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From educators to influencers

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We opened up talking about pubs opening up in Ireland (only outside), haircuts being possible again in Germany, Mercury in retrograde and grandmothers sucking eggs! We compared each other’s tech setups; new mics, lighting, standing up work spaces, etc. We talked about the odd reality that is that of the travelling examiner, a tour of 7 weeks, staying in hotels and feeling a wee bit uncomfortable. We mused on cultural shifts around the increased popularity of Santa (vs the 3 Kings) at Christmas and wondered whether the tooth fairy does really exist?!

Interestingly both sessions went down similar lines… In one “Is it our duty to raise awareness and open students’ eyes with regards to social matters, or is it just not our place to do that?” and in the other “Are there “taboo” subjects or should education be open?” There are strong and often conflicting, always complex, opinions. The Hub is a great place to explore these subjects; it’s a safe, open space where all are respected. These notes are an attempt to bring together the two conversations…

English teacher or “educator”?

We asked ourselves if our role is to teach English or to “educate” people and then whether we’re qualified to do so. It’s also a linguistic question rather than just a moral one; we should include vocabulary like “life-partner”, of course.

Some felt that they really wanted to address some of these issues to “make the world a better place” and others very much thought it wasn’t our job to do that. We noted that we spend a great deal of energy making students feel comfortable in class so we need to think carefully.

What do we do when we hear “rude” or “inappropriate” comments? I want to talk about my views, should I?

We need to teach people how to not offend people, we never know who might be thinking, feeling or experiencing what in our classes.

Perhaps our job is to support students to ask and answer difficult questions, especially if it comes from the students or comes up in class, as well as create the environment where our students feel comfortable. We need to provide the vocabulary and create a culture of respect. 

Our job is not to guide students rather than impose anything, unless there is something offensive to deal with (and then it’s up to our discretion). Having said that, when we encourage critical thinking and critical reading and whenever we introduce a text or an idea, we’re sort of imposing an idea. Also, if there are only straight people portrayed, we are imposing “a straight-washed world view”. We also acknowledged the sanitised world view that coursebooks so often portray, do often aspirational, middle class, white, and can be seen in the vocabulary in books (e.g. jobs).

Representation is the first step

We don’t need to talk about the issues, images can begin the process. Representation is the first step.

Can we use LGBTQ+ pictures in our primary classes? Why not? It’s a representation of society. We wondered whether ELT is, due to issues around international acceptability, behind the curve in many ways. We talked about using different photos of families, for example, including one from “Modern Families” (containing all sorts of families!). There are increasingly representations all over the place, why not in ELT? Might parents complain? How might language schools react? Arguably, schools should support their teachers with parents and in CPD. There is much work to do. We wondered whether students sign up for language and/or culture? Inclusivity is increasingly part of international culture, it is only natural for it to be included in our classes too.

We can create space for the conversations to happen and this will, of course, differ in different contexts, for example, in Brazil these conversations feel more commonplace than in Spain. Is that because the society is more conservative as a whole or because of the dominance of religious education among our students or is it because of our students… or maybe us? In Korea there was a race awareness element of a British Council programme which included a variety of reactions to mixed race marriages and led to significant difficulties for the students. We need to be sensitive. We might well need to balance the global with the local reality. At the same time we need to remember that students lives are not limited to the local, many of our students exist within international spaces online.

If materials don’t exist, we can create our own. One participant talked about the freedom they have in teaching (a group of adults) without a coursebook and using an article about Sam Smith choosing the “they/them” pronoun. Their context is international Geneva where people are used to being asked their opinion about everything in frequent referenda. We talked about the importance of the conversations being student-driven.

We don’t need to bring the text in, our students can (they might bring in texts that contain sensitive stuff). Ideas around student voice and choice can be extremely powerful in class as they have control to really contribute. 

The teacher might need to guide (and almost certainly provide a model) and then students can drive things forward. One difficulty we might encounter is that students can worry if we ask totally open questions, instead we can give a choice of three ideas with a “or anything else you’d like to choose”. 

One idea was a reading activity where students bring in texts, put them around the walls and have two minutes to read each one before taking two more minutes to write notes on what they’ve just read before moving on to the next one. After the texts have all been read and notes taken there are a whole range of possible activities afterwards (writing comprehension check questions, creating exam style cloze activities,  writing discussion questions, etc…) 

Another practical idea was around giving presentations, again we need to provide a model and give support. We commented that this felt like a TBL (task based learning) approach where the students look at a model, complete a task and then produce the product.

We talked about the potential difficulty of presenting “controversial statements” to the class which they have to agree or disagree with.

We agreed that it’s easier to talk about other people rather than to “own” it all.

Representing everybody is normalising. Everyone should be represented. Representation is the first step.

Is our own awareness already “out-dated”? 

We thought, yes, it’s quite likely, things are changing fast and it can be hard to keep up with it all. The best we can do is be aware and realise that we might “get it wrong”.

13 Reasons Why (a text about suicide) was used as a set text by an exam board and appropriacy was again questioned. Teenagers arguably need and want to talk about these issues. Are we prepared? Instead of us providing the answers we need to find out how to guide them to access the support they need.

What is our personal mission as teachers?

We often talk about the mission of a business but what’s our own mission, why are we teaching? Teaching can be a radical tool of transformation; education can be the way up and out of a particular situation. A teacher can be a “motivator”, to communicate in a different language can be a joy and we can open doors to understanding the world.

TEFL influencers… is that a thing?

We went on to talk about FOMO (Fear of missing out) and JOMO (the Joy of missing out) for our teenage students. They read a lot of influencers rather than listening to teachers or parents. We wondered whether there are TEFL influencers… 

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…

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

Coffee and a catch-up

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What are we up to?

Studying for diplomas, applying (and getting) new jobs for next year, finishing training courses, doing examining tours, writing (boring) workbooks… “like tennis balls bouncing around in my head”.

Loving meeting teens on examining tours… restores faith in humanity; they’re so hopeful and full of dreams. They keenly feel the loss of this year.

And more on teens…

We went on to talk about teens and for many of them this year has been about studying and exams rather than music, sports, etc. 

We talked about their growing autonomy as learners and noted that this was likely to be true only for a set of students, not necessarily all or indeed most. Teens are in that interesting time of fighting for independence and needing support. Some note how much time is wasted at school and they can learn more effectively and efficiently at home. We need to increase the value of the new skills sets they are learning, like flipped learning in operation, setting up independent study groups, finding resources, etc., etc. Good on (some of) them! 

Podcasts and learner coaching

We asked about good podcasts for learners and the conversation moved on to talking about learner coaching.

We agreed that it all depends on the learner and we should try to personalise recommendations to match with learners’ interests. We tied this in with a conversation about learner training and there was some resistance to us as “coaches”; “everyone is a coach these days, it doesn’t mean anything.” But what are we? Teachers, facilitators, coaches? All of the above?

If we accept the role of coach in our classes, then we should make time in class to help students to reflect on the process and share what they’ve done. We appreciated that the number of resources available for lower levels is limited. YouTube channels and audio books were mentioned, as was “English Central” (on YouTube) where you can record your voice and compare with the original (sounds like fun!). And what of authentic resources? TED talks, BBC learning (not necessarily language learning specifically) and The Guardian all got honourable mentions as places to find authentic resources. Do teachers still make lessons around songs, articles, etc.? Some do, yes, maybe less than before. Someone shared a BBC Learning resource about the Suffragettes and another the beginning of a poem that students needed to complete, “When all this is over…” and record it for homework. 

We wondered whether we will increasingly see courses being sold in different ways; a total number of hours for the course with x number of classroom hours. We talked about different course structures and what we can learn from them; e.g. pre-sessional university courses often have an INPUT – STUDY GROUPS (with task) – LESSON approach. Hours outside the classroom don’t necessarily need to have a teacher present but still constitute formal study; they can be collaborative tasks and can be timetabled elements of the course. We can also have more informal study groups and networks.

A move towards “translanguaging”?

Should we expect or even insist that students do the tasks in English? If, in the study groups, the students all share the same language, why wouldn’t they talk about it in their language first before creating the product in English. This started us thinking about translanguaging, interlanguaging, code-switching, etc. (Read more in Scott Thornbury’s Big questions in ELT.) 

We thought about the difference between code-switching and translanguaging. We felt that the former had a negative connotation, we switch because we lack certain language as opposed to the latter which encourages access to all resources to solve a problem and help us learn using critical thinking skills and our world knowledge. Others thought that code-switching is a more natural approach and translanguaging is a strategy to be implemented. Should we do listening and reading comprehension tasks in students’ L1? Maybe one way would be for us to scaffold translanguaging in the classroom, with YLs in could start with “Can I speak in (L1), please?” We agreed that it would be interesting to understand the subject better and to think about a principled use of L1 in the classroom, to challenge the dominant and rigid “English Only” view. Using L1 can build trust, allow students to express themselves and then find the language they need. One for a focussed forum, we concluded!

What do teachers want in their coursebooks?

Apparently publishers understand that teachers want coursebooks based around the PPP model (presentation, practice and production) and we can still see it in operation with books for very young learners. 

Task Based Learning is, we agreed, much harder to manage and Enquiry Based Learning needs high confidence from the teacher. EBL often starts with a topic and then participants share what they already know and what they want to know and then what they do end up learning. 

Perhaps there could be a teachers’ guidebook about how to implement this kind of approach.

DIY materials – from tiny acorns…

Michelle shared Five Six Seven – a book she wrote for a soft CLIL approach where she taught science and maths through English, she’s looking to rewrite it!

As Fiona said in her webinar, lots of people start making materials and writing by addressing their own needs and then sharing them. Within the group there are people who write materials as their main source of income and others who use it to top up their income.

We mentioned Peachey Publications as a place to self-publish. And, does anyone know, is The Round still going?

Thanks to all for coming and for the conversions which were as stimulating and interesting as ever!

See you all soon.

What authentic materials do you use in class?

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We had a smaller group today so stayed in the main room for the whole chat. The original questions around the topic were:

  • What authentic materials do you use in class?
  • Where do you find them? How do you use them?
  • What do we need to consider when bringing authentic materials into the classroom?

These were some of the sites and ideas mentioned for where we can find materials to use in class.

For ESP / Business English, company websites were mentioned as a resource to use as this will give you topic-based vocabulary which your learners need. It can also be trickier to source materials for ESP – for example, research papers written in English on a topic may only be available through a paid subscription site; in other cases the material may be redacted if it includes sensitive information.

In terms of working with reading materials, there were also suggestions of using readers, short stories (such as Roald Dahl) and making the most of video transcripts from authentic sources, such as TED. Some teachers mentioned doing an extensive reading project with higher-level groups and using an original text to find idiomatic language.

We touched again on an issue which has come up before, that learners don’t have the patience to work with longer texts and that teens seem to be reading less in general. Fiction Express is trying to make reading a more interactive process and works in a ‘build your own adventure’ format – a chapter is published each week and readers vote on what will happen next.

There was also some chat around reading as part of the class – though it’s something many of us did pre-Covid, it somehow feels like the time online should be used more efficiently than asking learners to read a lengthy text and do some comprehension activities around it.

Another aspect we discussed was finding resources which were age- and/or level-appropriate. There was consensus that what some of our teen and younger learners are seeing outside the classroom isn’t necessarily what we would feel comfortable working with as a resource in a lesson. We started off thinking about the sort of music videos our learners sometimes request but then also considered the idea of bringing ‘authentic issues’ into the classroom and how sensitivity is needed to ensure that we don’t trigger learners.

Related to this topic was the question of what ‘authentic’ really is – for example, BBC newsreaders will often use quite flat intonation, have very limited or unclear body language and no false starts. This idea that if learners learnt English from one particular media – such as the news – then they would have a very one-sided view of the language was mentioned at some point (possibly by David Crystal?) but I can’t find a link to a quote now!

We also talked about how to exploit materials in the best way – one suggestion was to look for videos which are linked to common coursebook topics as then you’ll be more likely to be able to rewatch it with a different group. We also chatted briefly about using the same material with different levels – you could have a ‘complex’ video with a very simple task for a lower-level group and watch the same video with a more challenging task for higher levels. Another idea was watching videos with the sound off to focus and asking learners to look for certain things or to imagine what the conversation is, etc.

One issue which came up frequently was time – the time to find a material and plan a lesson around it which you can make the most of. There were also comments that working in a context without a coursebook gives you much more freedom to find your own materials for a class, but conversely you don’t have the security of a coursebook when you need to plan a lesson quickly.

This week we have been mostly…

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… writing Sustainable Development Goals into syllabus. It’s a long, boring, time-consuming job but it does represent a shift in the profession making these things a priority.

…getting deeply involved in student registration and uncertain planning for the next academic year in September.

… trying to achieve a healthier relationship with technology. Some try to limit the times we use devices trying to keep time tech-free. Others go for a mindful use of phones. The conversation and the “battle” goes on for us all!

… trying to keep up with all the various threads of our lives, both personally and professionally. Sometimes it feels overwhelming, other times things feel in balance and in “flow”. 

More on “mediation”

The conversation continues in the TEFL Development Hub of what mediation is. We’re getting closer to getting a good grip on this. It’s all about bridging the communicative gaps for students and all users of English. Mediation activities are so often communicative tasks we’ve been doing for years; information exchanges, paraphrasing, explaining situations, transferring information, etc. and we’re just adding a useful label. The reading and listening into writing activities of the Trinity ISE exams are good examples of mediation that have been going on for years; it’s nothing new and it is helpful. The term has been around at conferences for the last few years, one of the participants remembers a happy accident at an ACEIA conference when they ended up in a mediation session thinking it would be something very different! The term is useful as it values those skills specifically alongside other skills. All too often though it is imposed from above with little buy-in garnered from teachers who then have to implement mediation into lessons and exams. By way of a summary, it feels important to recognise mediation as a skill but pressure shouldn’t be put on teachers to have to teach and test it.

Additional note: The EOIs in Spain have implemented mediation across the board and often use English File as a course book. English File therefore contains all EOI material, including mediation resources.

Big up for voice recognition technology

Another recurring Hub theme, which started in Lina’s webinar on pronunciation, is that of voice recognition technology. This time we talked briefly about how useful it is for presentations, webinars, online classes, etc. and is often amazingly accurate! 

We also looked at “highlighting” bubbles to highlight something from the chat on the screen.

Please add your favourite apps into the chat on the Facebook post. It’d be great to get a list together.

Top TEFL Reads

We continued the chat around one of the recent Hub questions about favourite ELT books.

The Etymologicon (Forsyth, M.) and The Story of English in 100 Words (Crystal, D.) were mentioned as go-to language reads.

We wondered whether books have, in the digi-age, become decoration more than anything else. There’s so much online (including so much rubbish too!), the idea of books feels more and more distant.

We got on a roll about all sorts of ELT books too; honourable mentions went to ETpedia Grammar (Jones, C. and Barber, D., both TEFL Development Hub members!), 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom (Read, C.), 700 Classroom Activities (Seymour, D. and Popova, M.).

Straying away from matters strictly ELT but still within education, Visible Learning, Feedback in schools (Hattie, J) John Hattie collected a huge number of studies to try to identify what really makes a difference in learning. Well worth looking into. We moved into other wider educational reading, particularly looking towards the US as being on the cutting-edge. One of the group is currently reading The best teacher in you – How to accelerate learning and change lives (Quinn, R. Heynoski, K, Thomas, M, Spreitzer, G.) We asked ourselves how aware we are of the most recent, cutting edge work and where it comes from; should we look further afield for inspiration? Yes, we should, but where?!

We talked about how hybrid learning has been going on for a long time in other contexts, often in huge countries like the US and Australia. For university work the model seems to make so much sense but then came back to our own experiences and even the biggest advocates of the possibilities around hybrid learning doubting its effectiveness in our under 10s classes. Extremely experienced young learner teachers in the group commented that hybrid teaching with YLs is challenging, it feels like we’re consistently not succeeding and while smaller class sizes help a bit the feeling in the group was that cognitively it just doesn’t work for our young learners. Hybrid teaching with YLs seems to have significantly reduced the joy in teaching, with teachers reporting less space for emergent language to develop and less spontaneity and perhaps most importantly, less engagement.

A TEFL Development Hub not-just-Books Club?

A rather lovely idea emerged from the conversation about books, research, etc. Wouldn’t it be great to have a space where we can share whatever we’ve found enriching and have a space to talk about it all together? We started with the idea of a book club, traditionally where we all read the same text and then meet to share impressions. This would be fabulous but, how would we decide what books to read? And really, would we keep up with the required reading?! So we tried a different angle…

We all loved the idea of a place to share our recent inspirations. We could include anything we’ve been inspired by recently and think others in the Hub would benefit from; we could include books, articles, blogs, vlogs, quotes, images…. Anything really! People could just share whatever they want to and to say why they have found it interesting; it could be a one-minute introduction with a question to the group, or perhaps 5 minutes to explain the main take-aways, a free format to share and circulate ideas. That sounds like a great place for the Hub to be! 

The Evolution of ELT Conferences

Another recurring Hub theme here. 

Some said that online conferences are so tiring with so many hours in a row in front of the screen. We talked as well about being more ‘present’ at a face-to-face conference – there are no homelife distractions, you’re very much ‘in the zone’.

We also recognised that it’s a really different experience as a speaker too without the natural reactions in the room. Can workshops still be considered workshops if you don’t get the chance to talk to other people? Although we can make use of the private chat facility to have individual conversations, if the chat box is busy, these messages can easily be missed. One participant shared that presenting on YouTube is a particularly weird experience! Presenting online can be quite isolating if you’re just talking to a screen.

There was praise for the way InnovateELT hosted their event with everything done through Zoom in a social/interactive way and BRAZ-TESOL was hosting online events pre-pandemic so some people are used to the intensity of an online conference. People also mentioned finding it easier to organise notes watching things online. TESOL-SPAIN’s use of the Whova app for their conference was also celebrated, it allowed attendees to connect in the build-up to the event as well as throughout the two weekends, the week in the middle and even afterwards too. People really enjoyed the ease of connection, for many of us it was better than a face-to-face event when we might not want to approach people, but it felt so easy through the app; lots of us made new contacts, new friends. 

We talked briefly about netiquette at conferences as well – should people be encouraged to have their cameras on?

There was a recognition about different types of stress distress and eustress, the second being euphoric stress, good stress. Do we get the same “hit” when presenting online?

Perhaps the future is in hybrid events? …let’s wait and see.

Pronunciation coaches and the responsibility of FLESes

We talked a little about the perceptions of what a ‘pronunciation coach’ is and whether we feel wary of ‘marketing’ ourselves as one if we are a First-Language English Speaker (FLES). There’s a lot of native speakerism and we wouldn’t want people to think as a FLES pronunciation coach that we would be promoting accent reduction or pushing for students to produce a particular FLES model.

We also talked about some of the prejudice around what a FLES is – it doesn’t tend to include Indian English, Jamaican English, South African English, etc.

Someone also mentioned feeling disappointed that some schools which are members of established organisations use ‘native speakers’ as one of the selling points on their websites and a feeling that as a DipTESOL-qualified teacher, they would still lose out to a FLES with a 120-hr TEFL course with no teaching practice.

This is an area of our profession where there is still so much to do.

COVID around the world

We shared COVID experiences from around the world and what’s clear is that COVID is still very much with us and still very dangerous.

Argentina was heading back into a full lockdown with political points being scored all over the place to the detriment of dealing with the crisis; the President declared that schools would be going back online and then just a few days later the Mayor of Buenos Aires overturned the decision requiring students to go back to school. The member in question was herself recovering from COVID, we wish her well in her recovery. 

From Germany, the feeling of uncertainty is still dominating with a member saying that nobody seems to know what to do.

Lesson planning – theory or practice?

A question was posed as to whether the lesson plan as laid out in DipTESOL/DELTA was real and appropriate or a theoretical tool which doesn’t truly represent teachers’ work in the classroom.

We agreed that Diploma-level lesson plans necessarily need to take into account far more factors than a normal lesson plan. We might cram in so many elements into a Dip-level lesson that would normally stretch over the course of several normal lessons and this is what makes it feel inauthentic and frustrating. Having said that we recognised that this approach is necessary for the one-off “official” observation towards the end of the course which requires evidence of all those angles being appropriately covered.

We talked about how our books are able to do most of the planning for us and we can just tinker with it to balance the needs for our students. 

A plan is a plan, an idea about how we think a lesson might go, but so often it goes in different directions.

We wondered if we as teachers look for a lesson plan that flows from one activity to another through a discernible narrative but perhaps our students are less bothered about such things, especially those studying for exams. Timing never works out as planned and we always want to build in wiggle room to accommodate the shifts and the emergent language of the class, but “there’s no space” for that, is that because of the lesson plan? And if that’s the case, how important are lesson aims? Do we need an aim at all? If we don’t have an aim, how can we measure success and evaluate learner outcomes? We also need to know why we’re doing what we’re doing, these are effectively planning decisions which of course we can alter as we move through the class.

We talked about the aim coming from the students and how all students have their own objectives, often different from each other’s, so a teacher’s job is, in part, to navigate between these differing requirements. Some in the group enjoyed negotiating the syllabus with certain groups; look at the syllabus, what do you need? What do you want? This approach might work better for older teens and adults.

And while we’re at it, what of the student-centred approach? How many times have students felt a sense of accomplishment as they evaluate themselves at the end of a course saying “now I understand you better” which for them is amazing but probably not our aim. 

We also talked about behavioural aims too, for example, “by the end of the lesson my students will better understand the need for correction and be more open to it”. This could lead to an interesting conversation about the value of errors, peer correction, etc. we talked about the value in sharing our aims with the students (we can write them on the board at the beginning of class) and encouraging understanding of learning processes. We mulled the idea of whether we are trying to impose our ideals onto the students. We all agreed the most important thing is to talk to our students appropriately. 

Writing

We talked a little about co-authoring in the ELT writing community, and the need for communication, different people can have different agendas and ideas, people might not be used to working with one another and a serious relationship needs to develop. We were happy to hear that so much is built into a new book; as well as the grammar and vocal, sustainable development goals and “cultural issues” all need to be accommodated. What happens though if one writer is really passionate about inclusivity and the other is not?

We referenced the Raise Up! webinar and wondered whether we should/could suggest a Raise Up! for Kids, all present were deeply committed to inclusivity. We wondered what would happen to pronouns moving forward; will he and she change to they or maybe zie? And what should we do when people say things we consider may be offensive to students in the classroom and indeed to others beyond. Do we keep trying? We thought it depends on who is doing it and how’s it happening. And recycling some thoughts on swearing; see Nicolas Cage and Stephen Fry (separately, not together!)

Congratulations on making it to the end! 

There was a lot of amazing chat and we’re trying to keep it moving around. Thanks to all and see you at the next coffee breaks!