I suppose the most useful thing I could do with that document is to do a bit of reflection upon it which means that I could blog a bit about it…and perhaps I will when I get the chance. I won’t be getting a chance soon. These are the final days of exams followed by the flurry of activity to depart on summer vacation. Blogging/reflecting is going to drop off quite a bit over the next couple of weeks…but maybe I’ll get some thoughts in before I go.

Originally he intended to talk about a) how radical the lexical approach can be and b) how it can and can not be used to inform teaching practice in the classroom. The conversation that actually took place did hit upon those ideas but not (I guess) in the detail that his lecture might have had he been able to give it. Not a problem really since.

In the conversation he did concede a point that I’ve made several times to folks who would listen: nearly every approach/method that’s been used has been effective to some degree. “Traditional” approaches, techniques, methods have all produced speakers of the target language. The truth of the matter is that we don’t (and can’t) empirically know that students learned because of or in spite of the method. Assuming that this is correct, it ought to make one question whether or not teaching a language in an institutional setting is a worthwhile endeavor.

Maybe I’ll ask ML his thoughts about that at lunch today…but probably not.

I’ve just finished lunch with ML. I tried very hard not to talk about ELT and language and I failed. Consequently, I did get to ask he views of the validity of ELT as a profession.  If I understood him correctly, his take on the question is that language teaching is valid if one doesn’t place too much weight upon the concept of teaching. When it comes to language learning, we (teachers) do not impart knowledge so much as we guide students through their learning process. Obviously, he is very much in line with the dominant theories (not necessarily practices) of our day; namely that teachers as authority figures are out-dated and teachers as facilitators/managers/guides/gurus are the future.

I’m content to let that go unchallenged in the context of language learning and teaching, however from a philosophical perspective, I simply disagree. I say that there is such a thing as Absolute Truth and/or Objective Reality which is/are necessary for the existence of Authority. I would also maintain that I am the authority in my classroom but I am not The Absolute Authority….but I think I digress.

The session that I attended was his attempt to get his audience to start looking at language in a new way. Presupposing that we were all largely guided by the traditional belief that language is “lexicalized grammar” he attempted to get us to see language as “grammaticalized lexis”. I suppose this really means that instead of thinking of grammar first and training students to plug their vocabulary into the grammatical structures, we should be thinking of lexis (words and combinations of words) and then taking note of the grammatical structures in which they are found. While it was an interesting way to pass the time, I’ve not had that epiphany where I suddenly grasp how to improve my teaching by following this approach. Certainly there are some intuitively gratifying sentiments in this approach such as “forget explicitly teaching grammar” and “reading to students is good”, I don’t know how I’m going to let some of the other things I heard inform my classroom practice, but I feel like that if I continue to plumb this lexical approach, something good will come from it.

Lewis will be with us tomorrow for another session, so I hope that this one will give me something that I can practice in order to be able to use it in the classroom this coming fall.

There are 24 potential candidates from Foundation English and the truth of the matter is that I don’t know the majority of them well enough to nominate them for anything. Take a look at the sought-after characteristics:

A. Significant contributions to teaching

B. Innovative classroom techniques and classroom materials

C. Availability to students

D. Ability to inspire students and motivate them to learn

How does one measure A? Is it the number of contact hours per week? What makes teaching significant?

I think the answer is D, however without observing the teacher, how would I know if D applies to a given nominee? For that matter, it’s necessary to observe someone in the classroom in order to address B. Of all my colleagues, I’ve only seen one in the classroom with her students and that was only one time toward the end of the class. As for C; we all keep office hours and the common complaint is that students rarely/never take advantage of them so wouldn’t it be better to evaluate the teacher’s attitude toward availability? Better still, their approachability?

Perhaps I’m over analyzing the process…I’m prone to that sort of thing, I know. Again, I’m reluctant to nominate anyone when I know so little about them in this way. That being said, I was on the verge of nominating one colleague who is passionate (to a fault) about helping his students, eager to improve his technique and easily accessible to his peers. However, I stopped short because a technical glitch with the online submission form gave me time to reconsider in light of this person’s perpetual conflict with authority.

So what’s the solution? I guess I’ll refrain from nominating anyone, look at the candidates once they’re presented and then I’ll…probably repeat this post except I’ll remark that I don’t feel good about voting for any of them for the same reasons that I couldn’t bring myself to nominate any of them. I wonder if I’ll feel more informed next time this whole thing rolls around next year?

Foundation One English students were required to research an object from everyday life and explain what contributions different fields of engineering make to its production. Part of this project is putting together a poster and explaining its content to their peers in an exhibition.

Technical Notes:
The  video is formatted to be smaller than 5 MBs so I can host it from my free Geocities account. Consequently, it’s very low res.

I used XP’s movie maker.

I used about 2 minutes of a song by Rush without permission. (I’m ready to take it down when ordered. )

That’s pretty much it.
Enjoy.

As I’ve written before, the SDQA is not meant for EFL students so its validity is highly questionable. That being said, we really need a reading level assessment on these students when they come in so we can give them some direction instead of just shoving some books at them and telling them to get started reading. Since we don’t have one, this one will have to do.

So far, it seems that the majority of students have not moved up a grade level on the SDQA. There have been some who have but not many. I don’t think that this group of students will yield the best information because as I’ve noted earlier, I’ve not been with them reliably and I haven’t applied a consistent reading enrichment scheme. In the fall, it will be different. I’ll be a lead teacher and I can be more consistent in promoting reading and following up on it.

Another thing that I’ve gotten back recently in terms of student feedback has been the questionnaire that I put in Moodle. Several students (apparently from Section A) have filled it in and their response has been favorable toward an entire period devoted to reading silently. Of course, they struggle with staying alert and they suggested that I should be doing more but for the most part, the feedback was favorable. In the fall, I’m planning on doing it again. This time while students are reading, I’ll try to split my time between reading (they suggested that I read anything-not only Russian) and roaming around. It really bothered some of them that I stayed at my desk…which is a bit funny when you consider that I let them move all around the room and read reclining, sitting and crouching under desks, whatever felt comfortable to them. Then again, I’m the teacher and different standards apply.

Section A asked me if I was planning on being in the class for their presentations. They sounded like they wanted me to come so I said yes. Section B did not ask and I did not go. I figured they could do their presentations for me during our only class today. They did but not with much enthusiasm. Basically, I’ve connected with Section A much better than I have with Section B. The reasons are fairly easy to see.

Section A is the top. This means that they generally have a better level of language, which means greater ease of communication. Additionally, the majority of the class is motivated, even if they are not particularly (self-) disciplined. Finally, I’m assigned to them 10 hours per week. Even though I have no input to their grades, this frequency of contact makes me better than a “substitute teacher”.

Conversely, Section B sees me so rarely that I’m more like a “substitute” than a “real” teacher. Furthermore, the majority of the class is not nearly so motivated as Section A and may be even less (self-) disciplined as a group than Section A. Section B also seems to have more students with markedly lower abilities even though Section B is one from the top. In other words, the difference in abilities from Section A to Section B is unexpectedly large.

I felt much more compelled to be present during the regular class time for Section A’s presentations than I did for Section B’s. In fact, I didn’t go to B’s presentations during their scheduled time but rather used our class time for the students to do them again for me.

I think that had I been their lead teacher, shouldering the majority of their instructional hours I would have managed to bond with them much better, even though so many of them lack motivation and maturity.

I’ll be glad to have my own class again in the Fall.

My students asked me today if I got a good evaluation and I could only respond “I guess so.” I got all of the tick marks in the right places so that’s good. The hand-written notes didn’t reflect anything negative about the lesson or my execution of it, so that was good. Yet, I got no usable input. Nothing in the notes pointed to what I could do better in the future. No indication of what I could work on. No praise for anything done well. This is…not good. Maybe it’s even bad.

It’s possible that my coordinator may read this and so I want to be clear: I know the man has a busy schedule. It’s unimaginable that he could observe all of his teachers and then provide any kind of detailed feedback that we could use. I don’t wish to indicate that he’s not doing his job. It’s just unfortunate that the most a teacher can expect from his evaluation is to be determined to be performing well enough as not to warrant further observation…until the next semester.

The schedule had the class doing their free-reading (more on that in a moment) but I decided that I wanted to do something to help them prepare for their end of semester project. The guys have to choose a product and explain what contribution each of the big four engineering fields (mechanical, electrical, chemical and computer) makes to the production of it. I prepared a text gleaned from the internet (and used legally as far as I could tell) that explained how CDs are made and then tells which engineering fields contribute to their production. The only criticism I have of the lesson is that I should not have tried to model the pronunciation of the entire vocabulary list. I should have let the students tell me which ones they wanted modeled. I’ll remember that next time.

The students were fine. Whenever they would speak Arabic, I would walk over and in a voice loud enough for Mr. Coordinator to hear and say, “You know that when you speak Arabic in class you make me look bad in front of M.” It was not entirely ineffective.

So now I’m waiting for the official feedback. I popped in Mr. C’s office for some informal feedback and didn’t get any (he’s a busy guy) so I’m just waiting.

…and about the free-reading experiment: I spent part of my morning today putting a questionnaire on Moodle to get the students’ feedback at the end of the semester. I can’t say that I enjoyed my first in depth experience with Moodle. I didn’t find the interface terribly intuitive and probably recreated the questionnaire three times before I got it to the point of being usable. Not sure if it is a “good” questionnaire but then again, if it tells me what I want to know, I guess it’s fine. We’ll find out eventually.