A DVOLVER FILM BASED ON "UNDERSTANDING ENGLISH TEACHING"

Hello everybody!

The post for today is about understanding English Teaching considering the death of the methods and the Postmethod era in language teaching.

In the following link you will be able to see a Dvolver film that illustrates the main problems a teacher may find and the possible solutions taking into account the Postmethod framework:

I hope you enjoy it!

3 TECHNIQUES FROM THE THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED

In this post I will tell you about The Theatre of the Oppressed and some of its techniques that might be applicable in the English classroom:

The Theatre of the Oppressed is a different kind of theatre elaborated by the Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal in the 1960s that promotes social and political change on the part of the audience who becomes active (“spect-actors”). The people participating in it explore, show, analyse and transform the reality in which they are living.

Some of the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques are the following:

ANALYTICAL THEATRE:

A story is told by one of the participants and immediately the actors improvise it. Afterward each character is broken down into their social roles and the participants are asked to choose a physical object to symbolise each role. Having analysed the characters, a fresh attempt to tell the story is made, however this time removing some of the symbols from each character, and consequently some social roles as well. For example, the story would be perceived differently if the robber had the police uniform. Through this method, the participants will realise that human actions are not the exclusive and primitive result of human psychology.

INVISIBLE THEATRE:

A form of theatrical performance that is enacted in a place where people would not normally expect to see one, for example at school. The performers attempt to disguise the fact that it is a performance from those who observe and who may choose to participate in it, encouraging the spectators to view it as a real event.

NEWSPAPER THEATRE:

A system of techniques devised to give the audience a way to transform daily news articles or any non-dramatic pieces to theatrical scene. Here there are some strategies:

Crossed Reading: two news item are read in alternating form, complementing or contrasting each other in a new dimension.

Rhythmical Reading: article is read to a rhythm (musical), so it acts as a critical “filter” of the news.

Parallel Action: actors mimic the actions as the news is being read.

Improvisation: news is improvised on stage to exploit all its variants and possibilities.

Historical: data recurred from historical moments, events in other countries, or in social systems are added to the news.

Reinforcement: article is read accompanied by songs, slides, or publicity materials.

INTERVIEW TO AN EXPERT ON TEACHING

ELISENDA MAROON

Elisenda Maroon was born in Barcelona, Catalonia. She is Catalan, and is trilingual in Catalan, Spanish, and English. She graduated from the English philology department of (UB) Universitat de Barcelona. After graduation, she has taught English in five different high schools. After passing competitive and rigorous government exams in 2011, she became a public high school English teacher. At present she is a “provisional” teacher; it means that she has not been assigned to any particular high school permanently, though she will always be assured of a position in some high school. So far since she passed the exams in 2011 she has taught at two high schools.  Last year she taught students aged 11 – 16 in INS Roda de Berà in the village of Roda de Bera.  She hopes in the next school year that she will be assigned to a high school nearer to Reus in Tarragona, where she lives at present. Elisenda has been teaching English in primary and high schools for ten years.  She has also taught adult classes in private academies from time to time.  She also volunteers at eTwinning which provides great opportunities for her students to use English.  While she has never lived abroad, she spent 15 days participating in a government-supported program for teachers in Totnes, United Kingdom. Elisenda participates in one or two EVOs organized by TESOL each year.  In 2009 she participated in the NNEST EVO.  

1) Welcome Elisenda! I’m glad that you have accepted my invitation to be interviewed. First, could you please tell me about your linguistic and educational background? What led you to your decision to become an English teacher?

Thanks for inviting me! I was born in Barcelona. At home I spoke Catalan, and I watched TV both in Catalan and Spanish. When I was 3 years old, I started school where my lessons were in Catalan, but my friends used to talk to me in Spanish, so I could speak both languages.  When I was 12, I failed one of my English term exams, and then I felt a bit uncomfortable and worried about my English level. It was the following year that I decided to take private lessons in a private academy near my home. I continued learning there until I was 18. Then, I took the FCE (the Cambridge English: First or First Certificate in English) exam, but I failed it. However, that was in June and in September I started my studies at the University in Barcelona. There I studied English Philology, where almost all the subjects were in English. I didn’t take the FCE again because I thought it was just a big business and I didn’t need to pass this exam in order to find a job. I can say that I became proficient in English through studying hard and practicing this language one day after another at University.

About being an English teacher… when I was 17, I had a plan to study either Economics, English Philology, or Social Studies to work in a mental hospital. Those were my favourite options… But finally, I decided to become an English teacher and also in my free time to do some kind of community volunteering, which I would always be able to do. However, I wouldn’t have been able to work in a high school if I hadn’t studied to be a teacher. That was my thought then, and I think now I chose the correct option. I’m volunteering now… but with senior citizens, not with people with mental illnesses and so on.

2) You have been teaching English in public primary and high schools for about ten years. Could you tell me more about public schools and the process to become an English teacher? What are your main responsibilities in this job? What aspects of your job do you enjoy the most?

I was very lucky because I finished my degree when I was 22. It took 4 years, and I finished it just as I had planned beforehand. After graduation, I sent out a lot of CVs and in October, I started working in the Public School where I had been a student. I was substituting for one of the teachers there, who had had a child. Although it was the first time I worked as a teacher in a curricular school, I had given private lessons at home and some lessons in an academy, so I was able to succeed and enjoyed this job very much. I have wonderful memories of that year, and of the following one, when I substituted for another English teacher who was pregnant, too. The name of the school was Josep Tous in Barcelona. I was there almost two years. When I finished substituting for these two English teachers, I received a phone call from the State School. One has to put his/her name on a waiting list and wait some time until they phone you to work as a substitute teacher. Until then I had worked in different schools for short periods of time until I passed my public examination (oposición). I had to study very hard for two years to pass the exam but finally I passed it! Passing this exam enables me to have a stable job in a High School forever (so long as the law doesn’t change!). I am working now in INS Roda de Berà, in the village of Roda de Berà in Tarragona.

I have also always been a tutor. Tutors are always in demand, and I always want to do this kind of work because I like working with teens and their families. The main responsibility in this job is to be able to work with teens; they can be easily affected by your gestures and words, so you have to be careful to say what you mean in the proper way. Also, they are sensitive and their education is put in jeopardy by a lot of things: TV, different sort of parents, classmates, the type of village they live in, etc.  You have to be a good role-model for them. You should not get too close to them, nor should you be too distant. It’s difficult sometimes.

I just enjoy all my work: working with people, especially with pre-adults, how people can be so different, how teens make their way to become adults, how I can help them and teach them to be strong in life and have values. It involves much more than teaching English. In general, their English level is very low, I must admit.

3) What can you tell me about NEST / NNEST-related issues?

I can tell you that in my case, working in State Schools, it is not a problem if you are not a native speaker of English. In fact, most of the teachers are Spanish. There are no teachers or professors interested in NNEST issues in my city.

I can also add that if I wanted to work in a private academy, then, maybe there I would need to be a native speaker of English, as it is something students like; these students prefer to enrol in those lessons because the teacher is native. I was told once that I could not work in a certain private academy because I was not native speaker of English.  I totally disagree with this practice. In fact, I once had a native teacher who was “a disaster”.  I think that not everybody can be a teacher, and not a language teacher, but it has nothing to do with nativeness.

4). What do you feel is or are your greatest strength(s) as an English teacher? What strategies have you used to develop these strengths?

As a non-native teacher I continually want to keep learning and practicing English, not to lose my current level. As I don’t like travelling, I read books in English, I follow websites in English, and I watch TV series in English from time to time (right now I’m addicted to “LOST”). I also join an English corner meeting every Thursday. I’ve been doing it for three and a half years, and I love it. It’s a way to get to know new people as it’s an open group, and we really have fun speaking in English. After three years some of the regulars have become good friends, and that’s great.

I feel that the greatest strength I can develop is my ability to use different strategies to be able to get to all kinds of students. It’s important to use a variety of activities (oral, written, games, summaries, kinaesthetic learning…) to get all the students involved in class. Therefore, I constantly use a variety of activities, depending on the various students and their particular learning styles.

5). In your school and in your English classes, do you use the three languages you know while teaching?

When I teach, I use English and Catalan. But if some student usually speaks in Spanish, I just reply in Spanish. My Catalan linguistic background helps me to make the learning of English easier for my students because whenever I consider it necessary, I compare the two or the three languages.

6) Teaching is a very rewarding profession. What memorable experiences do you have as a teacher?  

Yes, I agree that teaching is a wonderful and rewarding profession. I wouldn’t change my profession for any other so far. I could tell you a lot about nice students, nice parents, nice presents and so on… But for me, what is really rewarding is what happens on any ordinary day,… when I leave my school and I see I have helped some student with something personal, when I prepared an activity and it has been a success, when I talk to a student and there’s a good feeling between us (as a person, not as teacher-student)… For me, it’s just good work, well done, and I feel so happy that I can explain something in accurate words. On the other hand, there are also awful days when a student has been rude, when I am very angry because s/he hasn’t worked…  But, it’s OK, and I can manage these bad days and just disconnect once I’m out of school. The good thing is that the good days and good moments far outnumber the bad ones.

7) I would also like to become an English teacher in the future, what advice would you give me?   

You need to have a strong personality and you have to like the job. Also, you not only have to be good at teaching the subject (being a good communicator and being proficient in the subject), but you also have to be able to work with PEOPLE. It’s social work. Therefore, I think that teachers should be able to enrol in psychology classes at University because that’s part of your day as a teacher.  For instance, some years after having finished my degree, I thought about studying “psico pedagogia” (psycho-pedagogy), but how strange… you have to have graduated as a Primary school teacher to be able to enrol in courses on “psico pedagogia”… I don’t understand why! What about Secondary School teachers?! I think that nowadays there must be some tutors who could teach me this, but they are too expensive. However, psychology is really, really very important for all teaching levels, so I still hope that I will have a chance to take courses in this area.

Thank you very much, Elisenda, for your interview, it has been very interesting and informative. I have learned a lot about the things you said and I hope they will be useful for my future as an English teacher.

ACTIVITIES FROM AULAS FELICES

In this post I will present 3 activities from the book "Aulas Felices" that I consider could ease my future lessons:

I DON’T KNOW

LEVELS: Primary and Secondary Education

AIMS: Facing the fear towards not manageable situations.

DEVELOPMENT: With this activity, students need to realise and recognise that there are always some things that we are not aware of and there is no problem about saying “I don’t know”. In the activity some questions are asked to each one of the learners, alternating the level of difficulty so that each of them is able to answer at least an easy question and a difficult question saying “I don’t know”. This task can also be made in small groups, giving the activity the aspect of a contest so that it becomes more motivating for students.

It is important to emphasise the idea that we don’t have to be afraid of not knowing something and we should show it in a natural way, given the fact that even the wisest adults don’t know everything. The important thing is to own the wish and curiosity to learn from what we don’t know.

TIME: Among 10 and 20 minutes.

OBSERVATIONS: As adult teachers, it is convenient to take into account the classmates’ attitude.

COUNCIL OF SAGES

LEVELS: Primary and Secondary Education

AIMS: Trying to give some advice to others in order to help them to overcome difficult situations.

DEVELOPMENT: In school and in daily life some conflicts may arise and they need to be addressed. These conflicts could be taken as examples in order to deal with this activity. We have to ask students to think and write about a conflict that has happened to them or to a person they know. After giving them some time to write it, we will ask one student to read it out loud and the rest of the class will focus on the problem and once it is understood, they will have to think and write in a card a piece of advice for this person. After that, we will gather all the members of the class who will form “The Council of Sages”. This council will have to read all the advice, move away the ones that are repeated and give the person with the problem the ones that might be useful for him or her in order to confront the conflict.

This process will be repeated with the conflicts shared by other classmates.

RESOURCES: Cards to write the advice

TIME: One or more than one session taking an hour.

ADVERTISING AND COUNTER-ADVERTISING

LEVEL: Primary and Secondary Education

AIMS: Critical analysis of advertisements. Developing creative strategies to elaborate advertisements with positive aspects.

DEVELOPMENT: Advertising is a topic that appears in different subjects both in Primary and Secondary Education. We can take advantage of this aspect by introducing critical reflection and analysis of the world of advertising and the media in the classroom.

We will ask students to select and bring to class some advertisements with negative connotations: sexist connotations using women as a seduction strategy, adverts that don’t take into account the respect for the environment, advertisements showing products that have been made by exploited workers or children from underdeveloped countries, adverts that stimulate the consumption of damaging products (tobacco, alcohol, junk food…). We can pick several representative advertisements, if possible the ones coming from different storage medium (newspaper, TV, radio, hoarding, etc.), and analyse their characteristics: the language they use, the characteristics of the pictures or sounds that are shown, the aims that are behind them, etc.

After doing the analysis, the creative activity will consist of designing a positive replica (a counter-advertisement) for each advertisement showing a negative feature. This new advert has to show texts, pictures or sounds that offer a different message to encourage positive attitudes and actions such as an image presenting equal roles among men and women, a responsible consumption that is respectful with the environment, a complaint against the oppressive situation that millions of workers and children from underdeveloped countries are suffering, etc.

The result could be represented in different formats: texts with images, audio-visual montages in PowerPoint or in video, a sound recording taking the style of a radio advert, etc.

RESOURCES: Advertisements collected by the students and the teacher. They can come from newspapers, magazines, TV or radio recordings, photos from hoardings or from the Internet, etc.

OBSERVATIONS: This activity is ideal to be made in groups where all students can give their creative ideas. What is more, this task can be useful to develop the students’ open-mindedness as well as their critical thinking and judgement.

3 ACTIVITIES THAT MAY SUIT DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES

In this post you will find three activities that promote multiple intelligences, that is to say, some activities that benefit every kind of student, no matter what their learning style is. I hope you find it useful!

LISTENING TO A SONG

Firstly, students will be given a photocopy with the lyrics from a song. These lyrics will contain some words that are missing and students will have to complete them while listening to the recording. Before listening, the teacher will make students read the lyrics and will welcome any doubt about vocabulary or grammar.

After doing the first listening, students will be shown the video clip of the song. Again they will have the chance to complete and check the missing words from the lyrics.

Thirdly, the teacher will ask for the missing words and after doing this, some volunteers will go to the front of the class and will think about some words that appear in the lyrics. They will make some gestures and drawings to represent these words so that the rest of the class can guess them.

With this activity we are dealing with multiple intelligences because listening to a song benefits musical, auditory and intrapersonal learners. The fill in the gaps activity might be good for linguistic learners and watching the video clip might be interesting for visual learners. With the guessing game, interpersonal, kinaesthetic and tactile learners will feel at ease by representing and drawing the words that their classmates, and most concretely logical learners, will happily guess.

CHAIN GAME

In this activity students will be divided into groups of eight containing two students of each learner style.

All groups will be given the same dialog which will have to be read by two visual learners. While these students read, two auditory learners will have to listen carefully. When they finish, they will have to explain what they heard to two tactile learners who will need to make a comic about it. After that, tactile learners will have to show their production to two kinaesthetic learners who will perform the dialogue in front of the class.

With this activity both interpersonal and intrapersonal learners will be able to feel comfortable while learning English.

CHRISTMAS RESOLUTIONS:

In this activity students will be divided into groups of four.

In the first place, every student will be given a sheet of paper and will have to draw one of their own Christmas resolutions. Then each learner will fold his or her drawing and will give it to the student on his or her right.

The student on the right will have to see the picture and make a sentence interpreting the drawing of his or her classmate´s Christmas resolution by using the structure: “I want to” or the “Future Going to”.

When he or she finishes, the sentence will be passed to the next student sitting on the right. This student will open the sheet of paper and will read the sentence and then he or she will have to make a second drawing about this phrase.

This folded drawing will be given to the last student of the group and he or she will write the last statement according to what he or she understands from the picture.

After that, the person who started the game will read the sentence and see the evolution of his or her Christmas resolution. The learner will communicate the rest of the group if they were close to his or her idea or not.

With this game tactile, visual and linguistic learners will benefit from making drawings, seeing their classmates’ pictures and reading their statements. Logical learners will feel pleased to deduce their classmates’ Christmas resolutions. Kinaesthetic and interpersonal learners will enjoy the activity because they will be able to learn by playing and interacting with their peers. Auditory learners will look forward to listen to the final and right interpretation of their colleagues’ Christmas resolutions. And finally, intrapersonal learners will also like this activity as they will have to think about themselves, about the things they would like to accomplish in the coming year.

QUESTIONAIRE ON MY PIZZA & LEARNING STYLES

WHAT´S YOUR LEARNING STYLE?

I made two tests in order to know what my learning style was and curiously, my results in each of them were different!

According to the Education Planner website, I´m a visual learner, that means I learn by reading or seeing pictures and I understand and remember things by sight (this is completely right!).

I can picture what I am learning in my head and I like to see what I am learning as well. As a visual learner I am usually neat and clean and I often close my eyes to visualize or remember something (well, I don´t completely close them but it´s true that I don´t keep them fully opened) They also say that I will find something to watch if I become bored (my mobile phone most of the time, hahaha).

I may have difficulty with spoken directions and may be easily distracted by sounds (they got it completely right!).

And finally, I am attracted to colour and spoken language, like stories, that are rich in imagery (it´s true… I easily get bored by reading, I prefer watching!).

On the other hand, according to the BGfL website I am much more an intrapersonal, interpersonal, kinaesthetic and naturalistic learner than a visual one! This is my multiple intelligences pizza:

As an intrapersonal learner, I know about myself, my strengths and weaknesses and I will probably keep a diary (the first things are true but I don´t have a diary any more, I used to write about my daily life when I was a child).

As an interpersonal learner, I´m people smart and I like to mix with other people, play in team games and share (That´s kind of true).

As a kinaesthetic learner, I´m body smart. I enjoy sports and I´m good at swimming, athletics, gymnastics and other sports. (I need to recognise I like sports now but I used to hate them! So, I don´t agree that much on this description).

And finally as a naturalistic learner, I like the world of plants and animals and enjoy learning about them (they got it completely wrong… Take me out of the city, and I´ll be lost!).

So, all in all I guess the Education Planner website was more accurate describing me than BGfL. Now take the test yourselves and check your learning style!

These are the webpages I used:

http://www.educationplanner.org/students/self-assessments/learning-styles-quiz.shtml

http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/index.htm

I´m definitely a visual learner, what about you? :)