Teresa

Hub digest – 3rd September, 2021

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Happy Friday and happy September! July and August seem to have flown by in the Hub – though August was definitely quieter so our last event of the month, Tuesday’s Trainer Talking Time, has been rescheduled for next month when everyone’s more in the mood to talk TEFL.

Talk around DEI has continued in the Hub, with a wonderful video to get us thinking about making our classes more inclusive; we also had a video on an eco-friendly oceans project. The Wednesday Question on exit tickets sparked some conversation and there were also posts on mindfulness and networking.

Finally, on Thursday we were back with our regular coffee breaks and with conversations on Aptis, accentism and authenticity.

Aptis, accentism and authenticity

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The chat in the coffee breaks went in various different directions this week. We started off chatting about learning and teaching online, as one participant would be going back to in-person university courses soon, but with a hybrid aspect to cater to interational students. This led us to thinking about the difficulties of hybrid in a communicative classroom as well as the challenges of teaching phonology behind a mask – whilst regulations at the centre say the teacher can wear a face shield at a distance of two metres from the students, this doesn’t allow for students to practise sounds with each other with the same visual quality.

We went on to chat about the British Council Aptis exams, as another Hubster runs dedicated preparation courses for these exams. As a relatively new exam – though seemingly gaining popularity in Spain, Poland, Turkey and Latin America – preparation material was quite limited so the teacher was creating a lot of her own resources for the lessons.

We chatted a little about the popularity of different exams and exam boards in various countries – the Cambridge main suite exams are still hugely popular in Spain, Cambridge CAE and IELTS were both popular choices for people looking to move to Australia, and the Duolingo test is accepted for entry to university in Ireland. In the afternoon break, exams also came up – but then we were chatting about the inauthentictity of oral exams. As many exams are based on a script which examiners have to adhere to quite strictly, it makes conversations with candidates quite unnatural at times. For example, if you ask a candidate what they did at the weekend and they respond with something wildly exciting, ‘Thank you’ doesn’t seem like the most appropriate response!

On the topic of exams, we also questioned how well first-language English speakers would fare in a C2 exam…yet this is generally the requirement placed on second-language English users in order to get work as English teachers. This led on to talk around native speakerism and accentism, with a couple of our Irish participants experiencing discrimination because of their accents. The topic of descriptive and prescriptive grammar also came up briefly, in terms of thinking about what people say as well as how they say it – in my recent binge-watching Castle, I’ve noticed a lot of ‘What do we got?’ from Detective Beckett and one Hubster mentioned working with third-culture children and how the phrases they come out with can sometimes be seen as ‘incorrect’ by someone not familiar with their parents’ linguistic heritage.

Authenticity came up as well in thinking about coursebook materials, as well as the accents our learners are most familiar with. Working in Australia, one Hubster mentioned that her students struggled to understand the Australian background having come from Asia or Europe where American and British English was taught. Considering materials, there was a question of whether coursebooks even have authentic varieties of English – is the Australian you’re hearing really just a voice actor from Oxford? Voices – a new coursebook series from National Geographic – has a strong focus on varieties of English and using second-language English speakers as models for pronunciation activities, so there are definitely steps being made in the right direction. An excellent resource for exposing learners to more accents is the Dialects Archive in which speakers from around the world have been recorded reading a scripted text and speaking freely – great for learners to hear and compare different accents in English and perhaps a useful resource for any teachers looking to find out more about potential pronunciation problems their learners may have. It’s also worth revisiting the notes from Lina’s webinar for more ideas and useful resources.

Another suggestion for exposing learners to different accents was inviting guests to speak during our lessons. One Hubster mentioned having asked her mother and husband to record short audios for her students and another said she had invited guests to join classes, even pre-pandemic. This type of live listening is a fabulously authentic experience for our learners and we suggested it might be more beneficial for guests to be non-teachers, as we have a habit of modifying our speech to support learners’ listening. However, if anyone is interested in getting involved with a ‘guest-speaking’ project with other Hub members, let us know and we can put you in touch with other teachers.

Another project which was mentioned was a training course from Renewable English to make your classes a greener place to be – see Harry’s website for more details and look out for a post in the Hub sometimes soon… And on the topic of courses, we chatted about the difference in prices for online and in-person courses, as well as the huge difference in costs for an in-person course depending on location and a concern that if cheaper courses of the same quality are now readily available online, people will be discouraged from travelling to take an in-person course. 

And that was today’s coffee breaks. Thanks to everyone who came along – as always we had questions prepped around recent topics from the Hub, but the conversations took the direction they wanted to!

Hub digest – 27th August, 2021

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August is definitely a quiet month for the Hub and as yet we’ve had no comments on the Wednesday Question this week…or is it because nobody really knows how we can effectively deal with fossilized errors? There was also a question from a teacher looking to work in Italy and wondering about the sort of paperwork involved and an interesting query about schools requesting a particular level in the learners’ L1, in this case in Spain.

We also held our second Speakers’ Corner event this week and the webinar with Riccardo Chiappini has been rescheduled for Tuesday 7th September as we were having some technical issues.

Hub digest – 20th August, 2021

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Another relatively quiet week in the Hub, but there was some great chat in Tuesday’s Monthly Management Meet Up on the benefits and drawbacks of being your own boss – a topic we’re sure to come back to again. There were also some interesting comments in response to this week’s Wednesday Question, thinking about parsnips and controversial topics for the ELT classroom. We also touched on the topic in one of the Coffee Breaks on Thursday – notes coming soon!

Next week we’re back on Tuesday with Speakers’ Corner – the chance to come along and share something that’s on your mind. And on Thursday, Riccardo Chiappini will be joining us to talk about mediation.

Hub digest – 13th August, 2021

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It was a slightly quieter week in the Hub and we didn’t get any attendees for Tuesday’s Focused Forum, so we’ll keep it as a topic option for next month! There was some action on the Facebook group this, with interesting responses to our Wednesday Question on using the phonemic chart and on error correction techniques in the online environment.

On Thursday, we had a wonderful webinar with Claire Thom on using poetry to promote creativity in the classroom, looking at using haiku in particular. Don’t forget, there are follow-up notes for all our webinars and other live events on the blog – at the top of the page you can choose the notes from specific events and there’s also a search bar if you’ve looking for something in particular.

Coming up next week, we have a Monthly Management Meet Up on Tuesday and our fortnightly cofee breaks on Thursday. See you there!

Using poetry in the classroom to promote creativity

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Using poetry in the classroom to promote creativity - with Claire Thom (webinar)
Watch now

It was really wonderful to be joined by Claire Thom, who is a very experienced ELT professional and author of Ever Forward. She’s from Scotland and currently works as a teacher in the south of Spain. Her book is a collection of fourteen haiku, with watercolour paintings by her dad, Colin Thom. All profits from the self-published book are going to the UK Guide Dogs association. Claire was also kind enough to share a handout with all the ideas shared in the session, including some ready-to-go worksheets.

She started the webinar with a little bit of background from Yasemin Kirkgöz, who defined creativity as ‘the ability to come up with new ideas that are surprising yet intelligible, and also valuable in some way.’ This led on to Claire saying that poetry is a personal activity and whilst we may try as much as possible to personalise coursebook and lesson content, working with poetry encourages them to view language, and the world, in a different way. She added as well that it’s easy to get bogged down, particularly in exam preparation classes, and creativity through poetry encourages a playfulness with language which it’s nice to return to. She later added that haiku can easily be graded to work with different levels.

What is a haiku?

Interestingly, the way we have adopted haiku in English is slightly different to the original Japanese: whilst we measure haiku in syllables, with a standard 5-7-5- pattern in the three-line poem, originally they were measured in sounds or ‘breaths’.

Claire highlighted how haiku often have a seasonal link and are about the natural world around us. She then went on to share a number of very practical ideas for working with haiku in the lessons. These are all outlined in the handout.

Watercolour by Colin Thom

It was also wonderful to hear about the positive experiences of using poetry in the classroom: Claire mentioned how it can transport learners to a completely different world, especially if they’re given time to brainstorm the location and what they might see, hear, smell, touch and taste there. One Hub member also mentioned how using a restrictive task, such as limiting the number of syllables, really encourages learners to think about the words they use. Claire says that once students are familiar with haiku, they can easily be used as a warmer or end-of-the-lesson activity, and suggested creating a prompt bank of words chosen by students as a starting point; alternatively, you could give them an image as a starting point.

When Claire talked about doing a chain haiku, another Hub member commented that ‘collaboration changes the direction and forces the writer to bring it all together somehow. Really inspiring!’ Claire also mentioned how proud her teenagers were of the haiku they produced – despite orginally regarding the task with some suspicion. She had some wonderful ideas for ways that students can share their work too: Haiku Corner, a Haiku Poetry Slam or even publishing a collection of their work – all wonderful ideas to acknowledge their creativity.

She chose the title Ever Forward for her own anthology of haiku as it reflects the strength and determination that animals show of always moving forward and highlighted how in our classes we’ve become much more aware of nature and the climate crisis. Claire says that most students are very appreciative of the natural world and are keen on taking steps to improve the current situation.

One Hub member asked about working with different levels: Claire talked about working with a C2 group of adults, as well as working with B1 teens. Some of the feedback from the students was the¡at it allowed them to forget about everything else and just focus on the creative process. A lot of the activities, particularly the gapfill, could easily be adapted to working with lower levels or younger learners – and the fact that they are such short pieces of text means they hopefully won’t be overwhelmed by creating a piece of poetry. There was also a suggestion – to make the haiku a bit more TEFL-y – of using the haiku to work on pronunciation, perhaps y saying words must have a particular sounds or should rhyme.