This post was originally written in 2009 on this blog which was very very new and had very few readers.
I have updated it with two videos of a Pecha Kucha which was inspired by it and you will find them at the end of the post. Both post & original talk and PK’s are spoof, delivered tongue in cheek and I particularly enjoyed doing them. I hope you will find some use for them.
This short post includes my notes from a presentation I did some years ago at a conference for Foreign Language School Owners in Greece where I was specifically asked to present a workshop on good classroom management.
At that time, I had been training a group of directors of studies and had used Gilbert’s (1978) excellent “Behavior Model for Creating Incompetence” . You will find this on page 87.
This inspired me to use Gilbert’s model, in some cases with phrases lifted right off his table (p.87) and in many cases, adding my own ideas to categories of teacher behaviours typically associated with good classroom management.
The idea generated this worksheet. The participants were, at some point during my workshop, involved in commenting on the statements below and, of course, turning them into positive, empowering teacher behaviours.
Handout given to participants:
Rapport – classroom atmosphere
Scowl and frown as often as possible – this should make you look serious and busy
Never smile or show warmth – familiarity breeds discontempt
Encouraging smiles are for young classes – adult classes don’t need such nonsense
Avoid jokes and humour – the classroom is a place for work
Create an atmosphere of high anxiety
Threaten students with spot tests and low performance ratings as often as you can
Setting up activities: guidelines to students
Make your guidelines as confusing as you can
Never check to see whether your students have understood your instructions
Don’t bother to help or support students or groups who are lost
Avoid explaining the purposes of activities – you were not meant to give your students free teacher training!!
Give them as little guidance as possible and only if pushed against the wall
Never show them how to perform well
Hide what is expected of your students as much as possible
Never tell them what you expect them to do in case they might get smart
Student Groupings
Don’t mix or match groups according to levels of ability or personality
Make sure the loudest, most domineering students are working with the shyest ones
Never allocate tasks in group work – your students should already know how to work in a team
Training your learners
Leave training to chance – you are there only to explain grammar & vocabulary
Your students should already know how to participate in class activities – so they are OK
If you decide – against all good judgement – to do some learner training, make it unnecessarily difficult
In that case, also make training irrelevant to your students’ needs and objectives
Never give your students choice – this means you might have to do more work
Design activities and materials without ever consulting with your learners
Schedule difficult activities for times when your learners are not at their sharpest
Avoid using activities that your learners could find motivating or pleasant
Teacher’s Position and Movement
Always remain seated behind your desk – learners must know where to find you
When you do move, pounce! This should keep them on their toes…
When the students are working in groups, butt in and participate
In fact, that is an excellent time to tell them some choice episodes from you personal life
Eye Contact & Attention Spread
Avoid looking at all the students; too much eye contact breeds familiarity
You should only look at your favourite students – ignore everyone else
When a student is talking, do something useful, e.g. write on the board
Always ask your best students – ignore the rest
Ask your weaker students questions you know they could never answer
When a weaker student is talking, remember to glare and show disapproval
Your Language & Using your Voice
Treat your learners as if they were five year olds – talk to them simply and very loudly
Call them ‘children’ as often as possible – establish your authority
Being polite is not in your job description – you need to assert yourself over them
Avoid using simple language everyone can understand – show off your knowledge of terminology
The more abstruse and vague you are, the more respect you will inspire
Giving Students Feedback
Give your students misleading information about their overall performance
Never let your students know how well they are performing
If anyone makes a mistake, do not neglect to comment on their low IQ
Name students who made serious mistakes and laugh at them to motivate them to study
Correct everything – preferably while a student is talking, for a lasting effect
Never correct any of your favourite students – praise them warmly instead
Make sure that poor performers get the same marks as good performers
See to it that good performance gets punished in some way
A Pecha Kucha delivered at the 2nd ISTEK International Conference in 2011. Much of what is in this PK first originated in the handout above. This one was done in front of a live audience.
The same PK delivered online during the 4th Virtual Round Tempel Conference in 2011.
Reference
Gilbert, T. (1978) Human Competence – Engineering Worthy Performance, A Publication of the International Society for Performance Improvement.
Please feel free to use this as a handout for your workshops or discuss during teachers’ meetings on the subject.
Finally, someone who has recognised, applauded and wrote a follow up post to highlight my words of infinite wisdom…. A Model for Classroom Incompetence by TEFL Tradesman – what other laurels would I need? Edublog awards, eat your heart out!
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Many teachers who have had the opportunity to read discourse analysis either at University or on a PD course such as the Cambridge DELTA, express great interest in this way of studying connected text or talk, but just as many find it hard to incorporate it into their teaching; apart from an occasional lesson focusing on cohesive devices, referents or discourse markers, I must admit I have not seen much by way of other important concepts in discourse, especially related to the study of conversation analysis, an area which should be of intense interest to anyone teaching spoken English.
In most needs driven courses nowadays, there will be some components responding to the need of learners to acquire sociolinguistic competence and the wise ESP teacher will have phrases and functional listings, plus activities to get the studetnts to do things with this language – ranking, labelling, matching, analysing, using, etc…
But still some learners sound aggresive and abrupt in their interactions, and not only because of the intonation.
Politeness Principles Across Cultures
From http://www.infobarrel.com/Media/The_Art_of_Politeness
Being polite may differ from culture to culture – there are linguistic and paralinguistic means of conveying politeness, distance and respect which do not hold true in every language.
Take the classic French tu-vous distinction – the same exists in Greek – εσύ-εσείς – and using this plural of respect and distance makes politeness easier to spot. For learners coming from such languages, the absence of this in English is rather unsettling and difficult to replace with other linguistic tools
Another example is the highly frequent use of please in English and many other languages. In Greek, this is not used very often but informal requests tend to incorporate this ‘please’ function via the use of the noun dminutive -ακι as well as a more pleading and intimate intonation while making, say, a request. A Greek learner translating this into English will generally use the imperative, oblivious to the need to replace his/her own politeness indicators with their English equivalent.
No wonder Japanese businessmen are reported to think that Greek businessmen are very aggressive during business negotiations (Ron White, in a talk he delivered some years ago for TESOL Greece).
In Foreign Language classroom, teachers tend to correct mostly for errors of grammar, or inaccuracies in functional exponents. Teachers will also respond to errors of pronunciation of individual words or sound clusters and errors of vocabulary. This is expected and highly useful for the learner.
What I do not often see offered as feedback to adult learners in collaborative activities is correction related to whether and to what degree the learners
In the boardrooms of the world, different rules will abide and different cultures, microclimates and conventions. How quickly you can reduce distance and converse in a more intimate and familiar way will be very different in a boardroom in the US from, say, a boardroom in an Arab country, or in Japan…
There are many who argue that Grice’s Maxim’s and G Leech’s or Brown & Levinson’s or Lakoff’s politeness principles are not universal, and that following them promotes an Anglo-Saxon oriented interaction culture ( I presume this bothers them for reasons of linguistic imperialism, perhaps), and, therefore, feel it is not really necessary to introduce them into a programme.
From http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/f/forced_politeness.asp
There is, of course, truth in the non-universality of tones and politeness rules. What sounds polite in English may sound gruff in some cultures and what sounds polite in another country, may sound cloying, or even ingratiating in English, no question.
But in most cases, our adult learners are not aware of these perceptions of them formed by others.
They are not aware of the fact that their professional or academic persona which comes across just as it should in their native language, can be distorted beyond recognition in the foreign language projecting an image of themselves which would appall and horrify them, if they knew.
Should they not know or should they be left to discover this the hard way?
And should this concern just Business English teachers?
The impressions and judgements non-teacher native English users form of non-native English users are often formed by linguistic manner, not by linguistic accuracy.
I, for example, get really annoyed when a trainee teacher says “Where’s my handout? You haven’t given me one!” when I sometimes inadverently skip one of them in sharing out stuff. I never say anything because it’s not the right time to call them up on their linguistic manners but I do get a message which travels not to my intellect but to my solar plexus or somewhere near there, where I think is the seat of my emotional reactions
But being a teacher makes me much more tolerant and understanding. I know that if this trainee were to be speaking to me in Greek, s/he would be using the plural of politeness/respect. In English, it sounds too direct and confrontational but I understand and do not ‘pounce’ on the erring (according to me, always) producer of this particular utterance – I am even more tolerant in the case of foreign language learners at lower levels.
Being tolerant, patient and understanding of the learning effort, of lack of knowledge, is one thing. Leaving your learners in the dark is another.
For me, the non-universality argument is food for the complacent, the “I-can’t-be-bothered” type of teacher. Sometimes, it’s even further reinforced by arguments such as, “It’s not my job to teach them manners. They’re adults, they should know”.
For the Business English student, this is, indeed, important information. Careers can be unmade because of such linguistic faux pax.
But it’s not just in business that you need to be aware of politeness rules.
I do think it’s our job to let people know what they sound like when interacting in English and what impressions they may create.
If the learners decide they do not wish to change, as some do, out of a particular kind of ethnic pride, that is just fine, too. It’s their decision, not ours.
How can we incorporate this type of work into speaking activities/practice?
Well, I have already mentioned one of the obvious times in a lesson: feedback after speaking activities, for example, by setting up and giving students lists of criteria and getting them to evaluate peers and self as to whether they did well or not in terms of each category.
But there should be opportunities for presentation or noticing work, too, by analysing spoken samples, by looking at videos of board meetings, by reading conversational transcripts with a particular focus on aspects of discourse, for example, lexical cohesion in a text, or on knowledge speakers take for granted when they are saying something, etc.
And of course, focusing of producing speech, for example, by introducing role activities where some people will be told to be rude and others extremely polite, by cueing the politeness principles in discussions through giving each participant a particular prompt, e.g. “Before your response, summarise the previous speaker’s point and make a flattering comment”, or some such (if this one not to your liking) cues or prompts that regulate the manner and not the content of the discourse.
A story
Some years ago, we were approached by a young executive in a well-known pharmaceutical company who wanted to have one-to-one lessons because he was soon to be transferred to a higher position in a different country and wanted to improve his English as much as he could in the short time available to him before his transfer.
Two weeks into his course, his teacher (a young native speaker teacher fresh out of her DELTA course) came to me and announced that she could not stand this student any longer and could I find him a different tutor? ”He’s really very rude!!!” she said. “I cannot deal with him at all!”
I told her that I would give him a couple of tutorials to identify the problems and we would then decide how to proceed.
The teacher was right. While speaking to me in Greek, the young gentleman was charm personified, but in English, he turned into someone who really got on one’s nerves.
In his case, and because I could not take on the 1-2-1 course myself, I decided that we needed to confront the problem head on with some explicit instruction first and some contextualised practice later.
Materials Used
As his issues had to do with intonation, nuclear stress and discourse politeness rules, I only did some work on those areas and to be honest I could not think of any better material than what I was already using for my trainee teachers. The student was intrigued and fascinated by this ‘different’, as he called it, material, but he was highly motivated and keen to improve.
In two weeks, the student was fully aware of his main issues – as we also talked about how Greeks tend to express themselves and he did recognise himself in some of my descriptions.
His progress was fantastic.
Of course, he began by using this knowledge in a deliberate and rehearsed way before each thing he said (in other words, it had not become an automatic decision for him as yet) but I was thrilled when, one day, I heard him say in answer to a point I had just made during a problem solving task/discussion in which I was partnering with him
“Your viewpoint is very interesting, Ms Constantinides”, and in an ‘aside’ he added: “I’ve just made you feel good, but now I ‘m going to disagree with you!”
I returned him to his teacher two weeks later and, apparently all was plain sailing from then on.
Teacher Language Awareness & Discourse Analysis
For me, it goes without saying, that the study of discourse is essential on any teacher development programme. How can teachers introduce it to their learners if they themselves do not have that type of awareness?
Discourse (spoken and written) is an important component of our English for Teachers course as well – right in the heart of their systemic competence, along with Grammar, Syntax, Phonology and the study of Meaning.
The methods we use to introduce this area of systemic knowledge do not have to be laborious and complicated. For example, the video clip below, is excellent as an introduction for the study of the topic of coherence in spoken and language and important related concepts.
Games of various kinds can be used as well – for example to introduce cohesion, I have sometimes used cards with some famous pick up lines split in two halves. The students have to mingle and find the other half, then we discuss what aspects of language led them to find that half. I like this one because the lines make the students laugh at how silly they are. Different ‘adjacent pairs” can be used for different courses with a general of Business English focus.
Final Comments
Learning about politeness rules in spoken communication, presupposes the use of samples of language which are embedded in a context of use, preferably authentic. This does not necessarily entail long and difficult stretches of language, so the earlier we begin, the better.
I used some Wikipedia entries to link to definitions of terms used in this article but there are many very good books on the subject and if you have any further ideas to add, either about how you teach different aspects of discourse, or interesting texts and articles, I would appreciate it if you left a comment.
Videos of most of my talk at IATEFL Harrogate 2010
Part A about 22 minutes (conntent of slides 1-7 below is not included)
Part B about 8 minutes
A Summary of my talk
It has been suggested that creativity (or, as it is also termed, divergent production) is not a single unifying ability but is viewed as a composite of intellectual abilities. The four main facets I will be looking at are:
FLUENCY Ability to produce large numbers of ideas
FLEXIBILITY Ability to produce diverse ideas (not the same kind)
ELABORATION Ability to add on to and embellish an already existing idea
ORIGINALITY Ability to produce uncommon, ‘clever’ ideas
Creative thinking, or divergent production, facilitates problem solving, and in a problem solving approach oriented classroom, enhancing creative thinking potential can facilitate discovery learning as well as enhance language production.
This talk outlined the relationship of divergent versus convergent production to specific language activities encouraging one or the other kind.
A range of activities which can develop aspects of creative thinking singly or in combination were suggested; the handout contains a few more which were not covered in the actual presentation.
The four facets listed do not refer specifically to language learning but to any kind of intellectual challenge, language learning being one of them.
I would like to add a significant, for me, point, which does not emerge from my slides and handout, but which was made during my talk:
The activities mentioned and listed are intended to be integrated into a regular syllabus, for instance, the ‘unusual uses’ activity could be used when you introduce and practise the infinitive of purpose, or later, when you want to cover time clauses, or the language of re suggestions. The ‘predicaments’ activity can be used as is (..you were seen dancing on the rooftop of your friend’s car in a car park) or with other structures which you might introduce earlier or later, e.g. “Why did you hang your shoes outside your window last night?”
All these activities, however, need to be seen in the context of language practise and learner training.
The synthesis of these individual facets, their combinations and integrations need to be taken to a higher level of application through activities in the higher order level of Bloom’s taxonomy, whether digitally or non-digitally, in holistic activities, collaborative projects, large scale simulations, web quests, authoring of wikis or blogs, creating collaborative stories or similar tasks.
The activities presented in my talk at Harrogate were all related to language learning situations, but a few years ago I wrote an article ‘translating’ the basic activity typology into a list which could be useful to teacher educators. Many of these activities form the basis of the training at my centre on a variety of courses, from CELTA to DELTA and beyond.
My main bibliography on the subject of my talk can be found on this other, related post.
Acknowledgement
I am hugely grateful to Graham Stanley who livestreamed my talk on the day and has kept the videos on his account without deleting them for so long! Thank you so much Graham! I actually only now saw that you can download livestreamed talks via Real Player on Firefox (if anyone is interested in saving theirs )
This post is written in response and as part of a twitter conversation with Martin Sketchley – @ELTexperiences on Twitter. His blog post on his own Dogme observed lesson can be found at the end of this post.
In the days before writing his experimental asignment for the DELTA course, Jonathan – my trainee of last summer – worried a lot about whether he should attempt this or not and whether a lesson plan was in order – in the days that ensued, I asked Scott Thornbury on twitter and this was his very kind response:
Doing a Dogme lesson
Jonathan, was properly flattered and smitten with the wonder of twitter and immediate feedback and started working up to this lesson
Eventually, he finished his assignment and lesson plan and you will be able to find it here and download assignment and ‘plan’, more of a diagram really
It truly did not matter whether the lesson worked or not; the reflection which follows a failed attempt to implement something new, something outside one’s comfort zone is perhaps much more valuable than an incidental and mechanically produced “success” – which can happen too, if you are experienced and versatile.
But here is Jonathan’s beautifully crafted diagram – it bears a lot of discussion why this lesson did not perhaps live up to its creator’s expectations. Jonathan himself has identified some of the reasons in this post lesson evaluation and discussion as well as in his blog post where he lets off a bit more steam!
Here is his diagram though – submitted as a nice alternative to column style planning.
Forgot to mention that this post and materials upload was with the full consent of Jonathan Aichele – I felt it was not appropriate to post before his Module 2 results to were issued, but now that he has got through this Module with flying colours… well, the sky’s the limit and on to Module 3, Jonathan, right?
Reading is a highly complex activity and, yet, in the foreign language classroom, it is often approached as if texts are just collections of words and grammatical patterns which students, if only they could analyse and decipher them, would be able to arrive at the overall meaning of the text.
But, is this what happens when we read in the world outside the classroom? Wouldn’t it take forever to read anything if that is what we did?
When we read (think about you, reading these lines) we engage in a series of decisions, interpretations and reinterpretations of the stream of text we are involved in processing but, do we do this merely at word and phrase or sentence level?
In this post, I would like to highlight the role of previous knowledge in interpreting textual meaning and have my readers think how they could translate this into best classroom practices in teaching their learners to be effective readers.
The diagram below shows two things:
1) the types of knowledge readers make use of in order to understand a text, beginning with what they already know about the subject, of similar texts, of type of publication and specific reason for which something was written as well as linguistic knowledge they possess.
2) the order in which this prior knowledge is put into use, with linguistic knowledge put to use last rather than first, in other words, processing is effected from the top-down rather than from the bottom-up, with bottom-up exploration coming into play when the reader encounters difficulties interpreting/understanding part of a text.
This is what we do as readers in the real world – in which we are not only accomplished in the language in which the text is written but, moreover, we have both reason and desire to read.
Language learners who are not accomplished readers, will, unless trained by their teachers, usually begin processing at word and sentence level, in effect trying to arrive at the overall meaning by first understanding all the small and local nuts and bolts of each text. This makes for slow, laborious and unmotivated reading.
Here is a diagram which represents the levels and types of knowledge we use to achieve understanding of a text.
The diagram I have adapted from the original by A.Anderson & T.Lynch (1988) is an attempt to make a case for engaging our learners in activities prior to reading which will activate schematic/background knowledge, and will bring contextual knowledge into play as further ammunition for help in interpreting – thus, it is hoped that our learners will learn to make use of top-down processing; bottom-up processing will be put into effect when they encounter meaning difficulties, when there is a need for reading between the lines, for text interpretation at a deeper level or for identification and recognition of language features which we wish to have them notice and be aware of.
Activating Prior Knowledge – Advance Organisers
“If I had to reduce all educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly”
Ausubel, D. P. (1960). The use of advance organizers in the learning and retention of meaningful verbal material. Journal of Educational Psychology, 51, 267-272.
This is something I read only very recently, but it rang a variety of bells which first started ringing when I studied psycholonguistics at university and first heard this term in relation to the processing of discourse (whether spoken or written). I am going to try and make a connection between the concept of advance organisers which D.P. Ausubel introduced to the idea of facilitating learning by activating previous knowledge and top-down processing which is perhaps more familiar to foreign language teachers.
Graphic Organisers
A typical example of an advance organiser or sometimes called graphic organisers, would probably be some type of diagram which the learners would be involved in actively completing prior to reading a text You can view more examples here and here
In ELT terminology, graphic organisers go by the name of “information transfer‘, a term first coined by H.G.Widdowson (1979) who identified them as excellent bridges between what he called ‘comprehension’ and ‘composition’, in other words, receptive understanding and productive skills work, speaking or writing.
Widdowson doesn’t describe exactly the same use of information transfer as I am suggesting here; but I see no reason why his ideas should not be combined with the concept of advance organising, tuning in the learners’ mind into a topic by drawing on available knowledge, not only of facts and information but of language as well – something which is of great interest to the language teacher.
Understanding the relationship between information transfer and different genres is a really useful idea, as different types of diagrams suit different text types, for example, a flowchart diagram will usually be appropriate if a text has sequential information – narrative, instructions, a process description.
Here is an example I have used with a newspaper article with the following title:
After a brief lead in in which the students look at the headline and see that the husband’s attempts were unsuccessful, the table above gets them to think and predict what different methods he may have tried to use and possible reasons why he may have failed; this aims to activate prior knowledge of such events, as well as related linguistic knowledge; it aims to stimulate curiosity by personally investing in this type of guesswork. By the time the students are allowed to read the text, they are really just checking to see if their guesses were the right ones. The same diagram is used for checking up with the text ( diagram as bridge). Later, if you like and are so inclined (:-) ) you can get them to use the same diagram to invent a fictitious failed criminal who failed to rob a bank 7 times or something similar.
(If you are curious and want to have a look at the text, please go to my Materials & Downloads page and you will find it in the folder called SEETA Reading Course)
The most popular and simple graphic organiser which is used by many educators (not only ELT teachers) looks like this and it is easy to put up on a board, on a google document or even a Wallwisher!
Mind maps are also a great ways of connecting ideas and because they can be expanded and added to very easily, with the additional benefit of appearing to resemble the way our brain organises information, making connections and subconnections and creating associations. Mindmaps can be created by Ss by using large sheets of paper or, online, there are many website which offer free applications – here is an example using Mindomo
This example of a mindmap explains the uses of mindmaps and includes a great number of ideas useful to teachers.
How to use mindmaps @Paul Foreman http://www.mindmapping.com/
Cues or Prompts
I am using the term here in a different sense to how it is used in audionlingualism, in which the teacher supplies a verbal or non-verbal prompt for a student to reproduce a language pattern.
Cues or prompts in pre-reading activities may also be verbal or non-verbal but their purpose is to generate anticipation and predictions related to a text the learner are about to read. They can be simple or complex; for example, a series of controversial statements which the students must discuss before they read a text is still a prompt, albeit a more complex one.
Here is an example of such a prompt I have used to generate predictions related to a story the learners are about to read.
Questions Please Activity Based on these Prompts
A list of key words or key phrases may also act as a prompt; the learners can use these to guess the topic or they can be asked to choose which ones might be expected to be included in a text with a specific title or headline. In the case of working with a whole book, the size or amount of text may vary and it may include predictions about plot, character, themes and settings.
Questions
The concept of questions to elicit prior knowledge and generate predictions is a familiar one, in which the teacher may lead the learners into thinking about a topic by asking a variety of questions. This type of lead in is just one of the many available but, in reality, most often used because it requires minimal materials preparation.
Again, more often than not, this type of dialogic model tends to place the teacher at the centreand may generate more teacher talk – your choice to follow or not. A teacher can avoid this by writing up the questions on the board and asking learners to discuss in pairs or by assigning one or two questions per pair or group to discuss and present to the rest of the class.
The Q & A format could be seen to exist in advance organisers as well; a heading in a table or graph is, in a fact a question, isn’t it? The only difference being the format.
I personally tend to prefer questions asked by the learners themselves.
For the learners to ask their own questions about a text they are going to read, they may need one or more prompts. for example the prompt example above can be used by the class/groups to ask the teacher questions about the narrative, but only Yes or No questions – than, based on the teacher’s answers, they can be invited to try and construct the text from the answers and the prompts before they read it.
Or, they can be shown the “husband tried to kill wife 7 times’ headline and be asked to brainstorm as many questions as they think/hope the article will answer to satisfy their curiosity . The questions can be shared by all or not but the learners are then asked to read with their own questions in mind – not the teacher’s or the book’s.
Final Thoughts
I have been trying to argue the case for creating a range of activities which will
engage the learners prior to reading a text
prime them and motivate them to read
promote top-down processing of the written text
create a bridge to later stages in the lesson
increase flow/task accountability from stage to stage
lead to focused and purposeful reading
provide a stimulus for follow up productive skills work.
Advance organisers can be great tools for this, but stimulating learner curiosity, excitement and motivation to read can be further enhanced by other cues/prompts and types of questioning. So, combining, mixing and matching for text, diagramatic display, sound and visual stimulation can work even better and stimulate different learners in different ways.
Diagrams (or information transfer or graphic organisers … ) have additional value however.
Their added value to other types of priming activity is their ability to demonstrate logical links between ideas or hierarchical relationships. Once comprehension of a text has been achieved, the text can be taken away from the learners but the diagram remains available as a prompt which can generate further oral or written work.
Related Reading
Book
Widdowson, H.G., 1979, Explorations in Applied Linguistics, Oxford University Press (pp. 73-74)
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