Curriculum Design: Part 3

Needs Analysis

One of the first things I need to do at the beginning of the planning stage of the course is to conduct a needs analysis. This should be a comprehensive analysis of what the students need, want and lack. It should include information about present knowledge and any gaps in this, general and specific language students will need in the future, skills, types of activity, topics, as well as taking into comsideration the environmental factors outlined in Part 2. The analysis should be partly done by and with the students, but should also take into account research and past experience of similar groups and courses.

The following are some of the aspects I will need to consider:

Needs:

• What will learners need to learn in order to be able to reach the goals of the course?
• What language will students need in order to communicate at a higher level than present?
• Which skill areas do students need to work on?
• What types of activity or task would best help students in these areas?
• Is fluency work more important than accuracy or vice versa?

Lacks:

• What is the students' proficiency in each skill?
• What language needs to be revised in order to fill in gaps in their knowledge?
• What do students think they need to work on?

Wants:

• What would the students like to work on?
• What kind of task do students prefer?
• How much time would they be prepared to spend on each aspect of the language?
• Will they spend time out of class improving their English?
• Do students prefer individual, pair, group or whole-class work?

How will I find this information? I will design a questionaire and interview form to use with the students in order to find out as much as possible from their point of view. I will also analyse the work covered this year. I may give students a diagnostic test in order to discover their main weaknesses. When I have all the results, I shall combine them to find the most important areas to include in the course. For example, if an item appears on the "lacks", "needs" and "wants" lists, it is something to spend more time on during the course.

Have I gatecrashed the party?

Maybe it's just me being silly, but I sometimes get the feeling that I have joined an CPE class when I am only a Pre-Int student in the world of blogging and social networking and that I do not belong here. After all, I am but a simple teacher in a private language school in the South of Spain, doing my job on a day to day basis to earn a living. I have been doing the exact same for the past eight years: preparing lessons based on the course book, spending fairly little time on planning, because I had lots of experiences of spending hours preparing lessons only to be greeted with bored faces asking me to do something else. I felt that it wasn't worth the effort.

However, over the last school year something has changed. Something has changed inside me and it all started when I started to read other blogs and use Twitter. Enthusiasm is infectious, just like a laugh or yawn can be and every day I read comments from professionals that are just oozing in enthusiasm towards their teaching. I have had such zeal relatively few times in my career, but recently I have a new-found passion for my job. Perhaps passion is the wrong word: I do not consider teaching the be all and end all of my life, but I can say that I am much happier about going to work than I used to be. I have plenty of new ideas, thanks to my PLN (a term that I feel uneasy about using, and that I will come to shortly) and I think my students are benefitting from this. I have decided to start giving some in-house teacher development sessions to share what I am learning.

Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that I don't fit in with these professionals that I sometimes communicate with on Twitter. I get the feeling that I am pretending to be a professional and that someone soon will catch me out for being a fraud. As for Personal Learning Networks, I believe this supposed to be a two-way affair. I learn so much from the people whose blogs I read and links I open. But do they learn anything from me? They are teacher trainers, course book writers, directors of studies, whereas I am just a teacher. I can't help thinking that I am taking much more than I am giving back.

I felt even more like a fraud when a well-known magazine agreed to publish an article I wrote. Why would anyone want to read what I have to say? I am not well read on methodology. What I write is really just common sense. I feel slightly embarrassed to see myself on people's educator lists on Twitter - I am not an educator, just a teacher! Now I have always been a quite an insecure person and find it difficult to believe in myself, probably the opposite to a lot of  Tweeters and bloggers out there, and so it really does make a difference to me when I get comments on my blog, or people retweet my tweets. I guess I just need a bit of encouragement occasionally!

Does anyone else get these feelings from time to time? Is it normal? How do you deal with it? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Curriculum Design: Part 2

One of the first things to think about when designing a course is the kinds of situational or environmental constraints that may exist. These constraints are factors that have the potential to impede the success of the course, and must be taken into account during the planning stage. They could be related to the students, the teacher, the resources available and the general situation.

In my case, the biggest constraints are time, resources, students' needs and students' level of proficiency. Let's look at these a little more closely.


Time
One of the most common problems that teachers find it hard to accept is that of time. Most teachers in the private sector only see their students for around three hours per week. In the context of adult learners, the majority of these will also have very little time to spend on language study or practice outside the classroom. Adults have lots of commitments such as work or studies and families as well as all the basic daily activities they have to make time for. This means that trying to get them to do anything in their free time is very difficult, and at best they will find half an hour once or twice a week. The challenge for us is to make sure they progress quickly in order to maintain high motivation, but it is very difficult to do, especially if some of the learners are sporadic attenders. How can we find the time to recycle language enough that the learners really internalise and acquire it without them feeling that they are repeating something they have already learnt. How can we make the students feel that they are making good progress? One possible solution is to do several tasks over several lessons that use the language in question, including warmer and filler games or activities. As for the lack of homework, maybe trying to incorporate the use of technology could be a solution. If we can get students using a social network in English, they can chat to each other, send messages, and share links to English language materials on the web. This will not seem like homework and it is a way of encouraging students to use the language out of the classroom.

Resources
In this particular case the problem is finding interesting and thought-provoking materials that challenge and motivate the learners. This group of adults enjoy talking about things they have been doing and about current affairs, especially local politics! However, we can't talk about politics all the time, and this means that the majority of these discussions are based around something they have read or heard in their own language, or a newspaper article I have brought in. The traditional topics that are found in course books are not suitable for this class, as many of them have been learning English for several years, and are tired of the typical course book material. Their syllabus should be based around topics that are up to date and stimulating. This means that choosing texts and listening tasks before the course starts may be detrimental, as they will be out of date by the time they are used. I will need to design a flexible syllabus whose topics can change according to what goes on in the world. However, I can choose the topics beforehand - in most years there will be a natural disaster, a general election in some part of the world, an important sports event, a change in government policy and so on. It will be the choice of lesson material that will have to wait until each specific lesson is planned.

Students' needs and levels
 Although the group is small (usually around 6 students), each student has different needs and wants. Some have excellent speaking skills but have big gaps in their grammar, others find reading and writing fairly easy but have problems listening and speaking, some want conversation and others want grammar practice. I need to accommodate all these needs into the syllabus in order to keep everyone happy and motivated. Looking at common wants, the course should be based around improving speaking and listening skills whilst widening students' vocabulary and revising grammar. However, most of the learners do not enjoy doing the typical controlled grammar exercise, and will therefore need a different way in which to practise language.

These are the most important environmental factors that I need to consider for this class. Other factors to consider are lack of lesson planning time for the teacher and whether it is worth spending so much time designing a course that is only suitable for this specific group. Will the course be suitable for other groups? If not, it may not be practical to develop a whole new course but to adapt an existing syllabus or published course book.

Curriculum Design: Part 1

I have just started reading a book about curriculum design and I thought that writing down what I understand from the book may be a good way of processing and reflecting on what I am learning. I have decided then, to do so here on my blog, so I apologise if my next few posts are really boring and complicated - I'm writing them for myself rather than for my (very small) audience. Just ignore my posts that begin with Curriculum Design!

I am going to be thinking about a specific group of students whom I have been teaching for the past two years, and will possibly continue with next year. These students have not had a book because they wanted conversational type lessons in order to maintain their level of English and increase their comprehension and fluency. I have had lot of help with lesson planning from onestopenglish.com this year! The group are middle-aged students who do not need English for their job, but really see their lessons as a hobby. This is the class I will be analysing for the purposes of the tasks in the book.

Before planning a course, it is important to think about the following subjects, and to ask yourself a few questions:

What are the levels of the learners and how I am I going to deal with variation in proficiency?
How am I going to encourage autonomy through the course?
How am I going to deal with students' lack of time outside of class to study English?

What do students want to achieve during the course? Long term and short term goals.
Which aspects of ELL do students want to work on most?

Which methodologies would best suit this group?
How can I introduce different methodologies into the lessons?

What are the main aims of the course?
How can I choose the goals from students' needs and wants?

Should the syllabus be lexical/functional/grammatical/skills based?
How will I decide the order of language items to be presented?
How often will I recycle language?

How can I effectively assess progress without the use of tests?

Evaluation (during and after the course) - Is the course successful?
Does it meet its aims?
Are students and teachers happy?

I need to consider these aspects in order to design a suitable curriculum for my learners. As I have not found a suitable course book for this group, I am going to design my own course, based on their needs. I am hoping this book will help me do so in a systematic way.

Teacher, can I write on the board?

This morning I bought a small whiteboard with washable marker from the local chinese bazaar. As I was standing in the queue I was thinking about what I would use it for. Here are some of my ideas, sometimes requiring more than one board, but you can buy them very cheaply and they will last for a long time.

1) Secret Word - I write a word on the board and tell students what category it is e.g. clothes and they take turns at guessing the word. The student that guesses correctly then writes a word.

2) Pictionary - Instead of whispering the word or sentence to the drawer, I write it on the board.

3) Pictionary - Students draw on the whiteboard and play pictionary in small groups (several boards needed).

4) Sentence completion - I write a sentences with a missing word on the main board. Students in teams write on their board the missing word. (Suitable for PET and FCE exam prep)

5) Writing letters - Very Young Learners practise letter formation on small boards.

6) Picture Dictation - In pairs or small groups students draw a picture and describe for their companions to draw.

7) Giving praise - When a student does something very well, I draw a smiley face or a big tick on the board and show it to the individual.

8) Sentence writing - In a chain, students each write a word to form a sentence. If done in two teams, give points for the number of words.

9) Silent Way - Instead of speaking, write everything on the board, encouraging students to respond orally. This includes saying hello, showing your feelings e.g. big smiley face, a question mark if you don't understand.

10) Writing vocabulary - For young learners who find it hard to locate a specific word on the main board, write the word they want to use on the board.

11) Pass the board - Like pass the parcel but with vocabulary. Give a topic e.g animals and play music. Students pass the board around and when the music stops, the person who has the board writes a word.

12) Prompts - Ask students questions and prompt their answers using the board.

13) Instructions - Write an instruction on the board, show it to one student who does that action, then the others say what the instruction was. (Practice for Starters speaking exam)

14) Menu - For a café or restaurant roleplay, write the menu on the board and display.

15) Shopping List - For a shopping roleplay write the shopping list of items students need to buy.

16) Physical Sentences - With several boards, write a word on each that can form a sentence. Then give one to each student who have to stand in a line in to make a correct sentence.

If I think of any more I will add them to the list. I'm sure Alex Case would come up with a hundred! The possibilities are really quite endless. Most of these activties can be done on paper, but just think that this way you will be saving a tree or two! Please feel free to add any suggestions in the comments section.

Getting the Buggers to Speak English!

I have often though about trying out different teaching approaches in my lessons, and to some extent I have done so, but some approaches such as Task Based Learning do not work as well as I would like. The main reason for this is the difficulty (impossibility?) of getting my learners to use English during the task. This problem usually occurs with Young Learners. I'm not really thinking about children here, as they do not have enough language to be able to discuss things in English, but teenage learners, for example, a PET or FCE group. At these levels, the students should have enough language to be able to talk about problems and do simple tasks without L2 interference. However, even if they start to do the task in English, they will always end up speaking in Spanish.

So, I'm thinking of doing an experiment to try to make them aware of how much Spanish they actually use in class, as I'm sure they don't realise how little English they use when left to their own devices. What I plan to do is:

a) Give them a task based activity to do in small groups and write down the number of utterances I hear in both English and Spanish on a piece of paper (using a simple five-bar gate method) and later transfering this to the blackboard. I think that if I did this directly on the board, they would ask me what I was doing rather than concentrate on the task. So I will have two columns on the page; one labelled English and the other labelled Spanish. Each time I hear a word or sentences in either of the two languages, I will mark it in the right column. This of course would not work with a large class. Seeing this on the board will give them a visual image of the amount of Spanish they use. We could even transfer the numbers into a bar or pie chart.

b) Record a lesson, either audio or video. For this I will need a good quality microphone that the students can't see in order to pick up the speech whilst drowning out the background noise. It is probably not feasible to record the whole lesson, but just a short part of it should be enough. I have actually done this before with a very small class and a tape recorder. I will then play the recording.

c) I also thought it might be nice to make it more fun. I could bring in two large jars or boxes and a big bag of sweets and a bag of chickpeas or dried beans. Everytime I hear an English sentence, a sweet will go into one jar, and every time I hear Spanish, a chickpea will go into the other. At the end, the jar with the most items will be given to the students.

I don't think the last idea is right for the experiment as I don't want to bribe them into speaking English, but to do a realistic experiment in order to show them the real results. My hopes are that the students will become more responsible and try to speak English as much as they can, without having to be reminded constantly.

What do you think of these ideas? Do you think they could work? Do you have any better ideas?

Competition Winner!!!

This month I have won the lesson share competition on Onestopenglish and I was so happy when I found out that I felt like a little girl again! It is a strange phenomenon, that whatever the competition, you never really expect to win, or at least that's how I view them. I tend to think of all competitions as a prize draw, where thousands of people enter and only one name is drawn out of a hat, therefore making it virtually impossible for me to win. This is why I have refrained from entering any competition for many years. I suppose however that you can compare the idea of competitions to the phrase: It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Is is better to enter a competition and to lose than to not enter? If you don't enter, you can't win (which is what my partner says every week when he buys several lottery tickets!)

Anyway, that first time I won a competition was when I was about 7 years old, and I remember clearly that it was for drawing a picture of dangers in the home and the prize was a book token. Now I have won the second competition in my life (how sad does that sound?) and my lesson plan about the World Cup which practises First Conditional sentences is here

Thank you, Onestop,  for choosing my entry as the winner!

Snozzcumbers and Never Ending Gobstoppers

I was having a bit of a tidy up last week at work, clearing off the stacks of unused photocopies to put in my scrap paper pile and sorting out my books, when I found my beloved copy of The Roald Dahl Treasury. Just the title of this book makes me love it - a treasury sounds like something very important, that you care for and would hate to lose. I know that Mr Dahl passed away years before this collection was published, but it sounds like a title he would have found acceptable, mainly because the word "treasury" appeals to children.

As a child, I never read many books by Roald Dahl, I suppose this was because these books aren't really aimed at young children anyway, and I was more into Enid Blyton. However, as an adult I can really appreciate the talent and efforts of this writer which enabled him to penetrate into the world of a child and write stories that children would want to read. The way Dahl portrays adults from the point of view of a young boy is exceptional. I would recommend that anyone who has children gets hold of some of his creations, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda or The Witches.

The most fascinating talent of Dahl for me, though, is his use of language. I have a copy of Revolting Rhymes, which is a collection of well-known fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White told in a rather different way to what you usually expect. The stories are written in rhyme and are therefore ideal for reading aloud. I have used these rhymes many times with my students (generally Intermediate and above) as a reading activity, listening activity, for pronunciation practice (sentence stress), as a cloze exercise, and to inspire creative writing. The rhymes are fun for students of all ages, including adults, who will often try to come up with their own unusual fairy tales. I had a student who recently suggested that they write their own revolting rhyme - actually in rhyme!

Dahl uses a lot of words he has made up himself, and this can be a useful way of getting learners to think about the meanings and usage of words, giving them practice in guessing meaning through context. It can be great fun for them to make up their own words too! With a story like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you can give students the names of sweets that appear and ask them to describe what they are like - what they look like, what they taste like, what is so special about them, which one they like the sound of, and so on. With The Witches, you can ask students to draw a picture of one of the witches that is described in the book, and then for them to imagine a witch of their own.

Have you used Roald Dahl stories in class, and if so, how did you use them?

Happy Birthday To You; Squashed Tomatoes and Stew!

Today I had a last minute change of plan because when I arrived at work I discovered that I had to take my class together with another class. I had to think of something quick to do, as we couldn't do our normal course book based lesson that I had planned. I thought, having taken in a soft football, that I would do something on the World Cup, teaching them the names of some of the countries involved. However, after getting them all seated (fifteen children in a class that normally holds maximum twelve) one of my students told us all that today was a special day and we had to guess why. We quickly discovered it was his 9th birthday.

Great! It was easy enough to find something on birthdays. I had a quick look in one of my resource books and found an activity that would work well with a class this size.

I started off by eliciting the months of the year, and then the seasons, asking which months were in each season. This was revision, but I really had little idea of what the other class had covered before the lesson. They all knew the months, if some of them had a few pronunciation problems. We then looked at how to say dates, which is normally a source of confusion for Spanish kids, since in Spanish cardinal numbers are used. We went through ordinal numbers and there didn't seem to be any serious problems.

We played a quick game of "Guess my birthday" with "hot and cold" clues to practise dates.

I then wrote on the board:

Somebody whose birthday is in the same month as mine.

                                             in a month that begins with J.

This was to prepare the children for the following activity, where these kinds of sentences would appear on cards with presents. 

I then told them all that they would each have three presents that they would have to give to other students.

I demonstrated by taking a card (I had very briefly cut up the cards whilst practising dates earlier- multi-tasking!) and reading it aloud. It said "Somebody whose birthday is in winter". I went round the class asking several individuals when there birthday was until I found somebody whose birthday was in January. I then repeated with a different card. After that, I asked the class what question they had to ask the other students (to see if they had been paying attention and to make sure they all knew what they had to ask).

I gave out three cards to each student. And then came the mingle! Fifteen eight to ten year olds actually successfully managed to complete the task (mostly!) in English. After this task, we discussed who had received the most presents and why (because their birthday was in a month that began with J and was in summer etc).

We then all sang Happy Birthday to Jorge, asked him what (real) presents he had got and the did a quick pairwork activity talking about the best present you would like to get.

The activity I did was from Speaking Activities (Junior English Timesavers) by Cheryl Pelteret and Viv Lambert, Scholastic. However, you could make your own similar cards using language that your learners are capable of understanding. You could make the clues more simple or more difficult.

This is yet another example of how improvisation can work in almost any situation, even when you don't know the learners. As long as you do something that interests and engages the students (and hopefully teaches or practises some language) the lesson should work.

Note: I actually learnt some silly versions of the Spanish version of Happy Birthday, Cumpleaños Feliz in this lesson. Does anybody remember any English versions? There was one that went: Happy Birthday to you, squashed tomatoes and stew... but I can't remember the rest. These could be fun examples of authentic (if nonsense!) English rhymes and I can guarantee the kids will love them!

Wider Reading - updated

The title of this post has just teletransported me back into my A Level English Lit class (circa 1993). At the time the expression really just meant reading something you chose rather than the books from the syllabus, on which you would later write an essay. Surely I should have forgotten this by now, but I remember writing about Thackeray's Vanity Fair, something about the similarities and differences between Amelia and Becky. In fact I must read the novel again as it is a brilliant piece of work.

I'm not going to talk about literary works here as this blog is supposed to be about teaching and I am also no literary expert. What I would like to do is to ask for recommendations for ELT wider reading. I am not a big non-fiction reader and I am also more of a bedtime reader (ELT books hardly making ideal bedtime reading) but I would like to compile a list of ESSENTIAL ELT works that myself and others could pick and choose from. The list could also be suitable for schools looking to update their library. Any kind of book is welcome as long as you think it would be of interest to ELT professionals, whether they are teachers, materials writers, teacher trainers etc.

If I get enough responses I would then like to categorize the entries, e.g. methodology; resource; teacher training and development; young learners; course books; exams etc.

So what would you put on the list?

At the moment I have listed your suggestions in two categories, although if I get any more suggestions I will update the list.


Language and Linguistics
The English Verb by Michael LewisPractical English Usage by Michael Swan
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter
Language Myths edited by Bauer and Trudghill
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage
The Teacher’s Grammar of English by Ron Cowan
Learner English by Michael Swan and Bernard Smith
Language, Context and Text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective by M.A.K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan
The Language Web by Jean Aitchison
The Fight For English by David Crystal

Teaching Methodologies

Teaching Tenses by Rosemary Aitkin
Teaching Grammar Creatively by Puchta, Gerngross and Thornbury
Learning Teaching by Jim Scrivener
Young Learners by Sarah Phillips
Implementing the Lexical Approach by Michael Lewis
A Framework for Task-Based Learning by Jane Willis
Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching by Richards & Rodgers
How to Teach Speaking by Scott Thornbury
Language Assessment – Principles and Classroom Practices by H. Douglas Brown
Principles of Language Learning and Teaching by H. Douglas Brown
The Techniques of Language Teaching by Lionel Billows
Teaching Collocation edited by Michael Lewis


I don't think I've come across many of these books before but there are certainly some interesting titles here that I would like to have a look at. I would recommend anything by David Crystal, who is a genius! If you have any favourite resource or course books I will create another section. There are so many thousands of ELT books out there, mostly available on Amazon, and it really can be difficult to choose a book to buy, so I really appreciate your help in compiling this list, which is by teachers for teachers.


Happy Reading!

Time flies when you're blogging

I have been so busy reading and commenting on posts on different ELT sites I have recently joined that I seem to have abandoned my own blog! And the only reason I was admitted to Bloggers in ELT, Freelance is because I have a blog, so I guess not updating my own blog due to spending too much time there kind of defeats the object.

So, I've been wandering around the Beltfree site, trying to figure out if I have to upload my blog entries, or copy and paste them, or write different ones just for that site... but I haven't been very successful. I've spent at least 45 minutes sending friend requests and getting sidetracked by some rather interesting comments (a bit of a soap opera melodrama between two feuding members!) and haven't actually found out what you are supposed to do on the site. Maybe I should just look for a "I'm new and I'm lost" section, which is the kind of place I usually avoid.

I've also been busy on ELTCommunity, which is run by a well-known publisher (don't want to do any free advertsing!) where I've been drawn into the addictive points system they have. This is surely the downfall of heavily competitive people like myself. I only joined last week but I'm trying my best to get from "newbie" to "novice", by answering questions in the forums and taking part in polls (unfortunately, I discovered after about 15 polls that this doesn't give you points!).

While I think all these sites and social networks are a really good idea for teachers and writers to share ideas and have interesting discussions, I'm not entirely convinced that I am not wasting a lot of my free time on them. And not just my free-time, since I've really got into this whole world of PLNs, Twitter and Google Reader lists, I think I have actually spent less time planning my lessons! One day I was so engrossed that suddenly it was lunchtime and I hadn't even decided what I was going to do that afternoon in class. Luckily, this isn't a major disaster for me, being able to pull tricks out of my hat and improvise when necessary. That lesson even worked out really well because I took the children on an imaginary trip to the past using a  visualisation that required very little preparation.

I  would just like to ask anyone who reads this blog, how do you find the time to keep up a blog (and some people even have more than one!), read other blogs, tweet, belong to other social networks, plan lessons and actually teach all at the same time?? Is it possible to do all this and have a private life?

By the way, if anybody can help me on the beltfree question I'd be grateful as I don't want to sound stupid on the site itself! Thanks.

Jack and the Beanstalk Trial - a roleplay for teens and adults

A few years ago I was teaching a group of upper-intermediate/advanced teenagers and the topic of the week was crime. It was in a UK summer school and we had done all the usual vocabulary activities and language work, and I wanted to do something different that would get them speaking. They were a lively group and I knew that some kind of drama activity would go down well with the majority. Mentioning this to a colleague who was teaching a similar class, she introduced me to something she had found surfing the web called The Jack and the Beanstalk Mock Trial. Now, this is actually a real mock trial, I assume designed for Law students, but it can be easily adapted to suit an EFL class. It is available in its entirety here.

Your teenage students will probably not have had any experience of a trial, but they should have seen plenty of Hollywood films that they can base the activity on. If not, you can always show them a few scenes of a trial from a film or TV show, so they get an idea of what happens.

The first thing I do before introducing the roleplay idea is to do some vocabulary work related to the courtroom: judge, jury, defense, prosecution, witness, sentence, be charged with etc. 

Then, I ask them to tell the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. They can do this in pairs or small groups before giving feedback to the whole class, just to make sure that they all know the story. Then tell them that Jack is in trouble. He has been charged with two crimes: the first being the MURDER of the giant and the second being BREAKING AND ENTERING the giant's house and subsequent THEFT of  a goose and her golden egg.

Now give out a copy of the Charge Sheet to all the students, which they should read. Say that the class is going to act out Jack's trial.  Tell the class that you are going to split them into two small groups representing the Prosecution and the Defense, a Judge and Jury (depending on the number of students), and four Witnesses. You will need a minimum of eight students to do this activity (1 Prosecutor, 1 Defense Lawyer, 1 Judge, Jack, 4 Witnesses). If there are several students forming the defense and prosecution, they can either choose a spokesperson to speak during the trial, or take turns to speak. It is a good idea for these students to be the stronger and more outgoing ones as they will have to try and persuade the judge that they are right.

If the group has a very high level of English you can give them the Legislation and Legal notes but if not you could quickly explain and discuss what actually constitutes the crimes Jack has been accused of.

Now give out the roles and the following materials:

The Prosecution needs Martha's Statement and Detective Morse's Statement
The Defense needs Jack's Statement and Nora Jones (Jack's mother) 's Statement

Each group needs to read the statements they have been given and prepare their case. The witnesses (and Jack) should prepare their own statements, trying to remember as much of the information as possible in order to answer questions in their own words. They should try to think of any questions that they may be asked and make up the answers.

The judge is the most problematic at this stage because he/she doesn't really have anything to prepare but you can either ask the judge to help the Prosecution, or you could be the judge yourself, especially if you have a shortage of students. The judge is an important character, however, since he/she will have to instruct the Prosecution, Defense and witnesses to speak.

During this preparation period, you should go round monitoring and helping with any problems (language or ideas) students may have.

The trial itself is probably best held another day, as otherwise it will be rushed. This also gives students time to look over and learn some of the information they will be required to present, making a more organised and fluent trial. When you are ready to begin the trial, make sure everyone is comfortable and clear about what they should say and when, although it doesn't really matter if things go a bit astray, you can always put them back on track yourself if necessary. (If they are not camera shy, you could even record the trial and show it to them another day. Taking photos is another option. They could later make a poster as a kind of photo story, detailing what happened during the trial.)

Then, let them get on with it, only interrupting if absolutely necessary. If you have a very shy student that doesn't want to take part, you can give him/her the role of taking the minutes, which means that he/she has to listen carefully and can later type up what was said (or give to you to type up!).

At the end of the trial, the judge and jury must decide whether Jack is innocent or guilty and what punishment he should have, if any. The judge should base this on what he/she had heard during the trial and which side has been more persuasive, with the better arguments. There are some worksheets for the judge and jury to complete during the trial on pages 9-11 here (pdf).

You can then make a big drama out of sending Jack to jail if he is found guilty, which they all love!

I have only used this activity once and I had completely forgotten about until yesterday, when I was thinking about what kind of "crime" materials I had for my FCE teenage group tomorrow. So I am going to try it out with them. I think they will enjoy it because they are a lively noisy bunch and are quite fed up of doing FCE-type tasks. I will report how it went down on Thursday. Wish me luck!

Baby Talk

One of my closest friends has just given birth to her first child. His name is Andrés and is two days old and he is beautiful. However, I have a dilemma - and no, it is not whether to have one of my own. The dilemma is the following: do I speak to the child in English or in Spanish? Of course, my natural instinct is to speak Spanish: I speak to his parents in Spanish, none of our group of friends speak English very well and although completely fluent in Spanish, I'm not the best at switiching between the two languages. Every time I'm with an English-speaker and a Spanish-speaker at the same time, I always end up speaking the wrong language to each one.

So why the dilemma?  Well, as soon as my friend discovered she was pregnant, she promptly informed me that I would have to speak to the child in English so that he would have a headstart and somehow acquire English just by listening to me speak English babyspeak. Of course, my friend has no knowledge of language acquisition and just assumes that if I talk to the boy in English for half an hour very week (I only see them on weekends) he will suddenly be able to speak the language when he is older. Everyone has it got into their heads that children are brilliant natural language learners (which is why they all put their kids into English lessons when they are four years old) but there is evidence that a child who starts at four and one that starts at eleven will have similar chances of learning a language well. My friend's son will evidently not acquire English from me speaking to him for a few minutes a week.

What is your opinion on the subject of language acquisition? Is it worth me talking to the baby in English? Will he get any benefit from this? Or will he just think that his "Auntie" Michelle speaks funny? Should I just do it to keep my friend happy?

I'd love to know your thoughts on the matter.

Ten blogs

It's my turn to recommend ten blogs that I think are worth taking the time to follow. I was given this priviledge by Richard, at http://richardteachesenglish.blogspot.com and I'm finding it hard to come up with ten that haven't already been nominated! When I started my blog, I didn't realise how many other ELT blogs were out there, and have only really started to discover many of them recently. This means that I follow some of the most typical blogs on everyone's reading lists, but I am going to try to provide some different ones here. Of course, my favourites are going on the list, even if they have been listed 20 times already! By the way, the blogs are not listed in any particular order.

1) Carol Read's ABC of Teaching Children http://carolread.wordpress.com/
I have unwittingly become a kind of young learners specialist over the years and Carol has some wonderful ideas about teaching children. She also gives extensive replies to comments you make, which means she is all for helping and sharing with others.Well worth following if you teach kids.

2) Tefltastic with Alex Case http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/
 Alex was the first person to comment on my blog and I regularly read his. He also accepts guest posts by newbies like me, helping novices to get our faces out there! He also provides lots of interesting ideas to use in the classroom.

3) Early EFL by Leahn Stanhope http://earlyefl.blogspot.com/
I have worked with Leahn in the UK and I can say that she is a funny, intelligent and dedicated teacher who has now entered the blogosphere to share her thoughts and ideas with the rest of us. This blog concentrates on Primary Ed and CLIL.

4) Training English Language Teachers Blog by Vanessa Reilly http://vanessareillytelt.wordpress.com/
Vanessa is a teacher trainer and writes course books and resource books for very young learners. Her blog has some lovely ideas to use with children under six, as well as older children.

5) TEFL Clips by Jamie Keddie and blog http://www.jamiekeddie.com ,  http://www.teflclips.com/
Fantastic resource site and blog (I've included them in the same entry because they're both worth a look and are both by Jamie) with plenty of original and interesting lesson plans and ideas, especially using video and images.

6)  Mantras of a Mad Man http://mistermikelcc.blogspot.com/
A blog by a dedicated tutor of English, Mister Mike provides ideas to use in the classroom as well as how to use different web 2.0 applications and funny anecdotes. All in all, a good read!

7) Nik's Learning Technology Blog http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/
I am a complete tech novice but I am trying to learn, and following Nik's blog is a great way to do so. I attended a workshop of Nik's at a virtual conference and discovered his blog. He presents different web tools in a very simple way and provides tutorials, which really do the trick.

8) Strictly4myteacherz -A tefl blog with Swag!  http://strictly4myteacherz.wordpress.com/
I have actually only just discovered this blog even though it has been around for ages. It has lesson plans and teaching ideas, and amusing general posts. Put it on your reading list!

I am starting to flag now... I think I might have to include all the blogs that I am trying to avoid - they are brilliant but they have already been on so many lists, I really wanted to exclude them!

9) English Raven http://jasonrenshaw.typepad.com
Jason Renshaw's blog was one of the first I started reading. I really don't think I need to say anything about this blog, it's one of those "must-reads".

10) Sean Banville's Blog http://seanbanville.com/
I'm including Sean because apart from his blog he has several resource websites and I think he must be a kind of robot in disguise to manage all these things at once! He is totally dedicated to sharing and helping teachers and students alike with his lesson plans and online activities.

So, these are my ten. It has actually been much harder than I thought it would be, but I never imagined I would get to do one of these lists, I am honoured to take part. I wish I did know of more up and coming blogs rather than renominating these oh-so-famous ones because surely that's the idea of the initiative, but I don't. I would love to find out about more blogs, though, so if you have any recommendations or friends who have set up ELT blogs, please add them in the comments box.

Fun at the Fair!

Living in Andalucía, one of the most important weeks of the year (after Holy Week) is approaching: the feria, or fair. In Jerez, where I live, the fair is considered to be far better than the more famous Feria de Abril in Seville and the local ladies spend hundreds on their new frilly flamenco dresses and impossibly high heels, enormous earrings and the like, and the kids are all completely over-excited because they get to go on rollercoasters and dodgems and the ferris wheel.

So the days during the run up to the fair it is impossible to get any work out of the younger students and your typical course book lesson goes out the window. Here are a few activities I do with my youngest learners, to take advantage of their excitement and enthusiasm.

First, I ask them to supply words about the fair. This is usually in L1 since they don't have the vocabulary to do so in English. I write up their suggestions on the board. I then show them some pictures of different fairground attractions (big wheel, carousel, dodgems, roller coaster, ghost train, haunted house) as well as candy floss, horses (in Jerez it is The Horse Fair), girls dressed up in flamenco dresses dancing "sevillanas". I then drill the vocabulary with them, doing different picture activities such as: point and say, what's the missing picture?, run and touch, the "corner" game.

We then walk in a line around the classroom chanting  or singing this little song I made up (to the tune of The Farmer's in the Den):

We're going to the fair

We're going to the fair

 We're going to have lots of fun

 We're going to the fair

I then ask the children what they are going to go on?  "I'm going to go on the big wheel", "I'm going to dance sevillanas" etc.

We then go on to mime the different activities, which they love. We all go on the ghost train together, me at the front and the children all hanging on behind, me going "woooo woooo"; we drive round in dodgems, all bumping into each other; we go on the big wheel, crouching down and standing up tall and looking at all the imaginary tiny people down below; we go into the haunted house, all in darkness, and get frightened by the monsters (me - roaring); we dance sevillanas; we ride horses; and best of all, we go on the rollercoaster, slowly creeping up to the top only to rush down the other side screaming!

After all this excitement, comes a calm down period, where we sit and discuss our favourite parts of the fair. I sometimes get them to draw pictures and label the rides, or tell me the names, if they can not yet read.

With children that have started reading in English, you can make a wordsearch or crossword with some of the vocabulary.

Activities on the topic of Emergencies and Road Safety for Very YLs

New post on my resources page: http://sothisisenglishresources.blogspot.com/2010/04/activities-on-topic-of-emergencies-and.html

Praise

I recently watched an interview with the wonderful Carol Read on the subject of praise. Carol is in my opinion THE authority on young (primary age) learners and so when I saw her name on the interviewees list, I clicked straight on the video link (http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-09/interview-carol-read-spain).

Carol focuses on the use of praise with young learners, explaining about how to use praise in order to give encouragement and to build up children's self esteem as well as to help with classroom management and deal with behavioural problems, without going overboard and using too much praise, making it empty and meaningless. I don't want to go into too much detail, as you can see the video for yourselves.

However, this interview got me thinking about the use of praise with teenagers and adults. When we think about praise, we automatically think of children, since they seem to need a certain amount of praise and they are constantly demanding it, by asking the teacher if their work is OK, if they can have a tick and so on. But what about older students? You will rarely find a sixteen-year-old directly asking for praise, but there may be indirect signs which we as teachers must learn to interpret. For example, a teenager who answers questions when no-one else does may secretly be hoping for a "good" from the teacher. I find my FCE students looking for a "well done" when I give them back their writing tasks, and see their disappointment when they see a "good effort" which they interpret to be a mediocre result.  Most teenagers have many insecurities and lack self-esteem and confidence in  their abilities and therefore maybe need some sort of praise more than any other age group. Nevertheless, we must be very careful not to make the praise too obvious or selective since this can have the opposite effect. Peer pressure may make it uncool to be a model student, so I think private praise could be the solution. On written work, think carefully about the comments you write as using the right words can be an excellent method of encouragment. However, as Carol mentions in her interview, it can be much more effective to praise the different elements of a piece of work such as the planning and ideas, as well as the linguistic aspects. Give praise for good paragraphing, or the use of different vocabulary and structures. Notice the work that has gone into the piece; with practise you will be able to quickly tell when an essay has been rushed and when some thought has gone into it at the planning stage. As for other types of work, if you do not want to openly praise your students, write them little notes at the end of the lesson mentioning anything they did especially well. They will probably want to compare them with their classmates but if everyone gets one, there should be no problem with this.

Now, what about adults? I feel that we neglect adults because we think that they don't need praise, but surely this isn't true. I am convinced, when I think about it, that adults need just as much praise as younger learners, they just don't show it. Think of an elementary group of adults. These learners don't have enough English to express themselves well; they get stuck, they get frustrated when they can't understand or make themselves understood, and all we do is tell them not to worry, we try to encourage and motivate them to keep trying and we may even put words in their mouths for them, but how often do we say "excellent" or "you are doing really well!"? And as we go up through the levels, we give less and less praise. With an advanced class, we already have high expectations (maybe too high) and assume that these learners know how well they are doing and don't need to be told so.

Adults are actually the biggest drop outs of evening classes. We must understand that they have many other commitments like work and families and they could be making sacrifices to come to their English lessons. When these people feel that they are not progressing enough, or that they are simply not good language learners, they drop out. It is then, more important than ever to show learners how they are doing and give them support and praise when necessary.

Topic of the month: Natural Disasters

Most course books at Intermediate or FCE level have a chapter or unit devoted to the topic of natural diasters or extreme weather, and I think it can be much more sensible to study these topics when an event of this kind has recently occurred. Most adults watch the news or read a newspaper, and even many children also see images of what is happening in the world, and to me it seems far more  natural to discuss these things as they take place, rather than when you get to that chapter in the book, as it makes the topic much more interesting and personal. After the recent eruption in Iceland, (and of course Haiti) most learners (of any age) will have seen some images on TV and will want to discuss them. It is far better to look at a topic about which everyone has something to contribute, than the one that appears in your couse book on the next page just because you are following the book from front to back cover.

So this week (in Europe, at least) could be a good time to talk about volcanoes, possibly leading on to other natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis.This kind of topic is interesting for all age groups from small children to the elderly, and there are plenty of resources on the internet that you can use. Here are some I have found:

Great for CLIL but suitable for any class are these presentations on how volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis are caused. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/science/2009/09/090930_volcanoes_guide.shtml

Lots of links here for Primary learners: http://www.teachervision.fen.com/natural-disasters/teacher-resources/48771.html

Some wonderful ideas on the British Council site: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/language-assistant/essential-uk/natural-disasters

Nice listening activities by Adrian Tennant on Onestopenglish: http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?catid=100283

If you have access to the internet in your school (for students) you could create a webquest where learners have to find out the answers to a set of questions. If, like for me, such resources are unavailable, you could print out texts about different disasters which you could then hide around the school or classroom making a kind of treasure hunt out of the activity. Each pair or group should get only one question at a time (it is best to stagger the groups by giving them a different question each) to which they have to find the answer, like a reading race. You could even bring in audio so that it is not just practising reading, having some of the answers in a recorded text. You could use the one provided by Adrian Tennant, or download a podcast from a new website. In fact, you could also include puzzles like anagrams of vocabulary or crosswords that they have to complete as part of the quest. All this may take quite a bit of planning, but it should certainly make for a fun and productive lesson.

The topic can be a good one for practising modal verbs with elementary students, having them design posters or leaflets giving advice and recommendations for what to do in an emergency situation like an earthquake or severe flooding.

Please feel free to send in any good ideas that have worked well with your students on this topic, especially with YLs.

Psychiatrists: a good game for practising questions

This is a well known game in Spain, but I had never thought of using it in class until my teenage students asked if they could play it. It is a typical group guessing game where some of the players know the rules but others are unaware and have to guess what is going on.

You will need to have the class sitting in a circle (or semi circle if you lack space). Some of the students must go out of the room while you explain how to play the game. These students are the "psychiatrists". These students must never have played the game before (it is better if they are stronger students). The others are patients. Tell the patients that they have an illness. This is usually that they think they are the person sitting to their right (but if you want to play the game on other occasions, change this every time e.g, the person sitting opposite, to the left, two to the right etc).

Then, invite the psychiatrists back into the room and tell them that they must diagnose their patients by asking questions. The patients must answer as if they were the person to their right, e.g to the question: Are you wearing jeans? If the person to your right is wearing jeans, say yes. Students must be careful not to look at this person as this will give the game away. If the patient does not know the answer to a question, they must shout "psychiatrist!" and everbody changes places. If a question is too revealing, any player can shout "psychiatrist" at which point everbody, again, changes seats.

The game continues until the psychiatrists correctly diagnose the illness.

This game can be played at any level; at higher levels make sure the students ask more complex questions using different tenses, the passive etc.

Play it again, Teacher!

After so many years in Spain, I may have forgotten what it is like to be in the presence of a group of people and not understand a single word of what they are saying. Having my mum over for a few days, I have realised how unpleasant it can be for someone to be in the company of people who speak a different language. That feeling of overwhelming frustration and annoyance and even paranoia you get when everyone seems to be laughing and you have no idea of what's going on. Trying to put myself in my mum's shoes, I got a faint recollection of how I used to feel for the first few months I spent here, with a group of Spanish friends. Despite actually speaking the language quite well even in those days, whenever I found myself sitting at a table with more than two or three other people I suddenly became unable to understand what anyone was talking about. On a one to one basis I was fine, but put me in a group and they could have been speaking Mongolian for all I knew. All this got me thinking about some of my students and their inability to understand listening extracts or videos, even those that are below their productive level.

As teachers, we have usually forgotten about our own experiences of language learning, and blocked out those unpleasant memories of being in a classroom with another 30 students all trying to make out what is being said on a tiny taperecorder placed unstrategically on the teacher's desk at the front of the classroom. Maybe you were lucky and had a language laboratory with individual headphones, but it was rare to do any listening comprehension at all, at least in my French class, and when we did it was a recording of Mrs Rowlands speaking in her lovely Potteries accent.

Teaching methodologies have changed a lot over the past couple of decades and we now force plenty of natural sounding English conversations and interviews down the ears of our students, whether it is still on a cassette player, a CD or if you are "modern" like me (that's what my students say when I get the equipment out) an MP3 player with portable speakers. But however good the equipment and acoustics of the room, unless our students are well prepared for what they are going to listen to, the exercise will be useless. Put yourself in the situation my mum was in last week, sitting on a bar terrace having a drink with me and seven Spaniards, not knowing the language. Even if she did speak Spanish, what would the chances be of her understanding what we were all talking about? She doesn't know any of the people or places mentioned, and has little knowledge of what we do every weekend or what kinds of things we discuss. Now put yourself in the place of your students. They know they are going to listen to a recording, but unless they are given some clues as to what it is going to be about, they are unlikely to understand a thing and the whole activity will be pointless.

So, what can we do to make listening comprehension tasks more productive? Firstly, it is vital to provide some information about the context. How many people will speak? Who are they and what relationship do they have with each other? Where are they? What are they going to talk about? You can do this by explaining the situation, you can provide a photo of the interlocutors (which often appears in the coursebook) or you could get your students to ask you questions which they think will help them with the listening task. Secondly, make sure it is clear what students have to do. What information do they have to listen for? Are there any questions they have to answer? Where are the questions? Which exercise do they have to complete? This may all seem far too obvious, but I can guarantee that all of you have had at some point at least one student trying to complete exercise three (fill in the gaps) when they are supposed to be doing exercise two (comprehension check). They should be allowed plenty of time to read the questions before they listen so that they don't get lost because there is a word they don't understand in the questions. Take the time to explain any confusing words or questions, and if you feel it is necessary, preteach some of the vocabulary that occurs in the recording. All of this preparation should at least make your learners feel more relaxed when they listen.

One of the most important qualities a teacher needs and especially with listening exercises is patience. Listening may be something which comes naturally in your own language, but in a second language a great deal of concentration is required. Don't try to make a challenge out of listening and don't allow your learners to feel that they have failed if they have not been able to understand. You may find that certain learners or even whole classes have a listening ability below their general English level. If this is the case, you will need to adapt the materials (it is easier to adapt the questions rather than the recording) and make sure your students get plenty of practice. Build up the level little by little, start with easy tasks and gradually make them more difficult or complex. Be sympathetic and understanding, and if the pressure is off, your learners will become better listeners.