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Marcoregano
Joined: 19 May 2003
Posts: 872
Location: Hong Kong
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 Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 6:30 am Post subject: |
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| Justin Trullinger wrote: |
| Why can't (don't) we just skip it? |
In respect of post-training observations, I can see at least two reasons why they persist - and will continue to do so. The first is that, as the fictional creator of Frankenstein discovered, it's one thing creating a monster but another thing entirely getting rid of it. Having insinuated its way into the western school curriculum during the lucrative and profligate 20th century, too many staff are now entangled in the observation beast, and many of these staff are quite senior. And lets face it, do turkeys vote for Xmas?
Another reason why 'professional' observations won't vanish from the scene anytime soon is that they have become an indispensable management tool. What better way for a principal or department head to ensure that his or her staff are towing the line and earning their crust than to plant a trusted spy in their midst? Or better still, do it themselves if they can be bothered. Of course, I'm not suggesting that all observers are management spies, but as many of the above posts testify, such a supposition is often not far from the truth. |
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dreadnought v.2
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
Posts: 20
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
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| Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 12:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Marcoregano wrote: |
Another reason why 'professional' observations won't vanish from the scene anytime soon is that they have become an indispensable management tool. What better way for a principal or department head to ensure that his or her staff are towing the line and earning their crust than to plant a trusted spy in their midst? Or better still, do it themselves if they can be bothered. Of course, I'm not suggesting that all observers are management spies, but as many of the above posts testify, such a supposition is often not far from the truth. |
Sadly I think you may be right - not at all schools I'd imagine but definitely at many of them. When I worked as DoS for a very reputable chain of language schools (I won't mention any names!), I was constantly at odds with the school director about the purpose of observations. She insisted that I report back about any 'bad' teachers so she could decide whether to keep them on or fire them. I told her I would only do observations if they were purely developmental. After weeks of arguing about this, I (kind of) caved as I could see I wasn't going to win, but I chose in the end to report back in the most vague, uncritical way possible and after a while she gave up asking. Directors don't really want to hear about TTT and lesson frameworks anyway, so I always made sure my reports would bore the pants off her. |
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Cohen
Joined: 30 Dec 2008
Posts: 91
Location: Hong Kong
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| Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:45 am Post subject: |
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| fluffyhamster wrote: |
| Now I know that methodology has moved on some from the good old pure PPP days, but (I)TT will always want to boil complex things down to "manageable" proportions. |
Nice post, Fluffy. Sorry to take this excellent thread off at something of a tangent, but I have to follow up on your allusion to the nonsense formerly known as 'PPP'. As you say, methodology has indeed moved on, but not necessarily to anywhere objectively better or more methodologically sound/valid. On the CELTA and DELTA for example they no longer mention 'PPP', and if you dare bring it up the instructors � even those with ten or twenty years of experience (yes, believe it or not some people do such a crud job for so long) � will react in very much the same way the average bod reacted when it was announced by Big Brother that Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, never Eurasia, and the CELTA never advocated PPP, rather, it has only ever pushed/taught/promoted 'C', 'RU', and 'AU', namely, 'Clarification', 'Restricted Use', and 'Authentic Use'.
So, 'Presentation' has been chucked down Winston Smith's memory tube and has been replaced by 'Clarification', and 'Practice' and 'Production' have been superseded by 'Restricted Use' and 'Authentic Use', respectively. The use of terms here is quite telling. ESLers no longer present (i.e, teach), rather, they now 'clarify' existing knowledge (after all, the semantics of clarification entail prior knowledge). That is, they tidy up around the edges, and clear up any misunderstandings the learner(s) may have regarding the vocabulary and/or grammatical structure(s) in question. This of course is so much better than actually teaching � everybody would rather clarify existing knowledge than have to actually teach something, especially from scratch.
And students no longer practice, they engage in 'Restricted Use' � again, there is a world of difference here regarding entailments and presuppositions. Leaving such philosophical matters aside though, it is not exactly hard to see that this is simply the TEFL emperor's new clothes. One can't learn languages by restricting their use, that is, one can't learn a language in little bits and pieces. It simply doesn't work. Languages are simply not the sort of things that can be learned in piecemeal fashion, in useful doses, acceptable morsels, handy phrases, syntactical outlines, or word fields. That is the English waiter's approach to 'learning' 'French', and the results are very much the same. Nevertheless, the CELTA and DELTA instructors are propagating this nonsense as if it is a given.
And then we have the final component of this new paradigm: 'Authentic Use'. Leaving aside the question of just how authentic classroom language can or could ever be, again we see that Authentic Use suffers from exactly the same problems as Production used to: it simply doesn't happen. In the PPP days, the presentation part was no problem for the teacher, and the practice part was no problem for the learner. The problem came when students were meant to actually produce the language. That's where the system tended to break down, and we have exactly the same problem with Authentic Use. The 'clarification' part is no problem (at least from the point of view of the teacher, who at least tacitly presumes prior knowledge on the part of the student), the Restricted Use part is no problem (at least from the point of view of the teacher and the learner), but things start to break down when it comes to Authentic Use for the simple reason that if someone could produce authentic language after a cursory clarification and brief practice then they wouldn't be in the classroom in the first place, rather they would out there on the street or in the workplace (or wherever) actually using the language. |
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Justin Trullinger
Joined: 28 Jan 2005
Posts: 3110
Location: Seoul, South Korea and Myanmar for a bit
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| Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 5:28 pm Post subject: |
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This is turning into a really interesting thread. My thoughts on PPP, or PPU, as it's sometimes called, or ECRIF, which is a another representation of similar, though more flexible and better developed....
...would take a lot more time and space than I'll be spending on here today.
About observations, though-
Thanks to the thoughtful answers to my question about why we don't just skip it.
I'd add a few more, though-
I have a responsibility to know that the classes in our institution are meeting our standards. There are a lot of ways to go about this, but observation is one, and it's one that counts. Other ways I could check?
Teachers often ask for it. A number of jobseekers have asked about this- if they feel they benefit from it, why not?
It keeps me knowledgeable about teachers, and therefore able to look for the best T-S matches. (How do I know if a new applicant will fit the dynamic in your class if I don't actually know what your class looks like?
Best,
Justin |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:49 pm Post subject: |
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Nice post too, Cohen! I wasn't aware of the exact terms being used nowadays, but it comes as no great surprise that the "new" terms beg similar questions to the old.
A keyword for me is authentic. If more time were spent making every word coming from especially the teacher's mouth more authentic (and that doesn't necessarily have to mean more complex and difficult), more genuine, then students might actually develop to the point where they could handle the language spontaneously and without the "need" for the endless nannying if not babying that the worst teachers and their handlers seem wont to continue to inflict and exercise. |
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dreadnought v.2
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
Posts: 20
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
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| Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Cohen wrote: |
And students no longer practice, they engage in 'Restricted Use' � again, there is a world of difference here regarding entailments and presuppositions. Leaving such philosophical matters aside though, it is not exactly hard to see that this is simply the TEFL emperor's new clothes. One can't learn languages by restricting their use, that is, one can't learn a language in little bits and pieces. It simply doesn't work. Languages are simply not the sort of things that can be learned in piecemeal fashion, in useful doses, acceptable morsels, handy phrases, syntactical outlines, or word fields. That is the English waiter's approach to 'learning' 'French', and the results are very much the same. Nevertheless, the CELTA and DELTA instructors are propagating this nonsense as if it is a given.
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An excellent post Cohen, lots of interesting points, but I would humbly challenge some of the things you say. Firstly, you are operating under the assumption that the goal of students is total mastery of a language, that people don't want to speak 'waiter's French' a set of fixed phrases for a specific context. Yet I think that is exactly what a lot of students aim for when learning a language, often they need just enough to do a particular task (communicate with customers in their shop, answer the telephone at a call centre etc) and in such cases a piecemeal approach may give them the language skills they need to do what they want. To suggest that a particular approach/methodology/lesson framework has no validity for any students seems to reduce language learners to a homogenous group....oddly, this is one of the major objections to PPP 
I absolutely agree with you that language is not something that can be easily broken down into 'chunks', it's a immensely complex, multi-faceted system. Yet, at the same time, it's important to distinguish what something is from the process of learning something, particularly in the classroom. A violin concerto is more than a series of notes, however that doesn't mean that violin players don't sometimes benefit from practising their scales (the musical equivalent of drilling I suppose). As learners we want to make our subject matter manageable, and having it broken down into smaller parts is one thing that can give us the feeling - however illusory - that we are improving and developing. And that's very important for our sense of motivation...a key factor in language learning.
I'm not a particularly staunch advocate of PPP, but I do acknowledge it as one of a range of possible techniques that can be used in a classroom to achieve certain ends with certain students in certain situations. Just as grammar-translation can serve a useful purpose on some occasions. I'm not simply ready to dismiss out of hand something simply because DELTA tutors or Scott Thornbury or Michael Lewis tell me I should. I'll continue to rely on the evidence of my own eyes with my own classes to see what works and what doesn't and then change accordingly. |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:02 pm Post subject: |
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