I've been thinking about the different forms there are of a single language, and how we need to master so many of them during a lifetime.For example, the language I use at home with my family isn't the same as the language I would use in an academic paper (not that I ever mastered that particular form of English, it has to be said!).My kids happily use 1337 (leet) speak online with their friends and even in their text messages to one another. Occasionally, they will use elements of 1337 when texting me. Elements of 1337 have informed lolcat (follow the link and have a bit of fun, I dare you!). Even my pedantic septuagenarian mother has adopted some of the shortcut spellings when sending text messages (her most recent message to me included the word 'fite', for example... I never thought I'd see the day!).My last employer owned the rights to a few courses in business English in a range of delivery media.Here are some anecdotes that illustrate misapplication of contextual terminology:A neurosurgery theatre nurse recently told me about a wonderfully talented Vietnamese neurosurgeon who had very little English when he joined the team at the hospital where she works. Being an intelligent and determined man, he learned quickly by listening to and imitating his colleagues. But he learned the hard way that it is inappropriate to tell a patient's family, "Oh, he's toast."When my husband arrived in South Africa as a child, at the prompting of his classmates, he went and told his teacher to "Go jump in the lake" (although you can be pretty sure what he actually said was "gaw yump in de lake"). She remembered that with fondness when he phoned her some 25 years later to wish her well on her retirement.A pastor friend of mine went to preach at a church in Mexico, where one or two teenagers, passionately devout about their Christian faith, sported T-shirts with the most profane of slogans, utterly oblivious to the meaning of the words writ large across their chests.If there are this many forms of the language of which I am a native speaker, goodness knows how many forms there are of the languages of which I am not a native speaker. I wonder how many times I have put my foot in it. I know of one occasion when I politely advised a Swede that my Swedish was poor, but that I could follow if only they would speak 'more badly'. I'm sure there have been countless other occasions.As national and cultural boundaries are breached by social media, we find ourselves in daily contact with non-native speakers of our language. We might need to remember to cut them a little slack... there may be times when they say something grossly offensive without meaning to do so!

Image courtesy of PixelAnarchy Stuart Redman, teacher trainer and OUP author, introduces his upcoming webinar on 30th September entitled: "Don’t Give Up on Idioms and Phrasal Verbs." Teachers often have strong views about teaching (or not teaching) idioms and phrasal verbs. Read through a cross-section of views below. Which statements do you most identify with? Are there any that you strongly disagree with? ‘I tend to steer clear of idioms and phrasal verbs for low-level learners. They have other priorities, and I don’t want to confuse the students too much.’ ‘I teach phrasal verbs and idioms as they come up, even to low-level learners; for example, they need to understand items like ‘write it down’ or ‘take it in turns’ as part of the classroom language I use.’ ‘I teach quite a few phrasal verbs, but I don’t really teach idioms. They don’t seem to crop up very much in the course books I use.’ ‘Generally speaking, the students I teach are learning English for academic purposes, so I don’t teach many idioms and phrasal verbs because they’re too informal. I just stick to teaching more latinate vocabulary, because that’s what they need for reading, essays and that sort of thing.’ ‘I’m quite confused about how to organise the teaching of idioms and phrasal verbs. I always go over the grammar of phrasal verbs, but after that, I’m not sure how to go about it in a systematic way.’ ‘I often focus on idioms associated with parts of the body, for instance, ‘have a chip on your shoulder’, ‘put your foot in it’; or animal idioms such as ‘let the cat out of the bag’ and ‘the black sheep of the family’. It’s always fun, so that helps students remember it.’ ‘When I studied English at school, we used to learn long lists of phrasal verbs organised by the root verb, for example, ‘take in, ‘take out’, take over’, etc. As a student I found this quite confusing and I felt overloaded.’ ‘It’s all very well teaching idioms and phrasal verbs, but the big problem is how to practise them. I think students get bored by just doing gap fill exercises, and that’s the kind of thing I come across most often.’ ‘I don’t bother much with teaching idioms because a lot of learners tend to use them inappropriately or they just stand out like a sore thumb.’ Look again at the statements. Can you find fourteen idioms and phrasal verbs, not including the examples given in inverted commas, e.g write it down and take it in turns? During my upcoming webinar we will look at ways of organising and contextualizing idioms and phrasal verbs for teaching purposes. We’ll also be looking at material from the Oxford Word Skills series and the Oxford Learner’s Pocket series.Filed under: Dictionaries & Reference, Grammar & Vocabulary Tagged: Grammar, Idioms, oxford pocket, Oxford Word Skills, Phrasal verbs, Vocabulary

For the past few weeks, I have experienced a level of powerlessness I have not known for a long time. The frustration it has caused me and my family has spilled over into other areas of my life.It caused me to think again of the workplace learner.My frustration started with something as pleasant as the prospect of our family holiday. We decided to go to Lanzarote, which (for those who don't know) is a Spanish territory, and therefore within the EU.Because I am married to an EU citizen, I have never before had problems getting a visa to travel in the EU. Things were different this time. The visa service has been outsourced to an organisation which appears to have become a law unto itself.Previously, because I was already on record at the Swedish embassy, I could apply for a visa through the mail and would receive it within seven days. No problem. This is no longer the case. The requirement now is that I should attend an interview in London and there were no available appointments until after the start of our holiday. When I contacted them to point out the problem this presented, they were utterly unsympathetic. "Reschedule your holiday," was the solution they offered, as if this were the easiest and most obvious thing in the world.I began casting about for ways to get my visa more quickly when I came across EU directive 38/2004 article 10 which states that, as the (1) spouse of an EU citizen and (2) having indefinite leave to remain (permanent residence) in an EU member state, I am allowed to travel anywhere within the EU in the company of my husband for a period of up to 90 days.I contacted the visa service with this information. They already knew about it, it seems, but they still insist that I need a visa and they are still unable to assist me. So much for another provision of the directive which says that the spouses of EU citizens will be given priority treatment.I was sure that they were mistaken and tried to contact the Spanish embassy for confirmation. They never answered either their phones or their emails.My husband and I searched online and found all manner of precedent:http://ec.europa.eu/youreurope/nav/en/citizens/living/entry-procedures/for-family-members-who-are-not-citizens/index_en.htmlhttp://www.uklgig.org.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452http://eumovement.wordpress.com/info-spain/http://sid.usal.es/idocs/F3/LYN10709/3-10709.pdfhttp://www.immigrationboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=30020http://www.maec.es/subwebs/Consulados/Londres/en/MenuPpal/Servicios/Visados/Paginas/novisaenter_services.aspxhttp://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2004:158:0077:0123:EN:PDF The visa agency remained unmoved.We were advised by various sources that it would be illegal to prevent me from boarding the plane and that I should take my original marriage certificate and a copy of the EU directive with me. But I had my doubts about the effectiveness of these pieces of evidence on the person on border control with no authority and a set of rules handed down from on high.I have made a host of telephone calls and have at last been advised by the border control folks at the UK airport that they will not stop me from boarding the plane. I have also been advised by the folks in Lanzarote that they will not stop me from entering the island.I don't think I will actually believe it until I am safely ensconced in my villa!But this saga isn't so very different from the experience of someone trying to upskill in order to be able to do something differently or better in the workplace. We've all been there.You're not eligible to attend this course. Yes, I know what the employee's handbook says, but you're still not eligible.You can attend this course, but the next one is running in 6 months. You'll have to reschedule that project.You need an enrollment key/password to access that material, but we aren't issuing any at the moment.In the end, we go subversive, or we find ways around the obstacle.Or, at least, some of us do. I have never been very good at taking no for an answer. I have pushed back all my life. It's one of my most annoying characteristics. But I have seen 'impossible' things happen. Documents that should take 12 weeks to obtain have miraculously appeared with 24 hours. Jobs that have supposedly been lost have been reinstated. Doctors who are unavailable have suddenly become available. Doors that are supposedly sealed shut have swung wide. Of course, there are times when I deem it best to cut my losses and turn away, but these are conscious choices.But I am stubborn and bloody-minded.What about those who are not? What about the more gentle-natured people in the organisation? When they identify a development need and are stonewalled, what are they to do? This is a surefire way to generate a team of 'jobsworths' who punch the clock and look forward to retirement.I can't bear the thought of willingness to learn going to waste. We simply have to find ways to empower people to access the learning that they need in order to do their jobs and do them well, or to upskill to take on another role, if they so desire.We need to prise open some creaky doors. Of course, there will be resistance, but that's why there are people like (you and) me in this field: to push back against all that 'no-ness', to ask 'why' a lot until the lack of good reason causes the obstacles to crumble.Ugh! I'm feeling right rebellious today.

Angela Buckingham, language teacher, writer and teacher trainer, introduces her upcoming webinar on 24th & 26th September entitled: "Oral Error Correction in the English Language Classroom." As part of my role as a teacher trainer, I have observed many ELT lessons over the years: some given by new and inexperienced trainees, others by experienced members of staff who have been teaching language for many years. One area that interests me is the teacher response to learner mistakes in a lesson and what steps are taken towards oral error correction. Even if we haven’t thought about this consciously, our stance is usually writ loud and clear. What is evident to the observer is that teacher attitudes to learner mistakes can have a profound impact on behaviours in class. Here’s my Top Ten list for ensuring that your quiet language students will be even quieter, simply by adopting some or all of these simple classroom techniques: Always correct every error you hear Ensure that you correct in a stern way; Do Not Smile Make sure that you never praise your learners for answers given in incorrect English Don’t give thinking time - where possible, make sure you supply the answer yourself When learners do answer, respond to the language only, not to the content of the response Spend most of your lesson facing the board, computer, or looking at the textbook. Avoid eye contact with your students Ask questions to the whole class but always accept early answers from the most confident students, who should get the answer right If a student is hesitant, don’t give them time to finish. Show in your body language that you are bored listening to their attempts Seize every error as a teaching opportunity - don’t move on until everyone in the class is absolutely clear what the mistake was Be prepared to interrupt your students’ interactions at any time, so that they are using Perfect English Or… you might want to think about doing things differently. Error correction in the language classroom is important - my students definitely want to be corrected, and can feel irritated if they aren’t. But for teachers, what to correct, when to correct, and how to go about it are issues we grapple with on a day-to-day basis.  How can we help our learners in an encouraging way? In my upcoming webinar we’ll explore how to categorise oral language errors and examine strategies for dealing with them, as well as evaluating practical ideas for immediate use in class. Join the webinar, Oral Error Correction in the English Language Classroom on 24th and 26th September to find out more.Filed under: Grammar & Vocabulary, Pronunciation, Skills Tagged: Angela Buckingham, Classroom strategies, EFL, English Language Teaching, Error correction, ESL, oral error correction

This is the second article of a three-part series on giving EAP students effective feedback. Julie Moore, an ELT writer and researcher, shares her thoughts on how teachers can encourage students to act on feedback. In my last article, I wrote about how overwhelming it can be for new student writers to get back a piece of writing covered in feedback. They can often feel like getting their writing up to scratch is going to be such an uphill battle that they just give up and ignore the feedback altogether. I suggested that by giving less feedback and breaking it down into more manageable chunks, students can focus on a specific area at a time and make realistic progress. With my own EAP students last summer, I started off by focusing on the content of their writing, ignoring language errors and giving feedback on whether they’d answered the question, whether they’d provided sufficient support for their arguments, or whether their overall message was clear. Copy-editing Once we’d established what they were expected to write, I turned next to the how. Many students new to EAP arrive with what I describe as a high-school style of essay-writing. That is, their language is rather simplistic: it is not sophisticated enough to communicate the more subtle details and perspectives involved especially at higher levels of academic study. The purpose of teaching students to write in a more academic style is not to make them sound more ‘fancy’ or ‘impressive’, but to give them the tools to do justice to their subject knowledge and ideas. Explaining the why of features of academic style is as important as demonstrating the how. Group feedback As you read through writing that a class has handed in, you’ll often find that a particular task has thrown up the same issue for a lot of students, in which case, group feedback is the most efficient way to address it. One rule I always try to stick to is to work on the feedback activity before I hand back students’ individual writing. That way you’re more likely to have their attention, they’re not so caught up in their individual feedback and more concerned about some other feature you’ve mentioned on their paper. One problem for my students centred around the use of impersonal language in academic writing. In early writing tasks, many of them were still using a lot of personal pronouns to refer to people in general (we, you): If we restrict access to media like internet for young people, it is possible that they will find another way to gain related information. So I started off with this example from a student essay on the board (anonymously) and asked who the ‘we’ referred to. Of course, the class came back with various different answers - society, the government, parents, ISPs - so identifying the problem for themselves (i.e. vagueness). Next, we looked back at the text we’d read as input for the writing task (from an academic textbook) and picked out the subject of each sentence. We found that these were invariably noun phrases (often plural nouns to refer to specific groups), thus identifying how expert academic writers deal with this situation. Then in small groups, students looked at some more similar examples from their own writing, identified the problem in each case and suggested rewrites. Responding to feedback As well as staging group activities to highlight problems and features, I also tried to get students to engage more actively with individual feedback. So I’d focus on two or three key errors in a piece of writing and frame my feedback in the form of a question to be answered. I then asked students to email me their rewrites of just the highlighted sentences. For example, this was an exchange with a business studies student just after we’d been talking about hedging and the appropriate use of confident and tentative language: Student’s first draft: This paper demonstrates how the main management methods… My feedback comment: Is demonstrate the best verb here - a little too confident? Student redraft: This paper attempts to argue that the main management methods… My feedback: Great! This is really good and sounds just right for a student writer. By making feedback a collaborative process between student writer and you as editor - rather than a passive one - you can help students to better understand why we use certain linguistic features in academic writing and hopefully, help them to find their own voice as a novice academic writer. In my next article, I’ll talk about teaching proofreading techniques to help students polish up their final draft. This article first appeared in the February 2014 edition of the Teaching Adults Newsletter - a round-up of news, interviews and resources specifically for teachers of adults. If you teach adults, subscribe to the Teaching Adults Newsletter now.Filed under: Business & English for Specific Purposes, Professional Development Tagged: EAP, English for Academic Purposes, Feedback, Julie Moore, Methodology, Teacher Development, Teaching EAP

Like most people, I have a strong need to belong. To feel accepted. Like most people, I am also picky about where it is that I am accepted and by whom.When I originally started blogging, I stood in awe of the likes of Kathy Sierra and Stephen Downes (among others). I hovered on the sidelines of the spaces they inhabited and then grew brave enough to contribute my twopenn'orth to the conversations they were having. For different reasons, neither of these two people are particularly strong on responding to blog comments - Kathy (who no longer blogs, to my knowledge) received so many comments that she was physically unable to respond to them all; Stephen believes that his readers' comments have validity in and of themselves, without needing his affirmation or validation (or so I seem to recall from somewhere... blowed if I can find where he said it). At one point, I posted something that took an opposing stance to something Stephen had said and almost fell off my chair when he spread a little link love and referred to my post in his OLDaily the next day.It was this kind of acceptance that made me feel as if I belonged. And social media are great for this. They are such levellers. For example, to extend the Downes story for a moment, the nature of the relationship I have with Stephen has become increasingly relaxed over the years, as we have become connected in a wider range of social media spaces, to the point where we engage on personal issues as well as shared professional interests.Switching tack for a moment, let's look at this belonging thing from a slightly different angle:Because of a quirk of genetics, I always found it very difficult to find clothes that fitted me. I was the woman who hated clothes shopping, because after three stores full of nothing that fitted me, I began to feel like a freak. Things that fitted here, didn't close there, and things that closed there, hung like a sack everywhere else.Then a wonderful woman called Sarah Tremellen established Bravissimo, an outlet for... well, check it out for yourself.I don't know who developed her marketing plan, or whether she is naturally insightful, but she has formed a community for women who - like me - had to put up with all the strife that goes with being the shape that we are: quite apart from the struggle to find decent clothing, there are the assumptions about our morals and our intelligence levels, the ribald remarks, the failed attempts to conduct professional conversations with men who later wouldn't recognise your face if their lives depended on it.I was an early adopter of Bravissimo and am a fan of just about everything about it: the decor in the stores, the defiant quotes on the walls, the professional fitting service. But most of all, I love that I can walk out of their stores feeling like a shapely woman, rather than a freak.Recently, I was in one of their fitting rooms, when I overheard a woman in the next cubicle make a discovery: due to significant recent weight loss, she no longer fell within Bravissimo's target audience. The store no longer catered to her. She was utterly crestfallen as she said, "It looks like I'm just not a Bravissimo girl any more."Why do I relate this story?Because, in spite of the fact that the woman in question had achieved goal weight and all the attendant health and aesthetic benefits, in spite of the fact that she could now buy clothing from any high street store at a significantly lower price, she had effectively ousted herself from the community, and that was causing her genuine distress. And yet, one becomes a member of the Bravissimo community in the first place as a consequence of being excluded from all manner of other communities.The difference is that Bravissimo deliberately fosters that sense of community, that sense of belonging.As we build our learning environments and create our communication spaces, let's look for ways to foster that same sense of being part of something that make a person feel special. Something they will be reluctant to leave.

I have blogged about this story before (and probably got the details wrong), but it blipped on my radar again today. It is the most standout story of Olympic 400m sprinting for me. Even though 400m was my distance, and it remains my favourite event of the Olympics, I couldn't tell you off-hand who won that year... but the name Derek Redmond stands out in my mind.I want to draw your attention to the Dad in this video. Watch him fight his way past the officials. Watch him shoo them away so that his son can cross the finish line.I want to be that person.

Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman is the series director of Inside Writing and vocabulary consultant for Q: Skills for Success. In this article, she takes a look at vocabulary development in the classroom. Isn’t it obvious?  In order to write well, we need to know a lot of words, and we need to know a lot about each word so we can use it to say what we mean.  In fact, without the knowledge of many words, our writing is stymied - or should I say crimped? impeded?  blocked? snookered? A word choice transmits not only meaning, but tone and subtleties of meaning such as familiarity or distance, precision or vagueness, certainty or ambiguity, earnestness or light-heartedness and more.  For academic writing, this becomes especially challenging. In order to communicate as I intend, I need to know the ways in which words vary and then I need a wide variety of words from which to make my choices. Why isn’t vocabulary development included in every writing class?  Perhaps we underestimate the difficulty of this task and prefer to spend precious classroom time on other issues.  Or perhaps we don’t know how to integrate word learning into writing in a way that is relevant to the writing task.  But by not spending time developing our students’ vocabulary, we are hindering their writing development and academic success. This article suggests some techniques that address vocabulary development at each stage of the writing process: pre-writing, drafting, revision and editing, and gives you the bottom line when it comes to explaining the role of vocabulary to your students. Pre-writing This is the stage in which we gather ideas, develop thoughts and analyze the writing task.  First, what type of writing (genre) is to be used:  newspaper article? persuasive essay? summary? blog?  This helps sort through the topic, choose how to focus attention and be clear about purpose and audience.  Next, focus on finding a topic and exploring it with a purpose in mind. Reading and writing go hand-in-hand. To help students with both genre identification and topic development, use high-interest readings to provide clear models and to spawn ideas. A focus on vocabulary can illuminate the topic and guide the planning.  Pre-writing activities with a lexical focus might include: Brainstorming: Students read the writing prompt or a short passage about the topic, and identify 1-2 words that stand out as central to the topic. For each one, students generate as many related words in 5-10 minutes without censoring themselves. Pairs or small groups compare lists, and explain their choices, keeping the topic and genre in mind. Encourage students to share words and add to their lists. Freewriting: Students write non-stop for 5-10 minutes about whatever comes to mind that might relate to the topic, again without censoring themselves. Next, students reread what they wrote and circle words that seem important to what they want to say. Include words that describe facts, important names, opinions and feelings.  Include synonyms that are related words in different registers. Using these selected words, describe your plans to a partner. Paragraph Analyses: Select a paragraph that is written in the same genre or on the same topic as the assignment. Provide copies or project on a screen.  Read  together as a class, drawing attention to vocabulary with questions such as: Which academic words are used here? (See examples here). Which everyday words are used here? Focus on one well-used word at a time; what is behind the author’s choice of each word? Select another paragraph and repeat this activity. Pairs work together to answer the same questions as above.  Compare answers. Bottom Line for Your Students Different types of writing use different types of words.  Even very academic papers don’t use a large number of academic words, but they use them effectively.   Academic texts contain an average of 10% academic words (Coxhead, 2006). Drafting Stage In this stage, vocabulary activities can evolve from a focus on meaning to a refinement of meaning, always related to whom you are writing for and why you are writing. As your students begin their first draft, refer to the words they identified during prewriting. Organize the way these words relate to each other as they develop their first draft. Return to the source text for the assignment or other relevant articles on the same topic. Identify words that stand out to your students as interesting and important to the message.  Use these words in the writing. Bottom Line for Your Students Word learning doesn’t just mean to learn new words, but also to learn to have confidence to use words that you recognize but don’t use often.  Writing gives you a chance to use partially-known words and to build your knowledge of these words. Revision Stage The revision stage is a time to check that your students’ writing responded to the prompt, and that it focused on the purpose and audience as intended.  Examples of doing this with a focus on vocabulary include: Ask your students to re-read the prompt and then re-read their papers. Do they address the prompt? Are there any words in the prompt that can be added to their papers for the purpose of congruity? Read through the papers and look for vague words (good; nice; very). With purpose and topic in mind, change them to be more specific and clear. Bottom Line for Your Students A study of 178 university professors found that the greatest problem with the writing of non-native speakers in their classes was vocabulary.  They said vocabulary (more than grammar) kept them from understanding the meaning.  (Santos, 1988)  Your word choices are very important. Editing Stage The editing stage can be used as a guided opportunity to check for details of word-use including subtleties of meaning, lexical variety, grammatical features, derivatives and collocations. With this stage, students work with a final or near-final draft.  Guide students to read through all or part of the paper, focusing on one task at a time. Lexical variety: Did they over-use any words?  Did they repeat the same word in the same sentence? Noun use: Check their accuracy: Are they plural? singular? countable?  uncountable? Verb use: Do they "agree" with the nouns in plurality? Check for verb completion.  Do the verbs need to be followed by an object?  Do they need a "that clause?" Academic word use: Underline each academic word used.  Has the student used them correctly?  (when in doubt, check a dictionary)  Do they have enough? Too many? Bottom Line for Your Students You may have been taught to focus on grammar when you edit your paper, but grammar and vocabulary often overlap. Take time to focus on individual words; do they say what you mean and say it accurately? Please leave your ideas in the comments below.Writing instruction and word learning belong together.  These are some examples of ways to engage vocabulary development in writing. As you reflect on your writing classroom, what else can you add about vocabulary and writing? References Coxhead, A. (2006).  Essentials of teaching academic vocabulary.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Santos, T. (1988). Professors’ reactions to the academic writing of nonnative-speaking students. TESOL Quarterly 22(1), 69-90.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Grammar & Vocabulary, Skills Tagged: Academic writing, AWL, Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman, Inside Reading, Inside Writing, Q Skills for Success, Vocabulary

Those of you who are Facebook friends will know that I lost something during my recent holiday. It was something of no intrinsic value, and yet I treasured it enormously. It was something that has been featured on this blog before. It was the bangle my father gave to me for my 17th birthday.It was the only truly personalised thing he ever gave me, and the only times I wasn't wearing it were the times it was broken. It occupied pride of place on my right wrist through thick and thin for about 30 years (albeit with the aid of several repair jobs). If you have met me in person, you have seen it, even if you haven't noticed it.It has been swimming, climbing and jetskiing... and survived it all.But one day during our holiday, my elder son playfully grabbed me by my wrists in the sea. As I felt it move on my arm, I yelled, "My bangle! My bangle!" It took my son a moment to understand the import of what I was saying, by which time the bangle had fallen off. We could see it clearly through the water, lying at my younger son's feet. In distress, I yelled at him to pick it up for me, but he couldn't see it, and - as I watched in horror - accidentally stepped on it, burying it in the sand.Although we borrowed goggles from kindly people nearby and spent the next 40 minutes or so searching for it, we finally had to accept that it was gone.I am unashamed to say that I wept huge, wracking sobs for the loss of it. I felt hollow. I even dreamt that night that it was returned to me. I still keep absent-mindedly trying to adjust it on my arm, and there is a faint tan line where it used to be.Someday, maybe, someone else will find it: a badly made, shoddily repaired silver bangle cut in the shape of an unusual name not their own.... and it will have absolutely no value to them.Will they even be able to tell that it had once had enormous value to someone else? Will they know as they hold it that there is a woman somewhere out there whose delight would know no bounds if they were to find a way to return it to her?So it is with learning. Sometimes we share things in this space that have inspired us, or from which we have gleaned enormous value. Sometimes we wax lyrical about something we have found or made or seen... to a round of utter indifference.And what of it? Does that diminish the value to the beholder? I certainly hope not. There is space for a wide range of value systems and measures.As learning providers, we need to be careful not to denigrate certain resources simply because they hold no value for us. One man's meat, as the saying goes...

Alice Savage and Colin Ward are professors of ESOL at Lone Star College - North Harris in Houston, USA.  This article is adapted from their presentation ‘Beginning Writing Students and the Vocabulary-Grammar Continuum’ at the 2014 International TESOL Conference in Portland, Oregon. Words are powerful things. When we look at research-based word lists, such as the General Service List or the Oxford 3000, we come across many useful words that can inform our teaching of vocabulary in the classroom.  We know these words are the most important for our students to learn. Yet, from the perspective of the student, the task of acquiring these lists of words can be daunting. One challenge is length.  How can students learn hundreds, or even thousands, of words when learning only a select few at a time?  And once new words are introduced, how can they be internalized without a sufficient amount of recycling and repurposing? Another and more interesting challenge is meaning.  Meaning turns out to be a complicated notion when dealing with high-frequency words. For example, the Oxford 3000 includes three main categories. The first includes content words such as red, car, fast, which are obvious and easy to teach. The meaning is sharp and clear, so it can easily be demonstrated with a white board, a photo or pantomime. The second category includes grammar words.  The words so, is, the, of, and their high frequency siblings hold a prominent position on the list and yet resist attempts to be neatly defined as solitary words. These worker bee words have become so directly associated with specific functions that they have become grammar (Larsen-Freeman, 2013).  Their place on a word list is obvious, and they get much treatment in grammar syllabi. Then there is a third more elusive category, which we call shadow words. Words such as join, thing, important and place are extremely useful but difficult to teach because they hide in the shadows of other words.  Rather than being specific in meaning like the content words, shadow words tend to be abstract, vague, and flexible. They may not call attention to themselves, but they are important because a great number of other words like to partner with them in collocations. (Schmitt, 2000). As a result of their accommodating nature, shadow words can be very useful when taught in phrases. For example, become is quietly helpful.  Phrases such as become an engineer, become friends, or become rich illustrate the supportive nature of become. When become is taught with other words, learners can better pick up the meaning of both. Become does not like being alone. It needs friends. Shadow words can also have multiple personalities.  They take on different meanings depending on their context.  Have appears on high-frequency word lists because it collocates with so many other words—have fun, have a sister, have to leave, have an idea, have enough money—yet each pairing has its own personality. So, in looking at all these different types of words that populate high frequency word lists, it becomes clear that vocabulary is not just one thing.  While some words can meaningfully stand alone, many of the most common words prefer to be in groups. These words unleash their full power when paired with other words in collocations (word partners), lexical chunks (groups of commonly occurring words that include grammar), and prefabs (fixed expressions that allow students to frame ideas by slotting in different vocabulary) (Hinkel, 2004). Perhaps it is possible to conceive of teaching language a third way, not to present vocabulary lists, word form charts, and grammar items separately but together on the same continuum. There are many benefits to this approach.  If students are exposed to words in these groupings, they have more opportunities to gather and use words in their natural environments. Furthermore, these distinct environments can help classroom participants make decisions about which meaning or meanings to focus on (Hyland, 2004).  For example, play means one thing when talking about children and toys, and another when used in an academic setting as in, Teachers play a role in helping students choose vocabulary. Teaching words in phrases also mitigates the difficulty of learning parts of speech because students see adjectives being used before nouns, and nouns as objects of verbs or the subjects of sentences. They can establish cognitive hooks for storing the words in the same manner in which they will be used (Schmitt, 2000). Finally, words in phrases maximize vocabulary learning by providing whole unit chunks of meaning that clarify individual words at the same time.  A list of 12 phrases includes more language than a list of 12 individual words.  For example, the lexical chunk blew snow in our faces can be visually depicted in one go while teaching 5 different words, including content words, shadow words, and grammar words. The following example activities demonstrate how vocabulary and grammar can support each other in providing useful language for specific writing tasks. While each activity has a specific aim, the basic structure can be adapted for different topics and purposes. Activity Type: Categorizing Activity Type: Manipulating chunks  Activity Type: Flow Charts Having students attend to the boundaries beyond individual words can begin to help them see vocabulary and grammar on a continuum and may be one approach to making vocabulary learning more meaningful and efficient.  Collocations, lexical chunks, and prefabs can be used to introduce not just content words, but also grammar and shadow words.  Through scaffolding, students can then learn how to mix and match these words to produce new lexical strings.   They will see that words are not just dynamic, but do in fact have many friends.   References Hinkel, E. (2004).  Innovative and Efficient Construction Grammar.  Selected papers from the 21st International Symposium on English Teaching.  English Teacher’s Association, Republic of China (ETA-ROC), Taipei, 51-59. Hyland, K. (2004).  Genre and second language writing.  Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2013).  Transfer of Learning Transformed.  Language Learning 63:Suppl. 1 pp. 107-129 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00740.x Schmitt, N. (2000).  Lexical chunks.  ELT Journal, Volume 54 (4), 400-401. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Savage, A. & Ward, C. (in press). Trio Writing.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Dictionaries & Reference, Grammar & Vocabulary Tagged: Academic Word List, Alice Savage, Colin Ward, ELT, English as a second or foreign language, Grammar, Oxford 3000, Vocabulary

Verissimo Toste, an Oxford teacher trainer, looks at some different ways to establish a positive learning environment in the classroom. Behind every activity in the classroom is the question of behaviour. If you’re lucky, you don’t have to think about it, as your students are motivated to learn and behave accordingly. However, as the teaching of English as a foreign language moves beyond the smaller classes of private language schools into the larger classes of mainstream education, teachers know that student behaviour becomes a key aspect of every lesson and every activity. Mixed abilities, different learning preferences, intrinsic motivation, and varying attitudes towards learning become more important considerations for the teacher, and activities that would work in smaller classes don’t in larger ones. In this series of blog posts, I will focus on establishing a positive learning environment, taking into consideration the nature of larger classes in a mainstream environment, where English may be seen as another subject like Maths or Science. In these circumstances, many students see success as a good grade on a test rather than the ability to communicate that is implicit in communicative language teaching (CLT). I have always found that the best way to communicate with my students is to show them what I want rather than to tell them. So, in my larger classes, where motivation to communicate was low and the difference in competencies was very high, I focussed on the first ten minutes of class. 1. As students entered the classroom, I wrote on the board what I expected them to do. It was a simple exercise, maybe words we had learned the previous lesson with the letters scrambled. I might simply write the page number and exercise from their workbook. My aim was for them to have something to do when they walked into the classroom. No more aimless talking until I told them to sit down and take out their books. No initial explanations that led to using L1 to get them seated and quiet. More importantly, students who were ready to work would have something to do and could simply get on with it. They didn’t need to wait for everyone else. I didn’t need to repeat instructions. To those who had not yet started working, I simply looked at them and then looked at the board. The message was clear. Of course, some protested that I had not told them we had already started. I patiently ignored them, not falling into the trap of explaining what we already knew. 2. About a minute into the exercise, when I knew some students had the first answers, I would simply say, "Number 1. Does anyone have number 1?" Before any student said the answer there would be protests from some students who had not yet started, that I was rushing them, that this was not fair. I smiled and said, "Relax, I’m only asking for number 1." A student would say the answer to number 1 and I would wait for them to continue the exercise. It is important for teachers to set the pace of an exercise in their classrooms. Students quickly learn that the longer they take to do something the less material they will have to do in class; in essence, taking longer means less work. By asking for the answer to number 1, I am simply setting the pace of the activity for them. I am telling them they should have started the exercise, that they should already have the answer to number 1. If they don’t someone has just given it to them. All they have to do is to listen. I wait another few seconds and ask if anyone has the answer to number 2. Again, there will be protests, but fewer this time. Beginning my classes in this way I have communicated some very important points to my students. First, they all have something to do when they walk into the classroom. There is no need to wait for the teacher to repeatedly tell them to sit down, take out their books, and turn to a certain page to do a certain exercise. Second, I can focus on the students who are working and not on those who are not. By asking for the answer, I allow students who have worked to participate more in class. Equally important, I have taken away any reason for weaker students to hold up the class with excuses and poor working habits. The exercise is simple and clear. I usually begin with scrambled words on the board based on vocabulary we have been learning. I even write the page number on the board. In this way, they can use their books to find the words in order to write them correctly. In essence, the activity is based on effort, not on knowledge. Anyone who wants to do it can, no excuses. Also important for today’s students whose attention span is getting shorter is that I have not had to explain the exercise. It is obvious what they are expected to do. If I need to, I can even ask a student who knows the answer to come up to the board and write the word, thus demonstrating to everyone what is expected. There is no need for lengthy explanations. Finally, I have provided students a transition from using their first language when they came into the classroom to focussing on English. The exercise acts as revision of a previous lesson, helping theme to focus on the upcoming lesson. My initial aim is for students to finish the exercise in 5 to 10 minutes. Eventually, I will want them to finish the exercise in less than 5 minutes so that I can go on to use the language of the exercise in order to work on their speaking skills. That will be the subject of my next post. Then, we will move on to the lesson itself. As you try this in your classes, remember to make the exercise simple, clear, quick to complete, and quick to correct. Your aim is not only the language. Your aim, at this point, is also to have the class work better so that everyone can learn better.Filed under: Professional Development, Skills, Teenagers, Young Learners Tagged: Classroom, Classroom management, Learning environment, Motivation, Teaching problems, Verissimo Toste

I came across this today, courtesy of a link from one of my Twitter friends. I forget which.For those who use Articulate and like to try to find ways to push the boundaries of what it can and can't do.I have tried umpteen times to embed the video in this post, but, while I can see it perfectly in preview, it simply refuses to play ball when I publish. Sorry.

In this series of video tips Ben Shearon, the Stretch Presenting Skills Consultant, shares his advice to help students enter The Stretch Presenting Skills Competition 2014-15 and become more comfortable and confident public speakers. Here, he reveals how to plan and prepare a presentation effectively:   Get your young adult/adult students presenting in class by entering The Stretch Presenting Skills Competition 2014-15. One of your students could win a two week all-expenses paid scholarship to Regent Oxford, a renowned English school in Oxford, as well as a class set of Stretch for you. Expand students’ public speaking skills, improve their English, and get them presenting in class! Closing date: January 2, 2015. Enter today! Related articles: Check back in November, when we will post Ben Shearon’s second video tip. Or visit the competition webpage to see it today. Filed under: Adults / Young Adults Tagged: 21st Century skills, AMELT, American English, Ben Shearon, Competition, Integrated skills, presentation activities, Presentation skills, presenting skills, Professional English, Stretch competition

Regular readers may remember the trauma we experienced with the maths department in respect of our elder son. At the time that this was going on, I was venting to a friend (let's call her Rachel) with kids at the same school. She could relate to my situation, because her own experience of the maths department with one of her older sons (let's call him Tim) was not a happy one.Tim, Rachel tells me, is one of those people who takes a little longer to grasp a new concept. But, once he's got it, he's got it good. Having done well at GCSE maths, he had opted to take the subject at A level. But things were not going well, and he was becoming steadily more discouraged. At the first progress meeting, Rachel was advised that Tim should give up maths because he was simply never going to get it.This pushed Rachel's 'I'll show you' button. When it comes to her kids, the mild-mannered Rachel gives me a run for my money in the tigress stakes!She found her son a private tutor and enlisted the support of the same Ms Verity I have mentioned before. Tim passed A level maths strongly and went on to study it at university.He has just taken up his first post as a maths teacher... at the very same school he attended himself.This means that Tim and the teacher who wrote him off will be colleagues... and this is not the first story of this kind I have heard.Teachers please take care. I have personal experience that crow and humble pie don't taste very good and egg makes an uncomfortable facial accessory.The same teacher who was so discouraging of Tim, recently advised my younger son - during 6th form induction - not to sign up for maths A levels. This after an impassioned speech to the whole group about how it was the most important subject in the curriculum and an absolute must, yadda yadda. What changed her tune was that she learned that my son and one other child present had been in set 5 of 9 for GCSE maths, and she felt that they would 'struggle'. She had apparently already advised all the kids in set 6 and below against attending the talk on maths at all.The daft thing is that, 5th set or not, he sat exactly the same exam as the kids in the top set... and he got a solid B. What's wrong with that, I ask you?He returned from the induction full of doubt, and started casting about for an alternative subject. I was livid, nay, apoplectic. Those of you who know me well can just imagine how this played out.This is a kid who, since the age of 3, has wanted to be an explosives demolitionist. Never once has he wavered from this goal. If he is to realise this ambition, he will need to study structural engineering. One of the entrance requirements is a solid pass in maths at A level. He knows how hard he is going to have to work, and is prepared for the challenge.As my husband said, "So, he may struggle. So what? Is there a rule against struggling somewhere? If he struggles, we'll find him some extra help. That's what parents do."We get the impression that the department - or at least, this teacher - is only interested in kids who are going to sail through and score the sort of results that will keep the school in its lofty position on the local league tables. My mother in law has a sticker on her fridge that says, "The forest would be a quiet place if no birds sang but the best." Our kids may not be among the best, but, by 'eck, they're going to get to sing! To put a (slightly) more polite spin on a South Africanism, that woman does not get to urinate on our son's campfire! It may be that he changes his mind about what his career choice (our elder son did exactly that, shortly after starting 6th form) but it is to be his choice to make! It is not to be foisted upon him by someone with an agenda.So, tomorrow, he goes into school to sign up for his A level subjects, and maths (with mechanics) will be one of them. He may well struggle, but (as the great Gretzky says) you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.Not all parents are as determined, as resource-rich, as stubborn, as supportive, as teeth-clenchingly bloody-minded as my friend Rachel and me. My heart sinks as I wonder how many young people are giving up on their life's dreams because of what a teacher has said.Let's be enablers, folks.

This is the final article of a three-part series on giving EAP students effective feedback. Julie Moore, an ELT writer and researcher, shares some proofreading tips to help students to reduce careless errors and spelling mistakes. How often do you remind your students to check their work carefully before they hand it in, then despair of all the careless errors and spelling mistakes that still pepper their writing, especially in a world with spellcheckers? But is proofreading your own writing really that easy? The importance of accuracy Accuracy in academic writing is particularly valued. In an academic context, an argument or a piece of research that contains errors and inaccuracies will not be seen as credible. Similarly, it can be difficult for subject tutors reading a piece of student writing to judge whether inaccuracies from a non-native speaker student are a product of flawed thinking or simply a result of language weaknesses. A long text full of minor language errors puts pressure on the reader, as they have to keep reprocessing sentences to extract the correct meaning. In this case, it’s easy to lose the thread of the argument or for the writer’s message to get lost, thus detracting from the academic content. Teaching proofreading techniques There’s no simple solution to eliminating those frustrating surface errors, but you can help students by explicitly teaching a few techniques they can use to proofread their writing. A first step is to raise students’ awareness of their own specific weak points. It’s easy to assume that students know where they make the most mistakes, but often their attention is elsewhere. With every class I teach, I have a session where I ask them to bring in as many pieces of writing they’ve had feedback on (from me or other teachers) as possible. I then get them to go through and systematically count up and classify their error types (with articles, prepositions, noun-verb agreement, etc.) They pick out their top 3 or 4 error types and we work on ways that they can systematically search for and identify those errors in their writing. This short activity from Oxford EAP Advanced is really useful for highlighting and discussing practical proofreading techniques:   It amazes me every time how many of them don’t have their computer spell-check set to English! Dictionary skills With a background in lexicography, I’m a big fan of teaching dictionary skills and encouraging students to use a dictionary and thesaurus both when they’re writing and when they’re checking their work. In class, I jump at any opportunity to turn to the dictionary to demonstrate to students how they can use it to check not just meaning, but collocations, dependent prepositions, following clause structures, etc. I’m particularly looking forward to using the new Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English with my classes which focuses specifically on the academic uses of words. I also try to find time to introduce students to using a thesaurus. Often when they try reading something they’ve written aloud (a useful technique for checking that a text flows), they notice they’ve repeated a particular word or phrase too often. I point students in the direction of the Oxford Learner’s Thesauruswhich explains the similarities and subtle differences between sets of synonyms, helping them to choose an appropriate alternative to avoid those awkward repetitions. Armed with a few simple tools and techniques, I hope that by the end of their EAP course, my students are better equipped to improve their academic writing style and to tidy up their own final drafts. Many of them are incredibly bright cookies in their own disciplines and I’d hate for them to let themselves down with a few awkward collocations or misplaced prepositions! This article first appeared in the March 2014 edition of the Teaching Adults Newsletter - a round-up of news, interviews and resources specifically for teachers of adults. If you teach adults, subscribe to the Teaching Adults Newsletter now.Filed under: Business & English for Specific Purposes, Professional Development Tagged: Collocations, EAP, English for Academic Purposes, Feedback, Julie Moore, Methodology, proofreading, Teacher Development, Teaching EAP, Writing

You find in me in not such a very good place, right now.A sequence of events - both good and bad - has taken place at such breakneck speed as to leave me little time to think or breathe. Life has been lived in a purely reactive mode, and only the noisiest wheel has been oiled at every moment.I have hardly blogged. I have Facebooked only superficially and largely only socially. I have Twittered only sporadically. I have not worked at all. There has been neither the pressing need, nor the time. Instead, I have graduated. I have taken my mother on day trips hither and yon. I have prepared for a momentous event (more of that anon). I have taken a family holiday.But now the dust has settled.The problem is that is has left me space to reflect far too much on the most recent and most momentous of the events, namely my elder son's departure for his gap year in Australia.Another of the events that took place was the loss of a major contract that was to have kept me busy for about 12 months, while supplying a source of income for the same period. The loss of that contract - under slightly fishy circumstances, to say the least - has left me with the double bogey of financial concerns and too much time to grieve.Because it is grief.Even though my son has only gone for a year, his departure has left such a great, gaping hole in my life that I found (find) myself bereft.Even this provides the opportunity to learn. Geek that I am.I have learnt about a parent's capacity for self sacrifice and for simultaneous multiple heartaches.For much of their lives, we have encouraged our sons to take a year out after school to go and work abroad. To try out the parental value set for size and adjust it for a more personal fit. To discover what it means to have to earn and pay your way. To see a different culture going about the daily business of doing things that you have always done a certain way by default.I always viewed it from the perspective of my sons and the benefits they would reap from such an experience.However, as the departure date for the first of these experiences loomed nearer, it dawned on me what the experience was going to be like for me. I'd never thought about the impact on my life. I began to dread it. I changed my mind. I didn't want my boy going to the other side of the world, where I couldn't reach him in an emergency. Part of me realised that this was part of the point. Another part of me realised that I was going to be learning about letting go as much as my son was going to be learning about becoming independent. I could only think about how un-prepared he was.But I learned through bitter experience many years ago, that "it is possible to do something important for someone precious, even while it rips your heart out". These were the very words I recently wrote to the 'someone precious' who was at the heart of that first bitter lesson. And I also learned that I have a parent's capacity to take on personal pain for the benefit of your kids. I was rather pleased at this discovery. Looking back over my life, there has been ample evidence of it before. It is only now that I have formally recognised it for what it is.In the midst of all this, there is my younger son. He was inconsolable after his brother left, and I felt his grief in addition to my own. Every time I found him in tears, I would realise afresh the extent to which a parent can carry two griefs simultaneously.I also realise that my younger son is being forced to witness in advance the impact of his own gap year departure on us. My husband is stoic and Scandinavian, and bears his pain much better than I do. So it is my grief that is the danger. I so desperately do not want my son to decide that he cannot bring himself to be responsible for such heartache... especially since his departure is likely to result in an empty nest, leaving his parents rattling around their rather large house.I have watched my younger son try to step out of his more naturally self-contained mode to supply the hugs and cuddles that are his brother's habit to bestow upon me - not because it is in my elder son's nature to be tactile, but because, with the alarming insight that he has always had, he identified early on that I needed that physical contact.I always knew that this was going to hurt like the dickens. I have learnt over the past week just how much a dickens hurts.I have always known that parenting is difficult. I am discovering just how difficult it can be, and realising that it could be way worse.I am grateful for Facebook and Skype and text messages. These things have turned the world into a much smaller place, and I am able to have real-time and almost-real-time contact with my son quite frequently. These technologies that I tried to look at so hard as professional learning and development tools (and they are, I haven't changed my stance on that), are also a way for keeping families intact across the miles.Of course, I should have realised that, since I also swanned off to the other side of the world, leaving my own mother behind. But it tastes a different colour from the parental perspective.What I now need to learn is how not to try to be awake during the waking hours of both my sons when they live 7 time zones apart.Zzzzzz.....

We are delighted to announce that four of our titles have made it to the shortlist for the English-Speaking Union’s English Language Awards 2014! The Oxford Online Skills Program has been shortlisted for the ESU President’s Award which celebrates and encourages the widespread use of technology in the teaching and learning of English. The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English, Focus on Content-Based Language Teaching and International Express have been shortlisted for the HRH The Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Awards, which recognise the best book published each year in the field of English language teaching and learning. The Oxford Online Skills Program supports and develops Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing skills online using a sequence of media-rich activities, enhanced with video, animated presentations, interactive info-graphics and striking photography, to engage students. The judges commented, "The Oxford Online Skills Program contains high quality content for students, across a range of different topics. This resource is easy to use, including the function of tracking student progress".  The program is an ideal companion to any Adult English course, and gives students plenty of support to study independently, including cultural glossaries, automatic marking and instant feedback.  Teachers can use the management tools to communicate with students outside class, and monitor progress. The judges were also impressed by the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English, which they described as providing "clear and useful information for students both in the classroom environment and as a reference text for essay writing".  Focusing exclusively on Academic English, this dictionary is specifically designed for learners studying, or preparing to study academic subjects on English-medium university courses. Based on the 85-million-word Oxford Corpus of Academic English, it provides all the tools students need to develop their academic writing skills. Focus on Content-Based Language Teaching, written by well-known language educator and applied linguist, Patsy Lightbown, is described by the judges as "an innovative resource" which "gives a clear representation of ideas in an increasingly important sector of the ELT market". Following on from the success of How Languages are Learned (now in its fourth edition), it is the flagship title in a new series which bridges the gap between research and classroom practice. The all new, five-level International Express is specifically designed for adult professionals who need English for life and work.  The judges commented that the course "displays sound practice in the field of English Language Teaching", and praised it for its "interesting texts" and "good amount of digital content".  This new third edition retains the popular student-centred approach and strong communicative focus of earlier editions, while adding a range of new features. We are obviously thrilled with this news and looking forward to the announcement of the winners in December.Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: English Language Awards 2014, English Speaking Union, ESU Awards, Focus on Content-Based Language Teaching, HRH Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Awards, International Express, Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic English, Oxford Online Skills Program

Image courtesy of Flazingo Photos There are widely-held perceptions that numerous language schools refuse to hire non-Native English Speaker Teachers (nNESTs). In this guest article, teacher, teacher trainer, and founder of TEFL Equity Advocates, Marek Kiczkowiak, shares his thoughts on how this can have negative effects on students and teachers alike, and looks at an alternative, more egalitarian hiring model, that emphasises qualifications and experience, regardless of their mother tongue. Dear Student, I would like to tell you a few things about your English teachers which you might not have been aware of. As a teacher, I really care about your language progress and I would like you to understand what characteristics make certain teachers unforgettable, so that you can make an informed choice and pick the best language school. It is very common for language schools to advertise only for and hire exclusively native speakers (NSs). I am sure that you have come across (or perhaps even studied in) institutions that boast having only native English speaker teachers (NESTs), who will teach you the ‘real’ English. In theory, this sounds fantastic. After all, who wouldn’t like to speak like a NS? In practice, however, there is a catch. Numerous non-native English speaker teachers (nNESTs), that is teachers for whom English is not their first language, have been rejected out of hand, not for lack of qualifications or poor language abilities, but simply for not being a NS. It is very likely, then, that among those rejected nNESTs there were numerous teachers with higher qualifications and more experience than the NEST who was hired. The recruiter might have based their choice on the assumption that all nNESTs speak ‘bad’ English. While I certainly agree that language proficiency is very important for a successful teacher (I certainly wouldn’t like to be taught by somebody who doesn’t speak the language well enough), I agree with David Crystal, one of the ultimate authorities on the English language, who in this interview said that "Fluency alone is not enough. All sorts of people are fluent, but only a tiny proportion of them are sufficiently aware of the structure of the language that they know how to teach it." In addition, there are language tests (e.g. IELTS, TOEFL, CPE) which can be taken to prove a teacher’s proficiency. And there is no doubt that you can reach native-like level in a language - people did that even in the dim and distant past when teaching (and certainly language schools) was almost non-existent, or simply backwards by our standards. Take Joseph Conrad, for example. Born, bred and baptised in Poland as Józef Korzeniowski, he only emigrated to England in his late teens. Yet, he still managed to outwrite most of his contemporaries, introducing the English to the beauty of English. So yes, of course, a successful teacher should be highly proficient in the language. There is no question about that. You need a good language model. However, it is a mistake to assume that only a NS can provide it, and to dismiss any nNEST out of hand. What is more, being proficient in a language is not the only characteristic of a good teacher. For if it were, there would be no need for teaching courses and university degrees in pedagogy. Successful language teaching is so much more than merely knowing the language and I think this should be reflected in the way language schools hire their staff. So, if as a student you want to know whether a particular school is worth investing your money and time in, ask them how they recruit teachers. On the whole, more trustworthy and renown schools select successful candidates based on logical and measurable criteria which are independent of and irrelevant to being a NS or not. For example: Qualifications Years and variety of teaching experience Language proficiency Personal traits As a teacher, the best staff rooms I have worked in, and the best language schools with the happiest students, all have a healthy mix of NESTs and nNESTs, an opinion confirmed by many Academic Directors such as Varinder Unlu, who works for International House London. This is because the two groups can bring different characteristics into the classroom, learning from each other and improving as teachers. So while NESTs might be experts in language use, nNESTs have many important strengths which should not be overlooked. For example, having mastered the language themselves, a nNEST can serve as an excellent learning role model. They can give you numerous tips that will help you learn faster based on their practical insights. They might also be more aware of the difficulties you are having since they have been through them too. And empathy and understanding are vital for successful teaching to take place. Many nNESTs have also studied the language on university level and can therefore bring a deep understanding of its mechanics. I suggest then that as a client you question how your school chooses its teachers. Do not be swayed by slogans such as: We employ only NESTs because we care about your progress. If they did, they would be employing the best teachers out there: native and non-native alike. And you have the right to receive the highest quality of education. So get involved and support equal teaching opportunities for all teachers. Best regards, Marek Kiczkowiak, TEFL Equity Advocates  Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: English Language Teaching, Marek Kiczkowiak, nNESTs, non-Native English Speaker Teachers, TEFL, TEFL Equity Advocates

Thanks to Paul Simbeck-Hampson, I came across this recording of a TED talk by Sugata Mitra. I don't think I need to add much more to it, really. You're an intelligent person. You will draw your own conclusions.You've probably been making observations of this nature yourself for years. Perhaps this evidence will serve to strengthen your resolve.You've probably also realised that, while they have acquired a greater capacity for doing things they find distasteful, adults are not so very different.

This new book by Dr Jane Bozarth is currently enjoying a 'blog tour'. Today is the turn of this blog.I'm not going to make any attempt to do a full book review. However, I would like to suggest that this is an important and timely publication.In my line of work, I come into contact with many classroom based trainers who see social media as something 'other' having nothing to do with them. One of the primary reasons the book needed to be written and now needs to be read, can be found pretty much within the very first paragraph of the books itself:Those in need of information need it—and need to know how to find it—in the moment, not when the training department happens to offer it. And they have learned to find that information from one another, rather than depend on traditional, slow, inefficient, and often inaccurate top-down means. It is critical, if workplace trainers intend to remain viable and credible, that they understand how to participate in the networks and use the social media tools to extend their reach and enhance the development of the employees they are charged with developing.The book starts with the basics of what social media are, how they can be used in training and which ones to select.It then moves on to looking at a few social media in greater depth: Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and Wikis, as well as a few 'other tools'.The book can be found in print and as an ebook at the following places:PfeifferAmazon UK (it also available at Amazon US and Amazon Canada)Barnes & NobleBordersThere is also a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a Twitter hashtag (#SoMe4Trainers).The challenge (as always) is to get this book in front of the unconvinced. Fortunately, Christmas is coming! ;o)

Philip Haines is the Senior Consultant for Oxford University Press, Mexico. As well as being a teacher and teacher trainer, he is also the co-author of several series, many of which are published by OUP.  In this post he discusses the use of L1 in the classroom and shares some guidelines for its use. The majority of English language teaching takes place in classrooms where both the students and the teacher share the same L1 (first language). In these contexts, the L1 is often banned from the classroom, and for many good reasons. Many teachers and heads of department forbid the use of L1 because an all-English speaking environment is prized since it actively encourages communication in English. Another reason is that the L1 can easily take over if not restricted. While there are many reasons for banishing the L1 from the classroom, there are also good reasons for using it. What I believe is needed are clear guidelines for effective use of the L1. Below I set some guidelines in three levels; from basic to more in-depth. Level One: Functional Level one can be used by all ELT teachers to help the class function more effectively without essentially compromising the popular principle that English should be used at all times. The use of the L1 is quite restricted and the teacher is always in complete control so there is no chance of the L1 taking over the class. How do you say ____?: Students are allowed to ask how to say something from their L1 in English. Can I say something in my language?: If students have something important to say but do not have the level of English to do so, they can request permission from the teacher to speak in their L1. Time out: Just as in Basketball, the teacher can indicate that they will create a short space within the regular class to use the L1, and then return to the English class. This is especially useful when something needs to be discussed which could not be done in English. Level Two: Strategic In this second level, the teacher has at their disposal all the uses outlined in level one, but now encourages students to draw on their knowledge of their L1 and English to develop language learning strategies. This is essentially done by asking students to make comparisons between the two languages. The teacher is able to do this without the need to use the L1 themselves if they do not want to. Again, if the teacher fears losing control they can use the time out idea to create a ‘window’ from the exclusively all English atmosphere in the classroom. English you already know: When there is a new word that has some relation to a word from their L1, the teacher asks students, "Does it look like a word you know in your language?" Finding patterns and similarities: When there are grammatical patters or phrases that are have similarities between English and the L1, the teacher can ask, "What is the equivalent in your language?" or "Is it similar or different in your language?" Level Three: Discourse Level three uses the L1 to develop language awareness, higher order thinking skills, and to explore and comprehend features of discourse in English. The teacher also incorporates the ideas from levels one and two. Discussing register: When looking at a phrase in context that has a particular register or degree of formality, the teacher asks students for an equivalent in their L1. This opens up discussions about appropriacy and register. Just for fun: All bilinguals are aware of words and phrases that are easily mistranslated and produce funny consequences. By highlighting some of these and encouraging students to play with the language, we not only bring some light relief into the classroom, but encourage creativity and heightened language awareness. Translating: Students work together and translate extracts or short texts from one language to the other. The teacher encourages students to discuss and justify their choice of words and phrases. This develops insight into features of context, appropriacy and register, develops higher order thinking skills, and promotes greater awareness of both languages. These ideas are designed to encourage teachers to make principled use of the L1 in their classroom without feeling guilty about doing do so, while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls that are often associated with its use. It is hoped that all teachers will feel comfortable using some of these ideas and will consider the possible benefits of others.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Professional Development, Teenagers Tagged: classroom practice, ELT, ELT class advice, English as a second or foreign language, First language, L1, Philip Haines

The town I live in is currently being subjected to the most extensive disruptions imaginable. The centre of town is being revitalised or some such thing, so we have all manner of roadworks and diversions in place. At the very same time, BT or British Gas or someone is doing an upgrade of something or other, so there are holes all along the road past our part of town, each with a flimsy barrier around it.We suffered with these holes all down one side of the road recently. Instead of digging one hole, or one section of holes at a time, all the holes had been dug at once. And you never saw anyone working in or near any of them.Then we saw a bunch of people beginning to fill the holes in, and take away the barriers. "Wahey!" quoth we, "Have you finished, then?"The response almost took our breath away.It turns out that these chaps had been subcontracted to dig the holes in order for the work to be carried out. So they dug them all at once, because they are the hole-diggers, and that's what they do. BT/BG/whoever then never actually got as far as doing the work for whatever reason. But the time had come, according to the contractual agreement, for the hole-diggers to come and fill in the holes and take away their barriers.They then proceeded to dig the holes on the other side of the road, where they now stand, surrounded by their flimsy little barriers, devoid of any workers. Perhaps, in a week or so, the hole-diggers will come and fill them in again and take away their barriers.In a few weeks' time BT/BG/whoever, will finally be ready to do the work, and they will have to either dig the holes themselves, or hire someone else to do so.The waste is utterly ridiculous.And sadly, not unique.I once knew a man who worked on what is now known as the O2 building, but used to be called the Millennium Dome. His job had to do with flooring. At some point in the project plan, the wiring and plumbing and such like was to have been done, after which, the concrete floors could be poured. When the time came in the project plan to pour the concrete for the floors, the wiring and/or plumbing had not yet been done, because this aspect of the project was running behind schedule. In full knowledge of this, the contractor poured the floor anyway, because that was what they had been contracted to do and this was when they were contracted to do it. When the teams were ready for the wiring/plumbing, all the flooring had to be broken up.I don't even know how to frame my thoughts on this. I find myself goldfishing madly, going, "Surely....But... You mean..." and getting no further.I can't understand (a) how the overall project manager can allow this happen, (b) how the contractors involved can be so shoulder-shruggingly unconcerned about the bigger picture (c) how the impact on time and cost (not to mention quality... ooh, my ex-boss would be proud - he always wanted to turn me into a project manager) can be tolerated by the commissioning client.Stephen Downes often uses jumbo jets as an illustration of distributed knowledge in action: no one person knows how to design, build and fly a jumbo jet. Yet they are designed, built and flown... each aspect of the operation falling to an expert or team of experts. And this is a Good Thing. But when the knowledge has become so distributed that people are able to shrug their shoulders and deny ownership of the bigger picture, something surely needs to be done and butts need to be kicked somewhere along the line.Only, who gets to do the butt kicking, if nobody is in overall control anymore?Hmm.

Stacey Hughes, former teacher and current teacher trainer in the Professional Development team at Oxford University Press, shares some ideas to help students get more out of using a dictionary in the classroom. Has every pair got a copy of the dictionary? OK. Here’s a list of words for you to look up. This is a race. The first pair to find a definition for all the words is the winner. Sound familiar? We’ve probably all done dictionary races.  They can be a motivating way to get students to use a dictionary and can help students become faster at looking up words. However, for my class of pre-sessional university students, I needed them to delve deeper into what the dictionary has to offer. So, instead I organised a slow-down race. In this race, the students needed to spend more time on an entry in order to find out common collocations, different word forms, synonyms and antonyms, the part of speech, any idioms, and whether or not the words were on the academic word list (AWL). The first thing I noticed was that not everyone knew how the dictionary was organised.  I hadn’t even considered that dictionaries in other languages (Arabic and Chinese, for example) weren’t organised alphabetically, so already I’d lost about half of the class to confusion. I’d also assumed that, because my students were at an intermediate level, they must have used dictionaries before. Well of course they had, but never paper ones. The next thing I noticed was that few students knew what the abbreviations and symbols meant. Some students were able to figure out that SYN means synonym, but OPP and NAmE stumped them. I realised that, if students were going to get the most out of using a learner’s dictionary, they were going to need some dictionary training. Finding words more quickly First, a review of the alphabet. Students thought this was funny, but not everyone knew the right order, so I left the alphabet on the board. Then a little lesson on running heads - the words at the top of each dictionary page. On a 2-page spread, the word at the top left is the first word listed and the word at the top right is the last word listed. By using the running heads, it makes finding the word you want quicker. So, if you have the running heads contradiction and control, you would expect to find the words contrary, contrast and contribute within those two pages, but you would have to keep turning the page to find conventional. Admittedly, this skill is only useful for paper dictionaries whereas most students have dictionary apps nowadays. It’s rather like using a compass instead of a sat nav. I still feel it’s a useful skill to have. Plus, paper dictionaries have the advantage of having more words on the page to look at, and word-lovers like me can learn a word incidentally that they weren’t actually looking for. Going deeper Next were symbols and abbreviations.  These are used in dictionary apps and online dictionaries as well, so they are relevant for everyone. I chose a word with a range of these. In the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English, the word irrational works well (and it is also on the iGuide, so I was able to put it up on-screen). I got them to find the symbol or abbreviation that meant opposite, somebody, something, countable noun, uncountable noun, singular, adjective, adverb, where the stressed syllable was and whether it was in the academic word list.  Then we played a game in which they had to find the parts of the entry which showed the opposite meaning, example sentences, information about when to use the word, related words and word families, grammatical information about the word, alternative spellings of the word, etc. (Again, I used the iGuide for this, but the same thing can be done with a photocopy and coloured markers or highlighters). We finished up where we started - by looking deeply into the meanings and uses of the words we needed to know and by using the dictionary entry to find out which meaning was the right one for words in the context of an article that we read later. By the end of the lesson, the students had a much better idea of how to make sense of the dictionary entry which before had been a little intimidating. They also had a better sense of how the dictionary could be used in a deeper way - to find out more information about words so that they could be used more flexibly.Filed under: Dictionaries & Reference, Grammar & Vocabulary Tagged: Academic English, Dictionaries, EAP, Stacey Hughes

This is the second of a four-part series of articles from Verissimo Toste, an Oxford teacher trainer, about establishing a positive learning environment in the classroom. Here he shares some exercises to engage students before the lesson begins.  Following on from last week’s post, we have our students working on a simple exercise, in this case, simply writing words from the board whose letters have been scrambled. We have set the pace of their work and eventually, you can get them to do such a simple exercise within about 5 minutes. Once students have completed the exercise, you can use it to start working on their speaking skills at a very basic level. Let’s use this exercise as an example. Students have a list of words that they have written correctly.  Usually I aim for a list of between 8 and 10 words to make it challenging. retrohb - brother tanu - aunt nusico - cousin rsites - sister ehrtom - mother aefhtr - father celnu - uncle eehnpw - nephew ceein - niece adeguhtr - daughter 1. Confirm that everyone in class has the right answer. Ask a volunteer for number 1, another volunteer for number 2, and so on. At the end, there is no excuse for anyone in the class not to have the answer. You can go around the class until everyone has heard the words twice. 2. Then, pick up the pace a little. Go around the class again asking for the answers, but this time a little faster. Start with volunteers, but then start choosing the students to answer. Again go through the list about 2 times, or even only once, if it becomes very easy for them. At this point you are telling your students 2 things: One, that they should know the answers. Two, by choosing some of the students to answer, you can choose any that are distracted or talking to someone else. They will soon understand that they can easily be a target. If a student does not answer, do not wait for them too long. You want to keep the pace of the exercise challenging. 3. For large classes there may be some students who have not yet said a word. Start again with number 1, choosing a student to say it. Point to a student and say number 2. Then, point to a student and simply say "next". Then, point to another student and again say "next". By simply saying "next" all students in class will need to listen in order to know which word to say. Keep a challenging pace, so they don’t get distracted. At this point you can divide your class into 2 - 4 groups. Say "next" to a student in each group. If the student cannot say the word, they must sit down. Go through the list twice. The group with the most students standing, wins. As it is a game, don’t wait too long for them to say the word. 4. Finally, have the students "build" a memory chain with the words. - Ask a student to say any word they want from the list.    Student1: "mother" - Ask the student sitting next to them to repeat the word and add another.    Student 2: "mother, uncle" - Ask the student sitting next to them to repeat the first words and add another.    Student 3: "mother, uncle, niece" - Continue until the chain is broken, or students have completed a chain of six words. A chain of six words can be challenging for younger teens. You can challenge older students by asking them to complete a chain of 8 words. If a student cannot continue the chain, then it begins again from the next student. Each step in the activity has challenged students a little more than the previous, even though the language itself remained the same. Weaker students listen in order to have the answer. By simply saying "next" students have to listen to each other in order to know what word to say. Doing the activity in groups and the memory chain adds memory to further challenge the students, as well as continuing to encourage them to listen to each other. While stronger students may find the language easy, remembering the order of the words keeps them interested in the activity. More importantly, for any student or group to be successful, they depend on others to be able to say their word and continue the chain. When a student is not listening and so cannot continue, the whole group loses. In this way, students who are distracted in class are encouraged to listen not only by the teacher, but by their classmates too, in order for all of them to complete the chain. In this simple way, all students have had an opportunity to speak in class, albeit only one word. But this is important, because through these simple activities, you are telling your students that: you will help them get the right answer, you will confirm the right answer for everyone, you will give them an opportunity to practice the language, you will make it challenging and, hopefully, fun. Everyone can participate. My aim is to be able to do this in the first 10 minutes of class. Then, I am ready to begin my lesson.Filed under: Professional Development, Skills, Teenagers, Young Learners Tagged: Classroom, Classroom management, Learning environment, Motivation, Teaching problems, Verissimo Toste