Ode to rigidity

[woodcutter]

Flexibilty, in a teacher, is generally viewed as being an absolute virtue. However, let's say I'm a general cooking teacher. Some of my students want to learn Thai cooking, others Chinese, others French. Instead of my trying do do all these, and perhaps throwing fish sauce in the onion soup, it is obvious that students will be better served by being separated out into different classes.

However, in teaching we almost never make an attempt to do this, we only sort into ability levels. No, the individual teacher must satisfy every need of a disparate group. The needs and desires should be diagnosed, though teachers have very little chance to do so in any kind of scientific way. The literature tells us to be responsive to the group, often forgetting that the group is a large collection of individuals who may have very little in common, leaving us no hope of finding suitable common ground. The group is also very often in flux from day to day, leaving our well laid plans in tatters.

Let us also consider the average student. The average student has given little thought to which methodology is most time efficient. This is hard to perceive. What they can easily perceive is whether they are having a good time. If an experienced teacher is sanctioning the good time then they may assume that it is useful, while the teacher is actually providing the style of instruction because the teacher wants to be popular, has to be popular, because the authorities demand it. Therefore, when students are in unknowing control, fairly useless activities like gawping uninterrupted at a video on a friday become the norm.

Consider instead a large city in which every method or approach that has ever been practised is available - students have oodles of choice, they can make their own judgements about what they need, rather than have poor judgements inflicted. The teachers will be expert at delivering that style of instruction, and under pressure to excel at that, rather than merely court popularity. They will be able to spend more time teaching, and less time racking their brains for ways to deal with the fluctuating, mixed bag of students in front of them. It seems to me that making teachers do busy work is a sin, but the literature generally seems to think it is a virtue!

Still, as Lorikeet once seemed to insinuate, I may be on the lazy side.....I shouldn't have bridled!

[LarryLatham]

I don't blame you for railing at the system. The system sucks!

Now. What's your solution?

Larry Latham

[fluffyhamster]

Hello again, woodcutter! Good idea this, to start another thread!

OK, agreed, a lot of classes may be full of "sound and fury, signifying nothing" (that is, signifying little thought on the teacher's part about "quality input" rather than generally yammering away, and perhaps often showing, as Atreju has intimated, '(students) don't learn (any), or hardly (any), new words from talking with (their) classmates'), and the "mixed" bag of students we usually have to deal with may make it impossible to please everyone all of the time, but at the other extreme, a class "full" of identically attired, shaved-headed monks who have taken a vow of silence and don't mind being whacked with a big stick by a humourless abbot isn't necessarily a model of "enlightened" practice either (or a realistic model of the diversity of the student body, the "demands" of "business" vs. "education" in private English language schools etc); and even if you feverently believe that what goes on in temples is good for the soul and all that, the fact is, the monks have cut themselves off from real life a bit too much and are leading what is actually a very "priveleged" existence (as the irritating and contradictory sages and masters among them are often fond of reminding their puzzled followers). That is, people can't and shouldn't forget about or idealize away from the real world too much; practice totally divorced from reality might not ultimately be that helpful for mankind blah blah blah.

All that being said, if the teacher is able to identify excellent coursebooks, add all the necessary grammar/lexis/discourse activities to fill in the gaps, and present the students with more "academic" tasks that they really, absolutely, honest-to-goodness need to do (because the teacher can't learn it for them) e.g. memorizing through repeated exposure and "encounters" more vocabulary than is found in your "average" conversation, perhaps specifically (as Stefan reminded us recently) the past forms of irregular verbs (to give one obvious example) through mechanical drilling etc, then there is no reason that every class needs to remain a "no-brainer" is there. HOWEVER, it might be worth remembering (to use another oriental, this time martial arts again, analogy) that students learning the dance-like forms (kata) in karate are often kind of expected to learn or pick them up in their own time, and once they have got the basic movements down pat, only then does the teacher come along and add little bits of refinement to the movements and show how the knowledge is actually to be applied (kata have "bunkai", applications, that recently have been shown to possibly be wristlocks, throws, nerve point defences etc rather than the often contrived and silly "traditional", boxing-like defences against multiple opponents). Students who don't seem to be bothering to learn for themselves, who don't appear motivated to the teacher, can end up being ignored (unfair as that may seem to us westerners; and I myself do prefer a teacher who takes the lead, who has a bit more carrot than stick to offer. I should probably stop here before I start losing or contradicting what appears to be my point and argument, but tangents are useful if they get us all thinking a bit outside the foursquare boxes that a too-rigid argument tries to draw).

So, once again, we have dichotomies - classroom as social microcosm, language as ability "versus" classroom as classroom (for "learning", or, rather, teacher-centric teaching), language as knowledge. Our job as communicative language teachers (whether you like the C word or not, you really are going against the stream if you can't accept the insights it might afford) is to narrow, not maintain or widen, the gaps between these dichotomies, and it will take a lot more thought on our parts (and not just a passing of the buck academically to the students, so to speak) to get everything (language, syllabus - materials, activities etc, methodology/presumed and planned patterns of "talk" and interaction, in short the overall approach/viewpoint/point(s) of departure for our thinking and practice) into the sort of order that will provide everyone with a real basis for efficient (well-planned and executed, for the time available) learning.

I guess that ultimately, the only way of knowing for sure if we are onto a good thing, have valuable ideas and theories, would be to open our "own method" schools in that large city of yours, woodcutter, and see how many students we could initially attract and keep on enrolling. I rather suspect that the schools that would do the best business would be those at which the students were not only learning a lot but having a good time with it (to directly address and hopefully in an arresting final sentence resolve what seems to be your biggest dichotomy)!

[fluffyhamster]

Woodcutter wrote (on the "An argument for reading in the target language" thread):

By the way, FH, I often write my posts in between classes when I should be doing something else, and it can be hard to deal with the torrents of information you provide. It makes me feel guilty to answer superficially but sometimes it just can't be helped.

I'm going to kick off another thread about flexibility now in the hope that some of the things you brought up can be dealt with.

Duly noted and appreciated, woody. Apologies for the further torrent above. Take your time in answering, I won't post again until you've had a chance to post again yourself. (And I've got that Sandwich story thread to read first anyway, can't keep putting that off!).

[woodcutter]

But Larry, I did offer a solution. Every method running at once. That would offer some real, worthwhile flexibility. Though I must say that one purpose of employing the "community learning method" "suggestopedia" et al is to provide a kind of special needs service, in my book. "The communicative approach" (or as I like to call it, The Headway Method) is good for the garrulous, creative and lazy kind of student too.

At the moment teachers talk a lot about flexibilty and provide little. I am sure all of you reading this have a style of teaching that your students can smell a mile off, and do not vary what you do very much according to an objective assessment of class needs. That is almost impossibly hard to do. All I hear in Fluffy Hamster's post is the way in which he supplements coursebooks in order to make them more in his own image. It seems as if he is searching for the 'perfect style' rather than for a way to adapt to a class. And that is usually all that you can do, because if you have a large class then different individuals will have widely different needs, classes are not generally homogenous to any degree.

[revel]

Hey all!

I'll jump into this one feet first.

The only people who know what I do in class as a teacher are my students. I am not at all heaping laurels by saying that 90% of my students are highly satisfied with what I do in class, it's simply how things are. The other 10% might not like my classes as much as the grand majority, but they also see the value of what I do. One problem I do see, though, is that almost all of the students enter the class with a lot of preconceived notions that I do not necessarily live up to. This is mainly because my bosses don't have any idea what I am doing in class and simply sell one thing while offering another. Last year I taught with the door of my classroom open so that they could hear and observe what was going on, and now they leave me alone, knowing that my students are having a good time (not essential, perhaps, but certainly helpful), and feel they are learning (reflected in endless evaluation surveys that the boss offers them).

Though I am inflexible in my ideas about teaching, I do have to be flexible in the application of those ideas in any given class. Where an adult class last year was led through improvisational workshops with song, dance, scenes, pronunciation and structural drills, this year the same class (with different students) is unable to face singing a country western song to enjoy vowel lengthening, I would hardly ask them to stand up and learn some basic tap-dancing. Have to take the group dynamics into consideration despite the class planning already done.

This past summer I and my colleagues wasted a couple of hours meeting and planning a team-teacher structure of adult classes for this year, on the request of our boss. Our ideas were valid, based on the individual talents and interests of each teacher. We made our proposal which was immediately discarded with the words "it won't work"....not meaning that it would not work linguistically but rather that the boss would not make enough money from the way we offered to structure the classes. And yet, when preparing the special, state funded adult classes for unemployed people, the boss suddenly had four teachers trying to work as a team. The reasons were not based on taking advantage of the individual talents of each teacher but rather based on making sure each teacher had enough hours of work to keep them from looking for another job. Despite his "efforts", the boss has lost one teacher to a better job, as well as presented the students with a linguistically weak class. Our hands are tied and it is the student who suffers. Finally, it is the academy that suffers, as these students will not come back to a learning situation where three of the teachers are boring, one is fun but too demanding, and the objective is learning to use "comercial English" in just 200 hours of rapid study. Once again, as fluffy points out, the business gets in the way of the learning.

I'm afraid I'm just saying blah blah blah here, so I'll leave this open to comments from others. Not even sure I'm on the subject, think I'll go to the gym and do some abdominals.

peace,
revel.

[revel]

More on this....

I am, indeed, a popular teacher, though I do not seek popularity. I am indifferent to what students think of me, either as a person or as a teacher. I am an expert in my field and all of my students recognize that fact at once. I am hard, strict, demanding. I give good, sound advice and insist that that advice be followed. When the dentist says "that tooth must be pulled" the suffering patient rarely argues the fact, opens his/her mouth and then rubs his/her cheek tenderly for a few days afterwards. When this ESL teacher says "practice this sentence 25,000 times before Thursday" he expects the student to accept that he knows what he is talking about. When that practice is not done outside of class it is evident in the next class and valuable class time must be spent practicing before one can move on. Sometimes there is time in the program for practice, most of the time there is not.

Students do not need teachers to learn. A student who takes personal responsibility for his/her learning learns because of and despite of what goes on in the classroom. I have a personal discipline, well developed, that leads me to self-study, I did not attend a single Spanish class and yet speak Spanish quite well; I have had few guitar classes and yet play the guitar to my own personal satisfaction; I am autodidactic. Most people, however, are not. A teacher ought to be able to identify the needs of any group, find the common denominator and address that which all students in the group need in common. A teacher ought not to sacrifice his/her personal "method" in the name of flexibility. I am not Plato, I am revel. I know how to do this or that well and those who attend my classes learn to do this or that thanks to my teaching. I do not teach them ESL, I teach them how to study, how to learn, how to accumulate information. Though there is no pat way of doing such, there are certain "truths" out there about learning that many students are not aware of. Using the ESL material, I teach them how. I would teach in the same way even if the subject matter were different, say, mathmatics or social studies or history. Learning is the personal responsibility of each student, teachers are there to facilitate learning. I teach how to learn, or maybe I remind them how they learned what they already know and help them to apply those memories on what they want to know.

Oh, how easy it is to get off on tangents, isn't it, fluffy¿?

peace,
revel.

[LarryLatham]

Woodcutter, I am beginning to gain new respect for your thoughts. At least, I am appreciative of your intentions, if I read them correctly. It looks like you'd like to improve ESL/EFL teaching. That's great. But I'm not sure I'm always understanding what I read from you. For example:

At the moment teachers talk a lot about flexibilty and provide little. I am sure all of you reading this have a style of teaching that your students can smell a mile off, and do not vary what you do very much according to an objective assessment of class needs. That is almost impossibly hard to do.

There's a lot in there, I think. I guess that you mean teachers talk a lot about flexibility in the classroom, and yet do not vary their methods much from class to class. That's possible, but I can't quite figure out whether you approve or disapprove. Or whether I would. First, what kind of assessment of class needs can be "objective?" If you are promoting the use of standardized tests to determine class needs, then I cannot support you. I haven't seen any such test that I thought actually measured student needs "objectively." They are always mandated by someone (or some group) with an agenda, which is always not the same as mine. If you would accept an entirely "subjective" assessment of those same needs by a teacher who's been there before, perhaps many times, then I like that better. And once that assessment has been made, then what elements of the classroom experience can or should be flexible, if any? I have witnessed rigid application of some 'method' (generally, one that is promulgated by teacher training, or a coursebook series, or an administration, but conceiveably could be one arrived at by an individual teacher's long experience--one like revel's, for example, or lorikeet's) without regard for the particular characteristics of the group of students in a classroom. Generally speaking, it's a disaster. I do not think either revel or lorikeet practice this kind of rigidity, regardless of some of their comments, because of the totality of their comments here at Dave's Bar. I've also seen (and confess I've tried once or twice myself with poor results) nearly complete "flexibility", in the sense that there is no overall plan in place...no general guide to progress. And of course there are examples of nearly everything between one and the other of those.

I kind of like revel's statement here:

Though I am inflexible in my ideas about teaching, I do have to be flexible in the application of those ideas in any given class.

...but I'm not entirely certain about what he means either, about "inflexible in my ideas about teaching." Hopefully he means that he has some pretty solid ideas about teaching, although he is open to new ideas, but skeptical, and a "pretty hard sell." You'd have to have some awfully good evidence that some other way was superior for him to buy it. I believe, though I cannot know it, that revel is a pretty good teacher. (He believes that he is a pretty good teacher; that cannot be missed. And I don't see any problem with that...far from it.) What seems good about his statement above is the part about being flexible in his application. You see, that could mean that he makes judgments about his students, and tailors a particular pattern of lectures, exercises, practices, songs, tap-dances, chants, or whatever he has in his repertory especially for those students in that particular group. There's nothing scientific about this, he does it out of his personal subjective assessment of student needs. Would you count that as being flexible? Do you think his students can "smell his style of teaching a mile off?" And if so, is that bad? Administrators don't like anything like this, because they claim it cannot be 'measured.' However, maybe revel has a pretty good idea that his students know more English at the end of his classes. (Now don't let's rehash the argument about "best possible" method here. We've already been there, and while it's good in principle, there are times when just knowing your students have improved has to be good enough.) Maybe his students think so too.

Revel says he is a popular teacher, though he is "indifferent to what students think of [him], either as a person or as a teacher." I don't believe that for a moment, although he thinks he is a stud for saying so. He is a performer. And performers care whether the audience applauds. He's more than a mere performer, though, ready to do whatever it takes to get a laugh, and perhaps that is what he really means. He is always aware of the seriousness of his underlying purpose. I'll leave it to him to tell us, if he so desires, exactly what his purpose is. I'll tell you mine, though, which I always tried to keep in mind when I was actively teaching: Get them to enjoy exploring English. It isn't the only good purpose in ESL/EFL, but I think it is worthwhile for students. My hope was that they would take it out of my classroom and into their lives no matter who were their subsequent teachers, even if there were no others.

I like a style that some call controlled chaos. What I mean by that is, the course contains a little of this, a little of that, and quite a bit of repitition (or revisiting what's been done before). I don't like lesson plans. Let me repeat that, because some of you will suck in your breath at the blasphemy. I don't like lesson plans. Lesson plans pin you down. They tend to tie you to your "method", and leave less room for consideration of your students' needs, especially their needs of the moment. But don't overgeneralize here. I'm not against planning. I very much believe that teachers should have a good idea about where they want to go, not only in tonight's class, but also in the weeks to come. But only in general terms. The particulars, I think, are best done off the cuff. Have lots of hip-pocket materials and ideas. You can plan for a class without making lesson plans. And if you do, you can turn on a dime if need be. In my experience, need be comes along with some frequency. If a student asks a question that you think merits more than a quick answer, and if you think several or many other people in class could benefit significantly from a thorough treatment of the question, well, your class plans have just been changed, and off you go. But you have to be prepared yourself for that...and that means you have to know your stuff. That's why the kind of thinking that goes on here on the "Applied Linguistics" forum is critical for every teacher. You have to start somewhere, and most of us started from near zero (at least I did; I hated English in school, and came out knowing next to nothing), but then, if you are truly a professional, you have to make it your business, your passion if possible, to learn as much as you can about your subject. You have to be ready.

Like I said at the beginning, I appreciate that you recognize flaws in ESL/EFL teaching as it is practiced today, and that you want to make it better. Me too. But it sure seems to be an uphill battle. Three kinds of people oppose you: students, teachers, and administrators.

Larry Latham

[fluffyhamster]

But Larry, I did offer a solution. Every method running at once. That would offer some real, worthwhile flexibility.

There is nothing stopping "every method from running at once" i.e. setting up shop, it's not like there is more than the "success" of the CA to account for its ascendance and the relative decline of other methods (such as CLL, (de)suggestopedia etc); I mean, since when was a law or ban implemented against other methods? (The CA is actually very tolerant of a wide gamut of techniques, it's an "eclectic" approach, as I mentioned before).

Though I must say that one purpose of employing the "community learning method" "suggestopedia" et al is to provide a kind of special needs service, in my book.

I like that "Though" there, and the immediate "demotion" to only 'a kind of special needs service', it seems pretty obvious to me that you are only paying lip service to the notion of methodological diversity and wouldn't really value that diversity.

"The communicative approach" (or as I like to call it, The Headway Method) is good for the garrulous, creative and lazy kind of student too.

Now you're just getting silly. As I said at length on that other thread, anyone who closely reads something like Lewis's The Lexical Approach will be aware of the shortcomings (non-implemented aspects) of the current CA, but the "original", originally envisioned CA does actually make a lot of sense (as Lewis interprets/reinterprets it at least, that's a point, rather than just flick through Headway why not go back to "the sources" to get the "real deal" and make up your own mind, materials, methods etc?!), and it/he goes a long way to dispelling the easy notions that 'you talk to learn' or that a close(r)study of the language is not required. Incidentally, not sure you should be calling those students "creative", unless you put it in scare quotes. (You did put scare quotes around "The communicative approach", but 'The "communicative" approach' is surely more what you meant, and a little bit of discussion would be nice from you about 'a "communicative" approach", or rather 'a more communicative approach', and I actually prefer just to say 'a communicative approach, because it makes clear less, not more of the RSA style is required! LOL!).

At the moment teachers talk a lot about flexibilty and provide little. I am sure all of you reading this have a style of teaching that your students can smell a mile off, and do not vary what you do very much according to an objective assessment of class needs. That is almost impossibly hard to do.

I'd like to provide more and freely admit that I could probably do with being more flexible, but I also always make it clear why this is why (not that it has to or should always remain so); my priority is the language, and to introduce the language in natural ways that are true to that language as far as possible rather than to a methodology (note that I say as far as possible there: a rigid methodology might have a teacher always excitedly shouting at the students, clapping and raising their hands in classes, whereas I wouldn't act too crazy in studying, say, why people get angry - not that an analysis of the possibly linguistic reasons for people getting frustrated or angry , and how to possibly avoid giving offence, takes place in many "exciting" classrooms).

Is this linguistic basis not a good way to provide variety in at least the content (with implications for the methodology), and as thorough a way as any to identify and meet the 'objective...class needs' (moreso anyway than supposedly "thorough" needs analyses, pre-course questionnaires etc - that whole "you tell me what you need to learn, because I actually have no idea what to do with you, and you'd realize that if you were smart and save your money" thing), then?

Anyway, nobody is saying that teachers are probably not at heart creatures of habit comfortable with their routine(s), but I would say that such routines have been shaped not only by beliefs but also by "absorbing what is useful" (i.e. eclecticism), and having useful ideas and beliefs in the first place, even only a few, does show evidence of an at least initial mental curiosity and eclecticism (that "finger pointing to the moon"). Furthermore, and contrary to the saying, I think some old dogs can learn and might like to learn some new tricks just to keep themselves young, if not also entertain their "owners" (the students in the class); and no teacher would last long in a job if they went to such an extreme as to not adapt to a single classes seeming wishes, compromize is the order of the day.

Basically, eclecticism, flexibility, communication etc are all just idea(l)s that we try to keep in mind and lift us out of the ruts we often find ourselves in. 'I am sure all of you reading this...do not vary what you do very much' and recognize and try to live with that unsurprising fact as you wait for the Perfect Method to save you. Then, you can all put your feet up and have a nice cuppa as the class teaches itself according to the guru's way (maybe it will be this "woodcutter" we've all been hearing so much about, felling the treetrunks of illusion blocking our path!). Now, was that one lump or two you wanted, you lazy sod? Ah, yes, sorry, I was forgetting your teabreak was over and you have another class to teach. Try not to get them all to quit and/or demand refunds this time, okay?!

All I hear in Fluffy Hamster's post is the way in which he supplements coursebooks in order to make them more in his own image. It seems as if he is searching for the 'perfect style' rather than for a way to adapt to a class. And that is usually all that you can do, because if you have a large class then different individuals will have widely different needs, classes are not generally homogenous to any degree.

I was trying not to lead into this until now, saving the "best" for last, as they say. Now that I'm looking closely at just the quote immediately above, I can see your style clearly, woodcutter. You have a curious way of starting by seeming to insult somebody ('All I hear in FH's posts is...'), then you say something ambiguous hate-love wise ('It seems as if he is searching for the "perfect style" rather than a way to adapt to a class'), before then going on to add insult to injury by using "all" of that to reach your forgone conclusion.

Anyway, let's look at your points one by one. My "perfect" style is ultimately based on language (see above about 'needs analysis' etc) - perhaps moreso even than Lewis, because I really do want the classroom to resemble a little corner of the real world, much like the corner of a pub with colleagues/friends after work does (see the 'Out damned Lewis! Enter the Lacksitall Approach instead!' thread i.e. the Dogme one), provided it covers almost everything people close can indeed talk about, and how they go about it. I'm not trying to make a student in my own image, what I'm doing is anything but; I'm just trying to give them an idea of how most people talk and, hopefully at as near to the same time as possible, get them talking in the same way so the gap between knowledge and ability is as small as possible (as you know, I am not a great fan of dichotomies, because I think they don't encourage us to try to close the gaps between the two "concepts" they contain). Anyway, I hope readers who've stuck with me this far can see my approach is not meant to reduce a class down to anything less than "talk" (a single concept, but containing incredible potential diversity in matter, means and the interplay between them in functionally achieving communication i.e transmitting meaning through a variety of competing forms; this staggering variety is about the only thing I will be 'adapting' - selecting from, simplifying, streamlining, any other good words beginning with 's'?!).

I've let you into my "methods" quite enough - hey, no sleeping at the back there! - perhaps you could let us into yours, woodcutter, rather than simply saying that nobody can satisfy a (large) class of students (who, I think, do want to talk, and are waiting to be shown how to really, rather than being told to "talk about" or around yet another "topic" - that is the difference between "communicative" and communicative approaches, if you ask me), unless they use the Direct method, that is (you didn't say it, but then, you didn't really need to! ).

I suppose that, in the final analysis, both our methods are "direct", but I find the Direct method nebulous beyond its seemingly sole maxim of "Use only the target language". (Maybe that there is another link between our approaches, but you'll need to get more explicit before you get at least one person i.e. me, on your side). If we accepted the RSA interpretation of that, we could as easily and breezily append '...to patronize your students and confound their expectations of ever really being able to communicate well in a natural setting' to the above maxim of Maximilian "Mad Max" Berlitz's.

There are limits to how much can be deduced (induced) from "simply" speech-speaking (BUT this is a necessary stage to "test hypotheses"!) unless the teacher really does know their stuff and knows where they're heading, there has to be more than the "sink or swim" ("immersion") attitude regarding not only the students, but also the teachers too (it's almost like their "career" in education/"educational" career/"voyage of discovery" never really gets started beyond that first day, unless they are a total "natural", naturally "at ease" (whatever that means) with the approach/method itself i.e. become "merely" a "method man", which is what I've been told is all I need to be, I simply have to "forget" about the language and just "be there" in the classroom, "for" my students.

(The boss concerned actually said grammar etc was just "armour" worn by an "insecure" teacher - as if I wanted to lecture on it like I was metal or something - and couldn't seem to get what another teacher was driving at when she asked him, repeatedly, exactly what a course sold as "Cooking in English" was about. What, she wondered, would she do if the students wanted to do more than break a few eggs to make an omlette - no, she didn't say that, I'm just trying as usual to be witty here - and actually learn some English. Should she teach them? What would or could she teach them? Would her getting "academic" conflict in any way with what the students had been sold? It was conceivable that some students - probably only a minority - might complain if she tried to move out of and away from the frying pan!).

Make up your own minds:
http://www.berlitz.co.uk/CorporateInfo/ ... htm?ISO=en
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=slv1- ... ect+method

[fluffyhamster]

Woodcutter, I am beginning to gain new respect for your thoughts. At least, I am appreciative of your intentions, if I read them correctly. It looks like you'd like to improve ESL/EFL teaching. That's great. But I'm not sure I'm always understanding what I read from you. For example:

At the moment teachers talk a lot about flexibilty and provide little. I am sure all of you reading this have a style of teaching that your students can smell a mile off, and do not vary what you do very much according to an objective assessment of class needs. That is almost impossibly hard to do.

There's a lot in there, I think. I guess that you mean teachers talk a lot about flexibility in the classroom, and yet do not vary their methods much from class to class. That's possible, but I can't quite figure out whether you approve or disapprove. Or whether I would.

I was also struggling with what woodcutter had written (but I appreciate him posting! ). The way you've tried to figure it all out in the rest of your posts chimes with me (and probably many others reading it), though, Larry, and it's nice to hear about how you generally go about your teaching.

It's also helpful that you selected higlights from revel's posts that will get me to circle back to them and re-read them with a new "appreciation".

[revel]

Hey all!

I had jumped in feet first, but now find that this thread offers some "bite". So little time, so much to say. I'll be brief (HA HA HA!)

Larry comments "You'd have to have some awfully good evidence that some other way was superior for him to buy it." and he's hit the nail on the head. "Inflexible" in my comments means that I know what I am doing, I know what has worked and will work, and "new-improved" ideas hardly ever stand up to my own personal experience. Let's remember, please, that I teach in a small corner of the world, to only some 80 people, and am a specialized teacher, that is, I have specialized in certain aspects of ESL teaching that coincide perfectly with my own background, talents and personality. I suppose I could be a bit more 'umble, as Uriah Heep puts it, but to what end? My dentist is one of the best in my part of Spain and he doesn't mind letting his clients know such.

Being "totally indifferent" is also a comment that results from recently rereading "David Copperfield", thinking about his Aunt Betsy and her "total indifference" to what people thought about her and her way of doing things. How I would love to have that attitude. However, Larry has caught me out, I do count on the feedback from my students, it is important to me what they think of the classes I impart. Not on a popularity scale as woodcutter seems to suggest, but rather in self-evaluation of my "performance". I don't care if they think I'm a wonderful person, though most do think so, but I do care if they consider me a professional, a good teacher, a sympathetic informer. That such makes me popular is a nice side-effect in that I am chosen over other teachers when certain classes are being prepared and offered. Can't complain about that, I have to pay the mortgage like anyone else! (Larry, does indifference make one a stud? Wow, will have to work on my studliness more! )

I'm not sure that students can smell my "style" a mile off. Most state openly that they have never had an ESL class quite like mine. Though the objectives are clearly posted on the board, though I review them constantly before, during, after class, students are never sure what to expect from day to day. I don't mean that I surprise them constantly, but they have never had a teacher use tap-dance to teach basic structural rhythm, they have never sung past tense irregular verbs like opera stars, they have never imagined that they could be the Duchess of Alba talking about her boring lifestyle. I don't doubt that there are other teachers as crazy and creative in the classroom as I am, but as far as I know, here in Huesca, I am the only one who approaches ESL in the manner that I do. They may smell me a mile off, but they can't quite identify that odor (don't use cologne, so it can't be the Massimo Dutti stuff wafting through the air.)

Hope I've been a little clearer on what I was saying at 6.30 this morning with the first cup of coffee!

peace,
revel.

[fluffyhamster]

I've just re-read your very first post, woody, in light of the discussion since, and have realized (should've sooner, before waffling away for ages above, I know) that your biggest concern seems to be just matching "type of learner/learner style" with "method" (rather than which method is best overall) which, in your utopian meglopolis will presumably be an easy thing; and just think, if the student themselves had read up, appreciated and sussed the differences between every method they'd probably have no need of a teacher and would go apply their awesome intellect to teaching themselves! Problem solved!

But let's just assume that the schools (teachers?) will still be being entrusted with accurately identifying what a student needs for the student, and will refuse to teach anyone incompatible with their method (perhaps there are generous government subsidies that support to some people educationally "silly" but honest when it comes to trying to make a profit). How exactly does the school match student with method? By measuring many things, probably (you mentioned a few things): wants (to learn Thai cooking, have a good time, maybe even gawp at a video), ability, needs, desires...oh, kitchen sinks were mentioned on another thread somewhere, I hope they'll help too.

What I'm trying to say is that there are way too many variables amongst learners to ever totally guarantee that you have a homogenous, trouble-free class, although I suppose you could try devising a questionnaire that honestly gave the students an idea of what your (or rather, your school's) method(s) are like, to only attract those who would welcome those methods and fully knew what to expect (not that your school would let you write such a questionnaire, it would probably scare away too many students if we put the onus more on them to be "ideal, good, obedient students" than the teacher to be good and 'do busy work', though, I mean, why do you think they come to a language school in the first place? Schools make promises that the teacher "will" keep and deliver upon).

But all this, whilst interesting, is still not addressing if one method is better than another (picking up/carrying over the discussion somewhat from the "Atreju theory" thread), which is what I think we are more concerned with than the "possibilty" of achieving an ideal body of students.

I would argue that the "method" i.e. through being in a classroom and engaging in the process of doing whatever, is actually and realistically about the only means and place where the students really will find out how they learn best, what is to be learnt, what more there is to learn etc; it can't really all be figured out just by reading a glossy brochure or taking a questionnaire.

Schools and teachers should be more open and honest about what they are offering, sure, and make efforts to group students in appropriate ways (no Israelis in with Palestinians, or Palestinians in with Israelis, if you'd prefer, if you'll forgive and not pick upon the jokey allusion to what all know is actually a serious concern), but provided there is a thorough, linguistically-principled syllabus behind the scenes somewhere and actually being thoughtfully implemented with respect to learners as people wanting to soon be able to communicate through the process of involving themselves in that more or less social arrangement known as a "classroom", talk about "differing" methods is ultimately just, well, "talk", not talk.

[fluffyhamster]

Hi again revvers, I must say I enjoyed your last post a lot.

Being "totally indifferent" is also a comment that results from recently rereading "David Copperfield", thinking about his Aunt Betsy and her "total indifference" to what people thought about her and her way of doing things. How I would love to have that attitude. However, Larry has caught me out, I do count on the feedback from my students, it is important to me what they think of the classes I impart. Not on a popularity scale as woodcutter seems to suggest, but rather in self-evaluation of my "performance". I don't care if they think I'm a wonderful person, though most do think so, but I do care if they consider me a professional, a good teacher, a sympathetic informer. That such makes me popular is a nice side-effect in that I am chosen over other teachers when certain classes are being prepared and offered. Can't complain about that, I have to pay the mortgage like anyone else!

I found the part higlighted in bold particularly interesting (=got me thinking). I think applying the "good" adjectives there to the words 'talker' and (to add something vital, and "missing" in my previous posts, by which I mean I hope it was ultimately assumed "present and accounted for" even if its absence was noted) obviously 'listener' will also help (beyond what revel and Larry have said) in describing a teacher with the right sort of approach, these are currents that flow under and through the more specific things we do in the course of our own individual classes.

[fluffyhamster]

A few perhaps somewhat related threads (if you haven't already read them), to do with the quality of teacher training (arranged from more to less recent, and concerning an EducationGuardian article, the DELTA, an interview Q for teaching kids/basic English, and Teacher training exercises/mention of International House courses, repectively):

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... php?t=2544
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... php?t=2423
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... php?t=2229
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... php?t=1964

[fluffyhamster]

I was doing searches on "pimsleur" (see recent thread/query by another member) just now and came across some interesting comments by Derek Bickerton (you get extra points and 'spect if you have any idea who he is). Doubtless he got something out of it for saying nice things about Pimsleur, but even so, I think we should at least consider what he says generally, it's a good interview.
http://www.pimsleurapproach.com/learn-c ... ndarin.asp?

Skip down to the bottom of the page - the top 3/4 is adverts and 'Want a bigger p*nis?'-style junk (well okay maybe it's not that bad but I skipped it, maybe I have a big enough, um, intellect, er, already to not need to read stuff like that! ).

There's also a relatively informative link (about the Pimsleur method itself) here:
http://www.simonsays.com/content/featur ... ure_id=422