Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi All

I am planning a training session for people who are new to ESL. I am looking for an activity at the beginning of the session that will act as an icebreaker as well as a "becoming sensitive to the unique issues of ESL" activity. Has anyone been to a great training session where you did a fun activity or does anyone know of a great activity to use? Any help would be very very very appreciated!

Thanks!

The following idea has been influenced by several activities (one of which was a "Rinvolucri" called something like "Ask me my questions"), and more than a few beers immediately prior to typing:

Get the trainees to think of something they enjoy doing and would therefore be able to talk passionately about (it would help if they also had a few "stories" or anecdotes to tell in relation to their experiences in doing whatever it is they like doing).

Then get them to each briefly stand up and introduce themselves to the rest of the trainees by saying, and/or writing on a nametag something along the lines of, "Hi, I'm X, and I'd like to be able to talk about.....in French/Russian/Swahili/GIBBERISH!". The desired language can be a real one that they would sincerely like to learn, but the important thing is that it be a language the person concerned has VERY LITTLE COMPETENCE IN, but would like to learn someday.

Now ask everybody to stand up and pair up. The pairs that they make, and on what basis they make them are entirely up to the participants: they might try to find somebody who is competent in the language they wish to learn and/or find somebody who shares or who wouldn't mind listening to stuff about the activity that was just mentioned (having the nametags will help cut down on the English used beyond the point of standing up).

Insist that people try to make pairs and stay in their pair for at least as long as it takes one person to finish talking.

Give them a good five minutes to grunt and gesticulate in what they imagine to be passable French/Russian/Swahili/GIBBERISH (if a partner actually speaks the language they can provide ongoing "commentary" and "feedback" about what they think is being communicated). They should make the effort to "speak" Gibberish, and NOT fall back into English!!! (unless the English is an accepted technical term for example, but even then, its pronunciation and exact meaning might well change in the other language).

Call time and get everyone to sit back down. Ask a pair (a pair who were very animated would be a good idea!) to tell the class what they thought their partner was trying to say, which can be confirmed or contradicted by the partner as it progresses - this should provide a few laughs! Do this with a few more pairs, and then allow time for each (remaining) pair to clear things up themselves if they haven't already done so.

Finally, explore the implications of the activity with the whole group. They could probably communicate a great deal simply by being willing to LISTEN and REACT; but there were also probably at least a few times when the exact message was obscured by the lack of language. (There is one area that the activity will not really shed much light on - the area of mistakes and correction - because what exactly is a mistake in Gibberish?! Nobody knows! But the more perceptive might be able to pinpoint the less effective communication strategies that their partners did or didn't utilize).

This will hopefully put the trainees in the shoes of being both "learners", but especially teachers/listeners in more active and fun ways than is possible with e.g. "taster" lessons conducted directly in a language none of them can "actually" speak (such lessons are instructive, but can end up very passive for the "learners").

BTW I have not actually seen or done this activity, it is very much off the top of my head and fuelled by alchohol, so I can't guarantee that it would work even if you see something of value in it and want to give it a shot.

Oh I just had a thought about how to make this less taxing on any "shrinking violets" and/or more sensible to everybody: if you are lucky and have a class full of talented linguists who can speak a diverse range of languages, then they could conceivably talk about something in their foreign language to anyone who DOESN'T speak that language. But the "Gibberish option" is probably going to need to be the one you'd have to end up using, because I just don't know if many trainees will actually be able to speak a genuine language very competently (or be more willing to speak it than, say, Gibberish!).

Edited-in bit: Unless your trainees are as good at accents and making up languages as, was it Sid Caesar (?), then you might want to let them speak the language known simply as "Blah blah di blah".

Hi Duncan,

Thanks for the idea! That actually sounds like a great idea - if all your ideas fueled by alcohol are this good, maybe I should take up drinking more! Thanks again!

Hey there!

This is just to get them laughing and to break the ice.

Don't address the trainees until you notice that all of them are seated and waiting for you. Ask them to stand. Then simply instruct them to sing "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" with you, including the gestures. Sing it three times, each time at a faster pace. I have used this over and over again with all types of groups, almost everyone knows the song and it's good for laughs. Then I tell the following anecdote:

When in university, I attended, along with another five-hundred students, teachers and administrators, a five-hour Saturday seminar on Value Systems. The seminar started at 7 in the morning, and being Saturday, you can imagine 500 people slouched sleepily in folding chairs in a huge gym. The presenter of the seminar entered, left his papers on the podium and stepped closer to the front row. He waited a moment for everyone to focus on him, made a gesture that we should all stand and said, simply, "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, please." It got us to wake up, to laugh, and prepared us for one of the most interesting seminars I have ever attended in my life, five hours without a break and most of us wanted more when it was over.

Then I would try what Duncan suggested, which I'm also going to try. Thanks Dunc for the idea! Have another beer on me!

peace,
revel.

Heh, you're welcome, belle! Whether my idea is good or not remains to be seen...I guess it would add a twist (of lime or something not altogether pleasant hahahahaha ) to your class c*cktail, should you actually go ahead with using it. Hopefully you'll get a few more replies (and better ones at that) before your session is due, to give you more of a choice! I'll try to think of something else myself...

Ooh Hi revel, maybe you should start another thread to tell us about what was said in that lecture! (if you can remember that far back hahahahaha ).

I'm still not sensitive to the unique issues of ESL after my half-decade in the profession. What are they?

I'm glad that drinking can help me discover them though!

You can't identify any issues (raised) in the above activity, Woodcutter?!

Actually, I prefer genuine, individual introspection to group "thinking"; some (often random, scattershot) issues get raised and talked about (but not through) in these kind of training sessions, yet there is no real likelihood (and probably no real expectation ever) that anything substantial will come of it all. It can all get a bit tiring, this having "fun", can't it!

What's important is that we ourselves suss out what and how (and...etc) to teach people to communicate, and then/or let them use what they (think) they know. Only after we've thought things through for ourselves and reflected on our experience might we have anything to say in a group discussion.

That's the paradox of teacher training: that it tries to deal with things that can only really be seriously approached, let alone anywhere near answered, by veterans. Until the training gets a lot more ambitious, it's best not to take it too seriously (in fact, why even bother with it?!).

Excuse me whilst I change the record - I think the needle's stuck...

Hey all!

Without meaning to depress belle51, or belittle his/her efforts in the teacher training thing that he/she has ahead of him/her, I have to second Duncan's comment: "Until the training gets a lot more ambitious, it's best not to take it too seriously (in fact, why even bother with it?!). " Woe is me, I will have to sit through one of those teacher training sessions this term, since it is costing my boss a lot of money. Have to sew the lips tightly shut, smile and nod (without nodding off!) and hope the boss meant it when he said he was going to pay us for the Saturday morning lost listening to someone else tell me what I probably already know....sigh, oh well, I'm sure I'll get something out of it, even if it's only having fermented grain beverages with my colleagues after the workshop! But count on it, I'm going to do everything in my "power" to play hookey!

peace,
revel.

Revel and I are probably sounding a bit two-faced here - we've given some advice, but now seem to be p*ss*ng on our own parade. But it isn't a paradox really - these trainees aren't veterans, so belle can "get away" with silliness and fun a lot more (and that activity I suggested could be a lot of fun and revealing in some ways)...I just hope things aren't too reductionist, simplistic or patronizing is all. Only belle will be in a position to judge how "thowaway" or "imponderable" to appear about the issues that are raised...

By way of anecdote (got your popcorn and revels ready, revel? ), on the CTEFLA teacher training course I completed, the topic of the day was going to be writing. We were all sitting there, wondering what kind of activities had been planned.

The trainer came in and simply said: "Have you got a piece of paper and a pen? Write down the following title: 'Writing is simply speech written down.' Now BEGIN! You have 40 minutes."

All the other trainess apart from me sighed, shifted in their seats and practically threw their pens down in exasperation if not disgust. Oh no! What a difficult topic to write about!! they were "thinking". Meanwhile, I was preparing to sketch out an essay outline, based upon my study of Chinese and connected reading of the works of John DeFrancis (do a search for his name here on Dave's to find out about his opinions, I've mentioned him before); I was probably also aware even then of the primacy of speech in linguistics, but to really write more than half an essay it would've helped for me to be aware of the work of Douglas Biber, perhaps Halliday etc (I didn't get into Corpus Linguistics until I had read some Lewis, after finishing the course).

Anyway, the trainer soon called time and said she was only joking about needing to write an essay - we could "see" what was involved in "writing", all, I recall, without the need to even talk the topic through (perhaps the implication also was that speech=ESP, mind-reading etc).

I suppose you could say that in essence, the trainer had touched upon an issue or two, but without it being made explicit, I don't know if anyone went away with anything that day; I just feel that as the only one in the room who seemed to "know" anything, the trainer's approach raised more questions (to me) than it answered. All well and good, you might say, all a teacher can do is point to the moon, but there are important things such as academic references, acknowledging and providing sources (especially when time for reading/discussing/rehashing them is short)...and when a trainer doesn't provide them, it makes me start to wonder if they are actually coming from anywhere in particular at all. The end result is that nobody is helped, and a feeling of "bogus sophistication" fills the air.

How I wish that somebody had come in and gone through at least the kind of issues that I had in mind - you'd think that they could hire somebody capable of that, given that we were paying good money! Why do trainers skirt around the subjects so? It is patronizing at best...revealing of their ignorance at worst...

I take the attitude that you either know something, or you don't; admittedly, there are degrees of knowing and mastery, but there seems to be no excuse for deliberately excluding items on the grounds especially of "there won't be time" or "not important for them to know this at this time". This kind of thinking really holds people back in their development and does nothing to help the profession's image. Before we can expect teachers to be better informed, maybe we need to get the trainers themselves to improve; I for one don't like to be kept waiting until I begin an MA to broach these subjects (and I bet that AGAIN, they are passed over too quickly or not mentioned at all, because by that point, it is probably assumed that we know enough about things or can find out for ourselves. Does anyone anywhere outside of academic publications provide helpful references?! Here indeed is a difference between writing - albeit academic - and speech, the latter of the vehemently anti-academic kind, it would seem ).

I told a great colleague who'd trained at International House (after teaching "unqualified" in China for over a year) about that training activity (I guess that Sinophiles have reasons aplenty for talking about writing systems!), and he seemed shocked; at IH, they'd been scribbling I-Love-You's and more at breakneck speed and running around the room in an attempt to make writing "match" speech's speed, or something like that. I was quite glad I'd trained elsewhere after hearing that (being the old unfit fogey that I now am, and perhaps always have been). The two approaches had a lot in common, except that only one would've been in danger of turning into a wet T-shirt contest (I sweat a lot - and no, I DON'T have br*asts just yet, thank you!! ).

He passed with an 'A' grade, by the way...hmm I wonder why...maybe we soon get to a point where we don't need training (at least, not of the SINGLE type and "quality" that is on offer EVERYWHERE at this "level").

Hey all!

International House (read "of Pancakes") is, in my humble opinion, one of those places that gives the word "method" a bad name. The teacher who will be sharing his/her wisdom with us in this aformentioned workshop that I'll try to avoid works for IH. At a recent teachers' meeting our "boss" (see my comments on the "b"-word on another thread) told us that this teacher would be from IH and that they were charging him an arm and a leg for the workshop (meaning "So you all better get something out of it, or else!") It was obvious I had an opinion and so was asked and I simply said that, though their "method" might be linguistically sound, their materials thorough, I personally didn't like the teacher's training course I had done in Madrid when I thought they might be useful as employers.

"WHAT!¡!" reacted my fellow teachers, "But IH is HIGHLY reccommended in the field, EVERYONE says that they are excellent! Are you MAD!¡! How can you have such an OPINION!¡!" (I've mentioned that my fellow teachers are sometimes histerical reactionaries.... ) "No," I answered, "I simply found that they not only don't accept that there might be other ways of doing things but that they also did not allow adaptation of their method to the personality of the teacher, and specifically belittled past experience, often calling it simply wrong. Seemed like a sect to me." I inwardly chuckled at the scandal I had created but did not persue the point, let them rain their comments down on me, I personally have nothing to worry about.

Teachers need to be trained perhaps. Who's going to train the trainers?

peace,
revel.

In IH's defence, I should say that my colleague, whom I respected a lot (an Oxbridge man and a salt-of-the-earth fellah), said he'd enjoyed the course a lot and was glad he'd done it, and done it at IH (I pressed him on whether it was value for money - us being then lowly-paid teachers in China - but I recall him saying that our employer or somebody had stumped up the greenbacks for it, he'd kind of wangled it as a condition in renewing his contract I think, cheaper than flying in new teachers, what is it, better the devil you know? OMG I am writing like you now revel!i!). Personally, I thought it was a waste of "his" money if not time, he didn't need it, whether through the auspices of IH or not, 'cos his heart, brain and everything a teacher needs were in the right place and had been used by him in his own development.

I also respect John Haycraft, the late founder of IH, and the role IH played in the development of the RSA certificates, it's good that we have at least these certificates! However, I just don't think it's ambitious enough or has widened its scope enough in line with all the developments that have taken place since its inception, and it's a shame that the interesting stuff is held back until at least the Diploma level (I wonder how many simply skip that now and go straight onto an MA, disillusioned with what RSA/UCLES has to offer).

One advantage of qualifying at IH is that if you are any good, there is a worldwide network of schools for which you might be recommended, in a variety of jobs (not just teaching, but teacher-training etc), and who could say no to that kind of glittering career?! Go for it revel! You know you want to really!:D