Teacher in Development

Some people have natural language learning ability. My wife, for example, seems to be one of these people. She is Mexican, so her first language is Spanish. But she speaks near fluent English, and has begun picking up French, German, and seems pretty open to learning Italian. She seems to take it on with ease - while I have been immersed in Spanish for almost a decade and still have problem areas. 

My wife, like many other people out there, have a natural gift to learn other languages. If you get one of these people in your class - great. They’ll likely push you more than others, but you’ll likely see faster progress.

But then there’s the rest of us. The ones that don’t have a "language talent." How can teachers develop classwork that encourages and even creates an environment for top performance to happen for everyone else?

 Fascinating read: "Why Talent is Overrated." 

 Today’s Takeaway:

"The essence of deliberate practice is continually stretching an individual just beyond his or her current abilities. That may sound obvious, but most of us don’t do it in the activities we think of as practice. At the driving range or at the piano, most of us are just doing what we’ve done before and hoping to maintain the level of performance that we probably reached long ago." (Geoff Colvin Talent is Overrated.)

 Classroom App:Redefine Practice

Do our practice activities simply rollover the skills our students ALREADY have?

I fear that this is a common situation - and finds itself in my own life. I have been playing the guitar for about ten years, but have never ventured out of basic chord progressions like G, C, D, F, and E. I stay there because it’s easy and safe. I can play those chords with ease and confidence.

When I try to play a bar chord for example - I enter new and often painful territory. It doesn’t come easily, and often sounds HORRIBLE.

Can you guess what happens to my "practice" time? I stay in the nice and easy zone. Even though I often feel frustrated with my lack of progress and the limited music I can produce, the prospect of enduring the awful sounding new is just too much. And we’re not even talking about the difficulty of managing new hand positions and commanding fingers to sluggishly stretch to new spots.

But practicing just beyond my skill zone (read: comfort zone) is vital to improve performance. 

How well are we pushing students past their comfort zones? For example, when they are able to describe things they are doing RIGHT NOW(present continuous) consistently and correctly - what would happen if you suddenly used the same tense to describe something you were planning to do in the future: (I’m flying to Madrid on Sunday.) And then ask them to produce the same thing?

 It’s important for students to feel like they have mastered something - but it’s VITAL to keep them pushing back their comfort zone. 

It’s not easy to develop ESL course work around unique content and student needs. I’ve often posted against using "cookie cutter" style course work - buying the level appropriate course book, marching your students though it chapter by chapter until the book and their current level is finished. (Which usually happens at the same time.) Exams or quizzes are administered, results tabulated - and in most cases, the student moves up to the next level where the whole "cookie cutter" process repeats itself. (Another book is purchased, the chapters marched through, the book/level finished, and evaluations fly.)

This methodology is widely employed - at least around Mexico City where I work. It has a lot going for it: a) It is easy to replicate: most every language school/company I have had contact with here employs it in some way. b) The industry is designed for it. (It’s pretty easy to call up your local ESL bookshop and buy level appropriate material. c) Students tend to expect it. I think, perhaps, this is the strangest thing of all: students actually expect you to follow the book model - and even complain when they don’t get it.

I’m pretty sure the "book method" works. Somehow. But I wonder if it’s the most effective strategy to adapt. Is it really THE most effective thing you could be doing with your students?

Making Meaning: Is the industry broken?

Idea: Maybe the ESL industry is broken. We’re used to doing things the way I described above. Everyone is doing it. The public expects it. But it’s broken. We’re just buying books, filling in blanks, doing practice activities, engaging in, many times, boxed in conversation, and then filling out exams. I’ve seen students blow through books - successfully performing all the activities, and passing all the exams, but with little to no improvement in their real world langauge necesities. (The English they need to use OUTSIDE the classroom is often left unimproved- or what was learned does not filter out to where it’s needed. I’m not sure which.)

Fixing Tinkering with TESOL

I suggest that there’s a better - but more difficult path to explore. Instead of relying solely on course book content, classes should be built around the specific needs of each of your students. Corporate lawyers will have very different language development needs vs. a Marketing manager - yet the classic approach is to lump everyonetogetheraccordingtolanguagelevel instead of according to language needs AND language level.

This approach is not easy. It’s not efficient either, at least in the short term. But I wonder: would the more awkward and tailored approach eventually catch up to - and even surpass current ESL industry practices given time as far as effectiveness goes?

Some interesting reads that I think have to do with this post:

"The validity of the action learning process is well-grounded in research on how adults learn — which is predominantly via on-the-job "real-time" experiences. Sound action learning design provides a stage upon which behavioral performance dynamics can be observed and critiqued, and from which new choices and behavioral improvements can emerge." (Action Learning: A Recipe for Success. Marshall Goldsmith)

– Action Learning could and should be applied to as many ESL classroom experiences as we can. We should be thinking "How can I make these lessons as close to real life as I can possibly make them. How can I get chapter exercises OUT of their chapters so that they fit into Student needs.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

– Nuf said. Just cus everyone is going in the same direction doesn’t necessarily mean that they have found the right direction…just means that path is easier to take.

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/tesol/future-textbooks/#comment-3591

The three most fundamental parts of our newly certain knowledge are:

-What we teach is not the same as what students learn

-There is a long delay and many stages between coming across the language for the first time and mastering it

-People learn differently and so learn different things at different speeds

Until a textbook deals with the points above (and I have yet to see a teacher’s book that even mentions all three in full), whether we teach more natural English, more collocations, more international English etc. is not really a question I can get excited about. The question is how we teach any of these points.