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.]

L1 articles

This is a selection of different discussion posts on L1 in the classroom

Better Language Teaching

Tefl certificate courses

From the British Council website

Round up of some academic books

Iatefl British council

A quiet week

[Interestingly if I had changed two letters in that sentence (Quite a week) then the Blog post would have a completely different meaning to the one that it actually does. Isn't the English language fun!]

As you may have noticed there has been a distinct lack of blogging this past week. This was due to a variety of reason. The start of the month hails the start of lesson observations again and all the joy that brings. Don't get me wrong I am extremely grateful for the observations and I am certain they are a great help to grow as a teacher and improve on the areas that I am struggling with.

As per usual instructions came up as a major point of discussion, although it was noted that I am improving a lot here and picking up when students haven't understood a lot quicker. In addition it was pointed out that I need to make sure my tone is actually one that is telling people off when I am telling them off! And finally it isn't always best to tell people off for using L1, sometimes we have to encourage them to try and use English as they are embarrassed/unconfident.

All in all some good things to work on and I hope to take them on board very quickly.

Other than this the week has been pretty quiet, the only real events of note are the non stop salsa party last night (where if you danced with the most people you got free entry to the next one, I came second somehow!) and the ice skatting today...speaking of which I must go.

Hopefully I will blog a bit more in the coming week but until then I am about to post a link to some articles on L1 in the class room... the good and bad.

Personal reflections on a task

This morning I was teaching a Buisness English class (pre-intermediate level, 60 minutes long, one student turns up on time the rest appear over the course of the next hour session) on presenting visual information. The lesson included identifying the names of certain charts/diagrams, filling in some information on the charts and also learning some vocabulary to describe the charts/information on the chart. The lesson was running slightly faster than I anticipated and so I set a final task of getting students to draw a personal graph/pie chart and then describe the information on it. This could be about business or their personal life and so unsurprisingly they choose their personal life (often a nice change after a work intensive lesson). What was very interesting was what they choose to display in their graphs.

Most choose to go for pie charts of some sort, this was possibly because I made an example of the break down of the lesson including the 15% where there was only 1 student, or possibly some other factor. One chose to show how she spends here time during an average day. I instantly realised that this would have been a great task to set and would have been really interesting to see how similar/different peoples days were, what their responsibilities at work were (vocab we had just looked at) and also what they did in their spare time. I made a quick note on some paper so that I would make a more permanent note.

The other was a students break down of the lesson time. He identified the amount of time spent talking in Russian, the amount of time I spent talking, the amount of time we did feedbacks/checking answers and also the amount of time spent on communicative activities (though he didn't put it like that). The good point was that his chart said that I spent very little time talking! (always encouraging when the aim is to get the students to speak as much as possible). The bad was how much time he identified as Russian speaking time.

After I saw his chart (which luckily he didn't show the rest of the class) I had to accept that he was roughly right, there was a lot of time spent speaking in Russian. This was partially due to the presence of a student who very rarely attends, when she does she is late and also gets very embarrassed about being behind the other students (which doesn't help with her attendance record). There is also another student who with the exception of saying an English word or doing a communicative task REFUSES to speak in English. I have tried explaining to her the benefits of spending as much time as possible talking in English and reminded her during lessons but she still refuses to budge. From speaking to other teachers this seams to be a pre-existing condition and problem that must be tackled. In addition to that the student who came up with this Pie chart also often discusses in Russian (which does of course raise the question, Does he actually think 30% is too much time or not enough??).

Having previously only taught in a Multi-lingual context (with perhaps only a couple people speaking the same language, who were easy to separate.) the issue of L1 (first langauge) is one that has certainly been a struggle to cope with. At first I almost tore my hair out if a single word was uttered in L1 (even when children who could barely speak a word of English spoke in russian) but then there has been the question of have I now gone too far the other way and accepted defeat.

In an effort to help understand why students speak in L1 and when it can be helpful I picked up a few articles and will write a post [series of posts] covering my thoughts on L1, when it's useful, when not, and how we can maximise the amount of English our students learn through careful use/tactics to avoid L1.

The Next Chapter

As I mentioned before the weekend I was off in Donestk this last weekend at the 25th International House Ukrainian workshop. It was a great time with some amazing speakers and great teachers there. I certainly enjoyed the many different experiences from that weekend (including releasing a Chinese lantern from the centre circle of the Dombass stadium, watching a couple of ballet performances, witnessing a scots man perform ACDC in the Irish pub in Donestk (and then have hundreds of girls ask for his photo), having a Skype conference with Scott Thronbury (oh and 123 other people) being interviewed for an Eastern European TV station, watch a Russian singer perform (who was pretty good) teach some "english" dance moves to hundreds of Ukrainians and many more (which I will blog about later) However It started me on a train of thoughts about my future, both job and blog wise.
Job wise the overwhelming feeling was just that I love teaching and I think teaching English in particular. I say I think because lack of trying/considering other subjects may be influencing this and as such I may equally (or even potentially love greater) teaching another subject but obviously this raised many other questions. If I love teaching English so much then I pretty much NEED to spend another year abroad as there just aren't enough jobs in England (at least that wan't so little experience), The market may change but as it stands I would basically have to spend another year abroad [or possibly move north but that may in effect just be abroad].
This was however backed up by how much I like the Ukraine (in particular seeing a different city with all it's wonders) and further to that, how much I am enjoying learning/speaking Russian. As such staying in Dnipropetrovsk/the Ukraine/Russian speaking countries would not be as bad as I might have thought.
Another thought provoking...er. thought came during the talk from Lucy Horsfield one of the big figures within International House World organisation and International House London. She talked about the impact of blogging on teaching English and how we could learn from other teachers this way. It reminded me about my own blog and made me think about a couple of things. Perhaps I should do some more teacher specific things, as in lesson ideas, interesting articles on methodology, resources etc.
In addition to this I realised that this blog has had a complete lack of Political blogging since I moved to the Ukraine (with perhaps 2 exceptions in articles). As such I have decided on two things, one I am taking myself of the political blogging lists for different services (including Lib Dem Blogs). the other one I am still considering is weather to just resign to not doing any political blogging at all (and intentionally avoid it) or to just not state that I will. At the moment I favour the latter but we shall see. Either way you shouldn't come to this blog expecting any political posts.
So I am going to go through some further changes to the blog (such as the current AD free state etc and now a tumblr version) to make it as user/teacher friendly as possible and still allow me to write personal blogs. Thanks to everyone who has encourage the political blogging side and especially to Lib Dem Voice for the links and golden dozen awards. It was great to find out that someone thinks you have something intelligent to say.
Anyway I hope you do want to continue reading my adventures in the Ukraine and perhaps find out some information about teaching English as a foreign language and as such you will stay on this blog. If not then Thank you any way.