Speaking in Colour

Starting a new course this week in Caceres and Merida with the Centro de Profesores y Recursos. Should be interesting.

http://cprmerida.juntaextremadura.net/67-noticias/3026-lista-de-admitidos-al-curso-speaking-in-colour

All That Glitters...isn't Zara

Writing in the local paper. Local Issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs, which can now be seen online (in Spanish) as well.

Secondary Training Day, Escuelas Catolicas Madrid

Harnessing the Visual Zeitgeist

and

Stories Beyond the Images

In Madrid today.

An Odyssey

The regional newpaper HOY has been hosting a series of articles on the state of the University of Extremadura. I was asked to contribute and rather than offer an in-depth academic analysis, I opted to tell my story and experience of working there. 

First the English version:

It came as a complete shock to me. It was during my first weeks teaching in Filosofia y Letras at the University of Extremadura and one day as I walked into class, I noticed a thick, heavy tome weighing down the table in front of one of the young students.

Being curious by nature, I wanted to see what young people were reading beyond Harry Potter. But perhaps what drew my curiosity even more was the size of the book. It was as thick as a dictionary yet from afar I could tell that it was a novel and not a reference book. I walked over and asked the student what they were reading and couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that it was James Joyce’s Ulysses. I cautiously asked the student if they were reading it for pleasure and was completely floored when he answered that it had been assigned to them to read in another subject. 

Not that it’s a bad book. After all, it is considered to be one of the most important works in modernist literature in English but one that is also extremely difficult to understand, even for educated native speakers of the language. It is a book that makes Goytisolo’s triologia de Alvaro Mendiola look like easy reading and here was an English student that was still struggling with basic verb tenses being asked to read and analyze it. 

I found myself asking, why would something so incredibly dense and difficult be assigned to learners who were just beginning to explore the language? I wondered what possible interpretation could be expected from the learner when even a dictionary would not help clarify some of the puns found in the opus? Was the student being asked to analyze the book on his own or was he simply being asked to memorize what others had written about it? I found myself feeling sorry for the students and began asking myself what exactly was the purpose? A doubt that would continue to plague me while I taught at the University. What were we trying to achieve with these students?

Informal surveys over the years have shown me that at large majority of the students enrolled in the English program at the University had done so because they wanted to become English teachers and those that hadn't would probably end up doing so anyways. Yet the program they were studying had only one elective/optative subject in the whole four year degree that dealt with applied linguistics and not one that specifically focused on methodology or language acquisition. Could this glaring oversight be due to the fact that the next step was a rather expensive Masters that would, in theory, convert the graduates into professionals? Here we had students being assigned Joyce and musty Victorians when they would never use anything even remotely similar in their hoped-for jobs as English teachers. Modern concepts such as corpus linguistics were beginning to creep into the teaching but only to show stylistic patterns in the works of writers long since dead who would never have dreamed of something like Twitter and how it is influencing the way the language is used today. And my doubts were raised again, what is the purpose? Were professors meant to be teachers or researchers? And if they are meant to research, should that research necessarily be related towards what the field of language teaching and acquisition in order to ensure that their students were as up to date as possible? Were these due to an inherent disregard for being 'teachers' and even teaching within the University?

It was only some years later when I began to help people prepare for oposiciones that I would find a possible answer. In my initial confusion to grasp exactly what topics such as the legal history of the United States had to do with language teaching, I suddenly remembered that book on the table and came to a realization. The University wasn't preparing language teachers or even proficient users of the language but instead was readying them to face an arcane exam which itself has no real tangible meaning in relation to the job they would be asked to do if they somehow passed. Rather than preparing them for the job they dreamed of, they are being moulded for the exam that they have to sit in the future in order to get that job.

I have met and had the pleasure to observe some great teachers, both within and beyond the University. I have also heard of a few brave, questioning voices within the system that are raised now and again, but that are also quickly silenced or isolated. The closed, endogmatic nature of the selection process for university teachers ensures this pact of silence. If you want to get on, and get on easily, you learn to keep your head down and which group you need to join, agree with them or not. A truer version of Pablo Iglesia’s casta would be hard to find.

So indeed what is the purpose? Some would argue that it isn’t to create workers for specific jobs, but instead to focus on producing creative thinkers adaptable to any job and they might be right. Yet the mere word philology sounds ancient and Greek to my Canadian ears and memorizing the analysis of others contrary to this purpose. Others might denounce this utilitarian, practical view of University study as neoconservative thought and the antithesis of the Humanities in general. But then I think of that student facing Joyce, armed with the arguments of others and think, there must be another route in this odyssey. 

*In the Spanish version there is a translation error. It should read literatura modernista en ingles rather than literatura modernista inglesa.

Seeing Sounds in Macmillan's Academy Day in Madrid

Macmillan Webinars 2018

A new teaching adventure this week, braving the new online, virtual world. I was invited to participate in some online training with Macmillan in Madrid which was beamed to the world.

The first session, Bing, Bang, Boom, Boing and Baa: onomatopoeia and the importance of sounds in the YL classroom, was a fun look at bringing sounds to life. Making the sounds of English visual and while it was aimed at YLs, the main ideas are equally valid across all levels and ages. 

The second session, Harnessing the Image Zeitgeist in a Visual World, or as I had subtitled it in my mind, Grabbing Learners' Attention in a Post-Text World, was an in depth look how images can be more than just pretty pictures in coursebooks. Ways to make classrooms into 2-way streets, which exchanges going in both directions. 

I look forward to exploring more of this type of training in the future. Thanks to all who participated!

Post Academy Life: 5 ways to move beyond teaching at Language Academies in Spain

Open a job search for ESL job openings around the world at any time of the year and a sunny southern corner of Europe is bound to tally the most hits. A place where, if you subscribe to RP pronunciation patterns, the rain falls mainly on the plain. A place I have called home off and on for more than 15 years, Spain...

And thus starts my piece in EFL Magazine. Click over for a look.

De-Use It - A tale of coursebook misuse

Last month I was asked by one of the editors of IATEFL's TDSIG newsletter to contribute to their Teacher Development Stories series and I came up with the following.

They say you never miss the water till the well runs dry and as is often the case, they were right. For years, the institute where I work had shown keen interest the ongoing development of its teachers. Training sessions were organized throughout the year, the occasional methodology book was acquired and money was even found to help teachers attend conferences around the country. But times are tough here in Spain and while it took some time to finally filter down to this modest, lost corner of the country, last September we found ourselves forced to become apostates to the country’s new religion, Austerity. The new fundamentalist prophets ruled that Teacher Training and CPD was frivolous and non-belief in the new creed would not be tolerated. Deprived of this flow of ideas, the few teachers that remained were forced to go deep underground and hide their activities. The teachers’ room turned from a place where Thornbury’s latest posts were once debated upon to an arid waiting room where nameless transitory teachers would drift through without even saying hello, let alone stop to discuss the best ways to straighten out Spanish syntax problems. The few of us still interested in developing ourselves as professionals were on our own. 

As conditions worsened and job insecurity set in, many of us found ourselves auto-censoring our classes, playing it safe in order not to provide any excuses for letting us go. Under the new regime, the teacher’s role in the learning process was minimalized and the coursebook became the new prophets’ holy book. Faced between the unemployment line, in a region with around 30% out of work, and the coursebook, I chose the latter.

After struggling through a few classes where I made a vain attempt to ‘teach to the book’, an epiphany came to me and realized that I could establish my own individualized CPD programme by learning to de-use the very book that had become the de facto syllabus. I purposely use the prefix de- because un- seems too overtly negative for my plan. I wasn’t going to not use the book and thus find myself looking for a job, but was simply going to find as many ways as possible to use it differently and in the process it would become my most used TD book of the year. Unit 3B, with perhaps the most paint-drying boring text possible became my newest teaching challenge. How was I going to not only lift it off the page but make it somehow relevant to my learners? Unit 3B’s challenge led me to dust off my old methodology books and delve deeper into the internet for ideas. In my quest, I involved my learners in my project. How could we make this text more interesting? Could we alter the text in some way or perhaps write something similar together on a subject that actually interested everyone? The book and its de-use became the goal.

As the year progressed and my students became aware of my personal challenge, the challenge itself became a motivational factor for the groups. I found they no longer were asking what they were going to be learning that day but had become interested in the process of how they were going to do it. The process of de-use engaged them and encouraged them to look beyond the mere grammar point on page 87.

There simply is no replacement for active discussion with other teachers on topics that matter to us, but when faced with a dry desert, any drink of inspiration will do.

Number 2 is...well, number two.

Teaching isn't a competition but it's nice to have your ideas recognized sometimes.

The picture drew me into the idea...

It was worth it...

Click over to Cambridge's site to see.

Onestopenglish Lesson

One of my interests, other than traveling and music is teaching...and teaching English. Around this time of year (Christmas), teachers are often looking for something seasonable but perhaps without the mistletoe. Here I try to combine my three main interests. Macmillan International published one of ideas recently on their teaching site, Onestopenglish.

Subtle Satori IATEFL TDSIG

I look back on the time that we lived in Vientiane, Laos very fondly and in fact often question why we ever left. The city was opening to the world back then and seemed to change daily and I'm sure that it would be unrecognizable now, but memory has a way of playing tricks on us. Even if there were no change, I'm sure the image I hold might not match reality.

I was asked to write a piece about my development as a teacher and as  Director of Studies of a large language school and Laos kept coming to mind. My story was recently published in IATEFL's Teacher Development Special Interest Group newsletter. It's a journey rather than an academic look at change but I suppose all change has something of a journey inherent in it. A quick link here.

Making it Real

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

I grew up attending a French immersion school on the very English speaking prairies of western Canada. Every subject, except English, was given in French by first language French speakers from Quebec or France. The problem was that when we stepped out into the freezing cold, the only French that existed for us was the obligatory translation on everything from chocolate bar wrappers to cartons of milk. 

Contrary to popular belief, only about twenty percent of Canadians speak French and the great majority of those live in the east. Out in the Wild West, exams were the sole motivation to use French and as the language didn’t exist to us outside the classroom, the system generally produced students with excellent receptive skills but only mediocre speakers. The added difficulty of learning everything in a second language only fueled the resentment that I used to feel while trudging off to school in the snow. 

It took me more than twenty years to finally thank my mother for her perseverance when I gave her a phone call from my first tour in Paris, thanking her for giving me the gift of another language. It’s with this experience in mind that I have always been a bit skeptical of the mad push for bilingual schools here. That is until the other day when I was given the chance to swap my normal workplace environments of concerts halls and adult classrooms for a crowded music room full of 5^th and 6^th graders in the Castra Caecillia. 

My bandmate, harmonica ace, Jose Luis Naranjo and I were invited to give a bilingual workshop on the Blues and in the talk we worked on the Blues as poetry and then showed them how to accompany the song they created on their instruments. 

It was one of those rare moments that every educator strives for, the learning was palpable in the room, the classroom fell by the wayside and the kids were learning without realizing it. Their language skills completely surprised me and the songs they played were excellent. With motivational activities like this, no wonder these hardworking teachers are making me reconsider.

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Lion Tamers and Circus Clowns

Uncomfortable truths in the Young Learner teaching game here in Spain and around the world.
Contributing to Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto's teaching webpage.

The 4 part series comes to an end

The last installment of my 4 part series on teaching around the world has just come out in Verge's summer edition. This one isn't available online like the last, but you can find all the info here.

This piece focuses on the ins and outs of teaching in Asia, often the first-timer's first glimpse at the horrors and honors of the business of teaching English.

A New Piece over on Verge

I've been writing a series of articles for the Canadian travel magazine, Verge. This series of articles are basically focused on teaching English around the world while traveling (or vice versa depending on how you look at it!) They've introduced a new aspect to their website where you can read some of their pieces online, check my latest one out here.

Verge Winter issue is Out

Part 2 in my four part teaching abroad series with Verge Travel Magazine is out and in the stands. This time we move on to some of the practicalities of teaching English in Europe to stretch your time abroad. However, the easy life doesn't always come so easy, TEFL has its drawbacks. Check out the mag to learn more. If you can't find it in your local stands, try here.

Verge Fall issue is Out

A new issue of the travel magazine Verge is out and I've got a few pieces in the current issue. Check out the sidebar on some of the Do's and Don'ts when traveling in Laos and the first installment of a 4 part series on teaching English abroad. The first piece is aptly named, "Secret Agent Present Continuous" after a particularly interesting entry into Libya once upon a time. If you can't find the magazine in your local shops, try here.