Who's afraid of the summer break?

In the Northern Hemisphere, summer is upon us. For teachers, that also means that the long summer holidays are upon us. Students are already getting into their holiday mindset (that is, thinking ahead to what they will be doing away from school, instead of thinking about what their teacher is asking them to do at school), so they are slipping away from our lovingly crafted supportive learning environment.

After the summer: back to school, back to square one?

If you are a teacher, are you dreading the autumn restart? Are you concerned about how much your students will have fallen out of practice, how much they will have forgotten of everything you taught them over the past months, perhaps years? Do you then, every autumn, drop back the level and re-teach some of what you consider the problematic essentials? Well, that IS the responsible thing to do, but how much better would it be to get your students back with exactly the same level of knowledge they had before the summer break? The same level of practice, already warmed up for further study? How would you prefer progressing from where you left off rather than having to repeat yourself?

Summer assignments - do they work?

Many of us set our students summer assignments - like reading texts we think they might enjoy reading, "fun" grammar exercises to fill their time, perhaps a project for them to do while on holiday? (If you do have a successful idea that has worked in the past, perhaps you'd like to share it - feel free to use the Comments feature below.)
Will students complete these assignments? Sure, some will - most probably just a couple of days before they're due back to school, in a rush and without proper care for quality of content. They know you won't have time to check and assess their work properly anyway! You'll be too busy repeating what you taught them in the spring...
Well, there are no foolproof recipes for all this.

Here's an idea: social networking

One thing you can try to do is to capitalise on students' obsession with social networking. Yes, yes, you and their parents would love them to go outside and get some fresh air rather than to sit in their rooms or in Wi-Fi hotspot cafés, facebooking... Resign yourself to this! They'll be facebooking all day long, anyway. 
But how about creating your own network? (Nik Peachey's excellent blog on technology in education might help - here's an article from 2008, most of it still valid: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.hu/2008/06/create-your-own-social-network-7-steps.html - have a look!) Social networks are meant for precisely the same purpose as the whole of language education: communication! Why not let students communicate the way they like communicating then?
If you decide to go with Facebook itself, make sure you create a closed group so only your students and yourself can see the posts in it - your students' safety is your responsibility, and preserving their privacy is vital. But there are other options are to explore - free web services which allow you to create your own noticeboard (check out http://boardhost.com/ or http://www.proboards.com/ or http://www.runboard.com/ for example - note that I cannot personally vouch for any of these three sites, but there are literally dozens of similar services available) where students can post comments, updates on their activities and photos. You can even create your own private social network (for example: http://www.mixxt.net/ or http://www.yooco.org/ - again, note that I haven't personally vetted these two, but have a look yourself to decide whether they offer what you need). 
Here are a few tips to get you going:

• Don't frame this network project as a school assignment - make it sound like fun. 
• Don't set too many rules. One rule that is worth setting: English only (or as much as possible).
• Involve students in setting up the network or noticeboard. You might even like to allow them to pick the service they like best. If the service allows page design, get students to customise your network page - this can even turn into a classroom project as well as proper language work (practising the language of planning and co-operation, for example: making, accepting and rejecting suggestions, should / ought to, modals for obligation, necessity and permission, and so on).
• You might want to kick things off by writing the welcome message together in class. Discuss the sort of things they would like to see on their network. (NB. Steer them gently towards coming up with the kind of things you want out of it - don't tell them explicitly what to post. Don't worry, you're a teacher, you're good at making them come up with your own ideas.)
• Encourage students to be active. There's no point in having a noticeboard or network with only one or two boring posts on it.
• Join in. Be active - post about yourself regularly. Posts don't have to be long (students won't be interested in ALL your holiday snaps, for instance - just pick one or two that will make them laugh or that will make them interested in finding out more), just make sure you're seen. 
• Don't be TOO active. The network isn't a news service for your students about your life - it's a place for them to share experiences, thoughts, feelings.
• If the selected service allows it, post comments (or, at least, "like") on what students have posted. Show them you're interested.
• Don't correct any errors. Make notes of any glaring mistakes students make, but go over them in your autumn revision classes - without mentioning that you've picked up on them in the network.
• Moderate posts and comments. Make sure things don't get personal or inappropriate - but don't make a huge issue about it all. Use private messaging to warn misbehavers rather than public. Intervene only as a last resort - most conflicts, if any occur at all, can be sorted between your students. It's their network.

Am I saying this will work? Hard to say. But students are more likely to give it a go than to complete a worksheet on, say the third conditional. Who knows, perhaps next summer it'll be them who suggest repeating the experience!

Children's literature in ELT? Why not?

Although throughout most of my TEFL career I have been working with teenage and adult learners, I now have two "young learners" of my own back home, so I'm learning the ropes through experience. One might think that language teaching is language teaching, irrespective of the age group, but that's not quite true - and this goes beyond the obvious differences in attention spans, activity type preferences, or cognitive maturity... teaching kids turns out to be a different ball game altogether. 
One thing I quite like about young learners is that it is much less result-oriented, and a lot more focused on the learning process itself. Children don't usually question why we're doing something. As long as it's fun, in the sense that it becomes another game for them to play, they're happy to play along. As their teacher (parent, au pair, tutor... whatever), you may set goals and forge plans (which you simply must be prepared to abandon if necessary, as with young children things, as a rule, never go according to plan), but the children don't need to be aware of these. I suppose it's important for them to sense that there is a point to an activity, and sometimes they may even ask what that is - but this is a lot less vital than the actual activity itself.
Another nice thing about young learners is that teaching them is not coursebook-bound. Anything can, and will, become a tool for learning. (A brief aside: but should that not be true for a learner of any age? Why exactly then do we get bogged down in "covering the coursebook" a lot of the time...?) Their favourite toys, furniture, natural objects, people, and obviously, books, too.
I think reading is fun. I also think reading SHOULD BE fun. But how about turning the joy of literature to our advantage in teaching the language? How about setting those goals and forging those plans - while allowing the kids to immerse themselves in a world of imagination, knowledge and inspiration? 
I've only just found out about a new publication called CLELE journal, which focuses exactly on that theme: children's literature in language teaching. Find our more here: http://clelejournal.org/. I'll definitely be following it from now.

Motivated to motivate? Reflections on the ELTA 11th Annual Conference, Belgrade

ELTA, the association of English language teachers in Serbia, organised its annual conference last weekend at the Pedagogical Faculty in Belgrade. Despite the hot weather, lots of teachers attended (and hopefully enjoyed) a wide range of plenary talks and workshops. I wouldn't personally have expected to participate in any "Bollywood dancing", for example - if you were there, you know what I'm talking about. 

I had a double slot before the lunch break on Friday, starting with a 45-minute workshop on classroom dynamics, followed by a 60-minute plenary on teacher motivation. 

Although devised as a workshop, my first session (All for one, one for all) didn't really work as such. We were given the main lecture hall, which meant that on the stage I was separated from my training group by several metres and I had to use a microphone as well because of the big space - not really conducive to good two-way interaction. I'd planned several questions where I was going to elicit trainees' responses first before exploring the issues myself, but standing on that stage, I simply couldn't hear them... Note to self: perhaps next time try to find out which room I'll be given further ahead of time so I can plan accordingly? Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, I hope teachers benefited from the content.

The workshop was organised around activity ideas for each stage in the formation of a working group from Forming to Storming to Norming to Performing (terminology from Tuckman, 1969, quoted in Argyle: Social Interaction. 1969, Tavistock Press, London - in case you wanted to know) which I encouraged teachers to consider trying in their own classes as they start in their new groups in the next school year.

For anyone wanting to download a handout copy of my workshop (with said activity ideas and a short recommended reading list), follow this link: https://www.box.com/s/24r3zzdwpemkewohmxv7.

In my plenary, the focus was on teacher motivation: where it comes from, and what teachers can do to maintain their own motivation. The idea actually came about as an extension of a talk I did on 23 February at the OUP Day at the Sava Centar in Belgrade. The February session explored student motivation, which got me thinking about how this was connected (assuming at that point that it was) to teacher motivation, then I shared the results of my further research with the delegates at ELTA. For anyone wanting to explore the subject further, here are a few recommendations:
M. Praver and W. Oga-Baldwin: What motivates language teachers. Investigating work satisfaction and second language pedagogy. In: Polyglossia Vol.14, February 2008.
G. Demes da Cruz: From limitation to motivation: fourteen tips on how to enhance motivation in the EFL class. From www.developingteachers.com.
L. Bartlett: Teacher development through reflective teaching. In: J.C. Richards and D. Nunan (eds): Second language teacher education. 1990, Cambridge University Press.

I have also contributed a short article on student motivation to the April issue of the ELTA Newsletter, and those interested can check it out here: http://www.britishcouncil.rs/predavanje-engleskog/elta-e-bilten/april-2013.

I really enjoyed ELTA - Serbian teachers are always a joy to work with. Look forward to my next opportunity to re-test this impression. :-)

Consonant finds a voice

What is 'Consonant Voiced'?

Due to popular demand, I am creating a blog space, mainly for my activities within English Language Teaching.The blog will feature articles, news and updates on my activities, any relevant media appearances, and materials for sharing - and that's just the basic plan.

Why 'Consonant Voiced'? 

Consonant is the name of my own limited company, which I set up at the beginning of 2012 to provide a range of services to clients, primarily in the fields of publishing and language teaching. 

Playing on the meaning of the word 'consonant', I chose 'voiced' - to suggest this blog will become the soapbox for all those themes connected with what I do on behalf of my company.

For those of you who have never succumbed to the elusive charms of phonetics, consonants (that is, to use the simplest definition, all the speech sounds which aren't vowels: A, E, I, O, U) can be voiced or unvoiced. An unvoiced consonant doesn't produce vibrations in your vocal chords - unlike voiced consonants, which resonate.

I sincerely hope that many things you'll read here in the future will resonate with you, in the best figurative sense of the verb...