Winter night

With icy weather hovering over our part of the world, winter gets almost painful, and I long to feel the life-giving warmth of the (our) Greek sun, to bask in its embrace.

The following is a poem I wrote on a wintery night a few years back.

Teaching and exams or the exam dilemma

I intend to raise some questions this time, which I am certain many people in the teaching profession have asked themselves and not only those teaching languages. Even though these issues concern instruction in other subjects too, I will confine myself to English as a foreign language.

As far as I am aware, there is research going on constantly into how people acquire language – both the mother tongue and foreign languages. The results of the research may have value as such but they are also meant to assist in developing methods of teaching which will be more efficient and will suit learners with different approaches to learning.

Furthermore, in our days care is being taken so that individuals with learning difficulties, especially dyslexic students, can benefit from customised teaching, and there is even a dyslexie font specially designed for dyslexic readers.

Despite acknowledging the plain fact that people access knowledge in different ways, language exams remain invariably static, out of step with developments in teaching methodology.

Dyslexic candidates are simply given more time to process texts when it would have been far more effective if they were given shorter texts with spaced out lines.

There are certain exams which are limited to multiple-choice questions in order to test reading comprehension, grammar and vocabulary. Students who are more creative and less analytical are evidently at a disadvantage. Often working out the right answer by ruling out the incorrect options is a matter of logic but does not necessarily indicate a thorough understanding of the text itself.

 In my experience many a time students who have a good command of both written and spoken English fail to fulfil their potential in either the written or oral examination. Challenges that candidates have to meet include writing two compositions in a limited amount of time or answering questions for the listening part after having heard the conversation only once. In real life people are not required to produce two samples of writing in a row and of course when we haven’t heard well we can always ask again. Besides everything that we teach our students about planning their writing and checking for mistakes on completion of the task simply go out of the window when there is hardly any time to write as you think – let alone prepare a draft.

Many of us teachers find ourselves wasting a lot of valuable time teaching strategies rather than language. Personally I find this frustrating, and I wonder whether exam creators should invest as much effort and money into updating exams as is spent in enhancing methods of teaching so as to reach out to all types of learners.  

Leaves

Back to the theme of trees: this time it is leaves.

Leaves come in all shapes and hues; they are flexible; they produce all kinds of music depending on the intensity of the wind and they are constant reminders of the cycles in nature and by extension of those in our lives.

Whether attached to the branches or lying on the ground they brighten our space and are a wonder to look at.

To my mind leaves are in eternal communication with each other not only while inescapably attached to the tree but also when they begin their downward or, the wind willing, occasionally upward journey.

This end of cycle may serve as a way of introducing young children or people in their early teens to the transience of human existence.

I, therefore, composed a visual “conversation” between two leaves setting off on this last journey.

Trees: an inexhaustible source of teaching material

Working on a theme is a challenge for me as a teacher. It is a challenge in that you can never exhaust a theme plus you need to produce material on different levels. Some themes will recur ad infinitum, which is daunting when you set out to work on one of them in the knowledge that you will need to revisit the theme again and again.

Trees are one of my favourite themes not least because personally I find them fascinating -- from the stunted ones with their bare branches hanging low to the evergreens with their thick foliage on display throughout the year, a standing provocation for the elements.

 What follows is simply a suggestion on how to approach such a multi-faceted theme. At an elementary level I prefer to start with some vocabulary work on the parts of the tree. One can find plenty of images by way of introduction to basic vocabulary. For instance the following image would serve the purpose quite well.

At an intermediate level, one might need to revise and enrich the vocabulary related to trees but also fire the imagination with one of the many beautiful poems written about trees.

Joyce Kilmer’s poem is a celebration of trees:

Trees

I think that I shall never see   

A poem lovely as a tree.   

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest   

Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;   

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;   

A tree that may in summer wear   

A nest of robins in her hair;   

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;   

Who intimately lives with rain. 

Poems are made by fools like me,   

But only God can make a tree.

Personifying trees can have a more lasting impression on students.

 Trees, like animates, are associated with tradition and popular

 wisdom, and stories abound.

One might even find stories about individual trees such as the

 one of the American environmental activist Julia Lorraine Hill, 

who lived in a 55-metre 1,500-year-old redwood tree in California

 for 738 days between December 1997 and December 1999 to 

stop Pacific Lumber Company loggers from cutting it down.

Alternatively one could relate the story of the collapse of Sydney

 University’s jacaranda tree, which was “steeped in superstition.

 A popular myth asserted that undergraduates would fail their

 exams if they neglected to study before the tree's first bloom, 

typically in October or November.” 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-37819712

The possibilities are endless and there will be more talk of 

trees in the near future.