Turkish TEFL

In my last post I argued against viewing many structures as advanced, especially when they exist in the students’ L1.  While I think my main point of considering many structures as somehow advanced and difficult for students to be nonsense is well-founded, I do stand corrected on two grammar points I used as examples.

Looking deeper into the matter, there is a difference between adjectival passives (or pseudo-passives as one commenter called them) and actual passives.  A sentence like “he is married” is an example of a past participle adjective rather than a true passive as “married” serves a predicative function in the sentence.

Compare “He was married in 1990, but now he is divorced” with “He was married by a priest in 1990.”  There is a slight difference in the meaning I think.

On the “have got” end, I do still think it originally comes from one of the ways in which we use present perfect today, but it has lost that nuance.  It merely has a similarity of form rather than a similarity of meaning.  Compare “I’ve got the car for 5 days” with “I’ve had the car for 5 days.”  The first implies the length of time I will have it while the 2^nd implies the length of time I have had it.  It follows then that the meanings are not exactly analogous.

These two examples lead very well into my second reason for thinking grammar is incredibly overrated in the classroom.

Reason #2:  If it confuses us, how could it possibly help the students?

In the simple definition I use in teaching, grammar is simply the structure of the language.  For instance, in English we use subject + verb + object, the past tense is used to talk about finished actions in the past and we make it with S + V2 + O, etc.

Does this really help our students for them to know this?  Does it make sense to them?  My contention is that it doesn’t help them nearly as much as the importance we place on it seems to indicate.

Let’s face it, how many of you knew what an SVO language was before becoming an English teacher?   If you walked into a Turkish language classroom and someone told you that Turkish is an SOV language, would that have meant anything to you before becoming a teacher?  My guess is no.  So why do we teach it to the students?

Do we ever teach that “to give” is a ditransitive verb?  How about that “I wish I were…” and “If I were you…” are past subjunctive structures, or what about even the basic difference between an object and a complement?  I’m betting that almost no one has taught ditransitive verbs, done a lesson on the past subjunctive, or a lesson on objects vs. complements.  Yet our students use these structures all the time and, of course, native speakers use them as well.

Let’s do an experiment.  For those who don’t know, a ditransitive verb is a verb that takes two objects such as “to give.”  For example, “please give me the ball.”  “The ball” and “me” are the dual objects.  Now, take a minute and think of some other examples of ditransitive verbs…

Not so easy is it?  What if I asked you how to determine if a verb is ditransitive or not before seeing it in use?  The fact is, we can’t.

Now do the same with the past subjunctive.  The past subjunctive can be used for counter-factual information, hypothetical situations, wishes, suggestions, or doubt.  Besides the examples given above, please take a minute to think of some other sentences using the past subjunctive…

Again, I’m willing to bet most readers were unable to come up with any.  Why then do we ask students to do things like this?

What I’m betting you could do was come up with a whole lot of sentences using the previously given examples.  You could probably think of a hundred sentences with give, or if I were you, or I wish I were.  Using language with examples that emerge from the class is what is worth teaching – not sweeping categorical rules.  We want information like this to become chunked in our students brains and then recalled in situations similar to what we saw in class, on tv, in a book, etc.

I used the grammar points above because I’d bet that most teachers aren’t familiar with them and it gives us a good feel of what learners are going through.

Moreover, the teacher often has to figure out the rule before class or review it.  I often see experienced teachers walk into a class and bungle up passives, conditionals, or present perfect.  If we actually have trouble understanding how it works, what makes us think that passing on this knowledge to the students will help them?

How often have I seen a teacher give a rule and then ask students to make sentences with it?  It’s not easy, especially if the student is put on the spot in front of the whole class.  Just think, if we can’t quickly do it ourselves in our own language, how can we expect students to do it?

If we have taught complements vs. objects, ditransitive verbs, and subjunctive moods to our students all this time without knowing what they are, what’s to say we can’t do the same exact thing for every other grammar point?

How many of our students ever run through the long lists of grammar rules while speaking?  Well, we can easily spot the ones that do because they take ages to produce a single sentence and it comes out in little pieces.

I think this is really where ideas like teaching students to chunk language and learning through context come into play.  Students are given opportunities to use language in certain situations and then the teacher helps lead them to the most appropriate language.  Through lots of usage opportunities and comprehensible input, the language will chunk and, more importantly, it will start to sound correct to the student’s ear.

This is always a goal in my classes.  I don’t care if the students know the rules much, I want them to be able to say, “well, this just doesn’t sound right.  It should be this way” because they’ve had so many learning opportunities inside and outside my class that he language comes naturally.

What do you think?  Does teaching grammar rules have a positive impact on student learning?

Related Articles:

Why Grammar is Overrated – Part 1

Steven Pinker on Language & Thought – A good video showing how grammar talk can be extremely complex and almost useless in a language teaching environment.

In Other News:

I did a guest post over on Barbara Sakamoto’s Teaching Village on different ways of using a text in class for her Stuff All Teachers Should Know Series.

I’m also doing a number of workshops at conferences this year.  Last weekend I did a workshop on storytelling over at Cevre Koleji that went incredibly well although I was rushed into giving it in 25 minutes.

I will also be presenting at TESOL Greece next week, Gelisim College in Turkey, BETA Bulgaria (2 workshops), and the 3^rd International ELT conference in Cyprus.

If anyone else will be at these conferences I would love to meet up.  Shoot me a message.

A discussion ensued on my  last blog post about some changes we were implementing at my school.  One of the issues that came up was how to approach grammar teaching.  I’ve been meaning to start a series on this, so here is the first installment.

Assumption:  Grammar-focused lessons, syllabi, and course books are the antithesis of communicative language teaching.

We need to stop deluding ourselves that teaching grammar and then asking the students to partake in an activity that uses the structure is actually communicative.  It is not.  It’s simply grammar instruction with a speaking component.  This series will examine the many incorrect assumptions made about grammar and will take a look at actually applying the CLT approach and teaching communication.

Part 1:  The Argument Against Advanced Grammar

One point that came up in the discussion is teaching “advanced” structures to lower levels.  I think Karenne’s reply aptly sums up my feelings on the subject, mainly that language is “NOT math.”  The picture above is a great example of how grammar can be made overly complex in a classroom.  Will diagraming grammar like above help the students use the language?  Certainly not.  Well the same follows for all the time wasted explaining grammar to students with simpler but still overly complex language.

Understanding and using grammar are two different things.  We want to teach our students to use the language, not to be grammarians.  A very common mistake is to focus on grammar as form rather than grammar as meaning.

Well, here’s the question:  should we teach structures like passives or present perfect or mixed conditionals to lower level learners?  My answer is, in most cases, absolutely, if they are ready for it or it‘s appropriate.

The first critical point that Karenne brings up is that a step by step approach to grammar is nonsense and even insulting to some people’s intelligence.  In an article by Scott Thornbury and Luke Meddings on Dogme and the coursebook, they state that, “there is no research evidence to suggest that such [grammar] lists match the manner nor the order in which language is learned. It is more probably the case that such language items “emerge” naturally in real language use, through repeated cycles of exposure, attention, output and feedback.”

I would strongly agree.  My main language learning experiences are with Turkish and a bit of Vietnamese.  While Turkish is worlds apart from English, I picked up the structures incredibly fast.  As I lived in Ankara, a city somewhat notorious for cold people, when I first came to Turkey and because I was teaching all the time, I had few opportunities to practice my Turkish.  Yet I downloaded grammar explanations online for most major grammar points and started amassing translations of important words.  Not an ideal way to learn, but it’s all I had.

After a month in the country I had the opportunity to take a vacation to a different city.  On that vacation I made friends with a couple of university students who were studying art.  Neither of them spoke a word of English.  However, I had no problem talking to them.  I had the most difficult time understanding anything they said to me, because I had so little listening practice, but I got my message across with the scarce vocabulary I had available at the time.  The thing I did not have trouble with was expressing passives, future plans, unreal situations, etc.  This is all part of my language that I use every day.   It’s not difficult to understand.  Not only that, my language ability sky-rocketed with two days of practice compared to the small gains I had made in the previous month I had been studying on my own.

This has been my experience throughout learning languages.  I progress slowly or I can’t get something, and then suddenly I get immersed in intensive speaking situations and my fluency shoots up in a very short time.

A very similar story goes for my experience in Vietnam although that was much easier as grammar was much simpler and closer to English.  I would meet people who were shocked that I could make sentences in the past, present, future, and continuous in Vietnamese and they still couldn’t after months of Vietnamese classes.  That’s because I took 10 minutes to look them up online rather than wait until the course thought it was appropriate.  I not only knew these tenses, I used them in my interactions every day at the market.

The idea that our students can’t understand some grammar because it is too “advanced” is ridiculous.  What is difficult is actually learning to take the grammar apart and explain it, but I’ll deal with that in a subsequent post.

Let’s take a look at some “advanced” grammar.  How about passives?  Should we really be able to teach this to beginners? Hmm.  Let’s see… 

I’m married.
Is he tired?
He gets dressed at 6am every day.

Well look at that, 3 passive structures that we teach almost immediately to beginner level students (Ok, you can argue the first two can be viewed as adjectives, but it’s a moot point because functionally the structure and the meaning are the same).

This is probably one of the biggest misconceptions in TEFL.  Obviously if the students can get the above structures, we can teach any other grammatical point in the same way, passives or not.  It’s all about meaning and using the correct language in the correct situation.

How about present perfect?  Well, have you got some more time?  A present perfect sentence most course books teach within the first few weeks.  Why then do we wait until later to introduce this tense?  Well, we could say there is no present perfect in many languages so it’s more difficult.  Well, Turkish also doesn’t have a commonly used verb for “have” anyway either.  Of course this use of present perfect is a bit simpler to comprehend, but you get my point.

Then we move on to mixed conditionals.  What thel is a mixed conditional anyway?  The only reason it’s “mixed” is that because somewhere down the line someone came up with the less than brilliant idea that there were only 4 types of standard conditionals in English.  What egghead sitting in an office decided this I don’t know.  Mixed conditionals are only difficult because our students have been told for years that there are only 4 types.  Now you are mixing them?  How about just not putting constraints on them in the first place?

I tell my students, if they ever ask, there are two main categories of conditionals, ones that deal with real situations and ones that deal with unreal.  That’s the only point to even worry about.  As for conditional types, anything goes.

Once the student is ready, they’ll attempt a sentence like, “If rain, I (hand motion for grab) umbrella.”  Why would I not give the student the correct language he wants to use?  What can possibly be more important than what the student is trying to say? I don’t need to create a context, the student already has it.  He just needs the correct forms, “If it rains, I’ll take an umbrella.”

Now say the same level student comes out with the sentence, “If I rich, I buy very nice house.”  Again, the student has the context, give them the language they need to say it.  They’ve got it in their own language already.  Do you want to clarify it for the rest of the class?  Ok.

Teacher:  So Mehmet, are you rich?

Mehmet:  No teacher.

Teacher: Do you have a nice house?

Mehmet:  No

Teacher:  So this is real or not?

Mehmet:  No real.

Teacher:  Ok then, say, “If I was rich, I’d buy a very nice house.”

There, you just taught 2^nd conditional to a low level class.

Will they remember it right away?  Probably not.  Should you spend lots of time on it and drill it?  Again, I’d say probably not, it depends on the nature of the conversation or activity taking place.  But now the students have been introduced and, when they are ready or when they see it again, they’ll be much more prepared.

Were a few of your students a bit lost?  Ask for a quick translation and move on.  You’re not going to waste time trying to explain something unless you really think your students are ready to use it or it’s appropriate for the activity.  Once you really want to or need to dig into this kind of language, then really bring the points home, but if it’s just something that came up in class (which is the best way to introduce language anyway), quickly get students on the same page with a few well chosen concept check questions or a translation and move on.

We know that grammar knowledge does not equal acquisition.  No matter how much you teach the students about the grammar, it will not translate over to proficiency and fluency, so why do it?  Most students have had years of grammar instruction and it has not worked for the vast majority of students as we can see quite clearly by looking at our students.  Why then do we continue to give grammar instructionwhen it so obviously hasn’t been working?

Present a topic very briefly, I usually say under 5 minutes like in the example above and then just give the students tons of practice opportunities in the form of conversations and tasks.  Will everyone get it immediately?  No.  Is that ok?  Most definitely.  They will see it again and again, and – this is very important – when they are ready, they will pick it up.

This isn’t just theory.  This is something I have seen work in my classes time and time and time again.  For all the trouble Turkish students have with present perfect I can honestly say that my elementary students start to use it naturally without even realizing they’re using it after a while.  Why?  Because we don’t focus on the grammar.  We just do lots of activities with excellent context that provide them language use opportunities.

I would argue that the only thing that should limit explicit grammar teaching, if it is explicitly taught at all, is size and whether it’s in the mother tongue or not.  Obviously for a student that can barely get out “I live in Istanbul,” we’re not going to introduce “If I get a new job, I’ll move.”  However, the student is hardly going to attempt saying something like that if he’s not ready for it.  It should never be a problem.

Obviously beginners have less ability to keep long sentences in their head or to manipulate a lot of variables.  It makes sense to teach present simple and future before introducing the 1^st conditional because the conditional builds on the previous two.  In the same way, students need to have a critical mass of vocabulary before dictionary use can be really effective.  However, grammar that depends on other grammar is in the minority in the language, so this is rarely a problem.

The other constraint is the L1. It’s always much easier to learn something that is already present in your L1.  I’ve been told Chinese does not have language for imaginary situations in the past, so 3^rd conditional will be a struggle.  Turkish students don’t have anything like the present perfect, so it’s more difficult for them to pick up.  It doesn’t mean we can’t introduce it early on, it just means the students will need to spend more time working on it to acquire it.

To connect back to my last post.  Stop worrying about what the book and the syllabus say and start worrying about what language your students need and are ready for.

What are your thoughts?  Are structures like passives, perfect tenses, and wishes really any different from present tenses or possession?  Is it really that difficult for an adult who may have a master’s degree and run a company to make a sentence with two pieces instead of one (i.e. I go vs. I am going).  Do some classes focus too much on grammar?  Are complex analytical explanations useful to students?  I’ll be interested to hear what others have to say.

Related Reading:

Dogme and the Coursebook

I have a number of posts in the works, but have something more pressing that I would really love all your feedback on.  I’m trying to convince my fellow manager to follow suit on a few issues and would also like to know if anyone thinks I’m on the right track or not as well.

I’ve been managing my current school, Oxford House College, for about 6 months now.  It is an absolutely fantastic school, one of the best in Turkey as far as I’m concerned and I’ve very proud to work there.  Everyone from the owner to the managers to the teachers are dedicated to teaching and we are constantly improving.

Before I ask for your input I should let you all know that we use an ongoing enrollment system.  While there are some drawbacks such as shifting classes and difficulty in planning or building on previous material, I love the system.

For anyone that doesn’t know, ongoing enrollment means that students do not buy courses, they buy hours.  They can enter a class at any time.  They don’t go through a course in the traditional sense that there is an official start and finish date.

They can also advance at any time.  The system is tailored to the students’ needs.  If they work hard, practice a lot, or are just good at learning languages, they can move up quickly.  If they are slower, very busy, or just taking more time, they move at a slower rate.  The teachers constantly keep the students progress in mind and when they feel the student is ready, they move them to the next level or tell them to stay longer, whatever the case may be.

We are trying to work with a set of can-do statements similar to the Common European Framework’s. However, these statements have been annotated or changed to apply specifically to Turkish learners.

If a students can talk about their present routines, their family, and fill out a form, but can’t write an email to a friend well, then the teacher specifically focuses on that can-do task until they are reasonably proficient and then the student(s) can move up.

Keeping this in mind, I’ve slowly been making and been trying to make a number of perhaps radical changes since I accepted the position.  I would love to know what your thoughts are on the issues.

#1 Exams

I have eliminated all exams.  Of course, if the teacher feels they really need to, they can give one, but exams are not required and the students know that the teacher’s opinion is all that matters.  I have done this because I trust my teachers.  I have an excellent team right now.  My teachers are with the students every class.  They know their students.  How can an exam tell them anything they don’t already know?

What’s more, students are becoming intrinsically motivated and focusing on progressing in their communicative ability.  They know there is no exam at the end, so they don’t skip class and show up at exam time and they don’t save all their studying for a week before the end of a course (technically we don’t have courses, but you get the idea).

My teachers don’t feel the need to teach to an exam, they can focus on what the learners actually want and need to learn.  It makes classes more flexible and allows students and teachers much more control over the direction of the course.

#2 Course books

We no longer have a primary course book.   Course books have a whole slew of problems associated with them.  They aren’t made for our learners, they are often boring, they take a step-by-step approach to language learning that often isn’t realistic, and they are too grammar focused.

We have a number of course book series available and lots of supplementary material in our small library as well as tons of high quality digital lessons on the computer all organized by level, skill, grammar point, and content.  Teachers identify the needs of the class and find or create appropriate material.

Too often students and teachers get bogged down in slogging from one page to the next and focusing on grammar mcnuggets (thanks Darren and Scott ) Why are we teaching past simple or letter writing if our students already do it well?  Skip it and move on to lessons they actually need.  A course should be dynamic and fluid, not linear.

#3 The Internal Syllabus

I’d like to do an entire post on this concept sometime, but for now, just a brief summary.  The syllabus comes from the students.  I’m terribly partial to Harmer’s EASA approach (which was brought up nicely on English Raven not too long ago) or Test-Teach-Test styles in general.

Come in with an engaging activity and then see what the students do well with and what they struggle with.  Make notes on the points they struggle on and then, in that lesson or another, teach, review, or revise the material.

This way you don’t cover stuff the students are already good at.  That’s boring and a waste of time for everyone.  You really focus on students’ needs.

It’s also much more skills and content focused.  You are constantly practicing skills rather than isolated grammar or lexical sets.

In true Dogme style, if students are searching for language to communicate, teach it to them.  Don’t worry about the course book or the lesson plan.  What could possibly be more important than what the students are trying to say?  This also ensures the perfect context.  The students know what they are trying to say, they just don’t know it in English.  Supply it and I guarantee it will stick better and make more sense to them.

An internal syllabus isn’t just about language points, it’s about content as well.  What are the students interested in?  What do they want to learn?  Get to know them.  Get the feedback from them.  Ask what they want.  Then bring in material based on that information.

An internal syllabus is created in the dialogue between teachers and students.

#4 Cut Down on the Worksheets

Gap-fill worksheets are banned and so are book activities that do the same.

I’m trying to get my teachers to cut down on worksheet use in class in general.

Yes, yes, I know.  I’m a Dogmeist now.  I need help .  Most of the material for a lesson can come from the students themselves.  You can get at least a two-hour lesson out of picture with tons of wonderful, student-produced language.

Let’s not bombard our students with worksheets and busy work.  Give one sheet to every 2 students so they are always working together and helping each other out.

Worksheets should be short and help to scaffold a primary activity.  I hate coming into classes and seeing students spend 20 minutes figuring out a crossword puzzle or filling in some blanks.  Then another 5-10 minutes is wasted going over the answers.

If you want your students to practice prepositions of place have them hide objects around the room, describe pictures of their bedroom for a partner to draw, show them a scene from Wallace & Grommit and the Wrong Trousers and have them describe what’s happening, play Simon Says, anything but an unproductive worksheet where very little language is produced or engaged with.

#5 Skills and Content Focused Learning

We have 3 and 4-hour lessons at our school.   I encourage my teachers to see this as an extended learning opportunity rather than discrete hours with separate lessons.

Pick a topic like Art.  The first lesson can be a listening on abstract art, the second a reading on surrealism, and the third can be a heated debate or discussion on the connection between politics and art.

Throughout the 3 hours, students are building and revising related vocabulary and structures, but they are also coming across lots of new information and getting a chance to focus on particular skills throughout.

Were your students sick and they come in talking about it?  Have a conversation about it.  Brainstorm illnesses and discuss remedies.  Do a doctor-patient role-play.  Write about your last visit to the doctor then exchange with a partner and do some peer correction.

Our students should be learning to communicate and learning different skill sets, not obsessing over grammar  and vocabulary.  Of course, grammar and vocabulary have their place, but skills and content are so much more interesting, contextualized, and, IMO, effective.

What Do You Think?

Well, that’s the end of the main pushes I’ve been trying to make that directly concern teaching in the classroom.  What do you all think.  Good ideas?  Bad ideas?  Should I modify them.  I’m really looking for your feedback on this one and I’d appreciate any and all comments.

Related Reading:

No Good Reason to Grade

I am honored to have Darren Elliott guest posting this week.  Darren often has insightful posts on the conflicts and issues that emerge between students and foreign teachers on his blog.  In this vein, check out Which English:  Why Your Opinion is Irrelevant, I Want You to Express Your Opinions Freely (as long as they’re the same as mine), and Responsible Racism:  A Guide for Teachers.  Darren was kind enough to give us a series of anecdotes about his experiences with Turkey and his understanding of what those anecdotes tell him.

I once worked with a man from Turkey. As we sat in the canteen one icy morning, he looked out the window at the thin light peeking above the horizon and told me that the winter sun always made him feel sad. Mind you, working night shifts at a cake factory in a provincial English town will do that to you.

According to Thompson (2001) there is no ‘be’ verb in Turkish. However, there are three different /r/ sounds, none of them like the English. So, what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts. I’m guessing that Turkish language performances of ‘Hamlet’ lose something, as do discussions of Cartesian philosophy.

Amongst the list of First World War peace treaties I had to learn as a schoolboy, I was especially impressed with the Treaty of Lausanne signed in 1923, as it was a re-negotiation of the 1920 Treaty of Sevre. That was the kind of schoolboy I was; one who sat up the front in history and memorized pacts, alliances and peace treaties.

I once taught a Turkish student, a labourer, at a private conversation school here in Japan. He was the exact inverse of his two Japanese classmates. While they would go through agonies before allowing tiny, perfectly-formed droplets of language to fall from their lips, he spewed forth streams of consciousness in which the flotsam and jetsam of English grammar bounced and tumbled.

So, to answer the question, “What does this tell me about Turkey?” – none of this teaches me anything about Turkey or the Turkish people. Gert Hofstede claims that Turkish people are keen to avoid uncertainty, maintain a fairly large power distance, and are members of a collectivist rather than an individualistic society. An awful lot of data analysis has gone into reaching such conclusions, but I wonder about reducing national cultures to numerical scores on a five-point scale? Why not buy the cultural GPS app for your I-phone (it’s a real product!) next time you travel? We can all too often pick out those little factoids we half-know about countries we have never visited, and pass them on as truths, extrapolated to express an entire society. It’s a danger that teachers, in particular, should never lose sight of.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard the stereotypes about Japanese students. Japanese students are quiet, they lack creativity, they can’t think critically, they are stifled by fear of losing face. I could find you a number of examples from my own teaching career which would bear these stereotypes out – in fact, there is one listed above. Without visiting Japan, or ever having taught Japanese students, you may have a similar image. But I could also find you a number of examples of Japanese students who are talkative, who think around corners, who have no shame!

The stories you hear first, the ones you choose to remember… is there a danger that the teacher will put their students into a box before they even walk into the classroom?

So that’s what I “know” about Turkey. I’d love to hear your notes on countries you have never visited, as long as you recognise that they tell you absolutely nothing.

I have just read Vocabulary by John Morgan and Mario Rinvolucri, a part of the Resource Books for Teachers Series by Oxford House Press.  This post has nothing to do with the merits of the book although I would say that I didn’t find it very useful.

My problem is with one of their assumptions that relates back to one of my earlier posts.  Right in the introduction there is a mention of why translating is a natural learning strategy and should be allowed or at least built upon in the language classroom.  As it so happens, the example they give has to do with the Turkish word ev.

Rather than making a case for them, it actually makes an excellent case for not using the students’ L1.  John and Mario claim that a student will naturally associate any new word in English with its translation in the L1.  They are right, this is inevitable, at least at low levels.  However, it is not something that should be encouraged.

Just looking at the word ev in Turkish.  The closest English equivalent would be “home”.  However, “home” is often an adverb in English, so we can’t say things like “We’re going to my home” or “We went to home.”  In Turkish, it always functions as a noun and so there are immediate grounds for error.  This word can also be translated as “house” or “apartment.”  In Turkish, the word can be used for your house or your apartment, whereas, at least in American English, we would distinguish between going to our house or going to our apartment. This is a common source of confusion in the classroom as you ask students if they live in a house and they say they do (houses are very expensive and hard to find in Istanbul).

This is why I really discourage this kind of approach.  Even with the simplest words, there are vast differences in grammar and usage.  Encouraging translation encourages these kinds of mistakes.  We want to build students’ learning strategies that don’t rely on this crutch.  It slows down their processing of the language, leads to untold numbers of errors, and kills their fluency.

I’ve had so many students that struggle to say even the simplest sentences because they are still translating.  It becomes a conceptual problem as well.  Students get so frustrated when there aren’t grammatical or lexical equivalents to new language.

My best students and the people I know that learn languages well always think in the target language as much as possible.  They don’t get tripped up by “I feel like a coke.” because they don’t translate “feel” and “like” literally.  Rather, they take it in context and immediately understand what it means.  If we translated the Turkish kola icmek icimden geldi it would literally translate as “cola drinking came from my inside” which makes no sense in English.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had students be unable to process new words unless translated because it’s become such a habit or because they haven’t developed better learning strategies yet.  I’ve had a picture of an owl and pointed to it and said, “owl” and still had a student ask “what it meant.”  I’ve had students come up with the weirdest translations for present and future perfect tenses (there are no equivalents in Turkish).  They mangle their own language just to try and make it work.  I’ve had students using causatives correctly yet still want to know “what they mean” because they can’t translate them.

One activity in Vocabulary was to play Othello with words in L1 on one side of a card and words in L2 on the other.  This kind of decontexualized activity only makes the situation worse.  What’s the point of having students make sentences in decontexualized fashion and at the same time reinforcing bad translation habits?

Condition the students to think in English as soon as possible and the rewards they will reap in the future will be enormous.

Related Posts:

Turkish-English Dictionaries in the Classroom

Using Turkish in the Classroom

Not too long ago Marisa Constantinides posted a piece that discussed building trust and relationships in the classroom.  I think this is probably one of the most important things you can do to create a positive classroom environment.  This series will look at a number of different ways to build relationships in the classroom between you and the students as well as between the students themselves.

I think relationship building is often overlooked in the classroom.  How many lesson plans list “to build bonds” or “to establish trust” in their objectives?  Activities designed to build relationships and a positive environment are extremely beneficial for lowering the affective filter.  By doing such activities we are in fact laying the groundwork for a constructive environment in which learning can occur. It’s well worth the time to think about and plan for.  Isn’t teaching really about relationships after all?  The learning of a language really comes second to this.  I think we have all seen teachers who do everything right, but if they don’t have a connection with their students, the lessons still fall flat.

Luckily for those of us in Turkey, one of the greatest things about Turkish students is how quickly they bond with each other.  Despite the many differences that exist, they will quickly form a cohesive whole without a whole lot of prompting by the teacher.  This is a strength you can exploit to the fullest.  Often classes will go to great lengths to stay together and adding or taking away students can be quite disruptive.  Although, again, new members will quickly be accepted into the group given a little time.  I think the most common positive feedback I get from my classes is that they “made some good friends.”

One way to build up bonds between students and get them to learn to rely on each other is to use pair or group work situations where they have to work together to complete the goal.  Of course, any goal-oriented group activity accomplishes this, but something with a physical element and an element of challenge can get much better results.

When I worked in domestic violence we did all kinds of trust-building exercises and I decided to modify one of them to fit an ESL context.  First, let’s look at the lesson plan and then let’s highlight some important aspects of it.  Here’s the lesson plan:

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

Tank Battle!

Level: Elementary & Up

Objectives:

• Build up trust in the class
  Imperatives
  Direction vocabulary
  Prepositions of place & movement

Plan: Walk into the class and draw a big bull’s-eye up on the board (I like to tape a picture of a tank in the center).  Draw a line on the floor where people have to throw from.  Then throw a crumpled up paper ball on the floor.  Point to the ball to indicate that you want it.  You also might want to tell students not to touch it.

Leave the classroom and put on a blindfold.  Enter the classroom and start stumbling around as if you’re searching for something.  The students should catch on immediately that you want the ball.  If not, ask where the ball is.

The students should guide you to the ball using whatever language they have.  Then indicate that you want to hit the target.  Again, students will guide you to throw it using whatever language they know.  You can scaffold by asking.  For example, “should I throw it (mime throwing)?”

After you have successfully thrown the ball at the target, ask the students how close you were to the bull’s-eye.  Then put up on the board any language they used and try to elicit some more and add your own.  Students will need language like, go forward, move your hand to the right, bend down, , turn to the left, throw it hard, etc.

Depending on the level of the class you might want to do some TPR with this.  Play a quick game of Simon Says to familiarize them with the necessary vocabulary. Or you could set up 3 chairs at the front of the class and have students come up in groups.  The person in the middle gives commands while the other two follow.  Work through a couple groups this way.

Once you are sure people are fairly familiar with the necessary language, point to the tank and ask them what it is.  Ask them when tanks are used.  Tell them that they are going to learn to fight a war in English!

The Rules of War are:  1) No touching , 2) Stay behind your tank at all times, 3) Commanders cannot touch the balls, and 4) if you get hit with a ball, you are out.

Split the class off into pairs.  One person in each group is the tank.  They will be blindfolded.  The other person is the commander.  They will give the directions.

Scatter a bunch of tank balls on the floor (crumpled pieces of paper).  Explain to the students, by way of demonstration, that the tanks must pick up a ball and try to hit another tank with it. Once a tank is hit, they are out until the next round.

Blindfold the tanks and spin them around.  Keep track of who hits who.  The first round the teacher should monitor the game, but the 2nd round should have the teacher participating with someone else monitoring.  If a group uses L1, they are automatically out.

Probably after round 1 you will need to revise some of the necessary commands and directions.  Play the game for as many rounds as the students are interested in.

Get feedback on the lesson and tell students they are now ready to fight a war in English

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

The first thing to notice is that the teacher demonstrates the activity themself.  When building trust, we can never ask the learner to do something we don’t do ourselves.  We can model the activity and create an atmosphere where students feel comfortable copying us.

Simon Says is your typical TPR.  All the students perform the same actions and so nobody really feels embarrassed (well, too embarrassed anyway )and it helps foster group bonds, especially as they see the teacher joining in.

The blindfold activity is great because students really have to trust one another to guide them and there is a competative element that makes it really fun.  You could also split the class up into teams, one with blue blindfolds and one with red, to foster more comraderie.

In the end everyone gets a laugh and they really start to rely on each other.  It’s a good way to get classes working together.  They really learn to trust each other and the element of putting yourself out there and taking risks creates an environment that encourages further risk-taking in the class when it comes to language use.

Here is the downloadable lesson.

What do you think?  Do you ever focus on relationship-building as a lesson objective?  What other activities can you think of that build group cohesiveness, relationships, trust, and/or a positive atmosphere?

On another note, I did a humorous guest piece over on TEFLTastic with Alex Case on what managers look for in their teachers here.

Related Posts:

Building Productive Classroom Relationships

Anita Kiwatkowska, a.k.a. Little Miss Bossy, is a rising star on the ELT blog scene.  She is currently a YL teacher at private school in Istanbul, Turkey.  She also happens to be one of the few people in my PLN I have met in person.  Her blog deals with YL in ELT among other things.  I am very happy to have her over here for a guest piece, so without further ado…

There are three kinds of foreign language teachers.

1. A teacher whose nationality is the same as the students’ and they share the same mother tongue (e.g. a Turkish teacher of English teaching Turkish students)
2. A teacher who does not share the same nationality with his/her students and does not know their mother tongue (e.g. an American teacher who does not know Chinese teaching Chinese students)
3. A teacher whose nationality is different from his/her students’ but he/she knows the students’ mother tongue (pretty) well

In a great majority of countries priority is given to teachers type 2 i.e. native speakers who do not know their students’ mother tongue. But is it really the best option?

I have been lucky enough to pass through all these stages. Teaching in Poland I knew the mother tongue of my students – Polish. Having started my job in Turkey, I knew no Turkish whatsoever. Living in Turkey for almost three years now, I know enough Turkish to get by.

Of all the kinds of teachers, number 2’s job is the most difficult, especially when you have to teach Young Learners. With adults it is a lot easier even if they are beginners. Adults are capable of abstract thinking, can concentrate longer and their knowledge of the world enables them to guess a lot from context.

Young Learners, on the other hand, come to the classroom knowing (almost) no English. Eliciting usually fails, as they have no previous knowledge of English. Teaching them basic instructions involves a lot of miming but eventually a teacher is still not sure whether his/her students got what he/she was trying to explain or not. And how to check whether they understood? Concept check questions are definitely not recommended. Those of you who do not agree should try to explain the word ‘only’ to a bunch of seven-year-olds.

Another issue is classroom management. Even if you succeed in having the kids sit down and do their work, there are always cases of students misbehaving. If you tell them off, the only thing they will understand is that you are angry and possibly why you feel so. Your exact words however will remain a mystery to them.

Some students, to make the matter worse, curse and use bad language in the classroom. The only way for a teacher type 2 to find out that it takes place is after other kids start complaining to their parents. And who is then to blame? The teacher, of course.

Teachers type 1 are in a much better position. In case of an emergency caused by bad behaviour or any other problems, they can immediately switch to the students’ mother tongue and have it all settled in a couple of seconds.

These teachers have also learned the foreign language themselves. They know what the process feels like and can easily anticipate learners’ problems. Most likely they will be able to explain the rules of grammar to the students better having experienced learning them before.

On the other hand, teachers type 1 often overuse L1 usage in the classroom. It’s not that I am criticizing non NESTs – explaining things in the students’ mother tongue is simply faster and a lot easier.

To take the matter further, non native speakers of a given language tend to mispronounce certain sounds absent in their mother tongue or have difficulties with stress and intonation of English. Consequently students of non-native teachers, being exposed to mispronounced words, start copying the teachers’ mistakes and the vicious circle goes on.

In contrast with teachers type 1 and 2 is teacher type 3 – myself at the moment. I no longer have the same problems as teacher 2 and knowing my students’ mother tongue well enough lets me have more control of what is going on in the classroom.

Comparing all the types, I can honestly say that being teacher type 3 works best both for me and my students. We feel more comfortable and relaxed in each others’ presence and dealing with difficulties is no longer the main issue. Most importantly this situation provides an opportunity for a constant intercultural dialogue which enhances learning on both sides – what more can one wish for?

Related Links

Using Turkish in the Class

I was waiting until Christmas to post this post, but then I realized that would not be appropriate at all.  Christmas is a time for giving gifts, but this is a post about heartfelt thanks and is better suited for Thanksgiving.

I wrote the following about a month and a half ago.  It’s the story of how one little response to a comment changed my life.

I’m a new blogger and I started blogging less than a month ago.  The entire concept of a PLN was alien to me and Twitter was a strange new world.  I entered this world because of one man, Jamie Keddie. I was a big fan of his site, TEFL Clips.  It got me using video in the class, something I had never done before.  All it took was the quick link to Savevid that let me download YouTube videos to my laptop.  In my unconnected and computerless classrooms suddenly I could bring in my laptop and do video lessons with my students.  The fact that one person was making all these great lessons and sharing them with teachers was very inspiring.  I started to make my own video lessons.

After using a number of the lessons, I posted a small comment under one of the them on the reasons I liked it.  To my great surprise, I got an email the next day thanking me for my comment and asking some simple questions about how I use video.  I sent him the lessons I had made using his site as inspiration.  Looking back with some chagrin, my lessons were a bit messy with lots of mistakes, but I think I’ve worked most of those out.  The lessons in question are now posted on my lesson plan page for teachers to use in their classes.

Anyway, after that, we emailed back and forth a few times and he informed me about an ELT conference in Istanbul being hosted by Burcu Akyol that he would be attending.  He asked if I knew about it or thought about coming.  I was shocked, an ELT conference in my city?  I didn’t even know these things happened outside the private colleges.  He then directed me to Burcu’s blog and said I should try out something called Twitter.

Well, I got on Twitter and didn’t do much with it for a while.  I looked at Burcu’s blog and followed her blogroll links to others.  I was simply amazed that there were all these people blogging about ELT.  At the time I was working at a terrible school and I’d previously worked at schools where people were professional, but no one was really interested in ELT or developing.  Suddenly there was an entire world of full of people interested in the same things I was.  Not only that, they were actively interested in helping each other become better.  It was amazing!

Soon after, the conference came around and I went to it.  I had never seen something like that in Turkey before (or anywhere else I had worked for that matter).  I didn’t even know that level of professionalism even existed here or that a school would actually pay to develop and train their teachers.  I thought, “Wow, this is what I’ve been looking for.”  I talked to a lot of people at the conference and found it was a mixed bag.  Some people were more into it than others and, to the people who were non-plussed about it, I felt some surprise.  I was thinking, “You don’t know how lucky you are to have a school and director that cares enough to do this.”

But the highlight of the conference for me was finally meeting Jamie Keddie in person.  Here was a person who I knew was passionate about teaching and sharing.  It was a far cry from what I was experiencing in my current teaching environment.  I got to see his plenary, go to one of his workshops, and talk a bit about my experiences with him.  For me, it was a great experience.

Also at that conference I got to meet the drama king himself Ken Wilson and attend one of his workshops.  I hadn’t even known he was a big name in ELT or that there actually were big names in ELT before going to the conference and starting this blog journey.  Ken Wilson gave the best workshop I’ve seen to date and his style has greatly influenced the workshop style I use when training my own teachers now.  On top of Ken, I also got to see plenaries by Gavin Dudeney and Nina Lauder, both of which were fantastic.

After the conference, I was jazzed up.  I wanted to become part of this world and try to connect with other teachers who shared my passion and commitment to teaching.  One thing I really realized after I went to the conference and started looking at a lot of blogs was that many in the field of ELT have mostly taught in environments very unrelated to what I was used to in Turkey.  They simply didn’t face the same challenges or obstacles.  The dynamics in the classrooms were different.

I made my decision right then to start my own blog to try and help out and connect with teachers specifically in Turkey.  I can’t say how successful I’ve been in that as my blog is still quite new and I’ve only had one commenter from Turkey so far, but I’m hopeful for the future.

Luckily, at the time I made my decision, I had a two week break in between jobs.  I had thankfully completed my contract at the wasteland of my last school and had gotten a job at what I believe to be one of the top 3 schools in Turkey.  I poured hours and hours into setting up the blog.  Using Burcu’s blog as a guide, I got my own wordpress blog and really started digging into all the people on her blogroll and started following the twitter contact lists she had so nicely posted for people.  At the same time, I started commenting a lot on others’ blogs and getting into a ton of wonderful discussions.  I realized that Jamie wasn’t an anomaly and that most people that ran blogs engaged in dialogues with their readers.  In fact, people even commented on the comments and got into great big discussions.  On one of Karenne’s posts she even said I had good ideas and thanked me for stopping by.  How cool was that?  I had never been told before that my ideas had any value, at least by anyone with experience that wasn’t a new teacher.

I posted a new blog post every week and to my utter amazement people actually found it and linked to it in their blog.  These two people were Alex Case and Karenne Sylvester, both people whose blogs I was amazed by and who were quite famous in the blogosphere from what I gathered.  I simply couldn’t believe it.  Google hadn’t even found my blog yet (it still hasn’t for some reason unbeknown to me) and yet they had obviously found my blog, liked it, and mentioned me on their own blogs.

My other surprise was when I got a comment from someone who wasn’t a co-worker.  It was from Darren Elliot.  I was only 3 posts in and another person had found my blog and even taken the time to comment on it.  I was quite honored that these three people had taken the time to stop by, link to me, and/or comment.  It meant that all the time and effort I had put in wasn’t for nothing.  I thought it would be months before people even noticed my blog and here I already had visitors, and famous ones at that.

Well, I was quite pleased with the way things were going.  I kept posting every week and then, yesterday morning, I posted my Keepin It Real lesson idea.  We had a work party last night and when I came back home with my wife, I of course went to check my email as I usually do.  In my inbox I found 4 comments waiting for approval on my blog.  They were from Karenne, Alex, Darren, and Jeremy Day.  I was so happy.  They had come back to my site and they had liked my idea or at least felt it was worth commenting on.  It was a great honor and so here I am, inspired to write this post now.  Thank you all very much for the help, guidance, confidence, and inspiration you have given me.  It’s absolutely amazing that there are such intelligent and caring people out there and that they are not only willing to share their ideas with the world, but to help out the new people on the block as well.  Already in my short time as part of the twitter and blogospheres I have developed so much as a teacher and it is because of you guys.  Thank you so much.

Present Day:  Well, that was a month and a half ago now. Now I have many more members of my PLN.  Some are big names and some aren’t.

There are Larry Ferlazzo, Shelly Terrell, and Ozge Karaoglu that are some kind of sharing gods.  They are always linking to tons of useful stuff on their blogs and on Twitter and generally  just happy to share.  I’m in awe of the amount of time they put in online.

There is Sue Lyon-Jones. who is as far as I know the first person to add me to their blogroll and who provides a site with tons of free resources and a wealth of links on Twitter everyday.

There is Anita Kwiatkowska who is one of the few people I have met in person and has helped my YL teachers out with her blog focused on kids.

There are also my teachers Teresa Hanlon and Thomas Christie.  Teresa is one of the most positive people I know and always always goes that extra mile for her students.  Tom has really creative ideas in his classes and is always willing to share.

There is Andy Hockley who is always good for a laugh, a counterpoint, or some information on reflective teaching practices.

Last but not least, let me not forget Diarmuid Fogarty who is always able to turn a critical eye towards any subject.

There are of course many many more and I couldn’t possibly list everyone here, but please don’t feel I’m forgetting you.

After that night I thought it would be great for some of the people who had helped me out so much to be featured with a guest post on this blog.  I thought I was still too new though and I hadn’t gotten enough of my own material on the site yet, so I wanted to wait a bit.  Now I feel the time has come.  After this week I will be posting some guest posts from some of the people above.  In the short month in a half since that night and in the 3 months since I started blogging I have met so many wonderful people that have helped me develop and grow.  Some I’m in touch with more than others.  Some people I only follow on Twitter while others I meet for coffee.  I value each member of my PLN and appreciate everything you have done.

To think, all this started because someone sent me a short email about a comment on their blog.  The little things are so important and none of us should forget the difference we can make in another teacher’s life by doing something so small.  Making other teachers welcome and helping them to start their own PLNs is something we should always think about when we get a comment on our blogs or when someone follows us on Twitter.  We can make a difference .

Keep sharing

Added:  Dec. 17, 2009. - I have recently been made aware that some people/sites have been stealing other people’s material and claiming it as their own.  This post in no way endorses such behavior and I find it contemptible that someone would take something offered freely and then claim it as their own to gain cash or fame.  This post was posted in a playful spirit and clearly states that credit should be given where credit is do. -

As Chris Rock once said on Jay Leno, “Jay, sometimes I just like to steal things.“  C’mon, admit it.  You do too

Actually, this is probably the best advice my TEFL instructor ever gave me.  Steal everything.  Steal ideas from other teachers, observe their classes, go online and use anything you can find.  Maybe you’ve only been teaching two months, but there are teachers at your school and on the net that have possibly even decades of experience.  They will have good ideas.

If you see a good lesson, use it in your class.  Take a look at it.  Use it like a template.  What makes it work?  Why is it good?  Can you use a similar lesson to teach other things?  Most likely, with a little tweaking, you can use the same type of lesson to teach a number of different points.

Why make your life difficult?  Others have already done your job for you and they have probably done it better.  Stop agonizing over how to teach the present perfect.  Instead, ask your fellow teachers and check online.  In this climate of sharing, everyone is willing to help.

Of course, if you do steal someone else’s ideas it’s always good form to give credit where credit is do.

Here are three of my favorite stolen lessons:

Create a Country

This is a lesson the famous Chris Westergaard demoed for me and some other trainees on our TEFL course.  It can be adapted to work with both low level and high level classes and always gets great results.  It is part of my lessons for a rainy day or cover folder.

Achy Breaky Imperatives

This lesson was stolen from the onestopenglish lesson share here.  I used basically the same format, but instead of yoga, we’re doing line dancing, which is more fun and you don‘t have to get on the dirty floor.  The focus is still on imperatives, body parts, and following instructions.

Famous American Ads

A lesson stolen from the British Council lesson share.  This one can be found here.  I think this is a great lesson, but I thought to myself, “wouldn’t real advertisements be more interesting?”.  So I went online, found a bunch of ads, some interesting advertisement pics to go with them, and the best commercials on YouTube.  Do the lesson in the same way, but just replaced with more authentic texts.

So get out there and have fun stealing whatever you can find.

I think one of the things that is hardest to translate from one culture to another is humor.  Humor can change quite a bit between cultures and even between subcultures within the same society.  The lesson I’m using as an example in this post comes from my favorite web comic, Penny Arcade, which deals with the geek/gaming subculture.

The comic in question is here.

What I love about this comic, besides that I think it’s hilarious, is the sheer amount of background cultural knowledge one needs to understand it.  Hopefully it will facilitate a good discussion on the subject.  It’s also fun for me to teach because it’s something I’m interested in.  I think a teacher’s enthusiasm for a subject often shows through and rubs off on the students.

I really wanted to use it in a lesson when I saw it.  I’m not really happy with the lesson I’ve got now and haven’t had a chance to try it out, so if anybody does or has suggestions to improve it, I’d love to hear your ideas.

Even without a full lesson, the comic is a great example of how important understanding culture is when using another language.  Of course, not all English speakers will understand the comic either, but that’s part of the point and something that should be brought up with the students.  The students don’t need to know everything about other cultures.  It’s up to them and you to learn what is important and what isn’t and how to go about learning that information.  You can also discuss with your learners if they will actually ever be communicating with native speakers and so need to know this information.  Over on Ken Wilson’s Blog there has been a nice debate going on on the importance, or lack thereof, of teaching culture, so there’s no need for me to rehash it here.

I’ve been meaning to blog about the subject for a while myself and since Ken brought it up, now would be a good time.

Language has no real meaning in isolation; the meaning comes from the context in which it is spoken, the background of the speakers, and the culture that created the language.  Our old friend @DFogarty goes into a better and more thorough explanation of the Russian philosopher Bakhtin’s view on this on his blog Tao Te(a) Ching.  I don’t want to argue much for the importance of teaching culture here, though.  I’m just going to give one way in which I think it’s important.

Students who are just starting to learn a language love to look only at form and function.  They want to know the structures and the rules (In Turkish kalipler and kurallar), that’s about it.  We sometimes have to convince them of the need to understand the context within which the language is used.

I used to work at Wall Street Institute where we rarely taught anything, we just tested the students.  Learning is computer-based and native speakers merely check the students progress and decide if they are ready to move on.  Within the exams or encounters, as they were called, we simply created a context for the language we wished the students to produce and then it was up to the students.  Over and over again you would repeat (fail) students that swore up and down they knew the things you were failing them for.  It might be something simple, like “Neither do I”.  After setting up a number of situations where the students were supposed to produce the language and instead would produce “Me, too” which is a translation from the Turkish, you would show them their errors and tell them why they needed to repeat.  They would always protest, “But I know that !”  Of course, what they meant is that they know the grammar structure.  What was clear they didn’t know was how, why, or when the language was used.

We all know how important it is to look at the context the language is coming from and how it provides meaning to the language used.  Eventually, the students begin to understand that a language is much more than a set of structures and rules that can be put together like some mathematical formula.  This can be done by doing something as simple as pointing out the fact that many cultures do not refer do dead soldiers as martyrs or as complicated as analyzing a poem or our comic .

Does anybody else use lessons that teach culture?  What kind of lessons do you do?  Should we bother talking about culture if, as Ken points out, most students will never actually taught to a native speaker in English?  What does language without the culture that speaks it look like?  If the majority of English speakers are actually non-native speakers, what implication does this have for our profession?

Lesson:  Why Aren’t You Laughing?

Related Posts:

The Penny Arcade Mr. Period Series

Ken Wilson’s Contribution to the Culture Debate

Kalinago – The Globality of English