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The ELTABB JournalAnniversary Edition1993-2013

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“A Few Thoughts from the Editor” - Dale Coulter“Teaching Grammar at the Point of Need” - Scott Thornbury“How a Task-Based Approach Works – Examples of Learning by Doing.” - Matthew Plews“Effecting Simulations” - Dale Coulter

“Variety is the Spice of Language Learning” - Sebastian Taylor“Podcasts in Business English” - Phil WadeA Conversation with...“Selling Yourself” Evan Frendo - With Dale Coulter“Getting Real in Teaching Listening” - Book review - Anne Hodgson

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A few thoughts from the Editor...

2013 saw the 20th anniversary of ELTABB. The founding members will be able to recall the modesty and simplicity of the first meetings in which the foundations for what we today know as ELTABB were laid.

A year has passed since Scott Thornbury braved the freezing temperatures for our 2013 AGM. This year, we’re excited to host Lindsay Clanfield as our speaker with a double header: Let's Get Critical! and: Rediscovering Writing.

2014 is the year we say goodbye to Leo Waters, whose hard work and dedication to ELTABB over the past three years I’m sure everyone will agree has been invaluable. Your passion and commitment will not be soon forgotten, Leo.

Another board member, Anne Hodgson, will be stepping down from the Events Coordinator position. You would have to be living under a rock not to have not come into contact with Anne. Her charisma and motivation has shone through in the first-

class events calendar in since joining two years ago.

The Journal

Teaching, networking, developing all are inclusive concepts. We learn best from each other - the conversation in the staff room, reading a blog, attending an ELTABB workshop, chatting to a colleague. My mantra for putting this project together is inclusiveness.

On that note, if you want to share your professional practice, your ideas or you thoughts with the ELTABB Journal - please get in touch with us at

eltabbjournal@gmail.com

Now all that’s left is to thank you for downloading and hope you enjoy the first volume of the ELTABB Journal!

- Dale Coulter

The 2013 Team

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“Teacher 1: ‘Today is Tuesday so we’re going to do the present perfect continuous.’

Teacher 2: ‘Tell me something I don’t know, and I’ll help you to say it better.’”

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Teaching Grammar ‘at The Point of Need’

Compare and contrast these two approaches:

Teacher 1: ‘Today is Tuesday so we’re going to do the present perfect continuous.’

Teacher 2: ‘Tell me something I don’t know, and I’ll help you to say it better.’

OK. I’m exaggerating, but these two approaches capture, respectively, the difference between ‘pre-emptive teaching’ and ‘reactive teaching’. In the former, the teacher assumes that there is something that the learners don’t know, and the teaching intervention is designed to fill the gap. In the latter, the teacher assumes that there is something that the learners need to say, and the teaching intervention is designed to enable them to do it. It is consistent with

the view that, as Dave Willis (1990: 128) puts it, ‘The creation of meaning is the first stage of learning. Refining the language used is a later stage.’

A marvellous account of reactive teaching applied to the teaching of writing is At the Point of Need: Teaching Basic and ESL Writers, by Marie Wilson Nelson (1991). This book deserves to be a classic, not least because it’s about more than simply the teaching of writing. It makes a convincing case for a pedagogy that, rather than trying to second-guess and thereby pre-empt the learners’ learning trajectory, is entirely responsive to it: that is, a pedagogy which is wholly driven by the learners’ needs, as and when they emerge. As Nancy Martin writes, in the Foreword (ibid.: ix):

The concept of teaching only at the students’ perceived points of need, and as they arise, presents a different view of learning from that of planned and sequenced series of lessons. The former view depends on recognition of the power of the person’s intention as the operating dynamic in writing – and in learning.

The book describes a five-year experiment at a college in the US, where writing workshops were offered to small groups of mixed native-speaker and non-native-speaker undergraduates, each with a tutor, and where there was no formal writing – or grammar, or vocabulary – instruction. Instead, the students (all of whom had scored below a cut-off point on a test of standard written English) were – in the words of the program publicity – invited to:

1. Choose topics that interest you and your group

2. Freewrite without worrying about correctness on the first draft

3. Revise your freewrites. Your group will help you [...]

4. Learn to copy-edit your writing for publication.

Instead of pre-teaching or modelling the skills of writing, ‘this writing program was set up on a dynamic of retrospective planning’ (ibid.: viii) whereby ‘the tutors found that the most acceptable and effective teaching was to give the help the students asked for when they asked for it – that is, as the students perceived the need’ (ibid.: ix).

Scott ThornburyScott Thornbury teaches on the MA TESOL program, both online and on site, for The New School, New York, and is the author of a number of prize-winning books on language and methodology. He is a regular guest at ELTABB events. He is currently blogging The (De-)Fossilization Diaries at www.scottthornburyblog.com

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The program was based on the principle that ‘less is more’ (ibid.: 189), and that effective writing instruction involves simply:

Motivating students to want to practise and improve

Giving students control of decisions about their work

Limiting teaching to what students need or want to learn.

Teaching ‘at the point of need’ is, of course, a principle that underpins the whole language learning movement, including ‘reading recovery’ programs. Courtney Cazden (1992: 129), for example, writes about ‘recognizing the need for temporary instructional detours in which the child’s attention is called to particular cues available in speech or print’ (emphasis added). It would also seem analogous to the reactive focus on form promoted by proponents of task-based learning, described by

some researchers as ‘leading from behind’ (e.g. Samuda 2001), whereby the teacher intervenes to scaffold the learners’ immediate communicative needs. As Long and Norris (2009: 137) write:

Advantages of focus on form include the fact that attention to linguistic code features occurs just when their meaning and function are most likely to be evident to the learners concerned, at a moment when they have a perceived need for the new item, when they are attending, as a result, and when they are psycholinguistically ready (to begin) to learn the items.

‘Point of need’ teaching also shares characteristics of what are known as ‘just in time’ (JIT) interventions, as when the user of unfamiliar computer software refers to a Help menu or seeks online support. Thus, in noting how video games embed sound pedagogical principles, James Paul Gee (2007: 142) identifies

what he calls the Explicit Information On-Demand and Just-in-Time Principle, which goes: ‘The learner is given explicit information both on demand and just in time, when the learner needs it or just at the point where the information can best be understood and used in practice.’

This is a principle both of good video games and of good teaching. Gee makes the point that ‘Learners cannot do much with lots of overt information that a teacher has explicitly told them outside the context of immersion in actual practice. At the same time, learners cannot learn without some overt information; they cannot discover everything for themselves’ (ibid.: 120).

Gee gives the example of good classroom science instruction, where ‘An instructor does not lecture for an extended period and then tell the learners to go off and apply what they have learned in a group science activity … Rather, as group members are discovering things through their own activity, the good science instructor comes up, assesses the progress they are making and the fruitfulness of the paths down which they are proceeding in their enquiry, and then gives overt information that is, at that point, usable’ (ibid. 120).

How does this principle apply to grammar teaching, as in the hypothetical case we started with? I.e.

Teacher 2: ‘Tell me something I don’t know, and I’ll help you to say it better.’

In teaching one-to-one, it is relatively straight-forward and easy to manage. The learner performs a task (perhaps something they will need to do in their work), and the teacher provides corrective feedback, either during or immediately afterwards. The corrective feedback may be overt (‘You said X, but you should have said Y’) or covert, in the form of a recast: Student says ‘He go to work by bus’. Teacher says, ‘Ah, he goes to work by bus’. The feedback may involve explanation (‘We use –s on third person simple present verbs’), or it may not. And the lesson sequence may require the student to repeat the task, incorporating the corrections. But with a single student, none of these procedures is necessarily very difficult to engineer.

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More problematic is providing ‘point of need’ instruction with groups, while still maintaining lesson flow and engaging the attention of all learners. ‘Instructional detours’ (to use Cazden’s expression) need to be short, to the point, yet salient: a case of ‘putting the task on hold’ for a minute or two, while an error is remedied or a grammar point explained. Of course, involving other students in the intervention is often a viable means of avoiding the lesson becoming a series of one-to-ones. Ideally, too, a running record needs to be kept of these interventions, so that they can be revisited after the task, and so as to provide a ‘scaffold’ for a possible repetition of the task. A further stage, in which learners review and record the grammar and vocabulary issues that arose during the lesson, serves not only to help fix these in memory, but to persuade those who crave it that formal accuracy has not been sacrificed for the sake of fluency.

References

Cazden, C. (1992) Whole Language Plus: Essays on Literacy in the US and NZ, New York: Teachers College Press.

Gee, J.P. (2007) What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Long, M. and Norris, J. (2009) ‘Task-based teaching and assessment’, in van den Branden, K., Bygate, M. and Norris, J. (eds), Task-based Language Teaching: A Reader, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Nelson, M.W. (1991) At the Point of Need: Teaching Basic and ESL Writers, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Samuda, V. (2001) ‘Guiding relationships between form and meaning during task performance: the role of the teacher’, in Bygate, M., Skehan, P. and Swain, M. (eds.) Researching Pedagogic Tasks: Second Language Learning, Teaching and Testing, London: Longman.

Willis, D. (1990) The Lexical Syllabus: A New Approach to Language Teaching, London: Collins ELT.

How a Task-Based Approach Works: Learning by Doing

TBLT – the hype!The concept of ‘learning by doing’ has been around since time immemorial, although as a more formalised approach to language learning, TBLT (task-based language-learning and - teaching) has only existed since the mid-1980s.

Since its inception in the world of EFL, teachers have been bombarded with reminders of how wonderful TBLT is and how, if we simply make everything ‘task-based’, our students will make enormous gains in their language proficiency. This “drooling” over TBLT has even led to large organisations throwing out their old textbooks and methodologies and demanding that their teachers adhere exclusively to task-based syllabuses and teach only task-based lessons.

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“From my perspective, the chance to put TBLT theory into practice in the form of a wholly task-based course has been

extremely valuable”

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About ten years ago, I taught for just such an organisation. Following a change in local management, out went the textbooks and in came a huge amount of work for the teachers, who were asked to develop task-based syllabuses for every single course. Understandably, there was a lot of resistance to the wholesale upheaval of a system which seemed to have been working well for the preceding 70 years or so but within a few months, the new, task-based approach had to be put into practice.

The overhaul went so far that even preparation courses for external exams had to tow the task-based line so, instead of working through a coursebook and following the well-known ‘PPP’ (presentation → practice → production) approach, exam students were involved in activities such as firstly telling each other anecdotes, afterwards reflecting on their performance and receiving feedback from peers before having a second attempt, this time recorded and assessed. As a teacher of a number of exam courses, I had my doubts about the effectiveness of

such an approach for helping students obtain the certificates and grades they needed (for all ‘four skills’ plus grammar and vocabulary). The school management were also clearly worried that if pass-rates for external exams went down, the reputation of the language centre would be damaged and, as a consequence, student numbers would significantly decrease. Nevertheless, the task-based experiment was allowed to continue and, in fact, there was no decrease in the pass-rate at all – quite the opposite, as it happens.

I was impressed by this result, but also somewhat mystified as to the success of lessons which appeared to me to be somewhat unstructured, haphazard, out of my control and in which students had simply chatted a lot together. In addition, the courses had even been more fun to teach – surely this was just a blip! However, exam pass-rates continued to be high, indicating that the task-based approach seemed to be working.

Some years later, I had the opportunity to investigate the question of why a task-based approach should be successful, as part of an MA in TESOL. Finally, my questions would be answered!

Now teaching at a university, I decided to analyse a series of lessons in which fifteen C1-level students research and discuss a controversial issue, much as in the context of an academic seminar.

In terms of the structure of the lessons, I opted for a more ‘deep end’ TBLT approach, with students first researching a topic (the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), formally discussing it together as a class, before listening to C2-level (in this case, native) speakers perform the same task and noting down any useful language that occurred. Following this, one week later, students repeated the same discussion, without notes and having received absolutely no language input from me at all.

To measure if there had been any improvement in students’ performances, both whole-class discussions were recorded and the content analysed using

software, to determine how much of the native speakers’ language the students had taken on board and re-used. The results were interesting, showing that students had re-used approximately 16% of the new phrases and part-phrases (four- to eleven-word chunks which students had not used in the first discussion) used by the native speakers. In other words, without any explicit language instruction and using a purely task-based approach, students had acquired and used a significant amount of useful language, appropriately and correctly in almost all cases.

So, why did this extremely “hands off” approach work? To answer this question, it is worth taking a look at the theories that underpin TBLT. First, there is Krashen’s (1982) ‘input hypothesis’, which states that learners acquire language better when it occurs at a level just above their own (i+1), as in the example above. Second, Schmidt’s (1990) ‘noticing hypothesis’ maintains that if learners identify the language they need themselves, then they are more likely to acquire it, as they clearly did in the aforementioned research.

Why Should TBLT Work Any Better Than Other Approaches? The Theory...

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Having largely satisfied my curiosity as to why a TBLT approach was effective in a series of lessons, I decided to expand upon the research I had done, by developing an entire, purely task-based course.

To this end, I created a course designed to develop students’ ability to participate and interact more fully in academic discussions. The course consists of a series of (three to four) academic discussions on topics determined by students. Each academic discussion sequence begins with students informing themselves on the topic (from a variety of sources e.g. ProCon.org, Debatepedia) and sharing information in small groups, which is followed by the whole-class discussion itself (recorded and uploaded to Moodle), then student comparison of their own performances with

those of C2-level speakers performing a similar task (easily found on e.g. YouTube) and, finally, (self- and group-)reflection and feedback phases (in TBLT terminology, ‘focuses on form’) to address their individual language needs. Following each discussion, students produce an argumentative or opinion essay on the same topic.

In order to ‘push’ students to use newly-acquired language, I built in a system of assessment where two-thirds of the course grade is based on performance during the discussions. For this purpose, I developed CEFR-related scales with the assessment criteria of content, flow, grammar and vocabulary, interaction and pronunciation. Incorporation of the assessment scales has proven to be a major motivating factor as well as enabling students to know exactly what they need to do to

reach a certain grade for each criterion, with any “weak areas” providing the ‘focuses on form’ in the feedback phases following each discussion.

Student results and feedback on the course (which, at the date of publication of this article, has been run five times) have been extremely positive, with more than satisfactory improvement of student oral and written grades, also in external exams. In their end-of-course questionnaires, participants also cite improved knowledge concerning the course topics (borne out by their excellent grades for essay content) as well as increased motivation, autonomy, self-awareness and critical thinking. Most importantly, perhaps, participants say they value the usefulness of the course for their academic studies.

Once learners have identified the language they need, according to Long (1983) it is extremely important that they perform tasks to try out any new language (to “negotiate meaning”) in order to be able to use it correctly; in other words, to “learn by doing”, as in the second discussion in the example above.

TBLT is also supported by a host of other theories, such as those concerning collaborative learning (e.g. Lantolf, 2000), gains in ‘complexity’, ‘accuracy’ and ‘fluency’ (e.g. Skehan, 1998), plus the views of educational theorists such as Dewey. other words, to

“learn by doing”, as in the second discussion in the example above.

TBLT is also supported by a host of other theories, such as those concerning collaborative learning (e.g. Lantolf, 2000), gains in ‘complexity’, ‘accuracy’ and ‘fluency’ (e.g. Skehan, 1998), plus the views of educational theorists such as Dewey.

Learning By Discussing – An Example Of How A TBLT Approach Works (The Proof?)

From my perspective, the chance to put TBLT theory into practice in the form of a wholly task-based course has been extremely valuable, and I feel that, through providing students with the opportunity to improve over a series of discussions, together with the introduction of assessment criteria and the feedback given in the ‘focuses on form’, students have been able to further improve their performance and make significantly more gains than in the single, non-assessed and feedback-less discussion that took place during my MA research.

In short, I would definitely recommend designing courses that are wholly task-based and which incorporate comprehensive feedback and assessment.

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For those interested in designing a task-based course, I would suggest the following procedure:

Determine ‘learning objectives’

Using a combination of diagnostic tools such as tests, questionnaires, and planning frameworks (e.g. SWOT analyses), coupled with previous experience, determine what the needs of course participants are, in the form of ‘learning objectives’. These can, for example, be written as ‘can do statements’ e.g. “The learner can provide good support for their arguments”. These are helpful for keeping the course on track, making participants more aware of their learning, and for assessment purposes.

Define assessment criteria

Once the participants’ needs have been determined, the learning objectives can be incorporated into a CEFR-style assessment grid (see Council of Europe, 2008), containing appropriate criteria at the required level.

Develop each ‘task cycle’

Next, the nature of any tasks needs determining.

According to Ellis (2009), a ‘task’ is:

an activity with a clearly-defined outcome other than the use of language, where ...

learners have to rely largely on their own resources, and ...

the primary focus is on meaning.

This definition distinguishes ‘tasks’ like completing a family tree from ‘exercises’ such as filling gaps with

missing prepositions. It also differentiates between the discussion ‘tasks’ I have used and ‘exercises’ where learners are given a list of useful phrases at the beginning and told to use them in a discussion.

Thus, course developers need to ensure that their tasks meet the above criteria.

It is also necessary for course designers to adhere to the theoretical principles supporting TBLT. In other words, the task itself and any input should be at a level just above the learners’ own, and learners need to be given opportunities to identify the language they need themselves and then to use it.

There are also several common (though non-essential) features of tasks which course developers may wish to consider, namely whether the tasks are to be authentic (as far as this is possible!), collaborative (e.g. groupwork) and/or contain an information gap.

Once the tasks have been clearly defined, comes the question of what happens before and after them i.e. pre-tasks and post-tasks, as well as any options to be incorporated during tasks themselves e.g. the question of when to ‘focus on form’. This whole sequence is known as a ‘task cycle’.

Common examples of pre-tasks are the performance of a similar task (e.g. mini-discussions or essays before the main one; feedback could be given here as a ‘pro-active focus on form’) and analysis of a model task performance (although there is the danger that learners will stick too closely to this, reducing their creativity!).

How To Develop A Task-Based Course – The Toolkit!

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When designing the main task itself, course developers should consider various options, such as whether they will impose a time limit (this can provide extra motivation, although it can also lead to poor task achievement), whether learners will have access to input data (e.g. research notes for a discussion), and how teachers should (not) react to learners making errors during a task (should we correct anything we judge to be an error by immediately ‘re-casting’ it, or is it enough to provide this ‘reactive focus on form’ post-task?)

Following the completion of the main task, it is important to have learners reflect upon their and others’ performances (self- and peer-evaluation) and for both learners and teacher to give feedback on language and task performance (‘focus on form’) plus, possibly, even for learners to do exercises on discrete points of vocabulary and grammar use (in TBLT terminology, to ‘focus on forms’). Another option would be for learners to repeat the task (we almost always do things better the second time, though it may be worth modifying the task slightly or having learners swap roles in order to increase motivation).

Learn by doing

Once the course is ready, in the form of a series of task cycles, try it out, seeking feedback as you go in order to further improve its effectiveness. Although a TBLT approach may seem demanding, I firmly believe that the rewards (for both teachers and students) are well worth the effort. Also, of course, things become easier the second time around…

Happy developing!

References

Council of Europe (2008) Structured overview of all CEFR scales. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/elp/elp-reg/Source/Key_reference/Overview_CEFRscales_EN.pdf [accessed: September 9, 2013].

Ellis, R. (2009) ‘Task-based language teaching: sorting out the misunderstandings’, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 19: 221-246.

Krashen, S. (1982) Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon.

Lantolf, J. (2000) ‘Second language learning as a mediated process’, Language Teaching, 33: 79-96.

Long, M. (1983) ‘Native speaker/non-native speaker conversation and the negotiation of comprehensible input’, Applied Linguistics, 4 (2): 126−41.

Schmidt, R. (1990) The Role of Consciousness in Second Language Learning. London: Edward Arnold.

Skehan, P. (1998) A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Matthew PlewsMat Plews teaches English for Academic Purposes at Humboldt University, Berlin. His professional interests, alongside TBLT, include second-language acquisition, learner motivation, CEFR-based continuous assessment and Virtual Learning Environments. In total, he has been teaching for over 20 years, working in both EAP and EFL contexts.

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“They know much more than I do about their interactions in the

workplace”

Effecting Simulations

I was marvelled recently when I saw Driss (Omar Sy), in the job interview scene from Intouchables, in which he inverted the power roles between him (a Senegalese immigrant) and Phillipe, a quadriplegic millionaire (François Cluzet). In stark contrast to the other candidates’ enthusiasm, Sy expresses no desire to get hired and simply requires a signature confirmation of attendance – he ends up getting the job.

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I was marvelled recently when I saw Driss (Omar Sy), in the job interview scene from Intouchables, in which he inverted the power roles between him (a Senegalese immigrant) and Phillipe, a quadriplegic millionaire (François Cluzet). In stark contrast to the other candidates’ enthusiasm, Sy expresses no desire to get hired and simply requires a signature confirmation of attendance – he ends up getting the job.

Phillipe conducts many interviews for this role before Driss’. Driss, on the other hand, has clearly been through this process before – he is unemployed. For both these characters, were they to do this in a Business English classroom, their tasks would be similar to those they carry out in real life, and not roles for them to act as different people. It makes sense, at least for me, to use simulations with learners over role-plays, because it draws upon their pre-existing knowledge and experience.

How do you run a simulation? Take the job interview again from Intouchables. As I mentioned previously, both parties in the interview had practised it before hand, whether that be Sy’s experience of getting the

signature or Phillipe’s previous interviews that day. Rehearsal. After setting the scene, ask learners to call their partner or friend to ask for some advice for the interview – it does not rehearse the interview per se, but it certainly runs them through the script they will use after.

My learners – experienced business people who need English to help them do their jobs better and not to pass university exams - know much more than I do about their interactions in the workplace, so it is highly

impractical for me to assume so and provide them with a structure for the interview. Rather, I elicit the missing information to ‘flesh-out’ the simulation skeleton. Working with this information, we co-construct the stages of the simulation in order to align it more closely with a task-type learners are likely to encounter.

Going back to the interview scene in Intouchables, I would like to pull out another element present in Driss’ interview tactic – unpredictability. I often allow learners to run through the simulation once before I assign a new role for them to play in the task. Essentially, this is an element of a role-play in so much as it requires learners to perform or act a part they would not otherwise. It does, however, play some relevance to their job roles. For example, I ask them to invert the status roles (interviewer with the power - interviewee without) by asking the interviewee to use higher status behaviours (speaking slowly, using more complex sentences or sitting back in their chairs, stand instead of sitting). The tweaking will help prepare learners to deal with the unpredictability element they will encounter in real life – we have all had to deal with difficult people at some

point! All of these are tweaking tricks I have used to push learners to experiment with new language and provide more focus on the process of completing the task rather than completion of the task.

The tweaking will help prepare learners to deal with the Unpredictability element they will encounter in real life – we Have all had to deal with difficult people at some point!

Dale CoulterDale Coulter has taught in a variety of teaching contexts for the past five years. He now specialises in corporate language training and is the Human Resources Manager for All on Board in Berlin. You can find him on his blog here at www.languagemoment.wordpress.com

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Some other ways of tweaking the simulation include the following:

All of these are tweaking tricks I have used to push learners to experiment with new language and provide more focus on the process of completing the task rather than completion of the task.

I find it helps me to record the simulation to provide more detailed feedback post-task feedback. There benefits to me are two-fold: firstly, I have more opportunities to be involved in the simulations as a participant. I avoid teacher-like questions that test or quiz learners on their language knowledge. Secondly, I can design future simulations based on the information and give language feedback in much greater detail to each participant.

The advantage of simulating over role-playing is that it involves more person-experience, during the process of simulating the parameters can be changed to add

new layers on the penumbra of learners’ communicative ability, the affect of which is that they will produce more authentic language and be pushed to deal with the unpredictable – that’s life.

I would like to thank Douglas Mackevett, lecturer in Business English at Lucerne School of Business, whose talk at ETAS SIG Day 2012 inspired and influenced my teaching of simulation.

• Pair interviewer and interviewee up with a silent partner to offer support with language and content and to provide post-simulation feedback;

• Provide each group with a posture and body language guide to offer each participant advice in the simulation on these elements;

• Provide each group with a back-channelling monitor (eye contact, words like “right”, “ok”, “hmm”, “yes” “ah”) to provide feedback and input on these;

• Ask one participant to avoid eye contact with the other or take a more aggressive body language stance towards the other;

• Record the interview on learners’ mobile devices for them to play back with another group after to evaluate;

• Aim to repeat your message in as many ways as possible;• Aim to provide a fictitious or real-life experience for each

point made in the interview (it might be also interesting to evaluate these afterwards in terms of true/false);

• Give participants a hidden agenda in their simulation like play devil’s advocate, act uninterested in the job.

Variety Is The Spice Of Language Learning

Everyone involved in English language teaching would agree that most of the major developments of recent years, including those related to the opportunities created by new technologies (blended learning, interactive course books, etc.), the (almost) all-conquering rise of the communicative approaches and the commitment to lifelong learning, are all connected in some way to empowering learners, catering to different learning styles and an overall shift from teacher-centredness to learner-centredness. But what does learner-centredness actually encompass? In what ways does it have an impact on our approaches to teaching and how do we implement it (in concrete terms) in our classrooms on a day-to-day basis?

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“Key challenges for us are to move away from teaching according to our own learning styles and to enable learners to gain a better understanding of their own

preferences.”

The first issue for any teacher is to understand each student's motivations and priorities, past learning experiences (both positive and negative) and optimal learning styles. If you can't understand why a student is in your classroom, what they most want (and need) to learn and how they can most effectively go about this, you are never going to fully satisfy your students' needs, or your own. This is why both initial and on-going needs analyses are so important. Otherwise the only information you will have is the language level based on whatever placement testing your school carries out (and we all know how reliable these results can be!), the ages and nationalities of your students.

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The key information any needs' analysis should provide is:

It is best to collect this information over a series of lessons - by getting your students to interview each other, design their own questionnaires, compare and contrast experiences, etc. As a teacher, you can monitor and record, noting any relevant information provided by your students as they are engaged in communicative activities (for which they will also receive language-related feedback) - everybody wins! You can even get your students to design the course syllabus for you (if you have this kind of freedom). Why not run a pyramid activity: ask each student to think of five language and five topic areas that they want their course to cover. Put the students in pairs and ask each pair to agree on a combined list, and then do the same in fours or as a whole group. Make note of items that don't make the final list as these will also be relevant once you have covered the prioritised items.

You will then know which students are taking the course because the want to (to travel, to study, for family reasons), which need to so that they can get ahead (for an exam or a job) and which need to because they have no choice (they risk losing their job or their parents force them to). Once you've got a degree of understanding of which students have intrinsic (a personal interest or enjoyment in learning English) or extrinsic (the potential reward for improved English is the main factor) motivations; which students have a predominantly visual, auditory, kinaesthetic or tactile way of learning; which students work best independently (field-independent) and which work best in small groups (field-dependent); and who is more logical and intellectual in their learning (left-brain dominated) as opposed to those who are more intuitive and subjective (right brain dominated), what do you do? In short, you offer variety:Key challenges for us are to move away from teaching according to our own learning styles and to enable learners to gain a better understanding of their own preferences. The idea is not to teach each student exclusively according to their preferences

(which in a group environment is impossible anyway),

but to aim for a blend of methods. If the right balance is struck, learners will be taught partly in a manner they prefer (leading to an increased willingness to learn), and partly in a less preferred manner, providing practice and feedback in ways of thinking and learning which they may not initially be comfortable with, but which they may have to use to become more effective learners.

Sebastian TaylorSebastian Taylor is an experienced English trainer, teacher trainer for the EUROLTA course and Director of Studies at ESL Prolog in Berlin. He is also very active in the local teachers’ union in Berlin.

! personal profile (Who)• needs, wants and expectations (What)• motivation(s) (Why)• learning preferences/styles (How)

• whole group, small group, pair and individual tasks

• pictures, graphics, timelines and realia• projects, problem-solving and case-

studies• discussions, debates and role-plays• video clips, recordings, music and poems• gap-fills, matching, labelling and ordering

activities• collaborative and competitive activities

and tasks

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, I have subscribed to lots of podcasts so finding a suitable one isn’t too difficult and then I just mail them a link.

I have to maximise the limited face-to-face time I have with my students but still try to include a mix of different input and output opportunities. As my students are all involved in senior decision making, they are interested in their industries and the business world in general. They keep abreast of issues via the press and are quite ‘tech savvy’, using iPods and iPads on a daily basis. Thus, it was no surprise that I was asked to integrate this into my methodology and I have done so by using business podcasts and my own feedback podcasts. Students listen to them on the way to work, during their breaks and even while having lunch.

Podcasts

iTunes has a wealth of podcasts for any teacher and you can subscribe to most of them for free. Here are some of my favourites which are regularly updated

Using podcasts

I recommend a podcast before every lesson for my students to listen to. However, they often have specific requests for something related to their work or a topic from the press.

Thanks to my iPad, I have subscribed to lots of podcasts so finding a suitable one isn’t too difficult and then I just mail them a link.

I listen to the podcasts, note down the main ideas, useful language and anything which can be used as revision from a previous lesson. Then, in the class, whether it be a physical face-to-face, an online lesson or a phone lesson, I begin with asking them for a summary or just their thoughts on the podcast. This then develops into a discussion as I ask them questions relating the topic to their job and we go over the key points and language which they didn’t understand or which is useful for the topic. As we go, I keep notes of emergent errors and weaknesses to be worked on during or following the lesson.

For feedback, on account of the very short time we often have together, I record my own mp3 podcasts where I explain the new language and highlight and expand on their difficulties. Even though, I do provide a feedback document, every student prefers the recordings and one even said he listens to them several times to help revise all his classes.

LogisticsUtilising and recording podcasts can seem complicated at the start but it really saves me a lot of time and is very effective. Of course, there are times when students don’t listen to the chosen one and you have to discuss the topic from your notes but this does give them an incentive to listen to it afterwards

Bloomberg

McKinsey: Finance

Accenture: Management

You can also find more listed by business topic here:

Background

I teach a number of high level Business people in a one-to-one context. They generally have very little time for lessons and practically none for any out-of-class study but they are dedicated to sustaining or improving their levels of English.

Podcasts In Business English One-To-Ones

Phil WadePhil Wade designs and delivers BE and ESP courses to managers and directors in France. He is the author of several e360 courses and an ELT Social Media Manager.

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, I have subscribed to lots of podcasts so finding a suitable one isn’t too difficult and then I just mail them a link.

Book review:

Richard Cauldwell: Phonology for Listening. Teaching the Stream of Speech. Speech in Action. Birmingham, UK 2013. ISBN 0954344723ISBN-13: 978-0954344726Self-published and printed on demand by Amazon.€25.68http://www.speechinaction.com

Richard Cauldwell has made his point: Listening acquisition lags behind the acquisition of other skills because we treat listening as a skill learners will acquire simply through enough exposure, by “osmosis”. Instead of teaching listening, we test listening comprehension. As a result, and drawing on learner diaries, Cauldwell reports that learners have two major complaints:Ying’s dilemma: Ying from Sinagpore says she can’t catch the words she knows when their sound shapes change in the middle of sentences, as they are squeezed together, especially in spontaneous speech. Anna’s anger: A student from Finland is angry at her teachers for underusing recordings, neglecting to teach what Cauldwell calls “the realities of the stream of speech.” (p. 3)

Approaching the problem from the standard pronunciation syllabus doesn’t resolve the problem, Cauldwell says, because “the careful speech model” that underlies that syllabus treats language as “a correct, tidy, steady-speed, rule-governed phenomenon,” with a limited set of sounds and rules for sentence types and connected speech phenomena, “optimised for clear pronunciation.” (p.4) So while it may be easy to use such a syllabus to teach, it doesn’t help learners acquire the listening skills they need. Cauldwell explains the challenge using three metaphors: Beyond the “greenhouse” of the classroom, and outside the “garden” of careful speech, awaits the unruly “jungle” of

spontaneous speech (p. 260). And we have to prepare our learners for jungle listening.

Cauldwell’s solution is to take a comprehensive approach, “teaching learners to decode the sound substance of the stream of speech.” (p.1) He lays out a “window on speech framework”, contrasting the clearly pronounced “citation form” with the sound shapes in spontaneous speech. He studies the speaker-defined speech unit, rather than the grammar-defined sentence unit, born out of “the moment-by-moment choices that speakers make as they communicate.” (p.5) Speech units are multi-word rhythmic sections with prominent and non-prominent syllables, steps up and down in pitch, and tone glides (up, down and level). His special focus is on the squeeze zones of non-prominent syllables contained in speech units, and how they compress whole word groups.

Part 1 (Chapters 1-5) presents the window on speech framework, expanding on the work of Brazil, Bradford, Hewings, Cauldwell and others to introduce transcription techniques to describe the effects of squeezing.

Part 2 (Chapters 6-10) describes the sound substance of the stream of speech, including shifts in stress, and includes an interesting discussion on syllable timing, i.e. how speakers of an L1 such as French with syllable timing will retain that rhythm when they use English.

Part 3 (Chapters 11-15) studies accents (Britain, Ireland, North America, and Global including English as a Lingua Franca), as well as how identity, emotion and attitude influence speech.Part 4 (Chapters 16-20) suggests learner activities for spontaneous speech listening, in both low- and high-tech contexts.

Getting real in Teaching listening

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, I have subscribed to lots of podcasts so finding a suitable one isn’t too difficult and then I just mail them a link.

Overall, the exercises raise awareness for getting past the “decoding gap”, which requires “letting go of the careful speech model”. While Cauldwell uses sample recordings throughout the book to raise awareness for the specific sound shapes, with careful listening/analysing and preparing/performing tasks, Part 4 goes the extra step of explaining how to work with the material.

The activities focus on what Cauldwell calls savouring and handling short stretches of speech. Such activities generally involve drafting a transcript of the various versions of one and the same phrase. Transcription follows the standard procedure: Put each prominence surrounded by double lines to signify the small break, note down stressed syllables in capital letters, additionally underline the main stress syllable, and add arrows to show rising and falling pitch. For example:

18.1! Stepping stones (18.01-4)

This pair work activity includes four model recordings using the phrase “It’s the second biggest city in my country, I think.”1. First, students or the teacher create a greenhouse version with every word spoken very clearly.2. Then they create a slightly messy ‘garden’ version with stress dictated by the speaker’s personal intended meaning.3. After that pairs speak in unison to contrast the two different versions (performing before the class)4. Finally, students are presented a very messy ‘jungle’ version with filler words (perhaps from the teacher, or from an authentic recording)

Other activities include:

Practicing clusters of frequent forms Close listening following transcriptsSoft focus listening to catch mondegreens – i.e.

“occasionally” can sound like “ok jolly” (p. 285)Formulating questions to include an answer that the learner would give based on mistakes in decoding the sound streamTaking phrases from squeezed to clear and backImpromptu dictations stopping recordings to have

students write down the last 64 words they heard

Finally, Cauldwell suggests using Audacity or another

digital editor to record and study the wave shape of sounds, and Audio Notetaker to listen to, analyse and edit the chunks of a given audio file.

Overall, Phonology for Listening represents an original, practical approach to understanding and teaching an essential language skill that is clearly in need of improvement.

Additional tips:!

Richard Cauldwell’s recorded workshop “Jungle Listening” is available online here

Richard Cauldwell’s iPad app Hot Listening, Cool Speech, available on UK iTunes, won the digital innovations award at the ELTons 2013.

Anne HodgsonBased in Berlin, she has been teaching business and academic English since 1998. She gives language and intercultural skills training to corporate clients and works as a translator. Anne gives and organises talks for BESIG and ELTABB (events coordinator 2012-13). She’s been a writer for Spotlight and recently authored Basis for Business C1 for Cornelsen. http://www.annehodgson.de

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You also need to be prepared to say “no I am not prepared to do this”. They may reply with “yes ok goodbye” or “ah yes maybe

you are right”. You have to have what is known as a BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement).

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, I have subscribed to lots of podcasts so finding a suitable one isn’t too difficult and then I just mail them a link.

So Evan, you’ve been working as a freelancer for over twenty years. What does every freelancer need to know?

If you are pitching to a company then you’re not in teaching, you’re in the sales and marketing business. It has nothing to do with language teaching. Language teaching is simply the service you are selling.

First of all you have to be credible. This means that you have to look the part and give the impression that you know what are you doing. If you don’t look credible in the first couple of minutes then it’s over. You need to show that you understand what in-company training is all about.

You need to see yourself as a business partner. Your client will be paying you to take work away, to solve problems, not create work. That’s often the biggest problem for a lot of companies. They see freelancers are creators of work. They don’t turn up every week because of illness, holidays etc, but there is no guaranteed replacement. Freelancers are not accountable to anyone; the company needs to find a way of checking them, which again creates work. Many freelancers don’t even submit bills correctly. Put yourself in their shoes. Would you choose a freelancer or a school?

In a nutshell what would you consider as accountability? I want to take the first step into the corporate world.

First you agree some sort of objective with your client. You then need to agree on criteria so that you and the client can both evaluate whether or not the objective has been met. You are accountable if you take responsibility for meeting or not meeting those objectives. Accountability is basically answering to the client.

What kind of questions would you expect to face?

I think most of the questions will be about you proving that you are credible. Experience, qualifications, that sort of thing. I also think you need to ask questions. You have to have done some research. You should know what customers the company has, its products and services, its main markets. You should certainly have a rough idea why they might need English training.

In many ways, it’s similar to a job interview

Exactly like a job interview, you are selling yourself.

So you need to do some research before hand. When you turn up, you need to show that you are inquisitive, asking intelligent questions. Partly it’s about active listening. One of the key things you want to ascertain is that you are speaking to the right person because you might be speaking to the wrong person and wasting your time. Find out if they have the authority and then find out what they think they want from the training. That might start a discussion of what is possible and doable in a set time for the money.

Before you even talk about making any offers, arrange to speak to as many stakeholders as possible. This word needs to be in your head at all times, stakeholders. Speak to the learners as well as expert insiders (people who can do it already) and find out what they think the training should involve. Speak to people who influence (HR managers, other in-house trainers, department managers). It’s like a puzzle. You need to put the pieces together.

Whatever you do, don’t make an offer too early, and certainly not at the end of the first meeting. Go away, think about it, and come back with your offer because things will occur to you afterwards. Don’t commit yourself too early on. There probably needs to be at least one other meeting on the scope of the training so that everyone is clear on what you are offering and what you are not offering. Don’t promise the earth and then not deliver.

Pitching To Companies: What Every Freelancer Needs to Know Dale Coulter Talks To Evan Frendo

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, I have subscribed to lots of podcasts so finding a suitable one isn’t too difficult and then I just mail them a link.

You mentioned money: how do you prepare figures?

The money is really the hardest thing. I have just had a meeting where one of the things I had to do is sit down and make an offer. The lady told me they have had another offer from a competitor that was a quarter of the amount and asked me why. I had to think on my feet and explain and justify my price. What’s the difference? Why are you charging four times as much? The money side of things is really difficult because every client has different budgets and different priorities, and they are also expecting different things. They may think all trainers are the same, but we’re not. There are lots of people out there offering training who have never had any real training themselves. They just happen to speak English and live in a foreign country. They have never really developed the skills and techniques you need to analyse a company’s language needs and then design an effective training intervention.

On the other hand I have had times where I have sat down and they have offered me ten times what I was going to ask. So the important thing is just to feel things out a little, and be prepared to justify your price. You might find out that they have approached other people. They might say that they have approached a language school and been offered a certain package and you know roughly what they are offering. You need to have an awareness of what the market price is.

But it’s not always important to compete on price. The difference between 25 and 29 euros per hour is negligible to a company. If you can show that you are more professional or do things better – when you look at the costs of the training, the actual cost of paying the trainer is minute in comparison to the cost of not having people at their desks, a manager not available to make decisions, an employee being paid to not do their job. You can point this out very early on. So yes, people do compete on costs but two to three euros per hour is nothing when you consider the bigger picture. Business people tend to understand these sorts of arguments.

You also need to be prepared to say “no I am not prepared to do this”. They may reply with “yes ok goodbye” or “ah yes maybe you are right”. You have to have what is known as a BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement). You’ve got to know the time at which you say “enough is enough” and walk

out. You have to pay taxes, costs, and so on. You are a professional, not a beggar.

How do you make first contact? Direct selling? Networking?

I personally favour networking and word of mouth. I have tried direct selling and of course the people you are competing against have very big marketing budgets. I have also been on the inside of these companies and the HR person will have piles of brochures and CVs and be swamped with candidates with qualifications ready to do the job. It’s a tricky one.

Would you ever say that it’s a good idea to cold call?

Personally, no. Because unless you know that customer really well you are probably going to irritate or annoy. As I say I have worked on the inside of these companies and especially in the bigger companies you could be dealing with people who have a lot of experience and very good language training qualifications themselves. I regularly get hired to help companies find suitable trainers. Some outsider who decides to cold call and claims they know what is best is likely to receive a no. They clearly don’t know the first thing about the company and are not really worth working with if they can’t even be bothered to do the basic research.

My advice would be stick to networking, or better, stick to recommendations. Get your first client via networking and get recommended because word of mouth is much better. Cold calling takes a lot of courage as well because you might succeed once and turned away a 100 times. Cold calling is a hard game. Either you can or you can’t. I don’t think I could.

Evan FrendoEvan Frendo is a freelance trainer, teacher trainer and author, and have been involved in teaching English for the workplace since 1993. Although he lives in Berlin, most of his work is elsewhere and he spends a lot of time traveling. He works mostly with corporate clients, either training or consulting, as well as language training providers. Recent projects have included courses for German executives who need to work with Asian varieties of English, working as an instructor on the New School's MATESOL program