Tag Archives: theory

Low Impact Teaching

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Over the last 5 to 10 years, I’ve been developing new ideas about how we should be teaching in our classrooms.   These ideas have changed as the possibilities and promises of educational technology have become reality.

The most fundamental of these ideas are always revolving around learning and the student. The possibility to differentiate and deliver personlized study to students is the most important possibility before us teachers. Technology allows us to tailor curriculum, materials, delivery to and for each student. It allows us to correct the most horrid feature of schooling – that everyone learns the same thing, at the same time, at the same rate.

Here are three approaches that I espouse and have worked to develop.

SCC, student created content    Students create the content that will be the basis of their language learning. We start from the students’ world and understandings and build on that. A teacher elicits language from the students, forming a material. This material is the basis for further language activities and practice. The teacher is the facilitator and organizes the language practice and learning of students – there is no direct instruction.

The Flipped Classroom for ELT    Students can learn and practice the structures, vocabulary and content of our language classrooms through mediated self directed learning. Either in a computer lab or BYOD class at school or as homework.  No longer do classes need a teacher in the front, leading the whole group.   Classroom time is taken up with actual production and the teacher having direct time with the students assessing, getting feedback, engaging.  The teacher no longer has to spend time (usually wasted), teaching infront of the class a language point or eliciting language for a group on a topic probably only 2 or 3 students are interested in.

Low Impact Teaching     I’ve long had a big interest in the work of Sugata Mitra and especially his concept of MIT – Minimally Invasive Teaching.  Now, he’s developed it along the principles of allowing learners maximum autonomy in the class and to allow for “self organizing learning environments” (SOLE).  I go a little further and more broad with my concept of low impact teaching (and I highly recommend Kevin Gidden’s DNT – Do Nothing Teaching approach).

Low impact classrooms are classrooms where a teacher is not the dominant focus, the central power and puppeteer. EFL has always been for better or worse, led by a teaching model where the native speaker was the primary source of authentic language/input.  Nowadays this shouldn’t be so and needn’t be so. Students in most parts of the world have access, immediate access to all kinds of spoken English, even at an appropriate level.   So now, the role of the teacher shouldn’t be one that dominates and talks but one that organizes and disappears.  The best teachers are invisible, just like the best use of technology is.

Low impact teaching is about organizing the environment in which the students will learn and then, as I’ve referred to Sugata Mitra’s approach – “going away”.  It is about driving back into the learning environment organic, intrinsic student motivation, curiosity and independent learning.  And that is the end goal of all education, helping to create a learner that will learn when we are not there, when nobody else is looking …… Low Impact Teaching is “I’m going away now” teaching – where the teacher doesn’t tell the student the answer but teaches slow and allows the learner to learn for themselves. It is about putting students back in control. Low impact  teaching but high impact learning.

It’s so energizing to be involved in education at this moment of time. Beyond opportunity, we teachers must realize there is a heavy responsibility on our shoulders to not let things get hijacked and to push for change, be disruptive and enact approaches like Low Impact Teaching or the Flipped model in our classrooms.  Once we’ve changed the existing cultural paradigm of teaching, I’m sure we can then take school out of the walls it inhabits and into the wide open world where it will best flourish and nurture students.

 

The #1 issue facing teachers around the world ….

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Number One** Not your ordinary, endless list – just what’s number 1.

                              The Freedom To Teach

I haven’t done much with the #1 lists of late however I’m restarting my engine and will be updating the ebook and this post is a good blast off.

I truly believe that what education anywhere needs is more freedom for its teachers, more independence.  Much has been said about Finland and why it is so successful at educating its citizens.  My own conclusion, PISA results or no PISA results is that the success of Finland is directly related to how much freedom and control its teachers have in the classroom.  Teachers in Finland are given the freedom to teach (read more at Pasi Sahlberg’s portal site).  They can put their own selves into each classroom lesson, change and adapt lesson material based on students’ needs. They don’t “teach by numbers” or by flipping pages or turning to exercise 4, page 26.  We need edupreneurs in the most strict sense of that word. We need to trust our teachers as professionals (as Diane Ravitch points out in this must read) , we need to liberate the curriculum from the bondage it is now under, we need to give our teachers the freedom to teach as they best see fit in their classrooms.

My own travels, witnessing different teaching cultures and teacher training has led me to this conclusion.  I can even frame it as a “law” – call it David’s law.  The greater the freedom of teachers in an educational system, the higher the corresponding achievement by students as measured through long term results (not short term standardized scores). 

Too often, we see talented teachers frustrated by the inability to practice their own trade. They are tied up, imprisoned by requirements to cover x material in y fashion. Frustrated by having to teach z when they know students are only ready for y.  Teachers are stressed as the human factor is sucked out of their daily teaching day.

I find it incredulous that the greatest freedom in most educational institutions is given our early childhood educators AND that they are paid the least.  All teachers should have the freedom to teach and part of that freedom is a commitment by society that they will be free of financial duress and paid appropriately.

Hand in hand with the “Freedom To Teach” is the notion that teachers should be well trained and supported in their professional development. All freedom requires a matching responsibility.  Both teachers and administrations need to commit to being well trained and progressive (in the wide sense of that word).  Better paid AND better educated teachers are needed in our schools so that the freedom we promote is realized.

Now you are probably saying to yourself, “What exactly is this – freedom to teach?”  Well, here is my short list defining the conditions required for the blossoming of this most precious right. Call it a mini manifesto and I hope its flag blows across the world and becomes a standard oath, a wind blowing us away from the monstrous restrictions most teachers presently face when teaching.

The Freedom To Teach

1.  Teachers should be free to enact the curriculum as they see best.  Teaching shouldn’t be about following but about leading, leading students.

2.  Teachers should be allowed to take detours and personalize instruction. Teaching should not be an objective and distant, abstract activity.

3.  Teachers should be able to teach from their own set of teaching beliefs and with their own teaching style.  Teaching should not be a one way delivery system.

4.  Teachers should be free to set their own teaching day and vary it as they see fit.  If they need to spend a whole week on a novel, they should be able to. If they need to skip music so students can finish math, so be it. The teaching day shouldn’t be set in stone – no longer should the Minister of Education be able to look at his/her clock and know what a grade 4 class in Lyon is studying.

5.  Teachers should be judged by how well they get students involved and engaged, by the thought and feeling that is happening in their classrooms. Teaching shouldn’t be about short term scores or outcomes nor should any teacher be judged by a number alone.

6.  Teachers should be able to use any and all materials that will help their students learn. Teachers shouldn’t need approval to use x book or talk about subject y. Teachers should be treated as professionals that understand students and are sensitive to students’ and the wider societal needs.

7.  Teachers should be free from financial stress and paid at a rate that is appropriate for their highest importance in the society. Teachers shouldn’t be at the mercy of  needing to stay in a job because they can’t pay the bills any other way. Teaching should be a free choice and not one based on financial necessity.

This is just my short list. I’m sure you can think of many more parts to this “Freedom To Teach”.   We also might flip this and together look at it from the students’ side – The Freedom To Learn.  Students don’t have this freedom and so many, too many, spend days of boredom, trapped between walls.  Just as teachers need the freedom to teach, we need to give our students’ a voice and the freedom to learn.

 

Issues in ELT / Issues in SLA

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I haven’t written much about language recently but I’m definitely always thinking about it. It is itself a jailer, something I can’t get away from and like the adage goes “I am language”.

But been thinking about language as it relates to what we teachers do – teaching it.  I think teachers both need to be aware of the issues surrounding the teaching aspect of their profession but at the same time, the issues surrounding how students learn a language.  Lets call them the practical vs the theoretical ( the house (visible) and the foundation (invisible) ).

So here is a list with a few notes I made along the way, outlining off the top of my head, the main issues in English language teaching (the practical) and Second language acquisition (the theoretical).  Please comment and add your own but I think this list will be helpful to a lot of beginning teachers and help them see the breadth of our profession.

Issues in ELT

1.  Native speaking teachers vs Non-native speaking teachers  - pay / power / role?

2.  The backpacking teacher vs the certified teacher.  Is accreditation needed/useful?

3.  The role of technology.  Problems.  Eteaching boon or bane?.  Teacher training – how?.  Digital literacy.

4.  Textbooks.  Are they necessary?  Are any materials necessary (Dogme)?

5.  Edutainment.  Do students learn through games, being entertained? How much is too much?

6.  Edubusiness.  Does the profit motive hurt / hinder student learning? Are there low cost / no cost alternatives?

7.  Prof. Development.  Does it always mean conferences/workshops? Online PLNs, sharing.

8.   Education vs  Applied Linguistics.  Which orientation should drive the profession and be given importance?  Following good pedagogical practices or the research driven findings of linguists?

9. Proficiency.  What is a fluent speaker?  Can a learner attain native fluency? How do we know what a student knows?

10. Methods.  Is methodology important? Is there a magic bullet/pill? What works best?

Issues in SLA

1.  Poverty of stimulus.  How do we produce language in such unique ways (know and use grammar rules ) without very much input. What’s at work here?

2.  Order of Acquisition.  Does this apply to learning a second langauge?  What are the stages of learning a second language – grammar / words?  What are the differences between L1 and L2 learning?   Interlanguage – does it exist?

3.   Age. Critical period hypothesis.  Are young learners better language learners or just different?

4.  Cognitive Issues.  How does the brain store and process language? How are the brain and language linked. Do we think in words? Can we feel language? How is memory related to a second language.  Does the language we speak change the brain (Whorf)?  What mechanisms drive acquisition?  Innate vs learned behavior.

5. Identity and Culture.  Do we become different when we speak another language?  Culture.  Is language culture specific – how? Is it important to save languages and have many languages spoken in the world?

6. Form vs Function   /   Input vs  Output   /     Skills Focus  vs Immersion 

– do we learn a language best through an inductive nature or by deductive explanation and then application? Do we learn the rules informally or formally?  Can be break up language into discrete skills/units to study or is it too messy an affair?

7.  What is a word?  What is the basis of meaning and upon which communication is built? Semiology – how do things have meanings and what is the relationship? Why can’t a wink be as good as a nudge?

8.  Social factors.  The affective filter. How do factors like intelligence, affluence/poverty, peer grouping,  development, motivation affect learning? Are they critical? Personality – how does it effect learning a language (risk taking).

9.  Aptitude.  Why are some people better at learning languages? Why are females better? What factors drive this success – innate /  learned?

10.  Error correction.  How? Should it be done at all?  What makes a self correcting learner?

If you enjoyed this, you may enjoy “Insights Into SLA”

Dogme revisited

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This morning, sat down and had some “my time”.  Went through a number of my hundreds of notebooks full of philosophy, essays, poems that I’ve been collecting over 4 decades.  A lot of stuff buried in these books but was surprised to pull open about 50 pages on film. Don’t even remember writing this but it was fascinating. One part was on Dogme, when it was a new approach to film making in the 90s.

It got me thinking about Dogme ELT something I think is often misinterpreted by many teachers. It also is sort of misnamed – if Dogme ELT were to follow the original Dogme manifesto, it wouldn’t ever take place in a class but only use original settings for practicing language. For example, if you were learning about ordering food, you’d do so in a restaurant. The classroom would be anthema for anything but learning metalanguage (language we use to talk about language).

To me, Dogme ELT is about two crucial things:  

1.  focusing class activities around the language of the learner and the resulting emergent language (it is highly personal)

2. little or no use of materials (textbooks, worksheets, cards, tapes, computers etc…)

Too often I hear teachers talk about Dogme ELT like it is just going into a classroom and chatting up, running with  anything that happens. I don’t think this is what it is about and that approach would be Hangout ELT.   In Dogme, the teacher needs to be very experienced in language teaching and interpreting the language of the learners – so they may guide them towards better use and form of that language .

So find below two things.

1.  My rewrite of Dogme ELT imagining if it followed the original Dogme 95 manifesto

2. My notebook entry from the 90s about Dogme, rewritten to apply to Dogme teaching.

Might spark some thought about new possibilities with our lessons and in our classrooms.

Dogme ELT Manifesto: (see original HERE)

  1. All teaching and practice of language must be done “in situ”, in the real location. No fake props or sets but only using real language in a real location.
  2. Teaching is holistic.  There must be no separation of function and form and language is treated not in discrete parts, nor dissected but rather as it is used.
  3. Technology must be simple and hand driven. Chalk, pencils, pens etc…. No use of electronic devices; computers, screens, CD players and so on. The speaker, the human being, is the focus.
  4. Teaching must be real. It can’t be a play, a scripted event. The plan is that there is no plan other than the main objective to start things off.  No fakery, no lying on the part of the teacher.
  5. Extrinsic motivators are forbidden.  The class must not be tainted by point systems, rewards and competition.
  6. There should not be any role playing in the classroom (this is artificial). All language takes place and arises from a real need and impulse.
  7. No use of video to show learners language used in a different time and place. It all happens in the here and now.
  8. The teacher can’t be an actor or use different teaching styles. Nor are there any different types of English to be taught (business, global studies, finance, hospitality and tourism etc…). The only English used is that of necessity that comes from the learner, there is no imposed structure given from the instructor.
  9. The class must be 10 or less students to facilitate real use of the language and proper instructor intervention.
  10. The teacher is part of the class and a learner.  Credit goes to the whole class for any success, not just the teacher.
Dogme Teaching – A revisiting (rewriting for education/teaching of what I originally wrote about Dogme film, substituting “teaching” for references about cinema)

Dogme?!  Everyone is talking about this manifesto, a new and amazing approach to teaching. What a crock!  There is nothing new there, it is all fluff and puff. It is only “style”, how a woman might choose a scarf for her walk. Dressing up. The form of teaching shouldn’t be an absolute, a funnel but open and expansive, a way to more things. Dogme teaching is a way for some but we shouldn’t think that anything about teaching language is a MUST. Nothing is sacred and there are many ways to touch that special place where learning happens.

But even if we accept this new form, this new approach as being new, it certainly isn’t revolutionary or transformative. It hasn’t any developmental gravity, it takes teaching nowhere. It only leaves so much on the cutting floor. It simplifies but at a cost.  We don’t realize it but we all bring so much cultural baggage into the classroom – there must be desks, a chalkboard, students as an audience, 40 minutes …….  Dogme teaching is just another system and jailing – as all ideological, school and teacher led learning must be.

 

4 Keys to learning English: input, input, input, noticing

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insideheadI’ve written a lot about Krashen’s ideas on this blog. Fundamentally because they focus so well on what is “essential” in language learning. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly and I’m glad about that.

I was going over his online articles and especially his seminal work – Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. I kept coming back to the feeling I had as a teacher – that comprehensible input was what students needed – needed to be engaged, on task and effectively learning a language. Not memorizing, not manipulating words, not learning grammar rules, not translating, not x or Y or z but only input, input, input – at a comprehensible level.

This is why extensive reading is so powerful in helping students acquire a language – but extensive listening is just as powerful yet so seldom done effectively. We need more of that – I’m trying my best at EnglishCentral to make this happen through authentic (but leveled/supported) content.

However, input really isn’t all that must happen when a student receives language. They also have to “notice” the language in their conscious mind. That’s when the learning happens and language “sticks”.

Krashen has a nice little article where he calls this “The Din in the head” hypothesis (and yes, yet another hypothesis). It is kind of like the ghost inside the machine. Meaning, when language is received, there is a “din” that goes off which links the input to something “there”. Scaffolding is achieved and the language rooted when the language is put into a context. What is this “din”?

Essentially it is the student’s bell/brain sparking and going off. An involuntary mental rehearsal of the language. Students notice language. They are no longer fish in water but fish that know they are in water! They take the received and convert it to something and somewhere that it can be produced. It may be relating the incoming language to a known form or L1. It may be repeating it. It may be thinking a thought of something it relates to. It may be a lot of things this din – but it is important. Everything isn’t just input – there has to be some ghost in the machine doing its thing.

Here’s what Krashen says,

“The Din in the Head hypothesis claims that the din is the result of stimulation of the language acquisition device, a sign that language acquisition is taking place (Krashen, 1983).I noted that the Din experience correlates with less reluctance to speak the language, but did not make any hypothesis about a sudden “critical stage” that leads to a “sudden and massive restructuring” as de Bos claims (p. 173). ”

So what does this mean for the working Joe teacher?

I think it means that we have to create curriculum that is contextualized strongly and thus offers “comprehensibility”. I think it means we have to think more about the input that happens in our classes and how we can create regularity of it. I think we have to think about how we might get our students to do some metacognitive activities and start practicing “thinking about language”.

I know it is a long shot but maybe we can try to get this “din” activating more often in our students?

To end. Here’s a screencast I made of the new EnglishCentral “hidden task” feature. Basically a listening cloze activity. I think this kind of activity can support our efforts to activate this “din inside the head”.

More about “getting out of the way”

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einstein1The objective of education is learning. Or not even that, I’ll interject. More exactly, the true objective is “contentment”, a well adjusted individual.

And the only way to reach this objective is to tap into the “feeling good about oneself” that is always there in each student. To give them success, that feeling of success that they define and set. And you do it by rubbing relationships together and giving students the space and freedom to be. The space to do what they can and want to do, what they can dream to do – not what you’d want them to do or what you’d want them to dream about or what the “state” would deem proper.

Anyone who’s read my blog more than a week knows I keep coming back to this one salient point. Teachers need to seek their own demise. Teachers need to have the courage to get out of the way and let their students climb, fall, reach, fail.

Nuff said. Watch this video on how students can “learn” from their own volition and drive. How teachers CAN get out of the way and still be successful teachers.

(see the previous post about “giving students room” – here.

Focal vs Tacit knowledge

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tweet technology

Technology. Everyone wants to learn it and everyone wants the “key” that might open up the door to these skills.

Truth is, there is no easy way! I’ve been mucking about and learning as I go – for a long time. And that’s what I love about technology and education. I can learn by riding my waves of motivation – surfing toward possibility. There is so much damn possibility!  However, how best can you learn to get up on the surfboard and feel the power and freedom of that wave? How?

Well, most teachers learn by doing and trying and struggling.  I do think there is an easier way – you can benefit from a course. However, IMHO and from my own experience being wrong – most technology courses are given in the wrong manner.

I was prompted to think about this after commenting on Jeremy Harmer’s blog post about technology and by default, his own efforts to learn an audio recording program. I commented that I thought despite how most training programs work – that an embedded approach is the best way to “teach” technology.

What do I mean? Well, as the above tweet so nicely relates, it is about making technology the servant, the means and not the king or product. Technology should be taught in the process of teaching other things – it should not be the focus. Programs are ill effective when they take the, “Let’s learn how to do subtitles” approach.

I’ve been there, I’ve done it and it effects little change in teachers. They get a nice little diploma, maybe a pay raise, maybe a confidence boost but that’s mostly it (except for those spark plugs and you don’t ever teach them – they’d learn even if exiled on the moon).  Why do I think this direct,  technology course approach is ineffective? Because we learn by doing but even more so with technology through “purposeful” doing.

One thinker extraordinaire is Michael Polyani (the lesser known of a family of thinkers and of many amazing Hungarian intellectuals of his era). I read him extensively while in university, especially his “Personal Knowledge“.  To me, he is brilliant in his explanation and support of “tacit knowledge” over explicit or what he called, “focal knowledge”.  As he famously said, “We can know more than we can tell.” This speaks volumes for both language trainers and teachers.

Focal or explicit knowledge (or Polyani would say, “knowing” for knowledge is never a static phenomena) is something we are directly attending to. We can count it and define it and share it. Tacit knowledge is an ability or skill to solve a problem based on one’s own problems and concerns. It is very difficult to show another person or “transfer”. Both have a place but some things (like skills, like technology) are not very well transferred by way of explicit knowing. You must learn it indirectly.  [and please note, I'm massacring Polyani's subtle thought - he'd never so brutally divide these two ways of knowing...]

To explain by way of a good metaphor, let’s think of an apprentice. An apprentice might go to school but more often than not, he/she observes, tries, imitates, practices. They don’t follow strict steps or listen to someone tell them how to lathe a 3/8 inch pipe. They do it but most importantly, they do it as an actual, real and personal thing. Not just for the sake of learning….. They don’t think, “Wow, I’m learning how to lathe a pipe!”  What they are thinking is, “this will work well and fit perfectly”.

It is kind of like looped feedback. You model the technology in use and teachers learn by seeing it in use as it should be and then using it not in and of its own sake but for an outcome that is non technology related. You see, we never use technology in order to use technology (or few of us do, maybe those unfortunates showing off their latest ipad while doing squat). We learn technology by using it as a means to something else.

Let me give a practical example. Take the usual course on “Moodle” . You go there and learn and practice tutorials on how everything works. Then maybe you do a final project to show how brilliantly you can “do” moodle. My way is completely different. You don’t take a course in moodle. You’d say take a course in curriculum development and learn moodle as you learn about curriculum development and develop your online syllabus. Two different animals.  You learn tacitly. You make it personal.

In my own teacher training classes, I have got trainees using technology to produce learning outcomes that aren’t technology related. That’s the way to go. And of course, I got many teachers saying, I can’t do that! However, they always managed – LOL! And that’s how we learn, we struggle and we try but not in the name of technological competence but in the attempt to do something else, communicate something else.  Technology is a means, not an end.

Let me list a few more examples of how this would work (and will work in my new TESOL certificate course).

I’d love to know what you others think about learning technology through a course which isn’t “about” technology? Also, shouldn’t we be hiring teacher trainers that are good with technology – that can model it in every day class instruction, so teachers can learn it indirectly, tacitly?

embedded training

Insights about SLA …..

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I’ve recently been updating articles and resources on the TESOL Teacher Training page/course. One article that I read several years ago has always stood out for me. What do we know about learning and teaching second language – Implications for teaching. Written by Francis Mangubhai, it is somewhat technical but still can be read by teachers and gleamed for its intelligence. He sets out some things that he can be pretty sure of, after 25 or more years in the field.

I’ve listed his “insights” below but read the whole article for his own elaboration. Also, please vote here – I’d like to know your opinion on how acquisition happens. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be making a few brief comments of my own about each insight. So today let’s start with the first –

1. Adults and adolescents can “acquire” a second language

This suggests the most valuable of all knowledge for teachers – that we don’t “learn” a language but rather “acquire” a language. It is through exposure, an environment of meaningful communication that we “get” language – not by memorization or conscious, ABC building.

Take the learning to drive metaphor. Yes, you can learn to drive in the sense that you can read a book about it, attend a lecture, memorize all the parts of the car and the rules of the road, pass a test. But can you just with that alone drive a car? Not a chance. You must observe (we call this input – and see Stephen Kraschen’s work for more elaboration) for many hours, drivers in action. Further, you then must actually drive a car (see Swain’s notion of Comprehensible Output). You can’t actually drive a car through just conscious learning. It has to come in the backdoor through productive practice. Same with language – language learning always comes in the back door and not the front door.

Why do students in foreign countries take so much longer to acquire English, despite all their hours of English classes? Mostly because unlike in an ESL setting, these EFL students don’t get the necessary amount of input. They don’t encounter English enough in the public realm, in the real, non-artificial , non-classroom world. They don’t have the opportunity to “acquire” English through unconscious learning. Of course they learn something, but never enough to actually say they can “drive a car” / “speak “X” language.

But with a proper environment, both adults and adolescents can acquire a second language, especially if give sufficient input (and children do actually need less exposure to language to acquire it). Extensive reading has been shown as one method to foster language input, social media (videos, radio, TV) is another. We as teachers have to learn to “speak” to the student’s need to learn language “implicitly” and realize our “subject” is not like so many others but one which involves “tacit” and personal knowledge and knowing — not facts, blocks and unmovable knowledge.

We might also think about how this might challenge the more “nativistic” views of language acquisition in L1 – such as Chomsky’s own notion of a “language acquisition device”. This LAD according to Chomsky, is hard wired in our brain and with input, we can sort it out and “acquire” language. But do we really need a part of our brain geared to language? Isn’t our brain already powerful enough? (and new “connectivist” theorists would say it is). Chomsky says that the “poverty of input” that a child gets suggests that we do have an LAD. I’m not so sure. We can’t just define language as words or what is spoken, but it is also very non verbal and most children don’t need a lot of verbal input to still start to create connections and organize language in their heads. I’m not so convinced that in our evolutionarily short span of time as “language makers” , we would have developed this “LAD”. So I’m going to sit on the fence.

But what I suggest this “insight” really says to every day teachers is that we should teach language through inductive and playful means. There should be an effort to “hide” the instruction and for students to be unaware they are really learning English. I”m still a big cheerleader of the “keep them talking” notion. The best teachers can step away and be the guide at the side, not the sage on a stage!

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Insights into Language acquisition and learning.

1. Adults and adolescents can “acquire” a second language

2. Learners need to focus on form also in order to develop a more complete grammatical repertoire in the second langauge.

3. The learner’s developing grammatical system, the interlanguage, is often characterized by the same systematic errors as made by a child learning that language as a first language.

4. There is a predictable sequence in second lang. acquisition; learners have to acquire certain structures first before they can acquire aothers as their interlanguage develops.

5. To become fluent in a language – one must practice it! (and get extensive input)

6. Knowing a language rule and being able to use it in communication or writing are two different things.

7. Isolated, explicit error correction is usually ineffective in SL learning.

8. In meaningful contexts, learners are able to comprehend much more than can be judged by their ability to produce accurately language of comparable complexity.

9. The different rate of learning observed in our students arises out of individual differences.

10. The “pour” into a vessel view of knowledge doesn’t work.

11. Teachers’ practical theories guide their behaviour in classrooms.

Self Directed Learning – Part 1

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illichIf I could meet just one guy who I’d like to chat about the future and place of education in the world – it would be a toss up between Ivan Illich and John Taylor Gatto. Illich the intellectual, the piercing and challenging mind – Gatto, the more matter of fact, direct working guy. Today – I’d like to talk about Illich.

I do believe that we are slowly, “deschooling”. What we are doing online as bloggers, eteachers, sharers – is such. Illich in the sparkling podcasts below from 1968, tells it exactly as it is TODAY. Meaning, we have started unschooling but instead of a new form of nourishment for the brain, a new direction whereby citizens, students are empowered – we are still in the grips of a school system that is quite irrelevant to the needs and benefit of citizens. A school system that isn’t working and essentially assembly line and out of date.

My hope, as Illich outlines, is in “learning networks” – not just what you see here on the internet but in others taking things into their own hands and creating a world where a person’s worth is not in their labor or their mind but in their capacity to learn AS THEY SEE FIT. No reins, no guru, method. Limited authority. Just the freedom to be where their mind beckons. As Illich says, “the little spark” that allows us, offers us the opportunity to “dance to our own drummer”, to open our own doors and be the WE that we want to be.

I have taken notes from these lectures and will post up thoughts along with relevant excerpts in part 2. I’ll add my thoughts about the future of learning and in particular – Self Directed Learning. For now, please enjoy and savor. Also, read his mini book. An important document for all educators – 1968 or 2010. After Deschooling What? by Ivan Illich

Illich on Deschooling

If you liked this – you might enjoy: Killing Creativity or Teacher’s Who Needs Them?

Let me list the ways I’m subversive….

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Postman and Weingartner in Teaching as a subversive activity talk of subversion being even a tiny act, even as tiny an act as thinking about who you are as a teacher. Subversion begins there, in that kernel of self truth.

They asked teachers,

Why do you teach?

I can control people.
I can tyrannize people.
I have captive audiences.
I have my summers off.
I love seventeenth-century non-dramatic Elizabethan literature.
I don’t know.
The pay is good, considering the amount of work I actually do.

Obviously, none of these answers is very promising for the future of our children. But each in its way is a small act of positive subversion because it represents a teacher’s honest attempt to know himself. The teacher who recognizes that he is interested, say, in exercising tyrannical control over others is taking a first step toward subverting that interest. But the question – ‘Why am I a teacher, anyway?’ also produces answers that are encouraging: for example, that one can participate in the making of intelligence and, thereby, in the development of a decent society. As soon as a teacher recognizes that this is, in fact, the rearm he became a teacher, then the subversion of our existing educational system strikes him as a necessity. As we have been vying to say: we agree.

I think teachers, especially those in any leadership capacity, have to start thinking about “subversion” differently. It is the small steps that count in reforming education, not the grand pronouncements and sweeping reforms. It is our own acts before and among our students and colleagues that matter.

How do you subvert the system, in your own little way? How do you keep “sane” and keep “counting” despite a system that stamps approval and keeps the emphasis on product and not process?

Let me list the ways I do….

1) I always ask probing, challenging questions when I can. Each and every opportunity, even forsaking the “lesson” and the “book”. Who cares about Unit 2, exercise 3 – “The Family”. It can wait. Let’s ask why there aren’t any colored people in the book or let me relate how I was adopted and how complicated my own family roots are….

2) Every student gets an A. I follow the Benjamin Zander (see video below) school of assessment. If admin asks me to tweek, I will, but ever so slightly and softly.

3) Standards? My standard is the twinkle in student’s eyes and that they “know that they are knowing”. It isn’t how high but HOW, plain and simple.

4) I talk to colleagues and share information and resources. I make my teaching transparent and my classroom door is always open. I even run out and drag in people from time to time….

5) Paperwork gets done, no more and no less. I refuse to package it or throw a ribbon around it. Let nothing be cosmetic and let my desk be a mess. Paperwork comes last, my time in the classroom comes first.

6) Student choice. I always give choice. If the curriculum says talk about shopping and students are talking about P.Diddy – I don’t give a diddy. They are practicing their English.

7) Taking detours…..see most of the above comments. The learning happens on the off beaten tracks and as we get lost and rediscover our own path through the woods to grandmother’s house.

8. I don’t get concerned if students are off task (so long as they aren’t bothering others). Of course, I try to motivate them and urge them on and get them engaged. But if that fails, I don’t give a damn if they just chill out. It is their life – they are responsible for it. That’s a big lesson I try to season my lessons with constantly.

What about you? Any ways you subvert the system, big or small. Any ways you break out of the matrix?


Find more videos like this on EFL CLASSROOM 2.0

If you liked this post – you may enjoy “Are you a Subversive Teacher” (get pdfs of Postman and Illych’s seminal books/readings)

What is Language?

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“in the beginning was the word, and the word became flesh”

Today I was reading Roger Cohen’s column (I’m quite his fan, never was but recently he’s take some very intelligent and courageous stands on issues from nuclear disarmnament to Palestine) Loos and Language. That was enough to take me on a meditation of “What is Language”. It is so powerful this clay we teachers work with! I remember, me a German by name and birth, in Canada. I remember hearing the word “German” and thinking of “germs” , “bad”, “dirty”. That still rests with me, though I’ve traveled all over German and become a germanophile. The power of language. So here is my meditation.

Language is thought made visible. We might even extend that to emotion made visible. It is the electricity that lights up human experience and allows us to “not be an island”. From the swamp of thought, a tree grew and declared itself alive – this tree of life was language…..”for in the beginning was the word, and the word became flesh.” It made something permanent, solid and resistant against the chaos of that within……

Words? They die quickly without life in our inner thoughts as we “think aloud”. They live forever in the written word, scratched on a stone wall. Words – they allow us to complete desire, “I love you”, “I’ll have eggs, over easy” or they allow us to kill and control desire – rules, laws, edicts. One imam today declared a fatwa, with 10 words only, thousands march…… Words are power and an expression of our ultimate existential powerlessness….a national anthem plays at our opening ceremony, this language creates us as a culture. Yet, I open the newspaper and a writer demands the ex-president of Korea be jailed. He disrupts culture, he uses words to mix and destroy as well as build….. Language builds and destroys, blows bombs and kisses…….

Language. It is both that which is compressed with meaning – poetry, song. It makes the young girls cry, as I heard Barry Manilow sing today. Yet, it is mundane, a ritual and meaningless, robotic. “Hello, how are you?”, “I’m fine, thank you. And you?”. I must have said this a dozen times today but don’t remember, so insignificant it is/was. Auden’s comment goes well – “Poetry makes nothing happen, but it matters” (so many forget the last part of this quote!).

Language is loud or soft – a drum for how we feel. They say a picture speaks a thousand words but nothing speaks of quality better than sound, meaningful sound. This sound and fury that is the very essence of life and which we haltingly call, “soul”. The yawn that I just made as I stretched, is as much a word as “Pandiculation” – however we might think otherwise. I communicate myself or like Whitman, use language to sing, continually sing, “the song of myself.”

Language is the music I listen to every day. A kind of on/off which provides meaning. As Nietzsche so well said, “without music, life would be a mistake.” I say, “without language, life would not even be, a mistake”. Language gives us ourselves — we have a name, Thou art that, Tat Tva Asi sayeth the Brahman. Meaning, everything begins with calling something by the right name. Today I asked for a “pencil”. However arbitrary at the bottom language is, it is precise in functioning. I had to call it by its right name…..I will never be anyone other than “David”. A rose, is a rose, is a rose, as Gertrude Stein might have explained. We may well want to call it another name but it is consigned this for perpetuity.

Language. It is a time machine. First I’m talking about my weekend, next, I’m 5 years down the road, looking at new career moves, finally, I’m right here now, drinking my coffee and talking to you, whoever you are. Time allows us the joy of travel, the safety of this kind of travel.

Language is identity. A man walks into my office and says “kaput”. He and I share a Germanic bond. We know something’s wrong. From the hooligan’s cry to the babies babble, language links – it is a cacophony of sound, a stream of nonsense that has no space, no pause. Yet we pause it, we make sense out of it. We perform miracles because of it. Like the miracle that from the finite number of letters available to me, from the finite number of sounds I can wind — we may create the infinite number of sentences and “crie de coeur”. Miraculous, through language we are all as if gods.

Whatever else language is, language is freedom. It is an endless creativity, a gift of pun and playfulness. From one thing, we can build an infinite of another and on and on. Language gives us power because ultimately, we feel like we make the rules – whatever the ghost in the machine. When I’m teaching, I’m empowered – where do these words come from, that just appear out of nowhere? What a god I am! From nothing – I create something!

Without language, we’d be chained to the now, chained to the wall of our self. Imprisoned, a Guantanamo of our own making. That’s why I say thank you to language, through language. That’s why, I care about the words I use and that’s why I try to learn more about language. It is the sun the beckons our human spirit.

What Makes A Great Teacher?

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There is A LOT that makes a great teacher. I guess that’s why this topic comes up over and over and over again. Hard to pin down and wrap it in some formulaic response. However, The Atlantic “What makes a Great Teacher“, just tried to and though they hit a lot of nails, they didn’t manage to really build a house.

They expound on the “Teach for America”, “Race for the Top” and “New Teacher Project”, all cash cows to both come up with the silver bullet that will kill a “bad teacher” and the “ecstasy pill” to make a great one. Poppycock!

First, they got the measuring stick all wrong! You don’t measure success in education through test scores, nor do you use test scores as the measure of a teacher. Partly because you’ll just be whipping lint off the microscopes and mostly because teaching isn’t about “da numbers” but about creating a happy child. Poppycock!

Making a great teacher takes so much. So much that isn’t even in control of a teacher (and so you got to judge things from that perspective also). Here’s a picture of it….

Further, a great teacher is as the article suggests, about a person who constantly tinkers and changes (which is anathema to a “test driven culture and classroom). However, I challenge the whole “Teach America Team” to stir me up a soup that will make a great teacher. There is no recipe!

The article has a lot of thoughtful things in it. Teach America has thrown out some tired assumptions. However, why do they come up with their own assumptions that will just no sooner than my cheap suit, be tomorrow’s second hand store item? It really is frustrating this wish, this need, this want for “pie in the sky”.

From my own perspective, there are only two things that make a difference in the classroom. One, have passion and show it in your own manner as a teacher. Two, tell the kids they are smart, tell them they can do it. Sell success. All the rest, poppycock!

Here’s an old presentation I show to new teachers – highlighting all the things that go into being an effective English language teacher. (there’s a lot I’ve left out, including a good “poppycock” detector!)

The #1 …….. (book on language)

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Number One** Not your ordinary, endless list – just what’s number 1.

Let’s not beat around the bush – no question: Thought and Language – Lev Vygotsky

This book is the “Origin of Species” for language. A collosus. It has everything a mind interested in language could imagine. Originality, nuance, suggestion, intelligence, research… ……

My favorite chapter without a doubt is Chapter 7 – Thought and Word. Read it online HERE. More resources HERE.

I’ll end with a few gems from this Slavic soul…..

“A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.”

“Through others we become ourselves.”

The teacher must orient his work not on yesterday’s development in the child but on tomorrow’s.