Have you seen in your ELT travels that teacher sitting in the classroom making personal calls on his mobile while he's supposed to be teaching? A common enough example of a blight in our overall profession? A sign of a teacher who lacks professionalism and consideration for his learners?
Well, of late I've occasionally been that teacher. Hopefully, if you read on, you'll decide not to bestow some of those less-flattering labels on the Raven...
Today I applied something I like to call "live listening" with a more advanced group of learners. This is something I've really been enjoying utilising as a teacher, as it isn't the sort of thing I had access to (nor might have been all that appropriate) when I was teaching in an EFL context. Here in an ESL context, with adult learners, it's a different kettle of fish.
Basically, I regularly bring real telephone enquiries into the classroom, based on what is happening in my real life (so long as it isn't too personal and correlates well with the learners' own needs and the curricular goals for their levels).
This can be things like calling up the phone or power company to check something about an actual bill I have received, booking in my car for a service, talking to the real estate agent about issues to do with our home... the list goes on.
There are a variety of ways to apply this for learning purposes, but my favourite method is to:
(a) Introduce the particular situation to the learners and discuss it with them in relation to their own lives
(b) Have them draw a line down the centre of a page in their notebooks
(c) Have them listen and write down notes (on the left-hand side of their pages) while I make the actual phone call, which I also video record on my Flipcam
(d) Have them work in pairs or threes to try and accurately reconstruct what I said during the conversation
(e) Have them work in their pairs/groups to try and figure out what was being said at the other end of the line (the voice they can't hear)
(f) I play the Flipcam video again a couple of times for the class so that they can watch and listen again and make any adjustements or additions to what they've already got down
(g) Check and discuss learners' transcripts and guesses about the other speaker's involvement, as well as anything noteworthy or interesting about the overall conversation
Often it works out best if the learners can do parts (d) and (e) at the same time, as it really promotes hypothesising and discourse awareness.
I don't broadcast the voice at the other end of the line out of respect for privacy, but also because I think it's more engaging from a language development point of view to experiment and try and work out ways in which what I'm saying could be working within an overall dialogue.
The telephone enquiry today was about making an appointment for my children to see a doctor at our local medical clinic. Real situation with real timing: my children were both sick last night, and the very haggard look of Mr. Raven in the video is genuine and warranted (it's 9:10 a.m. and I've had all of three hours sleep on account of our two suffering bairns).
What really amazes me about these real telephone conversations is how unlike the scripted coursebookish ones we're accustomed to presenting to our learners they tend to be. For example, the lady at the clinic today answered the phone and said (at 9:10 a.m.) "Good afternoon - um, oops!"
I also like the fact that the pauses as I listen to or wait on the person at the other end of the line give the learners a nice series of breaks to not only add to their notes about what I'm saying, but also think and hypothesize about what the person at the other end of the line is currently saying in response, using my facial expressions and body language as valuable cues. These pauses help to make this listening experience more manageable for the learners, but also more thought-provoking.
On a final note, it always interests me how real "live" listening experiences like this seem to automatically encourage the learners to notice and ask questions about speaking style and communication strategies, not to mention cultural aspects of "local" conversations. In the example above, how did I set a friendly tone at the start of the conversation (and why)? How did I push for appointment times that suited me better than the initial ones on offer? What did I push for and not get? How and why did I finish up the conversation the way I did?
Today, following this exercise, the learners (who all have a reasonably high level of English) confessed that none of them call the clinic to make appointments to see the doctor (for themselves or their children). They get their Australian spouses to do it for them... And following today, they all agreed they ought to be giving it a shot on their own, and that it isn't necessarily as intimidating as they previously imagined it would be.
Great activity - love using it in class!