Issue 104

May
2016

The Leading Practical Magazine For English Language Teachers Worldwide

Tales of the unexpected

Beth Davies
Mission possible
William Chaves Gomes
I blog, therefore I am
Pete Clements
Why do a TESOL research
degree?
Emily Edwards, Nha Vu, Sovannarith Lim
and Chiem Khang Mai

• practical methodology

• fresh ideas & innovations

• classroom resources

• new technology

• teacher development

• tips & techniques

• photocopiable materials

• competitions & reviews

w w w . e t p r o f e s s i o n a l . c o m
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Contents MAIN FEATURE
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED 4
Beth Davies is in favour of flexible planning
FEATURES
DIRECTING THEATRE 8
Michael McCarrell gets his students on stage
JAZZ CHANTS 12
Scott Gross finds chanting ideal for his students
ORAL TESTING 15
Hua Yuan and Zenhui Rao rely on roleplays
STORIES FOR A WIDE WORLD 38
Stephen Reilly highlights short stories written by women
TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS
VISUAL AND VERBAL SCAFFOLDS 18
Handoyo Widodo and Arnis Silvia find inspiration
in their fridges
FUN WAYS TO WRITE 22
Laura Besley offers creative writing ideas
21ST-CENTURY TEACHING AND LEARNING 23
Fiona Baker insists on integrating essential skills
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION! 25
Katie Alaniz focuses on her students’ stories
EAP
THINKING SKILLS 5 27
Louis Rogers and Nick Thorner help students organise
their ideas logically
MISSION POSSIBLE 32
William Chaves Gomes overcomes what seems
at first impossible
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
BRIDGING THE TECHNOPHOBE– 46
TECHNOPHILE GAP 5
Daniel Monaghan and Tessa Woodward approach
stimulus creation for teachers with differing attitudes to
technology
WHY DO A TESOL RESEARCH DEGREE? 48
Emily Edwards, Nha Vu, Sovannarith Lim and
Chiem Khang Mai relate their rewarding experiences
LOVE YOUR LARYNX! 51
Richard Pinner has advice for those who like
the sound of their own voice
I BLOG, THEREFORE I AM 53
Pete Clements assesses the professional development
potential of blogging
TECHNOLOGY
POWERPOINT 55
Stephanie Hirschman evaluates a powerful teaching tool
FIVE THINGS YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO 57
KNOW ABOUT: TECHNOLOGY AND
SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS
Nicky Hockly discusses technological support
for the disadvantaged
WEBWATCHER 59
Russell Stannard delves into discussion forums
REGULAR FEATURES
IT WORKS IN PRACTICE 36
REVIEWS 40
SCRAPBOOK 42
COMPETITION 45
PICTURE PUZZLE 60
Includes materials designed to photocopy
1
 Editorial
I
f you don’t want your students to lurk silently at the
back of the class like those pictured by Jon Marks in
the Langwich Scool cartoon on page 60, then you
need to find ways to get them engaged and involved.
In our main feature, Beth Davies suggests that a degree of
flexibility in lesson planning, which allows for exploitation
of unforeseen events and unexpected student
contributions, will help towards demonstrating to the
students that their input is valued and respected, thereby
encouraging them to join in more eagerly.
Getting his students to play an active role in drama
lessons, to the extent of putting on a complete theatre
production, is Michael McCarrell’s goal, whilst Scott Gross
finds no difficulty in persuading his Vietnamese students to
take part enthusiastically in jazz chants – this medium
being one that complements their own cultural and
educational ethos.
encouraging their engagement in the activity by making it
as much fun as possible. The motivation displayed by
Katie Alaniz’s students, one of whom expresses a wish
that they could ‘do this every day’, goes to show how
digital storytelling can capture young imaginations and
ensure full participation in class.
Nicky Hockly looks at how technology can enable even
those students with physical or learning difficulties to take
a full part in language lessons. And Russell Stannard
recommends using online forums to get students engaged
in discussions both inside and outside the classroom.
Active participation in learning is the key to success, so
I hope you will find inspiration in this issue and ideas that
you can use to make your students enthusiastic learners.

When it comes to teaching children, Handoyo Widodo and

Arnis Silvia believe that students are never too young to
participate in writing activities – as long as proper verbal Helena Gomm
and visual scaffolding is provided by the teacher. Laura Editor
Besley also has some ideas for getting children to write, helena.gomm@pavpub.com

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2 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

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Tales of the
M A I N F E AT U R E
unexpected
W
Beth Davies reviews hen delivering teacher
training sessions on
the case for flexibility and lesson planning, I often
begin with Mary Spratt,
anticipation in lesson Alan Pulverness and Marion Williams’s
‘metaphor’ activity in which the trainees
planning. have to complete the following sentence:
A lesson plan is most like …
an instruction leaflet
a photograph
a story
a road map
a series of road signs
a written summary
a computer programme
something else
While there is clearly no right or wrong
answer here, most trainees (both
in-service and pre-service) tend to
complete the sentence with a road map
or a series of road signs, ie the plan
shows us where we are going and how
we are going to get there. However, it
soon becomes apparent that, as with any
journey, there may be times when we
will need to take a different, perhaps
unexpected, route.
The planning paradox
In 1996, Craig Thaine described how he
and his colleagues had increased the
emphasis on timetabling and lesson
planning in their teacher training
courses. The rationale behind this was
4 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
that he was concerned that the courses
‘were often not adequately preparing
candidates in the very useful skill of
timetabling in daily, weekly or monthly
blocks’.
His article provoked an extreme
response from Mario Rinvolucri, who
questioned the very assumptions on
which it was based, as can be seen in the
following extract:
‘The assumption behind your article seems
to be that a teacher on a Sunday evening
should know what ... she will be doing with
her class on Friday morning, five lessons
on. The assumption fills me with a mixture
of amazement and hilarity. How can I
possibly, on a Sunday evening, know what
will make sense to me and to at least some
of my learning group the following Friday
morning? ...Why do you consciously teach
your trainees to elaborate mental
structures that ignore their flesh-and-
blood, here-and-now learners?’
In his reply to this letter, Craig Thaine
pointed out that, for novice teachers in
particular, a plan (or mental structure)
might be ‘just the map we initially need’.
These exchanges illustrate perfectly
the ‘planning paradox’: while it appears
to make little sense to go into any
situation without thinking about what
to do, if we pre-determine what is going
to happen before it takes place, we may
be in danger of missing opportunities
for development.
So, does planning have the potential
to hinder student and teacher creativity?
Advantages and
disadvantages of
planning
!
Before we go any further, take a
moment to consider your
responses to these questions:
What are the advantages and
disadvantages of planning (on a daily,
weekly or monthly basis)?
How much planning do you do? What
format does it take?
Now take a look at the table opposite, in
which I have suggested some benefits
and potential drawbacks of planning.
The planning continuum
Whatever our personal views on the
planning paradox, the fact remains that
most of us do what Tessa Woodward
describes as ‘some thinking and preparing
before class’. Jeremy Harmer refers to
this as a ‘proposal for action’, which may
fall somewhere along this continuum:
A ‘jungle path’ lesson, which is how
Jim Scrivener describes a lesson in
which very little is prepared but,
instead, the lesson is created moment
by moment by responding to the
learners and whatever is happening in
the classroom. There may or may not
be an activity or a piece of material as
a starting point, but what comes out
of it will not be known until the
moment in which it happens.
Some sort of ‘corridor planning’,
which, according to Jeremy Harmer,
basically involves a few vague ideas
being formulated in the teacher’s head
as they walk towards the classroom.
Scribbling down a few notes (eg the
name of an activity, a language point
or lexical area to work on) on a piece
of paper, perhaps in the form of a
brief ‘running order’.
Allowing the coursebook to act as the
plan.
A plan you may have to produce for a
formal observation.
An assessed lesson plan which forms
part of a teacher training programme.
Implementing and
modifying the lesson plan
Regardless of where our approach to
planning for a particular lesson falls on
the spectrum (and, of course, this may
differ, depending on a whole host of
Advantages
New teachers, especially, need a plan
to guide them through the lesson.
The students like to know what the
teacher has in store for them; it
provides a sense of direction and
reassures them.
Evidence of teacher planning can
instil confidence in the students.
A complete lack of planning may appear
irresponsible to the students and
others (colleagues, supervisors, etc).
It allows teachers to consider issues
such as the ratio of practice and
development of skills to language input.
factors, including the aim of the lesson in
question and how confident we feel about
how best to achieve this, the available
time, our motivation levels, how
experienced we are, and so on), once the
‘proposal for action’ is implemented in
the classroom, all sorts of things could
happen, many of which we may not have
anticipated. Jeremy Harmer suggests a
number of reasons why we might have
to divert from our plan, once a lesson is
in progress. These are:
1 ‘Magic moments’: when a
conversation develops unexpectedly or
when a topic produces an unanticipated
level of interest. This is the moment
when the students suddenly really want
to talk about a topic, or when a
contribution is so extraordinary,
challenging or amusing that everyone,
including the teacher, wants to follow it
up. At such moments, we have to make
quick decisions about what to do: carry
on with the planned lesson or seize the
moment? If we carry on as if the
moment had never occurred, we might
miss a perfect opportunity for real
communication; it may also suggest to
our learners that we are not really
respecting them or listening to them.
The best option may be to recognise the
moment and see how it can be used,
rather than ignoring it because it doesn’t
fit into our plan.
2 ‘Sensible diversion’ or
‘opportunistic teaching’: when
something non-magical happens, which
causes us to reconsider our plan. For
example, our students might start trying
to use some grammar or vocabulary that
we had not planned to introduce, so this
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
Disadvantages
Teachers may be so focused on
short- and medium-term needs that
they fail to respond to the students’
needs as they arise during a lesson.
Teachers may be so focused on
achieving their lesson aims that they
fail to notice or interact with their
here-and-now students.
It could make lessons predictable.
Teachers may become too focused on
variety, and forget language and/or
skills that actually meet their students’
needs.
leads us to focus on the emerging
language, rather than sticking with what
we had intended to teach.
3 ‘Unforeseen problems’: despite
thorough planning, unforeseen problems
often occur. For example:
The students may find an activity
which we thought would be
interesting really boring.
An activity may take more or less time
than anticipated.
The students may find something that
we thought would be fairly simple
very difficult (or vice versa).
Fewer students than we have planned
for may turn up to class.
The students may have used the
material or done the activity we had
planned before.
Technology may fail.
In such instances, it would be almost
impossible to carry on with our plan as
if nothing had happened, and so a
certain amount of flexibility is required.
Of course, it is possible (and advisable!)
to anticipate potential problems in the
lesson and to plan strategies for
overcoming them.
Anticipating problems
and solutions
When producing a formal lesson plan as
part of a teacher training programme or
for an in-house observation, we will
often be asked to complete an
‘anticipated problems and solutions’
section. While I’m sure most people
would agree that anticipating potential
difficulties in relation to the lesson’s
5
Tales of the
unexpected
aims, our students, the learning context
and the equipment and materials to be
used – and thinking carefully about how
to deal with these – is extremely useful,
unfortunately, this may be overlooked in
our everyday teaching (perhaps due to
heavy workloads and time constraints).
However, I would suggest that this is
a habit it is worth getting (back) into.
For example, take a look at the possible
problems and solutions listed opposite,
and consider how taking the time to
consider such issues, and how best to
overcome them beforehand, would make
for a more positive learning experience
for the students.
Of course, however well we anticipate
what will happen, surprises will still occur.
Using a plan means having a constant
dialogue between our intentions and the
reality of being in the classroom.
Continuing with a planned activity
simply because it is on the plan can be
detrimental to our students’ perception of
us and may close off potentially beneficial
learning opportunities. To quote Jeremy
Harmer: ‘It is in the implementation and
adaptation of a plan – and the interaction
between the plan and the ever-changing
reality once a lesson has started – that the
planning paradox is ultimately resolved.’
Practical principles for
dealing with ‘hijacks’
Tessa Woodward offers some practical
principles for dealing with what she calls
‘hijacks’ – that is, ‘when something
happens that makes it virtually impossible
for you to do what you planned’. Her
advice for dealing with both pleasant and
unpleasant surprises is summarised below.
When something unexpected
happens, the interruption should be
allowed on any of the following grounds:
You have no choice.
It involves true communication in the
target language.
The students are trying to tell you
something they feel is important.
The hijack is actually more useful and
interesting than what you had planned,
or takes what you had planned deeper
or further in some way.
6 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Problem
Some students may dominate
Solution
Nominate students when eliciting
class discussion and feedback. responses from the class. Elicit feedback
from more vocal students while monitoring,
so they have already had an opportunity
to say what they think, and will be less
likely to dominate during whole-class
feedback.
The wide variation in reading ability of Prepare an extra ‘unknown vocabulary’
the students may mean that some finish sheet so that the more able students have
the tasks more quickly and become an additional set of words to identify and
bored or distracted. infer the meaning of.
The students may attempt to use their Ask the students to put their dictionaries
dictionaries during a lexical inferencing away and (re-)explain the rationale behind
task. the strategy.
Some students may try to read the text Set up the task clearly and recap/elicit the
too intensively during the scanning stage. purpose of this subskill (script this). Also,
set a strict time limit. Monitor carefully, to
ensure the students are not reading
word-by-word.
Technology may fail. Draw a table designed to be completed
on an IWB during feedback on the regular
board, or prepare a completed table with
the answers for the vocabulary stage, so
that the students can check their answers
without needing to use the screen.
The students may run out of things to say Encourage them to use the notes
during the final speaking fluency activity. prepared during the planning stage to
help with ideas. Prompt any students
who are struggling.
With an ordering task, the students may When setting up the task, encourage the
struggle to put the sentences in order, students to sort the sentences into topics
resulting in this stage taking longer than before trying to order them. If necessary,
anticipated.
prompt them by giving them the first (and
last) sentence of each paragraph.
It allows you to ‘cash in’ on a Longer-term
teachable moment.
suggestions
The majority of students state clearly
that they like the interruption, and it’s Although it can be daunting, in the
long-term, you may want to work on
for their good.
ways of getting better at ‘going with the
It doesn’t take long and it makes one or flow’ and accepting real life flexibly and
two people very happy by, for example, creatively. Here are some practical
accommodating their learning style. suggestions, as well as some ideas from
Woodward goes on to suggest that when published sources:
something unexpected happens, you
should try to disallow it when: Really listen and respond naturally
and appropriately to your students’
It is a case of one or two students contributions in class. This will help
dominating for too long. to build rapport and will demonstrate
After checking, you find that other that you view your students as
students are bored or upset by the individuals and are interested in what
interruption. they have to say. You may even be able
You haven’t got the emotional skill or to incorporate their contributions into
stamina to deal with the interruption. the lesson.
 Notice your students’ output, and
exploit their contributions to further
enhance their control and use of
language and their skills development.
This may include incorporating a
variety of error-correction techniques
and giving constructive feedback.
Adapt your plan, as necessary, to the
emerging needs of your students. For
example, you may need to adapt your
planned timings or interaction
patterns, omit a stage or include an
extra unplanned activity in response
to linguistic, motivational or learning
needs which emerge during the lesson.
Improve your ability to make
appropriate decisions as to which
direction the lesson should take by
working with ‘decisive incident reading
mazes’. These can help you to take a
systematic approach to the many
decisions involved in everyday teaching,
and are described by Judith Kennedy
as ‘a way of presenting structured
alternative actions’. Incidents are
identified and alternative possibilities
for action are chosen, with each
possibility leading to further reflection
and options for action. According to
Kennedy, working with mazes can help
you to become more aware of how to
choose particular courses of action and
reflect on their possible outcomes.
Draw on your personal experience in
the classroom by discussing and
reflecting on real-life ‘critical incidents’.
David Tripp offers a range of strategies
for approaching this, and gives advice
on how to develop a critical incident
file. Of course, your analysis doesn’t
have to be as formal as systematically
categorising critical incidents in this
way; it’s just important to raise
awareness and, subsequently, become
more confident in handling the
unexpected in a professional manner.
Get together a group of colleagues
and play Rosie Tanner and Catherine
Green’s ‘snakes and ladders’ game, in
which the aim is to suggest acceptable
solutions to problems which may arise
during the course of a lesson in order
to progress through the game and
make it to the end of the class.
Depending on which square you land
on, you have to deal with issues caused
by the teacher (eg ‘You have five
minutes before the lesson ends and you
have nothing left to do’), the students
(eg ‘Over half your students have not
brought their books to the lesson’) or a
surprise (eg ‘The video recorder works
with picture only, no sound’). This
will encourage you to think about and
discuss (in a fun way!) practical
strategies for dealing with the
unexpected in class. It certainly goes
down very well with my Delta trainees!
Although we will undoubtedly take
different approaches to planning
throughout our teaching careers, the
ultimate aim of a plan is to guide us
through what we are going to do and
how we are going to do it, with the
ultimate aim being to enhance learning
opportunities for our students. To return
to our original metaphor, then, a plan is
perhaps best seen as a road map or
series of road signs and, as such, we
should be prepared for the possibility of
diversions en route. As Jeremy Harmer
says: ‘Classrooms are dynamic
environments and ... a lesson is an
interactive event in which people interact
with each other and with the language.’
I hope this article has raised
awareness of the need for anticipation
and flexibility in both the planning and
execution of these interactive events and
provided some practical suggestions of
ways in which we can respond to our
students’ needs – and deal with the
unexpected in the classroom.
This is your magazine. We want to hear from you!
Reviewing
for ETp
Would you like to review books
or other teaching materials for ETp?
We are always looking for people who are
interested in writing reviews for us.
It really worked
for me!
Did you get inspired by something you read
in ETp? Did you do something similiar with
your students? Did it really work in practice?
Do share it with us ...
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
Harmer, J The Practice of English
Language Teaching (4th edn) Pearson
2007
Kennedy, J ‘Using mazes in teacher
education’ ELT Journal 53 (2) 1999
Rinvolucri, M ‘Letter to Craig Thaine’
The Teacher Trainer 10 (2) 1996
Scrivener, J Learning Teaching (2nd edn)
Macmillan 2005
Spratt, M, Pulverness, A and Williams, M
The TKT Course CUP 2011
Tanner, R and Green, C Tasks for Teacher
Education Longman 1998
Thaine, C ‘Dealing with timetabling on
teacher training courses’ The Teacher
Trainer 10 (1) 1996
Thaine, C ‘Letter to Mario Rinvolucri.’
The Teacher Trainer 10 (3) 1996
Tripp, D Critical Incidents in Teaching
Routledge 1993
Woodward, T Planning Lessons and
Courses CUP 2001
Beth Davies is a CELTA
and Delta tutor, based
at the ELTC at the
University of Sheffield,
UK. She has worked in
ELT for almost 14 years
in a variety of contexts
and has an MA in Applied
Linguistics with TESOL.
e.davies@sheffield.ac.uk
IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
Do you have ideas you’d like to share
with colleagues around the world?
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7
Directing
IN THE CLASSROOM
theatre
Michael McCarrell
and his students learn as
T
he purpose of this article is to
provide a detailed account of
my experiences in producing
and directing a play, in the
they go. hope that other teachers who are
considering teaching through the use of
theatre will gain some insight into the
challenges that lie before them and learn
some possible strategies to deal with
those challenges. Let me say that of all
my experiences as a teacher, none has
been more challenging – nor more
satisfying.
In the beginning ...
Several of my Thai students asked me to
teach a drama class the next semester. I
had actually already suggested just such
a thing to the head of the department,
so I told them I would love to.
I have an extensive background in
western theatre as a performer, director
and teacher. As an English teacher, I
had also used shadow theatre in
elementary schools and had directed a
play with young learners in Korea. I
wanted my drama class to be as close to
what I had experienced as a college
student as possible, within the structure
of an ELT environment. In preparation,
I searched online for articles related to
using drama/theatre in ELT classes. I
didn’t find any articles dealing with
taking a class all the way through to a
production, and it quickly became
apparent that this would be a learn-as-
you-go class.
8 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Classes
One of the first things I learnt was that
the students wanted the classes to
culminate in a production, though none
of them had any previous experience in
theatre. Their level of English varied
from false beginner (with very poor
grammar) right up to upper-
intermediate. I wasn’t overly concerned
with their English level, however,
because I planned to teach acting
techniques that required very little
conversational ability.
The Meisner method of acting
involves listening to other actors,
responding to what you hear and feel,
and allowing this to drive your
performance. I don’t watch a lot of Thai
television, but a lot of TV comedy seems
to consist of making funny faces. This is
called ‘mugging’ in western theatre, and
it is generally frowned upon because too
often it results in audience
embarrassment and alienation. I felt it
was important to ground the students in
honest listening and reacting, as a
baseline for how to approach acting in
the drama class.
Repetition
The most famous Meisner exercise is
called ‘Repetition’. I put the students in
pairs, and told them that all they had to
do was ‘listen’ to their partners.
(Listening in this context involves
reading a partner’s expressions and body
movement and using this to inform your
own reactions.) For example, one
student might see a smile on their
partner’s face and then could start the
exercise by saying happy. The partner
would then repeat happy and the word
would be passed back and forth between
the two students quickly without
thinking, until something in the
repetition changed, either visually or
auditorily, causing an emotional shift.
The word would then change, to reflect
the new emotion felt by either one of
the students. This exercise evolves over
time and becomes more and more
complex, with other elements added,
until you arrive at an honest,
organically-driven
performance.
I found
it important
to stress
repeatedly to the students
that they were not responsible for
doing anything. If either student forced
the exercise (changing the word for no
observable reason, for example), I
would immediately stop them and ask
what caused the change. If the change
came about organically, I let the
repetition continue for a while, before
stopping it and giving praise. The
activity is not as easy as it may sound.
In the Meisner class I took in New York
City, we did nothing but this exercise in
every class for the first three months. In
my English class, we were only able to
do it for a total of three classes.
My students gave it their best effort,
and to some extent they were successful.
However, ultimately, they lacked the
ability to react instantly and accurately
because of a lack of vocabulary: they
needed to keep stopping and translating
what they were feeling. Thus, as an
exercise to get them out of their heads
and react emotionally, it was only
partially successful. It did, however,
succeed in grounding them in honest
performance, and also encouraged them
to attach feeling to the use of English.
I soon realised that many of the
advanced Meisner techniques I had used
previously in non-ELT acting classes,
focusing on listening and reacting, were
not going to work. The level of English
was just too low for such difficult tasks.
Floor
not o wor
nly de k
coord velop
inatio ed
gave n, but
me also
which some idea
stude of
physi nts w
cally e r
talent e
ed
Theatre games
Basic theatre games were more
successful. The ‘trust’ exercise – where
one student stands in the middle of a
circle of other students, closes his or her
eyes and falls backwards, being caught by
the students behind – always struck me as
a waste of time as a young actor, but it
gained great respect from me as a teacher.
Many of my students were terrified and
unable to let go. When they were
encouraged to keep trying, and succeeded
after several attempts, they often
displayed an enormous sense of victory.
Later, on the opening night before the
show, I reminded them of this exercise
and told them to trust in all the work
they’d done to bring them to this point.
Other theatre games included the
‘mirror’ exercise, where partners face each
other and follow each other’s very slow
movements so that it appears as if each
is looking into a mirror. This helps to
reinforce the concept of watching for
minor details as a part of the listening
process. Floor work (various kinds of
movement by the class from one end of
the room to the other) not only
developed coordination, but also gave me
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
© iStockphoto.com / vicnt
some idea of
which students
were physically
talented. I used
guided relaxation
exercises to connect them
with their diaphragms for
sound production, using a soft
‘ha-ha’ sound. This was useful in
the production when they needed to
laugh or cry. I gave them basic
instruction on working with emotion to
support the text, but really only
scratched the surface there. I gave them
the analogy of the script being a ship
that is floating on an ocean of emotion.
They needed to fill the ‘ocean’ with
emotion of their own creation, in order
for the ship to float, the script to work.
We also worked with objectives and
actions by using a simple one-page
scene. The objective an actor was given,
such as ‘Make the other actor laugh’ or
‘Make the other actor look at his shoes’,
would completely change the way the
lines were said.
Discipline
The class was very popular, as there was
no mid-term or final examination – the
course grade would be determined by
participation and the final performance
alone. To establish the seriousness of the
course, I instituted one of the rules that
I had had as a young theatre student: If
you miss more than two classes, you will
be dropped from the course. The students
needed to understand that live theatre is
a group effort. If any single person fails
to perform, the entire project is
endangered. Getting a cold or having to
go to a family gathering is not an
acceptable excuse. The show must go on.
9
Directing
theatre
Casting
Several weeks into the course, I asked
the students who would be interested in
performing. In a typical drama class in
the US, nearly every student would
happily kill to get on stage! However, out
of 40 students, there were just ten girls
and ten boys who – somewhat reluctantly
– raised their hands. Of the ten girls, two
were identical twins: how was I to use
them both without hopelessly confusing
the audience? I also needed to find a
script, and it was evident from the
preceding acting exercises that a
full-length play would be too much. I
needed to find a suitable one-act drama.
After searching online, I settled on a
one-act comedy called Check, Please by
Jonathan Rand. This consists of a clever
series of short scenes with lots of visual
comedy. The dialogue was simple
enough for the students to handle, and
the technical demands were modest. An
immediately apparent benefit was that
one of the female characters is a mime
in full make-up and, by happy
coincidence, the most gifted student in
movement happened to be one of the
female twins who were auditioning.
Ultimately, only seven girls auditioned
for the seven available female roles. Ten
boys auditioned for the seven male roles.
So, as a director, I didn’t have much of a
casting pool to choose from. After having
each student read various excerpts from
the play, I assigned the roles.
The rest of the class formed the
production crew. First and foremost, I
needed a stage manager: someone
dependable, who was capable of running
the show and willing to be at each
rehearsal with me. Next was the stage
crew, consisting of properties and set. I
had chosen a play with very little in
terms of a set: just two tables with two
chairs at each, and only the props
(flowers, plates, glasses, etc) changing
between scenes. Nevertheless, the stage
crew would need to be very well
organised, and prepared to change the
props rapidly for each scene. We also
needed a costume crew to help design
and find the necessary costumes, and
sound and lighting crews to design and
run sound/lighting during the
performance. Finally, we needed a
10 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
front-of-house crew to make all the
programmes, posters and tickets, to sell
the tickets and to run the front-of-house
before the performance.
Rehearsals
Check, Please is about a boy and a girl
going on separate blind dates with various
other characters, their scenes alternating.
I set a rehearsal schedule of alternating
days for the boy’s and girl’s scenes, with
rehearsals for the full cast on Fridays. This
gave three rehearsals of 90 minutes to two
hours each, per week, for each character.
In normal circumstances, rehearsal time
for a one-act play would probably be three
At the
post-production
party and for weeks
after, I heard students
quoting their favourite
lines from various
actors
weeks of five 90-minute rehearsals a week.
We rehearsed in an eight-week period,
with two weeks off for New Year and
mid-term exams, giving a total of six
weeks. The last two weeks, we rehearsed
run-throughs (run the whole play, give
notes, run it again, give notes) five nights
a week for 90 minutes. The final
performance ran at just over 30 minutes.
Pronunciation
The first obvious problems were
pronunciation and word/sentence stress.
At the beginning of the rehearsal
period, several of the students were
unintelligible. Problem sounds were / /
(which came out as / /), / /, / /, / /, / /
and / /. I attacked the problem with
tongue twisters:
Rubber baby buggy bumpers
These things that we do are the things
that we do
Lady luck is a very red lollipop
I explained to the students that actors use
tongue twisters to warm up the muscles of
the mouth before performing, and that
they needed to do these exercises for at
least five minutes per day at home and five
minutes before each rehearsal. Despite my
continual reminders and remonstrations,
these exercises were not used as much as
I could have wished. We did enough,
though, for the students to be pretty well
understood throughout the performance.
Giving readings
One of the cardinal sins of directing is
to give an actor a ‘reading’: to tell them
how to say a line. If the way to deliver a
line is not found organically, it will never
sound quite right and the actor will be
locked into mimicking, in order to fulfil
the director’s wishes, rather than having
the freedom to listen, explore and grow.
Ideally, a director guides an actor
towards discovering the way to say a line
by asking leading questions about the
actor’s own experiences and feelings. My
problem was that the students had no
frame of reference to guide them. If an
actor has never heard a phrase stressed
for meaning in a certain way, how can
you possibly lead them to it? In listening
class, students are not expected to find
these things organically, nor should they
be. In order to keep the production on
track, there were times when I had no
choice other than to give readings for
sentence stress, but it was always a last
resort. At the celebratory post-
production party and for weeks after, I
heard students quoting their favourite
lines from various actors, and the
unusual and often comic intonation was
almost always the cause of mirth.
Blocking
Blocking (deciding where and when
actors move) was something new to the
students. They had to learn terms like
upstage, downstage, what a cross is, how
to write all the blocking notes into their
scripts, even basic things like how to
‘open up’ so you can all be seen. Talking
normally but loud enough to be heard in
the back row of the audience took a lot
of practice and constant reminders.
Humming to warm up the cavities in
the head that project sound is very helpful,
and the students were more willing to hum
than to do tongue twisters. I did finally
resort to placing two microphones on
the floor at the edge of the stage. Not
surprisingly, one of these ceased
working five minutes before the actual
performance … the joy of live theatre!
Memorising
Memorisation is critical to the rehearsal
process. I know from experience that if
actors still have scripts in their hands a
week before the performance, the show
is in big trouble. I wanted the scripts out
of my students’ hands three weeks
before the opening. It is the director’s
job to force the issue on this. I also knew
that the difficulty of memorisation was
magnified by a lot of new vocabulary,
but that was a reason to get off-script
even earlier. Actors will find themselves
unsure where to focus and what to do
with their hands when their scripts are
first put down, so they need time to get
used to the new dynamic.
Initially, I told the students not to
get stressed if they forgot their lines
because the stage manager would be
following the script and they could just
call Line when they needed help. Actors
naturally want to take time to struggle
and ‘find’ the words they’ve forgotten,
but in excess this is counterproductive.
If too much time was taken in trying to
recall a forgotten line, I called Line for
them so they learnt this was the right
thing to do.
If the rehearsal really couldn’t
proceed because an actor didn’t know a
particular section, I handed them the
script, pointing out gently that they had
a lot of work to do before the next
rehearsal. The students soon learnt where
their memorisation problems were and
where their work needed to be focused.
Pace
In the last week of rehearsals before the
‘tech week’, the students started to put
together everything we had worked on.
They were listening and reacting. They
were acting, bringing their own creativity
to the life of their characters. As the
director, I introduced new blocking or
‘business’ (direction for what the actors
are to do) where scenes seemed not to be
working. Where the pace was too slow, I
had the students do speed-throughs.
This is where actors say their lines as
fast as possible, without thought or
interpretation. Speed is everything. They
must anticipate the ending of cue lines
so as to deliver their lines immediately
afterwards. Nothing kills comedy like
slow pacing or pauses between each actor
saying lines. Speed-throughs are an
excellent remedy for poor pacing.
Things were going very well and, in
general, I felt we were ready for ‘tech
week’.
Final rehearsals
Tech week consists of the last rehearsals
before a performance, when lighting,
sound, costume, make-up and set
changes are put into the foreground and
worked into the production. It is also,
therefore, a time when the performance is
put in the background and momentum
can be lost if you are not careful. Our
tech rehearsals were complicated by
problems with lighting. Initially, the tech
rehearsal blackouts and lights up
consisted of one of the lighting staff
turning the fluorescent room lights off
and on. More sophisticated lighting was
hired from Bangkok, but there were some
problems. The company expected that
the lights would be removed by the two
attending technicians and taken back to
Bangkok – a 90-minute drive – at the end
of each evening, which meant that they
would have to be re-hung, wired and the
levels set each day before the
performance. I had to argue rather
forcefully that the lights had been rented
for three days and so would remain hung
for the entire three days. I could not
accept a situation where a van caught in
traffic or involved in an accident could
cause the complete collapse of months of
hard work. In the end, because of various
problems, the lights did need to be
re-wired and re-focused each day, but
the company agreed to leave them there.
I also stipulated the need for a lighting
board, which did not come initially, but
when I explained the need for fading in
and out on two separate areas of the
stage, we did get a board for the final
dress rehearsal and performance.
The final dress rehearsal is the last
chance to get the performance right.
Traditionally, there is an audience of
invited guests, giving everyone in the
production a chance to feel what it is
like to have an audience. As we were
doing a comedy, it would be the first
chance for the students to get a feeling
of how to act through laughter. I told
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
them that they would need to be aware
of audience laughter and to wait for it
to peak; just as it began to decrease they
would need to deliver the next line,
speaking even louder than normal.
There were times early on when success
looked doubtful. However, the students
consistently rose to the occasion. I let
them know what wasn’t working and they
responded with hard work and open
minds. We needed curtains and a student’s
mother sewed an entire black stage cloth,
wings and a backdrop. The stage
manager’s father graciously sponsored
the production with a gift of money.
The performance far exceeded my
hopes and was very successful. I’ve
never been more proud of any
production with which I’ve been
associated, because there was so much
more to overcome. I know the students
in the class all felt an enormous sense
of accomplishment, and rightly
so. It was a tremendous amount
of work. Not only did we stage
a production, but we staged it
in a second language for the first
time ever at that university. I recently
had dinner with several of the actors
and crew. They were nearing
graduation, and all of them told me
their participation in the production
was the highlight of their university
education.
Meisner, S, Longwell, D and Pollack, S
Sanford Meisner on Acting Vintage 1987
Chekhov, M and Callow, S To the Actor
Taylor & Francis 2002
Linklater, K Freeing the Natural Voice
Drama Publishers 1976
Rand, J Check, Please Playscripts Inc
(www.playscripts.com/play) 2002
‘Theatre and Acting/Objectives, Obstacles,
Tactics’ (https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/)
Michael McCarrell has
a Master of Fine Arts
degree in Acting from
UCLA. After gaining his
CELTA qualification, he
started teaching in
Poland and Korea, and
was named the 2009
Native English Speaking
Teacher of the Year in
Seoul. He has also
lectured at Kasetsart
University in Thailand,
and is currently teaching
at Mahidol Wittayanusorn
School in Nakhon
Pathorn, Thailand.
mccarrell.michael@gamil.com
11
JazzAchants
IN THE CLASSROOM
Scott Gross finds s I heard the clapping and
the chanting, I realised that
that communal chanting students in Vietnam feel
right at home with jazz
strikes a chord in chants. This surprised me, because my
experience with jazz chants (such as
Vietnam. those created by Carolyn Graham) in
North America is that they are only for
those extravert, enthusiastic and artsy
teachers who think it is fun to take
students out of their comfort zone.
However, in Vietnam it appears that jazz
chants fit perfectly into a communal or
group-oriented culture.
As Jean Engler points out, jazz
chants are wonderful at helping students
to become aware of the stress-timed
rhythmic patterns of English, which are
often quite different from the syllable-
timed patterns of many world languages,
including Vietnamese. Furthermore,
according to John Murphy, they are a
great way to integrate listening, speaking
and pronunciation skills in one lesson. For
students with fossilised pronunciation,
William Acton finds that performing
jazz chants with a teacher can be quite
beneficial for mirroring the facial and
body movements of a speaker, in order
to capture important supra-segmental
and intonation patterns. For all these
reasons, jazz chants are not just fun and
appealing to auditory and kinaesthetic
learners, but they are also efficient in
merging the practice of many oral skills.
The case for the effectiveness of jazz
chants from a pedagogical standpoint is
substantial. Even though they are
considered somewhat ‘artistic’ in ELT
methodology, they are actually closer to
the cultural characteristics found in
many Asian classrooms.
Language teaching techniques in
Vietnam have often been judged harshly
as being, in the words of Le Ha Phan,
‘deficient and imposing, didactic and
backward’ when compared with Western
language teaching methods, notably
communicative language teaching. On the
surface, there are many things about the
12 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Vietnamese classroom that do not mix
well with many of the teaching methods
coming from the West. Communicative
language teaching emphasises
communication that promotes fluency
and active participation, with the teacher
taking the role of a facilitator. The
challenge for English teachers from the
West and Vietnamese teachers who wish
to employ more communicative methods
is how to utilise the strengths and
characteristics of the traditional
Vietnamese classroom, in order for
students to experience language learning
in a way that resonates with them
culturally. The wonderful quality of jazz
chants is that they fit quite easily into the
cultural landscape of the Vietnamese
classroom. The congruence is manifested
in the importance of memorisation,
teacher-centred learning, a tight
classroom community, and a high value
placed on music and poetry.
A cultural match
Vietnamese students are very good at
memorising. From primary school
straight through university, they use
memorisation as a tool for retaining
very specific information related to their
subjects. In language classrooms,
students memorise grammar rules and
important linguistic structures. When
faced with teaching methods that
emphasise free speaking and oral fluency,
Vietnamese students can feel quite
disoriented. Students with Western
teachers who favour extemporaneous
speaking rarely hear the same forms
repeated. As a result, they have difficulty
knowing what the best form is and
whether they should memorise it. The
great advantage of jazz chants is that
they present a series of phrases that are
meant to be memorised. In fact, the
words are not just meant to be
memorised, they are meant to be
completely mimicked from the individual
sound level to the sentence level.
 Teacher-centred education in
Vietnam is manifested in the almost
universal use of the lecture technique in
schools. Dialogue and input from
students is almost nonexistent. In
defence of the value of Vietnamese
traditional education, Le Ha Phan
points out that the classroom in
Vietnam ‘is often like a family in which
the sense of supportiveness, politeness and
warmth both inside and outside the
classroom is obvious’. The result of this
is that many students are willing to take
risks as a group, though, individually,
they are quite reluctant to step out of
the group. In a collectivist culture such
as that of Vietnam, it is important to
use the concept of community, instead
of fighting to swim upstream by forcing
the students to participate in ways that
make them stand out.
Jazz chants are teacher-centred in
that the teacher introduces the chant,
performs it as an example and then
invites the students to try it, while
maintaining the role as the ‘chant leader’.
In this way, all the students can actively
participate without losing the dynamic
of a teacher-centred lesson. Jazz chants
invite students in collectivist classrooms
to take risks that they would normally
not take individually. They allow for
active participation in groups – even if
the action itself is a little bizarre.
I have found that getting the students
to clap, stamp their feet, snap their fingers
and chant works well in Vietnamese
classes, since they are accomplishing
something as a unit and there is a sense
of community. The experience chimes
with a Vietnamese proverb that roughly
translates to ‘a single tree on a hillside is
alone, but three trees are a forest’.
Music and movement
The value that Vietnamese people place
on the musical and bodily-kinaesthetic
intelligences can be seen in the emphasis
placed on performing songs and dances
at many occasions during the academic
year, right from primary school up to
university. This is also not something
reserved for those few who can do it really
well – it is expected from all members of a
group, and high value is placed on its role
in solidifying community and family
relationships. A whole class of students
may perform a song publicly as a group,
though only two of them are actually
given microphones to sing into. Jazz
chants relate well to this emphasis on
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
musical and bodily-kinaesthetic
intelligences since they involve music in
terms of rhythm, and physical movements
are employed to express that rhythm.
Vietnam has a rich oral tradition and
there is great interest in poetry. As Claire
Kramsch and Patricia Sullivan have
found, oral communication in Vietnam
‘abounds with proverbs, sayings and
poetic allusions’. Students also enjoy the
use of word play, experimenting with
different tones and syntax in order to
make creative expressions and jokes.
Puns have an auditory element because
Vietnamese is a tonal language. This
interest in poetry and word play
connects well to jazz chants, which are
an interesting genre of poetry with an
important auditory element.
In addition, my students are not
only interested in learning jazz chants
but, more importantly, they are keen to
perform them well. This is something
that lies at the heart of jazz chants,
because the oral repetition of them
solidifies the correct pronunciation.
Since Vietnamese students are used to
learning English through drills and
repetition, I have found that they have
an excellent tolerance for repeating a
jazz chant multiple times in one lesson.
Harmonising traditional
and modern
Brian Tomlinson and Bao Dat conducted
a study of university English students in
Ho Chi Minh City in 2004 and found
that classroom harmony leads to students
wanting to participate actively. They went
on to point out that choral response
‘allowed students to participate securely’.
One of Tomlinson and Dat’s conclusions
was that Vietnamese learners need to
‘reduce their performance anxiety’. They
also deduced that ‘classroom methodology
should reflect the students’ preference for
“a family style”’. Since jazz chants are
performed as a class or in large groups,
the students are able to participate in an
environment that reduces potential
anxiety over losing face and being put on
the spot. Tomlinson and Dat observed
that Vietnamese students need ‘more
culturally sensitive pedagogy as a vehicle
to transfer culturally appropriate subject
matter’. I see jazz chants as an example
of the type of culturally sensitive
pedagogy that can be used in Vietnamese
classrooms.
I find that differences in culture are
often first understood as being ‘right’ or
‘wrong’. I feel that this tendency is
evident in the university setting in
Vietnam. One side wants to show how
the tried and trusted traditional ways of
doing things are still useful. The other
side wants to show how new and
different methods can achieve better
results. These debates are quite
emotionally charged, and people find
themselves defending generations and
hemispheres. Le Ha Phan represents the
voice of reason when she asserts that
‘what one culture values should not result
in devaluing other cultural practices,
which may present similar qualities in
different ways’. I believe that all teachers
need to acknowledge the context that
students come from, and to think about
what approach would best build on the
place where the students already are.
In the end, the point is not necessarily
that jazz chants are the ‘be all and end
all’ of merging communicative language
teaching and traditional East Asian
pedagogy. They do, however, fit nicely
into the traditional educational culture
of the East, even as they are a
progressively creative method coming
from the West.
Acton, W ‘Changing fossilized
pronunciation’ TESOL Quarterly 18 (1) 1984
Engler, J C ‘Review of jazz chants:
rhythms of American English for students
of English as a second language’ TESOL
Quarterly 12 (4) 1978
Graham, C Jazz Chants OUP 1978
Kramsch, C and Sullivan, P ‘Appropriate
pedagogy’ ELT Journal 50 (3) 1996
Murphy, J M ‘Oral communication in
TESOL’ TESOL Quarterly 25 (1) 1991
Phan, L H ‘University classrooms in
Vietnam: contesting the stereotypes’ ELT
Journal 58 (1) 2004
Tomlinson, B and Dat, B ‘The
contributions of Vietnamese learners of
English to ELT methodology’ Language
Teaching Research 8 (2) 2004
Scott Gross taught
English at the University
of Thai Nguyen,
Vietnam, from 2010 to
2014. He holds an MA in
TESOL and Intercultural
Studies from Wheaton
College Graduate
School, Wheaton, USA.
He currently works
internationally for
Pinnacle Teaching
Solutions.
scottgrosstesol@gmail.com
13
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 E X A M S & E VA L U AT I O N
Oral testing
A
Hua Yuan and ssessing students’ oral
proficiency is always
Zhenhui Rao advocate problematic, and it is
particularly difficult with
the use of roleplay with large large classes. Of course, the best way to
evaluate someone’s oral competence is
classes. to talk to them, but grading students in
a large class by means of individual
interviews is almost impossible. In a
moderately large class of 50 students,
for example, even a five-minute interview
with each one will take the teacher more
than four hours! Moreover, as Le Phuoc
Ky points out, any teacher attempting to
do this will become dazed and exhausted
and will not, therefore, be able to remain
objective for all the interviews.
How, then, is it possible for a teacher
with more than 50 students to assess
each student’s performance objectively
in the limited time available for an oral
test? In this article, we will suggest that
roleplay may be one answer.
Using roleplay for
testing
At the beginning of each semester, we
tell our students that they will have an
oral test at the end of each unit of our
textbook. It normally takes around two
weeks to complete a unit. Each test
takes the form of a roleplay, performed
in groups, in which the students are
required to display knowledge of the
topic and core vocabulary from the unit
in question. Immediately afterwards, we
give the students scores and comments
so that they get feedback on their
strengths and weaknesses.
Organising groups
The first step is to divide the students
into several groups. In a class of 50
students, for example, we put them in
ten groups of five, making sure each
group contains a mixture of strong and
weak students to ensure diversity. We
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
select a leader for each group to serve as
a coordinator and to assist us.
Assigning roles
The first unit in our textbook is about
holidays. This unit provides several
sentence patterns and offers a set of core
vocabulary for talking about the topic
of travel. So for our roleplay at the end
of this unit, we ask each group to
choose a topic, such as ‘deciding on a
holiday destination’, ‘planning for a
holiday’, ‘packing for a trip’ or ‘holiday
memories’. Each member in a group is
required to play a role, such as
‘introducing the topic’, ‘giving advice’,
‘making suggestions’, etc. We remind
the students that they are actors in a
roleplay and should not just write a
script and read out their lines. We also
tell them that we would consider it
cheating if any two groups presented the
same roleplay and, as a penalty, we
wouldn’t give them any points. Once the
assignment is given, all the groups have
to prepare and practise their roleplay on
their own outside class.
Making a schedule
Each group is given five minutes to
perform their roleplay. Therefore, for a
class with ten groups, 50 minutes need to
be set aside for the test. However, instead
of testing all the students at one time, we
divide the test over two lessons, setting
aside 25 minutes at the end. The groups
are allowed to choose the order in which
they will perform their roleplays, with the
group leaders signing up for their chosen
five-minute time slots. This gives us a
schedule for the performances, and the
groups are expected to present their
roleplays on schedule.
Testing
Each group is invited to the front of the
class in turn to present their roleplay. At
the beginning of each, the group leader
15
Oral testing
has to introduce the topic they have
chosen and say which role each member
will play. Then all the students act out
their roles as naturally as possible. When
they have finished, we usually ask them
some impromptu questions relating to
their performance.
Grading
We grade our students’ oral performance
in four categories: pronunciation, fluency,
grammar and appropriate use of
language, awarding five points for each
category, which gives a total of 20
possible points for each student. Points
are awarded to each student individually,
rather than to each group as a whole,
because team members may differ greatly
in language proficiency.
In addition, in order to ensure
objectivity and to increase motivation, we
invite the students to get involved in the
oral assessment themselves. We give a
score sheet (see page 17) to each group,
and instruct them how to grade. Thus,
each time a group is doing its roleplay,
the other nine groups and the teacher
award points to each member of the
performing group. An average of all ten
scores gives the final grade. Furthermore,
the students are encouraged to give
comments or make suggestions to their
peers. The students are given the
completed score sheets immediately after
the test, so that they can discover their
own strengths and weaknesses.
Advantages of using
roleplay
So far, we are very happy with the
results of using roleplay for oral testing.
The approach spares us from tedious
interviews with a large number of
students and helps reduce the burden of
grading in a final oral test. Most
important of all, it makes the students
creative in their roleplays and improves
their oral English proficiency. The most
obvious benefits are as follows:
1 Collaboration between
students of different levels
In large classes, it is hard for teachers to
cater for students with many different
proficiency levels. However, using
roleplays can help, to some extent, to
solve this problem. When preparing for
16 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
a roleplay, both advanced and less giving tests is no longer such a burden,
advanced students are encouraged to and grading each student is much easier
make equal contributions, so students of and can be done more objectively.
all proficiency levels participate actively.
They work as a team, in which the 4 Improving students’
stronger students serve as models for the language proficiency
weaker students. The students discuss Roleplays help to get all the students,
and share ideas in their group, and this especially introverted and shy students,
helps improve their thinking and involved in practising English. It
understanding of a given topic. More provides them with the opportunity to
importantly, it contributes to an active use the vocabulary and expressions they
learning environment, in which students have learnt in class to communicate in
feel empowered to meet challenges rather their own way. Using roleplays also
than respond passively to the teacher. helps students to identify and overcome
their weaknesses in speaking and to
2 Increased practice of and improve their oral communication skills.
interest in English outside Having a test for each unit allows for
class ongoing assessment throughout the
The fact that the students get few term, and thus helps students appreciate
opportunities to speak English in a large the progress they are making towards
class makes it especially important that their learning goals. A strong sense of
they practise speaking outside the accomplishment provides motivation for
classroom. In general, students rarely sustained efforts to learn the language.
take oral practice outside the class All these factors ultimately contribute to
seriously if they are not tested on it. A improving the students’ language
good test score becomes a real and proficiency.
immediate reward for the work they do
outside class. Since each unit is Ky, L P ‘Problems, solutions and
accompanied by a test, the students are advantages of large classes’ Teacher’s
Edition 9 2002
stimulated to spend a considerable
amount of time at home practising Hua Yuan is a lecturer
speaking English in preparation for their in Jiangxi Normal
University, China. She
part in the roleplay. is currently studying
In addition, practising a roleplay for a PhD in applied
linguistics. She has
outside class allows the students to work been teaching English
together, discussing, negotiating and for 12 years, and has
reaching agreement on any problems published several
articles in academic
they encounter. Instead of feeling journals.
helpless and frustrated in solo oral
practice, the students can practise
yh3867@sina.com
speaking with their group members.
Such groupwork can gradually develop Zhenhui Rao is a
professor at Jiangxi
the students’ interest in practising oral
English, and stimulate their motivation
Normal University,
China. He has a PhD in
applied linguistics from
for learning English in general. the University of South
Australia. His articles
3 Easier and more objective have appeared in
journals such as
testing and grading ELT Journal, Modern
English Teacher and
Traditionally, students’ grades in a Language Learning
course depend solely on a final Journal.
examination. As a result, they get rao5510@jxnu.edu.cn
nervous and may not perform well. By
having tests regularly throughout the
term, the pressure is reduced and the
students gradually become aware that
PICTURE PUZZLE
speaking English is not as hard as they Answers
thought. More importantly, they know
that even if they mess up in one test, Liverpool (2013), Harrogate (2014)
they will have a chance to do better the Manchester (2015), Birmingham (2016),
next time. Theme: IATEFL conference venues
Since the teacher does not need to
interview each student one by one,
 Oral testing • Score sheet
Pronunciation

Score Fluency
Grammar
Appropriateness Total

Name 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 20

G A

r
B

D
p

E
1

G F

r
G

I
p

J
2

Comments and suggestions:

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 • 17

Visual
and verbal
scaffolds
Handoyo Puji Widodo and Arnis Silvia believe even
young students can write – with the right support.
I
n many contexts around the world,
students are exposed to exercises
involving memorisation of grammatical
patterns and decontextualised
vocabulary. It is also often the case that
teachers consider children too young to
learn how to write in English and deny
them the opportunity to learn. As a
result, young learners frequently have
no idea how to generate ideas and put
them down on paper.
We believe that encouraging young
learners to write in English can be a
springboard for building the habit of
writing, benefiting not only their English
skills but also their writing ability in
their native language. In this article, we
will discuss how visual and verbal
scaffolds can be used in the writing
classroom to help students at the
pre-writing and while-writing stages to
complete writing tasks successfully.
A cognitive and
social activity
Writing in a second language, such as
English, involves both a cognitive
process and a social undertaking.
The cognitive process requires the
18 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
use of cognitive resources (eg prior
knowledge and experience) and cognitive
strategies for attending, monitoring,
searching, evaluating and self-correcting.
For example, students may recall prior
knowledge and experience (schemata) in
order to brainstorm a possible writing
topic, and then they select ideas, choose
appropriate words and assemble these
words into a finished piece of writing.
As a social process, learning how to
write is mediated through meaningful
interactions with more capable
individuals, such as teachers and more
proficient peers. During the writing
process, the students attempt to position
themselves as readers, and try to meet
their audiences’ expectations in their
work. This social interaction provides an
engaging platform not only for sharing
ideas, but also receiving teacher and peer
feedback as instructional support.
Without a cognitive process, the
social process of writing will never
occur, because the cognitive resources
facilitate the social interaction. It is
necessary, therefore, to nurture both in
the classroom.
In order to help young writers to
generate and develop ideas, we can
employ visual and verbal scaffolding,
with the aim of enabling our students to
activate their cognitive resources and to
build a bridge between the ideas in their
head and their readers.
Visual and verbal
scaffolding
Visual stimuli facilitate the thinking
process, helping the students to recall
their past experiences and knowledge of
a given topic. The use of visual images is
particularly important for young learners,
because images have a more immediate
impact than text. Graphic organisers or
visual aids such as drawings, photographs,
comic strips and sketches are all useful
for helping students to build background
information, develop ideas and organise
text content.
Verbal scaffolding is also important
and may involve using modified or
simplified speech, posing guided
questions, teacher modelling, small-
group instruction and peer feedback.
Two activities using visual and verbal
scaffolding are described below.
What’s in your
1
fridge?
This activity was used successfully with
two classes of students (aged between
8 and 12) at a language institute in
Jakarta, Indonesia.
1 Pre-writing stage
The lesson began with a warm-up
activity based upon the theme of the
lesson (food). The students were shown
a photo of a fridge with a lot of items in
it, with the aim of helping them to recall
their prior knowledge of the lesson
topic and the kind of items (food, drink,
fruit, vegetables, etc) normally kept in a
fridge. In this activity, the teacher simply
asked the students to do a ‘point and
say’ activity, identifying the items shown
in the fridge. The teacher provided
verbal scaffolding by saying things like:
Please look at this picture. What do you
see in the picture?
OK, you see a fridge. What items are in
the fridge? Can you name some of
them?
Now take another look at this picture. Can
anybody tell me how much milk is in
the fridge? (eliciting containers like
bottle, jar, box)
All right, now who has a fridge at
home? (asking the students to raise
their hands)
OK, now everybody is imagining his or her
fridge at home. What do you have in
your fridge?
Great! Can you remember, how much ...
do you have?
The students were then given a photo of
a fridge containing a lot of items and a
drawing of an empty fridge (see Figure 1).
They were asked to complete the
drawing by adding the sort of items that
they usually have in their own fridge. The
photo was there to help them think of
ideas. Some students were easily able to Figure 1
recall what they had in their fridges;
others, however, had difficulty deciding (pointing at the rough draft). Now, same for another picture?
what to draw because they were less where do you put the milk?
S1: Yes, Miss. Thank you.
familiar with the contents of their home S1: The milk is in the jar.
fridges, or simply never noticed what was After writing complete sentences in a
there apart from their favourite drinks T: Excellent. Jar. It is in the jar. Now, first draft, the students then re-wrote
and snacks. The teacher helped these write a jar before milk (pointing at their sentences in a final draft
students by encouraging them to draw the space close to the word milk). underneath their drawings. Figure 2 is
their favourite items in the fridge. an example of a student’s final draft.
S1: (writing jar) Miss, ditambah of ya?
(I need of, don’t I?)
2 While-writing stage 2 My bad day
After they had finished drawing the T: Great, yes, you put of. Now, how
items in their fridge, the students were many jars of milk do you have in
told to write down the names of the your picture?
things they had drawn on a separate S1: Two, Miss. Two jars.
piece of paper. If they were unable to
name specific food items, drinks, fruit or T: Great, now you add two and -s on
vegetables in English, the teacher helped the word jar.
by using picture dictionaries or putting T: Wonderful! You did it really well.
the word on the board. They were then Now, what do you use for two jars?
asked to write a simple paragraph There is or there are?
describing their fridge.
S1: Mmm ... there are?
The teacher helped with structures
such as there is and there are while they T: Correct! Now you write that on
were writing their paragraphs. Here is the left of two jars. (pointing at the
an example of her verbal scaffolding: space close to two jars)
T: Oh, wow. You’ve done a nice T: OK, now you are done with the
drawing. Can you tell me what you sentence. Can we read it together?
have in your fridge? There are two jars of milk.
S1: Milk, Miss. S1: There are two jars of milk.
T: Right. Now, please write milk here. T: Good work! Now, can you do the Figure 2

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 • 19

Visual
and verbal
scaffolds
1 Pre-writing activity
In the pre-writing stage, the teacher
modelled how to tell a story about a
bad experience by telling an example
herself. She then put large comic strips
on the board so that all the students
could see, and read her story. This
activity was intended to connect the
visual images to the story. Once the
students were familiar with the story,
the teacher asked some comprehension
questions, such as:
Who is in the comic?
What does she have?
Where did she go? What happened there?
When was the laptop stolen? Who stole
the laptop?
What happened after the laptop was
missing?
How did she feel?
The purpose of showing the story was
so that the students might be able to
recall their own prior experiences of a
bad incident (eg losing money, being
pickpocketed, having a quarrel with a
sibling). Once they had done this
warm-up activity, the teacher
distributed two pieces of paper to each
student: one piece with a rough story
outline (Title, Introduction, Events,
Conclusion, etc) for a first draft, and
another blank piece for them to use for
their final draft and to add comic strip
drawings. The teacher also provided
some suggested story lines (eg settings
and characters), events and conclusions
where necessary.
2 While-writing stage
At this stage, the students were asked
to jot down their ideas in the form of
drawings and writing. The teacher
helped them organise their stories,
walking around the class to provide
20 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
linguistic scaffolding if needed, and
helping them develop their ideas. Here
is an example dialogue:
S2: Miss, I don’t know what to write.
T: Never mind, even famous writers
have difficulty getting started. But,
we can do it together, OK? Now,
let’s pick a bad experience you had
lately.
S2: Mmm. My book, Miss! I lost my
book.
T: OK, now you can start by writing
that as a title.
S2: (writing)
T: When did it happen?
S2: Last week, Miss.
T: All right, you can write that in the
‘Introduction’ part. (pointing at the
story outline)
S2: (writing)
T: Who was involved? Who were the
people?
S2: Claudia, Jack and my mom. I write
here?
T: Yes, you put it in Introduction, as
well. Great. So, what happened first?
S2: I put my book on the table, Miss, on
Friday. Then it was lost on Saturday
morning!
T: Oh, OK. That’s a good start. You
can write it in the ‘Events’ part.
(pointing at the story outline)
S2: (writing)
T: Then, what happened?
S2: My mom was angry, Miss! I was
searching for the book everywhere,
but I can’t find. then, she (was)
angry at me. (directly writing)
T: And then?
S2: The book was taken, Miss.
T: Who took it?
S2: My brother, Jack.
T: When did he take it?
S2: Last night, when he went home
from his friend’s house.
T: Did he tell you?
S2: No, he didn’t
T: Were you angry at him?
S2: No, Miss. I thanked him. I was happy
that my book was not lost.
T: What can you learn from this
experience?
S2: Next time, I must put my book in
my room.
T: All right. Now you have a clear
story. You can write what you told
me on this (pointing at story
outline), and then you can start
drawing.
S2: OK, Miss.
When their story outlines were
complete, the students drew their
comic strips and added simple scripts to
them, with the teacher helping out with
grammar and word order. Some
students could draw comics and write
down their ideas easily because they
were used to telling stories to others.
Others were familiar with the features
of comics because they liked reading
comics. Some were even taking a manga
drawing course, so they were
particularly good at drawing comic
strips. Some learners had difficulty
drawing life-like cartoon characters, so
the teacher suggested that they draw
stick figures instead. Thus all the
students felt confident, even if they
were not very good at drawing. On
page 21 are some examples of the
students’ work.
Using visual and verbal scaffolds for
writing is time consuming, particularly
because it often involves providing
instructional or fully guided support to
individual students. Nevertheless, it has
enormous benefits in helping young
learners to complete a writing task. We
believe that it is vital that schools
should allow plenty of time for their
students to learn how to write in
English. Writing should be part of the
school curriculum, and schools should
aim to make writing a sustained habit
among young students.
 Not all young learners are
extroverts and are willing to share their
thoughts with a teacher. They may be
too shy to ask for help. It is, therefore,
important for teachers to be alert to
possible problems their students may
have, and to be able to identify their
needs, interests and abilities.
Deciding when to gradually start
decreasing or withdrawing the
scaffolding given to the students
remains a challenge. In both the tasks
described earlier, teachers should
realise that both visual and verbal
support can and should be reduced,
depending on how well the students are
coping. By doing this, we ensure that
our students become ready to work
independently. This has the added
benefit that the teacher is then free to
pay more attention to those students
who are still in need of full support.
Despite the challenges, both visual
and verbal scaffolds benefit young
learners, affording greater opportunities
for students to complete writing
assignments successfully.

Handoyo Puji Widodo

has a PhD in Language
Materials Development
from the University of
Adelaide, Australia.
He has published
extensively in the areas
of language curriculum
and materials
development as well as
language teaching
methodology.

Arnis Silvia is currently

an English lecturer at
Islamic State University
of Syarif Hidayatullah
Jakarta, Indonesia. Her
research interests lie in
language materials
development, language
teachers’ identity and
culture in ELT.

handoyopw@yahoo.com

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 • 21

Funwaystowrite
Laura Besley has ten suggestions to make writing
more enjoyable for very young children.
W
riting, like any other new skill,
needs practice: the more the
better. However, for very
young learners (VYLs), variation is key,
as their concentration spans are short
and they are unable to sit still for any
length of time. This article will outline
ten suggestions for how to vary writing
practice (letter formation or very short
words), hopefully making it more
enjoyable for both teachers and
learners alike.
1 Paint
In my experience, children love using
paint, so a great way to allow them to
practise writing is to use paint. You can
get them to write one big letter on a
large piece of paper (don’t make it any
bigger than A3, because they will
struggle to reach the length and width
of the paper), or you can get them to
paint as many letters as possible on a
piece of paper. Equally, you can ask them
to paint one letter as neatly as possible
(for this, don’t make the paper any
smaller than A5, otherwise they will
struggle to paint neatly).
2 10
Rainbow writing
Writing with a pencil is boring, but
writing with coloured pencils is
somehow far more exciting! You can get
your students to use as many colours as
possible to write letters on a page, but
something that is also fun is to get them
22 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
to choose several colours (I would
recommend at least five) and write the
same letter over and over again on top
of the one they’ve already written, so
they end up with a ‘rainbow letter’.
3 Sandbox/rice tray
You can set out sand or rice trays and
ask the students to write letters in
these, using their index fingers. Most
students find this very exciting, so make
sure you set out the ground rules first:
1 The sand/rice stays in the tray.
2 To make the surface smooth again for
the next student, the children should
gently move the trays from side to
side.
4 Water
You can have a tub of water and ask the
students to write letters in it. This is
similar to Suggestion 3 above. In this
case, you can’t see the results of their
writing, but you can monitor their
movements. Also, it’s more about the
fun of the activity than the result.
5 Big board
Most classrooms have a big wall-
mounted board – whether it be a
chalkboard, whiteboard or interactive
whiteboard (IWB) – and children love
being able to write on the board. You
can have writing on the board as a stage
in the lesson; if you have an IWB, the
children can take turns, and if you have
a traditional board, you can have two or
more students using it at the same time.
You could even have them race each
other (if you’re going to do this, make
sure you pair up ‘equal’ students so as
not to undermine their confidence). Or
you can have the board ready for the
children to use as a ‘fast-finisher activity’
and they can practise independently.
6 Little board
If you have access to mini-whiteboards,
you can ask the students to write as
many letters as possible in a set time.
7 Music, maestro
Give the students mini-whiteboards and
a board marker (or pen and paper). Play
some music and tell them they can only
write while the music is playing. When
the music stops, they have to stop too.
You can use nursery rhymes or classical
music.
8 Magic letters
Use white wax crayons and thin (really
watered-down) paint to create ‘magic
letters’. The students write on white
paper with the white crayons and when
they paint over them with the watery
paint, the letters will appear, as if by
magic.
9 Glitter
Everyone (apart from the person
cleaning up afterwards) loves glitter!
Get the students to write a letter on a
piece of card (black works particularly
well) with a glue stick and then sprinkle
glitter over the top to create the letter.
Alternatively, you can put the glitter
into a tray, and when the students have
written their letter with glue, you can
put the card face down into the glitter
tray. Remember to shake off the excess,
otherwise there will be a lot of glitter
on the floor.
Metallic pens
You can get students to write letters
with metallic pens on black paper. First,
cut the pieces of paper into various
sizes or shapes and allow the students
to choose which they would like to
write on.
Laura Besley taught
business English in
Germany for two years,
and has also taught in
the UK. She is currently
teaching at the British
Council in Hong Kong.
besley.laura@gmail.com
21st-century
teaching
and learning
T
Fiona Baker identifies here is no doubt that language
education has changed
the important elements dramatically over the past
decade. Today’s teachers don’t
we should be teaching just teach language; they are also
expected to prepare children with the
our children. skills needed for success in the 21st-
century world. As a result, the question
today is not only what the content of
English language learning should be, but
also what 21st-century skills should be
taught, and how.
Teachers must nurture technological
adeptness; communication and
collaboration, and problem-solving.
Learning English is playing an
increasingly important global role and,
through the medium of English, there is
also an opportunity to develop these
21st-century skills. Teachers of English
should be constantly thinking about how
to use the skills themselves in the young
learner classroom, and how to use them
to prepare children for their future. So
why are 21st-century skills so important?
Technological adeptness
Today’s children were born into a highly
technological age. Many are confidently
pressing buttons on devices that their
teachers have rarely touched. To
connect with this generation of young
learners, teachers must themselves
become fully conversant with
technology. Integrating technology in
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
early childhood education means
tapping into children’s interests and
strengthening their technical skills, while
providing enriching language learning
opportunities. Teachers of English to
young learners need an in-depth
knowledge and understanding of the
tools available; and they also need to be
involved in meaningful reflection about
how, when and for how long to use
technological devices to enhance
second language learning.
Certainly, limited and purposeful
technology use is advised. There are
many engaging websites for early
learners which reinforce key vocabulary
and academic language concepts with
accompanying child-friendly activities.
Bringing iPads into the classroom and
using a range of different apps is an
excellent way to generate excitement
about learning.
Electronic touch boards such as the
Promethean board and SMART board
allow teachers and children to
manipulate items on a large screen
using electronic pens, bringing a new
level of interactivity to classroom
instruction. Promethean Planet offers
over 60,000 free teaching resources for
the Promethean board, while SMART
Exchange shares a myriad of activities
for the SMART board. Teachers can also
create their own lessons using material
from the internet, including academic
videos or energising clips that promote
movement. Some websites encourage
children to tap into their creative
imaginations in order to create online
digital stories. Digital storytelling not
only keeps children engaged, it also
encourages higher-level, critical thinking.
Children can have video chats with
other students their age via Skype.
The social platform Edmodo connects
classes, so they can share materials and
access information easily and safely, and
ePals Global Community connects over
half a million classrooms around the
world. Nowadays, teachers can also take
advantage of the many websites featuring
popular children’s books.
Online Stopwatch offers a range of
teacher timers, clocks and countdowns
for display on the computer screen and/
or interactive whiteboard. In addition,
23
21st-century
teaching
and learning
behaviour management software can
help teachers manage their young
learner classrooms online. An example
is Class Dojo, which allows teachers to
award points to students for such things
as participating, helping others,
exercising creativity, showing great
insight, working hard and making a good
presentation. The software can be
accessed from a tablet or smart phone.
Communication and
collaboration
Effective teachers of young learners
should use a child-centred approach to
foster a sense of collaboration and to
encourage teamwork. Collaborative and
cooperative learning sparks engagement
in classrooms by encouraging
interaction among the children. Rather
than calling on one child at a time to
answer a question or perform a task,
the teacher allows the children to
explore the English language with
buddies or in teams, often through fun,
play-based activities. This maximises the
level of participation, with the children
working just as hard as the teacher, and
the teacher taking on the role of
facilitator. This, in turn, leads to higher
achievement, while promoting team
building through collaboration and
engagement.
Involving children in the goal-setting
process is an excellent way to
encourage them to take ownership of
their learning. When first introduced,
goal-setting needs to be presented in a
clear and simple way. This can happen
through frequent two-way
conversations with children about their
progress. Teachers can further facilitate
goal-setting through the use of
organisers, anchor charts and similar
aids. Free printable charts available on
the internet provide models for early
learners as targets. These are geared
24 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
specifically towards reading and writing.
In general, helping children achieve their
goals calls for teachers to provide
specific, frequent feedback, as well as
ample time for self-reflection.
Teaching English through content
helps children learn the language in a
more meaningful way, encouraging an
understanding of concepts and requiring
the use of 21st-century skills. Blending
the learning of English with maths,
science and/or social studies content,
for example, helps children learn the
language because it is meaningfully
integrated with real-world content.
Problem-solving
Problem-based learning involves the
teacher in guiding the children into
developing solutions to real-world
problems. In enquiry-based learning, the
children generate their own questions
according to their interests, and then
investigate these. Such approaches
develop the children’s 21st-century
skills because, rather than the teacher
simply telling the children what they
should know and then practising it, the
children are engaged in exploring and
uncovering information in a meaningful
way. These approaches are highly
motivating for children and, in addition,
actively encourage collaboration.
All too often, teachers of English to
young learners rely on summative written
© iStockphoto.com / Wavebreakmedia
assessment of language ‘learnt.’
Assessment for learning – a data-
gathering process which helps teachers
customise their teaching to match the
children’ needs – is much more valuable.
In summative assessment, once data is
gathered, the teacher may already be
moving on to the next step without fully
understanding a child’s level of content
knowledge and skills. To prevent children
being left behind, and to refocus on both
content and 21st-century skills, teachers
need to monitor how the children are
learning as they teach, using observations,
questioning strategies, class discussions,
exit tickets, learning logs, peer assessment
and self-assessment. Teachers can use
this technique to gauge the progress of
individuals, groups or the whole class, and
they can adjust the process by supporting
or challenging the children as needed.
These ongoing assessments mean that
teachers can understand individual
learner performance in the classroom
and ensure that the children are learning
and being evaluated not only on their
language abilities, but also on their grasp
of 21st-century skills.
Fiona Baker is currently
responsible for preparing
teachers for kindergarten
and primary education in
Abu Dhabi, UAE. She has
taught English world-wide
and incorporates
21st-century skills into
her teaching as a priority.
fbaker@ecae.ac.ae
Lights,
camera,
action!
Katie Alaniz delights her students with digital storytelling.
‘I
wish we could do this every day!’
one of my students exclaimed. He
and his classmates eagerly awaited
the special treat of hearing their
own voices and seeing their hand-drawn
images on screen while I displayed their
digital stories.
As I switched on our classroom
projector and flipped the light switch off,
my students hurriedly settled into their
places on the carpet. Silence descended
upon the room, the children waiting with
bated breath. With the click of the play
button, the glow from the projector
danced upon their faces, revealing their
unmistakable enchantment. Storytelling
was captivating each and every one of my
young learners – digital storytelling, that is.
Why digital storytelling?
Digital storytelling enables teachers to
offer their students what Midge Frazel
describes as a ‘leg up’ by integrating
innovative technology into the
classroom curriculum. From infancy, our
students listen to stories told and read
by family members, thus laying the
groundwork for appreciating the ability
of narrative to captivate, inspire and
impart knowledge. Today’s students
enter the classroom not only eager to
tell stories, but also wanting to produce
them by means of technology. The vast
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
and growing collection of student-
generated videos on internet sites such
as TeacherTube offers evidence of their
capacity and eagerness to do so.
Digital storytelling elevates the
enduring art of oral and written stories
to the next level, adding fresh,
interactive elements to capture the
interest of a digital generation. In today’s
world, an infinite stream of media –
from photographs to videos to voice
recordings and music – provides a
broad foundation upon which stories
can be constructed and shared. As
Gwen Solomon and Lynne Schrum
point out, the ever-growing collection of
Web 2.0 resources has contributed
further to the plethora of tools at
teachers’ and students’ fingertips,
transforming the world wide web from
a read-only medium to one by which
anyone can publish and share created
content. According to Marc Prensky, the
students of today’s world expect and
anticipate opportunities to utilise such
tools for inventing and interacting.
Digital stories
Digital stories hold tremendous potential
to enrich students’ lives. My second-grade
students once created autobiographical
‘documentaries’, showcasing the most
important moments in their lives through
personal photographs and scripts they
wrote themselves. This served as a unique
venue by which to introduce themselves
to fellow classmates at the beginning of
the school year. For example, Lindy’s
documentary featured special family
photographs, from the day of her birth
through her favourite ‘play date’ with her
grandmother, to her family vacation at the
Grand Canyon. After viewing the finished
product, she smiled with unbridled delight
and proudly remarked, ‘I can’t believe I’m
starring in a movie!’ Many of my students
and their parents commented that this
was among the most meaningful and
memorable projects we created.
In ESL classrooms, such projects
engage learners in developing their
written and oral communication skills
while also highlighting their particular
familial and cultural characteristics and
distinctive background experiences. By
incorporating pictures from home, as
well as downloaded images and musical
selections illustrating traditional aspects
of their cultures, learning becomes more
meaningful. Students naturally devote
their attention to activities that tap into
what matters most in their lives. In this
way, they feel inspired and empowered
through the process of creating a digital
narrative about themselves, their families
and their cultural heritage.
Additionally, the act of creating a story
to replay digitally offers opportunities for
commending the work of students who
might seem hesitant to express
themselves using a more traditional
avenue, such as public speaking or writing.
Because digital stories can be shared
through school or class websites and
learning blogs, they offer an effective
method of celebrating the talents of
students who may feel disadvantaged in
comparison to native speakers. The
individualised yet community-oriented
nature of the digital storytelling process
encourages students of all ability levels to
devote time, effort and enthusiasm to
designing an exemplary finished product.
Embarking on the digital
storytelling journey
The journey to incorporate digital
storytelling begins with the process of
establishing a roadmap of curricular
25
Lights,
camera,
action!
goals, to guide the way and meaningfully
address the concepts to be learnt. In
general, as Bernard Robin has pointed
out, digital stories typically fall into one
of three categories: personal narratives,
explorations of historical events or
stories that inform or instruct.
Additionally, digital media can serve as
an instrument through which students
‘publish and illustrate’ an original work
or story.
For instance, my school’s second-
grade science objectives include an
exploration of various types of rocks.
Instead of simply examining carefully-cut
samples of rocks from a classroom
science kit, I guided my students
through a campus-based field trip for
gathering a variety of rock specimens.
Throughout our journey, I snapped
digital photographs of the students in
action. These images, along with my
students’ journal entries about their
rock findings, formed the basis for our
own digital representation, modelled
after the delightful children’s book If You
Find a Rock by Peggy Christian and
Barbara Hirsch Lember.
After deciding upon specific
objectives, teachers should support
students with clear-cut directions for the
project. Script development serves as a
truly worthwhile educational endeavour
for EFL and ESL students. Learners may
either write their stories individually or
collectively, sometimes within a group
called a ‘story circle’ where constructive
feedback can be offered and ideas
developed. Through the process of
working collaboratively, learners practise
speaking skills and creating meaning
alongside others. Once the students are
prepared to record their stories, the time
spent practising their narration enables
them to exercise further important
elements of oral production such as
fluency, intonation and pronunciation.
26 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
When students start to organise
their resources, older children might
gather their typed scripts, audio files,
images and videos in electronic file
folders. For younger students, scripts
may be written on paper and stored in
a set location. Additionally, young
learners will probably need assistance in
saving their photographs and other
media within a set digital location,
perhaps on one common workstation.
After the students incorporate the
resources they gather in creating a
video, peer review might play a role in
the final stages of the project.
Free digital storytelling
resources
Are you considering the prospect of
introducing digital storytelling to your
class? If so, many free, teacher- and
student-friendly resources reside on the
internet, little more than a mouse-click
away. One noteworthy website, the
Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling
(http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu), is
dedicated to providing teachers with
essential tools for incorporating digital
storytelling into classroom learning
experiences. This expansive website
presents explanations, exemplars, tools
and instructions for designing digital
stories. Educators of younger learners
might particularly enjoy viewing such
teacher-created stories as ‘Mission:
Gum’, a kindergarten teacher’s quest to
teach students about making
predictions by tracing the experiences
of a wad of gum in the classroom.
The Center for Digital Storytelling
(http://storycenter.org/), an international
non-profit organisation, is another
valuable resource. This extensive
website offers case studies and
examples of digital stories, spanning
elementary through higher education,
even including specialised workshops
for educators.
Digitales (www.digitales.us/), another
free online resource, presents educators
with beneficial information about
creating and evaluating digital stories.
Although this site showcases an
assortment of examples produced by
teachers, such stories also serve as
excellent samples of the sorts of stories
students might invent. Experienced
educators realise that one should never
underestimate the creative genius of
students, especially when given the
chance to integrate their aptitude for
technology!
Let the journey begin!
In today’s information-saturated world,
storytelling is being revived as a unique
tool for assisting learners in sifting
through an onslaught of data and crafting
meaning of the world around them. The
process of creating digital storytelling
channels everyday information into
distinctive opportunities for lasting
learning. By journeying alongside their
students as they create and share their
stories, teachers have the potential to
breathe new life into learning.
Imagine the sight of your students’ eyes
brimming with wonderment as they
view stories they have authored,
illustrated and narrated. How might it
feel to hear your students respond to
a classroom activity with the words,
‘I wish we could do this every day!’? If
these thoughts seem alluring, you might
try taking steps to initiate ‘Lights,
camera, action!’ in your own classroom.
Let the digital storytelling journey
begin!
Frazel, M Digital Storytelling Guide for Educators
International Society for Technology in
Education 2010
Prensky, M Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering
for Real Learning Corwin 2010
Robin, B ‘Digital storytelling: A powerful
technology tool for the 21st-century
classroom’ Theory into Practice 47 (3) 2008
Solomon, G and Schrum, L Web 2.0: New
Tools, New Schools International Society for
Technology in Education 2007
Katie Alaniz teaches
undergraduate and
graduate education
courses at Houston
Baptist University, USA.
She greatly enjoys the
opportunity to work
alongside students seeking
to make a positive impact
in schools and society. Her
primary research interests
include digital learning,
collegial coaching and
teacher education.
salaniz@hbu.edu
 EXAMS AND ASSESSMENT
Thinking skills 5
The activity in this issue, which uses the photocopiable worksheets on pages 28 and 29, is
part of a series that aims to develop the thinking skills of IELTS candidates. It was prepared
by Louis Rogers and Nick Thorner, and focuses on preparing students for Part 2
of the Writing paper.
The challenge
Part 2 of the IELTS Writing paper contains
many challenges for students, and to
make the task seem manageable and less
daunting, it can help to break it down into
the various stages of process writing.
From question analysis, to brainstorming,
to thesis statement writing, through to
sentence writing, all the stages can be
practised individually to give the students
more confidence.
One of the key challenges in this
process is to organise ideas, both at
planning and paragraph level, and
students must be able to write coherent
texts. This means maintaining a clear
focus and having all the ideas following
logically one from the other.
At the planning stage, the students
can be encouraged to develop topic
sentences for their main ideas. They can
also make notes on possible supporting
ideas. By breaking the task down in such
a way, we can get the students not only
to focus on the language of organisation,
but also on the logic in the connection
between the ideas.
Aims
The worksheets on pages 28 and 29 aim
to develop the students’ abilities to write
coherent paragraphs by training them to
think about what it means to support the
ideas expressed in a topic sentence. We
do this by showing them a range of topic
sentences and possible supporting ideas
for them to match. Further scaffolded
practice is provided by asking the
students to complete missing topic
sentences or supporting sentences with
their own ideas, before finally building up
to writing their own independent
paragraph.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
Procedure
You will need a copy of Worksheet 1
(page 28), cut up into cards, for each
group of three to four students, and a
copy of Worksheet 2 (page 29), cut into
strips, for each pair. Keep a complete
copy of Worksheet 1 to help you check
the answers (the topic and corresponding
evidence cards are in the same order).
1 Write the following essay question on
the board and ask the students to
discuss possible ideas for it with a
partner:
Outline the advantages and
disadvantages of living in a city.
2 Write the following example sentences
on the board. Ask the students to
identify which is the topic sentence
and which are pieces of supporting
evidence:
There is a high level of congestion on
the road.
There are many disadvantages to
living in a city.
People often live in very small spaces.
There can be a lot of pressure on
services, such as schools and hospitals.
3 Divide the students into groups of three
or four. Hand out the topic and
evidence cards from Worksheet 1 in
two separate sets. Tell the students to
place the topic sentences in a pile. The
evidence cards should be spread out
across the table so everyone can read
them. Each student takes a turn to read
out a topic sentence to the group. The
other students then have to compete to
be first to find the matching evidence
card. There is only one piece of
evidence for each topic sentence. The
winner is the student who finds the
piece of evidence fastest. Repeat this
until all the evidence and topic
sentence cards have been matched.
Check the answers with the class.
4 Once the students have finished the
matching game, distribute the strips
from Worksheet 2. Put the students in
pairs and ask them to write the
missing sentence on each card.
Decide if they have completed it with
an appropriate idea. (You can choose
to correct any language mistakes
now if you like, or do it later.) If they
have completed it appropriately, you
can add it to their finished pile. The
pair with the most sentences in their
finished pile in ten minutes wins.
5 Finally, ask the students to produce a
paragraph about the advantages of
living in a city. Elicit some examples
from the class first. Make it clear that
they should write a topic sentence and
three supporting evidence sentences.
Give them five to ten minutes for this,
or set the task for homework.
Nick Thorner currently
works as a teacher,
trainer and freelance
writer, and is co-author
of Foundation IELTS
Masterclass, published
by OUP.
nickthorner@googlemail.com
Louis Rogers is a Senior
Academic Tutor at the
University of Reading,
UK. He is the co-author
with Nick Thorner of
Foundation IELTS
Masterclass.
l.j.rogers@reading.ac.uk
27
 Thinking skills 5 • Worksheet 1

Topic sentences

There are many advantages to owning a car. Pollution can also affect rural areas.

Many people argue that we need more parks. There are many benefits to keeping pets.

Large cities have a lot of problems. Job satisfaction comes from a variety of sources.

There are many advantages to studying

Teachers often face poor working conditions.
in another country.

One cause of stress is that people often

One cause of obesity is modern technology.
have several roles in life.

Prison does not help reduce crime for many reasons. One of the main problems with city life is congestion.

Prison is perhaps the only solution for serious crimes. Pets are a luxury we can’t afford.

Evidence

You can accept jobs in more remote areas. Tourists may throw litter from their cars.

It’s necessary to have space for exercise. They provide company, especially for the elderly.

Traffic is perhaps the most serious issue. Having pleasant colleagues is particularly important.

Salaries, in particular, are low

Your language skills are likely to improve.
for the number of hours worked.

With social media, people can socialise without getting Today, many women are not only housewives and
up and leaving their home. mothers, but also have professional careers.

Many criminals simply leave prison The average traffic speed in some cities
and commit crimes again. is slower than walking speed.

It is wrong to spend so much on animals

The protection of the public must be our first priority.
when some people don’t have food.

28 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 Thinking skills 5 • Worksheet 2

1 Another advantage to owning a car is the freedom.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .

2 Some argue that we need the space that parks take for other things.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .

3 However, there are a number of benefits to living in large cities.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .

4 There are also many disadvantages to studying in another country.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .

5 It is essential that governments continue to provide library services.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .

6 A good public transport system benefits local communities enormously.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .

7 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .
For example, people are eating more fast food and processed food, which contain high levels of fat.

8 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .
Cities are expensive and many people cannot enjoy a high standard of living.

9 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .
You can have more control over your future when you are self-employed.

10 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .
One of the problems linked with traffic congestion is increased noise pollution.

11 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .
Old buildings often have a lot of character and contribute to the identity of an area.

12 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .
If we put art in public spaces, people will stop and spend more time together.

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 • 29

Mission
EAP
possible
T
William Chaves he Academic IELTS Reading
paper is, in my opinion, the
Gomes takes measures most difficult part of the
exam. The sheer size of the
to improve results in the texts and the time given to answer the
questions make it so challenging that
IELTS Reading paper. even advanced students often struggle to
finish. An ordinary native speaker would
most certainly find it very tricky, too.
They would no doubt be able to
understand the text, but interpreting the
details in order to answer
comprehension questions within the
given time limit is another matter.
What must it be like, then, for an
intermediate or upper-intermediate
student who needs to achieve a Band 5.5
or 6 score? I can tell you that preparing
such students for the exam is a
challenge! And it is one that I was given
two years ago.
Mission impossible?
My class was a mix of intermediate and
upper-intermediate students, all from
the same country, who wanted to be
pilots. To get into aviation school,
though, they needed a minimum IELTS
score of 5.5. Their spoken English was
quite good, but their reading skills
needed a lot of work. Their vocabulary
was very poor, and they confessed that
back in their own country they never
read anything. As a result, even when
given only a very small paragraph to
read, it would take them ages to get
through it. To make matters worse, even
32 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
after managing to read a text, they were
still not always able to understand the
subtleties when trying to interpret it.
This was mainly because of problems
with the vocabulary. I soon realised that
the good old techniques of predicting
the content, using background
knowledge, and skimming and scanning
would simply not work with this class.
They required something more drastic.
Drastic measure 1
I decided to start every lesson by putting
on the table a pile of free London
newspapers (especially The Evening
Standard and City AM because these
tend to have longer articles) or printed
texts from the internet on architecture,
engineering, sports, and so on. Then, I
would ask each student to choose an
article to read in five minutes. When the
time was up, even if they hadn’t finished,
I would stop them and ask them to
report what they had read to a partner.
After inviting a few of them to tell the
class about their article, I would always
ask them to go through the article again,
and collect four collocations or items of
unknown vocabulary and write these
down in their notebooks. The whole
exercise lasted about 15 minutes, and we
did it every single day for a month.
Slowly the students’ reading speed started
improving, but they still had no success
with reading comprehension questions.
If you are familiar with the IELTS
Reading paper, you will probably agree
that one of the most popular tasks
involves matching headings to the
paragraphs of a text. We are normally
taught in teacher training courses to ask
the students to read the headings first,
so that they get an idea of what the text
is about. Even the test layout itself
encourages this practice, as the headings
always come before the text. For very
advanced students, this is a very good
technique and pretty straightforward.
But it doesn’t really work with C1
students – and definitely not at all for
those at B1/B2. I’ve had plenty of
opportunities to teach average students.
I tried this approach with my pilot
students for several weeks and they
didn’t show any signs of improvement.
The texts were still far too long for them
to finish, and the matching was still
going terribly wrong.
I had to come up with another way
of helping them, as their professional
fates were hanging in the balance. No
IELTS Band 5.5 would mean shattered
dreams, as competition in the aviation
industry is fierce. Although, in theory, the
students could reapply to aviation school
if they didn’t get a satisfactory score, in
practice this was not the case, which
means it really was a make-or-break
situation. So, I had three problems to
tackle: getting them to read the whole
text as fast as possible, helping them to
cope with the vocabulary and training
them to match the headings correctly.
Drastic measure 2
Change the timing
Unlike the Listening paper, in which
candidates have ten minutes at the end
of the test to transfer their answers to a
separate answer sheet, in the Reading
paper the students have to read three
texts, answer the questions and transfer
the answers in one hour. No extra time
is given. Taking this into account, I
designed a plan for my students: they
would have to finish each of the three
reading passages in 18 minutes (18
minutes x three texts = 54 minutes),
allowing them six minutes to transfer
their answers.
You may be wondering if six minutes
to transfer the answers is a waste of
time, and if these minutes couldn’t be
better used in reading the text or solving
the questions. Trust me: it’s not a waste
of time at all. Students in my classes
who have taken the test before often tell
me that they didn’t have time to transfer
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
their answers, or that they were so
nervous that they couldn’t finish
transferring them. A considerable
number have also told me that they had
so little time that they had to hurry and,
because of that, they misplaced one
answer, resulting in all the others not
corresponding to the intended number.
Not having a designated time for
transferring answers is too risky.
Go against the theory
The importance of understanding the
concept of topic sentences is
unquestionable, and for an IELTS
candidate, topic sentences are even more
important because they carry a lot of
information. Many of the
comprehension questions (but not all)
are based on the first and last sentences
of each paragraph. Bearing this and the
fact that my students were very slow
readers in mind, I decided to go against
the theory and all I had learnt about
how to approach a reading task: I asked
my students not to read the headings
first. Instead, I gave them five minutes to
read the first and the last sentences of
each paragraph and, next to each one of
them, write key words that would
summarise it.
The reason why I encouraged these
students to ignore the headings was
because they usually spent a long time
trying to understand the headings and
then, after reading them, they were
frequently so overwhelmed by similar
ideas that going through the paragraphs
to try to find a match only made things
even more confusing. Their brains were
no longer ‘fresh’ but ‘contaminated’ by
so many possibilities and traps.
Imagine you want to make a specific
pasta dish. You go to the supermarket
and find yourself face to face with a
number of different kinds of pasta. If
you are an experienced cook, no
problem, but if you are a B1/B2-level
cook you will probably be baffled and
won’t know what to choose. Wouldn’t it
be much better if you read the recipe
first, so that you knew exactly what kind
of pasta it says you need?
But back to the reading task: once
they had their notes in the margins of
the text, they were better able to
compare them to the headings. And
guess what? There was – and there is –
always a match. The following example
shows what a student jotted down next
to the paragraph, and what the actual
heading in the test was.
Student’s note: statistics / number
of children falling
Heading in the test: Facts and
figures about birth rate fall
Once they had compared their notes
to the headings and found those that
had more or less the same idea, the next
step was to give the students an extra six
minutes to do the task itself and match
the headings, which they did much more
successfully this time round. This
approach worked with the pilots and,
after a few weeks, they were much better
able to extract the key words from each
paragraph in the allocated five minutes.
Make them notice vocabulary
It is true that students don’t need to
know all the words in a written text to
understand it, but, as far as IELTS is
concerned, some words do matter, as
they are the key to some of the answers.
The approach described above did
help my students immensely and,
eventually, after intensive practice and
homework, they were able to read the
whole text much faster. But they were
still failing to get many correct answers
in the other IELTS tasks because of
difficulties with the vocabulary. A good
IELTS candidate, I believe, is one who is
able to recognise the use of synonyms,
antonyms and paraphrasing in the texts.
Sometimes the answer to a question is
just a matter of reorganising the order
of a sentence or the use of a synonym.
Have a look at the examples below,
taken from a practice test book.
Extract from the passage: Is it any
wonder that there are teacher
shortages?
The task and answer: Is it surprising
that there is a shortage of teachers?
There are no magic tricks which will
help someone acquire more vocabulary.
Of course, there are techniques to
memorise words, but none that will get
them magically installed in your brain.
Learning vocabulary for me means
being exposed to words and collocations
and being aware of them. So I decided
to ask the students to start creating their
own personal IELTS dictionaries. This
was another notebook, kept just for
vocabulary, not the book they used in
class. I asked them to divide each page
33
Mission
possible
into two columns, one headed The text
and the other The task. All the students
had to do was to write the way a
collocation was written in a text and the
synonym or way in which the same idea
was conveyed in the task. They also had
to collect vocabulary after ever single
text they read for homework. I even
encouraged them to collect words from
other classes apart from IELTS as well
as from listening activities. By doing
this, the students started becoming
aware of potential traps in the test and
started acquiring more vocabulary.
Opposite is what a page from one of
my student’s personal IELTS
dictionaries looks like.
Mission accomplished
After months of experimenting,
planning and tweaking, I came up with
a lesson template that worked for these
students and for other students I was
teaching. The structure of my IELTS
reading lessons now is:
Five minutes to read the whole text
and write on the side of each
paragraph the key words/main ideas.
Six minutes to do Task 1.
Seven minutes to do Task 2 (or six
minutes for Task 2 if it’s smaller or
less demanding than Task 1)
Total: Eighteen minutes (per passage)
Obviously, if the students manage to
read the text faster or do Task 1 faster,
they can always use the extra minutes to
tackle a more complicated question. The
key, I have observed, is to be consistent
and not to allow the students any more
than 18 minutes per text, if their aim is
to do all three texts in the test. This
structure worked so successfully that I
now use it for all other types of reading
passages.
As I said before, a very advanced
student might not need to follow this
approach, but it certainly helps those at
lower levels. Also, I’m not saying this is
the only possible way to help B1/B2
students improve their reading skills, but
after using it for more than two years
now, I am convinced that it works and
34 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
The text The task
To restrict access To limit access
Divide them up To separate them
Install an alarm To put in an alarm
A great range of (trees) Many different (trees)
A reconstruction of A replica model of
Try to foist on (schools and colleges) Try to impose on (schools and colleges)
etc etc
gives results. I must highlight, however, students have been getting in their real
that the students must be prepared to tests. I’m grateful to the pilots who
work hard at school as well as put in made me think and come up with an
extra hours at home. Being able to read alternative solution for average students
faster and acquire more vocabulary is who need to achieve a minimum score
something they have to do themselves. of 5.5 in the IELTS Reading paper.
William Chaves Gomes
has been teaching and
training teachers in the
No teacher can learn for the students. UK and other countries
for 20 years. He has a
What teachers can do, though, is to
degree in English
provide learning opportunities and to be Language and Literature
and the Cambridge
consistent with the approach they use so
DELTA. He also writes
that the students are well-trained and ELT materials for
publishers and is
know exactly what course of action to
currently working as a
take on the day of their test. teacher, teacher trainer
I’m very happy with feedback I’ve and ELT consultant in
London.
been getting from my students and,
wichago@hotmail.com
most importantly, the results my B1/B2
This is your magazine. We want to hear from you!
Reviewing
for ETp IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
Do you have ideas you’d like to share
Would you like to review books
with colleagues around the world?
or other teaching materials for ETp?
Tips, techniques and activities;
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in ETp? Did you do something similiar with
write to us or email:
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 More tested lessons, suggestions, tips and techniques which have all
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Top stories
This engaging activity, which is best suited to upper-
intermediate and advanced learners, uses authentic sources of
English to engage the students and allow them to practise the
skills of predicting, listening for gist and listening for detail.
The students guess the content of a series of news stories from
images alone, and then do detailed listening practice with one
news story.
The activity uses the television news in English. This is
obviously easier if you are teaching in an English-speaking
country, but in other contexts there are likely to be cable
channels that show the news in English, or you could find news
stories on YouTube. If you don’t have classroom internet access,
the material could be pre-recorded on DVD.
Here are links for on-demand TV sites:
Australia
www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/
http://iview.abc.net.au/
New Zealand
www.tvnz.co.nz/ondemand
www.tv3.co.nz/OnDemand.aspx
Europe
On-demand websites in Europe can be searched for at
http://mavise.obs.coe.int/
chose correctly. Ask them to summarise the main topic of each
story. The students should then vote on which news story they
would like to know more about.
4 Fast-forward the broadcast to the chosen story. The students
should listen and take notes on the key facts, using the questions
below as a guide (they should be made aware that answers may
not be available for some of the questions):
What happened?
When and where did it happen?
Who was involved?
What caused it to happen?
How have people reacted?
5 The students should discuss their answers in groups. Monitor
to confirm that their answers are correct, clarify any details and
help with key vocabulary.
6 After the students are satisfied that they have answered the
questions to the best of their ability, they can discuss the story in
further detail:
Why is this story considered newsworthy?
What are the implications of this story?
Have there been similar stories in the news in their own countries?
7 For homework, the students could be given a newspaper

1 Prior to the lesson, choose two episodes of a news show which
starts with a summary of the top stories. It is fine (perhaps better)
if there is some overlap in the stories covered in each episode.
(Don’t forget to watch the summary of the top stories first, to
ensure that they are not inappropriate!)
2 Once in class, play the ‘top stories’ section of the first
broadcast with the sound turned off. Ask the students to guess
what each news story is about, based on the images they’ve seen.
(If any students follow the news, they can help the others.) Then
play the ‘top stories’ section from the second broadcast and,
again, have the students guess the content from the images.
3 Next, turn off the IWB screen or projector, and turn on the
sound. Play the audio only of one of the recordings the students
just viewed. Ask them to identify which broadcast these sounds
belong to, the first or the second. Elicit the key words that helped
them guess. Turn the board back on and play the clip along with
the sound, so that the students can confirm whether or not they
article on the same topic (if one is available). As they will now be
familiar with the context, they will have more attention free to
notice new vocabulary or phrases used in the article. These can be
highlighted and discussed in the next class.
The first time I did this activity in class, a student asked if we
could do it again the next day. As news stories are by their very
nature topical, they may be more relevant than the material in
the students’ textbooks, which can date quickly. By allowing
the students to choose which story they would like to learn
more about, it gives them some input into what they study.
In addition, the activity gives the students practice in
understanding different varieties and accents of English, and
helps them build up their knowledge of what is going on in the
world around them – something which many students could
benefit from.
Nita Yukseloglu
Auckland, New Zealand

36 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 How can a single student win?
Success is a very important motivational factor in the
learning process. When a student wins, even in a simple
word game, it means that they did something right and
better than the others. However, in a one-to-one lesson, it is
not very easy to organise a fair competition. If a student
plays a language game against a teacher, it is obvious that
the teacher is going to win.
The easy answer is for the teacher not to play as well as they
can: to be slower, to give wrong answers on purpose. But my
students, even the young ones, hate this. It is patronising
and discouraging, rather than motivating. So what can be
done?
I use two techniques to enable my one-to-one students to
compete against themselves. All the work is done by the
student, who then compares their latest result with their
previous ones. They get a sense of achievement when they
beat their previous result, and the competition is fair, as
their ‘opponent’ has the same level of English.
1 If I want my student to review some recently-learnt
vocabulary, I make cards of the target words and give these to
the student. I then set a time limit, usually a minute, for them
to explain as many words as they can. They have to do this
three times. At the end, they will have three scores: the number
of words they could explain during the first, second and third
minute. They compare the scores, and if the score for the third
minute is higher, they win!
2 The student writes seven sentences using a target grammar
structure. Before checking them together, I ask the student
how many correct sentences they think they have. We write the
number they predict above the sentences and then go through
them together. Afterwards, we compare their prediction with
the actual result. This gives them, and me, quite a lot of
information. First of all, I learn about my student’s self-esteem.
A student with low self-esteem tends not to expect many
correct sentences. If there are more correct answers than they
expect, they feel better about themselves and become more
inclined to take risks in language activities. Those who have
fewer correct answers than expected generally become more
careful about written assignments, as they remember their
unjustified expectations.
I use this technique quite often, and I have noticed that, at
first, some students are not very enthusiastic about having to
predict their results. However, they get much more enthusiastic
about it later. In the end, it is their own mark and there is
nobody to blame them or to make comparisons with anybody
who is better.
These two little techniques help me and my students to
experience a sense of achievement during one-to-one
lessons. Why not try them out?
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
Planning communication
When planning lessons, it is not just activities, handouts and
the logistics of the lesson that are important. We also need to
plan our way of communicating with our students.
This is quite a complex matter, as it includes:
the words you choose to greet, explain, praise, answer, etc
during the lesson;
the intonation you use, which can motivate, bore, inspire, scare
or provoke your students;
the structures you use – for example, questions, imperatives or
descriptions;
the language you speak, if you are working with students who
share your mother tongue;
your body language: your position, gestures, facial expressions.
Of course we can’t exactly prepare all these things before a lesson
in the same way that we prepare a set of handouts. However, I
believe that we should pay attention to them, as sometimes we
don’t know what we intuitively choose to do in a lesson and why.
Recently, I observed some lessons and I paid attention to the
teacher’s speech. It was grammatically correct and quite clear, but
the monotonous intonation, the absence of a smile and the
formality of the language meant that it wasn’t very friendly. The
teacher didn’t mean to sound unfriendly, it was just the way she
had got used to sounding in English.
Here are some pieces of advice that I collated while attending
seminars given by successful speakers:
1 Make your speech positive, using more affirmative sentences
than negative ones. Instead of saying Don’t forget to …, say
Remember to … . This makes your instructions clear, because you
are telling the students what to do, rather than what not to do.
Using affirmative sentences is particularly important with children.
2 Use questions to involve the students when you explain
something. By doing this, you engage the students in the active
process of analysing the information you are presenting to them.
However, if a teacher who always just gives information suddenly
starts asking questions, the students will stay silent and wait for
the teacher to return to explaining. So allow time for the students
to adjust to your new technique. In three or four lessons, they will
get used to it and you will see the benefits.
3 Be polite: you are not only using the foreign language, but
also representing the culture of this language. English is a very
polite language, and it is important to introduce this aspect of it
in your instructions. Make all your instructions polite by adding
please at the end. This is not as easy as it sounds. I had to make
quite a lot of effort to teach myself to do it. Pay attention to your
own speech and remind yourself all the time about polite words.
Your speech will be more authentic, and your students will
gradually become more polite as well.
Nadiya Klymyshyna
Kharkiv, Ukraine
37
 IN THE CLASSROOM
Stories for
a wide world
Stephen Reilly continues his exploration of short stories and activities based on them.
W
hen choosing short
stories to use with your
students, don’t limit your
choices to the works by
white British and American males which
abound in short story anthologies. If
you do, you and your students will be
missing out on the vast amount of rich
literature produced by women and
writers from a range of different
countries and backgrounds.
Using short stories in class gives
teachers an opportunity to provide their
students with perspectives, customs and
lives that they might not otherwise
encounter. Read, for example, Yiyun
Li’s Love in the Marketplace for a
glimpse of school, a mother–daughter
relationship and unkept promises in
urban China, or Alice Munro’s The Eye
for a shifting vision of death and life
from the perspective of a young girl.
Moreover, stories allow us to look
beyond the diversity of countries,
characters and lives to perceive our
common humanity. Read about the
dreams of two girls getting rich, and
their subsequent disillusion in Dorothy
Parker’s The Standard of Living. The
story might be set in New York, but it
could take place anywhere. Or experience
the narrator’s illusions and disillusions
of love in Alice Walker’s The Lover.
More than a mere lesson in language,
short stories are a lesson in life.
Here are six stories by women
authors from different countries,
followed by classroom activities and
task-based roleplays.
With all these stories – which can be
found online and are suitable for CEFR
B2 level and above – the students should
38 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
first read the text at home, reflect on the
setting and themes and research the
author. Once in class, they compare notes,
discuss the titles and themes, and act out
follow-on or related scenes. The suggested
activities may be either stand-alone (allow
at least an hour) or used to support other
themes being worked on.
Whichever approach to teaching
literature you favour (language-,
culture- or personal development-
centred), you’ll see your students
improve in both systems and skills, and
become more knowledgeable about
writers, countries and, in short, people.
Apollo
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Whilst visiting his parents, Okenwa, a
young Nigerian man, learns that Raphael,
their former servant, has been arrested
for armed robbery, and he recalls his
unreciprocated attraction to him. After an
intense friendship, ‘jilted’ Okenwa had got
Raphael the sack, unwittingly pushing
him into an abyss of street crime.
The students discuss the themes of
friendship, social class, lies, revenge and
Okenwa’s responsibility in Raphael’s
downfall. They write a stream-of-
consciousness style diary by Raphael as
he lies in jail, awaiting his trial. The
students imagine that Okenwa goes to
visit Raphael in prison, and that the
latter claims compensation from the
former for unfair dismissal; both parties
attempt to reach a settlement.
My Son the Hero
by Clare Boylan
Ken, an Irish boy with learning disabilities,
tells his mother that his torn clothes and
scratches are the result of having rescued
a kitten from a tree. The incident
happened at the same time as a murder
was committed in the neighbourhood.
The mother increasingly believes that
her son was the murderer, and decides
to implement her own form of justice.
The students discuss the notions of
good and bad, the process of the
mother’s precipitate judgement and her
motives. Then in threes, they act out a
trial where the mother defends herself
before a judge and prosecutor.
Children of the Sea
by Edwidge Danticat
A young Haitian couple write unsent
letters to each other whilst she has
remained in their village and he is on a
makeshift boat, escaping persecution
from the Tonton Macoutes.
The students identify and explain the
two different writing styles in the story,
and imagine why the girl’s father didn’t
want her to marry her childhood lover.
They then imagine what refugees go
through when fleeing their country, and
share what they know about the current
refugee crises in Europe, the Middle
East and Africa. They list the political
arguments for and against accepting
more refugees and make suggestions on
how to integrate them better in our
communities. Then, in threes, the
students roleplay a village council
meeting with a mayor, a right-wing and
a left-wing councillor, in which they
attempt to reach an agreement on how
many refugees to welcome and on what
conditions.
Country Lovers
by Nadine Gordimer
Set during the apartheid system in South
Africa, the story tells of Thebedi, the
black daughter of a farm worker and of
Paulus, the white farm owners’ son.
Playmates as children, they become
secret lovers as teenagers, although
Thebedi marries Njabulo, another black
South African. She bears a pale-skinned
child, much to the despair of Paulus, who
takes matters literally into his own hands.
The students discuss what they know
about apartheid, speculate on the
characters’ motives in the story and
discuss interracial relationships today in
their country. They then listen to
extracts from Donald Trump’s speech at
Trump Tower, Manhattan, summarise
his references to different countries and
people, and prepare arguments to
counter his. They imagine a
confrontation between him and
someone from one of his targeted
nationalities and religions. They roleplay
what they would say to attempt to
enlighten him on foreign policy and
persuade him to change his presidential
campaign speech.
Interpreter of Maladies
by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Das family, who live in the United
States, take a holiday in India, their
country of origin. They hire Mr Kapasi as
an interpreter/guide. In a doctor’s
surgery, hearing his job described by
Mrs Das as ‘romantic’, Kapasi begins to
fantasise about her. Once they’re alone,
she unburdens herself of an untold
secret, although their subsequent
conversation exchange sees his
fantasies blown away.
The students discuss the reasons for Mrs
Das’s confession and the symbolism in
the story of glasses, windows and
cameras. They then debate the story’s
themes of acculturation, third-world
tourism, parents acting as their
children’s friends and the difference
between ‘pain and guilt’ as formulated
by Mr Kapasi. They discuss Mrs Das’s
thoughts during the trip and write a
monologue, stream-of-consciousness
style, from her point of view. Finally,
they carry out a roleplay between her
and a therapist, where she seeks a
solution to alleviate herself of her
‘malady’. At the end of the roleplay, the
students present their solutions to the
class.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
After a Life
by Yiyun Li
Mr Su and Mr Fong, two elderly Chinese
men mired in complicated family
situations, become friends at a
stockbrokerage. Su and his wife keep
secret their severely disabled adult
daughter, whereas Fong uses Su as
cover for an affair with a younger
woman, before suggesting to his wife
that she should allow all three of them to
live together.
The students speculate on the meaning
of Su’s thoughts that ‘things unsaid had
better remain so’ and on the burden of
shame felt by each of the characters. In
twos or threes, the students then carry
out a roleplay in which Mr Su attempts
to persuade his wife to allow his mistress
to live with them.
Tips
To display the stories on an interactive
whiteboard or by projecting them
from a computer, use the links at the
end of this article to find them online
(or type the author’s name, the story’s
title and then either ‘pdf’ or ‘text’ into
a search engine). Hold the CTRL key
and press + to enlarge the text and
facilitate reading. Hold the CTRL key
and press F to find a specific word or
phrase in the text.
Read the stories yourself before
giving them to your students.
Upon the announcement of her
Nobel Prize award, I sent out extracts
of Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from
Chernobyl, thinking that as no student
would probably read them, I wouldn’t
either. Not only were the students all
speaking about the stories when I
arrived in class, but they told me that
they were by far the most touching
stories that they had read all year.
When seeking to make a list of
culturally diverse stories, favour plot
over style and foreignness over
familiarity.
Whilst American author Edith
Wharton’s lexically lush stories are
perhaps more suited to C2-level
students, they will enjoy the simple
and yet deeply touching Mother
Tongue by Amy Tan, an account of
her relationship with her mother and
the English language. And although
no one should deprive themselves of
Tillie Olsen’s I Stand Here Ironing – a
moving tale of a woman recounting
her life to a councillor who has come
about her troubled daughter –
venturing out to Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie’s Nigeria in A Private
Experience, a disorienting, scary, but
ultimately instructive tale on inter-
religious violence, is certainly worth
the trip.
Be aware of the culturally sensitive
nature of the topics of some stories.
Some teachers may prefer to steer
clear of issues too ‘adult’ with
teenagers, whereas others may relish
getting them to approach edgy topics
and seeing the animation of the
ensuing heated discussions. My own
classes were split between ‘enthralled’
and ‘appalled’ on reading Flannery
O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to
Find, a tale of, let’s call it spiritual
change, but at least it got them
animated.
Be careful about using potentially
sensitive material: it can work both
for and against you.
I once assigned Annie Proulx’s
Brokeback Mountain and told my
adolescent class that it was too risqué
to tell their parents about. Naturally,
before the following week’s lesson they
had all read it. However, after I had
announced the homework at the end
of class, one girl leaned towards me
and whispered ‘Sir, if you give us too
much homework at any time this year,
I’ll tell my mum!’
Apollo: http://goo.gl/6lrltW
My Son the Hero: https://goo.gl/YJLGAR
Children of the Sea: http://goo.gl/oy4i0G
Country Lovers: http://goo.gl/SyGuqg
Interpreter of Maladies:
http://goo.gl/1K8Irw
After a Life: http://goo.gl/iB0q5l
Donald Trump’s speech:
https://goo.gl/vL4yxo
Stephen Reilly works at
the British Council in
Paris, France, and his
main interest lies in
literature. However, he
often tells his students to
read stories he knows
little about and
sometimes can’t join in
their classroom
discussions. To remedy
this, he recently bought
Pierre Bayard’s essay
How to Talk About Books
You Haven’t Read, but it’s
still lying by his bed
unopened.
stephen.reilly.iii@gmail.com
39
Reviews
Teaching Children
How to Learn
by Gail Ellis and Nayr Ibrahim
DELTA Publishing 2015
978-1-905085-86-6
A teacher flicking through
Teaching Children How to Learn
might mistakenly think that it is
simply a book of lesson ideas
and activities to take and use in
the classroom. But if one takes
the time to read through Part A
(the theoretical and
methodological concepts)
before getting to Part B (the
classroom activities) and Part C
(the teacher development
activities), one will soon come
to realise that this book is so
much more! From pedagogical
principles to lesson plans and
opportunities for the individual
teacher’s professional development, this
book tries to provide the complete
package: a systematic framework that
allows the teacher/education manager to
truly help children to learn how to learn.
As English solidifies its position as a
global language, there is a greater need
for children around the world to be
introduced to the language at an earlier
age. But with diverse language levels and
needs in the same classroom, it can be
challenging for the teacher to manage
everyone’s learning process and cater to
each student’s development. By
encouraging learner autonomy and
collaboration, and getting students to
become more aware of their learning
strategies, teachers enable their students
to become effective at managing their
own learning.
Those involved with primary
education might already know of
initiatives that try to promote learner
autonomy, and the benefits of conscious
reflection and self-monitoring. However,
the national curriculum in the UK is not
always quick to embrace the practical
application of such an approach, perhaps
because it requires an overhaul of how
education managers, teachers, parents
and students see the learning process.
So what does this approach entail?
40 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Learning to learn involves
implementing a wide range of activities
that help learners to reflect on their
learning, expand on their learning
strategies, and develop a metacognitive
awareness that would lead them to
becoming self-directed.
This book does not attempt to deny
the multifaceted challenges that this
approach faces, but does not shy away
from them either. In Part A, it tries to
cover every base, explaining the theories
underpinning the approach, addressing
the more traditional views on teaching
(‘We don’t have the time!’, ‘Children are
too young for this aspect of learning’,
‘You have to use the mother tongue’, etc),
outlining what it means to help learners
learn to learn, dispelling misconceptions
and providing information not just for the
teachers but also for the parents, so that
parental involvement in their children’s
learning is maximised.
The activities in Part B cover a range
of ages and proficiency levels, and take on
a plan–do–review structure. In the ‘plan’
stage, the students are encouraged to
think about what they already know and
what they want to learn, thereby involving
them in negotiating their criteria for
success. In addition to a step-by-step
lesson plan in the ‘do’ stage, there is an
extension option to ‘do more’,
allowing the students to work
independently and take their
learning a step further if they
choose to do so. The ‘review’ stage
gets the students reflecting, using
five questions: What did you do?
What did you learn? How did you
learn it? How well did you do? and
What do you need to do next?
Aside from teaching students to
reflect on their learning and become
aware and self-sufficient, it also
teaches them useful learning tools,
such as mind-mapping, concept
webs and ways of recording
vocabulary, while promoting skills like
collaboration, making use of prior
knowledge, following instructions and
problem solving.
In covering lesson suggestions for
a large range of age and proficiency
levels, the lesson plans do make
certain pedagogical assumptions about
English language learning that might not
be too warmly embraced by some
teachers, eg concentrating explicitly on
specific phonemes or word stress, the
occasional focus on Anglo-centric topics
like Guy Fawkes Night and Hallowe’en
and the usefulness of some of the new
vocabulary items. However, the writers
themselves call these lesson plans
‘models’, and that is exactly how they
can best serve the teacher, as the plan
and review stages provide a clear idea of
how we can get children reflecting on
their learning.
After reading a few lesson plans, you
will gain the confidence to apply the
same plan–do–review cycle to your own
classroom activities and materials,
adapting them to the approach.
And if the bank of ready-to-use
teaching materials does appeal to you,
these materials are available online as
photocopiable handouts, with reduced
versions shown in the book itself. There
is also a ‘Teachers’ toolkit’ in Part C of
the book.
Teaching Children How to Learn
successfully combines theory and
practice with a well-thought-out
framework, and I’m sure it is a long-
awaited book by many.
Reviews
After all, as the famous proverb says:
‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a
day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him
for a lifetime.’
Chia Suan Chong
York, UK
Subscribers can get a 12.5% discount
on this book. Go to the ETp website and
quote ETPQR0314 at the checkout.
Brainstorming
by Gerhard Erasmus and Hall Houston
The Round at Smashwords 2016
978-1-311183-88-0
From my own teaching experience, I
would say that brainstorming is one of the
most important tools a teacher has in
class – especially nowadays, when
learners seem to struggle to find ideas on
any topic other than technology! Not only
does brainstorming pave the way for the
lesson, but it also enables the students to
perform subsequent tasks with much
more confidence. There is, though, much
more to generating ideas than the usual
‘spider web’ on the board, with words
elicited from the students.
Brainstorming is a practical and useful
e-book that takes things a step further. It
starts by giving a very brief introduction
to the origins of the term brainstorming
and the rules one must follow when using
the technique. It then goes on to provide
teachers with useful tips on things such
as how to set up a brainstorming activity
and manage the class, in a concise and
straightforward fashion.
If you are a teacher, you will already
know well that things don’t always go
according to plan. What seems to be easy
in theory might not be so in practice. This
e-book, however, does mention four
potential problems that might crop up:
silence in class, the fact that not all
students might contribute to the activity,
unimaginative ideas and when some
participants, in the authors’ words, ‘shoot
down other people’s ideas’. For each of
these problems, there is a brief suggestion
on a possible course of action to be taken.
In the last part of the book, which is
perhaps the most interesting, the reader
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
will find 20 brainstorming
activities with, again, short but
clear instructions on what to do. I
used a few of them with my own
classes and they worked very
well. I was pleasantly surprised to
see that some of the tasks did
manage to get a lot out of those
students in my classes who often
lack imagination or are unable to
come up with ideas
spontaneously. What I particularly
like about this section in the
e-book is that some of the
activities integrate skills by adding
a bit of writing. Another advantage
is that most of them can be used as
a filler in a lesson, as well as to
expand a topic which the students
have already been working with in
class. They can also be easily
planned to take a whole lesson. As
previously mentioned, the material is activity with a different group of students
quite succinct, but the authors include a and wanted to refresh my memory as to
list of other books and websites for the procedures. I had to scroll through
further reading. page after page, looking for the activity
My only reservation is the absence of until I eventually found it. This, however, is
an index, though by no means does this just a minor issue. I can clearly see the
mar the contents of the book. I believe it value of this e-book, and I thoroughly
would just make things easier for the recommend it.
reader. I wanted to repeat one particular William Chaves Gomes
London, UK
This is your magazine. We want to hear from you!
Reviewing
for ETp IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
Would you like to review books Do you have ideas you’d like to share
or other teaching materials for ETp? with colleagues around the world?
We are always looking for people who are Tips, techniques and activities;
interested in writing reviews for us. simple or sophisticated; well-tried
or innovative; something that has
It really worked worked well for you? All published
for me! contributions receive a prize!
Did you get inspired by something you read For guidelines and advice,
in ETp? Did you do something similiar with write to us or email:
your students? Did it really work in practice? helena.gomm@pavpub.com
Do share it with us ...
41
I Mean machines
t has long (and often) been suggested that pets and their
owners grow to look like each other – the resulting
photographs have sometimes borne that out to amusing, You do have to wonder sometimes what is going through car
and occasionally horrific, witness. designers’ minds: it is said that a camel was the result of a design
I am now wondering whether this sort of cross-pollination committee trying to come up with a horse, and some cars do have
can be extended to owners and their cars. The lengths to which a touch of the dromedary about them. A perfectly elegant
some people will go to pamper their four-wheeled pride and joy sweeping line of bodywork may be interrupted by a cluster of
have to be seen to be believed. lights that looks as if it fell off the back (or even the front) of a lorry,
only to be glued roughly in place on a car.
Clean machines Speaking of lights: ever since the discovery of LEDs, all sorts
of expressions appear on the front grilles of automobiles.
I recently found an online company specialising in car cleaning Predatory eyebrows seem to be the thing on some sportier models
and grooming products, with some eye-wateringly expensive car (presumably to frighten you off the road if you are in their way), and
cosmetics: minute pots of exotic wax costing literally hundreds of I came across one recently that looked like a plaintive owl.
pounds per pot; ‘special’ cloths with which to wipe the fevered
bonnet of your loved one; massagers – sorry, electric polishers
– going (sale price) for less than £500! Before I am accused of
hypocrisy, I am going to admit to buying some of their very
cheapest wax, which has cut down the car-washing time by over
half, but further exploration into this automobile Harrods will be
limited. My pocket and common sense forbid it!
Even this cornucopia of cleanliness is thoroughly outdone by
‘The Best Car Wash In The Country’. It is hand-done, of course,
and takes some time (weeks) to do; even so, at more than £7,000
a shot, I think I can save a mortgage’s-worth in a very short time,
maybe even a few hundred miles of motoring …

Dream machines
Cleaning the thing is only enhancing the existing looks, of course,
and it’s the looks which give rise to my original speculation. All
cars are designed by humans, and so I have to remind myself
that, in the case of all cars, ‘somebody loved it once’. At any rate,
they thought it would sell, which is the point – come to that, if I’ve
seen it, then someone has actually spent money on it, so the
scam has worked to an extent. Scam? Well, in some cases, yes,
definitely.
There has always been the taste for For the first few decades of
the exotic, not to mention the quixotic motoring, you bought the car in two
– typing ‘weird-looking cars’ into a stages, as it were. First you decided
search engine will afford hours of fun! what sort of engineering you wanted;
An aside here: weird they may be, this would come in the form of a
but anything to relieve the eye from the substantial steel chassis with (usually)
myriad of giant fridges on wheels, which four wheels, an engine and all the
is what so many big four-by-fours look controls, including dashboard and
like has to be welcome. steering wheel. For all the rest, the new
And then there’s the boxy white one owner could then indulge themselves
which is the spitting image of a Star either in the luxurious or the exotic. In
Wars stormtrooper’s helmet … the 1920s and 30s, there were some

42 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

truly elegant and futuristic designs
which would still turn heads today. Car
What the owner can do to a car’s
shape is pretty constrained these quotes
days – though the manufacturers are ‘A suburban mother’s
still at it: there is a completely role is to deliver children
impractical car in the shape of a obstetrically once, and
cricket bat; another is a replica of the by car forever after.’
red phone on wheels that features in Peter De Vries
a well-known UK insurance advert; a
‘The best car safety
van in the shape of a huge pink
device is a rear-view
crouching cat; and yet another,
mirror with a cop in it.’
completely covered with real grass.
Dudley Moore
This last example must be a
nightmare to run – not only does it ‘Each year it seems to
need watering regularly, but the extra take less time to fly
weight ensures that you are thinking in terms of gallons per mile, across the ocean and longer to drive to work.’ Anonymous
rather than miles per gallon!
‘You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving
And it’s not just the exterior that gets the enthusiastic
today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said “Parking
customiser’s attention. Luxurious interiors can include reclining
Fine”.’ Tommy Cooper
rear seats with massage setting. You can choose from eight
different scents to accompany your drive (the chauffeur ‘Walking isn’t a lost art – one must, by some means, get to the
presumably has to wear a mask to prevent distraction). garage.’ Evan Esar
The Force 1, designed by entrepreneur Henrik Fisker, has no
luggage compartment to speak of – instead, between the two
You’ve never had it
so good
seats, there is a leather holder for two bottles of champagne …
One Rolls-Royce interior features hand-painted crimson
blossoms painted onto a hand-dyed silk lining. I don’t know if
Feng Shui is extra … Of course, cars were preceded by carts and carriages pulled by
Of course, numberplates can be personalised in several horses. For long-distance travel, there was the horse-drawn
countries – a splendid example was 1 EARUP, whose origin could stagecoach. In the UK, the golden age of the stagecoach was
be seen through the back window: a German Shepherd with one during the Regency era, from 1800 to 1830. This period saw great
ear flat and the other firmly held aloft. improvements in the design of the coaches: John Besant’s design
There have been reports of a car parked outside a blood- was noted for a novel feature that prevented the wheels from
donor clinic, with the plate ‘VAMPYR’. falling off while the coach was in motion …
Steady improvements in the roads themselves were also

Car anecdotes
A traffic officer pulled a car over and told the man driving that he
was doing 50 miles per hour in a 40 mph zone.
‘I was only going 40!’ the driver protested.
‘Not according to my radar,’ said the officer.
made at this time, most prominently tarmac surfaces; these
enabled the speed of coaches to rise from around six miles per
hour (including stops) to eight miles per hour.
Some two hundred years later, official figures show that, for
the first quarter of 2011/2012, the average traffic speed on major
roads in central London for the 12 hours between 7 am to 7 pm
was 8.98 mph. Progress?

‘Yes, I was!’ the man shouted back.

‘No, you weren’t!’

Don’t drink and drive!
There is a photocopiable activity about a car driver on page 44 for
With that, the man’s wife leaned towards the window and said,
you to use with your students.
‘Officer, I should warn you not to argue with my husband when
he’s been drinking.’ Scrapbook compiled by Ian Waring Green

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 • 43

 Don’t drink and drive!
This activity involves re-ordering sentences to make a story.
Cut out the cards, jumble them and distribute them to the students. There are 14 cards. If you have more than 14 students,
put them into groups. If you have fewer than 14 students, give some students more than one card.
Tell the students that they mustn’t show their cards to the other students. They should read their sentences aloud and try to
work out the order of the story.
When they have finished, ask them to read out the complete story in order.

Sam Richards goes to a party and has too much Sam waits and waits, but they don’t return, so
to drink. finally he decides to drive home.

When he gets there, he tells his wife that he is going

His friends beg him to leave his car at their house, to bed, and asks her to tell anyone who comes
offering to drive him home or call a taxi for him. looking for him that he has ’flu and has been in bed
all day.

Sam refuses, insisting that he is quite capable of

driving home, and he points out that he only lives a A few minutes later, the police knock on the door.
mile and a half away.

About a quarter of a mile from the party, two police First, they ask if Sam Richards lives there, and his
officers see him weaving all over the road and they wife replies that he does, but that he is in bed with
pull him over. ’flu and has been there all day.

They order him to get out of the car, show them his
driving licence and take a breathalyser test. They then ask to see his car.

Just as he is about to blow into the breathalyser She asks why, but they insist on seeing it, so she
bag, the police radio informs them of a robbery takes them to the garage and opens the door.
taking place in a house a very short distance away.

The officers tell Sam to stay where he is, saying that

they will be right back. They then run down the There they find the police car, lights still flashing.
street to the robbery.

44 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 COMPETITION
Left on the shelf
It’s almost as if they were made for each other
Love at first sight
He was going one way
She was going the other
He smiled at her
She smiled back

Make a film!
And that was it
No chance to stop

Neither of them thought

It’s time to turn your students into actors, directors and That they would ever meet again
video editors. In this issue, ETp is launching a filmmaking But perhaps this love was meant to be
competition. Because against all odds
Their paths crossed
Opposite is a story (Left on the shelf) from Jamie Keddie’s Not once, not twice, but three more times
new book, Videotelling. Your students’ task is quite simply
to create a short film (five minutes maximum) to bring this They fell in love
story to life. He popped the question
She said yes
Encourage the students to interpret the text and invent They tied the knot
answers to their own questions. For example, Who are And their love went from strength to strength
these characters? Why didn’t they stop? Are they human?
But then one day everything changed
What was the careless little action, and who was
A careless little action
responsible for it? What happened to her? What A situation beyond their control
happened to him? And against their will they were forced apart
Made to go their separate ways
This could be a whole-class effort. Alternatively, you could
take a more autonomous approach and get your students She went on to new things
scripting, planning, finding locations, shooting and editing A new life
in small groups. It’s up to you. A new reason
A new purpose
Upload your students’ videos onto a video-sharing
site (YouTube, Vimeo, etc) and send the links to But not so far away from here
helena.gomm@pavpub.com, no later than In a forgotten little corner
He lives alone with nothing but memories
September 20th, 2016. You must include your
Loveless
name, postal address and email address.
Homeless
The winning video will be announced in ETp Issue 107 Purposeless
(published in November, 2016). We have £100 of Amazon A terrible feeling of emptiness
Sometimes he thinks that life might have been better
gift vouchers for the winning students to share. And their
If only he had been
teacher will receive a signed copy of Jamie Keddie’s book
Left on the shelf
Videotelling, which will be available later this year.

Good luck!
Important note: If your students are under 18 years old
and they are to appear in their own videos, you must
get parental permission. You must also get permission
to share their videos online.

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 • 45

TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Bridging the
technophobe--
technophile gap
T
Daniel Monaghan his series of articles was
prompted by a particular group
and Tessa Woodward of in-service teachers we met on
a short teacher training course at
end their series by applying our college. Some of the participants loved
using new technology in their language
their unifying framework to classes, some loved using low-tech activities
and others had very mixed feelings, seeing
creation. pros and cons for all and any media used.
To avoid arguments and conversational
log jams, we looked for a unifying theme
or course structure that all of us could
happily work with. We wanted one that
would lead us to think and talk about
language learning and teaching more than
about the specifics of the high- or low-tech
media we can use to support it.
A unifying framework
Our way of avoiding too much
concentration on the precise medium
used for language teaching and learning
was to adopt a unifying framework called
‘Stimulus-based learning and teaching’.
As we’ve made our way through this
series of five articles, we have gradually
been explaining this framework. We
believe it can help us all to concentrate
on the rationale for the activities we use
in class, instead of dealing mainly with
media worries or disagreements.
Stimulus-based
teaching: Creation
In our articles so far, we have looked at
ways that students can meet a stimulus, get
to grips with how it works, gain a feeling
of personal connection with it and rattle
it around fast and flexibly to use it to
46 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
5
maximum effect. For each of these four
stages, or four categories of ‘teaching
move’, we have described no-tech, low-tech
and higher-tech ways of working. The
table at the end of this article lays out the
five categories of move, with examples and
a rationale for each. Our hope is, then, that
teachers can talk about encounter, analysis,
personalisation and alteration, rather than
worrying about the exact amount of newer
technology they use.
In this article, we turn to the last
category: creation, considering how we
can capitalise on all the work done so
far in order to help our students create
something fresh, novel or different with the
stimulus. We consider what the students
can make from or with a stimulus. As
teachers, we use this category of move a
lot, either in class or outside. Every time
we encourage our students to use known
material to do a roleplay, write a dialogue,
story, article or advert or use what they
know as a springboard to practise new
skills, we are challenging them to create.
To take a very simple no-tech
example, let’s imagine we have been
working on past simple questions such as
Where did she go? We can ask the students
to create a three- or four-line dialogue
containing that question, whether this is
at the start, in the middle or at the end
of the dialogue. This is a very simple
example of how we can gently encourage
our students to be creative.
If we wanted to set this as a piece of
homework and involve some technology,
we could ask the students to use a
website such as Dvolver (www.dvolver.
com/moviemaker/make.html) to create a
cartoon of their dialogue. (We first learnt
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
about Dvolver from a group of Dutch
CLIL teachers.) This website provides a
step-by-step template to enable the
students to create a cartoon quickly and
easily, so the main focus can remain on
language rather than animation skills, but
the students still get a fun product at the
end. When the various steps have been
completed, the website provides a link to
the finished cartoon, which can be emailed
to the teacher, who can then use the link
to show it to the class, if the classroom is
equipped with a computer and projector.
Spoken homework
One advantage of using newer technology
is that homework, which for centuries has
tended to be written down, can now be
spoken as well. For example, if you want
your students to make up a story or
anecdote based on a stimulus, you can
ask them to record the story on their
smartphones and send it to you as an
email attachment. Note that the students
will need to have an MP3 recorder on
their smartphones to do this, but these
can easily be downloaded for free from
app stores such as GooglePlay or iTunes.
The advantage of asking the students to
use an MP3 recorder is that the teacher
simply clicks on the attachment and it
should play automatically. If the students
use their smartphone’s built-in voice
recorder, there may be difficulties in
opening the recording because of the
unusual recording formats that some
phones use. If teachers or students prefer
to do things via computer (or don’t have
a smartphone), then using a website
such as Vocaroo (www.vocaroo.com) and
a computer microphone achieves much
the same effect. Russell Stannard has
produced a useful guide on how to use
Vocaroo at www.teachertrainingvideos.
com/audio-podcasting/vocaroo.html. Our
experience of using recordings in this way
is that it seems to provide a challenge that
is stimulating without being terrifying –
students usually want to make a good
recording to send to their teacher, and will
take the time to do the activity over and
over again until they are satisfied with
the result. At the same time, those
students who find presenting to a group
highly stressful can practise speaking (or
rehearse for an eventual presentation) in
a less pressured way.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
This series of five articles has been for Woodward, T Planning Lessons and
all of us, whether we are totally into Courses CUP 2001
newer technology, totally into no- or Woodward, T ‘Stimulus-based teaching’
low-tech teaching, or have mixed English Teaching Professional 25 2002
feelings on the whole subject. Our plea Thornbury, S https://scottthornbury.
is that we talk to each other about wordpress.com/2015/03/01/s-is-for-sla/
language learning and language teaching
Tessa Woodward is a
and don’t get bogged down in teacher, teacher trainer,
disagreements or become dazzled or and the Professional
Development Co-ordinator
confused by new technology. Whatever at Hilderstone College,
materials we teachers use, we are most Broadstairs, UK. She is
also an international
probably endeavouring to help our ambassador for IATEFL.
students to encounter a stimulus, Tessa edits The Teacher
Trainer and is the author of
analyse it, gain a personal connection to many books and articles
it, adapt it and then use it creatively for for teachers and teacher
trainers. Her latest book,
their own purposes. The precise medium with Seth Lindstromberg,
we use to achieve these goals is less is Something to Say
important than our knowing what we (published by Helbling
Languages).
are doing, how and why. TessaW@hilderstone.ac.uk
As Scott Thornbury wrote some
time ago in the ‘S is for SLA’ entry in his Daniel Monaghan has
the Trinity Diploma and
An A-Z of ELT blog: ‘The criteria for an MA in TESOL from
evaluating the worth of any aid to Sheffield Hallam
University, UK. He is a
language learning (whether print or tutor at Hilderstone
digital, and, in the case of the latter, College. He has been
an oral examiner for the
whether app, program, game or the Cambridge exams and
software that supports these) must include has written teaching-
related articles for
some assessment of its fitness for purpose. The Guardian Weekly,
That is to say, does it facilitate learning?’ Onestopenglish.com and
The Teacher Trainer.
We couldn’t have put it better
DanielM@hilderstone.ac.uk
ourselves!
Categories of teaching moves, examples and reasons for their use
Category Examples Reasons
Encounter Immediate or slow reveal, eg mask, The students meet the stimulus.
the stimulus flash, blur, show upside down, gap fill, This builds curiosity. The students
cloze, stop before the end, jumble, can speculate, match, sort, re-order
divide into two and hide half, separate. and thus increase the impact.
Analyse Break down, identify and name the The students get to grips with all
the stimulus parts; define; describe; discuss the parts thoroughly and
context, contents and uses, past, understand how it works.
present and future history.
Personalise Have you ever ...? Similarities and This establishes a link between
the stimulus differences between the stimulus and the stimulus and the students.
the students; what it reminds them of; As a result, it increases interest
what if this ever happened to the and depth of learning.
students, how the stimulus is used
and adapted by the students; can
they somehow add themselves in?
Alter the Reduce, expand, reverse, make The students work with the
stimulus opposites and parallels, change stimulus more flexibly and faster.
tense, add a paragraph, use it for This improves thinking and
something else. language skills.
Create What can students make with/from it? It becomes a springboard to new
something Roleplay, letter, story, article, advert, skills and products.
with the magazine or portfolio writing, graph,
stimulus life story, chart, diagram?
47
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Why do a TESOL
research degree?
A
Emily Edwards, TESOL research degree,
such as an MA or PhD, is
Nha Vu, Sovannarith one of the options open to
English language teachers
Lim and Chiem wishing to continue with their formal
education. In this article, we, a diverse
Khang Mai explore their group of PhD candidates studying at the
University of New South Wales
routes and motivations (UNSW) in Australia with Professor
Anne Burns, outline our own
motivations for doing TESOL research
degrees, as well as the routes we have
taken. Through four individual case
studies, we share our experiences and
perspectives on why an English language
teacher might choose to do a TESOL
research degree, and offer tips for
teachers who might be considering this
option.
Case study 1
Name: Emily
Nationality: British/Australian
Current position: PhD student
(full-time), tutor and research officer
(part-time) at UNSW
TESOL qualifications: BA Languages
(2002–2006) CELTA (2006), DELTA (2010),
MApp Ling (2010–2011), PhD in
Education (2013–2016)
I have been a TESOL teacher since 2006,
when I did my initial qualification in the
Czech Republic. I then spent the next
three years trying to satisfy my itchy feet
– teaching in Europe, Japan and
Australia. After deciding to settle in
Australia, I realised that I needed more
theory, to help me properly understand
and develop my teaching. Doing the
DELTA opened up my eyes to a world
of TESOL research that I never knew
existed – and finally I felt that I had some
principles to back up and extend my
48 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
teaching practice. I wanted more! So in
the same year, I enrolled on a coursework
Master’s in Applied Linguistics (TESOL)
at Macquarie University in Sydney, and
my interest in research kept growing.
Although I enjoyed my coursework
degree, I knew that what really excited
me was research. I wanted to be able to
explore theories in much more depth,
and then apply them to real-life
situations. However, applying for direct
entry to a PhD degree proved difficult.
As I hadn’t completed a dissertation
before, on paper I wasn’t eligible to start
a PhD. While I worked full-time after
my Master’s, two things motivated me to
keep going with the research degree
application process. Firstly, I managed
to publish an article in a local peer-
reviewed journal (English Australia
Journal) and, secondly, I met my future
supervisor, Professor Anne Burns, who
encouraged and supported my
application for a Master’s by Research
(MRes) degree at UNSW. If I could
start a MRes degree (two years full-
time), my hope was that after a year of a
lot of hard work, I could apply for a
transfer to a PhD programme (three to
four years full-time). And I made it,
finally! It has been quite a roundabout
way of starting a PhD, but this allowed
me to achieve my goal in the easiest (and
quickest) way.
So my motivation for doing a PhD
was initially my passion for learning and
wanting to know more about TESOL
theories. Now, though, I’ve been
thoroughly seduced by the research
process, and I’ve realised that
researching, presenting, publishing and
teaching are what I want to keep doing
for the rest of my career.
On a final note, I continued teaching
part-time during both my Master’s and
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
PhD, both of which I studied full-time. I
highly recommend this option, if
possible, as it allows you to immerse
yourself fully in your studies while still
earning an income (which can often be
supplemented by scholarships and
funding), and it really helps to be able to
‘see’ theory working in your teaching
practice.
Case study 2
Name: Nha Vu
Nationality: Vietnamese
Current position: Dean of The Faculty
of English, University of Languages and
International Studies, Vietnam National
University
TESOL qualifications: BA (1997–2001),
MA (2003–2006), PhD in Education
(2010–2014)
I started a part-time Master’s degree in
Vietnam because my employer
supported it, and it would be helpful for
obtaining a tenure position. Except for
frequent challenges in organising the
class time to fit my teaching schedule, I
found learning and working at the same
time was financially and educationally
complementary. My employer paid both
the tuition fees and my salary – enabling
me to support my family, buy books and
pay research fees. I did a combined
degree, with both coursework and a
thesis. On the one hand, I could relate
my actual classroom experiences to
group discussions with my classmates
and lecturers or to the reading that I did
for the course. That helped me to reflect
on and improve my own teaching
practices. For example, I took a course
on materials development in which I
designed a set of teaching materials that
I could use for one of my English
classes. On the other hand, the teaching
job gave me access to valuable resources
for data collection. I knew the teachers
and students well, so they were more
than willing to participate in my
research. For one of my experiments, a
colleague volunteered to teach the
control class. After the course, I was
offered a tenure position and a small
monetary reward for finishing a
postgraduate degree with a rector’s
award: ‘Thesis of the year’.
I was happy with my job until my
university started to adopt English as the
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
medium of instruction four years ago. As
I was the Academic Vice Dean, managing
the EMI program, I personally
experienced the worry and confusion it
caused, and it was an emotional time. I
sometimes felt overwhelmed by new
tasks. Then I was offered an Ausaids
scholarship for Vietnamese scholars, and
I decided to leave my job and go to
Sydney to begin a PhD study on the
implementation of this new EMI
programme. At the time, I was uncertain
about what I really wanted to find out in
my research and how I would benefit
from the study. I just wanted to move to
a new country and learn from the best
practices of new colleagues. Now that I
am able to reflect on the literature and
data, I realise that a new country gave me
access to a strong learning community
and rich EMI experiences. I have
developed new skills to enable me to
analyse international teaching issues.
Now I am working with Vietnamese
students, lecturers and other individuals
who have been working on these EMI
initiatives themselves for locally
appropriate solutions.
Case study 3
Name: Sovannarith Lim
Nationality: Cambodian
Current position: PhD Candidate
(full-time)
TESOL qualifications: BEd TEFL
(2003), MATESL (2007), PhD in Language
and Literacy Education (2016)
I first started teaching English as a
foreign language in 2003 in both
secondary and tertiary contexts in
Cambodia. As a new graduate at that
time, I was always excited and very keen
on teaching and meeting with students!
My knowledge was fresh, and I was full
of confidence. As time went by, I
became more experienced in my daily
routines, as I came to understand better
the contexts in which I worked: my
students, the textbooks I used, the
assessment methods implemented and
the educational system itself, which
governed my teaching activities.
Everything was perfect. I could manage
my life and work together very well. But
then, I kept having thoughts. It was
really my ego that kept telling me to
move forward, that my life journey
didn’t stop there. So I just knew what to
do – I must have a Master’s degree!
So, in 2005, I went to the
Philippines, undertaking a two-year
Master’s degree in teaching English as a
second language, a coursework
programme with a thesis component. I
spent the first year doing all the
coursework requirements and the
second year on research for my thesis
(on EFL learning motivation). For me,
the coursework and the research were
two great sources of knowledge. From
the former, I learnt to appreciate the
various factors accountable for the
success and failure of ESL/EFL
learning. These ranged from biological
factors, such as age, to linguistic factors,
such as the learner’s first language, and
from sociocultural factors, such as
where the learning takes place, to
psychological and psycholinguistic
factors, such as how the learner learns
the language. The research component
of my Master’s allowed me to use my
theoretical knowledge as a tool to
investigate the phenomenon that
interested me. It was an intellectually
rewarding experience to do research on
a learning area that I believed was
responsible, to a large extent, for L2
learning mastery. Upon the completion
of my Master’s, I went back to teach in
the same contexts, but this time I was
also a teacher educator and a course
convenor.
Was my MATESL not sufficient for
me to perform my professional work?
Why did I decide to study for a PhD in
this field? ELT was a fast-growing field
at that time (and it still is). New
challenges emerged, so I needed new
knowledge and expertise to tackle them
effectively. Also, I felt I needed a higher
degree to be part of a wider ELT
community. But most importantly, I
identified a problem in my work and I
wanted to understand its nature so as to
address it for the betterment of my
professional self and my professional
community. The problem, this time,
dealt directly with the teacher and the
teaching, as different from the learner
and the learning. I was particularly keen
on understanding how teachers went
about their daily practice.
I believe there are many more reasons
for one to decide to study for a Master’s
or a PhD. You might find mine
49
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Why do a TESOL
research degree?
corresponds to yours. Whatever the
reasons, I can tell you from my
experience that studying for a Master’s
and/or a PhD is always beneficial and
enjoyable, despite the academic
challenges that every student experiences.
Case study 4
Name: Chiem Khang Mai
Nationality: Vietnamese
Current position: PhD candidate
(full-time)
TESOL qualifications: BA in TEFL
(1999), MA in TESOL (2007), PhD in
TESOL (2016)
Working as a teacher educator since
1999, I have always been aware that the
journey of lifelong learning is extremely
important in the teaching profession.
While I have been working, I have
received much support, not only from
my colleagues, but also from the
president of the university in which I
work, who was always encouraging me
to enter Master’s TESOL programmes.
However, I did not actually undertake
any Master’s courses until 2004.
The reason why I changed my mind
is that, in 2002, a new set of locally-
written textbooks for teaching English
at secondary schools in Vietnam was
introduced by the Ministry of Education
and Training. These textbooks follow
the introduction of a new national
curriculum, which claims to adopt a
theme-based syllabus, with
communicative and learner-centred
approaches and task-based language
teaching as the central method. Because
of the new curriculum, I became aware
that I needed to update my knowledge
and acquire more theories, with the aim
of gaining confidence within my area of
expertise.
After getting a Master’s in TESOL
in 2007, I received a promotion but,
more importantly, I realised that doing
research is one of the most interesting
things in my teaching life. Therefore, in
2012, after securing an Australian
government scholarship for my PhD, I
came to Australia to do further research.
50 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Different routes and apply, observe and reflect on the use of
theories and principles.
motivations
When we initiated the idea for this article,
we all shared a common goal and
interests in completing a research degree We hope this article has shown that there
in TESOL at UNSW in Australia. It was is not only one, but many different routes
an opportunity for us to reflect on how into a TESOL research degree, and
we had started our learning journey. perhaps some of our experiences and
Emily had accumulated several motivations resonate with yours. Our
qualifications in TESOL and teaching next article will focus on the main stages
experience in various contexts before she within a PhD, and what you can expect
decided to settle into a full-time PhD from each one. If you are thinking about
course at UNSW, where we all met. Nha starting a research degree, good luck and
did her part-time Master’s degree in enjoy this challenging but extremely
Vietnam as a job requirement for rewarding adventure!
professional development before the
course. Sovannarith started the journey
with a strong desire to develop his
professional competence in the field.
Khang came to the Master’s course to
gain confidence to implement a new
language curriculum.
We realise that our active
involvement in the field as teachers or
managers and the need to improve our
practices has given us the key push to
undertake a postgraduate degree. We are
well aware of the reciprocal links
between research and practice. Research
gives us theories, ideas and skills to
analyse teaching problems critically and
to be able to select the most efficient
solutions. Meanwhile, everyday teaching
practice gives us the contexts in which to emily.edwards@unsw.edu.au
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Reviewing
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Would you like to review books Do you have ideas you’d like to share
or other teaching materials for ETp? with colleagues around the world?
We are always looking for people who are Tips, techniques and activities;
interested in writing reviews for us. simple or sophisticated; well-tried
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It really worked worked well for you? All published
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Do share it with us ...
Love your
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
larynx!
I
Richard Pinner has n Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius
advises his son, Laertes, to ‘Give
some advice for protecting every man thine ear, but few thy
voice’. This is also good advice for
the voice. language teachers wishing to increase
student-talking-time while decreasing
their own teacher-talking-time:
something long recognised as good
communicative practice. However, there
is another reason for reducing the
amount you use your voice in the
language classroom.
The first time I encountered someone
who had lost their voice completely, I was
a young child. My aunt, who was not
normally a loud person, couldn’t even
whisper, and remained completely silent
while my uncle explained that she had lost
her voice through laryngitis. I remember
thinking at the time that this was rather
silly. In later years, I experienced a hoarse
voice, sore throat and other common
symptoms myself, but I never actually lost
my voice, certainly not to the extent that
I could not utter a word. The idea that
anyone could completely lose their voice
seemed unlikely to me for a long time
into adulthood.
A deafening silence
Then, after an ill-advised evening out
with two Irish colleagues on St Patrick’s
Day in 2010, I found when I arrived at
work the next day that my voice was
reduced to a tiny whisper. I was not
actually teaching that day – we were on
a team-building excursion – but my
participation was required in meetings in
which we were to talk about the various
e-learning materials we were developing.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
By the end of the day, I was totally
voiceless. The next day, I had to call in
sick because I literally could not talk,
hence I could not teach a class (since I
do not ascribe to The Silent Way).
When my voice didn’t return by the
weekend, I went to the doctor and was
told I had laryngitis: a common illness
resulting from inflammation of the
larynx, usually due to a virus or
infection. The vocal chords swell up and
can no longer vibrate as usual, meaning
the voice becomes hoarse, weak or may
even disappear altogether. The
symptoms can last a week or two. The
doctor told me to rest my voice and not
to even whisper, as this actually places
extra strain on the vocal chords. He also
told me to drink plenty of fluids,
especially warm herbal tea or honey and
ginger, but to keep away from caffeine,
tobacco and alcohol.
To my surprise and great concern,
my voice was not better by Monday, and
I had to cancel more classes. By this
time, I was beginning to feel very
miserable. When you cannot talk, you
realise just how essential language is to
your identity and ability to function as a
normal human being. Without speech, I
basically had no way of expressing
myself. I had to write down things I
wanted to say to my wife, which took a
long time. If I wanted a cup of tea, I
could only nod in acceptance at the
offer, and my only way to express
gratitude was with my eyes.
As a language teacher, this was
actually a very formative experience for
me, and this is why I am writing the
story in such detail.
51
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Love your
to promote voice health and avoid the
loss of one of your most valuable
professional tools:
larynx!
A still small voice
It took over a week for my voice to return
enough for me to teach. It was still fragile
for a further week, but it did mean that my
students definitely got to do most of the
talking. After the horrible experience of
being voiceless, I vowed never to let it
happen again. Sadly, I have lost my voice
a further three times since that first
experience. Each time it happened was due
to being under stress (something nearly all
teachers will no doubt be familiar with),
often accompanied by some form of
over-indulgence in the form of coffee, late
nights, whiskey – or all three. Being in a
smoky pub or bar does not help, and
although I do not smoke, I am sensitive to
contact with smoke. Also, living in a large
city (such as London where I was in
2010, or Tokyo where I live now)
exposes you to many harmful airborne
toxins, which can also lead to infection.
Silence is golden
In other words, it is important for
language teachers to take care of their
voices. Almost every profession around
the world – from shopkeeper, waiter,
taxi-driver, police officer, to opera star
or professional singer – requires the use
of language and, hence, the use of the
voice. We also use our voices for
everyday interactions, of course, such as
maintaining relationships or exchanging
information. This is all rather obvious,
but it becomes very salient when you
lose your voice and cannot engage in
any of the normal daily activities that
you take for granted. I invite you to try
going about your normal daily life
without speaking for an hour or two, as
an experiment. With the exception of
people who live alone, most of us will be
using our voices regularly and will find it
very hard to maintain the vow of silence.
The fact that I have lost my voice
completely several times has further
increased my resolve to keep my vocal
chords healthy and happy. Here are
some pieces of advice I would like to
share with other practitioners, in order
52 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Don’t overdo it: Teaching is stressful
work and many of us rely on large
doses of caffeine to get through the day,
perhaps followed by something a little
stronger in the evening to help us
unwind. This is fine, but only in
moderation. I have actually found that I
have more energy and sleep better when
I am regularly exercising and not relying
too much on caffeine and alcohol.
Put the kettle on, honey: Even if
your voice is fine, honey is a very good
natural antibiotic. Not only does it help
soothe sore throats and colds, it can
also help prevent them by boosting
your immune system. Moreover, it is a
natural energy booster and antioxidant.
Add a few slices of fresh ginger to a
hot drink with honey to enhance the
medicinal benefits for your throat – and
make a daily dose part of your routine.
Rest is best: Regular days when you
do not use your voice much are good
ways to ensure your voice is healthy
for when you need it. There is also
something therapeutic about spending
the day on your own or without
speaking to many people. Going to
the cinema or staying at home to read
a book are excellent ways to spend the
day, and they might also provide you
with new things to talk about in the
classroom.
Get out in the open: There is a
growing body of research that connects
happiness and mental well-being with
nature and the great outdoors. In an
article for Psychology Today, Marilyn
Price-Mitchell explains that several
recent scientific studies have found a
link between nature and happiness,
adding that, because of the modern
preoccupation with technological
devices and the fact that more people
are living in built-up, urban areas,
many of us are not being exposed to
our true ‘natural’ environment. Getting
out of the city whenever you can will
alleviate the strain on your voice and
also help you to stay fresh.
Give someone else the floor: Even
the most communicative classes rely a
great deal on the teacher giving
instructions and setting up tasks. One
way to give the floor to the students
more could be to have them give
presentations or work on projects that
feature lots of groupwork and
autonomous interaction. One
successful task I have used is what I call
‘output sessions’, which are basically
interactive presentations where a group
of learners is responsible for leading the
class for an entire lesson. These need a
lot of scaffolding to set up and time to
prepare, but the benefits go well beyond
giving your voice a little time off.
These are simple strategies which I use to
try to preserve my voice. More obvious
lifestyle changes such as not smoking,
moving to the country or becoming a
Trappist monk/nun were not mentioned
for several reasons, not least for fear of
patronising the reader. I write this article
as someone who has lost my voice several
times, despite having for a long time
believed that it would never happen to
me. I have related my personal experience
to highlight both how unpleasant and
debilitating it is not to be able to speak.
I hope the article will make some of
us consider our voices more carefully
and make a few small changes to
improve voice health. Long-term voice
degeneration is something any fan of
Tom Waits will know about, and even if
you prefer the singer’s deeper and more
raspy vocals in later albums, is this
something you actually aspire to as a
teacher? Just like the rest of our bodies,
our voices change with age. However,
taking care now can prevent a lot of
damage later. As teachers, we not only
use our voices a great deal, we also rely
on them for our bread and butter. So,
take care of what is arguably your main
professional asset – and give it a rest.
Price-Mitchell, M ‘Does nature make us
happy?’ Psychology Today 2014
Richard Pinner has been
working in ELT since
2004, and is currently an
assistant professor at
Sophia University in
Tokyo, Japan. He is also a
part-time PhD candidate
at the University of
Warwick, UK, where he is
examining the relationship
between authenticity and
motivation.
richardpinner@live.com
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
I blog,
therefore
I am
Pete Clements evaluates entering the blogosphere.
A
year ago, I decided to enter
the ELT blogosphere. I had
just finished my teaching
diploma, and I wasn’t too
sure about the best way to continue my
professional development. A colleague
and experienced blogger (see
eltexperiences.com) suggested that
interacting with the online ELT
community might help me to reflect on
my own practice, and would provide a
platform for some of my teaching ideas.
I was reluctant at first, but decided to
start a blog, give it six months and then
evaluate the benefits.
It has been half a year since
ELTplanning.com came into existence,
with the aim of ‘sharing lesson ideas,
plans and tips from a developing teacher’.
What started as a fleeting idea without
much direction has become the best CV
I’ve ever compiled – helping me get two
great jobs in fantastic locations. I’ve gone
from a mild technophobe to an avid social
networker – I’ve even got a Twitter
account! I have been shortlisted for the
British Council ‘Blog of the Month’ award
a couple of times, which has brought
visitors to my site in the thousands, and
the numbers are still rising.
I have read many posts from others
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
extolling the benefits of blogging, and
plenty of tips from the big names within
the ELT blogosphere on how to go about
it. However, I can’t say that my blogging
experiences have been wholly positive.
There are downsides to starting your own
blog which seem to be overlooked (or at
least rarely discussed) by many of the
ELT bloggers out there. If you’re
seriously considering ELT blogging as a
means of continuous professional
development (CPD) – and, despite the
caveats, I would recommend it – here’s a
summary of some issues I’ve faced and
what you could do to avoid them.
Blogs and bloggers
In a recent webinar entitled ‘Professional
development through blogs and blogging’
(see https://tekhnologic.wordpress.com for
a summary), Sandy Millin mentioned a
handful of reasons why people blog.
These included self-reflection, sharing
ideas, creating a teaching portfolio,
networking, or even just for catharsis. A
common reason for reading blogs was to
gain new ideas. Although Sandy does
touch on some of the negative aspects of
blogging (eg chasing hits and quantity
over quality of posts), the webinar is
generally very positive towards the use
of blogs for CPD.
What is not discussed is whether
these are all equally valid reasons to
begin a blog. If a teacher begins blogging
merely to create an online portfolio of
their skills, are they making a useful
contribution to the ELT community?
The same could be said for someone
who starts blogging just to network.
Maybe, like my own blog, things
start with a dual purpose – you might
wish to ‘sell’ yourself, but also to share
ideas with other teachers. In that case,
which motivation should take
precedence? Recently, I wanted to post
some activities which I thought didn’t
work very well with young learner
groups. Although I felt that the
information would be beneficial to one
of my audiences (other teachers), it had
the potential to be detrimental to me, as
potential employers may misjudge my
self-reflection as admittance of poor
teaching technique or lesson delivery.
Interacting with the
online ELT community
might help me to reflect
on my own practice,
and would provide a
platform for some of
my teaching ideas
Hits and likes
Unfortunately, ‘hits’ have become a big
part of blogging – for anyone with an
ego, this is unavoidable. When I created
my first few posts, I was amazed to see
that 20 people around the world had read
them, and that each post had received
four ‘likes’. One day, after writing a post
about the CELTA qualification, I saw my
hits jump by nearly 500. I channelled my
energy into CELTA posts for a few
weeks, and quickly realised I was onto a
winner. I got really excited when I saw
my hits increase every hour, and I was
delighted to see the countries where my
blog was being read.
Very quickly, however, this became an
obsession. Although I really wanted to
post about my experiences in studying for
a diploma, I only had about 100 people
53
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
I blog,
therefore
I am
interested in that. On the other hand, if
I posted some generic teaching tips and
started my post with a phrase like ‘Ten
ways to …’, I’d get viewers in the
thousands. For three months, my blog
became dominated by ‘click bait’. Once, I
received nearly 30,000 hits for one post,
but I still only got about ten likes!
It seems easy for blogging to become
self-gratifying. Of course, it’s nice when
your blog gains a following, but it can
mean that you start to base your blog
content on what will bring in the most
viewers, regardless of how useful,
insightful or innovative this might be.
Share and share alike
Primarily, I started a blog to share
teaching ideas. I assumed that by sharing
some of my more successful activities, I
would encourage my audience to do the
same. Naively, I expected to develop a
network of like-minded collaborative
teachers around the world whom I could
bounce ideas off, share plans with and
give advice to/gain advice from. In six
months of blogging, I have only
interacted with about three teachers who
fit this mould, leading to three
collaborative relationships in my field. On
the other hand, despite regular requests
for my readers to share thoughts, add
extra ideas, write responses, guest posts
– or anything to show engagement more
than just a mouse click – interaction on
my site has been minimal.
I have attempted to change this by
undertaking plenty of shameless
self-promotion on social networking
sites. Whilst this brings plenty of viewers
to my blog, it still fails to provide any
debate or discussion on blog topics. In
particular, I’ve found my use of the
‘Twittersphere’ to be rather pointless.
I’ve had only a handful of meaningful
ELT-related interactions through it, and
found various organised ELT Twitter
chats too hard to follow because of text
limitations. I have rarely found that
anything of value to my own practice
54 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
has developed from my experiments in
tweeting. However, this is probably
down to my poor understanding of how
to use it!
Having my own blog has encouraged
me to read other teaching blogs more
frequently. I’d say that reading the
thoughts of others online, rather than
sharing my own, has been a more
beneficial means of professional
development. However, I probably
wouldn’t have delved into the
blogosphere so much had I not been
involved in it personally, so one process
has complemented the other.
Pedagogy and identity
The trouble with starting a blog is the
expectation it creates. Writing successful
posts brings visitors to your blog, which
is probably what you’re aiming for.
However, as subscribers, re-blogs and
shares increase, the pressure to post
something worthwhile rises, too. It was
easy for me to do this at first, as I’d
already made a list of potential ideas for
posts and added to this during my first
few months of blogging. However,
having chosen to blog once a week, I
quickly realised that my ideas were fast
running out.
Recently, I realised that my blog was
starting to underpin my practice. I was
trying new approaches and techniques in
the classroom, and exploring different
methodological literature and resources,
just to have something to write about.
From one perspective, this was a positive
thing, as the blog was helping me to
expand my knowledge of ELT pedagogy.
Alternatively, you could argue that my
approach was rather egotistic – more
often than not, I’d be thinking things
like ‘I might give Cuisenaire rods a go in
class tomorrow; they might give me
something to blog about’. I started to
seek affirmation of my teaching skills
based on blog hits or online followers,
rather than honest feedback from the
people who really matter – the students!
In the end, the best thing about
blogging has been taking a break from
it. My decision to have a month off and
reflect on my experiences came after a
fellow blogger referenced some of my
posts. I was referred to, not by name,
but as ‘ELTplanning.com’, which
summed up how much the blog had
come to define me!
Overall, blogging has been an extremely
beneficial experience, despite the
problems I’ve encountered. I would
thoroughly recommend sharing your
ideas and thoughts with the online ELT
community. So if you are thinking of
doing so, here are some things to
consider before plunging in:
Think very carefully about your reason
for blogging. What is motivating you?
Are your motivations more intrinsic
or extrinsic?
What are your goals? Are they
realistic? How much are your goals
driven by your own ego (ie the desire
to find blogging fame)? If you are
truly altruistic and wish to share your
ideas with others, how would you feel
if you got no hits at all?
Would blogging create a conflict of
interest with your employer? It may be
worth discussing your plans to blog
with a manager.
Many ELT blogs already exist. Do
you offer anything different? Do you
feel it’s necessary to be unique? Is
there a specific area in ELT that you
wish to focus on?
How much time can you dedicate to
blogging? Is this flexible? Will
blogging be more of a hobby?
So, now you’ve got your blog …
Who will you tell about it? How do
you think people at work will react to
it? Would you expect them to read it?
Will you promote your blog through
social networking?
How might you evaluate the success
of your blog? Do you even need to?
Pete Clements has taught
in South Korea, Spain,
Vietnam, Thailand and
the UK. He has recently
completed the Trinity
DipTESOL. His interests
include data-based
teacher development,
supporting new teachers
and using authentic
listening materials in
class. He currently works
for the British Council,
Bangkok. You can visit
his blog at https://
eltplanning.wordpress.
com.
pgclements27@gmail.com
PowerPoint
TECHNOLOGY
Stephanie Hirschman praises the power of the program.
P
owerPoint seems to be one of
those things that you either
love or hate. People who are
not fans complain about
presenters simply reading aloud to them
from slides, or about the projected text
being too small or the slides too
crowded to read. There is a tendency for
PowerPoint to give presenters a false
sense of security: a triumph of form
over content. However, although I was
initially a little sceptical about the merits
of PowerPoint, over the last few years I
have become an enthusiastic convert and
I am now full of missionary zeal.
I feel that PowerPoint offers a lot of
positive features that make it useful in
the classroom as a medium for teaching.
There is no doubt that it provides a way
of presenting engaging visuals to the
students. It can also help the teacher
pitch the lesson at the right level, and
pace the lesson to promote student
engagement. Finally, it offers teachers
opportunities to use their time more
productively by planning and recycling
lessons and materials.
In this article, I’d like to demystify
this medium and offer some tips for
beginners.
Planning a PowerPoint
lesson
At its most fundamental level, creating a
PowerPoint presentation of your lesson
is simply planning your boardwork in
advance, and this is undoubtedly sound
practice, even if you don’t go in for the
special effects that the program permits.
It is especially helpful to use PowerPoint
for things that you want to display to
the class if you have limited space on
your classroom board.
When I sit down to make a
PowerPoint display, I have a ten-stage
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
Pre-input Main input
1 Can you remember? 4 Lead-in
5 Input
2 Warmer
6 Controlled practice
3 Daily menu 7 Freer practice
template (see above) in mind, and I plan
to have at least one slide for each stage.
If you’re new to PowerPoint, you can dip
your toes in by just planning a few slides
for one of the stages and build up your
confidence from there. And make sure
you use a minimum font size of 24 (28
or 32 are even better for legibility).
PowerPoint looks professional, and
students nowadays expect to see this sort
of technology in the classroom. When
you create and use a PowerPoint lesson,
you’ve forced yourself to plan your lesson
very thoroughly, so you will feel more
confident about achieving your learning
objectives. In addition, your students
will feel more confident in you, as they
can see the work you’ve put in before the
lesson. Students can be further supported
if you have an institutional online
learning platform or class blog where you
can make your PowerPoint slides available
to them to review outside of class.
Exploiting PowerPoint
in the lesson
Projecting
PowerPoint allows a huge range of
images to be projected – in colour and
large enough to engage the students.
These can be scanned images from your
coursebook, photos and illustrations
downloaded from the internet, or
Post-input
8 Homework
9 Extension/filler
10 Review
of daily menu
pictures that are accessed through
hyperlinks to websites. They can include
moving images, such as film trailers or
performances of songs.
Checking
Scanning exercises from a coursebook
(or even retyping them on a slide) and
projecting them at the front of the class
also allows answers to exercises to be
checked much more quickly than if you
were to write everything out on the
board. This also promotes consideration
of the full context of the answer, rather
than concentration on a single word, so
you can easily refer the students to any
clues contained in the sentence and elicit
a justification.
Modifying
I have sometimes been asked to teach
from a coursebook which has turned out
to be the wrong level for the class. This
is a tricky situation, as the students can
become demotivated if the materials are
either too hard or too easy for them.
However, making a PowerPoint
presentation to use in class can serve
either to expand the input by adding a
few slides with an increased level of
challenge – eg more intensive vocabulary
or pronunciation work – or to restrict
the input to those elements that are
essential to get through the lesson. If the
55
PowerPoint
students aren’t looking at their
coursebooks all the time, they will be
unaware of the changes you have made
or why you have made them.
Animating and engaging
PowerPoint includes a number of
animation features which can be
exploited to make lessons interactive.
‘Entrance’ animations can be employed
to:
incorporate prediction activities, eg
bringing in a picture very slowly using
a pixellated effect such as
‘checkerboard’ or ‘random bars’, and
asking the students to respond when
they know what it is. Predictions can
also be staged over more than one
slide. For example, you can show the
students some key vocabulary on one
slide and ask them to speculate about
the content of a text, revealed on the
following slide.
‘stage’ delivery, ie introduce ideas one
at a time to allow an opportunity for
processing and concept checking
before moving on to the next item.
This is also useful when checking the
answers to exercises.
‘Emphasis’ animations can be used to:
highlight important information (eg
with ‘wave’, to indicate ‘This is
important – take notes!’).
support guided reading (eg with
‘brush on colour’), to improve speed
and control the pace of the lesson.
‘Exit’ animations can be used to:
support recall activities by making key
information (eg grammar rules)
disappear from a slide and asking the
students to remember it. You may
need to use text boxes to achieve this.
support text reconstruction activities
by removing some or all the words
from a cohesive text and asking the
students to write it again. Again, use
text boxes which disappear and
reappear or, alternatively, bring in
shapes as an ‘entrance’ animation to
cover the key words, and then make
them exit to reveal the answer again.
stage delivery by using shapes to cover
key information and making the
shapes disappear when you wish to
reveal what is underneath. This is
56 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Introductory phrase
Can you tell me if ...
Subject
1 4 3 2
Americans
Verb
eat
Is it true that ... Scottish people consume hardly any fresh vegetables?
particularly useful when teaching
something with complicated word
order. For example, I wanted my
students to generate some questions
for each other about eating habits and
stereotypes. The target language was
polite/indirect questions which form
the initial phrase. However, the main
idea for the question is really
generated later on in the sentence by
the subject and the food (with a
quantifier), so these actually need to
be considered first. By using
disappearing shapes to reveal the
information in the two example
sentences above in the order shown, I
could elicit some ideas from the
students, allowing them both to build
the sentence in a logical order and to
see the syntax of the finished sentence.
They were then instructed to work in
the same order to formulate questions
to ask each other.
Promoting speaking
Students should also be offered
opportunities to use PowerPoint to
support their own speaking. It is
especially pleasing when they are able to
include their own personal photos in
class presentations. Student PowerPoint
presentations (done individually or in
pairs or small groups) need to be
structured – as any class activity would
be – with clear goals and target
language, and some sort of feedback
given by both the teacher and the
audience. It’s important not to overdo it:
no class should be asked to sit through a
whole morning of long and poorly-
organised presentations. However,
formats which are carefully controlled,
as are the two below, support students in
their speaking and ensure a reasonable
time limit.
1 One slide only!
For example, prepare a pictorial
presentation about a festival in your
country and use the target language
from today’s lesson, ie:
expressions with take x 3
repetition to describe changes and
emphasis x 2
signposting expressions x 4
Quantifier
a lot of
Food
junk food?
Organise your four pictures like this on
the slide:
Picture 1 Picture 2
Picture 3 Picture 4
2 ‘Pecha kucha’
This is a format which was developed to
allow multiple speakers to participate in
an event, by strictly limiting the amount
of time each speaker can take. In the
original format, transition effects are
used to change slides automatically after
20 seconds, and the total number of
slides is limited to 20, making each
presentation exactly six minutes and 40
seconds long. I have modified this
format for my students to give them ten
slides which take 20 seconds each, ie a
presentation which is three minutes and
20 seconds long in total. Speaking in
this controlled format is challenging, but
it promotes fluency and discourse
management, and develops the students’
academic and vocational skills.
Obviously, further modifications can be
made to suit your needs.
Perhaps best of all, it’s very easy to reuse
and improve a lesson once you’ve made
the initial investment of time. Some of
the PowerPoint presentations I have
created have become lessons I return to
every term or every year. I always make
sure I print myself a hard copy of the
slides (choose ‘Handouts’ and ‘Three
slides/page’ when printing), and I
annotate these notes both before and
during the lesson. When I return to the
lesson the next time, I can easily see what
went well and what needed a little tweak
– and making changes is really simple.
Stephanie Hirschman is
a Curriculum Leader in
the International Dept at
Sussex Downs College in
Lewes, UK. She teaches
teenagers and adults,
co-ordinates the summer
school and works in the
languages self-access
centre. She has also
worked as a Development
Advisor, providing
teaching support to
colleagues across a
range of subjects.
stephanie.hirschman@sussexdowns.ac.uk
 TECHNOLOGY
Five things you always wanted to know about
using technology and
special educational needs
(but were too afraid to ask)
1 What are special educational
needs?
The term ‘special educational needs’ –
SEN for short – is imprecise at best. It is
used to refer to learners with a wide range
of needs, from students with cognitive and
learning challenges like mild dyslexia and
mild intellectual disability at one end of the
spectrum, through to severe learning
difficulties and autism at the other. It
includes learners with behavioural
challenges such as ADHD (attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder), or other social or
emotional difficulties. It also includes those
with physical challenges like visual or
hearing impairments and mobility issues,
including restricted movement and limited
motor skills. Clearly, these very different
needs require differing levels and types of
support with learning.
2 Why might I have SEN learners
in my language classroom?
There are two main approaches to dealing
with SEN learners in education. On the
one hand, we have what we might call a
‘deficit’ model. In this model, SEN learners
are perceived to have a ‘problem’ which
education should try to put right through
special learning programmes in separate
schools. This corresponds to a medical or
clinical approach to SEN. On the other
hand, we have a social, or inclusive,
approach, in which SEN learners are
considered to be unique individuals with
their own strengths and weaknesses. In
this model, SEN learners are integrated
into mainstream schools, with specialists
like educational psychologists helping
teachers develop strategies and materials
to support these learners in the classroom.
Depending on the educational views and
strategies for dealing with SEN that are
prevalent in your context, you may well
have learners with disabilities such as
dyslexia, ADHD and mild-to-moderate
intellectual disabilities, as well as physical
special needs, integrated into your
language classes.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
3 What’s the connection between
SEN learners and technology?
Technologies have been used to support
SEN learners in general education for
decades. For example, tape recorders
were originally used to provide learners
with audio prompts to help them
understand and/or produce language.
Later, MP3 players and portable DVD
players could be used to deliver audio
and video prompts, with the added
advantage that SEN learners could carry
these smaller technologies around with
them, for support outside the classroom
and in their daily lives. More recently,
mobile devices such as tablet computers
have been enthusiastically taken up by
SEN educators, because of their assistive
features – more on which below.
4 What are assistive
technologies?
Mobile devices, especially tablet
computers, include a range of assistive
features that can support SEN language
learners. For example, dyslexic learners
can listen to, rather than read, an English
text by activating a tablet’s audio
capabilities. Conversely, learners with
hearing impairments can have audio
content transcribed into text by activating
closed captions (subtitles not visible
unless activated by the viewer) for video
content on a tablet. The font and size of
these subtitles can be changed, so that
learners with visual impairments can easily
read them. For students who may have
better hearing in one ear, many tablets
include a mono option in the sound
settings; and hearing aids can be
connected to some tablets via Bluetooth.
For learners with motor-skill challenges,
tactile screen settings can be changed
from swipe movements to tapping
movements, which are easier to control;
also, the screen display on mobile devices
can be locked into one position so that
screen movement for these learners is
reduced. Finally, some tablets include an
In this series, Nicky Hockly
explains aspects of technology
which some people may be
embarrassed to confess that
they don’t really understand.
In this article, she discusses
how technology can support
learners with special educational
needs (SEN).
‘assistive touch’ feature that allows
teachers to guide the students around the
screen as they read.
Unsurprisingly, there is also a wide
range of educational apps available for
SEN learners, including those learning a
second or foreign language. For example,
for dyslexic learners, there are writing apps
that can help them learn to spell letters by
tracing them on a touch screen. Learners
who find writing challenging can use
text-to-speech apps that deliver written
texts in audio format. Learners with
hearing disabilities can use speech-to-text
apps that can provide written transcripts
of audio texts. More sophisticated apps
can enable teachers to create video
scenarios in order to help learners with
autism or behavioural challenges to
develop empathy and social skills.
5 Where can I find out more about
supporting SEN learners?
The OUP English Language Teaching
Global Blog:
Five myths about teaching learners with
SEN: http://goo.gl/RKADjY
Teaching students with attention,
concentration and hyperactivity
difficulties: http://goo.gl/w1Se3R
Dyslexia – a problem or a gift?
http://goo.gl/F415dY
Help organisations:
Dyslexia Help: http://dyslexiahelp.umich.
edu/tools/software-assistive-technology
Languages without Limits:
www.languageswithoutlimits.co.uk
Nicky Hockly is Director
of Pedagogy of The
Consultants-E, an online
teacher training and
development consultancy. Her
most recent books are Digital
Literacies (Routledge),
Webinars: A Cookbook for
Educators (the-round.com),
Going Mobile (Delta Publishing)
and Focus on Learning
Technologies, which will be
published by OUP later this
year. She maintains a blog at
www.emoderationskills.com.
nicky.hockly@theconsultants-e.com
57
 ETpedia
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by John Hughes
Webwatcher
I
often use the forums in Edmodo, Moodle and Facebook on
teacher training courses. These programs all offer the chance to
create asynchronous chats and discussions. However, I often
notice that teachers lack ideas about how to make good use of
discussion forums with their students. This article will focus on
some of the activities I have come across or done myself to get
the students engaged in discussions and forum activities.
Setting basic rules
It is worth drawing up some rules when students work on forums.
With higher-level classes, you could get the students to create
the rules themselves. Introduce the term netiquette* and talk
about the rules you need to establish about working together.
Maintaining consistency
I would also suggest being consistent in the way you use
discussion forums. It might simply be a weekly activity that the
students do at home. Or you could perhaps have two or three
regular forum activities going during the week. I have even met
teachers whose schedules clearly show precisely what activities
will be taking place on their forum every week. For example:
Monday – Last week in the news
The students each write 20 words about a news item.
Wednesday – This week in history
The teacher focuses on one event in history, which the students
read about and comment on.
Friday – Let’s make it personal
The students discuss a weekly question posed by the teacher (or
other students).
Linking the discussion forum to the class
It is a good idea to bring the discussions back into class. For
example, you might summarise the posts, highlight the best
‘Post of the week’, or get one student each week to review the
week’s posts and do a quick presentation. This will encourage
the students to get more involved and to appreciate that it is a
key feature of the class.
I also suggest that you contribute to the forums. Your weekly
task might be to write about an event in history that occurred in
that week. You could then encourage your students to comment
on your post. You might have something like ‘Word of the week’
where you introduce a word for the students to learn. You could
highlight one item from the news, one personality in history, etc.
Try to make it a regular ‘Feature from the teacher’ and, again,
make a point of referring to, or even using, the posts in class. The
link between what you do online and in the class is vital. It can’t be
seen as simply a side event that the students can ignore.
Personalising it
Personalising the chat can be nice. This was quite a successful
feature on a Facebook project I reviewed in Chile. Each week,
you might give (or ask the students to provide) statements for
completion, like these:
If I had more time I would …
What really irritates me is …
The famous person I most admire is ... because ...
My dream job would be … because ...
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 104 May 2016 •
Russell Stannard discusses
discussion forums.
Reacting to it
Reacting to a picture, video or short text is a great activity. Again,
this can be a regular feature. You could also use audio. For
example, the students might be asked to listen to a podcast and
then comment on it. Using news podcasts especially made for
students can work well.
Interviewing a student
I have seen student interviews work really well. One good twist is
to nominate a student to take the role of a famous person or
historical character for the week. The rest of the class have to
write questions, and the student does their best to answer them.
You can even do this as a ‘20 questions’ game. One student is a
mystery famous person, and the rest of the class have up to 20
yes/no questions to find out who they are.
Brainstorming
It is not always easy to brainstorm ideas in a forum. The students
who begin first tend to write lots of things, and then the rest have
nothing to write. Try limiting the activity. Here are some examples
which will result in pretty comprehensive lists, built up by all the
students collaboratively:
Name two things you find in the kitchen/bedroom, etc.
Name two foods you consider healthy.
Name two things you hate eating.
Using it for assessment
You can easily make ‘Communication on forums’ part of your
assessment. It doesn’t have to be big part of the total mark, but
the fact that it features in your assessment process helps to get
the students engaged and encourages them to focus on the
discussions.
At the heart of all this is ‘buy in’. Where discussion forums tend
to be successful, it is because the teacher has committed to the
forum and slowly got ‘buy in’ from the students**.
* Useful information about netiquette:
www.edutopia.org/pdfs/stw/edutopia-onlinelearning-mastering-
online-discussion-board-facilitation.pdf
** A useful summary about the research into educational forums:
www.studentpulse.com/articles/414/using-online-forums-in-
language-learning-and-education
Materials
Good sources for pictures:
www.flickr.com/photos/eltpics/albums
Two useful sites where you will find news stories:
www.newsinlevels.com/
www.breakingnewsenglish.com/
Russell Stannard is the founder of
www.teachertrainingvideos.com,
which won a British Council
ELTons award for technology. He
is a freelance teacher and writer
and also a NILE Associate Trainer.
Keep sending your favourite sites to Russell:
russellstannard@btinternet.com
59
 PICTURE PUZZLE
Find the words hidden in
the photos and identify
the common theme.
Hint: photos that are joined
together are part of the same
word; complete words are
separated by a space.
Can you puzzle it out?
The answers are on page 16.
(This idea is taken from The Independent
newspaper’s ‘Get the picture’ column.)

Middle: © iStockphoto.com / ChinKS

60 • Issue 104 May 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 ETpedia Business English
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