mr. Dellar makes a number of points that I quite agree with. (And as reinventing the wheel seems to be a universal in TEFL talks and so on, I won’t dispute him that.)

    But his particular sense of humor seems to push him across the line on several occasions. We should “laugh with”, not “laugh at” our students, ourselves and each other, am i right?

  26.   Marisa Constantinides | January 20th, 2010 at 4:13 pm     Reply
    Mohammed and Nicky,You are absolutely right!Yes! Laugh with, not at….Nicky,

    “Somebody get this man a projector and some slides”…

    I was wondering about that because I saw him occasionally glancing left or right to where a screen would have been, so that may not have been his fault but the cameraman’s.

  27.   Duncan Trout | January 21st, 2010 at 1:49 am     Reply
    Two concerns:How to be funny without hurting people?Judy Carter in the Comedy Bible says to always begin your stand up routine with self-directed humor so that later jokes directed at others don’t seem so offensive. In that way, the audience gets the message that we’re all laughable characters, including the standup. Also, you can’t tell jokes about bald men unless you’re bald, nor about overweight people unless you’re overweight, etc.Another concern: I’d love to know about public speaking information for EFL students, especially very shy people like many of my Taiwanese students. A colleague takes some of her students to Toastmasters’ meetings, and they seem to enjoy it.

    Does anyone have any favorite methods for encouraging sts to speak to large groups?

  28.   Marisa Constantinides | January 21st, 2010 at 4:55 pm     Reply
    Hi Duncan,I have started trying pecha kuchas and I know a lot of other colleagues are using them either in thei original 6.40 mins version, or shortened versions 3 mins, 2 mins – you can increment as necessary really.Have a look at this, one of my first blog posts actually and google them to find out more.https://marisaconstantinides.edublogs.org/2009/07/21/pecha-kucha-and-some-ideas-for-use-with-your-classes/
  29.   Hugh Dellar | April 5th, 2010 at 10:03 pm     Reply
    As Dear Oscar once said, there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.:-) )

    •   Marisa Constantinides | April 6th, 2010 at 3:19 pm     Reply
      @Mr Dellar,Thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment – not much more to say really to the positive way you have taken this in your stride.Marisa

      •   Hugh Dellar | April 6th, 2010 at 8:09 pm     Reply
        @Marisa Constantinides,Hi Marisa –
        Well, you seemed to be having so much fun not liking me that I felt almost guilty stumbling into a position where I could eavesdrop the conversation! It feels positively indecent to be able to interrupt it (British humour alert!).I honestly don’t really know where to begin. You clearly didn’t like my talk, which is fine and is of course your right. I see loads of talks I don’t agree with or find boring or only manage half of or whatever. You can’t please everyone all the time and it seems pointless to set out to do so.If, like me, though, you feel that at least one of the points of doing talks is to stimulate debate and dicussion and to get people to assess how they feel about things, then clearly the IH session I did was a great success, given the expenditure of energy you’ve put into raging against it.

        There were just a couple of points I wanted to make in response to things, however, just to set the record straight. Firstly, the trainee whose lesson I mentioned knows full well that she appears in the talk. I asked her permission and sent her drafts of the talk and explained why I was mentioning it. She’s seen the talk live before and is fine with it. She is also, I should add, now a sucessful and competent teacher in her home country – and we remain in touch. My intention was certainly never to mock her. It was, though, hard not to find the lesson comic and my beef was essentially with the construct of creativity floating around within our profession that leads otherwise sane teachers to feel it’s worth inflicting ‘improvements’ upon tried and tested coursebook material (not, I should add, MY coursebook material in this instance, for what it’s worth). If you do watch the whole talk, incidentally, there is a point where I return to this lesson and strongly identify with it as this was also very much how I myself was taught to teach. This was my whole point in mentioning it in the first place – as an example of an attempt to be creative gone wrong, one we’ve all been through, at least those of us educated via the paltry medium of four-week CELTA / CTEFL courses. Obviously, in a 45-minute talk, defining the parameters of what I mean exactly by ‘creative’ teaching is nigh-on impossible if one wants to leave time for other matters, but I had hoped – perhapos in vain – that illustrations from my experiences such as these might go at least some way towards clarifying what it was I was opposed to.

        Secondly, I think it’d be wise if from the off we were all honest about our own prejudices. I do have to say that your comments about my accent and intonation amused me, given your apparent disgust at my supposedly ’snarky’ comments. One of my personal bugbears certainly is twinset-and-pearls types from Oxbridge who accuse me of straitjacketing students’ ‘creativity’ by teaching formuluaic language (though I suspect this was a club of one, in all honesty). Yours clearly includes London accents. Which is fine, but it’s then a bit pot-kettle-black of you to moan about my prejudices whilst being blinkered about your own.

        Anyway, that’s quite enough of tedious self-justification on my part (something at least we should both be able to agree on!). I’ll close by saying that I do have plenty of other talks – many of them less confrontational / polemical. You may even enjoy some of them. Then again you may not. Whatever, I would hope they would at least make you react in some way or the other.

        By the way, I shall be in Harrogate and should our paths happen to cross, fear not. I do not bite or hold grudges and am always happy to talk over differences in ideology and approach, as I trust those here who’ve met me will testfiy to.

        Best,
        Hugh

        •   Marisa Constantinides | April 7th, 2010 at 10:04 am     Reply
          @Hugh Dellar,Hi! Long answer but you deserve a comment – as you say no point in going too long self justifying – a blog is a blog is a blog, very personal and not the ELTJ. I do agree you may have a lot of other talks some of which I may or may not like – I mentioned this somewhere that I am looking at this one particular instance.Look at it as a teacher observation. We have all gone through it – our tutor didn’t like one of them at all and yet we turned out to hopefully be fine teachers.A lesson or a talk is 2 secs of your life, not the sum total of it and I have no personal gripe or rage against you.

          Should our paths cross at Harrogate I will not rage either but I hope we don’t go on belabouring this.

          Life is too short to sulk and there is plenty of other stuff we can very happily argue about

          :-)

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