DOCUMENT RESUME ED 404 844 AUTHOR … The Teacher Trainer: ... Modern Language Teacher Trainers, 1993. REPORT NO ISSN-0951-7626 PUB ... FOR TEACHER TRAINING IN TEFL …

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 404 844 FL 021 837

AUTHOR Woodward, Tessa, Ed.TITLE The Teacher Trainer: A Practical Journal Mainly for

Modern Language Teacher Trainers, 1993.REPORT NO ISSN-0951-7626PUB DATE 93NOTE 125p.PUB TYPE Collected Works Serials (022)JOURNAL CIT Teacher Trainer; v7 n1-3 Spr-Aut 1995

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC05 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS Class Activities; Classroom Techniques; Educational

Objectives; Educational Strategies; English (SecondLanguage); Foreign Countries; Higher Education;Instructional Materials; *Language Teachers; *StudentAttitudes; *Student Teaching; *Teacher Education;*Teacher Education Curriculum

ABSTRACT

This document consists of the three issues of "TheTeacher Trainer" published in 1993. Articles include: "Why I Left anRSA Diploma Course"; "Two Anxiety Dreams Experienced During the RSADiploma in TEFLA Course"; "Why Do an RSA Diploma Training Course?";"Training for Medical General Practice: Assessment Techniques andWhat We Can Borrow for EFL Teacher-Training"; "'Lead Us Not Into

on-Training Bus Drivers"; "Using Activity Cards onTraining Courses for Language-Teacher:" "nn -It- Yourself LanguageClasses for Non-Native-Speaker Trainees"; "DonIl Go See forYourself-Let the Trainees Tell You"; "The Action Plan Cycle: A Way ofIntegrating the Classroom and Training Course Sessions"; " A FearClinic"; "Models of Teaching Practice and Feedback for TeacherTraining in TEFL"; "From Behind the Barricades"; "How Do You Think ItWent?: A Task-Based Approach to Feedback"; "Training EFL Teachers forMulticultural Schools"; "A Training Game: What Is a Language?";"Transacting TEFL"; "Professional Self Management in FLTT"; "ThePrice of Change"; "Teaching Is Teacher Training"; "Why Train?";"Trainee Interaction on Participant-Centred Postgraduate Courses";"Video, Fear and Loathing: Self- Viewing in Teacher Training";"Finding the Centre"; "Reflection and Feedback on a PGCE Course";"Reading Mazes"; TEFL Auction"; "The 'Ghost' Instrument"; and "OnForm." (MSE)

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Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be madefrom the original document.

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T 11 If

TEACHERTRAINER

A Practical Journal mainly for modern language teacher trainersVolume seven Number one

"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THISMATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED-BY

TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCESINFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)...

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONOffice of Educational Research and Improvement

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC)rhis document has been reproduced as

received I rom the person or organrzationoriginating it.

O Minor changes have been mane to trnprOserect,OduCt ton Quality.

Points of view or opinions stated in this docu-ment do not necessarily represent officialOERI positron or pOliCy.

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

INSIDE

Three trainee voices

Training for medicalgeneral practice- Assessment techniquesand what we can borrowfor EFL teacher-training

Page

5

10

Don't go see for yourself -let the trainees tell you. 25

29

Quel professeur etes-vous? 30

A fear clinic

CAMB RID CIE ELT: the professional choice

Cambridge Teacher Training andDevelopmentSeries Editors: Ruth Gairns and Marion Williams

Three new titles available in early 1993:

Tasks for Language TeachersA resource book for training and developmentMartin Parrott

This is a practical resource book for teacher trainersand teachers of English and other languages. Itprovides 40 Tasks, of two types Discussion Tasks and

Classroom-based Tasks for training seminars anddevelopment groups.

Classroom Observation TasksA resource book for language teachers and trainers

Ruth Wajnryb , --

This book shows how to use observation to learn aboutlanguage teaching. It does this by providing a range of taskswhich guide the user through the process of observing,analysing and reflecting, and which develop the skills ofobservation.

Literature and Language TeachingA guide for teachers and trainersGillian Lazar

Literature and Language Teaching is for teachers and trainerswho want to incorporate literature into the language classroom.It can be used as a resource by trainers working with groups ofteachers. by teacher development groups or by teachers working

on 'their own.

BEST COPY AVAjLABLE

For further information, please contact:ELT' Marketing, Cambridge University Press,The Edinburgh Building, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge C132 ZRLI, UK.

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4

THE

TEACHERTRAINER

VOLUME SEVEN NUMBER ONE SPRING 1993

Published three times a year.

CHIEF EDITOR: Tessa Woodward

GUEST EDITOR: Mario Rinvolucri

LETTER FROM TESSA

GUEST EDITORIAL

Subscriptions Information

THREE TRAINEE VOICESDavid Tendler, Julie Colton and

- John Wilson

TRAINING FOR MEDICAL GENERAL PRACTICEAssessment techniques and what we canborrow for EFL teacher-training

Tessa Woodward

"LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION" OR TRAININGBUS-DRIVERSMario Rinvolucri

USING ACTIVITY CARDS ON TRAINING COURSESFOR LANGUAGE TEACHERSMartin Cortazzi

3 DO-IT-YOURSELF LANGUAGE CLASSES FOR NON-NATIVE SPEAKER TRAINEES

3 Tony Luxon 21

5 DON'T GO SEE FOR YOURSELF - LET THE

TRAINEES TELL YOUJudith Wilson 25

5" THE ACTION PLAN CYCLESheila Estaire 26

A FEAR CLINICPatrick Philpott 29

10MODELS OF TEACHING PRACTICE AND FEEDBACKFOR TEACHER TRAINING IN TEFLGosia Barker and Simon Hamilton 31

14A NEW TEACHER TRAINING RESEARCH DATABASE 35

HAVE YOU READ ...? QUEL PROFESSEUR ETES

15 VOUS? - PROFILS DEL'ENSEIGNANT DE FLE 36

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED 38

PUBLISHED BY:

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PRINTED: The University of Kent Printing Unit, Canterbury, Kent, England.

For all enquiries concerning subscriptions, advertising and contributions,please contact the Editor.

Views expressed in the articles are not necessarily those of the Editor, orof Pilgrims Language Courses.

Page 2 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993

Fr,

Letter from Tessa Woodward

Dear Readers,

OMR A LABOUT THIS ISSUE

I was just finishing off the last issuewhen I realised I was falling quite ill.Rather than risk a patchy new volume I

decided to act quickly and set up a systemof guest editorship.

The first person I thought of was MarioRinvolucri. It was Mario who first thoughtthat a newsletter for teacher trainerswould be a good idea and Mario who firstasked me to get it off the ground. It

seemed to me fitting that he should havethe chance, six years on, to work on hisidea! I am really delighted that Mario hasagreed to take it on.

I hope to be back some issues from now. In

the meantime I hope you'll enjoy all theold hallmarks of The Teacher Trainer, plussome new energy and sparkle.

Tessa WoodwardChief Editor.

Im-A

I4INISOLLI1111111till °Min1/111111P4 1

14. W "91. yr-r

!

Guest Editorial

Tessa, I know I speak in the name of allthose who have read and written for THETEACHER TRAINER over the past years when Ibeg you to come back to health. This isour forum, the forum of the EFL teachertraining community, but you are its gentle,far-seeing architect. Gather strength andcome back quick. From many places, in manyvoices, in many different ways, we loveyou.

- Issue One, Volume seven, opens with threetrainees describing their feelings abouttheir RSA Dip TEFLA courses. It is hard tocome out and speak publicly about yourcourse, especially when a large part ofwhat you have to say is negative. It canfeel like washing dirty linen in public.-So a warm thank you to the three ex-

trainees who have had the courage andenergy to talk to us trainers about whatthey experienced. Mostly unhappy traineesslink away into the night.

The Journal regularly brings you accountsof the way trainers in fields far-removedfrom EFL go about their work and this issuecarries two such articles. In the firstTessa Woodward outlines the ways in which

general practitioners assess trainee

doctors assigned to their practices. The

techniques used include manning and rating,audit of work and attitude statements.

Tessa prepared this article for the FrenchTesol Newsletter and we are grateful tothem for letting us re-publish it. In her

closing remarks Tessa writes: "Perhaps themost important point of all for me is just

the inspiration and feeling of breadth that

comes from listening to a trainer in a

completely different field."

In the second article Mario Rinvolucridescribes a bus trip that got him thinkinghard about why language teacher trainers do

what they do in their training rooms.

Maybe London Transport has things to teach

us.

In his article on Activity Cards, Martin

Cortazzi offers you five, firm stimulatingtraining session outlines aimed at getting

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993 6 Page 3

students thinking in depth about theseareas:

learning vocabularylearning languagemeeting a strange culturequickly explaining the meaning ofsemantically over-lapping words to aclasslearner strategies

The next two pieces describe experienceswith trainees from beyond the greedy partof the world, to whit South China andMozambique. Tony Luxon reports on the wayin-service secondary school traineesmanaged to teach each other English withminimal help from the trainer. I suspectthe Luxon model could be applied in manyparts of the world and in many insettraining situations. Judith Wilson tellsus that going to personally see Mozambicanteachers in action in their home teachingsituation was a lot less useful than reallylistening to their view of their teachingsituation, their mapping of it. (Whoknows, the same could be true of observingtrainees' lesson?)

In her article Action Plan Cycle SheilaEstaire tackles the problem of turning the!inert ideas' of the training room intoreality in the trainee's own classroom.She offers a clear, practical plan of

trainer action!

From Southern Spain Patrick Philpott writesabout how he has run FEAR workshops within-service trainees. Among the things hefound his trainees feared most were:

their own language deficitmethodological incompetencefailure to motivate studentsnot achieving objectivesdifficult "know-all" studentslosing control

Patrick's article on fear links back to thetwo nightmares that Julie Coltonexperienced while doing the RSA Dip TEFLA(Page 6).

In the final article of this issue GosiaBarker and Simon Hamilton discuss ways theyfound of training people from an Irishstate school background in the perhaps morehumanistic ways of EFL.

Would you like to search a new teachertraining database'? Would you like to inputyour research to the database? Have a lookat Page 35.

The Review section this time brings you afun questionnaire from a French-as-a,foreign language teacher training book.

The Publications received column is jampacked this time. Lots of titles held overdue to lack of space from the last issue aswell as plenty of new ones.

Mario RinvolucriGuest Editor

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THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993

THREE TRAINEE VOICES

Many trainees are no doubt happy with thecourses they do. A number, though, are notand the three voices presented here bringyou negative feedback on a UK based in-service teacher training diploma course,the RSA Diploma in TEFLA.

David Tendler explains why he left hiscourse early on, while Julie Colton givessome idea of the sort of strain she wasunder during the course, though she mostlyenjoyed it a lot. John Wilson explainswhy, for him, his year on the RSA Diplomacourse "will remain in my memory as one ofthe most thankless and pointless years ofmy life".

My aim in letting you hear these threevoices is not to attack a particular coursebut more generally to question how easy itis for our trainees to question us, the

gate-keepers. Their aim is to get throughthe gate: how much can we properly hear themuffled sound of their voices?

Guest Editor

WHY I LEFT AN RSADIPLOMA COURSEby David Tend ler

My background is ten years secondary schoolteaching and two and a half years ELT(adults) experience. I came to the RSADiploma course wishing to develop mytechniques in ELT classroom teaching andalso to learn more about theories of

teaching. I felt that the Cert. TEFLcourse, for which I had obtained an overallB grade, although my final writtenassignment was grade A, had introduced meto some exciting ideas which I wished todevelop. I had been refused a Diplomaplace in September 1991 when I had only atemporary part-time job. I was finallyoffered a place in September 1992 when I

had a permanent full-time (25 hours) job.

I left the course after five weeks as I

considered it to be a rush to the

qualification rather than a time for realteacher development. To my mind the course

betrayed the main principle of goodlanguage teaching: in ELT we are encouragedto create a supportive relaxed and creativelearning environment on the basis that this

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THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993 Page 5

THREE TRAINEE VOICES cont'd

promotes effective learning. The students'needs and learning circumstances are takeninto account when we plan the curriculum.

On the first evening we were told thatteaching practice had to be marked atdiploma standard which meant we might failthe first TP. When we were handed ourfirst written assignment we were told ithad to be marked at diploma standard, so wewere given some help with it. Even so I

spent ten hours on it as I wanted to dosome reading about the topic not just 'dothe assignment'. There were to be sevenmore home assignments during the year,three more that term. They, together withsix timed essays in class were to form 40%of the written exam. Two three-hour exampapers with six questions formed theremaining 60%.

By week four we were already a lessonbehind in our ambitious schedule. Thelesson was put in a free 'voluntaryattendance' slot normally reserved forguest speakers. Group work and discussionswere of necessity brief and in my opinioninconclusive. Heavy reliance was put onhandouts, which led to more work at homedigesting them. On top of all the abovewas the matter of a comprehensive booklist- fine in itself, and very interesting, butthere was little time to investigate itseriously. We also had to carry out lessonobservations and report briefly on them.Despite maximum back-up at home, I couldnot find enough time to prepare my normalschool lessons as I wished.

I began to feel that lip-service was beingpaid to the important teaching principlesmentioned above. I also felt that, due tolack of time for discussion, my teachingexperience could not be exploited orshared. I also began to notice that it wasbeing assumed that we knew a lot of thefiner points of English grammar (eg modals,aspect) and methods, so that the emphasisin class was with the techniques ofteaching those points rather than the finerpoints themselves. An eighty minute slotper topic was hopelessly insufficient inmany cases and led to more research athome.

EXTRACTS FROM DAVID'S LETTER TO THE HEAD OFDEPARTMENT ON LEAVING THE COURSE:

I have decided that a course which leavessuch little time for learner contributionand initiative is not the course for me.

To receive a certificate at the end of acourse whose philosophy is concerned withprecisely those principles is for me anirreconcilable contradiction.

As I said at interview and repeated onThursday, I came to the course primarilybecause I was genuinely interested in thewhole subject area and wanted to gain freshmotivation with regard to my teachingtechnique. I have come to the conclusionthat I can best do this by setting my ownlearning agenda based around the book listand handouts so far received.

TWO ANXIETY DREAMSEXPERIENCED DURINGTHE RSA DIPLOMA INTEFLA COURSEby Julie ColtonIn the first dream, I was fighting my waythrough a thick forest on horseback,knowing all the time that I was alreadylate for my observed lesson. The harder Itried to get through the undergrowth andover all the fallen tree trunks in my path,the slower my progress became. Finally, I

ended up in a pond which was clogged upwith weeds and I knew that I was not goingto make it to the lesson on time

In the second dream, I had made it to theclassroom and was standing at- the boardattempting to write examples on the

whiteboard. I kept making mistakes butwhen I tried to rub them out using theboard wipe, it put black ink onto the boardinstead of cleaning it. I knew that I wasbeing observed and got more and moredesperate but there was nothing I coulddo .

(Julie achieved a distinction, despite herdream life!)

Page 6 () THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993

WHY DO AN RSA DIPLOMA COURSE ?by John Wilson

At the time of starting the RSA Diplomacourse (October, 1990) I was 37 years old.

My first teaching job had been in

Barcelona, some twenty years previously,and I have been teaching, on and off, eversince, mainly in EFL. In addition to aCambridge first degree and M. Litt. in

English I have a PGCE in English and

Communications (Garnett) and an MA in

applied linguistics (Bangor) .

Nevertheless, in 1990 the school I have

been working for since returning to Englandin 1989 sent me on a one-year in-serviceRSA Diploma course.

Although I was not altogether delighted atbeing asked to do this, I agreed to it,

mainly because I could see that there wasa tremendous rift between EFL and applied

linguistics, and I wanted to know what it

was that caused this antagonism and draw my

own conclusions about whether it was

justified.

The first term passed with only one or two

minor shocks. There was a lot that I

disagreed with, or felt was rather garbledand confusing (not to say misspelt or

linguistically ill-informed!) but some ofthe material was useful to me. The crunch

came at the start of the second term, when

the two assignments I had handed in theterm before were returned to me - failed.

My first reaction was, "if they don't likemy assignments, then it's only right thatthey should know about the aspects of theircourse which I dislike," so I dumped all my

negative reactions on my tutor, after firstconsulting with the director of studies atthe school where I worked (who had beenvery keen for me to do the RSA) on the

suitability of such a course of action. It

was no help at this stage that the tutorrelayed to me the dictum of the coursedirector: "If this chap's going to causetrouble he'll find himself off the course."Apparently, the right to criticise was only

one-way!

I rewrote the assignment on language

analysis and resubmitted it. This time it

was not only failed but also contained some

extremely hostile language (eg 'Your

materials and preparation are inadequate')in a totally unsupportive context - the

sort of language that actually creates

failure, rather than simply diagnosing it.Yet language analysis (mainly in the form

of transformational grammar) had been one

of my major strengths when doing the

linguistics MA (which, incidentally, I didnot scrape through, but came joint top outof a group of 16 MA students!)

My main tutor (who had not marked thisparticular piece of work) showed a

creditable degree of sympathy, with just atouch of exasperation, and gave her owntime, as well as putting me in touch withthe course moderator, to try to help methrough this very trying experience. One

major difficulty was the apparentlyunquestioning acceptance by the tutors ofphrase structure grammar, as laid out byRandolph Quirk et al., with very littleawareness of the problems which phrasestructure analysis might give rise to, and

virtual complete ignorance of alternativeanalyses, particularly those deriving from

the Chomskyan school.

In view of the difficulties, I abandoned

the idea of an Easter holiday, and instead

concentrated on writing my project (on

teaching English to Japanese students).

This went well, and I found that I had hit

on a formula of presentation that

guaranteed the acceptability of my writtenwork from this point on. Unfortunately, my

way of doing things was so unfamiliar to

the established RSA school of thought that

all my written work ended up about twice

the specified length, since I had to

explain every step very carefully.

Obviously, this meant a lot of extra work,but at least the tutors were accepting mybasic approach (once I had explained it interms accessible to them), and not trying

to force me to change my approach.

Since the comment about 'terms accessible'

to the RSA tutors sounds rather arrogant,

I had better give an example. My

assignment on language analysis had been on

the theme of teaching modal auxiliaries.

Central to my approach to teaching these is

the concept of 'subject raising', which

postulates that the underlying structure of

sentences like, 'He seems to be unhappy',

may be represented as something like '[[he

is unhappy] seems]' (or, '[seems [he is

unhappy]'). In other words, the basicproposition, 'He is unhappy,' is marked for

'seeming'. A similar analysis can be

applied to auxiliaries. Thus, 'He is

coming,' may be analysed as containing theunderlying structure, 'He comes,' marked

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vo1.7, No.1 Spring 1993 In Page 7

THREE TRAINEE VOICES cont'd

for continuity in the present, or for

future intention, depending on the context;'He may come,' contains the same structure,marked for future possibility, etc. Theunderlying structure, incidentally, is muchmore similar to the structure of a

'topic/comment' language (such as Japanese)than the 'surface structure' (ie, the one

used in normal English sentenceconstruction). Concomitant with this

analysis is the assumption (alien to phrasestructure grammar, but useful, I find, whenteaching such things as interrogatives,short answers and question-tags) that theauxiliary is not part of the verb phrase.This also required explanation.

The analysis was one which the tutors onthe course appeared not to have come

across. Instead of appraising it on itsown merits, they fell back on their owncertainties, and upbraided me for not

pointing out, for example, that modals haveno third-person singular '-s'.

remonstrated -.'So who said they did?!' -but in order to get the assignment

accepted I had to include such obviousinformation as well as the raising

analysis.

Simply dropping the latter was not anoption, since it forms an important part of

my teaching practice. For example, I give

students lists of 'circumstances'

(possibility, advice, obligation,supposition, etc, with translations for

lower-level students) and ask them to

identify sentences with modals in

newspapers, etc, then tell me which

circumstances apply. In this way, I can

check whether students understand the

different uses of, say, 'must', in caseslike, 'Iraq must comply' (obligation), andMacEnroe's, 'You must be joking'(supposition). Similarly, I will give thema basic proposition, and ask them to use amodal to 'mark' it for advice, intention,etc, as well as using modals to make'WH-' questions, relative clauses, etc,

drawing on the transformational analysis,with colour-coding and other devices tohighlight the positions of the subject,auxiliary and verb in such sentences. For

Japanese students (of which there is a

large number at the school where I work) I

often use the 'underlying' (or 'deep')

structure in English as a bridge betweenJapanese and English sentence construction.

For example:

Kare wa

He

modal + infinitive

iku

go

beki desu

should

The next bit of deep water I ran into waslesson observations. I passed the firstfew observations, but then failed one. Theobserver wondered whether this was, in

part, because I had, for once, tried to dothings 'the RSA way', instead of being.trueto myself as a teacher. If this was so,then it is in itself a severe indictment ofthe validity of RSA training methods. I

only know that my confidence sank to anall-time low, my teaching (in my ownestimation) suffered, and the-spectre ofthe observer sitting in a corner writingdown the notes that would fail me will-haunt me for a long time yet. Prior tothis, I had always been very happy to letanyone observe my lessons.

I failed one more observation after that.Like the other, it was a video lesson -apparently the RSA and I. have verydifferent views on the nature and purposeof such work. The negative reactions ofthe observer were apparent to me within thefirst few minutes, and I found it almostimpossible to teach at all. The followingday, working again on the same material('Dead Poets' Society'), I was at last able

to obtain the affective response from

students that I had been aiming for, butsuch a response could never be obtainedwhile there was such a hostile presence inthe classroom.

In retrospect, I think perhaps the mainproblem concerning lesson observation layin the fact that EFL methodology - as itwas taught on the course - was enshrined in

the formula of the 'three Ps' -

presentation, production and practice. On

the one hand, this seemed to me to rule out

any genuinely heuristic approach, such as

I had been encouraged to adopt during PGCEtraining - since the initial presentationeffectively blocked the opportunity for

students to make their own discoveries. On

the other hand, I was preparing studentsfor First Certificate and other exams, inwhich they would, if I adopted the methods

Page 8 11THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993

advocated on the course, be tested bycriteria that were quite at odds with thoseby which they had been trained.

Throughout all of this, I had the supportand sympathy of my colleagues at work, anda steady flow of positive feedback from mystudents, who were quite unaware of whatwas going on behind the scenes. If not, I

should scarcely have been able to keepgoing.

I finally passed the course, and am now ina position to ask myself what I havelearned from it. I have learned somethingabout dealing with institutions andauthority figures (the teacher is stillvery much an authority figure in the RSAscheme of things) with which I do not seeeye to eye. I have learned what it is like

to be in the firing line between two

mutually hostile discourse communities

(teacher of English as a foreign languageand those who study languages as a

science). I have learned to express someof my linguistic and pedagogical knowledgein ways that are accessible to the ELTdiscourse community. And I now haveconcrete reasons for saying that I do not

accept that general linguistic and

pedagogical considerations should be

belittled in an obsessive pursuit of

metholology.

To me, this is not enough. My year on theRSA Diploma course will remain in my memoryas one of the most thankless and pointlessyears of my life, and, while I accept thatmy position as a trained linguist made mea rather atypical candidate for this

particular course, 1 suspect that, althoughsuch a course suits some people, there aremany others who secretly agree with me, butfind it expedient not to speak out.

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THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993 2_Page 9

TRAINING FOR MEDICAL GENERAL PRACTICE:ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES AND WHAT WE CANBORROW FOR EFL TEACHER-TRAININGTessa Woodward

Reprinted from the Tesol France News(Spring 1992)

Penny Aeberhard, a doctor for over 20

years, has a medical general practice(local, family doctor clinic) in Englandand trains an apprentice doctor each year.Penny's article was so interesting (seeref.) that I invited her to work with agroup of EFL teacher trainers attending aBritish Council Specialist Course, in 1990,in England.

Out of her very full and stimulatingpresentation covering the GP scenenationally and locally, ways of learning ingeneral practice, the trainer-traineerelationship, curriculum planning, andassessment techniques I have chosen thelast topic - assessment techniques, fordiscussion in this article. I have chosenit because "assessment" is an area that Ishy away from and try to ignore. It makesme think of formal exams and gradingpeople. In my own editing I feel this isan area of "collusion" ie an unconsciousagreement (between in this case editor andwriters) to ignore or leave out boring ordifficult bits! Penny mentioned collusionquite a lot in her talk, with reference toone-to-one doctor training. She talkedabout how resolved one had to be to avoidit. I will thus take heed and think aboutassessment here!

In training for general practice,assessment and teaching go hand-in-hand.Many, many assessment/teaching proceduresare used continually and simultaneously andare applied to one trainee. A selectionfollows. After each one, I have written afew comments from the point of view of anEFL teacher trainer.

1. "Mapping" and "rating"

During direct observation by the trainee ofa Doctor-patient consultation, the traineejots down, on a form, notes under headingssuch as "Patient's concerns", "Patient'sexpectations", "Involvement of patients inmanagement of illness". The headings areusually chosen by the trainer but therecould of course be negotiation here. Themapping can also be done while the trainee

is watching a consultation through a one-way mirror, listening to a tape, watchinga video, or while listening to a report anddiscussion of a consultation (indirectobservation). The mapping is thus a speedyform of note taking. It guides thetrainees towards important areas to lookfor and acts as a memory aid andinformation base for later discussion andfor work on "rating". Rating involves thetrainee in gauging or evaluating behaviouralong scales. Thus a trainee might beasked to tick along a scale such as thisone:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Patients are treatedwith disdain, aslittle children withno opinions, or noright to voice them.

Doctor always trysto build anadult-adultrelationship with

- patients. Patientsare encouraged tobe more self-aware,questioning andself-reliant.

Rating scales can deal with simpleparameters such as the tidiness of theconsultation room or with complexbehaviours and attitudes. Once bothmapping and rating have been completed,discussions can ensue. Rating scales canbe applied by the trainee to their ownconsultations too. This self-assessmentcan then be compared with the trainer'srating of the trainee in the same areas.Mapping and rating could also be used forpeer observation too.

COMMENTSAlthough in EFL TT we are quite familiarwith the idea Of observation schedules,checklists or "maps", the headings are

interesting here. Translated into EFLterms, the trainee would be watching for"language students' concerns", "student

expectations" and "involvement of the

student in the management of their own

Page 10 13 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993

learning". We may be moving towardsstudent-centredness in some aspects of EFL

but I wonder if it has got onto ourobservation schedules as clearly and

determinedly as here? "Rating" is

something I have not yet tried. I can

imagine applying it though to such simpleareas as the legibility or illegibility of

boardwork or to similarly complex

behaviours and attitudes as above.

"Students are treated as children ..." etc!I can certainly suggest trainees use ratingscales for their own self-assessment and I

would enjoy negotiating the mapping

headings and rating scales with a peer toimprove my own teaching and training.

2. Attitude Statements

The trainee-doctor is given an attitudestatement such as "Patients come to thedoctor too often". The trainee has to

state their degree of agreement or

disagreement and compare this with others,including the trainer.

COMMENTSThis translates nicely into an EFL TT

context. I tried it the other night with

the statement "Students ask difficult

questions just to try to catch teachersout". It generated a lively exchangeamongst pre-service, non-native trainees.It brought to the surface all kinds ofunexpected (to me) resentments towards

language students who actually ask

questions!

Some other attitude statements that might

be of interest in an EFL context are:

"Error correction doesn't actually work""Students shouldn't be expected to revealpersonal information in language lessons""Teachers who don't write lesson plans are

lazy".

3. Audit of work

One parameter of the doctor's work is

chosen, for example, the giving of

prescriptions to patients. This is logged

in some way and analysed. For example the

costs of what the doctor prescribes, thetype of medication prescribed, the numberof prescriptions handed out per day, could

be logged. Audits of work mean not

presuming that you know what your behaviourin a certain area of work is. Once you

have logged it, and analysed it, you can

decide what you want to do. In the example

above, the doctor could decide to prescribe

lower cost medication. You can then re-log, after a time and re-analyse to see if

you have changed your behaviour. The audit

of work can be applied to a trainer's,trainee's or a practice's work.

COMMENTSAudit of work clearly has a straight

application to EFL. A teacher could auditany area of her work including: The numberof questions she asks her students, theamount of wait time left after the

questions, the number of times students'names are used, the number and type of

teacher interruptions into student talk,the number of times a particular praiseexpression is used. In my own work I havebeen interested to find out whether I reactsimilarly or differently to female and male

student interventions. I have looked atnomination of male versus female students,

number of questions put and amount of

further comment or questions asked by me to

female versus male students. I am

discovering some differences but would next

- like to use a video to find out more about

my eye contact.

Multiple essay questions (MEQ)

This technique works as an exercise in

problem solving. A case study is described

As an unfolding scenario. In other words,first, some information is given in a short

text. After the information there arequestions such as:

* What is happening here?

What's the most likely diagnosis?

How would you deal with this

situation?

Once these questions have been answered,more information is revealed. And more

questions put. It is as if one patientwere to come back several times to a

doctor. Each time the patient comes back,a little more knowledge of the family, of

the illness, etc become evident. And each

time, in answer to the questions, the

trainee has to show flexibility, knowledge,and a broad range of options in the action

taken. The questions are marked for these

three strengths.

COMMENTSI find the questions asked here

particularly helpful. The idea is clearlyapplicable first of all to "one-to-one"

teaching. A case study of a language

student, presented with a tape of the

student's voice, and a few samples of their

written work could be used. More

information could gradually be made

available as to the student's situation of

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993Page 11

1 A

TRAINING FOR MEDICAL GENERAL PRACTICE:cont'd

target language use, their needs,proficiency, job situation and so on.

A loosely- fitting jigsaw of individualstudent descriptions could also be used inorder to build a picture of a whole class.As further information (includinginformation on late arrivals to the class)is added, the level, language background oraims of the group could be made to shift ina very realistic fashion. This would be avery good way of encouraging the trainee torefine, adapt and occasionally abandonplans, aims and materials as classcomposition alters.

5. Sitting-in and feedback

Since consultations between doctor andpatients are the key area, the real contacttime, a lot of time is spent in generalpractice training, with either the traineeor the trainer sitting in on each other'sconsultations. The person who sits in canbe in a spectator role or can share theconsultation. The feedback can be run asfollows:

* The Doctor says what she thinks shedid well

The observer states what she thinksthe Doctor did well

The Doctor says what she thinks shedid not do well

The observer says what she thinksthe Doctor did not do well

As a result of this discussion theDoctor and observer arrive at jointrecommendations which the Doctortries to implement in later work.

This type of feedback structure can also beused after joint observation of a video ofone of the Doctor's consultations.

COMMENTSObservation is not new to EFL trainers ofcourse. What is refreshing here is thatthe person who did the work always has thechance to start first, the positive comesfirst and the recommendations are arrivedat jointly rather than being prescribed bythe observer.

6. Prepared tutorials

The trainee prepares something, perhaps an

audit of work (see above), or a criticalreading passage (see below). The traineralso prepares some input on the samesubject. The session is thus of jointdiscovery.

COMMENTSThe clue for me here is the word"prepared". Both the trainer and thetrainee thus come to the tutorial withsomething to offer and both have somethingto learn.

7. The Viva

The viva is the face-to-face question andanswer session between the trainee doctorand a trainer or trainers that theapprentice has not been working with. Thetrainers are concerned to discover qualityin clinical competence, affective behaviour(eg voice on the phone to patients),technical skills (eg giving injections),knowledge (eg of psychological theories),interpretive skills (eg the appropriate useof the laboratory), preventative medicineand personal growth. The viva can thusinclude role play, demonstration anddiscussion as well as simple question andanswer.

COMMENTSI find this a fascinating one"to translateinto EFL TT. It would mean that I met,

face to face, someone else's traineeteachers outside their classroom, away fromall language students. I would beendeavouring to discover, for example, howthey deal with latecomers, how they managea tape recorder, what they know of learningtheories, what use they could put-action oracademic research to, how they are changingin training ... and all via role play,question and answer, and discussion. Whata wonderful way to spend a morning!

8. Critical reading passage

The trainee doctor reads an article from amedical periodical and critically reportson its contents:

COMMENTSThis idea gets the trainee into the habitof reading, and not necessarily acceptingnew ideas. The interesting question iswhich part of the EFL press would we drawfrom? Or have we got lots of alternativeseg MET, PET, TESOL Quarterly, ELTJ, System,Forum, IRAL? Perhaps articles on the samesubject from different sources would makean interesting jigsaw in a groupdiscussion.

Page 121 M


9. Discussion of the trainee with otherpersonnel

Members of the general practice staff, egreceptionists, health visitors and nursesare asked their opinion of the trainee

doctor. This fosters the primary healthcare team spirit and liaison. It also,potentially, makes a trainee doctor moreapproachable, less distant or high handed.

COMMENTSWho would our "primary team" consist of?At UK language schools, perhaps the

landlady, the DOS, the receptionist, the

janitor? In France, secretarial staff,staff from the companies where the trainee

teaches? Perhaps in EFL where group

training rather than one-to-one is the norm

for teachers, the primary team would

include colleagues on the same trainingprogramme. Would we want to go a stepfurther and include students? In generalpractice it seems that the patients are not

asked. There is thus a retention of

professional "face". An interesting area

this one.

Conclusion

Above is a very sketchy account of somemedical general practice teaching and

assessment procedures. Sitting down andtalking to other trainers from other fieldsprovides not only interesting informationon what they do for a living, but alsothrows new light on our own procedures.Slight changes, new insights ... that canradically alter the tone of our training.

The things that particularly struck me

while listening to Penny's talk were:

What a luxury for the trainer tohave one-to-one training

Would the trainee, however, preferto have a colleague, a peer in

training at the same time, in the

same or a nearby medical practice?... for support, for co-operative

learning?

What an enormous number of carefulprocedures for evaluation and

assessment are applied,simultaneously, to one trainee!

How professional!

I am just now, after coming to understandsome of the procedures, starting to comparethem with what I do as a trainer, and, asa result of this, adapting my own practice.

I see two main areas of change ... (for

me):

A. Which of these ideas can I apply tomyself so that I develop as a

trainer? At the moment I am

concentrating on "audit of work".In other words, trying not to assumethat I know what my trainingbehaviour is but trying instead tolog it in some way.

B. Which of these ideas can I use toalter the tone of the training I do.Here I think that the emphasis onconcern for the patient (see

"mapping") translated into concernfor the language student, is

something Iwant to concentrate on.The techniques that work towardsmaking attitudes more overt (see"Attitude statements") will be

useful in this area too, I think.

These are the concerns that spring out asimportant for me. For other peopledifferent concerns will come to the fore.Perhaps the most important point of all forme is just the inspiration and feeling of

breadth that has come from listening to a-trainer in a completely different field.Colleagues of mine, I know, have had the

same experience of enlargement of vision

from talking to drama trainers,counsellors, gardeners, yoga trainers ...!Is there anyone you know who trains adifferent field? Business? Law? Office

practice? Chiropractice? Could be

interesting to hear about their techniques.

ReferenceAeberhard, P (1988) 'Training for

General Practice' in "The TeacherTrainer", Vol 2, No 2, Pilgrims

Publications.

Tessa Woodward is the author of "Loop

Input" (Pilgrims), "Models and Metaphors inlanguage teacher training" (CUP), "Ways ofTraining" (Longman) and a section of "TheRecipe Book" Longman.

THE. TEACHER TRAINER. Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993 1RPage 13

"LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION" OR TRAINING BUSDRIVERSby Mario Rinvolucri

One December day I took a bus thatmeandered all over North London on its wayto Notting Hill Gate (a central Westernsuburb). A young white male driver wastackling the route for the first time andhe had a trainer with him. A man in hisfifties, a West Indian.

The trainer hovered a pace or two back fromthe door so he could easily talk to thedriver.

The model of training I observed while thatbus wandered through North London wasrefreshingly different from the normal onein our work: let me pick out some of themodel's salient features:

the older man had an elder brotherrapport with the younger one but youcould feel they were both in thesame thing: they were both busdrivers. They had a community bondthat they did not share with us thepassengers, the public. The olderman was neither judge nor parent,though in years he could have beenthe apprentice driver's Dad.

He forestalled mistakes the driverwas likely to make over tricky bitsof the route with instructions like:

"Position right and be ready to pullup fifty yards after you have turnedright".

He led him not into temptation butdelivered him from evil. Unlike anRSA trainer he did not just watchthe trainee making a pig's ear ofthe job.

He was instantly available when thetrainee asked for help, as when hedid not know the right fare betweenStop 13 and Stop 7. The help wasgiven matter of factly to thetrainee and to the passenger.

He commented warmly on the trainee'shandling of the bus (clearly the manhad already passed his bus drivingtest) and thus strengthened the bondwith him.

At one point he started chattingwith the trainee about "dem

engineers". He told him he shouldhave no hesitation in telling amaintenance man that he refused totake a bus out of the depot if hedid not like the way it handled.The trainer went on to let him in ona secret: "You'll take a bus inthere and the engineer'll say:'leave it over there mate'. Hegives you another vehicle. Half anhour later another driver comes inwith a ropey bus. The engineer'llpoint to the bus you brought in

which nobody has looked at and say:"See that one over there, take thatone."

In this spiel the trainer is letting theyounger man in on one of the secrets of thetrade and in so doing he is bonding withhim. He is also helping the traineerealise the rights he has when faced witha "lesser breed", the maintenance engineer.

As a trainer I was really sad when 1 got toNotting Hill Gate. Had I had time I wouldhave gone right back to where I had comefrom to learn more about the bus drivertraining model.

Application of the model to our work

1. No note-taking by the trainer - shewould use her visual, auditory andchoreographic memory.

2. She'd be around at the front of theclassroom, sharing the trainee-teacher's territory, behaving as acolleague.

3. She'd know the lesson plan (the busroute) and help the trainee withtricky bits in it ...

4. She would unobtrusively answer anytechnical questions the traineeteacher asks her, right there, in

front of the students.

5. When the bus trainer and theapprentice driver went off for theirtea at the depot they will naturallyhave chatted about the route theyboth experienced from parallelperspective. What a marvellouslyequal and normal relationship

Page 141 147


compared to many a trainer-traineefeedback session! If trainee andtrainer have both taught the lesson,with the trainee as a sort of

younger sibling, then the subsequentconversation has the chance of beingwell-bonded and relativelybarrierless.

Maybe you have trainees who would prefer itif you co-taught the odd lesson with them,partly sharing in the implementation of thelesson plan (if you are working within atraditional frame*). Maybe some traineeswould love to openly refer to you for helpwhen they get to a difficult bit of theirlesson.

The London bus-driver trainer model mightbe one more string to your bow, to beselectively used with some trainees.

* For some teachers the existence of a

lesson-plan is a refusal to negotiatecontent with the learner group.

JOURNAL EXCHANGES

"The Teacher Trainer" has arranged journalexchanges with

IATEFL Newsletter (UK)English Language Teaching Journal (UK)Cross Currents (Japan)English Teachers' Journal (Israel)Modern English Teacher (UK)RELC Journal (Singapore)The Portuguese Newsletter (Portugal)Forum (USA)Practical English,Teaching 1UK)Focus on English (India)TESOL Newsletter (USA)ELT Journal (OUP)ETAS NewsletterCultura Inglesa: News and Views (BritishCouncil, Brazil)

and is abstracted by 'Language Teaching',The British Education Index, the ERICclearing house and Contents Pages in

Education.

USING ACTIVITY CARDS ON TRAINING COURSES FORLANGUAGE TEACHERSMartin Cortazzi

Activity Cards - What are they?

Activity cards are blank playing cards, or'flashcards' of about the size of an

ordinary envelope, on which key words orbrief sentences are written. They haveseveral uses in teacher training sessions:they can be distributed, matched or

sequenced, and can be used to involve

trainees in the content of whatever is

written on them. They can also be used to

simulate or model aspects of language

learning. This article outlines the use offive sets of activity cards. Each setillustrates an activity which takes between30 and 40 minutes of class time.

Activity One - Vocabulary Cards

The trainer writes on the cards a range ofterms which are useful when discussing waysin which vocabulary can be organized:

synonymy, antonymv, hYPonymy, formality,

collocation, cognates, false friends,

euphemisms, etc. Add other key words whichsummarize important aspects of learningvocabulary: frequency, repetition, context

usefulness, visualization, personal

association, use of dictionaries, and soon. This makes the set of 'vocabulary

cards' cards with key terms about

organizing and learning words as .a foreign

language.

In the class, the trainer holds up a card,defines or explains the term, says why itis important in learning vocabulary andgives an example of its use.

Alternatively, a trainee could do this, ifsomeone in the group is already familiar

with a particular term. The card is thengiven to a trainee while the. trainer (or atrainee) explains the next term. When all

the cards have been distributed, traineesget into pairs or groups and share theirunderstanding of the terms with each other.

They are encouraged to use their own

examples to illustrate the meaning. As

pairs finish, the trainer swaps the cardsaround so that trainees explain other

terms. Finally, the trainer displays - or

hands out the complete list for further

discussion, questions and comment.

Trainees are asked to reflect on the

activity as a process of learning newwords: Did the words have a useful context?


Page 15

USING ACTIVITY CARDS ON TRAININGCOURSES FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS cont'd

Did 'learners' use them productively? Dothey understand the terms now? Thesequestions. draw attention to the 'loop'nature of the use of activity cards, wheretrainees, through a task, learn at theirown level as future teachers, while at thesame time reflecting on systematicparallels with tasks they may give to theirown students (see Ref 1).

Activity Two - Language Learning Cards

In this activity each card contains a briefsentence about learning, for example,Learners should be involved. Somesentences are very brief, others are longeror more complex: Learning a languageinvolves an opportunity to analyse it,

consciously or unconsciously, into itsconstituent parts. The total set areillustrated in Figure I. (Some items aredrawn from Ref 2 and 3, both of which areworth consulting).

First, the cards are distributed among thetrainees, so that each receives two orthree cards. Trainees are given severalminutes to read and reflect each of thestatements on their cards: What does it

mean? Why is it important? Do they agreewith it? Can they think of an example?They should not write anything at thispoint, but are asked to memorize the words,or at least the gist of what is written.The trainer encourages them to work out themeaning of the sentences for themselves,even if this is not clear at first.

Next, the trainer collects up the cards.Now the trainees circulate around the room:the aim is to talk to as many othertrainees as possible to find out what wason all the cards. Trainees tell otherswhat was on their own cards and mentallycollect what others say was written ontheir cards. After ten or fifteen minutes,the trainees are asked to sit quietly andwrite down as much as possible aboutlearning, using the information justgathered.

Finally, the trainer displays the list ofthe original sentences, or distributes thelist as a handout. Inevitably there isdiscussion about how the informationchanged, about the role of meaning andmemory in learning, and about theimportance of activity and interaction. In

international groups there is also bound tobe discussion about the culturalinterpretation and validity of some of the

statements. Among members of one group Irecently worked with there was a lengthyand thoughtful discussion about "Learninginvolves creativity" and "Learning involvestaking risks". Activity Two can becontrasted with Activity One: How was the

.7- information presented? Does one activityrepresent deductive learning and the otherinductive learning?

Figure 1

Learning should be active.learning involves practice.Learning involves repetition.Learners should be involved.Learning involves creativity.Learning involves forgetting.Learning should be enjoyable.Learning should be interactive.Learning involves taking risks.Learning involves making mistakes.Good language learners attend to form.Good language learners attend to meaning.Learners need a lot of listening beforespeaking.Everybody is a learner and everybody is ateacher.A learner's attitudes affect thedevelopment of motivation.Learning should be economic - exchangingtime for experience.Good language learners monitor their ownand others' speech.Language learners vary in their productiveand receptive skills.Learning a language involves an opportunityfor new skills to be practised.Learning a language involves an opportunityfor new items to be remembered.Learners learn to say things when they havea reason for wanting to say them.The more motivation a learner has, the moretime he or she will spend learning a secondlanguage.Learning a second culture in all itsramifications is often very much a part oflearning a second language.

Page 16 1.A THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993

Learning a second language may be

associated to varying degrees with thedevelopment of academic language skills.Learning involves meaning, and meaninginvolves choice; therefore learners shouldbe given access to communicative choices.Learning a language involves an opportunityto analyse it, consciously or

unconsciously, into its constituent parts.Learning a language involves an opportunityto learn how its constituent parts arerecombinable grammatically into larger

units.Learning a language involves an opportunityto learn how its elements function in

linguistic and non-linguistic contexts.Learners learn when verbal material andnon-verbal images are actively present intheir minds at the same time.

Activity Three - Language and Culture Cards

This set of cards gives examples of a

cultural concept which is likely to beunfamiliar to many trainees. Even if it'sfamiliar, the cultural nuances are probablydifferent from trainees' experience. Theactivity models what it is like to try andmake sense of an unfamiliar culturalconcept: one thinks one has understood it,but on encountering an unexpected use ofthe concept one suddenly realizes that onlya part of it has been grasped, if that!

The set of cards illustrated in Figure 2are instances of applying the Iraniancultural concept of "Ta'arof", which willbe explained later. Cards are numbered,and each card has one sentence.

First, the cards are distributed to

trainees, one or two cards per person.They are asked not to show anyone elsetheir card, but to read and think aboutwhat is written on their own.

Then trainees take turns to read aloud whatis on their cards, starting with card 1.After five or so cards, the trainees areasked to stop for a moment and write downtheir idea of what Ta'arof means: "I thinkTa'arof means ... because ..." Then fivemore cards are read, before trainees againwrite down what they think Ta'arof means.When all the cards have been read, traineeswrite their final conclusions about

Ta'arof.

In twos and threes, trainees now share whatthey have written. This is later followedby a whole group discussion: How easy wasit to understand the concept? Are theresome English concepts like this? WhichEnglish cultural concepts are difficult toexplain? What does the activity tell you

about learning vocabulary or about learningto understand culture? Trainees willquickly see that they can make vocabularygames for their own classes, based on theTa'arof activity, by writing activity cardsusing a nonsense word instead of the nameof a familiar object or idea. The readermight like to read through the sentencesfor the set of cards in Figure 2 and workout what Ta'arof means before checking theexplanation below ...

Figure 2

1.

2.

3.

4.

Be careful about Ta'arofs when yougo through doors.If you don't know about Ta'arofs youwill probably cause chaos.You should watch out for Ta'arofswhen you drink tea.A host or hostess with a Ta'arofwill make sure that guests do notsit near the door.

_ 5. A person with a Ta'arof will offeryou a lift.

6. A teacher who doesn't recognize aTa'arof will lose authority andcontrol in the classroom.

7. A Ta'arof is one way of making surethat people mean what they say.

8. Ta'arofs are taught in the familybut they can be seen everywhere.

9. With a large Ta'arof you will offerto buy the tickets for a groupentering the cinema.

10. A person with a Ta'arof may offeryou a present, naturally.

11. Using a Ta'arof shows that you arenot greedy or selfish.

12. Someone offers you a gift - with aTa'arof you refuse it, naturally.

13. Outsiders think that people withTa'arofs are proud, hypocritical orconstantly flattering others.

14. A Ta'arof shows that you are

dignified and respectable, that youhave status.

15. "May your shadow never decrease, and

may your kindness ever increase",says a person with a Ta'arof.

16. A Ta'arof shows modesty, humilityand that you recognize the status ofothers.

17. A Ta'arof may be given to someonewithout the exchange of money but

only if those concerned are of thesame social rank.

Explanation: trainees are often puzzledduring the activity, but usually concludeby the end that the Iranian concept ofTa'arof has something to do with

politeness, compliments, propriety,correctness, ceremony and status, which isbasically correct. Often a Ta'arof is a



flowery phrase of greeting or thanks. It

can be a gesture of generosity, such aspaying for a meal, offering a lift, orbuying cinema tickets for a group. On theother hand, it means refusing - at firstanyway - gifts or food offered by others:to accept too readily would show pride orwanton eagerness. A Ta'arof can also be agift given to someone of higher status,usually as a way of asking for a favour orexpressing obligation or willingness to beof service. In essence, it has to do withstatus in interaction: showing modesty andhumility in oneself, while according otherhigh status, and thus it has a lot to dowith "face". Since humility is a greatvirtue in Iranian culture, one can acquirestatus by publicly putting others first andmaking oneself lower. Thus, an Iranian mayinsist that others go through a door first,and does not accept food or drinkimmediately - but waits until it has beenoffered several times. William Beeman (Ref4), defines Ta'arof as "the activeritualized realization of differentialstatus in interaction. It underscores andpreserves the integrity of culturallydefined status roles as it is carried outin the life of every Iranian every day inthousands of different ways".

Activity Four - Vocabulary ExplanationCards

This activity leads trainees to practicegiving explanations of vocabulary. Onestage of it encourages quick thinking, asteachers often have to give explanationswithout warning. Each activity card hastwo or more words or expressions written onit. These words are of the kind oftenconfused by some learners. The cards aredistributed to trainees, who are givenseveral minutes to prepare a briefexplanation of the vocabulary items.Trainees are encouraged to think ofdifferent ways of explaining vocabulary:using demonstration, mime, pictures,objects, synonyms, antonyms, typicalsituations or examples of use, etc. (seeactivity 1). The trainees then give theirexplanations in pairs or small groups whilethe trainer circulates listening andsupporting. When all explanations havebeen given, it is useful to have a secondround: the cards are redistributed, butthis time trainees ask their partners aboutthe vocabulary items. Their partners areasked to respond immediately after hearingthe words, as language teachers often haveto respond in this way to answer learners'

queries. (They might, of course, say thatthey will think about it and tell thelearners later, but this sometimes leavesstudents dissatisfied.)

Figure 3

to squat - to crouchto eject - to rejectto argue - to quarrelto linger - to loiterto amend - to restoreto shuffle - to staggerto preserve - to retainold senile - venerableshy - embarrassed - ashamedhonest frank - bluntpuzzled - baffled - confusedalone lonely - independentappealing - attractive - stunningsurprising - astonishing - staggeringto trick - to cheat - to rip offto steal - to pilfer - to pillageto pick on to condemn - to criticizeto divorce - to split up - to fall outto compliment to flatter - to be politeto regret to apologize - to make anexcuseantiquated antique - run-down - outdatedpleased - delighted - thrilled - over themoonflash - gleam - twinkle - glitterfate fluke - coincidence - lucky breakbag of nerves - flustered - wound up ill

at easeirritating - frustrating - a pain in theneck - the last strawto bear in mind - to be in two minds to

weigh the pros and cons to take intoaccount

Activity Five - Learners' Strategies Cards

In this activity the trainees are asked toconsider the views of learners aboutvocabulary and other aspects of language,and the learning strategies adopted bythem. The activity cards focus on Chineselearners of English, as a case study. Eachcard contains a brief quotation in which aChinese user of English reports how he orshe learnt English (adapted with permissionfrom Ref 5). Although each card featuresa different individual of a different agegroup or occupation, the cards as a wholereveal a number of common Chinese learningstrategies.

The cards are distributed to individualtrainees. They are given time to readthrough them and are then asked to prepare1) a brief comment summarizing how thelearner goes about learning Englishvocabulary and 2) advice they would give tothe learner. In doing this they are asked


to consider building on the learners'

strengths, but to be prepared to suggestalternative learning strategies, bearing inmind what they understand about recent

approaches to teaching vocabulary. Then in

pairs or small groups trainees give

comments on the cards.

After some discussion in pairs or groupsthe trainer might bring the whole grouptogether. Were there any similarities inthe learners' reports? How do the

learners' strategies fit in with

communicative or other approaches to

language teaching? Was there any commonadvice which they would give? Have theycome across parallel learning strategiesamong other groups of learners? The

trainer may see this as a useful moment toshare his or her own experience of teachingdifferent groups of students. It may alsobe an appropriate time to review recentapproaches to teaching vocabulary or recentresearch on learning strategies.

A variation which can usefully follow suchdiscussion is to use these activity cardsas role playing cards. Trainees work inpairs: one has the role of a language

teacher, the other is a learner. The

'learners' each receive an activity card.They read the card and try to think

themselves into the position of the learnerwho made the statement on the card. They

can imagine any background informationwhich is relevant. They then explain theirviews about language learning to the

'teachers', who should reply in the lightof any recent thinking about learning whichthey have encountered on their trainingcourse. The 'learners' may then modifytheir views, or not, depending on how farthey felt convinced by the 'teachers'

explanation.

Figure 4

"I seldom take down vocabulary words. I

always think if I write it in a notebook,I'll come to depend on it ... But when Ihave nothing to do, I flip through thedictionary, enjoying and appreciating onthe one hand and discovering on the other.I especially like 'A New English-ChineseDictionary'."

"I tried to read everything in Englishthat I could. But I never made an effortto remember words by rote, even though Ialways read and re-read the lessons,

stories and essays which I had managed tounderstand, to familiarize myself with themeaning, spelling and usage of the wordsand expressions in them. Now we know thattrying to retain words out of context is

a largely ineffective approach. For each

person, the method of others can onlyserve as a reference. You don't have toimitate others. You have to slowly

develop the study method that suitsyourself best."

"If you want to learn English well, youmust watch a lot of movies, but there isone condition: You have to remember fouror five idioms from each movie. Afterchecking them in the dictionary, keep yournotebook in your pocket and look at itwhen you have time. After a year, you'llhave a few hundred idioms ...In 'The

Devil's Brigade' a character used theAmerican slang, "I can lick you in arace." In the same movie, William Holdentold a major to train his troops well bysaying, "Major, lick them into shape."

"One way to 'increase word power is to

constantly read anything you can lay yourhands on and look up the words you don'tknow in the dictionary. There are manyadvantages in using an English-English.dictionary, the most valuable being that

it trains you to think in English. Hereis the fastest way to improve your use ofthe language. Get yourself a simpleEnglish-English dictionary. Spend sometime every day to look up in it a fewwords which you know very well, such as"rain, camera, healthy". When you read.the dictionary explanation, it is quitelikely that you will read the wordsstraight through without thinking in

Chinese at all."

"When I'm reading a book, I read it forenjoyment. I don't stop to look up a wordin the dictionary because that mayinterrupt my interest. But if one wordkeeps appearing and you just cannot guessits meaning, I think then you should lookit up because you are too curious. ThenI think it will make a deep impression onyou."

"In learning other languages, I depend onrote memorization. Turkish is even harder

than English. Things to read (in Taiwan)are few. There aren't any novels, so I

depend on dictionaries. I don't know howmany times I've read my Turkish and

Manchurian dictionaries from beginning toend because I find in them a lot of

important things. I strongly advisestudents to frequently read throughdictionaries. If you don't remember aword the first time, look again, over andover, try again. After a long time,you'll be able to remember it more easily.But at the start, you have to be

persistent."

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 19930 17

Page 19


"In learning any language, the hard workyou put into it yourself is still veryimportant. What I mean by hard work isthings as'trivial as using a dictionaryand reading a lot ... The English languagehas a lot of idioms. If you don't usethem, you can't capture the flavour of thelanguage. It's the same with using words.It's the same, but you still have to relyon memorization. There's nothing thatdoesn't depend on memorization ... Memoryability depends on one self. Taking notesalso helps memorization, of course. Takenotes at any time and any place, becausethe best memory is no better than thepalest ink."

"At school my teacher wanted to memorizevocabulary words, the next day you had tosay them out loud in class. I developedthe habit of doubting everyone'spronunciation. So all the words I canpronounce are a result of checkingdictionaries. At home I have a

dictionary, every single page of which hasbeen blackened- with use. You have tomemorize a lot of vocabulary words. If

you haven't learnt enough vocabulary wordswhat you say will be incomplete."

"I bought an English-Chinese dictionarywith half a month's salary to learn thelanguage. If your goal is to conversewith foreigners on general topics, it

isn't hard to achieve. Two thousandvocabulary words should be adequate. Tolearn 2,000 words is not difficult. It

would only take you a year if you were tomemorize six words a day. But you shouldrealize that if you learn ten words, youwill actually only be able to pull out ofyour memory and use two or three of thesein a given situation. So to have masteryof 2,000 words, you must learn at least6,000."

"This little notebook always sits on mydesk. After coming across a word I don'tknow and looking it up in a dictionary, I

record it blindly in English. If you useEnglish to explain the new words in yournotebook, you can increase your ability tocomprehend and apply English. Two thingshave helped me most. The first is, whenI see a word, I read it and sound it out.The second point is, if you use English incorrespondence, your progress will begreat. If you start reading novels andsuch when you first learn English, theywill also be a big help to yourunderstanding because they can stimulateyour interest."

"I learnt one thing from my professor atthe university. When he taught us abouta novel, he would ask a student to standup and pick out from a page one word whichhad the most to do with this book. Thiswas a great challenge. It nurtured mysensibility to words. I do not carry anotebook. If I see a word while readingin a bookshop, I write it down on the palmof my hand and enter it into my reviewcards when I get home. I have preparedmore than 10,000 cards, all categorized.When I'm free, I play solitaire with them,because browsing is better thanmemorization."

"I began reading Western novels incollege. One of my methods for learningEnglish was to look up all the new words.I came across. Many people are againstthis method but it has helped me a greatdeal. If you don't look up a new word,you can't follow the story and it leaves

_ a blank in your mind. When I watchedfilms on T.V., I also made sure that I

understood every word. I noted down allthe slang."

"In one sentence: Learn ready-made idioms.In hundreds of years of development, manyEnglish idioms were formed. Within theidioms themselves there is grammar.Grammar is the bone while idioms are themuscles. We tear them apart and then askthe students to put the muscles back onthe bones. The result is often not thesame as the original. Foreigners haveready-made idioms. So why don't we takethem over and use them? Why do we inventthem without the least knowledge of whatthey should be? Foreigners never spokelike this before, so they don't understandwhat you mean and cannot imagine why youtalk this way. Chinese say "I havesomething on my heart". If you tell anEnglish speaker that, he'll probably thinkyou have a tumour or something. Youshould say "I have something on my mind."

References

1. Woodward, T. 1991 Models and

Metaphors in Language TeacherTraining. Cambridge UniversityPress.

2. Brown, D. 1987 Principles of

Language Learning and Teaching.

Prentice-Hall.3. Stevick, E. 1989 Success with

Foreign Languages. Prentice-Hall.4. Beeman, W. 1976 Status and Style in

Iranian Interaction. AnthropologicalLinguistics vol. 18, no. 7, p. 317.

5. Chang, C. 1990 How I LearnedEnglish. Bookman Books.


DO-IT-YOURSELF LANGUAGE. CLASSES FOR NON-NATIVE-SPEAKER TRAINEESby Tony Luxon

The following is a description of a coursewhich was initiated on the Senior MiddleSchool Teacher Training Course (SMSTTC), anINSET project at Guangzhou Institute ofForeign Languages, China, in 1991. It

originated because of sheer expediency, but

it soon emerged that there were

possibilities which had not been

immediately apparent.

Background to the project

As part of their language development, thetrainees had an oral course. It wasintended to last for one term but we felt,as the trainees had appeared to havebenefitted in terms of fluency from thecourse, that it would be a pity to end itthere. The only problem was that the

teacher time just wasn't available for

another full term. In the second half ofthe second term, trainers were required tosupervise dissertations, so there wasnobody to take on the oral class. Whatshould have been obvious immediately, buttook some time to discover, was that therewere plenty of teachers available; thirtynine Senior Middle School teachers, to beprecise. If the teachers wanted the classto continue, they could do it themselves!

It has to be stressed that this was notintended to be teaching practice for theway the teachers would teach in a seniormiddle school. This was not micro-teachingin the sense that fellow colleagues wouldbe required to role-play middle schoolstudents. If it had been micro-teaching inthat sense, then the whole enterprise wouldhave been different. There were certainlyspin-offs in terms of teacher training aswill be discussed later on, but the mainaim was to continue an oral class using theresources of the trainees themselves.

Furthermore, the emphasis would almostcertainly be more on fluency than would bepossible or even perhaps desirable in amiddle school. Until then, it had beenmore of an oral fluency course thananything else, with only minimal errorcorrection by the teacher. Whether thetrainees themselves would continue thistrend or not was not foreseeable. If theywished to concentrate more on accuracy atthis point, then that was their choice.They were after all thinking of the needsof the students because they were the

students.

The brief was relatively open. Thetrainees who ran the sessions could usereading or listening material as input, butthe emphasis had to be squarely on oralpractice. Their own middle school textbook could be used if the students so

wished, but it was understood that thetrainees would not be playing the role oftheir own students in middle school.

How the Sessions Worked

The sessions were run in this way. For

each class, there was a group of threetrainees who would perform differentoperations in rota. Trainee one wouldteach the first activity. Trainee twowould be observing the activities of thestudents and taking notes on the progressof the class, and at the same time makingnote of any errors which could be dealtwith in the feedback session at the end of-the class, using whatever techniques theyhad developed on the course. Trainee threewould be operating a video camera.

After the first activity, the traineeswould exchange roles, trainee one takingover the note-taking, trainee two takingover on the video camera, and so on, untilby the end of the class, all three traineeshad performed all three roles.

After the class had finished, the threetrainees reported back to the lecturer,

briefing him on how they felt the classwent and what they had learned from theexperience. Within a week or so, they wererequired to give the lesson plan and areport on the lesson to the trainer.

Later, the whole class, plus the trainer,would watch the video and make furthercomment. Errors which had been missed bythose people running the class could bepicked up by the trainer and dealt with.

It was stressed before the beginning of the

sessions that the classes depended on

cooperation among all of the trainees, sothey should be as supportive as possible tothe groups who were running the classes.

Before each session, the trainees discussedtheir lesson with their trainer who couldoffer advice if any were needed, but theplanning of the classes was their own,responsibility and the trainer kept hishands off as much as possible. The main


DO-IT-YOURSELF LANGUAGE CLASSESFOR NON-NATIVE-SPEAKER TRAINEES cont'd

area of concern for the trainer was theoperation of the video camera. It has tobe said, as most people using a videocamera will probably verify, that this wasa great source of motivation; the traineeshadn't seen themselves on video before andthis made them quite excited. I don'tthink this aspect should be underestimated;as they were doing the class themselves,any kind of motivational element wasdesirable, and curiosity is as powerful adrive as anything else.

Possible Problems

There were a few difficulties to overcome.First of all, the trainees were teachers intheir own right, and had authority in theirown classes, but it was different in theinstitute. They were now languagestudents, and in this environment, they

felt in a different position; here, theydid not have the same power as in their ownclassrooms. This feeling of diminishedpower, I think, could inhibit anybody.

Secondly, the kind of teaching the traineeswere expected to do was rather differentthan they had been used to doing in theirown classrooms. So, although they had hadexperience of teaching, it was not the samekind of teaching, and they were not surethat they could do it. They experienced,I am sure, the same kind of nervousnessthat novices all experience when they firstbegin to teach.

Thirdly, they were teaching people who wereboth their professional colleagues and

their friends. This presented difficultiesof self consciousness, but it also gavethem some comfort. They were all in ittogether, so to speak. We also wonderedwhether it would be difficult for youngerteachers to teach their older colleagues,but this did not turn out to be a problem.This might have had to do with the factthat the teachers were in a team of three,and there were both older and youngerteachers in each team.

Materials Used in the Sessions

As the classes got under way, anotherpositive factor appeared. Again, it seemedso obvious that we wondered why it wasn'tthought of before the classes started.Before the course began, the trainees werecirculated with various pedagogicalsyllabuses and contents pages. For

example, they were given the contents pagesof'Speaking Personally' (Porter-Ladousse),'Functions of English' (Jones), 'AdvancedCommunication Games' (Hadfield), 'Notionsin English' (Jones), and 'Discussions thatWork' (Ur), which they could use as a guidefor the kinds of things they could teach.If they wanted, they could also use lessonsfrom these books, although it was indicatedthat it would be preferable if they createdtheir own lessons and material. As it

turned out, the trainees preferred to maketheir own lessons. This was due to a

mixture of pride in their ability to maketheir own material, and a sense ofachievement that they had created somethingof their own, another powerful motivationalfactor. There was always the facility touse material from other sources if need be,but once the process was under way, thetrainees felt that it would be lesssatisfying to do this, especially as alltheir colleagues had made their own.

So, this was the other positive by-productthat wasn't obvious before we began; thetrainees were generating a large body ofmaterial, specially made with the interestsof their peers in mind. As oral teachersare constantly looking for new materialwhich is appropriate to the needs andinterests of their students, this was anideal situation for its manufacture; in

this case, the material was actually madeby the students themselves.

At the end of each class, the trainees were_ required to give their material to thetrainer, who would then put it into thecomputer where it would be available toother trainers and trainees involved on thecourse in future. There were two classeswith six or seven teams of teachers in eachclass, so over the weeks, thirteen orfourteen sessions or original, speciallydesigned material were generated.

This is another aspect of the course whichwas different from the normal micro-teaching programme; it was real. This wasnot secondary role-playing either by theteachers of the session or by the studentsin the session; the trainees were gettingtheir oral class and these activities couldbe used again at another time. They weredeveloping their language skills by usingtheir pedagogical. skills.

Most of the trainees were quite confidentat the outset. They were already teachersand so first night nerves were not theproblem it was thought they might be. If

a teacher was nervous, they had their othertwo colleagues to rely on for support.Once the classes got under way they had a


momentum of their own and for the most partturned out to be successful.

The activities the trainees used werevaried, with lots of role-play, informationgap, pair and group work as well as wholeclass discussion, debates, competitions andgames.

The materials they made were topic based,and as we had been following a

functional/notional approach previous tothe sessions, this was a welcomedevelopment at this stage. The topics wereall relevant to their own concerns.

Here are some of the comments from thereports they gave after each class.

TOPIC: Travel in China

On the whole we think we got along wellwith the class. Our introductions wereshort but to the point, our instructionswere concise and clear, so were ourconclusions. We tried to speak English asclearly as possible, so that it seemedthat none failed to understand ourinstructions. By giving the classourselves we find that we can benefit a

_ lot. We can gain teaching technique aswell as our basic skills in speaking andlistening. We can also find problems inour teaching. Then we can find ways tosolve those problems.

TOPIC: The New Image of the ChineseStudent

The topic was familiar to the students soit aroused their interest to participate.All of the students were active in

speaking. However, during the activities,some pairs or groups concentrated on onlyone aspect of the task, which made it

difficult for their talk to go on. As

teachers we should have made a betterlead-in.

TOPIC: Talking about the Past (SpringFestival)

During the oral practice I walked aroundthe class and helped those who had anyquestions to ask. I felt very excitedwhen I saw them talking freely withoutpausing. All of them worked hard.

TOPIC: Sports

We think giving lessons is a good way tohelp us master not only teaching methodsbut also to give us confidence to speakEnglish publicly.

There are many other positive comments, too,many to include here.

The Role of the Video Camera

The incentive for the trainees to do theclasses was increased by the idea of seeingthemselves on the screen for the firsttime. One particularly telling aspect ofthe use of the video camera showed throughafter one class. This class did not go toowell. It was one of the only classes thatwas more teacher-centred than student-centred, but it was also obvious thatcooperation was not forthcoming fromcertain members of the group. This becameevident as the trainees watched the video.As there were two classes and both of themwatched each others' videos, it becameclear that one of the classes performedmuch better as a whole than the other, andthis made the people in the other grouprather uncomfortable. The video had raisedquestions concerning the cohesion of thegroup in general. Consequently, there wasa discussion with one of the trainers inwhich the question of group morale wasraised. The trainees realised thatsomething was wrong and decided to dosomething about it in general terms. The

-next class went extremely well and all thetrainees were very active.

Further Developments

Subsequent to the oral course getting underway, the trainees came to one of thecoordinators expressing a wish to conducttheir own reading classes on top of theones they were already receiving from theirtrainers. They are now doing this. Eachweek one of the trainees takes on theresponsibility of preparing the materialand giving the class. They have also askedfor listening material, in order to do thesame thing with that next term. All thisis supplementary to their original course,so they are getting about four hours extraEnglish per week. So, as well as theirregular classes, the trainees will havesupplementary listening and reading classesconducted by themselves.

There would appear to be otherpossibilities in this approach within allthe skill areas. There is plenty of

reading, writing, and listening materialwhich could be self-taught in this way.Material which is intended to be eithertaught in class or used for self access maybe used. For example, 'Study Listening' byTony Lynch can be used for self-access, butin view of the activities contained in thecourse such as pre-listening discussions,pair work and group work, it would be far


DO-IT-YOURSELF LANGUAGE CLASSESFOR NON-NATIVE-SPEAKER TRAINEES cont'd

more satisfactory if a teacher wereavailable to coordinate the activities.

There is 'no reason why this cannot be

taught by the trainees themselves. Throughthe experience of teaching the material,their awareness of the aims of the materialwould be enhanced. Writing courses withkeys, such as Academic Writing by Jordan orStudy Writing by Hamp Lyons and Heasleycould also be used, as could EffectiveReading by Michael Swan. An integratedapproach could easily be accommodated by,for example, the 'Headway' set of

materials. If trainees end up creatingtheir own material, then so much the

better, but learning how to use books inthis way is also a valuable experience andthrough using them, they could developtheir own material more coherently.

As far as teaching their own classes isconcerned, the situation is different fromthis one. Instead of twenty mature teachertrainees, they would have between fifty andseventy adolescents to teach. However,

this kind of activity has given theminsights into the problems which mightoccur and the aspects they should payattention to whenever and wherever theyteach. This experience, coupled with theteaching practice they will undertake inthe local middle school will, we feel, helpthem in their future teaching assignments.

This kind of programme may not work in

every situation. If the group is not

cohesive and the trainees lack motivation,then the project might fail. However,

group cohesion and motivation mightactually be enhanced by the process as hashappened here.

In the ODA sponsored 1991 Advanced TeacherTraining conference in Nanjing, one of therecurring themes was the desirability ofthe combining language development withmethodology, and of paying attention toboth process and product. What couldcombine them more than the trainees reallyteaching themselves?

Bibliography

Greenall, S. and Swan, M. Effective Reading1986 CUP

Hamp-Lyons, L. and Heasley, B. StudyWriting 1983 CUP

Harmer, J. The Practice of English LanguageTeaching 1983 Longman

Jones, L. Functions of English 7th ed. 1990

CUP

Jones, L. Notions in English 1982 CUP

Jordan, R.R. Academic Writing Course 1980Collins

Luxon, T. Practical Psychology for LanguageTeachers (To be Published)

1992 Guangzhou Institute of Foreign

Languages

Lynch, T. Study Listening 6th ed. 1990 CUP

Porter Ladousse, G. Role Play 1987 OUP

Porter Ladousse, G. Speaking Personally1983 CUP

Soars, J. and Soars, L. Headway 1989 OUP

Ur, P. Discussions that Work 1981 CUP

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEND SOMETHINGIN TO 'THE TEACHER TRAINER'

"The Teacher Trainer" is designed to be aforum for trainers, teachers and traineesall over the world. If you'd like to sendin a letter, a comment, a cartoon, a tapedconversation or an article sharinginformation, ideas or opinions we'll bevery happy to receive it. It's easier forus if the written pieces are typed up withdouble spacing and 46 characters a line.The style should be simple and readable andthe normal length of articles is about 1000to 2000 words. We can serialise if

necessary but this will delay publicationconsiderably!

WHO READS 'THE TEACHER TRAINER'

Here is a sample list of subscribers:

The British Council, Spring Gardens, LondonInstituto Anglo - Mexicano, Mexico CityThe School of Education, LeedsDavies's School of English, London.

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KhartoumThe Language Centre, Muscat, OmanInstitut fur Deutsche Sprache, FreiburgThe Library, St Clare's, OxfordLecturers in Aston University and LanzhouUniversityTrainers in Ouagadougou, Ljubljana,

Sarawak, Goiania-Goias and Al-Jubail

Bookshops, Holland, BelgiumThe Director General, Bell Educational

Trust


DON'T GO SEE FOR YOURSELF - LET THE TRAINEESTELL YOUby Judith WilsonAbout four years ago we became involved ininservice training courses for groups ofsecondary English teachers from Mozambique.The courses were held in England at BellCollege because of the difficulties in

providing accommodation and facilities forsuch courses in Mozambique.

A pre-course visit to Mozambique allowingdiscussions with the education authorities,visits to schools, and observation ofclasses by the potential trainees wouldseem to be advisable when planning such acourse. In fact this wasn't possible. Atthe time this seemed a pity, but lookingback I'm not so sure. Since neither I normy colleagues had been to Mozambique, thecourse was planned on the basis of theinformation we were given by contactsthere, the lessons we had learned fromother African Teachers' groups who hadstudied at the College, my own experienceof teaching in Africa, and, mostimportantly, from what the Mozambicanteachers themselves told us. During thecourse we had long discussions andarguments about every aspect of teachingfrom the size of a typical blackboard tothe Ministry of Education's regulations ontesting. It was often hard to come to anyagreement, but the discussions on the bestsubstitute for chalk when it ran out(pieces of cassava) the possibility of asecure place for storing badly neededtextbooks (the Headmaster's office) notonly allowed us to build up a very detailedpicture of their teaching situation butalso allow the teachers, often veryisolated in their widely spaced schools, toshare their own experiences with oneanother. It was not until over two yearslater, after the completion of two courses,that I went to Mozambique. I visited sixof its ten provinces and met most of theMozambican teachers I had worked with inEngland.

Once I was in a Mozambican classroom, ofcourse I saw gaps in the courses we hadgiven. We had known about the largeclasses - they were the teachers' chiefcomplaint, together with the almost totallack of teaching materials. In fact quitea lot of the classes weren't so large, theyhad forty or fifty on the roll but maybefewer than thirty in the room. However,there would be a different combination ofstudents the next day, so it would really

be easier to teach a class of fifty regularattenders. What none of the teachers haddefined as a problem was the range ofdifferent levels in each class - the lackof English teachers meant that in mosthigher classes there were students who hadone, two or three years English. Teachingsuch a wide range with few or no resourcesis a problem we shall have to addressdirectly as it seems that it is going to bewith the teachers for some time. None ofthe teachers had mentioned that studentsare expected to stand every time theteacher addresses them, and not to sit downuntil they are given permission -maybe aminor point but one which has enormousimplications for classroom dynamics. Weknew about the large number of hours ateacher might work - but hadn't realisedthat the same lesson might be given toseven or eight different classes, whichsuggests that more time can be given tolesson planning and preparation of simplevisual aids. We had discussed theprofessional isolation of the teachers butit was not until I travelled the hugedistances from one school to another thatI-realised this fully.

The main question we had asked ourselves inEngland was how far the teachers would beable to apply the procedures we hadpractised in a peer group teachingsituation to a real classroom with forty orfifty students. There were successfullessons and less successful lessons, butthe individual weaknesses I saw when I

observed lessons were not really surprises.The problems I saw in control of the targetlanguage, pace, and the giving of clearinstructions were ones we had discussedwith the teachers concerned after peer-teaching sessions in England. It did makeme feel that we should have confidence thatthese are real problems and not just aproduct of an unrealistic teachingsituation. The most positive thing I sawwas that greater confidence in what theywere doing seemed to allow the teachers toadopt an approach that did not have to relyon fear to establish discipline, and thatallowed them to be themselves in theclassroom.

All in all, I don't think that a pre-coursevisit would have been preferable to the

experience I had. The whole of the firstcourse was an information finding exercise

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vo1.7, No.1 Spring 1993 28 Page 25

DON'T GO SEE FOR YOURSELF -LET THE TRAINEES TELL YOU cont'd

and each time we repeat the course itchanges as we learn more, and also becauseeach new set of participants has gelledinto a different group with its ownstrengths and needs. The fact that theparticipants were our main source of

information gave a priority to theirstatement of their needs and also probablyled to higher expectations on our partwhich I think in the long run werejustified.

4.10

Sitfip teL,

Hildetstone Prelintiriary CertificateCoiuses for overseas teachers of English

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Why Hilderstone?Small groups

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For details write to:Teacher Training, (Dept. TT)Hilderstone College, BroadstairsKent CT10 2AQ England

Tel: 0843 869171Telex: 966182 THANET GFax: 0843 603877

Member of

THE ACTION PLAN CYCLE:A way of integrating theclassroom and trainingcourse sessionsby Sheila EstaireThe question of helping and encouragingteachers to actually apply ideas from in-service training courses in theirclassrooms is one that has concerned me fora long time. In 1990, in an attempt toavoid these ideas remaining simply as"inert ideas," (Ref.1) never put intopractice and most probably forgotten aftera relatively short time, I developed theACTION PLAN form shown in Fig. 1. It isdivided into a REFLECTION column on theleft, with questions to help structure thereflection phase, and a WRITING column onthe right, with space for teachers to jotdown ideas they want to make sure theydon't forget and ways of applying them inthe classroom.

ACTION PLAN

Title of sessionor other source:

Date:

What have I learnt?

How

can I

apply

it?

INITIAL (BRIEF)

ACTION PLANFOR THE CLASSROOM

AND/OR

Action plan forfurther reading, thinking

WRITE

BRIGHT IDEAS!

Point(s)/ideas(s)/technique(s) springingfrom the session

I'm going to ...

Sheila Estaire(illustrated by Natalia Llave)

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

Paae 26 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993

Phase 1

Phase 2

Coursesessions

End -of -dayreflection

Conversation withcolleagues, reading,thinking, syllabusrequirements, othersources of ideas

On our in-service courses, at the end ofeach day's sessions (4-6 hours), teachershave 15-20 minutes to themselves to workindividually in an informal and relaxed wayduring which:

they reflect on what they have gotout of the sessions and jot down themain points

they reflect on ways they would liketo apply these ideas in theirclassrooms and jot down a briefinitial action plan

they make a note of any points theywould like to read/think about and/ordiscuss further

Teachers can of course finish writing theiraction plans at home if they run short oftime in the training classroom.

The next time teachers come together again,the first thing they do is to spend 10-15minutes sharing their action plans in pairsor small groups, and adding any new ideasthat may crop up as a result of this grouptalk. The talking normally happens withteachers standing up and walking around theback of the room.

Action plans are not generated only bysessions. Teachers are also encouraged towrite them for any ideas springing fromtheir own reading, thinking, conversationswith colleagues or any other situations, asshown in fig. 2.

The first year I used this framework therewas an implicit invitation to put actionplans into practice (actioning the plans inthe classroom) and in fact many teachersdid so quite regularly and enthus-iastically, but I felt that much more couldbe got out of phase 2 if it was betterstructured. This led me to carry theaction plan cycle several steps further, asshown in fig. 3.

FIG. 2

WritingACTIONPLAN

sharingACTIONPLANSwithpeersand newideasaddedto AP

ACTIONINGPLANS inthe classroom

CourseSessions

Thinking

Reading

Conversationswith colleagues

Syllabusrequirements

AP

PHASE 1

Fig.

ACTIONING PLANSin the classroom

Lesson plans

for everyday classwork

for observedlessons

peers

tutors

PHASE 2

Course sessions

presentations

further input

discussions

Post-lessonreflection/discussion

Tutorials

Written work

Case studies

Course project

Assignments

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993 '40 Page 27

Writtenreflectionson lessonstaught

Record of APsimplemented

classwork

Course project

Developmentalprofile

New APs

follow-up lessons

When structuring phase 2, my main objectivewas to complete the cycle by providingopportunities for action plans (APs) tofeed into other course sessions. The ideawas for teachers to share the classroomexperiences generated by their APs, clarifyany hazy areas with colleagues and tutors,and develop ideas further during sessionsspecifically timetabled for this purpose.For those groups of teachers doingUCLES/RSA COTE courses (Ref.2) there was afurther objective: to link action plans asclosely as possible to other coursecomponents: teaching practice, tutorialsand written assignments. This is shown infig. 4.

Course

Classroom Experience

fed back into

Action Plans

written

Action Plans

implemented in

the classroom

Fig. 4

This year teachers on COTE courses areencouraged to action their plans as an on-going process

- through their everyday classwork

- through lessons observed by their tutors,within the teaching practice programme.

When the latter happens, teachers specifyaction plan aims in their lesson plans.During pre-lesson discussion of lessonplans, teachers have an opportunity todiscuss with their tutor these specificaction plan aims and ways of implementing

them. After the lesson, they are one ofthe areas to be analyzed and commented onby both teacher and tutor, either in face-.to-face chat or in written exchange ofcomments (teacher writes to tutor, tutorcomments on teacher's comments plus anyother relevant points) (Ref.3). Teachershave Action Plan Record Sheets to help themkeep a record of plans acted upon, andcomments on what actually happened in theclassroom. They are encouraged to refer tothem whenever relevant in their writtenassignments, which always have an elementbased on classroom-based work.

Next year teachers doing the UCLES/RSA DOTE(Ref. 2) course will use their Action PlanRecord Sheets as the basis for writingtheir own Developmental Profile (Ref. 4)towards the end of the course. In thisprofile they will describe, analyze andillustrate their own professionaldevelopment - innovations and changes -over the period of the course. As a

starting point for looking into thisdevelopment, teachers will be asked toproduce a piece of writing at the beginningof the course, describing their teachingsituation, teaching practice and beliefs,and indicating some of the areas in whichthey would like to see some change.

I have great faith in the action plan cycleas a valuable instrument to help us ensurethat in-service courses produce change inthe classroom, and as an effective vehiclefor actually bringing the classroom intoin-service courses.

References

1, A.N. Whitehead, "Aims of Education"(Source unknown. Any readers know?)

2. Course leading to a Certificate forOverseas Teachers of English awarded by theUniversity of Cambridge and Royal Societyof Arts. DOTE is the Diploma

3. Post-lesson exchange of written commentswas incorporated into our COTE framework bymy colleague Cathy Myers

4. Thanks to Ian McGrath for this idea.

Paae 28 31 THE TEACHER TRAINER, vol.?, No.1 Spring 1993

A FEAR CLINICby Patrick Philpott

This is an account of a series of

activities I set up on a course I am

leading at the Institute of EducationalScience, here in Cordoba, southern Spain.It is a 30-hour course, in three-hour

sessions on Saturday mornings, spread outfrom November 1991 to May 1992. It is

designed for experienced non-native Englishteachers who feel they need a breath offresh air - hence the title to the course,"A Refresher Course for Tired Teachers"(with acknowledgements to Chris Sion - see

Ref 1). The theme for these activities wasFear. The theme was perhaps not one to beexpected on a training course - I certainlydo not recall hearing of its use on othercourses. However, I felt it was highlyrelevant even for teachers who had been inclassrooms for years. Fear has definitelyexisted at all stages of my own teachingcareer, and, of other teachers I know too.It causes varying degrees of stress andunhappiness and, what is more important,prevents teachers from doing things theywould like to do in their classrooms. For

example, it prevents us from being

different from other teachers, trying outnew ideas, admitting that we don't know all

the answers. In short it prevents us frombeing ourselves. It can reach the extremes

a young teacher was telling me about

recently: she often has to have a glass ofsomething strong to help her to get tosleep at night - and after she told meabout her classes I wasn't surprised!

While not reaching that pitch (at least forthe last 20 years or so), I still feel

afraid, or at least apprehensive, wheneverI go back to teaching after the holidays,when an apparently sound lesson-plan startsto founder and, above all, whenever I am

going to do something new and important tome. The physical symptoms are

unmistakable, and there are times - notmany, thank goodness! - when I just can'tgo through with it. I skip the whole ideaand revert to something less ambitious.However, on the positive side, I feel that

if I did not go through these crises, it

would be a sign that I no longer found thejob challenging, or was just not trying any

more.

Teachers, however, do not often mention the

topic of fear. Many prefer to blame theirfeelings on their students' unruliness orlow motivation, or their schools'

deficiencies rather than their own

reluctance to be innovative, or just

natural. The first idea behind the "fearclinic", then, was to discuss fear as aperfectly normal, "respectable" emotion,that we all have, however experienced wemay be. I then wanted to bring theparticipants' fears out into the open. In

_itself this would, I hoped, defuse thefears to some extent. Finally, we mightsuggest practical remedies for our fears.The problem was how exactly to approach theproblem on this course, how deep to go, andhow a group of relative strangers wouldtake to the topic.

Before each stage of the clinic I plannedactivities which would create a climate ofrelaxation, hopeful enquiry and positivesuggestions. Thus, in the first session,I led my introductory talk onto the subjectof originality, pointing out how this often

consisted of minor alterations to

established classroom routines. As a

practical example, we got into pairs andthought up new ways of taking the register.These were then explained and demonstratedto the rest. The point was also made thatvicious circles in class can often be

broken by changing one of the components of

the process; for example, ignoring

misbehaviour takes away the gratificationthe culprit seeks. Then, after a hecticgame in which they had to learn as many oftheir companions' names as they could intwo minutes, we did a neck release exercisefrom Joan Agosta's "Changing Energies" (see

Ref 2). Only now did I introduce the topic

of fear, mentioning that it had been apreoccupation of mine for some time, andtelling them the story of a day a few

months before when I had panicked in class

through fear of revealing too much of

myself.

mtiC mr,,rnrt, m,711,717n 1 sin 1 14101 Page 29

A FEAR CU= cont'd 27.6% difficult-(ie awkward, too smart)students

Next, I gave them sheets of paper and askedthem to write their names on one side.They then had ten minutes to write down onthe other side all the things they wereafraid of in teaching. I gave them some

deliberately vague indications of the

things they might consider. They could

write in their mother tongue (Spanish) ifthey preferred, or ask me for help withtheir English if they would rather.

At the end of the ten minutes, I collectedin the scripts and we had our recess,

during which with their permissionphotocopied the papers (without names) andtried to glean some idea of their content.At the end of that session, I commentedbriefly on some of the fears expressed,indicating that most of them seemed to bemore worried about their own inadequaciesthan anything else. I also tried to makethe following points:

a) fear is a perfectly normal emotion,and nothing to be alarmed at orashamed of

b) the first step towards conquering itis to accept its existence

c) the next step is to talk it over,write it down, or somehow bring itout into the open

d) seeing other people's fears helps usto deal with our own

e) we would look, in a later session,for ways of overcoming some of ourfears.

On reading the scripts more carefully athome, I got the distinct impression that afew people were clearly holding back; I

seemed to have rushed in too soon withthem. On the other hand, most of them hadbeen very explicit about their fears, andsome obviously felt them very keenly. Thenumber of fears expressed varied from twoto eight per person, with most putting down

4 to 6. The responses were extremely

diverse, with a total of 43 differentpoints made by the 29 participants. After

grouping all these points, under more

general headings, it turned out that thefears mentioned by most respondents were,in percentage terms:

58.6% feeling linguistically ormethodologically incompetent

37.9% failing to motivate students

34.5% not achieving objectives, or notteaching well

20.7% losing control

17.2% starting lessons, new methods, newcourses etc

13.8% rejection by students

10.3% testing

10.3% their image as teachers

10.3% getting bored with the job

Other fears were: making excessive demandsof students, handling audio-visual aids andother materials, being a bad influence,going blank in mid-session, colleagues, andtension in general. I was struck by thepredominance of fears arising from the

teachers' feelings of inadequacy whether in

- the form of insufficient pedagogicaltraining. On top of this, manyparticipants clearly felt the system wasagainst them.

I tried to accentuate the positive to theutmost in session 2, after what had

-inevitably been a slightly sombre firstsession on fears. Amongst other things, we

did a guided visualisation of childrenduring break, brainstormed thesatisfactions of teaching, and played

Charades. We did not mention the subjectof fear.

Session 3 began with some lively circleexercises and some left-handed writing,

designed to remove inhibitions, and accessthe right hemisphere of the brain.

Participants were then each given a slip ofpaper with a fear written on it; I had

prepared these previously with a selection

of trainees' fears plus some of my own,making up a total of 40. Each person wasasked to reflect on the fear he/she hadbeen given, and try to make it his/her own;they could ask me if they were not sureabout anything. The important thing wasfor them to "personalise" this fear, to

think how the person involved would feelit, and how this would affect his/her

behaviour. Three minutes were given forthis. Then they sat in pairs, and, for

five minutes, A had to expound their fearto B. B was supposed to ask questions in

order to find out exactly how it felt.

Only when B really "felt" their partners'fears were they to volunteer any advice.The process was then repeated with the

partners changing roles. The next, in

plenary, comments were invited, and twopeople briefly described "their" fears and

3 THE TEACHER TRAINER, V01.7, No.1 Spring 1993

commented favourably on the advice offered.

They then changed partners, each one takingwith him/her their old partner's fear. Theprocess of expounding and advice giving wasrepeated with the new partner. At the endseveral people volunteered to tell us about"their" fears, and comment on thesuitability of the advice received.wound the session up by basically recallingand extending the remarks I had made at theend of session 2 about accepting fear andbringing it out.

Although that was the end of the fearclinic as such, I did, in session 4, givethe bare statistical results, and invitedthe group to surmise why I had done thecircle and left-handed activities beforethe final stage. This led into a

discussion of the brain hemispheres andrelated issues. Finally, in session 4, webegan tajlking about classroom control, anissue w4h obvious links to the topic ofteacherqear.

That, th7, was my fear clinic. I amparticula4y interested in hearing from

anybody who has done, or taken part in, orjust heard of, anything similar. I should.also be grateful for any comments fromreaders of "The Teacher Trainer" on how I

conducted the business. I am still notsure, for instance, if I was too intense,or too superficial, in my approach.Furthermore, is it right to bring up anissue to which you have no professionalsolution to offer (I am not a trainedpsychologist)? Should I have concentrated,in the final stage, on 2-4 general orextremely acute fears, which might havebeen examined in some kind of plenarysession? Most of all, what would you havedone?

Patrick Philpott.Cordoba, Spain.

References:

.-- 1) SION, Christopher, "Recipes for

Tired Teachers", Addison-Wesley,1984

2) AGOSTA, Joan, "Changing Energies",Pilgrims, 1988.

MODELS ,OF TEACHING PRACTICE AND FEEDBACKFOR TEACHER TRAINING IN TEFLby Gosia Baker and Simon Hamilton

Introduction

EFL and Educational Perspectives

Educational researchers have highlighted anindex of observable factors which go someway to contributing to an effectiveteaching situation. These includeclassroom management, general presentationskills, familiarity with audio-visual aids,general teaching techniques and self-confidence in standing before a class(Ryan:1960, Flanders:1970, Rosenshine andFurst:1973). Such research findings areobviously welcome and instructional, whenone comes to consider the adult EFLteaching environment. Native-speakingteachers who enter the TEFL arena from astate school teaching background bring withthem many of the skills traditionallyregarded as part of the battery of a goodteacher. However, these new apprenticesoften fail to see that there are somedifferences in type of course and needs ofthe new learner group. Some degree of

modification of their current skills is

necessary if they are to seize theadvantages of systems of EFL teaching whichin our circles have been independent ofnational curricula and their constraints,and have been able to develop as learner-centred and not result-centred systems. We

have found that there are four main

problems which affect trainee teacherperformance:

The Four Main Problems

1) Teacher behaviour needs modificationin proportion to the cognitivematurity of the group of learners.In other words, the way in which ateacher'acknowledgesstudent ideas'or 'accepts student feelings' willvary according to the age of thelearners. Or at least it should do.Quite common among trainees who comefrom other teaching backgrounds isthe apparent inability to

differentiate - on a communicative

mn, mrncl/FP TDATNr17. Vn1.7 nn.1 Crlrira 1001 4 Paae 31

MODELS OF TEACHING PRACTICE AND FEED-BACK FOR TEACHER TRAINING IN TEFL cont'd

level - between secondary and

tertiary level learners. Needlessto say, this can send the groupdynamic awry and can cause adultlearners to become detached from thelesson, since they do not respondwell to being patronised.

2) Quite often it is assumed thatinstinct or one's native ability touse the language correctly will beenough to explain points which thelearner finds difficult. Theinternalisation of native grammarand an understanding of the

reasoning behind native speakerintuition are essential elements inthe process of clarification of anyfalse notions which will inevitablyarise in class. Therefore, thetrainee teacher is only courtingdanger if he/she engages in

explanation of a grammatical areathat they are really - from a

pedagogical perspective - unfamiliar

with. It is better to be honestabout one's uncertainty than to

insist on teaching something whichis incorrect, particularly since

what is covered or uncovered - inclass should have become part of thelearner's language resource andought to be available for

spontaneous communicative activityoutside class.

3) It can be rather daunting to standbefore a class of continentaluniversity students and teach themsomething about a language that theyare using everyday in their coursestudies. As a result, we have foundthat trainees tend to assume toomuch about the knowledge of theirlearners. Frequently there existsthe false presupposition that oneexplanation is enough andverification of this can be gainedby employing simple enquirystrategies like "Is that okay?" or"Does everyone understand?" withsilence taken for an affirmative.Elicitation should be part of theprocess of interaction not just aformal stage in the lesson. Actingas a kind of consultant, the traineeshould always try to vary the

process of enquiry so that the

learners become involved in the

questioning on a communicative,

interactive level. Elicitationshould not be a unidirectionalprocedure. Checking strategiesshould be employed.

4) It is possible to employ techniqueswhich shift the responsibility ontothe learners without handing overcontrol of the lesson. Quite oftentrainees who have come from a stateschool teaching background tend tohold very firmly to control. Part

of this syndrome is displayed in

the way the trainee divides out

talking time in a lesson. Talkingtime includes all interaction. It

can be enhanced if the trainee canresolve the difference between

division of responsibility and

sharing of responsibility. Perhapsasking the question, "How can I get

learners to talk more?" can be

reinforced by the advice "Change theclassroom equation of talking timeso that you are still in control butthe class members are more involvedin procedures that would have beenyours in state school teaching."

_Organisation of Teaching Practice (TP) atthe University of Limerick (UL)

It is part of the responsibility of TEFLtrainers to mould their new trainees withpractice in the methods and techniques ofTEFL and retrain their new apprentices fromwithin the educational umbrella so thatthey can maximise their prior knowledge inthe development of new skills. Most often

we find that 'school teacher trainees' havedifficulty perceiving the difference andmaking the adjustment between state school

and EFL/adult/private teaching. As a

result of failing to see that EFL is

different they become resistant to

criticism of their teaching practice during

review. Our model of TP is one we havearrived at after a few years of trial and

error; namely 'whole-class' teaching

whereby individual trainees teach wholelessons. We have found that this model has

met with the least resistance. Our source

of learners for TP are real classes ofERASMUS students or groups of volunteerswho require remedial teaching. This means

that we have our own resource of learnerson campus and do not need to travel abroad

for an extended teaching block. Our system

has its advantages and its drawbacks. The

following observations have been made onthe experience of 'first-time' teachers andseasoned teachers from outside the EFL

context working with multi-lingual classes

of intermediate learners of English,

studying at third level under the auspices

35' T7r TrAnTER TRAINER. Vol.7. No.1 Spring 1993

of the ERASMUS and LINGUA internationalexchange schemes.(1.) In response to thetwo factors mentioned above - a particularkind of student population and a particularkind of trainee - we have come up withdifferent models of TP and feedback.

Models of Teaching Practice at UL

We have taken into consideration the

concept of gradual progression in designingTP for our trainees. This means that alltrainees begin teaching informally aftermodel i. ii. and iii. and go onto theformal environment when they are ready(which is usually before the end of winterterm). During the spring and summer termstrainees teach according to models iv. andv. and all TP sessions are recorded onvideo.

i. Peer Teaching - This is the firststage where trainees get the

opportunity to acclimatisethemselves to the teachingenvironment by giving short lessonsin English on specific grammarpoints to their peers.

ii. Team teaching - EFL classes of 15learners are taken by teams of 2 or4 trainees who plan and teach onesixty minute lesson. This allowsnovices to work with and learn frommore experienced trainees andacquire a 'feel' for coherent andcohesive structural lesson planning.Within the team system trainees arequite willing to receive peercriticism and advice, and this hasproven a useful first step towardtrainer feedback.

iii. Micro teaching Trainees teachsmall classes of 5-7 learners in

short lessons of 10-15 minutes.

iv. Macro teaching Trainees teachsmall remedial groups of learners insixty minutes sessions.

v. Whole class teaching - Traineesteach 15-20 intermediate learners inhourly sessions. This is seen asthe optimal TP experience andtrainees have full responsibilityfor designing lessons.

(1). Our EFL classes are made up of foreignlearners who are on academic exchange asErasmus students taking up to a year ofstudy in another European university, orLingua students who are teacher trainees inlanguages acting as language assistantsduring their exchange period.

Types of Feedback

The following are some suggestions on

different types of oral and writtenfeedback we have come across. Althoughthis is obviously not an exhaustive list,it does cover the major possibilities. Wediscarded group feedback in favour of one-to-one because of the level of resistanceto trainer criticism.

1.Trainer as reporter : trainer tells thetrainee about the lesson through feedback.2.Trainer as listener : trainee discusseshis/her performance during the lesson.3. Trainer as facilitator : trainer chairssession in which the trainees comment ontheir performance and trainer sums up invarying ways.4. Trainer as consultant : trainee chairsa controlled discussion with task-orientedactivities given by trainer.5. Free discussion : a type of

brainstorming, problem-audit session, withtrainer or trainee as manager.6. Trainer as monitor : trainer discussesthe trainee's performance while referringto video-recording of the lesson.7. Trainer intervention : trainer interactswith trainee/s during peer teachingsessions. Reteaching follows immediately.8. Written feedback by a trainer : thismost frequently occurs where there is nopossibility of re-teaching.9. Written self-evaluation activitytrainee fills in a self-evaluation sheetafter his/her TP (see below).10. Written self-evaluation as a post-viewing task : trainee fills in a self-evaluation sheet after reviewing his/herlesson on video cassette.* It is possible to create alternativefeedback types by combining two or more ofthe above suggestions, or by increasing thenumber of trainees at a session.

For our purposes and because of the

constraints in operation we have adoptedfeedback type 2. combined with self-

evaluation in a written form (9. and 10.)with the trainer adding to the trainee'scomments with helpful tips and advice.

The advantages of this type of feedbackare:

(a) The system is trainee-centred.(b) The trainee is encouraged to

honestly appraise his/her own

performance and acknowledgemistakes, which in turn helps to

build self-reliance, versatility andthe willingness to adapt in

unpredictable teaching situations.

(c) Elicitation of comments enables the

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993 Page 33

MODELS OF TEACHING PRACTICE AND FEED-BACK FOR TEACHER TRAINING IN TEFL cont'd

(d)

(e)

trainer to assess the awareness oftrainees on their own performanceand sometimes give the trainees theopportunity to clarify their

treatment of a particular part ofthe lesson.It allows the trainees a greatersense of responsibility.Trainees are encouraged to analysethe class-room dynamic objectively

observations forand makethemselves.

(f) It is constructive and encouragingas it concentrates on the good

things first.(g) It focuses on the aims of the

lesson.

(h) It looks at why things have

succeeded or failed.

The disadvantages of this type of feedbackare:

(a) It is not economical in terms oftime.

(b) It is not suitable when the traineris meeting with more than one

trainee. As a group, trainees tendto develop a low collectivethreshold to criticism, and can tryto commandeer the orientation anddirection of feedback.

Conclusion

As we have previously stated, our TP systemhas developed to overcome the problems oftrainee resistance and the institutionalconstraints at Limerick. We have also hadto adapt our system of trainee supervisionin order to arrive at the most effectivemodel for our mixed intake of first-timeand non-EFL 'school teacher trainees'.Most authors on TP recommend the schemewhere feedback is given to the trainee thesame day while recall is still fresh. We

have developed a particular system of

teacher training designed according tostages of progression from peer teaching towhole class teaching. In addition we havearrived at our own model of feedback whichsees the trainer as listener and which iscoupled to self-evaluation in a writtenform. We have settled on the modeldescribed, mainly because it has met withthe least resistance from our trainees, who

sometimes have not been prepared for

criticism of their TP performance. Thisresistance has been circumvented too byencouraging a "cooling-off period" so thatthe trainee has some time to assimilate theevents of the lesson and become objectiveabout his/her performance before "cold

viewing" of video recordings and feedbacktakes place. Thus we would generally be infavour of delayed feedback.

SELF-EVALUATION SHEET (see 9. above)

Read this after you have taught the lesson.Write brief notes on a separate sheet ofpaper.

TEACHER

1. How successful was the lesson?

2. Which part of the lesson was

successful and why?

3. Which part of the lesson was theleast successful and why?

4. What was the aim of the lesson?

What new structures, functions orvocabulary did you teach? What

techniques did you use?

5. How did you ensure that all thestudents understood?

6. What might you do differentlyif/when you teach this lesson again?

7. What teaching aids did you use?

Were they effective?

8. Did you encourage real use of

language?

9. How much of the students' Ll didyou/they use?

10. Did you incorporate any pair

work/group work/roleplay?

11. What skills did the students

practise? Speaking? Writing?

Reading? Listening? How did itsucceed? How could it have beenimproved?

STUDENTS

1. Did your students learn?

2. Did any students fail to

participate? Why?

3. What activities did they enjoy most?

Why?

4. Did the students find the lessoneasy/difficult? Why?

5. Were there any discipline problems?If so, why and how did you deal with

them?

Parr. 1i 57 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7., No.1 Spring 1993

MATERIAL

1. W a s t h e materialinteresting/motivating?

2. Was the material suitable to thestudents' linguistic competence?

3. Did you use any authentic material?

OTHER COMMENTS

REFERENCES

Flanders N. A. (1970) Analyzing TeachingBehaviour. Addison-Wesley, Reading, M.A.

Rosenshine B. & Furst A. (1973) 'The use ofdirect observation to study teaching' in

Travers R.M. (ed), Second Handbook of

Research on Teaching. Rand McNally,

Chicago.

Ryan D. (1960) Characteristics of Teachers.American Council on Education, Washington,U.S.A.

ABOUT 'THE TEACHER TRAINER'

"The Teacher Trainer" is a journalespecially for those interested in modernlanguage teacher training. Whether you area teacher who tends to be asked questionsby others in a staffroom, or a Director ofStudies with a room of your own, whetheryou are a course tutor on an exam course,or an inspector going out to schools, thisjournal is for you. Our aims are to

provide a forum for ideas, information and

news, to put trainers in touch with eachother and to give those involved in teachertraining a feeling of how trainers in otherfields operate as well as building up apool of experience within modern languageteacher training.

The journal comes out three times a yearand makes use of a variety of formats e.g.article, letter, comment, quotation,cartoon, interview, spoof, haiku ideas. If

the idea is good, we'll print it whatevervoice you choose to express it in.

A NEW TEACHER TRAINING RESEARCH DATABASE

If you want to get a print-out of the itemsin the database send the compiler, PatriciaDaniel, £2-00 to The School of Education,Deiniol Road, Bangor LL57 2UW UK. Fax:

U248 372187. Alternatively, send her anApple Mac disk and no money!

The database consists of sheets like theone below.

We have printed this example because

Patricia obviously hopes her list of

contributors will grow. If you want toenter your research project in the databaseplease use the format below:

Name

Contact Address

Country

Working title

Funding

Collaborators

Type of TeacherTraining

Teresa Doguelli (Co-ordinator of TEDS' Group cf. below)

Teacher Educators Group,

The British Council, Kirlangig Sokak No 9, Gaziosmanpasa, Ankara.

Turkey.

Teacher Trainers at Universities, Private Language schools and Secondary Schools in Ankara.

Mainly Adutt; Pre-Service and In-service

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993 3 APage 35

Type of Institution Universities, Private Language Schools, Secondary Schools.

Main Aspects

Alm/purpose

When started

Likely durationMain Methods

Anticipatedoutcomes

Publications

Any other Info

To increase the effectiveness of trainers through greater understanding of resistance, giving feedback, teacherobservation and approach methods to training in general.Self help goup.

1989

Input and discussion.Outside collaborators (guest speakers) from UKVideo input (Open University material)

Newsletter

Brief write-up can be found in the (ARN Directory of Members' Activities, 1990. (Co- ordinator. Briget Somekh,University of East Anglia. )

ave You ReadQuel professeur hes vows? Profils de

l'enseignant de FLE (French as a ForeignLanguage), Louis Porcher and BertrandSapin-Lignieres, Hatier-Didier, 1987.

In The Teacher Trainer we don't usuallyreview books published in languages otherthan the "imperial" one, but guest editorscan be allowed to be a wee bit

irresponsible!

What sort of a teacher are you - Profilesof teachers of French as a foreign languageis a light-hearted/serious set of

questionnaires of the sort you could welluse in a trainee centred in- service

session. The questionnaires might alsobring diversity to the work of a TO group.

This is a 108 pager (thin and narrow) with12 questionnaires in all.

Each questionnaire offers a barrage of 30questions.

The questionnaire titles give you somethingof the flavour of the thinking:

My profession - what profession? (echoes ofUK EFL feelings?)

Training before, training again training

for ever(hands up those who feel in-servicetraining is a sham mainly there to maintainthe trainer's status)

Traditionalists and Modernists(Teachers who "know what they are doing"through to the wacky ones!)


The job of being_ student

Me and the language

etc ...

Le métier d'eleve

My classroom behaviour

Here are the first ten questions from MyClassroom behaviour:

1. If you've given a bad lesson, youfeel:

a

b

c

d

e

guiltyembarrassedworriedphilosophicaleager to do better next time

2. What makes you realise you are

giving a bad class?

the students aren't saying anythingyou're stumbling for wordsyour anger is.mountingthe students are messing aboutyou can't manage to do what you had

planned

3. What makes you sure you've given agood lesson?

a -b -

d -e

you're in a really good moodyou've got where you intendedthe students are happynothing went wrongthe exercises went down well

4. When you've given a good class youfeel

a

b

c

d

e

pleasednothing muchdisappointedyou want to start all over againpleased with the students

5. If you haven't prepared your lessonyou feel

a

b

C

d -e -

guiltyvery anxiousconcerneddelightednothing much either way

6. If your students don't answer yourquestions you think

a they don't like you any moreb - they are hopelessc they are lazyd - you asked them the wrong questionse the language does not interest them

7. In class you mostly

a - readb - write on the boardc - ask questionsd answer questionse correct

8. A good class group is

a

b -

c --d -

e -

all the same levelmixed abilitysmalllivelyhappy

9. If you get the feeling your studentsare nodding off

a -_ b

c -d -

e -

you mention it to themyou ask a daft questionyou fly off the handleyou wait for them to get it togetheragainyou change the activity

10. If a student is rude to you

a

b

c -d

e -

you tick them offyou swallow it in silenceyou punish them after the lessonyou throw them outyou let it keep you awake at night

Since the book under review is in French itmakes sense to offer you enough of a chunktranslated for you to directly try out withtrainees. Questionnaires are a veryflexible tool you can use in all sorts ofdifferent ways. Let's look at a few:

- white out some of the multiple choiceitems and ask trainees to fill these

blanks with their own items

ask trainees to do the questionnaire inthe skin of an old teacher of theirs.

This brings back loads of memories


ask trainees to swap names across thegroup and then to answer the questionnaireas the person whose name they have pickedeasily done by putting their names onslips of paper. This is an interestingmixture of observation and projection

ask the trainees to offer the

questionnaire to their own languagestudents. The language learners answerthe questionnaire in the shoes of the

language teacher (trainee)!

- ask trainees to read the questionnaireand decide what it tells them about the,mindset of the folk who wrote it. etc

My colleague Sheelagh Deller, (Lessons fromthe Learners) might well advise you to

forget about the Porcher and Sapin-

Lignieres questionnaires and get the

trainees to invent their own for each

other. She might be right, but then itwould serve her right if no one bought herbooks, either!

Guest Editor

PI MACCE

AT IONS

Of special interest or relevance to teachertrainers are:

Collaborative language learning andteaching edited by D. Numan (1992) CUP.ISBN0-521-42701-0. A collection of 12 papersby different authors all on the subject ofcollaboration, between teachers, learners,researchers and curriculum specialists.Motives for the collaboration in each casevary and include promoting co-speakerrather than competition between learners,to team teaching, to collaborativesupervision in teacher education andothers. The paper by Gebhard and VedaNotonaga on an exploration of teaching ina Japanese setting will be interesting tothose involved in supervision.

Making the grade by M. Covington (1992)CUP.ISBN 0-521-34803-X. Thorough andreadable this short book discussesmotivation, achievement, anxiety, self-worth, effort and failure in Americanschools before drawing out the implicationsfor the structure and goals of classroomlearning. A realistic chapter on seriousgames plus a fat reference section and ashort appendix on co-operative learning.

Ways of Training: recipes for teachertraining by Tessa Woodward (1992) Longman,184pp ISBN 0-582-06493-7. Deals withprocesses of teacher training rather thandirectly with the content of teachertraining courses. The introductionincludes a working distinction betweenprocess and content in teacher training.Chapter One outlines 'a grammar of trainingprocesses' and briefly sets out the'options approach' advocated by the author(citing Earl Stevick Images and Options inthe Language Classroom CUP 1986). Theremaining six chapters are:2 'Input': ways of 'eliciting andtransmitting information, ideas, opinionsand awarenesses'.3 'Reactions to information': ways of

interesting trainees in information by

getting them to react to it.4 'Moving on from information': ways ofgetting trainees 'to internalise newly metinformation by memorising, physically

storing, visualising and (re)organisingit'.

5 'The teaching encounter': ways of guidingoneself and trainees about lesson planning,observation and feedback. (This is theonly chapter which is not predominantlygeneralisable to any sort of training.)6 'Finding out': ways of encouraging

Page 38 4-11THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.1 Spring 1993

trainer and trainees to learn aboutthemselves, each other and about the workthey intend to do.7 'Support': ways of building support ofpeer by peer.(to be reviewed)

Sur les chemins d'une pedagogie d 1"etre:une approche psychodramaturgigue de

apprentissage des langues by BernardDu f eu (a superlatively giftedpractitioner). (1992, pp.300) Editions'Psychodramaturgie' (Rilkealle 187, D-65,Mainz, Germany). The longer originalversion of the forthcoming OUP Englishversion. From back cover blurb: 'La

premiere partie aborde le "pourquoi" decette approche et expose ses fondementsmethodologiques (progression, grammaire,comprehension, retention, objectifs ...).La second et principale partie present le"comment" ... Une description precise desactivites de la psychodramaturgie permet decomprendre comment les participantspenetrant au coeur de la langue etrangereet la vivent de l'interieur. La troisiemepartie expose une conception 41argie de laformation des- enseignants. Elle metl'accent su r l'importance d'unesensibilisation aux aspects relationnels del'enseignment des langues.'

Directory of Professional PreparationPrograms in TESOL in the United States.1992-1994. (1992, 243pp) TESOL, Inc. ISBN0-939791-40-4.

Optimal Experience: psychological studiesof flow in consciousness Eds. M and I.S.Czikszentmihalyi (1988;, ppbk 1992, 416pp)CUP. ISBN-0-521-43809-8. 22 articles by 17contributors, cross-disciplinary. 'Flow'is a relatively newly hypothesized factorin intrinsic motivation. Sample chaptertitles: 'Optimal experience and the uses oftalent', 'The systematic assessment of flowin daily experience', 'Self-esteem andoptimal experience', 'Women, work andflow', 'Ocean cruising'.

Cooperative development: professional self-development through cooperation withcolleagues by Julian Edge (1991, 106pp)Longman. ISBN 0-582-06465-1. Note: CD isnot to be confused with CooperativeLearning.

Modern English Teacher, vol.1/1 (Jan. 1992)Macmillan. The new look MET. Articles andreviews pertaining to TESOL, quarterly.

Sociolinguistic perspectives on bilingualeducation by Christina Paulston (1992,

174pp) Multilingual Matters 84. ISBN 1-85359- 146 -7. Eight articles that appearedin print separately from 1972-1984.

Linguistic and Communicative Competence:topics in ESL by C Paulston (1992, 145pp +introductory matter) Multilingual Matters85. ISBN 1-85359-148-3. Twelve articlesthat appeared in print separately from 1968to 1991. Sample chapter titles: 'The useof video-tape in the training of foreignlanguage teachers' (1972), 'Linguistic andcommunicative competence', 'The use of

linguistics in ESL', 'Communicativelanguage teaching'.

Language Culture and Cognition Eds L.

Malave and G. Duquette (1991, 321pp)Multilingual Matters 69. ISBN 1-85359-

- 102-5. 17 articles by 24 contributors(incl. Oiler, Selinker, Seliger, Swain)..3 chapters: 'Cognitive processing oflanguage systems', 'Language and culture'and 'Language learning and instruction'.Much on bilingual education for minoritystudents in North America.

Longman dictionary of language teaching andapplied linguistics (2nd ed) by J Richardsand J and H Platt (1992, 423pp +

introductory matter). Longman. ISBN 0-582- 07244 -1. 2000 entries.

A Practical Handbook of Language Teachingby David Cross (1992, 296pp) Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-380957-9. Contains fourparts: (1) fundamental skills, (2) samplelesson types, (3) testing; teachingpronunciation; using of games, songs,rhymes, homework and revision, (4)

developing receptive and communicativeskills.

Language through Literature by Susan

Bassnett and Peter Grundy (1993, 136pp).

Longman. ISBN 0-582-07003-1. Classroom

procedures within the DUET tradition.

Special emphasis on using poetry, grantingthe validity of students' interpretations,getting students to write literature, usingliterature even with beginners.

Teaching Literature by Ronald Carter andMichael Long (1991, 200pp) Longman. ISBN

0-582-74628-0. Covers approach and generalissues pretty thoroughly; much less onprocedures than Bassnett and Grundy.


PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED cont'd

The Pronunciation Book by Tim Bowen andJonathan Marks (1992, 85pp) Longman. ISBN

0-582-06491-1. Procedures for cognitiveteaching of pronunciation.

Creative Grammar Practice by Guenter

Gerngross and Herbert Puchta. (1992,

133pp). Longman. SIBN 0-582-08957-3.Complete lessons (minus the initial

presentation of concept) for helping

students to internalise 50+ commonstructures of English. Unusual attentionto fostering memory. Considerable classtime to be devoted to writing, ie.,

creative in-filling of skeleton texts.

Conversations and dialogues in Action byZoltan Dornyei and Sarah Thurrell (1992,160pp + introductory matter). Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-175035-6. Ways of

exploiting coursebook-type dialogues;includes suggestions for further reading,indexes.

Pictures in Action by Guenter Gerngross andHerbert Puchta (1992, 157pp) Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-675182-2. 62 activitiesbased on the use of pictures.

Songs in Action by Dale Griffee (1992,173pp) Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13- 824988-1. 76 activities.

Classroom Dynamics by Jill Hadfield (1992,180pP) OUP. ISBN 0-19-437147-6. Justunder 100 activities for establishing goodworking relationships with and withinincohesive classes.

A teacher's grammar: the central problemsof English by R A Close (1992, 166pp).

LTP. ISBN 0-906717-48-5. A revision ofClose's 30 year old English as a ForeignLanguage. Cover to cover reading ratherthan a comprehensive reference work. Aimed

at non-native speaking teachers and nativespeaking trainees on courses such as onesin the Cambridge Cert. and Dip. TEFLAschemes.

The EFL Textbook and Ideology by BessieDendrinos, (1992) N.C. Grivas Publications(7 Simonidi St, 12243 Aegaleo, AthensGreece). 256pp, ISBN 960 7113 217. BessieDendrinos, a major force in Greek EFL,takes a sociological and political look atthe textbook genre. Her chapter headingsare a useful summary of the book: I. Therole of the textbook in formal education.2. The Nature of the EFL Textbook - the EFLtextbook as a unique case among otherschool books the authority of the EFLtextbook. 3. Ideology in education anddiscourse. 4. Educational value systems andthe foreign language. 5. Ideology andinstructional texts in the EFL textbook.

Linguistic Imperialism by Robert Phillipson(1992) Oxford University Press 365pp ISBN0 19 437 1468. Robert Phillipson, who

lectures in Denmark, explores the

phenomenon of English as an internationallanguage and analyses how and why the

language has become so dominant. The book

takes a look at the spread of Englishhistorically, at the role it plays in theDependent World ("Third World") and at howEnglish language teaching contributes tothe dominance of English worldwide. The

book is an interesting companion to

Dendrino's book, (see above).

gooks on writing:

Learningabout writing (The early years) byPam Czerniewska (1992) Blacknell. ISBN0631169636. A book from the generaleducation library which reflects on therelationships between literacy and culture,discusses the child's theory and role inwriting and learning before looking atprimary school classrooms and examples ofchildren's work.

The writing systems of the world by FlorianCoulmas (1989) Basil Blacknell. ISBN 0 -631-18028-1. A presentation of the majoroptions of writing systems past andpresent, to demonstrate what exactlywriting does to a language. Interestingchapters on non-alphabetically writtenlanguages such as Chinese, semitic writingbut small print and detailed text.

Second language writing ed Barbara Kroll(1990) CUP. ISBN 0-521-38778-7. Forteachers who are dedicated to fosteringgrowth in writing by providing a sequenceof lessons and courses designed to movestudents beyond basic skill level. Sectionone is on the philosophy behind L2 writinginstruction (6 papers). It helps teachersidentify the main considerations indesigning writing programmes and lessons.Section two is on considerations for

Page 40 13 THE TEACHER TRAINER, vol.7,' No.1 Spring 1993

writing instruction (7 papers). It focuseson options and constraints in the writingclassroom.

Teaching Grammar. A Guide for the NationalCurriculum by Richard Hudson (1992)Blacknell.. ISBN 0-631-16625-4. Aimed atprimary and secondary school teachers inEngland and Wales this book has generallyeducative sections on issues such asdiscovery learning, what is grammar, whatis Standard English, as well as some samplegrammar lessons from the world of secondaryteaching that make an interesting contrastto EFL. Useful parts for background inpre-service training.

Teaching Tenses by Rosemary Aitken (1992)Nelson. ISBN 0-17-555920-1. A book aimed

at expanding the repertoire of theexperienced EFL teacher and educating therepertoire of the novice/trainee teacher.Each tense is analysed by form, meaning andfunction, has a list of suggested contextsfor teaching, has likely learner errorslisted plus additional notes. There is aphotocopiable section of visuals forlanguage practice too. Very useful fortrainee lesson preparation.

Visuals for the lanquace classroom byA.Wright and S.Kaleem (1991) Longman. ISBN0-582-047811. Another in the slim,practical, 'keys' series of teacherresource books. Each visual medium (board,OHP, wall pictures, flashcards etc) isdiscussed by characteristics, use,techniques in different types of lesson,and production tips. Lots ofillustrations. User friendly.

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can be exploited in an immense variety of ways in the language classroom.

VideoRichard Cooper, Mike Lavery, and Mario RinvolucriVideo offers a wide range of communicative activities designed to reinforce and enhancethe language learning process. This is a practical book which provides students with real tasksinvolving the language of perception, observation, opinion, and argument.

CALLDavid Hardisty and Scott WindeattCALL presents a large number of practical activities which utilize a variety of computerprograms and which are based on communicative methodology.

Classroom DynamicsJill HadfieldJill Hadfield explores some of the problems teachers have with managing groups, anddescribes over 100 classroom activities designed to foster a cohesive and supportive groupatmosphere.

Learner-based TeachingColin Campbell and Hanna KryszewskaThis book contains seventy language practice activities which use the wealth of knowledge,experience, and expertise of learners, and can supplement course books or form the basis ofan entire teaching programme.

NewspapersPeter GrundyNewspapers are a source of authentic texts which provide language practice, as well asinsights into English-speaking culture. This book is full of creative and original ideas and theactivities are practical, need little teacher preparation, and can be applied to a wide rangeof articles and extracts.

For further information please contact:ELT Promotions Department, Resource Books for Teachers, Oxford University Press, Walton Street,Oxford OX2 6DP, England. 45

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

TWO BOOKS FOR ALIFETIME'S LEARNING

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Papers on Classroom Research and Teacher DevelopmentGeneral Editors: Julian Edge & Keith Richards

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Why train?

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Literature and Language TeachingA guide for teachers and trainersGillian Lazar

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52

llTHE

TACI-TERRAINER

VOLUME SEVEN NUMBER TWO SUMMER 1993

Published three tines a year.

CHIEF EDITOR: Tessa Woodward

GUEST EDITOR: Mario Rinvolucri

EDITORIAL TRANSACTING TEFL 18

Apology 4 Neil Jones and Lorrie Phillips

FROM BEHIND THE BARRICADES 4 PROFESSIONAL SELF-IMAGE INFLIT 23

Keith Morrow replies to the threetrainee voices from Vol 7 No 1 Ephraim Weintroub

Subscription information 5 THE PRICE OF CHANGE

Another Trainee Voice: HONESTY Melanie Ellis

Jackie Smith 7

TEACHING IS TEACHER TRAINING

HOW DO YOU THINK IT WENT?A TASK-BASED APPROACH TO FEED-BACK 9 Jim WingateFrank Fitzpatrick and Ruth Kerr

WHY TRAIN?

Training EFL-teachers for 14 Saxon Mennemulticultural schools Wout de Jong

HAVE YOU READ?GRIDS AS A REFLECTIVE TRAINING TOOLUN TRAINER-TRAINING COURSES 16 Ways of Training by Tessa WoodwardRod Bolitho and Tony Wright

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVEDA TRAINING GAME - WHAT IS ALANGUAGE? 18

Sarah Walker

PUBLISHED BY:

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24

26

28

31

32

5? THE TEACHER TRAINER. Vo1.7. No.2 SUMMER 1993

ABOUT THIS ISSUE

Tessa Woodward, the editor of THE TEACHERTRAINER, has got a lot better over the pastmonth and it is with a lighter heart thatI come to the task of telling you about theideas in Vol 7 No 2.

The first article From Behind TheBarricades thoughtfully tackles some of theproblems put on the table by the threetrainee voices in the last issue. KeithMorrow, currently working for UCLES, tellsus how the reformulated Cambridge teacherexams will improve things for trainees.

In her article, Honesty, Jackie Smith,

editor of the Italian teacher newspaper,The Reporter, pleads for trainers to openlyshare their expertise and not use Rogerian

style non-directivity as a thin,

infuriating smoke screen.

The main hands-on, go-off-and-try-it

contribution in this issue comes from

Naples. Frank Fitzpatrick and Ruth Kerroffer practical, well-tried ways of makingpost-lesson feedback more positive, less

negatively personal and more clearly

future-focused.

I am delighted to have an article by

Bolitho and Wright on the area of trainertraining - in this case they offer ways ofsorting out who is giving feedback in whichrole in the train-the-trainer room. Is a

given participant thinking in role as alanguage learner, language teacher or

trainer of language teachers? I can hear

Saxon Menne smiling as he reads these

lines! (see page 28)

Sarah Walker is back again with anothergame for teacher-trainees, playing withmetaphors for language. Nice to hear avoice from Brazilia.

It is fairly clear that the therapies aremajor feeder fields for EFL teachertraining and Transacting EFL brings youEric Berne's thought made directly relevantto the teaching and the training room.

Ephraim Weintroub reports on the traumasfaced by teachers from the former USSRbeing re-trained in Israel. He pleads for

the training to strictly respect these

people's experience and knowledge. "I used

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993

to be a good teacher" sighed the formerLeningrad school principal. Ephraim is

here writing about the teachers of Frenchcurrently being "remoulded" as EFL teachers

in Spain and the massive re-trainingprogrammes in the sixties in China when all(800,000,000) people suddenly had to switchfrom learning Russian to tackling English.

Poland is in the throes of going capitalistand Melanie Ellis writes movingly of thetransformation and the way it makestraining work more fraught but also moreinevitably whole-person. "This is whatchange is about: fears, tears and sometimeslaughter."

The last two articles in this issue,

Teaching is training and Why train? look insimple depth at what training is reallyabout. Jim Wingate, in the first article,suggests the real trainers are a country'sprimary and secondary teachers, not theofficial trainers, while Saxon Menne', in

the second article, elegantly suggests thatthis magazine should not exist and that allof us trainers are simply a self-

perpetuating group of parasites.

Personally I find his arguments

uncomfortably persuasive. Good thing I dostraight language teaching for 8 months ayear! Phew!

Wout de Jong gives us glimpses into abank of Dutch Materials used in trainingteachers for life in multi-culturalclassrooms.

In the review section Jeremy Harmerintroduces and comments on Ways of Trainingby Tessa Woodward.

In Publications Received around 20 titlesget a short back and sides from Seth

Lindstromberg.

Have you enjoyed this issue?Do you use ideas from the journal?If the answers are YES why not get usanother reader? Show your copy to a

colleague and sing its praises. The morereaders we have the more writers we haveand the richer the journal becomes.

-Please write something for The TeacherTrainer yourself. Yes, this week!!

Page 3

APOLOGY

In Volume 7 No 1 'published an article bySheila Estaire THE ACTION PLAN CYCLE: A wayof integrating the classroom and trainingcourse sessions.

She responded to publication with thisletter:

Dear Mario,

I feel terribly frustrated (and would liketo complain) about the way figures 1-4 inmy article have been printed in The TeacherTrainer. As they are, they are absolutelymeaningless.

She goes on to suggest a number ofsolutions to the problem one of which is toprint her address so that interestedreaders can contact her and get the

original diagrams:

Sheila EstaireHead of Teacher Development UnitThe British CouncilPlaza de Sta Barbara 1028004 MadridSpain

Tel: 337 35 00Fax: 337 35 73

Sheila, I would like to apologiseunreservedly for the sloppy presentation ofthese essential aids to understanding yourarticle. I understand the feelings of awriter who wants their work to come overclear and untrammelled. When an editor hasmessed me around this way I have been atleast as fierce as your paragraph above.

Mario Rinvolucri (Guest Editor).

FROM BEHIND THEBARRICADES

Keith Morrow is a senior consultant to theproject which UCLES has launched to buildon the existing CTEFLA/DTEFLA and COTE/DOTEschemes to develop the Cambridge IntegratedTEFL Scheme.

Keith Morrow replies to the three traineevoices published in Vol 7 No 1.

Guest Editor

So, what can you say? Three pieces writtenon the basis of personal experienceoffering insight into the emotional andintellectual unhappinesses caused by threedifferent courses leading to the

Cambridge/RSA DTEFLA. A considerableindictment of what goes on. Time for thoseinvolved in the running of the DTEFLAScheme to duck down behind the barricadesand dodge the pot shots. Well, yes. Or

maybe no.

First let me put my cards on the table. I

am not exactly a neutral bystander in allthis, since one of my sources of income atthe moment is work 1 am doing for UCLES onthe project to develop the existing TEFLschemes into an integrated framework. But

it is precisely for that reason that I am

interested in the points made in the

articles. We are going to great lengths toincorporate as much feedback as possibleinto the development of the new framework,and criticism of what happens at the momentis potentially of great value. But

criticism, like praise, needs to be

evaluated. It may be fair or it may beunfair; more crucially, it may be

generalisable or it may be context

specific. What sort have we got here?

I think that there are three main areas ofconcern which underlie the points made bythe writers. Firstly there is concernabout the nature and status of the DTEFLAcourse. Is it concerned with training ordevelopment? Should it be based on

prescriptively defined content? Secondly

there are concerns about assessment. Are

the procedures by which assessment is

carried out, and the criteria on which itis based, fair? And thirdly there is

concern about the personal stress and

distress which courses leading to the

Diploma may cause.

Pacre 4 55 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993

.1)

In its present form the DTEFLA scheme isvery much a reflection of its own history.It dates from 1965 when the Certificate inTeaching English as a Foreign Language wasintroduced by the RSA. This was the firstattempt in the UK to offer certificationfor teachers working in the field,

particularly in Colleges of FurtherEducation and in the relatively smallnumber of private language schools. Overthe years a number of changes have beenintroduced. The syllabus has beenextended, various different course formatshave been developed, different combinationsof internal and external assessment basedon different combinations of course workand final examination have been tried - andthe name has changed from Certificate toDiploma. But the name of the game is stillcertification.

And certification implies certification insomething. Originally the RSA, and nowUCLES, have the responsibility of

certificating successful candidates as

having skills and knowledge appropriate toan experienced EFL teacher. The fact thatthere is still lively professional debateabout exactly what skills and whatknowledge are appropriate is hardly thefault of the RSA or UCLES. All a

certificating body can do is to say: "We

have set up procedures to show whethercandidates have demonstrated x, y and z andwe will give successful candidates a

Diploma to show that they have done this."Whether x, y and z are relevant orappropriate to individuals or institutionsis up to those individuals and institutionsto judge.

In the development of the CITS project, weare therefore trying to establish a

syllabus framework which will be much moreexplicit while at the same time potentiallymuch less prescriptive than the existingone. This will mean that individualinstitutions will have much moreflexibility in providing courses tailoredto local needs while still operating at acommon standard. Putting this intopractice will not be straightforward, butwe recognise that at the moment DTEFLAcourses all over the world are in manycases clones of each other. We want toprovide a framework which will offer thechance of a distinctive identity forcourses while still locating them clearlyas Diplomas.

One area where there is not likely to be :

change, however, will be the requirementthat Diploma level courses (like those atCertificate level) should be firmly basedin classroom teaching. The idea in JohnWilson's piece that there is a great




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FROM BEHIND THE BARRICADES cont'd

tension, bordering on animosity, betweenthose interested in theories of linguisticsand those interested in language teaching,is one which surprises me. My work(especially with English Language TeachingJournal) brings me into contact with manywho are working exactly at the interfacebetween the two. But the DTEFLA is not alinguistics course. Ideas from linguisticsare useful only insofar as they enablecandidates on the course to facilitatetheir learners' grasp of the structure ofEnglish. Since different learners may findthat different ideas do in fact facilitatethis process, it is surely wrong to benarrowly prescriptive about the differentapproaches to the analysis of Englishgrammar. But there is an important caveatin John Wilson's use of the termaccessible. Whatever approaches areexemplified or included in a DTEFLA coursemust take as their starting point thenotion of accessibility to learners. It isvital, for example, that we draw on

whatever resources will be helpful to teacha given group about modals; not that we usethe teaching of modals as a pretext to

exemplify for the group our own favouritetheories of grammatical analysis - whetherthese are phrase structure or Chomskyean.

In an ideal world, it might be argued thata DTEFLA certificated teacher ought to haveavailable a range of models of grammaticalanalysis so that the most appropriateone(s) can be drawn on for specific groupsor individuals. But there are two problemshere which perhaps John Wilson has notrecognised. The first is the problem ofoverloading course content. There is

already a lot (too much) in the DTEFLAsyllabus. Finding room to introduce inuseful depth a range of grammatical modelswould be impracticable. And then there isa question of "the standard". There is nodoubt at all that the "standard" model ofgrammatical analysis incorporated in EFLcourse books and reference books is basedon phrase structure analysis. What is

important at DTEFLA level is thatcandidates show that they can use this andhelp students to work with it - since, like

it or not, it is what is there. I thinkthat the tutors who were trying to get himto work within this framework were probablydoing so not out of perversity, but out ofthe realisation that all the materialslearners work with take this as theirstarting point and so DTEFLA candidatesneed to be able to handle it.

The second major area of concern I

identified in the three pieces relates to

57,

assessment. This is clearly related to thefirst area, since any lingering uncertaintyor unhappiness about the content of a

course will be magnified by assessmentrelating to this content. Yet the issue ofassessment is fraught with potentialproblems of its own. How can skills andknowledge be most fairly evaluated? Theproblems are exacerbated when assessment isbased on "snapshots" of performance - theassessed lesson, the 3 hour exam. In anattempt to move away from this "snapshot"model, various attempts have been made overthe years to increase the amount ofcontinuous assessment, and particularly theamount of moderated internal assessment bycourse tutors, as opposed to assessment bypeople external to the course. But none ofthese have been problem-free, and our

research for the CITS project has shown asubstantial majority of respondents in

favour of keeping some form of externallyassessed exam as an element in the award ofa Diploma.

But in two areas at least, problems of thesort which are identified in these piecesare being tackled. The first is thequestion of how teaching is assessed. We

want to kill off absolutely the myth thatin order to pass it is necessary to conducta hyperactive P-P-P lesson of InternationalHouse circa 1969 vintage. The way to dothis will be to draw up explicit criteriawhich will form the basis of theassessment. These will be public knowledge- and I sincerely hope that neither P norP nor even P finds its way into them. Ofcourse not everybody will agree with thecriteria, and no doubt they will be

modified in time. But they will be thereas an explicit focus for standardisingassessments against identified targets.

The second area has to do with theassessment of progress through the course.

The point made by David Tendler about thestandards expected in TP and assignmentsfrom the very beginning of a course is animportant one. At the time of writing, weare planning to run a number of pilotschemes for teachers of young learners.

These are at pre-service level and we haveworked out a system of progressiveassessment of TP, whereby the criteria thathave to be met by candidates become moredemanding in defined steps through the

course. This seems to be an important

principle since it enables progress to bemonitored - and a lack of it to becomequickly clear. Experience from the pilotschemes will show how feasible it will beto introduce such a system more widely inthe CITS framework.

Assessment leads into the third area ofconcern - stress and distress. Clearly allthree of the contributors here were more orless distressed by the experience offollowing their DTEFLA courses, and this isin itself distressing. From the

perspective from which I am writing I risk

sounding pious or patronising, but clearlyto some extent this distress belongs to theindividuals concerned. Julie Colton'sdreams reveal a creative and original mindprocessing the stresses she is undergoing;John Wilson seems to have started his

course from a position of perceivedconflict; David Tendler rapidly ran into aclash between his own expectations and hisperceptions of the reality of his course.In all these cases the role of UCLES, ofsystems and structures and frameworks, maybe rather limited.

In a number of areas, however, we aredetermined that schemes operating under the.CITS framework will work to minimise thestress to which candidates are exposed.More flexible syllabuses and fairer andmore explicit assessment procedures willboth have a role to play, but in additionwe will be establishing a range of tutor-training and accreditation measures to

ensure that centres running courses haveappropriately qualified and experiencedstaff available who see it as their role tosupport candidates in their learning. Theneed for such support is clearlydemonstrated by these three contributions;I suspect that each year a very healthymajority of thedcandidates following DTEFLAcourses feel they already get it. But

after 1996, with the introduction of theCITS schemes, we hope the majority will beeven bigger.

Further information about the developmentof the CITS. framework is available fromLynette Murphy O'Dwyer, TEFL Unit, UCLES,1 Hills Rd, Cambridge CBI. 2EU.

ANOTHER TRAINEEVOICEIn this issue Jackie Smith takes us back to

her Masters program in the States and

focuses on the problems the trainerscreated for themselves with a policy of"let them find out". The trainers espouseda Rogerian, non-judgemental stance but thismade some trainees feel un-at-home. Let

one of them speak.

HONESTY by Jackie Smith

In my case it seems that reinventing thewheel was not the right way for me tolearn. It only created confusion and

anxiety, which of course then raised myalready high affective filter, blockedacquisition and contributed to my negativeattitude. I needed to learn by example.Just as students have various learning

styles, so do teacher trainees. It is

inconsistent to say that we must respectstudents' individual learning styles by

giving some of them grammar rules or

letting them look at tape transcripts.

etc., if they feel they need them for

security, and then say that we cannot givetrainees practical techniques, especiallywhen we ask these teachers to take on aheavy teaching schedule and subject

themselves to constant observation.

I felt that my trainers were deliberatelywithholding crucial information that 1

needed then and there for my survival inthe classroom and I resented it, although

I only now understand some of the deeperreasons for my feelings.

There were others in the program who feltmore or less as I did about the need fortrainee security and after talking to themI took it upon myself to approach the

trainers, but the whole subject was

dismissed very lightly. I even wrote animpassioned plea to the director, which hebarely responded to. Everyone was verypolite; it just was not seen as a seriousissue, despite all the emphasis on

affective factors in students' learning.

I know that another important area of

concern in teacher training is feedbackhow to give it, when, how much, etc. The

director of my MA program had given a lot

of thought to this area. He had researchedand written extensively on it, and he hadgood ideas. He believed very much in.

trying to be as scientific about it as

possible - not passing judgements on

anything, just observing and describing.

THE TEACHER TRAINER. Vo1.7. No.2 SUMMER 1993 58 Page 7

ANOTHER TRAINEE VOICE cont'd

We used a very complicated system ofobservation a good deal of the time, withthe aim of scientifically categorizing anddescribing what went on in the classroom.The key word was "non-judgemental". In

giving feedback, observers were not to saysomething was good or bad, just help thetrainee generate alternatives andvariations on what she/he had done in

class.

I learned to respect this director verymuch. His heart was in the right place, 1

think, and he very much believed in what hewas saying. But I had a lot of problemswith the way his ideas were applied in myMA program. As so often happens with goodideas, they become distorted along the wayas they pass from person to person. Whathappened in my MA program was thatinexperienced trainers, that is my fellowstudents in the MA program who werefollowing a course on teacher training, orwho had finished the MA program, observedus and gave us feedback. Many of them usedthe terminology of the director's approachto feedback, without really trying to enterinto the spirit of being truly neutral andnon-judgemental. In a way, they hid behindthe term "non-judgemental". Saying "maybethere were other ways you could have doneit" can make one feel criticized as much as"That's not a good way to do things",depending on how it is said, with whatfacial expressions and in what context. I

had the feeling of being judged all thetime, (especially by some would-be trainerswho, I am convinced, liked the power andauthority that this "non-judgemental"observation gave them") yet no one wouldever admit they were judging me, which leftme feeling confused and insecure. I, forone, would have preferred someone's honestopinion.

A moment of truth

It came, one day. The assistant professorwho taught our methodology course, adheringto the idea of not giving us practicalapplications of theory, had been assigningus a lot of readings on communicative

language teaching and a lot of Krashen'sworks. There was also a lot of discussionon error correction. I and my fellowtrainees (I discussed this with them) gotthe definite impression that this assistantprofessor was trying to tell us that

teaching grammar and error correction weremortal sins. But as the trainer wanted toremain neutral and allow us to draw our own

conclusions, he never told us where he

really stood on the matter. We all wentinto our classrooms armed with endlessgames, games, games. We didn't darediscuss grammatical points or correcterrors. The assistant professor came inwith groups of observers and they all wrotedown lots of things, making us verynervous. Some of us got the feeling thatsomething was wrong, but the feedback wasalways neutral, so we continued to playgames with our students. The assistantprofessor smiled benevolently at everyone,and everyone was happy. Then one day inclass, this assistant professor exploded."You're supposed to teach them thelanguage, not just play games with them!"he said harshly. Some of the trainees wereterribly hurt. They had been gettingcompletely different feelings from the

trainer. A few of them even cried. We

went through a sort of group counsellingsession (this assistant professor wasparticularly interested in the counselling-learning approach) to deal with the hurtfeelings. I, for one, was relieved thatour trainer had at last revealed his truefeelings. I had always had the feelingthat he didn't like what we were doing inthe classroom, but had thought that I musthave been paranoid, because the acceptingsmile and neutral feedback was telling meotherwise. 1 much preferred to see thereal person, with his genuine feelings,opinions, perhaps even prejudices, than

this impassive, secretive person that wehave always seen before. In the end, hisattempts not to "judge" us or influence usin any way only ended in tears.

Why always hide?

As teachers, we occasionally mask our truefeelings in the class. Sometimes we are

not in a good mood and yet act light-

hearted. Sometimes we do not reveal thereal purpose of the activity we are doingwith our students because we want them to

discover it themselves. Sometimes a

particular student gets on our nerves andwe must carefully hide that fact. There

are good reasons for not always letting

students know what we think. But, to my

mind, there is no reason for always hiding

feelings, even negative feelings from

students. Telling students that you feelbadly about the way a lesson went mightactually lead to important discussions andimprovements in the future. It opens the

channels for genuine (not simulated, as in

prepackaged "communicative activities")communication, because you allow studentsto see the real you and challenge them to

show their real personalities. And talkingabout negative feelings is as much a partof real life as talking about good oneg,

Paae R Citl THE TEACHER TRAINER. V01.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993

From a language teaching point of view,then, it makes sense to he yourself as muchof the time as is possible. Obviously ittakes experience to know the right momentand the right way to approach a "heavy"topic with your students.

A lot of the above also applies to teachertraining. There comes a moment, after thetrainees have read a bit, and tried out oneor two things, when the trainer should feelfree to express his/her ideas, feelings,preferences, etc. Trainees are certainlycapable of distinguishing the trainer'ssubjective view from, for example, findingsin applied linguistics. They are not soeasily impressionable that they cannot formtheir own opinions.

Like language teaching, teacher traininginvolves human beings in some kind ofrelationship. How can this relationshipexist if people are not ever honest? Forall this assistant professor's goodintentions and desire to create a warm,friendly environment lacounselling/learning approach, many of ussensed that he was being false and thismade us anxious, rather than relaxed. Forothers it was a painful shock when he

revealed his true, negative feelings. Allmight have been avoided if the trainer hadnot been afraid to be himself.

WI4AT J It Youriiirk ofMY I.EsSoN ?

IT WAS Mein- I

HOW DO YOU THINKIT WENT?

A TASK- BASED APPROACHTO FEEDBACKby Frank Fitzpatrick and Ruth Kerr

Talking about and criticising lessons andteaching styles often proves to be quite adelicate issue in feedback sessions,especially when the trainer concentratesheavily on individual negative points.

Trainees become defensive and the feelingthat feedback is a whipping session beginsto emerge, with both trainer and traineeshowing frustration. What happens is a

direct outcome of an approach wheretrainers do not have clear ideas about whatthey want to achieve in the sessions, andthe only concrete support for their vagueideas tends to be small isolated examplesfrom lessons. Also trainees often do notengage in discussion or useful analysis ofeach other's lessons, which reinforcestheir passive role and the .judgemental role

of the trainer. What is lacking is a

structure to the sessions with cleartraining objectives and trainee-based taskswhich would help to achieve them.

TRAINEE STRATEGIES

The nature of trainee resistance and

dissatisfaction comes out quite clearly in

a number of different ways. Various

strategies, often subconscious, can be

identified which trainees use to protectthemselves from overt criticism from thetrainer, ranging from quite aggressive

reactions to complete acquiescence. It may

be that a lack of direction or

inappropriate approach to particular points

on the part of the trainer actually

encourages these reactions and gives thetrainees the feeling that they have todefend themselves. Here is a brief outlineof trainet strategies we have identifiedover a series of feedback sessions.

Denial

We have often found ourselves in the

situation where we are using vague quotesor examples from the lessons in order to

clarify or even to make a point. This

means that if a trainee denies our

evidence, which is often the case, the

point is lost, and complete disagreementabout what actually happened in the lesson

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993 An Page 9

HOW DO YOU THINK IT WENT? cont'd

leads to stalemate and confrontation. Thisresults in an overall atmosphere of

frustration, which a more global and lessspecific approach would avoid.

Making Excuses

A further drawback of focusing on specificpoints is that trainees often feel thatthey are being called upon to offer a

justification. Trainees then cite certainfactors as excuses for problems in theirlessons, such as the lack of cooperation ofstudents or fellow trainees, stress and

nerves or even comments from trainers takenout of context ("But John said that we

should ..."). Here the trainee is

relinquishing responsibility for the lessonby blaming an external factor beyond theirown control. A specifically criticalapproach then makes it very difficult forthe trainer to address the more generalissues involved in the trainee'sdevelopment.

Hypothesising

When trainees are asked about how they feelthe lesson went, a series of hypotheses isoften the response. Here trainees talkabout what they "would have done normally"but could not, owing to the difficultcircumstances. This is often an indicationof problems with lesson preparation andanticipating how the lesson would develop,but the trainer is prevented from focusingon this by so much hypothesising. In this

way, by giving the initiative to the

trainee, the trainer loses the opportunityto direct the feedback in a constructiveway, and cannot then address the real

problems observed during the lesson. In

many cases the trainer is tempted to beginthe session in this way, either becauses/he is unsure of how to focus on certainaspects of the lesson, or may simply

believe that it is positive to let thetrainee direct his/her own feedback.

However, lack of clarity is the result.

Saying sorry

Another common response is to apologise fora "terrible lesson", when confronted with

a specific problem by the trainer. The

trainee is aware of underlying difficultiesbut is discouraged from dealing with themin a constructive way by the trainer'sapproach, and blames her/himself in orderto avoid direct criticism from the trainer.

A more general and less personal focus

would avoid this strategy.

Bargaining

Other trainees react in a moreconfrontational way by accepting criticismon certain points on the condition thatother points are praised. The trainer,when faced with "I know it didn't work, butthey seemed to enjoy it, don't you think?"has no option but to agree if confrontationis to be avoided, and can proceed nofurther.

Silence and tears

Here trainees are completely passive andmay get upset when criticised. This leadsthe trainer to avoid talking about thelesson and to only show sympathy. Thesetrainees often plead ignorance and want tobe "told how it's done". The trainer hasno choice but to give solutions and supportrather than make the trainee think abouthis/her own teaching.

The diagram below offers a summary of therange of these strategies and how theyinterrelate.

Makingexcuses

Refusal

Sayingsorry

Avoidancetechniques

Hypothesising

Acquiesces.

Bargaining

A trainee may use several of thesestrategies at any one time(which has led usaway from presenting trainee profiles)

although some trainees may constantly fallinto one category.

A DIFFERENT MODEL FOR FEEDBACK

Feedback sessions in which the abovestrategies are constantly used inevitablymean that trainees do not go away withclear ideas on how to analyse their ownlessons and ways to improve their teaching.We have found that if the structure of thefeedback is vague, trainees do not have an

nn,. In 61 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993

objective framework on which to base theircomments. These sessions often turn intohaphazard criticism or "nitpicking" whichpersonalise and degrade what should be aprofessional analysis. Furthermore, if thetrainer has no particular objectives otherthan just '"talking about the lesson",

trainees automatically employ theiravoidance strategies particularly in

response to what they construe as

criticism. The result is an impotenttrainer and an over-defensive or bewilderedtrainee.

As a result, we strongly feel that the onlyway to proceed is to provide a structured,largely depersonalised approach with thetrainer leading the session in a clear,planned and constructive way. Only thencan trainees relax, be objective andthereby really benefit from feedback.

Bearing this in mind, we began to

experiment with trainee-centred tasks whichcould then be used as a lead-in to

individual problems but always with a viewto reinforcing general teaching principles(eg. "how to elicit", "providing a contextfor new language", "setting up pairwork"etc.) covered in previous input sessions.Within this framework trainees are morewilling to accept individual "criticism" orcomments and are able to see more clearlywhy problems are arising and how they candeal with them in the future.

THE TASKS

The tasks that we devised fall into fourcategories, which were designed to relatefeedback to general aspects of teachingdealt with in input sessions and to developtrainee awareness of their own progress.These categories are described below andsamples of each task type are also given.

a) Self Awareness Tasks

These tasks are designed to bring out

trainee anxieties and feelings about

certain aspects of their teaching and

classroom management, which can then be

discussed openly within the group. By

talking about their feelings and respondingon an emotional level, trainees are in fact

pinpointing their own difficultiesthemselves and the trainer is able to

direct the session in such a way as to helpprovide concrete strategies for coping withthese difficulties. On the whole,

discussion tends to revolve around generalprinciples (eg. teaching pronunciation,using the overhead projector, etc.) and

looks ahead more to what trainees can do infuture lessons rather than back to whatthey have not achieved in previous lessons.(see figures 1 and 2)

b) Remedial Tasks

When we found that there were commonproblems in the way trainees approachedcertain areas of teaching or certaintechniques, we designed tasks to revise and

clarify what had been said in input

sessions. These are valuable for traineesbecause they revise general principles,which they can relate to their own lessonsstill fresh in their mind. By doing thisthe trainer can see if the trainees areunaware of or have misunderstood certainprinciples covered in input or are merelyhaving difficulty in putting them into

practice. These tasks help trainees tosee, in a un-threatened and impersonal way,how their lessons are lacking and how theycan modify their approach in the future.(see figures 3 and 4).

c) Reconstruction Tasks

In order to direct observation time and7make it more constructive, we devised taskswhich would focus trainees' attention onindividual aspects of each others' lessons.These aspects can be chosen by the traineesthemselves, or by the trainer, and traineesare then responsible for leading the

feedback sessions and discussing eachother's strong and weak points. This isuseful for trainees as they can discusstheir lessons openly without the trainerdominating, and useful for the trainer tobe-able to analyse the level of awarenessand interaction in the group. Also, withthese tasks, trainees gain more insight-into both the teaching process and theirown performance.(see figures 5 and 6).

d) Summary Tasks

In this type of task the trainer compiles .

a list of typical problems from the lessons(eg. student pronunciation problems, lackof student participation), and throughgroup discussion tries to elicit the realsource of these difficulties. The finalsample, "The Heart of Teaching", is an

example of how the trainer can draw

together the various strands that emergefrom the discuSsion. This diagramdemonstrates how individual problems, thatsurface at various stages of the teaching

process, relate back to fundamentalprinciples and planning. The trainer canthen make the point that these principlesanalysing language, anticipating problems

and planning stages - determine how a

lesson will develop. Making these

connections in a general way enableg

trainees to discuss their difficulties

within a clear framework.(see figures 7 and 8).

Ttiv TrtrIrry TTPATNT-R. nn.2 STWNER 1901 62 Page 11

HOW DO YOU THINK IT WENT? cont'd

CONCLUSIONS

With these tasks a framework for discussinggeneral professional principles is

established. Feedback is no longer a

meandering chat with veiled criticism and

Self Awareness Tasks (1) Fig. 1

List the strong points and weak points ofyour lesson.

strong weak

How could you improve the weak points'?

What do the other trainees think ?

, /IP

Remedial Tasks (1) Fig. 3

(:).01,c,i/ril ut Yiudemi slc14.44,61i

Discuss the following questions together :

1) Why do we need to CONTEXTUALISE language whenwe teach it?

2) How does ELICITING Involve your students?

3) Why do we do PAIRWORK?

4) Why is If important to DEMONSTRATE PAIRWORKbefore beginning the activity?

5) When we CHECK ANSWERS how can we know all thestudents have understood?

6) When would you choose a PLENARY FOCUS?

7) Why do students talk to each other when you aretrying to EXPLAIN GRAMMAR?

conflict, but a structured session in whichtrainees become more aware, not only of howto improve their own teaching techniques,but, more importantly, of why thesetechniques are used. In this way, thetrainer can lead the analysis effectively,albeit in a non-directive way.

Self Awareness Tasks (2) Fig.2

How do you feel about the following ?

teaching pronunciation

....Map ea the beard

acing the Otte

highlighting form

mplaktinggratmmu

monitoring pairwork

students' mistakes

setting up pairthork

Discuss these with the other members of yourgroup.

Remedial Tasks (2) Fig. 4

Below are examples of typical classroom activities and ways of

checking students' work. ketch the classroom activity with the scat

approp r checking activity.

Cleantomoibmilelty

To activate schemata you

ask students to write

list of words or phrases

they associate with the

ides of 'loneliness'

You want'to check the

meaning of els items of

vocabulary from the

previous lesson

You play short

presentation dialogue

on cassette and ask

students to fill in the

missing words

fhp,leinn aerivitir

teacher gives a series of

gap -till sentences and students

provide the missing words

Students compare their

answers in pairs

(minimal teacher control)

A plenary check in which

the teacher makes sure

that all students have the

correct answer

BEST COPY AVAILABLEDario 1/ THE. TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993

Reconstruction Tasks (1) Fig. 5

When you observe the lesson think abouthow the teacher deals with TWO of thefollowing:.

CONTEXT

MODELLING

ELICITING

PRONUNCIATION

FREE PRACTICE

MONITORING

FORM

FOCUS AND PACE

CHECKING ANSWERS

SETTING UP PAIRWORK

In "Feedback" be ready to discuss the lesson with the othertrainees_

Summary Tasks (11 Fig. 7

Here are soma common problems in class. Why do they happen?

1) Students mispronounce the new words youhave taught them.

2) Students are not sure how to use astructure you have taught them?

3) Students are not following the controlledpractice you set them.

4) Students are yawning and muttering toeach other.

5) Some students are writing an exercise, someare doing oral practice, others are silent

6) Teacher says: "Do you understand?'Students do not reply!!

7) The teacher gives an incorrect model for astructure.

8) Students ask each other what they have todo after you have set up an exercise!!

Reconstruction Tasks (2) Fig. 6

General Aims ofthe Lesson

Specific aims ofeach stage

Teacher activity Student activity

USE

Look at the information below which is taken from a lesson plan.

the extracts back into the plan in the right category and in

right order.

To give students practice

in listening for gist

To revise and reinforce

previously learned

language and Co give

practice in listening skills

Put

the

Write lour simple questions

on the board and play the

tape once

Listen and think about

the answers to the

Questions

Summary Tasks (2) Fig. 8

LANGUAGE ANALYSIS

ANTICIPATINGPROBLEMS

PROCEDURE

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993 64 Page 13

TRAINING EFL-TEACHERSFOR MULTICULTURALSCHOOLSby Wout de Jong

"It showed in the faces of so many of theteenage children of the immigrants - a

taut-skinned, hollow-eyed look, as if alltheir strings had been keyed up to breaking

point. They were vibrant with the tensionof trying to be Koreans and Americans atthe same time."(Jonathan Raban, Hunting Mister Heartbreak,Picador 1991, p.350)

Western Europe has been trying to cope with

a huge influx of immigrants since the

fifties and sixties. People from aroundthe Mediterranean basin were encouraged tomove north to satisfy a shortage of labour.There was a migration of people fleeingformer colonies when these gained

independence. Then followed an influx ofpeople fleeing dictatorial governments invarious continents. All in all most

European countries have becomemulticultural, which has created problems.

The Dutch government, like most governmentsin western Europe, recognised that

something needed to be done to meet theneeds of these people. Courses were

therefore organised to teach them the

basics of the Dutch language. Of course,

teachers rapidly discovered that teachingthe language was not enough. Instruction

in cultural habits, particularly those

concerning social interaction, needed to

be included, so that learners might becomeautonomous persons able to cope with thedemands the new society puts upon them.

But such a schooling programme is not initself sufficient to help the immigrantfamily gain acceptance in the new society.

In the first place the new immigrantquickly discovers that basically he needsthe new language only at work and for a few

other very 'elementary' purposes. With

friends sharing the same background andlanguage, you quickly revert to your nativetongue, whenever you meet them. If yourwife and children have come to live in

Holland as well, the situation is less

simple. Particularly for the childrenthereiSthe difficulty that at home they are

expected to behave according to 'home

rules'. But at school and later, when theyhave made friends with the 'natives', therules are different, leading to the kind ofsplit personality Jonathan Raban refers toin the quotation.

The Dutch educational system does notparticularly favour a foreign background.The system relies heavily - as do mosteducational systems on familiarity withthe local culture. No wonder then thatchildren from immigrant families find itdifficult to achieve distinction in

education. Many of them drop out, andquite often become involved in criminalbehaviour of one sort or another. Thisseems to be particularly true of childrenwhose parents come from Islamic countries.

The Dutch tentative solution

Immigrants may shed their native cultureand adopt the new culture totally, if thenew culture will let them. Natives oftenhave the unfortunate habit of remindingthem of their background, particularly ifobvious features, such as the way peopledress or the colour of their skin, cannotbe hidden. Alternatively, the immigrantmay only adopt so much of the new norms andvalues, and retain the native culture toall intents and purposes, quite often goingto extremes to insist on being different.The problems this can cause are only toofamiliar: the creation of ghettos, culturaland social isolation, discrimination at

school and at work.

Whichever compromise immigrant familiesselect for themselves, acceptance in thenew country is a two-way system. If the

new country is willing to accept theunfamiliar customs and allows them to keepas much of their culture as they feel theyneed in order to retain their identity, itwill be easier for the immigrant to adoptthe new norms and values. This is wherethe educational system can play a crucialrole in creating a fitting niche for thechildren of immigrant families.

In 1985 the Dutch Ministry of Education andScience launched a pilot project 'Towardsa more intercultural orientation in teachertraining for further education'.(1) Eachteacher training establishment for lowersecondary education was to develop its own

approach to intercultural education withinlocal constraints. The project was

reasonably successful and in 1989 it wasdecided that it would be appropriate tocollect the experiences gained and publishthe results in the form of supportingmaterials for each of the subjects taughtat the teacher training colleges concerned.

The series consists of a general basiccoursebook, followed by studybooks dealingwith particular aspects of interculturalteaching and learning, such as pupil-guidance, use of drama, pedagogical andsoc i o- psycho log ica 1 aspects of

Page 14 65 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993

intercultural learning, learning through asecond language, etc. There is also onecourse book for each subject for which alower secondary teaching-qualification isavailable.

What type of approach?

All the coursebooks published so farattempt, in a variety of ways, to raisestudent awareness of the multi-ethniccomposition of virtually all Dutchsecondary school classes. This is done ina variety of ways. Activities may startfrom individual students' perception oftheir environment and try to make themrealise that we tend to be selective in ourobservations. The way a person perceivesthe world is influenced by culturalassumptions shared by people in one'simmediate surroundings. Consequently,developing an awareness of this influenceis a second step towards cultural autonomy.And finally, students meet problem-solvingactivities requiring them to adopt a pointof view and act accordingly in apotentially difficult setting. It issuggested that many of these tasks can beused in two settings: in the training ofteachers and (with adaptions) in thesecondary school. The materials publishedso-far are plainly intended for trainee-teachers.

The 'perception tasks' may bestraightforward, like:'Go to your local supermarket, shoppingcentre, or town centre for an hour andestimate the proportion of people comingfrom Dutch, Western European, African, andAsian backgrounds.'

Or they may be somewhat indirect, like:

'List the contributions you were expectedto make to life in your family (when youwere still at home). Has anything changed?Now compare notes with the other membersin your group. Is it possible to accountfor the differences? What about thesimilarities?'

The following is an example of a taskinviting one to face prejudices. It offersstatements for discussion, like:- 'A girl can't be a good car-mechanic'- 'All blacks are hooligans'

'The unemployed are basically lazy, if

they wanted to they could get work.'

Coping with prejudice is not always simple.The following tasks ask trainees to reactto a colleague's prejudices:'How would you deal with the comments ofthe 'popular' colleague in the staff commonroom about one of his pupils:

'He's as intelligent as five blacks'and:

'Check a popular newspaper for explicit andimplicit racist/discriminatory reporting.And write a suitable letter to the Editor.'

Some tasks confront trainees with differentcultural perceptions in order to raise

awareness of how cultural backgroundinfluences one's perception of the world.Do you know the answer to this one?

'Which word or concept does not fit in thefollowing list:

(1) MAN, JUMBOJET, SWEATER, PENCIL, WOMAN,

(2) MIST, RAIN, SUN, CIRCUS, MOON,(3) MOUSTACHE, BEARD, RABBIT'S MEAT,MUTTON.

[ The answers are: (1) pencil, because ithas no cross-shape, nor can it assume one(apparently dead easy for Moroccanchildren), (2) mist, because it isn'tround, nor can it cause round shapes, like,e.g. raindrops in water (easy for Moroccanwomen), (3) beard; all the others are notallowed according to Shi'ite law.]

Conclusion

The Dutch have a reputation for tolerance,which is perhaps not always wholly

deserved. The series of coursebooks for thetraining of teachers in lower secondaryeducation, if used well, will providefuture teachers with many of the means tohelp their indigenous pupils developtolerance for the otherness of peoplecoming from other parts of the world. At

the same time these materials show traineeshow to help children from these places todeal with the otherness of their Dutchfellow-pupils.(2)

It would be interesting to hear how othercountries attempt to deal with such issues.

Notes:

I. At the time the project was planned,teacher training for primary, lower andupper secondary education took place in

three different types of institution. Atpresent, teacher-training for primary andlower secondary education is mostly offered

by institutions combining these two.

Teacher training for upper secondary

education is dealt with in universitypostgraduate courses. It seems likely that

in the near future all teacher trainingwill be provided by semi-independent'Educative Faculties'

2. Should anyone be interested in thesepublications, there are 24 titles availableso far, all in Dutch except for the

coursebooks for English and German. Theyare published by "Educatief Centrum Noord",

Postbus 1018, 8900 CA Leeuwarden, the

Netherlands.

mnr my7!rtrrn MAnT,Tr.. V,-,1 7 ,7r,..1 CTIMMFP 1 "1 66 Page 15

GRIDS AS A REFLECTIVETRAINING TOOL ONTRAINER -TRAINING COURSESby Rod Bo litho and Tony Wright

Working experientially in trainer trainingposes a number of problems. One of themost familiar, to us, is that of levels.We find a need to deal with, and switchbetween, two distinct levels of activity(language classroom and training room) andthree distinct roles (learner, teacher andtrainer). In order to ensure thatparticipants derive benefit from sharedactivities, we constantly find it necessaryto stipulate these roles and settings,otherwise there is a danger of talking pasteach other in feedback and follow-updiscussion.

Here are some examples of potentiallyconfusing situations:

(i) On a train-the-trainer course wepresent a classroom level activity (eg agrammar game) to a group of trainers, andthen have to guard against the danger thatsome will respond as teachers, some fromthe viewpoint of learners and others astrainers.

(ii) We present an activity targeted at thegroup of trainers (eg an ice-breaker, whichhas significance for the life of the groupitself) and find some responding to it asteachers ("It wouldn't work in myclassroom") and others as learners ("It wasa nice game. I enjoyed it").

(iii) We share the viewing of a classroomvideo and find our trainers identifyingwith the teacher ("I would have asked morequestions") or the learner ("It was a

boring lesson").

(iv) We run a micro-teaching session, in

which one or two participants 'train' theirpeers, who are playing the role either oflearners or of teachers (or sometimesalternating between these roles for thepurposes of the session). For some reason

the potential for confusion here is

particularly high.

One of the obvious reasons for thisswitching is that almost all trainers havefirst-hand experience of the role ofteacher or learner, but may only be feelingtheir way forward as trainers. Thus the

unconscious temptation to slip into a saferand more familiar guise is quiteunderstandable, but may becounterproductive in terms of the aims ofa trainer-training programme, on which wemay want participants to view classroomexperiences at a distance great enough toallow for objectivity. On the other hand,we would never wish to lose sight of thevalue of learning and teaching experience:training is an essentially parasiticalactivity which would not exist withoutlearners and teachers. (Are trainer-trainers the ultimate parasites?). *

To avoid breakdowns in communication, blindalleys in discussion, and to promoteconstructive reflection, we have found ithelpful to make use of a chart or a gridfor cumulative completion after eachexperiential activity, or each stage in an-activity. For example, for a a-hourworkshop on 'Teaching Grammar', we mightselect a series of 6/7 activities fromteachers' resource books such as Ur (1988)Rinvolucri (1964) Frank & Rinvolucri (1991)or Hall & Shepheard (1991), sequencing themin a particular way to allow for variety oftopic, interaction, activity type etc. We

provide our participants with a blank copyof a grid such as the one in Figure 1, andpause for 5 minutes after each activity toallow them to complete the grid, and at thesame time to allow time for any necessaryclarification. After writing, we oftenallow time for small groups to comparenotes.

It might be useful here to comment brieflyin turn on the headings at the top of eachcolumn.

Name of Activity. Although we are alwayscareful to acknowledge the sources of ourchosen activities, we find that our

participants often like to invent their ownname for an activity. In that way, theyfeel more of a sense of joint ownership,and are more likely to want to try it outfor themselves.

See Saxon MennPs article Why Train?Page 2.8

c,r7

Description of Activity. The first stagein reflection is clear recollection of anevent. Here participants are encouraged towrite brief but clear notes on the stagesof the activity while it is fresh in theirminds. They may include notes on timing,interaction patterns etc.

Purpose of Activity. It is here that thelevels problem often surfaces. There islikely to be fruitful debate about thedifference between classroom objectives andtraining objectives.

Role of the Trainer. In this columnparticipants note down their perceptions ofour role, which is the one on which theyshould be focusing for their own

professional purposes.

Classroom Implications. Here teacher andlearner awareness are needed as the basisfor comment, which is often evaluative innature.

How did you Feel during the Activity? Thiscolumn provides a much-needed outlet for aneffective response to the activity, and

entries in it often form the basis for

considerable discussion.

Other Comments. This is space foradditional, unstructured responses to theactivity.

At the end of the workshop, participantswill have a complete personal record of theactivities they have experienced, and willhave begun the process of reflection anddiscussion, having established some

objective distance from a closely involving

shared experience. We never collect thegrids in or ask to see them, since they may(usefully!) be used to 'let off steam'about the workshop, but we certainly invite

FIG 1: Grammar Activities Workshop

participants to use them as a basis forfeedback and discussion.

Headings in grids such as this one can beadapted and changed to match the needs ofa particular session. Some workshops maytake place solely at training level; othersmay mix classroom activities and trainingactivities, grouped round a particular

theme. We have used grids to good effectwith teachers as well as trainers. Theyallow participants to reflect on differenttraining and teaching purposes in a

carefully structured but open-ended way.We have found them invaluable as a trainingtool, and believe it is well worthsacrificing one or two activities from a 2-hour workshop to allow time for reflectionafter each activity. They seem to helpparticipants to start the process of

principled thinking about sharedexperience. Participants themselvesinvariably appreciate this thinking spaceand the lulls in a hectic sequence ofactivities.

We'd like to hear from colleagues who haveused similar devices, or who would like tooffer any comments on the idea we havepresented here.

References

Frank, C & M Rinvolucri (1991) Grammar in

Action Again. Prentice Hall

Hall, N & J Shepheard (1991) The Anti-Grammar Grammar Book. Longman

Rinvolucri, M (1984) Grammar Games.

Cambridge

Ur, P (1988) Grammar Practice Activities.Cambridge

Name ofActivity

Descriptionof Activity

Purpose ofActivity

Role of theTrainer

ClassroomImplications

How did youFeel duringthe Activity?

OtherComments

THE TEACHER TRAINER. Vol.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993 G8 Page 17

A TRAINING GAMEWHAT IS A LANGUAGE?

by Sara Walker

This is a game of similes or comparisons,which aims to create light-heartedimaginative insights into what a languageis and how it works. If, like me, youteach English as a means of communication,but occasionally find yourself wonderingwhat on earth it is that you are teaching,try this game on your colleagues or yourtrainees. It makes a useful warmer to asession on such serious topics asstructural versus functional approaches tolanguage teaching, or discourse analysis,or any session with a mainly linguisticfocus.

Time:

Approx 20 minutes

Materials:

A small picture card for each participant(pictures of animals, insects, musicalinstruments, utensils, food, clothes, etc.Virtually any object will do, but each cardshould be different).

If you are working with non-nativespeakers, write the name of each object onthe card, so that vocabulary doesn'tpresent a problem.

Arrange the cards in sets of about 5

pictures, each card from a differentcategory of object, so that each group getsa wide variety of pictures.

Procedure:

Participants work in groups of around 5.

Give each group a set of picture cards.

Give a model comparison, using one card:eg. "A language is like a pair ofbinoculars. When you use it properly, itbrings the world into focus."

Invite the participants, in their groups,to use each picture in a comparison(involving either "a language" or"English").

Feedback:

Ask each group to choose one or two of thebest comparisons to share with the wholeclass.

TRANSACTING TEFLby Neil Jones and Lorrie Phillips

How often have you made a perfectlyinnocent comment to a trainee/student onlyto be met with a negative reaction - suchas hostility or fear? Did. you feel youcould have said the same thing in the sameway and in exactly the same situation but

to a different student/trainee - and be metwith a perfectly acceptable response? It

is precisely in this area (eg. giving

feedback after lesson observation) that wehave found Transactional Analysis(hereafter referred to as TA) invaluable.

TA is a theory of personality and of

communication devised by Eric Berne in 1961and since used and refined in areas such astherapy and management training.

The basis of TA is Berne's concept of ego-states, states of being that we can switchbetween from one moment to another eventhough we may not be aware of them. These

are called Parent, Adult and Child (notethe capitals) and are usually representeddiagramatically as:

P (P = Parent)

A (A = Adult)

C (C = Child)

Berne chose these three terms for his three

ego-states, but it is important not to

confuse them with the meanings we normallyattach to these words. For example, an

actual parent is capable of being in anyone of these three states at any givenmoment. To get a clearer idea of the PACego-states, try the following exercise.

Page 18 6'9 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993

Under the three headings, Parent, Adult andChild, list as many adjectives, positive,negative or neutral you think would betypical for them.

Once you have produced your three columns,compare them with the following whichteachers in our seminars have come up with.Notice we have grouped them, as Berne wouldhave, in five columns rather than three.Now reassign your adjectives to the groupthat best fits with them.

(1)

criticalstrictcontrollingdirectivejudgementalauthoritariandomineeringintimidating

(3)

rationalanalyticalboringlogicaldetachedunemotionalunfeelingclear

(4)

spontaneouscreativelivelyimaginativecharminglovingenergeticimpulsive

(2)

caringsupportiveprotectivenurturingencouragingover-protectiveanxiouspatronising

(5)obedientrebelliousresentfulun-cooperativesullendemandingaccommodatingdestructive

Within the three ego-states, we candistinguish five extremely useful sub-states, known respectively as:

(1)

CriticalParent

(4)

FreeChild

(2) (3)Nurturing AdultParent

(5)

AdaptedChild

Depending on the situation, all five ofthese could be useful for a normally.functioning person, provided they were usedappropriately. As you can see from thelist of adjectives above, each one has itspositive and negative aspects - for exampleNurturing Parent, an ego-state that will bevery familiar to teachers, can be

supportive and encouraging, but also over-protective and suffocating.

Although the nature of each of the fivestates should already be fairly clear fromthe key adjectives commonly associated witheach one, it is worth taking a little moretime on the differences between Adult andParent as participants at our workshopscommonly had most difficulty here. Bernesaw Adult as being, logical, unemotional,the problem-solver. It is best thought ofas playing the part of the logical,

unemotional Mr Spock from television's StarTrek.

Now let us relate these five statesdirectly to our own jobs as

teachers/teacher-trainers. First, takingeach ego-state in turn, take a few minutesto think of different working situationswhere it might be useful - even essential -for you to be in one particular ego-state.

When you have identified an example, thinkof the different things you might say inthat situation, your tone of voice,

posture, and the gestures you might use.

Here are some example for you to consider:

1) A student asks you a complicated - andintriguing grammar question. You canwork it out but you really have to thinkhard before you can come up with an answer.You may adopt a pose similar to Rodin's,"Thinker" as you ponder the problem. If

you speak out loud, your tone might bethoughtful. And you will be in Adult.

2) A student has just realized they havemisunderstood something, and looksdespondent. You lean forward, saysomething encouraging and supportive. Yourtone is warm, your expression smiling. Youare in Nurturing Parent.

3) It is Friday. A student has come lateevery day this week, disrupting the classeach time, and now, ignoring a previouspromise to you, has just marched in lateagain. You tell the student this is

unacceptable. You may emphasise your wordswith a pointing finger. Your tone may bestern, even harsh. If so, you are in

Critical Parent.

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993 70 Page 19

TRANSACTING TEFL cont'd

4) In a teacher-development meeting, youand several of your colleagues brainstormnew ways of using self-access materialswith students. The atmosphere amongst thegroup is co-operative and friendly, and youcome up with several fresh and potentiallyinteresting ideas. You are in Free Child.

5) You and your superior at work differover a point of methodology and, althoughyou feel your ideas are valid, you areover-ruled. You do what you are instructedto do, even though you remain unconvincedand may even resent this decision. You arein Adapted Child.

Looking at the above examples, you can seethat a normal functioning teacher isloingto need each and every state in differentsituations. However, arguably most of uswill want to avoid Critical Parent whereverpossible and use our Adult and ourNurturing Parent wherever appropriate. Todo this, it is helpful to be able torecognise these ego-states, both is

ourselves and in others. As already statedthere are clues given by posture, gesture,and voice-tone. There are also words andphrases typical of each one (eg."must" forCritical Parent) and, in the case ofidentifying your own ego-state, typicalfeelings you may begin to become more awareof.

Having established the PAC building blocksof Berne's theory, let us now go on tointeraction between two (and sometimesmore) people - which we can think of asinteractions between their ego-states.Berne called these transactions (hence thename Transactional Analysis) and heidentified three types which he calledComplementary, Crossed, and Ulterior.

With Complementary Transactions, you getsuccessful on-going communication, and wecan diagram two examples of this belowusing the PAC model.

Student

P

A

C

A teacher might initiate something from the

Parent ego-state (hopefully Nurturing

Parent) and the student might respond

appropriately in Child.

Teacher Student

P P

A 2> A

C C

A student might ask a question from theAdult and the teacher answers in Adult.

With both examples, communication continuessmoothly. Essentially "what you see iswhat you get".

Crossed Transactions are wherecommunication clearly and obviously breaksdown. Consider the following conversationbetween teacher-trainer and teacher:

"I'm interested to know why you chose thatparticular reading comprehension.", (Thetrainer is genuinely interested. There isno intention of criticism on the trainer'spart.)

"Why?" (said defensively). "What's wrongwith it?" Showing this on a PAC diagram,we get:

Teacher Student

P

A

Here again "what you see is what you get".However, communication does not continuebut instead breaks down - and bothparticipants know it. (Berne calls thisthe exasperating or interruptedtransaction.)

Ulterior Transactions are wherecommunication appears to be continuingalthough below the surface, the seeds ofpotential breakdown are already therewhat you see is clearly not what you get.This is exactly the situation we outlinedin our opening paragraph. Something isgoing to go wrong here even though on thesurface there may seem no reason for it tohappen. For example, consider the

following conversation between a studentand a teacher.

"I've got a problem learning newvocabulary."

"Well, why don't you try grouping new wordsunder different subject headings?"

Trre 20 1 I THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vo1.7. No.2 SUMMER 1993

"I find that very confusing."

Student Teacher

The actual words themselves may appear toindicate what is going on but the reactionsand feelings of the participants show usthat communication is also taking place atanother level. The teacher may feel thatthe transaction is Adult-Adult, whereas atthe hidden level, the student has startedin Child, and the teacher is actually inNurturing Parent.

When you get "an on-going series of

Ulterior Transactions which progress to awell-defined and predictable outcome", youget what Berne calls a Game. The dialogueabove is the opening of a game of "WhyDon't You ...?" Yes, but ..." which wasthe very first game that Berne identified.This is a very common game for many people- especially for teachers. If we play out

our previous example, we might get a

conversation that continues like this:

"I find that very confusing."

"Well, what about reading newspapers. Youcould read an article and write down fivenew words and then look them up in yourdictionary."

"I'm not interested in newspapers."

"Why don't you do the extra exercises inthe workbook."

"I don't have time for that."'

"Maybe you could buy the new book thatfocuses on vocabulary."

"No, that doesn't look very good to me."etc.

At the end of this, the teacher is likelyto be left with a negative feeling - thepredictable outcome. This feeling will be

a familiar one (Berne's predictableoutcome) because the teacher will have

played this game with others before. The

student plays the opposite hand in thisgame and for the student too it is a gamethat has been played many times before,even though neither participant may be

consciously aware of this.

From the evidence of the example given

above, you may feel confident that "Whydon't you ...?" is not a game that you .would ever play yourself. Not everyoneplays the same games and so this studentwould not be able to hook you into playinghis/her game. Of the two writers of thisarticle, one of us plays this game - andeasily identifies with the examplesituation whereas the other does not.This does not mean you do not play games,it simply means that you do not play thisparticular one. Here are a list of somecommon games - find the ones you do playfrom amongst them. (If you cannot, asksomeone who knows you well to spot yourgame(s) for you.)

1) Why Don't You?...Yes But. Theinitiator invites advice from others with

'I've got a problem'. Solutions are

rejected with 'Yes, but... culminating infeelings of self-righteousness in the

initiator at the expense of the other.

2) Kick Me. Here the initiator says ordoes things which provoke others to

criticise or punish him/her in some way.For the initiator, this negativerecognition is better than no recognitionat all.

3) Stupid. In this game the initiatorneeds repetitive clarification on points ofmisunderstanding. At the end s/he may well

say 'I must be stupid' (unless someonebeats him/her to it and says it for them).People who are really stupid try to hidethe fact. People saying Stupid advertisea level of stupidity they do not actuallypossess.

4) Blemish. Here the initiator enjoysfeelings of superiority by always beingable to find some minute fault no matterhow well the other's job is performed.

5) Try and Make Me. The initiator willoften provoke somebody to try hard and gethim/her to do something s/he has no

intention of doing.

6) Now I've Got You. The initiator willwatch, even set up a scenario wheresomebody makes a mistake. S/he steps in topoint out the error or inconsistency,causing the other person to feel bad whilsts/he enjoys feelings of superiority.

7) If It Weren't For You. Here theinitiator complains endlessly that if it

were not for some other person (not

necessarily the person s/he is playing the.current game with) they could achievesomething which at present they feel theycannot. -

7S Parrp

TRANSACTING TEFL cont'd

8) Do Me Something. The initiatorcovertly manipulates other people intothinking or acting for him/her.

So now you know your game. Both the basicsituation and negative feeling you are leftwith at the end of it are familiar to you.What you. need to know now is, how you canavoid getting hooked into playing yourgame. The key point to remember is that ittakes two to play a game.

The first step then is awareness of yourgame, the second is recognition of when youare about to be hooked into playing it, andthe third is taking conscious action tostop yourself being hooked (or, if'

sometimes necessary, stopping yourself inthe middle of-a game).

This third step is probably the mostdifficult. There are various ways ofbreaking the game pattern. You couldchoose the direct approach and confront theother player, although neither of thewriters here felt comfortable with this one- and interestingly there seemed to becultural differences amongst our Britishand American participants on this! Areliable alternative is to consciously moveinto Adult. Remember that Adult is thelogical, unemotional problem-solver. As anexample of this, let us repeat the sameinitial 'hook' from the student for anothergame of "Why Don't You...? Yes But..." asabove.

"I'm having problems learning newvocabulary, what do you suggest?"

"I see...what ways have you tried?"

"Lots. None of them have worked."

"There're many different ways, some workbetter for some people than others. Do youread anything in English?"

...etc

Here the teacher has gone back to his/herAdult. S/he has appealed to the other'sAdult. This time the teacher deals onlywith facts. A useful way of remaining inAdult is to ensure that you gather as muchinformation about the problem as possible.A by-product of this is that the teacher isfar more likely to find a suitable solutionfor this student.

Developing an awareness of games we aredrawn into playing offers us insight into

areas of our professional lives that havepreviously been difficult to handle. TAoffers us a framework for identifying suchdifficulties and also offers effectivestrategies for counteracting the invariablynegative results of game playing.

READING LIST

BENNET D - TA and the Manager Pub: Amacon1976

BERNE E - Games People Play Pub: Penguin1964

MORRISON J AND O'HEARNE J - Practical TA inManagement Pub: Addison-Wesley 1977

STEWART I - Eric Berne Pub: SagePublications 1992

WAGNER A.- The Transactional.Manager Pub:Prentice Hall 1981

! News !

RELC Regional Seminar on. Reading andWriting Research: Implications for LanguageEducation, Singapore, 18-20'April, 1994

Contact: Miss Yolanda Beh, Library- andInformation Centre, RELC, 30 Orange GroveRoad, Singapore 1025, Republic of SingaporeTel 7379044 Fax 7342753. -

Who reads The Teacher Trainer?

Here are a few of our subscribers:

- Fachhochschulen in Germany- College and University libraries (eg.

University of Liverpool, WaikatoUniversity, NZ ...)

-The Library, Bundesprachenamt (Germany)- British publishers- Lecturers at teacher training colleges(eg. Wroclaw and Bialystok, Poland)

-Polytechnic lecturers (eg. CityPolytechnic of Hong Kong)University lecturers (eg. University ofEdinburgh, Open University ...)British Council Centres leg. Kiev, Bahrain

.)

Language schools (eg. Barcelona, Rio deJaneiro, Osaka ...)

OpeTr. 1, Tpr. TEACHER TRATNER. Vo1.7. No.2 SUMMER 1993

PROFESSIONAL SELF IMAGE IN FLTTby Ephraim Weintroub

One of the features of recent developmentsin present day society is the uprooting and

movement of large groups of populationfrom one country to another often resultingin a need for professional re-training andassessment.

Israel has, over the past 3 years, been faced

with an influx of half a million immigrantsfrom the former Soviet bloc (equivalent of

almost 10% of Israel's population).Amongst these have been a large number offormer teachers of English. As standards,

approaches and curricula are vastlydifferent, there has been a necessity forestablishing a large number of RetrainingCentres for the hundreds of teachers whohopefully will he integrated into the

system.

This article will not deal with the contentor framework of the courses themselves butthe process undergone by the re-trainee.

The trainees enter the new situation withtheir own self esteem firmly established.They have taught for many years with

varying degrees of success in systems whichthey understand and know. This familiarityenables them to feel secure and it is thissecurity and knowledge which enables themto grow and feel that inner worth whichgives the professional the strength to

withstand storms and have the courage totake new steps. Any professional who doesnot have a sense of his or her own selfworth will reflect this in everyday workand in the way they interact with thosearound them. Teachers lacking in a belief

in themselves will react negatively to

pupils and may often entrench themselvesagainst changes. Without self esteem, theprofessional 'soul' will wither away.

The veteran teacher taking first steps ina new framework and society will often feel

disorientated. Much like a drowningperson, he/she will clutch at the familiaror the well remembered as the only way.This of course may be a way of keepingafloat, but it also stops the trainee frommoving forward.

Another reaction is 'culture shock'. A

Soviet immigrant teacher used to a systemwhich is clearly defined and centrally

controlled may find himself at sea in asystem of teacher autonomy where teachershave to prove their worth in each class.Changes like this are very sharp and severe


and result in a sudden drop in self esteem.

"I once was a good teacher" sighed theformer school principal from Leningrad whohad been unnerved by the difference betweenthe Israeli school system and the oldfamiliar one.

It is essential for such re-trainingcourses to build on the experience andprofessional world of the immigrant

teacher. If the process is one ofbuilding, adding and re-direction, then there-trainee will not feel that professionalself esteem damaged/undermined. Without afeeling of wholeness, there will be nogrowth. A tree that has had its roots

tampered with is traumatized and a

professional whose previous experience and_worth is denied/devalued may not have thecourage to restart, either.

We should not forget the individual and hisworld when we in our omniscience decide tore-train immigrant teachers. When theirworlds of experience and value are acceptedas the starting point, they will be able togrow in the new situation.

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Page 23

In this article Melanie Ellis vividlydescribes the situation in Poland, which ismaybe paralleled by things happeningelsewhere in the area between the Oder-Neisse and Vladivostok.

At a recent conference I heard from anAlbanian colleague how the impact ofcapitalism has solved overcrowding in

secondary schools. Half the kids are outon the streets selling things and schoolsthat used to have eleven classes now havefive. Over to Melanie and Poland:

Guest Editor

THE PRICE OF CHANGE by Melanie Ellis

East and Central Europe are now a targetarea for foreign institutions and companieslooking to expand into a new market. Thisarticle aims to give an insight into thecomplex reality that is Poland today withparticular reference to teachers who arechanging their qualifications.

The teacher_education project in Silesia,Poland is profoundly different from anyother work with teachers which I have beeninvolved in, because of the rapid changesEastern and Central Europe are undergoing.

This ii.a_project for teachers, alreadycontracted and working as teachers ofEnglish in school, who are not graduates ofan English department. A few of them areformer teachers of Russian, but themajority come from a wide range ofdifferent backgrounds chemists,economists, engineers among others -somewith substantial teaching experience,others with little. Their motive forchanging-job is usually economic necessity.Either there is no longer any demand forthem in their subject areas - theinstitution is under-financed, the formermarket has collapsed, the company has gonebankrupt - or they cannot earn enough tolive on doing what they did before.English teaching offers the possibility ofextra, evening work in private languageschools, or of teaching privately at home.The demand is such that the customer is notyet very discerning about quality, as longas the price is right.

It is a desperate motivation, fed by thethreat of unemployment and the terriblefear of constantly rising prices and frozensalaries.

This is a world which has turned on itshead. We reminisce about the simplicity of

the old days. You stood in endless queues,bought what you could and-made do. Yourarely asked the question "Why?" becauseeither there was no answer, or the answerwas straight from 'Alice in Wonderland' andleft you more resentful and confused thanbefore. Energy went on 'arranging' things- from foodstuffs, through medicines tobuilding materials. Suddenly democracy andits attendant market economy burst in, withcolour, brighter lights, shiny packaging,speed, ease and status consciousness. Thepainful process of re-learning how to livebegan. Things which are second nature towestern Europeans came as a shock. Thediscovery, for example, that the sameproduct was available in several shops, butat several different prices, was quite new.The concept of shopping around for the bestbuy was quickly learnt. The idea thatforeign, brighter and glossier does notnecessarily mean better quality is takinglonger.

In English teaching there have been manyshocks but the greatest was the sudden in-rush of the western publishers with morebooks than ever dreamed of in brighter,bigger, picture-filled splendour. Thelocal books with ecological recycled paperand tiny black and white illustrations looklike poor cousins. If the kids couldchoose of course it is obvious which theywould like. Their beleaguered parents oneastern salaries and faced with westernprices like whatever is most affordable -and that is rarely the western-producedbook, except where a locally publishededition is being produced.

Concepts unfamiliar in the past have rearedtheir ugly heads. A gulf between the havesand the have nots, unemployment, violentcrime, theft, advertising, debt. With asyet little provision for the unemployed,

Page 24 75 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vo1.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993

poor benefits and jobs hard to find, thereis for the first time real fear about thefuture. The atmosphere is one of constantchange, inexorably moving the country intoa new way of being. There is a sense thatwhat is coming, will come whether it is

desirable or not and people are sweptalong, bewildered, trying to make sense ofit.

Against this already stressful backgroundis placed an education system in a processof change. Schools have more autonomy now.Local authorities for the first time havebudgets which they must learn to manage.Spend it all at once and, they have

discovered painfully, there is no more.Forget to allow for inflation on fuel billsand the school must close in the coldestweather. Accountability, competition and,

more recently, effectiveness are the

concerns of the moment. Yet at the sametime this is not a Third World country.The universities here are among the oldestin Europe. Scholarship is cherished and ofworld standard. In the struggle to acquirenew skills this cannot be forgotten.

The Ministry of National Education (MEN)have changed their minds regarding"unqualified" English teachers once already

by suddenly abolishing the State

Recognition exam in 1992. This has meantthat teachers are reluctant to believe themwhen an announcement is made now. The tone

of a recent document is desperate.Addressed to heads of school and decision-makers in the local education authoritiesit insists that the three-phase re-

qualification process and deadlines,(announced in 1992), must stand. Teachersnot attaining phase one by September 1993MUST NOT continue teaching.

wholeheartedly support them in this

decision, but the reality is hard. Phase

one is Cambridge First Certificate. The

exam fee alone costs two months' salary foran unqualified teacher, who receives a

token amount of the already-low teacher'spay. Added to this is the small printwhich states that only teachers with gradesA or B will be allowed to teach. Thestress level is palpable, tears frequent,anger bursts out unexpectedly.

The most resourceful of our participants isknitting her way to her exam fee, sittingup all night between teaching to run offfashionable sweaters on her knitting

machine bought several years ago with the

proceeds of a grape-picking holiday in

France. She also acts as an agent forseveral UK language schools, but the

profits are small as few can afford somuch. How she manages to plan lessons,teach and cope with a husband and two sons

as well as studying for the exam I do notknow. Some mornings she is speechless with,

tiredness, but is always cheerful andmanages a smile.

The breakdowns, which seems inevitable, arepainfully dramatic. "How can anything I dohave any value?" wept Barbara, a highly-qualified Russian teacher with 15 years'experience. "I know I'm not good at whatI'm doing!" The plight of the formerRussian teachers is perhaps the easiest toempathise with. One could, with a littleimagination, put oneself in their shoes.Their fury at their less than adequatecompetence in English is hard to assuage.The best are bilingual Russian/Polish,steeped in the literature and a love of thelanguage. English is a poor second in

those circumstances. At the end of

residential courses I have begun to make apoint of asking them to sing Russianfolksongs. They need to, so that for a

-little while they can lose themselves in alanguage which is no effort to them andpresents no threat.

Am 1 going to pass? Am I going to get a B?Am I wasting my money? If I pay the fee itmeans my child can't go away for 'greenschool' (the whole class goes to a mountainresort to escape the heavy pollution). We

won't be having a holiday this year - wecan't afford it because of having to payfor the exam and I can't do much eveningwork at the moment because I'm studying.I've had to borrow the money from my familyin Germany, because I MUST teach in

September, so I can't wait until I've savedenough.

The pressure is unrelenting, desperate.There have been days - dark, overcastSilesian winter days, when I have had toabandon what I had planned and ask them totell me what has happened, as the

atmosphere has been so flat and gloom-laden. I improvise 'off-loading'activities and jolly them along with funnystories. Marking written work has becomea tightrope walk. No comments and theyrage at me about the effort it was to findtime and quiet to do it and what does atick mean will it pass'? Mark on the examrating scale and I have outbursts of "Myhusband was right! I'm wasting our money -I'll never pass." Write comments like

'Good!' and I still get asked, yes but is

it good enough?

The counselling element of these courses isvital. There is a lot to be said and evenmore to listen to. We have to talk aboutthe old days, about now, about the kids inschool, about drugs and battered kids and

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vo1.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993 Page 25

THE PRICE OF CHANGE cont'd

alcoholic families; about heads of schooland the attitude of other members of staff('they don't speak to me because I'm not aproper teacher') ('they tell the directorthat l'io not teaching as I should be' 'Havethey seen you teach ?' No' 'Has thedirector?' 'Not yet' 'Well then...shall I

come?'); about problem kids ('he just sitsand rocks') and difficult books ('It seemsto go through a lot very fast' comment onbeginning book for vocational secondaryschools which covers five tenses in 12

pages), about their own studying ('I justdon't have time' her colleagues sortedthis one with a wealth of ideas for how todo two things at once - 'Listen to the BBCWorld Service when you're in the kitchenlate in the evening making the next day'sdinner, or doing the ironing. Make keycards to look at waiting for the tram orwalking the dog. Lock yourself in thebathroom for half an hour with a grammarbook...)

Macdonald's opened a few months ago and I

went along to have a look. It was a

terrible shock. A huge restaurant withseats for about 150, tiled in shades ofpastel pink and beautifully furnished.Despite snow in the street the floors werespotless, thanks to four women whose solejob seemed to be mopping up endless trailsof muddy feet.

On a particularly low day I told them aboutit: "So now you can stop worrying abouteverything. If you fail the exam you canalways go and wash the floors in

Macdonald's..." There was a fraction of asecond of horrified silence before theyrealised it was a joke and then someonecracked back: "and get paid far more thanwe'll ever get teaching!"

This is what change is all about: fear,tears, and sometimes, laughter.

Melanie EllisWojewodzki Osrodek Metodyczny, Katowice.

TEACHING IS TEACHER:

TRAININGby Jim Wingate

Invite your pupils to imitate you, or toimitate a colleague of yours. They do itvery accurately! Even my total beginners,and even the aphasic pupils I've had whocould not speak at all, even in their ownlanguage observe, experience and absorb mytechniques, my lesson structures, mymethods. They can reproduce the form andfeeling and style of my lessons. In fact,they pick these things up more quickly andaccurately than my teacher trainees.

,

So, truly, when I teach, I am training mypupils as teachers, whether I'mean to. ornot. Neuro Linguistic Programming says"Don't ask a good teacher to-tell you whyhe/she is a good teacher. No. Watch andobserve what he/she does, and imitate it."

My pupils watch what 1 do. Often theywatch with their whole bodies. When theyimitate me they become me, posture, voice,mannerisms and all.

So I do . a technique with my pupils."Here's a game. We'll do ietogether. Nowyou do it." "Remember this activity? Youtake it now, and adopt it, change it, makeit suit your style."

Teaching and Training Similarities

I do all these things too with my in-service and pre-service teacher trainees.I also help them to insights as to howthey, as individuals, learn eg. visually,audially, kinaesthetically, asaccommodators, divergers, assimilators orconvergers, left brain or right etc etc.Now I do these insights with my pupils tooand they learn to translate the way I teachinto the way they, as individuals, learn.

"Good teacher training must be goodteaching" has been my guiding maxim. NowI let it build its own bridge back ie.

"Good teaching is good teacher training."

I encourage my pupils to take over theprocess as soon as they have experienced itas that form/technique/method, and theymake it their own. My job is then to passthem the'content or to negotiate with themthe content to be contained within that

process. we agree the grammar point, forinstance, to be learned or practised usingthe game they know.

Parer 25 /v7 mnr mrArTTFP TPAINER. vn1.7. No.2 SYMIMITR 19q1

Teaching and Training Differences

The only difference between teaching

pupils, and training teachers is for me

simply the luxury of time. I have far more

time with my pupils. I therefore don'tpack 4 lessons into 40 minutes as I do with

teacher trainees. Instead, the training

takes real time and is therefore more

effective and complete. A lesson takes its

40 minutes. We work right through eachactivity. It is a whole experience ratherthan a collection of recipes demonstrated.

With my classes of pupils I avoid some of

the frustrations of teacher training. I

therefore train my pupils in the way I

would ideally like to train my trainees.

Better Training

Why don't I cross the bridge again, then,and train my trainees the way 1 now train

my pupils? Yes, when 1 can, 1 do. More

and more of my training of teachers

consists of real lessons in a real foreignlanguage with feedback at the end of the

language learning. The feedback is abouthow we learned, and what we learned aboutourselves through learning the language.1 use the same feedback with my pupils.

These experiences are the "upside" of beinga teacher trainer and I love it.

The Downside

What I hate most about teacher training isthat the trainees have already been trainedas teachers when they were pupils by theirteachers, who in turn were trained whenthey were pupils by their teachers, and

thus self-perpetuating awfulness is deeply

ingrained in my pre-service and in-service

teachers.

Negative Messages

Mainly what the teachers have already

learned when they were pupils are "I am

stupid". "Language is difficult."

"Learning is difficult." "Learning

shouldn't be fun." "If' it's not hurting

it's not working." "I am ignorant. I

don't know language."

My greatest struggle with my teacher

trainees is to replace these negativemessages With positive ones. To do this I

teach them a new language and they

experience it as quick, easy, fun. They

experience themselves as knowing and

intelligent while they learn the new

language. They learn up to 120 new words,per hour with the grammar too. Yet stillthe negative messages persist, and theypass them on to their pupils.

My Motivation

What motivates me to continue'?

Pity and anger.

I'd like to replace these. To my tastethey are ugly emotions. Yet they are

justified. I pity pupils who receive suchnegative messages and have their time,

energy and potential wasted so

systematically. I am angry at teachers foroppressing pupils with the slowness andineffectiveness of their teaching.

For 13 years I have been doing lessons with

teachers' pupils' in a role as guest

teacher while the teacher has watched meworking with his/her pupils.

The most frequent things the teacher saysto his/her pupils at the end of the lesson

is "I didn't know you knew so much

. English!" "I didn't know you were so

intelligent!" "I didn't know you cared!""I didn't know you were so confident andcreative!" I respect the teachers'

honesty, but my heart screams.

What to do with Anger?

My anger and pity are thus constantlyconfirmed and fed. Perhaps I am angry at

the wrong generation of teachers, and

should fulminate at the teachers who taughtthose teachers when they were pupils, andwho taught them that they knew little

English, were unintelligent, uncaring,

unconfident and uncreative.

I try to do the NLP thing of "sharing apositive attitude and vision of how muchbetter we can all learn to be as teacher."'But sometimes I simply have to express my

passion and anger:*

When I work with pupils it restores myequanimity because pupils are not as set in

their ways as teachers. Pupils are more

receptive and flexible. They are not

seeing themselves as teachers therefore

there is less interference from their

experience of teachers. So pupils areeasier to train as teachers than teachersare.

I therefore recommend that we train

teachers when they are pupils, and beforethey choose to be teachers. That is the

best and most effective time to train them.

Final Thoughts

I hope to become clearer with my teachertrainees in opening up the pupil in them ,

putting to sleep their self-image as

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993 7a Page 27

TEACHING IS TEACHER TRAINING cont'd

'teacher' or 'future teacher', and helpingthem to construct their own style directlyout of the new experience of pleasurablelearning of a new language. I am thereforecreating the circumstances where mytrainees regress, and regain formerinnocences.

"Teaching is Teacher Training."

Therefore "Teacher Training is Teaching."

I invite any negative or positive responseor further exploration. Please write in toThe Teacher Trainer magazine.

* Editorial comment

When I first worked with teachers of Frenchin the UK I realised I was not gettingrapport. At first I could not see why.Gradually I came to realise that in thepresence of these UK teachers of French Iwas feeling fury at the poor way my ownchildren were being taught French. Thisfury made rapport very hard to get. Thingsimproved when I put my parental glassesback in their case.

thePRIMARY ENGLISHTEACHER'S GUIDE

jean Brewster. Gail Ellis and Denis Girard

Illunsv:so

JEAN BREWSTER

GAR REIS

AND

DENIS GIRARD

66001401513594

For wore information please contact:Annie Middlemiss. Penguin Books Ltd..

27 Weights Lane. London WA 5TZ. Tel: 071 416

For allteachers o(Englishto young learners

and teacher trainers.1111 ell1,1 I \I.11,11 II III li .I II II

StirNustlIctic,O.qmicmodlaligtmgctugl..mIgchildrun.

tvachiog to hnit !tic, .111(1

Ic.triling strategic,

Gist,tcachcrspiclucdprmlicalstIggest It nl. - Ilnss ICI t 1111,11`,111:11Crial, C6aS,1,11,111111.11.114CMCM

anti LiSing Mill:Wink iCNN.

ElICIlltrjgeN [123,110, II 111111i,1,12

dwir.m,11,1guag,..mdtc.lrhing .kill..

Cwilairi.dctailudi116.1111mitm

;1110III the mant mrcesas :111.16k ttt tc:IChc, LIOIshinpritnar .c11414.1..

French edition also available:BRIDGING THE GAP:

GUIDE DE L'ANGLAIS PRECOCE

Page 28

by Saxon Menne

Crain?

It's in the nature of things that peoplewho have reached a certain level in a

hierarchy become attached to the hierarchyitself. Having succeeded in reaching thatlevel, they stop querying the basis oftheir job and the necessity for having itat all. They prefer not to considerwhether their job serves any usefulpurpose, and whether or not that wholelevel should be scrapped.

The function of "teacher-trainer" is-not anobviously useful one. A master craftsman,for example, has reached the top of hisprofession, and is expected to trainothers. There is not, then,. a separatelevel of master craftsman who trains othercraftsmen in the methodology of, trainingapprentices. In language teaching, and inthe drab world of formal education ingeneral, someone has suggested, andapparently everyone has accepted, that itis not enough to be a master of yoursubject - you need instruction in how toinstruct. You need to be told how to be agood teacher.

What is it that defines a good teacher? Weall have our favourite definitions atdifferent times, and I am willing to betthat whatever your current favourite is, itwill centre on something that cannot betrained, so that pretending to train peoplein it is, at best, pointless.

For example, good teaching involves a skillat simplifying tasks to the level wherethey tax the learners without defeatingthem. This is like an art or a sport,where you improve with practice, and youcan be encouraged and maybe coached fromthe sidelines "try rolling your wrist alittle when you hit the forehand" - but youcan't be trained to do it.

One worthy function of the teacher is thecreation of a sort of art form, where thecourse as a whole and the lessonsindividually have a pleasing shape and asatisfying content. As with any art form,it's possible to describe how some oldmaster used a certain approach, and to getpeople to be more appreciative of the formin general, but it is not possible to trainpeople to produce it. You can only train

BEST COPY AVAILABLE79 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993

people to produce pastiches of otherpeople's work: teaching with no heart.

This is precisely what teacher-trainingends up doing.

A definition of the teacher's function - isit Rogers who says this? is that it is tocollaborate with a learning process goingon in the student(s). On the occasionswhen this happens, it is mysterious,reliant on idiosyncratic qualities in theteacher, and unpredictable. It is quite;impossible to train somebody to recognise;and respond to a learning process going onin someone else, let alone to train them tocollaborate with it.

What, then, is the point of teacher-

training?

The point is that it gratifies variousbureaucratic and hierarchical needs.

A born teacher does not need training, andcannot be trained anyway. He or she may ormay not benefit from exchanging ideas withcolleagues. That depends on whether thecolleagues' ideas help or hinder. A

powerful natural lecturer - such peopleexist - will get the message from seniorteachers now that there is somethingimproper about the lecture form in itself.The result is a loss, not a gain. You geta powerful lecturer trying to run

workshops.

For every one person for whom the currentmethodological orthodoxy, whatever that

happens to be at the time, is helpful,there will always be several for whom it isnot.

The result of exposure to methodology isgood natural teachers distorting theircommon-sense styles. Natural goodschoolmasters; people who like simplicity;people with natural authority; naturallysympathetic people; all decide that theirnatural style must be changed.

Left in ignorance, these people would helpwave after wave of students. Through beingexposed to methodology they become unsureof themselves, and waste their energytrying to follow their trainers and theirtrainers' models. For the majority,training deforms.

Now, education authorities want a system offormal qualifications to simplify their

work. They want a simple scale, preferablyexpressed in numbers, which will allow anoverworked clerk to decide whether someoneis capable of doing a certain teaching jobor not. (So then you hear of only PhDs

being shortlisted for an upper elementaryclass.) The education authorities turn tosenior teachers, you and me, for help. Weshould respond with "Push off - it's a

complete nonsense - If they know thesubject matter, in this case if they canspeak English, and if they turn up to theinterview sober and on time, then you mayor may not have a competent teacher in yoursights - How you sort the rest out is yourproblem, not mine." But of course we areflattered to be asked our opinions. wepurse our lips and look thoughtful, and say"Well, of course, we must include an

element of modern methodology."

We all know of excellent natural teacherswho have failed some TT course or exam orother the number of good teachers whofail the RSA/UCLES dip. is amazing,

considering its aims. Even worse, we allknow lots of people with teachingqualifications who shouldn't be let loosein a classroom.

A professional reference I saw recentlysaid "... finds it difficult to listen tothe students ... in time may become a goodteacher." Why was this person ever givena teaching qualification? Because he

satisfied the requirements of the course,which were not to be a teacher - you can'ttrain someone to be that but to have acertain body of knowledge, and to be ableto do pastiches of probably one teachingstyle.

The education bureaucracy wants an

apparatus, and we connive. Once theapparatus is in position, it develops itsown inertia, and the effects are mostlypernicious.

One of the most pernicious effects is onsenior teachers themselves. They seethemselves as part of a professional group,and do all the appalling things that a

professional group always does: showingcontempt for anyone who is not a colleague,.developing a mystique with a protectivejargon, closing ranks whenever a member ofthe same perceived profession comes under

mTry mr7 r7p17 TvliT,,Trp. Ir.-0 7. Vn2 CTTMMFp 1q01 80 Page 29

WHY TRAIN ? cont'd

attack. All the unpleasant and irritatingbehaviour that one associates withreactionary groups like doctors andlawyers..

Does this ring a bell? A student expressesdoubts about one of your colleagues. NOwyou know for a fact that that particularteacher has been clinically barmy for atleast three months. But do you say "You'veonly just noticed?" No. You go allguarded and say "Yes? I don't know aboutthat. I do know that he's very experiencedteacher -very experienced and very able."

Why? Because he's one of us. Because oneday you might come under attack yourself,justifiably or unjustifiably, and you hopeyour colleagues will stand by you if thathappens. 'Because there's a professionalmystique to be upheld.

It's not just closing ranks to protect anindividual colleague. Whole systems, wholeinstitutions are protected. The normalresult of bright people, people with realsparkle, being promoted into teacher-_training positions, is that they start togive public support to those aspects of thestatus quo that previously they would haveattacked. Why don't senior teachersprovide persistent, concerted criticism ofthe RSA and the Cambridge Syndicate, to

mention just two deserving targets?

Given the existence of teacher-training,the cultivation of hierarchy andprofessional mystique is inevitable. A

second pernicious effect, and 1 don't knowwhether this is inevitable or not, is theemergence of proselytes.

I am not now talking about run-of-the-millTT: the dire PGCE course at some gloomycollege. The effect of that, if any, is toproduce a bored and boring group of trainedmembers of a closed profession. (Listen tothe trainees' resentment in January at theirrelevance, the shallowness and tedium ofsuch a course - then listen again in Aprilto those same trainees, now just waitingfor the qualification that will satisfy theeducational bureaucracy). That is

pernicious enough, in all conscience, butit is not as bad as the results of reallygood, inspirational teacher-training.

Do you remember the ferocity with whichpeople attacked translation, dictation,overt grammar teaching, all sorts ofharmless little tools that a languageinstructor might find useful? All thepassion, the denunciations?

That certainty and lack of vision is stillin evidence now, though finding othertargets, and it is the direct result ofinspirational teacher-training.

Whenever I come across someone who speaksEnglish better than they should given theirbackground, better than necessary giventheir circumstances, I try to ask them howit happened. Sometimes they give thecredit to a teacher, and then I ask aboutthat teacher. They never say the teacherwas good at getting them through exams, orvery smoothly professional. In fact, a

typical description would be the following:

"He was a drunk. On Monday mornings hecame to class straight from the bar wherehe'd spent the whole weekend. He hadn'tbeen home, and he was still drunk, and welaughed at him. He'd shout and swear atus, and-then he'd take out a copy of someDickens or something, and say that this iswhat we,were laughing at. He'd walk roundthe class, reading it aloud, and trying toexplain it, and saying how wonderful itwas. We all laughed, but there wassomething about his enthusiasm, hispassion."

Maybe it's worth considering advisingteachers to forget all their training, todrink half a bottle of vodka, and to trustin'the god Dionysus.

Such a course would be very short, andyou'd probably have difficulty getting itvalidated, but it would be much morepraiseworthy than the standard teacher-training course.

Some activities are a harmless waste oftime: doing crosswords, watching rugby,putting up shelves in the kitchen, thatsort of thing. You may not agree with myexamples, but you know what I mean:activities where the most that can be saidfor them is that they pass the time in anot unpleasant or totally antisocialfashion.

Other activities are not only a waste oftime, they are actually likely to causeharm to the people who are involved inthem, and even to innocent bystanders.Playing Monopoly, I think, makes peopleselfish and bad-tempered, if onlytemporarily; some violent sports seem tohave bad effects on the participants andsociety in general; smoking seems to be abad thing.

Teacher-training falls into the secondcategory.

Paae 30 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vo1.7, No.2 SUMMER 1993

ve u Re d?Ways of Training by Tessa WoodwardPilgrims Longman Resource Books.184pp. Longman 1992.

Reviewed by Jeremy Harmer.

A few days ago, at a university in TurkeyI was talking to a teacher trainer who gaveme every impression of professional andhumanistic competence. "The trouble is,"she said, "I'm getting fed up using thesame old routines with new groups oftrainees. I'm feeling really stale." Ofcourse you can say to her "but a new groupof trainees won't think you're stale. Theywon't have seen the routine before," and Idid. But the feeling of staleness both forteacher and trainer is a very real one, acrisis that many of us face from time totime. It is precisely at such moments thatwe need new ideas, new stimulation, newquestions and answers, new ways of lookingat old procedures. And that is what TessaWoodward's book aims to provide. If anyone kind of trainer can be thought of asthe target audience for this book it is

someone who feels 'stale'.

Ways of Training has an introduction whichexplains how and why the book came to bewritten, what assumptions underlie it, howthe book is organised and how the materialcan be used. Chapter 1, called 'Makingthis book work for you' discusses the

process of training in more detail, showinghow different processes can be applied tothe same basic procedures. Chapter 2

(Input) looks at ways of revitalising theacquisition of information by the trainee.There are many different ways of dealingwith the process of lecturing (15 in all),ways of getting the group of trainees toprovide input, and experiential tasks.Chapter 3 looks at ways of getting traineesto react to information before, during andafter Input. Chapter 4 (Moving on fromInput) looks at ways of helping trainees tostore, remember and organise information.Chapter 5 (The teaching encounter) providesmany different ideas for planningobservation lessons, observing lessons andgiving/organising feedback on teaching. It

is the longest chapter in the book.Chapter 6 offers different ways for

trainees and their trainers to find outabout each other, and Chapter 7

offers different ways of getting members ofthe group to support each other. There isa bibliography too. For each processsuggested, readers are told what materialsare necessary, who the trainees could be,

7 Inn,

what the content is etc. The process isdescribed, variations are suggested and arationale and comments are given. In otherwords, in appearance and design this bookfits perfectly into the Pilgrims LongmanResource Books series.

I have had some difficulty trying to decidehow to convey to readers of this reviewwhat the contents are actually like.Perhaps 1 can do it best by saying thatregular readers of this journal and ofother books in the series will recognise atonce the style and commitment of thesetraining ideas. They have the directnessand the 'hands-on' feel that characterizemuch of Tessa Woodward's work. It is

perhaps best exemplified for me by the_comment she makes at the end of a

description of the process called 'Whoneeds a cuddle today?' where a groupsupports and boosts the morale of an

individual if they are feeling down, oftenwith supportive comments and applause."Mike Gradwell introduced me to the use ofapplause to raise confidence," she writes,"If I hadn't experienced it and loved it,I would have thought the idea was bothcrazy and embarrassing!" (178). I confessthat I haven't experienced this process formyself and view it with a trace ofjaundiced scepticism. Or I did. But thatkind of testimony is both direct andconvincing. And it the strength of thisbook. Tessa Woodward has experienced theseactivities, she has used them. When shetells you that something works you canbelieve that for her is true. This is astructured collection of excellent ideasfor training, different ways of seeingthings, different ways of doing things,different ways of being a sensitive,informed and surprising trainer.

There is much in the book that readersfamiliar with Tessa Woodward will recogniseand there are many old friends: the 'JargonGenerator', the Curran lecture, methodologynotebooks, 'Loop Input' (summarisedsurprisingly in less than a page) writingto your students etc. But there is a lothere that is refreshing and new. Iii

particular the chapter on classroomobservation is quite excellent, offeringideas for making that encounter both humane

BEST COPY AVAILABLE PA" 11

HAVE YOU READ ? cont'd

and insightful for both trainer andtrainee.

There are some things that 1 am less sureabout. We (male readers) are asked, forexample, to reflect on the use of thepronoun 'she' throughout the book and I

reflect that it is simply a bit out ofdate. It is claimed that looking at

processes of training helps you see theworld in a different way - a claim whichmay be a bit exaggerated, and then there isthe perennial problem of 'government healthwarnings' which gets her into a bit oftrouble, I think. She says that she hadconsidered giving some of the more'personal' (my word) activities a healthwarning, but she felt that it would be tooprescriptive. So instead she labels someof them as appropriate for trainers who are"Experienced, flexible, sensitive and withsome counselling skills" which soundspretty much like a warning to me. And theproblem is to know which activities shouldbe labelled in this way. 'Insistence

Questions', for example, is the techniquewhere a trainee (or anybody) is asked thesame question again and again ('Why did youbecome a teacher?' is the example givenhere) and has to give a different answereach time. On the one occasion 1 have seenthe technique used it put the answererunder enormous pressure, and I have heardanecdotal (and therefore not completelyreliable) evidence that this activity hasreduced at least one victim to tears. 1

would have given it some- kind of agovernment health warning. But it hasnone.

However, the job of a reviewer is to makesome kind of final recommendation, so thisis mine: the trainerin Turkey should havea copy of.this book, so should just abouteverybody else. As Tessa Woodward herselfpoints out, to some it will representmainstream UK teaching, to others it willbe completely new. To me it is anexcellent collection of ideas - some ofwhich appeal to me more than others, it istrue - a resource book in the best sense ofthe word.

(comments by S Lindstromberg)

Newspapers by Peter Grundy (1993, 134pp)OUP. ISBN 0-19-437192-1. In OUP's'Resource Books for Teachers' series.Chapter One is an excellent survey of moreor less familiar techniques cum statementof approach. The next five chapters (110activities) are consistently original andusable.

Learner-based Teaching by Colin Campbelland Hanna Kryszewska (1992, pp 126) OUP.ISBN 0-19-437163-8. In the same series.To my knowledge one of only two sources inthis important area. If you also check outDeller (Lessons from the Learner 1990Longman), you're on top of the wave.

Collaborative Language Teaching andLanguage Learning David Nunan, ed (1992, pp272) CUP. ISBN 0-521-42701-0. 19

contributors. Described on the back coveras being for those 'interested in

experimenting with alternative ways oforganising teaching and learning'. Amongits chapters are ones on experientiallanguage learning, collaborative writing,teacher research groups, team teaching anda collaborative approach to curriculumdevelopment.

Making the Grade: a self-worth perspectiveon motivation and school reform by MartinCovington (1992, 351pp of smallish print)CUP. ISBN 0-521-34803X. A work of highscholarship (38 page bibliography) yetreadably written. An examination of

variables in student motivation. Thestandpoint is self-worth theory (ie.,

'achievement behaviour in schools can beunderstood best in terms of students'attempts to maintain a positive self-image'). Available in paperback.

Research Methods in Language- Learning byDavid Nunan (1992, 249pp) CUP. ISBN 0 -521-

42968-4. An 'introduction to researchmethods ... designed to help students ofapplied linguistics, education researchers,classroom teachers, and teachers in

training'. Chapter titles: 'An

introduction to research methods andtraditions', 'The experimental method','Ethnography', 'Case study', 'Classroomobservation and research', 'Introspective

Methods', 'Elicitation techniques'',

'Interaction analysis', 'Programevaluation', 'Doing research'.

RI Top, TFAMTER TRAINER. Vo1.7. No.2 SUMMER 1993

Girls, Boys and Language by Joan Swann(1992, 251pp) Blackwell. ISBN 0- 631 - 16469-

3. A wide ranging consideration of howgirls and boys differ in their use of

language within and outside of school. The

back cover blurb lists some of the

questions addressed as: 'What are the

implications of gender L. sex] differences,and inequalities, for teaching, learning

and assessment? How can teachers monitorgirls' and boys' language in the classroom?And how can they introduce "equal

opportunities" in and throughlanguage?...Does the aptitude demonstratedby many girls actually operate to theirlong-term disadvantage?'

Language Testing in the 1990s J r Aldersonand B North, eds (1991, pp 256) Macmillan.ISBN 0-333-55825-1. 18 contributors;papers from a meeting of the IATEFL specialinterest group on testing.

Communicative Language Testing by CyrilWeir (1990, 216pp) Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13- 155284 -8. 85 pages of text in fourchapters: 'Approaches to language test

design: a critical review', 'Basic

considerations in test design', 'Test

construction', 'Test methods'. Plus, 113ppof appendices and 15pp of bibliography.

Assessment in Literature Teaching ChrisBrumfit, ed (1991, 119pp) Macmillan. ISBN0-333-53782-3. 7 contributors; particularreference to second language teaching.Jane Spiro's 'Assessing literature: fourpapers' makes up approximately half thevolume.

Applied Linguistics and English LanguageTeaching R Bowers and C Brumfit, eds (1991,131pp) Macmillan. ISBN 0-33-57228-9. 13

contributors. The articles vary greatly instyle, scope and detail. At one extreme,Michael Swan's appealingly conversational'The textbook: bridge or wall?' (3pp). At

the other, Keith Brown's meaty andscholarly 'Describing modality in English'(21pp). Obviously, in a thin volume, it isimpossible to measure up to some of thechapter titles' suggestions ofcomprehensiveness (eg., J C Wells'

.'Phonology in EFL teaching' and Louis

Alexander's six pages on 'Grammar in theclassroom'). Other topics touched on: 'thestate of the art in applied linguistics','curriculum design', 'classroom practice','programme design in teacher education','socio-cultural dimensions of language

use', 'properties of spoken discourse' and'vocabulary'.

Edinburgh Working Papers in Linguistics nr2 Tony Lynch, ed (1991, 142pp). 11

articles, 'a yearly cross-section of

current work in Edinburgh's Department ofApplied Linguistics and Institute for

Applied Language Studies'. Sample titles:'Interlanguage lexis: an investigation ofverb choice' (D J Hill), 'Bibliographicpresentation' (T Lynch and I McGrath','Assessing the readability of medicaljournal articles: an analysis of teacherjudgements'.

Teaching American English PronunciationPeter Avery and Susan Ehrlich (1992, 254pp)OUP. ISBN 0-19-432815-5. 10 contributorsfrom various institutions in Toronto. Theparochial title is not well suited to

attract the interest of teachers andtrainers in British English and other non-North American TESOL realms. This is ashame as this is a broadly useful book,rich in tips (though most of these are NOTto be found in the disappointing chapter'Teaching pronunciation: an inventory oftechniques'). The title conceals the scopeof the book in another way. The entirefirst part (of three) is devoted to a

comprehensive overview of 'the sound systemof English' (sic). As it happens, these 87pages constitute an excellent introductionto the subject for both pre- and in-servicetrainees. (I don't see why the non-RPphonemics should significantly distractBritish readers.) Part Two, 'Theidentification and correction of specificpronunciation problems' contains a chapteron common pronunciation problems followedby one on typical learner problems. 14

mother tongues are covered (some absentfrom Swan and Smith Learner English 1987CUP). Teaching tips are included. PartThree, 'Classroom activities' has its upsand downs. Overall, the methodology lagsbehind that of the British mainstream,though this might make it all the moreaccessible to novice teachers. (Bowen andMarks The Pronunciation Book Longman 1992would make excellent supplementary readingto Part Three.) There is one particularlapse I can't help commenting on. IlsaBurns, at the outset of her chapter'Pronunciation-based listening exercises',quotes Penny Or thus: 'It is certainly truethat if the learner learns to pronounce...sounds accurately..., it will be mucheasier...to hear them correctly when saidby someone else'. Burns chooses to

misconstrue this as a flat assertion thataccurate pronunciation is a sine qua non oflistening comprehension generally.

Teaching English Overseas: an introductionSandra McKay (1992, 155pp) OUP. ISBN 0 -19-

432814-7. Many prospective buyers wouldexpect a book with this title to have

sections on basic classroom survival moves,visas, exchange rates, basic teaching kitsand so forth which it doesn't. More-

accurate would be a title like 'The ecologyof teaching overseas'. Part One looks atthe social, political, economic and

THE TEACHER TRATNER. Vo1.7. No.2 SUMMER 1993 84 Page 33

cultural factors that determine the natureof an overseas institution and affect

classroom practice. Part Two considers theinfluence national educational systems andparticular institutions have on classroompractice. Includes case studies.

Socio-cultural Issues in English for

Academic Purposes P Adams, B Heaton and PHowarth, eds. (1991, 135pp) Macmillan.ISBN 0-333-53975-3. 9 articles from the1989 SELMOUS (Special English LanguageMaterials for Overseas University Students)Conference on 'Socio-cultural issues in

English for academic purposes'. Topicsinclude problems arising from students notknowing the rules of the game in an

unfamiliar educational setting, preparationof PhD theses, behaviour in seminars andthe use of questionnaires to obtaininformation about students' backgrounds,needs, attitudes and so on.

Curriculum Renewal in School ForeignLanguage Learning by John L Clark (264pp;1991 edition in Educational Low-PricedBooks Scheme of 1987 original) OUP. ISBN

0-19-442131-7. 11.65!! Part One: 'The

effects of different educational valuesystems' (ie., classical humanism,

_reconstructionism, progressivism). Part

Two: 'Curriculum renewal in action' (ie,

two lengthy case studies - a Scottishproject and an Australian one).

Practical Stylistics by Henry Widdowson(1992, 230pp) OUP. ISBN 0-19-437184-0.Part One: 'The significance of poetry'.ie., 'Poetry is a representation ofsocially unsanctioned reality through theexploitation of unrealized possibilities inlanguage'. (p. 71) Part Two: 'The teachingof poetry'. The author's declared aim isto present activities 'which will engagestudents with poetic texts and draw theirattention to the possible significance ofparticular linguistic features as

conditions on interpretation' (p. 90). A

small set of activity types is consideredwith extreme scholarly care.

Reading by Catherine Wallace (1992, 161pp)OUP. ISBN 0-19-437130-1. Section Onedeals with key terms and social aspects ofreading. Section Two deals with a widerange of topics including the process oflearning to read, roles and aims of secondlanguage readers, the business of choosingtexts and settling on classroom procedures.Section Three contains one chapter entitled'Exploring reading in your own classroom'which outlines 21 types of task learnerscan be given. Personally, I am irked bybooks which pester me with tasks on theassumption I don't know how to readproperly.

BEST COPY AVAILABLEPage 34 Ps5

Word Maps - a dialect atlas of England byClive Upton et al. (1992) Groom Helm.This book offers 200 word and sound mapsfor England (not the UK). The map on thecover shows you at a glance where in thecountry people say, glee-eyed, cross-eyed,squint-eyed, boss-eyed and skend (Liverpooland South Lancashire). Map 143 shows youwherein England dialect speakers pronouncethe woolly animal 'sheep' and where'ship'. The short 'i' is used across theMidlands and East Anglia and in twoenclaves along the south coast. A usefulbook for people over-enamoured of'standard' UK English.

Language Anxiety by E Horwitz and D Young(1991) Prentice Hall. Part..1: Anxiety andlanguage learning. , Part 2:

Conceptualisations and research paradigms.Part 3: Empirical findings, how languageanxiety affects student performance. Part4: Students' perspectives. on languageanxiety. Part 5: Teaching strategies,helping learners cope with l.a. Part 6:Program strategies: institutional responses

to l.a.

A useful book which could do with more atthe practical 'what do I 'do in the

classroom' end of the spectrum.

tad

',04444140 900iOtEldestonePrelimmary:Cestifilzate_Courses for oversemitiacheii of

Why Hilderstone?Small groups

Highly experienced teaching staffReasonably priced accommodation

For details write to:Teacher Training, (Dept. TT)Hilderstone College, BroadstairsKent CT10 2AQ EnglandTel: 0843 869171Telex: 966182 THANET GFax: 0843 603877

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Language International co-organizes occasional confer-ences on professional language related issues. The Sec-ond Language International Conference is organized incollaboration with the University of Copenhagen: "TeachingTranslation and Interpreting", Elsinore, Denmark, 4-6 June1993.

Selected articles from Volume 4:Pilgrimage to Provo [Special Issue]: WordPerfect, BYU,

WordCruncher, LDS Church, ALPNET, Wydner, ECSMachine Translation, LinguaTech

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Music and SongTim MurpheyMusic and Song shows how any piece of music from folk to classical to jazz, rock, and pop

can be exploited in an immense variety of ways in the language classroom.

VideoRichard Cooper, Mike Lavery, and Mario RinvolucriVideo offers a wide range of communicative activities designed to reinforce and enhanbethe language learning process. This is a practical book which provides students with real tasksinvolving the language of perception, observation, opinion, and argument.

CALL .

David Hardisty and Scott WindeattCALL presents a large number of practical activities which utilize a variety of computerprograms and which are based on communicative methodology.

Classroom DynamicsJill HadfieldJill Hadfield explores some of the problems teachers have with managing groups, anddescribes over 100 classroom activities designed to foster a cohesive and supportive groupatmosphere.

Learner-based TeachingColin Campbell and Hanna KryszewskaThis book contains seventy language practice activities which use the wealth of knowledge,experience, and expertise of learners, and can supplement course books or form the basis ofan entire teaching programme.

NewspapersPeter GrundyNewspapers are a source of authentic texts which provide language practice, as well asinsights into English-speaking culture. This book is full of creative and original ideas and theactivities are practical, need little teacher preparation, and can be applied to a wide rangeof articles and extracts.

For further information please contact:ELT Promotions Department, Resource Books for Teachers, Oxford University Press, Walton Street,Oxford OX2 6DP, England. 7

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Clear, practical guidelines whether you're approaching ELT for the first time, orwould simply like the chance to read someone else's overview

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A Practical Journal mainly for modern language teacher trainersVolume seven Number three

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THE

TEACI-TERTRAINER

VOLUME SEVEN NUMBER THREE AUTUMN 1993

Published three times a year

EDITUR:

Guest editor:

EDITORIAL

'Letters'David Tendler(reader letter)Simon Hamilton/Gosia Barker p 4(authors' reply)

'Trainee Interaction on p 6participant-centredpostgraduate courses'Simon Borg

Tessa Woodward

Seth Lindstromberg

P 3 'Reflection and feedback p 17on a PGCE course'

P 4 Gary N Chambers

'Video, fear and loathing:self-viewing in teachertraining'Rick Cooper

p8

'Finding the centre' p 13Alan Maley

'Reading mazes' p 19David Spencer

'TEFL Auction' p 22Tony Penston

'The "ghosts instrument"' p 24Ephraim Weintraub

'On Form' p 25Tony Skevington

'Publications received. p 27comment, short reviews'

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For all enquiries concerning subscriptions, advertising and contributions.please contact the Editor.


Page 2 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993

Welcome to the final number of volume 7,1993. This is the last issue to be puttogether by a guest editor. TessaWoodward, the founding editor, is

returning next issue after a year off

owing to a long illness and (happily) arecent, rapid recovery. Apologies forthe lateness of both volumes 7/1 and 7/2.We were lucky our guest editor MarioRinvolucri was able to find any time at

all in his packed agenda to shepherdthose two issues as far as the PrintingUnit at the University of Kent. We thankMario mightily for stepping into the

breach last Fall.

This issue is as usual a collection ofarticles that are: (1) for the most partbroadly informative, strategic andreflective; or (2) mostly tactical,ready-to-use and easy-to-adapt; or(3) strategic and tactical in more orless equal measure.

(1) In the strategic, reflective campis:

Finding the centreAlan Maley divides the elements ofsuccessful teaching into (1) 'conditions'(skills and knowledge) and(2) 'preconditions' (the physical,psychological and material aspects ofteaching). He argues that physical andpsychological preconditions arerelatively neglected in teacher trainingand teacher development. He tells uswhat we can to do make up the deficit.

(2) In the ready-to-use and easy-to-adapt group are three articles in our on-going series of process options:

Reading mazesDavid Spencer offers a rationale for theuse of reading mazes in teacher training.He includes a complete example.

On formTony Skevington argues that forms canmake teachers and trainers more efficientand that getting trainees to design formsinvolves them in a beneficial process

that has a useful, tangible result. Tonyincludes two example forms.

TEFL AuctionTony Penston shows us how he has adaptedone of Mario Rinvolucri's grammar gamesfor use in language teacher training.

(3) Among the-articles which are bothstrategic and tactical, two deal each

with a particular way of structuringreflection and exchange of information:

Reflection and feedback on a PGCE course'PGCE', for our non7British readers.stands for 'post-graduate certificate ineducation'. It's what gives you alicense to teach in the school system.Gary N Chambers, who leads PGCE coursesat the University of Leeds, describes atrainee feedback system he and hiscolleagues have implemented in order tostimulate reflection on the part of allconcerned.

The 'ghosts' instrumentEphraim WeintroUb describes a way ofstimulating and structuring profound.wide-reaching reflection on one's life asa teacher. What kind of teacher am I?How did I get that way? What effects doI have on my students? This is an areathe author has been working in for manyyears. You may well have encounteredthe basic idea second hand, but it'salways worth going to the source.

Additionally, in group (3) there is...

Student interaction on narticoant-centredpostgraduate coursesParticipant-centredness has been much infashion for some years now. Simon Borg,who recently finished a participant-centred postgraduate course, tells us ofhis experience as one of theparticipants. He identifies a potentialobstacle to the smooth running of suchcourses and suggests how to avoid it.

The.final article in category (3) is...

Video, fear and loathing: self-viewing inteacher trainingRick Cooper writes against the backgroundof a common use of video in teachertraining: first, trainee teachers arevideo'ed; next, they watch their video'edselves. In part one of his article Rickreflects on what seems to be the typicalprocedure and finds it flawed and risky.In part two he offers detailedalternative procedures.Other descriptions of video self-

viewing (or 'autoscopys, to use Rick'sterm) have all included the same smallrange of procedures and repeated the samecommentary. Forget them; you won't needthem now.

Endnoteaccept for one of the letters, this issuedoes not have a single woman contributor.That's just the way articles comesometimes. We have several articles bywomen in preparation. but none were readyfor typing in time for this issue.

Seth Lindstromberg, guest editor

THE TEACHER TRAINER. Vol.7. No.3 AUTUMN 1993 g4- Page 3

Dear Editor,

I was lookingforward

to receiving my first

copy of 'The TeacherTrainer'

(volume7

number1) and

have to say that, having read

it from coverto cover,

I foundit a

valuablelearning

experience.

I found Mario Rinvolucri'sarticle

"Lead Us

Not Into Temptation"(pp

14-15) a delight

to read - from its curioussounding

title,

throughits easy-to-follow

analysisto its

novel conclusion.I think

that the article

shows above all that successfultraining

is

essentiallydue to rapport

betweentrainer

and trainee.It would be interesting

to

analyzehow much the nature

of the bus

driver'straining

wasbased on

the bus

company'sin-service

trainingtheories,

how

much on the personalityof that particular

trainerand how much the trainer

felt

threatened(in a career

sense)by the

trainee'sapproach

to the job. I suggest

that as far as this particularbus ride was

concerned,there

was an engaging

personalityand absence

of threat.Or

maybeall was due to the company's

training

techniques.

The point which emergesfrom Mario's

bus

ride is that trainingis an essentially

human processand that over-concentration

on techniquecan lead to a perverse

state

of affairs.John Wilson's

mentionof 'the

RSA way'("Why do an RSA diploma

course?",

page8) is an apt illustration

of what can

happen.We are

urged to use cooperative

learningtechniques

in the classroom:how

far do we use them outsidethe classroom

and in our daily lives?Or is humanistic

philosophyonly for the classroom

and not

for ourselves?

It was a soberingexperience

to read Gosia

Baker and Simon Hamilton'sarticle

in the

same issue.Having thoroughly

enjoyed my

bus ride,I now found myself

being

transportedover the bumpy cobblestones

of

depersonalisedtechnique.

John Wilson

suggests(page

9) that "the teacheris

still verymuch an authority

figurein the

RSA scheme of things".It appears

from

Baker and Hamilton'sarticle

that this

authorityalso extends

over colleagues

(yes, colleagues)who join ELT from the

state school sector.I find the underlying

tone of the referencesto those teachers

unacceptable."As a result of failing

to

see that EFL is different,they become

resistantto criticism

of their teaching

practiceduring review."

(Do they mean

'feedback?'I think not. 'Criticism'

is

used severaltimes in the article).

Are

the authors really trying to suggestthat

school teacherscan't

tell the difference

betweenteaching a

class of teenagersin

the state sectorand a class of fee-paying

adult learners?It took me no time at all.

But the most importantpoint

here is the

confrontationaland divisive

natureof the

statement.No wonder the authors

write in

terms of'levels of resistance

to trainer

criticism'.Back to basics:

all trainees

like to be listenedto and have their

experienceacknowledged,

as exemplifiedby

the youngdriver on Mario's bus.

Whatstrikes me about

EFL is that its

concentrationon technique

can lead to an

inflexibleand judgmental

formula.I think

we need to rememberthat at both ends of

techniquethere are real live people,

and

if the road to learningbecomeF

uncomfortablesome of those people might

just getoff the bus before their intende'

destination.

Yours sincerely,David Tendler

AUTHORS' REPLY(Simon Hamilton and Gosia Barker's article,"Models of teaching practice and feedback

vol 7/1 pp 31-35).for teacher training: TEFL", appeared in

Dear Mr Tendler,We were interested by your responseunderstood the tone of your letter to the e

Page4 el I!" 04, r1s4, %SA If A of c 96

editor in the light of Your bitter andunsuccessful experience on the RSA Diplomacourse. Nell you might ask about thecompany's in-service training theories, asyou 'got off the bus' before completing theRSA 'journey'! The tenor of your comments,however, might suggest that the bus wasstill moving when you alighted and thus you

training in general.are still feeling aggrieved about teacher

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN /993

TRAINEE INTERACTION ON PARTICIPANT-CENTREDPOSTGRADUATE COURSESSimon Borg (University of Malta)

I recently came across Marion Williams'article on MAs and Postgraduate (PG) study(The Teacher Trainer, 3/2, p.13) and withmy own PG course in the UK still fresh onmy mind, I thought about the way Williams'suggestions fitted in with my own

experience. My course seemed to match hercriteria for PG study quite well. That is,

the course aimed at promoting the continuedprofessional development of the trainees,it emphasised reflection, valued traineecontributions to the course and did notpromote a top-down view of knowledge.

I have no doubts about the value of PG

study organised along these lines, but myexperience suggests that the actualoutcomes of such courses may often not bethose which the course designersanticipate. That is, even a course basedon a humanistic, reflective andparticipant-centred approach to learning(I'll refer to such courses as participant-centred from now on) may still result inknowledge-focused, rationalist learningexperiences for certain trainees. This isparadoxical when we consider that suchcourses are supposed to promote a learningexperience of quite the opposite nature.

I'd like to try to account for this bydrawing on my own experience of a

participant-centred M Ed in English

Language Teaching designed mainly for

international trainees. This is not anuncommon PG context in the UK and thediscussion which follows is meant to berelevant to this context as a whole ratherthan specifically to the course 1 did.

I would like to suggest here that a

difference between intended and actuallearning experiences on participant-centredPG courses can be explained by looking atthe role of trainee interaction on suchcourses. A great deal of the work onparticipant-centred courses relies on thetrainees being able to interact

successfully (eg by negotiating,discussing, collaborating and sharing).Interaction of any form will involve thetrainees in relationships with each other,

and it will be most effective where thetrainees are aware of these relationshipsand the effect they have on this

interaction. Trainees who are aware inthis manner will be able to reflect on the (;)

effects which their behaviour has on eachother when they interact. They will beable to think about how what they didaffected the others and how what the othersdid affected them. For example, after aninteractive session they did not findeffective, trainees can ask themselvesquestions like; Was there anything I said,did or implied (eg through my attitude)which negatively affected the interaction?Why did this have the effect it did? Was

there anything someone else said, did orimplied which had a bad effect on ourinteraction? What? Why did it have thiseffect?' Such reflection will lead

trainees to a greater understanding of howtheir relationships affect theirinteraction, and this understanding willenable the trainees to manage the

interaction more efficiently. As a resultthe objectives of the interaction (eg adiscussion, a presentation, aproject) willbe reached more effectively. This meansthat, for trainees, becoming more aware ofboth themselves and those they interactwith, apart from being an enrichingexperience in itself, can also lead toacademic benefits.

On the other hand, trainees who do notpossess the awareness I've described herewill not tend to reflect upon the nature oftheir interaction with others. Forexample, they will be more likely to emergefrom an unrewarding interactive sessionwith negative feelings which they will notevaluate critically and which will not

contribute in any way to improving anyfuture interaction they are involved in.For such trainees, interaction cannot befully effective and as a result they willnot realise the full benefits of

participant-centred courses. For example,they will remain underdeveloped in terms oftheir ability to work with others, theirawareness of the interpersonal dimension oflearning, and their own self-awareness.These are all important aspects of thelearning experience participant-centredstudy aims to promote.

Now that I've had the time to reflect on myPG studies, my own experience will serve to

illustrate how the kind of awareness I'vejust described is vital in enablingtrainees to get the most out ofparticipant-centred courses. During the

We feel that in your haste to reply, youmust have overlooked some pertinent factsconcerning our article.

We do not represent the hardened face ofteaching practice policy. Our paperencompasses the realm of our experiencewith our trainee 'colleagues'. Sometimesthough they fail to accept responsibilityfor a lesson - over which they have control

when it goes wrong. To follow theanalogy: if the trainee driver drives thewrong way up a one-way street after beingadvised not to, the trainer driver mightneed to take evasive action.

Just for a moment, Mr Tendler, put yourselfin the position of the trainer driver. If

the trainee disagrees with your advicewhile 'delivering him from evil' what doyou do? We as trainees sometimes have toface that situation. We have - as you willsee from our article provided thetrainees with many routes by which they cancome to an honest appraisal of a bad orweak lesson.

After all, why blame the trainer or thelearners when occasionally the teacher isto blame? We encourage our trainees to behonest about their performance throughself-evaluation. We don't tell them theirwork is 'lousy' when they've taught a goodclass. No, Mr Tendler, our system is

trainee-centred and trainee-friendly so wecan 'maximise their prior knowledge withthe development of new skills'. (p. 32).

We having successfully come through thesystem - are in a position to act on thekind of concerns you do rightly refer to.Perhaps a course like ours would offer youthe time and freedom to fulfil yourcommitment.

Yours sincerely

Simon Hamilton, Gosia BarkerLecturers in EFL/TEFLUniversity of Limerick

CORRECTION

Re: 'Training around the world: Hungary'in vol. 6/3.This article was attributed solely toAngi Malderes. Angi has written to saythat her 'team-mate/right arm', CAROLINEBODACSKY. was co-author.

THE TEACHER TRAINER. Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993 q-7




The journal is for a specialist audienceand so circulation figures will beconsiderably lower than for more generalteaching magazines. The costs of producinga journal do not, however, sink appreciablyjust because the circulation is small. Wehave, therefore, settled on the figureabove ...


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first month or two of the course I was moreor less absorbed in the academic side ofthings. I was finding it difficult to workin groups with people who I seemed to havelittle in common with. People seemed tofind it difficult to be at ease with metoo. I was-also aware that I didn't likesharing my work with others. The qualityof my interaction with others on the coursewas not so good. At one point a group ofus happened to start chatting about thefirst impressions we had had of each other.

I found out that most people's firstimpression of me was a negative one andthat with many people on the course thatfeeling had stuck. I'd never thought ofother people's view of me before but thatcomment made me think. I realised that upto that point I had been totally unaware ofthe importance of human relationships on acourse like ours. I had been too self-centred to think about the others on thecourse, about their perceptions, their

beliefs, their backgrounds and their

expectations. This lack of awareness on mypart was in fact the root of the problemsI had been encountering. My understandingof the importance of becoming more aware ofboth myself and others gradually allowed meto adjust my attitudes and this definitelyhelped me interact more effectively with mycolleagues. This allowed me to derivegreater benefits from the participant-centred approach our course was based on.In turn, this helped with the academic sideof the course too.

I was made aware of my unawareness quitefortuitously. However, we cannot assumethat all PG students will make the samechance discovery. If being aware of theirinteraction with each other can lead

trainees to a more effective participant-centred learning process, creating anddeveloping this awareness in trainees mustbecome a priority for those running thecourse. The creation of this awarenesswould need to occur towards the beginningof the course (eg possibly as part of Pre-Sessional work). At this stage traineescould be made aware that their interactionwith each other will have a strong bearingon their work during the course. Theycould then be introduced to the importance

of monitoring and reflecting upon theirinteraction in order to evaluate it and to

improve its effectiveness. Once this

preparatory awareness-raising stage has

been completed, the deeper development ofthis same awareness would then become theconcern of the rest of the course (we mustacknowledge that the kind of awareness I amdiscussing here can be created early on butcan only be developed over a period oftime). This development could be

facilitated, for example, by making"interaction effectiveness evaluation" anintegral part of the regular interactivetasks (eg discussions, shared assignments,projects, seminars) set for the trainees.

Reflecting on my experience, I have beenable to identify a number of issues which

may have an influential effect on theinteraction which trainees experience onparticipant-centred PG courses. These

issues, listed below, have arisen out of along developmental process which I have

been through, yet I would suggest thattrainees be given opportunities early onduring their courses to at least become

aware of such questions and of their

relevance to the trainees' PG work. At

this awareness-raising stage, trainees neednot be required to answer such questionsopenly (it is likely that they will find itdifficult to do so honestly at such anearly stage), but it is important that they

. have time to think about the role of

interaction on their course and the factors

which can affect it. It is only on thebasis of this awareness that throughout the

course trainees can develop a deeper

understanding of their own interacti: with

each other. And as I have argued

throughout here, trainees who do develop inthis manner will be able to get the mostout of the interactive work they willexperience during their studies. This will

enable them to reach learning outcomeswhich are more consonant with the kindwhich PG participant-centred courses try to

promote.

Understanding Interaction: Some Issues to

Consider- How do others perceive me?

What messages do I transmit to

others?What can I do to alter any

undesirable messages?How do I feel about sharing with

others? Why?Do I tend to group with certain kindsof people? Which kinds? Why?

Do I tend to avoid certain types ofpeople? Which? Why?How do my relationships with othersaffect my work?What do I have in common with others?How can these similarities assist myrelationships with others?In what ways am I different fromothers? What effect can thesedifferences have on others? If these

effects are undesirable, how can I

change them?How do others feel about certain

topics (eg relationships, religion,social issues)? What bearing do

THE TEACHER TRAINER. Vol.7. No.3 AUTUMN 1993 RR Page 7

TASKS FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS cont'd

these feelings have onrelationship with them?

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Margit Szesztay for encouragingme to think about the interpersonaldimension of PG study, and to Rod Bolithoand Tony Wright for their comments on anearlier draft of this paper.

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Page 8 89

VIDEO, FEAR AND

LOATHING:SELF-VIEWING INTEACHER TRAININGRichard Cooper

latrodactioaVideo can be detrimental to observation asa part of in-service teacher development ora teacher training program. Not only canvideo weaken the observee' s confidence inthe observer or the trainee's confidence inthe trainer, it can powerfully disturb theobservee/trainee's confidence in him orherself. The camerafollows the developingteacher into the middle of their class andway of being. Later the television replaypillories them, a pillory because of theineluctability of events when displayed onthe screen. Why inflict this unpleasantnessupon trainees, colleagues, friends? Whatgood over less harsh observation tech-niques can video possibly offer to make itworth the while?

This article aims to deconstruct the possi-ble misadventure of video in teacher devel-opment sessions. I want to show thatvideo's pitfalls are not unavoidable. Videorequires reflection about its consequencesbefore squeezing the play-trigger. Later Iwill suggest discuss ways video camera-work can fruitfully improve observationand teacher training sessions. Finally, Iwill present some video activities for theobserver.orteacher trainer.

Video as consentless stripteaseIn the framework of teaching practice ses-sions, the motivations behind the use ofthe camera are no doubt innocent enough:video the trainees , then playback the videoand correct the trainees' errors in theirpresence in order to guide the trainees tocorrect themselves. With video luridly real,trainees certainly discover error by thegross. Errors in freezeframe rewound andreviewed become a tattoo needleworktaken from Kafka' s penal colony: hereclass and self mismanagement are stainedin photon technicolor into the skin of theafflictedeacher.

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993

Teacher trainer, camera operator, masterof ceremonies, you underestimate the dis-comforta sudden bath of video can be. Inyour own training you have acquired basicobservation skills such as the use of openquestions, the qualities of a good listener,the need to develop the trainee to self eval-uate. But through the sideshow of video,those decent humanistic techniques of ob-servation can be thrown to the wind.

The first shock is in seeing and hearingyourself on video. The film publicly un-dresses your behavior in every detail. Thevoice turns tinny, the body language pre-posterous, to say nothing of the amokteacher style. The most well-seasonedteacher is liable to draw these less than en-couraging observations from the initialcontact of their video selves. Is it surpris-ing then that trainees on teacher trainingcourses, confronted matter-of-factly withthe stark video witness of their being,often find such viewing deconstructive?Video is more than just another ritualizedtraining ordeal. It can easily hurt people.

Seeing yourself in action may appear badenough. But that's not all. Video turnsagainst you again when the trainer uses thevideo to mark your teaching. Video eval-uation from one whose privacy behind thelens is secure is salt to the wound.Nonetheless perhaps the observee/traineetakes it all, the sociopolitical needs of themoment outweighing the personal discom-fort. Eventuallythe group will move on tosomething else. "But please, no morevideo. Who could blame anyone for that?

What is it about the television screen thatwields so much power? It isn't the filmingitself. During a session the camera perchedon a shoulder or tripod is perhaps at firstunsettling. But it is no more threateningthan the human being behind it and thoseothers in the "audience ". The camera, inshort, is just another viewer in one's field

of vision, perhaps even less troubling thana human being because cameras don tcough, have discomfiting body languageor doze off.

The disturbance comes later, on thescreen. To appreciate video's conse-quences, consider a different and generallyfamiliar recording medium in languageteaching, the audio tape. An audio tapeplayback of my voice invariably presents adifferenttimbre from the one I know. Thetape doesn't record my voice resonating inmy jaw. This is how I normallyexperiencemy voice, through the soundbox of myown flesh. The recording may remind meof radio or other professional recordings,though the suggestion doesn't sustain anyparticular genre comparison. Instructiveand probing as the experience may be, itsintrusion upon my private self remains inthe realm of my relationship with my ownvoice.

Video playback however is different.Suddenly, my tinny voice has a body, mybody, that cavorts on TV. Compared to thediscovery of self through audio tape,videotape represents the New World.Consider the medium in the wild.Television is simultaneously film, news,documentary, games, sports, advertising,and so on. Television is a meticulousselector of what it shows. As rarely asparthenogenesis does television ever airanything which is not minutely and strate-gically composed for broadcast. Life is totelevision what Jackson Pollack' s actionpainting is to mosaic from antiquity:whereas the former' s thrown paint can beread as meaningful, for the latter everypoised stone we see is meant to be exactlythere. Even the realest or least processedpart of television, the news, is edit-filteredevery day into neat fixed-time composures.

Most readers of this article have lived vir-tually their entire lives with almost daily

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993 ion Page 9

VIDEO, FEAR AND LOATHING:

SELF - VIEWING IN TEACHER TRAINING cont'd

consumption of some sort of television. Asix-year old child can discern in a secondwhat is on television, whether it is news, agame, an ad. And now my rawly uneditedself trying to teach a class appears on thesame television-window stage as the thou-sands of characters and soundtracks andthe millions of shots I have seen in theformation of my television literacy. Notonly do I see myself at odds with the self Ithought I was, I also look like bad televi-sion.

Nonetheless, video is not inherently piti-less. If video is to develop confidence andcompetence in the trainee, the trainee willneed time to make its acquaintance. We gagdiscover our ordinary, everyday selveswithouttelevisionanxiety. We are not for-ever blocked at the entrance to the televi-sion screen by the images of VictoriaAbril, Saddam Hussein, our local news-reader, the wheel of fortune, a jeans ad,the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau,and so on. We merely sidestep those gen-res toward another newer, emerging one.

Video self- viewingDuring the 80s, the video camera orcamera recorder if it contains the videotapeand can be battery-powered surged intothe accessories market, joining the ranks oftelevision, stereo, washing machine, andthe like. Its sales continue to nearly doubleevery year. Soon home-video watchingwill be as commonplace as looking at thestill photographs from last summer's vaca-tion. But despite being a moving picture,home video is not compelled to beHollywood or network or anything in par-ticular. You might say that home video ismade by the family, of the family, and forthe family (or read "user" for "family "). Itcreates its own rules. People laugh at theimages, laugh at themselves, laugh at thecamerawork as well as the subjects, andwatch them over and over again. An en-tirely new genre of video is born.

Home users of video get to know them-selves and feel okay about themselves onvideo. Showing such productions can ex-tend beyond the nuclear family, just likehome still photography. And like homestills, filming has spawned camera

recorder magazines, accessories, and thedevelopment of a home-movie craft art.Owners of camera recorders want to bebetter at their art, whatever that happens tobe. If personal discomfort for the subjectsof home videos when shown on the hometelevision were the norm, it would be diffi-cult to reconcile that with the steady phe-nomenal sales of camera recorders andparaphernalia.

Home-video camerawork instinctivelystarts with experimentation. First films are,as film, notoriously bad. The camerapoints anywhere or at nothing at all, joltsin nervous unschooled hands, is uninten-tionally left on, is voiced-over unwittinglyby the camera operator, is shot out of fo-cus, is cut off prematurely, makes youseasick from all the camera movement, andso on. And yet all this potpourri is viewedin relaxed good humor and exchange. Andviewers and filmers learn.

Classroom video-viewing often neglectsthis warm-up phase, this family sense, thisgetting-to-know-it period. his as if camer-awork should join the language teacher'sstock-in-trade with no introduction, to be-come part of the tried and true landscape ofteaching devices like the overhead projec-tor, the white or blackboard, the handoutto be exploited in that self-evident way."The television image should speak for it-self. " Oh, it sure does. Right into the faceof the course and its participants.

Video - filming in the classroom could becalled "autoscopy" (looking at oneself).Like roleplay, debate, and other discourseevents that go beyond spontaneous con-versation, autoscopy is a process and ameans that require preparation. Autoscopybegins with the trainee learning to see himor herself on the screen without anxiety.This aim requires specific effort on the partof the trainer. Trainees, for example, notjust the trainer or group leader, handle thecamera recorder. The roles of viewer andfilmer thus become interchangeable. Andtraineesneed a chance to make short filmsbefore embarking on longer ones, such asa class observation.

Above all, the group need time to get toknow their video selves, through makingvideo productions with each other andtalking aboutthem. In this way humanisticvalues in classroom observation can inte-grate with video. By the time the traineegets around to watching longer videos oftheir teaching, there is less shock of

1 ri 1 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993

teacher self and television, together for thefirst time. The trainee has already madetheir television acquaintance, and it hasbeen fun. Video thus becomes an uncom-plicated tool, a classroom accessory. Itsdiscoveries are manageable, even interest-

ing.

Some autoscopy activitiesThere are two sorts of activities presentedhere: those activities which imply the liveuse only of the camera's imagemaking,and those activities where filming occurs,with a time set aside to review this filmlater. The first type may strike one at firstas odd: what is the point of video if youare not filming? But these video-less ac-tivities lead us with less stress and greaterpersonal comfort toward the process ofusing this image of ourselves. The secondtype of activity suggests there are differentways of using the camera than pressing thetrigger and shooting, and different ways ofviewing than pressing the remote controland watching .

(The following set of exercises is not ex-haustive. Teams who use this article willcontribute ideas of their own. )

ACTIVITY 1: The camera recorderas 'mirror'

TIME5-10 minutes (per trainee)

WHAT TO DO1 Organize the group so that they are sit-ting in a circle, the television situated aspart of the circle. Plug the cameradirectlyinto the television so that the image seen inthe camera is shown on the television. Setthe camera on top of or next to the moni-tor, ie the TV. Do not record, don't eveninsert film simply turn the camera andtelevision on. The image on the screen iswhat the camera " sees" .

2 Ask a trainee to volunteer to talk abouttheir family. Get a head-and-shouldersclose-up of the trainee (remember, you arenot recording). The trainee uses the televi-sion image of him or herself as a visualaid. The effect of the camera resting on topof or near the television is that the traineehas the impression of making eye contactwith their image on the television. Thespeaker compares herself with people in

the family. For example, "My hair is longand brown, but my mother's is shorter andmostly gray ..." "These are my father'scheekbones."

3 All participants have a go. Trainees canask the speaker any question they want toask. Urge the speaker to maintain eyecontact with their screen self. Questionstoo are also directed to the screen persona.When another person has a go, someonesimply adjusts the camera a little bit.

CommentThe title of this activity is an intentionalmisnomer. Video is by no means a mirror.Whereas one's mirror-self is well known,seen and referred to countless times a day,for many participants the video self isbrand new. A couple of quick activitieseasily demonstrate this novel self. Whilelooking at the screen, ask a trainee to runtheir hands through their hair. This usuallymirror-friendly task requires considerableconcentration to do. Ask a trainee toscratch under their left eye. Theseactivitiesrevealthe back-to-front video self as com-pared to the everyday mirror.The absence of recording helps the

trainee to adjust to their video self. Talkingto one's video self and sharing personal in-formation with the group establish posi-tive, personalized video feedback associa-tions. And this sort of discussion definitelybreaks away from the schoolmasterstereotype of video feedback.

AcknowledgementThis activity in a slightly different formappears in Cooper, Lavery, andRinvolucri , Video, Oxford UniversityPress, 1991.

ACTIVITY 2: The monster insideus

TIME5-10 minutes per trainee, up to 8 traineesin a single session

PREPARATIONCameraset-up as in the previous exercise.If the monitor is fixed on a high trolley, setthe camera on a tripod to one side of themonitor. If the monitor is fixed on thewall, you will need to adapt the exercisesomewhat. You also need a packet of peel-able stickylab els.

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993 102, Page 11

VIDEO, FEAR AND LOATHING:

SELF - VIEWING IN TEACHER TRAINING cont'd

WHAT TO DO1 Lead into the exercise by talking aboutvoices you sometimes hear in your mindThese are the voices which sometimes in-terfere with your presentations or partici-pation in discussions. They whisperdoubts, fears, anxieties. Call them "yourmonster". For each person the monster isdifferent. Now ask the trainees to draw apicture of their monster. Have them draw iton a sticky label.2 Turn the camera and monitor on. Thecameraarrangementis as in The Camerarecorder as "mirror". Do not record.Tell the trainees that you are going to letthe other trainees interview their monsters.Position the camera in close-up on one of s

the trainees, one who has volunteered tobegin. Ask the trainee to give you theirdrawing of the monster and stick it on thescreen over one shoulder. Allow thetrainee to look at themself and introducetheir monsterto the other trainees.3 When the introduction is over, the othertrainees ask this monster questions.Discussion and eye-contact are directed tothe video self of the trainee currently doingthe activity. The trainee who drew themonster speaks for the monster. Themonster explains the effect it has on thetrainee, the sort of tactics it uses, its fa-vorite moments to strike, and so on. Letthe interview take the time it takes. Butkeep the exercise moving. Go to anothertrainee as soon as appropriate.4 When everyone has finished, do a feed-back. This feedback should include notonly discussion about the various monstersintroduced to the group, but the impact ofthe video an the activity.

CommentThe trainees share their particular discom-forts when talking before a group. Thisexchange in itself is useful. The exercisealso undertakes to develop a dialogue be-tween the trainee and their video image.The feedback here will be invaluable be-fore moving on to other autoscopy activi-ties.

AcknowledgementI owe the germ of the "monomer" idea toKevinBatchelor.

ACTIVITY 3: Audio magic moment

TIME10 -15 minutes

WHAT TO DO1 Video a trainee in class giving a lesson.2 During the feedback session turn themonitor away from the trainees so that noone can see the screen. Fast forward, thenstop somewhere, anywhere, in the lesson.From this point play a short excerpt of thevideo. Several seconds is enough. Fromtheaudioinformationalone, can thetraineecorrectly identifythis point in the lesson?And can they speak about what they re-member was happening in the lesson atthis point? They should talk about the dy-namic of the group, and their own behav-ior at that time. The important thing is: bespecific. You might ask them to draw asimple map of how the group includingthemself were deployed at this moment.3 Ask the other trainees to comment here,too. Compare what they remember withwhat the trainee who was filmed remem-bers. Comments should be literal (ie, whathappened), notcritical.4 Turn the television around so that every-one can see the screen and play the ex-cerpt. Discuss the differences between theobservations made before seeing the videoand what was actually seen. Repeat the ac-tivity a couple more times per trainee.

CommentBy using the video in this way first tostimulate trainees to reconstruct episodes inlessons and then to check the reconstruc-tions, the video becomes a tool the trainee,not simply a sudden reminder of a recentexperience. This activity gets away fromputting a tape in and watching it from A toZ.

Give the trainees control of the VCR assoon as possible. It is important to breakthat other stereotype: that only trainersmanipulatethevideo. Video is the produc-tion of everyone in the group.

ConclusionI have attempted to demonstrate in this ar-ticle that video does not have to be painfulCallous use of video is simply bad peda-gogy, however well-intentioned the aims.Video could be useful and fun. Also,sensitive, effective use of autoscopy on ateacher training course may well transfer to

Page 12 103 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993

its sensitive, effective use by trainees intheir own language classrooms.Autoscopy's ancestry is not in broadcasttelevision but in the home movie.Humanistic techniques in observation willbe most effective in this warmer, home-spun context.

Ingrid Bergman' s walking away fromBogart in Casablancameans plenty on thenarrative level. She chooses her husbandover her lover, chooses sacrifice to the wareffort over her prewar romance, and so on.But her famous movie-ending disappear-ance into the mist also means the movie-shooting is over, time for the actors andcrew to pack up and go home. Autoscopydoes not have a narrative level separatefrom the real. Trainees in observation areconfronted with themselves, starkly with-out any studio-made mist. Trainees con-front their perceptions of themselves. If wecan confront ourselves with answer-phones, mirrors, photographs, why notvideo? Why not, as long as video is notused crudely. Inspector, Bogart says, thiscould be the beginning of a long friend-ship.

JOURNAL EXCHANGESThe Teacher Trainer has arranged journalexchanges with:

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Brazil)ELT Journal (OUP, UK)English Teachers' Journal (Ministry of

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RELC Journal (Singapore)TESOL Newsletter (USA)University of Hawai'i Working Papers inESL (USA)

and is abstracted by: Language Teaching,The British Education Index, ERIC, andContents Pages in Education.

FINDING THE CENTRE

by Alan Maley

I want to take up the central question for

Teacher Training: 'What makes a good

teacher?' The question can be

alternatively phrased as 'What makes forsuccessful teaching?' or 'What makes forsuccessful learning?'

It is central for Teacher. Trainers because,

presumably, our answer(s) to it will

determine and shape what goes into TeacherTraining programmes. If we believe thatfactors X, Y and Z are what make for a goodteacher, then we will train our teachers inX, Y and Z (and not in A, B or C).

Working back from many existing TeacherTraining programmes, I deduce that we

attach major importance to Knowledgefactors and to Skills factors.

The Knowledge component of such coursestypically includes items such as:

-the syntactic, phonological and semanticsystems of Englishtheories of language acquisitionthe psychology of learning

-principles of syllabus design etc.

In other words it covers what we are

thought to need to know about the languageand about systems for teaching it: the

what.

The Skills component often includes itemssuch as:

-lesson planningrecord keepingpresentation techniquesmaterials preparation and evaluationtesting techniques

-classroom management skills etc.

That is, all the practical things teachersneed to know in order to teach: the how.

I would like to suggest that, by

concentrating on these two sets of factors,our programmes leave out of account, or at

the very least seriously under-value,

something which is arguably even more

important. My difficulty is in definingmore precisely what this 'something' is.

We can think of the Teacher Training

process as a triangle:

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993 1(1A_Page 13

FINDING THE CENTRE cont'd

Skills

Knowledge

Atmosphere/Attitudes/Authenticity

I have labelled the third corner of thetriangle with the overlapping compound ofthe three A's: 'atmosphere', 'attitudes',and 'authenticity'.

We can all recognise a good atmosphere whenwe encounter it in a classroom, and most ofus can readily recall specific instances ofsuch classroom atmospheres from our ownpast as learners. Likewise we quickly pickup on the underlying as well as the overtattitudinal stance of a teacher: whethers/he actually likes the students, feelsconfident in the role of teacher, is happydoing this job rather than another, is

'open' or 'closed' and so on. We rapidlysense too whether a teacher is authentic,in the sense of being him/herself as a realperson with genuine interests andcharacteristics, rather than someone simplyacting out a role or going through themotions (however technically proficient).

My problem lies in defining just what makesup these qualities. Traditionally we havenot felt such attributes were amenable totraining, preferring instead to relegatethem to the realm of folk wisdom - 'the

born teacher', 'having the right knack','having a natural talent for teaching' etc.Yet I would argue that, if we cannot doanything to develop these qualities, we runthe risk of ignoring the very set offactors which in many cases makes thedecisive difference between a class in

which learning takes place and one in whichit does not. I am not suggesting for onemoment that Knowledge and Skills areunimportant: they are essential. But theyare not sufficient alone to bring aboutsuccessful learning. For us to consignsuch key factors to the vague area of folkwisdom is an abdication of ourresponsibility as trainers. If we believethat teachers can be trained, then toexclude this whole critical area from ourattention, on the grounds that it is tooinsubstantial to be grasped, is simply ie.a cop out.

In order to begin to focus on what may beinvolved, it is perhaps helpful to divide

nt

0

Yes, I THINK YOU Cou LD sAY"THAT MRS. PHILPoTr HAS FOUND

HER CENTRE.

what I have called The Pre-Conditions ofTeaching from the Conditions of Teaching:-

Pre-Conditions

PhysicalPsychologicalMaterial

Conditions

KnowledgeSkills

In the rest of this article I shallconcentrate on the Physical andPsychological Pre-Conditions. (Materialpre-conditions relate to the physicalsocio-economic environment in which theteaching takes place. They are notstrictly relevant to the discussion here.Readers may be interested however in aforthcoming book dealing with this area:NO RESOURCES by Jill and Charles Hadfield,OUP).

I will attempt to anatomise them in orderto make them amenable to incorporation intoa programme of training (or development).

Physical Pre-Conditions:

Undoubtedly, a significant part of theeffect teachers have derives from theirphysical presence. Our body and what we dowith it is our prime teaching resource.And, because it is observable, we canrelatively easily both raise trainees'awareness of physical factors and trainthem to make the best of them.

Page 14 1 05 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993

The main physical components are: posture,breathing, voice, gesture/expression,dress/appearance. Of these the inter-related trio of posture/breathing/voice arein my view both the most important and themost amenable to training. And I wouldstrongly contend that some sort of'physical' training (not in the sense ofphysical jerks!) should form an integralpart of training programmes. (See below).

Psychological Pre-Conditions

These are more difficult to define. They

can be regarded both as preventiveprotection against negative factors such asexcessive stress and as a positive basisfor further development.

Teachers are not unique in being subject tohigh levels of job related stress, whichsaps their effectiveness, but they must be

among those most open to occupational

stress. Among other things, they tend todevelop high levels of guilt about notdoing more for their learners, they feelinsecurity about peer-comparison and

criticism from students and anxiety

connected with self-esteem. If they are toperform effectively overlong periods, theyneed to develop the ability to distancethemselves from such pre-occupations to

find a calm and balanced centre.

The same is true if they are to sustain aninterest in their professional life and tocontinue to develop both as individuals andas professionals.

The problem for trainers is precisely howto train/develop this 'centring' process sothat trainees can operate with 'effortlesseffort'. The way a seagull uses the aircurrents to achieve apparently effortless,graceful movement; the way a skilledcarpenter enters into the grain of the woodand uses it for his purposes; the way acook makes a perfect souffle. We can

recognise this harmony between forces,

where we cannot 'tell the dancer from thedance' - but to produce it is more

problematical. But I would argue againthat we need to make the effort to provideto some formal training in this area too.

Making a Start

The kind of content and process I have

suggested below is in no sense a courseoutline; merely a set of possible ideas toget started.

I would propose three basic types of

activity: awareness-raising, training in

specific techniques, further reading as

access to knowledge.

1. Physical Pre-Conditions:

a) Awareness-raising:

i) group discussion based on keyquestions relating to posture,breath and voice.eg. - What happens to yourvoice whenangry?/tired? etc.

Brainstorm allwhich make up

etc).

you a re

the factorsyour voice

ii) Peer/Self observation in class

focused on physical features only.eg. How much did you move about?How much eye-contact did you have

with all students?

iii) Reflection based on videoed lessonsequences.eg. - List three things you like

about her voice.- Did she have any distracting

physical habits/tics?

b)

i)

Training in Techniques:

Training in becoming aware of the'feel' of the body and its parts.

ii) Relaxation exercises. These come inmany shapes and sizes. Thoseincluded in Dufeu (forthcoming) aresimple and practical.

iii) Some basic yoga positions/movements(asanas) to improve posture. (NB.

Yoga should not be undertakenwithout professional supervision).

iv) Some basic yoga breathing exercisesto improve breath control and calmemotions such as anger or anxiety.

v) Alexander Technique exercises to

improve posture/suppleness. (Park

1989).

vi) Basic theatre training techniquesfor time and movement.

vii) Voice training exercises such asthose advocated in Rodenburg 1992.

c) Reading:

Stevens 1987, Rodenburg 1992, Feldenkrais1980 (see references).

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993 1 OAPage 15

FINDING THE CENTRE conrd

2. Psychological Pre-Conditions:

a) Awareness raising:i) Group recollection and reflection

about past teachers/learningexperiences and the way they haveinfluenced trainees ways of thinkingabout teachers and teaching. (Thishas been thoroughly developed byEphraim Weintroub in his 'GhostsBehind the Blackboard' sessions withtrainees in Israel). [seeWeintroub's article in this issue.]

ii) Group discussion of selections fromkey texts such as Gallwey's 'The

Inner Game of Tennis', Hoff's 'TheTao of Poo' etc.

iii) The use of paradoxicalstories/fables especially from theTaoist, Zen and Sufi traditions.eg. - 'Nasruddin was searching onthe ground for a key he had lost.A passer-by asked him, 'Where didyou drop it?''In my house,' said Nasruddin.'Then why look for it here?''There is more light here than in myhouse,' replied Nasruddin.'-What does this suggest with regardto teaching?

iv Group brainstorming of causes forstress/anxiety: decisions on whichcan be changed and which cannot.

b) Training techniques:i) Quiet half hour at the beginning/end

of each day to plan/reflect on theday.

ii) Trainee diaries of inner feelings,reactions to the course, eventsconnected with students etc.

iii) Basic training in Neuro-linguisticprogramming techniques to facilitateimproved observation of learners.(O'Connor and Seymour 1990).

iv Introduction to techniques ofmeditation (Le Shan 1989).

c) Reading:Le Shan 1989, O'Connor and Seymour 1990,Watts 1979, Gallwey 1974, Reason 1988,Schon 1991, Heron 1992, Cleary 1991, Reps

1971, Shah 1985, Hoff 1983.

Conclusion

I have tried to suggest that, if we areserious about Teacher Training, we would dowell to expand the range of our programmesto include what has hitherto not beenconsidered amenable to training, namelythose factors which go to make upa t o s ph e re , 'attitude' and

'authenticity'. My practical suggestionsare tentative and incomplete. I shallwelcome letters from those interested inexploring these factors further.

References

Physical Pre-Conditions:

Dufeu, Bernard 1993 Teaching Myself (OUPforthcoming) [see also vol, 7/1, p. 39 reDufeu 1992].

- Feldenkrais, Moshe 1980 Awareness ThroughMovement (Penguin)

- Park, Glen 1989 The Art of Changing(Ashgrove Press, Bath)

-Rodenburg, Patsy 1992 The Pight To Speak(Methuen p'backs)

- Stevens, Chris 1987 Alexander Technique(Optima)

Psychological Pre-Conditions:

- Cleary, Thomas 1991 The Essential Tao(Harper. San Francisco)

-Gallwey, Timothy 1974 The Inner Game ofTennis (Pan Books)

Heron, John 1992 Feeling and Personhood(Sage Pubs.)

Hoff, Benjamin 1983 The Tao of Poo(Penguin)

- Le Shan 1989 How to Meditate (TurnstOnePress UK)

- O'Connor, Joseph and Seymour, John 1990Introducing Neuro-Linguistic Programming(Mandala - Harper - Collins)

- Reason, Peter 1988 Human Inquiry in Action(Sage Pubs.)

- Reps, Paul 1971 Zen Flesh, -Zen Bones(Penguin)

Schiin, Donald, A 1991 The ReflectivePractitioner (Avebury)

Shah, Idries 1985 Learning How to Learn(Penguin)

Watts, Alan 1979 The Tao - The WatercourseWay (Penguin)

Page 16 107, THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993

REFLECTION AND FEEDBACK ON A PGCE COURSEGary N Chambers (University of Leeds)

Teacher trainers strive to produce the

"reflective practitioner"(1). Theyencourage trainees to evaluate theirperformance, positive and less positiveaspects alike, and to seek to improve inthe light of this evaluation. This in turndemands that teacher trainers reflect ontheir performance, in all its facets.

1. Trainee reflectionSome trainees do not feel comfortable withreflection. Many find it difficult toidentify their strengths and areas to whichthey need to give attention. It is

something they have never before been

forced to consider. Some grasp at thedefence-mechanism of being hypercritical ofthemselves in the certainty that the tutorwill redress the balance with almost

exclusive focus on the positive. Some

genuinely have low self-esteem. A veryfew, in my experience, tend towards

inflated self-assessment.

To encourage reflection amongst traineeteachers of German on the PGCE(2) course,to access their views and to gain thenecessary insights to allow me to evaluatemy own performance as trainer, I ran apilot in "profiling".

2. My brand of "profiling"Trainees keep a weekly log of all German-related activities and answer at intervalsopen-ended questions in a "profile

document". Here are some examples:What strengths do you feel you bring tothe course of training?

-Which areas do you feel you will need towork on?How do you feel you have performed to datea) in trainer input and activity sessionsand b) in school?

-To what extent do you feel you have metthe targets you set at the last meeting?What are your targets for the next term?Do you feel that the trainer input andactivity sessions meet your needs?How could these sessions be improved?I meet each trainee for 20-30 minutes every5-6 weeks to discuss her/his responses.

3. Trainee reactionSpace does not allow a detailed analysis of

the profiling exercise. Post-pilot

evaluation of the process reveals that the

considerable investment of time and effort

at each phase, provides a rich return for

both trainees and for me. Typical comments

from trainees include:

'It's nice to know that somebody is

interested.""The one-to-one meetings are a time whenthe tutor listens to the trainee-teacher.""Even if I eon't fill in every section ofthe profile document, at least it gets methinking.""Having been forced to think about thingsI wouldn't otherwise have done and talkabout them, I feel that I have grown inconfidence."

4. Outcomes for the traineesTrainees feel better able to articulatetheir views on performance in the light ofreflecting on questions in the profilingdocument. They do not wait nervously forme to pass judgement on them, for better orfor worse. They are aware that their viewis of value. It is central to the

discussion and to the learning process.They mature as "reflectors" and the

concomitant growth in confidence leads toenhancement of performance in the

classroom.

In their feedback on profiling, traineesrevealed that being "forced" to think andtalk about strengths and weaknesses, havingto set meaningful, achievable targets andreview them at regular intervals, all hada very positive influence on the quality oftheir work.

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993 1 OR BEST COPY AVAILABLE Page 17

REFLECTION AND FEEDBACK

ON A PGCE COURSE cont'd

Regular one-to-one meetings with me alloweda relationship to develop much earlier thanhad been the case in the pre-profiling era.Trainees had the opportunity to expressviews and ask questions which they may nototherwise have done in a whole-groupsession or if they had been required totake the initiative to set up a meeting.They could express needs and seek guidanceon how to meet them. They had a means ofshaping the course and influencing itscontent.

5. Trainer reflectionTrainers do not necessarily find reflectionany easier than trainees. As a teachertrainer I need to know i) whether I amproviding trainees with what they need; ii)how I can improve provision and iii)whether my support and supervision duringblocks of teaching practice in schools isappropriate. What if the messages I

receive are largely negative? Thenegatives, provided they are justified, canbe turned into positives, given that thetrainees are providing me with theinformation I need to improve things.

In the weekly log and profile documentstrainees provided much of the informationI felt I needed and yielded some unexpectedinsights besides. Here are some examplesof information relating to a 5 week periodin the 3rd term.

6. Trainee responses to the ...6.1 Structure of PGCE courseTrainees are conscious that there is alimit to what can be covered in a 36 weekcourse. They made valuable suggestions asto how content could be rationalised tomake room for items worthy of a place onthe agenda.

They appealed for a reconsideration of thetimetable to better accommodate deadlinessuch as those for the submission of methodassignments.

Some trainees commented on the role of theweekly log and profile document as avehicle for them to give feedback about thecourse programme and structure. Traineesfelt they had a means of communicatingviews to me and via me to the course-coordinator and of influencing theprogramme and its structure.

Although not asked for, trainees providedinsights into their experience on non-German specific aspects of the course, suchas their second subject or "Educational and

Professional Studies." They commented onthe quality and nature of the input andactivities. Importantly they identifiedareas of overlap in provision where savingsin time and effort could be made.

6.2 Inputs and activity sessionsTrainees appreciated the variety ofactivities, the opportunity to experimentand learn from the outcome.

They attached great value to sharingsuccesses and failures with tutor andfellow trainees in a supportive, non-threatening environment.

Trainees saw the benefit of conductingalmost all business in the target language(German). They were conscious of thedifficulties this presented for those whodid not have German as a first foreignlanguage(3) and suggested practical ways ofproviding support.

6.3 Written assignmentsTrainees commented not only on the natureand extent of assignments but also therange of choice, the quality of feedbackand in some cases the emotions felt at theprospect of tackling what sometimes seemeda daunting task.

6.4 Post-lesson discussionTrainees appreciated the motivatinginfluence of focusing largely on thepositive aspects of their teaching andsetting achievable and meaningful short-term targets, with a view to improving inareas needing attention.

In one case a trainee used the profile toinform me of difficult domesticcircumstances. Her problems had beenaffecting her work rather seriously and shehad not felt able to talk about them.

The profile served as a means to explainand plea for help. This alone does muchto justify the profiling process for me.

7. Outcomes for meProfiling brought similar benefits to me asto the trainees:

-the rapid establishment of a meaningfulrelationship with each student

-the opportunity to discuss views withindividuals which may have beeninappropriate in plenary

-the opportunity to access individual needsand provide for them

-the confidence that what I was providingwas what the trainees needed and in a formwhich they appreciated and enjoyed

-the knowledge that if my provision was notappropriate, trainees had a means oftelling me so.

Page 18 1 0 q THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993

I have been provided with the informationnecessary to shape the remainder of thecurrent course and of future courses,

insofar as Department of Education edictsallow. Profiling exposes problems whichmay otherwise have remained uncovered. It

gives access to a range of possible

solutions.

Trainers cannot please all trainees all ofthe time, but they can get closer to theideal in the light of feedback.

Differentiation by need becomes a

possibility.

Performance, regardless of the field ofactivity, can only be enhanced by

reflection. An integral part of reflectionis feedback. If my experience of profilingis anything to go by, you ask for an inchand you are given a mile. Like it or not,

whether the feedback hurts or not, it is

all useful stuff. It tells us about ourprogramme, our input, ourselves. Feedbacktells us about our trainees, their work andtheir lives beyond work. It can providereward in the short-term. Its benefit inthe long-term is beyond doubt.

I feel that my pilot exercise has been asuccess. It has been demanding not leastin terms of investment of time but the pay-

off has been more than commensurate.

Changes in initial teacher education,however, could sound the death knell forprofiling in this form. As trainingbecomes more school-based and time spent attraining institutions is diminished, littlespace may remain for a process such as that

described above. Profiles are being

developed but appear to be competence-based, akin to box-ticking exercises andleave less room, it seems, for the

reflection which surround the competencesand contribute to a trainees developmenteither side of blocks of teaching

experience. Are we moving into an erawhere the value attached to the views oftrainee is to be diminished? Is less

effort to be made to access trainee-

feedback as part of an ongoing process?Let's hope not. This would surely lead toan impoverishment rather than enhancementof provision, to regression rather thanprogress.

NOTES AND REFERENCES1. See Sch8n, D.A. (1988) Educating the

Reflective Practitioner Jossey-Bass

Publishers, London2. Postgraduate Certificate in Education.One year full-time course in teacher-

training3. All trainees are required to have 2subjects. Some take German as second

method and another subject, not necessarilya language, as first method.

ProcessOption.s S ries :

Ideas 2 25READING MAZESDavid Spencer

WHAT ARE THEY?Reading mazes usually consist of situationsand options written on a set of cards. Thegroup discusses the situation on the firstcard, arrives at a group consensus on whichpath to take, depending on the optionsgiven to them on the card, and then moveson to the next card. Finally the groupwill come to an exit from the maze, ie. toa conclusion for the particular situation.

WHY USE READING MAZES IN TEACHER TRAINING?1. Mazes focus on the importance of

decision-making. Decision-making is a

central part of a teacher's job, in andoutside the classroom. Some of the

decisions a teacher makes can be made

outside the classroom in the form of alesson-plan. But, as we all know, a

lesson-plan is not the same as the lessonitself. What happens when the plan has tobe changed on the spur of the moment,

either because of unforeseen language

difficulties, lack of interest, or

classroom management/discipline problems,particularly common with younger learners?Anxieties as to what might happen in theclassroom are particularly strong for newor less-experienced teachers who must think

not only about, the classroom activitiesthemselves, but also about the techniquesthey will use to establish and executethem, since although this is routine to the

experienced teacher it may well requireconscious decision from the less-

experienced teacher/trainee. Conversely,consciously re-thinking old routines is ofgreat value to the more experienced teacherwho may have ceased to respond to

situations in a thoughtful, principled waybut acts automatically, without consideringother options.

2. Reading mazes are based on interactionbetween a situation and a group of people,and between individuals within the group.This means that the situation is

unpredictable and "alive". The conclusion

THE TEACHER TRAINER, V 01.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993 110 BEST COPY AVAILABLE Page19

READING MAZES cont'd

depends on the on-going decisions taken bythe group. This can be motivating as wellas being a more realistic way of looking atevents in the classroom, never a staticplace.

3. The fact that trainees work together onreading mazes provides variety within awhole input session, encouraging maximumparticipation. By sharing ideas andviewpoints, trainees can learn from eachother. Returning to Point 1 above, this isparticularly useful since classroomdecision making is normally such adifficult task precisely because it is asolitary activity.

4. For the reasons mentioned above, mazesare a powerful and stimulating way ofleading into more general discussions.

5. Lastly, mazes are a useful type oflanguage practice activity for students,providing oral and reading practice. Apartfrom the methodological content of themaze, this practice element can be of greatuse to non-native trainees. All traineesare being exposed to an activity type whichthey can adapt and use with their ownstudents. (See Woodward 1991 for the useof reading mazes as the basis for loop-input sessions).

PROCEDUREEach group (3 to 5 participants) has acomplete set of cards, face down, from 1 to14. One group member turns over Card 1,reads it aloud to the group, and the groupthen proceeds to discuss which step (ie.which card) to take next. It can be usefulto set a minimum time limit for eachdecision, to avoid trainees racing throughthe maze without considering the optionscarefully enough. If the trainees are nothappy with either of the options, ask themto write down the card number and whataction they would like to have taken, butthen choose the option on the card whichthey least dislike, in order to continuethrough the maze. When a group reaches theend, they reflect on the whole situation.They can also look at the other optionsthey had previously rejected.

Afterwards, whole group feedback can focuson various points of interest. Did all thegroups finish on the same card? Why/not?Where were people dissatisfied with theoptions available and why? What overallpoints (eg. about classroom management,about discipline, or about decision-making

in general) can be made from the situation?

Finally, trainees can consider the activityfrom the point of view of a language-learner. The use of mazes for reading andoral practice can be discussed and examplesof language practice mazes can be shown(see Berer and Rinvolucri 1981; Farthing1981), or can even be made by trainees (seeWoodWard 1991).

NOTE:- With the maze below I point out thatthe same piece of material has been usedwith young language learners and that theyoung learners nearly always finish on Card13, a "harder" approach to classroommanagement, whereas trainees ofter finishon Card 14, the "softer" approach. Thisinevitably leads to further discussion.

REFERENCES- Berer, M and Rinvolucri, M: Mazes,Heinemann 1981- Farthing, J: Business Mazes, Hart-DavisInternational 1981- Woodward, T: Models and Metaphors in

Language Teacher Training, CUP 1991

EXAMPLE OF A TEACHER TRAINING MAZE

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT WITH ADOLESCENTS

CARD 1You are presenting a new structure to amonolingual group of fifteen twelve-yearolds on a Wednesday afternoon. The twomost talkative children are chattering intheir own language and laughing. Theyconsistently do this in your lessons.

What do you do?Continue your presentation, thinkingit is not worth stopping the classagain for the same two students.(CARD 2).Separate the two students. (CARD 3).

CARD 2You continue the presentation but thechatting soon spreads to two or three otherstudents.

What do you do?Decide to abandon the presentationand tell the students to do the

reading exercise in the text book andwrite out the answers. (CARD 4).Ask the original two students to

repeat what they are talking about tothe whole class. (CARD 3).


CARD 3One of the students looks very resentfuland says in a loud voice: "Why is Englishso boring?".

What do you do?Ignore the comment. (CARD 5).Tell the student to see you at theend of the class. (CARD 6).

CARD 4The whole class is now quite restless andunhappy since those who were payingattention before do not understand why theyshould have to do the reading exercise.

What do you do?Promise the students that if theyfinish the exercise quickly they canplay a game afterwards. (CARD 7).Remain serious, telling them to workindividually and to write theiranswers on paper, which you will takein later to correct. (CARD 8).

CARD 5The student simply continues chatting tohis/her neighbours as soon as you are notlooking at, or speaking directly to,

him/her.

What do you do?You send the student out of the

class. (CARD 9).Tell the student to come and see youat the end of the class. (CARD 6).

CARD 6At the end of the class the student staysto see you and so does a small group ofhis/her friends.

What do you do?Start to talk to the student with theother students around. (CARD 10).Tell the group of friends to go away.

(CARD 11).

CARD 7After the reading, you set up the game.You had spent an hour last night preparingthe activity which you expect to taketwenty minutes in the class and thestudents to enjoy. After four minutes youhear the uninspired cries of "Finished".This is not the first time that it hashappened.

What do you do?Tell them to do the activity again.(CARD 3).Start the presentation again, warningthem that if there is any chatteringthey will have to do some morewritten work instead. (CARD 12).

CARD 8When they have nearly all finished they aremuch quieter and seem to have calmed down.

What do you do?* Start the presentation again, warning

them that if there is any chatteringthey will have to do more writtenwork instead. (CARD 12).Decide to let them play a game thatyou have prepared, to compensate forthe last activity. (CARD 7).

CARD 9The student has gone out of the classroombut the door has a window in it and he/shekeeps making faces at the other studentsfrom time to time, which they find veryamusing.

What do you do?Decide it is easier to let thestudent back in since he/she is justa disruptive outside the class asinside. (CARD 13).Tell the student to see you at theend of the class. (CARD 6).

CARD 10The student's 'friends defend him/her,

saying that he/she didn't do anything andthat you, the teacher, can't take anyaction against the student.

What do you do?You are unsure what disciplinaryaction can normally be taken in your

school so you tell them all,

including the "difficult" student, togo, asking them to behave better nexttime. (CARD 13).You tell the group of friends to goaway. (CARD 11).

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993 112 Page 21

READING MAZES cont'd

CARD 11

You are not sure whether to take a "hard"or "soft" approach.

What do you do?Ask why the student finds Englishboring, what could you, the teacher,do to make it more interesting. (CARD14).

Tell the student that if his/herbehaviour does not improveimmediately you will take importantdisciplinary action. (CARD 13).

CARD 12

You start the presentation again and thesame student simply continues chatting tohis/her neighbours as soon as you are notlooking at, or speaking directly to,him/her.

What do you do?You send the student out of theclass. (CARD 9).Tell the student to come and see youat the end of the class. (CARD 6).

CARD 13You decide to find out about thedisciplinary system in your school. Lookback at the steps you have taken and

discuss how effective you think they havebeen.

How could some of these situations havebeen avoided in the first place?

What might you do next?.

CARD 14You decide to re -think your lesson-planningin response to some of the students'comments.

Look back at the steps you have taken anddiscuss how effective you think they havebeen.

How could some of these situations havebeen avoided in the first place?

What might you do next?

TEFL AUCTION Tony Penston

This idea follows the principle of loopinput(1) to a certain extent, ie. traineestake part in an activity and become awarethat they are doing what their studentswould be doing, with just a change in thesubject matter. The idea of the auctionitself is not new - most readers will befamiliar with Grammar Games(2), where it isused with grammar only. It can also beused with any suitable true-false materialyou find, or make yourself. Here I haveadapted it to suit a TEFL training course,somewhere in the second half, wheretrainees have had a reasonable amount ofboth theoretical and practical sessions toallow a broad mix of questions. This isnot a requirement, of course - a TEFLauction can be based purely on phonetics,for instance, and come at a time thoughtbest for class revision or even testing.

Procedure:There is no need to stray too far fromRinvolucri's(2) format; working in pairsseems to add enjoyment, but some peoplelike to work individually at least some ofthe time. Each pair has, say £500 and bidsfor the items which they think 'worthbuying' (minimum bid £5). Hand out theauction sheet to each pair. Better still,photocopy it or write the items onto an OHPtransparency to save future trips to thephotocopier. Tell the bidders that someitems are good, some worthless. Allow afew moments for reading and rough budgetingin notebooks. The idea is to simulate anauction, so having an item list anddeciding on what you will spend are true-to-life. That you may have to bid morethan you intended is also true-to-life, andthis is one of the entertaining parts ofthe activity.


Lead the first auction yourself. Trainees

can devise and run later auctions. Keep

bidding brisk so interest and learning

value are not reduced. Trainees should

keep a clear tally on their notebooks.

Contrary to Rinvolucri's suggestion I wouldnot comment on the value of the sold itemsuntil the auction is all over. One reason

for this is to avoid disappointment on thepart of those who may find they are buying

too many 'bum steers'. Another is to

comply with the simulation conditions - youdon't usually find out the Seiko isn't aSeiko until you get home.

After all the items have been sold, go downthrough the list item by item asking forcomments before revealing the true/false

value of each. Have references ready forthose who want to check up on a point, ie.

page numbers in grammar books, etc. The

winning pair is the one with the mostcorrect items and the most money left. Why

not try it yourself now? (Key at end of

article).

Auction Sheet

1. Chomsky was responsible for the notionof Communicative Competence.

BUDGET BOUGHT2. I have been talking is an example of the

present perfect continuous tense.BUDGET BOUGHT

3. There was friendship between she and 1is an example of hypercorrection.

BUDGET BOUGHT

4. The TOEFL test consists of multiplechoice questions and an oral.

BUDGET BOUGHT

5. Having had breakfast. This is an

example of a past tense.BUDGET BOUGHT

6. Looking up a number in the telephonedirectory is an example of skimming.

BUDGET BOUGHT7. The Council of Europe was instrumentalin launching the functional-notional

syllabus.BUDGET BOUGHT

8. The RP pronunciation for the letter 'h'

is /aIt/.BUDGET BOUGHT

9. The singular form, a dice is incorrect.

BUDGET BOUGHT

10. A jigsaw activity usually involves

group/pair work.BUDGET BOUGHT

11. Martin Shovel not only wrote MakingSense of Phrasal Verbs, he also drew thecartoons.

BUDGET BOUGHT12. There was a BLACK one, then a WHITE one

is an example of contrastive stress.BUDGET BOUGHT

13. CALL stands for Computers And Language

Learning.BUDGET BOUGHT

14. A quick shout from the teacher is the

best cure for a student who is being

disruptive.BUDGET BOUGHT

15. The audio-lingual method promoted theuse of the language laboratory.

BUDGET BOUGHT16. Kim's Game involves using coloured rodsto teach the red/blue one, prepositions,etc.

BUDGET BOUGHT

17. Suggestopedia advocates the use ofkinesthetic (tactile) as well as audio and

visual media.BUDGET BOUGHT

18. Simon/O'Grady Says is an example of aTotal Physical Response activity.

BUDGET BOUGHT

-References:1. Woodward,

MetaphorsTraining.

2. RinvolucriCUP 1984.

Tessa. Models and

in Language TeacherCUP 1991.

, Mario. Grammar Games.

Note:

A slightly different version of this

article appeared in NATEFLI Newsletter Vol

3/5:19.

Key to TEFL Auction:Items1,4,5,6,8,9,12,13,14,16,17areincorrect.

1 -u

717 A 11.1C0 %/,..1 I A/1711MM 10301 Page 23

THE 'GHOST INSTRUMENT'Ephraim Weintroub (Hebrew University of Jerusalem

A teacher sitting across the circle in thesmall group twisted awkwardly and thenjoined the debate for the first time. I

was relieved to hear her voice becauseothers had long since broken the barrier ofsilence. "I once had a teacher of Latinwhom I remember vividly," she beganhesitantly. "He was a wonderful teacher -so knowledgable, so strong .. er ... but..," she hesitated, "he terrified me." Shestopped as if in shame. We waited and heldour breath. Our silent support encouragedher.

"He was so cynical and so sarcastic, acruel hurting tongue. Any mistake wouldearn you a tongue lashing. On the onehand, I was terrified, but he also angered

.

me enough so that I forced myself to excel... to beat him at his game. I became hisbest pupil. For years, he used to say thathe had never had a pupil like me. And yethe terrified me and every lesson had itsown terrors for me."

The speaker, an established teacher trainerin her own right, had located her own ghostand begun to deal with him. Slowly,painfully, she had brought to the surfacea significant shaping image from her pastas a learner. By the slow process ofdredging it up from the dusty files ofmemory, she had brought herself and thegroup face to face with an important facetof her learning past. Later we were todiscover how important he was to herteaching present.

Central to this workshop was the premisethat the teachers from one's past (theGhosts behind the chalkboard) have had ashaping influence on one's inner growth.When exposed to someone for long hours onend, the captive audience can not fail toreact, be it in anger, indifference oradmiration.

Positive figures from one's past are wellremembered any way. "I often do thisbecause of ... When I do this, I oftenremember ... Because of XYZ, I ... OneBritish colleague related how he often felthis primary school teacher's presence whenadopting a certain stance. This wasnarrated as he beamed at the listeners.This positive aspect of his formerteacher's contribution had filled him withwarmth which had radiated towards thelistener. These positive memories oftendefine skill areas ("My former teacher

often did it like ...") or affectivebehavioural areas ("He/She would ofteninvite us home ...", "At the beginning ofevery lesson she ..."). These are readilyremembered and easily integrated not onlyinto the teaching mode, but in thepersonality itself.

More problematic are the ghosts from thedarker realms where the participants haveto deal with long shelved, or repressedmemories which have been hidden and ignoredfor very good reasons. Some of these dealwith pain and humiliation, with anger andrejection, deep blows to the fragile selfimage of the young learner. Manyparticipants have remembered art teacherswho have reacted in a derogatory manner toa learner's work. This dismissal has oftenhad the effect of blocking any furtherventure into creativity of art. Thesubject and teacher were associated withrejection and flight was the only resort.

It is very important for us asprofessionals to relate to these aspects ofour teaching inheritance. Where do theybelong in our make-up? What has this doneto our own professional personalities anddevelopment? Too often the professionaccepts the pre-service student as a fullygrown entity and sees no reason to tend tothe affective side, to deal with affectivedevelopment in addition to the developmentin cognitive/technical areas.

Let us return to the experienced trainerparticipant who had described her Latinteacher. As the workshop progressed,participants were asked to describe theirown modes of work in their own classes.After giving the matter a great deal ofthought, she said, "I think many pupilsmust admire me because my lessons arebrilliant. I make my pupils think and Istretch them to the limit. There are, I

suppose, moments when they fear my caustic

Pace 24 1. y.5 THE TEACHER TRAINER. Vol.7. No.3 AUTUMN 1993

wit. I have such a sharp tongue ..." Itwas at this moment that her previous wordsechoed in our minds. She had adopted themode of the teacher who had so terrorizedher. This man, whom she had admired hadbecome integrated into her teachingpersona. The sheer force of his teachingpresence had led her to unconsciously adopta similar stance, ignoring the consequencesof this kind of behaviour. Now that shehad had to remember the negative effectsand to realize their impact on herchildhood, she would of necessity have todeal with this in her own classroom. Wouldshe, like her Latin teacher, wish herpupils to excel in order not to be defeatedby the whipmaster?

The 'ghosts instrument', like similarinstruments of teacher development andawareness, helps the teachers to examinetheir inner world and affective impact ontheir students in the hurly burly ofexternal demands. This area is oftenpigeon-holed for 'later attention'. TheTeachers who have no time to examine selfin the professional context may begin todry up and lose interest. Real teaching,in the educational sense, demands constantself-examination with teachers constantlyre-designing their inner maps. When we areaware of our ghosts, we will be more awareof ourselves in our everyday teaching.

GHOST - WORKSHOP

The steps are as follows

1. Discussion of importance of pastteachers

2. Memories of good teachers

3. Categorization of these memories

4. Our own classroom experience

5. Memories of bad teachers

6. Categorization of these memories

7. Discussion and description of ourown classroom modes eg. stance,voice etc

8. The ghosts in our classroom - anexamination

Note:

This workshop demands an acquaintance bythe group leader of sensibility trainingmethods and should not be attempted byunqualified people.

ON FORM Tony Skevington

Introduction

One of the aims of a good teacher-trainingcourse should be to enable trainees to dealwith those routine tasks which can take upso much of a teacher's time, eg evaluatingnew materials, planning future courses,making lesson plans, etc., etc. Peopleapproach these tasks in different ways,some having well-tried formulas which theyuse again and again, while others changetheir method each time they face the taskanew. Both in organizing my own work andas a tool for training I have found thatnothing works so well as designing a goodform to deal with these recurring chores.

Groan, groan

I can almost hear the groans (and yawns)that must have greeted that last somewhatpompous sounding sentence! The idea of yet

more forms for teachers to fill in mayappall some people. However, if designedwell, a form or chart can save teachers andtrainers hours of work when dealing withthose administrative and pedagogical tasksthat come up again and again.

As well as saving time, the utilization offorms and charts has other advantages.Firstly, it leads to greater efficiency; indesigning a form people have to stop andthink, categorize and prioritize.

Secondly, the use of forms and chartsencourages teachers to be systematic andconsistent in dealing with tasks; once aform is designed a task is dealt with inthe same way again and again, only beingmodified as circumstances dictate.

Finally, a form or chart which can fit ontoan A4 size piece of paper enables us to seethe most important information at a glance.

Form Design on a Training Course

Form/chart design can be incorporated intoall aspects of a training course from

training in teaching the four skills toteaching materials and course design. Some

of the charts I have drawn up with mytrainees have been used for lesson plans,evaluation of listening materials, classprofiles, student profiles and course

outlines.

Let's look at one or two examples of howdesigning a form can be used on a trainingcourse:

,1C

ON FORM cont'd

Example 1:A form for the preliminary evaluation oflistening materials. In the listeningcomponent of a training course I wasteaching in Tokyo recently many of thetrainees stated that one of the things theywould like to learn was how to evaluatelistening materials. (Of course I gatheredthis information from a trainee profileform which I gave to each trainee at thebeginning of the course!)

I approached this trainee need during oneof the sessions by asking each student todraw up all the kinds of information andquestions they could think of whenevaluating listening materials. After theyhad done this individually, they got intogroups, discussed their individual :-

brainstorming and then drew up a form onthe basis of their pooled ideas. Finally,we came together as a class and put all thegroups' suggestions together and wrote aform on the board. When everyone wassatisfied that we had as much relevantinformation as we needed, I copied the formdown in my notebook and presented eachtrainee with a typed copy at the followingsession.

The next step was for each trainee toevaluate a course using the form as a

guideline. With the results of theseevaluations we modified the fora to its

final draft. (See Form A). Thus insteadof the trainer just explaining some of therules for evaluating listening materialsthe trainees had pooled all their knowledgeto solve the problem for themselves. Ofcourse the evaluation of materials cannotbe completed until one has actually usedthem in class to find out warts and all.The important point about this exercise isthat trainees now have a fairly precise andsystematic way of categorizing andevaluating listening materials at the

initial stage.

Example 2:A listening activities chart.A much simpler but nevertheless usefulchart was one which the trainees and I

designed in order to match up listeningtasks with specific kinds of texts atvarious stages in the listening process.First I elicited from the trainees themajor kinds of listening texts thatstudents are exposed to, ie. dialogue,narrative and expository (though of coursethere is often overlap of these). Weplaced these three broad bands down the

AIKYARA USED TO 9f fNLOCAL OVERIVIlfgr.

left hand side of a piece of A4 size paperand then across the top we wrote threetime-frames, 'pre-listening', 'whilelistening' and 'post-listening'. By

drawing lines down and across the paper wehad nine squares. As the training sessionson listening progressed and trainees learntabout different listening tasks they couldset their students (eg. focusing questions,multiple-choice questions, informationexchange exercises, attending to

paralinguistic features, etc), the traineesfilled in their "Listening ActivitiesChart". (See Form B). By the end of thecourse the trainees had a quick referencechart of which tasks go best with whichlistening texts at different points in thelistening process. Of course this chartcould be adapted to the use of teaching theother skills as well.

Spin-Offs

As well as the advantages already mentionedI think that becoming used to designingforms and charts has other spin-offs in thetraining classroom.

117

Firstly, in my experience brainstormingindividually and then coming together ingroups works much better than brainstormingin a group at the beginning. The initial,individual brainstorming means thateveryone has a chance to get their ideassorted out first. This is especiallyimportant for the weaker and shyer traineeswho, in a group which goes straight intobrainstorming together, may think that theyhave nothing to contribute.

Secondly, the whole-class activity, when afinal draft is put on the board, workswonders for class dynamics, producing auseful piece of work which everyone feelsthey have contributed towards. Thirdly,the forms and charts produced throughoutthe course can be taken away by thetrainees and used and adapted in theirfuture jobs.

Finally, it is hoped that the emphasis onindividual effort followed by group

cooperation will be carried over by thetrainees into their teaching methodologyand thus have a "trickle down" effect intheir future classrooms.

Form A

PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF A LISTENING

COURSE

Title:

Author(s):

Publisher:

TAPES

Length of tapes:

Content of tapes:

Quality:

STUDENT'S BOOK

No. of units:

Level:

No. of units:

No. of hours work:

Types of exercises/tasks:

Is the material interesting/useful to

students?

What supplementary materials will be

necessary?

Suitability for this class:

TEACHER'S BOOK

Comments:

Fore B

LISTENING ACTIVITIES CHART

TEXT PRE-LISTENING WHILE POST-LISTENING

Dialogue

Narrative

Expository

PUBLICA IONSCE

COMMENT,SHORT REVIEWSBOOKSTasks for Language Teachers: a resourcebook for training and developmentby Martin Parrott (1993. 325pp) CambridgeUniversity Press. ISBN 0-521-42666-9.The back cover blurb says this book isfor use on 'courses leading to formalprofessional qualifications. (in) in-

service training programmes, (and in)

informal professional development'. Most

of the book consists of tasks for usewith / by teachers. Primarily for in-

service participants and ones on pre-service courses with a teaching practicecomponent.pp 1-7: Introductionpp 8-35: Part A: Backgrtunding for

the trainerChap. 1: 'Using the tasks'

Chap. 2: 'Carrying out small-scaleresearch in the classroom'

Chap. 3: 'Devising and evaluatingtasks'

pp 36-288: Part B: Session tasks andtrainer's notes

Chap. 4: The learners': 'tasks that

focus on a variety of factors whichcontribute to learning'

Chap. 5: 'The teacher': here the

focus is on 'teaching styles,teachers' roles and teachers' use oflanguage'

Chap. 6: 'Planning': Addressessplanning the content and process oflanguage lessons

Chap. 7: 'Teaching: developingskills', ie, developing languageskills (eg., reading) in the learnersChap. 8: 'Teaching: developinglinguistic competence', ie, inlanguage learners

pp 289-317: Part C: Resource bankpp 321-325: Index(To be reviewed)

Mixed Ability Classes by Luke Prodromou(1992, 168pp incl 75 item bibliography)

Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-49386-9. Likely tobecome a classic on the practicalities ofmixed ability teaching.

Getting Beginners to Talk by Jim Wingate(1993, 165pp) Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993 Page 27

BOOKS cont'd

357708-2. A teacher's resource book. PartOne: 'Using the material', 44pp. Part Two:Descriptions of 39 main procedures. Thereis a strong emphasis on creation of clear,vivid contexts of use and on earlypersonalization of language use. A wealthof tips.

Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching by JNattinger and J DeCarrico (1992, 218pp)Oxford University Press.ISBN 0-19-437164-6. The linguisticanalysis (Part One) is interesting andimportant. The methodology (Part Two)revives some old chestnuts (eg. patterndrilling).

The Lexical Approach: the state of EFL anda way forward by Michael Lewis. (1993,200pp) Language Teaching Publications.ISBN 0-9067 17-99-X. Lewis writes forchalkface teachers, arguing for nothingless than their complete conversion to thelexical approach lock, stock and barrel.In the first half of the book he tours manycorners of recent thought on languageteaching, his route seeming to me to berather spontaneously thought out. Is thisan author-edited work? Much pruning, somereordering, and additional proofreadingshould make for a much better secondedition. An index would be nice. Also,there are inaccuracies that Lewis couldhave avoided by relying less directly onNattinger and DeCarrico eg., it was NOTNattinger who coined the term 'chunking'.Rough as it is in parts, Lewis is veryreadable - if you don't' mind LOTS ofrepetition. He is a valuable andindefatigable popularizer of ideas thatdesperately need to get into widecirculation. Readers who cultivate aninterest in applied linguistics should gostraight to Nattinger and DeCarrico.

Issues and Options in Language Teaching byH Stern; eds, P Allen and B Harley (1992,404pp) Oxford University Press. ISBN 0 -19-

437066-6. A broad mesh survey. Excellentin the clarity of its depiction of theinter-relationships among elements withinthe vast and disparate field of languageteaching. This book seems to me to be bestfor readers who are already fairly familiarwith many of these elements.

Agendas for Second Language Literacy bySandra Lee McKay (1993, 151pp + 6ish pp ofprefaces/intros) Cambridge UniversityPress. ISBN 0-521-44664-3. What drew meinto this one was the desire to find outwhat the title means. The term literacy Ifound discussed soon enough, in Chapter 1,

where the author among other thingscharacterizes the (non-exclusive)'individual skill' and 'socio-historicalperspectives' on literacy. The buzzwordagenda was more difficult. In the end Ilearned it sometimes means 'objectives','goals' or 'desiderata' (eg. a learner's);'policy' or 'program' (a government's);'traditions' (a nation's, community's orfamily's); 'actions', 'assumptions','beliefs' or 'interests' (anybody's); or'tasks' (given by someone to someone else).One thing it seems never to mean is

'agenda' in the pre-1980's sense. An old-fashioned title for this book could beContexts and Motives of Second LanguageLiteracy. The focus throughout is onimmigrants and ethnic minorities in

Australia, NZ, Canada, the US and the UK.McKay argues steadily for programs todevelop (not just preserve) the mothertongue literacy of ethnic minoritycitizens, generally without meticulousexamination of opposing arguments. (Thebibliography contains no title publishedbefore 1970.) McKay's wording is

frequently Pentagonesque (eg. 'languageminority children'). The book merits aquick read for its discussion of socio-political, economic, familial andeducational facets of SL literacy.Overall, I found this book intenselydoctrinaire. For example, on p.83 she saysof someone's findings that they can bequestioned on grounds of 'methodology andideology'. Ideology?!

A Communicative Methodology: suggestionsfor the teacher in the primary school andthe intermediate school division, eds

Raphael Gefen and Carol Goldfus. (1993,

349pp) Ministry of Education and Culture,Israel. ISBN 965-444-014-0. 42 articleson everything from discipline to teachinghandwriting. I also learned that RaphaelGefen has retired as Chief Inspector ofEnglish.

Understanding and Developing Language Testsby Cyril Weir (1993, 203pp) Prentice-Hall.ISBN 0-13-947532-X. This is a companion toWeir's Communicative Language Testing

(1990, PH). From the back cover blurb:"For language teachers, teacher educators,and language teacher trainees interested inthe theory and practice of tests ... Thebook's teacher-training element consists ofevaluation tasks in which the reader isinvited to analyse a range of specific testitems and formats. The author then giveshis own analysis... For... Reading,Writing, Listening and Speaking, Dr Weirconstructs a three-part framework ofguidelines for developing a good test ofthat skill."

Page 28 119 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993

Making the most of micro-computers byHeather Rendall (1991) Centre forInformation on Language Teaching, PO Box8, Llandysul, Dyfed, SA44-42B, Wales.

This slim book aims to help secondaryschool modern language teachers who have

still to take their first steps in

integrating micro-computers into their

methodology. It deals with questionssuch as what computer to choose, whatsoftware to buy and what can go wrong.

Five-minute Activities by Penny Ur and

Andrew Wright (1992) CUP. ISBN 0-521-

39781-2. Over 130 short activities inalphabetical order: warm-ups, getting

acquainted activities , practice

activities , fillers and transitions.

Some new, some familiar. Already very

popular we hear.

Discourse and Language Education by

Evelyn Hatch (1992) CUP. ISBN 0-521-

42605-7. The aim of the book is to helpthe reader discover system in the wayslanguage is used for communication in

social contexts. The book contains

information , verbatim examples and

practice sections. Both spoken andwritten discourse from natives and non-

natives are included. Very clearly

written.

Second Language Acquisition and LanguagePedagogy by Rod Ellis (1991).

Multilingual Matters. ISBN 1- 85359-

135-1. A collection of papers on

research issues (interaction formal

instruction variability . learning

styles) and their relevance to language

pedagogy. Section 6 considers:(a) whether teachers should intervene

directly in their students' developmentprocess and, if so how, (b) what types of

clssroom interaction are optimal, and(c) how teachers can best take account ofdfferent learning styles. Bitty, but

interesting.

ESP Today: a practitioner's quide byPauline Robinson (1991) Prentice Hall.

ISBN 0-13-284084-7. What is the content

of ESP? What are its characteristicprocesses? What sort of discipline is

it? What developments have there been

since 1980? These are the main questionsbehind a text peppered with acronyms and

research citings. 35 pp bibliography.

Aspects of Language Teaching by H. G.

Widdowson (1990) OUP. ISBN 0-19-437

128-X. A book made by smoothing out andjoining up a number of conference papers,it is nevertheless as thorough and

thoughtful as you'd expect from this

author. Deals with the relevance of

theoretical enquiry to classroom

practice , perspectives on language

description, and the way these lead to

different language teaching approaches.The author has not lost his fondness foralliterative, polar adjectives. Now we

have abstraction/actuality to go withtype/token , use /usage...

A Review of Research in Teacher Educationby E. C. Wragg (1982) NFER - Nelson.

ISBN 0-85633-247-X. Written more than a

decade ago, this booklet gives a brief

description of research reports on

teacher education under the following

headings: surveys of research, student

teacher background , course content ,

teaching practice and school experience,

experimental courses , in-service and

follow up. Useful for anyone contem-

plating doing reading or research about

teacher education.

Teachers' Professional Learningedited by J Calderhead (1988) The Falmer

Press. ISBN 1-85000-389-0. A collection

of twelve papers originating from a

conference in 1987 designed to bringtogether researchers from several

countries to explore research findingsand theoretical fameworks and to considertheir implications for pre- and in-

service teacher education. The chaptersequence follows a teacher's career from

beginner to older professional. Mostly

about the training of primary and

secondary general education teachert, butstill interesting to the adult and / or

TESOL

That's not what I meant! by DeborahTannen (1992) Virago. ISBN 1- 85381 -312-

8. A reprint of the predecessor to Youjust don't understand by the same

author. Tannen looks at conversations

people have with colleagues, bosses,

friends and family, and considers how

differences in conversational style can

cause problems.

Note: Ways of Training by TessaWoodward 1992 (reviewed in vol 7/2) wasunavailable throughout much of 1993. Weare informed that Longman once again hascopies in stock.

THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993 120 Page 29

PERIODICAL PROFILESETAS Newsletter (English TeachersAssociation, Switzerland) Among nationalTESOL publications this one stands out inits fatness, information value and concernwith chalkface issues. Each numberincludes a good dollop on a differenttheme, eg, 'Testing', 'Studentindependence: do we want it, do they needit?', 'The tyranny of the coursebook, morecreative teaching'. A very good reviewssection. Also workshop reports,announcements, ads. I recommend it tointernational subscribers. Quarterly.Contact: B. Tanton, Schuetzenstr. 7, 4552Derendingen.

English Teachers' Journal Ministry ofEducation and Culture, Israel. Also wellworth the attention of the internationalsubscriber. Contact: English Inspectorate,

M of E and C, Jerusalem 91911. Nr. 46, May1993 (127pp) contains 16 articles on avariety of topics including 'Retrainingimmigrant teachers' by Ephraim Weintroub.This issue also features 10 reports fromparticipants on conference workshops; somebook reviews and announcements; no ads.

University of Hawai'i working papers in

linguistics, 1991 vol 10/2. Very fat, ca.210pp of the US version of A4 (= standardEEC sheet size, eg. this page). This issuecontains 6 diverse articles one being ofdirect relevant to teacher development,'Action research for second languageteachers it's not just teacher research'by Graham Crookes.' This article is a must-read for action research enthusiasts; 12ppplus a 74 item bibliography. Contact: Deptof ESL, U of H, 1890 East-West Road,Honolulu, 96822. Two a year.

CROSS CLIKKE\TSAN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF

LANGUAGE TEACHING AND CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Editor. Thomas Clayton. The Language Institute of Japan. Odawara. Japan

Cross Currents is a biannual publication of the Language Institute of Japan (LIOJ)which provides a forum for the interdisciplin.ary exchange of ideas within theareas ofcross-cultural communication and language skill acquisition and instruction. Our goalat Cross Currents is to act as a medium through which intemational ESL/EFL issues,theories, and methodologies can be made available to our Japanese audience, and alsothrough which Japanese ESL/EFL contributionsincreasingly vibrant, innovative, andinfluentialcan be disseminated to our international colleagues. .

Cross Currents has served a diverse international readership continuously since 1972.

A Selection of Recent Articles and Essays:

Man Maley (UK), Courses or ResourcesSubhash Jain (India), Arriving at the

Himalayan Range

Thomas Clayton (Japan), Politics and theModem English Language

John Staczek (USA), Professionalism and

the Degree in TESOL

Robert O'Neill (UK). What Did IsadoraDuncan and Einstein Have in Common'

John Swales (USA), Teacher-Researcher:Personal Reflections

SUBSCRIPTIONS 1 Year 2 Years

IndividualInstitutionalISSN 0289-1239

US 515.00US 519.50

US 525.00US 535.00

For air mail. include an additional US 56.00 for one year and US 5/2.00 for run rears.

Subscription, may be ordered through your local bookseller or directly from C rossC wren's. L101.4-14- I Shiroyarna.Odawara. Kanagawa 250. Japan. Checks must be payable to C nos Corr-1,1.511_1011. in US funds. and drawn on a LSbank. Back issue, available through ("mu Currents. 205 discount for order, of ten or more placed by individual,.

RETURN THIS AD WITH YOUR SUBSCRIPTION ORDER, ANDRECEIVE THE CURRENT ISSUE AS A COMPLIMENTARY GIFT.

BEST COPY AVAILABLEPage 30 91 THE TEACHER TRAINER, Vol.7, No.3 AUTUMN 1993

t9 0 3

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The works of well-known authors offered inunabridged form, the first titles are thematiccollections of short stonesEach has a pre-reading introduction, notes onculturally difficult vocabulary, and exploitationactivities for students reading alone or in class.

New titlesCrime Never Pays edited by Clare WestFrom the Cradle to the Grave edited by Clare West

For your free colour catalogue and guide to using Oxford graded readers please contact.

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for--LANGUAGE

TEACHERS

Musical OpeningsDAVID CRANMER AND CLEMENT LAROYUsing music in the language classroom(accompanying cassette available)

Was of TrainingTESSA WOODWARD

Recipes for language teacher training

Creative GrammarPractice

GUNTER GERNGROSS AND HERBERT PUCHTA

Getting learners to use both sidesof the brain

CooperativeDevelopmentJUUAN EDGE

A practical guide to professionalself-development

Series Editior: Seth LindstrombergSeries Consultant: Mario Rinvolucri

The Pronunciation Bookrim bOWEN AND nNATHAN MARKSStudent-centred activities forpronunciation work

Language throughLiterature

SUSAN BASSNETT AND PETER GRUNDY

Creative language teaching through literature

Teaching TeenagersHERBERT PUCHTA AND MICHAEL SCHRATZ

Model activity sequences for humanisticlanguage learning

Longman booksfor language teachers have

all the answers! LnNGMAN ELTBEST COPY AVAILABLE For further information please contact:

Longman ELT. Longman House. Burnt Mill, Harlow Essex CM20 2.1E England 125

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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 404 844 AUTHOR … The Teacher Trainer: ... Modern Language Teacher Trainers, 1993. REPORT NO ISSN-0951-7626 PUB ... FOR TEACHER TRAINING IN TEFL …