Tagged for Christmas

I was down with some flu-like disease, sleeping and blowing my nose for a couple of days, to (partly) get better to a wonderful Christmas Eve: I’d been tagged. Four times :)))

Thanks Ratnavathy, Ika, Alexandra and Debbie :)

Now I’m doing as seen on Rose Bard’s blog, now I’m posting just the facts, the questions and answers later. (And obviously I won’t be able to tag anyone who hasn’t been tagged, so I guess I will be a dead end of the tag, sorry :( Still have no voice and feeling terribly weak, by the time I’m fine it will all have gone, the game I mean...)

11 Random facts about me

1 I’m an only child and lost most of my family.

2 Adversities taught me to be an optimist, there seems to be no other way.

3 As a child I was sure I wouldn't ever become a teacher.  I wanted to be a guitarist. (I was a really bad one and female = low self esteem.)

4 I don’t eat meat but fish. (And cheese.)

5 When I have a fever, I laugh at everything.

6 I’m a time-management disaster.

7 I made my own wedding dress (this is NOT why I divorced).

8 When I was a little kid, sometimes my dad told me nonsense bedtime stories. I laughed myself to sleep.

9 I’m still petrified in a school building: teacher’s desks, boards, classrooms give me the fright, I’m scared of fellow teachers too if they are not my ex-classmates. I feel really uncomfy when I’m a school teacher every now and then.

10 I learned to ride a bike no hands when I was 32.

11 I don’t have a TV or a Christmas tree.

My answers to

Ratnavathy Ragunathan-Chandrasegaran Alexandra Chistyakova Ika Chieka Wibowo Débora Tebovich

To the adult beginner thing

My previous post had been written before a first lesson with an adult beginner (who finally decided to have lessons alone, supposing he was not good/fast enough to couple up with someone who might be more proficient and a better learner (?).

What I had expected turned out to be true. The phase when I try to find out of the learners aims, language learning history, somewhat of learning styles or attitudes and the length of time they can devote to learning English a day was 45 minutes!

Why?
Do you know why? It was all self-criticism, he told me repeatedly how slow he was, how old his brain was at his age (born in the same year as me, dammit!), how much worse men are at learning languages and what an anti-talent he was. Should I re-think my ambiguity tolerance mania and pushing learners out of their comfort zone project?

Good start:/

 Ban schools! Or someone please tell all the teachers that making sweeping judgements about their students abilities may turn into to self-fulfilling prophecies, hence this is NOT a valid tool!! Grrrr!!!

I believe in life on Mars but nay the existence of the zero beginner EFL adult learner

If I were told to play the part of a first lesson adult learner on the stage of an improvisation theatre, I would be sitting in the limelight, saying very bravely:

“I am a total beginner, I have never learned English ... OK, I’ve been taught hahaha ... but my knowledge of the English language is zero ... and I want to start the whole thing from the start line, teach me as if I were a kindergartener ... especially focus on grammar ... I want to start with a clean sheet ... and what book should I buy?”

I rather believe in life on Mars. And I believe there are false beliefs about language learning. It took me long years to recognize that I have two options as an English teacher:

• play the role of the big white magician who knows the secret, does the mambo jumbo, takes revenge on the homework-non-doers
• train learners how to learn and share responsibility

I’m not a good actress, opt for the second one and make sure I take the following precautions :

I usually explain the difference between skill and knowledge. 

I draw the attention to the fact that the (here) so popular grammar-translation method (which they were most probably exposed to as kids) is the one that has proven to be inefficient forthem. I try to convince them that in spite of their memories of the 5th grade Russian teacher this is not necessarily the way to learn English this time.

Typically they agree with me, very happy, enjoy the lesson without the book, but soon the regression comes along: they want a book, they want a text, they want to read and translate it sentence by sentence. Bummer!!

Ok, this is not typical, this is the extreme, but it’s still in the air.

If a student who has just decided to start learning English (again) insists on the clean sheet idea (stupid stage image above), I (pretend to) accept that. But also tell them that they are about to unlearn things that they already know, which requires more effort than making use of them.

Another thing to mention is my view that it is not the lesson where the majority of learning takes place. Somehow I’d like to show them that the ownership over their own learning is a great thing, it is simply a good feeling, rather than a weighty responsibility.

Years have shown that merely sharing my experience about language learning with students is not enough. I’m trying hard to find or device activities to make them feel how it works the more fun and efficient way.

Some rough plans for a first lesson, primarily aiming to bust the clean sheet myth:

Signs

As I  live in a tourist place, many of the signs are written in English.

I spent 15 minutes walking around and taking photos and I made some clippings (http://pic-collage.com/). The game is to guess where the photos were taken. Apart from proving that my learners do know some English, it is a chance for them to pick up names of places, learn or revise prepositions. (I bet they are false beginners :))

The second photo will reveal the places and you never know what else emerges.

Songs

Nearly everyone is exposed to pop music in English and nearly everyone has been a teenager with even more extensive exposure to pop music in English.  

Song lyrics are somewhere in our brains, so let’s get them out. The magic words are “doodle music videos”:

The task here is to collect language from the videos. Watch the videos twice and take notes of language that you understand. Then swap notes, discuss.

TV

This is not to show how much they already know, rather a link to the English speaking world. 

Soap operas and sitcoms are language acquisition boosters, that’s pretty well known. However many learners don’t watch them in English, they find them too fast, too difficult, they feel uneasy when they don’t understand every single word. Or they just don’t like them :))) But those who do usually attribute a huge part of their development to TV shows.

Extra English is a great bait, a sitcom designed for language learners, someone uploaded countless episodes on YouTube :O. I hope my new students will somehow get hooked on the genre by this.

First lesson first homework: watch the first episode and see if you want to watch the others.

If it should turn out to be unpopular, Peppa Pig is still at hand!

Cognates

Any language is a window to another language, L1 as well as a known foreign language. Many people use German here, a knowledge of it may be of some help.http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Transwiki:List_of_German_cognates_with_English

Another piece of homework: choose minimum 7 words worth remembering, check their pronunciation on translate.google.com and see how cool you are with so much you already know in English.

Student Appreciation Week? Hmmm? Hö?

Student Appreciation Week

Emergent language when it's an unplugged huge-egg-lesson with a very young learner

Easter is approaching so why not make a huge paper-mache egg in the 1-2-1 lesson with a very young learner?

One very uncool (and I'm being mild) thing that happened today

Perhaps nothing to do with Mike's challenge, I'm juist a bit upset. Actually furious, literally swearing non-stop.

This is 15th March 19.15 p.m.
Yesterday in the morning hours it started to snow in my tiny country. It all turned into a severe blizzard that took for over 24 hours.More than 10000 people spent the night in cars on the roads. (Some of them are still there.) They were cold, hungry, thirsty and what's probably the worst part, had no idea when they would escape. Rescue professionals were working hard. And thousands of everyday people were ready to help. I saw the thing this morning, I read the news on Facebook and listened to the radio. On Facebook I saw an update by a guy who was stuck in his car, letting us know about a young couple (with a chihuahua) who were giving away food from a giant bag. Guerilla helpers.I thought I could help if there were people in need around here. I wanted to find a map or some practical info on where and how to help, but no use. The websites of the authorities/state services/etc. were just useless or not even working.I spent the morning sharing updates from people who sought help and others who wanted to help. I wished for some central hub for all these, to coordinate it all, finally by the afternoon there was that map. A group of volunteers created a simple Google map to coordinate it, thanks to them, marvellous people. I’m sure there have been examples of human kindness and help in numerous other cases, and I hope finally everyone is fine and I’m happy to know that our society has ample resources of humanity and care. 

The thing that bothers me is that ... I know how fast it can be in the 21st century to connect. I wonder what would have happened if we were more aware of ... that, we had more 21st century skills and tools up our sleeves.
So .. I’m sure those in governmental positions and the relevant offices are very intelligent professionals and they must hold excellent qualifications and certificates with the best grades and stuff.But ... what if that map had been created by those officials who are supposed to be in charge of these matters? Yesterday afternoon let’s say.
They just didn't think of that?



What I’m getting at is ... Do we really need to make kids memorize and regurgitate things at school? Do we really have to tell them what to do step by step, without making them aware why? Shall we go on spoon-feeding them? Isn’t it high time to do a bit more of project work? Problem solving? Creativity? Communication? Collaboration? Collaborative ICT tools? Responsibility? Ownership? Decision making? Setting up priorities? Dealing with unexpected situations? Snow in March? (It wasn’t an earthquake, for God’s sake.) Am I still the weirdo with those video projects? Should I really be entertaining my students and call it motivation? Shouldn't we rather kick their asses to get up and do something ... before LIFE gives that painful kick?


Just asking myself, never mind. Sorry, I’m very pissed off.

Ah, the ill-targeted text from the Ministry of Interior. saying "We're going to help you. Don't leave your car. If you run out of petrol, sit in another vehicle." Sent to ...everyone? I don't even have a car.

Early March Love Story

It all started with these two pre-schoolers, who left their Miss and Mr Potato here in the armchair. 

Two lessons later L arrived (a nine-year-old girl) with a booklet. It had girls and stickers of clothes in it. Obvious, let’s do something about clothes.
Then she spotted the two potatoes....

I took a picture of them and got the ShowMe app and asked her to draw clothes on the potatoes and I recorded a description of their outfits. She also drew a speech bubble in which Mr Potato showed his affection towards Miss P.


-


Then we somehow started to play with Miss and Mr Potato, she was the girl, me the boy.
This was the moment it turned out that Miss P didn’t reciprocate Mr P’s feelings, because she found him too fat.
I thought he could do something about it and suggested the diet and some exercise.
Unfortunately a potato won’t get any slimmer. Then L said this knife thing... And it was inevitable: Mr P had a plastic surgery!
So we recorded this video. L carved the he-potato :)

Then I thought it was time for a bit of reading: while L was doing the first and the third tabs of this and this I wrote the story on sticky notes. 

Then she ordered them to put the story together again. Then we recorded this video and drilled the text a bit. 





Now all the stuff is on her blog and hope she’ll have a look at that.

How will I test her on it? That’s the part that is not exciting at all for me... hmm... suggestions?