I can hold my tongue no longer. After hearing Anthony Gaughan summarise the theme of IATEFL as demanding more from our students that finally tipped me over the edge. I didn’t attend Jim Scriv’s talk but have heard enough to push me into action.
If you read the last guest post by George Chilton you may be aware of the increasing interest in teaching with more serious/common/realistic or just normal subjects. I use the term ‘normal’ because if you look in newspapers, what’s popular on twitter or on your search engine, these are the topic you’ll see so why aren’t we doing them in class?
Secondly, grammar/vocab. Students and we are bored, face it, with teaching one abstract grammar point and 7/8 words per 1 hr slot. This isn’t how they learn outside and the formula of the EFL lesson has just got old. As Scott Thornbury says where does the grammar and lexis stop? It’s all connected, so are tenses and structures.Students have had it to death, us too.
Thirdly, we are just too nice to students and spoon feed them with a bit of this her and there and praise them constantly, even when they are terrible. Then when they move on and some teacher says they are horrible or they fail a test then we get it in the neck. It’s time to stop!
Fourthly, most of us, when we plan or discuss or even write materials, are imagining a dream class full of eager and polite students who would love to stand up and mingle with a find someone who or would find it fascinating to spend 10 minutes playing with cards or running across the class. Meanwhile, the other 99% of us in the real world have demanding/tired/uninterested students who either are forced to take English, need it for an exam or just aren’t bothered either way.
Interestingly, when I tweeted that high demand teaching was just what EAP/BE/ESP teachers had always been doing, Dave Dodgson said, and rightly so, that this is always the case ie whenever coins a new movement lots of people say “I’ve always done that”. Dave you are spot on mate!! The only response I have is that, as with Dogme, it just adds so legitimacy and a common language for like-minded teachers. BUT if Dogme put the 1st nail in the coffin of TEFL teacher-dominated/leading classes then High Demand seems to move us back to teacher as facilitator and challenger. What’s common about both is that students need to work and develop, we can help them by setting up activities and prodding and stretching them, but they need to get used to putting in the effort.
Time wasting and ‘schemata activating’ warmers that don’t directly relate to the topic.
Long lead-ins via random questions that are obvious to everyone
Endless Gist/Detailed questions for every text or listening
Endless drilling students like parrots
CCQs with just YES/NO answers
Structured practice of everything
Countless different types of paper-based exercises just made to confuse people and prepare them for test types in exams
Constant praise and ‘letting it slide’ with regards errors
A focus on fluency at the expense of content
The warn out structure of Lead in, PTV, Reading, Gist..Open practice
General/bland/out-of-date topics with no appeal to anyone
Confining and limiting lessons made to restrict students at every turn and turn a class into just ‘going through the motions/plan’
The reliance on the idea of the ‘active learner’ who is studying out of class and learning and deciphering with us as his guide.
Dumbing down our talk and lesson content because we think low level=low intelligence
What I propose is a new manifesto that creates a comfortably challenging class with a spirit of development and difficulty. One where a right answer isn’t enough but an explanation of it, why others are wrong and how it could be changed into different things is welcomed. Everything should be exploited and seen as an avenue for development. I have these points:
1)Only topics that are in the news now or within a week of your lesson are allowed
2)Readings, listenings and videos are essential and a whole lesson can just be on reading and discussion
3)Listenings and texts should be followed by summaries and reflections where students must present their response to the input referring to it where needed
4)Students should be encouraged to use dictionaries/thesaurus/colloc at all times to find language they don’t understand
5)Vocab and grammar should be pulled from the input and used to discuss the content then recycled into output but naturally and ‘in context’.It must be shown to be useful to help work on the topic
6)Nothing should be explicitly taught out of context
7)Critical and meaningful speaking AND writing must be developed
8)For speaking & writing, only common genres should be used such as writing a text message, a purposeful letter, a blog post, a tweet, an email, chatting, discussing and arguing. No fake role-plays.
9)Students must be told they are wrong when they are then helped to understand why and progress
10)Everything should always be comfortably challenging or even hard on an intellectual level
11)Challenging homework should be given after each class such as reading an online article or watching a news report followed by student note-taking and analysis
12)Starting class however you want and letting them develop naturally
13)Treating students like adults and telling them what they need to work on, why and reinforcing it.
14)Learners need to and should be exposed to proficiency/native speech. If it’s too difficult, make it shorter, add scaffolding. Don’t make it stupid (Dale Coulter).
15)No EFL written materials of any kind should be used.
16)At every stage of a lesson students should be challenged and made to explain why answers/comments/ideas are right and wrong and to provide alternatives
A sample lesson for 18+
Topic: Internet surveillance
Materials: Youtube video about Microsoft teaming up with the government to monitor internet use
Goals: Critical listening, discussion, context-specific vocab, arguing about pros and cons, writing a letter to the government
Discussion of responses
Vocab+word formation/collocations+contextual use
“Paul, why do you believe that the speaker thinks…..?”
“But couldn’t it also be true that…?”
“What else could he have said in support of this argument?”
“Sarah, you have made 2 grammar mistakes, do you know what they are? Can someone tell her? Sarah, do you know why you make those mistakes?…Your homework for this week is to revise…and practice it. We will check next week to see how you have progressed. Can anyone give Sarah some help?”
“Your ideas are OK but you are missing a couple of key things…” “ Why did you not think of these?””Based on these ideas, now can you think of some more?”
Isn’t this just an EAP/BE/ESP style class?
If this is what we should be doing why have we been wasting time playing games and having fun for so long?
Does the CELTA really prepare us to teach like this?
Will this mean the end of summer schools and ‘fun learning’?
Is Krashen to blame as we have all been using his ‘affective filter’ as our main support for doing fun lessons?
Are challenging lessons suitable for younger learners?