EnglishClub

I originally trained as a biological sciences teacher but, after deciding to go to Korea to teach English for a year, I opened my own language institute. The success of the institute led to teacher training for Pearson and Oxford University Press (OUP) after which I became academic director for Disney’s chain of private English schools. I’ve always been interested in the way we learn, and language learning, in particular, holds a fascination for me. After four years writing English courses for a local publisher in Taiwan, I decided to do a Masters in international education development with an emphasis on languages, literacies and technologies. Later, I began to write courses for leading language learning app, Studycat.

From the beginning, I was aware of the power of playful learning. When I first taught in Korea, I wasn’t familiar with the language and I had to incorporate a lot of demonstrating or acting to get vocabulary words across clearly. This often involved using a lot of pictures and flashcards. I soon realised the kids were bored by the textbook they used and were much more engaged when we taught through games or activities, which led to better language acquisition for them.

Far from being games for games’ sake, or filling in gaps during the lessons, this approach is rooted in research. In 1982, the linguist and educator, Stephen Krashen, published his theory of second language acquisition. Through his research, Krashen and Tracy Terrell, a Spanish teacher in California, developed the Natural Approach (NA). One of the hypotheses of this approach is the affective filter. Put simply, if children have any fear or anxiety about making a mistake, it will act as a filter that blocks the child’s ability to learn or acquire the target language. Games are incredibly good at lowering the affective filter. Children are children, and no matter where I have taught, I’ve found they go back to their childhood mentality, in which games are a natural and stress-free way of learning. They aren’t afraid of making mistakes and just want to do well in the game.

Playful learning goes back even further though. Think of Friedrich Fröbel in Germany in the early 1800’s, who called his early childhood learning centre the child’s garden, or Kindergarten, as we know it. He was an advocate of songs, games and hands-on toys to help children learn in general.  Maria Montessori was also driver for this playful approach in Italy, and John Dewy in the US. Games teach us from an early age.

How children learn best

The games that worked best in my classroom were those that felt familiar for the children. These included card games, flash card games, board games and even games I read up on from African villages that have been played for generations. I started adapting all these games and put together a collection that I could use for any topic. Games make language practice much more intensive than oral drills, which don’t motivate children. When you build a game, children become excited about it they tend to respond much more quickly, and my experience has shown that higher levels of engagement make the learning ‘stick’ in an effective way.

When teaching, we need to be able to put ourselves in a child’s mind set and remember what type of vocabulary children want to use. What types of sentence structures do kids use in their daily lives? They want to talk about what colour crayon they want, or which animals they like. If they get hurt, they want to tell you where it hurts. When planning a curriculum, those are the things I try to teach very early on. I want to keep in mind that young children are incredibly egocentric until they are in first grade, which is when we can try to accustom them to concepts like empathy, cooperation and teamwork. In the beginning, if I am teaching very young learners, I try encouraging them to talk about their own lives; their favourite colour or favourite food. This uses their natural inclination towards self-interest and gets them communicating in a way that feels natural to them.

Technology’s role

In the early days of technology, our games were purely analogue but, as technology continued to evolve, I explored different ways in which it could be used. Research has recently shown parental engagement helps enormously when it comes to educational attainment and this is an area that technology lends itself very well to streamlining communication between the school and the home. In addition, children feel a natural affinity towards certain technologies; look at the way they instinctively navigate smart devices like phones or tablets. We’re teaching digital natives now, and using the natural interest that they have in technology in order to improve their language acquisition is a sensible step.

I’ve recently completed a set of courses for Studycat, who create fun language learning apps for children. The apps are designed to encourage critical thinking and build the foundations of language. They also provide performance metrics to measure how the child is learning when they are playing those games. Is their performance improving? Are there certain vocabulary words they seem to be struggling with or certain structures they seem to be struggling with? This insight into individual learners is like solid gold to teachers, enabling them to tailor lessons accordingly to ensure that each child is progressing well. We can assign every child the same, or different, game depending on their personal focus areas as determined by the performance metrics. It has a dual benefit though, as it also enables parents to see how their child is doing, connecting the home and school environments seamlessly.

For us, as English language teachers, it is incredibly rewarding to see our pupils build the foundation of knowledge they need at an early age, but it is even more rewarding if they have fun while learning. I would encourage any teacher to explore games and incorporate them into every lesson. Watching the children shake off the nerves that often come with rote learning is a pleasure all in itself!

I am not writing this as an expert on the interactive whiteboard – in fact quite the opposite as I tend to avoid technology if at all humanly possible, making me the perfect person to write for people who feel the same way! Here are twelve reasons why even if you are dubious there is no need to be scared:

1. You can use it exactly like a normal whiteboard

For my first two weeks with an IWB I used it just like any whiteboard, writing things on it when I needed to. To do so during class all you need to know is how to change pages and erase. Before class you’ll probably want to go in early and make sure there is a pen, that the pen is aligned (= writing exactly where you’re touching the board), that the width of the “ink” is one you are happy with, that you like the colours, and that the projector remote control is working. If you can’t yet do these for yourself, it will only take someone a couple of minutes to set it up for you and only five minutes to learn how to do it next time.

Other things that are nice (but not vital) to know at this first stage are blanking the screen and freezing the image on the screen so the students can still see the last thing you put up when you want to do something else on the computer.

2. The basics of IWB software are just like other programs

The next stage after writing is obviously typing, either in class or when you are preparing. This is just like using PowerPoint or Word, but you also need to choose where you want to put your text and how big you want the text box to be (something someone can show you in a minute or two).

3. You can use it as just a big computer monitor

The next stage for me was to use the IWB as just a way of projecting something on the wall for students to see, e.g. showing them a video without the need to wheel in a TV. Thinking of it as just an extension of my computer’s monitor included interacting with it mainly from my computer mouse and keyboard rather than clicking on icons on the board with my pen, including often looking at my monitor rather than up at the IWB.

4. An IWB pen is just like a mouse or your finger on a touchscreen

The next stage is to touch things on the screen with your pen just as you would click things with the cursor using your mouse or touch the screen on an ATM or automated airline check-in machine with your finger. For example, if you are using the computer to play a CD recording you can press play, pause, skip etc on Windows Media Player with your pen on the IWB rather than going back to your computer to control it. The same is true of opening, shrinking and closing webpages and programmes; choosing things from menus; clicking in boxes so you can type in them; etc.

5. You can use other people’s stuff

Until you have got the hang of using the equipment in the classroom you can usually get away with a combination of using other people’s materials and writing the other stuff on the IWB (number 1 above). You might also find that the easiest way to start creating your own materials is by changing other people’s rather than by starting from scratch.

6. You can use other programs to prepare

If preparing materials with the IWB software is still putting you off, you can easily start with more familiar programs like PowerPoint or even Word. For example, a word processor document opened in the classroom will show up on the screen just like anything else on your computer monitor. You can make sure everyone can see it properly by using the magnify function in Word and/ or by highlighting the text you want to show and changing the font size.

7. You can prepare in other programs and then switch to the IWB software

Most IWB software can convert to and/or from PowerPoint, and it is always possible to copy text and pictures from webpages or other programs. You could, for example, prepare a Word worksheet for your students and then copy the part of it that you also wanted up on the board into your IWB software. Someone can show you how to do this in a matter of seconds, but it often consists of copying and pasting by highlighting and right-clicking and/ or keeping both programs open on the screen next to each other, highlighting, and dragging what you want from one to the other.

8. You can prepare with the actual IWB

If you are having problems with preparing with the keyboard and mouse, you can go into an empty classroom and do it all by pen, saving your results on the hard disk of that computer and/ or on a USB stick to take with you.

9. If you can use a CD ROM you can use the coursebook IWB software

It really is that easy, especially if you open the program (or ask someone else to do so) and find the right starting page well before class.

10. You can always undo

If you make some kind of mistake there are many ways of undoing it, e.g. the erase button, the undo button, and closing the program and reverting to the original version of the file (= closing the version you have changed and opening the original one again). To make the last one possible you will need to have two versions of each file saved – one that is the original and is never changed, and one that you can add to in class.

11. You can have a back up plan

If things really go wrong, that will hardly stop the whole lesson. Most schools also have (paper) flipcharts, OHPs and/ or whiteboards, and if not you can buy a cheap portable whiteboard and bring it in. The other emergency option is just to write on A3 paper and hold it up for the class to see.

12. You don’t have to write things down

Another reason not to panic is that, perhaps ironically, one of the most useful things that teaching with an IWB has shown me is that there is often no need to write. For example, spelling things out for students involves useful classroom language.

Teleconferencing is one of the most difficult things to do in another language, and nowadays many people have more teleconferences in English than face-to-face meetings. Unfortunately, materials for telephoning and meetings in English generally ignore this fact, with a page or two on the topic at most. This article aims to help you prepare such lessons without the need for published materials. Most of the ideas should also be easily adaptable for video conferences.

What Students Need To Know To Teleconference In English

A teleconference is a bit like a cross between a meeting and a telephone call, and it can help to have several lessons on one or both of those topics before launching into the trickier topic of teleconferencing. Language that exists in at least one of those two but is more important in teleconferencing includes:

• Clarifying
• Sorting out technical problems with the equipment
• Referring to documents
• Asking people to wait
• Introducing the people who are taking part
• Keeping everyone on topic
• Making sure everyone has a chance to speak
• Keeping to the agenda and timings
• Turn-taking, e.g. interrupting
• Deciding on breaks
• Asking people to speak in particular ways (more slowly, more loudly etc)
• Regularly summarizing what you have discussed and agreed
• Signalling what you will talk about
• Chatting while people arrive
• Explaining silences (e.g. while looking for something)
• Taking time out to have conversations between just one side
• Talking about differences in time zone/the time of day

Language specific to teleconferencing includes:

• Checking who is speaking/has just spoken
• Telling the other side when people leave and come in
• Sending documents during the teleconference
• Chatting with people as they set up and pack up the equipment

They might also need some vocabulary, e.g. “bullet points”, “voice quality” and “echo”.

Classroom Activities

Although there are few materials with useful language for this skill, there are plenty of tips for native speakers on how to go about setting up and taking part in a teleconference. These tips can be used to make a classroom activity by choosing ones that have specific phrases associated with them such as “Introduce everyone at the beginning of the meeting.” Students choose a top ten from the tips and then brainstorm suitable phrases to do those things, e.g. “I’ll introduce each person at this end and ask them to say their names.”

Especially if you have done some work on telephoning and/or face-to-face meetings before, you can use the contrasts with one of them to introduce or practise teleconferencing language. One way is to give students cards with “Face-to-face” written on one and “Teleconference” written on the other. They should lift up the “Face-to-face” card if the phrase can’t be used in teleconferences (e.g. “This person on my right is Alex”) and the “Teleconference” card if it can’t be used in face-to-face meetings (e.g. “I’ll just adjust the microphone”). You can also have them raising both cards if the phrase can be used in both situations (e.g. “Sorry for interrupting, but…”) and/or leaving both cards down if it can’t be used in either (e.g. video conferencing phrases like “I can’t see the people at the sides of the room”).

You could also do something similar by giving them the script from a face-to-face meeting that includes phrases that couldn’t be used in a teleconference, asking them to find and rewrite the bits that need to be changed.

Two other ways of presenting or practising  this language are:

• giving them impolite teleconferencing sentences that need to be made more polite (e.g. “Move your microphone!”)
• giving them the dialogue from part of a teleconference that they should put in order

When it comes to practising a whole teleconference, the best way is obviously with the actual equipment and the class split into two, preferably with students in rooms fairly close to each other so the teacher can run in and out helping them. If you can record it for later feedback and/or analysis by the teacher, that would be even better.

Even more than telephoning, it is very difficult to create realistic practice without the actual equipment. For example, it is possible to practise telephoning with two people back to back but this hardly makes sense with four to twelve people speaking for at least twenty minutes! The other thing is that, as with the real thing, the middle of the teleconference might vary little from any meeting, or even most classroom discussions. This takes away the practice of the specific functional language for this skill and often makes the students completely forget that they are practising teleconferencing.

You can add more intensive practice by splitting the teleconference up into little sections like “Make sure the other side can hear you.” They should then practise these stages one at a time. You can also add more challenging stages like “The first two attempts to sort out the problem don’t work.” By setting this up as some kind of board game, you can make sure it still adds up to practice of a whole teleconference.

You can also do something similar but with more natural flow by asking them to roleplay a teleconference all the way through after giving them cards containing things they should make sure they do such as “Go off topic” or “Chat with the people on the other end while your colleagues pop out for some reason.” They can discard these cards as they successfully do these things. If you want to make it competitive, you can tell them that the person or team with fewest cards at the end of the teleconference wins. They can then discuss what they could say for each of the cards they didn’t use. You can also do something similar with actual words or phrases they must use during the teleconference.

Though January is often referred to as “clean up your computer month,” it makes sense for teachers to do this chore in the summer. Don’t try to do everything in one day. Take a week and clean up a little each day. By the time your next class begins, you will be able to find everything you need.

Day 1: Back up Important Files
This may take some time but you will thank yourself if you ever run into computer difficulties or theft. Put on some good music in the background and get started! Read the rest of this entry »