Job Discussion Forums

[TokyoLiz]

Fluffy, perhaps I should have said "intrinsically motivated adult learners" as opposed to the larval stage creatures I attempt to teach at junior high. My students are generally not motvivated to do anything but flirt, play with their mobile phones and wrestle each other. They're also very cute, smart and funny, and when they do take interest in something, they absorb it like sponges. However, there's no telling what they'll seize on or reject. They're fickle.

I glanced at the thread you linked to. I realize that I don't know much about the CELTA model, and my own TESOL diploma purity is tainted by many years of experience in both Vancouver English schools and immigrant programs, and k-12 schools here. On top of that, a lot of reading (my bookshelves bow under the weight), conferences, researching and writing, grad school and ELT hothouse environments (some schools I worked in have sane programs that get amazing results) have all influenced the way I approach (or back away slowly from) some academics' ideas of English language pedagogy.

About L1 use - as long as you have a rationale that makes sense and use the L1 as a tool to help the students (scaffolding), then do use L1. Class time is precious, and why not translate discrete phrases to expedite learning when it merits it? Lessons on prepositions or telling time don't need translation, just demonstration. When I teach imperatives, I tell the students that in the headless sentence, the verb by itself means ~しなさい. I could demonstrate the meaning with an elaborate contextual lesson, but that costs time and may not hold the attention of all my sweet ADHD larvae.

[rxk22]

No Japanese in class is a silly premise. It isn't like the students are anywhere near immersion. Why pretend that they are? I find occasionally using Japanese has been immensely helpful. This is just more EFL pseudo-science at work here.

[fluffyhamster]

@TokyoLiz: Although I too have at times used the terms intrinsic and extrinsic to describe motivation (following Harmer's TPoELT2 and the lil background reading tasks assigned on my CELTA*), it's ultimately unnecessary jargon - learners are either motivated or they aren't, with adults tending to be more motivated (or at least more polite about it) than kids, and it should hardly come as a surprise that trying to make lessons more engaging and interesting (supplying "extrinsic motivation") will hopefully engage any of the less motivated that bit better! Mind you, the risk is always that teachers go overboard on the "fun" aspects.**

Sorry, but who are the academics? (It's not just CELTArers who may feel the term has a more negative than positive connotation LOL). The writers I mentioned may be or once have been academics, but all they are trying to do is highlight (facts of) meaning and usage, or point to useful resources for those purposes, which CELTA-inspired guff can all too easily forget it seems. No need for theories of language or whatever, Communication with a big C is the watchword here (or certainly should be, in CLT of all places!). Obviously the CELTA itself is not too~that academic...which would be a good thing, if it didn't then seem so anti-academic with all its claims and exhortations to be "practical" first and foremost. Too much experiential doing, not enough honest-to-goodness thinking and reflection usually.

Heh, the UCLES thought police will be after you given your comments in your last paragraph. But seriously, you couldn't have become Imperative Lady for a few brief instants? Graciously inviting a guest to come in, sit down, have a drink? Or telling an unsuspecting citizen to Look out! and Call the police! etc. Or a disobedient kid to tidy their room or do their homework and so on (hmm, time for...Stupendous Man! ).

The tl:dr version of this post is that a lot of teachers remain too outside the language, while decrying translation in(side) another language, as if never translating necessarily makes one's contextualization of the target language (English) so much better than the teacher who uses occasional translation. It's a false dichotomy - one can use both languages to equal effect, when allowed and given sufficient time (and when the time allowed is insufficient, as in the clip in the OP, the need for translation is surely a no-brainer!). And at least translation is an honest (authentic) use of a language.


*Well, actually, CTEFLA (as the CELTA was formerly called), but if I keep saying that people either won't know it was the forerunner of the CELTA, or some may even make a point of saying Oh but that was sooo loooong agoooo, as if my experience and thinking since has been of no value (yeah, righttt) and a Dip or MA can be the only true indicator critical faculties.

**See for example that truly edutaining BC example activity (here: http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?p=1230135#1230135 ) wherein a student leaves the room and then several minutes later has to come back in and guess "what very unusual things could have happened" [activity writer's rhetoric LOL], i.e. supply missing if-clauses, on the basis of classmates' would-have-clause clues e.g. I'd've bought some flowers (< > If students A and B had got married?). Hmm, how about I'd've bought some flowers if I'd known A and B were getting married ROFL (and here I am now, standing flowerless at their very wedding or sometime soon after!). As if in real life we go around counterfactualizing on the basis of unknown conditions (or ifs), or use 3rd conditional as opposed to simply 2nd conditional for flights of completely nonfactual fantasy fancy (e.g. 'If the OHP exploded we'd need to evacuate the classroom' is or becomes via the activity writer's rhetoric '??If the OHP had exploded we'd have needed to evacuate the classroom'. Ain't nobody got time for that!). Why make communication harder work than it really needs to be, as if there is no fun to be had in real communication or that it is so difficult in comparison? Info-gap-style "thinking" run amok! And that betrays a fundamental misunderstanding or ignorance of how things really work. Actual communication itself more often than not builds the necessary context, strange that eh! As in the activity I suggested in that same thread as an alternative to the BC's, here: http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?p=1230327#1230327 . Actually, that thread and Hod's approach for one should give you a pretty good idea of what the CELTA style is often like, but if you want more examples just ask LOL!

[mitsui]

Yes rxk.
I remember over 10 years ago when I could only speak English in class and had students mostly understand or at least try to.

Last year at a university I was speaking mostly Japanese since students would tune out if I spoke English.

I mostly teach low-level students. Teaching only in English is impossible.

[TokyoLiz]

I disagree with your position on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Students who come to a topic with expectations and excitement are very different from those who are told there is either a carrot or a stick waiting for them. Many of my students are the latter, and over years I have worked hard to turn this kind of student into the former. It's got more to do with learning about the world and the self than English language aquisition.

I've taught in house for big corporations, and I have found that the workers are motivated by anxiety about scoring on TOEIC and other hoop-jumping tests. For me, that's a miserable environment to work in. After all, higher anxiety environments mean poorer quality of uptake, and lower quality of life.

The kinds of activities you describe - they are a poor fit for academic classrooms. A long time ago, I abandoned teacher-fronted activities that do not engage all students. Also, like you say, the context is so contrived. Better to practice conditionals in real contexts, perhaps in writing or brief presentation. A fellow teacher taught conditionals to senior high students, first presenting the target in the dry textbook, then drilling the form. Finally, he asked the students to write a brief composition, " If you could go back in time to any era anywhere, where would you go and why?" The students wrote, then checked their writing with a peer, and finally presented to a partner who then asked a follow-up question. The students were engaged with the contextualized grammar point for 40 minutes, and when done, left the classroom continuing to chat about the topics they had generated themselves.

My classroom practice is similar - as little teacher-fronted as possible, drilling target language and/or writing, then engagement with real people, asking and answering about their real experiences and ideas.

CELTA may not prepare a teacher well for the academic context, or provide the kind of foundation you would need to do what my colleague does. But it does give teachers a place to start.

The junior high classroom is full of imperative practice, "Spell it, please" "Check my paper!" "Don't touch my stuff!" The classroom provides the use after we look at the form.

[fluffyhamster]

I don't think we're in disgreement, as whatever carrot cake there is becomes essentially part of motivation, as Confucius once said. Or to paraphrase Field of Dreams, "If you put down the big stick, they will get excited and develop expectations other than fear, the fluffy bunnies". The turning follows on from the 'more engaging' I wrote earlier. I doubt if really any of us foreign teachers are just focussed on English language learning completely Japanese-style! Interpersonal factors and considerations of 'affect' are very important ( http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?p=1134958#1134958 ).

The writing activity that your colleague used isn't a bad way to go beyond the form (it's pointless to try to straightjacket people into using repeated instances of a form, though a stock of examples may help them along) and engage skills other than speaking, but the ideal I usually describe is focussed on speaking a la eikaiwa or language schools generally. Obviously I adapt that when classes are quite large and/or the students possibly more reluctant than adults to talk directly and openly to the teacher, but hey, when I was in JHSs and SHSs I was just a humble AET/human tape recorder mostly. The only time I could take more of an oral approach and do what I wanted to was in ESs, where there were no JTEs. So whatever writing in did in the J context was spent introducing the alphabet (see my infamous Alphabet related to kana thread LOL). I've marked my fair share of exams though, replete with mini compositions.*

I think actually that the average CELTArer could do writing activities and the like quite adequately actually, though whether they could ever talk like normal human beings and effect the kind of turning we're on about is another matter! But they'd doubtless limit their remit simply to English learning and say everything else can be left to general development outside the classroom.

I'm not keen on imperatives, unless the context and tone is like I say to do with genuinely inviting/about genuinely-inviting things (such as coming in, sitting down, having a drink, digging in, using fingers, not standing on ceremony, and so on). I just know that when speaking to fellow native speakers I don't bark imperatives but usually form a request question - Ooh, can you spell that (please)? Hey, can you/are you ready to take a look at my paper? (Note the delexicalized verb). I'd even go so far as to wager that 'please' doesn't co-occur with that many imperatives, or occurs more often with fuller request forms, at least in native-native interaction. What shall we bet, 5 yen?

But perhaps such considerations matter less with foreign schoolkids being boisterous with their fledgling English (and the Don't touch my stuff! would be a great line to hear any of them spontaneously say! Even though Japanese would be more natural given the context LOL), but I'd still be concerned that they (be shown how to) grow out of it as they approach adulthood and possible overseas immersion or befriending English-speaking foreigners in Japan. But how many lessons and years do we get with them? Never enough, usually, which is why it may be important to get it as right (long-term appropriate) as possible the first time round.

Not having a go, just shooting the breeze, and like I say, what's appropriate for high school age at least is up for debate!


*One item that I particularly liked asked students to write six sentences about their then recent visit to Kyoto (i.e. to generally use past tense), but to make sure that at least two used Present Perfect, which resulted in many examples similar to the following tense/perspective-switching~clashing beauty 'I went to Kyoto recently. I've never been to Kyoto before'. When I pointed out to the JTE who'd written the item that there was a tense clash in the instructions, and that it was basically asking students to use a form they didn't know, Past Perfect, which doesn't appear anywhere in certainly the 3-year course of JHS study, he just shrugged and sighed that "it" was "too difficult" (What, to write non-contradictory test items? ROFL!).

[Inflames]

[rxk22]

[fluffyhamster]

[TokyoLiz]

Oh, dear. I guess my post was too vague. What I meant was, I disagree with your opinion that motivation or no motivation is the only distinction.

My position is that the distinction between motivations, extrinsic and intrinsic, are significant factors in learning. I do my best to distract the students from the carrots and sticks by engaging them in something we're all interested in reading,writing or talking about.

Rxk22, spot on. How many times I have seen Japanese and non-Japanese teachers fail to produce comprehensible language, or scaffold their input. All English lessons aren't all mighty. On the flip side, I've seen teachers wreck learning by translating, or failing to dangle language just within reach of the learners.

[Inflames]

[Lamarr]

I'm no expert in this, but I think it's difficult to engage and interest all of your pupils or learners, all of the time. It's more realistic to hope to engage some of them, some of the time. And other times, you'll engage none of them. It's just the way it is. What works for and engages one group will go down like a lead balloon with another. You have to get a feel for a particular class and adapt accordingly. That's something that comes with experience.

Another problem is that there are lots of mindless things (telly, phones, social media, games) in the modern world that take away from concentration on learning and study, that make learning English or whatever seem a pointless, irritating drag. People would benefit from realizing how insidious these distractions can be, and regulate them better in their lives. Not that that's going to happen on any wide scale.

[fluffyhamster]

It's not that you were too vague, Liz, just that you're preaching to the choir. Anybody, which likely includes anybody posting in this thread, who's read nice basic foundational stuff like Harmer will have already come across the terms intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, which I recall Harmer boiling down to needing interesting, engaging and fun activities for the latter type of learner. My personal takeaway from that (and all this beyond the Hu Flung Wot with fried rice) is that intrinsically-motivated learners are, well, motivated enough to begin with, while extrinsically-motivated ones aren't that motivated and need at least some carrot (little or no mention of stick, mind, unless one is a salivating disciplinarian). Not that one can fob intrinsically-motivated learners off with anything too dry either LOL.

[Inflames]

[rxk22]