ENGLISH Issue 68

May
2010

Tprofessional
EACHING
The Leading Practical Magazine For English Language Teachers Worldwide

How do you rate your boss?

Mario Rinvolucri
The beautiful game
English, football and ELT
Ben Goldstein
Therapist or teacher?
Lisette Allen
Freedom, what freedom?
Gillian Twine

practical methodology

fresh ideas & innovations

classroom resources

new technology

vk.
com/
engl
ishl
ibr
ary teacher development

tips & techniques

photocopiable materials

competitions & reviews

w w w . e t p r o f e s s i o n a l . c o m
Contents MAIN FEATURE TEACHER DEVELOPMENT

HOW DO YOU RATE YOUR BOSS? 4 FREEDOM, WHAT FREEDOM? 48

Mario Rinvolucri investigates the ideal DOS Gillian Twine looks at teaching from two different
perspectives

FEATURES TEACHER PLUS 52

Sue Leather is confident that teachers can become
THE BEAUTIFUL GAME 8 conference presenters
ENGLISH, FOOTBALL AND ELT
Ben Goldstein suggests soccer is sure to score A CAREER WITH A PURPOSE 54
with students Viv Midlane considers the implications of a move
into EAP
SPONTANEOUS STORY-MAKING 12
David Heathfield and his class tell tales together
TECHNOLOGY
A STINT IN THEIR SHOES 16
Kevin Kewley learns a lesson from learning ENGLISH FOR TEXTING 57
a language himself Paul Bress suggests strategies to help students
text successfully
OVER THE WALL 18
Alan Maley recommends four more books TASK-BASED POWERPOINT 58
on the immigrant experience Chwa Ee Loon turns lecturing into language teaching

THERAPIST OR TEACHER? 21 FIVE THINGS YOU ALWAYS WANTED 60

Lisette Allen sets some boundaries TO KNOW ABOUT: MOBILE LEARNING
Nicky Hockly makes the case for learning on the move
SPEAKING OF WRITING 27
Geoff Perrin finds that switching between WEBWATCHER 61
discourse types can be illuminating Russell Stannard watches more websites with
video clips
HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE ABOUT ...? 34
Scott Lauder uses jokes for language input
REGULAR FEATURES
LEARNING DISABILITY 2 37
Lesley Lanir looks inside our heads at the PREPARING TO TEACH ... 40
mechanics of learning Get
John Potts
ENGLISH TEACHING CONFESSIONAL 46
Burcu Aykol describes her development as a teacher WORKING WITH WRITTEN WORK 2 63
Rose Senior

TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS SCRAPBOOK 42

AN EARLY START 23 REVIEWS 44

Wang Ping questions whether the early bird
always catches the worm
COMPETITIONS 41, 64

BUSINESS ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL

INTERNATIONAL SUBSCRIPTION FORM 32
THE NUMBERS GAME 29
Charles Mercer charts the language for
interpreting graphs
Includes materials designed to photocopy

www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010 1

 Editorial
S
everal of the articles in this issue remind us that Continuing her series on the things that teachers might
ELT is a multi-faceted profession. Some teachers want to do to enhance their career, Sue Leather suggests
are happy simply to be with their students; others how they can add the extra skill of conference presenting to
seek out new opportunities in terms of different roles their repertoire.
within their organisation, specialist teaching areas,
For Viv Midlane, the world of EAP opens up potential new
materials writing, etc.
opportunities for teachers. He explores the benefits and
One possibility is to move into teacher management. In requirements of moving into a new area of teaching where
our main feature, Mario Rinvolucri discusses what makes job security and financial rewards may be better, but teachers
a good director of studies. He recalls what a group of will be expected to increase their skills and qualifications.
successful directors of studies once told him about the
Finally, with the World Cup only weeks away, Ben Goldstein
people who had influenced them one way or another in
celebrates the features that English and football have in
their careers, and he lists the qualities and skills that he,
common and sees how the two can be mutually beneficial.
personally, looks for in a line manager.
And if you havent had enough of the beautiful game
Gillian Twine is also able to look at the profession from already, youll find more football fun on the Scrapbook pages.
two different perspectives those of teacher and
administrator. As she completes an assignment for a
management course while continuing her classroom
teaching, she considers the issue of freedom: how much
freedom do teachers have and how much should they Helena Gomm
Editor
have? Can the viewpoints of teachers and management
ever be compatible? helena.gomm@keywayspublishing.com

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2 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com

 M A I N F E AT U R E
How do you
rate your boss?
T
Mario Rinvolucri wenty years ago, I asked a group
of directors of studies (today
reviews the role of the often referred to as academic
managers) of private language
Director of Studies and schools in the UK to write a page each
about a director of studies (DOS) that
suggests three requisites. they themselves could remember from
their days in the classroom. The things
they wrote in the early 90s speak volumes
about the role of the DOS and about
what teachers want and need from their
line-manager and they are still
relevant today. Four distinct roles/types
were identifiable from their responses.
1 This is what a second DOS wrote:
A three-way clutch-
plate between principal,
teachers and students
One DOS wrote:
He was well organised and knew a
lot about EFL teaching, but it was a
small school and he was very much
under the control of an extremely
authoritarian principal. As a result,
he was unable to do much more
than put someone elses ideas into
operation ideas that he frequently
disagreed with. Probably because
of this, he had a generally worried
appearance and used to wander
round all day with a clipboard,
ticking off various jobs which he
had been detailed to do. Within the
limits of this, he was friendly and
helpful but always with one ear
cocked, in case the principal
should arrive and suspect him of
preaching sedition to the staff.
The five key words and expressions that
come to my mind when I read the text
above and think about the DOS role
4 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
are: three-ways-facing Janus (principal,
staff, students), weathercock, lubricating
oil, harmoniser and modifier.
I wonder if you can think of people
in the DOS role who manage, skilfully,
to live in the teacher camp, the student
camp and the management camp and
to satisfy all three constituencies. It is
interesting that academic managers who
go along with teacher griping in the
staffroom do not necessarily gain
respect by doing this. Being on the
teachers side is not necessarily seen as
loyal or honourable.
... good as a teacher, well-qualified
but not a leader. Tended always
to complain and would join in with
the teachers complaints rather
than solve problems. Gave the
impression of being over-worked
and underpaid which was
probably true! But the overall
memory I have is of complaining,
which I felt reflected a lack of
loyalty (which is something of
importance to me).
Another DOS wrote:
Friendly, to me at the time, she
possessed a great deal of
knowledge of the English language.
Very concerned with her own
physical appearance, appeared to
gravitate towards certain students,
ie certain nationalities more than
others. Appeared to enjoy her job.
Seemed to be trying to keep a foot
in both camps teachers versus
principal.
This person brings in another part of
the job of the DOS: management of the
students (who are also, directly or
indirectly, fee-paying clients). In this
case, the DOS is criticised for not being
even-handed and fair with the different
nationality groups.
2 crises. I felt he didnt praise and
A parental figure
A fourth person wrote:
... warm, humorous, grey,
protective, paternalistic. Someone
I think of now with great affection
(which I also felt at the time) but
who also caused me great
frustration, anger and irritation
(disappointment).
The main source of the anger and
frustration was that he wouldnt
give enough time to listen fully. He
was always ready to rush about
and find a solution without having
heard the problem. I think that
listening carefully is often half of
the solution.
Afterthought: My immediate
attraction to this person was in
some part that he represented a
father-figure this may also be
the source of the irritation/
disappointment.
I guess many of us unconsciously or
semi-consciously have family
relationships as our underlying model
for understanding workplace
relationships. I remember meeting a
teacher of maths and English in Serbia
who told me that when she left teacher
training college, her students saw her as
either an elder sister or a potential
girlfriend. In her 30s and 40s they saw
her as Mum. With pride she said, Now
I am over 60, they see me as Gran.
The fourth DOS, writing above,
stated that they saw the DOS as a
father. We have no way of knowing how
much this writer has transferred their
feelings towards their real father and
projected them on to the DOSs
shoulders. I wonder how much
academic managers realise that
sometimes feelings like this get
projected onto them.
The fifth writer, below, also gives us a
vision of a DOS perceived as a father
but, in this case, maybe a wiser and
more far-sighted father:
He would support and guide me
when I really needed it, but was not
always there for smaller problems
and needs (probably a good thing
because I learnt to be
independent). I therefore only leant
on him when there were important
appreciate what I had
done/achieved sufficiently, although
I also felt that he was aware of it
but I wanted it stated. (Thats a part
of my father image, also.)
3 Someone who does not
love herself
A sixth person wrote:
This DOS would always look tense
and would march purposefully
through the school, shoulders
hunched forward, fists clenching
and unclenching, and teachers and
students alike would scatter. She
was always on the defensive, which
made those around her nervous
and apprehensive. She was
extremely bossy and patronising,
reminding one of the matron of a
hospital. Now, we havent tidied up
the staffroom, have we? was a
typical remark and I would feel
like a naughty schoolchild.
I also felt very sorry for her,
because as well as seeming not to
like others, I felt that she did not
like herself she somehow felt
awkward and ill-at-ease with
herself. I tried hard to acknowledge
what I saw as her good points:
hard-working, energetic and a good
organiser.
As I read the above text I am forcibly
reminded of the three human hungers
that Eric Berne, the father of
Transactional Analysis, postulates. One
of these hungers is structure, and it
would seem that this is an area where
this DOS could offer her staff a useful
framework to work within. She was a
good organiser. However, according to
the writer, this DOS failed to appreciate,
recognise or acknowledge her own
worth and beauty. Another human
hunger Berne speaks of is recognition,
and this woman seems to have such low
self-esteem that she cannot love herself
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
or give herself recognition. As a result,
she is quite incapable of liking others
and showing appreciation of them. I
would suggest that two prime qualities
of any good leader are self-acceptance
and the ability to reach out to and
appreciate others.
The next writer made the same
point but in the context of a star DOS:
Wonderful was the adjective
predominantly used to describe
her, which is why, though she was
physically unattractive, people of
both sexes came to find her
extremely attractive. She had the
technique of making you feel
wonderful and useful, but also,
unfortunately, about two inches
high.
It is clear that, in Bernes terms, here
was a person for whom confirming,
enhancing and encouraging others was
just part of her nature. She was also
able to be critical when necessary. My
hunch is that she also acknowledged
and recognised herself and that she
maintained a positive internal
monologue and dialogue. (The third of
Bernes hungers is stimulation, which
will be discussed below.)
4
Someone who is
anxious to please
The eighth author wrote:
He was friendly, humorous and
generally benevolent. He was
always smiling and telling jokes
almost universally popular. Looking
back, I think that his greatest fault
was wanting, needing, to be liked.
This is a quality I was not
particularly aware of at the time but
which since has loomed large in my
perception of him.
From this description, it would seem
that this DOS had what Eric Berne calls
a Please people driver. This is one of
five major compulsions (drivers) that
Berne believes accompany some of us
through life and which are based on
unconscious parental injunctions from
our early years. The other drivers he
identifies are: Be perfect, Hurry up, Try
hard and Be strong.
When I have done workshops with 
5

How do you
rate your boss?
 teachers on the Transactional Analysis
drivers, asking them to decide on their
predominant drivers, the Please people
group has often been the largest one. I
wonder how many of you have
experienced Please people academic
managers.
Line managers
All the DOS portraits above are, of
course, one persons impression of the
professional in question. They are
highly subjective and, no doubt, contain
a great deal of transference and
projection. Nevertheless, I am struck by
the lack of discussion in our
professional literature of the uses and
abuses of our line managers, and it
would be, I think, interesting for you to
reflect on what you, the reader, want in
your own line manager. You might also
consider how many academic managers
you have had who in various ways fell
short of what you want and need to
help you to be the best teacher you can.
My ideal line manager
First, let me set out my own store. In my
case, I need a line manager who satisfies
the three Transactional Analysis human
hungers of structure, stimulation and
recognition/acknowledgement. Let me
take these one by one.
1 Structure
I need a DOS who offers me the
security of decent organisation and who
can immediately, crisply, answer my
when, where, how, what and why
questions. I want a person with a mind
structured enough to give me technical
help if and when I need it.
I can do without a DOS whom I feel
I have to constantly check up on. Their
organisational and administrative super-
ego needs to be stronger than mine!
2 Stimulation
I want a DOS whom I can have a good
technical conversation with and who
can put articles, books, websites,
training courses and people my way that
I might not otherwise light on.
For me, a DOS who is only
administratively competent is an empty
6 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
drum. Things need to be going round in
their heads: there needs to be
imagination and vision. ENGLISH
3 Acknowledgement Tprofessional
EACHING
I do my work for myself and for my
students. I do not want a DOS to thank
me or praise me. The recognition I need
This is your magazine.
is that of deep dialogue and of an We want to hear from you!
attempt to go further and beyond. The
recognition I seek is the DOSs
generosity in entering my world as it is 
and walking a few steps with me
through that world. IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
Do you have ideas youd like to share
 with colleagues around the world?
Tips, techniques and activities;
I wonder what you want from your line simple or sophisticated; well-tried
manager. What experience have you had or innovative; something that has
of superiors who have worked well for you? All published
wowed you? contributions receive a prize!
Write to us or email:
bored you?
iwip@etprofessional.com
seen into you?
usefully clashed with you?
given you in-depth training?
TALKBACK!
Do you have something to say about
insulted you with their vapidity? an article in the current issue of ETp?
left you flatly indifferent? This is your magazine and we would
really like to hear from you.
It would be marvellous if you were to Write to us or email:
write to ETp about a DOS you have
talkback@etprofessional.com
known and what you yourself need
from a DOS dialogue is what makes
magazines live. ETp
Writing for ETp
Would you like to write for ETp? We are
The texts quoted in this article were always interested in new writers and
written 20 years ago in the context of fresh ideas. For guidelines and advice,
a DOS workshop. They were written write to us or email:
anonymously and so I have not been editor@etprofessional.com
able to ask the authors permission to
use them. I hope no one feels
aggrieved that I have not been able to Visit the
extend the normal courtesy of
authorial acknowledgement.
ETp website!
The ETp website is packed with practical
tips, advice, resources, information and
selected articles. You can submit tips
Mario Rinvolucri works
for Pilgrims, UK, and his or articles, renew your subscription
most recent book, or simply browse the features.
written with Gill Johnson,
is Culture in our www.etprofessional.com
Classrooms, published by
Delta Publishing. He
considers his best book
to be Once Upon A Time, ENGLISH TEACHING professional
with John Morgan, Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Ltd,
published by CUP. He is
also author, with Jane PO Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex,
Arnold and Herbert PO18 8HD, UK
Puchta, of Imagine That!
published by Helbling.
Fax: +44 (0)1243 576456
Email: info@etprofessional.com
mario.rinvolucri@pilgrims.co.uk
 C U LT U R E
The beautiful game
- English, football
and ELT
Ben Goldstein kicks a few ideas around.
The English language, like football ...
began here and has spread to every
corner of the globe ... Indeed, English
is much more than a language: it is a
bridge across borders and cultures, a
source of unity in a rapidly changing
world.
(UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown)
T
he parallels between English
and football are not difficult
to see. Even politicians like
Gordon Brown make
comparisons between them and yet,
surprisingly, the beautiful game is rarely
discussed in relation to English language
teaching. In World Cup year, I thought
it would be timely to reassess the
relationship and see how this popular
cultural phenomenon can be analysed
and exploited for use in the classroom.
David Goldblatt in his book The Ball is
Round (a title that clearly has a
language-class ring to it) says this of the
relationship between the two:
Is there any cultural practice more
global than football? ... The use of English
and the vocabularies of science and
mathematics must run football close for
universality, but they remain the lingua
francas of the worlds elites, not of its
masses. Only the most anodyne products
of Americas cultural industries can
claim a reach as wide as footballs, and
then only for a fleeting moment in those
parts of the world that can afford them.
Although Goldblatt perceives
English to be an elite language, if the
number of English speakers continues to
8 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
grow at the current rate, the popularity
of the language will certainly reach a
par with that of football. Consider the
use of English in mass musical genres
such as hip-hop: those lyrics certainly
do not reflect an elite usage.
Status
On my travels, one link I have found
between football and English is their
joint status as a lingua franca. Get into
a taxi almost anywhere in the world it
seems and theres a good chance that
the small talk between you and the
driver may revolve around football. In
Like English,
football is also a cultural
phenomenon that can be
refashioned, reinvented
and appropriated by
its followers
my case, living in Barcelona but brought
up in London, there is usually plenty to
discuss! Currently, Baras Argentine
forward Leo Messi would get a mention
and/or at least a few exclamatory noises
suggesting approval of the mans skill.
As a subject of casual chat, there is
almost nothing that can beat football.
The omnipresent Did you see the match
last night? could be translated into an
infinite number of languages and lead
to a similar set of verbal encounters in
most countries in the world. Misguided
religion or opium of the people for
some, the truth is that this lingua franca
is growing beyond anybodys
imagination. Countries such as China
or Japan, whose citizens previously had
little interest in the sport, now represent
its biggest consumers. And for once, this
product of globalisation has not come
from the United States.
Identity
Like English and its multitude of
speakers, football is also a cultural
phenomenon that can be refashioned,
reinvented and appropriated by its
followers. In this way, it can lead to the
creation of unexpectedly diverse voices,
and often forms an integral part of a
persons make-up, their cultural cards
if you like. In this way, much like
English, football can play a part in
transcending cultural and national
boundaries. This is tied up with issues
of identity and desire: What does
following a team say about you and
your identity?
Devotion to a club may be
expressed in various ways, with English
often playing a key role. For example,
walking down the Ramblas in
Barcelona, you can buy a flag claiming
that Bara are the best of the world (a
direct translation from the Spanish or
Catalan). During the FIFA World Club
Cup final between Barcelona and
Estudiantes, played in Abu Dhabi, the
camera at one point panned to a group
of female fans holding a banner that
read All Syria Love Messi. In the same
way that musicians may insert their own
brand of English into lyrics to reach a
wider audience, here we can see football
fans spreading a meaningful message to
the largest possible number of people.
The terraces at Barcelonas Camp
Nou are also the place for political
placards written in English. When a big
match is on and the fans know the
world is watching, you will find flags
proclaiming Catalonia is not Spain. This
suggests, of course, the significance that
the sport can have in different contexts
and the reason why certain football Reading Alastair Pennycooks work move, change and are reused to fashion
rivalries remain so highly-charged. on the topic of hip-hop and global new identities in diverse contexts. This is
Whatever the cause, English is central to Englishes led me to seek out more not, therefore, a question merely of
spreading the word. The more parallels between these fluid cultural cultural movement but of take-up,
passionately felt is the message, the phenomena and football. Pennycook appropriation, change and refashioning.
greater the need for English to uses the term transcultural flows to I see a clear parallel here with football
disseminate it. address the ways in which cultural forms in that both the sport and hip-hop are
powerful phenomena that unsettle
common distinctions between the local
and global, the traditional and
contemporary, and reflect the flows,
fluxes and fluidity of life in an era of
globalization. The power of football to
subvert and shape communities and
identities is undeniable in this respect.

Diversity
Football is, therefore, an excellent
vehicle through which teachers can
incorporate aspects of global citizenship
and intercultural dialogue into the
classroom. Consider the UKs Premier
League today. What was once a largely
monocultural environment now has
more than 300 foreign players from
more than 68 countries. However, the
diversity that exists within this
particular sport can, of course, be
viewed in various ways, depending on
the media. Despite the changing
demographic of UK teams, a largely
xenophobic British tabloid press still
sadly makes fun of many foreign
players. Fortunately, the excellent
British Council website Premier Skills
(http://premierskills.britishcouncil.org), a
joint venture with Englands Premier
League, has done much to redress the
balance. The site examines UK clubs
projects to promote inclusion and
diversity within their community and
elsewhere. It even features interviews
with footballers not talking about the
sport itself, but referring to subjects as
diverse as language learning and their 

www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010 9

 The beautiful game
- English, football
and ELT
 experiences of adapting to life in the
UK. As such, it can be linked to work
on challenging stereotypes, learning
styles and autonomy and concepts of
immigration and home. It also has a
teachers area with a host of practical
ideas for integrating football into your
classroom.
YouTube is another great resource for
seeing football personalities in an entirely
different light. Here, we can track how
Fabio Capellos English has improved
since he took over management of the
England team. There are also a number
of online interviews with players such as
Liverpool forward Fernando Torres,
whose intermediate-level English is also
very interesting to analyse in class. In
fact, Torres talks very candidly about
personal issues, which may relate directly
to the learners lives (www.youtube.com/
watch?v=vvpIl_dm5E). Because of this,
he acts as a sympathetic role model for
students, which is in stark contrast to
the way that celebrities are usually
treated in coursebook materials.
Stereotypes
There are also several websites which
help challenge the negative stereotypes
associated with football, such as fan
violence, racism and homophobia. A
good place to glean material for this
topic is www.kickitout.org. Likewise,
stereotypes such as the common one
that women dont like football can be
challenged by reading texts about
cultures where there is clearly a great
deal of female support. One such
country is Iran, despite the fact that
women are not allowed to attend games
there (the Iranian film Offside captures
this situation brilliantly). Other
surprising angles include the fascinating
relationship between football and
popular music in Brazil, with countless
songs celebrating the game. Elsewhere,
there are a number of events which
show the topic in an unexpected light,
such as the Homeless World Cup, a
tournament that has been held yearly
since 2003 to give homeless people an
opportunity to represent their country
and turn around their lives (see
www.homelessworldcup.org). In terms of
10 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
sites particularly designed for the
language classroom, another excellent
source of material is the website
www.elllo.org (English Language
Listening Lab Online) which features a
number of interviews with non-native
speakers on the importance of football
in their countries. Episodes 98, 440 and
926 have some great authentic listening
texts. You might also like to check out a
football rap by Dr Brown on YouTube
at www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGLzsGg
Kfc4. It features these lyrics:
Name another sport that can capture
imaginations
Bring together races
From a million places
All about your skill
Not what colour your face is ...
Metaphor
Talking of skills, could there be a
correlation between those that you need
to play football and those required to
speak a language? Leo van Lier sees an
analogy in the self-organising nature of
learning both activities and the fact that
the skill emerges from a combination of
trying it yourself and watching others, of
guided discovery and explicit instruction:
When they start playing, children
tend to run after the ball in a single
swarm, kicking it around in seemingly
random directions. Then at some point a
feel for the game emerges. The game
reorganises itself (not for all players at
once, but for some) from running after
the ball wherever it rolls to moving the
ball around collaboratively in strategic
ways. At that point, the rules of the
game become learnable, in an interaction
between bottom-up discovery, and top-
iStockphoto.com / Josh Hodge
down instruction, within the social
context of playing the game.
Maintaining flow in a conversation
could, therefore, be seen as something
comparable to keeping the ball in
motion, and a succession of passes as
stringing your sentences together. There
is also a link here with exposure:
football is all around us and you can
start playing it virtually anywhere with
minimum resources. It seems that these
days speaking and listening to English is
not dissimilar in its accessibility,
visibility and universality.

In much of the world, English is akin to
a background hum and football has
that buzz to it, too. For good or bad, I
imagine that during the four weeks that
the South Africa 2010 World Cup is on,
people will be talking about little else. ETp
www.number10.gov.uk/output/
Page14289.asp
Goldblatt, D The Ball is Round Viking
2006
Pennycook, A Global Englishes and
Transcultural Flows Routledge 2007
van Lier, L The Ecology and Semiotics of
Language Learning Springer 2004
Ben Goldstein has
taught English for over
20 years, currently
online at the Open
University in Barcelona
and on the New
Schools MATESOL
program. He is the
author of Working with
Images (CUP) and lead
author of the adult
course Framework
(Richmond).
ben@bengoldstein.es
 IN THE CLASSROOM
Spontaneous
story-making
O
David Heathfield ne of the most exciting
activity types I regularly do
and his students in the classroom is making
stories together with my
improvise together. students out of next to nothing. Mental
imagery plays a huge role in the story-
making process, enabling the students to
understand, experience and recall
language as well as storylines. I have
found that so-called challenging classes
create the most extraordinary stories.
Control
The group dynamics involved are
noteworthy: as teacher, I need to be
prepared to give up control of the story
and trust in the collaborative process.
Only then will all the students remain
actively and creatively involved.
Co-creative story-making lends itself
particularly well to language learning as
the teachers level of involvement can be
varied in response to the knowledge and
needs of the students. (In fact, the
degree to which the teacher participates
will probably be determined more by
the group dynamics than the students
level of English.) Story-making involves
a set of skills that we language teachers
have in abundance. Judgement and
intuition are called for when it comes to
deciding when to intervene and when to
sit back and allow the co-creative
process to take its course.
Contributions
I find that there are times when the story
is taken so far away from the route I
expected in my head, that I start to
wonder if it will ultimately make sense.
It is just at this moment of uncertainty
that there is a contribution from a
12 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
student that rescues the narrative. The
fact that this rescue arises spontaneously
indicates that there is a non-conscious
group dynamic at play. The situation is
entirely different when students are
asked to create stories individually.
One recurring feature is that
individual inhibition is superseded by
group freedom. Students frequently
laugh out loud when they are being
creative.
The teacher often acts as a
facilitator, taking the students
enthusiastic contributions in small or
unclear chunks of target language or in
the students mother tongue and
paraphrasing them into natural and
easily comprehensible target language.
This is evident in the following
transcription of a story-making activity
I did recently with a group of 12
learners of English at INTO University
of Exeter, UK. These are five Chinese
speakers, five Arabic speakers and two
Japanese speakers. One of the
difficulties I observed was that the
students in this group often struggled to
understand students who speak a
different mother tongue. One of the
reasons for doing this story-making
activity was to make them aware of the
need to listen more closely and focus on
speaking more clearly.
To support the storytelling and to
give inspiration, I played the soundtrack
to the movie Leon, composed by Eric
Serra. It created an eerie, magical mood.
I recorded the story-making process
on my MP3 player and then typed it up
for this article. There is at least one
contribution from each of the 12
students. At the start, I (the teacher) am
in the storytelling role:

Teacher I was walking alone. Where
was I walking? And if you put
your hand up, I will ask you.
Where was I walking?
Student School.
T School.
S Small village.
T I was in a small village. I was all
alone. What time of day or night?
S It midday on the day, the weather like
sunshine.
T I was walking through the middle of
the village and the sun was shining.
How was I feeling?
S Unhappy.
T Unhappy?
S Unhappy.
T And why was I feeling unhappy? The
sun was shining and I was feeling
unhappy?
S The feeling unhappy because I have
lost my job.
T I had lost my job recently. So I was
walking through the village, feeling
unhappy because Id lost my job and
there, as I walked along the street, I
saw something something there,
shining in the street a small shiny
object, shining the street. What shiny
object did I see?
S Gold coin.
[ Here I took a shiny gold replica
Roman coin from my box of small
shiny objects and put it on the floor
in front of me, much to the
amazement of the students.]
T I saw a gold coin in the street. When
I saw this gold coin, what did I do?
S Take it.
T I decided to pick it up. There was no
one around, the village was quiet, so
I bent down, and I picked it up
[ picking it up ]. What happened when
I picked it up?
S A person behind you.
T A person. I heard someone behind
me as I bent down to pick it up. I
knew there was someone behind me.
How did I know?
[ A student mimes a footstep.]
T I heard a footstep and I knew there
was someone behind me. So what
did I do?
S Eat in your mouth.
T In my mouth?
S In your mouth.
T I quickly put the gold coin in my
mouth [ miming the action ]. I quickly
put the gold coin in my mouth,
because the person behind me I
didnt want them to see the gold
coin. But when I put the object in my
mouth, something happened. What
happened when I put the gold coin in
my mouth? And it would be good to
hear ideas from everybody. Yes, not
just the same people every time.
What did I hear?
S Some people all around.
T People all around. I found myself
surrounded; there were people all
around me. A moment ago I was
alone. And now?
S All around me where you come from
that ...
T People started asking Who are you?
Where are you from? Where do you
come from? We dont know you.
What did I do?
S I was afraid. I was afraid.
T I was afraid. All these people asking
me questions. What did I do?
S Ate it.
T I swallowed it. Yes, I couldnt breathe
because I had a gold coin in my
mouth. So I swallowed it into my
stomach. OK. Lets remember the
story so far. But first of all Id like to
offer one person the coin. So Im
going to ask one person to come
here and take the coin. So, who
would like to be here? No, dont
volunteer another person. Who wants
to come here? Ahmed? Ahmed,
come and sit here. So what youre
going to do, Ahmed, is youre going
to continue the story. You are I.
What you have to do is you have to
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
ask, how did I feel, what happened,
what did I hear, what did I see, what
did she look like, these kinds of
questions and then they will put their
hands up and you will ask one of
them. Whatever they say, you
accept. Whatever they say. You must
accept. You cannot reject, you can
never say no. This comes from
drama improvisation.
So, from the beginning. I was
walking along in an empty village.
The sun was shining. It was the
middle of the day, but I felt unhappy
because I had lost my job and there,
as I was walking through the village, I
saw something on the ground. A
gold coin. I picked it up, and as I
held it in my hand and looked at it, I
knew there was someone behind me.
I heard footsteps so, without
thinking, I put the coin in my mouth
and suddenly I was surrounded by
people. They came from nowhere.
They said Who are you? Where are
you from? We dont know you. I felt
afraid. I couldnt speak because the
coin was in my mouth. So I
swallowed the coin into my stomach.
Yes, OK?
[Ahmed from Saudi Arabia is now
storyteller and sits in the storytellers
chair. ]
A I swallowed the coin in my stomach.
What they have?
S [Unintelligible answer ]
A What is happen?
S I felt stomach
ache.
A What it called,
stomach ache?
After that Ill
T You have to ask a
question. Every time,
Ahmed must ask a question.
A After that, what can I do? What could
they do?
S [Unintelligible ] Make coin out.
T I thought, how can I make the coin
come out.
A How can they make it out? How to
get the coin out? How can I get the
coin out?
S [ Some students discuss briefly in
Arabic ] Drink. 
13
 Spontaneous
story-making
 A After I drank alcohol. I thought the
coin come out, after I drink alcohol,
the coin get out. How can I get
alcohol?
S A shop.
A A shop will have but I didnt like
drink alcohol. How can I hope that I
feel?
S You will feel something moving you
in your stomach ache.
S You feel something moving, you feel
someone speaking, the chance a
small baby.
T Ahmed, any time youre ready, you
can pass the gold coin or you can
continue.
A I will take it out. How can I?
S You can ask wheres the toilet.
S You can help me and I can take three
hopes.
T Three wishes.
A Three wishes.
S Go to toilet.
A So, the first one I go to the toilet, and
what is the second wish?
S Give me the paper.
A Gave me the paper is not important
for me [ laughter from students ].
S My stomach getting out now.
A I told him I want the coin can get out
of my stomach.
S And he helped me.
A And he helped me. The calling Get
out of my stomach. This time, all the
people ask them and what happened
this time?
S The coin get out from your stomach,
and the coin changed to a beautiful
woman.
[ Ahmed offers the coin and a female
Chinese student, Penny, takes it and
sits in the storytelling chair.]
P When change to the beautiful lady,
and after that the lady gets out from
my stomach, and it becomes a
14 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
beautiful woman. Theres all the together. And we left. She was so
people is looking for her they wanted beautiful that we fell in love. We went
to kill her. So you saved me. You to another village and we built a
saved my life that people are looking
for me. So she can help me. What I
can do now?
house and we had children. Life was
good.
But one day, I came home to find
T We are nearly at the end of the story. that my wife and children were gone.
So how can we finish?
I was unhappy again. Every time I
P What can I do at this time? drank alcohol and waited but my
wife and children never came. I
S Ran away from the small village. You
wanted them back because I loved
saved the woman and ran away with
them so much, so every time I took a
her from the small village
coin, I would put the coin in my
P The woman said to take her away mouth and swallow it down with
from the village, where the people alcohol and hope that my wife and
want to kill her and leave the village family and house would come back.
together. Yes, they the woman wants But they never did. So, I drank and I
to pay me for what I do. swallowed and I swallowed and I
drank, and I never found them again.
S You marry and have children.
Thats the end of the story.
P So we got married, and we were
This is your story. Could you turn to
married and had children. So what
the person next to you and could
happened next is the end of the
you just remember the story
story.
together? Just remember the story
S He always drink, drink, drink alcohol, together. If you want to change
and the woman and the coin. So he something together, if you want to
drink deeply and then drink. change some detail, thats OK. You
can change something. So you know
P Sorry I didnt get it.
what youre going to do. Youre
S His hobby is drinking alcohol. going to tell your story to a partner.
Its going to take about three
P I drink the alcohol and take the coin
minutes. And then youre going to
and eat it again. So the woman
write the story of the gold coin.
disappeared again from my house.
My wife and my children
disappeared. Did she change into a
coin again?
S Yes, and then Im going to the streets
and feel unhappy.
T So, the story starts again the same
as it finishes. And just to be clear,
shall I repeat the end of the story?
So, thank you very much. Thank you
very much, Penny. And thank you
very much, Ahmed. And thank you
Collaboration
everybody. I found the next stage particularly
interesting. In mixed-nationality pairs,
T So I heard a voice in my stomach
the students retold the story. It is
giving me three wishes. I said I
noteworthy that some of the language
wished the coin was out of my
that I as teacher supplied in the course
stomach and wished for a toilet and
of the story-making became part of
wished for the toilet paper. And the
their telling. When I had paraphrased
coin came out of my stomach and
what students were trying to say, using
through my mouth. It had changed
clear and simple target language, it
into a most beautiful woman, and I
made it possible for them then to use
looked at this beautiful woman and
some of the same language to express
she said People here in the village
themselves more successfully. Another
want to kill me. What can we do?
interesting feature was that some
How can I repay you for saving me?
students felt a need to be faithful to the
I said Come with me. We can be jointly-created storyline, while others
changed the story significantly to make
it their own.
I then asked them to form new
mixed-nationality groups of three. Each
group member had the task of
individually writing the beginning,
middle or end of the story and then the
three came together to rework it into
one story. The reworking was a struggle
for several of these students who were
still sensitive about making changes
suggested by anyone other than their
teacher.
Consolidation
Finally I read the four group stories
and, in preparation for our next class
together, wrote out the version in the
box opposite, which drew on all four of
them. I asked students to complete my
text with relative clauses, as this was an
area of written language they had asked
to practise in more detail.
A key element of this story-making
process is mental imagery triggered by
questions and responses. These mental
images are visual (a small village on a
sunny day), auditory (quiet, hearing a
footstep behind me) and kinaesthetic
(walking, bending, picking up the coin,
putting the coin in my mouth). Also,
many students will be experiencing
Telling tips
Set the scene of a story yourself
and then start to invite student
input. Once you have established
that every contribution must be
incorporated, invite a volunteer to
take over the role of storyteller.
Alter your voice to bring the
students into the mood of the
story.
Use a simple prop which can be
passed to the students as they
take their turn as storyteller (you
may decide to remain in the role
of storyteller yourself).
Play an extended piece of
background music such as a film
soundtrack. This can guide the
students and fill silent pauses
with expectation rather than
awkwardness.
Focus on mental imagery to
inspire creativity and aid learning
and recall.
iStockphoto.com / Lee Pettet
The Gold Coin
It was a sunny day and I was walking through a
country village. I was unhappy because I had lost
my job. I suddenly noticed a small shiny object
(1) .......................
It was a gold coin. I picked it up but heard footsteps
behind me. I felt afraid so I put the coin in my mouth
and found myself surrounded by people.
What is your name? Where are you from? What are you doing in our village?
I couldnt speak so I swallowed the coin. I felt it going down into my stomach.
All the people disappeared. It felt strange knowing there was a gold coin in my
stomach, so I decided to buy a bottle of spirits from the nearest shop. I thought
perhaps I could bring the coin back up. After drinking the bottle, there was a
voice (2) .......................
You have three wishes.
First, I want a job. Second, I want a beautiful wife. Finally, can you come out of
my stomach?
Suddenly there was a woman (3) .......................
I am your wife. We must leave this place for the people here want me dead.
Come, our farm is nearby.
I became a farmer near the village (4) .......................
The years passed and we had two children (5) .......................
My life was full of joy. One day I came home to find our farmhouse had been
burned down. Inside there were three gold coins (6) .......................
I remembered what had happened in the past so I swallowed the three coins and
started drinking alcohol. No matter how much I drink, they have never returned.
tactile, olfactory and gustatory mental we are all primed to listen to and tell
images (imagining the taste of the coin stories. Even students who claim not to
in the mouth). Holding a real coin, have much imagination may surprise
picking it up and miming swallowing it themselves doing activities like the one
may have helped to stimulate the described above.
students mental imagery in the course To watch me doing this story-
of the story-making. Strong emotions making activity with another group, go
will also have been imagined to www.youtube.com/watch?v=
(unhappiness at losing a job, fear of the L0_7I5iFYrg. ETp
footstep). There is a strong link between
language, emotion and mental imagery. Arnold, J, Puchta, H and Rinvolucri, M
As Arnold, Puchta and Rinvolucri state, Imagine That! Helbling 2007
Mental imagery can improve Heathfield, D Spontaneous Speaking
comprehension and recall language DELTA Publishing 2005
material is processed more deeply
David Heathfield tells
through the use of imagery and is stored stories and runs
in a more permanent manner. In fact we storytelling workshops
for teachers in the UK,
could say that images are essential for us throughout Europe and
to get meaning out of language. beyond. He writes
articles on student
 creativity and bridging
cultures through stories.
With minimal guidance, students can
create a story orally and collaboratively.
www.davidheathfield.co.uk
Storytelling is a universal tradition and
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010 15
 OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM
A stint in
their shoes
D
Kevin Kewley steps o you ever find your students
annoying, lazy or just plain
into the role of student stupid? These thoughts have
occasionally crossed my mind,
and stumbles. but last year I realised, after six years in
Taiwan, that my Chinese was still pretty
rudimentary, so who was I to judge? A
stint in their shoes would right this
wrong and, as a professional educator,
it should come quite easily to me.
Looking forward
I had already studied for my DELTA
(Diploma in English Language Teaching
to Adults) and learning Chinese seemed
a convenient way to further my
professional development I could
experiment, practise and reflect on the
whole experience.
To be meticulous, I started with a
learner self analysis test to discover the
best way for me to study. It turned out I
like music, puzzles, physical activities
and generally using my brain. Worryingly,
I scored poorly on linguistic and
interpersonal intelligence, meaning Im
not actually that good at either picking up
or using language. I actually wouldnt like
to teach someone like myself! This led to
my first, somewhat obvious, lesson: I had
no right to expect everyone to be an
ideal learner; in fact, the majority may
never be able to pick things up quickly.
Motivation
So that brought me to my needs analysis
test. By actively selecting the language
and functions I needed, I would surely be
more motivated to study and learn with
more efficiency and efficacy. All fine in
theory, except for one glaring problem.
After living in Taiwan for so long, if I
was truly motivated, Id already be fluent
in Chinese. But it just didnt do much for
16 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
me. For basic day-to-day survival, I got
by with poor Chinese and hand gestures,
with context and guesswork filling in
the gaps. For more complicated tasks,
particularly anything legal, I found
someone else to help. To relax, I tend to
stick to my English-speaking social
group: it is just more comfortable. In
fairness, Id seen foreign students do the
same in London. The fact is, for most of
them, English isnt a calling, its a means
to an end, a job promotion or an
overseas study opportunity. Some may
not mind it, some may even resent it.
I was determined
to make the best use
of my time in class and
put heavy emphasis
on self-study and
learner training
But without some motivation, surely
there was no point in my even starting
to learn Chinese. I settled on the goal of
passing a test hardly original or
inspiring, but tangible and achievable.
Course design
With all this in mind, I set about
designing the course itself. I decided to
employ a private teacher. It denied me
the opportunity for communicative
practice with other learners of my level,
but it did mean I could experiment with
different up-to-date and authentic
materials and see which worked.
Importantly, I was determined to make
the best use of my time in class and put
heavy emphasis on self-study and learner
training, using frequent and short study
periods throughout the day and week to
optimise my learning experience.
Looking back
So how did it all go and how much did
I actually progress academically and
professionally? My Chinese has got
better, although not as dramatically as I
hoped it would; in fact, probably as
much as my average student. I learnt far
more about learning itself.
Learning style
The most evident problem was not my
learner type, but how I went about
learning. Basically, I wasnt getting
enough authentic speaking practice. Why?
I didnt like it! Reacting to events in real
time is a real challenge: fantastic when it
works, horrible when it doesnt. You can
run a whole gamut of emotions from
embarrassment to anger to despair in the
space of a one-minute exchange, multi-
tasking between comprehending what you
hear and trying to string together how
to react whilst feeling increasingly self-
conscious with every error or mistake.
Of course, I knew this was part of the
learning experience; Id told enough
students it had to be faced. I knew they
were used to passive learning and they
had to break out of it. Yet I avoided it
myself and, over time, this had become
a habit. It may have started because of
laziness and lack of confidence, but it was
now an instant reaction and something
I found extremely hard to overcome.
Achievements
Creating motivation was just as tricky.
Facing up to my true level after months
of hard graft was depressing. No
intelligent adult can be truly happy to
reach the level of pre-intermediate,
which essentially means quite bad at
everything, but trying. Realising how
much study time and effort even a
relatively simple exam requires was also a
little demotivating. In the end, motivation
came from actually achieving things:
holding small conversations or being able
to carry out tasks in real-life situations.
The things I achieved in class could be
rewarding, but not nearly as much.
Teachers
Being a teacher myself, Im probably not
the easiest to teach and, in the first few
months, I got through a few teachers.
First impressions counted for a lot.
Sitting through ill-preparation, lack of
enthusiasm or an inability to express
No intelligent adult
can be truly happy
to reach the level of
pre-intermediate,
which essentially
means quite bad at
everything, but trying
things clearly isnt funny. Also having
paid for the experience, it feels insulting.
Not a cutting, personal insult, just a
mild one thats repeated, again and
again, through the course of the lesson.
Upon finding a suitable teacher, I
found I couldnt micro-manage the way
I wanted to. In fact, this teacher didnt
feel comfortable teaching my way. She
had her own ideas and some of them
even contradicted mine. Over the
course, we tried each others ideas out
and compromised on whoevers worked.
I never thought this would happen as I
was convinced that my ingrained ideas
were correct.
The key was in developing trust with
my teacher, built through constant
communication throughout the course.
Id had students myself who, having
been taught English almost exclusively
in Chinese, thought an all-English
learning environment was far less
efficient. While I still disagree with
them, I now see why they wouldnt
change their minds easily, if at all.
Expectations
I expect a lot from my students. Mostly,
they want relatively short-term intensive
English for Academic Purposes or test-
preparation courses, which I constantly
remind them will take a lot of effort both
in and out of class time. As adults, they
need to take responsibility for their
learning experience and not rely on being
spoon-fed. I had no less expectation of
myself. At first.
For instance, after years of
encouraging students to find their own
extra authentic materials, I found it
difficult myself. Wondrous as the
internet is, locating Chinese texts that
were readable and interesting was hard.
I fell back on reviewing the textbook Id
bought and a website Id subscribed to.
Also, at first, I invested countless hours
in creating flashcards, a vocabulary
notebook and a reflective learner diary.
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
The problem was I couldnt commit this
much time each week and it all became
haphazard.
In class, not getting it got to me. An
overload of incomprehensible language
would cause a mental fog to set in, during
which I could literally get my own name
wrong. It was frustrating how some
things wouldnt sink in, no matter how
much conscious effort I put in, especially
compared to the random language I just
acquired with no effort at all. Finally,
praise from the teacher wasnt that
effective. Correction wasnt that effective
either, unless I reviewed it at home.
Timetabling
Of course, its best to learn in small
bursts, but life gets in the way. Daily
ten-minute sessions gradually got
lumped into hour-long blocks. Things
like overtime, social life or random
minor disasters ate into study time and,
the more the routine was broken, the
harder it was to get back into it.
Targets
After a while, I learnt to set realistic
goals, to balance my time and use it
effectively. Through my experiments, I
discovered what worked for me: rote-
learning (which surprised me), listening
comprehension, seeing and hearing
language in different contexts, using
graded texts and, most importantly,
actively speaking outside of class.

My immediate conclusion from this
experience is that I am a nightmare to
teach and too hard on my students. Its
good to know, I guess. Most of the
insights I gained Id read about before.
However, by experiencing them, the
message finally sank in. What I really
gained was the ability to relate to my
students, talk to them as equals and
actually have a two-way discussion
about learning a language. This
discussion is mostly in English, though,
because their English is still far better
than my Chinese! ETp
Kevin Kewley has been
living and teaching in
South East Asia since
2003. He is currently
working for University of
Arts London in Beijing,
China, teaching Chinese
graduates preparing for
Masters study in the UK.
His Chinese is still poor.
kevinkewley@hotmail.com
17
 Over
the
wall ... Alan Maley
recommends books
that give a voice to
the tongue-tide.
I have crossed an ocean
I have lost my tongue
From the root of the old one
A new one has sprung.
Grace Nicholls
he books reviewed in this issue
T deal with the immigrant
experience from a more
specifically linguistic angle. Two
are memoirs, one is a novel, and two of
them are humorous. In all of them, the
tide of language washes over the
characters and leaves them tongue-tied
in one way or another.
Lost in Translation
The first memoir, Eva Hoffmans Lost in
Translation (not to be confused with the
film of the same name) is a most
perceptive and moving account of what it
means to be uprooted and transplanted.
In Part 1, Paradise, she evokes the
atmosphere of post-war Krakow despite
all its hardships, a surprisingly warm and
iStockphoto.com / Steven Robertson
intimate place. In Part 2, Exile, the 13-
year-old Eva explores with particular
sensitivity the painful linguistic re-invention
of herself she undergoes as an immigrant
to Canada. Virtually every page has telling
quotes, but these few must suffice:
Polish in a short time has atrophied,
shrivelled from sheer uselessness In
18 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
English, words have not penetrated to
those levels of my psyche from which a
private conversation could proceed.
Im not filled with language anymore,
and I have only a memory of fullness to
anguish me with the knowledge that, in this
dark and empty state, I dont really exist.
The sense of having lost one
language and not yet having acquired
another is beautifully conveyed. In Part 3,
The New World, Eva, now in New York,
The tide of language washes over the characters
and leaves them tongue-tied in one way or another
has become thoroughly at home in the
English language: But now the language
has entered my body, has incorporated
itself in the softest tissue of my being.
However, she still has to find a way of
adapting culturally without a loss of
identity. As she says, I have to lose my
alienation without losing my self. I cannot
recommend this book highly enough for
the insights it gives into the mind of a
cultural transplant and she writes like In our house its dangerous to sing a
an angel.
The Speckled People
Hugo Hamiltons memoir The Speckled
People is a beautifully written, sensitive
evocation of the authors Irish childhood.
It is set in 1950s Dublin. The family is
unusual in more ways than one, but
principally because of the languages the
children grow up with. The mother is
German and speaks no Irish. The father
speaks both English and German but, as
a tyrannical promoter of the Irish
language, will allow no English in his
house. The children are the speckled
people of the title, neither one thing nor
another, and they suffer for it.
The father, who also has a limp, is
violent both to his wife and kids. They are
physically punished if he catches them
so much as listening to English: we
could only play with children who could
speak Irish. Unsurprisingly, they have few
friends. And a psychological atmosphere
of stifling terror suffuses the household.
song or say whats inside your head. You
have to be careful or else my father will
get up and switch you off like the radio.
They are mercilessly bullied and
harassed by other kids, who brand them
Nazis. Their mother, who comes across
as warm and protective, is also deeply
unhappy both to be trapped where she is
but also because she is still working out
the trauma and guilt of a war-time rape
by a Nazi businessman: shes
downstairs again, clacking on the
typewriter, putting down all the things
that she cant say to anyone, not even my
father. Things you cant say in a song, or
a story, only on a typewriter for people to
read later on their own, without
looking into your eyes. She desperately
pretends happiness. Everybody has a
story to hide behind, my mother says ...
She made up a story to hide behind and
said she was nowhere more at home than
in Ireland with her family.
Yet for all the pain and misery,
Hamilton leaves us with a feeling of
optimism. His exploration of the country
of childhood is full of sharp perceptions
from the eyes of an observing child. And
it is good-humoured and witty into the
bargain. In Germany people think
before they speak so that they mean what
they say, while in Ireland, people think
after they speak so as to find out what
they mean. And maybe not just in Ireland!
A Concise Chinese-
English Dictionary
for Lovers
The only novel in this batch is Xiaolu
Guos A Concise Chinese-English
Dictionary for Lovers. This is a spirited
and saucy romp through the experiences
of Zhuang, a 24-year-old Chinese girl
who is in London to learn English. It
charts her progress in English and in love
over a 12-month period, during which
she meets and falls in love with an older
British man a bisexual artist and drifter.
Each chapter is based on a word and its
definition from her dictionary. Although
this is superficially a light-hearted and
irreverent story, it has some serious
undertones about what it feels like to
be an alien, about language learning (she
is scathing about her English teacher),
about the difficulties of adjusting to
cultural difference, and about growing
into love and loss. The inevitable ending
of her affair and her return to China rings
true and leaves us sharing her sadness.
One interesting feature is the skilful way
the author shows the improvement in
Zhuangs English, which starts off as
pidgin and progresses to a still quirky yet
highly expressive style by the end. It is a
book well worth reading, if only for its
acerbic asides on Western (and Chinese)
cultural practices.
The Education of
Hyman Kaplan
The Education of Hyman Kaplan by Leo
Rosten (and its sequel, The Return of
Hyman Kaplan) should arguably be on
the additional reading list of any ELT
teacher training course. The books are
based on the happenings in an evening
class for adult migrants in New York in
the mid-20th century. The hapless
teacher, Mr Parkhill, struggles against all
odds to inculcate some kind of
communicable form of English into his
class of highly individualistic and
eccentric learners. Poor Mrs Moskovitz,
she was still confusing English with some
other, unrevealed language. Chief among
his scourges is Hyman Kaplan. Here he
is, in typical full and eloquent flow:
These books offer several different takes on the
immigrant experience and its linguistic fallout
Oh sed, sed, sed, to play mit halth
for de sek of odders So dey had to call
a doctor, and he came an said, Mr
Popper, you got bronxitis! So Jake vent
into his bat. An got more seek. So de
foist doctor insulted odder doctors ...
You mean consulted ...
an dey took him to Mount Sinus
Hospital ...
Mount Sinai!
... vere dey fond Jake Popper had
double demonia! So dey gave him special
noises ...
Nurses!
... an from all kinds medicine de
bast, iven oxenjin tants, he should be
able to breed. An dey give him blood
confusions ...
Transfusions!
... an dey shot him in de arm he
should fall aslip, mit epidemics.
Small wonder that Mr Parkhill
concludes that so much of Mr
Kaplans English remained to be
improved that the hills of his progress
shrank before the mountain of his errors.
Yet, sometimes Mr Parkhill wondered
whether it wasnt entirely fair to try to
clamp the chains of conformity on so
unfettered an intelligence.
The often hilarious humour does
however mask an underlying truthfulness
about such teaching situations. Any of us
who has ever tried to eliminate a fossilised
pronunciation error by intensive practice
(pronouncing w as v, for example) will
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
identify with the immediate reversion to
the error once the practice stops.
Prectice? Mr Kaplans voice rang
out. Fromm nah on, ve vill voik vit
dobble-yous till ve vouldnt iven vhisper
vun void vitout.
And Mr Parkhill feels even worse
because Kaplan is such a nice guy, and
so hard-working, who wedded such
willingness with such unteachability.

These books offer several different takes on
the immigrant experience and its linguistic
fallout. They remind us, as language
teachers, that for all the generalisations
we make about language and language
learning, it remains an intensely personal
thing, deeply influenced by culture. ETp
Guo, X A Concise Chinese-English
Dictionary for Lovers Vintage Books 2007
Hamilton, H The Speckled People Harper
Perennial 2003
Hoffman, E Lost in Translation Vintage
1989
Rosten, L The Education of Hyman
Kaplan Penguin 1970
Rosten, L The Return of Hyman Kaplan
Penguin 1968
Alan Maley has worked in
the area of ELT for over
40 years in Yugoslavia,
Ghana, Italy, France,
China, India, the UK,
Singapore and Thailand.
Since 2003 he has been
a freelance writer and
consultant. He has
published over 30 books
and numerous articles,
and was, until recently,
Series Editor of the
Oxford Resource Books
for Teachers.
yelamoo@yahoo.co.uk
Visit the
ETp website!
The ETp website is packed with practical
tips, advice, resources, information and
selected articles. You can submit tips
or articles, renew your subscription
or simply browse the features.
www.etprofessional.com
19
 IN THE CLASSROOM
Therapist
or teacher?
Lisette Allen reflects on the dilemmas and dangers
of one-to-one classes.
T
he main goal of English language
teachers is to help their students
communicate more effectively in
English. So far, so obvious. However,
offering as it does an opportunity to the
student to offload emotional baggage, the
one-to-one class can end up resembling a
therapy session. How then can we ensure
that the distinction between conversation
class and talking cure remains clear?
Teaching and therapy
Like therapists, language teachers make
extensive use of active listening skills.
Both professionals spend much of their
time paraphrasing and reformulating
what their clients are saying in order to
help them express their thoughts more
clearly. However, unlike a counsellor or
psychotherapist, no teacher would see
their primary purpose as being to help
someone overcome their emotional
difficulties.
On the other hand, as long as
teachers believe that students are not
empty vessels simply to be filled with
grammar and lexis and that the aim of a
class is genuine communication, getting
students to recount events which will
have an emotional resonance will lead to
longer, more complex stretches of talk.
When teachers ask How are you? at the
beginning of a class, they hope for more
than the perfunctory two-word response
which may be more usual in the real
world. In making themselves available
to listen attentively to the mundane,
trivial events of a persons life in this
manner, teachers are doing more than
offering the chance to have fluency
practice in the target language: they
could also be inviting the student to
open their emotional floodgates.
This has its dangers. While most
teachers and researchers now concur
that emotional engagement is key to
language retention, an excess of
emotion can be at best distracting and
at worst detrimental. Is there really
much likelihood that a student will pay
a great deal of attention to your error
correction while divulging the details of
their impeding redundancy or messy
divorce? Many students, especially those
facing real difficulties in their personal
lives, will simply seize the opportunity
to feel heard.
Unlike a psychotherapist,
no teacher would see
their primary purpose
as being to help
someone overcome their
emotional difficulties
Teachers and therapists
Just as importantly, though, it is
potentially draining for teachers to act
as untrained (and underpaid) therapists.
Counsellors and psychotherapists have
regular supervision sessions where they
are themselves offered emotional
support in order to continue to be able
to do this demanding work; English
language teachers do not. Yet the
individual class, which usually takes
place in a small room where only
teacher and student are present, invites
a particular kind of intimacy, which a
group class does not, and,
subconsciously, this may encourage
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
students to use their English class as a
substitute therapy session.
It is up to teachers, then, to set up
clear boundaries. Counsellors do so
before embarking on a series of
sessions, usually by means of a
contract. This process is understood to
be a vital starting point to the
relationship. While teachers may not
need to complete a detailed contract
outlining dos and donts, they do need
to manage the expectations of their
students. Setting a time-limit for the
open-ended How are you? fluency
practice starting activity could be one
way of preventing someone straying off
into negative territory.
Teachers also need to decide how
much personal information to reveal
about themselves. While it may be
preferable to be authentic and genuine
with students rather than providing an
aloof faade, it is all too easy to confide
personal information when a student is
doing the same which may then invite
the student to unburden themselves
still more.

Having the opportunity to meet people
from different cultures and walks of life
is one of the most rewarding aspects of
English language teaching. Indeed,
having the skills required to develop
and manage relationships within the
classroom in order to promote learning
such as being attuned to the
undercurrent of a conversation, picking
up on a students anxiety around a
certain topic and then being able to steer
the conversation elsewhere is one of
the most overlooked but challenging and
rewarding aspects of teaching language.
The language classroom should be a
space in which thoughts and feelings are
shared, but how, when and why this is
done needs to be carefully monitored in
order to promote learning and to make
sure the needs of all concerned are taken
into consideration. ETp
Lisette Allen is an EFL
teacher with more than
seven years experience.
She has worked in the
UK, France and the
Czech Republic. She is
currently based in
Prague, where she is a
lecturer in Academic
English at Charles
University.
lisette_allen@hotmail.com
21
 TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS
An early start
Wang Ping explores whether younger is necessarily better.
A
ll over the world, there is a
trend to start children
learning a foreign language,
usually English, at a younger
and younger age. Many people believe
that an early start will lead to higher
proficiency later on. I should like to
explore this assumption and explain
why I believe that younger does not
lead to better in terms of linguistic
competence, drawing on evidence both
from research and my own personal
experience in China. I will then discuss
the factors we need to consider if we
want an early start in primary school to
lead to later higher proficiency and
how to ensure that this really benefits
our young learners.
Assumptions
Many European countries, such as
Austria, Sweden, Italy and Poland, have
implemented, or are planning, an earlier
start to foreign language teaching (often
English) in their primary schools. A
similar change is happening in China
today. Since 2002, in most towns and
cities, children have been required to
learn English at the age of six or seven,
when they start their primary schooling.
The main reasons for this are as
follows:
1 The amount of time a student
spends learning a foreign language
is considered to be a significant
factor in their success. An earlier
start means more time is available
so the expectation is that higher
levels of proficiency can be
achieved.

2 It has been claimed that the poor
English exhibited by adult
immigrants to English-speaking
countries testifies to the difficulty of
mastering a foreign language as an
adult. The fact that many immigrant
children seem to pick up a new
language much faster than adult
learners contributes to the belief
that it is easier the younger you are.
3 A belief in the superiority of young
learners is also enshrined in Eric
Lennebergs hypothesis that there is
a critical period for language
development. He put forward the
idea that human beings are only
capable of learning their first
language between the age of two
and their early teens. Some
researchers think that after a certain
age, the L2 learner is no longer
capable of attaining native-like levels
of proficiency; or, at least, successful
L2 learning requires markedly more
effort than before this point.
4 Higher levels of proficiency mean
examination success, a significant
factor in determining job prospects
or access to further or higher
education in many countries. In
China, English is compulsory for all
secondary students and there is
pressure on primary schools to
give their pupils a head start.
Reality
I worked as an English teacher in a
Chinese high school for 12 years before
I came to the UK. My students were
between 13 and 18 years old. Most of
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
them had first been exposed to English
at 13 when they started their secondary
schooling. But sometimes I would have
a mixed class with some students who
had already learnt English for a few
years in their primary schools. I found
that those students who had been
exposed to English earlier than their
peers did show more enthusiasm for
the subject. They also scored higher in
all the tests at the first half term.
However, by the end of the first year
their peers had caught up in tests in all
four language skills. It appeared that an
earlier start didnt make any difference
to linguistic competence.
An earlier start
means more time is
available for foreign
language teaching so
the expectation is that
higher levels of proficiency
can be achieved
This reminds me of the primary
French pilot project in England and
Wales, conducted by Clare Burstall and
her colleagues at the National
Foundation for Educational Research in
the 1960s. An experimental group
(who started learning French at age
eight) were compared at the age of 13
with a control group of students two
years older who had begun French at
secondary school and who had had
roughly the same amount of French 
23
 TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS
An early start
 tuition as the experimental group. The
control group consisting of the older
pupils was consistently superior on
every kind of test. A similar study was
carried out in 1972 by John Nisbet and
Jennifer Welsh on students in Aberdeen,
Scotland. A group of 964 students who
had learnt French in their last year at
primary school (Group F) was
compared with a group of 867 who had
not started learning French until
secondary school (Group NF). By the
end of the first term of secondary
school, Group F scored higher on a test
of aural comprehension of French
vocabulary, but the difference had
largely disappeared by the end of the
first year. All differences in linguistic
attainment had disappeared entirely by
the end of the second year.
According to some
researchers, older
learners have developed
a greater cognitive
maturity and have
better general learning
strategies and skills
Why do older learners appear to
outperform younger learners in their
rate of language acquisition? According
to some researchers, older learners
have a better grasp of grammatical
patterns, which can be transferred from
their mother tongue to the foreign
language. They have developed a
greater cognitive maturity and have
better general learning strategies and
skills. For this reason, they are more
efficient at acquiring facts and concepts.
However, this is only one side of the
coin. David Singleton identified the
reason that the students who were
given early exposure to a foreign
language did not maintain a clear
advantage for more than a relatively
24 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com

short period was that they were mixed
with beginners in the same class.
Richard Johnstone reported that in the
experiment in England and Wales, many
pupils went on to secondary schools in
which the French teachers were ignorant
of, or indifferent to, what had been taught
at primary, with the consequence that
progression in the language was likely to
be impeded. Failure to maintain in
secondary the possible benefits of French
at primary may therefore have had to do
not only with the possible superiority of
older over younger learners, but also with
problems of transition, teacher attitude,
continuity and progression.
Continuity
In my own classroom, I, too, failed to
consider the continuity and progression
of the students who started earlier. The
reason for this lack of continuity from
primary school to secondary school is
often that there is little or no contact
between primary and secondary school
teachers. I didnt know what material
the students had been using or what
they had already learnt. Most of my
colleagues, including me, assumed that
the students had simply learnt English
for fun in primary school. In many
cases, this was more or less true, so we
didnt see the point in knowing who
had learnt what before.
What was worse, sometimes in
order to ensure that other students got
more opportunities to practise, I had to
pretend I didnt notice those pupils who
raised their hands eagerly to answer
questions or wanted to act in roleplays.
It was a shame to discourage these
students enthusiasm but I had no
choice. After all, I had 50 students to
look after. Perhaps I should have given
them extra homework or more
challenging tasks, such as organising an
English party for the whole class or
taking turns to tell stories in English.
However, given the class size in Chinese
secondary schools, this would have
meant a lot of extra work.
Furthermore, we should not expect
miraculous results from students who
have been exposed to English on the
basis of two or three hours per week.
The reason for the
lack of continuity from
primary school to
secondary school is often
that there is little
or no contact between
primary and secondary
school teachers
In fact, my students told me that
sometimes their primary school English
lessons would be cancelled just because
they had a maths or Chinese test and
the maths or Chinese teachers needed
extra time. So, although these students
did have the chance to learn English, the
subject was not taken seriously. Also
there is a lack of trained primary English
teachers in China it is not a core
subject and the salary and social status
of primary English teachers are not
attractive. How can we expect students
to learn without good teachers?
From my own experience in the
classroom and based on the evidence
of research in the UK, I would conclude
that an early start does not necessarily
lead to higher linguistic proficiency.
However, I believe we should examine
in more detail what goes wrong and
whether the situation can be improved.
I am not claiming here that if we solve
the problems associated with continuity
when students progress to secondary
school, an earlier start will definitely
lead to higher proficiency in language
learning. But perhaps we could say that
an early start will generally lead to later
higher levels of competence, given the
right learning conditions.
Challenge
If the early starts discussed above failed
to lead to greater proficiency because
the early starters were put in the
wrong learning conditions, what can
we learn from this?
In China, we lack foreign language
specialists and the level of English
 TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS
proficiency of most high school
graduates is still not satisfactory. I know
from my experience as a teacher how
difficult it is for many Chinese students
to learn English also how important it
is for them because of the status of
English in the university entrance
exams. I am sure the move to teach
English in primary schools has come
about because the policy makers have
noticed this problem and believe that
starting English education earlier will
help. Naturally, people are hoping that
the nearly 700 hours (three 45-minute
periods each week) of exposure at
primary school will have some effect.
However, it seems to me that there are
other factors that we need to consider:
teacher training for primary English
teachers, provision of appropriate
teaching materials and assessment for
young learners, and continuity and
progression as the students move from
primary to secondary education. Even if
these things can be improved, we still
need to accept the fact that some
young learners wont reach the level we
expect later because of a variety of
other factors.
Considerations
I dont deny the importance of
proficiency in English in China.
However, should proficiency be the
only thing we want to achieve by
teaching English in primary schools? I
believe that it shouldnt.
Any experience of a foreign
language at primary school must surely
have an educative value that goes
beyond merely developing competence.
Foreign languages make a valuable
I know from
my experience as
a teacher how difficult
it is for many Chinese
students to learn English,
and also how important
it is for them

One of the principal
aims for teaching a
foreign language,
or indeed anything, is
to provide pleasure
contribution to a childs overall
personal development, cultivate their
communication skills and develop their
understanding of the world. It has also
been suggested that learning foreign
languages can help children grasp a
wider sense of community, beyond their
peer-group, the locality, the region and
the country. Vivian Cook claims that
learning another language makes people
think more flexibly and leads to better
attitudes towards other cultures.
If my British students knew some
cultural background about China, (I am
teaching Chinese in a Catholic girls
school in London), they perhaps would
not have been shocked when I told
them that I didnt have any religion.
They would understand it was just
different.
One of the principal aims for
teaching a foreign language, or indeed
anything, is to provide pleasure. It is
important for our children to enjoy
their schooldays. My own experience of
learning English was pleasurable. Songs,
games, roleplays, stories and drama can
be employed, techniques which are very
popular with young learners.
Learning a foreign language may also
have a strong influence on a students
command of their first language.
Teachers can encourage their students
to reflect on and discuss the
vocabulary, the grammar and the
discourse of the foreign language they
are learning, and to make connections
where possible with their first language.
Vivian Cook noticed that English
children who study Italian for an hour a
week learn to read more rapidly in
English. In fact, many Chinese teachers
have found that the first-year students
in primary schools now read books
written in Pinyin (a way of expressing
the sounds of Chinese in Western
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
script) much easier and faster. Perhaps,
this is because of their early start in
English.

It is understandable in China that
people expect an early start in English
to lead to higher levels of proficiency
later on. However, we have to be
realistic and accept that practice has to
be shaped by actual circumstances. We
also need to be realistic in our
expectations of what can be achieved in
primary schools. Many factors interact
to bring about differences in students
achievement. Also, proficiency should
not be our only goal. There is more to
be gained than that, but only when we
stop evaluating the success of primary
school English teaching initiatives solely
in terms of linguistic objectives will we
succeed in giving our children its real
benefits. ETp
Burstall, C, Jamieson, M, Cohen, S and
Hargreaves, M Primary French in the Balance
National Foundation for Educational
Research 1974
Cook, V Second Language Learning and
Language Teaching Arnold 2001
Johnstone, R Addressing the Age Factor: Some
Implications for Languages Policy Council of
Europe 2002
Lenneberg, E Biological Foundations of
Languages John Wiley 1967
Nisbet, J and Welsh, J A local evaluation of
primary school French In Entwistle, N and
Nisbet, J Educational Research and Action
Open University 1972
Schachter, J Maturation and the issue of
universal grammar in second language
acquisition In Ritchie, W C and Bhatia, T K
Handbook of Second Language Acquisition
(Eds) Academic Press 1996
Singleton, D Second language instruction:
the when and the how AILA Review 9 1992
Ping Wangs entire
academic life has been
devoted to professional
development. As an
English teacher and
academic, he has
published a wide range
of subject-related papers
and articles and has also
enjoyed making
contributions to
teachers meetings and
national conferences.
Pwang886@hotmail.com
25
 IN THE CLASSROOM
Speaking
of writing
Geoff Perrin raises Question: Which famous work of
English literature opens with the
awareness of differences following dialogue?
Tell me, Jane, what is it you were
in discourse.
saying about single men the other day?
Come again? Single men?
Yes, you know, if hes well off ...
Oh, that! Now I know what you mean.
Yes, if hes well off, then he must need a
woman in his life.
OK, but I mean, isnt that ... er ... a bit
of a sweeping generalisation. You know,
a single man with money may well have
other priorities. You can never know,
especially if hes new to the area.
He may have other priorities himself. But
you can bet your life that some family or
other somewhere will be determined to
marry him off to one of their daughters!
Answer: None, to my knowledge.
However, suppose I were to frame my
question rather differently and ask
instead which famous work of literature
opens with a stretch of prose from
which this dialogue has been retrieved
or extracted, would that make the task
of identification any easier? Just in case
there are still some readers who have
not yet come up with the answer, here is
the piece of prose in question:
It is a truth universally acknowledged,
that a single man in possession of a
good fortune must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or
views of such a man may be on his first
entering a neighbourhood, this truth is
so well fixed in the minds of the
surrounding families, that he is
considered as the rightful property of
some one or other of their daughters.
(Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice)
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
From spoken to written
There is a sense in which any piece of
writing can be said to pre-suppose the
existence of a corresponding spoken
text, since the act of writing normally
implies some sort of dialogue. This
dialogue may be with the specific reader
or readership that the author has in
mind, or it may be a dialogue which the
author conducts with her- or himself.
The contemporary Welsh poet, Ruth
Bidgood, has put it this way:
When I write, I rarely have an agenda. I
respond to something felt, seen, heard,
read, sensed; and Im always talking to
someone. Ive no idea who that may be,
but Im never just expressing myself.
(Poetry Book Society Bulletin Spring
2009)
What is true of poetry is equally true at
the other extreme even of something as
mundane and everyday as a shopping
list, since this, too, is often the product
of an internal dialogue:
Do we need some more sugar?
Perhaps I should go and look in the
cupboard and just check. No, I shant
bother Ill get some just to be on the
safe side.
This idea that any written text has an
underlying spoken text is something we
can capitalise on in language teaching
to create an awareness of the discourse
conventions appropriate to different
types of spoken text produced in
different circumstances. For example, if
we compare the dialogue at the start of
this article with the Jane Austen original,
we are immediately struck by some of
the features typical of conversational
English: fillers like you know and I mean;
verbless constructions (Single men?);
pausal phenomena (... er ...); simplified
vocabulary (need rather than be in want
of ); and colloquialisms (Come again? ).
From written to spoken
Over a course of language instruction
lasting several weeks or months, we
could incorporate such insights into the
programme by sometimes perhaps
once a week as a homework task
giving the class a written text and
asking them to write a dialogue which
can be derived from it.
In an in-service training course
which I recently conducted with a group
of English teachers, we tried out this 
27

Speaking
of writing
 idea with two texts. The first, taken
from the website of The Australian
newspaper on 7th January 2009, dealt
with the threat of a strike in the
countrys telecommunications industry,
and from the first half of the article we
looked at a stretch of about 15 lines,
setting out the position of the trade
union. The first six lines read as follows:
The Communications, Electrical and
Plumbing Union (CEPU) has called on
its members to ban overtime, recalls
and call backs from 12.01 am on
January 10 until 11.59 pm January 11.
The CEPU has organised a number of
strikes in the past month in an effort to
achieve better pay for its members.
Previous industrial action against the
telco has involved 24- and 48-hour
stoppages as well as bans on overtime
and call backs.
This how one of the teachers in the
group transposed these six lines into a
dialogue:
TV interviewer: So what are the latest
steps youve taken, then?
CEPU rep: Well ... er ... weve called on
our members to ban overtime and call
backs on January 10th and 11th.
TV interviewer: And all these strikes
youve been organising in the past
month what have you been trying to
achieve with them?
CEPU rep: Quite simply, to get better
pay for our members.
The second text we looked at during the
workshop was one with which many
readers will no doubt be familiar, since
it must have been dissected and
discussed in thousands of ELT classes
around the world: Barack Obamas
inaugural address. This time, I asked the
teachers to imagine that instead of
conveying his ideas through the medium
of a speech, Obama had chosen to do
so in a television interview. What effect
would this have had on the language?
(Clearly, the speech was the product of
a lot of writing, re-writing and
rehearsing to get it as close to
perfection as was humanly possible.)
28 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
Early on in the address, the newly-
elected President outlines the problems
facing the country as follows:
Our economy is badly weakened, a
consequence of greed and irresponsibility
on the part of some, but also our
collective failure to make hard choices
and prepare the nation for a new age.
Again, one of the teachers in the group
rendered this passage in dialogue form
in the following way:
Interviewer: OK, I think everyone can
agree on the problems but whos to
blame, and how are we going to solve
them?
Obama: Well, some of the problems have
been caused by ... er ... certain individuals
being greedy and ... and irresponsible,
for others we must all shoulder some of
the blame because weve failed to ...
look beyond the present and take the
tough decisions on where we should be
... should be .. er ... heading.
The students
are gaining an insight
into, and actually using,
some of the features
of spoken English
Distinguishing discourse
The example above nicely underscores
the point that any dialogue will
necessarily be less polished than a
speech, containing hesitations and
repetitions. It could be argued that what
we have done in this instance is to
transform one type of speaking (formal)
into another (less formal), but I am not
entirely convinced. A speech, it seems to
me, would be more accurately described
as written discourse delivered through
the spoken channel. The point, though,
may in the present context be rather
academic, since what we are seeking to
achieve as language teachers is an
awareness in our students of the
distinguishing features of informal
spoken English.
What is also interesting about this
teaching strategy is that it reflects
perhaps a novel and very beneficial way
of integrating the skills: by taking part
of a written text and then doing another
piece of writing based on it (write a
dialogue), the students are gaining an
insight into, and actually using, some of
the features of spoken English. So this
might also be considered a language
awareness activity. Most teachers, I
would guess, hope that this kind of
awareness will develop over time if they
expose their class to a rich, regular and
varied programme of listening
comprehension: the kind of activity I
have been outlining could be a useful
complement to, and reinforcement of,
just such a programme.

Perhaps I might be permitted a final
observation. What I have been talking
about here changing one discourse
form to another and seeing what effects
this has on the language used is
something language teachers have been
doing in their classes for many years,
only more usually in the other direction
(speech to writing). It happens, for
example, when we ask our students to
write a summary of a listening passage,
and it happens, too, in most exercises
designed to practise reported speech,
since the rules of the latter
phenomenon, as found in most standard
works of reference, are those of a formal
variety of written language with the
emphasis on reporting verbs, tense
backshift, and so on. Whether these
rules genuinely reflect linguistic reality,
especially when the reporting is done
through the spoken channel, is a moot
point, and an issue which clearly lies
beyond the scope of the present article.
My principal concern here has been
rather to show that, whilst the norms of
the written language may remain our
main point of reference in the language
classroom for some years to come, we
can use written texts as a starting point
to foster discussion and an awareness of
some of the key differences between
writing and speaking. ETp
Geoff Perrin is Head
of Teacher and
Examiner Training at the
German Government
Language Centre
(Bundessprachenamt) in
Hrth near Cologne. Among
his main professional
interests are language
testing especially the
assessment of speaking
and the use of text corpora
and concordancers in the
classroom.
geoffperrin@web.de
B USINESS E NGLISH professional 
The
numbers
game
Charles Mercer gets to grips with graphs
and numerical terms.
I
f you analyse what business people
have to do in their jobs, particularly
in relation to presentations, it is
evident that they need to be able
to handle numbers with a degree of
competence. Similarly, students wishing
to take the IELTS exam need to have a
wide vocabulary related to numbers to
answer the first part of the written
exam. Fortunately, it is possible to
combine a lot of the available material
relating to numbers for both IELTS and
business students.
At first glance, numbers seem to be
fairly straightforward, but it depends on
how the information is presented
whether in simple numerical terms,
tables or graphs. Even the humble zero
has pitfalls for the unwary. Consider, for
example, how we express zero for
temperature (zero degrees) or in a
football score (nilnil = 0 0). And it
gets even more complicated: a score of
15 0 in tennis is fifteenlove (love
comes from an English variant of the
French word loeuf (egg) in the game of
royal tennis). In a phone number, 0 is
pronounced oh /P/ and it may be zero
or nought in the decimal 0.125. When
spoken, this decimal is expressed as
nought/zero point one two five, not point
one hundred and twenty-five.
In the case of graphs, the vocabulary
relating to numbers is relatively finite. It
is possible to describe a lot with a
limited number of words. The grammar
required usually involves past tenses,
because most graphs look back at what
has happened in the past. For example,
the dreaded question for a sales
representative from an anxious boss is
usually How much have you sold this
week?, requiring the answer I have sold
x worth of our product. This
immediately leads us into the present
perfect, which, granted, is not always
the easiest of tenses to understand. But
I would like to look at numbers
themselves before considering tenses and
vocabulary for graphs in more detail.
Numbers
Because I teach students who come to
the UK from all over the world, I find I
am presented with two ways of
expressing numbers. Those who come
from areas where American English is
more commonly heard (Japan, Korea,
the Middle East and South America)
will naturally use the American system,
omitting the and where there are more
than three digits, eg 1,256 is expressed
as one thousand, two hundred fifty-six.
British English expresses this figure as
one thousand, two hundred and fifty-six
(note that and is not placed after the one
thousand).
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
Also, in the United Kingdom, we
separate the digits in written numbers
which exceed 1,000 with a comma, not a
dot. This practice seems perverse in the
modern era, given that a small alteration
in our Word or Excel software would
bring us into line with the rest of the
world where a dot is used, eg 1.000.000
rather than 1,000,000.
Students often have great difficulty
in saying large numbers involving
thousands and millions. I am often
surprised at their inability to do this,
though correction is relatively easy by
giving dictation involving a series of
numbers, or by using some of the games
which are readily available (see Grammar
Games and Activities for an excellent
telephone number Bingo game).
While in the area of pure numbers,
it is as well to check the students ability
to say simple formulae, eg 2 + 2 = 4
two plus two equals four (the s on equals
is frequently missed). This can be
extended to multiplication and division,
paying particular attention to the
preposition by, e.g. 2 x 2 = 4 two
multiplied by two equals four. Area,
volume and weights are worth
discussing, especially because of the
differences between the UK imperial
Numbers seem to be
fairly straightforward,
but it depends on how
the information is
presented whether in
simple numerical terms,
tables or graphs
system and the metric system favoured
by most of the rest of the world. This is
a complicated subject, so I try to keep
any explanations to a minimum.
However, students of English must
certainly expect to see measurements in
miles, yards, feet and inches and weights
expressed in tons, pounds and ounces
(especially if they travel to the USA). In
an English pub, they would have to ask
for a pint of beer. Currently in UK
supermarkets, both the metric system
and the older English systems are used
for product weights. I am often asked 
29
 B USINESS E NGLISH professional 
always encourage your students to read Sales started at $25m in January,

The IELTS questions minutely to see exactly

what is required.)
rose steadily to $30m in March,
increased sharply to $50m in April and

numbers Going up?

To take the upward trends first, here are
went up gradually to $60m in June.
Note: Students will often mix adverbs

game
and adjectives, and a considerable
some verbs and nouns which describe
amount of practice is required to
moderate movements. The verbs are
eliminate errors like these:
shown with the infinitive, simple past
tense and past participle. There was a steadily rise in May.
 what the symbols lb and oz represent There was a sharply fall in June.
(pound and ounce respectively), but I Verb Noun
wonder whether I need to go as far as to Going down?
to rise, rose, risen a rise
explain that there are 2,240 lbs in a ton For downward trends, there are, again,
or 1,760 yards in a mile. to climb, climbed, some basic verbs and nouns that the
To round off basic numbers, telling climbed a climb students need to know:
the time in both clock time and using to increase, increased, Verb Noun
the twenty-four-hour system is helpful. increased an increase
Most students are a little slow in finding to fall, fell, fallen a fall
the correct English for times like (a) to go up, went up,
gone up to decline, declined, declined a decline
quarter to five or (a) quarter past two, so
this should not be overlooked. There to slide, slid, slid a slide
are plenty of timetables available on the 2008 to go down, went down,
internet for practising the twenty-four- 80 gone down
hour system and, again, home-made 60
dictations can be useful here. 40 These can be augmented with the
20 adverbs and adjectives already given,
Graphs 0 but here are some extra ones:
January

February

March

April

May

June

The vocabulary of graphs may appear a

little more complicated to students Verb Adverb Adjective Noun
because graphs can appear in many fell slightly a slight fall
forms, eg pie/pizza, bar, column, line or Sales in millions of dollars
scatter. In my business classes, I tend to declined suddenly a sudden decline
2008
outline the language of graphs and then slid marginally a marginal slide
ask the students, in pairs, to give a
If presented with a graph like the went
presentation in front of the class based
one above, students very often make the down dramatically
on a skeleton graph which I give them.
common error of misreading the values
They are encouraged to invent a fictitious
on the left-hand vertical (Y) axis. A Although basic, this vocabulary
company and explain the movements of
typical error would be: Sales rose from allows adequate description of the
the graph to practise the vocabulary. The
30 to 50 in April. (30 to 50 what?) graph below:
X axis contains a timeline in months or
The vocabulary given above is Sales fell slightly from January to
years, while the Y axis is left blank. The
enough to describe the graph accurately February, declined suddenly from March
students fill in their own figures here, eg
in its basic form: Sales started at $25m to May and showed a marginal slide from
prices in dollars, millions of dollars or
in January, rose to $30m in March, mid-May to June.
whatever they wish.
increased to $50m in April and went up
Graphs are relatively easy to
to $60m in June. 2008
understand once it is accepted there are
Of course, this language is really 120
three basic ways to describe the
basic, using the simple past tense, and 100
information on them. The figures will
would attract extra marks in an exam if 80
either move up, down or remain stable
augmented by adjectives and adverbs: 60
when compared with other information
in the graph. (I ought to note here that 40
Verb Adverb Adjective Noun
in the IELTS exam two graphs could be 20
presented where a comparison is rose steadily a steady rise 0
January

February

March

April

May

June

required between the figures, negating

climbed rapidly a rapid climb
the use of most of the movement
vocabulary learnt by the students, eg a increased sharply a sharp increase
Sales in millions of dollars
comparison of deaths from smoking 2008
went up gradually
against money spent on research; so

30 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com

B USINESS E NGLISH professional 
Staying stable? These words describe more dramatic The graphs show the mortality rates
And finally, here are some words to downward trends: for the diseases of cholera and smallpox
express stability: in Outer Province for the year 2001. It
Verb Meaning can be seen clearly from the figures
levelled off steadied shown that more people died over the
to drop, dropped, to fall
stabilised, remained stable evened out dropped period from cholera than from smallpox.
Cholera deaths escalated rapidly
to slump, slumped, to fall dramatically, from a base of 100 per 10,000 people in
I would regard the above vocabulary slumped without warning
as a survival kit for someone taking the January to reach a peak of 600 in April.
IELTS exam and, as an antidote to the to plummet, to fall heavily By contrast, smallpox deaths were much
daunting 150-word answers required by plummeted, lower during January at 60 per 10,000,
the examiners, I always tell my students plummeted and remained stable during February.
this is the easiest part of the written to nosedive, to fall steeply, like
They then took off, rising dramatically to
exam because the facts are presented in nosedived a plane crashing reach a maximum level of 200 per 10,000
front of them, almost giving them the in March.
to crash, crashed, to fall suddenly Cholera deaths declined steeply in
answer. I encourage them to study the
crashed May but after this fall they rocketed in
graph for an overview, then to write all
the variations of movement vocabulary to bottom out, to reach the lowest June to almost 1,000. From their highest
they can remember onto the graph bottomed out point on a graph level in March, smallpox deaths
itself. After all, this is basically what is plummeted to 50 per 10,000 people in
being examined, along with the ability Here are some extra adjectives and April. The trend continued with a
of graph interpretation. It is then a lot adverbs: marginal drop in May, where the total
easier to write a short introduction, bottomed out at 30 deaths per 10,000.
Adjectives Adverbs Following this decline, there was a
displaying a variety of vocabulary to the
examiner. It is a good idea to point out steep steeply moderate rise to 75 deaths per 10,000 in
to your students that opinions are not June.
significant significantly In conclusion, we can see that cholera
required in the answer.
Another way of looking at this is to substantial substantially
deaths rose during 2001, while smallpox
count the words I have suggested above deaths remained relatively stable after
(without the modifiers), which total 13 moderate moderately reaching a peak in March. ETp
verbs and 6 nouns. If sentences with an small
average length of 14 words are built Watcyn-Jones, P Grammar Games and
minimal minimally Activities Longman 2001
around these 19 words, then a student
will write 19 x 14 = 266 words in total fractional fractionally Charles Mercer first
more than enough to achieve the 150- worked for a busy
word target. And the adjectives and Finally, here is an example of a London timber importer
and later moved into
adverbs still have to be included. Now comparison of two graphs, using a sales and marketing in
the exam does not appear so selection from the language I have the DIY industry. After
setting up his own
intimidating, and there is still lots more outlined. agency representing
vocabulary available see below. manufacturers and
distributors, he retrained
Deaths per 10,000 in Outer Province as an English teacher at
Adding a little drama 1000 Trinity College, London,
UK, and joined Studio
The following words describe more 800
Cholera

School Cambridge. After

dramatic upward trends: 600
14 years with Studio, he
400 is now semi-retired. He
200 is the author of New
Verb Meaning 0 Business Matters
Workbook, published by
January

February

March

April

May

June

to soar, soared, to rise dramatically Thomson Heinle.

soared like a bird 2001 charles@pearldrop.com

to rocket, rocketed, to rise suddenly

rocketed
to take off, took off, to rise dramatically
Deaths per 10,000 in Outer Province
250
TALKBACK!
Smallpox

taken off 200

Do you have something to say about
150
to escalate, to rise in a rapid, 100 an article in the current issue of ETp?
escalated, relentless climb 50 This is your magazine and we would
escalated 0
really like to hear from you.
January

February

March

April

May

June

to reach a peak, to reach a maximum Write to us or email:

reached a peak height on a graph 2001
talkback@etprofessional.com

www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010 31

 IN THE CLASSROOM
Have you heard
the one about ...?
Scott Lauder tickles some ribs and reviews
the use of jokes in class.
J
okes can be no laughing matter.
Jokes about gender, sexuality, race
or ethnicity are often used to create
or maintain degrading stereotypes that
result in the alienation or suppression of
others. Even if the joke is deemed mild,
it may be so culturally laden that its
comic effect is lost on the listeners.
Therefore, if jokes are to be a part of
the language learning classroom, there
are ethical as well as practical concerns
that teachers must consider carefully.
Nevertheless, jokes can be a way of
providing language learners with
opportunities for enjoyable reading and
speaking tasks.
As a teacher in the United Arab
Emirates, I have used jokes for a
number of years as a means of
delivering vocabulary, exploring cultural
knowledge, practising reading and
speaking skills and simply having a
laugh. Through telling jokes to my
students, I have encouraged them to
participate in a real-world task: the task
of making another person laugh or
groan or just smile, and I have been
rewarded with their attempts to do the
same. Two jokes that I have used
successfully are The shrewd
businessman (a version of which you
may remember from ETp Issue 60) and
The crafty old woman, which I hope
will illustrate how the use of jokes as a
teaching resource might be approached.
Selection
Perhaps the starting point is to ascertain
whether the class is of a sufficient level
to understand the text or not. I have
used these two jokes successfully with
intermediate students whose overall
English abilities are in bands 4 to 5.5 on
the IELTS (General Training) scale.
The next decision concerns the
suitability of the jokes. My aim is to
avoid, as far as possible, anything that is
controversial and by that I mean
34 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
sexual, political or religious in nature
or material that clearly promotes a
highly derogatory ethnic, racial or
gender stereotype. However, the latter
category is perhaps the most difficult to
avoid entirely. Many jokes are gently
mocking of a particular group or its
attitudes, though what counts as gently
mocking is of course subjective. The
crafty old woman joke could be seen as
perpetuating the myth of the woman as
mans deceiver, while the shrewd
businessman story could be viewed as a
condemnation of the greed through
which rapacious capitalists bolster
Western capitalism!
Sub-texts
If many jokes derive much of their
humour from being mildly subversive or
critical, there is no real escape from the
objection that a particular group, set of
ideas or behaviours might be
undermined or challenged by their use.
However, armed with the knowledge
that jokes may be vessels containing
numerous unchallenged assumptions or
even falsehoods, the teacher can use the
post-reading discussion to raise
awareness of this and delineate some of
the assumptions that allow the joke to
work. In The crafty old woman and
The shrewd businessman, students
could be directed to consider whether
all old women are crafty or if old
women alone are capable of confidence
tricks. Similarly, they might be quizzed
about whether the joke works as well
with an old man and if not, why not?
With The shrewd businessman,
students could consider in what other
circumstances people behave badly or at
least unscrupulously, whether every
businessman would do the same as the
one in the joke and if money alone
motivates everyone who owns a
business. Reflecting on these issues
might actually result in ridicule for the
jokes childish simplifications. Whether
this happens or not, the discussion will
at least have provoked some thought
into what the jokes sub-texts are.
Support
The next decision is how many tasks will
accompany the text and what those tasks
will be. On page 35 you will see two
worksheets that I use with my students.
I tend to use jokes as vehicles for
vocabulary, discussion and reading
comprehension and I often introduce
the topic of the joke obliquely through
a short discussion of some pre-reading
questions. Advance exposure to
vocabulary connected to the reading also
helps to prepare students for what they
will read. After reading the text either
individually or as a class the reading
comprehension questions are usually
done individually. These sometimes help
those readers who do not initially get
the joke. After discussion of what ideas
underpin the joke, I usually ask my
students as a class to re-tell as much of
it as they can, eliciting what they
remember, one sentence at a time.
In post-reading discussions with
students about The shrewd
businessman, the difference between
Islamic banking in which charging
interest on loans is haram or forbidden
and Western banking has arisen. The
discussion has led learners to explain
how an Islamic bank can ethically make
money. Similarly, The crafty old
woman has led to a discussion of Freej,
a popular cartoon in the UAE featuring
some spirited elderly ladies.

In conclusion, jokes have allowed for
interesting cultural comparisons,
provided intensive reading practice and
encouraged learners to retaliate with their
own rib-ticklers. Not a bad days work
for such an overlooked resource. ETp
The website that first encouraged me to
use jokes with my learners is
http://www.teacherjoe.us/index.html.
Scott Lauder works in
the United Arab
Emirates for Sharjah
Higher College of
Technology. He has
been teaching in the
Middle East for ten
years. Previously, he
taught in Greece, Japan
and the UK.
scottangus_65@yahoo.com
 Have you heard the one about ...?
The crafty old woman The shrewd businessman
A Discuss these questions. A Discuss these questions.
1 Who takes care of elderly relatives in your country? 1 Where is New York?
2 What are some of the disadvantages of growing old? Are there 2 Is it an expensive place to live?
any advantages? 3 Banks are usually highly profitable. How do they make
3 Have you or has someone you know ever been tricked by money? How might they lose money?
someone?
B Match the word to the meaning.
B Match the word to the meaning. ___ to borrow 1 extra money that you pay when
___ to whisper 1 very unlikely, something that has you take a loan
little or no chance of happening ___ security 2 to feel confused, uncertain
___ to stare 2 to buy ___ a loan 3 the opposite of lend, to take
___ to push in front 3 to look at for a long time, to not money and plan to repay it later
look away ___ an employee 4 to research, to get information
___ uncomfortable 4 embarrassed, experiencing about
discomfort ___ interest 5 someone who works for a
___ to ignore 5 to speak in a quiet voice company
___ impossible 6 to move someone aside with force ___ puzzled 6 something that may be sold by
and stand ahead of them (especially the lender to repay a loan
in a queue) ___ to investigate 7 a sum of money that you
___ to purchase 7 to pay no attention to borrow
someone/something deliberately
C Now read the joke below. Choose the best word from
C Now read the joke below. Choose the best word from the list the list in B to complete it.
in B to complete it. You may have to change the grammar. A businessman walked into a bank in New York and asked
A young man was walking through a supermarket when he for the manager. He told the manager that he was going to
noticed an old woman following him around. Thinking nothing of Europe on business for two weeks and needed to borrow
it, he ____________________ her and continued shopping. After $5,000. The bank manager explained that the bank needed
he had put some milk, bread and biscuits in his basket, he went some kind of ____________________ for his loan, so the
to the checkout. Suddenly, the old woman pushed in front of businessman gave the manager the keys to his Rolls
him. Pardon me, she whispered, Im sorry if my staring at you Royce. The bank quickly agreed to accept the car. A bank
has made you feel ____________________: its because you look ____________________ drove the Rolls into the banks
just like my son who just died recently. Im very sorry, said the underground garage and parked it there. Two weeks later,
young man. Is there anything I can do? Yes, she said. When the businessman returned and repaid the $5,000 loan with
Im leaving, can you say goodbye, mother to me? Id feel much ____________________, which came to a total of $5,015.
better. Sure, answered the young man. So the old woman gave The manager said, We were very happy to give you the
the checkout assistant her items and just as she left, the young loan, but we are a little ____________________. While you
man said Goodbye, mother!. Then he gave the checkout were away, we investigated you and found that you are a
assistant his items and looked at the total. It was $427. What? millionaire. What puzzles us is why you would
Thats impossible! he shouted. I only ____________________ a ____________________ $5,000. The businessman smiled
few things! I know, said the checkout assistant, but your and said, Where else in New York can I park my car for
mother said that you would pay for hers, too. two weeks for only $15?

D Are these statements true (T) or false (F)?
1 The young man was shopping in a supermarket by himself.
2 The young man bought lots of things.
3 The old woman bought lots of things.
4 The young man had to pay for the old womans shopping.
5 Milk, bread and biscuits probably cost $427 in total in the
USA.
6 The young man said goodbye to the old woman after she
left.
7 The old woman paid nothing for her shopping.
8 The young man probably did what the old woman wanted
because he felt sorry for her.
9 The old woman probably whispered to the young man
because she was embarrassed.
10 The young man was probably happy to pay for the old
womans shopping.
D Are these statements true (T) or false (F)?
1 The businessman was very rich.
2 The businessman went to Europe on vacation.
3 The businessman wanted a cheap place to park his car.
4 New York is an expensive place to park a car.
5 The businessman only paid $50 for parking.
6 The businessman didnt really want a loan he only
wanted a cheap place to park.
7 If the businessman hadnt paid back the loan, the bank
would have sold his car.
8 The businessman probably needed the bank loan to
pay for his trip to Europe.
9 Parking in a New York car park for two weeks probably
costs a lot more than $15 dollars.
10 The Rolls Royce was probably worth less than $5,000
dollars.

www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010 35

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 IN THE CLASSROOM
Learning
disability 2
Lesley Lanir examines how learning works.
I
n my article in Issue 67 of ETp, I
mentioned that learning disabilities
may result from impairments in
one or more neurological processes.
Logically, then, to understand the way
our students learn, we need to know a
little about the brain and its functions.
How does the brain
work?
The brain is a complex structure. It
controls our body and receives, analyses
and stores information. Even though
advances in brain-imaging allow for
many new debates regarding brain
processes, the following remain the
accepted primary divisions and
functions of the brain.
This three-pound mass consists of
three major parts: the cerebrum, the
cerebellum and the brain stem. The
area of main interest to language
teachers is the thinking part of the
brain: the cerebrum.
The cerebrum is divided into two
halves (hemispheres) that are joined
and communicate with each other by
way of a bunch of nerve fibres called
the corpus callosum. The left
hemisphere is known to control the
right side of the body and the right
hemisphere the left side. In addition,
each hemisphere appears to have its
own specialised behaviours; the right
is known to be more concerned with
emotional, spatial and visual
information, whereas the left is
believed to be the technical, more
linear and rational side and is usually
the location of the language areas
known as Broca and Wernicke.
For ease, scientists have further
partitioned the thinking cerebrum
symmetrically into four sections or
lobes: the frontal, temporal, parietal
and occipital lobes, as can be seen in
the diagram.
cerebrum
frontal lobe parietal lobe
Brocas
area
occipital
Wernickes area lobe
temporal lobe
cerebellum
brain stem
A view of the left hemisphere of the brain
The frontal lobes are associated with
language-related tasks.
reasoning, higher-level cognition, and
expressive language. At the back of the
frontal lobe lies the motor cortex, which
controls body movements. Brocas area,
associated with language production,
word meaning and word association,
resides in the left frontal lobe.
The left temporal lobe is the location
of the primary auditory cortex, which
interprets and processes sounds, and the
hippocampus, which is involved with
the formation of memories. The
understanding of the meaning of
spoken words and overall language
comprehension takes place in the left
temporal lobe in Wernickes area.
Above the temporal lobes are the
parietal lobes, which process and integrate
sensory information, such as touch,
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
temperature and pain, from all over the
body. Wernickes language area also
crosses over into the left parietal lobe.
Finally, the occipital lobes, located at
the back of the brain, manage visual
processing.
How does learning work?
The brain has billions of microscopic
cells called neurons. We are born with
all the neurons we will ever have, but
many are not connected to each other.
When we learn, messages pass from one
neuron to another by way of electrical
and chemical transmitters. This is
known as a neurodevelopment function.
As we learn new material or repeat
tasks, the brain starts to create new
connections between neurons or
strengthens existing pathways.
Continual or recurring practice creates
stronger connections. As a result, tasks
become easier and eventually automatic.
Like a complex electrical circuit board,
each brain is wired in a unique way and
there may be strong connections or
disconnections and misconnections,
both of which will cause dysfunctions.
Reading this article causes many
neurodevelopmental functions to take
place. Very basically, the visual
information is being processed within
the occipital lobes, and the left frontal
and temporal lobes are processing
sounds, extracting meaning and piecing
everything together to make sense.
As Mel Levine clearly states,
learning requires the participation of
multiple neurodevelopmental functions
and if one or more fails to operate
properly, our students may be unable to
read and comprehend or perform any
Implications for
the language classroom
Usually a dysfunction will become
apparent when a problem reoccurs
over time and may surface in:
difficulty remembering the
associations between sounds and
symbols;
an extremely slow reading pace;
inability to form letters quickly or in
the right order;
trouble finding exact words;
difficulties with pronunciation and
fluent speech.

37

Learning
disability 2

How does memory work?
So, billions of neurons create
neurobiological connections and are
busy perfecting our ability to perform
many tasks, but how do we remember?
How does the information become
permanently stored in this grey mass?
Even though there are many credible
memory models, forming memories is a
complicated operation still under debate.
Nevertheless, for our purposes, memory
can be thought of as three functions:
short-term sensory memory, short-term
working memory and long-term memory.
The emphasis here is on the general
functions of the memory systems and
how to aid learning and remembering in
general for all students. Memory
associated to specific learning disabilities
will be addressed in a later article.
Billions of neurons
create neurobiological
connections and are busy
perfecting our ability to
perform many tasks
First level of input sensory
memory
Everything in memory begins as a
sensory input of some kind. The brains
sensory registers, located mainly just
above the brain stem, receive and process
information through sight, sound, taste,
touch, movement and smell. Enormous
amounts of information bombard our
sensory registers. Luckily, in a normally
functioning brain, within milliseconds,
99 per cent of this information is
discarded as being irrelevant. All
accepted sensory data goes through a
process called sensory integration,
where past experiences attach meanings
to the incoming sensory information.
This is the basis of how we form our
perceptions and make sense of our
environment. There are many types of
perception; the two most common
associated with language learning are
visual and auditory perception. Although
38 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
processing is largely unconscious at this
stage, attention, meaning and emotion
strongly influence whether the brain
initially attends to sensory information.
Implications for
the language classroom
Those with sensory processing
problems may be:
overly or under sensitive or reactive
to touch, movement, sights or
sounds;
highly active or underactive;
lacking in coordination;
delayed in speech or language skills;
lacking in motor skills (fine and/or
gross);
unable to plan and organise.
Classroom strategies:
Remove distractions in order to
minimise factors that will interfere
with attentiveness.
Provide background and activate
schemata in order to give meaning.
Present information clearly visually
and verbally.
Slow down the pace of the lesson.
Repeat new material more than once.
Question your students to verify
understanding.
The middle man short-term
working memory
Moving from the unconscious to the
more conscious processes, sensory
integrated data is transferred to the
short-term working memory. Short-
term working memory receives,
rehearses, organises and integrates
incoming information with already-
saved information.
Of course, there are limitations in
what services the working memory can
provide. For example:
It is severely affected by anxiety and
emotional issues.
It cannot successfully process two
new trains of thought simultaneously,
especially if they are using the same
sensory mode.
It has a limited capacity; it can hold
between five and nine items at any
one time.
The duration that information is held
there is short up to 18 seconds.
Implications for
the language classroom
Incoming information may not be
processed correctly if there is:
too much new information offered;
interference from similar information
that is new or previously learnt, for
example teaching homophones or
homonyms or even similar-sounding
words together;
lack of rehearsal or practice of new
information, so it fades before
reaching long-term memory;
a noise or a distraction that results
in new information being distorted
so an imperfect image is processed.
Those with short-term working
memory problems may feel that:
they are overloaded they cant
register the incoming information
quickly enough;
new information falls out;
new information erases prior
information;
new information fades too quickly.
Classroom strategies:
Provide a calm, safe learning
environment.
Reduce the pace of the lesson.
Keep attention constantly focused
on the information being taught.
Activate prior knowledge to
enhance meaning.
Teach small meaningful amounts at
a time.
Encourage information chunking.
For example, take a meaningless
list of 14 items, such as
WBBDMBCSGVDBUA and turn it
into five items that have meaning
and prior knowledge: BMW BBC
USA GB DVD.
Encourage highlighting and
underlining.
Rephrase key points in order to
encourage rehearsal.
Promote interaction with the new
information encourage speaking
and writing.
Use additional devices to support
working memorys restricted space,
for example lists, diagrams and
clear worksheets.
Long-term memory
When a new piece of information enters
the short-term working memory, its long-
term processing is reliant on how deeply
we register it. The advantages of long-
term memory are that it is lasting,
reasonably stable, varied and unlimited. In
order to make use of the information in
long-term memory, we must move it back
to our working memory, using a process
called retrieval. According to both
Marilee Sprenger and Eric Jensen, the
more pathways or memories used to
store an event, the more powerful the
learning will be and the easier retrieval
will be. According to Mel Levine, for
ease of access, information needs to be
stored systematically.
Long-term memory can be divided
into explicit or implicit memory.
Explicit memory is our conscious
memory of all those things that we are
aware of remembering and that we can
describe in words. There are two types
of explicit memory: episodic and
semantic. Episodic memory allows us to
remember events that we personally
In order for learning to
occur, teachers need to
activate neurons and
create strong new
pathways in the brain
experienced at a specific time and place,
eg where we placed our bag or parked
our car. Semantic memory is the system
predominantly used in educational
settings. It stores words, symbols, rules,
meanings and general knowledge.
Implicit memory, unlike explicit
memory, does not require conscious
thought. The best known implicit memory
is procedural memory, which enables us to
carry out commonly-learnt tasks without
consciously thinking about them. Its our
how to do something store; for example,
driving a car or making a cup of tea.
The key ingredient that facilitates
long-term storage is meaningfulness: the
degree to which new data can be related
to previously-stored information.
Furthermore, according to Mel Levine,
in order to aid later retrieval of
information, data needs to be entered
systematically into the long-term
memory in pairs, procedures, categories
or rules and familiar patterns.
Implications for
the language classroom
Those with long-term memory
problems will show:
inability to retrieve information the
I dont remember anything I know
syndrome;
delayed or inaccurate retrieval;
difficulty remembering procedures
and processes I dont remember
how to do this.
Classroom strategies:
Keep things structured and
meaningful.
Use a context.
Activate prior memories.
Keep chunks to a minimum.
Use mnemonic devices link new
information using acronyms,
keywords, etc.
Use graphic organisers to map out
new information.
Use associations, similarities and
contrasts.
Create action pictures in the
students minds.
Use illustrations and strong colours.
Colour-code handouts, eg pale blue
for past simple verbs.
Get the students to talk through the
steps of new procedures, eg new
grammar rules.
Give intense practice over short
periods.

To summarise:
In order for learning to occur,
teachers need to activate neurons and
create strong new pathways in the brain
and redefine old ones.
Firstly, perception and attention
enable information to move into the
sensory register. Without focused
attention, information will not move
from the sensory register to the short-
term working memory. What catches a
persons attention depends heavily on
what is currently happening in the
short-term working memory and what
has already been stored in the long-term
memory. Information that does not move
from the sensory register to short-term
working memory is never learnt.
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
The memory process
Sensory information
Sensory organs
Sensory memory
Sensory integration
Past experiences
Sensory integrated information
Short-term working memory
Rehearsal
Retrieval
Encoded information
Long-term memory
Explicit: Implicit:
episodic procedural
semantic
Rehearsal is the main activity that
ensures that information stays in the
short-term working memory until it is
correctly encoded. Encoding causes
information to move from short-term
working memory to long-term memory.
Information in the working memory that
is not encoded is never learnt. Retrieval
of information is dependant on deep
and varied systematic encoding. ETp
Jensen, E Teaching with the Brain in
Mind ASCD 1998
Levine, M A Mind at a Time Simon &
Schuster 2002
Sprenger M Learning & Memory: The
Brain in Action ASCD 1999
Wolfe, P Brain Matters: Translating Research
into Classroom Practice ASCD 2001
Lesley Lanir is a
freelance writer, lecturer
and teacher trainer who
has been involved in
teaching English for over
15 years. She specialises
in learning disabilities
and foreign language
learning. She has a BA in
English and Education,
CTEFLA/RSA and an MA
in Learning Disabilities.
lesleylanir@gmail.com
39
 D E S I G N E D T O P H O T O C O P Y

PREPARING TO TEACH ...

Get
John Potts gets to grips with a versatile verb.
A Crime was getting worse in Tinas neighbourhood. G Luckily, shed just got a new policy from her
insurance company.
B Shed got new locks fitted on the doors and windows.
H However, the burglars got away with her computer
C Her brother had got her to buy a dog.
and the dog.
Nevertheless, when she got home (D) one evening, she
So then shed got to buy (I) a new computer and she
got an unpleasant surprise (E) her flat had got burgled
got thinking (J) about moving house.
(F) while she was at work.

BASIC MEANING SOME DETAILED MEANING

A get worse = become worse
B get something done = have it done
C get someone to do something =
persuade/induce someone to do it
D get home = arrive/reach home
E get a surprise = have/experience it
F get burgled = be burgled
G get something = acquire it
H get away (with something) = escape (with it)
I have got to do something = have to do it
J get thinking = start doing it
These are just some of the meanings and
collocations of get: a student once said that
English is an easy language, because all you
need to know is get!
In B, get something done, like have
something done, shows that Tina didnt
actually fit the locks herself she
asked (and probably paid) someone
else to do it for her. Get something
done shows that she actively took
steps to ensure this perhaps she had
to make special arrangements or go to
extra expense.
Sometimes, depending on the context,
this form can also mean that something
(unpleasant) happened to the subject:
She got her bag stolen on the train.
This doesnt mean that she asked or
arranged for this to happen!
In C, get someone to do something
also shows that the subject (her
brother) took some active steps to
persuade her perhaps he had to
suggest it several times. The same
pattern can be used with a thing: She
couldnt get the alarm to work properly.
In F , get burgled is an informal passive
it sometimes suggests a more
dynamic passive than a standard
passive formed with be. For example:
Her car was stolen = a neutral
statement of fact versus Her car got
stolen = someone took steps to steal it.
In I , have got to do something, like
have to do something, means that the
subject is required or obliged to do it,
usually because of the circumstances or
external influences. Again, got is more
dynamic and adds a little more urgency
or pressure.

FORM
B get + noun + past participle Phrasal verbs
Many phrasal verbs are formed with get + particle (sometimes followed by a preposition), and
C get + noun (a person or a thing) +
some combinations have more than one meaning. Some examples:
infinitive with to
get a message across, get ahead in business, get along with other people, get away with
F get + past participle
something, get by on very little money, get down to business, get off with a small fine, get out
I have + got + infinitive with to of a commitment, get over an illness/disappointment, etc.
J get + present participle (This
Fixed expressions
pattern can also include an object:
There are also many fixed expressions and collocations that use get or got. Most are informal.
The teacher got us thinking about
the tenses.) Get lost! (= go away! impolite)

American English uses got as the
participle form when it means
have/possess and when it is
equivalent to have to, but uses gotten
when it replaces meanings such as
become, acquire, manage, etc: The
situation has gotten worse recently.
Get a move on! / Get on with it! (= hurry up!)
I soon got the hang of it. (= I learnt how to do it)
The traffic noise really gets on my nerves! (= irritates and annoys me)
(I) Got it! / Got you! (= I understand it/you)
Use a learners dictionary (especially one with a CD-ROM) to find lots more. Natural Grammar
by Scott Thornbury (OUP, 2004) has (got) very useful sections on get and got.

40 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com

 D E S I G N E D T O P H O T O C O P Y

PREPARING TO TEACH ... Get

USE
CONCEPT QUESTIONS
Expressions using get are
usually considered informal or
even very informal, and would
often not be appropriate in
formal, written language.
She got new locks fitted.
Did she fit the locks herself? (No.)
Did she ask someone else to fit them? (Yes.)
Did she pay for this service? (Probably yes.)
Her brother got her to buy a dog.
Was it her idea to buy a dog? (No.)
Whose idea was it? (Her brothers.)
Did he advise her to buy one? (Yes.)
Did he have to convince her? (Yes.)
Who actually bought the dog? (She did.)

PROBLEMS
Since get is so common, and
SITUATIONS
has so many meanings,
learners are sometimes unsure
how to interpret a particular
occurrence. This is perhaps
especially the case when get
replaces be in passive
constructions; and phrasal
verbs are, in any case,
notoriously difficult. Gotten in
American English contexts can
also cause problems.
PRONUNCIATION
In I, have/has got to do is
often greatly reduced, and
may even be said (or written)
as I/you/she gotta do in very
informal contexts.
Got to get you into my life
Write a short text or dialogue that doesnt include get/got. The students
work in pairs to insert get/got where it fits they mustnt change any of
the text, but simply add get/got. This activity focuses on have (got), and
have (got) to. (See Natural Grammar by Scott Thornbury for an example.)
John Potts is a teacher
Got rid of it! and teacher trainer based
Write a short text/dialogue similar to the one in this article, containing in Zrich, Switzerland.
He has written and
expressions with get and/or got. The students work in pairs to replace co-written several adult
these with an appropriate paraphrase. coursebooks, and is a
CELTA assessor. He is also
a presenter for Cambridge
Got a good memory? ESOL Examinations.
Make a set of cards, each with an expression, collocation or phrasal johnpotts@swissonline.ch
verb using get/got. Make a second set with the respective paraphrases
or synonyms. Shuffle the two sets and deal them face down on the
table in a grid pattern. Two teams of students have to turn over a card
and try to find the matching card. If the cards dont match, they are
replaced face down. If they do, the team can keep the pair.
Variations: the students can also play this as a card game, as tic-tac-
toe (noughts and crosses), a board game, or simply as a worksheet with
the language items in two columns or boxes.

COMPETITION RESULTS
15 11 25 5 19 17 25 23 3 Congratulations to all those Christian Egolf, Mellingen,
T R E M B L E P S
25 1 26 26 readers who successfully Switzerland
E I U U
2 13 17 15 7 12
completed our Prize Jocelyne Gillet, Gageac et
C O L T F N Crossword 38. The winners, Rouillac, France
8 13 8 13 15 14 1 25 7 9
Y O Y O T H I E F D who will each receive a copy David Hnggi, Baden,
1 5 1 17 25 18 of the Macmillan English Switzerland
I M I L E A
7 18 17 17 5 11 26 12 18 20 18 8
Dictionary for Advanced
F A L L M R U N A W A Y Neda Joksimovic, Belgrade,
Learners, are:
25 15 Serbia
E T
11 25 15 26 11 12 15 23
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Jean-Luc Mercier, Mescoules,
R E T U R N T P I C S J M X F Y D Z R N O
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 France
25 18 9 18 12 16 25 11 13 26 3
E A D A N G E R O U S H T G L A B W K V P Q E U
Laurence Nabad, Bergerac,
17 18 9 8 15 11 17 26
L A D Y T R L U 18 26 15 26 5 12 1 3 18 France
A U T U M N I S A
1 15 25 17 13 23 25
I T E L O P E 3 25 2 13 12 9 3 23 11 1 12 16 Dominique Schmid, Dttwil,
S E C O N D S P R I N G
18 26 15 26 5 12 18 17 26 25
20 14 25 12 25 22 25 11 8
Switzerland
A U T U M N A L U E
W H E N E V E R Y
12 13 2 13 5 5 26 15 25 11
17 25 18 7 1 3 18
Katharine Scott, Ternay, France
N O C O M M U T E R
L E A F I S A Ewa Sniegocka, Plock, Poland
2 13 21 18 25
7 17 13 20 25 11
C O K A E
F L O W E R Gion Wyss, Wettingen,
25 18 16 25 11 12 13 20
E A G E R N O W Albert Camus Switzerland

www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010 41

SCRAPBOOK Gems, titbits, puzzles, foibles, quirks, bits & pieces,
quotations, snippets, odds & ends,
World Cup quiz
1 Which team in the 1930 World Cup were
selected by their king?
a) Belgium
b) England
c) Romania
d) Sweden
2 What were the Cameroon players not
allowed to wear in the 2002 final?
a) coloured war paint
b) sleeveless shirts
c) hair extensions
d) boots with steel toecaps
3 Why did Ronaldo change his hair style
after Brazil beat England in the 2002
quarter finals?
a) to improve his ability to head the ball
b) because a fortune teller told him it would
bring good luck to the team
c) to make him look different from his
teammate Roberto Carlos
d) to make him look like his favourite film
star
4 What was the name of the dog that found
the stolen trophy before the 1966 final?
a) Pickles
b) Batman
c) Rover
d) Bertie
5 Why was the 1966 opening match
between Uruguay and England delayed?
a) The stadium clock was broken.
b) The referees taxi was involved in a road
accident.
c) Some of the English players had left their
identity cards at the hotel.
d) One of the Uruguay players was still at
the hospital where his wife was giving
birth.
42 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
what you will
6 Why did India withdraw from the 1950
finals?
a) They were not allowed to bring their own
food.
b) The Indian government refused to pay for
the teams air tickets.
c) Three of their players had food poisoning.
d) They were not allowed to play in bare
feet.
7 Why did Raimondo Orsi of Italy return to
the stadium the day after the 1934 final?
a) to look for his wedding ring, which he lost
during the match
b) to demonstrate his goal-scoring
technique to the press
c) to take a photograph in front of the goal
with his family
d) to take a sample of the turf as a souvenir
8 Why was Italian captain Peppino Meazza
embarrassed when he took a penalty kick
in the 1938 final?
a) The ball hit the referee and knocked him
out.
b) He missed the ball completely and fell
over, breaking his ankle.
c) The ball went into the crowd and hit his
father-in-law on the head.
d) His shorts fell off.
produced.
new pair of shorts was
gathered around him until a
kick. His teammates
did not survive the penalty
torn earlier in the game and
Meazzas shorts had been
8 d)
this shot for the cameras.
he was unable to reproduce
swerving shot. Unfortunately,
goal with an amazing
He had scored the winning
7 b)
play in the World Cup final.
never had another chance to
in bare feet, but they have
Indian players no longer play
6 d)
the seven identity cards.
sent to their hotel to retrieve
A police motorcyclist was
5 c)
Corbett.
walked by his owner, David
by Pickles, who was being
South London and was found
It was hidden in a garden in
London just before the final.
it was being exhibited in
The trophy was stolen while
4 a)
screen.
Carlos appeared on the
shouting Daddy! whenever
baby son had kissed the TV,
His wife told him that their
3 c)
were deemed to be vests.
players sleeveless shirts
wear shirts. The Cameroon
FIFA rules say players must
2 b)
months leave on full pay.
allow each player three
and asked their employers to
selected the national team
keen football fan, personally
King Carol II of Romania, a
1 c)
Answers
 Shirt swap
For many years, swap Whose
anthem is that?
ping shirts at the end
has been an integral pa of a match
rt of football. The practic
came to the publics att e first
ention in 1970 when Bra ll
zilian g at a footba
football legend Pele sw started playin
apped shirts with Engla When music team and
nd captain Chinese
Bobby Moore at the end
of their World Cup ma atch in At he ns between a
m
tch . rs stood up in
However, the first record , the spectato
ed case was in 1931
wh en a Greek team the
French team asked to the g that it was
swap shirts with their ec tful sile nce, assumin
English re sp nese players
opponents to comme
morate a 52 victory at na tio na l an them. The Chi
Colombes. Chinese g it
tch, assumin
When low-ranking sid
es are drawn against d to at te ntion on the pi
more stoo . In fact, it was
prestigious teams, the
shirts become even mo e G re ek na tional anthem
re precious. was th
.
Leigh Walker of non-l for toothpaste
eague Scarborough wa
s giv en a shirt a commercial
by Carlo Cudicini of Ch
elsea at the end of an
match. Cudicini had sig FA Cu p
ned it with the messa
best of luck for the res ge To Leigh,
t of the season. Unfor
mother found the shirt tun ate ly, his
in his room, saw that
covered in mud and pu it wa s
t it through the washing
machine.
In 1993 the Albanian coa
ch asked his players no
shirts after playing the t to swap
Spanish team in the Wo
The team was in financi rld Cup.
al difficulties and the
to go to the stadium at pla yer s had
their own expense. Th
knew that they couldn e coach
t afford to replace the
would need them for shirts and
the next match.

r football Jokes
Underwate
ue teams took Which goalkeeper can jump higher
be tw een two non-leag d.
A football mat
ch rth of Englan than a crossbar?
ul ar ly w et w inter in the no
rtic nd All of them, a crossbar cant jump.
place in a pa k and the grou
en ra in in g heavily all wee d that play
It had be referee rule Why are football players never invited to dinner?
sw am p. However, the . The
resembled a termine ends
an d to ssed the coin to de Because theyre always dribbling.
was possible and, after a m
oments
g ca pt ai n won the toss end! How did the football pitch end up as a triangle?
visitin e shallow
t, sa id , O K well take th Somebody took a corner.
though
What lights up a football stadium?
A football match.
A taxing prob Why do grasshoppers not go to many
A few years ag lem
o, Bolton play
football matches?
return and th er Ivn Campo They prefer cricket.
en got a lette filled in his ta
r from the tax x
couldnt proc offic e saying they Which insect doesnt play well in goal?
ess it without
previous wee some form of
photo ID. The
iStockphoto.com / Gino Crescoli / Adamkaz

kend he had The fumble bee.

Bolton and th sc ored the winni
ere was a ph ng goal for
Bolton Evenin oto on the ba Why are football grounds odd?
ck page of th
g News, show e
the net. He cu ing him head Because you can sit in the stands but you cant
t this out and ing th e ball into
heading the ba added an arro stand in the sits.
ll home with th w pointing to
e caption This him
is me! What part of a football ground is never the same?
The changing rooms.

www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010 43

Reviews
Images
by Jamie Keddie
OUP 2009
978-0194425797
My first reaction to the book was
Well this is pretty obvious, isnt it?
We all use images in our teaching.
What teacher training course doesnt
advocate the use of images? Arent
we all familiar with visual intelligence
as one of the multiple intelligences
(see the articles by Jane Revell and
Herbert Puchta in ETp Issue 43)?
And dont we all know about the
importance of the visual approach
to learning and teaching as
expounded in Neuro-Linguistic
Programming (Judith Baker and
Mario Rinvolucri in Issues 37
and 38)?
However, a quick browse
through the book soon changed
my mind. Perversely, I started at
the end of the book with the
appendices. Here youll find a rich
concentration of information about where
to find images both on and off the
internet, how to make slideshows and
organise your images, how to adapt
images, how to use them in class. I
immediately found myself making mental
notes of new image sources and ways of
demonstrating image use in the class.
The very last section, Ten
commandments, should perhaps be
right at the beginning as it offers practical
classroom sense about making images
an integral part of whatever you do.
Many of you will already be familiar
with Jamie Keddies writing. He has
written extensively in this magazine about
exploiting images. The book takes his
ideas further by offering a wide range of
undaunting, practical examples, all
presented in a clear, engaging way. Many
of the images come from the internet, but
there are plenty of ideas for using hard
copies from a wide range of possible
sources, including books, money,
dreams, cards, camera phones: anything
and everything! When technology is
involved, Jamie does a good job of
making it accessible by offering step-by-
step guides.
The book is usefully divided up
according to language skills, so there are
44 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
examples of using images for listening,
reading, writing, speaking, grammar and
vocabulary, and there is a whole chapter
on helping students create and organise
their own flashcards.
The book is full of humour and is a
good reminder of how images can help
convey sometimes difficult concepts. I
enjoyed the simple but highly effective
cartoon on page 8, which illustrates the
power of the word for.
Many of the activities will be familiar
to you. For example, using images to
create dictoglosses, do running
dictations, add captions, stimulate
discussion and convey meaning. But as
with so many how-to books, it is
refreshing to be reminded of what can be
done and to see activities from another
teachers viewpoint. Jamie helps teachers
by suggesting class level, activity
duration and a simple statement of
the activitys aims. He is careful to
warn where we might run into
problems. For example, if you dont
use a safety feature on Google, your
class may end up seeing the
unexpected!
This is an enjoyable, useful book
and Im happy to recommend it.
Jeff Stanford
Silverton, UK
Teaching with Bear
by Mary Slattery
OUP 2008
978-0-19-443303-7 (with puppet)
978-0-19-443306-8 (without puppet)
Teaching with Bear comes in a pack
consisting of a book, a DVD and a bear
puppet (a pack without the puppet is also
available). When a resource like this turns
up, you feel like exclaiming Yes, thats
exactly what Ive been waiting for! and
you know youll read and refer to it again
and again. Although the use of puppets
in education, and language teaching in
particular, is well established, Teaching
with Bear offers a fresh approach. Aimed
at teachers and teacher trainers, it
provides a clear, up-to-date guide to the
introduction and practical use of puppets
in the language classroom.
The book explores six aspects of
teaching with a puppet, beginning with
the introduction of Bear at all primary
levels. We are shown how
communication is facilitated as very
young learners can be encouraged to
overcome shyness and older primary
children are introduced to the theatrical
aspect of puppetry. Units 2 and 3 deal
with ways of using the puppet to support
the four skills. Interestingly, the author
recommends that the puppet doesnt
speak but only understands and reacts to
the target language, thus saving the
teacher the embarrassment of having to
put on a strange, and possibly
incomprehensible, voice. In Unit 5 we see
how the puppet can be used in cross-
curricular activities, such as
environmental subjects, while Unit 6
takes the concept of puppetry further,
with ideas for making new puppets and
performing plays. The layout of the book
Reviews
is clear, with unit objectives at the start,
helpful sample lessons, challenging
questions and useful tips for puppet
manipulation.
The accompanying DVD, as well as
being an invaluable resource for lesson
plans, songs and games, has interviews
with teachers and authentic classroom
extracts of primary lessons, showing five
teachers at work with small to medium
groups of young learners. These extracts
and interviews are backed up with a
tapescript, lending the whole thing
potential as a training manual or
coursebook for trainee teachers wanting
to do language teaching with young
learners.
The bear puppet, which comes as an
optional extra, is well designed and fairly
easy to manipulate, though you might
need practice in picking up small objects
and pieces of card.
This would definitely be on my list of
items to save from a burning building
and/or to take to a desert island.
Bernadette Cross
Conne de Labarde, France
Teaching with Bear is one of the winners
of the 2010 British Council ELTon awards
for innovation in English language
teaching.
Provoking Thought
by Hall Houston
Anthimeria Press 2009
1-4392-5199-1
Provoking Thought is a resource book
promising to provide ideas and
inspiration for English teaching. Written
very much in the humanistic ELT
tradition, it contains a bank of classroom
tasks for adult learners. The book is
divided into five sections: Thinking,
Memory, Creativity, Critical thinking and
Organising ideas on paper. Each
section contains about 20 tasks and
usually has either a small discussion of
current academic opinion on the theme
of the section or an interview with an
expert who provides further insight.
The tasks are designed to
encourage sharing of thoughts,
feelings, ideas and opinions and also
to help develop academic skills.
Necessarily, this is fluency-focused rather
than accuracy-focused and the tasks to add things to the board. Depending on
routinely practise a variety of language your teaching style and context,
skills at one time. For example, in implementing this may or may not be
Thinking pie chart in the first practical. Another concern that teachers
section, learners are asked to explore may have is the cultural side to certain
their thoughts during a typical day tasks. For example, Political cartoons
through drawing a pie chart and then may be difficult to set up in some
comparing. In Classic memory countries which do not have a genre of
technique in the second section, political cartoon satire and where
learners recycle language by using exploring such things in a language
three highly visual memory teaching context may be taboo.
techniques. Such learner training However, all in all, there are likely to
may well be new. Without much be quite a few tasks in this book which
imagination or preparation time teachers in a variety of teaching situations
from teachers, many of these should be able to use or adapt in their
tasks can be opened up, adapted classes and which learners will benefit
and grafted together to suit from, both linguistically and intellectually.
particular class contexts and Peter Lyn
learners. The section on critical Cambridge, UK
thinking was, for me, the richest
source of classroom tasks.
Facts and opinions provides a
clear approach for interrogating
Reviewing for ETp
Would you like to review books or
different statements, while
other teaching materials for ETp? We
Weasel words helps learners
are always looking for people who are
assess the strength and
interested in writing reviews for us.
reliability of arguments or
Please email
information presented in texts.
helena.gomm@keywayspublishing.com
Some things, however, teachers may
for advice and a copy of our guidelines
dislike. Quite a few of the tasks have a for reviewers. You will need to give your
teenage feel to them: there seems to be postal address and say what areas of
lots of poster making and use of index teaching you are most interested in.
cards, and learners are regularly required
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010 45
ENGLISH TEACHING
CONFESSIONAL ...
In the second of our occasional series, Burcu Akyol describes the
decisions and directions she took in her development as a teacher.
A flashback. Eighteen
years ago, in 1992. An
English class with 14 year
olds. The students were all
I world who became a teacher of a
ears, listening to their
fabulous teacher, whose
lessons were always fun,
vivid and creative. A girl
sitting at the front desk
was looking at the teacher
with admiration and
dreaming of becoming just
like her. That girl was me. I
decided to become an
English teacher that year.
46 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
m sure Im not the only person in the
particular subject because of the
wonderful example that was set by the
person who taught that subject to them. I
liked my other teachers, too they were
hard-working and professional but I
never felt the same way about other
subjects. It wasnt just that I knew I
wanted to be a teacher; I wanted to be a
teacher of English. Is it because my
English teachers lessons were better
than my other classes? Maybe; or maybe
it was simply because she opened a
treasure chest for me. Im not even sure if
she did the same thing for anyone else in
the class.
Year 2000. I graduated from university. At
last I really was an English teacher and I
started working at a language school. I
was given an advanced class in the first
month of teaching. Oh my God, that was
scary! There was a judge, two lawyers,
engineers a class full of professionals.
I was just 23 years old. The youngest
person in the classroom was me!
Although I couldnt talk to any of my
colleagues about it at the time, and
certainly not to the director of studies, I
did have a terrible secret. I can confess
now that at the time I was not that sure if
my own English was good enough to
teach an advanced class. It was a very
big challenge for me. I found I was
spending two hours preparing every 45-
minute lesson, and I had a lesson-
planning notebook which was even
thicker than the coursebook itself.
When I wasnt in the classroom, I was in
the staffroom, browsing the resource
books and preparing extra materials to
make my lessons fun and interesting for
my students. Apart from regular lesson
planning using traditional materials, I was
also trying to use technology in my
classes.
At the time, the only technological tool I
knew was PowerPoint. Even though Im
aware that generations of teachers before
me had nothing like it, having PowerPoint
as the only available technology seems
very primitive nowadays. But at the time,
I appeared to be the only teacher using it
and, for that reason, some of my older
colleagues regarded me with something
approaching suspicion.
The students hadnt really encountered
PowerPoint in their previous classes,
either, and at first they were a little
uncertain about what to make of me
using it. A PowerPoint lesson with weird
sound effects and animations was an
unusual and innovative thing in those
days. However, after a few lessons, the
students got used to my methods, and
even some of my colleagues started to
think that maybe I could tell them
something about new technology. I found
this amazing, as I was still struggling to
work out how to teach effectively.
The only thing I was sure about was this:
technology can help you in teaching,
partly because it brings your teaching
more into line with the real lives of the
students. The moment they step out of
the door, theyre using their phones,
theyre surfing the net, theyre connecting
effortlessly with the technology that is
available to them. And (of course) the
younger the students, the more they
connect.
Working in the language school was
amazing because I learnt so many things
and I think I managed to teach the
students some English. But if Im honest
about those early days, I have to admit
that all the preparation time was rather
painful for me. At the time, I thought it
was probably only necessary because I
wasnt a native speaker of English. You
cant imagine how happy I was when I
met native-speaker teachers who told me
that their early experiences of teaching
their own language were also quite
painful!
One day, years later, I came across a
student from this first advanced class
(the one who was a judge). She was with
her two daughters who were nearly the
same age as me. I cant describe how
proud I felt when she excitedly
introduced me to her daughters as her
English teacher. I think until that moment
I hadnt fully realised that I actually had
my dream job!
A few months after I started teaching, I
heard that Scott Thornbury was coming
to Istanbul for a seminar. It was a two-
hour talk about Dogme. During his talk,
when he said that real communication
was getting lost somewhere under an
avalanche of photocopies, visual aids,
etc in the language classroom, I
remember feeling very desperate
because at that time, I usually went into
the classroom with piles of materials. It
was safer for a new teacher like me.
Although a Dogme talk was not, perhaps,
the best choice for a novice teacher like
me, I found the principles of Dogme, and
Scott Thornburys idea of materials-light
teaching, very interesting. The talk
encouraged me to improve my teaching
skills and gave me the desire to become
a more competent teacher. As a result, I
decided to take a series of teacher
training courses from the British Council.
After two years, during which I did
several courses, I started to feel much
more confident in class. During the
courses, I had a lot of chances to reflect
upon my own teaching, and teaching in
general, and this gave me the notion that
continuous learning was an indispensable
element in a teachers life.
After two years of experience with adult
learners, I decided to teach young
learners. In my country, private schools
can offer better development
opportunities to teachers than state
schools. Therefore, I started working at a
private school. My students were first-
grade students (six year olds).
I will never forget my first lesson with
them. Of course, I was not expecting a
serious-looking group like my adult
learners, but I was not expecting such a
dynamic and, frankly, uncontrollable
group either. They seemed to have
endless energy. Almost all of the children
were running around, jumping and
singing! Nothing I did worked and I ended
up watching them play until the bell rang.
I was about to cry. I asked myself:
Where am I? Why am I here? Should I go
back and continue teaching my adult
learners? While I was thinking all these
thoughts, a little girl from the class ran
towards me, clung to my leg and said:
When are you coming back, teacher?
Was she even aware that I had been
there during the lesson? Apparently she
was, and she was asking me to come
again. That day, I went to the library and
borrowed all the books I could find on
classroom management. I downloaded
tips and articles from the internet and
read them all. I had to find creative ways
to channel the childrens energy into
learning activities.
It was not easy, but eventually I had a
lovely class of six year olds who were
enthusiastically learning English. Singing,
acting, playing games and a bit of clowning
around made the lessons amazing.
After experiencing both adult and young
learner classrooms, I started to think
about making presentations at
conferences. I was (and still am) a keen
conference-goer and the idea of sharing
experiences by making presentations at
conferences was very appealing.
However, I was not ready for it. What
would I talk about? I was not an expert
on any specific area of ELT.
I gave my first presentation two years
after the idea entered my mind. It was
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
about authentic assessment, one of the
iStockphoto.com / BlackJack3D
areas I am particularly interested in. I was
quite nervous on the day of the
presentation. Actually, there was nothing
to worry about because my PowerPoint
slides were full of texts and the
participants could read and understand
everything, even though I nearly fainted
due to excitement.
This is a short account of my first years
in teaching. In those years, I made a lot
of important decisions about my career
and these decisions led me to work hard
to realise my aims and aspirations.
Nine years after my first teaching job, I am
now foreign languages co-ordinator at the
ISTEK Schools, where part of my
responsibility is providing in-service
development for nearly 200 teachers.
When I talk to new teachers on the staff, I
can see a mixture of trepidation and
excitement in their faces, and I always feel
the need to confess to the doubts and
fears, and ultimately joy and excitement,
that teaching has brought me. ETp
Burcu Akyol has been
teaching English for
ten years. In the last
three years, she has
focused on using web
technologies in the
language classroom. She
blogs at burcuakyol.com,
where her blogging
experiences have helped
her build a strong
personal learning network
and raise awareness of
the importance of sharing
knowledge and ideas.
akyol.burcu@gmail.com
Would you like to enter the
English Teaching Professional
Confessional and tell our
readers how and why you
became the professional
English teacher you are today?
Do you have any amusing
stories to tell?
Please write to
editor@etprofessional.com.
47
 TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Freedom,
what freedom?
Gillian Twine delves into the management versus teaching dichotomy.
I
n a moment of Continuous
Professional Developmental
madness, I have signed up for
English UKs Diploma in ELT
Management. This month I have to
write an essay entitled How much
freedom can/should a school give to the
individual teacher and what are the
considerations which affect this? Where
should limits be set by management?
The answer is clearly in the
question. Obviously not total freedom,
or there would be no need for managers,
or this course. But taking off my
management hat to deliver two and a
half of the 12 hours I am required to
teach each week in a further education
college, I do wonder precisely how much
freedom to teach I have.
If freedom means simply not bound;
at liberty, I have to say I dont feel
exactly unshackled. Swinging back the
classroom door on the first day of the
summer term using a deft combination of
right elbow and left knee, I am carrying
12 copies of the set coursebook with
supplementary handouts, a two-inch-
thick Adult ESOL Core Curriculum, a
ten-page scheme of work, a set of 14 A4
individual learning plan booklets,
prospectuses and course handbooks, a
manual telling me how to complete the
computerised register, and a three-page
lesson plan in set college format.
These items are a physical
manifestation of the seven areas I am
invited to consider as part of my essay:
philosophy and curriculum; promises effectiveness of resources and ensuring
made in marketing and advertising; the
perceived needs of students; syllabus
and nature and scheduling of courses
run; the environment in which the
school is operating; morale, cohesion
48 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
and management control and available
resources including teacher quality and
experience. They are also heavy, and I
wonder which of them I might, in the
name of freedom, redirect towards the
recycling bin. This is a state-funded
educational establishment, delivering a
range of foundation to degree-level
courses in everything from sugar-craft
to archaeology, and representing the fat
end of the wedge so far as bureaucracy
in ELT is concerned. Experience of
working in private language schools
suggests that surely teaching and
learning can take place without at least
some of this stuff.
As a teacher,
I would like the
freedom to choose
my own curriculum,
based on an analysis
of student needs
Philosophy
Philosophy first, then. The text on the
inside cover of the tutor handbook tells
me that the colleges mission is to create
success in a caring college, by
delivering highest quality, relevant
curriculum, maximising efficiency and
is to teach, rather than the extent to
an effective financial and business
strategy. Its rather wordy, but I suppose
that page can stay. For reasons of
morale and cohesion, I can see that all
those within an organisation, including
managers and teachers, do need to sign
up to, and feel ownership of, the mission
statement, where one exists. Indeed, as
Ron White and his colleagues point out,
where this statement has been devised
and agreed with stakeholders, it need
not impinge on freedom, but gives a
very necessary sense of what the
organisation stands for and where it is
going. As a broad statement of
institutional intent, which gives me a
notion as a teacher and manager of
what Im aiming for and what were
about, its worth hanging on to for now.
Curriculum
Perhaps I could ditch the ESOL
curriculum document instead.
Language is language, and surely this
publication is just another description
of it, albeit a pretty comprehensive one,
providing skills-based, grammatical and
communicative coverage the what
should be taught rather than the how.
Could I not, as I have done when
working in private language schools,
just let the map at the beginning of the
coursebook, or the exam syllabus, be
my guide?
As a teacher, I would like the
freedom to choose my own curriculum,
based on an analysis of student needs.
As a teacher and a manager, I am only
too aware that without a prescribed
curriculum, what is taught is often
determined by how easy or enjoyable it
which the students need it. I also realise
that this particular curriculum, based
on years of research into the needs of
learners in the UK whose first language
is not English, is more than a
 TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
description. It represents the
governments admirable, if not always
deliverable, Skills for Life philosophy
of breaking down language barriers to
enable genuine success for all. I cant
deny its relevance to the mission, or
more importantly the fact that we receive
no funding for courses which arent
based on it, so I guess, as a manager, Id
better hold on to it for now, and make
sure the other teachers do so, too. Were I
back in the private sector, I wouldnt be
bound to use this particular curriculum,
but Id still make sure for purposes of
clarity, cohesion and coverage that the
teachers used a particular one.
Promises
Promises made in marketing and
advertising are given in the prospectuses
and student handbook. International
students can expect experienced staff,
many holding diploma and masters
degree qualifications, free access to the
multi-media language centre and
designated grammar classes and
tutorials in addition to general English.
It seems obvious that as managers and
teachers we must all play our part in
fulfilling these promises. A school or
college that doesnt do what it says it
will is morally and legally compromised,
and teachers need to be made aware of
what they are expected to provide and,
at the least, be given powers of
feedback to modify marketing promises
where these are misleading. As my
Diploma course documents put it, No
amount of advertising, marketing and
efficient financial systems can
compensate for poor products,
indifferently delivered, especially given
the fierce competition in ELT.
Needs
One of the things we promise each
student is an individual learning plan or
ILP, the ultimate paper distillation of
perceived needs, covering everything
from educational background to future
goals and preferred learning style, but
always encompassing two or three
SMART targets specific and
measurable linguistic objectives, agreed
with the student and to be completed
within a certain time period. For
example, by the end of term, to be able
to narrate an anecdote using past simple
and continuous verb forms correctly.
As a manager, I am thrilled to be
able to demonstrate to inspectors and
the outside world that every learner is
known inside out and has taken an
active role in setting their own learning
goals in order to embark on a personal
journey to assured success. As a teacher,
I detest ILPs more than I can say. The
nonsensical practice of asking students
to formulate goals about language in a
tongue which they do not yet speak
fluently is bad enough, but the time
wasted in filling out 14 separate ILPs,
with SMART targets which tend
oddly enough, as the learners are all
entering for the same exams based on
the same curriculum to be exactly the
same, is a source of huge frustration for
teachers and students alike.
As managers and
teachers we must all
play our part in fulfilling
the promises made
in marketing and
advertising
I have no freedom to dispense with
these documents as our inspection and
funding bodies like to audit and sample
them at will, but I believe strongly that
teachers should be permitted to analyse
and record individual student needs in
whatever ways meet those needs best,
not through a set document which itself
assumes and imposes one particular
learning style that of unusually self-
motivated and aware individuals who
buy into the ideology that they know
just as well as the teacher where their
defects are and what they should be
learning, and would, in fact, rather like
to be giving the lesson themselves.
I dont have an ILP for the course
for which Im writing my essay, nor was
one promised, but Im confident my
tutor has, through the simple process of
observation and questioning, sussed out
my strengths and weaknesses, and
knows what I respond to best. Students
whose needs arent being met vote with
their feet, and where funding
mechanisms and inspection criteria
mean that teachers can be given
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
freedom in the way they record and
cater for these needs, they should be.
The institutional ILP can be shredded,
so far as I as a teacher and manager am
concerned, so long as what it is
important to know about students is
stored in the teachers head.
Plans
The same goes for institutional lesson
plan proformas. In my experience, one
size is unlikely to fit all, or certainly not
comfortably, especially when it is used for
everything from sugar-craft to listening
skills. I also know some teachers who
simply cannot work creatively within
restrictive formats. One crumples visibly
every time inspection comes round, at the
thought of having to cram her copious
and innovative handwritten lesson ideas
into little electronic boxes. The manager
may stipulate some key elements to be
covered on the plan (aims and objectives,
teaching and learning activities, feedback,
resources), and even perhaps
controversially insist that, simply for
inspection week, a particular format is
used to make things as easy as possible
for observers to find the information they
are looking for and to compare classes.
But for the vast majority of the time,
lesson plans are for teachers, not
outsiders looking in, and if a back-of-
an-envelope job results in as brilliant a
learning experience for the students as
the stiff, typed up, minute-by-minute
description I am carrying in my hand,
as a manager I have no objection to it.
Managers should intervene if observation
and student feedback indicate that
effective lesson planning and delivery
has not taken place, not because
paperwork that says it has is absent.
Syllabus
Syllabus and the nature and scheduling
of courses run is the next area for
consideration. If curriculum is the
what should be taught, and syllabus
the how, then teachers should surely,
as qualified professionals, be given the
freedom to decide how any set
curriculum is delivered.
The syllabus I am carrying is in the
form of a scheme of work, which has
fixed column headings (weekly
topic/content, learning objectives,
activities, materials and resources to be 
49
 TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Freedom,
what freedom?
 used, homework and, most importantly,
a space to record which objectives
werent achieved and need to be covered
again), but is otherwise mine to do with
as I will. It is the single most useful
document about my person, outlining
what I plan to teach each week and
what the learners should be able to do,
and it is sufficiently detailed to take the
place of a lesson plan, should heaven
forbid one not have been made.
The limits set by management are
just about right here. Inspectors and
common sense dictate that some form
of long-term planning must take place
for all courses, and in the past I have
chased teachers whose schemes were
sketchy or who failed to produce a
scheme of work at all; but the detailed
content of course plans should be left
to teachers themselves, the more so the
more competent they are and the less
scaffolding they require.
Courses
As for having freedom to determine the
nature of courses themselves, the
managerial need to run courses for which
there is a profitable market must override
individual penchants to teach modals
with macram, grammar with golf or corner of the room. It knows were
other such specialist programmes, no
matter how enthusiastic staff are about
delivering these. However, teachers
might well be provided with a forum for
suggesting new course types (the course
review, the personal appraisal, the
informal staff meeting) based on their
own expertise and knowledge of the
internal market, for managers to consider.
Course content
So far as the nature of course content is
concerned, total academic freedom
the freedom to teach, study and pursue
research without unreasonable
interference from law, institutional
regulations or public pressure might
be considered desirable. However,
management may have to set limits in
this area, and decide that interference is
reasonable, based on teacher
observation or student feedback.
50 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
On occasion it has been brought
home to me that on certain topics
teachers must keep their personal
opinions to themselves. Students come
to class to be challenged linguistically,
not politically, and the role of the
teacher should be that of chairperson,
facilitating the expression of views, and
ensuring a balanced representation of
these in class, not using the lesson as a
platform from which to air their own.
Where teachers comments or actions
clearly contravene legal guidelines, the
need for managers to intervene is clear.
Otherwise, they must rely on common
sense and good judgement to tell them
when to take a teacher aside to suggest
they modify their approach.
Teachers might
well be provided with
a forum for suggesting
new course types
based on their own
expertise
Schedule
Its half way through lesson now, and I
still havent filled out the electronic
register lurking in a computer in the
supposed to be in here. In fact it holds
the key to the entire college timetable,
detailing who is teaching or learning
what, for how long, in every single room
in the building, at any particular moment.
The manual tells me I should have filled
in the register within ten minutes of
starting the lesson, and now the monitor
is flashing a red sign saying Please update
the following registers immediately.
Freedom to operate outside the
timetable? I dont think so. Id like not
to be teaching my lessons in two-and-a-
half-hour slots its far too long for
either learners or teachers to
concentrate. Id like to swap to the
classroom over the corridor, which is
bigger and nicer. In fact, Id like to take
the students outside for a nice
conversation class under a tree. Or even
finish early, as the sun is shining. But
the great electronic register would be
displeased. Not in the right place, at the
right time, doing the right thing. And
the only way to pacify it would be to fill
out a form by hand, outlining just
exactly why we were in a different place,
at the wrong time, doing something else,
on this particular summer afternoon.
Its all simply too much bother.
Seriously, the matter of scheduling
courses is, in a large institution with
limited space, a devilish jigsaw which
only those paid enough to suffer the
pain of making all the pieces fit should
be asked to complete. There are fixed
elements only so many rooms,
particular numbers of hours which must
be delivered on each course in order to
receive student fees or government
funding, other associated courses to run
alongside English, certain numbers of
hours that must be allocated to full-time
staff before part-time staff can be
offered any, and so on.
Perhaps as a teacher I should crave
the freedom to play a part in the
scheduling but, frankly, Id rather leave it
to someone else so I can absolve myself
of all responsibility then spend the rest
of the year moaning quietly about what
Ive been given. As a manager, Ive
wrestled with timetables for many years.
I do consult tutors regarding their
preferred hours and course preferences,
and do my utmost to build these in, but
usually its all I can do to get the
abominable matrix ready in time so that
every student has a seat in a room
somewhere, in front of someone with a
teaching qualification, without
pondering on whether any freedoms
have been trampled on in the process.
Environment
The further education college
environment in which our ELT team
operates is particularly restrictive in terms
of scheduling ELT courses can run only
where rooms are available, and these
fluctuate depending on whether other
courses are deemed a more or less
profitable use of this space. Likewise, the
number of hours that can be delivered is
determined by strict Learning and Skills
Council funding rules. In a private
language school, where students can pay
by the hour, starting at any time and
staying for a week or a year, where there
is a more transient teaching workforce
which is not guaranteed a certain number
of teaching hours each week, and where
 TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
all rooms may be designated for ELT,
there can be much more flexibility in
scheduling. On the down side, the
nightmare of timetabling is a recurring
one, taking place as often as once a week
as new students come and go. I think
Id still rather leave it to my manager.
Resources
What about freedom pertaining to
available resources, including teacher
quality and experience? Weight for
weight, my complete set of coursebooks
is what is causing me most difficulty
when opening the classroom door.
Should I have the freedom to dispense
with those? Chucking out the
coursebook is very fashionable, it seems.
In fact Im supposed to feel slightly
ashamed about relying on one in the
first place, and am certainly urged to
keep it out of sight of any government
inspectors. British Council inspectors
might not mind seeing one, I am given
to believe, so long as the unit Im using
has been adapted to meet the needs of
the students that is, all exercises have
been jiggled, for well-thought-out
pedagogical reasons, into a different
order from that in which they originally
appeared. And providing, of course,
that however useful as a warmer the
illustration at the beginning of Unit 2
might be, I never allow the start of my
lesson to coincide with the opening of
the coursebook, let alone the immortal
words Open your books at page ten.
All in all, plodding through the
coursebook is seen as a bad thing.
The truth is, Im rather attached to
it, and the students are, too. If I were
better at devising unit topics, selecting
texts with universal appeal and sensibly
ordering the presentation of activities
and exercises, Id be earning money
writing coursebooks, not teaching from
them. Im grateful that my manager has
dictated which coursebook we are to
use, as that has saved me a good deal of
angst in trying to choose the most
suitable one for my students, for whom
all the coursebooks we have at that level
are moderately appropriate, with some
adaptation. It has also saved me feeling
guilty about having one in the first place.
If it really doesnt matter that
students have no back-up for lessons
they have missed, just a pile of dog-eared
handouts to support self-study, or find
themselves doing the same coursebook
as they did last year because the teacher
chose the one they liked best, perhaps
teachers should be given the freedom to
choose whichever coursebook they like
or none at all. But there may be many
practical reasons why a manager would
wish to exert some control over the
resources teachers use including
alternation of coursebooks each
academic year to prevent duplication,
the use of supplementary materials only
when these have been checked for quality
and appropriacy, and insistence, through
observation feedback, that teachers make
use of a range of resources including
electronic media (eg interactive
whiteboards), to meet inspection criteria
There may be many
practical reasons why
a manager would wish
to exert some control
over the resources
teachers use
and ensure stimulating lessons and high
teaching standards. Of course, teachers,
especially those with plenty of
experience, may be well-placed to have a
role in the organisation and management
of these resources, but it may not be
possible for them to have total freedom
to use whichever materials they like.
Conclusion
The lesson comes to an end at last and,
using my shoulder as a small battering
ram, I manage to open the door and get
my pile of coursebooks, curriculum,
scheme of work, ILPs and lesson plan
back out to the staffroom. If the truth
be told, I dont have that much freedom
from any of it, or the nerve to throw any
single item into the recycling bin. An
English language school, whether private
or state, can give individual teachers a
good deal of degree of liberty in terms
of curriculum choice, expressed
philosophy, the interpretation of
marketing promises and use of resources.
But for reasons of morale, cohesion and
management control it probably
shouldnt. Learners and teachers need to
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
feel they belong to a body in which
things are done in a certain, effective
and professional way. This can only be
achieved through a degree of conformity,
and managers may have to set limits in
the areas of scheduling, curriculum,
syllabus content, resources and corporate
philosophy. Certainly, there can be no
freedom to offend learners, and woe
betide the teacher who attempts to tinker
with the timetable. Lesson planning,
recording and acting upon individual
student needs meaningfully, and
selecting or inventing learning activities
within the classroom, are where
freedoms for teachers should lie, and
even these must be bound by the rules
of the inspection bodies without whose
blessing the institution could not exist.
The best teachers can hope for is the
freedom to give feedback and express
their views to their managers so that
limits are agreed rather than imposed,
and systems work to the benefit of all.

Its a disappointing conclusion, perhaps,
and not the one I thought Id reach
when I started my assignment. But the
afternoon is yet young. Perhaps Ill set
up my own independent language
school somewhere under the trees
instead, with rolling enrolment, a simple
timetable involving meeting regularly
for afternoon tea, no inspections, pay-
as-you-go fees, and specialising in
modals with macram, of course. Or
perhaps subjunctives with sugar-craft
(If only we had more iced buns ). But
perhaps that would be having ones cake
and eating it. ETp
White, R, Martin, M, Stimson, M and
Hodge, R Management in English
Language Teaching CUP 1991
White, R, Hockley, A, Laughner, M and
van der Horst Jansen, J From Teacher to
Manager CUP 2008
Gillian Twine teaches
and manages courses
in English for Speakers
of Other Languages in
a further education
college in the UK.
She has worked as a
volunteer teacher in
Poland and China, and
recently completed
English UKs Diploma
in English Language
Teaching Management.
gillian.twine@peterborough.ac.uk
51
Teacher
plus
Teacher Plus is a series which focuses on specific areas in which you can
step outside the strictly teaching sphere.
Giving a conference presentation
Sue Leather has some tips for teachers who want to start as speakers.
n Issue 67 of ETp I wrote about
I becoming a teacher trainer, suggesting
that training is in many ways an
extension of teaching, a desire to
share your ideas and your enthusiasm for
your subject with other teachers. Similarly,
by speaking at a conference you may
hope to give other teachers the benefits
of your knowledge of a certain subject,
convince them of a new approach or
simply share some activities.
However, although there are
similarities between teaching and
presenting at a conference, there are also
some key differences. There is a feeling
that teachers must be good at giving talks
because they spend so much of their time
in front of an audience, but in fact the
two activities require some different skills
and strategies. One of the important
distinctions is that teachers and trainers
are almost always in front of their own
students, whom they get to know very
well. Speaking at a conference means
speaking for a relatively short time in
front of an audience of unknown people.
In many ways, then, speaking at a
conference is more about public
speaking than teaching, and public
speaking is a skill that we go on learning
all our professional lives. More of that
later in this article but, meanwhile, we all
have to start somewhere. I searched
through my own memories, and asked
three of my associates, all very
experienced conference speakers Andy
Hockley, Simon Smith and Mary Spratt
to think back to the first time ...
Where to start
A good place to begin, if possible, is at a
conference you have already attended
yourself. This will help you to understand
the type of audience and the feel of the
52 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
+
+
Looking for new experiences within the profession?
Interested in different ways of developing beyond
+
the classroom?
Hoping for tips on how to extend and enrich your
professional life?
event. Its perhaps even better if the
conference is a small, local one so that
you stand a higher chance of knowing
people. Do you have a local teachers
association that puts on weekend or
even day conferences? I gave some of
my first presentations at local teachers
association conferences, and I found it a
comfortable place to start. Why not
research the ELT conference schedule
and look for the right type and size of
event? The EL Gazette has information
about many current and upcoming
conferences.
Speaking at a conference
means speaking in
front of an audience of
unknown people
Also, think about the length of your
presentation. You might be used to lessons
of an hour, or even longer, but as a
beginner, you might consider giving a short
presentation, rather than a long one. The
tendency these days is for even big
international conferences like IATEFL to
have many 25- or 30-minute presentations.
What to start with
If you are new to conferences and feel
nervous about standing up in front of
strangers, you could consider starting
your conference career with a poster
presentation. Many conferences,
including IATEFL and TESOL, accept
proposals for these: the presenter creates
a poster containing the main points of
their presentation. At a designated time,
people can come to the poster display
area and discuss the issues raised with
the presenter. Again, this will allow you to
get the feel of a conference and do some
presenting, without a hundred people in
front of you. You can find some examples
of past poster presentations and even
download some at the IATEFL website:
www.iatefl.org.
Many teachers find giving a
workshop-style presentation much less
daunting than a lecture-style presentation.
The main difference is that people will
come to these expecting more interaction.
Again, you will find that most conferences
in our field cater for workshops.
Who to start with
Presenting with a colleague can make the
whole thing less scary, and is a good
option for some. Mary recalled her first
presentation: I co-presented with an old
hand, she told me. He gave me lots of
confidence and was someone to share
things with. Andy also stressed the
collegial nature of co-presenting, saying:
I was co-presenting with two friends/
colleagues who were (I thought) more
nervous than I, so that sort of helped.
A word of caution, however:
co-presenting isnt always easy. You
need to think about how to split the
presentation content so that youre not
both speaking at once and so that the
whole thing looks elegant. If possible, its
a good idea to go to some co-presented
sessions at a conference so that you can
study what works and what doesnt.
Presenting with a colleague
can make the whole thing
less scary, and is a good
option for some
Topic
Find yourself a topic that you feel
convinced and enthusiastic about, Mary
suggested. Being excited about your
topic is a must. Whatever else happens,
your enthusiasm will transmit itself to the
audience, and given that most people at
conferences are sympathetic and want
you to succeed, this is a very good start.
The presentation topic is very much a
personal choice. It might be a good idea,
though, to research conference
programmes for the past year or two. Are
people talking about your topic? If so,
fine, but can you perhaps think of a
slightly different angle on it? You dont
have to be completely original, but its
always good to offer something a little
different. Which brings us to your outline
and to your planning.
Preparation
For most conferences, you will probably
have to write your title and outline
months before the event. Dont
underestimate the importance of this. A
short, pithy, attractive title and a clear
outline are important in attracting people
to your presentation. But they are also
important in clarifying your own thoughts
about what you want to say.
You dont have to be
completely original, but
its always good to offer
something a little different
When it comes to planning, the most
important part of a presentation is what
you leave out. Most presentations suffer
from too much, rather than too little.
Pruning your content is an essential part
of your preparation and, as in teaching,
theres no substitute for careful planning
and preparation.
Or, to put it another way, PPPPP:
Perfect Preparation Prevents Poor
Performance!
Goal
This one step choosing a goal and
sticking to it changes everything.
Scott Reed
At the planning stage, do keep in
mind what you want to communicate
about your topic. What are you really
saying? What is new and different about
your presentation? What are the essential
elements that you want your audience to
take away with them? In other words,
whats your goal? Your goal is something
you should probably be able to
encapsulate in one or two sentences,
and it should come through in your
outline. If youre co-presenting, this is one
of the things you can work through with
your colleague as part of your preparation.
Having a clear goal from the planning
stage is the thing that will ultimately
mean that people at your presentation
will leave with a feeling of satisfaction.
The more you think
about the topic and the
less you think about
yourself, the better
things will go
Fear of failure
It is said that success always occurs in
private, and failure in full view and it is
the fear of failure that makes many
people feel nervous about presenting. To
cope with nerves, try to remember that
your presentation is about the topic, not
about you. The more you think about the
topic and the less you think about
yourself, the better things will go.
One thing I always find useful to cope
with nerves is to put in some form of
interactive activity, such as a pair or group
discussion task, early in the presentation
or workshop. Andy agrees with me on
this, suggesting that interaction will give
you a chance to breathe and compose
yourself after any initial nervousness, and
actually help you to deliver the rest of the
workshop/presentation well. Simons tip is
to spend a few minutes finding out about
your audience at the start, and tell them a
little about yourself, too: this helps the
presenter to adjust the talk or workshop if
need be, and relaxes everyone.
+ + +
Public speaking and presentation skills
are a learnt skill, not an innate ability,
which means that you need to become a
lifelong student. You will find that even
the most experienced presenters are still
perfecting their presentation techniques.
After all, an athlete doesnt stop
practising just because theyre good at
their sport. It may look easy when you
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
see a perfect performance or
presentation, but behind the scenes are
many many hours of practice and
preparation.
There is so much to learn about the
technical aspects of presentation, from
how to connect with your audience to
how to use PowerPoint effectively.
Learning how to present well may not be
an easy task, but its a worthwhile one as
its an essential component to being a
professional in our field. It also provides
plenty of scope for your continued
professional development. So good luck
with your first steps on the journey! ETp
James, T and Shephard, D Presenting
Magically Crown House Publishing 2001
Kushner, M Presentations for Dummies
John Wiley & Sons 2004
Sue Leather is a trainer
trainer, educational
consultant and writer.
She has delivered talks,
workshops and courses
in over 25 countries for
the British Council and
other organisations. She
is currently Lead
Consultant to the ETTE
(English for Teaching:
Teaching for English)
project in Central and
South Asia.
sue@sueleatherassociates.com
IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
Do you have ideas youd like to share
with colleagues around the world?
Tips, techniques and activities; simple or
sophisticated; well-tried or innovative;
something that has worked well for you?
All published contributions receive
a prize! Write to us or email:
iwip@etprofessional.com
Writing for ETp
Would you like to write for ETp?
We are always interested in new writers
and fresh ideas. For guidelines and
advice, write to us or email:
editor@etprofessional.com
Visit the ETp website!
The ETp website is packed with practical
tips, advice, resources, information and
selected articles. You can submit tips
or articles, renew your subscription
or simply browse the features.
www.etprofessional.com
53
 TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
A career
with a
purpose
Viv Midlane considers the rewards and reality for
teachers in the world of English for Academic Purposes.
F
ew of us became teachers of
English for money or job
security; perhaps we wanted to
travel the world, we enjoy the
cosmopolitan environment of a
multilingual classroom, or we simply
have a passion for teaching. But as our
careers progress, contemporaries who
have taken other paths have settled
down with comfortable homes and a
regular pay cheque every month. Now,
more than ever in times of economic
uncertainty, some teachers may be
looking for more secure employment.
Remuneration
For many English teachers, a job
teaching English for Academic Purposes
(EAP) at a university or other institution
of higher education may seem to provide
such security, or indeed to be the peak
of a classroom teaching career. For one
thing, EAP posts are far better paid than
general English jobs in either the public
or private sectors. Pay rates are in the
order of 3040 per hour in UK
universities, while a senior EAP lecturer
in the Netherlands earns 75 per hour
in common with increasing numbers
of institutions worldwide, many Dutch
54 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
universities run popular courses such as
MBAs through the medium of English.
Pay scales elsewhere in the world may be
even higher. To earn these rates you need
to be well-qualified; a diploma-level
qualification (or at least, a very nearly
completed one) is mandatory, and in
many institutions the majority of EAP
lecturers have Masters qualifications in
ELT or Applied Linguistics.
Tenure
However, despite the better money, and
the possible increase in professionalism,
EAP teaching may not always provide
any more job security than the world of
general English teaching does. Often
work is based on hourly-paid or short-
term contracts, usually for a single
academic term or semester at a time,
with work availability subject to the
vagaries of the international market.
Even for senior posts, academic tenure is
rare for EAP teachers, and this is partly
related to the issue of status. While in
some universities an EAP teacher may
have the job title of lecturer, and the
attendant recognition that goes with it,
in other institutions that job title may be
instructor, roughly level in the pecking
order with the research student who
shows chemistry undergraduates how to
set up their Bunsen burners. Meanwhile,
in the UK there is increasing concern
over the trend for universities to
outsource English language teaching
provision to private sector companies,
of which three or four now dominate a
substantial part of the market. This has
already happened in a number of high
profile British universities, and some
teachers groups are concerned that
continuing privatisation may lead to a
degradation of both employment rights
and professional standards.
Students
Students who want to follow a course
taught through the medium of English
need to satisfy the admissions tutors that
they can operate in the language to a
level where they will be able to follow
the course. Usually this means providing
evidence in the form of grades for
internationally recognised exams,
Despite the
better money, and
the possible increase in
professionalism, EAP
may not provide any
more job security than
general English teaching
specifically IELTS or, especially in the
USA, TOEFL. The grades required vary
from course to course and from college
to college, but a requirement for an
IELTS score of 6.5 is common for entry
to courses at British universities.
If a student doesnt have the grade
they need, they may be offered the
opportunity to take an EAP course, with
admission to their main course of study
conditional on successful completion. In
many ways, this is a far better option for
the student than retaking the IELTS or
TOEFL exam, as such a course will aim
at providing them with the specific skills
they need to follow their main course,
rather than teaching to the (sometimes
esoteric) requirements of the
examination. Often these sorts of
 TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
courses are run over the summer before
main courses start, lasting from two to
12 weeks, depending on the amount of
work that is felt to be necessary to bring
students up to the required level. These
pre-sessional courses provide seasonal
work for many teachers and are often
reasonably well-paid. Other universities
may offer year-round foundation
courses, typically to younger students
planning to go on to undergraduate
studies, or, less commonly, in-sessional
courses which support students during
their actual main course of study.
Contents
Students need to be able to do a number
of things to follow their main courses.
These include listening to and
understanding lectures, making notes,
understanding how to go about
selectively and proactively reading books,
journal articles and websites connected
with their subject of study and, crucially,
being able to produce written work
which follows the strict conventions of
academic English. Their work on their
main courses will be assessed by subject
tutors, using the same criteria applied to
work produced by native-speaker
students. To some extent, EAP aims to
create a level playing field where non-
English-speaking students are given the
opportunity to gain exactly the same
benefits from their study as their native-
speaking classmates. EAP teaching aims
to provide non-native students with the
necessary skills to do this.
Differences
While the great majority of teachers
taking up EAP posts will come from an
EFL background, many will find the
content of what they teach on an EAP
programme rather different from what is
encountered in general English teaching.
They may need to get to grips with
teaching students in writing classes about
unfamiliar concepts such as thesis
statements and topic sentences, or
providing advice on how to use online
academic databases or how to take
effective lecture notes. While familiar
four-skills teaching remains an
important part of EAP, new teachers
may find themselves being asked to run
classes in research methods, study skills
or critical thinking. Preparing to teach
Getting started in EAP
Increase your qualifications to
Masters level look for a course
with an EAP component.
If you already have a Masters,
consider taking a specialist course in
EAP teaching. In the UK, certificate-
level courses are available at
Sheffield Hallam, Nottingham and
Plymouth Universities, while a short
course is run by SOAS in London.
Be ready to learn new skills and
think outside the box.
Adapt and build on your existing EFL
classroom skills.
Expect a steep learning curve, and
plan for your own professional
development.
these subject areas may involve a steep
learning curve and a considerable
amount of background research. While
EAP teachers are not expected to be
qualified in the subjects that their
students will be going on to study, the
ability to pick up knowledge and discuss
previously unfamiliar subjects is essential
(anybody who has taught business
English or any form of ESP will be well
practised in this kind of skill). One issue
new EAP teachers will certainly have to
learn to deal with is the ever-increasing
problem of internet-based student
plagiarism: evidence of a series of
profound cultural misunderstandings
based on fundamentally different
approaches to knowledge and learning;
or just good old-fashioned cheating?
Language
Give some thought for a moment to the
magnitude of the task which many non-
native-speaker students face in choosing
to study on an English-medium course.
Many of us who have taught around the
genre that many native-speaker students
EAP teachers may
find themselves being
asked to run classes in
research methods, study
skills or critical thinking
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
Be prepared to read up on main
course subjects you may not
otherwise have been interested in.
Look for a first post on a pre-
sessional summer course to gain
experience. UK universities advertise
from early spring into June. Many
offer accommodation in student halls
of residence at discounted prices.
Draw on your own experience
good or bad as a higher education
student. Did you think sitting up till
3 am reading set texts from cover to
cover with your eyes held open with
matchsticks was a good way to
learn? Make sure your EAP students
know better.
world may have learnt the languages of
the countries in which we have worked.
Some of us who are English native
speakers may have struggled to learn
languages that are profoundly different
from our own, and we may be rather
proud of the fact that we can ask for
directions on the street, order a meal or
even chat about the weather in Arabic,
Chinese or Tagalog. Now imagine
learning one of these languages maybe
not written in Latin script to the level
where you can function as a student at a
university where this language is spoken
and you have to listen to lectures, talk in
seminar groups and write academic
essays in it. For learners of English, this
means being very confident in grammar
and proficient in using cohesive
language should that sentence begin
with furthermore, moreover, nevertheless
or however? They will need to able to use
cautious hedging language, typified by
phrases such as it could be argued that
(this is sometimes described as being
confidently uncertain), and aware of
just what is and what isnt academic
language. It is this final awareness of
also struggle with. Add to all this the
fact that EAP students are not actually
linguists; theyre coming to class because
they want to study economics, database
design, engineering, fashion, astronomy
or any number of other subjects and, as
such, English is merely a means to an
end for them. 
55
 TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
A career
with a
purpose

Reality
The assumption, then, should surely be
that students coming into EAP courses,
and undertaking training in skills which
many native speakers find challenging,
would already need to be at a high level
of general English; maybe holders of
CAE or Proficiency certificates, or with
an IELTS score of 7.0 upwards.
Certainly, there would seem to be no
point in trying to teach a student to
write a Masters dissertation if they cant
write a coherent sentence. In an
interview with Max de Lotbinire,
published by the British newspaper The
Guardian Weekly on November 12th
2008, Dave Allan, who recruits staff for
Almost all EAP
teachers will have
had students whose
English level means
that they struggle to
keep up
INTO, a private sector company which
runs EAP provision at five UK
universities, said, You need someone
who has taught at higher levels because
by definition EAP is advanced-level
English.
Sadly, it just isnt the case that EAP
is by definition advanced-level
English. Almost all EAP teachers will
have had students whose English level
means that they struggle to keep up,
and many of us have encountered EAP
students who can barely communicate in
written or spoken English at all. At the
same time, teachers may find students in
the very same classes typically from
South Asia or Africa who are native
speakers. There are a number of reasons
56 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
why this kind of thing happens, many of
ENGLISH
which lie within the realm of educational
marketing. However, there is now
increasing awareness that EAP syllabuses
Tprofessional
EACHING
need to include both remedial language
and new study-skills content. This
This is your magazine.
We want to hear from you!
awareness that we still need to remember
we are English teachers was discussed
last year at a meeting of BALEAP (the
British Association of Lecturers in 
English for Academic Purposes) entitled
Putting the E back into EAP. These IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
multiple levels of student knowledge Do you have ideas youd like to share
with colleagues around the world?
and prior learning, together with new
Tips, techniques and activities;
and varying perspectives, mean that an
simple or sophisticated; well-tried
EAP teacher needs to be flexible, and
or innovative; something that has
may find that a high degree of
worked well for you? All published
individualisation is necessary in their
teaching and lesson planning. contributions receive a prize!
Write to us or email:
 iwip@etprofessional.com
For the career-minded EFL teacher who
wants to move on and develop, but who
wants to stay in the classroom, a switch
TALKBACK!
into EAP may well be the way forward, Do you have something to say about
although considerable commitment is an article in the current issue of ETp?
necessary in order to gain the This is your magazine and we would
qualifications and experience needed. really like to hear from you.
Like all teaching, EAP has its challenges Write to us or email:
and can be frustrating. However, it can
also be the basis for a fascinating job talkback@etprofessional.com
which involves constant variety and
working with lots of smart and
interesting people from around the world.
Writing for ETp
And that, after all, is what many of us Would you like to write for ETp? We are
always interested in new writers and
got into ELT for in the first place. ETp
fresh ideas. For guidelines and advice,
British Association of Lecturers in English write to us or email:
for Academic Purposes: editor@etprofessional.com
www.baleap.org.uk
www.jobs.ac.uk: an essential site for pre-
sessional and longer-term EAP posts in
the UK and worldwide
Visit the
de Lotbinire, M Self starters called to ETp website!
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www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=
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Viv Midlane is a or articles, renew your subscription
freelance EFL/EAP or simply browse the features.
consultant and
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has taught in Greece,
Belgium and Italy and
for various universities
in the UK. He now ENGLISH TEACHING professional
works as the Director Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Ltd,
of Studies at A+
PO Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex,
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 T E C H N O L O G Y
English
for texting
Paul Bress hs 5 pts to hlp U.
I
t goes without saying that
technology has had an increasingly
large influence on the way we
communicate with each other in modern
times. A generation ago we werent
emailing each other or texting each
other instead, we were making landline
phone calls (even though, of course, we
werent calling them landline calls
then). The rise of SMS messaging, in
particular, has been marked for
example, young South Koreans are
tending to turn their backs on emails
and are using SMS more and more.
Using SMS may seem ludicrously
easy. And, technically speaking, it is.
However, even amongst native speakers,
there can be communication
breakdown. Careless use of language
can result in misunderstandings about
when or where people have arranged to
meet or even about the emotions people
are trying to convey. I, myself, have
found it necessary to repair SMS
communication breakdown through
face-to-face communication on a
number of occasions.
So how can teachers help students
to text successfully in English? Lets
look at five possible ways:
1 Elicit or teach standard
abbreviations
One of the key tenets of SMS is brevity.
So you will be helping students if you
encourage them to abbreviate. The days
of the week are a good example most
people write sun instead of Sunday,
without there being any ambiguity.
Make a note of the abbreviations you
use yourself, and then teach these to
your students.
2 Check your students spelling of
key words
When it comes to teaching English for use
in SMS messages, you might think that
the last thing you should do is to teach
spelling. However, teachers should be
aware that their students will almost
always use the predictive text function
on their phones. This means that any
incorrect word will be replaced. (Note:
this is not like a Word spellcheck, where
you are given possible words after keying
in an incorrect word; predictive text will
simply substitute a different word, which
may not be the one intended.) Therefore,
a good old-fashioned spelling test (of key
words) is highly recommended. Some
commonly used and frequently misspelled
words you can test with lower-level
student are: friends, tonight, tomorrow,
beautiful, usual, expensive, cheap.
3 Use mobile phones in class
Using real mobile phones makes a
lesson come alive. One activity involves
two students swapping numbers and
then texting each other. You can do this
in two ways: in a more structured way,
and in a less structured way.
First set up a text interaction, by
writing something like this on the board:
Student 1 Student 2
Say hello and ask
how S2 is.
Reply. Ask what
he/she did today.
Reply.
Ask the same.
Reply. Ask if he/she
is free tonight.
Say yes. Suggest
a time and place.
Agree. Say goodbye.
Say goodbye.
After the students have had this
conversation by texting each other, get
them (in different pairs) to text each
other similar messages without your
supplying the stages. For example, you
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
could write this instruction on the board:
Get into pairs. Text each other and find
out how the other person is and arrange
to meet up at a particular time and place
for a particular activity.
4 Get the students to check their
messages before they send
them
If you fail to get your students to check
their messages, they may send a message
that is either unintelligible or simply
contains incorrect information. So
encourage your students always to
remember the maxim: Check before you
send!
5 Check that the students have
the same understanding
If you dont check that both students in
a pair understand the content of a text
conversation, they may continue to write
confusing texts without realising the
origin of the problem. Therefore, after
each interaction (regardless of whether its
structured or unstructured), ask each pair:
the gist of what the other student
wrote;
specific information about time or place
(etc) suggested by the other person.
If, between the two of them, they come
up with different information, encourage
them to scroll back to the texts sent, get
them to read them out in class, and then
elicit what the communication problem is.

If you teach teenagers, you may be
reading this with disbelief and
wondering how you can possibly
manage a class like this. Well, you may
be right to be sceptical to a certain
extent. Such lessons will need to be very
carefully prepared and controlled (see
point 3). If the activities are set up in a
structured way, the students will learn
some crucial communication skills (and
will, therefore, not simply want to mess
around). If the lesson is well organised
and managed, such lessons can be a lot
of fun and very liberating. ETp
Paul Bress works both
in the fields of personal
growth and ELT and has
published very widely
in both areas. He is a
life-long, non-stop
learner he learns
more from everyday
experience than from
formal research. His life
coaching website is
www.bemycoach.co.uk.
paulbress@talktalk.net
57
 T E C H N O L O G Y
Task-based PowerPoint
Chwa Ee Loon looks at life-savers for livelier lectures.
I
t is not uncommon for teachers of
English for Academic Purposes
(EAP) and Special Purposes (ESP)
at universities to be burdened with a
heavy content-based course they have to
complete in 15 weeks or fewer with only
three contact hours a week. Worse still,
there may be hundreds of students
taking the course with a mere handful
of teachers qualified to teach it.
Consequently, regardless of how much we
dislike it, many of us will have to resort to
lecturing using PowerPoint presentations.
However, the overuse of PowerPoint
presentations has raised significant
pedagogical concerns: How effective is
the teaching? During a lecture, we can
often see that some students are chatting;
others are dozing off or playing with
their mobile phones, if they have not
already sneaked out through the back
doors. They become uninvolved,
overloaded with information, passive and
impatient no matter how colourful or
animated the slides are. Even with those
who seem to be listening to us, do we
really know how much they have learnt?
A PowerPoint lecture certainly
removes many essential elements of an
ELT class. Students no longer have the
opportunity to work with peers,
something that allows interaction and
discussions with one another. Neither
are they engaged in a variety of active
learning tasks, where they work out the
answers for themselves.
Interactive lecturing
In a Business Communication class that
I used to teach, there were around 30
students. They were all Chinese,
studying Business Administration, and
their level of English proficiency ranged
from pre-intermediate to intermediate.
We met twice a week in two sessions: a
lecture and a tutorial of 90 minutes
each. The topic of my lecture one week
was Communicating in person and in
meetings. The subtopics that I needed to
cover were: Guidelines for promoting
workplace relations through conversation,
Constructive criticism, Conflicts and
Meetings in business: purpose, type and
58 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
documentation. I had prepared a total of
15 slides for the lecture.
I started by switching on the projector
with the title slide: Communicating in
person and in meetings. I then wrote Oral
communication on the board and elicited
the meaning from the students. To get
them to start thinking further about the
topic, I then asked when we needed to use
oral communication in the workplace. I
accepted all possible answers and wrote
them on the board. Next, I showed Slide
2, which had a quote illustrating the
importance of oral communication:
In your business or professional
career, you will be judged not only by
what you say but also by ____ you say it.
I then elicited the missing word
from the students (how). At this point, I
distributed handouts of all my
PowerPoint slides (three or four printed
on each page) to all the students and I
asked them to write the missing word
on their handouts.
Moving on to the first subtopic of
my lecture, Guidelines for promoting
workplace relations through conversation,
I began by showing students only the
title on Slide 3. On this slide, there were
some short sentences, for example: Use
correct names and titles. I had
previously selected several keywords in
the sentences and turned them into
anagrams. Instead of talking through
the slide right away, I gave students
three to five minutes to work with their
peers to sort out the words. This activity
was not only fun but also aimed at
promoting collaborative learning among
the students and getting them to think
about the meanings themselves. After
that, I revealed the answers and
followed up with explanations.
Moving on to my next subtopic,
Constructive criticism, I first presented
the students with a problematic
situation on Slide 4. I gave them five to
eight minutes to read and understand
the situation, then discuss it with their
peers and try to come up with some
possible solutions. After that, I got
some students to tell their ideas to the
class. This led to the next slide and task,
which was on the definitions of
constructive and criticism. Again, before
they got any explanations from me, the
students had to figure out the missing
words to complete the definitions. Then
on Slide 6, there were several tips on
how to give constructive criticism. I had
turned this into a task where the
students had to decide if the sentences
were true or false and why.
Task-based lecturing
In this approach, the types of tasks can
be anything from sentence completion,
matching or true/false statements to
problem-solving, anagrams, etc all
based on the contents of the lecture. It is
important that the slides are printed on
handouts to be distributed to the students
at the beginning of the class and that the
students attempt to do a task individually
or with their peers first, before any
answers and explanations are provided.
The tasks are then backed up by
explanations and answers from the
teacher. Furthermore, tasks that require
the students to work together in order
to solve problems can be used to promote
interactive and collaborative learning.
The students usually become more
interested in finding out whether their
answers are right or not, thus making
learning more active and engaging.

This approach may help university
teachers cope with having to work
under certain curriculum constraints,
without depriving the students of the
learning process they deserve. All it
takes is just a bit more lesson
preparation time and a certain amount
of creativity to make things work. ETp
Chwa Ee Loon is a
Cambridge CELTA and
DELTA qualified English
teacher. He has taught
General English, EAP
and ESP courses in
Malaysia and China. He
is particularly interested
in approaches to
teaching ESP and EAP
and in genre analysis.
elchwa@hotmail.com
ENGLISH
Tprofessional
EACHING

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or email:
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 T E C H N O L O G Y
Five things you always wanted to know about
mobile learning
(but were afraid to ask)
1 Mobile learning
whats that?
Mobile learning is essentially learning on
the move. The concept itself is not new I
regularly did my homework on the bus to
school several decades ago. What is new is
the wealth of electronic mobile devices
available nowadays to help us.
2 Does it mean learning a
language via your mobile phone?
Not entirely, although this is an
assumption that many people make.
Mobile learning, or m-learning, refers to
learning with the aid of any portable
wireless handheld device. This includes
mobile phones and devices such as small
handheld computers and PDAs (Personal
Digital Assistants, such as a Blackberry),
MP3 or MP4 devices (such as an iPod),
or any sort of smart phone. As devices
get increasingly sophisticated, the
difference between a mobile phone, a
handheld computer, a PDA and an MP3
or MP4 player becomes increasingly
blurred the latest gadgets have all of
these functionalities rolled into one.
3 Is mobile learning a bit of a
buzzword these days?
Definitely. Mobile technology in general,
and mobile learning in education, are
considered by many pundits to be the
Next Big Thing. The mainstream and
educational press (not to mention blogs)
are full of reports about the surge in sales
of mobile devices in both developed and
developing countries. Particularly
interesting is how internet-enabled mobile
devices are being used to access the web
in countries without fixed-line internet
infrastructure. In several countries in Africa,
for example, mobile phones with internet
access can be rented from small roadside
stalls and, in this way, one handset can be
used by many people. A recently published
2010 Horizon report (http://wp.nmc.org/
horizon2010) flags up mobile computing
as a key trend which will be mainstream
within the next 12 months.
60 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com
4 So what does mobile learning
mean for our students?
Your students now have access to mobile
materials that are specially produced for
English language learning and to authentic
materials already out there on the web,
via their handheld devices. They have
access to all this anytime and anywhere
on the bus or train, in the gym or training
for a marathon, or sitting on the sofa at
home. They can download and install
mobile phone applications for learning
grammar or bilingual dictionaries. They
can access websites and online course
environments from their mobile devices.
They can download podcasts and play
educational games in English. They can
talk directly to teachers who may be in
another part of the world via Skype.
(Of course, teachers and students
can also use mobile devices inside the
classroom. There are plenty of cases
where these devices are enhancing
classroom teaching and learning. But in
this article, were focusing on the informal
and unstructured learning opportunities
afforded by m-learning.)
The bottom line is that mobile learning
means you no longer need to be tied to a
computer terminal or a desk to learn. And
although many teachers bemoan the fact
that all this digital learning cannot
possibly be as good as the real thing
(meaning face-to-face learning), well, this
is somewhat missing the point. Distance
mobile learning is not the same as face-
to-face learning. They are not meant to
be the same. They are entirely different
forms of engagement with learning and
language, and there is no reason why
they cant be seen as complementary,
rather than as antagonistic. Mobile
learning simply provides the student with
more choices and options.
5 How can I introduce some
mobile learning elements into
my own teaching practice?
As a start, English language teachers can
point their students in the direction of
In this series, Nicky Hockly
explains aspects of technology
which some people may be
embarrassed to confess that
they dont really understand.
In this article, she explores
mobile learning, also known
as m-learning.
useful and interesting mobile learning
materials. Whether the students then take
advantage of these out-of-class learning
opportunities is, of course, up to them.
An informed teacher should know about
the applications already available for
learners of English. The first thing to do is
to check out what materials are on offer
(eg via the Apple iTunes store), and to aid
the students in deciding what applications
might be helpful for them. Would they
find it useful to receive an idiom of the
day on their mobile phones? What about
having a bilingual dictionary on their
mobile device? And how about
subscribing to the BBC or CNN news in
the form of video podcasts, and watching
these on the way to work every morning?
Try spending some classroom time
asking your students how they use their
mobile devices in their daily lives already,
discussing what options are available for
out-of-class informal language learning
and helping them make informed
choices. But dont just leave it at that.
Get your students to share what informal
mobile learning they have been doing by
discussing it in class regularly. Make it
optional even if you start with just a
handful of students picking up on your
recommendations, word will soon spread,
and more and more of your students will
be keen to try it out. Remember,
however, that, at the end of the day,
mobile learning options may not be for
everyone.
So start small, start optional, and see
what happens! ETp
Nicky Hockly has been
involved in EFL teaching and
teacher training since 1987.
She is Director of Pedagogy of
The Consultants-E, an online
training and development
consultancy. She is co-author
of How to Teach English with
Technology (Pearson) and
Learning English as a Foreign
Language for Dummies (John
Wiley & Sons).
Contact Nicky at nicky.hockly@theconsultants-e.com
and let her know of any other ICT areas youd like her to
explore in this series.
 Webwatcher
Web
Russell Stannard finds video sites that do more than entertain.
here is plenty of video content on the internet these
T days. I remember not that long ago it was much more
difficult to find good videos online. Now we can be
really choosy. We can find videos with subtitles, slow-
down facilities and even some where we can record our own
voices and compare our versions to the original.
www.englishcentral.com/en/home
I love this site. You can play good quality videos of a whole
variety of genres from film trailers to recordings of motivational
speakers (search by topic). You can listen with the subtitles on
or off and you can record your voice in small chunks and then
compare it to the real voices. The site even analyses your
recording and points out where it differs from the original. If you
sign up, you can go back to a recording that you havent
completed and you also get a list of all the recordings you have
worked on. There is a points system, too, so you can track your
progress. My feeling is that the comparison tool is a little
gimmicky because it depends very much on the accent and
sounds produced in the original recording, but I do like the
facility that allows you to record your own voice, especially as
you can do it in segments.
The content is divided into three levels, so you are not
restricted to searching by topic. This is a tool that you can make
great use of in class, and also one that you can recommend to
your students to use outside class.
www.teflclips.com/
Jamie Keddie, the man behind TEFL clips was a deserving
winner at the 2009 British Council ELTons Awards. For each
video clip on the site there is a whole lesson plan provided.
These plans are well thought through and often include a nice
variety of classroom techniques. The videos, which are listed
with the lesson plans on the right-hand side, are very topical.
You can also hunt for different genres, using the search facility.
Sometimes it is not completely clear what level a particular video
can be used with and I have to consult the teaching plans to see
if it is suitable for my class. Usually the level information is
provided at the top of the page. A huge amount of work has
gone into this site and the lesson plans can save you a lot of
time, so it is well worth looking at.
www.eslvideo.com/
This is another good site that you can recommend to your
students or use in class. It provides an embedded video and a
series of comprehension questions you can have your answers
checked immediately at the bottom of the quiz. The quality of
the content does vary somewhat, but that is to be expected with
material that users have created for others. There is a lot of
material on this site and you can even produce and add your
own. You can simply embed a video from YouTube and then add
a quiz to it. This is much simpler than you think, and the
www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010
following video will take you through the whole process:
www.eslvideo.com/eslvideo_how_to.php.
There are lots of songs on this site, too. So if you like using
music in class and want some pre-prepared gap-fill activities,
then this site is great for that. If you click on the Quizzes
button, you will see in the tabs underneath that are there lots of
levels, starting from Beginning and going to High Intermediate.
Many of the videos include scripts.
www.vocabahead.com/
This interesting site does something quite different as it uses
video to explain difficult words. It is a sort of video dictionary
and is very easy to use. Just search through the alphabetical list
for words or look at those displayed on the right-hand side. I like
it because the videos are extremely thorough and really highlight
the meaning of the word. This is an excellent tool for high-level
students. You can even sign up to the site and receive a word a
day (with video) by email.
http://en.yappr.com/welcome/
HomePage.action
Finally, here is a site that I have mentioned before. It offers lots
of material in English with subtitles and also has a Clear button
where the content is read out by a very good speech engine.
The videos are organised into genres, and include songs and
film clips. There are also some new sections, such as a
pronunciation tool. You have to download this, but it allows you
to listen to phrases and try to repeat them. It then gives you an
analysis of your pronunciation. This is not an entirely free site,
but plenty of the content is free and the joining fee is very
reasonable. An alternative is http://dotsub.com, which is similar
and, at present, offers all its content for free. ETp
You can find a help video that takes you through all these
sites, plus a few more, at:
www.teachertrainingvideos.com/videos2010/index.html.
Russell Stannard is a principal lecturer in ICT at the
University of Westminster, UK. He won the Times
Higher Education Award for Outstanding Initiatives in
Information and Communications Technology for his
website www.teachertrainingvideos.com and was one
of the winners of the 2010 British Council ELTons
awards.
Keep sending your favourite sites to Russell:
russellstannard@btinternet.com
Visit the ETp website!
The ETp website is packed with practical tips, advice, resources,
information and selected articles. You can submit tips or articles,
renew your subscription or simply browse the features.
www.etprofessional.com
61
 In this column Rose Senior explains why certain teaching techniques and
class management strategies are effective, and identifies specific issues that can assist
all language teachers in improving the quality of their teaching.

Working with written work 2

n Issue 67 I wrote about correcting in the mood with words such as: Right, and how sentences that develop the main

I students written work a time-consuming

task that we assume will lead them to
examine the errors they have made and
to write more accurately in the future. The
problem is that students are often reluctant
to focus on their own errors, preferring to do correct. Off you go with your detective
more exciting things in lessons. Is there any
way that we can encourage our classes to
engage more fully and dynamically in the
error-correction process?
One solution is to have We must respond we can look over their shoulders
the students focus on error
to our students and check their amendments.
correction collectively as a
class, rather than in isolation suggestions with we can say: Try correcting
from one another. To do this
consideration
takes some preparation, but
it is worth it in terms of increased student
interest and engagement. The procedure is
as follows. As we read through our
students work, we make a note of single
sentences written by individuals that
contain one or perhaps two errors that are
typical of the class as a whole. If our
students have been describing a process,
for example, we might select the sentence:
The rubbishes are put on the conveyor
belt, which requires both the noun and the
verb to be corrected. We collect perhaps
12 or 15 sentences, ensuring that we
include the errors of as many students in
the class as we can (including students
who typically make fewer errors).
Depending on our purpose, we may
decide to collect sentences containing a
range of errors that we think our students
should be able to identify, or sentences
that contain a specific grammar point or
type of error that we want our class to
focus upon (such as definite and indefinite
articles, tenses, parts of speech, cohesive
devices, and so on). We then either make
photocopies of the sentences that weve
written out or typed up (one sheet for every
two students is fine), or else prepare an
overhead transparency or document for
projection. The sentences should be in a
large font size and double-spaced, leaving
room for corrections to be written in.
Our next lesson starts with an identify student. When whole-class discussion
the error activity in which we get students
everyone! You have five minutes to identify
the errors in these sentences. Be careful!
Some sentences have more than one error
and just to keep you concentrating Ive
included one sentence that is completely
work! Encouraging words such as these
convey the impression that the activity will
be engaging, challenging and purposeful. If
some students finish before others,
When we see a miscorrected error
Number 3 again! Most students
willingly respond to the challenge
by reconsidering their answers as will
others sitting nearby who may have
overheard our intervention.
In the feedback session that follows,
individual students present their answers.
We can either write these on the board
ourselves (correcting the print projected
from the transparency) or, if appropriate,
have students come up to write on the
board. Either way, we must respond to our
students suggestions with
consideration, making sure Students find it highly often then apply the insights
that we do not belittle them
in front of the class.
motivating to be placed and
Particularly with higher-level temporarily in the role critically the writing of others
students, who write in more
of examiner
complex ways, there may
be more than one valid way of restructuring
sentences. We should be alert to the fact
that additional class members may wish to
put forward alternative suggestions,
remembering that students respond
positively when we take their suggestions
seriously and give reasons why their
alternatives are or are not acceptable.
Students are normally happy to have
their errors singled out for whole-class
attention, and may even make it known
publicly that the class is now focusing on
their error. Sometimes it is appropriate for
everyone in a high-level class to examine in
depth a paragraph written by one particular
focuses on how a paragraph is structured,
idea can best be expanded, separated or
linked together, a genuine sense of
collaborative learning can develop. At the
other end of the spectrum, a less
demanding activity (appropriate for
students of any level) involves the teacher
doing a five-minute spot test on spelling
errors that they have noted their class
recently making. Again, students become
far more readily engaged when they know
that the error-remediation activity relates
specifically to their own work.
It also works well to put students
occasionally in the position of judging the
quality of written work not only in terms of
its grammatical accuracy, but also in terms
of its content, organisation and quality of
English expression. Although it is risky to
ask students to pronounce on the quality of
the work of their peers, it is highly
beneficial to invite them to give an overall
mark for an anonymous piece of work
(such as a sample answer published by an
examining body). Students find it highly
motivating to be placed temporarily in the
role of examiner, and willingly discuss their
judgements with others. They
understandings they
have gained from examining
to their own work.
Obviously, most of us
find it too time-consuming to create whole-
class error-correction activities after each
piece of written work. However, since most
errors are committed time and again by
similar groups of students, we can develop
banks of correction activities that we can
bring out from time to time for subsequent
classes. ETp
Rose Senior is a language teacher educator
who runs workshops and presents at
conferences around the world.
If there are any particular topics or issues you
would like Rose to explore in this column,
please contact her at rsenior@iinet.net.au.

www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 68 May 2010 63

 Prize crossword 41
ETp presents the forty-first in our series of prize
crosswords. Try it and maybe win a prize!
Once you have done it successfully, let your
students have a go.
Send your entry (completed crossword grid and quotation), not
forgetting to include your full name, postal address and telephone
number, to Prize crossword 41, ENGLISH TEACHING professional,
Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Ltd, PO Box 100, Chichester, West
Sussex, PO18 8HD, UK. Ten correct entries will be drawn from a hat
on 10 July 2010 and the senders will each receive a copy of the
second edition of the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced
Learners, applauded for its unique red star system showing the
frequency of the 7,500 most common words in English
(www.macmillandictionaryblog.com).

1 2 3 3 4 5 2 6 2 7 8 3 9 3 10 7 5 12 10 5 2 4 22

2 10 7 7 11 10 18 4 7 2 12 23 11 7

3 10 1 11 12 6 13 11 11 3 11 5 14 8 9 2 3 4 23 22
Virginia Woolf
11 11 4 6 14 15

7 6 8 4 16 4 7 17 18 12 3 VERY FREQUENT WORDS ** Relating to people who are gay

*** Someone who is behaving in a (informal)
5 10 19 2 10 2 way that is weak, silly or not brave FAIRLY FREQUENT WORDS
*** Not to agree to an offer, * Forming an essential part of
4 7 8 2 5 6 10 3 10 20 18 proposal or request something and needed to make it
*** Used for stating where complete
7 11 3 3 6 2 21 2 20 8 someone or something is * To leave a job or school permanently
*** On the side of your body that is * Long grass that has been cut and
5 10 6 17 2 7 10 8 8 to the west if you are facing north dried to feed animals
*** An area of land next to a house, * A small road that allows you to drive
22 14 2 7 23 4 8 14 23 4 7 24 usually with grass and plants off a motorway
Y growing in it * The things you own
21 18 11 2 11 *** The group of features or * A chemical produced by animal and
qualities that make a person, animal plant cells that helps reactions and
4 12 3 1 2 10 12 2 or plant either male or female other processes to start
*** The people who work for an * An informal word for a toilet or room
20 9 4 7 20 9 4 3 3 10 22 2 25 organisation that catches criminals that contains a toilet
H H and checks that people obey the LESS FREQUENT WORDS
10 20 20 1 4 law A valley, especially in Scotland
*** The process by which a baby is Careful about or conscious of
17 8 6 2 2 14 26 12 4 8 pushed from its mothers body something
D during birth A womans boyfriend or lover
*** Used to show that something The unit of money used in Japan
belongs to a particular person or A group of people who live in northern
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 thing and not any other Siberia, Canada, Alaska and Greenland
H *** A very tall plant with deep roots, A small South American animal with
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 a thick woody stem and many soft grey fur
Y D branches Very unfriendly and angry
FREQUENT WORDS Showing a great interest in art, but in
To solve the puzzle, find which letter each number represents. ** A person, team or business that an way that may not be sincere
You can keep a record in the boxes above. The definitions of the competes with another Trying to be funny in a way that is not
words in the puzzle are given, but not in the right order. When ** A strong feeling of sympathy for suitable
someone who is unhappy Not existing or working any more
you have finished, you will be able to read the quotation.
** A building or large room where The scientific study of animals
people do scientific experiments or A holy war in defence of Islam
research The past tense of eat

64 Issue 68 May 2010 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com