Naming no names, the initials will be enough: NH intermediate. What a lot of rubbish. Having previously complained about its boring listening, its useless reading, its unbelievable list of vocabulary (unit 5, if I'm not mistaken, introduces none other than 25 adjectives!), today I will complain about its random presentation of grammar.
Unit 8, revision of conditionals (first and second): revision of first, all fine, intro to time clauses like "when I have time I'll take a second degree" or stuff like that. Even the grammar box and the explanation at the back of the book reiterates that nothing but present simple and perfect go after "when", so I stick to the instructions, just in case...and before I know it, the practice exercise that follows gives a sentence such as "when will you know if you've got the job", which fair enough, cannot be expressed otherwise, but haven't you just told your lot that the future cannot go after "when"???
Man, I do hate this book... Luckily I can use other resources, or god knows how I would have survived these 6 (7?) weeks...
In other news, having prepared paragraph 3 of module 3, improved the introduction, completed the background assignment for LSA4, prepared the lesson plan, I can definetely say that I am exhausted...and it's only Monday.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
A-ha
..as in: Take on me - great song: I couldn't help dancing on the bike at the gym, while it was playing soooooo loud in my earphones! I was one step away from singing it too, then thought of my fellow sweaters (as in: other people who were sweating on the machines), and screamed the song in my head. Good girl:-)
Anyway, one good thing from the money I am spending for the Delta: two pages on pronunciation which brought my students straight into the fantastic world of single vowel sounds, from "tree" /tri:/ to "boot" /bu:t/ through "car" /ca:/.
Beautiful.
Anyway, one good thing from the money I am spending for the Delta: two pages on pronunciation which brought my students straight into the fantastic world of single vowel sounds, from "tree" /tri:/ to "boot" /bu:t/ through "car" /ca:/.
Beautiful.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
PDA Stage 4, or: utopia
Since we are almost at the end of module 2 (with the external observation being the nightmare of nightmares, but let's not dwell on it), there is one more thing to do to close a chapter: complete the PDA assignment.
The PD (professional development) assignment, also called R&A (research and action), is the idea that after being observed the first time (the diagnostic, that is, not the official LSA1), you can identify key areas for development and improvement, as well as strengths to work on even more to become a super teacher. (Ahem: yeah, right).
So, divided into three stages, first you identify these areas, in the next session you say how you are working on them and possibly if there is anything to adjust (example: now that you, examiner, mention it, I see that my board work is not that bad...but my ccq are, so let's include them in my list. Just an example - my ccq are great, and so is my boardwork!).
Now it's the last stage, which is the one where (I just checked this on the rubric) you comment on how my "beliefs on teaching and learning and my classroom practice have changed as a result of this assignment" then you "identify and critically evaluate the most effective procedures and/or methods and/or documents for reflection and observation" that I (should) have used for my own professional development for this assignment; finally, you outline how you will continue to use these as part of your own continuing professional development.
In other words, you tell them what they want to hear and everyone's happy.
Because once again, let's face it, would we really have the time to do this? How can I write on my assignment that not only I have never had time to observe other teachers (being that I need to work to pay the rent/food/gym/books/Delta and can't just take time off), but the two I actually observed in December had a lot more faults than me and actually, I think that they would have benefited from a couple of input sessions on, say, how NOT to answer your own ccq. How can I say that yes, in an ideal world I would come home from a 10-hour work day and happily start developing materials for professional development, such as student's questionnaires, feedback forms, write my own journal on every lesson (which fair enough, I tried to do, only time...), and so on and so forth. Experience has taught me that most teachers just go by the book, and have no interest whatsoever in improving their teaching skills, especially once they're happily settled (like my current colleagues) and all they need to do is check that the cd player works, then off to class. Some do put some effort, but only because they've seen the same material over and over again and could do with some variety!
Ultimately, I am going to work on improving, constantly, because it's the way I am, and I love my job and want to be good at it. But I don't think I need to tell the Delta people that I will do it, because I certainly cannot promise a detailed action plan when I have no idea where I will be a year from now. Or six months from now, as far as I'm aware...the job in London is only until mid-August...
Anyway, enough of this: let's just write it down and pretend it never happened.
Happy Easter, everyone:-)
The PD (professional development) assignment, also called R&A (research and action), is the idea that after being observed the first time (the diagnostic, that is, not the official LSA1), you can identify key areas for development and improvement, as well as strengths to work on even more to become a super teacher. (Ahem: yeah, right).
So, divided into three stages, first you identify these areas, in the next session you say how you are working on them and possibly if there is anything to adjust (example: now that you, examiner, mention it, I see that my board work is not that bad...but my ccq are, so let's include them in my list. Just an example - my ccq are great, and so is my boardwork!).
Now it's the last stage, which is the one where (I just checked this on the rubric) you comment on how my "beliefs on teaching and learning and my classroom practice have changed as a result of this assignment" then you "identify and critically evaluate the most effective procedures and/or methods and/or documents for reflection and observation" that I (should) have used for my own professional development for this assignment; finally, you outline how you will continue to use these as part of your own continuing professional development.
In other words, you tell them what they want to hear and everyone's happy.
Because once again, let's face it, would we really have the time to do this? How can I write on my assignment that not only I have never had time to observe other teachers (being that I need to work to pay the rent/food/gym/books/Delta and can't just take time off), but the two I actually observed in December had a lot more faults than me and actually, I think that they would have benefited from a couple of input sessions on, say, how NOT to answer your own ccq. How can I say that yes, in an ideal world I would come home from a 10-hour work day and happily start developing materials for professional development, such as student's questionnaires, feedback forms, write my own journal on every lesson (which fair enough, I tried to do, only time...), and so on and so forth. Experience has taught me that most teachers just go by the book, and have no interest whatsoever in improving their teaching skills, especially once they're happily settled (like my current colleagues) and all they need to do is check that the cd player works, then off to class. Some do put some effort, but only because they've seen the same material over and over again and could do with some variety!
Ultimately, I am going to work on improving, constantly, because it's the way I am, and I love my job and want to be good at it. But I don't think I need to tell the Delta people that I will do it, because I certainly cannot promise a detailed action plan when I have no idea where I will be a year from now. Or six months from now, as far as I'm aware...the job in London is only until mid-August...
Anyway, enough of this: let's just write it down and pretend it never happened.
Happy Easter, everyone:-)
Saturday, March 27, 2010
7 books and counting - plus: the unreal life of DELTA students
Am currently preparing for LSA4: having read 7 books on the topic of teaching vocabulary, the only thing that is now clear is that nothing is clear.
Just like when I was preparing the assignment for LSA1, listening, everything is good and nothing is good. Pre-teaching vocabulary, not pre-teaching it, first the meaning then the form or the other way around, only 5 items or 20 items, chunks or single units, high TTT or total student's autonomy, translation or not translation.
Once again, I feel like everything I have done for the past 2 odd years doesn't mean anything, and is possibly wrong: if you believe the Cambridge people, the world of EFL is a fantastic island where every lesson is a rainbow of perfectly behaved smart students, who respond with perfect timing and the correct word, where a working day stretches to infinity, allowing you the time to plan and prepare perfect, memorable lessons, all from scratch, thanks to the wonders of technology and of your brilliant mind, you, the EFL teacher, holder of language knowldege.
In real life, unfortunately, a working day means being up at 6.30, walking to school, grab a cup of tea and start flipping through books wondering how to make your students click, and finally say "I went to the pub last night" rather than "I go to pub yesterday night" for the umpteenth time. And after queueing for the photocopier which will normally break down at precisely 8.32 of a Monday morning, you decide to actually use the horrible course book assigned for this run of the course, only to find out that the cd doesn't work, or the cd player doesn't work, or they work fine but the listening is so boring that it sends you to sleep in a microsecond.
Then in your afternoon class, as you are teaching IELTS to a bunch of lazy students whose studies are paid by the government so who can't be bothered to study when they can have a fun life free from responsabilities, you are trying to elicit methods to actually pass the bleeding exam, for example by looking at the questions, first, and guessing what the answers may be, the response to which is that one of them, after the lesson, goes to your DOS and says that you don't know the answers and are asking them!
At the end of the day you decide to go to the gym, because your brain needs some rest, so you spend an hour sweating on a treadmill watching CBBC on the screen in front of you, and when you go home, and it's almost 7 o'clock, all you want to do is collapse in a heap, crawl to the bed and enjoy a nice book (like the new biography of Dickens that you've just bought).
But no, there's the A-Z of EFL waiting for you on the desk, piled up with Lewis and Schmitt and Nation, and needs analysis forms to study, and of course your friend Jordan, all shouting for attention; and finally, what exactly are we going to teach tomorrow?
Oh, right, the class wants to study present perfect simple and continuous, the same class of students who today, after 90 minutes 90 of "I went - I didn't go", told you that "yesterday I don't sleep much because I go to pub with my friends"...
Just like when I was preparing the assignment for LSA1, listening, everything is good and nothing is good. Pre-teaching vocabulary, not pre-teaching it, first the meaning then the form or the other way around, only 5 items or 20 items, chunks or single units, high TTT or total student's autonomy, translation or not translation.
Once again, I feel like everything I have done for the past 2 odd years doesn't mean anything, and is possibly wrong: if you believe the Cambridge people, the world of EFL is a fantastic island where every lesson is a rainbow of perfectly behaved smart students, who respond with perfect timing and the correct word, where a working day stretches to infinity, allowing you the time to plan and prepare perfect, memorable lessons, all from scratch, thanks to the wonders of technology and of your brilliant mind, you, the EFL teacher, holder of language knowldege.
In real life, unfortunately, a working day means being up at 6.30, walking to school, grab a cup of tea and start flipping through books wondering how to make your students click, and finally say "I went to the pub last night" rather than "I go to pub yesterday night" for the umpteenth time. And after queueing for the photocopier which will normally break down at precisely 8.32 of a Monday morning, you decide to actually use the horrible course book assigned for this run of the course, only to find out that the cd doesn't work, or the cd player doesn't work, or they work fine but the listening is so boring that it sends you to sleep in a microsecond.
Then in your afternoon class, as you are teaching IELTS to a bunch of lazy students whose studies are paid by the government so who can't be bothered to study when they can have a fun life free from responsabilities, you are trying to elicit methods to actually pass the bleeding exam, for example by looking at the questions, first, and guessing what the answers may be, the response to which is that one of them, after the lesson, goes to your DOS and says that you don't know the answers and are asking them!
At the end of the day you decide to go to the gym, because your brain needs some rest, so you spend an hour sweating on a treadmill watching CBBC on the screen in front of you, and when you go home, and it's almost 7 o'clock, all you want to do is collapse in a heap, crawl to the bed and enjoy a nice book (like the new biography of Dickens that you've just bought).
But no, there's the A-Z of EFL waiting for you on the desk, piled up with Lewis and Schmitt and Nation, and needs analysis forms to study, and of course your friend Jordan, all shouting for attention; and finally, what exactly are we going to teach tomorrow?
Oh, right, the class wants to study present perfect simple and continuous, the same class of students who today, after 90 minutes 90 of "I went - I didn't go", told you that "yesterday I don't sleep much because I go to pub with my friends"...
Monday, March 15, 2010
Observation week
Yes, because if I didn't have enough, I am going to be observed tomorrow by one of the head teachers, in preparation for the British Council Inspection (it must be me: every school I go to receives notice for an inspection...clearly, they're after me), and then on Thursday I have LSA3...
As always, the thing with these observations is that you prepare so thoroughly for the 60 minutes with the tutor or whoever it is, and then you are left alone, wondering how to fill in the other 30 minutes, and in my case, the other 90 minutes after the break too!
Oh, well...
In other news, we are working on module 3, with a bit of cheating, I confess, as the commentary to the needs analysis is almost ready...but the needs analysis questionnaire hasn't even been given to the class! So I am half making things up, half writing stuff I have noticed in my class, where a full immersion, 3 hours a day 5 days a week, is always a good way to gather data, considering how they like to tell me about their needs and wants, and their studies in the UK and whatnot. So,
not so much cheating as anticipating the results...
And finally, being St Patrick's day on Wednesday, we have a useful (was going to write "interesting", but I'm afraid it will be kind of boring) lesson about it, which will be a good excuse to show some Michael Flatley to my boys in L4...What I wouldn't do to spread the word...
As always, the thing with these observations is that you prepare so thoroughly for the 60 minutes with the tutor or whoever it is, and then you are left alone, wondering how to fill in the other 30 minutes, and in my case, the other 90 minutes after the break too!
Oh, well...
In other news, we are working on module 3, with a bit of cheating, I confess, as the commentary to the needs analysis is almost ready...but the needs analysis questionnaire hasn't even been given to the class! So I am half making things up, half writing stuff I have noticed in my class, where a full immersion, 3 hours a day 5 days a week, is always a good way to gather data, considering how they like to tell me about their needs and wants, and their studies in the UK and whatnot. So,
not so much cheating as anticipating the results...
And finally, being St Patrick's day on Wednesday, we have a useful (was going to write "interesting", but I'm afraid it will be kind of boring) lesson about it, which will be a good excuse to show some Michael Flatley to my boys in L4...What I wouldn't do to spread the word...
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Articles: my own material (almost)
I like making my own stuff (without sounding suspicious). It allows a bit of creativity, and when you have to use such a horrible useless nonsense book like NH, well, sometimes it's the only thing you can do.
So today it was articles, which for a class of Arabs and Czechs and Koreans was a real struggle, but thanks to James Bond it worked well.
So all you do is: find an extract from a book (can't, for the life of me, can't remember where that reading came from), a very short passage about James Bond and someone named Mary and a guy from KGB.
Give it to the students with random questions to answer (being the last thing on my mind I had to make them up as I was writing on the board, so it was all about "who do you think Mary is" and "what do you think will happen next").
Write a couple of examples on the board, test how much they know of why in one there is "the" and in the other there is "a".
Go throughsome examples and rules.
A matching exercise (from sentence to explanation) is useful, at this point: I found a good one in "Trouble with articles" or something like that (have tried to find a link on Amazon, no such luck). Of course the students will want to do the other exercises as well, which is just fine as they are dialogues and spot-the-mistake kind of exercises, so it's good.
Finally, take the reading back (I made them turn the page over so that they couldn't read it), and give them the same reading but with gap-fills: I have never seen them so interested as in those 10 minutes (excluding an idiot who doesn't deserve more attention here than what he gets - not - in class. Seriously, nothing hurts an attention-seeker more than not getting attention, and I am soooo good at ignoring people when they annoy me. Unfortunately for him, I always give people 3 chances, and he burnt his 3 within 5 minutes of the first day in class).
Optional: snakes and ladders from New Cutting Edge pre-intermediate Teacher's Book: meant to be a 20 minutes game, it turned into a 50 minute-tournament...
Optional 2: Skaterboy from New English File intermediate TB; a song is always appreciated, and in today's case, it was a good way to conclude, since it also goes quite fast, so even if they had to predict how to fill the gaps before listening, it was still tough.
Big smile! Tomorrow it's speaking day, mostly, Friday will be food and easy stuff, maybe a category game, then at 12 half the class will leave to go to the Mosque, so I'm nearly done. And next week it's L5, so, back to my pre-intermediate. Hopefully I'll have "small Abdullah", who is fun to teach. Shame I'll have to leave "big Abdullah", who has been renamed "sweet Abdullah": you look at him and melt, nothing but that.
I love this class:-)
So today it was articles, which for a class of Arabs and Czechs and Koreans was a real struggle, but thanks to James Bond it worked well.
So all you do is: find an extract from a book (can't, for the life of me, can't remember where that reading came from), a very short passage about James Bond and someone named Mary and a guy from KGB.
Give it to the students with random questions to answer (being the last thing on my mind I had to make them up as I was writing on the board, so it was all about "who do you think Mary is" and "what do you think will happen next").
Write a couple of examples on the board, test how much they know of why in one there is "the" and in the other there is "a".
Go throughsome examples and rules.
A matching exercise (from sentence to explanation) is useful, at this point: I found a good one in "Trouble with articles" or something like that (have tried to find a link on Amazon, no such luck). Of course the students will want to do the other exercises as well, which is just fine as they are dialogues and spot-the-mistake kind of exercises, so it's good.
Finally, take the reading back (I made them turn the page over so that they couldn't read it), and give them the same reading but with gap-fills: I have never seen them so interested as in those 10 minutes (excluding an idiot who doesn't deserve more attention here than what he gets - not - in class. Seriously, nothing hurts an attention-seeker more than not getting attention, and I am soooo good at ignoring people when they annoy me. Unfortunately for him, I always give people 3 chances, and he burnt his 3 within 5 minutes of the first day in class).
Optional: snakes and ladders from New Cutting Edge pre-intermediate Teacher's Book: meant to be a 20 minutes game, it turned into a 50 minute-tournament...
Optional 2: Skaterboy from New English File intermediate TB; a song is always appreciated, and in today's case, it was a good way to conclude, since it also goes quite fast, so even if they had to predict how to fill the gaps before listening, it was still tough.
Big smile! Tomorrow it's speaking day, mostly, Friday will be food and easy stuff, maybe a category game, then at 12 half the class will leave to go to the Mosque, so I'm nearly done. And next week it's L5, so, back to my pre-intermediate. Hopefully I'll have "small Abdullah", who is fun to teach. Shame I'll have to leave "big Abdullah", who has been renamed "sweet Abdullah": you look at him and melt, nothing but that.
I love this class:-)
Monday, March 08, 2010
It's all about skimming
Or so it seems.
Welcome to the IELTS (low) class, where we patronise students with study skills they already have, or they have already learnt about because they have been on the course for so long that they've seen all that could possibly be seen.
The problem is, they still don't get it.
So, first of all we have an open discussion to brainstorm good ideas and bad ideas to apply on the reading part. Among the good ideas, we have things like:
- see if the title can give some information on what the article will be about (i.e. activate schemata, and there goes the spidergram on the board);
- read the first sentence of every paragraph;
- use illustrations to help you understand.
Among the bad things, we have:
- underline names and dates (that is scanning, my dear, not relevant or useful here);
- get stuck on unknown vocabulary.
So, everything is clear, they look almost bored when they tell me the do's and dont's, and so we proceed to do the reading, where I give them 3 minutes to skim the text (literally 30 lines) and produce a sentence that summarises it. It's about Malcom X and MLK, and some differences and similarities, so it's pretty clear, and you know what happens next?
They all get stuck on unknown vocabulary.
The all underline, no, worse, CIRCLE names and dates AND the unknown vocabulary.
The even start looking for translations in their evil electronic dictionaries.
And three minutes later, they haven't got a clue of what the article is about...but have a whole list of words to ask me!
And tomorrow: WRITING! Are you ready?
On the other hand, morning class: a gem. Dictogloss: a success. But this will be another story - LSA3, background assignment, is calling...
Welcome to the IELTS (low) class, where we patronise students with study skills they already have, or they have already learnt about because they have been on the course for so long that they've seen all that could possibly be seen.
The problem is, they still don't get it.
So, first of all we have an open discussion to brainstorm good ideas and bad ideas to apply on the reading part. Among the good ideas, we have things like:
- see if the title can give some information on what the article will be about (i.e. activate schemata, and there goes the spidergram on the board);
- read the first sentence of every paragraph;
- use illustrations to help you understand.
Among the bad things, we have:
- underline names and dates (that is scanning, my dear, not relevant or useful here);
- get stuck on unknown vocabulary.
So, everything is clear, they look almost bored when they tell me the do's and dont's, and so we proceed to do the reading, where I give them 3 minutes to skim the text (literally 30 lines) and produce a sentence that summarises it. It's about Malcom X and MLK, and some differences and similarities, so it's pretty clear, and you know what happens next?
They all get stuck on unknown vocabulary.
The all underline, no, worse, CIRCLE names and dates AND the unknown vocabulary.
The even start looking for translations in their evil electronic dictionaries.
And three minutes later, they haven't got a clue of what the article is about...but have a whole list of words to ask me!
And tomorrow: WRITING! Are you ready?
On the other hand, morning class: a gem. Dictogloss: a success. But this will be another story - LSA3, background assignment, is calling...
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