Teresa

Hub digest – 28th May, 2021

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The end of another week and time for a quick Hub digest. There’s been lots of great chat as always, with our Monthly Management Meet Up on Tuesday looking at CPD. We chatted about who benefits from it and what the focus for development can be. 

There were a couple of lovely comments in response to the Wednesday Question this week about how changing the way we think about problems can have a positive effect – but we also wondered whether there’s some psychological benefit to having a bit of a moan every once in a while. Our hope for the Hub is that it’s a place where everyone feels comfortable asking questions and as the community grows, it’s really wonderful to hear people’s experiences from different teaching contexts.

And the week was rounded off with a fabulously chatty Thursday in our coffee breaks – lots of interesting chat around pronoun use and academic dripdown.

Coming up next week, we’ve got a Focused Forum on Tuesday and a webinar on Thursday to keep us developing professionally!

Uncomfortable relationships?

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It was a fabulous couple of hours, “proper” coffee breaks where things got kind of philosophical!

How are we all doing? 

Lots of busy-ness and bits of beachiness for some!

How’s COVID doing where you are?

  • Argentina – things are tough, low vaccine rest and much uncertainty
  • Switzerland – vaccines moving quickly
  • France – getting there
  • Spain – heading towards the 50 year olds for the vaccine

What are you up to?

  • Updating CVs, thinking about making “my own website” and awareness of the freelancer’s insecurity but then “things just happen”. And then of course there’s the difficulties of keeping track of invoices and the “Declarado” app was recommended.
  • Writing SDGs (the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals) for Japan, there’s lots of work to do there.
  • Giving presentations at international conferences.
  • Wasting time on silly, but addictive, games on the phone…

And what about our relationship with tech?

We’re all dying a slow death of a thousand cuts with all the subscriptions. It feels like the companies own us. We all know that Google isn’t really “free”, we and our data are the product. How then do we feel about using Google Classroom? It seems to be the favourite for teachers.

There is a search engine “Gener8” which pays you for the ads you see; you get vouchers and can also donate to charity.

And what is the end game for online businesses? It’s either to make money or to collect data. Is there an ethical question around data collection or does it only depend then what we do with it? Businesses need to build their databases to let their potential customers know what’s going on and to sell our products. An alternative approach could be to do lots of free stuff and then sell special events.

Who taught us the most during lockdown?

Greta and family taught us about activism, privilege and LGBTQIA+. We learnt so much through listening to those less listened to. We were inspired by others and learnt to be quiet and listen. We learnt that litter-picking is a gateway drug into activism, we learnt that we can all make a difference. We learnt that teens listen to teens

Talking of inclusivity…

We went on to talk about the flexibility and potential inclusivity of pronouns in English and that Portuguese is adding a new neutral suffix “e” to add to the traditional “o” and “a”. We agreed that it can be hard to make the shift and challenged ourselves to use neutral pronouns more. 

Do we live in an age of contradictions? We’re increasingly moving away from the binary towards more nuance and complexity while at the same time being dumbed down by simplicity and polarisation.

We reported that we’re pushing the publishers, on some occasions more successfully than others; in one book we managed to get an info box of the use of “they” as a preferred pronoun and the accepted “they” if gender is unknown, wouldn’t it be good if we could add to “unknown or unimportant”?

Learning to listen?

Also on the theme of listening we wondered how often we just listen without visual prompts and therefore questioning the authenticity in books and exams. We commented that even phone calls are less used now in the age of the video call.

Exam listening tasks are so often torturous! Who writes this stuff? Not millennials, we guess. We commented on how contrived much of the exam language is, can it be any other way?

We got righteously angry about the claim that exams don’t need prep and the idea that if you’ve got the level, you can take the exam. Nonsense, we agreed.

We were similarly aggrieved by the expression “21st Century Skills”; it’s 2021! Would “soft skills” be better or is that a bit bland? What about “life skills”; communication, creativity, collaboration and critical thinking? We don’t like a page on these things bolted on to the end of a unit, these skills should be embedded throughout.

What is “transformative pedagogy”? And how does academia interact with practical teaching?

Apparently a theory focussing on “adjusting thinking based on information”. All learning is transforming, isn’t it? This left us with more questions than answers and led us to talking about the difficulty in accessing academic writing. We agreed that if you can’t explain something using simple words, it means you can’t explain it. But then, is the academic side of things necessary to elevate the profession? And action research is great but not much use if it just ends up gathering dust, there needs to be a combination of the theoretical and the practical. Perhaps there will always be a gap between academics and teachers. 

 

Do academics care about the practical application of their work or is it just a theoretical exercise? Also, it appears that some academics want to protect, rather than share, their research in the competition to get published (or tenure) and then to secure a research position. We also heard about how theory and practice are combining, in TESOL Argentina there is a talk about story-telling connecting stories, feelings and emotions.

“The lumpy jumper” scene from “The devil wears Prada” was mentioned as recommended viewing!

We were introduced to Google scholar (Google again, have we come full circle?); scholar.google.com. Some papers there are downloadable and there are often several versions. The number of citations shows if something is well-read. Use the abstract to see if it’s what you’re after and the bibliography to follow up and deepen. There’s also academic.edu where people share their research, subscription is free and they send interesting emails. 

“Schools kill creativity” (TED talk – Ken Robinson) was recommended, especially the conference disco section to illustrate one of the problems with academia.

What do you do with webinars and conference sessions?

How important is it to take notes? How often do we just leave them afterwards? We’re keen CPD-ers and what do we do? What about our younger colleagues? They seem to make no notes. Is it a generational shift? Some record it to watch later, will they ever? Is there something about active listening as we make notes deciding what to include and how to represent it? Is it the same on a keyboard as making a mark on a paper? Perhaps if we take good notes we don’t need to look at them again? The debate goes on…

Hub digest – 21st May, 2021

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Another great week in the Hub with lots of thought-provoking chat this week. In the Focused Forum on Tuesday we discussed translanguaging and the benefits of using it in the classroom – as well as how it could be ‘sold’ to students and parents as a useful tool to enhance their learning rather than just an excuse to use their L1 during lessons.

The Wednesday Question was also related to methodology and from the comments, it seems that principled eclecticism is the winning method for most Hub members.

On Thursday we had a really interesting webinar with Claire Thomson who was talking about how we can give our learners more choice in the classroom and the pedagogical benefits of allowing learners more autonomy in their learning.

Next week we have our Monthly Management Meet Up on Tuesday and then Coffee Breaks on Thursday – see you there!

Learner choice in the online classroom: another step towards autonomous learners

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Learner choice in the online classroom: another step towards autonomous learners - with Claire Thomson (webinar)
Watch now

Claire Thomson has been teaching for many years and since moving into ELT, has developed a passion for learner choice, which she also worked on for one of the research projects for her Trinity DipTESOL. She looked at choice with three different age groups, starting with a group of 10-11 year olds, a group of teens and a group of adults and the results encouraged her to investigate further. Interestingly, in her research, she’s found that adults tend to be more resistant – possibly due to previous educational experiences. Feedback from the other groups demonstrated that they were more motivated to come to class and to complete homework. Her work started pre-pandemic and so with the shift online she has now been looking at how to incorporate learner choice into the virtual classroom. This is particularly important to take the focus away from the teacher as the main face on-screen.

Choice gives your learners a voice in the classroom, which they so often lack. As Claire highlighted in the webinar, when we think about the choices our learners generally have, many are made for the learners by other people (parents, school policy, teachers):

As one Hub member commented in the chat:

Today’s kids are used to the internet, where choices are infinite. If all that choice is taken away in the classroom situation, it’s like tying their hands behind their backs.

Why? Claire went on to talk about the pedagogical benefits of offering choice:

  • promoting a learner-centred approach
  • encouraging agency – allowing learners to act and take responsibility for learning
  • increased engagement and motivation
  • learners take ownership for their learning
  • fostering autonomy
  • supports differentiation – between levels, abilities, learning styles
  • provides a safe environment for them to try new things
  • helps learners discover how they learn and develop learning strategies, as well as identifying the tools they need to learn best
  • they can find it easier to reflect o their learning as they’re more invested in the process

Who? Learner choice is for EVERYONE!

When? introduce it at any time – and there’s no need to tell them you’re doing it! However, remember that similarly to games, too much of a good thing isn’t great!

What? There are lots of opportunities to offer choice:

  • interaction patterns
  • homework (deadlines or how to complete)
  • activities
  • projects
  • debates and discussions
  • topics and syllabus (perhaps trickier depending on your context)
  • testing
  • class for that day

How? Overcome the fear – offering choice isn’t giving up control of your classroom.

The choices you offer need to be pre-planned – why are you offering your learners this choice? Is it to motivate them? To allow them more flexibility (e.g. if they have a lot of homework, you might give them a choice of when to hand in work)? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each choice and what’s the benefit for the individual learner?

Remember as well that you should always bear your learning outcomes in mind – the choices you offer should always lead to the same place.

At the start, you might want them to make the ‘wrong’ choice so they can reflect on the process of making the choice and why they need to think critically about the decisions they take.

Also, start simple as you’ll need to put a lot of thought into the choices you offer and planning for learners choice will take much longer. You’ll also need to devote more class time to preparing your learners for making choices so that their choice in informed J

Claire also suggests giving learners time to discuss the options in groups before making an individual choice: this gives them the opportunity to hear other opinions and make a more informed choice.

There was a question about ‘the tyranny of the majority’ which is perhaps less of an issue in the online classroom where choice can be more anonymous. Offering a choice supports quieter students to feel noticed and valued.

Some ideas for how to implement choice:

  • Send out a form before class with the choice of the lesson (e.g. letter-writing or passive), with the rationale for why each is important. Remember to make sure that they don’t need to have done one before they do the other!
  • Learning stations in the classroom, particularly useful for younger learners
  • For exam prep, give them a choice of three reading texts which practise the same part of the exam
  • Offering a choice of deadlines for homework – have them look at their schedule so they take responsibility for their learning and develop time management skills
  • allowing them to choose how to complete a project (on your own, with a specific person, with A.N.Other, in a group…). Again, explain the effect of each choice, e.g. If you want to work on your own,, you’ll be responsible for completing all the work and do you feel you have time to do this?
  • how to show understanding of new vocabulary (multiple choice activity, gapfill, writing a short story, creating your own flashcards)
  • Choice boards – an ocean of opportunities!

Claire shared an example of one of the first choice boards she used during her initial research project, which was “an unmitigated disaster”:

However, she was able to reflect on what went wrong and why – an overwhelming amount of choices and not dedicating enough time at the planning stage to explain the choice board and the rationale for it to the learners. She says they spent the entire next lesson discussing this choice board – which led to them being better-informed when the next choice board was offered.

Learning from experience, the best way, thanks for sharing that!

And, learning from experience, Claire showed another homework choice board which was a success:

Rather than leading to a shared learning outcome in terms of linguistic content, this one practised the different task types which they would need to demonstrate in an exam.

Claire shared a blank choice board to allow Hub members to share ideas for a B1 group of adults on the topic of news and media. Here are some ideas which people shared:

  • Write a tweet about a news article you have read (no more than … words)
  • Make a one minute video explaining the main news items for today
  • They can use something like speakpipe instead of filming themselves, speakpipe is only 90 seconds long so could be nice for students: https://www.speakpipe.com/
  • Read an article, present it next week to a partner, say why you read it, what you knew about it before reading it, what you learned, how did it make you feel?

Some useful links from Claire and from the chat:

What is translanguaging and what’s its place in the classroom?

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This was a really popular topic judging from the poll, with lots of members saying it was a pity they couldn’t make the live chat. We shared a couple of questions to guide the conversation, but as always the topic developed quite naturally with lots of engagement from everyone there.

  • Is translanguaging something we can/should plan into our lessons or should it be more organic? What are the benefits of each approach?
  • Do you think it can/should be used at any age or level?

As you can imagine, the first question we looked at was What is translanguaging? Although we had all read up a little more since the topic came up in the coffee break last week, nobody felt like an expert on the topic, so we shared some useful blogposts as a starting point:

Eowyn Crisfield has prepared a couple of blogposts on the topic and there’s also a link to the recording of her webinar in one of these posts:

This is the post Ceri shared in the Hub ahead of the chat:

As well as a short article in Spanish:

The roots of translanguaging are in bilingual education rather than ELT and the original idea was embedded in an immersive environment.

We discussed how it could be introduced as a ‘methodology’ in an ELT context, where students, parents and other stakeholders might be averse to using the learners L1 in the classroom. It would be important to explain the rationale for translanguaging – and using that term rather than saying ‘speaking in (Spanish)’ and what the benefits of it are.

Benefits of translanguaging

For example, we suggested that brainstorming could be done in any language as it allows learners to give more ideas at the initial stage of a task. By restricting learners to using just L2, we may be limiting the amount of emergent language which comes out. Translanguaging also allows learners to show what they know without a linguistic barrier, which can be very motivating.

We also considered that learners could reflect on how they completed a task afterwards: what did you use L1 for and why? Efficiency? A lack of linguistic knowledge? Was it something as simple as a mispronounced word which your peers didn’t understand so you resorted to using L1 to say it? We suggested that this reflective stage could be carried out with different people than those you worked with in the initial activity to allow you to pool resources and perhaps fill in the gaps if there was a linguistic need.

Another suggestion was that we could provide learners with more independence by having them reflect on L1 use for linguistic gaps and finding the missing structures or words themselves, either in the class or for homework.

We can raise learners’ awareness of their own abilities in this way and give them more agency, putting a positive spin on ‘what couldn’t you say in English?’ by asking ‘what do you want/need to learn?’

What’s its place in the classroom?

There was some chat about whether it should be explicit or passive – we considered the fact that when learners go into breakout rooms in the online classroom, they may well be using L1 until the teacher shows up. However, if they are completing the task and the final product is correct, should it matter how they got there? This led on to the question of whether we should explicitly tell them to do something in L1 (which then stops being translanguaging as such).

We also thought about the different stages in a lesson where translanguaging can occur: in the input, process, product or at a more personal level, in how learners take notes.

We talked briefly about the positive effect that translanguaging could have on learners who aren’t bilingual but who are learning in a bilingual system. Those who speak both languages, and perhaps even more so those whose parents speak both languages, are at an advantage to those who only speak one language if certain content is only given in one language.

Another question was why it seems to be ‘a thing’ now! We talked very briefly about how L1 use has become more acceptable in the ELT classroom, and mentioned Guy Cook and Philip Kerr. Here are a couple of open-source references:

And also how it could be included on pre-service courses – within a five-week course there are significant constraints – but judicious use of L1 could be mentioned.

Another quick thought to add here was to make plurilingualism a part of the school culture – having posters of phrases in a variety of different languages, being a ‘language-friendly’ school and normalising the fact that people use different languages.

Practical ideas for the classroom

One thing which was highlighted was the need for learners to have more functional classroom language to express themselves more succinctly. When you ask a question and a learner responds, “I don’t know”, what do they really mean?

  • I don’t understand the question.
  • I understand the question but I don’t know the answer.
  • I know the answer but don’t know how to say it in English.

There was a suggestion of using the learners’ L1 as a resource to elicit target language by going into class and saying, ‘Someone said this to me, but I don’t know what it means.’ (like one of those staged lead-ins where you pretend you’ve broken your arm to elicit certain responses from the class)

Have learners write a first draft of a text in (Spanglish) – you can feedback on some features of the text, such as structure and content if you speak their L1, and then in the second draft they can look at translating their ideas

Cloze activities (especially multiple choice) – have learners think about the word that would fit the gap in their L1. If it’s a multiple choice cloze, they can then look at the options and see if what they thought is there (and then critically think about whether that’s actually the answer)

Translanguaging, code-switching and mediation

There was a bit of chat about the crossover here – does translanguaging involve mediation? Are code-switching and translanguaging the same thing? We felt that code-switching perhaps involved more cognitive effort – you know something in one ‘code’ and then have to recode it; on the other hand, translanguaging is using the languages you have to communicate. We also said that code-switching covers more than just moving from one language to another and we code-switch within a language – dialects and regional varieties, formal and informal register, how we speak to certain people or others. And regarding mediation, we felt that perhaps the original idea of mediation was that there was some kind of barrier which needed to be addressed; for example, this could be that you’ve discussed a topic in L1 but the feedback needs to be done in English (the barrier here being task constraint).

Other bits and bobs which don’t quite fit into the sections above!

  • VYLs are less aware of a distinction between languages and we use translanguaging a lot with them as we build their receptive and productive vocabulary
  • Translanguaging isn’t only oral communication and we can also consider body language as a means of communication
  • Languages which have come about from a mixing of L1s aren’t a random use of language. For example, in llanito (which is the language they speak in Gibraltar) has a grammar to it
  • Translanguaging is about shared culture as well as language – we noted that in the session today we were all Spanish speakers and so although we spoke English, if we threw in a word in Spanish there probably wouldn’t be any problem and we all nodded when llanito was mentioned, which is much more about location than language

Hub digest – 14th May, 2021

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This week in the Hub we held our second Trainer Talking Time on Tuesday and there was lots of engaging chat around whether our practice is standardised or allows for teacher freedom, both thinking about pre-service qualifications and in-house teacher development.

There were some great threads this week in the group as well. One Hub member was looking for recommendations about podcasts for new teachers, another posted about how and when we introduce pronouns to our learners, and our Wednesday Question had some interesting comments about what skills our learners will need for the future.

Then on Thursday, we had our fortnightly coffee breaks – a lovely informal moment to hang out with other Hub members and let the conversations develop. We prepare some questions ahead of the chat, but the conversations always go off in wonderfully beautiful directions, this week including talking about the need for controlled practice in coursebooks and translanguaging…which looks like it might be the topic for next Tuesday’s Focused Forum!

Coming up next week, as well as our Tuesday get-together, we have a webinar with the wonderful Claire Thomson who’ll be talking about learner choice in the online classroom. See you there!