In this blog Elna Coetzer continues to talk about ways we can use our time more effectively (inside and outside the class) when doing writing tasks. How does one become a successful cook? The answer really is very obvious - by cooking, of course. But does that mean just cooking dish after dish, over and over again? No. Even if you are a successful cook, it is not about the number of dishes that you prepare, but more about the focussed attention you give to each aspect of a dish. In essence, you have to practise every step of the process over and over again. Only in this way can you know which choices are correct and what possible actions should be completed in order to create a masterpiece. And only in this way can the cook use their time effectively. If we link this with writing, similarly our students need to make choices every step of the way. And if our students do not know what the possibilities are, they cannot make the correct or best choices at any given time in the writing process. So firstly, writing is about having knowledge available - knowledge of language and vocabulary, style, layout, genre etc. Secondly, writing is about making the best choices with what you have available in order to communicate successfully with your audience. Therefore, thirdly, writing is about making these choices (based on your available knowledge) in a timely manner. Returning to our cooking analogy: if I see that the sauce is getting too thick, I need to make a choice immediately and this choice I make on the basis of my prior knowledge and experience cooking exactly the same dish. To summarize: 1) students need a lot of support in order to complete writing tasks (the prior knowledge), 2) students need to be aware of a variety of ways of expression etc. (choices), and 3) students need to be able to access the above-mentioned aspects easily and most importantly, quickly (retrieval time). And all of this is accomplished by targeted practice activities. What are targeted practice activities? Targeted practice activities are tasks that focus on a very specific aspect of the writing process, which allows students to notice in an explicit manner how something works or how something is done. These activities can take the form of vocabulary exercises, for example brainstorming language for a suspense story (extreme weather words, adverbs, etc.). Looking at the writing sections in Solutions, you will immediately be able to notice these types of tasks. These tasks are about noticing specific aspects of writing and raising the students’ awareness of the requirements when writing a specific type of text. Why are they so useful? These types of tasks allow students to focus on specific aspects of writing which will help them in the overall writing process. This means that if my students have practised a specific aspect extensively, they will have the knowledge required, will be able to make the best choices in a specific writing task and retrieve the information fast. Of course this is not an immediate process, but over a period of time students will become more efficient in their writing which necessarily then means that writing lessons will not be so laborious. Here are some ideas: Focus on only one aspect in each writing section. So instead of thinking about the layout, useful vocabulary and useful language chunks in the writing task, what about choosing one aspect to address? This would allow more time to focus explicitly on one aspect, more detailed attention given to the chosen aspect and more detailed practice for the students. This would also allow for more effective correction, because you would then focus only on the aspect discussed. Use jigsaw writing tasks. For some writing tasks it may be useful to show that the style and layout students are using can be used again for different purposes: for example notes written to say thank you, to congratulate or to take a message. In these cases one could get students in groups to only work with one type of task: group A only work on thank you notes, group B on congratulatory notes etc. When they have finished all the tasks related to their note writing task, regroup the students so that they can share what they have learnt with students from the other groups. You might want to give students some kind of grid or table in which they can take notes from the other students. (We learn better when we can teach somebody else!) Collaborative writing. If, for example, your students need to write a book review, it would be more time efficient to do all the tasks in groups. This means that the thinking and planning stages (brainstorming ideas, thinking of useful lexis and language, considering the layout, etc.), the writing stage (a draft, some editing and a rewrite) and also the feedback after the writing stage (peer correction), will be performed in groups or pairs. (Learning is a social activity!) Promote self-awareness, task-awareness and strategy awareness. This is useful because this actively encourages students to analyse, evaluate and create during writing tasks (Bloom’s revised taxonomy!). This can be done by getting students to think about the purposes of tasks (both before the writing and afterwards) and also by setting evaluative questions which prompt students to look more critically at the writing process. Questions like the following are useful: - who is the audience? - why would the audience be reading this text? - which register should be used? - what is the purpose of this text? (to advertise, to thank, to invite etc.) - which aspects of writing do I enjoy - which aspects am I good at or do I need to work on? etc. (Learning is a conscious process!) In conclusion, we can offer our students more differentiated and effective writing support within our time constraints by making sure that we include more targeted practice tasks, by raising our students’ awareness of the specifics of the writing process and thinking more deeply about the planning stages of writing lessons. Join Elna in her upcoming webinar to learn more about how we can use class time more effectively in improving students’ writing skills. Filed under: Professional Development, Teenagers Tagged: Solutions, Solutions writing challenge

Jane Hart has written an excellent article about the top-down implementation of social tools for workplace learning and why that approach is doomed to failure. As she points out, top-down is the traditional approach for implementing a new initiative, but in respect of social media for learning:Those that are already collaborating, sharing and learning with one another, will resist attempts to force them to use other social tools or platforms in order to track and control what they are already doing. This may well push their activities even further underground.Those that have yet to experience, understand and feel comfortable with social media will not want to be forced into sharing and collaborating when they are not ready for it, and are likely to resist attempts to make them do so.Hart suggests a more bottom-up approach. Providing support to those who already are sharing and collaborating with one another. I would also recommend a performance management attitude that gives kudos to those who are seen to be supportive of their colleagues. In this post in December, I talked about the value of the enabler within your team. Give these people kudos and the space to 'do their thing' and you stand to gain a great deal. As Hart's article says, "autonomy is a powerful motivator" and "better results come from getting out of the way".I wonder how many managers have considered that the biggest barrier to excellence in their team's performance might be their own attitude to people management (and people, come to that).It's funny how these things go in waves, because yesterday, Aliza Sherman published an article called 5 Reasons why Corporate Social Tools Fail. Top of the list for her is the lack of a social culture. As she says, mandating the use of x and y tools isn't going to change anything if you don't already have a culture of mutual support and collaboration within the organisation. Too many organisations make this very mistake. It's not about the technology. The technology is a just a conduit, a tool. You can give your 17 year old a car - that won't make him a competent driver! But, if he is already a driver, having his own car will enable him to do so very much more.It has to start with culture. So we find ourselves back at Hart's article which identifies the need for more autonomy and more getting out of the way. Less micromanagement and more belief in your people.

Interview with Bryan Alexander, educator, futurist, speaker, writer, and senior researcher for the New Media Consortium (NMC). We discuss the future of higher education.Education ContextsChanges in international education, demographics, enrollment decline, education for seniorsTechnology3d printing, Internet of Things, social media, augmented reality, cloud computing, digital video, alternative means of education, makerspacesEducation IssuesToo much testingCarnegie Unit vs competency based advancementePortfoliosthe LMS dark webadjunctification of higher edonline educationCreative Commonsopen educationLinksBryan Alexander Consulting, LLC@BryanAlexanderMakerspacesAlexandra PickettPodsafe music selectionA Passage Of Life by KitaroDuration: 47:09

Ten years ago today, the first YouTube upload was made live on the platform. Entitled ‘Me at the zoo’, it was uploaded by one of the platform’s co-founders, Jared Karim, and can still be seen on the site today. With over 19 million views on this video alone, and users in excess of 1 billion, YouTube and the influence of video content on our lives is undeniable. But how do we translate this medium into a practical learning tool for the classroom, without losing out on efficiency? Is the integration of digital content into language learning falling victim to fads, or a step towards the future? In recognition of an upload which changed the landscape of social and digital content sharing, here are some of our favourite articles dealing with the use of video in the EFL classroom. Using video for Business English The Power of Business Video Part 1 - Using ‘graded video’ in Business English teaching John Hughes examines the case for using graded video in the first of two posts on using video in the Business English classroom. The Power of Business Video Part 2 - Key uses of video for Business English teaching Taking the Business English classroom as context, John Hughes explores the most effective uses of video for learning. Practical ideas for the Business English classroom Part 2 - Making the most out of video In this blog post John Hughes looks at practical ideas as to how the use of video can support business English teaching. Using video for language skill-building Integrating video content in the EFL classroom with International Express - Part 1 Keith Harding shares some ideas and video resources for Elementary Unit 6 - Santiago, Chile, focusing on comparative and superlative adjectives. Integrating video content in the EFL classroom with International Express - Part 2 Rachel Appleby explores a video clip from Pre-Intermediate Unit 10 - Selexyz bookstore, which focuses on using ‘will’ to talk about the future, Zero Conditional and 1st Conditional. Using video and ICT to present grammar David Mearns, a teacher in Turkey, discusses the benefit of using video to show grammar in an authentic context and gives a few tips on how to teach grammar using video. Developing critical thinking by using video to teach essay writing Vanessa Medina is an English teacher, freelance ELT consultant and writer. Here she explores using videos to teach different writing structures. How and when to use video in the classroom Flipping and creating video presentations Thomas Healy explores the concept of ‘flipping’ in the classroom, aided by the use of video and video presentations. Video cameras in the hands of learners Jamie Keddie, author of Bringing Online Video into the Classroom, looks at the benefits of handing over control of the video camera to students. Using video in the classroom Christopher Graham, teacher and teacher trainer, looks at the benefits of using video in the classroom. What a 2 minute video clip can teach us… Annie Tsai, a teacher in Taiwan, writes about how music and the video-based Everybody Up Global Sing-along changed the lives of her students last year. Where’s the video? Rachel Appleby, co-author of the Business one:one series, looks at some of the benefits and drawbacks of using video in the classroom. Teaching and learning with video Part 1 - Video in the classroom Bruce Wade considers how and why video should be used in the ELT classroom of today. Teaching and learning with video Part 2 - The use of reportage and mini documentary In this blog post, Bruce Wade considers how reportage can be used as a visual and factual aid to learning. Teaching and learning with video Part 3 - Interviews, vox pops and beyond Can video interviews be used for contextual language learning? Bruce Wade explores how different formats of video can be used to support EFL training.  Filed under: Multimedia & Digital Tagged: EFL classroom, International Express, Multimedia, video content, YouTube

I'm posting this fresh off the back of last night's stimulating #lrnchat on Twitter. I don't watch Grey's Anatomy, but Jane Hart shared this fantastic extract from a recent episode, showing the use of Twitter in surgery. Just look how the walls of the OR melt away and surgeons and hospitals from hither and yon get on board to save a patient's life!I still have friends who tell me that Twitter is a space for the idle chatter of egotists. I wish I could just show them its potential.

Rod discusses why he thinks everyone should learn to code. I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think. - Steve JobsLearning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains. - Bill GatesDon’t just play on your phone - program it. - President ObamaWe answer the questions:Rod with his TRS-80 circa 1977Why am I interested in coding?Why do I think that everyone should learn how to code?What's the best approach to start learning how to code?Learn the BasicsHow to Design Programs, 2nd Edition - Good programming requires thought, but everyone can do it and everyone can experience the extreme satisfaction that comes with it. Google CE First - K-8 Computer Science Club program from Google.Google Computer Science for High School - Google grant program to teach K-12 science teachers how to program and bring it to their students.Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, CodingShould All Majors, Not Just Computer Science Majors, Learn to Code?Why You Should Learn To Code (And How To Actually Do It!) 9 coding schools higher ed should keep an eye on10 Places where anyone can learn to codeLearn CodingBento - A guided tour through curated, free coding tutorials on the web.Code.org - Offers a number of excellent free beginner’s tutorials for learning how to code.Code Academy - Learn to code in HTML/CSS, Javascript, PHP, Python and Ruby on Rails for free.Code School - Learn By Doing. No setup. No hassle. Just learning.Girls Who Code - To inspire, educate, and equip girls with computing skills.Khan Academy - Program drawings, animations, games and web pages.SkillCrush - Become a Ruby-on-Rails developer.Thinkful - With 1-on-1 mentorship from industry experts.Udemy - Your place to learn real world skills online.w3Schools - Teach yourself for free.Build Mobile AppsAppceleratorBuzzTouchMIT App InventorXamarinLinkswww.PharmPCS.com - The author's pharmacology calculation software. Podsafe Music Selection There's nothing impossible by Deus, a techno-classical musician from the Ivory Coast.Duration: 20:58

Interview with Greg Golkin, Head of Platform Innovation, Echo360, Inc. This is not your father's lecture capture system!We answer the questions:Learn more about Echo360 ALPWhat is an Active Learning Platform?Lecture Capture:software or hardware?live streaming?cloud?Instructional Content Managment:content & assignments?replaces LMS?integration or just SSO?Student Engagement:discussions, polls and quizzes?audience response?polls within videos?Analytics and Dashboards:engagement scores?success metrics?LinksRPP #71: Blackboard World Interview: Mark Jones of Echo 360RPP #27 Educause Interview: Apreso CourseCaster Interview: Geoff Allen, Chairman and Founder of Anystream Inc.RPP #6 Bb World Interview: Wes Barnes, Systems Engineer, Anystream Inc.Podsafe music selection from Music AlleyKiss This! (Hey IRS)" by Robert Lund of the Funny Music Project, a parody of Faith Hill's "This Kiss"Duration: 29:55

I often come back to this topic, because time and again I am struck by how unpredictable and subjective the issue of value is.This was brought home to me by something that happened on the 365 project. I don't pretend to be a photographer and my decision to sign up for the project was part of my self-help initiatives after the annus horribilis that was 2010. I decided not to try to take brilliant photographs, but instead to create a photo journal, publishing a photo that recorded something meaningful about each day. The results are of varying quality. Yesterday, I discovered to my my surprise that one of my photographs has been 'favourited'. Not the one with the accidentally excellent mood lighting, or any of the passable ones of historical buildings in my town. Not the one showing the symbolic snowdrops blooming bravely, or the accidentally good shots of my pets. Nope. Instead it's the shot with which I was least satisfied of all.I was trying to do something interesting with the water in the bottles, but I have neither the camera nor the skills to succeed. If I had taken a single other shot worth using that day, this one would have been binned. But this is the one and only photograph in my collection to have been favourited. I don't know why. I don't know what the person in question saw in it. Maybe it serves as a 'what not to do' example for a photography course they're delivering. Who knows?If you think about it, diamonds have no intrinsic value, but because of their perceived value, a whole industry... several whole industries have built up around them. People die in the quest for them. And yet they are solid carbon, just like coal, which we hardly value at all... until we are in danger of freezing to death, that it is. Then, suddenly, a diamond is worthless and coal is inestimable.Wall-E, the animated feature film, shows a (semi?)sentient robot coming across a diamond ring in its little box. He throws the ring out, and keeps the box, because it intrigues him... and because he wasn't programmed with our value system.We seem pre-programmed to think that anything or any skill we possess must ipso facto be of lower value. And, for those of us looking to develop a learning culture that is a hive of user generated content, this means we are going to have to work really hard at spotting the nuggets, the treasures, the diamonds in the rough and encouraging their owners to see their intrinsic/potential value to someone else.That trick that you learned in Excel/Photoshop; that activity that you do with your class; that piece of advice you give your staff members; that lesson you learned the hard way... these are the things that people can use. Because you discovered/developed them, you assume either (a) everyone knows how to do them or (b) nobody would be interested.I think you'd be surprised! I once developed a wiki to be used by a group of people embarking with me on a new venture. The idea was that we would develop a glossary of new terms related to the shared endeavour, as well as a recommended reading list, with reviews. When I mooted the suggestion, it was greeted with much enthusiasm: everyone was mad keen to have such a resource. However, once it was created, very few people were bold enough to add to it, and those who did tended to make additions in the form of questions: adding a word with a question mark after it... which no-one replaced with anything helpful. And yet these people were reading voraciously, and debating matters in class (an on the online discussion forum), they were each applying their own perceptions of the terms we were learning on a daily basis. They were more than happy to help one another on a 1:1 basis off-line, but actually sharing something in a space where others could see it? Not so much.This culture of undervaluing the things we know/can do is going to take a long time to overthrow, and we're going to have to work hard at. Until then, if one more person tells me "if we build it, they will come" I think I might scream. If we build them (up), then they might just come, but we have a long way to go, methinks...

Interview with John Baker, CEO, D2LD2L (formerly Desire2Learn) announced the next generation of its learning platform, Brightspace. By featuring a new faculty user experience and bringing adaptive learning to the masses, D2L says that Brightspace is more flexible, smarter, and easier to use.We discuss D2L and their next generation LMS, BrightspaceWe answer the questions:Does it replace "legacy" D2L?What is adaptive learning and LeaP?What features can be used in-class?What about student retention support and e-portfolios?What's the new faculty UI?How is it delivered? Multi-tenant Cloud? Hosted? On premise?LinksD2L Launches Next Generation of Learning Platform BrightspacePodsafe music selection from Music Alley"Fly Fly Fly" by singer/song writer Adrina Thorpe - Influenced by Sarah Mclachlan, Tori Amos, and ColdplayDuration: 27:12

I was recently at an event planning meeting in which I heard that the local doctors in our town find it very hard to live up to the expectations of the very large Polish population we have. Apparently, "Their expectations are very high," and their confidence in British doctors very low. I was the only non-British person present at the meeting, and it was pointed out with some surprise that Poles know "the names of all the different types of doctors" and expect to be able to access these directly.It sounded rather as if the Polish medical system was not dissimilar to the one I knew in South Africa. If you have a skin disorder, you make an appointment with a dermatologist. If you're a woman, you make a routine annual visit to your gynaecologist. Until your kids are 12, you are just as likely to take them to the paediatrician as the GP. You know your radiologist from your oncologist, and your ear, nose and throat specialist from your cardiologist.In the UK, the practice is that you go, in the first instance, to your GP. Always. You will then be referred to a consultant. And that process can take months. Been there. Done that. Nine months for me, last time.When I expressed surprise that the well-educated, otherwise knowledgeable people present at the meeting didn't know "the names of all the different types of doctors", one person rather proudly pointed out that, with the way the NHS works "we don't have to!"I had often wondered why all specialists were rather generically referred to as 'consultants', but this explains it. You see a generalist. The generalist refers you to a specialist. The specialist's secretary sends you the details of your appointment. You attend. The specialist reports back to your GP. Your GP reports back to you. You don't ever initiate contact with the specialist. So you don't need to know what sort of specialist s/he is. I find this approach quite disempowering. I don't feel the need to be looked after in this way. I feel quite capable of identifying the specialist discipline needed in each instance and making an appointment. I feel quite capable of providing said specialist with an accurate history and conducting a conversation about my ailment/condition.Many Poles obviously experience the same frustration, because they are quite prone to taking their ailments back to (as one Polish woman puts it) "a proper doctor" for a diagnosis that they feel they can trust. This doesn't really help, though, because when they come back from Poland, and feed the information back to the local doctor, the local doctor will not accept histories or diagnoses from abroad, and wants to go back to the start of the process again.I can think of so many situations in which traditional workplace practices reflect a similar approach. I would far rather see individuals given the freedom to run their own initial diagnostics and then to access to the resources they believe they need in order to get the information/support required, apply it and move on with the day job. Of course they will get it wrong from time to time. That's part of learning, too.Too much second-guessing can result in a culture where people are waiting to be taken care of, to be told what to do next, have no idea which kind of person/resource holds the solution they need, instead of taking charge of their own lives and figuring out their own 'what nexts'.Sometimes, taking too much care of people is even worse for them in the long run than taking too little care of them!

Interview with Mark Strassman, Senior Vice President, Industry and Product Management, Blackboard Inc.Mark Strassman oversees the company's product and integrated portfolio strategy to ensure Blackboard continues to build solutions that serve institutions, administrators, educators and students. We discuss the new Blackboard Ultra:What are Core, Essentials, Insight, Student Retention?What is the update roadmap for hosted systems?Versions of Ultra SaaS, multi-tenant, single-tenantNew web REST APIIs Ultra completely adaptive/responsive? New Bb Student appUltra workflows subset for CommunityMobile compatibility; adaptive designFuture of Mosaic"Persona Apps" New Collaborate UltraLinksBlackboard Inc.Bb Student AppWhat's the Ultra Experience for Bb Collaborate?EdTech ConnectionPodsafe Music SelectionConcerto No. 2 in G Minor (Summer) by the American Baroque Orchestra. Purchase the full CD: The Four Seasons by Vivaldi Duration: 35:26

Over the past few weeks, in a range of different situations, I have bumped into a few assumptions that I have had to challenge. Working as a consultant, I regard it as part of my job to challenge existing mindsets where necessary. I also have no qualms about doing so within my community of practice.So let's take a look at some of the issues I've addressed... and how:"We need to track learning"First of all, you can't track learning. The only way you can tell whether somebody has taken something on board is to observe their behaviour in the workplace. If it changes to incorporate the new material/process/whatever... then they have learned something. The best thing you can do is track access to learning materials. This is no indication that learning has taken place. If person X simply clicks 'next' every few seconds and keeps going right to the end, your LMS is going to tell you that they have successfully completed the course.It is true that certain levels of tracking will allow you to check how long a user spent on each page, from which you can draw realistic conclusions about whether or not they actually read the material on each page, but whoa! Who is actually going to do this job? Whose time can you afford to allocate to this task when there is so much real work to be done? And once they have identified that person X failed to spend long enough on pages 12, 45 and 67, what then? Are you really going to go after them with a big stick and force them to go back and do those pages again?"We must have an assessment"Let's just make one thing totally clear: a series of multiple choice questions with options such that even the average Joe from off the street could select the correct answer, is not an assessment. It's an attendance register. Okay?If yours is a regulated industry and you are obliged to have some kind of butt-covering tick box, then fine. But let's not pretend to each other that it is anything other than that. If this is not the case, why exactly do you want an assessment? You could provide a few thought provoking scenarios. I'm all in favour of that, but do you really need to record some kind of test score? Would something along these lines not suffice?Once again, the best way to assess whether people have learned anything is in the form of observable behaviour change on the job."People need to know this"Really? Why? Because they need to observe it? Ah. So what you're actually after is not that they should know something, but that they should do something, right? Can we agree that knowing is not necessarily linked to doing? How many people know what the speed limit is in any given area? How many people observe it? Knowing isn't the goal.Besides, let's face it, most 'policies' are pretty much common sense recorded in formal language with too many commas. In cases like this, I refer people to Cathy Moore's action mapping post. I've lost count of the number of people with whom I've shared that post!"We need a half-hour elearning course on xyz"Mostly when L&D people get this sort of request, they just nod and get on with it. I'd like to encourage them to push back. C'mon people: add a little value, already! Ask these questions:Why?What is it for?What will people do differently afterwards?Which of the organisation's strategic goals are being addressed, here?Do you really need an 'elearning course'? Could not just distribute a pdf? When I suggest this, I am often told that the people don't read pdfs. Well, let me share a little secret with you: people don't read information dump-type elearning courses, either. So don't go that route. This takes us back to the Cathy Moore post I referred to above - a far better way of addressing policy changes."How can we design this so that it fits with what we can do in Articulate/Packager/X-tool?"I get really uncomfortable when people adopt this approach. When they have a hammer and try to figure out ways to turn everything into a nail. Does it have to be shiny? Sometimes the answer is absolutely yes, but not as often as we are led to believe. Sometimes all you need is a simple roadmap diagram, or a list of procedural steps with a list of links to user generated screen capture videos or testimonial video clips taken with web/flip cameras.

So I recently got some new specs. Two pairs. Because I'm that old. One pair for reading. One pair for getting through the day without falling over or having a car crash.The latter pair cost an arm and a leg, and comes complete with designer label... among other things.Starting from top left of the picture and working our way down we have:The case, with a Velcro strap thingy which can convert into a nifty little handle (although I can't think of a single situation in which I would need to use a handle to carry my glasses case!),the specs themselves, all gorgeous and pink,a little booklet, containing the guarantee information in about a gazillion languages,a little lens cleaning cloth, pristine white (with logo, of course) in a little plastic bag, and...???Let's take a closer look at the mystery item.It's a little resealable plastic bag containing:Here we have about 25cm (10" give or take) of cat gut and about 15cm (6") of 4mm wide, white florist's ribbon. There are no instructions, no labels.I have posted that last picture on Facebook and Twitter, but no-one has yet said, "Oh yes! I know what that is. It's a...." One person did suggest that it was meant for running repairs in the future, which is entirely possible, but I can't imagine what repairs I might carry out using these bits and bobs. I have visited the D&G site (which takes quite a while to load), but there doesn't seem to be a page on which I can find the purpose of these items.I hate not knowing stuff!Do I throw these things away? Do I store them in my jewellery box?Any suggestions?

As I muddle along through this lifelong, lifewide learning journey, I find that the toughest lessons are the ones about being human. About human experience.A friend of mine recently lost her sister to cancer. She had been doing very well, and then suddenly she was gone. My friend and her family are grieving. This is the normal way of things. Hard as it is to deal with, this is how we more or less expect it to happen. Which is not to say that it's neat and tidy. Far from it. But it's more or less 'the norm'.Another friend miscarried twins and then, just as she was coming to terms with that loss, lost her father. Once again, her sense of loss was in step with the loss itself (although some of her friends considered the extent and duration of her grief over the twins to be self-indulgent, and broke contact with her). On Facebook and Twitter, she started discussions about the different models of loss and grief, and the stages one goes through. But that got me to thinking about the times when the grief is out of step with the loss.I recently learned that a friend of mine from college days died of drug abuse (I haven't had all the details) about 15 years ago. The fact that I only learned about it now is an indication of the fact that we had lost contact. But we were friends, once. So I found myself... 'grieving' is perhaps too strong a word, but I did experience sorrow, about 15 years after the event. It felt odd being out of step with the people who shared the news with me. They had been there at the time. They had grieved when it happened. For them it is a healed wound. For me, the process is just beginning.It made me think of the experiences of one woman I knew whose (widowed) mother had dementia. Whenever she visited the nursing home, she found her mother anxious to get home to prepare her husband's dinner. Initially, she would gently remind her mother that her father had died many years previously. But the staff at the home advised her against this approach. They explained that, because of the dementia, every time she heard the news was like the first time, and the grief was sharp and present, rather than a memory. Instead, they suggested that she simply reassure her mother about her late father's dinner requirements and move on to other topics.On Friday, I learned that another friend has terminal lung cancer (note the ubiquitous cigarette in the photo in the link) and lymphoma . Although we are Facebook friends, it has been many years since we were the sort of friends who spent easy hours in each other's company, and who performed musical revues together. I will probably never see him again. So, although he is still alive, I find that my grieving process has already begun.Grief is a slippery thing. It doesn't colour inside the lines, and it doesn't progress as it should. Just when you think you have a handle on things, something happens to open that Tupperware cupboard, and it all comes tumbling out. It was fully ten years after my maternal grandmother's death before I stopped thinking, "I must ask Granny..." She was the person to whom I turned with all my questions about cookery and needlecraft. Even twenty years after she was gone, I made a mess trying out her Christmas cake recipe and was in floods of tears because I couldn't ask her what I had done wrong.Being human is very complicated, very messy and somewhat unpredictable. But we insist on coming up with models to try to tidy it up.If you're grieving today, whether it is in step or out of step, whether it is appropriate or not, and even if your friends have utterly lost patience with your inability to 'pull yourself together', consider yourself hugged.

From time to time, I have noticed an interesting development in the space where face-to-face relationships bump into online relationships. In my extensive network are many people whom I know both on- and off-line. In some cases it was online first and then a personal encounter. In others it was the other way around. Some of the relationships are purely personal, others are largely professional. Some have become a blend of both.I have noticed that some of the people with whom I have both and on- and off-line relationship are competent at conducting a single relationship in two spaces. Others less so. In some cases, there is a strange split. There is one relationship going on online and another offline, and that it seems to be 'not done' to break that wall. So you might have an exchange of messages online in which something deep and tragic is shared, or a disagreement is aired but the next time you see each other, no reference will be made to he online conversation, and there seems to be no enhanced understanding demonstrated offline based on the revelation online.I recently had an experience that has puzzled and bemused me. Totally by chance, I discovered that I have been 'unfriended' on Facebook by someone I encounter face to face on a regular basis. Her behaviour towards me does appear to have shifted very slightly, but superficially the 'all is well' signals are being beamed bright and clear. She has given me no indication as to what the problem might be, which has left me unsure as to how I should behave toward her. I recently felt compelled to unfriend someone on Facebook that I have known since childhood, although we were never close. However, before doing so, I made it clear that it was due to her repeatedly aggressive behaviour towards my other FB friends on my page. She might not agree that I had just cause, but at least she knows what it was that caused me to reach this decision.In the situation where the boot is on the other foot, I am totally clueless, and it leaves me feeling disempowered and slightly bewildered.My relationship with my husband has many facets, but it is one relationship. We talk on the phone and continue that conversation when he gets home. I forward an email to him from the school, we exchange emails a few times, and then perhaps pick up the phone. We interact on Facebook, as we comment on photographs, one another's status updates and so on, and tease each other about that when we meet up. We connect in many spaces, but it remains one relationship. If he suddenly stopped talking to me, or touching me, the rest of the relationship would be affected. Of course, it would. And I would be looking to find out why. But here we have someone who is prepared to sever one aspect of a relationship and to continue the others as if nothing had changed, without discussing the action.In cases where people pursue two separate relationships with me, I have come to regard that as a sign of an inability to assimilate an online space into an existing relationship. An indication that there is a level of maturity still to be gained. By and large, this two relationship experience tends to be restricted to those for whom social media tools are little more than toys.I am struggling to formulate this as cogently as I would like, but I would be interested to learn whether others have had similar experiences.

You may or may not know that I have signed up for the 365 project this year. The plan was to restore a sense of balance after the disastrous tail end of last year skewed my perspective on the whole year. When I come to look back on 2011, if there is pictorial evidence of the wonders of some days and the total ordinariness of others, perhaps the bleak days will seem less significant. That's the theory, anyway.Initially, I set out just to capture a moment from each day, journal style. But then I saw the quality of some of the work in other people's projects and found myself trying to emulate their standards, when I had neither the equipment nor the skills to do so. After a few failed days of that nonsense, I reminded myself to 'run my own race' and went back to the photo journal idea. I chose to follow other members with the same sort of approach, to keep things in perspective.But yesterday, I surprised myself.I took my dog for a walk along the River Nene that runs through our town, and took photos as I went. If you're a Facebook friend, you can see the whole set. When I got home, I popped the camera card into my laptop to look at the photos and was really very impressed with the result. Even with just a little point and shoot (Kodak DX6490) my first picture of the day turned out to be as near perfect as anything I have ever done.The water looks wonderful. The swan is beautifully positioned and reflected. The pose is perfect - like something out of a fairytale. There is even, if you look really closely, a single drop of water that has fallen off the end of the bird's beak and landed with a sploosh in the river - that sploosh is captured exactly at the moment of landing.So there are two ways of looking at this.Either: I have no idea how I achieved that, so I learned nothing. This is entirely true.Or: I have stumbled upon evidence that I can actually do good work. Really good work. Knowing that I can, inspires me to try to do it again... only on purpose next time.A little accidental success goes a long way.

If you saw a woman walking down the street with her skirt caught in her knickers, obviously as a result of a post-restroom-visit 'wardrobe malfunction', would you tell her? No? Why not? If the woman was your wife/mother/sister/daughter, would you tell her?What's the difference?If you overheard a stranger at a bus stop saying they were going to X place, and then noticed that they were about to get onto the wrong bus, would you tell them?If the harried mother in front of you drops her child's shoe, do you pick it up and return it to her? If someone is unknowingly making an absolute prat of themselves in public, can you sit there and laugh at them?If your best friend's spouse/partner is cheating on them, do you tell them?If you're in a conversation and someone makes cites a piece of information that you absolutely know to be inaccurate, do you contradict them?To me it's all the same thing. If you care enough about that person, you tell them. You overcome your own embarrassment, your own distaste for confrontation, your own cultural dictates and you let them know. If they choose to continue along that chosen path, at least you can be sure that they are making an informed choice.I am often told that I am argumentative. What people don't realise is that I argue because I give a damn. Seriously. I don't set out to be difficult. It matters to me. All of it. I want you to know that we have recently discovered that the earth is round, that it revolves around the sun, that learning styles are bogus, and that your fly is open. I want to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on you when you're choking and I can't stand around and watch you embarrass yourself in public.So let's say I make a strong statement and you go off and mutter to your friends/colleagues about how misinformed I am, but you don't tell me how misinformed I am. When I find out about it, I am going to assume it's because you don't care enough to set me straight. To engage with me. To argue with me, even.Is my fly open?

Used from Pixabay, with permission under Creative Commons licence Jon Hird, materials writer and teacher trainer, discusses inductive and deductive grammar teaching, comparing and contrasting the two, and debating the pros and cons of their use in the classroom ahead of his webinar on the topic on April 28th and 30th. There are two main ways that we tend to teach grammar: deductively and inductively. Both deductive and inductive teaching have their pros and cons and which approach we use when can depend on a number of factors, such as the nature of the language being taught and the preferences of the teacher and learners. It is, however, perhaps generally accepted that a combination of both approaches is best suited for the EFL classroom. Some agreement exists that the most effective grammar teaching includes some deductive and inductive characteristics. - Haight, Heron, & Cole 2007. So what is deductive and inductive grammar teaching? In this blog, we will first take a look at the underlying principles of inductive and deductive reasoning and then look at how this applies to grammar teaching and learning. We will then briefly consider some of the pros and cons. Deductive and inductive reasoning Deductive reasoning is essentially a top-down approach which moves from the more general to the more specific. In other words, we start with a general notion or theory, which we then narrow down to specific hypotheses, which are then tested. Inductive reasoning is more of a bottom-up approach, moving from the more specific to the more general, in which we make specific observations, detect patterns, formulate hypotheses and draw conclusions. Deductive and inductive grammar learning These two approaches have been applied to grammar teaching and learning. A deductive approach involves the learners being given a general rule, which is then applied to specific language examples and honed through practice exercises. An inductive approach involves the learners detecting, or noticing, patterns and working out a ‘rule’ for themselves before they practise the language.  A deductive approach (rule-driven) starts with the presentation of a rule and is followed by examples in which the rule is applied. An inductive approach (rule-discovery) starts with some examples from which a rule is inferred. - Thornbury, 1999 Both approaches are commonplace in published materials. Some course books may adhere to one approach or the other as series style, whereas some may be more flexible and employ both approaches according to what the language being taught lends itself to. Most inductive learning presented in course books is guided or scaffolded. In other words, exercises and questions guide the learner to work out the grammar rule. The following course book extracts illustrate the two different approaches. The subsequent practice exercises are similar in both course books. Q: Skills for Success Listening and Speaking Level 3                        New Headway 4th Edition (Elementary) Which approach - pros and cons? First and foremost, it is perhaps the nature of the language being taught that determines if an inductive approach is possible. Inductive learning is an option for language with salient features and consistency and simplicity of use and form. The basic forms of comparative adjectives, as shown above, is an example of this. Conversely, teaching the finer points of the use of articles (a/an, the) inductively, for example, would most probably be problematic. The metalinguistic tools that the learners will need to accomplish the task is also a factor. However, the learner-centred nature of inductive teaching is often seen as advantageous as the learner is more active in the learning process rather than being a passive recipient. This increased engagement may help the learner to develop deeper understanding and help fix the language being learned. This could also promote the strategy of ‘noticing’ in the student and enhance learner autonomy and motivation. On the other hand, inductive learning can be more time- and energy-consuming and more demanding of the teacher and the learner. It is also possible that during the process, the learner may arrive at an incorrect inference or produce an incorrect or incomplete rule. Also, an inductive approach may frustrate learners whose personal learning style and/or past learning experience is more in line with being taught via a more teacher-centred and deductive approach. While it might be appropriate at times to articulate a rule and then proceed to instances, most of the evidence in communicative second language teaching points to the superiority of an inductive approach to rules and generalizations. - Brown, 2007 Nevertheless, while there are pros and cons to both approaches and while a combination of both inductive and deductive grammar teaching and learning is probably inevitable, an inductive approach does seem to be broadly accepted as being more efficient in the long run, at least for some learners. Would you agree with this? If you’d like to join Jon Hird for the free webinar discussing this topic at length on April 28th or 30th, register below or follow the link for further details.     References Brown, H.D. (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching. Pearson Longman. Haight, C., Herron, C., & Cole, S. (2007). The effects of deductive and guided inductive instructional approaches on the learning of grammar in the elementary language college classroom. Foreign Language Annals, 40, 288-309. Thornbury, S. (1999). How to Teach Grammar. Pearson.Filed under: Grammar & Vocabulary Tagged: Grammar, inductive grammar deductive grammar, Jon Hird

Fancy livening up your classroom with some ready-made video activities? This is the third in a series of four articles in which Keith Harding and Rachel Appleby share ideas for using the stunning new International Express video material. Each unit of the course features a video directly related to the unit topic. Here, Keith offers some ideas for using the clip from Intermediate Unit 4 - Mercedes-Benz Museum, which focuses on making comparisons. Watch the video Before you watch As with any listening or reading text it is important to prepare and predict, in order to maximise the learning potential from the video. Here are some ideas to get your students started before they watch the video. 1. Museums Students in pairs/groups describe museums in their city/country, and talk about their favourite museum. Questions to ask include: a. What do they like about their favourite museum? b. Why is it better than other museums? (This will help to elicit practice of comparatives) c. Do they know any unusual museums, e.g. for particular products and brands? Plan a ‘Museum of Brands’ Elicit some top-of-the-range brands from the students, for example, Rolex, Apple, Nike, Mercedes Benz (prompt to elicit this one if necessary) In groups, students decide what they would exhibit in a ‘Museum of Brands’ and what they would call each of the galleries. 2. Pre-teach vocabulary This exercise is taken from the video worksheet that comes with the International Express Teacher’s Resource Book DVD. All the worksheets are also available for free here. You just need your Oxford Teacher’s Club log-in details to view them. Vocabulary: What do the words in bold mean? The story is based on a local legend. The prototype of the vehicle used a piston engine. He is a real football enthusiast. He goes to every game. My father collects a lot of Beatles memorabilia, like albums, posters, and concert tickets. Phone companies need to have cutting-edge technology to be successful. The documentary on deep-sea diving gave us a glimpse into life in the ocean. The book gives us an insight into life in South America. While you watch To maximise the learning opportunities, you need to set tasks for the students to focus on. Remember tasks can be graded to the level of the learners, even if the content is not. This will involve the teacher in using pause, rewind, and sound-off facilities. 3. Silent play on fast-forward Play the whole video on fast-forward with the sound down. Students write down what they see, then compare in groups and then watch again on normal speed. 4. Recognising difficult or technical vocabulary As you would expect, the video contains several terms relating to vehicle transport. Understanding lexical sets of technically-related vocabulary and the differences in meaning between the different items is an important skill for the professional adult learner. Play the video in sections and ask students to write down the names of any vehicle types they hear. They should identify the following: motor car horse-drawn carriage automobile limousine convertible roadster sports car rally car (‘rallying’ on the video) Formula 1 racing car lorry (lorries) police car ambulance fire engine Check students’ answers, and ask them to give a definition of each type. 5. Numbers and names ‘bingo’ Design a bingo card for each student with numbers and names, including ones from the video, but other distracters as well. Students tick off the numbers/names when they hear them. When they have completed a line of three (horizontal, vertical or diagonal) they shout bingo, stop the video and check. Here are two examples: Example 1: nine 60,500 Rolls Royce Karl Benz Daimler AG one million euros Formula 1 Ferrari300 SL Example 2: a million 16,500 Porshe 1954 seven Mercedes Simplex 13 300 SL convertible After you watch Follow-up tasks and activities will help to reinforce the language and will also provide the opportunity for more communicative and interactive language practice. 6. Practice vocabulary work on different forms of transport, and different brands and products 7. Conduct a survey of class members or any other accessible group (e.g. work colleagues, teachers and staff in school). Example questions could be: a) Which museums have you visited? b) Which is your favourite - or least favourite - and why? c) What factors are important for you in a museum? Examples could include admission cost, interesting displays, interactive exhibits, a good cafe. d) Use the results to plan a group outing. 8. Plan and present an idea for your own museum a) Use the results from the survey (task 8) if available. b) Decide the theme for your museum. For example, it could be a museum of your own life, with photographs, objects from your past and from your present working life. c) Design the plan of the museum. d) Present to the rest of the group. I hope you enjoy trying out some of these activities in class!Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Multimedia & Digital Tagged: Adult Learners, Bringing Online Video into the Classroom, EdTech, EFL, ESL, International Express

For the past few months, I have been winding up my business, while also looking for a 'proper' job. The business was officially/legally wound up yesterday. But I am still hunting for alternative employment.Since I am not currently working in the field of L&D, it strikes me as being somewhat hypocritical to keep sharing my perspectives here. I don't feel as if I have anything to offer the practising L&D professional from here, and I would feel rather like the couch potato yelling advice at the honed athlete on the screen.Things advance so quickly in this field, that my firsthand experience will quickly be outdated.So, for now, I am putting this blog on hold. Should the day ever come when I am back in the saddle, you will no doubt see me back here again.I'd like to thank you for your company on my journey. Particularly those who have stuck by me since the very beginning, those who comment here, on Facebook and on Twitter... and those of you who email me or phone me to give me a blast when I say something you don't agree with. It has all been a rich and exciting learning tapestry. Happy hunting.

In January we asked over 450 teachers from around the world to vote for the biggest writing challenge they face in their classroom. Since then we’ve dedicated a month to each of the top three challenges with a series of webinars and blog posts from some of Oxford’s top teacher trainers. During our survey we also received some fantastic comments from teachers telling us about other problems they’ve encountered with writing. Join us as we take on 3 extra challenges raised by teachers like you. In this blog Gareth Davies addresses the first of these challenges: ‘My students complain they don’t have any ideas’. Any writer will tell you about the curse of the blank page. A blank page is the writer’s nightmare, it stares at you, providing evidence to the world that you have not written anything, that your ideas have dried up. If established writers have this problem, it is no wonder that students complain that they don’t have any ideas when asked to write. Writers often just try to get something down on the paper, anything, to give the impression that the process has started. Different writers use different tricks. For example if I am writing a factual piece like this, I will write My mother said that… on the top of the page. If I am writing fiction, I tend to describe the weather, It was a hot and sticky night… These prompts give the illusion I have started writing and remove the blank page factor. Later when I have completed the piece, I erase my prompt sentence because it is no longer needed but the prompt has got the creative juices flowing. (I did it with this blog, look at the start of this blog post and add in My mother said that…, see it works.) Would this work with your students? Would getting a prompt down on paper help them to create their piece of writing? Try it. Another useful trick is coming up with questions to answer in the text. If I have a list of questions that need to be answered, then I have a place to start. This can easily be applied to the classroom. For example, if the students have to write about a famous person or a town, then put the name of the person / town on the board and ask them to think of things they would like to know, remember to encourage them to write WH- questions. Write their ideas on the board and now you have a bank of ideas for what to write. Alternatively put your students in groups of 5. Ask each student to write the place / person they want to write about at the top of a piece of paper. Then pass that paper around their group. Each student has to write a different question about that place / person. When the student receives their own paper back, they will have 4 questions to answer in their text. I’ve used the idea of a person or place here, but this can work well with a film or book review or describing a holiday etc. Follow this up by asking the students to write a short response to only one of the questions. I sometimes suggest this takes the form of a tweet or a text message so it is only 140 characters long. They then swap this with another student or pair who read it and write a reply that includes a question about what they have read. The students now have to rewrite their short text including the answer to that question. Do this again with a different question; soon your students find they have too many ideas for what to write in their final piece. By the way, this also demonstrates to students that writing is not just a school discipline, but it is a means of communication. Finally when you mark the written work, you can write questions eliciting further information that you would like to know, how much does this cost? Why did she go to Hollywood? etc. This encourages students to see their writing as a first draft that they can improve by adding the extra information. It also shows them that you were interested in the content of their work and not just the mistakes they made. Of course this doesn’t have to be your job. You could ask students to pass their first drafts to another group who read it and ask the questions, thus developing their critical capacity. In my previous blog post on writing I suggested that as teachers we often throw our students into the deep end with writing tasks. When we ask them to speak they often only have to say one or maybe two sentences that are quickly forgotten but when writing they have to build whole texts that are there in black and white for all to see. I hope these ideas will help you to lead your students from the shallow end, helping them build confidence and gain ideas so they can approach the choppy waters of writing with confidence.Filed under: Professional Development, Teenagers Tagged: Professional Development, Solutions writing challenge, Teenagers

A rare emergence from hibernation for me, which just goes to show how strongly I feel about this matter.I have just received the weekly newsletter from my younger son's school. Said son is in the throes of exams for the lower sixth form (the first of two years of non-compulsory further education which serve as a springboard for those who wish to go on to higher education).The very first article in the newsletter focusses on the kids the year ahead of my son. In other words, those in the upper sixth. It includes the following:Students seeking work or higher education places after Sixth Form have never before found the competition so tough. More students across the country are competing for fewer available places and many of our students must obtain A grades in a number of subjects (even A* in some cases) for university entry.Our recent experience is that universities will not bend the requirements if students miss a grade. The need for students to revise really thoroughly has never been so vital.It's all about grades! Other things get taken into consideration, sure, but only if you get the grades in the first place.My son's results earlier in the year were very worrying. His teachers were at a loss: his homework is always submitted on time and is always 100% correct. But his exam results didn't even qualify for the word 'disappointing'. 'Terrifying' would be closer to the mark. We are currently spending a fortune on private tutors in attempt to help this boy learn some exam skills, so that he can reproduce under exam conditions the levels of competency he demonstrates in the classroom. If he doesn't succeed at that, his lifelong career dreams will become even more difficult to achieve.How can this be education?William Nicholson wrote a trilogy called Wind on Fire. The first book starts off in this utterly ludicrous society in which people take regular assessments all the way through their lives. Where they live, what clothes they wear and every single factor of their lives is governed by the cumulative assessment scores of the family.It is frightening how close we are to that. And I feel quite literally sickened as the parent of two sons who don't 'play the exam game' with any great skill. Nor can I help them there, because I have never been great shakes at it myself.What kind of a dysfunctional society are we inflicting on these kids? And at what cost?

Lysette Taplin, an ELT Editor for Oxford University Press, Mexico and experienced English language teacher, discusses the educational value of games in the English language classroom in celebration of Children’s Day in Mexico. Kids have amazing imaginations. This is why they have some really great ideas. And sometimes, these ideas become wonderful inventions. Did you know that kids invented the Popsicle and waterskiing? Did you know that a kid also invented earmuffs? And who invented the trampoline? A kid! George Baez, "From Dreams to Reality"[1] Universal Children’s Day (http://www.un.org/en/events/childrenday/) aims to promote the welfare of children everywhere and to encourage understanding between children all over the world.[2] In Mexico, this day is celebrated on April 30. Many schools in Mexico celebrate Children’s Day by hosting special events and festivals which often entail story-telling, games and more. Children love playing and games are a great way to promote communicative skills in the English language classroom. So, why not celebrate our kids with fun-filled games which also foster language development. They are highly motivating and create an enjoyable and relaxed learning environment which encourages active learning, collaboration as well as creative and spontaneous use of language. Task-orientated games engage students and give them a meaningful context for language use. They focus their attention on the task itself rather than the production of correct speech, and the competitive nature keeps students interested and concentrated as most learners will try hard to win. The advantage of using games is that they are student-centered and can integrate all linguistic skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. For example, when reading a dialogue from a story or play, project it onto the board, erasing some words or phrases. Have students work in teams to write the missing words. Encourage students to think of the funniest or most interesting captions to complete the gaps. Then, have teams vote for the funniest options. This activity promotes reading and creative writing while at the same time practices speaking and listening skills as students must understand what others are saying and express their own ideas. A running dictation game also gets students out of their seats and involves the four skills. Prepare and print a short text and place it at the front of the classroom. Have students work in pairs or small groups and decide on who will be the writer and who will be the runner. If students are working in small groups, have the non-writers take turns being runners. Tell the runners in each team to read the text and memorize as much as possible before returning to their team and dictating what they read to the writer. Tell students that the text must be as accurate as possible, including correct spelling and punctuation. With advanced groups, you can add italics, bold, parenthesis, etc. to make the text more challenging. Once teams have finished writing, hand out a copy of the text for them to check their work. This is an excellent and motivating game that can be adapted for both younger and older learners. Games to practice new or recycled vocabulary can help students learn and retain new words more easily. Chinese Whispers is a simple but effective game that gets students to practice correct pronunciation while reinforcing vocabulary. When playing this game, I usually split the class into two teams to add a competitive element. Tell the teams to stand in a line and ask a student from each team to come to the front of the class. Whisper one vocabulary item to them, or alternatively show them a picture or flashcard without letting the rest of the class see. Have them go to the back of their team’s line and whisper the word to the student in front of them. Tell the last student in each line to say the word aloud. Students love this game and find it hilarious when words get distorted as they pass down the line. Games encourage students to interact and communicate and to be more sympathetic towards one another, thus fostering understanding. While of great educational value, games are a fun distraction from the usual routine of language learning. They create a relaxed learning environment where real learning can take place and can also reduce students’ fear of speaking in a foreign language, which improves communicative competence. I believe games can and should be central to language teaching and can be used at any stage of the lesson. Many traditional games, such as Hangman, Pictionary, Bingo, Memory, Charades, Battleships, etc. can all be adapted for the ELT classroom. Kids love to play, and fun, exciting games will engage them in communication, making them forget about the language challenges they face. References: [1] Baez, George. "From Dreams to Reality." Ed. Justyna Zakrzewska. Step Inside 3. Mexico: Oxford University Press, 2014. [2] Unicef, Universal Children’s Day: Celebrating children and their rights, UNICEF Malaysia, 2012. Date of access: 08/04/2015. http://www.unicef.org/malaysia/childrights_universal-childrens-day.htmlFiled under: Pre-school Children, Young Learners Tagged: Children, Games, games for the classroom, Gamification, Gamified Language Educational E-tivities, Interaction, LUDIC PEDAGOGY

In January we asked over 450 teachers from around the world to vote for the biggest writing challenge they face in their classroom. Since then we’ve dedicated a month to each of the top three voted for challenges with a series of webinars and blog posts from some of Oxford’s top teacher trainers. During our survey we also received some fantastic comments from teachers telling us about other writing challenges they’ve encountered. Join us as we take on 3 extra challenges raised by teachers like you. In this blog Olha Madylus addresses the first of these challenges: ‘My students find formal writing challenging and keep using informal vocabulary’. Maybe this is something you have experienced? Teenage learners in particular can struggle with formal writing. They rarely use formal vocabulary even in their first language, and don’t see the relevance of formal writing. However, for most teenagers this will prove an important skill when they come to take their end of school exams. Beyond school, formal writing will also be useful in a number of contexts, such as essays, job applications, reports and letters. Firstly students need to be made aware of the difference between formal and informal English (I am sure they will understand this in their L1). Secondly they need to appreciate when either is appropriate to use and finally they need opportunities to practise both. Awareness-raising Write or project two example sentences like this on the board: After careful consideration, Michael Morris decided to purchase the vehicle, as he had decided the price was reasonable. Mike bought the car because he thought it was an ok price. Ask students to work in pairs and answer the following questions Do you think the sentences were said or written? Who do you think said or wrote the sentences and why? How would you translate each sentence into L1. Which words in each sentence are synonyms or near synonyms? (consideration=thought, purchase=buy, reasonable=ok etc). Clarify the terms formal and informal, using L1 as needed. Give out large pieces of paper to groups of about 4 students and ask them to divide the paper into two sections and write formal at the top of one section and informal on the other. Ask students to brainstorm their ideas about when we use each kind of language (they should use their experience of L1 as well as English). Prompt them as necessary. Hopefully they will have ideas like this. You can show them this on a slide, so they can compare their ideas. Formal Informal Usually written Spoken in official, public and smart situations like speeches Usually spoken in everyday, personal conversations, films, games, talk shows Written in songs, dialogues in stories, texts, emails Then ask your students to come up with three ways in which the language is different. They can look back at the original two sentences. Compare their ideas to your list and add any they have which are not included here. Formal Informal Usually planned, edited Usually spontaneous Official, academic Conversational Longer sentences Shorter sentences Longer and less common words More commonly used words Some words are only used in writing Some words are only spoken Grammatically correct May include some grammar mistakes Reader often not known to the writer Listener usually known to speaker Needed in exam tasks  Not appreciated in exam tasks Using language appropriately A. Show the students the following dialogue: A: Hi! What’s up? B: Nothing much. How are things? A: Not bad. Take it easy. B: You too. See ya later. Ask students to discuss The relationship between the speaker (friends) Their age (teens or young adults) The tone (informal) Now ask your students to ‘translate’ the dialogue so the speakers are (a) strangers (b) older and the tone is formal. It will look something like this: A: Hello. How are you? B: I’m fine. How are you? A: I’m very well, thank you. Have a good day. B: You too. Good bye. Ask pairs of students to practise reading out the dialogues with the correct voices and body language. They can do such short and focussed ‘translation’ tasks from informal to formal and formal to informal from time to time to remind them of the differences. B. When preparing students to write a formal letter you could do a task like this, which helps them think about and distinguish appropriate language to be used in the task. Dear Sir Hi there To consider To think about Firstly To begin We regret to inform you I’m sorry to say I wish to enquire I want to ask Consequently So However But We have pleasure in announcing I’m happy to say Sufficient Enough Then they could (a) take the formal words and phrases and write sentences which include them so the tone is formal throughout or (b) create a dialogue using the informal phrases or (c) when writing the formal letter try to include as many of the formal words or phrases in it.Cut up the cards and give a set to each group of 3 or 4 students. Ask the students to work together and match the formal to the informal equivalents of the phrases or words. Next steps Make sure your students practise both formal and informal English in class and constantly think about why they use different levels of formality. They can practise informal English by writing and acting out dialogues or sketches, writing songs in speaking tasks. They can also create posters and collect new vocabulary phrases in three categories - formal, informal and slang. It’s all English but they should be aware of when to use it and why.Filed under: Professional Development, Teenagers Tagged: EFL, Professional Development, Solutions writing challenge, Teacher Development, teaching english writing, teaching writing, Teenagers