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Issue 119
November
www.etprofessional.com 2018

Tales of the Fringe benefits

unexpected Charlie Ellis
Richard McNeff

Taming Working towards

Shakespeare a common goal
Stephanie Hirschman Patricia Barzotti

The practical resource for English language teachers worldwide

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Contents MAIN FEATURE
Issue 119
November 2018

BUSINESS ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL

4 Tales of the unexpected 17 Eight types of presentation

Richard McNeff sees unforeseen happenings Ben Dobbs proves that not all presentations
as opportunities are the same

FEATURES TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS

READING
4 23 Child’s play!
8 Taking it personally Andrew Griffiths addresses the way we teach
Jamie Clayton makes reading texts more relevant game rules and instructions
LITERATURE
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
11 Taming Shakespeare
Stephanie Hirschman delights her students 47 Keeping teachers motivated
with dramatic scenes Jeny Rapheal looks at what institutions can do
to maintain motivation
IN THE CLASSROOM
14 Fringe benefits 14 49 No one told me that! 3
Charlie Ellis finds the Edinburgh Fringe Beth Davies and Nicholas Northall offer more
an inspirational teaching resource tips for those moving into teacher training
EXAMS AND ASSESSMENT TECHNOLOGY
20 IELTS without tears 3
Graham Perry gives help with describing
52 English or Dinglish?
processes Chris Panell concentrates on the language
his students need to know
LANGUAGE 41
22 Defo take a selfie with that helibike 54 Necessity is the mother of invention
Paul Bress examines emerging language Israil Kurbaniyazov describes why Dropbox
meets his needs for e-portfolios
WRITING
26 Overcoming a fear of the unknown 58 Five things you always wanted to know
about: automated writing evaluation
Iain Maloney discovers a place for creativity
in academic writing Nicky Hockly assesses whether AWE is
awesome or awful
IN THE CLASSROOM 45 59 Webwatcher
28 Students’ stories 9
Russell Stannard asks questions with
David Heathfield tells a story about a wise barber
Google Assistant
IN THE CLASSROOM
39 Vocabulary: principles and practice 11 REGULAR FEATURES
Suhad Sonbul considers the interface between 32 IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
vocabulary and listening
34 REVIEWS
LANGUAGE
36 SCRAPBOOK
41 Singular plurals
45 ENGLISH TEACHING CONFESSIONAL
Ken Milgate uses World Cup commentaries Adam Miller explores the roots of his love
to highlight the use and abuse of group nouns of reading
METHODOLOGY 60 NOT ONLY, BUT ALSO ...
43 Working towards a common goal Chia Suan Chong recommends building
Patricia Barzotti fosters cooperation in relationships
large classes

Includes materials designed to photocopy,

some of which can now be downloaded from
the ETp website (see page 3)

www.etprofessional.com Issue 119 • November 2018 1

Editorial
Even the best-prepared teachers with the most The sense that we are not on our own is a great help when
meticulously-crafted lesson plans are going to encounter facing the unexpected, in whatever form it takes. The
the unexpected on occasions. This can happen for a relationships we establish with classmates and colleagues
number of reasons: it might be that the students get are key to overcoming problems together. Patricia Barzotti
through the teaching material quicker than anticipated; finds that getting students to cooperate with each other is
perhaps an activity simply doesn’t work with that particular an important ingredient of successfully managing large
class; or maybe the students have no interest in, or an classes. And, as Chia Suan Chong points out, how to build
active dislike of, the prepared topic and want to discuss relationships with others is one of the things that language
something else. However, it is to be hoped that few have teachers teach in addition to English.
experienced the ‘unexpected’ in quite the same way as
Of course, there is nothing wrong with being well prepared,
Richard McNeff describes in our main feature. His tales of
and a good lesson plan with the flexibility to allow for
weeping, traumatised students, classroom equipment
unscheduled events is a vital tool for any teacher. In this
crashing down on teachers’ heads and quizzes scuppered
issue’s instalment of their series of tips for novice teacher
by over-enthusiastic colleagues are enough to strike fear
trainers, Beth Davies and Nick Northall address how best to
into the heart of anyone about to enter the classroom,
help trainees construct such a plan.
thinking that they’ve got it sorted.
As we step into the unknown with our students yet again, let’s
On the other hand, there are many teachers who embrace
follow Richard McNeff’s lead in seeing whatever happens as
the unknown, and positively welcome the challenge of
an opportunity rather than a source of anxiety – but watch out
whatever surprises a new lesson may bring. One brave soul
for that heavy vase on the shelf above your head ...
is Charlie Ellis, who uses that most unpredictable and
exposing of art forms, stand-up comedy, as an inspiration
and resource for his teaching.
With luck, we don’t have to go it alone when we step out
into the unknown. Iain Maloney is not only willing to go into
uncharted territory himself, he even makes efforts to Helena Gomm
persuade his colleagues to follow his lead in conquering Editor
Email: helena.gomm@pavpub.com
their fear of the unfamiliar – in this case, creative writing in
academic English courses.
Connect with us!
Adam Miller admits to being a poor reader and writer as a
child, which made him reluctant to face the challenges
posed by a world of books. However, his mother’s care and
persistence succeeded not only in turning around this
@ETprofessional linkedin.com/ facebook.com/
unpromising beginning, but also in engendering in her son a etprofessional etprofessional
lifelong love of reading and literature.

ENGLISH TEACHING PROFESSIONAL

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Pages 29 and 36–­38 include materials which are designed to photocopy. All other rights are reserved
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prior permission in writing from the publishers.

2 Issue 119 • November 2018 www.etprofessional.com

 ONLINE RESOURCES

Resources online
Go to etprofessional.com/resources for your extra printable resources, ready for use in class.

ONLINE RESOURCES

Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew

Relationships vocabulary
What is the difference between the words in each pair?

1 a brother-in-law / a stepbrother
2 a half-sister / a foster sister
3 a partner / a spouse
4 a spinster / a bachelor
5 a spoilt brat / a dutiful daughter
6 a mummy’s boy / a sugar daddy
7 dependants / next of kin

Which expressions are positive? Which are negative?

Which are informal and which are formal?

The main characters

This play is about a family. The father is called Baptista. He has two daughters: Katarina, the older daughter, and her
younger sister, Bianca. Katarina is also called Katherine and Kate; she has a fiery temper, while Bianca is quite different.

Other characters are:

■ Petruchio – a man who likes a challenge and needs money!

■ Hortensio – one of Bianca’s admirers, and also a friend of Petruchio’s
■ Lucentio – another man who admires Bianca

Getting ready to watch

A shrew is an animal that is similar to a mouse. Even though it is very small, it can fight fiercely when it is in danger.
A shrew is also a word that people in the past sometimes used to describe a woman with a bad temper. Who do
you think is the shrew in this story? What does ‘tame’ mean? What do you think will happen in the story?

Get ready to watch

■ Who was Shakespeare?
■ When did he live?
■ Have you seen or read any of his plays?
■ Do you think it will be easy or difficult to understand a Shakespeare play? Why?

Watch the play

Read through the questions quickly before you watch, to make sure you understand them. Then watch the play and
answer the questions.

1 Baptista will not arrange a marriage for his younger daughter, Bianca, until
a she finds someone she truly loves.
b her older sister, Kate, gets married.
c a very rich man asks to marry her.

2 Bianca and Kate have a very loving relationship.

a true
b false
Give an example.

‘Taming Shakespeare’ by Stephanie Hirschman www.etprofessional.com

Shakespeare’s The Taming

of the Shrew
Accompanies ‘Taming Shakespeare’
ONLINE RESOURCES

Worksheet 1: Getting the desired response

by Stephanie Hirschman, page 11
ONLINE RESOURCES
Tell your two stories to a partner.
1 How did your partner react to your story?
Worksheet 2: Using descriptive language
Funny story: ONLINE RESOURCES ONLINE RESOURCES
Seeing:
First you are going to describe what you see around you. You are going to write for three
minutes. Don’t stop or erase mistakes, just keep writing. Worksheet 3: Writing dialogue Extensive reading checklist
Negative story: Example: Indirect speech Book title:
I am surrounded by paper. My desk is untidy because I am re-organising things. There is an Author:
King Lear sat on his throne, looking down at his three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia.
empty coffee cup and two bottles of water, pens, computer cables, my phone, wallet, keys and
In front of him, on the table, a map of his kingdom had been unfolded. Lear stood up and Did you finish it? Y/N Would you recommend it? Y/N
a big pile of marking for my third-year writing class. The walls of my booth are covered in memos
walked over to the map, inviting his daughters to stand beside him. His daughters all agreed Thoughts:
2 Why do you think they reacted this way? and things I need to remember, my timetable, my name badge – which I always forget to wear
and came and stood next to him. Lear looked at the map and told them that he was going to
– and some postcards of Scotland.
Funny story:
divide the country into three parts. The three parts would not be equal size. One part would be
much bigger than the other two, and this part he would give to the daughter who loved him the
Hearing:
most. He asked his daughters to tell him which of them loved him the most.
Now you’re going to describe what you can hear. Again, write for three minutes without stopping Book title:
or erasing. Goneril spoke first and said that she loved him the most. She said that she loved him more than
Negative story: her own life. Author:
Example:
Did you finish it? Y/N Would you recommend it? Y/N
I can hear the sound of cars on the highway outside the office and the swish Regan waspass
as they next, and she said that her sister was lying. She told him it was impossible for
through the puddles of rain on the road. I’m the only person in the office, but Goneril to love Lear the most because she, Regan, did.
the building Thoughts:
still makes noise: creaking pipes, the tick of air filters, the hum of the refrigerator.
3 What follow-up or clarification questions did they ask? Cordelia, the youngest, spoke last. She told her father that it was stupid to compete with her
sisters over who loved him the most. She said it was a stupid game and she wouldn’t play. So
Smell:
Funny story: Lear gave half the country to Goneril and half to Regan.
Same again. Book title:
Example: 1 Turn the passage above into direct speech. Begin like this: Author:
Kingsmell
The strongest smell in the room is coffee, strong and black. There’s a metallic Lear from
sat onthe
his throne, looking down at his three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Did you finish it? Y/N Would you recommend it? Y/N
Negative story: In front of him, on the table, a map of his kingdom had been unfolded. Lear stood up and
rain on my umbrella and a not very nice smell from the garbage bin in the corridor.
Thoughts:
walked over to the map.
Touch:
‘Come and stand with me,’ Lear said.
Once more.
Now tell the stories to a different partner, thinking aboutExample:
the information ‘OK, Father,’ said Goneril.
above. Can you make each story better? My hair is wet from the rain and my back hurts from sitting at the desk for ‘Coming!’ said
too long. It’s Regan.
quite
Book title:

4 How was the reaction this time? cold in the office, but that’s OK because it’ll get hotter as soon as other people arrive. My chair Author:
is too low and it makes my knee sore. 2 Continue this conversation. Did you finish it? Y/N Would you recommend it? Y/N
Funny story: A: Hi, how are you? Thoughts:
Finally, we will combine a sentence or two from each paragraph to make a description of the room.
B: Not so good. I’m really tired.
Example:
I am surrounded by paper. There is an empty coffee cup and two bottles of water, A: Whyand
is that?
a big pile
Negative story:
of marking for my third-year writing class. The walls of my booth are coveredB:in memos and
Book title:
things I need to remember, my timetable, my name badge – which I always forget to wear – and
some postcards of Scotland. I’m the only person in the office, but the building still makes noise: Author:
creaking pipes, the tick of air filters, the hum of the refrigerator. The strongest smell in the room Did you finish it? Y/N Would you recommend it? Y/N
is coffee, strong and black. It’s quite cold in the office, but that’s OK because it’ll get hotter as
Thoughts:
soon as other people arrive.
‘Overcoming a fear of the unknown’ by Iain Maloney www.etprofessional.com

‘Overcoming a fear of the unknown’ by Iain Maloney www.etprofessional.com Name: ________________________________________ Student number: ______________________________________

‘Overcoming a fear of the unknown’ by Iain Maloney www.etprofessional.com ‘English teaching confessional’ by Adam Miller www.etprofessional.com

Telling stories: responses, description, dialogue Extensive reading checklist

Accompanies ‘Overcoming a fear of the unknown’ by Iain Maloney, page 26 Accompanies ‘English teaching
confessional’ by Adam Miller, page 45

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MAIN FEATURE
Tales of the
u n expecte d
Richard McNeff takes advantage of unforeseen opportunities.
E
arly last year, I was teaching a young South American
woman who was working in London. I asked her
whether she intended to make a life in the UK or if
she would eventually go back to her own country. In
response, she burst into tears. As it turned out, her
father had survived a heart attack a few days before, but was
still in a critical condition. She was grappling with the decision
of whether or not to go back home. I did not know if I should
focus on her problem or steer things back to the lesson. In the
end, I did a bit of both.
The situation reminded me of a sketch a few years ago on
Smack the Pony, the UK TV comedy series, in which a teacher
corrects the grammar of a Spanish girl as she describes losing
several family members in a car crash. Such opportunism is, of
course, not what this article recommends!
4 Issue 119 • November 2018
Unexpected happenings
The traditional model of English language teaching has the
teacher marshalling the students towards a set of pre-defined
grammatical or lexical objectives that are happily mastered by
the end of the class. Events, however, can easily conspire
against this. My experience with my South American student
made me wonder what sort of unexpected happenings had
interrupted the classes given by colleagues at the school where
I work. So I asked them.
Problems with technology were an obvious example:
listening exercises that didn’t play, timetabled video links that
had mysteriously vanished. Another was classroom equipment:
a whiteboard had fallen on one colleague, while another had been
the target of the clock that was supposed to time the exam she was
invigilating: it dropped off the wall and hit her on the head.
www.etprofessional.com

Less dramatic, but just as trying, can be the scenario where
crossed wires cause havoc – and here I am not talking about
technology. I once gave a lecture to about 100 students on ‘Life
in the UK’. I was asked to prepare a quiz beforehand that their
teachers could use afterwards as a means of reinforcing the
lecture’s main points. I simply used the questions which I had
interspersed the lecture with in order to make it more interactive.
‘How many hours of TV does the average Brit watch weekly?’ I
enquired. Usually, this elicits a very uncertain response, ranging
from six to 17. On this occasion, the entire hall trumpeted 26,
which was the right answer. It turned out that, owing to a
misunderstanding, my colleagues had pre-taught the answers.
My wings were truly clipped – a state of affairs not helped by the
fact that the OHP I was placing my transparencies on, in those
bygone days, chose that moment to pack up.
On another occasion, I was giving a one-week special course
for a Russian Ministry in Saint Petersburg. The location was an
old, overheated, Soviet-era hotel with a ground floor comprised
entirely of lecture rooms. Despite the fact that none of these was
in use, I was informed that there was nowhere available to give
the course, and I was asked if the reception area would do. It
would not. When I did finally manage to access a room, an even
thornier problem presented itself. My request for chalk to use on
the blackboard was met by long faces and a great deal of head
scratching. Charming and diligent as the delegates turned out to
be, they worked in a culture of delay and deliberate confusion,
largely attributable to their miserable salaries.
At a conference for young lawyers in the Czech Republic,
the ‘computer contract’ roleplay a colleague was there to give
– as a showcase of the school’s legal English courses – was
scuppered by the fact that the delegates considered attendance
optional. Those who had been primed for their roles during the
pre-negotiation phase wandered off while others ambled in,
totally at a loss as to what they should do during the bargaining
phase. By definition, a roleplay needs to be carried out from
start to finish. This was just a carry on!
Unexpected situations
Unsettling as such incidents can be, they pale into insignificance
beside situations where heightened emotions erupt. A colleague
once asked a student why she liked going to art galleries, and was
informed that such places provided solace for the abuse she had
suffered in her childhood. How do you follow that?
Most teachers must have come up against students who
express racist or anti-Semitic views that may be permissible in their
own countries. The only opportunity there is to quickly stifle such
opinions. However, Kate, another colleague, adopted a different
tack when she found herself with a class comprised entirely of
students who came from countries that traditionally disliked each
other. So pronounced was the atmosphere of suspicion and
prejudice that it completely disrupted the business English lesson
she was planning to give. She decided to confront the situation full
on and, through discussion and pairwork, made the students face
those demons and, at least partially, exorcise them.
Sometimes, we are the unwitting agents of our own
downfall. One colleague played an old Cockney song called ‘A
Mother’s Lament’, another showed a clip from ‘Deaf Old Bat’,
an episode of the British comedy show Fawlty Towers, both of
www.etprofessional.com
MAIN FEATURE
which excited tearful reactions from a member of their class.
The song and the clip had revived painful memories: the former
of a miscarriage; the latter of a friend’s fatal accident in the
bath. This, of course, happens completely inadvertently and
nothing can be done to prevent it.
Less ghoulish, but potentially just as awkward, was the time
I thought a TV commercial advertising the Specsavers chain of
opticians might liven up a young business group. There is a
whole series of them, in which people make mistakes when
their eyesight lets them down, all with the slogan: Should have
gone to Specsavers! I couldn’t find the well-known one of a
myopic shepherd who accidentally shears his sheepdog (being
unable to distinguish it from his sheep) on YouTube but,
instead, chanced upon one involving a man and woman sitting
in the front seats of a car. I clicked. The commercial was
Scandinavian in origin, and what ensued excited a great deal of
sniggering and, no doubt, some misgivings about the moral
probity of the teacher. The woman should, indeed, have gone
to Specsavers. (And so should I!)
Unexpected opportunities
With the exception of Kate’s attempts at bridge-building,
none of the above provides an opportunity for anything more
than damage limitation. Emotional distress or vexatious
opinions are territories that are probably best avoided. If they
do crop up, a return to the planned lesson provides a welcome
respite. There is, however, another way the unexpected can
present itself, which can be rewarding and opportune.
Last year I had a two-to-one class with some Danish MPs.
My school regularly runs courses for members of Scandinavian
parliaments, and there is a host of regularly upgraded material in
the staff resource centre to choose from. One of the students sat
on the Danish Parliament’s Select Committee for Taxation, so we
started on a simple worksheet that displayed the different types
of tax in the UK. We never left it. Over five mornings, this single
sheet gave rise to discussions not only about tax itself, but also
about the issues those taxes related to: housing, wealth,
inheritance, relative incomes and welfare. This was readily
abetted by technology, for, with a couple of clicks, it was possible
to find podcasts, news clips, diagrams and graphs that illustrated
each theme. Of course, I was dealing with two fluent individuals
with a high level of English and a sophisticated grasp of the
topics at hand, and the ideas expressed here are largely confined
to classes whose English is at a level where they can digress.
Something similar, however, happened with a lower-level
student I taught in the same year: a German banker of
Albanian extraction. I would hand over the material selected
for that day. He would politely look at it, set it to one side and
initiate a wide-ranging discussion that, with appropriate
feedback, seemed to be of much more use to him than yet
another gap-fill exercise. This also made the lesson much more
interesting for me. With digression, it is not just the student
who learns: it is the teacher as well. Another banker seemed far
more interested in telling me about his farm in Normandy than
the lending to agricultural concerns he oversaw in Eastern
Europe. By the end of the course, I was in possession of almost
everything you need to know about Calvados production.
Issue 119 • November 2018 5
MAIN FEATURE
Teachers are understandably nervous about going off on
such tangents. Digression needs to be managed carefully, and it
is all too easy to leave some course participants behind,
particularly if there are dominant individuals in the room.
From time to time, I have a dream in which I am standing in
front of a class with all my material used up, 15 minutes to go and
absolutely no idea what to do next. Several of my colleagues have
had the same dream. It seems to be an occupational hazard. As a
result, I always like to take more material into the classroom than I
will probably need. However, if the class digresses, and everybody
is comfortable doing so, I am more than happy to jettison the
material, because what comes out of such impromptu journeys
can be more valuable than the route that was planned.
A staged, prescriptive approach, with meticulous lesson
planning, remains valid, particularly when there is a clear
aim in view, such as with exam or tightly-scheduled ESP
courses. Moreover, the bulk of courses in the centre where I
work last one week, with a different teacher and new
students joining stayers in the next week. This makes
syllabus-based continuity problematic. In such a scenario,
classes come alive when a phrase, topic or anecdote opens up
unexpected vistas. It is not what we take in that gets results,
but what we take up and they take out.
Unexpected affordances
I was discussing this with a colleague, Jason Anderson, who
provided a word for what I had been fumbling to describe:
affordance. An intriguing if slightly baffling term, affordance
means treating the classroom as a dynamic environment which
‘affords’ – in the sense of providing – its own themes and subject
matter. Jason has written a great deal about this in the pages of
ELT magazines, grappling, for instance, with the challenging
notion of an ‘affordance lesson plan’ and if, indeed, such a creature
could really exist. What if you have a class with students from
cultures that have a predominantly passive approach to learning,
such as those from some Asian countries? What will such students
afford ? How can you plan for affordance in advance, or know if it
will be worth pursuing or will just take you on a wild-goose chase:
exhausting for the teacher and counterproductive for the student?
And, of course, there is the question of personality. Some teachers
will never be happy with such a freewheeling approach.
Notice, nevertheless, the eagerness of a class when someone
asks a question that sometimes has very little to do with the
matter at hand. If you really don’t know the answer, it is
foolhardy to try to respond, as you can easily come a cropper.
6 Issue 119 • November 2018
It is wiser to postpone. But when you do get back to the class
with an answer, you often find their reception of the nugget you
have scrupulously mined is bordering on indifference. The
moment spurs relevance, which suggests that grammar and
vocabulary can be more effectively taught as and when they
arise, instead of being wheeled in like a cold buffet.
Expecting the unexpected
The above may sound like a recipe for chaos. However, if there
is such a spontaneous journey and it seems worth making,
there is a way to impose form and direction. As teachers accrue
experience, they can develop a repertoire of ‘routines’, in the
sense that comedians give to the term.
The simplest example of this is discussing people’s daily habits
when teaching the present simple. Explanations of grammar and
vocabulary give rise to narratives that develop over time and can
be exploited with different classes. Discussing travel and holidays
can teeter on the vague, but focusing on worst journeys can yield
dividends, both in terms of arousing student interest and
practising question and answer forms using the past continuous.
Starting with your own worst journey brings this particularly
alive (in my case, a return ticket bought in Spain for a plane that
did not exist). And, indeed, the more these routines are based on
your own experience, the better. More elaborate routines can be
derived from unusual facts, historical, etymological, literary,
geographical or cultural knowledge. English is littered with
synonyms that do not neatly dovetail. If the topic of stocks and
shares comes up, you can spend a merry 20 minutes or so
listening to the ingenious explanations of the difference between
them that your students suggest, before deflating them with the
simple fact that one is American English, the other British.
Having an armoury of such routines at their disposal, the
teacher can deploy them to give shape to whatever comes up.
t t t
Knowing what you are going to teach and providing a filter is,
of course, part the job. You only have to experience the
confusion that rapidly sets in if you have pitched your material
too high, or the disenchantment if it is too low. Nevertheless,
much that is teacher-directed is a simulation of the real world,
not the territory itself. By the end of a lesson, you may have
provided a nuanced guide to the difference between going to
and will, but outside is Babel. The points that students raise,
their questions, and the diversions that these can provoke, may
open a yawning crack in the lesson plan but can often lead to
what the students really need. That’s how the light gets in. n
Richard McNeff is a trainer at the London
School of English, Holland Park, London,
UK. He has taught in Spain, Norway and
Azerbaijan. He has also published novels,
a memoir of the sculptor Barry Flanagan
– and, most recently, the Brexit satire
Deceived Kingdom.
rcmcneff@hotmail.com
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CM

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K
READING
Taking it
personally
Jamie Clayton explains how relating reading texts to the students’ interests and understanding
can pay dividends.
R
eading lessons do not have the best reputation:
teaching reading is hardly a crowd-pleaser. Despite
attempts to dress up reading classes as something a
bit more fun by means of running dictations,
jumbled questions and ‘grass skirt’ games (where the
students tear questions on strips of paper off a worksheet as
they answer them), reading activities usually lack any personal
connection for the student; they are simply comprehension
questions dressed up as a game.
One of the tenets of ‘teaching unplugged’ and, frankly,
sensible teaching in general, is that, as Luke Meddings and Scott
Thornbury put it, ‘texts, when used, should have relevance for the
learner’. However, most teachers have to or choose to work with
a coursebook, and so are faced with using a set of potentially
irrelevant predetermined texts. Given this reality, one might
rightly wonder how relevant your average reading lesson can ever
be to the people who are in the classroom in any given context.
Personalisation in the classroom
Faced with these undesirable classroom conditions, teachers need
to find ways to work the situation to their own and their students’
advantage. Personalising coursebook texts through discussion of
personal experiences and opinions during the lead-in stages is one
useful and widely-used technique. However, linking texts to the
personal lives of our students is just one of the benefits brought by
embedding personalisation in reading lessons.
8 Issue 119 • November 2018
Personalisation in reading lessons can also provide agency: the
ability to act and make choices. As Daniel Barber and Duncan
Foord point out, giving students choices brings a sense of control
over their learning and, to an extent, the classroom. Giving agency
to learners in the reading classroom can often be done simply by,
for example, asking them how much time they need to read the
text (rather than telling them) or letting them choose which set of
coursebook comprehension questions to answer. With choice
comes responsibility, which can, in turn, increase motivation to
understand a text fully and complete tasks successfully.
Cultivating a sense of individualism, by making use of the
different interpretations the students have of a text, as well as
in terms of what tasks individual students are doing at any
given moment in class, can act as a valuable and striking
contrast to the fact that everyone is using the same coursebook.
Personalisation in practice
I would now like to offer some simple ideas for how
personalisation can be incorporated into the reading classroom.
Encouraging individual understanding
The powerful thing about the first two ideas is that they make no
assumptions about what individual students will or will not
understand in a text. In fact, they directly target the specific gaps
in understanding that emerge while the students are reading.
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Typical coursebook reading questions are focused on the result
– did the student get the answer right or wrong? – whereas the
two ideas below focus on the process of understanding the text
– why and where the student is struggling to understand.
1 A
 sk the students which paragraph(s) or sentence(s) of the
text they found hardest to understand. Get them to
highlight these, and to write in the margin why they were so
difficult for them. Encourage them to discuss their
difficulties and try to help each other in groups.
2 A
 sk the students to highlight a part of the text that they don’t
understand. After reading the whole text, get them to mingle
and see if anyone can help them make sense of this part.
With both these tasks, the teacher should monitor and take
note of any common places in the text causing confusion.
Then, the most frequent problems can be attended to during
whole-class feedback.
Getting the students to think about how they feel
about a text
Subjective questions which ask the students to react personally
to the content of a text work well as gist reading tasks.
Questions you can ask include:
■■ Would you like to read more of this text if it were longer?
Why (not)?
■■ Who would you recommend this text to?
■■ Give the text a score out of ten for difficulty.
■■ Give it a score out of ten for its relevance to your studies,
your job, current affairs or your personal interests.
■■ Which is your favourite paragraph? Which is your favourite
sentence? Why?
■■ What questions would you like to ask about a person or
object from the text?
■■ What would you have done if you were in the same situation
as someone from the text?
You can also establish the context of the text you are about to
read and give the students the title. Then ask them to write
five questions that they would like to know the answers to
before reading.
Personalising coursebook questions
Subjective questions like those above do not help us find out if
our students have actually understood the details of a text. The
kind of comprehension questions typically found in a
coursebook do this job, but they can become painfully dull if
used simply out of routine. Here are some ways to personalise
coursebook reading questions:
■■ Give your students a choice: Either answer exercise A or
exercise B.
■■ Show the students a set of book comprehension questions
before reading. Ask them to choose four that they would like
to know the answers to, and then get them to find the
answers in the text.
■■ Get the students to exchange coursebooks with a partner and
circle the most difficult comprehension questions for their
partner to answer.
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READING
■■ After reading the text, get the students to write their own
comprehension questions and exchange them with a partner.
■■ Give the students the answers to some of the coursebook
comprehension questions. Don’t let them look at the
questions. After they have read the text, ask them to write a
question to match each answer.
■■ Ask the students to give the text a new title (actually crossing
out the title in their books and writing in a new one).
Personal summaries
Summarising – restating in your own words what you have
understood from a text – is not only an excellent way of
demonstrating understanding but is also an activity we do in
real-life, for example when chatting about the news or sharing
stories we have heard.
Jo Ann Aebersold and Mary Lee Field suggest combining
personal summary writing with coursebook comprehension
questions:
■■ Ask the students to read a text and then write a personal
summary of it.
■■ Get them to answer some comprehension questions, and then
to edit and improve their summaries.
I have found that getting my students to write summaries and
then to compare them with each other and also with a
summary written by me is an effective way to check and notice
gaps in understanding.
Four-square reading
This is an activity I have created that I feel combines some of
the key aspects of personalisation and which students find
appealing. The procedure is as follows:
■■ Give each student a piece of paper divided into sections as
shown in Figure 1 (you can also get them to produce this as a
drawing dictation if the photocopier is not working):
Figure 1
■■ Tell the students the title and topic of the text they are going
to read.
■■ Depending on the text you are using, dictate four titles – one
for each of the four big squares. Titles I have used are:
Issue 119 • November 2018 9
READING
Questions for the author
Questions for someone referred to in the text
Questions about language for my teacher
Things I know about this topic (before reading)
Things I know about this topic (after reading)
Things I want to find out from this text
My opinion about the main idea in the text
A picture that represents the text
Three questions I have about what I just read
■■ Dictate the title of the small square: The most difficult
paragraph. Tell the students that when they have finished
reading they should write the number of the paragraph they
found most difficult to understand in this square. (If the text
doesn’t have numbered paragraphs, get the students to write
numbers next to each one before reading.)
■■ If you have used titles that require a pre-reading
brainstorm, eg Things I know about this topic (before
reading), allow time for the students to note their ideas in
the relevant square(s) before they read.
■■ Ask the students to read the text and to add notes, comments
and questions to the relevant squares on their paper.
The following stages work best with a projector and screen.
However, they could also be done with a traditional board and
pens (and speedy handwriting!).
■■ Once the students have read the text and added their ideas
to their four squares, collect everyone’s paper. Now direct
the students to answer some comprehension questions from
their coursebook.
■■ While they are doing this, open a Word or Google Docs
document on the screen. Begin typing in a selection of
the students’ questions and interesting comments. Make
sure to use questions and comments from as many
students as possible.
■■ Also, look through the students’ papers to find out which
paragraphs were voted as the most difficult. Write the most
common two or three paragraph numbers on the board.
■■ When the students have finished answering the
comprehension questions, ask them to stand up and make
small groups.
■■ Project the document you have just created and ask the
students to discuss the questions and comments with their
group. Figure 2 shows a set of questions one group of
students created with a text about a Dutch town planner.
Why don’t they just make the roads bigger?
Is it possible to implement this system all over the world?
What about in places with huge populations?
Will it still be effective if people are in a hurry?
Where do you think his idea comes from?
Why does the author say this is ‘the future’?
Has Jamie ever been to this place? What did he think of it?
Why do paragraphs 6 and 20 only have one sentence?
Figure 2
10 Issue 119 • November 2018
■■ After the discussions die down, ask the students to decide in
their group which of the numbered paragraphs that you
previously wrote on the board was the most difficult. As a
group, they need to pick just one paragraph.
■■ Once they have decided, tell them to sit down and write a
joint summary of that paragraph.
■■ While they are doing this, you should write your own
summary on another document and, for feedback, project it
on the board and have the students compare their summaries
with your one.
This activity incorporates the following key elements of
personalisation:
1 Personal experience and opinion are incorporated into the
four squares.
2 The students decide what questions to ask and what they
want to find out.
3 The summary writing targets the specific problems of
individual learners.
4 The students have control over the content: student output
becomes input for other students during the stand-up
discussion.
t t t
While personalisation is no guarantee of improvements in
reading ability, I hope I have outlined some basic reasons
why it is important in the reading classroom and how, if we
embed it strategically in our reading lessons, we will enjoy
those lessons more, as will our students. It also means that
coursebook texts can be brought to life, even if they appear
to have little relevance to the students. As Sheelagh Deller
explains: ‘When [personalisation] happens, students start to
feel that the book is theirs, that they have an important
contribution to make to the book, and that they matter. In
fact, the book comes alive and so do the classroom, the
students and the teacher.’ n
Aebersold, J A and Field, M L From Reader to Reading Teacher:
Issues and Strategies for Second Language Classrooms CUP 1997
Barber, D and Foord, D From English Teacher to Learner Coach The
Round 2014.
Deller, S Lessons from the Learner Longman 1990
Meddings, L and Thornbury, S Teaching Unplugged Delta Publishing
2013
Jamie Clayton works in Saigon at RMIT
Vietnam, where he plans, teaches, examines,
marks, reads, writes ... and tries to help his
students improve their English and enjoy the
language.
Jamie.clayton@rmit.edu.vn
www.etprofessional.com

Taming
Shakespeare
A
Stephanie s we neared the end of the academic year,
I found myself once again brushing up my
Hirschman
Shakespeare. It was time to demonstrate
rewards her to the teenagers on my year-long study
students with skills course just how far they’d come since
a confidence- they started at college. Shakespeare sounds like
something ‘proper’ and difficult – except that it’s really
boosting treat.
not that difficult, though it is certainly a proper area of
enquiry for all sorts of English students – students of
both language and literature, and both native and
non-native speakers. Every year, I come to realise more
and more what excellent material Shakespeare provides
for an EFL lesson – and this is particularly gratifying,
and also surprising, because the material that forms
the core of my lesson on Shakespeare is something I
wrote right at the beginning of my teaching career.
This year, I’ve also extended my repertoire to include a
resource I found on onestopenglish: ‘EAP
Shakespeare’, written by Dr Chris Lima.
In this article, I’m going to explain why the
input and output stages of these two Shakespeare-
themed lessons offer students such a rich challenge,
and what I’ve learnt as a teacher from using them
with my classes.
The resources
But first, a brief note about the resources. The lesson
I’ve been using for years is based on a version of
The Taming of the Shrew from the BBC’s ‘Animated
Shakespeare’ series. This is under 30 minutes long,
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LITERATURE
and has been cleverly abridged to include the main
plot points and Shakespeare’s original dialogue, so
during this input phase, the students can take in the
whole story and discuss their initial reactions within
one morning or afternoon session. The output phase
can carry on into the second lesson, and even be
extended, depending on interest. I use a worksheet
which I wrote myself to structure the students’
listening experience. This can be downloaded from
the ETp website at www.etprofessional.com/media/
32069/etp119_november2018_onlineresource_
hirschman_p11.pdf. It includes multiple-choice
comprehension questions about the main events
of the story. For example:
On the wedding day, Petruchio is
a) late and dressed normally.
b) on time and dressed ridiculously.
c) late and dressed ridiculously.
These lead naturally to further questions, which
reveal their significance, eg Why does Petruchio wear
ridiculous clothes to his wedding? What effect does
this have on Kate?
You can find the ‘EAP Shakespeare’ resources
by Dr Chris Lima at www.onestopenglish.com/esp/
eap/eap-shakespeare. In fact, there is a sequence of
five lessons, where the students:
1 watch a TED talk and do reading, writing
and language exercises, using some of
Shakespeare’s plays;
Issue 119 • November 2018 11
LITERATURE
2 practise summarising critical reviews;
3 practise close reading of a text;
4 learn about critical literary reading;
5 are introduced to academic writing.
Note that only the first lesson is free – that’s the one I used.
You have to subscribe to the website to access the others.
The input
The Taming of the Shrew is about dysfunctional relationships.
Therefore, it provides an ideal opportunity to pre-teach a range
of vocabulary items that students are genuinely interested in,
including: brother-in-law, step-brother, spouse, partner, spinster,
bachelor, spoilt brat, dutiful daughter, sugar daddy. I have rarely
seen my class so animated as when we were going through this
vocabulary, and they had suggestions and questions about
other related items, eg cougar. This lexical group also includes a
range of registers and connotations, which advanced students
relish exploring.
Although I also spend a little bit of time checking that
everyone knows who Shakespeare was, when he lived and why
he is famous, this seems like a very minor part of the
preparation we need. The vocabulary is much more important,
and this is apparent when I introduce the list of main
characters before we watch.
However, one salient point to elicit from the class before
viewing the play is that Shakespeare’s English is different from
modern English and that this can make it difficult to follow the
story. I reassure the students that this is true for native speakers
as well, and I point out that many people (like me!) will read a
summary of the story before they see a Shakespeare play, so
they can follow and appreciate it better.
In fact, as far as I’m concerned, the ‘foreign-ness’ of
Shakespeare’s English (in time, if not in space) is what makes
this experience so suitable and satisfying for EFL students. All
English, even modern English, is to some extent unintelligible
to our students. To achieve comprehension, they need to be
alert listeners, on the lookout for useful contextual clues which
will reveal more of the nuances of the plot to them.
12 Issue 119 • November 2018
Furthermore, they need to be engaged in a continuous dialogue
with themselves, as they formulate hypotheses about what is
happening in the play, and then see their guesses either proved
or disproved, modifying their ideas as needed.
Shakespeare provides students with an opportunity to
practise these crucial listening strategies explicitly. And even
better, Shakespeare puts the teacher in the same position as the
students, for once. I too have to work hard to recover meaning
from the dialogue, and thus I discover more about the
characters and their motivations each time I watch. This leads
to an atmosphere of genuine excitement in the class, as the
students and the teacher are negotiating meaning together.
Very high-level students will often be able to identify some
of the specific archaisms they’ve heard in the play, eg the use of
thee and thou instead of you. The ‘EAP Shakespeare’ resource
on onestopenglish includes exercises on some key early modern
English lexis, which helps the students to decode the meaning
of some troublesome false friends and other items. The lesson
also includes some information about David Crystal’s excellent
website www.shakespeareswords.com. This is free and fun, and
provides support and extension challenges to any student who
may want to see a Shakespeare play in English in the future,
either in London, locally, or as a film.
The output
After we have watched the play, and I have checked that we
have all understood the basic elements of the plot by means of
a series of discussion questions, the students are ready to get to
the productive phase of the lesson. There are a couple of
obvious activities that exploit this material.
The first is to ask the students to write a summary. This
works particularly well if the task refers back to the vocabulary
about relationships that the students started the lesson with,
requiring the use of a certain number of lexical items from the
list. Summarising is often cited as a requirement of English for
Academic Purposes, but it is, in fact, also a crucial skill in
everyday life – if the students are not to bore everyone they
know by reporting the minutiae of an event when they just
need to cover the main points.
The second is to get the students to rewrite part of the story. I
ask my students to work in groups of three and to choose and
rewrite one of three key scenes from The Taming of the Shrew in
modern English, eg Baptista explaining to his daughters, Bianca
and Kate, why Bianca can’t marry until Kate does, including both
daughters’ reactions. As the students will not have understood
enough of the dialogue to recall and reproduce it verbatim, they
have to rely on both their appreciation of the plot and on their ear
for the sort of informal and emotional language that would be
used by a modern family in this situation. (Never mind that a
modern British family wouldn’t prohibit a younger daughter from
marrying first! However, I’d be open to a student suggesting an
equivalent modern scenario.) The students have to script the
dialogue and, once I’ve checked it for ‘naturalness’, they also have
to block the scene (decide on the positions of the actors and their
movements) and perform it, so their pronunciation and intonation
must be ‘natural’ as well – I help them rehearse and offer feedback.
This is a challenge for all levels, and the whole class enjoy watching
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each other’s scenes. When some students assume a role, they reveal
an entirely unexpected side of their personality!
Dr Lima’s ‘EAP Shakespeare’ lesson also includes a suggestion
that the students follow some gap-fill exercises on the tricky lexis
of early English by rewriting some of the sentences in modern
English. Although these come from a number of different plays,
and therefore lack context, the students enjoy this task, and are
also able to speculate about the stories of these different plays,
based on the quotes. This is a useful and interesting extension.
In fact, some students may find these quotes to be ‘hooks’
for a particular play, and might go away and find out more for
themselves. As teachers, we often demand immediate results
from input, with the pressure to demonstrate that we have
‘made learning visible’, at least in observed lessons. But that’s
not always what learning is like; we know from our own
experiences as learners that some input lies dormant for days,
weeks, months or even years, before we are internally ready or
receive a stimulus to act on it. In my recent lesson, we talked a
lot about Othello, and I have a feeling that some of the students
have squirreled away what they discovered for some future
occasion. And now they also know how to find support on
David Crystal’s website, when that time comes.
If the students are interested, the sessions can be extended
to include a challenging listening based on a TED Talk by John
Bolton in the ‘EAP Shakespeare’ resources: ‘The Power of
Imagination – Lessons from Shakespeare’ (www.youtube.com/
watch?v=5vM_8E7vut4). Many of Dr Lima’s lessons seem to
relate to business contexts, but it is an excellent stimulus to ask
the students Why is this story relevant to us today? or What can
we, in the 21st century, learn from this story? John Bolton talks
about five famous plays, and we were also able to use these
questions to add another dimension to our discussion about
The Taming of the Shrew.
This brings me to an issue I have avoided thus far, namely the
problematic misogyny of The Taming of the Shrew. Is it possible
for us to learn anything from this story today? At first glance, this
play is, at best, uncomfortable viewing for modern audiences but,
in my opinion, this is actually a virtue in a teaching context. First
of all, the story is easy for students from all over the world to
understand: the enmity between siblings, a parent appearing to
favour one child over another, whether to marry for money or
love, and the physical nature of Kate and Petruchio’s relationship
(the ‘Animated Shakespeare’ does gloss over this somewhat) are
instantly relatable scenarios. Secondly, the misogynistic message
means that the students have plenty to react to, and this leads to
lively discussion about how attitudes to women have (or have not)
changed since the play was written. It is also possible to guide the
students to tease out some motivation for a character’s behaviour,
eg by examining how Kate changes during the story. Students
often conclude that Kate is deeply unhappy at the beginning, and
one possible interpretation is that her marriage to Petruchio offers
her a sense of security, which prompts a change in her outlook.
Students can be invited to speculate about the future of their
relationship, as well as the future for Bianca and her husband.
I have also posed the question of how the story would be different
if the genders of the main characters were reversed. In short, The
Taming of the Shrew can prompt a spectrum of responses and,
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LITERATURE
depending on their age, level and familiarity with literary
discourse, the students can take the lead to identify areas they’d
like to explore, and how deeply they’d like to consider these.
Different points of view
This brings me to a final point – this sort of lesson doesn’t
really have right or wrong answers, just different points of view.
Students feel free to present their own interpretations, and grow
by hearing other people’s. The teacher is in the same position as
the students, advocating one point of view among many, and is
not required to round up the session with ‘the right answer’. As
Dr Lima states in her teacher’s notes:
‘... there is no need to have whole-class feedback. If you do so,
the students will expect you to give the right answers for these
questions. Instead, let the students express themselves and share
ideas among their peers – this will boost their confidence and
independent thinking. However, you may want to tell them you
are open for questions if they wish to ask you anything.’
I often hate having to churn through a feedback session on
what the students have just discussed. It rarely results in any new
revelations, and just seems repetitive and mechanistic. In addition,
lessons without correct answers provide the students with a
realistic introduction to how further- and higher-education
students are often taught in the UK (after all, these lessons have
been framed as English for Academic Purposes), which may be
very different to what they have experienced in their own country.
t t t
My class thoroughly enjoyed the input, output and extension
sessions we spent on Shakespeare, and I’ll definitely repeat the
lessons in the future. Typically, after considering the relevance
of The Taming of the Shrew, my students totally refused to
engage with any of the other plays that John Bolton talks about
in the ‘EAP Shakespeare’ lesson listening but, instead, fixed
their collective attention on Macbeth. Someone mentioned
there were witches, and after that there was no turning back.
They asked to see the ‘Animated Shakespeare’ version, so I
obliged, with great interest, as I had just as much to learn about
that play as they did. In fact, some of the class came in late to
this lesson because they had an exam elsewhere in the college
that afternoon. However, even coming in late and seeing just
half of Macbeth furnished them with enough information to
launch into a heated discussion about the relevance of the play
today. The whole class agreed on the lesson to be learnt: a pithy
Don’t be greedy! Sounds good to me – words to live by. I can’t
wait until next year, to see what my new class makes of it all. n
Stephanie Hirschman teaches teens and
adults at all levels on the International
Programme at East Sussex College Group,
Lewes, UK, and coordinates the summer
school and various other special
programmes, including teacher training. She
has also worked as a Development Advisor,
providing teaching support to colleagues
across a range of subjects.
stephanie.hirschman@gmail.com
Issue 119 • November 2018 13
IN THE CLASSROOM
Edinburgh Festival Fringe posters. Edinburgh, UK - August 11, 2013
Credit: jmimages, gettyimages.co.uk.

Fringe
benefits
Charlie Ellis finds inspiration for his teaching at a famous arts festival.

M
ost of those who work in ELT will at
some point start to suffer from a
terrible affliction – what I’ve come to
term ‘TEFL-eye’. You will know that
you’ve contracted it when you find
yourself looking at a picture or diagram in a
magazine and thinking ‘Oh, that would be great for a
lesson on comparatives’ or, when watching a TV
panel show, ‘I reckon that might work with my
upper-intermediate evening class’.
For anyone suffering from TEFL-eye, the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe provides an overload of
images, sounds and words; your senses accosted on
every street, every close (the name given to the
narrow alleyways which crisscross the labyrinthine
Old Town) and in every dark and dingy venue.
Whilst watching over 50 performances at the 2017
Fringe, I regularly found myself wondering: Could
I use that in class? Can this be ‘TEFL-ised’?
The problem with language
The Edinburgh Fringe is the largest arts festival in
the world. First begun as an offshoot of the
Edinburgh International Festival, it has come to
swamp the main festival in size and scope: in 2017,
there were 3,873 shows in the Fringe. In recent
decades, comedy has come to dominate the Fringe,
to the chagrin of some, such as Ben Venables, who
would rather see a wider range of art forms
represented. The main problem with using the
Fringe as a language teaching tool is this comedy
dominance, especially as British humour is often
language-based. The fact that one Fringe performer
(Hari Sriskantha) had to explain a pun (‘How do
you make someone like you? Invent a cloning
machine’) using a laminated A3 sheet is indicative of
the issues involved.
A comedian such as Christian Schulte-Loh (a
German), who is able to perform sophisticated comedy
in a second language, might seem to undermine this
argument, but he, surely, is a brilliant exception
(perhaps the only way – apart from his accent – that he
revealed himself to be a non-native speaker was that
he correctly observed the traditional distinction
between less and fewer!). Most learners of English
(below C1 level) would find most Fringe shows very
difficult to follow. The students I was teaching during
the festival period (mainly Italians and Spaniards in
the A2–B2 range) were nonplussed by most of the
shows they attended. It was the language which was
the key issue. So, a festival which prides itself on its
international nature isn’t really accessible to the vast
majority of non-native speakers. There is yet no
comedy equivalent of film subtitles or opera surtitles.
The Fringe website (edfringe.com) does allow
Fringe-goers to find shows which are ‘accessible’ to
‘non-English speakers’. In 2017, 881 shows were
classified in this way, though most of these were
music, dance, physical theatre or magic. Magic

14 Issue 119 • November 2018 www.etprofessional.com


shows ought to be ideal but, again, the language barrier can
arise. I recall one young magician getting frustrated with an
Italian audience member who failed to understand what he
meant by please choose a suit (Italian playing cards being very
different from those used in the UK). In retrospect, perhaps I
should have intervened (the phrase you need is ‘sorry, but what
does “suit” mean?’).
So, if the Fringe, and similar cultural festivals, are difficult to
use for language teaching in a direct sense, what can teachers learn
from the performers? I believe that teachers attending such a
festival will be able to collect some lesson ideas but, more
fundamentally, will learn more about rapport-building and the
need for a clear performance/lesson focus.
Making a good start
At the 2017 Fringe, in most cases, it was clear from the first few
seconds whether a show was going to be worthwhile. The best
performers seemed capable of creating a sense of ease and
rapport with their opening words or gestures. The comedian
Markus Birdman would be a case in point – it was soon
apparent that he was an adept performer, unflustered by
late-comers and ‘noises off’. In a similar way, when you observe
experienced teachers, it’s the calmness they exude and the way
this settles the class that is striking.
In contrast, some performers deliberately sought to create
a sense of unease and mystery. But, again, the performer
seemed in command. Phil Nicol’s frantic guitar playing
helped create an urgent, energised mood which propelled
his performance forward.
While teachers might well employ music at the beginning of
their lessons, they might not get away with Andrew O’Neil’s
form of introduction: sweeping through a pitch-black room,
stripped to the waist, flaming incense ball in tow! It brought to
mind a favourite lesson of mine (a dream interpretation
activity, involving turning off all the lights and closing the
blinds in the classroom) which initially freaks out some
students but fully engages most classes.
Rapport is not enough
While rapport is a necessary condition for a good lesson or
performance, it’s not sufficient. Despite a boiling hot room,
Marc Warren created a convivial atmosphere, but then he ran
short of good material – and his performance petered out.
Kane Brown produced an electronic performance the first time
I saw him, but at a second viewing the rather facile nature of
some of his material scuppered him. In both cases, their
abilities as performers couldn’t mask the limitations of their
material. Several performances resembled an able teacher
‘busking’ a lesson.
In contrast, John Robins’s award-winning show had a large
degree of thematic unity: in particular, the final segment (his
painful break-up and subsequent downward-spiral portrayed as
a building society advert) which brought together the themes of
his show and gave it a powerful conclusion. Rob Auton takes the
idea of thematic unity to its logical conclusion by focusing on a
different theme each year (‘hair’ was his theme in 2017 and he
had not cut his hair or shaved since the previous August!). This
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IN THE CLASSROOM
gives him a single topic around which he can weave his
eccentrically wonderful observations and poems.
The lack of a coherent theme was what hamstrung many of
the improvised performances (or perhaps the very idea of a
wholly-improvised performance). The ‘Spontaneous Sherlock’
show that I saw was well performed, but its lack of any
narrative arc meant it was ultimately unsatisfying. There are
parallels here with teaching: the best lessons have a clear focus
running through them, leading to a satisfying conclusion, with
both students and teachers aware of why they have done what
they have just done.
Dealing with difficulties
Having a clear central theme also helped the performers to
respond naturally to the ‘expected’ unexpected (the late
arrivals, the drunk audience members) rather than allowing it
to derail them. The best performers are not only unflustered,
but are capable of integrating these incidents into their
performance. Having seen one or two performers more than
once, it’s clear to me that most have a pre-prepared ‘arsenal’ of
quips, which they can bring out when the right moment arises.
In a similar way, most teachers will have explanations and
examples up their sleeves, ready to be deployed at the
appropriate moment.
That teaching reproduces much of the performance anxiety
faced by those appearing on stage became apparent to me
when I witnessed several performers at one venue (Cabaret
Voltaire) sighing with relief and frustration when they came off
stage. Theirs was a sigh familiar to any teacher who has had to
grapple with a difficult class. The sense of always having to be
on guard is, perhaps, what makes being on stage as a solo
performer and teaching both so draining.
By the final week, a number of the performers were
flagging and suffering from ‘Fringe flu’ – caused by a
combination of exhaustion and spending several hours a day
in a dank basement. The parallels with an ELT summer school
barely need to be drawn! Nor do they, between a teacher and
a performer who starts their performance with a decent-sized
audience but ends with four … one of whom has dozed off
(in this case, me!). There is little doubt that a cultural event
such as the Edinburgh Festival provides much that is familiar
to the teacher, but also offers a wealth of ideas and inspiration.
I’d strongly recommend that any teacher who attends a cultural
festival does so with a TEFL-eye.
Add a Fringe flavour to your lessons
Here are some ideas that I took away from the Edinburgh
Fringe that you might like to use.
Big, bigger, biggest
This is good for practising extreme adjectives and improving
intonation.
A number of the games used by the excellent improvisation
troupe ‘Men with Coconuts’ are transferable to the classroom.
One example is ‘big, bigger, biggest’, where a short improvised
scene, eg a man with a sore leg goes up to a hotel reception
desk to complain about a cat in his room, is exaggerated twice
Issue 119 • November 2018 15
IN THE CLASSROOM

Emotions warmer
This is an activity for a lesson on different emotions
and intonation.
In his performance, Rob Auton held up large
pieces of card with different emotions
(disappointment, expectation, fear, etc) and got the
audience to vocalise each emotion. This helped
create a friendly, unthreatening form of audience
participation, and its ‘homemade’ style really
endeared him to the crowd. This warmer could be
Edinburgh Fringe Street Performer. Edinburgh, Scotland, UK - August 3, 2013

used to engage a class reticent about contributing,

or reluctant to speak in front of other students.
Text projection
This is an activity for teaching text language and
storytelling.
Bilal Zafar used mobile phone text dialogues to
great comic effect. He revealed their contents
message by message (using a projector). Such a
technique would provide the ELT teacher with a
visually arresting way to teach the language used in
Credit: georgeclerk, gettyimages.co.uk.

texts and online conversations, as well as to teach

question forms, etc. It might also offer a more
modern way to tell stories – with the story unfolding
gradually in front of the students (perhaps as a
result of their input). Having the conversation
projected onto a screen or board would help create a
single focus in the classroom. The ‘TextingStory
Chat Story Maker’ app (available for both Android
and Apple phones) would be ideal for this. n

t t t

… so that, by the third version, it’s a man whose

entire leg has been bitten off by a savage tiger. A I would like to thank Tom Nelson (ESC Scotland) for
teacher could model the initial dialogue (with a introducing me to the PBH Free Fringe and Kat
volunteer) before getting the students to create their Lucas (TLI, Edinburgh) for accompanying me to
own dialogues (in pairs) which they subsequently many of these shows – often in the dingiest of
exaggerate and then perform. venues. I would also like to thank my late father,
Richard Ellis, for his invaluable comments on an
Show selection
earlier version of this article.
This could be part of a lesson on tastes and interests
(‘What are you into?’) and looking at different types
of cultural performance. Venables, B ‘How comedy captured the Edinburgh
Fringe’ The Skinny 143 2017
Pick up a number of flyers or leaflets from a
cultural festival (from a range of shows). Get your
students to select a show they think a nominated Charlie Ellis is based in
classmate would like – and ask them to justify their Edinburgh and works at Alba
choice, eg ‘You’re into dance so I thought you might English School, where he is
currently doing the Trinity
fancy ...’. The student for whom the show is selected Diploma in TESOL. He started
must respond, using language such as ‘What were working in ELT about five years
you thinking!’, ‘To be honest, I’ve never been a fan of ago, following a period in
stand-up’ or ‘Yeah, that’s right up my street’. academia, studying British
politics. He is a keen table
Obviously, the best time to do this would be tennis player and coaches at
immediately prior to or during the Fringe, but it Murrayfield Table Tennis Club.
could be done with other festivals. (I am grateful to
charliejellis@gmail.com
Tom Nelson for this idea.)

16 Issue 119 • November 2018 www.etprofessional.com


Eight types of
presentation
Ben Dobbs explains the different types of presentations that teachers and students may need to know.
O
ne of the great things
about using presentations
as classroom tasks is their
versatility: in terms of when
and where they can be used,
their adaptability and the potential for
practice, assessment or as a useful
indicator of needs or level. Presentations
can be adjusted for the presenter and the
audience. For all courses – from general
English to business communication, EAP,
ESP and ESAP – giving a presentation is
a useful and challenging task, providing
benefits for trainers and trainees, students
and teachers. In business English,
presenting is – along with negotiating,
telephoning, writing, socialising and
meetings – one of the traditional ‘big six’
functions that form the mainstay of
typical task-based training courses. On
some general and academic courses,
summary presentations will be used as a
conclusion to a course, and may form all
or part of the final assessment. On EAP
and ESAP courses, presentations may be
individual or collaborative analyses of
case studies, or they may act as the
medium for the delivery of a report.
Flexibility
Presentations can be delivered alone, in
pairs or in teams, and may or may not
be subject to formal assessment and
examination. Whatever the exact focus
or type, any practice in presenting
should be preceded by preparation,
which may include lexical input, and so
on. The practice will be followed by
reflection on behalf of the presenter,
group peer feedback and trainer
feedback. On some courses, a further
reflective assignment may be given as
part of a personal development plan,
focusing on teamwork, communication,
collaboration, and so on.
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BUSINESS ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL
Feedback
Audience engagement techniques
Feedback provided on a presentation can and ideas
be broad or specific but should be ■■  elling stories with a moral or lesson,
T
beneficial, justified and relevant for future or simply to entertain or illustrate
development, in order that the next time a ■■ Rhetorical questions
trainee delivers a presentation, there has
■■ Sharing anecdotes
been some advancement and improvement
■■ Directing questions at people, or
in whatever areas it is required in. Having
directing questions to the audience
trainees design their own feedback form
in general
works well. In terms of feedback, it is also
■■ Sharing interesting facts or data
worth highlighting the difference between
feedback on the presenter (the person) and
■■ Using examples to support points
the presentation (the material or the event). made
■■ Acknowledging the work of the
Focus audience, or the issues and
While trainers will naturally focus on pressures they face
the knowledge, skills and mindset needed ■■ Being controversial, or making
for the presentation itself, it may also statements to stir reactions or debate
be beneficial for some classes to raise ■■ Telling a joke (that works and is
awareness of what an effective audience, not culturally appropriate and travels well!)
only an effective presenter or presentation, ■■ Quoting someone
can be, in terms of focus, attentive listening, ■■ General physical actions and
eye contact and questioning, amongst other movement
points. This ensures a more conducive and ■■ Tone of voice and enthusiasm
positive environment for a presentation and ■■ Giving a list
for the presenter. ■■ Setting a puzzle
A presentation is an interpersonal
■■ Using props
event; it may additionally involve ■■ Conducting a show-of-hands poll
intercultural dimensions in, for example,
style, level of directness, use of humour
■■ Use of extreme adjectives and
interesting language
and audience interactions and behaviour, ■■ Dress, appearance and credibility
such as if the audience are expected to
listen actively and engage with questions Note: these should not be overused,
or simply to listen silently. used repeatedly or used at all if not
suitable for the context, audience,
Some ideas for engaging with an
expectations or culture.
audience are presented in the box opposite.
Presentation types Examples
Let us take a look at eight types of
presentation (in no particular order): A business English student giving a
presentation about their company;
1 Standard presentation pre-sessional EAP students presenting
Description analysis of a case study; a general English
An interactive talk on a subject, student presenting something they have
usually with slides. enthusiasm for or a piece of project work.
Issue 119 • November 2018 17
BUSINESS ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL
Uses in training
The most general presentation type, this can be used with various
types of class and for differing purposes at differing language
levels. Standard presentations follow a fairly typical structure
– moving from greetings and introductions to the body of the
presentation, followed by the answering (or avoiding) of questions
– which can be adapted for style, audience and purpose.
Advice for classroom use
This type of presentation is likely to be used in numerous contexts,
on various course types and with students at different levels.
It must be kept in mind that, as with some of the other
forms of presentation, language skills are not enough to make
a presenter or presentation effective. Alongside lexis for
presenting, lessons should include time devoted to slide
design, the vocal features of presenting, nonverbal and visual
features (body language, stance, eye contact, movement),
structure, timing, how to engage an audience, and answering
and avoiding questions.
2 ‘Representing’ presentation
Description
A talk in which an individual or group acts as the ‘face’ of an
organisation, company, team or department and its brand,
including its values, benefits and purpose.
Examples
Board members representing the company’s management,
communicating with shareholders; team leaders representing
their team, talking to senior managers; legal professionals
representing clients, delivering a problem–solution report.
Uses in training
This type of presentation develops the linguistic and the
functional but also, in part, the leadership skills of the person
presenting and their ability to work in a team. The result of this
is that this kind of presentation can advance professional and
more general life skills. Presenting yourself (in whatever way the
trainer sets) can also serve as a group dynamic task, icebreaker
or way to build trust between group members.
Advice for classroom use
The difference between this type of presentation and a standard
presentation may not be immediately obvious. Both of these
presentations require the same preparation and skills, with only
the ultimate aim being different: the aim of a representing
presentation being to explain what actions have been taken or
what you and others you work with have accomplished. This
type of presentation also requires strong interpersonal skills,
especially in building trust with an audience, as well as a
demonstration of enthusiasm for a brand or project.
3 Speech
Description
A funny or serious talk with no visual support.
Examples
A political leader giving a speech to party members; a business
leader speaking at a social event.
Uses in training
18 Issue 119 • November 2018
Making a speech requires speaking with limited or no prompts,
and a great deal of committing to memory. Speeches are especially
relevant to students who are politically engaged, party members or
leaders, or active in an organisation such as a trade union.
Speech making can also be done with other classes, to
develop confidence, fluency and control of language, in terms of
rhetoric or figurative language use.
Advice for classroom use
Speeches may or may not require a great deal of planning and
practice to deliver well. How much preparation is needed will
depend very much on the individual student. This has an
impact on task and classroom management. While some
students can speak eloquently and confidently with little or no
planning, there will be others who either cannot or do not feel
that they could do so confidently.
4 Pecha kucha
Description
A presentation accompanied by 20 slides, set to appear for 20
seconds each (giving a total for the whole presentation of six
minutes 40 seconds). The slides can’t have any words, only images.
The name apparently relates to the Japanese term for ‘chit chat’.
Examples
Specific pecha kucha events with numerous speakers.
Uses in training
This is a highly dynamic form of presentation, which can also
reduce the dryness of technical presentations, and assist with
developing a presenter’s conciseness. This presentation type is a
great confidence-builder, while also being engaging and fun. It
can also greatly help in developing presenters’ time
management skills and reducing the dependency on slides of
those who tend to read from their slides.
This type of presentation is also useful for developing the
presentation skills of a presenter who may be considered ‘dull’
when presenting, or who may be too descriptive, mechanical
or overly technical.
Advice for classroom use
Ensure that this type of presentation has a narrative and that
there is development of a unified theme throughout the
presentation, rather than each slide resulting in a bland
description of an image, repeated throughout.
Despite being short in length, this presentation may take a
while to prepare. Trainers may or may not wish to give practice
time. Inability to control the timing of the slide changes can
cause anxiety, even panic, so allowing practice time is kind.
However, the whole point is to be able to present under time
pressure, so too much practice may defeat the object.
5 Virtual presentation
Description
A presentation given online at a distance to an audience that is
dispersed by location (and perhaps time zones), but connected
by technological means.
Examples
Members of a virtual team presenting their results or reporting.
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Uses in training
While working in a virtual team requires different skills and a
different way of thinking as compared to working in a face-to-
face team, virtual presentations require similar skills to other
presentation forms. The seeming lack, or perhaps different
nature, of interactivity during a presentation, as well as the use
of the technological platform on which the presentation is
conducted, can be additional areas to focus on.
Advice for classroom use
This type of presentation requires the use of technology, which
brings its own problems and opportunities, so being prepared is
imperative. There are several free platforms that can be used.
As virtual presentations in real life are often international
(across national borders and time zones), this can also be a
good opportunity to examine intercultural communication (in
areas such as directness, use of titles, level of formality, use of
facts and feelings, and so on). Additionally, classes may
consider the interpersonal, team and leadership skills needed
for working effectively in virtual teams.
6 Pitch
Description
A very short talk with the aim of selling/promoting something,
or influencing, persuading or convincing an audience to
purchase, buy into or invest in an idea or project. A pitch can
also serve to establish a trusting long-term working relationship,
as in the classic ‘elevator pitch’ task (making a pitch in the very
short time it would take to share an elevator ride with someone).
Examples
An entrepreneur promoting their idea to an investor; someone
involved in marketing or sales, promoting a product or service; a
manager trying to ‘sell’ an unpopular policy or change.
Uses in training
These types of presentation can be fun (such as selling a
useless item) or more serious (selling a new investment idea),
depending on the aim. There are numerous video case studies
available from TV programmes, for evaluation or other
exploitation as learning materials.
Advice for classroom use
Pitching requires interpersonal as well as linguistic skills,
enthusiasm and knowledge of the idea, product or service being
pitched. These types of presentation in the training room may be
light-hearted or may have a more serious focus.
7 Briefing
Description
A talk giving instructions and describing goals and objectives,
and what needs doing, by whom and within what time frame.
Examples
A supervisor, manager or team leader giving instructions to their
team; a military briefing.
Uses in training
Participants in leadership or managerial positions on numerous
types of courses will need to give briefings. These are important in
professional and business English training and numerous forms of
ESP (English for Specific Purposes) such as military English.
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BUSINESS ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL
Advice for classroom use
A focus on clarity and sequencing, as well as suitable language,
will be useful. Language should be arranged and chosen
carefully, as this type of presentation not only needs to grab
attention and interest but also bring about action, as those
attending the briefing will set about completing the tasks the
briefing relates to.
Briefings relate closely to goals and objectives which must
be set and monitored, as well as decision-making by leaders. It
will also be necessary to describe actions and what success and
failure look like, what pitfalls and obstacles exist, and what can
be done if things do not go according to plan.
8 Lecture
Description
Usually delivered at university, a longer talk on an academic
subject – most often part of a larger programme, such as a
module of a degree course.
Examples
A university academic lecturing on their subject as part of a
university course; a trainer lecturing at an academy (perhaps
military, police or corporate, amongst others).
Uses in training
Most often, it is going to be those involved in tertiary education
who need to lecture in English. This will be a key component in
EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction).
Advice for classroom use
Input on language and style may also be necessary, in order
that a person delivering a lecture meets the expectations or
follows the expected practices of the sector (for example,
academic language for university lecturers). However, the focus
of teaching should be on language and skills for lecturing,
rather than language only.
t t t
What, then, can we conclude? Whatever type of course,
whoever the trainees are and whatever their objectives may be,
the type of presentation we train, and the exact focus, need to
be specific to the type of course and the needs of the course
participants. Whatever the exact type of presentation, trainer
input will require more than just a collection of set phrases for
different stages; it will also require skills specific to the
presentation and the ultimate requirements of the trainees. n
Ben Dobbs is an independent international
communication and leadership trainer who
specialises in intensive in-company training.
He has recently delivered training in Saudi
Arabia, the UAE, Russia, Oman and China.
Ben is also an accredited Cert IBET trainer.
ben@bd-comms.eu.
Issue 119 • November 2018 19
 3
EXAMS AND ASSESSMENT

IELTS
without
tears
Graham Perry offers some fun ideas for preparing
students for the Academic IELTS exam.

I
n this issue, we’re going back to Task 1 writing.
Although most of the time, candidates in the
IELTS exam will be asked to write a description of
a graph, this is not the only type of diagram which
can appear in Task 1. Another possibility is that
the students will be presented with a series of
pictures showing a process of some kind. This could
be anything from the process of making chocolate to
the carbon cycle. Although this is nowhere near as
common as a graph question, the students still need
to be prepared, just in case. So here are some
activities which I use to focus on this type of
question and the important elements of structure,
signpost language and the use of the passive, in
order to make these tasks a little more engaging.
1 Mixed dictation
This activity makes a great introduction to the
structural and linguistic features of processes.
■■  efore the lesson, prepare descriptions of two
B an omelette:
or three short processes – I use making a cup
of tea, putting the washing machine on, and
how milk is produced.
■■  ell the class that you are going to do three
T You beat the mixture.
dictations simultaneously.
■■ Give them just the titles for each process.
■■  hen dictate lines from the different processes
T You break the egg into a bowl.
randomly (but keep the order within each
process correct).
■■  he students’ task is to write the correct lines
T
under the correct titles.
■■  ollow up by looking at such aspects as the
F
use of the passive, linkers, etc.
Variations for different levels
For lower levels, use only two processes.
For higher levels, you could also dictate the lines out
of order and ask the students not only to decide
which process each sentence belongs to, but also
the order that the lines should appear in.
2 Jigsaw dictation
I use this as a way to encourage the students to start
using such linguistic features as passives, or the
sequencing linkers which they will need for this type
of writing.
For this activity, you will need a description of a
process which contains around 12 different stages. I
use a description of how to make an omelette.
Although this process would probably never appear in
the IELTS exam, it is one that most people should be
familiar with – and this is important during stage 4 of
the activity.
Prepare two worksheets – one for Student A and
one for Student B. On each worksheet, put six stages
from your chosen process, but in the wrong order.
Here are examples of how this might work for making
Student A
You take a frying pan out of the cupboard.
Turn the cooker on.
Place the finished omelette on a plate.
Take an egg from the fridge.
Student B
You add oil to the frying pan.
You add some salt and pepper.
Wait until the omelette is a golden brown colour.
Pour a little milk into the bowl.
You beat the mixture again.
 se a spatula to fold the edges of the
U
omelette into the middle as it cooks.

20 Issue 119 • November 2018 www.etprofessional.com


■■  ut the students into pairs, Student A and Student B. Give
P not only do they have to write what they hear, they also have
out the worksheets, and ask the students to dictate the
different stages to each other.
■■  nce they have finished, ask them to put the 12 stages into
O time limit to complete the dictation. The students run to the
the correct order – first individually, and then by comparing
with their partner.
■■  nce the answers have been checked (allow for the fact
O ■■
that different variations are possible), ask the students why
this would not make a good piece of IELTS writing. Focus
on the informal elements (mixture of imperatives and use of
you, etc) and elicit which elements from a good IELTS
answer are missing (passives, linkers, etc).
■■  sk the students to rewrite the omelette process, using the
A
more formal features that you have focused on.
Variations for different levels
For lower levels, place the lines to be dictated in order, or add in
sequencing expressions (eg The first stage is …) to help the
ordering process.
For higher levels, follow the above process, but also gap each
sentence being dictated (eg Use a spatula to ………. the edges of
the omelette into the middle as it cooks) to add more challenge.
3 Passive or not?
I have found that one of the most difficult elements of this type of
writing for my students is knowing when to use passives (usually in
the artificial stages of a process) and when not to (usually in the
natural stage of a process). Often the process being described will
contain a combination of both (eg the carbon cycle: CO2 is
produced by factories (artificial); plants absorb CO2 (natural).
■■ Put the students into teams.
■■  how them some prompts, either on PowerPoint or on a
S
sheet of scrap paper. Examples of prompts might be:
chocolate – make – cocoa beans; tadpoles – grow – legs.
■■  he teams race to decide whether the expanded sentences
T
should be passive or not, and expand the sentence
accordingly.
■■ The first team to write the sentence correctly wins a point.
Variations for different levels
For lower levels: The passive can be hard enough by itself for
lower levels, so just racing to transform sentences into simple
passives might be an option.
4 Passives running dictation
This is similar to the above activity but, here, you can work with
an actual IELTS question, which would later allow you to focus
again on the structure and other important features.
■■  ind a model answer to an IELTS question that requires the
F
students to describe a process (there are plenty of
examples online or in coursebooks). Select a section of the
text which contains a number of passives and change
these sentences so that they are now active.
■■  ut the students into pairs. Tell them they are going to do a
P
running dictation, and ask them to choose who will start off
as the dictator and who will be the writer. Tell the writers that
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EXAMS AND ASSESSMENT
to transform the sentences into the passive, where possible.
■■  lace the text on the board and explain that there will be a
P
board to read the text and then run back to dictate it to their
partners. Half way through, ask the students to change roles.
 hen they have finished, compare the students’ versions
W
to the original text with the passives.
Variations for different levels
For lower levels, use shorter sections of the text, or add prompts
to certain parts of the text to let the students know which parts
need changing.
For higher levels, you could also remove any linking
expressions from the text and, as a post-dictation activity, ask
them to work out what linkers they think are missing, and where
they should go.
5 Missing vowels race
This is really to focus on the type of linking expressions which the
students will need when they are sequencing the different
elements of processes.
■■  repare a number of sentences containing useful linking
P
expressions. For example:
The first stage is to select the relevant materials.
Subsequently, the material is dyed.
■■  emove the vowels from the sentences. So the examples
R
above would appear as follows:
Th / frst / stg / s / t / slct / th / rlvnt / mtrls
Sbsqntly / th / mtrl / s/ dyd
■■ Put the class into teams.
■■  isplay the sentences, either on PowerPoint or large pieces
D
of paper, and get the teams to race to complete them, by
adding the vowels back in.
■■ The first team to complete a sentence wins a point.
■■  nce the activity is over, focus on the useful language and
O
practise using it when writing about another process.
Variations for different levels
For lower levels, you may want to remove only certain vowels,
or just remove the vowels from every second word.
t t t
Once again, I hope that you find these activities useful for
your students. Please send me any feedback if you can think
of any other useful variations on the activities described. n
Graham Perry is from Brighton, UK, and
started teaching in 1991. Since then, he has
worked in private schools in Spain and the
UK, teacher training and, for the last 20
years, working with international students in
the further education sector.
grahamperry99@yahoo.co.uk
Issue 119 • November 2018 21
LANGUAGE
Defo take
a selfie
with that
helibike
Paul Bress looks at the way language changes.
M
ost us are aware of the fact that language
changes. If language fails to change (perhaps as a
result of political decision-making), it will no
longer meet the needs of its users. That’s why
Latin and Ancient Greek are no longer used for
everyday interaction. English, by contrast, has constantly
evolved and is, despite the growth in the popularity of Chinese,
still the most learnt foreign language.
Changing times, changing words
What causes vocabulary to change? Mainly, it is changes in
society and/or technology that trigger this. There are many words
that trip off the tongue today which would have sounded like
nonsense just 20 years ago. These include app, satnav, download
and selfie, words which reflect our need to find and access
information independently, to navigate our way through crowded
streets and to show other people what we’re doing with our lives.
Of course, we don’t start using these words as soon as they
first enter someone’s imagination. Some clever person sees the
need for a device; that device is given a name and eventually
mass-produced; then it becomes part of our lives. Only then do
we finally find ourselves accepting words like these as part of
common currency.
But what about grammar? Does that change, as well as
vocabulary? Grammar does, indeed, change, but not with the
same speed as vocabulary. English used to be a much more
inflected language, but gradually inflexions have disappeared.
(And, to compensate, the word order has become much less
flexible – for example the subject almost always comes before
the verb and the object, as in The boy loves the girl.) Some
inflexions that remain are the s at the end of third-person
present simple verbs and plural endings (usually also an s).
One inflexion that has disappeared is est, as in thou goest (you go).
Right now, language seems to be changing primarily as a
result of texting on mobile phones. Do you recognise either of
these new words – defo and soz?
If you don’t, defo means definitely and soz means sorry.
Imagine that the word defo becomes used more and more, and
outside the realm of text messaging. After a while, it’s quite
22 Issue 119 • November 2018
possible that people will start to feel uncomfortable using words
like certainly and probably. Why? Because they’ve got used to
the defo abbreviation. They might even start saying certo and
probo. The new grammatical rule could be:
■■
■■
With each adverb ending in ly, keep just the first syllable.
Now add an o at the end of that syllable.
Does that sound ridiculous? In my opinion, this is consistent
with how language changes.
If the above is true, the word soz might herald another
change. Would all words ending in orry end in oz instead?
Would lorry become loz and worry become woz? If this doesn’t
happen, this might be because sorry, lorry and worry all belong
to different word classes. The similarity in spelling might not be
enough to drive the change forward.
Language change in class
How can you get your students to be aware of language
change? Firstly, you can simply ask them what words and
phrases commonly used today weren’t used 30 years ago (and
vice versa). Secondly, you can put them in groups and ask them
to invent five words (nouns or verbs) that are not in use now
but might be in the future. Also, you can ask them to predict
some changes in the future grammar of English. When they
share their ideas with the whole class, encourage a lively debate.
You could then ask each group to compose sentences with their
new vocabulary and grammar. For example:
Every morning he go to work on his helibike.
(Note: the es at the end of goes has disappeared, and helibike
is a new vehicle, not yet invented.)
I turn 18 next month and I’ll get my UB at last.
(UB = Universal Benefit: money provided by the state to
compensate for the fact that there are no available jobs in society.)
t t t
I hope the above doesn’t sound too fanciful – or even a complete
waste of time. Learning a foreign language is a dynamic
experience, and students have to keep on challenging themselves.
One way to do that is to embrace language change. When
students are watching a TV programme or browsing the net, they
can try to develop an awareness of how words are constantly
changing. They can make a written record of such changes. In
addition, attending English language courses – either in their
own countries or in an English-speaking country – will help
them to keep abreast of any recent language changes. n
Paul Bress lives in Herne Bay, UK, where he
teaches English to overseas students, writes
novels and paints. His novel The Crisp Packet
is published by The Conrad Press and you
can see his paintings at artfinder.com.
paulbress@talktalk.net
www.etprofessional.com

Child’s play!
Andrew Griffiths offers a framework to explain games and game-like activities to children.
G
ames and game-like activities offer prime learning
opportunities in English lessons. However, in my
experience, many young learners find it difficult to
follow explanations about how to play a game when
the explanation is given only in English, as their
language comprehension is often low compared to adult learners.
This article will outline a framework to explain almost any
game or game-like activity in English in a way that is
comprehensible even to young learners.
The framework: ‘Aim, How, But’
This framework responds to the basic purpose of a game or
competitive activity: to win. Therefore, in a game, all players –
even those who are non-competitive – will act in a manner
conducive to them winning rather than losing. For example,
even a casual game of football doesn’t result in players trying
to score own goals.
The root of winning any game is the fulfilment of an aim. For
example, the aim of football is to score more goals than the other
team. As such, any explanation of a game needs to answer these
questions:
1 What is the aim of this game or activity?
2 How do I achieve this aim?
3 What will stop me from achieving this aim?
The answers to these questions form the backbone of the
framework.
The key to using the framework is to use it consistently from
lesson to lesson, with the same structure and language each
time. The reason is simple: Other parts of English lessons often
have a consistent routine and language – for example, most
teachers carry out class greetings or controlled drills with a
similar routine, using consistent language such as Let’s start and
Repeat with me. This consistency allows young learners to follow
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TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS
those parts of the lesson more easily. Instructions for games,
however, do not normally have this uniformity: their structure and
language often change according to the nature of the game.
Games can sometimes require complex explanations, many of
which can ‘fly over the heads’ of young learners.
The framework remedies this by importing the consistency
of other parts of the lesson into the giving of instructions for
games. The framework directs us to explain games in a familiar
way, using familiar language, every time. This leads to more
understanding, as the more consistent things are, the more
easily learners can follow. Consistency on all levels – from
frequency of usage to framework structure to language – is thus
the foundation of the framework.
Aim
The ‘Aim’ section explains the ‘destination’ of any game or
game-like activity. Imagine yourself as a young learner getting
ready for a game; your first thoughts will be along the lines of
What do I have to do? Win cards from someone else? Finish
before anyone else in my group? These questions always lead
back to the aim; therefore we begin our explanation by
addressing them first.
We should note the distinction between learner aims and
teacher aims. Teachers generally only care about whether the
learners get enough language practice as a result of playing,
rather than who wins or loses. Winning, however, is paramount
for the learners (especially young learners, as any teacher who
has taught them can easily attest), and so, when planning their
explanations, the teacher must think from their perspectives.
We can explain the aim in a simple sentence, such as this one
for Monopoly, a game which can be simplified for English language
classroom use: The aim is to take all your friends’ money.
Aims should be repeated multiple times to enable better
learner understanding. The use of gesture and emotional
Issue 119 • November 2018 23
TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS
expression can also be useful for young learners, as well as
finishing with an instruction-checking question (ICQ), to highlight
the key point of the game or activity. For example:
Teacher: The aim is to take (money-grabbing gesture) your
friends’ money. Take your friends’ money.
Take your friends’ – what?
Learners: Money!
This section should be signposted with a specific sentence
(beginning, for example, The aim is …) that is repeated from class
to class for all games. Consistent signposting is a critical element
of creating predictability and routine within the framework, and
should be used in each section.
Beginning with the aim, and using similar sentences and
methods, creates a consistency in the explanation: the learners
begin to understand that the teacher always explains the aim first
and always explains it using the same kinds of sentences. This
allows them to catch on to the teacher’s directions.
Having understood the aim, the learners now need to know
how to achieve that aim.
How
The ‘How’ section explains the process of playing the game.
This section showcases an ‘ideal’ game (mistakes and
transgressions are explained in the following ‘But’ section). In
my experience, this section is the most problematic for
teachers, as we often talk too much, which then confuses young
learners. To resolve this, we must actually play the game or do
the activity as a demonstration. In other words, instead of
explaining what to do, we must actually do it so the learners can
experience the game or activity ‘in action’.
This is easier said than done. Many teachers continue to talk
too much during this section, and there is no simple solution to
this, except practice and a rigid focus on always demonstrating
rather than explaining. When training teachers to use this
framework, my direction to them when planning this section is
Just play! and allow their explanation to emerge as a result of that
playing, rather than trying to reverse-engineer a demonstration
over the top of a wordy explanation.
Using again the case of simplified Monopoly for the
classroom, the process is simple:
■■ Take turns.
■■ Roll a dice to move.
■■ Buy the property you land on if you wish to.
■■ Use the target language each time, whether you buy or not.
■■ If your opponent lands on your property, they pay ‘rent’,
and vice versa.
(Note: We skip aspects of ‘full’ Monopoly, and use a
specially-made board with only properties on it; houses and
hotels are not used, while fines for landing on properties are
identical to basic house prices.)
Aside from the initial signpost language (for example,
How do you play?), the majority of the teacher talk is the target
24 Issue 119 • November 2018
language. This emerges naturally as a result of the game being
demonstrated, since the target language will be used
extensively during the game. ‘Annotation’ language can also
be used (such as Your turn!), albeit in limited doses. The
annotation language should also be made consistent from
lesson to lesson; for example, ‘Your turn’ can be used across
multiple game explanations.
The following example illustrates these principles (the target
language is underlined). Gesture, emotional expression and ICQs
are also useful options to use with young learners, as well as
‘fixing’ the demonstration to show the various outcomes from
each turn – for example, buying, not buying and paying fines:
Teacher: How do you play? Watch. Your turn! (Rolls dice). What
is it?
Learners: Six!
Teacher: Six. The Angel Islington. Say the sentence …
Learners: How much is it?
Teacher: G
 ood. How much is it? It’s 100 pounds. Say the
sentence …
Learners: OK, I’ll take it. Here you are.
Teacher: Here is your card! Keep it (Gives card). My turn! (Rolls
dice) What is it?
Learners: Three!
Teacher: Three. Whitechapel Road. Say the sentence …
Learners: How much is it?
Teacher: Good. How much is it?
Learners: It’s 60 pounds.
Teacher: (Dramatic pause, followed by uninterested look)
Sorry, I won’t take it. Say the sentence …
Learners: That’s OK.
Teacher: Good. Your turn! (Rolls dice) What is it?
Learners: Two!
Teacher: Two. Euston Road. Say the sentence …
Learners: How much is it?
Teacher: Good. It’s 100 pounds.
Learners: OK, I’ll take it. Here you are.
Teacher: Here is your card! Keep it. (Gives card) My turn! (Rolls
dice and deliberately ‘fixes’ the result in order to land
on Euston Road) What is it?
Learners: Four! Ha ha!
Teacher: Oh no! How much is it?
Learners: It’s 100 pounds.
Teacher: (Sighs loudly and hands over the money with great
mock sadness) Here you are. Your turn, say the
sentence. My turn, say the sentence. Always say the
sentence. Always …?
Learners: Say the sentence!
Consistency is again the key: we always show the ‘How’
section after the ‘Aim’ section; we always demonstrate by
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playing the game; and we always hinge our teacher talk
around familiar target language and familiar annotation
language. This allows the learners to catch on to our directions
without having to decipher overcomplicated teacher talk.
Finally, being able to participate actively in the demonstration
helps solidify understanding, as well as being more interesting
for young learners.
Having understood the aim and the process towards reaching
it, the learners now need to know what things will stop them from
doing so.
But
The ‘But’ section explains the rules. Only essential rules
should be explained. The demonstration may continue through
this section, though we must always signpost the beginning
of the section with a consistent phrase (for example, But! ...
There is a rule …).
While demonstrating, the teacher can make deliberate
mistakes which, as well as being amusing, can also be
corrected by the learners. It can also be useful to employ
emotional expression and gesture when talking about penalties
and punishments.
Thus, in the demonstration:
Teacher: (Loudly) But! There is a rule! (Rolls dice) Two.
Whitehall. Good! (Pauses for attention, then grabs card without
speaking) Is that right, or wrong? (Shows thumbs up and
thumbs down)
Learners: Wrong!
Teacher: OK! One more time. (Repeats move) How much is it?
Learners: It’s 140 pounds.
Teacher: OK, I’ll take it. Here you are. (Gives money) Is that
right, or wrong? (Shows thumbs up and thumbs down)
Learners: Right!
Teacher: OK! I say no sentence, I give money. If YOU say no
sentence, YOU (stressed for effect) give money. ONE HUNDRED
POUNDS to each player. (Does so with dramatic gesture) 100,
100, 100 …
Learners: Woah!
Teacher: No sentence, give money. No sentence, give money.
No sentence …?
Learners: Give money!
The above dialogue exemplifies a key part of any successful
explanation of how to play and, indeed, of any successful game
or activity – the ‘golden rule’. The golden rule is always a variation
of the following: Use (or try to use) the target language, otherwise
it is impossible to win.
Therefore, in the example above, a learner must use or try to
use the target language each time they land on a property,
otherwise they will be fined, while persistent offenders will go
bankrupt and lose. The teacher can choose whether the golden
rule should relate to successfully using the target language or
simply trying to use it, depending on the needs of the lesson and
the abilities of their learners.
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TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS
Using, or attempting to use, the target language thus
becomes a necessary condition for winning. As such, the golden
rule inherently connects directly to the aim, which creates
interconnectedness within the framework:
The Aim connects to the How; the How connects to the But;
and the But connects to the Aim.
The consistency of the explanation of the rules at the end of
the instructions, and the consistency of the implementation of the
golden rule in games and activities allows the learners again to
catch on to our routine: we always explain the rules at the end of
the instructions, we always use the golden rule, and we always
use a similar sentence (No sentence, give money, or any variation
of rule-breaking = punishment) to describe it. Aside from the
benefits afforded for good language use during game play, the
simplicity of this structure is also very useful for setting learning
and study expectations with young learners.
It is important to return to teacher aims and learner aims here,
as the golden rule is where the two concepts unify. For a teacher,
language practice is the most important, and so the golden rule
will ensure a sincere attempt at effective language practice, since
the learner – whose primary aim is to win – can only achieve
victory through doing so.
This, again, is easier said than done. Classroom language
games and activities often fail to result in enough language
practice because teachers do not use the golden rule effectively
and do not unify their aims with the learners’ aims successfully.
For example, when playing Monopoly, I see many teachers tell
their learners Try to speak English! (reflecting the teacher’s aim),
without invoking a penalty for not doing so; yet the simple fact
with young learners is that often the excitement of the game and
the desire to win (reflecting their aim) overshadows speaking
English, and they end up speaking more of their L1 than the
target language – unless the requirement of English is explicitly
part of the formula to win.
t t t
This framework evolved as a result of many years of trial and
error teaching young learners. As such, it remains subject to
improvement. Nonetheless, I believe that it already offers a
workable solution to the problem of explaining games and
game-like activities to young learners in English. Young learners
can benefit greatly from the learning opportunities that classroom
games and activities can offer; it is hoped that this framework will
help achieve this. n
Andrew Griffiths is a teacher trainer for the
Daejeon Education Training Institute in South
Korea. He has been teaching for ten years
and specialises in methods of delivering
effective classroom English.
andrew.griffiths1982@gmail.com
Issue 119 • November 2018 25
WRITING
Overcoming a fear
of the unknown
Iain Maloney convinces his students and his colleagues of the value of creative writing.
W
hen I started teaching writing at a university in
Japan, the focus for all four years at
undergraduate level was on academic writing.
The students had never been exposed to
creative writing, despite the fact that numerous
studies have shown it to be beneficial to L2 acquisition.
Initially, my students were resistant to the idea, my colleagues
sceptical. In both cases, fear of the unknown was the emotional
driver. So I decided to take advantage of a ‘free topic’
assignment in the second semester of a third-year writing class
to show my students and colleagues alike that creative writing
can be beneficial and needn’t be intimidating. This article will
outline my approach.
Softly, softly
In conversation with students and through end-of-semester
feedback forms, it became clear that dropping creative writing on
them out of the blue would be counter-productive. The idea of
writing stories or poetry either scared or bored them. Instead, I
told them we’d take a couple of weeks off from writing, to look
at the relationship between writer and reader. This didn’t exactly
excite them, but it at least didn’t scare them. Enthusiasm isn’t a
constant presence in academic writing classes.
In order to prepare for the first lesson, I instructed both my
classes (12 students in each, all third-year English majors) to
come to the next class with two anecdotes from their own lives:
a funny story and a negative story, related to travel. I gave them
examples from my own travel history. They didn’t have to do
anything with the anecdotes, not even write them down: just
come in ready to tell their stories to their classmates. I then
structured the next six lessons as a series of workshops, each
dealing with a different aspect of creative writing, and each
using the same basic material: the students’ travel anecdotes.
Getting the desired response
In the first lesson, the students began in pairs, with each
partner telling a story in turn. I then gave them a worksheet
(Worksheet 1), which asked them to gauge their partner’s
responses. For example, if the story was meant to be funny, did
their partner laugh and, if so, how heartily? If not, why not?
The student was next asked to think about how they could alter
their telling of the story to better provoke the desired response.
They subsequently switched partners and tried again. The aim
of this lesson was to get them thinking about the different ways
26 Issue 119 • November 2018
in which stories can be told, and the different effects that can
be produced in a listener/reader. The students reported that
the class was fun and useful, with their anecdotes achieving
significantly better responses by the end of the 90 minutes.
Including details
In the second lesson, we moved on to details. During their
anecdote telling, many of the students concentrated entirely on
plot, ignoring contextual details. We began by brainstorming as
a class the kinds of details that could be included in a story,
such as location, environment, characters and motivation. After
that, the students individually made notes about one of their
anecdotes (they were free to choose the funny or negative story,
as they preferred) under all the relevant headings. Each student
then drew a chronological timeline of their anecdote and
matched the details with points on the timeline. So, for
example, when one student’s story moved from Nagoya to
Bangkok, details about location, weather, smells and personal
travel history became relevant. In many cases, the details were
extraneous or tangential, but that was ideal. The aim of this
approach was to short-circuit the ‘fear of the blank page’ that
confronts many people when they begin writing. At this point,
the students hadn’t been told that we were working towards a
piece of writing, yet they already had plot, chronology and
more details than they would need.
Starting to tell a story
In the third lesson, we looked at opening paragraphs. These are
something the students were familiar with through their
academic writing, and the principles of writing them are the
same in both contexts: introduce the themes and prepare the
reader for what is to come. To this end, I assembled six opening
paragraphs from travel writing, each in a different style and
voice, and each on a different subject. (If you would like a copy
of these, please email me at the address at the end of this
article. The other worksheets mentioned in this article can be
downloaded from the ETp website at www.etprofessional.com/
media/32067/etp119_november2018_onlineresource_maloney-_
p26.pdf.) In class, the students read the paragraphs and
answered questions, such as Which opening do you like? Why?
Afterwards, they discussed their responses in groups of three,
and shared ideas about how they could apply these concepts to
their own anecdotes. They were then given the remaining time
in the classroom to begin working on the opening paragraph
for their story, with the instruction that it had to be finished by
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 WRITING

the next class. At this point, the students were still unaware that
we had already begun the semester’s assignment. They got to
work with some enthusiasm, many of them trying different
genre styles, such as horror or farce.
During the week, the students emailed me their opening
paragraphs and I printed them out for a standard peer-review
activity, something they were very familiar with. Usually, they
were apathetic when taking part in this process, but the fourth
class was lively and boisterous as they debated the
introductions and gave advice on how to make them funnier or
more dramatic. Discussions also centred on inserting or leaving
out details at the beginning, in order to increase suspense or
alleviate confusion. Once this was complete, I let them into the
secret that their final assessed piece of writing would be creative
non-fiction – travel writing based on their anecdote, with a
minimum count of 700 words. Being assessed on something
they were already enjoying didn’t seem as threatening as just
being presented with the assignment and told to get on with it.
After some clarifying questions about APA (American
Psychological Association) referencing and its relevance to
travel writing (there is none) and how their writing would be
assessed, the students left – more engaged than I had seen them
at any point that year.
Using descriptive language
In the fifth class, we looked at descriptive writing. I guided The results
them through writing exercises emphasising each sense, using a The students’ writing was of a much higher standard than had
worksheet (Worksheet 2) with examples of my own writing. been achieved in the rest of the year, and each student moved up
First, they were given 60 seconds to look around the room in at least one grading band. Feedback from the students at the end
silence and, afterwards, told to begin three minutes of free, of the semester was incredibly positive about the creative writing
non-stop writing to describe the appearance of the classroom. element, with a number of them asking for a similar class in their
This exercise was repeated for sounds, smells and touch fourth year. When I shared the finished assignments and
(incorporating temperature, hunger pangs, etc). Not being in feedback with my colleagues (with the students’ permission), a
the cleanest of classrooms, we omitted the sense of taste! After number of them expressed surprise at the change in output and
I had once again drawn their attention to an example of my motivation, and asked me for advice on incorporating creative
own, the students combined a sentence or two from each writing into their own writing classes. I put together a
exercise to create a descriptive paragraph of the room. This was presentation for them, and this article was developed out of it.
shared with partners, and the students discussed the different
writing they had all produced from exactly the same input. The t t t
aim of this lesson was to show that originality is inherent in any
creativity, and to prepare them for achieving their word limit,
two standard concerns for students. Students and teachers alike are often sceptical about using
creative writing in the classroom, but the above approach goes
Writing dialogue some way to showing how students with no creative writing
In the last workshop lesson, we looked at dialogue. I devised a experience can produce impressive results, and teachers new to
worksheet (Worksheet 3) with two activities for this. In the first, creative writing methodology can easily bring it into the
the students had to turn a prose passage with indirect speech classroom. Creative writing is both fun and helpful with L2
into a prose passage with active dialogue. In the second, they acquisition, and a lot less intimidating than it can seem at first. n
had to continue a scripted conversation to whatever conclusion
they saw fit. Again, this provided them with tools to help in the
Iain Maloney has been teaching English in
drafting and dramatisation of their own story. Japan for 13 years. He is also a published
novelist, and combines these two areas of
Polishing the work interest into a focus on the role of creative
The remaining classes in the semester were devoted to drafting writing in second language acquisition.
and redrafting. In total, two full drafts were produced and maloney@nufs.ac.jp
submitted before a final draft was handed in for grading.
Feedback was given at every stage, and focused on aspects such
as characterisation, motivation and achieving the desired
response in the reader, as well as language.

www.etprofessional.com Issue 119 • November 2018 27

IN THE CLASSROOM
Students’
stories
David Heathfield tells a cautionary tale from Kazakhstan.
M
arat Mukashev is a senior
civil servant in the office
of the President of
Kazakhstan. Perhaps
that is why he chose this
incredible Kazakh wisdom story, set in
the corridors of power, to tell his
classmates on a general English course
I was teaching in Exeter, UK. He took
great pride in sharing his culture with
the other students, who knew little
about his country. In fact, he told me
that he had rehearsed telling the story
every day for a week in order to
communicate it as clearly as he possibly
could. One year on, Marat is now doing
his MA in Public Administration at the
University of Exeter.
‘The seller of wisdom’
Storytelling tip: Linking folk tales
to personal anecdotes
Learning is right at the heart of
traditional storytelling. A folk tale,
fable or myth offers the listener a life
lesson: sometimes directly, sometimes
more obliquely. This lesson is powerful
and memorable when it is parcelled up
in a story. The learning continues when
the life lesson is then discussed in class,
and can go still deeper when students
link the lesson in the story to their
own experience by sharing personal
anecdotes.
Before telling
Write up a list of the characters in the
story – king, adviser, seller of wisdom,
barber – and also draw or show a picture
of a cut-throat razor in order to
introduce some key vocabulary: barber,
beard, razor, shave. Then ask the
students, working in pairs, to speculate
about what might happen in the story.
28 Issue 119 • November 2018
9
While telling
The first time you say the line ‘Always
think before you act. Never act before you
think’, invite the students to repeat it
after you. After that, invite them to say
it along with you as you read the story.
After telling
Find out the students’ opinions about
the wisdom in the line ‘Always think
before you act. Never act before you
think’. Let this develop into a class
discussion about the way folk tales teach
us how to behave, getting examples from
the students. They might say that Little
Red Riding Hood teaches us to be wary
of strangers, and The Boy who Cried
Wolf teaches us to be truthful.
Tell the class a brief personal
anecdote about something that
happened to you or someone you know
which fits with ‘Always think before you
act. Never act before you think’. This
might be about an occasion when a
hasty action led to a problem or when a
problem was averted by thinking
carefully. For example, the day before
writing this, my wife Tammy and I
stopped our hire car to go for a short
walk on the volcanic central plain of
Lanzarote, the Spanish Atlantic island
where we were staying on holiday.
However, such a strong wind was
blowing when we got out of the car that
we decided just to take a photo from the
roadside. As Tammy was getting ready
to take a picture of me, our map of
Lanzarote flew out of the car and up
into the air behind me. There was no
way I could run fast enough to catch it,
and it was carried far off into the
distance. There we were in the middle of
the windswept volcanic wilderness
without a map, because we hadn’t
thought to close the car doors.
For homework, ask the students to
recall and practise telling a personal
anecdote which fits with the line ‘Always
think before you act. Never act before
you think’ so that they can share it in
the next lesson.
In the next class, tell the students
that they will be told at least three
different anecdotes by their classmates.
They should listen carefully, so that
afterwards they can say:
■■ which of the stories was the most
surprising;
■■ which story was the funniest;
■■ which was the most serious.
Ask the students to stand in pairs and
exchange their anecdotes. If any students
don’t have an anecdote to share, they can
still make pairs with storytelling students
and listen.
As the pairs finish, ask them to
make new pairs and repeat the process.
The more they tell the same story, the
more fluent and accurate their
storytelling will become.
When all the students have told their
stories at least three times, bring the
whole class together and elicit which
anecdotes they found the most
surprising, the funniest and the most
serious, and to give their reasons why.
t t t
You can learn ‘The seller of wisdom’
by listening to me telling it to
international teenage learners of
English in Kathmandu at https://youtu.
be/UDAWrzJSwgY or by reading it
on the next page.
David Heathfield is
a freelance
storyteller, teacher
and teacher trainer.
He is the author of
Storytelling With
Our Students:
Techniques for
Telling Tales from
Around the World
and Spontaneous
Speaking: Drama Activities for Confidence
and Fluency, both published by DELTA
Publishing. He is a member of The
Creativity Group.
www.davidheathfield.co.uk
www.etprofessional.com

The seller of wisdom
L
ong ago there was a powerful
king. He often sat at the window
of his palace and looked at the
square below. He noticed that, at
the same time every day, a crowd
of people gathered in one place for a short
time, and then disappeared.
He asked his adviser, whom he
trusted, ‘Why do the people gather in the
square every day?’
The adviser said, ‘Every day at the
same time the seller of wisdom comes to
sell his wisdom.’
The king was curious. He went down
into the square the next day and, when
the seller of wisdom appeared, the king
asked, ‘What wisdom will you sell to me?’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am the king, of course.’
‘Then pay me in gold and I will tell you.’
The king gave him a purse full of gold
coins.
‘Always think before you act. Never act
before you think,’ said the seller of wisdom.
‘Write these words on your walls.’
The king went into the palace and wrote
those words on every wall: Always think
before you act. Never act before you think.
The king’s beard was growing long,
and it was time for a shave, so he sent for
www.etprofessional.com
the barber. When the barber came into the
palace, the king’s adviser stopped him
and said, ‘Show me your razor. What! Are
you going to shave the king with this old
razor? Look at it. The handle is made of
wood. This is a poor razor for a king. Here,
use this razor.’
The adviser offered the barber a
beautiful shining new razor made of pure
gold. The barber took the golden razor and
went up to the king’s chamber. The king sat
down. ‘I am ready. Now shave me.’
The barber hesitated. After a while, he
put the golden razor on the table and he
took out his old razor. He began to shave
the king.
‘Stop!’ said the king. ‘What’s the
meaning of this? Here on the table is a
beautiful golden razor, but you are using
an old razor with a wooden handle. I am
the king!’
‘I am sorry,’ said the barber, ‘but,
your majesty, I read the words written on
your walls. Always think before you act.
Never act before you think. For many
years, I have shaved you as well as
many others in this land. I have always
used my trusted old razor with a wooden
handle. This is the razor I know. I’ve
never used this golden razor before.
I do not know its secrets.’
IN THE CLASSROOM
The king listened and then asked,
‘Where did you get the golden razor
from?’
When the king had heard the answer,
he allowed the barber to finish shaving
him. The barber shaved him well as
always. After that, the king sent for his
trusted adviser.
When he was brought before the king,
the adviser looked confused.
The king said, ‘I can see that you also
need a shave. Sit down.’
The adviser was frightened, ‘No, your
majesty, please!’
‘Sit down. Now you will be shaved
with this beautiful golden razor which you
gave to the barber.’
The barber began to shave the adviser
with the golden razor and, within a few
moments, that adviser was dead. The king
said, ‘This man wanted power. He wanted
to take my place. That is why he poisoned
the golden razor.’
The king paid the barber well, and
the next day he went out into the square
to find the seller of wisdom. But the
seller of wisdom was nowhere to be
found. He never came to the city again.
The king had learnt a valuable lesson:
Always think before you act. Never act
before you think.
Issue 119 • November 2018 29
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 IT WORKS
IN PRACTICE
More tested lessons, suggestions, tips and techniques which have all worked for
ETp readers. Try them out for yourself – and then send us your own contribution.
The contributors to this issue were participants in an ETp workshop at the National
Association for Teaching English and other Community Languages to Adults
(NATECLA) conference in Birmingham, UK, in July this year. They will each receive
a digital subscription to Modern English Teacher.

Participants at the NATECLA conference workshop

TOWERS OF SKILL have to pull out two. As in the original game, the block or
blocks must then be added to the top of the tower. Pulling
Andrew Radford, Chorley, UK faces from opposing sides is encouraged, to increase the
Jenga is a game involving 54 rectangular wooden blocks, pressure, but drumming on the table is frowned upon,
stacked to form a tower. Each player, in turn, has to remove one because of the chance of tower collapse.
block from the tower and place it on the top, thus creating an
If you have a table of masterful Jenga players where the
increasingly taller, but more unstable, structure. The aim is not to
exercise is taking a bit too long, increase the number of bricks
be the player who causes the tower to collapse.
they must pull out after each question. ‘Stinker’ questions of a
I have found that using Jenga in the classroom can spruce up more advanced level can be put on the board if some groups
drab written exercises such as gap fills, tense changing finish quickly. n
exercises or revision topics. It is also an easy way to use
differentiated questions when the students have been put into
groups according to ability.
The students sit in groups of four to six, each divided into two
teams. The two teams face each other across a table with one
Jenga tower in the centre. If you have 20 students, you will,
therefore, need four or five Jenga sets.
Each team is given a gap-fill or revision exercise with the
correct answers, and, as a team, they ask the opposing team
a question. (You could even get the students to write their own
questions, but you would need to check these before the
game starts.) If the students answer correctly, they pull out
one block from the tower, but if they make a mistake, they

32 Issue 119 • November 2018 www.etprofessional.com

 IT WORKS IN PRACTICE

ODD ONE OUT

Alexandra Bates, Harlow, UK
I like to adapt this activity for many scenarios: first-lesson ice
breakers, introducing a new topic, introducing a grammar
structure or just as a starting point for a discussion.
It can be adapted across all levels and can be followed up
by grammar, vocabulary, speaking, reading or writing tasks.
I always begin by taking three images and showing them to
the class. For example:
Which is the odd one out? Why?
saxophone guitar
drum
First, I elicit the meaning of odd one out, requiring phrases such as
different from, the same as, to have in common, etc. along the way.
I then set the task: In pairs, the students have to come up with an
answer to the questions Which is the odd one out? and Why?
I emphasise the need for them to justify their answers using
because. For example: I think the saxophone is the odd one out
because it is the only one you play with your mouth.
During feedback, I encourage a variety of responses, to underline
the fact that there is not a single set answer – any answer that
can be justified is acceptable. This also familiarises the students
with giving their own opinions, using I think ..., I believe ... and In
my opinion ... . This is useful practice for communicating and
expressing ideas orally.
In some classes, I ask the students to tell me the vocabulary
category (eg musical instruments) and encourage quick
finishers to extend the category by adding more items and
possibly categorising further (eg woodwind, brass, string, etc).
To extend the activity, I give additional sets of varied and
engaging images for the students to work on in small groups
– to discuss, to have ideas, to have fun and to give feedback
to the rest of the class, using the language and structures
previously modelled. Lists of items that have worked well for
me include:
■■ metal, plastic, wood
■■ butterfly, frog, snail
■■ sand, mud, water
■■ Moon, Earth, Sun
■■ shell, rock, plant
■■ chocolate, paper, water
■■ tiger, frog, elephant
■■ fridge, cooker, vacuum cleaner
In each case, you could just give the students the words for
the items, but having the images adds an extra dimension
and helps the students to visualise the similarities and
differences between them. Images of common objects are
readily obtainable on the internet, and it is worth making the
effort to produce PowerPoint slides or other displays which
include both words and images for the odd-one-out task.
As I said earlier, this activity can lead into grammar, vocabulary,
speaking and writing tasks. Below is a follow-up grammar task
which I use. The aim is to help the students spot the differences
between the present simple and present continuous sentences
and determine the usage of these tenses. n

Present simple versus present continuous

1 Which is the odd one out?
a I play tennis.
b I play football.
c I am playing Nintendo.
2 Complete the rule.
We use the present simple to talk about: __________________________________________
We use the present continuous to talk about: ______________________________________

a I drink tea. Remember:

b I am drinking water. Present simple:
c He drinks milk. I play
You play
a I am living in Harlow. He plays / she plays / it plays
b I live in Harlow. We play
c She lives in Harlow. They play

www.etprofessional.com Issue 119 • November 2018 33

Reviews
Second Language Acquisition
Applied to English Language
Teaching
by Michael Lessard-Clouston
TESOL Press 2018
978-1-942799-94-8
For many teachers of English as a
second language, Second Language
Acquisition (SLA) is a bewildering
maze of ideas and terminology hardly
worth considering. It is often assumed
to be light on practical value, whilst
heavy on theory. However, in Second
Language Acquisition Applied to English
Language Teaching, the subject is given
clarity and practicality in a book that
can be read in one sitting.
34 Issue 119 • November 2018
The book is well suited to language
teachers who have some experience to
reflect on, but are still getting to grips
with how best to teach in any given
context. It also provides a very helpful
introduction to those studying TESOL
or Applied Linguistics at undergraduate
or graduate level. Reading it will give
teachers greater insight into the theory
behind many teaching practices. And as
it is based on sound research, it should
also help them question and develop
their own teaching methodology.
The first two chapters unpack SLA
and its early history as a field of study.
Chapter 1 starts by defining SLA, and
then goes on to explain how teachers can
draw on both their own experiences and
an understanding of their students as
language learners rather than simply
non-native speakers. Chapter 2
introduces Stephen Krashen as a
foundational influence on the field of
SLA, together with his five principles:
the acquisition-learning, natural order,
monitor, input and affective filter
hypotheses. The author explains each of
these with a clear definition, practical
examples and some pertinent
applications to teaching today.
The next three chapters discuss three
‘essential components’ of learning
English: input, output and interaction.
As in the rest of the book, Lessard-
Clouston aims to present some of the
latest and most influential research,
while leaving the reader to investigate its
worth. Various distinctions of input are
discussed in Chapter 3: non-interactive/
interactive, positive/negative, incidental/
noticed and input/intake. The chapter
ends with the value of an underlying
linguistic system, extensive reading
while listening, and input leading to
output. Chapter 4 outlines the output
hypothesis as developed by Merrill
Swain. Pushed output, as she called it,
brings meaning, opportunities to test
the target language system, interaction
and greater accuracy. The chapter
concludes with examples demonstrating
the link between output and input.
Chapter 5 describes how interaction
encourages negotiation of meaning, but
takes on many different forms,
according to the context. This chapter
shows in a practical way how
interaction can be encouraged in a
variety of teaching contexts, such as
large classes or EFL situations.
The last three chapters cover a lot of
ground. Chapter 6 provides evidence that
age is not a deal breaker for language
learning, but merely a factor
necessitating varied approaches. The
author goes on to describe the need to
minimise anxiety by creating a
comfortable class atmosphere and setting
up activities or tests thoughtfully. Some
distinctions within error correction
(mistakes/errors, global/local errors) are
laid out. Finally, practical suggestions
are given, like the use of coding systems
and various types of feedback – not
least, regular encouragement!
Chapter 7 is a particularly useful
chapter for practitioners, as it outlines
a series of principles from Brian
Tomlinson, which can help match
suitable ELT materials to SLA theory.
It sets out the value of rich and
meaningful content, engaging learners,
noticing form and meaning, and
opportunities for language use.
Chapter 8 culminates with an
assessment of what SLA can offer
classroom teachers, by bringing
together some new factors with those
previously discussed. The author
acknowledges the complexities of
language learning and SLA in
particular. Next, he reviews the
importance of appropriate input,
www.etprofessional.com

output and interaction, and then
provides a useful vignette to work
through. The following section briefly
describes the place for vocabulary,
grammar and focus-on-form within
SLA, including the importance of
productive tasks.
The last two sections make brief
suggestions and encouragement for
applying SLA theory in the classroom,
since, as the author puts it: ‘Perhaps the
main value of SLA is to help teachers
recognise how understanding learning
can better inform their teaching.’
Besides the expansive introduction
to SLA this short book gives, there are
a number of features which make it a
great tool for teachers. In addition to
a clear presentation of the relevant
literature, anecdotes serve to reinforce
the points being made. In every chapter,
the well-crafted reflective questions
tease out the readers’ teaching
methodology. Around 30 of these
reflection features are placed at strategic
points, to allow what has been read to
be processed and put into practice.
There are also two vignettes, which are
basically short case studies, placing
the reader in contexts demanding
thoughtful application of the principles
they have learnt. Lastly, the list of
references at the end will help the reader
decide which aspects of SLA they wish
to explore in more detail.
Overall, I found this book to be an
inviting introduction to a complex and
sometimes confounding subject.
Having taught for many years myself
and had some experience learning a
second language, I appreciated the way
these two aspects were brought
together. Evidently, the author knows
his subject well and only references the
foremost research. Readers may find
certain sections frustratingly short and
wish for more definite conclusions
from the author himself. Nonetheless,
as an overview of SLA for teachers
who have never ventured to study it
before, it is a most adequate
companion. It explains simply and
applies practically the theories which
have influenced us as teachers, whether
we knew it or not.
Timothy Steele
Birmingham, UK
www.etprofessional.com
REVIEWS
ELT Lesson Observation & checklist) and Chapters 3 and 4 are
Feedback Handbook about lesson plans: decoding a lesson
by Jeanette Barsdell plan and giving feedback on one,
Jeanette Barsdell 2018 respectively. Chapter 5 is about
assessing teaching practice through
978-1-983308-00-0
observation, and Chapters 6 to 8 are
about various types of feedback and
the best ways to give it. The final two
chapters offer alternative ways to
manage oral feedback and alternative
ways to observe a lesson. Useful tip
sections and checklists are an attractive
feature of the book, and there is a large
section of photocopiable resources at
the end, with more checklists, sample
lesson plans, observation summary
documents and self-reflection sheets.
This will all be invaluable for
anyone thrown in at the observation
deep end, as the author was at the
beginning of her career, as well as for
seasoned observers. With the checklists
and photocopiables, a lot of the
preparation work has been done for
you, and the advice throughout the
This very useful book is designed for book is wise, sensible and rooted in
anyone who has to conduct a lesson reality. (As this is quite a small-format
observation and give oral and written book, the photocopiables may need to
feedback afterwards. The author starts be enlarged, in order to make them a
out by saying that she was in the little more readable.)
position of being asked to do this
I believe this is a must-have book
shortly after having passed her Delta,
for anyone who has to conduct lesson
and was terrified of sitting in judgement
observations now, or expects to have to
on a teacher whom she didn’t know and
do so in the future.
about whom there had been student
Vanessa Willis
complaints. An understanding DOS
guided her through the process and Exeter, UK
now, years later, she has written this
book to pass on the expertise she has
gathered throughout her career as a
teacher, trainer and leader of courses
for senior staff on lesson observation
and giving feedback.
The book provides practical and
accessible information on every stage of
a full and formal lesson observation
which is to be followed by oral and
written feedback. This represents the
gold standard of lesson observation, but
the author acknowledges that not every
situation will require or allow for the
same procedure, and readers can,
therefore, pick and choose what is most
relevant to their own context.
Chapter 1 begins by describing
various types of lesson observation.
Chapter 2 goes into how to set up a
formal observation (with a handy
Issue 119 • November 2018 35
 SCRAPBOOK Gems, titbits, puzzles, foibles, quirks, bits & pieces, quotations,
snippets, odds & ends, what you will
Presents
Just as a matter of interest, I wonder how you were
mentally pronouncing that word – with the
emphasis on the first syllable, or on the second?
Birthday presents or Walt Disney presents ...
I was presented with a present …
Giving presents is common all over the world, but it
can be a minefield. Depending on the culture, there are
many ways of giving them, and many occasions which
dictate whether giving a present is appropriate, and if
so, what kind …
Gift-giving cultures
Most countries have some kind of tradition of giving
presents to people, but there are some places where
it is a particularly significant and important part of
everyday life.
Gift giving is, for example, a key feature of Japanese
culture. Apart from the common practice of bringing
souvenirs (omiyage) for family and work colleagues
when returning home from a trip, and taking a
thank-you gift when visiting someone’s house, Japan
has two main gift-giving seasons – in July and
December. At these times, it is common for
Japanese co-workers, friends and relatives to
exchange gifts: called ochugen and oseibo,
respectively. These gift-giving seasons coincide with
company employees receiving a special bonus on
top of their monthly salaries.
Different types of presents (often seasonal food items)
are given on different occasions, and much attention is
paid to the wrapping, which is usually done by the
shop assistant at the time of purchase.
Japan: Omiyage Souvenir Snacks in Akihabara, www.gettyimages.co.uk
36 Issue 119 • November 2018
Gift-giving customs
Customs surrounding gifts can be confusing for
those unfamiliar with the culture involved. For
example, in China, it is traditional to refuse a gift
two or three times before accepting it. This is a
way of expressing modesty and good manners,
and does not necessarily mean that the person
doesn’t like or doesn’t want the gift. The gift giver
is expected to insist on the gift being accepted,
rather than withdrawing it. Additionally, when a
present is received, there is the expectation that
one of equal value will be given in return. The
giving of gifts is something that the Chinese learn
at an early age, as giving presents to children on
special occasions is very common.
Gift-giving dangers
In a number of countries, there can be hidden
dangers in present giving. Some cultures are
steeped in symbolism, and certain gifts that may
appear harmless to someone from one country
might actually offend in another. In China and
some South American countries, presents of
sharp objects, such as knives, scissors or letter
openers, are seen to symbolise a desire to sever
a relationship. So scissors and cooking knives
are best avoided – assuming you do want your
friendship to continue!
In Japan, the word for comb is kushi, but ku can
mean suffering and shi death, so combs are not
welcome presents there.
Clocks are also a tricky gift as, in many Chinese
dialects, the phrase give clock sounds very
similar to the phrase see off into death.
Handkerchiefs are often considered inappropriate,
as they tend to symbolise crying and funerals …
www.etprofessional.com
 Tricky numbers Tricky
In both China and Japan, the number four is problematic, as
it is considered unlucky (in both languages, the word for four
colours
sounds like the word for death). Gifts that come as a set of In Japan, green is a good
four are, therefore, a bad idea, unless they are offered as two colour for gift wrapping
pairs. In China, eight is a particularly lucky number, so gifts in and for signing the
multiples of eight will be welcomed. accompanying card, as it
has connotations of eternity and good luck. Cards should
Giving a present involving the number nine should be
not be signed in red, though red wrapping can be used for
avoided in Japan, as the word for nine, ku, sounds the same
wedding presents.
as the word for suffering.
In China, gifts should not be wrapped in white or black paper
In many cultures, gifts are traditionally given in even
as these colours are reserved for funerals. Gold and silver paper
numbers, but in others, such as India, odd numbers are
are used for wedding gifts. The safest colour is red, which
considered to bring good luck, so giving someone £9 would
symbolises good luck and happiness. Money given in a red
be preferable to giving them £10.
envelope is considered particularly lucky (personally, I regard
money in any colour of envelope to be pretty good news …).
Chinese children often tuck red envelopes under their pillow for
Tricky flowers seven nights to bring good luck. I’d say ‘good luck with that
level of optimism’ – presumably, on the seventh night it’s
Flowers are often seen as a safe bet for presents, but …
supposed to be bulging with money!
If you’re in Russia, make sure your bunches do not have an even
number of stems, as these are normally reserved for funerals.
The same can be said for yellow flowers, lilies or carnations.
In Germany, too, flowers are always given in odd numbers Gifting and reverse gifting
(but never 13). Your choice of flowers is also important: roses Open-handedness is a good thing, but sometimes only with
suggest that you have romantic intentions, while carnations, one hand – in Ghana, you should only present gifts with the
lilies and chrysanthemums are usually reserved for funerals. right hand, and this is also the case in India, where the left
The situation is similar in France, where the blooms to avoid hand is regarded as unclean.
are chrysanthemums, In Japan and China, however,
generally used for funerals, when a present is being
red roses (reserved for lovers given, both the giver and the
and very good friends) or recipient use both hands.
carnations, which are thought
In Native American cultures,
to bring bad luck.
the ritual of gift giving is
At one point, I wore a exactly the opposite to that of
carnation as a buttonhole for many other cultures.
several years, and I never Traditionally, during both
became a millionaire – is that weddings and social gatherings called powwows (birthdays
the sort of thing that’s meant? aren’t always recognised), it is the guests who are the
recipients of presents, rather than the hosts.
There are many customs and attitudes towards the giving of

When is a gift not a gift? presents, but I like the uninhibited approach common in
Zimbabwe, where it is not uncommon to be directly asked
The German word gift for a gift. However, when you are offered a present, even if
actually means poison, you didn’t request it, the very worst you can do is to refuse
so German friends may the offering, even if the family that is giving it quite clearly
react with surprise if you can’t afford to do so. Also, gestures of thanks are much
tell them that you have preferred over a mere verbal thank you. These may include
brought them ‘a gift’. jumping up and down, dancing, or even whistling. I firmly
believe this ought to be made the norm in the UK!
One piece of advice
given to visitors to
Russia is to avoid giving
expensive gifts, as they It’s the thought that counts
may be seen as a form I wondered what the largest recorded present might have
of bribe. (Unless, of been (apart from entire kingdoms), and the record probably
course, that’s precisely has to be the Statue of Liberty, given to the USA by France
what they are …) at the end of the 19th century. It is 46.5 metres high and
weighs 225 tons. Quite a challenge for a delivery man …

Scrapbook compiled by Ian Waring Green

www.etprofessional.com Issue 119 • November 2018 37

 Extreme re-gifting
Re-gifting is the practice of passing on an unwanted present to someone else, as a gift. Although most people agree
that this isn’t a polite thing to do, many admit to having done it – the trick is not to get caught out by accidentally
giving something back to the same person who gave it to you, or forgetting to remove the original giver’s gift tag.
Roy Collette and his brother-in-law Larry Kunkel probably hold the record for re-gifting. Each year, between
the mid 1960s and 1989, they took turns to give each other the same pair of trousers for Christmas. This eventually
turned into a bizarre game in which they competed to find new ways of wrapping the trousers so that it was
increasingly difficult to remove them from the packaging in order to re-gift them (undamaged) the following year.
It all started when Larry was given the trousers by his mother in 1964. He didn’t like them much, so he decided
to give them to Roy for Christmas. Roy wore them a few times but decided that he didn’t like them either, so the
following year, he wrapped them up in pretty paper and gave them back to Larry for Christmas. The regular
exchange continued until Roy stuffed the trousers into a three-foot-long, one-inch-wide tube before delivering
them back to Larry. It then became a competition each year to make unwrapping them more and more difficult.
Some rules were decided on: the exchange would continue until the trousers were damaged; the person
who damaged the trousers while wrapping or unwrapping them would be the loser; no money was to be spent
on packaging (they used free or junk materials); and delivery costs had to be kept to a minimum.
Over the years, the trousers were put into a wooden crate, which was filled with stones, nailed shut and
banded with steel; they were stuffed into a coffee can which was welded shut and then put into a five-gallon
container filled with concrete and metal rods; they were locked into a 600-pound safe which was decorated
with red and green stripes and welded shut; they were even put into the glove compartment of a car that was
then crushed into a three-foot cube.
The trousers finally met their end in 1989 when Roy planned to encase them in 10,000 pounds of jagged
glass. However, while hot liquid glass was being poured over the heat-proof container holding the trousers,
it shattered and they were burnt to ashes. The ashes were put into a brass urn and delivered to Larry with a
note confessing that the trousers had, at last, been destroyed.

1 Read the story and find words to match these definitions.

a) A label that says who a present is to and who it is from
b) Joined together with hot metal
c) A strong lockable metal box for keeping valuable things in
d) With rough, sharp pointed edges
e) What remains when something has been burnt

2 Read the story again and answer these questions.

a) Where did the trousers originally come from?
b) How did the competition for finding new ways of wrapping the trousers start?
c) Which way of wrapping the trousers do you think was the cleverest?
d) How would you have wrapped the trousers?
e) Who eventually won the competition, and why?

3 Discuss these questions in small groups.

a) H
 ave you ever re-gifted anything? If so, what was it? Did the person you gave it to realise that it had
been re-gifted?
b) H
 ave you ever received a present which you believe was re-gifted? How did you know? How did you
feel about it?
c) Do you think re-gifting is bad manners or a good idea? Why?

38 Issue 119 • November 2018 www.etprofessional.com


Vocabulary:
principles
and practice
In the eleventh part of this series on the insights to be gained from research into vocabulary learning,
Suhad Sonbul outlines four key lexical factors to be considered when designing listening activities.
R
esearch shows that 40–50 percent of communication
time is spent listening. Whether learners are talking
to shopkeepers or taking notes in an academic
lecture, they need to be able to comprehend what is
said. Listening is a complex process, which involves
both top-down (using background knowledge in understanding
the message) and bottom-up (decoding the sound signal into
pieces) processing. However, not much research has been done to
explore the two facets of the interface between vocabulary
knowledge and listening skill: what Larry Vandergrift terms
‘listening to learn’ and ‘learning to listen’. The little available
research, however, does point to a number of important
considerations in relation to vocabulary that language teachers
need to keep in mind as they plan and implement listening
activities. In this article, I will explore four of these key factors.
1 Lexical segmentation
Lexical segmentation (the ability to decode words in the speech
stream, ie bottom-up processing) constitutes an essential
component of the listening skill. While native listeners develop
this ability naturally through exposure, foreign language
learners often struggle to ‘tune’ their ears to the lexical features
www.etprofessional.com
IN THE CLASSROOM
11
of the L2 speech stream. This is particularly true when there
are marked differences in the sound system between L1 and L2.
John Field demonstrated how several awareness-raising
activities can be used to enhance bottom-up auditory
processing in the classroom. As learners improve their
decoding skill, their cognitive abilities can be freed up to focus
on the message and to start acquiring new vocabulary
incidentally (listening to learn).
Field’s recommendations mainly involve carefully planned,
five-minute dictation tasks, which can tune the learners’ ears
to the phonological features of English, including syllable
stress, reduced forms, assimilation, elision and re-
syllabification. An interesting point that Field raises (one that
is often neglected in teaching practice) is the reduced forms of
formulaic sequences in connected speech and the difficulty
these might pose for listening comprehension. For example,
the fixed expression I want to is often pronounced as I wanna,
which might lead beginner listeners to misinterpret it in
connected speech. Given the fact that vocabulary is now
viewed not only as individual words, but also as multi-word
sequences (see previous articles in this series), learners need to
be made aware of the presence of such expressions in speech
and of their special pronunciation features.
2 Lexical coverage
Research shows that in order to gain adequate comprehension of
a listening text, learners need 95 percent lexical coverage (the
number of words they already know in the text). In other words,
only one word in 20 should be unknown. For most listening
texts, this means that the learner needs to possess a vocabulary
of between 2,000 and 3,000 word families (a word and all its
inflected and derivational forms).
Learning so many word families is a daunting challenge for
beginner learners, so teachers should assist them in two main
ways. First, the learners’ vocabulary size can be expanded quite
quickly using word lists. Vaclav Brezina and Dana Gablasova’s
New General Service List (http://corpora.lancs.ac.uk/vocab/) is a
valuable resource for this purpose, as it consists of 2,500 core
vocabulary items that can provide learners with up to 80
percent coverage of most texts. In addition to learning the
meanings of these items (through L1 translations), learners
should also be encouraged to practise their pronunciation (with
Issue 119 • November 2018 39
IN THE CLASSROOM
online learners’ dictionaries, eg www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.
com), so that they are able to recognise them in speech.
After facilitating the development of this core vocabulary
repertoire, teachers can then identify and deal with lexical
items that are still outside the learners’ current vocabulary
size in a given text. Identifying these items can be done easily
through administering the VLT (Vocabulary Levels Test) and
then analysing the audio text using the VocabProfile tool
(both freely available through the Compleat Lexical Tutor
website at www.lextutor.ca). Any necessary lexical items
identified can then either be pre-taught or replaced with
higher-frequency words. Pre-teaching is particularly useful in
ESP classrooms, where key technical vocabulary items often
have Greek or Latin roots, making them difficult to replace or
to guess from context.
One aspect to consider is formulaic sequences (eg over the
hill), which may not show up in traditional counts of lexical
coverage. Research in reading shows that such sequences play a
vital, though unnoticed, role in comprehension. Given the
non-static, fleeting nature of audio texts, one can assume that
formulaic sequences constitute an even bigger hurdle in
listening comprehension. Thus, the teacher needs to pay careful
attention to such items in listening texts, and either replace
them with easier, more transparent, items or pre-teach them
prior to the listening activity.
3N
 umber and spacing
of repetitions
Up until now, we have been looking at the ‘learning to listen’
side of the coin. On the other side of the coin, learners can
listen in order to learn vocabulary incidentally from context (ie
as a by-product of a listening activity). This is an important
lifelong learning skill, as it is impossible to teach all words and
all aspects of word knowledge explicitly.
Research on the incidental learning of vocabulary from
listening shows that learners need a large number of aural
encounters with a given lexical item (at least 15 to 20) in
order to build the initial link between the spoken form of the
word and its meaning. This is far higher than the number
required for learning vocabulary incidentally through reading
(around five exposures) due to the fleeting and complex
nature of the listening process. Teachers can help their
learners by adapting audio texts to include more repetitions
of certain target lexical items within the reasonable 5 percent
of unknown words (see lexical coverage above).
Another finding of vocabulary research in general is the
importance of spacing repetitions carefully. Teachers can assist
their learners greatly by spacing the 15 to 20 required encounters
of new vocabulary items across several sessions, with the interval
between encounters increasing, in order to make sure the initial
link is strengthened through spaced exposure. There is also no
harm in supplementing this incidental learning approach with
an explicit one in which certain (maybe the most difficult) lexical
items are sometimes embedded in a listening text and sometimes
presented in a pre-listening vocabulary list. This complementary
approach can accelerate the process of learning vocabulary
through listening practice.
40 Issue 119 • November 2018
4 Maximising listening practice
Few textbooks offer the required amount of exposure for the
incidental learning of vocabulary from listening, so teachers
need to provide their learners with resources which they can
use to practise listening outside the classroom. This not only
allows the learners to improve their ability to segment words
in speech (learning to listen), but also helps them to learn
more words incidentally through repeated exposure (listening
to learn). The more you listen, the more likely you are going
to acquire vocabulary in context.
Moreover, research shows that incidental vocabulary
learning is more likely to happen when listening activities are
accompanied by reading the audio script, as this makes the
audio stream more tangible. Thus, beginner listeners, in
particular, might benefit from reading the audio script as they
listen. Hilde van Zeeland suggests a number of useful websites
that can be used for that purpose:
■■ www.ted.com
■■ www.tolearnenglish.com
■■ www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish
■■ www.englishclub.com/listening
While the first two websites provide videos with captions, the
last two additionally provide lexical definitions and exercises
for certain difficult words.
Another good alternative to these websites, especially for
beginners, is the use of graded readers, most of which are now
accompanied by audio files that can be used for graded
listening practice. The learners should be given the freedom to
choose the reader that they like, in accordance with their
level, in order to ensure higher levels of engagement and,
thus, higher chances of incidental vocabulary learning.
t t t
Listening is a complex skill, involving various top-down and
bottom-up processes. This article has explored four basic and
complementary vocabulary considerations in relation to listening
activities. The ultimate goal, as Larry Vandergrift puts it, is for
teachers to ‘help students “learn to listen”, so that their students,
in turn, can better “listen to learn”.’ n
Brezina, V and Gablasova, D ‘Is there a core general vocabulary?
Introducing the New General Service List’ Applied Linguistics 36 2015
Field, J ‘Promoting perception: lexical segmentation in L2 listening’
ELT Journal 57 2003
van Zeeland, H ‘Vocabulary in listening’ The TESOL Encyclopedia of
English Language Teaching 2018
Vandergrift, L ‘Listening to learn or learning to listen?’ Annual Review
of Applied Linguistics 24 2004
Suhad Sonbul is an Assistant Professor at Umm Al-Qura University,
Saudi Arabia. She completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham,
UK. Her research interests include formulaic language, psycholinguistic
assessment techniques and vocabulary teaching approaches.
sssonbul@uqu.edu.sa
www.etprofessional.com

Singular plurals
Ken Milgate takes a sporting look at the use of singular and plural verbs with group nouns.
‘
W
ithin the opening minutes of the match, Peru
was pushing forward.’
France were hoping that their opening
fixture of the tournament would be a
comfortable one.’
‘Poland was widely expected to qualify for the knockout rounds.’
‘Denmark were the favourites heading into the match.’
As you can see from the above examples, sports journalists
covering this summer’s football World Cup in Russia seemed to
be in two minds as to whether to use a singular or plural verb
when talking about the various national teams.
In all the above statements, it would be correct to use a plural
verb, as the subject is the national football team. If the country
were the subject of the sentence, the verb would be singular. In
all four examples, our minds are focused on the players
representing their country, rather than the country itself.
Compare the following:
Peru has a population of 31.77 million.
Peru is home to the Inca city of Machu Picchu.
Peru play most of their home matches at the Estadio
Nacional in Lima.
Peru have had success in the Copa America, winning the
tournament in 1939 and 1975.
The group noun either refers to an impersonal unit, a group as a
whole (in which case, a singular verb is used), or to a group seen as
www.etprofessional.com
LANGUAGE
a number of individuals engaged in personal activities like making
decisions, expressing hopes or desires and aspiring to human
achievements (in which case, a plural verb is used). Football teams
in action would seem to fall into this latter category.
The same distinction applies to football clubs, as in the
pairs below:
Aston Villa is a football club based in Birmingham.
 ston Villa were one of the founder members of the Football
A
League in 1888.
 anchester United Football Club was founded as Newton
M
Heath LYR Football Club in 1878.
 anchester United host Leicester City in the opening game
M
of the football season.
The choice of singular or plural in this context is an ideal topic for
a classroom exercise, as the issue is not always black or white: grey
areas will make for good debate for the students’ grey matter!
At issue is the rationale of the statement: Is the speaker’s
intention to think of individuals or a group? Is there human
activity or is the matter impersonal? To discuss a point of
grammar which is by no means absolute will be an interesting
challenge for more advanced students.
Activity 1
■■ Display the four sentences relating to Peru and explain the
rationale for the choice of verb in each one.
Issue 119 • November 2018 41
LANGUAGE

■■ Put the students into pairs and ask them to choose a country. I feel that the rationale above, distinguishing between human
■■ Ask the pairs to write a sentence in the singular with an activity and an impersonal statement, though not hard and fast
institutional statement (eg demographic, cultural, geographical) as a rule, is a workable solution and an easier distinction than
and a sentence in the plural in a sporting context. simply ‘individuals’ or ‘group’.
■■ On completion, get the students to exchange sentences with
another pair for approval. Activity 3
■■ Ask all the pairs to read their statements out to the class, and ■■ Make a handout with the following list for each pair of
display some on the board. students:
■■ Discuss as a class any disputed sentences, and resolve any 1 the BBC
difficulties. 2 the government
3 choir
Activity 2
4 union
■■ Make a copy of these sentences for each of your students:
5 committee
1 The Borodin Quartet was/were founded in 1945 in the then
6 jury
Soviet Union.
7 audience
2 The team is/are full of enthusiasm.
8 the Ministry of Defence
3 Australia is/are the largest country in Oceania.
9 public
4 Australia was/were beaten by six wickets in the fourth
One Day International. 10 Germany
5 My son’s school is/are undergoing structural repairs. ■■ Ask the students, working in pairs, to choose one item
from the list.
6 At tonight’s concert, the school orchestra is/are playing
works by Haydn, Schubert and Brahms. ■■ Ask the pairs to write two sentences for their choice, one in
7 My family has/have decided to move to Norwich. the singular and one in the plural, to show that they have
understood the difference. For example:
8 My firm is/are very considerate when staff want to take
The BBC is the UK’s only commercial-free TV channel.
time off at short notice.
The BBC have won the Sunday night ratings war with their
9 Police is/are growing increasingly concerned about the
new drama series ‘The Bodyguard’.
wellbeing of an elderly man with dementia who went
missing on Saturday. ■■ Ask the students to exchange their sentences with another
10 The staff is/are worried about their jobs. pair for approval and discussion.
■■ With the students working in pairs, ask them to decide which ■■ Get the students to share and discuss their sentences as a class.
is the more appropriate verb form: does the statement describe
human activity or is it an impersonal statement of fact? Activity 4
■■ Ask the students to compare answers with another pair. For homework, ask the students to choose a country, a sports
■■ Invite the students to give the correct choice to the whole class. team and a general group noun.
■■ Resolve any disputed choices and confirm the rationale. For each, they should write two sentences: one with a
singular verb and one with a plural verb, to demonstrate their
Suggested answers understanding of the rationale.
1 w
 as (impersonal statement of historical fact, regarding the
quartet as an organisation, not focusing on its individual
In summary
members) We use the singular verb form when we see the group as an
impersonal whole and the plural form when the feelings and
2 were (human activity)
actions of the people in the group are the focus of the sentence,
3 is (impersonal statement of geographical fact) personal human activity being the ultimate criterion. n
4 were (human activity)
Ken Milgate has over 40 years’ experience
5 is (impersonal statement of fact) of teaching ESOL in further education. He is
6 a
 re (human activity: we think of instrumentalists playing; a reflective practitioner, with research
interests in innovative teaching strategies,
compare The school orchestra is ten years old.) and he used to be Chief Examiner and
7 have (human activity) Distance Learning Tutor for Eurolink,
preparing prospective ESOL teachers
8 are (human activity) worldwide.
9 are (human activity) margaretmilgate@gmail.com

10 are (human activity)

42 Issue 119 • November 2018 www.etprofessional.com

 METHODOLOGY

Working towards
a common goal
Patricia Barzotti investigates whether Cooperative Learning techniques can promote
communication and collaboration in large classes.

I
first became interested in Cooperative Learning (CL) when I
started working at the University of Urbino in central Italy. I
was given classes of 80–100 students who had to practise
speaking for their exams. In such large classes, the students
are used to receiving knowledge passively and taking notes,
rather than participating actively and interacting with either the
teacher or their peers. Yet with the increasing move towards
internationalisation in universities, students are being expected
to work well in teams, to participate, communicate, show
interdependence and responsibility and use a range of social
skills successfully. However, the traditional teacher-controlled
style of learning, which continues to prevail in large classes,
makes it difficult for such things to be achieved.
Whilst lectures remain the primary mode of teaching
languages in the tertiary sector, studies such as those by Steve
Jones have shown that a cooperative approach can be used
through group discussions and pairwork. In this way, the
Individual accountability
students are able to engage more meaningfully with the content
of the lesson and become more responsible for their own Each group member must be personally committed to the task
learning. Researchers suggest limiting the amount of time and take responsibility for doing their part. Each has an
dedicated to traditional lectures, and encouraging critical important contribution to make, and needs to be motivated to
thinking through interaction and reflection. Mark Huxham do it well if the final product is to be effective.
talks about making use of ‘interactive windows’ at certain Cooperative groups, as differentiated from ordinary groups,
moments during a lecture to get the students active. are characterised by these two conditions and three further
principal features:
A spirit of cooperation ■■ Cooperative skills: These are required, to enable people to
According to David Johnson, Roger Johnson and Edythe work well together. They include things such as taking turns,
Holubec, who have pioneered the cooperative approach since listening actively to each other, contributing to discussions
the 1970s, ‘Cooperative Learning is the instructional use of small and problem-solving.
groups so that students work together to maximise their own and ■■ Face-to-face interaction: The learners do all the tasks through
each other’s learning’. For a group to work effectively, there direct interaction with each other.
must be two fundamental conditions: ‘positive interdependence’ ■■ Goal setting and group reflection: Targets are established, so
and ‘individual accountability’. that the learners know exactly what to aim for. Feedback
Positive interdependence sessions enable them to understand how useful (or not) it has
been to work in a group.
For a task to be successfully accomplished, everyone in the
group has to work well with each other and for each other, Such features distinguish cooperative groups from traditional
rather than in competition against each other. As opposed to learning groups, as they foster a group spirit, which is necessary
‘Negative interdependence’, in which individuals achieve their to carry out different types of task and accomplish sets of
goal through the failure of a competitor, and ‘No goals, and each member is personally responsible for some
interdependence’, in which there is no relationship between aspect of the task. In traditional groups, members may have to
individuals’ goals, ‘Positive interdependence’ implies that the work together to complete an exercise but not necessarily
learners are aware that they can only attain their goals if the cooperate, whereas in the CL framework, specific structures of
other members of their group do so as well. Therefore, everyone cooperation and responsibility are activated through the
has to help and encourage each other to reach the final target. distinctive features of the CL group.

www.etprofessional.com Issue 119 • November 2018 43

METHODOLOGY
A cooperative experiment
One of the cooperative learning techniques I have experimented
with is based on a group investigation originally devised by
Yael and Shlomo Sharan. This involves four essential features:
investigation, interaction, interpretation and intrinsic
motivation. In the first phase, the students are encouraged to
investigate an issue, using their own resources. They then plan
their approach and discuss the sources they will use through
peer interaction and collaboration, which enriches the planning
stage. Personal investment in the investigation increases their
motivation to do a good job. Once the task has been completed,
an evaluation of how the group performed is carried out, and
they discuss how improvements could be made.
This technique was applied to a presentation activity,
which a class of psychology students had to undertake in their
English lessons. Previously this was an individual task, which
they had to do in preparation for an oral examination, but it
was felt that it could become an interesting tool for groupwork,
thereby encouraging greater interaction and communication.
Students in groups of five to six selected a topic of current
interest in their field, prepared a summary of it and presented
it to their peers, with each member of the group taking
responsibility for a specific part of the presentation. One of the
main features was to work in groups and, as the success of the
final presentation depended on each member preparing their
part well, the students were encouraged to cooperate actively
in the process of researching, preparing and delivering the
presentation.
The results
Observations of the class revealed positive student behaviour
and interaction. During the stage in which the students had to
summarise the most important points of their chosen topic,
they seemed generally willing to share each other’s suggestions,
in order to complete their final text.
The students did not always feel comfortable about working
in groups or being ‘judged’ by the lecturer, who walked around
facilitating their work. However, participation increased over
time as groupwork was integrated into the lessons more
regularly. It was noted that the students felt more confident and
less anxious about taking risks with their spoken English, as
being in a group took away the pressure.
Most students agreed afterwards that peer cooperation can
increase learning by expediting the understanding of concepts,
summarising key points or re-formulation. During the process
of summarising and re-elaborating the material for their
presentation, the students exchanged information and ideas
about the topic and added new information obtained by
individual small-scale research. Some guidance was provided in
organising the presentation into logical and manageable parts,
and suggestions were made as to how to divide the parts
between the group members, but the students then decided
together on how to manage the parts and integrate the new
information, as well as designing PowerPoint slides to make
their presentation visually appealing. The students seemed
eager to help each other, only calling on the instructor to check
writing accuracy or correct pronunciation.
44 Issue 119 • November 2018
Indeed, once the students established a way of working
together, they appeared reluctant to have the instructor
listening to their conversations, and this might suggest they
needed their own space to work independently. The students
themselves commented that working in a group enabled them
to learn the content in a deeper and more engaging way, as
they had to look at the topic from different points of view
and accommodate diversity of thinking. In addition, they
were able to understand their language mistakes and correct
them when working with higher-level peers, and seemed
positive about receiving such help.
t t t
Given that CL can encourage students to develop
interpersonal relations, cooperate and communicate by
working in small groups, this approach should be encouraged
– particularly in large classes, where the students are often
resistant to speaking English in the presence of others.
Moreover, teachers of different disciplines should be trained
in the appropriate use of CL, in order to open Huxham’s
‘interactive windows’ during their lessons, encouraging greater
interaction, reflection and critical thinking.
Specific instructions should be given to students in the use
of cooperative skills before they undertake cooperative
groupwork, to enable them to understand the importance of
working together effectively in the pursuit of a common goal.
In particular, activities need to be carefully structured and
staged, and specific roles and tasks assigned, to ensure full and
active participation, as well as encouraging the students to
develop autonomy as a group, relying on each other’s
knowledge and linguistic resources rather than solely on the
teacher. Structure and order are essential, given the multitude
of learning styles and personalities, and the gender differences
that might obstruct the effective working of the group if the
students are not guided by clear objectives. n
Huxham, M ‘Learning in lectures: do “interactive windows” help?’
Active Learning in Higher Education 6 (1) 2005
Johnson, D W, Johnson, R T and Holubec, E The Nuts and Bolts of
Cooperative Learning Interaction Book Company 1994
Jones, S E ‘Reflections on the lecture: outmoded medium or
instrument of inspiration?’ Journal of Further and Higher Education
31 (4) 2007
Sharan, Y and Sharan, S ‘Group investigation in the cooperative
classroom’ In Sharan, S (Ed) Handbook of Cooperative Learning
Methods Greenwood Press 1994
Patricia Barzotti works at the University of
Urbino, Italy, as an English teacher in the
psychology, education and economics
faculties. In addition, she runs courses in
language and methodology for primary and
secondary school teachers. She is
particularly interested in using
communicative methodologies with large
university classes.
psbbarzotti@gmail.com
www.etprofessional.com
 ENGLISH TEACHING CONFESSIONAL

ENGLISH TEACHING
Confessional Adam Miller confesses how an introduction to the right books resulted
in a lifelong love of reading.

A
t the age of 11, I was told that I was seriously lacking
in many of the building blocks necessary for a
rounded education: my spelling was awful, my
knowledge of grammar and punctuation was poor for
my age, my reading level was considered sluggish
– and I even had a triangular rubber grip fitted to my pencils in an
attempt to try to improve my handwriting.
It was then that my mother decided that every night before
bed, I had to read out loud to her for at least ten minutes. She
started me off on classics, like Moonfleet by J Meade Falkner,
Kidnapped and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and
Pied Piper by Nevil Shute, all of which made a huge impression
on me. Even now, my memory can snap back more than 20 years
and easily recover very specific details from these stories.

A foundation for life

I quickly grew to love reading, and it has remained a lifelong
passion, one that has become such a routine that I find it difficult
to sleep at night without finishing off the day with a quick read. Of
course, whilst my mother was laying the groundwork for me to
enjoy reading, I was also subconsciously gaining a plethora of
skills: my vocabulary improved, as did my understanding of how
the English language is constructed. It was soon after I began
reading for enjoyment that I gained a keen interest in creative
writing, which has been a hobby and part-time job of mine for the
last decade or so. So through the humble beginnings of just
trying to improve my reading, I gained multiple academic skills …
my penmanship is still terrible, but reading can’t solve everything!

Passing it on
I now teach an extensive reading class at Aichi Shukutoku
University in Japan, and my aim is still very close to that of my
mother’s: to have my students embrace reading and, naturally
and organically, improve their English ability. I use an approach
that is much like my mother’s: reading ability is not commented
on, let alone graded, and mistakes are accepted (as a means to class by having the students share their reading experience that
learn and improve). The simple mantra of ‘low level, high volume’ week: What book have they read in the last seven days? Did they
is the cornerstone of my classes; I want my students to enjoy enjoy it? Would they recommend it to their classmates? I also put
reading and to work at a pace that suits them. aside, at the very least, 20 minutes of free reading time at the end
As a teacher working at a university, I obviously have of class, during which the students can borrow a new book from
assessments, goals and set reading that I must get through, but me, or talk to me about what they read that week as I check their
I always make a point of starting the first ten or 15 minutes of the ‘Extensive reading checklist’. This is a record of their reading,

www.etprofessional.com Issue 119 • November 2018 45

ENGLISH TEACHING CONFESSIONAL
where they list the title and author of each book they read, indicate
whether or not they finished it, and if they would recommend it.
There is also space for them to note down their thoughts about it.
A copy of the checklist can be downloaded from the ETp website
at www.etprofessional.com/media/32068/etp119_
november2018_onlineresource_miller_p45.pdf.
This sharing of opinions and free reading encourages the
idea that reading is fun, not only as a personal journey, but as a
way to communicate and connect with others.
My ultimate goal is to help my students find the books that
might encourage a lifelong passion for reading. George Jacobs
and Thomas Farrell describe these as ‘Home run books’ – titles
that create a profound connection with the reader. I have been
lucky enough to have three such books in my life and, below,
I will look into their importance and how they helped shape my
life and my love of reading.
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
This was one of the first books I read with my mother, and it is by
far the one that I remember most fondly. Defoe’s style of writing
made Crusoe a rounded and believable character, with fears,
flaws and prejudices. He was not a saintly hero who could thrive
effortlessly on his deserted island, but a man who had to strive to
secure survival, and rely on luck as much as skill. I still have an
obsession with any story that has a central theme of survival, and
on camping trips I fantasise as to how well I would fare in the
wild. This book locked me into a love of narrative and an
appreciation for character construction, and it is one of the few
books I have read multiple times.
Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture
by Takashi Murakami
This one book opened up an appreciation for Japanese pop
culture, something that I still marvel at today; it legitimises
46 Issue 119 • November 2018
everything from long-running cartoons to plastic figures as true
art forms. Whilst I am by no means an expert on anime or manga,
I still enjoy exploring Japanese art and culture and, for me, it was
this book that sparked an interest in Japan, one that eventually
led to me living here for close to a decade.
Ryan the Lion by Brenda Miller
This is actually a series of books written (and illustrated) by my
mother for my younger brother and me. As she saw my
growing interest in writing, she started to tell us bedtime
stories conjured up on the spot, where fictional versions of my
family played key roles in rescuing an orphaned lion cub. Later,
she took pen to paper and wrote up these stories, with
hand-drawn images brought to life with coloured pencils. My
mother let me know that reading and writing do not belong to
some exclusive club and are not an elusive dream; they are
tools that can be utilised by anybody, and a hobby that can be
enjoyed by all.
My mother passed away when I was 17, and when my father
came to visit me last year, he brought with him a dog-eared
version of my mother’s book. The instant recognition it brought in
me swept me back to a comfortable and safe time in my life, and
it made me appreciate all over again the love of reading my
mother nurtured in me.

Whilst it might be wishful thinking to believe that a single
extensive reading course could be similarly influential, it is not
beyond the realms of reality to think that books do have the
power to draw in the attention of even inexperienced readers and
completely capture their imagination. As a teacher, I can’t make
my students love reading, but I can expose them to enough
material that such an appreciation will, perhaps, emerge naturally
and, hopefully, last a lifetime. n
Jacobs, G and Farrell, T S C Teachers Sourcebook for Extensive
Reading Information Age Publishing 2012
Adam Miller has been living and working in
Japan for the past ten years. He currently
teaches Presentation, Creative Writing and
Extensive Reading courses at Aichi Shukutoku
University. He has also been charged with
creating a Film Studies syllabus, which is set to
start in April 2019.
millerman2k@gmail.com
ENGLISH TEACHING Confessional
English Teaching Confessional is an occasional series in which
teachers describe a pivotal moment in their lives or careers.
This could be something that happened, someone they met,
something that was said or something they read that steered
them in a new direction. Do you have a story to share about how
you became the professional English teacher you are today?
Please write to helena.gomm@pavpub.com.
www.etprofessional.com

Keeping
teachers motivated
Jeny Rapheal believes that top-down leadership is not effective in educational institutions.
T
he life of an educational institution
depends on the collective motivation of
its teaching staff to move that institution
forward. Once the teaching staff lose
interest in the development of an
institution, its future is in doubt.
According to motivational speaker Bob Nelson,
‘an employee’s motivation is a direct result of the
sum of interactions with his or her manager’. In
other words, motivation has a direct connection
to the impression an employer leaves in the mind
of an employee during their interactions. And an
educational institution, as an organisation, is not
immune from the realities of the relationship
between employer and employee.
Communication between the teaching staff
and the school administrators is crucial in this
regard, because this is where the fundamental
attitude of the teachers towards their institution
is shaped. Every interaction with their manager or
principal will leave an impression in a teacher’s
mind, and this impression has the power to
control that teacher’s response to their working
environment. These impressions often take the
form of implicit emotional messages
communicated to the teacher. They define and
fashion the teacher’s emotional bond with the
institution, conveying how much the teacher is
valued and how important they are perceived to
be in the development of the school.
No individual wants to be ruled over. The
need for autonomy – to be involved in activities
of one’s own choice, and to protect one’s personal
freedom and choice – is a fundamental basic need
of the human psyche. When obstacles are put in
the way of satisfying this basic need for
autonomy, the ego of the employee suffers. It
searches frantically for the cause of the obstacle,
in order to remove it. If the cause of the obstacle
is justified in the mind of the employee, they may
accept and go along with the situation. If not,
any unpleasant experience with the employer
leaves a distasteful and lasting influence in the
www.etprofessional.com
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
mind of the employee, and drains away any
motivation for promoting and participating in the
collective forward movement of the organisation.
Employee motivation
World over, the organisational climate is undergoing
a major shift. Rather than continuing to promote
rigid hierarchical leader–subordinate relationships,
leaders are now aiming to foster and create more
leaders. Top-down, one-way communication is
losing its appeal and is being replaced by
collaboration and cooperation. Employers are
realising that, without employee flexibility, no
institution can muster its workforce and head
towards success, and that the key to successful
leadership lies in influence rather than authority.
Each employee represents a possibility,
something that authoritarian leadership fails to
recognise. The leader who is only interested in
making sure that every employee is executing their
mandatory duties is below average in leadership
qualities. Good leaders motivate their employees to
go beyond what is mandatory and to experiment
with novel ways of working and progressing the
organisation. The best leaders focus not only on
what their employees do, but why they do it. The
very best leaders keep on examining the reasons
behind the actions of their employees, and are
committed to bringing out the best in them.
Simply put, motivation is the reason behind
any action.
Teacher motivation
Teacher motivation is a complex matter, and it is not
always easy for the principal or head of an educational
institution to figure out the kind of motivation that is
fuelling the actions of the teaching staff. A teacher’s
motivation to teach is subtle and sophisticated, as well
as volatile. Sheer commitment to the profession is not
the only motivating factor that sustains teachers in
their working lives. Motivation to teach is also likely to
be based on a teacher’s material and psycho-social
Issue 119 • November 2018 47
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
needs. At the most basic level, teachers may teach for monetary
gain, perhaps because they have families to feed. Their need for
intellectual and social recognition may also act as a motivational
force. The teaching profession may be seen as a means of
self-expression or a means of establishing a social identity.
Such myriad psycho-social reasons are there behind every
teacher’s desire to engage in teaching. Given this, a principal’s
task of instilling in each teacher an earnest desire for the
advancement of the institution in which they work is
no easy matter.
Institutional motivation
An interest in the development of the school can happen for
various reasons:
1 Teachers may become anxious about the future of their
school and its standards when they become aware of
increased competition from other institutions. Fear of falling
behind in the race to attract students may prompt the
teaching faculty to think seriously about raising the standard
of teaching and improving the image of their school.
2 Interest in the development of the school may be vicarious,
or a natural consequence of the interest the principal
exhibits in the development of institutional standards of
teaching and learning.
3 Interest in the development of the school may ensue from
the emotional bond that the teachers share with the
authorities and the institution as a whole. When teachers
feel that their institution will be there for them, through the
ups and downs of their lives, interest in the development of
the institution becomes part of their own emotional needs.
The kind of emotional bond a teacher shares with their
institution can have a significant impact on the interest they
have in the development of the institution as a whole.
Lack of motivation
The motivational energies of any professional are so volatile that
it is difficult to discern when or why they decline. It is particularly
difficult to identify any downward slide in the motivational level
of a teacher, as there is unlikely to be much concrete evidence for
the ultimate quality of the work they deliver inside the
classroom. So far, nobody has designed any device to identify
correctly the catalysts which will keep teacher motivation going.
The unsatisfactory performance of a particular student can
be attributed to myriad reasons, including personal, familial
and constitutional/genetic factors, and there will be few people
who dare to question the motivation of that student’s teacher in
delivering quality teaching. Quality teaching, though
important, is only one of the factors contributing to student
success. As a result, teacher quality cannot be directly gauged
by student performance.
Perception and commitment
So, how should the teachers’ interest in the school be created
and sustained? This rests wholly upon the vision of the
principal and how he or she believes the teaching faculty should
perceive the institution.
48 Issue 119 • November 2018
An educational institution can be said to be moving
forward if students are clamouring for admission to the
courses it provides. This only happens when an institution is
seen to be catering to the needs of its students and, if they are
children, their parents. In other words, it happens when the
institution has a thorough knowledge of what the students are
looking for. In this sense, the development of the institution
as a societal enterprise depends on the shared/collective
awareness of the teaching staff about the needs of all the
stakeholders involved: students, parents, society, community,
etc. This collective awareness among the teaching staff can be
sustained only if the institutional needs are commensurate
with the socio-emotional needs of the teachers themselves.
And a good principal is someone who can succeed in striking
the right balance between the two.
A teacher might be well committed to the teaching profession,
but professional commitment does not guarantee institutional
commitment. As I pointed out above, institutional commitment is
entirely dependent on what is being communicated to the teacher,
directly or indirectly, during their interactions with the principal or
manager. For this reason, it is important that the people at the
helm of educational institutions practise forms of leadership in
which they are conscious of the nuances of employee–employer
interactions. Here are some tips for things principals might do
to achieve this:
■■ Master effective ways of communicating with the teaching
staff. Avoid authoritarian forms of leadership at all costs.
■■ Avoid rigid and formal communication, where interaction
takes place only at an intellectual level.
■■ Ensure that synchrony has been achieved between the
emotional states of the principal and the teaching staff after
each interaction.
■■ Never try to iron out discord or overcome dissent simply by
exerting authoritative power.
■■ Aim to generate a climate of ‘acceptance’ rather than
‘compliance’, because mere compliance with institutional
requirements nudges out any chance for emotional bonding
with the institution.
■■ Have a structured procedural mechanism to resolve
grievances and disagreements.
■■ Ensure enough space is provided for expression of opinion.
■■ Hold occasional events within the institution which involve
the teachers’ families.
■■ At all times, promote and maintain a democratic atmosphere. n
Jeny Rapheal is a secondary school teacher
with 18 years of experience in teaching. She
has a PhD in Adolescent Psychology from
Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, India, and
has published more than 20 research articles
in various national and international journals.
jenyrapheal@gmail.com
www.etprofessional.com

No one told me
that! 3
I
f the teacher training programme you are involved in delivering
includes a practicum (teaching practice element), it is likely
that your trainees will have to produce formal lesson plans
which form part of the assessment. This begs the question: As
a trainer, how much support should you provide with lesson
planning? In this article, we will consider the trainer’s role during
the planning process, and consider some practical ways in which
we can help to make teaching practice a positive and rewarding
experience both for our trainees and their learners.
Some points to consider
!  Before we go any further, take a few minutes to consider
your responses to the following questions:
1 How much support do you offer your trainees in terms of
lesson planning?
2 How do you discuss a trainee’s lesson plan before the lesson?
3 How many drafts do you look at?
4 When do you expect your trainees to give you their final
lesson plan?
5 How can you focus on making lesson planning
developmental for a trainee teacher?
6 How many areas for development is it appropriate to ask
the trainees to focus on?
7 How can your trainees be encouraged to consider the lesson
from the learners’ point of view, as well as thinking about
their own development?
8 What are you looking for at certain stages of the course
in relation to planning?
9 Is independence important?
10 Should support with planning ease off as the course
progresses?
www.etprofessional.com
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
In the third instalment of this series aimed
at novice teacher trainers, Beth Davies
and Nicholas Northall share their advice
on assisting trainees with lesson plans.
Thinking carefully about your answers to the above questions
should help you to make decisions about how much support it is
appropriate and realistic to provide in your context – and when
this will be given.
Some suggestions
If you are intending to look at a draft lesson plan, we suggest
you ask for this at least a day before the lesson. On part-time or
online courses, plans can be sent via email or, mainly on
intensive courses, this could involve a face-to-face meeting, for
example during a supervised lesson planning slot. This gives
you a chance to discuss the lesson with the trainee, offer advice
and encouragement, and make any necessary changes well in
advance of the lesson being taught, thereby possibly reducing
the trainees’ stress levels.
We would also suggest that you only look at one draft
lesson plan. Otherwise, this can result in the trainees becoming
very dependent on you, as they feel the need to check every
little change they make. Although some trainees may need
more support than others, not giving them the opportunity to
actually think about their plan before checking with you is, we
feel, detrimental to their progress in the long run.
Even for experienced trainers, it is very difficult to assess a plan
and a lesson effectively at the same time, and this is likely to be
even more challenging for novice trainers. Therefore, we would
recommend that you also insist on your trainees giving you their
final lesson plan in good time before the lesson. This will give you
the chance to go through it carefully in advance of the lesson,
ensuring that you are well prepared for the ensuing observation.
Although it can be difficult (despite best intentions on both
sides, formal teaching qualifications do often lean towards box
ticking), try to get the trainees to consider the lesson from the
learners’ point of view and not just from their own.
Issue 119 • November 2018 49
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
On many teacher training courses, observations are seen
as evaluative. Try to focus on how the trainee could develop as
a teacher (eg by drawing attention to any areas to work on
from previous lessons) and how the planned lesson can
facilitate real learning. Encourage the trainee to think about
their own development: they may want to focus on every
aspect of teaching, whereas it might be better to focus on a
narrower set of criteria, such as one to three areas per lesson.
By not focusing on too many areas, you reduce the cognitive
load placed upon your trainees, possibly allowing them to
make solid progress in one to three areas, rather than making
no real progress in ten suggested areas.
Finally, as the course progresses, you might decide that you
will look for different things in terms of the contents of the
trainees’ lesson plans. At the beginning of a course, you might
only be looking at whether the lesson’s procedure is staged
appropriately and clearly. But as the course progresses, your
focus could widen, as you look at how the trainee has justified
each stage of their lesson to meet their lesson aims. You may
also consider withdrawing the support you offer trainees during
the course, to give them more opportunities to become
independent and less trainer-reliant.
In their excellent book for teacher trainers, Scott
Thornbury and Peter Watkins make some further suggestions
for supporting trainees:
■■ The trainer could simply observe the trainees (either working
on their own or in groups) planning their lessons, and offer
advice only if the trainees seem to need it.
■■ During the earlier stages of a training course, the trainees could
practise their lessons by using the other trainees as learners.
■■ As the course progresses, the trainees simply describe the
stages of their lesson plan to their trainer.
Unsupervised planning
All the suggestions above relate to guided or supervised lesson
planning: that is, when the trainer is available to support the
trainees. However, we think that it is also a good idea to include
‘unsupervised lesson planning’ slots on teacher training courses.
These are timetabled slots on a course in which the trainees are
given time to plan their lessons, but without having a trainer
available. As many training courses can be very intensive,
scheduling time for the trainees to plan their lessons (including
writing the plan, finding relevant materials and practising) goes
some way to reducing the trainees’ stress levels. We feel that
lesson planning (and delivery) especially for novice teachers is
by far the most important part of a teacher training course, so
we sometimes schedule unsupervised lesson planning in place
of more traditional input slots (see ETp Issue 118 for some
advice on planning and delivering input sessions). And, let’s
face it, as teachers, we spend much more time planning lessons
than attending workshops!
Support
Obviously, many of the points above mainly relate to pre-service
qualifications (such as CELTA or TrinityCert), where the trainees
do need a lot of support, rather than courses for experienced
50 Issue 119 • November 2018
trainees who are already able to plan effective lessons, but who
may want to take their teaching to the next stage of development.
If you are working with more experienced teachers, we would
suggest that you consider the trainees’ stage of development and
how much support they actually need. Depending on the required
level of support, all the suggestions we have made in this article
could be selected or adapted. We would suggest, though, that
perhaps the most important piece of advice relevant to working
with experienced trainees would be to manage expectations: that is,
ensure that your trainees know exactly how much support they
will receive and when they will receive it.
t t t
Taking all of the above into consideration, here are what we
consider to be our top tips when it comes to supporting trainees
with their planning:
Do ...
■■ set ground rules at the beginning of the course (deadlines,
amount of support, etc).
■■ ensure you have a copy of the final lesson plan in advance of
the lesson.
■■ encourage the trainees to think about the lesson from the
learners’ point of view.
Don’t ...
■■ expect too much during the early stages of the course.
■■ plan your trainees’ lessons for them.
■■ advise your trainees to make lots of changes to their plan at
the last minute.
We hope you have enjoyed this article, and that you now have
more ideas about helping your trainees prepare their lessons.
Good luck! n
Thornbury, S and Watkins, P The CELTA Course Trainer’s Manual
CUP 2007
Beth Davies is a teacher and teacher trainer,
based at the English Language Teaching
Centre at the University of Sheffield, UK. She
has worked in ELT since 2001 in a variety of
contexts and has an MA in Applied
Linguistics with TESOL.
e.davies@sheffield.ac.uk
Nicholas Northall works at the English
Language Teaching Centre at the University
of Sheffield, UK, where he teaches EAP and
contributes to the centre’s teacher training
programme. He has worked in ELT for almost
20 years.
n.northall@sheffield.ac.uk
www.etprofessional.com
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TECHNOLOGY
English or
Dinglish?
‘
L
Chris Panell ocky ALWAYS speaks English at home.
believes we I can’t understand him!’
Locky’s first language is Cantonese,
need to
as is true of the majority of my middle
pay more school students, who are English as an
attention to Additional Language (EAL) learners, here in my
the language Hong Kong classes. He sometimes struggles with
higher-level vocabulary, and I had just suggested to
our students his mother, by way of an interpreter, that Locky
need to learn. would probably do better in school if he did more
practice, perhaps by taking part in English
conversations outside class. So I was surprised
when she insisted that Locky was already speaking
English conversationally ‘all the time’.
As is often the case, ‘Mum knows best’. When I
began to think about the topics Locky had described
in his assignments, or subjects I had overheard him
talking about with friends during breaks, I realised
that he was speaking a lot more English than I was
giving him credit for; it just wasn’t the English we
typically speak in an academic environment.
A new digital language
On reflection, I realised that Locky – along with
many of his fellow EAL classmates – is fluent in an
emerging global digital English. Young people his
age the world over debate ‘pubg variations’, scorn
‘click-bait’, worry about being ‘triggered’, and want
to create ‘memes’ that ‘go viral’. This global
generation appears to be fluent in a new technical
variation of English. Whether we call it ‘Dinglish’
52 Issue 119 • November 2018
or ‘Englital’, it seems to be moving around our
world as quickly as the latest waves of technology.
English is the language of technology. There are
many reasons for this. Start with the fact that most
research findings must be translated into English in
order to be published in scientific or technology
journals. Add to the mix that the world’s most
popular programming languages – every one of
them, from JavaScript to C to C# to Java to Python,
and so on – use English key words. Even teams of
international app and software developers must put
their internal-code comments in English to be most
readily understood by their global co-workers.
A related issue is the fact that technological
innovations use English as the default or, sometimes
even, primary interface. This is as true for Google as
it is for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and most other
forms of social media, which our young people have
come to rely upon for communication.
Is it any wonder that during the 2017 Arab
Spring protests in Egypt, where social media were
used for organising purposes, signs and banners
were carried with phrases like ‘Together Against
Injustice’, ‘Go Away!’, and ‘Facebook Against
Every Unjust’? Right here in Hong Kong, during
the Umbrella Movement of 2014, protestors were
photographed carrying signs that read ‘POP VOTE’,
‘Because I Love ♥ HK’, and the iconic ‘Make Love
Not War!’ A widely-circulated picture at the time
featured an umbrella emblazoned with the words,
‘We don’t need any tear gas – we’re crying already’.
All of this came with #s aplenty.
www.etprofessional.com

Channels of transmission
Another way this digital version of English is being
transmitted to the young is through YouTube. According to
the company’s own publicity statistics (on their website),
YouTube has over one billion users, in 88 different countries,
with 76 different languages available for navigation. Even so,
if you want your video to reach the widest audience, if you
want it experienced in the language used by the makers of
most new videos, you had better use English.
It turns out that Jade, one of my own Hong Kong students,
is – despite her shy appearance – an aspiring YouTube
personality. Because of her in-class demeanour, I was taken by
surprise when she casually mentioned that she had over 4,000
followers on her YouTube channel.
I asked the other students in the class to raise their hands
if they followed Jade’s channel, and over a third of them did
so. It turns out, Jade has been teaching many more young
people in English than I have, this past year. She specialises
in diverse ‘Do It Yourself ’ topics, ranging from making
decorative Chinese lanterns to knowing how to tell the
difference between a blog and a vlog – topics that strike her
as interesting and which also appear to appeal to a fairly
substantial audience around the world, beyond her
immediate classmates.
When I asked Jade how she develops segments for her
channel, she described how she watches other YouTubers to try
to get ideas for how to put the latest attention-getting
technology into what she does. With quiet confidence, she said:
‘I want to get better at what I do, all of the time.’ Jade’s goal is
for her channel to ‘go viral’.
Young people around the globe are watching YouTube
videos and picking up a mixture of digital English along the
way. Many of the segments simply feature a young person
playing a popular game; he or she then provides a running
commentary while the screen video rolls. Others feature a
‘host’, informing the audience of unusual facts in a fast-paced
way; often these facts are comparisons of the ‘specs’ of the
latest technology.
In all of this, our young people are picking up new
vocabulary at a pace that would make any classroom teacher
jealous. There is a global conversation going on, and it is being
spoken in a hybrid digital English.
The primacy of language
As someone who has taught both English and technology
courses my entire career, both in the US and internationally, to
students ranging from 11 years of age to college-age, I’ve
thought a lot about this. Regardless of what course they tell me
I’m teaching, regardless of what the syllabus says or what the
class title claims, I’ve found that I’m always teaching language.
I first contended this in a 2003 essay entitled ‘Teaching
computer programming as a language’, which was based on
my experiences in teaching both entry-level programming and
English courses. I wrote then: ‘In the end, it is language that
we are teaching, and that should guide the activities used in our
programming courses.’
www.etprofessional.com
TECHNOLOGY
Since then, much evidence in favour of my argument has
accumulated. Janet Siegmund and her colleagues presented a
study at the 2014 International Conference on Software
Engineering in which the researchers imaged the brains of
students learning to program, and found that, as they wrote in
code, the portions of the brain ‘related to different facets of
language processing’ were activated. Another team of researchers,
led by Matthew Pierce, tested the use of second language
acquisition (SLA) techniques in the teaching of entry-level
computer programming classes and concluded that: ‘The results
from this project show great promise for the utilization of SLA in
introductory programming course content delivery.’
What all of this means is that by teaching English, we are
teaching technology, and by teaching the use of digital tools, we
are teaching English. We can either continue to fight to keep the
two as separate and distinct areas of study, or we can accept that
this is the direction in which our students are headed, and use it
to our advantage by increasingly integrating into our core
curriculum discussions and use of the social media, gaming,
coding and creation technology that interests our students.
t t t
Locky has already assimilated digital English into his daily life.
He seems to recognise instinctively that this is necessary as a
preparation for the realities he will face in the world – that is,
once he gets past the current false dichotomy he is presented
with in school, where he must choose between academic areas
like ‘English’ and ‘Technology’.
Maybe it is time for us to face up to this reality, which
Locky already understands. If we aren’t offering young people
in our English classes the chance to work with and improve
their use of the digital knowledge, skills and vocabulary that
they will need to succeed in their future workplaces, how
relevant or necessary are we? We shouldn’t be teaching English
or technology. Following the lead of this digital generation, we
should set out to blur these lines of division. n
Panell, C ‘Teaching computer programming as a language’ Tech
Directions 62 (8) 2003
Siegmund, J, Kästner, C, Apel, S, Parnin, C, Bethmann, A, Leich, T,
Saake, G and Brechmann, A ‘Understanding understanding source
code with functional magnetic resonance imaging’ Proceedings of
the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering 2014
Pierce, M, Griggs, A, Sun, L and Frederick, C ‘Evaluating student
perceptions and learning outcomes: differences between SLA-ABLE
and non-SLA-ABLE introductory programming courses’ International
Journal of Management and Applied Science 3 (9) 2017
Chris Panell currently teaches web and
app design courses at Yew Chung
International School in Hong Kong. He has
taught both technology and English courses
to students from 11 years of age to those in
college, and has been teaching primarily
English as an Additional Language to
learners for the past two years.
cccjpanell@juno.com
Issue 119 • November 2018 53
TECHNOLOGY

Necessity is
include essays, reports, podcasts and reflective logs.
Portfolios are commonly used as a student’s ‘digital
résumé’ to demonstrate learning outcomes and, as
such, can be used as an assessment tool.

the mother E-portfolio tools vary from specially-built systems

like Mahara to blogging websites such as WordPress or
Blogger. However, they all share a number of common

of invention
functions, enabling the students to:
■■ store and access their own completed work;
■■ showcase and share their work with others;
■■ receive feedback from their teachers and their peers.
If e-portfolios are used appropriately, they drive many
Israil Kurbaniyazov uses Dropbox positive changes in the learning process. For instance,
to make e-portfolios simple. as Min Yang and her colleagues point out, they allow
for productive learning for the following reasons:

F
■■ They make tasks authentic.
inding the right technological tools to
■■ They allow self-managing and reflective
accommodate our pedagogical needs can
engagement with the learning process.
sometimes be difficult, and it can require a
degree of creativity on our part. But what ■■ They enable a learning dialogue to take place with
does it take to be creative with technology? the teacher, and peer feedback.
I am certainly no expert, but in this article I will show ■■ They allow for student autonomy.
how I succeeded in using something normally regarded
as a business tool rather than an educational one, in Potential drawbacks
order to meet one of my pedagogical needs: setting up
So why didn’t I just acquire some e-portfolio software
e-portfolios for my young learners. By doing this, my
and go ahead with my students? Although I could see
aims are twofold: to explain how you can use Dropbox
that e-portfolios offered potential benefits for my
as a digital portfolio and to show how teachers can be
teaching, they also came with some constraints. The
creative with technology.
two most relevant to me were both to do with the ease
of use of e-portfolio systems with young learners.
What are e-portfolios?
An e-portfolio is a place where work produced Over-sophisticated technology
by a particular student or group of students can be Most e-portfolio systems, such as Mahara, appear
stored online. The things contained within it might to have been designed with university students or

54 Issue 119 • November 2018 www.etprofessional.com


adults in mind, and I found that they were not sufficiently
straightforward for my young learners to use: facility with
quite a number of features and functions is required to
operate them. As a result, I began to look for alternative ways
to set up e-portfolios. However, no matter what digital tools
I tried, it soon became clear that it would take a considerable
amount of time to train my intermediate teenage students to
use them. This was a real problem, because I find that when
novice learners (especially young ones) meet technically-
advanced digital tools, they tend to lose their motivation
to engage with them. In addition, teachers find themselves
having to offer a lot of technical help, rather than being
able to spend their time giving the students feedback on
their learning performance.
For this reason, I turned to websites, looking for ways to
use them as e-portfolios. The students still required technical
support with these, but the websites were easier to work with
than the e-portfolio systems, so less support was needed.
Lack of mobile apps
My initial e-portfolio integration attempts were, therefore,
mostly with web-based platforms like Blogger. Although
these were a boon in my writing classes, they weren’t very
popular with my students. This was mainly because there
were no apps for the websites, so the students couldn’t access
them from their mobiles. This meant that they visited the
sites infrequently, as they had to gain access to a computer
to do so.
Both these problems had the result that my students
regarded the e-portfolio as a somewhat ‘scary’ tool.
Having reflected on my initial experience with digital
portfolios, the vital conclusion that I came to was that
e-portfolios are tools for students. This means that the students
need to take ownership of them and regard them as their own
property. They should be able to access them on their mobile
gadgets in the same way that they access their favourite music
and photo apps and social networks like Instagram. This
simply wasn’t happening because of the lack of apps.
Dropbox to the rescue
Dropbox is a file-hosting and sharing platform built with cloud
storage. I was first introduced to it in a MOOC (massive open
online course), when I was advised to use it to keep all my work
online for reflection or later use. What keeps me so attached to
it are these advantages:
■■ I can use it to upload, store and download my files from
multiple devices.
■■ I can access and edit my files (photos, docs and others) from
anywhere.
■■ I can easily share my files.
I can receive comments on my files from people I invite.
■■
■■ I can connect with other web and mobile apps.
By using Dropbox for digital portfolios, I avoided all the
drawbacks outlined above. It is easy to use, can be accessed via
www.etprofessional.com
TECHNOLOGY
an app, and has proved to be an effective learning tool that my
students are happy to use.
Here are some step-by-step instructions for using Dropbox
as a means of setting up e-portfolios with students.
Preparation
Step 1
First familiarise yourself with the tool. If you are new to
Dropbox, sign up to explore it at www.dropbox.com. Try using it
for your own work and professional development, as a way of
learning about its features and capabilities. You might also
want to introduce it to your colleagues, so that you experiment
with collaborative work. This would be very helpful if you
consider designing formative assessment tasks using it later.
Step 2
Create a class folder. In your Dropbox account, create a
main course folder which includes multiple sub-folders. The
number of sub-folders will depend on the number of
students in the class. You should allocate one sub-folder to
each student, labelled with their names. You may also wish
to create another sub-folder entitled ‘Course materials’,
which you can use for uploading files to tell the students
about your learning goals and the criteria for success in any
task. Share your main folder with your students by email so
that they can access it.
This may sound similar to the structure of a digital learning
platform. However, setting up e-portfolios in this way makes
sharing and showcasing, documenting and commenting on the
students’ work really easy – something that can’t be done with
many digital learning platforms. Of course, with digital
learning platforms, the learners are able to share their folders
with you and others privately. But by creating a course folder in
which everyone is able to see everything, there is organisation, a
sense of community and more opportunities for learning
through peer support.
Step 3
Introduce your students to the basic features of Dropbox.
They may not be familiar with it, as it is a tool primarily used
in business, so you will need to have a tutorial session in which
you introduce it and demonstrate how it works. You will need
to explain how to:
■■ create an account and download the desktop and
mobile apps;
■■ use common functions, such as uploading, sharing,
editing files and commenting;
■■ connect to Office apps such as Word on a mobile gadget;
■■ navigate the course folders created by you.
Then, you are ready to go!
Further features
In addition to the basic ones listed above, Dropbox has other
features which can be used to enhance learning. Here is a
summary of the things you can do with it:
Issue 119 • November 2018 55
TECHNOLOGY
Constructive feedback
In the design and implementation of e-portfolios, the role of
constructive feedback is crucial. Feedback helps the students
to improve their work, gives them in-depth information about
their learning, shows them how they are progressing and
increases their confidence. Many Web 2.0 tools incorporate
features that enable users to build meaningful conversations
with each other. Dropbox is no exception, and it is easy for
both the teacher and the other students to comment on a piece
of work, by means of its ‘Comments’ feature, which has three
sub-functions: ‘Comment on specific areas’, ‘Add sticker’ and
‘@mention someone’:
■■ The main ‘Comments’ tool enables the students to receive
global feedback on their work from the teacher and their
fellow students. Because all the students’ individual
folders are shared with their teacher and the rest of the
class, any one of them can leave a comment on the work
that has been uploaded.
■■ ‘Comment on specific areas’ allows comments to be placed
on specific parts of text files, enabling more detailed
feedback to be given.
■■ ‘Add sticker’ helps those commenting on a piece of
work to communicate their feelings. According to my
students, finding funny, friendly, creative and supportive
images inserted into their work is more influential in
bolstering their confidence than written comments
of encouragement.
■■ ‘@mention someone’ is arguably the most powerful
feature for me. Whilst providing feedback to Student A,
I can send a notification to @Student B, @Student C and
@Student D via this feature, alerting them that there is
something they too can learn from the comments on the
work of Student A.
Audio feedback
Dropbox allows you to upload audio recordings from a
smartphone or iPad. Using audio feedback, you can talk at
length about the progress of your students and upload the file
for them to listen to.
Connecting Dropbox with apps
It is possible to connect Dropbox with Microsoft Office apps
on a mobile device. Students can use this facility to edit
Word text files from their phones or laptops, wherever they
are. They can create diagrams and presentations with
Microsoft Excel and Publisher. By encouraging them to use
these apps, I feel that I am helping my students to develop
important skills, such as collaboration, communication and
problem-solving.
t t t
So, how can a teacher be creative with technology? Here are
the answers that I have found from my own experience:
1 Increase your own experience with technology.
Whether it is for your own use or in your teaching, you
56 Issue 119 • November 2018
need to familiarise yourself with a range of Web 2.0 tools.
Being tech-savvy is the first step to being creative.
2 Find a ‘target of difficulty’.
This term, used by Martha Stone Wiske and her colleagues,
refers to a part of your teaching where you and your
students struggle and where technology is a potential
solution. Having a ‘target of difficulty’ creates the necessity
for creativity. I started using Dropbox when teaching
writing because, to furnish my young writers with essential
skills, I needed more reflective and peer-feedback activities.
Time constraints meant that these activities were difficult to
do in class. E-portfolios allowed the students and me more
time to achieve our learning goals.
3 Listen to your students.
I think we often overlook the fact that it is important to
listen to our students. But what they say may help us to
understand how a particular piece of technology could help
them better than we think. We should be open to accessing
new ideas from the user’s perspective and reconsider our
use of technology accordingly. It also pushes us out of our
comfort zones by suggesting new ways of using the digital
tools we are already familiar with. For instance, some of
my students told me that they wanted me to use online quiz
tools for teaching, rather than for testing. This prompted
me to use them to teach new vocabulary items online, which
soon yielded the desired learning outcomes. When it came
to Dropbox, I learnt from my students that their
e-portfolios needed to be as accessible to them as, for
example, an Instagram app.
4 Believe in your ideas, test them and get feedback.
I had already heard of other educational uses of Dropbox:
for example, using it as a learning management system or
collaborative writing tool. I soon found that it provided all
the features I needed to set up e-portfolios with my
students. When I had done this, I asked the students for
feedback. Apart from all the positive feedback about using
it in our English classes, it made me happy to hear that they
were eager to upload their work from other curriculum
subjects. This increased my confidence and has encouraged
me to be more creative in future. n
Wiske M S, Franz, K R and Breit, L Teaching for Understanding with
Technology John Wiley & Sons 2005
Yang, M, Tai, M and Lim, C P ‘The role of e-portfolios in supporting
productive learning’ British Journal of Educational Technology 47
(6) 2016
Israil Kurbaniyazov has a BA in ELT from
Uzbekistan State University of World
Languages and an MA in educational
technology from the University of Leeds,
UK. At present, he is an associate lecturer
at Westminster International University in
Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
israelkurbaniyazov@gmail.com
www.etprofessional.com
 Teac h i n g E n g l i sh

TITLE
Best Practices
for Blended
SUB TITLE

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Barney Barrett

By Pete Sharma and Barney Barret

T his comprehensive handbook supports
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bring their years of experience to this
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teachers, as well as offer a framework
to help you choose which of the many
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your context and goals. The handbook also
contains practical teaching ideas which
blend traditional classroom input with
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Order online or contact us at:
Email: info@etprofessional.com or Telephone: 01273 434 943

TECHNOLOGY
Five things you always wanted to know about
automated writing
evaluation
(but were too afraid to ask)
1 What is automated writing evaluation?
Automated writing evaluation (AWE) is software that can mark
and grade students’ essays automatically. It works by comparing
a student’s essay to a large database of texts of the same genre
and on the same topic, using computational thinking, such as
natural language processing (NLP) or latent semantic analysis
(LSA). The software analyses a number of areas in the text (eg
word count, range of vocabulary, spelling, organisation,
coherence). The essay is then given a total score, as well as
specific feedback (eg on spelling or grammar) and more general
feedback on the essay overall. Well-known AWE programs for
which you have to pay currently include Criterion from ETS; MY
Access! from Vantage Learning; and WriteToLearn from Pearson.
The Writing Mentor, a Google Chrome add-on from ETS (https://
mentormywriting.org/) and Cambridge English’s Write&Improve
(https://writeandimprove.com/) are both free AWE tools.
2 of writing assessment, such as portfolios.
Why should I care about AWE?
AWE can be used in summative assessment of student writing,
and/or for formative or developmental purposes. It is becoming
increasing common for AWE to be used in high-stakes testing – that
is, for summative assessment. For example, Pearson’s Intelligent
Essay Assessor graded approximately 34 million student essays for
state and national tests in the USA in 2017. The advantages of using
AWE in standardised testing are obvious. Huge numbers of essays
can be graded at speed, with significant savings in time and cost
when compared to human grading. Even if AWE is not yet being
used to grade essays in high-stakes language exams in your
context, it may well be used in the future. However, in the field of
ELT, AWE is currently most likely to be used for formative purposes
– that is, to help students develop their writing skills.
3 Does AWE actually work?
This is the million-dollar question (literally, as the high-stakes
testing industry is worth many millions per annum!). Perhaps
unsurprisingly, the research is unclear. Supporters of AWE highlight
the fact that in some studies, human and AWE scores on the same
essays are almost identical; detractors point out that AWE focuses
exclusively on ‘correctness’. Detractors also point out that writing
is a socially embedded process involving creativity, critical thinking,
rhetorical knowledge and the ability to write for a specific
audience. To demonstrate the limits of AWE software in judging a
piece of writing accurately, Les Perelman and others developed the
Babel Generator, a free online tool that generates nonsensical texts
based on three words from any essay prompt. Here are the first
two sentences of a 500-word essay produced by the tool, which
earned top marks from an AWE program used in state tests in the
USA: ‘History by mimic has not, and presumably never will be
58 Issue 119 • November 2018
In this series,
Nicky Hockly
explains aspects of
technology which some
people may be embarrassed
to confess that they
don’t really understand.
In this article, she
looks at AWE.
precipitously but blithely ensconced. Society will always
encompass imaginativeness; many of scrutinizations but a few for
an amanuensis.’ AWE may be good at gauging accuracy, but it is
not able to understand texts.
4 So should AWE be used in ELT or not?
For English language teaching AWE is arguably most useful for
formative purposes, especially at lower levels or in classes where a
focus on accuracy is considered important. Research* shows that
AWE can increase language students’ motivation to write and to
review their work more, and it can also improve the accuracy of their
writing. Research also shows that student and teacher attitudes to
AWE vary, that AWE feedback is not always useful or accurate, and
that how teachers actually use AWE with their students influences
how effective it is. Many teachers and researchers suggest that AWE
programs are useful as a support tool for writing development, but
should be used in tandem with other richer and more nuanced forms
5
 ow can I use AWE to develop my students’
H
writing?
You could start by showing your students a free online AWE
program like Write&Improve or The Writing Mentor (for EAP), and
exploring how it works with them in class. Encourage your
students to create short texts, to use the AWE program, and to
revise their texts based on the feedback. For AWE to be effective,
buy-in from teachers and students is important. So is trust in the
system (ie finding that the program actually works and is useful)
and support for students in how to use it. One suggestion is to
incorporate AWE feedback in informal assessment of student
writing. For example, ask your students to submit their texts with
the AWE feedback so that you can see how they have
incorporated that feedback in their texts. Most importantly,
discuss with the students how they feel about the program as a
developmental tool, and whether they find it useful or not. n
*For an overview of AWE research, see Hockly, N ‘Automated Writing
Evaluation’ English Language Teaching Journal 73 (1) 2019
Nicky Hockly has been involved in EFL
teaching and teacher training since 1987. She
is Director of Pedagogy of The Consultants-E,
an online teacher training and development
consultancy, and she is the prize-winning
author of many books about language
teaching and technology. Her company The
Consultants-E (www.theconsultants-e.com)
offers online educational technology training
courses for English language teachers.
nicky.hockly@theconsultants-e.com
www.etprofessional.com
 TECHNOLOGY
Russell Stannard

Webwatcher
gets some
assistance in devising
an all-in-one
skills activity

O
ver recent months, I have been lucky enough to run challenge, as they need to pronounce the questions clearly
some courses with teachers and students where I enough for Google Assistant to understand them.
have been able to test out a few ideas. One of the In the box is a set of questions that I have used with my
most successful activities was carried out using students. Obviously, although I have given the answers here,
Google Assistant, software that allows you to the answer column would be left blank when doing the activity
interact with a mobile device and ask it questions; you are then with the students.
provided with voice answers. Google Assistant is a feature of
most smartphones, and you can also download it to use on your Setting the questions
computer for free.
Of course, you can use different questions from those I have
Asking questions suggested, but first check that Google Assistant can actually
answer them. Sometimes it provides links to answers, rather
The activity itself was quite simple, but it ended up being a lot of than actually giving the answer. If you are working with a
fun – with lots of language being used. I put the students into high-level class, you could ask the students to write down the
groups of three and made sure that at least one student in each sources or even the year of the data, as this information is
group had a smartphone with Google Assistant on it. Their task normally provided too. So, for example, Google Assistant might
was to complete a questionnaire as quickly as possible by asking say ‘According to ...’ or ‘In the year 2017, the population was
Google Assistant all the questions and writing down the answers. …’. You can also ask slightly tougher questions, where the
This activity combines all four skills, as the students have to students have to be more careful about working out what the
read the questions, ask them orally to Google Assistant, listen to answer is. So, for example, the question Who was the UK Prime
the answers and then write these down. In most cases, the Minister in 1979? will produce two answers, as there were two
answers will be straightforward and easy to understand, but you prime ministers in that year.
can make the questions trickier if you want to test your students’ This idea has real relevance in a CLIL context. For
listening skills. For low-level students, this activity can be quite a example, you could ask a series of questions about a
particular person, country, city, etc. I tried an example where
Question Answer I had ten questions all focused on China and this worked well,
Who was President of the United though it did take me a bit longer to find ten questions that
Richard Nixon
States in 1970? Google Assistant would answer clearly. For example, I wanted
to find out the average height of people in China, but it
What is the population of South Africa? 57.25 million
provided me only with information about people in Shanghai.
Who is the current president of Poland? Andrej Duda
Who won the World Cup in 1958? Brazil t t t
How many countries make up the
28
European Union? Doing this activity has really opened up my eyes to what Google
What is the population of Tokyo? 13,784,212 million Assistant can provide. I have been using it recently to find all
On what date did Michael Jackson die? 25th June 2009 sorts of ‘quick information’ on various leaders of the world and
historical events, and it amazes me how often it immediately
How high is Mount Everest in metres? 8,848 metres provides me with an answer. n
On what day did the First World
11th November 1918
War end? You can find video help for doing this activity at www.
teachertrainingvideos.com/ideas-for-the-classroom/idea-6-develop-
What is the capital of Bali? Denpasar
speaking-and-listening-great-for-clil-too.html
How high is the highest building in Burj Khalifa, 829 Learn more about Google Assistant at www.youtube.com/
the world? metres watch?v=VHde1sWsVaE
9,597,000 square
What is the surface area of China?
kilometres Russell Stannard is the founder of
www.teachertrainingvideos.com, which
588 million kilometres
How far is Jupiter from Earth? won a British Council ELTons award for
(when nearest) technology. He is a freelance teacher and
What is the gross national income of writer and also a NILE Associate Trainer.
476.9 PPP dollars Keep sending your favourite sites to Russell:
Singapore?
russellstannard@btinternet.com
Challenger Deep, in
What is the deepest point under the
the Mariana Trench,
sea?
10,994 metres

www.etprofessional.com Issue 119 • November 2018 59

 Not only, but also • • •
Chia Suan Chong looks at what English teachers teach apart from language. In
this issue, she looks at relationship building.
Most of our students are learning English in order to be able to
communicate with others in the language. And why would they want
to do this? In many cases, it might be for transactional reasons – eg
to order food at a restaurant or ask the price of something – in which
case, it might simply be a case of learning the appropriate functional
language to suit the purpose.
In most cases, however, students are seeking a higher level of
proficiency, so as to build relationships with others. Whether they
are work relationships or friendships, relationships are often at the
foundation of our interactions. And the success of these
interactions – and whether they then develop into further
interactions – often depends more on our relationship-building
skills than our lexicogrammatical accuracy.
• • •
So what are relationship-building skills, and how are they related to
language? If we examine the sub-skills involved, we start to notice
that these skills have a lot to do with communication and how we
use language to show respect, create rapport, listen actively,
establish an understanding, explain our position, persuade and
influence, manage conflict and gain approval.
I’ve heard some teachers argue that these are transferable
skills: in other words, students who are competent at relationship
building in their first language should easily be able to do the
same in a foreign language.
• • •
A student once complained to me about how difficult it was to
‘transfer her personality to English’. She went on to elaborate that
she was a loud and jokey person in her own language, but wasn’t
able to be that way when speaking in English (partly due, of course,
to her English proficiency). I started thinking about the way I interact
in Japanese (I am a competent B2 speaker), and realised that I do
60 Issue 119 • November 2018
speak, act and build relationships differently from when I speak
English. Upon further reflection, I established that, apart from a
differing level of proficiency, there was also the issue of culture. My
Japanese interlocutors might not have responded to my relationship-
building efforts, had I stuck to the ways I do this in English.
• • •
By culture, I am not suggesting national stereotypes or implying
that people who speak the same language all build relationships
in the same way. After all, building a relationship with a classmate
can be vastly different from building one with a supplier. And
different communities come with differing norms and
expectations. The ways we go about building relationships can
depend on the context, the nationality, the age and affiliations of
our interlocutors, the existing relationship between us, the
relationship we are hoping to develop, etc.
• • •
In essence, teaching our students relationship-building skills cannot
succeed without teaching them how to be sensitive to the norms and
expectations of other cultures. It would be almost impossible to
pre-learn the norms of every existing culture without falling into the
realms of over-generalisation and stereotyping, but what we can do
as teachers is to help our students become more aware of how they
communicate and how they use the language when trying to build
relationships, and how others might do this differently. An awareness
of the differences can only serve to help the students become better
at accommodating and adapting, and enable them to build
relationships the way they intend when interacting in English.
Chia Suan Chong is a teacher trainer and general/business English
trainer, currently based in York, UK. Chia has been ETp’s resident
blogger since 2012, and you can find out more about relationship
building on her blog at etprofessional.co.uk. chiasuan@live.co.uk
www.etprofessional.com
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