Teaching as a process and ... reality shows

Teaching is a process and not necessarily a controlled one – quite the opposite, I would say. A great deal depends on the response(s) of the students to what is an intended teaching point. Their understanding of it will allow the teacher to move on to the next step. On the other hand, difficulty in comprehension could mean either that the teacher has to expand this particular step in the process or even that it should be deferred to the future, when the students will be more mature and ready to assimilate the new item.

Rather than following a series of steps suggested in a course book, particularly at a more advanced level, I prefer to design a process myself taking into consideration my students’ knowledge and needs. In this manner, I manage to cut out activities which are pointless because my students have already consolidated their knowledge of those particular items.

On the other hand, in a lesson plan of my own I have the opportunity to fit in material-- exercises or vocabulary-boosting activities -- which will be more relevant to my students. What is more, I can variegate the process rather than follow a routine, which is the rule in course books. The result is a convoluted venture which is, however, well worth undertaking.

I will illustrate.

·       Topic: reality shows

·       Warm-up questions (source: COMPLETE CAE Student’s Book page 77)

What do you think about reality shows in general? Choose one of these statements:

a.    “I don’t watch them but I don’t have any moral objections to them.”

b.   “I watch them and I don’t have any moral objections to them.”

c.    “I don’t watch them because I am worried by the ethics of some shows.”

d.   “I watch them but the ethics of some shows worry me.”

e.    “I don’t know/don’t care.”

·       Show video on BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50148299

·       Hand out the news story about Nicole Prince, the Australian reality TV star who won a landmark compensation case for being harassed.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xEbOLIXONVQBDUkWdOVY2iDIfiiYdJsm

·       I have created a derivatives exercise for my students and a few transformations which the students are supposed to do without looking at the text after they have finished reading it and completed the gaps with the right form of the words in capitals.

·       The first transformation brings to the students’ attention a structure which they don’t normally find in advanced grammars as there is so much you can categorise and include in a grammar. This is: Something is yet to + passive infinitive

You can follow this up with more practice:

They have not confirmed the date yet.

The date

We haven’t determined the extent of the damage yet.

The extent of the damage

They haven’t signed the contract yet.

The contract

·       The vocabulary exercise provides plenty of practice on the new vocabulary. I always include lexical items which I have already taught in the past but need to reinforce.

·       Finally, the derivatives exercise brought to mind an excellent semantic questionnaire by Mario Rinvolucri and Paul Davis in their resource book More Grammar Games.

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-bKxVyTyA6mIYREu-ejlovzv3xT0f2aa/view?usp=sharing

The end result is a much more stimulating and enriching experience for the students.

Smithereens or breaking poems down to gold nuggets

My thesis is that you can do anything you put your mind to with a poem as long as you let your mind wander off. What is more you can crank up the depth of the perusal of a poem tailoring it to the level of your students. Perhaps this is not always feasible, but a lot of times it is and the result could surprise you.

I will use a simple, linguistically, poem to illustrate the endless possibilities poems offer teachers. The poem is entitled Smithereens and the poet is Roger McGough.

I spend my days

Collecting smithereens.

I find them on buses

In department stores

And on busy pavements.

At restaurant tables

I pick up the leftovers

Of polite conversation

At railway stations

The tearful debris

Of parting lovers.

I pocket my eavesdroppings

and store them away.

I make things out of them.

Nice things, sometimes.

Sometimes odd, like this.

I suggest you walk into the classroom with a heap of glass fragments in one hand and another of tiny pieces of paper in the other. Show your students one and say the word “smithereens” and repeat with the other. Challenge the students by asking them what you can do with those smithereens:

·       You can put them in a jar.

·       You can throw them away.

·       You can blow them in the wind.

Then go on to tell them that you collect them and elicit a response out of them. This might work better with more advanced students. For example:

·       Are you out of your mind?

·       What use are they? They are practically worthless?

·       I don’t see the point in hoarding stuff like that.

You could then present the first verse of the poem, which doesn’t let on much about the particular meaning the smithereens will take on in the next verse.

Many times, in both factual reading and literature or poetry students come across words for the first time used in a figurative sense. I feel very strongly about preparing your students to understand and appreciate the metaphor, and this is only possible when they are aware of the literal meaning of the word.

So before moving on to the next verse, find some images of leftovers and some more of debris. In this way, your students will realise that when we say “leftovers” we usually mean food. You could even start a conversation, at the end of the poem presentation, about how leftovers could be put to good use.

When you show images of debris make sure to ask your students what debris is usually the result of. They are expected to come up with words like disaster, accident, crash, explosion, erosion etc.

You could also show lovers in tears parting at a railway station or, more excitingly, play a relevant film scene.

The parting scene in the ET film is well-known, and the words are: I’ll be right here. You could tease the students’ brains by first showing the words and asking which film these parting words come from, and if they don’t ring bells, simply show the following YouTube clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75M1XXEZciU

The time is now ripe to read out the second verse of the poem and let it sink in.

Before the third verse, explain the word “eavesdrop” by miming or paraphrasing it and go through the motions of putting some pieces of paper in your pocket. Ask what you have just pocketed, which might generate various responses – hopefully, “eavesdroppings” too! Do not become daunted if “eavesdroppings” doesn’t come up.

You are now set to read the last verse and ask the one question which is left:

What is meant by “nice” or “odd things” like “this”?

More mature students could be invited to elaborate on the “raw material” of poems and the process of composing a poem out of this material.

I also have some suggestions for more straightforward language work:

·       Find all the adjective+noun collocations in the poem.

busy pavements, polite conversation, tearful debris

·       Extend the above simple task by asking the students to find more nouns that collocate with those adjectives.

·       Take out the prepositions and get your students to fill the blanks with the right ones. (“On”, “in”, “at” can be challenging even for intermediate students.)

Here are also some more creative projects your students could engage in:

Think of an alternative title of a poem, which will denote the stuff poems are made out of. The answers can turn out to be unpredictable, but do use a couple of them and set the students a writing assignment – individually or in groups, depending on how well-matched the students are.

For instance, if some students come up with “Memories” for a poem title, they could be asked to write a poem keeping, if they find it easier, the mould of the original poem. It could be something to this effect:

I spend my days

Retrieving  memories.

I find them in drawers

On dusty shelves

And at the back of my mind.

(my example)

If writing a whole poem is tough, they could limit themselves to one verse of their choice –the first one would be more doable for young, less advanced students.

The rest of it I leave to your imagination!

Course book materials, exams and approaches to language learning

A question that has puzzled me over the years I have been teaching English is why most course books contain exercises modelled on the ones that are set in the exams five or six years later.

To my mind, material writers should be striving for as much variety as will accommodate learners’ widely differing approaches to second language acquisition. Ideally, the activities should suit individual learners’ needs, which vary depending on the mother tongue, age, exposure to English where they live, learning difficulties and many others. Of course, this would involve more varied course materials aimed at different markets and, potentially, less profit for publishing companies. And this is where our mindset and genuine concern for equality is pitted against homogenisation and globalisation.

Exams, in their turn, should reflect the different approaches to learning, which takes a good deal of research and the will to set aside convenience and time-saving considerations when creating exams.

How sound is it scientifically to subject a dyslexic candidate to the same test as non-dyslexic ones and content oneself that the extra 25% of time allotted to the former will compensate for the inequality especially when we know that there is even a special font – Dyslexie font -- to help people struggling with reading? One would expect updated exam types to reflect those new facilities meant to support different learners.

Even if one thinks of the weight of the different parts of most tests administered nowadays for the total grade, some steps towards equalising the results are imperative if fairness is to be ensured. For instance, in class we acknowledge the fact that dyslexic students perform better in spoken English both passively and productively than in written English. How can we take this into account when we calculate the grades of dyslexic candidates?

I may have focused on one group of “different” candidates but the same applies to all other groups of students with special needs, and in an age when “difference” is glorified perhaps more should be done to really prove our commitment to this attitude.

Stories, videos and imagination

Rare occurrences almost invariably hold the attention of learners -- both children and adults.

What would offer a couple of hours of fun and suspense is the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin followed by the video The town that nearly danced itself to death available on BBC, which is about the dance epidemic which led to a shocking number of deaths. A similar outbreak of dancing mania in Germany is thought to have been the basis of the tale of The Pied Piper.

The level of English required is B2 or post B2.

The original story is available online, plus there are several video versions available on YouTube. But I prefer to stick to the original so I can introduce new vocabulary and provide more practice on it.

Here is where you can read the original story:

https://www.wattpad.com/81958501-the-original-grimm-brother-fairy-tales-the-pied

A key concept you could start with is “plague”. An explanation in the students’ mother tongue would be appropriate -- accompanied by some images. It is a great opportunity to present relevant words such as “infest”, and “infestation”.

I have prepared a vocabulary exercise to use for extra practice:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SEhXOpJH5W6_adLhd7FO97Lf9eHeoryF/view?usp=sharing

The story of the Pied Piper is an enchanting one: man’s powerlessness to deal with nature’s strange ways, the power of music to tame, human greed, vengefulness. You could explore one or all of these themes depending on your students’ eagerness. The students could be even asked to think of or bring to class other stories revolving round those themes.

The video on the other hand about the outbreak of dancing in Strasbourg in 1518 contains more sophisticated information about the way the incident manifested itself and the possible explanations for people literally dancing themselves to death: from purely physiological (typhus or epilepsy) to socio-cultural ones (mass hysteria).

Here is the link for the video about Strasbourg:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161028-the-town-the-nearly-danced-itself-to-death

Mature students, especially those who specialise in Medicine or Psychology would find some food for thought in the video. It could serve as the springboard for an oral session on what motivates people to become self-destructive.

The screen is a "dangerous" place to be in many different ways. Talking to strangers is one. But we can't lag behind; we need to keep up with the times. The poem below is the result of dissecting the contradictory feelings the web may give rise to. I wrote it a couple of years ago, when I was "newer" to the online community.

SCREEN LURKER You lurk right thereIn the corner of the screenYou call yourself a friendYou dissemble unabashed When the screen gets blankLittle friend you are not enoughYou are so much more than a drugSo much less than a cure Every day your image
Fades with the tempo
Of a novelty turnedThreadbare with the use

The value of the mother tongue in foreign language teaching

I have touched upon the value of using the learner’s mother tongue in foreign language learning. I know I may be carrying coals to Newcastle by repeating a view that has probably been expounded by many a linguist or EFL teacher around the world but there can be no harm in sharing some thoughts from my long experience as an EFL teacher of Greek origin.

I will briefly enumerate the benefits for the learner of being provided with or even better working out a mother tongue equivalent for a word or phrase in the foreign language.

To begin with, the learner, especially if they are children, realises the difference between an equivalent and a word-for-word translation (the latter being pointless and leading to no real learning of the foreign language.) The teacher plays a significant role in this by acting as a facilitator rather than as a translator. Not insisting on a translation when another method of illustrating the meaning of the word is more straightforward is always preferable. This means if I can show an image of a “kettle” or a “pulley”, I simply will. Whether the student is familiar with the mother-tongue word for it is of secondary importance as long as they associate image and meaning without the agency of the first-language translation.

Secondly, the learner, whether young or adult, is obliged to mull over the concept(s) both in their mother tongue and foreign language and in the process  of doing so to activate their mind in order to discover the meanings of the words or phrases and reorganise the knowledge heretofore saved in their memory. Comparisons, even misguided ones, will help make the concept and lexical item more memorable.

Another outcome of using the mother tongue in understanding a foreign language is enriching your knowledge of your own language, which can only further enhance your overall linguistic skills. I will briefly describe a wonderful opportunity I had to do so together with an adult student of mine while working on an article called The Woman Defying Tradition with pistachios.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190527-the-woman-defying-tradition-with-pistachios

The word in question is “figurehead”. Although I knew what it meant, I had no Greek equivalent in mind so I set out to find out and I was fascinated by my discoveries: a few more Greek words in my stock:

ακρόπρωρο= το άκρον της πρώρας (πλώρη in Modern Greek)

αχυράνθρωπος= a man made of hay

υποχείριο=under sb’s orders (under sb’s hand, literally)

ανδρείκελο <ανήρ (Ancient Greek for “man”) + είκελος (Ancient Greek for :similar”)

In Greek the above word collocates with the word “government” to denote a “puppet government”.

So in English the phrase implies that someone behind those in power pulls the strings whereas in Greek it implies that those in power are only men in outward appearance.

A short discussion of the different ways of perceiving                     nominal leaders could further stimulate learners’ curiosity about other cultural differences encoded in the two languages.

I am aware that this cannot be done with every word, but it can be applied whenever the teacher and the learner need this extra support to save vocabulary in their long-term memory. 

A student of mine once said to me that he would never forget the word “idiot” after I explained to him that it came from Greek and in Ancient Greece “ιδιώτης” was someone who did not engage in public affairs. Somehow the impact of the meaning hit him.

Using videos to stimulate discussion of abstract concepts

It is often difficult to use a proper springboard for discussion of abstract concepts. In the exams normally the stimuli are either visual or short questions.

The point is that different learners would respond differently to the same stimuli depending on their temperaments and personalities.

However, there are occasions where I would be happy as a teacher if, rather than a long utterance, I managed to elicit some words for qualities or concepts which do not exactly come naturally to a foreign learner regardless of their level of English though perhaps more closely related to their age.

Using videos of any kind that a teacher thinks relevant can be effective in motivating students and in serving as the basis on which to build a conversation.

Here is a video of Yann Tiersen’s Porz Goret and a couple of ideas about how to use it.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z3jCiCrsx0

First simply show it to the students and allow them to indulge in the beauty of the movement. Since it is a short video of under five minutes, it could be replayed. This second time ask the students to write down a few nouns and adjectives which come to mind while watching the video. Make it clear that the nouns could be concrete as well as abstract.

If the yield is satisfactory, you could proceed by requiring the students to use their nouns and adjectives in order to verbalise their feelings about the video – images and music.

Otherwise, here is a list of nouns and adjectives and a task to perform, which will hopefully get the students to reflect on their possible use in a short speech that they can ultimately prepare.

nouns	adjectives
rhythm	soft
perseverance	smooth
discipline	mesmerising
agility	synchronised
gracefulness	intense
perfectionism	otherworldly
coordination	seamless
freedom	dreamlike
skill	elegant

Now ask the students to divide the nouns into causes and results and the adjectives into those that would qualify the music and the ones that would describe the movement.

The question now is what verbs to use in order to include the above nouns in their speech. Perhaps you could refer the students to a good online dictionary where they would search for verbs collocating with their list of nouns. (a very productive process at all times)

exert discipline

require perseverance

display skill

driven by perfectionism

Another idea is to show the students how to arrange adjectives in a sentence so as to create a climax.

You can use some of the adjectives on the list to demonstrate this stylistic device:

The music is soft, mesmerising, almost otherworldly.

You have now reached the point where the students are ready to prepare their speech using all the ideas suggested above to produce a meaningful response to the video.

Η ύλη της πλάνης

I often despair of the limited take on life we have. We may aim at understanding but time, memory and the fetters of our language and culture prevent us from merging with the world even from turning a sympathetic ear to the sufferings of those we do not comprehend. So here is a poem of mine verbalising this feeling of helplessness. It is called The Matter of  Fallacy.

Η ΥΛΗ ΤΗΣ ΠΛΑΝΗΣ

Από ύλη ρευστή

Το είναι μας γνέθουμε

Τις θολές αναμνήσεις

 του χθες

Κι ανυπόμονες χίμαιρες του αύριο

Σε αέναες συνθέσεις συμπλέκουμε

Με  το χρόνο τον φιλοπαίγμονα

Σύμμαχό μας

Τις πλάνες του νου μας

Σε δόγμα αναγάγουμε

Kept In or Hey teachers leave those kids alone

The moment I started teaching I realised sadly that I was now on the opposite camp from the one I’d been as a student. No matter who we are and how vastly different from other teachers, in the students’ eyes we are authority figures to be respected and obeyed.

In the course of time, depending on our personalities   and circumstances, we forge our own relationships with our students and develop our own ways of dealing with all kinds of behaviour so as to facilitate the teaching process.

Trying to strike the correct balance between the concern for making the most of every single minute of my students’ time and allowing enough space for them to express themselves has always been my main preoccupation.

Teaching people – among other things – involves gaining people’s trust so that they will let down their guard and embark on that wonderful journey of knowledge which will benefit not only the students but the teachers as well as there is always a lot to be learnt from teaching different people with different attitudes to life.

Punishing students in various ways can result in them loathing the very people who should be their major prop –their teachers.

I have chosen a poem by Barbara Giles that focuses on the alienation children can feel and the resentment they harbour at being detained at school. The title of the poem is Kept In and the only slight adaptation I took the liberty to make is to turn the “lad” in the second stanza to a “girl”.

Here is a video I made to liven up the poem:

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/15AKPobASNxtTtnxFML7SezX8xW1EtARa/view?usp=sharing

After showing the slideshow, you could ask the students to replace the following lines with their own ideas preserving the rhyme if possible:

With a Ho and a Hoo

I could turn you all blue

and

With a flash and a crash

I could turn you to ash.

You could also ask them to imagine a different place of origin from that of further off from Mars and explain why they chose it.

Another idea is to use an extract about Harry Potter’s detention at Hogwarts and ask students to compare reactions to detention.

If your students are old enough, they could be asked to write a letter to the press asking for the abolition of such a harsh and pointless form of punishment.

Multidimensional Living

In our mind’s eye we all create alter egos populating this and other worlds simultaneously. Imagine living parallel lives like much science fiction – or not so “science” – would have us believe. How many of our secret wishes would come true if only we could.

Here is a poem of mine on this possibility of a multi-dimensional existence.

Σε μια άλλη διάσταση

Θα σε πάρουν μακριά

Οι άνεμοι της μνήμης

Στων ευχών μου την πατρίδα

Θα ζεις δίχως πρόσωπο ή όνομα

Θα είμαι ελεύθερη εδώ

Μα αιχμάλωτη αλλού

Θα περνάει ο χρόνος

Πάνω στις πέτρες του πάντα

Θα σκαλίζω σχήματα

Στην οικτίρουσα άμμο

Θα τα νιώθει το σύμμαχο νερό

Και απείραχτα θα μένουν

Εις μάτην των νόμων της φύσης

Words, images and sounds or Rethinking dictionaries

Despite the fact that we have made significant progress in terms of resources and tools available to both teachers and students, we don’t seem to really have worked out a comprehensive approach to making vocabulary more digestible to learners.

As a teacher of English, I find vocabulary the most challenging aspect of teaching a foreign language for various reasons which any foreign language teacher will be aware of.

The first reason is an external one: the learner’s will and readiness to engage in learning and assimilating words. In my experience, grammar does not require such an active involvement as vocabulary -- assuming there is sufficient exposure to the language. Patterns keep repeating themselves and conclusions about what is right or wrong are drawn unawares as far as grammar and syntax go. 

 If, however, they are to memorise and save vocabulary in their long-term memory, learners have to make a conscious effort ideally to guess meaning from context or, when the opportunity is given, to look up words in the dictionary rather than expect the teacher to always provide an explanation and, above all, to integrate the items they have learnt in their speech. Without a shadow of a doubt, this takes commitment and perseverance.  

One need only look at the various methods learners use in order to internalise vocabulary to grasp the enormity of the task: mother tongue equivalents, paraphrase in the target language, examples and even theorising about how an item is used.

The first language can occasionally provide a more or less accurate equivalent, but more often than not, just a translation in the mother tongue will create some confusion when other synonyms in English can be translated in the same way. Take “get to”, “reach” and “arrive”. In Greek, all three could be translated with one word: «φτάνω». But then that would mean that if a Greek student was trying to say “I can’t reach the top part of the bookcase”, they would pick any of the three words quoted above if translation was their only resource.

It is obvious that translation by itself is inadequate in conveying the complexity of the different uses of words. Using a monolingual dictionary is an excellent way of understanding vocabulary and the nuances of its usage, but this is more appropriate for more advanced learners rather than beginners or intermediate students. Of course, presentation of new words in context and quotation of a few examples are always the best ways of complementing or replacing translation, but there is one aspect of vocabulary I find testing, and that is the different figurative uses of synonymous words.

A snowball struck him on the back of the head.

The robbers hit him over the head with a baseball bat.

But

Only a life-or-death issue such as a liver or heart will hit the headlines.

Such prejudices strike right at the heart of any notions of a civilized society.

It struck her that losing the company might be the least of her worries.

The realisation suddenly hit Sahara like a train crashing through a farm house.

One may counter this by arguing that figurative meanings are to come at a point when the learner will have had more exposure to longer and stylistically more varied chunks of language and therefore more subtle layers of meaning will be superimposed on more basic ones.

It is precisely this foreshadowing that I feel is well worth undertaking, wherever possible, at an earlier stage. My proposition is that images suitable for the understanding of the figurative uses of the words should be integrated in dictionaries so that learners can take a shortcut rather than beating about the bush.

I will illustrate with some examples:

Here are some images which will help learners avoid misuse of “reach” in many instances. [1]

The images will prepare learners for sentences such as

Anyone in need of assistance should reach out to the authorities as soon as possible.

Let me use another example. One of the many words that stump me when it comes to explaining them to Greek students is “ripple” not only because the Greek equivalents (κυματίζω, κελαρύζω, ρυτιδώνω, έχω αντίκτυπο, γίνομαι αισθητός) sound grossly unrelated to each other or make no sense to Greek students (ρυτιδώνω)but also because some  renditions in Greek (κυματίζω) would lead to wrong use of English words that can be translated in the same way. In the following sentences, for example, the italicised words could be all translated as «κυματίζω» in Greek.

A flag is flying.

A butterfly is fluttering its wings.

People are waving flags.

In fact, I was struggling to explain “ripple down” in a rather dense text for C2 students when I realised all I had to do was simply show this:

And then I moved on to “a ripple of laughter”, “a ripple of fear” and so on and the students caught on without as much as a word by way of explanation.

A similar approach could be adopted for the many onomatopoeias in English. Young learners have a keen ear and take great pleasure in imitating sounds. This is not the case with teens or adults –not in their majority, at least. It would therefore be extremely easy for an advanced learner who has already heard and imitated “rustle,” or “cackle” or “boom” at a more tender age to appreciate sentences like the following without the mediation of a dictionary or a teacher’s explanations.

Skirts rustled like dead leaves as Frau von Rogoff descended the stairs.

The interns began cackling with furious laughter.

Hope was getting dim when a deep voice boomed, “Children of the Earth, get out of the way!”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R7j182J1Em6INmHfveIMysNdIdOFFCmR/view?usp=sharing

To sum up, what a wonderful learner’s world it would be if dictionaries illustrated words with images and/or sounds wherever this would facilitate and speed up learning. After all, what is technology for if we can’t make the most of it?

---

[1] I must once again point out that I have Greek learners of English in mind when I say this, and apparently learners with different first languages might find different images useful. And of course the English words that would be clarified by images will differ depending again on mother tongue interference.