Job Discussion Forums

[Justin Trullinger]

It's worth reiterating that good teaching is always guided by student needs. If your students have a real need that these kinds of activities serve, then they will fit in. For example, in Ecuador, there is still, in a lot of households, a "little girls should be seen and not heard" culture.

So it's essential that, along with the English language, I include ways to increase their comfort levels in talking to each other, in taking risks and being willing to make mistakes. Because in my experience as a teacher, only through taking risks and being willing to make mistakes can a language be learned.

But ONLY when it serves a real need, and a need that is related to their learning English.

A lot of teachers use activities like this when they don't know what else to do, or because they, themselves, get off on touchy feeliness. Not cool.

But when it helps students to learn the language, it can be a very cool thing.

I agree, Ben, that irrelevant "warm ups" are often the plague of inservice workshops and teacher training. But I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater- relevant warm ups can be useful, and are sometimes, in my experience, essential.

Best,

Justin

[merlin]

And don't forget common sense.

So many people think that just because something is written in a book they have to do it exactly as printed and if it doesn't work overgeneralize that everything in the book is dumb, stupid, whatever.

I belive it was said somewhere that EFL teachers should have at least a BA degree so that they are able to have some small degree of critical thinking skills before they start a CELTA course.

For example, in discussions A-Z the authors reserve a special page in the introduction to mention that many of the activities should be skipped with certain classes.

I once had a student who started crying because of the activity "talk about your future plans". She was a housewife, mother of 3 and married to a boorish man so the only plan she could think of was what she would cook for the weekend and it depressed the hell out of her when all the 20-somethings were talking about their summer travel plans and she had no plans that she could see. Does this mean I should never have a class discussion about future plans again? Of course not. of course I'll drop that grammar point for a person on death row or with terminal cancer but otherwise it stays in the lesson plan for the vast majority of students.

[John Hall]

I know that this is a generalization, but it seems to me that the "cold, distant Northern" attitude is winning out on this forum over the "warm, touchy-feely" attitude often associated with more tropical climates. Of course, it depends on the students you have. When I taught company classes in Japan, these types of ultra-emotional games would have turned my students into stones.

However, I am now in Costa Rica, where I teach university students and professionals to become "professionally fluent in English." Believe it or not, this often means teaching them how to deal with the frustrations of not being able to express themselves in English. And when the tension gets to be too much for them, they usually break out in Spanish. That shows me that when they really want to express how they feel, they can't do it in English. They have never learned that whole way of speaking emotionally in English.

I certainly agree that these ultra-emotional activities need to be done for some reason, not just as filler, or for fun. And for certain types of curriculum in certain cultures, they do have their place.

[spiral78]

Ok, it was me who brought up the Cold North originally. Everyone's situation is different, but I teach in cold Northern climes - so my 'distant' Northern attitude is allowed!

The students I have from the 'tropics' are almost 100% immigrants to those cold Northern climes and it's appropriate in my case to set an example of personal space, both literal and figurative, in my classes.

That's not to say that I'm uncaring or unapproachable - in fact, I've got a reputation for being caring, concerned, and respectful towards my students (which is not always the case with teachers in my uni, where non-native speakers sometimes face some level of discrimination and/or patronisation).

Also, my work is focused on English for Academic Purposes and English for Business and Technical Professions. I think I can safely say that emotions and touchy-feely activities would really be out of place in this particular teaching context.

But it's been an interesting thread so far, to consider teaching situations where such activities might be appropriate. I still think there must be a language focus, though...

[Henry_Cowell]

Just looked through the table of contents of the Classroom Dynamics book on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Classroom-Dynamics-English-Resource-Teachers/dp/0194371476/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product/102-9401917-7878514

The book seems to have no discussion of cross-cultural dynamics and their implications for such touchy-feely types of activies in classrooms. How many of these activities have the potential for offending, shocking, or completely turning off students from certain cultures or backgrounds?

Seems like an instructor should have a good background in intercultural dynamics before even considering any of these activities, which are fraught with pitfalls for unsuspecting teachers and students alike.

[Justin Trullinger]

Agreed, Henry.

Of course, a good background in intercultural dynamics would be nice for EFL teaching in general, would it not?

Best,
Justin

[Henry_Cowell]

[eha]

I loathe those workshops where you're all forced into participating in meaningless 'touchy-feely' activities with strangers, and so would NEVER impose them on students--- especially as I work in a very conservative culture, where such activities are unheard-of, if not illegal! However, I'm lucky enough to teach writing skills, and a number of exercises I do on vocabulary building for 'emotional intelligence' are very successful indeed. Writing is a 'safe' activity; you don't have to risk looking like a berk, and they pretty soon decide whether they can trust the teacher. The students are in fact often very self-revealing in their writings; it's one of their-- and my -- favourite parts of the course. I use exercises I developed from Richard Nelson-Jones book: Personal Relations Skills.
But I wouldn't / couldn't use them for any other classroom purpose. In Speaking classes, I stick to nice, unthreatening stuff like: What do you think of the cafeteria food, etc.

[merlin]

that's the thing about teacher training, isn't it? people get something in a workshop or teacher training course and there's a an intense desire to try everthing on the next poor unsuspecing soul that comes down the street.

A lot of "touchy feely" activities in workshops are designed for the teachers themselves - not necessarily to be used by the teacher with all groups, but to build a particular class dynamic in London or wherever among that particular groupd of teacher trainees.

I keep a lot of things to myself for years - then break it out on the spur of the moment with no planning whatsoever and it fits just perfectly. Its often the case that the more I plan for that kind of stuff the less likely it is to succeed

[thelmadatter]

Henry said

[Henry_Cowell]

Here's a good introductory volume:
Basic Concepts of Intercultural Communication: Selected Readings, by Milton Bennett (Editor)

And here's a very brief handbook:
Guide to Cross-Cultural Communication, by Sana Reynolds and Deborah Valentine

But just do a search of "intercultural communication" and "cross-cultural communication" on amazon.com and you'll find lots of others.

[John Hall]

It seems that there are many teachers in this discussion thread who teach English only so that their students can communicate intellectually or professionally in English. But isn't one of the primary functions of language to enable people to express themselves emotionally?

I remember once using a book called American Streamline: Departures. It had a great lesson in it based on a short dialogue from an imaginary old-fashioned melodramatic film. One line from it showed the three basic structures that it taught. "I want you. I love you. I need you." My overly shy Japanese students would be very embarrassed with this mock-melodrama, just as they were embarrassed with any show of emotion in class. But the more "genki" (meaning "spirited") students would really get into, often with hilarious results. When the latter would happen, the students would rarely forget what those structures mean.

To sum up, I would have to say that students need to be taught how to express themselves emotionally in English, and that this does not always have to be done in an intensely personal touchy-feely way. By acting out or just reading the strong emotional expression of other people, students can learn how to express themselves emotionally in English.

[Stephen Jones]

Much of Streamline worked because it was deliberately exaggerated. I still iuse bits of it, or stuiff I 've written myself inspired by it.

[sallycat]

amusingly, american streamline is the much-maligned "quest" textbook that nova used to use. i've never heard anyone praising it before.

as far as your main point goes, it depends. maybe students are going to need to say "i want you. i need you. i love you." but i don't think it would crop up that soon.

[merlin]