TEFL: Reflections on losing my voice and Teacher Talking Time

Over the course of the weekend I happened to misplace my voice, very naughty of me I know, and so returned to teach this morning with the either or option of whispering [Which didn't hurt my voice at all] or speaking in an almost supervillan/ movie announcer (coming soon to a cinema near you, you thought it was safe to go outside...) type voice. As such I happily was forced to reduce my teacher talking time to a bare minimum (which coincidently was the action point from my last observation, don't you love "coincidences" like that).

One of the techniques I adopted was to check earlier finishers answers and if they got all the answers correct then I allowed them to initiate the class feedback acting like a teacher. I realised that they were using some language that they didn't normally in doing this to ask for answers/corrections, although they did reduce it to signals by the end [I'm not sure if I do that or speak and give signals]

I also realised  how useful speaking very softly can be and how many students can quieten down as soon as they realise that they need to in order to hear the teacher [sometimes even the most problematic child will be very quite simple to see if the teacher is telling him off or not!]

I also noticed how effective using my very deep strange voice could be to suddenly encourage more active lively discussion after periods of quietness [even if it did hurt!]

It also amazed me in general how if you do whisper, other people whisper to you! Even if you are just out and about having a conversation.

I think my overall conclusion was that I really can reduce my teacher talking time and perhaps it is worth trying speaking softer in general as a method to keep attention. I do, however, wish I had more time to experiment with no voice rather than having gained it back. I don't think I could pretend well enough to pull it off though!

[I hope you enjoyed this reflection on teaching please post comments and thoughts.]

Come on oh my soul

I heard about the Rend Collective Experiment a while ago but It's only really been since coming back to the UK that I've really had a chance to listen to them and I have to admit I'm hooked! This song in particular has been stuck in my head all week.

A holiday, A job and A wedding

It's been a while since I blogged and that's for very good reason.

Firstly I returned home from the Ukraine and had a very hectic time of unpacking, seeing as many people as I could, taking the dog for a walk and to a small extent readjusting to being back in England. Despite some of my fear about how this might be a hard process, based on my last trip back. This actually seamed to be very unfounded and I quickly settled back into adjusted routines and a variation on previous activities.

Then last weekend I travelled up to Oxford to start teaching at a summer school there. The first week was certainly an experience and quite a jump into the deep end. Thankfully I made it through the other side and for the first few days I didn't have internet access. On Tuesday I actually did arrange internet for my room there and started to use it but my duties had meant that I didn't have time to actually put up a blog.

The teaching work load isn't anything shocking and compared to some of the weeks we have had in Dnipro I didn't feel under too much stress to prepare all my lessons. However it is the other duties that can really put the pressure on. There was one day where I had a project lesson in the afternoon and then night duties in the Evening. I was at one point wondering where I would fine time to prepare my lessons for the next day but I did indeed find the time and manage to get everything done for the next day.

Today I had the pleasure of attending Sophie B...sorry Sophie Holland's wedding! From a very selfish point of view, being able to come home, see friends (including ones who had been away last week), and play guitar and sing in a band made for an amazing day. However the whole event was wonderful and I certainly hope that the bride and groom enjoyed everything.

I'm actually currently on the Oxford Tube heading back to Oxford and I am not sure when I will find a chance to blog again. I might try sending one from my phone tomorrow if I find myself with time to spare on my coach trip [I'm taking some students into London!!!! Eeeek]

Till next time.

Project Gutenberg

Yesterday I remembered the Values of the Christian community I was, and to some degree still am, involved with in Sutton called The Well.

One of these is Teachability and as such I thought I'd link to a great resources for learning. Project Gutenberg.

The idea of Project Gutenberg is to provide e-book copies of books who's copy write has expired and as such are now legal to be distributed by anyone.

There are many secular books and also some spiritual ones and as such is a great resource for holistic learning. I would certainly recommend checking it out and considering downloading a book to read.

Personally it is a bit of a shame not to have a paper copy of a book and sometimes staring at a screen for a long time can start to strain my eyes but still having the option to read these books that I wouldn't normally makes it worth it.

A 6 Month review of my 2011 Aims

I have been doing my aims for 6 months now. It's certainly been an interesting experience and I thought I'd do a bit of an overview of how I have found the aims and what I think about them.

Committing to Tithe has been really interesting and sometimes It has been really strange to see the reasons my mind has invented to resist tithing! Also I could definitely see that when I had less money it was a lot easier to tithe than when I had more! Something that really shocked me.

Prayers has really been an interesting experience and I think I want to do some more extended posts on Prayer rather than just one paragraph on the blog. I think the overall impression I have is about how prayer can be the easiest and hardest thing to do. When looking at a one of situation it really can be so easy to just suddenly turn to God and speak to him about the situation. However when looking at the long term it can really be a struggle and ensuring that you do turn to God can be a real struggle.

Skype has been a great tool over the last 6 months and I have certainly been glad that I had that option of contact with people back home. There have been moments when I have felt so homesick and then a quick chat has reminded me that I'm glad not to be home  that things aren't that bad and helped me carry on. The strangest things is how big an obstacle just 2 hours of time difference makes in contacting people. [especially when combined with unusual working hours.] The other point would be that I tend to talk to people who I arrange conversations with before hand rather than random impromptu chats to people who happen to be on skype.

Concious developing as a teacher has at times been a hard task. It can be easy as a teacher to just get stuck into the general ruts of day to day teaching and even when you do learn something new about teaching it can be hard to find the time to work out some practical step to bring it into day to day teaching. As such having the weekly sessions at the school has been very useful.

The best step that helped me push forward with my Russian was starting a word exchange with a girl in one of the coffee shops. As soon as this happened I started to stick to Russian a lot more when chatting and as I was finding my new words in a dictionary that looked at the frequency of use I came across many that I had learnt from other sources. My Russian still has a long way to go but I am really happy with its development and My ability to get by in conversations now.

Songs have been a sore point this year, as I have written about frequently, a fear of expressing things and also trying to write catchy, cleaver and well written songs basically lead to an inability to write anything. hopefully I have started to move past this but I shall not be focussing on publishing anything If I do write any more songs. As such I am going to remove this from my aims list BUT I will put a link up if I do happen to write and record a song.

Meals have been going well and I have really enjoyed having people round. It has been so great to get to know people better, and to even introduce some different groups of people to each other [despite the limited accommodation space!] It has also been very good for me for some selfish reasons. It has forced me to keep the flat clean, it has lead to people bringing tasty food around, it has lead to me learning to cook a lot of different dishes. I really hope this continues and I really want to build on this hospitality not just at the flat but at other locations too. More on this soon.

Having the deliberate challenge of 2 posts a week and some general guideline over what I should write has been a really great challenge and has really forced me to dredge my mind for something to write about. On the other hand I completely discovered that when I am reading about the subjects I want to write about then I was inspired and spurred to write about different things. In addition freeing myself from to write about whatever I wanted to has been a real blessing and has been a big factor in the regular nature of blogging. I have really enjoyed it and certainly feel as though the quality of writing and topics have improved and I have also noticed that I have branched into other areas such as pictures and videos.

My overall reflection about charity work is that after a long week it can really feel like the last thing I want to do is some charity activity. However when I actually do end up doing these tasks I notice that it really wasn't as bad as I thought and often I feel more energised afterwards. To some degree I know that in a way this shouldn't matter but it really does help.

It took a long time to get going with the video's challenges but I finally have and I have really enjoyed the ones I've done so far. I've got some footage than I need to edit [and shall this week]. I don't know if these will keep as a monthly activity as it does take a long time to make come up with an idea, shoot and edit into a slightly fancy set up.

So those are my little reflections and a few grand plans for the next few months ahead. I hope you have enjoyed this review. Please do comment with encouragement/suggestions etc.

2011 Aims: June update

If you want to see the page with an over view of all previous months of my aims you can click here. 


1.I will give at least a 10% tithe in addition to any other giving I will do.

Not 10%... yet! I would blame various things but that would be lame.

2. Making Prayer a stronger habit. 

Again another great month here. I intend to work through Richard Foster’s book “Prayer” again when I get home as a step for next month.

3.Use skype more to chat to people back home/Britain

I think there was a drop in skype activity this month. However usage was still high and I was happy with the amount of people I spoke to.

4.  I will improve as an EFL teacher.

Honestly this month has been very slow and I haven’t had as much contact time with students. In spite of this I had my busy ever week teaching at the start of the month and copped fine. I have also started to reading “teaching speaking” by Scott Thornbury.

5. I will improve my Russian.

Some real progress here, I can certainly hold down conversations for much longer now. I have been wondering how to continue this when I’m back in the UK. As such I have tried to look up some speaking clubs to attend but I’m not sure I can when at summer school and so I will just have to write letters/emails in Russian.

6. I will write more songs.

After pondering who I was writing songs for I have actually written a song! The relief of finishing the song was an astounding feeling. I don’t plan to show anyone this song, not yet at least but it is great to have done it.

7. Host a weekly meal at my flat.

Not weekly but I did host several meals and a couple of other gatherings at my flat this month.

8. Regular and higher quality blogging.

As I have already said my blog hits were up this month, despit the drop in blogging from the month before. This was probably due to targeting my blogging a bit better. I saw that people were landing on my site searching for a review of IHDNK, so I wrote one. This had an immediate affect.

9. I will get involved with some form of charitable work in the Ukraine.

Not a great month here, and the next two months will make this impossible. I hope to get involved with some stuff in my home town when I am back there though.

10. I will make a Public video each month.

I released another video challenge this week… so far I’ve had no responses. :( Hopefully I’ll have one soon.

I do now also have a large quantity of film to edit into some more video’s.

The best of the blog June 2011

It's the end of the month and it's time for another best of the blog!

Blog stats.

This month again saw a new record in terms of page views and visitors to the blog and also my post "words on a whiteboard" become the new most visited post that I have done. And as such was the most popular page this month. I suspect it's snappy title is what has lead to it's success.

The most popular new post was the video challenge 2: draw a self portrait. Which so far I've only had one reply to. Though if I included my review of IHDNK [which is technically a page and so slightly different] then that would actually be the top post.

The top country for visitors was the United Kingdom with the United states a very distant second.

Favourite...

I'd like your thoughts on this post please: Live a quite untamed life.

My favourite post on the internet was Tom's bible in a year. His reminder about the importance of preaching was really great to read.

My favourite video on the internet was


That was my blog month, tomorrow 2011 aims update.