Cultural Differences

After a long sabbatical from blog writing and Twitter, I am endeavouring to get back into this rich world of sharing and peer-support.  I’ve just finished my first year of a part time M.A. in Applied Linguistics & TEFL.  This isn’t the purpose of my post but I want to give a quick shout out to a couple of my tutors.  First of all, I have the distinct privilege to have Peter Watkins as one of my tutors.  Through an amazing coincidence, Peter Watkins was the very first ELT name I ever encountered as his book, Learning to Teach English, was core reading during my initial CertTESOL course.  Not only does he write very useful books but he is an inspiration in class.

My other shout out goes to John Naysmith, who was very generous with his time in talking me through my syllabus design module.  I ended up designing a syllabus around English & Culture and this leads me nicely onto the topic of my post today: cultural lessons.

I recently posted on my other blog about the need for correct pronunciation in international business situations, especially when it comes to pronouncing names.  In doing a bit of searching around on this topic, I was reminded of this series of advertisements in Britain from HSBC.

This is a short post so I’ll just leave you with the videos.  You could use them to introduce the broader topic of cultural misunderstanding, or you could simply show them at the end of a class as something fun and informative.  Enjoy.

 

Phonetizer

I have been away from this blog for a little while now while I get to grips with the additional workload of a Masters degree on top of 25 hours of teaching a week.  Still haven’t come up with a new name for the blog yet but hope that will get rolled out in the coming week as well… not that much of this is concern to any of you fine people reading this.  Just thought I’d get my ‘housekeeping’ out of the way first. 🙂

I’ll be publishing a more substantial post soon on a short exam preparation exercise but in the meantime I just wanted to draw people’s attention to this website.

Phonetizer

Quite simply this is Google Translate for phonetics.  Just type (or copy and paste) text into the left box, click transcribe at the top and the English IPA translation will appear on the right-hand side.  Without a doubt, a very useful tool!

If you are following Nik Peachey (and you really should be) then you have probably already seen this website recommended on his blog, Nik’s Quickshout.  I just thought that I would pass along the knowledge to a few more people who might not yet be following him.

P.S.  I was at the English UK conference a couple of weekends ago, in which Nik, Luke Meddings, Sam McCarter and many others were presenting.  The closing plenary was by Professor Mike McCarthy and focused on building on corpus linguistic data to help teachers and assessors understand more about what various English levels actually mean.  His talk was insightful and thought-provoking as he started to map the findings onto the CEFR.  It motivated me to write up this small question to learners on my learners’ blog, “Are you ready for intermediate level English?”  Follow the link and have a read through.  There might be a few useful questions to pose to your own students this week.

 

The New Blog Carnival has been Published!

If you aren’t familiar with a blog carnival then you are in for a treat.  It is a list of blog posts from various people all based around a common topic.

The 25th, yes 25th, ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival has just been published on Berni Wall’s excellent blog.  There is almost too much great content – certainly enough for several days of reading, consideration and commenting (hint, hint – always try to comment on blogs).

The common theme for this edition of the blog carnival was popular posts.  So basically these are the posts from people’s blogs that have already grabbed a lot of attention.

If you are just starting in the blogosphere then the Blog Carnival is the best way to quickly find some great quality bloggers to follow, learn from and share with.  Thanks for hosting, Berni!

Enjoy!

http://rliberni.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/25th-edition-of-efleslell-blog-carnival-here-from-nov-1st/

 

David Crystal’s Analogy for Grammar

Professor David Crystal (Photo from University of Salford on Flickr)

I recently attended a talk by David Crystal in Chichester – ‘Grammar Rules’.  I’d only had the pleasure of seeing Professor Crystal once before and that was online in a very engaging talk he gave a few months ago on the influence of the King James Bible on the English Language (follow this link for that talk).  So this was actually the first time I had seen him in person and the topic was grammar.

The purpose of this post isn’t to regurgitate the talk but to give voice to a somewhat random thought I had relating to an analogy Professor Crystal made.  It went more or less like this;

‘On the topic of grammar we should think about a car mechanic.  A good car mechanic can take a whole car apart and put it back together again.  However, this has little bearing on the mechanic’s ability to drive a car.‘

I thought this rather apt as it certainly fits with my current view* that covert grammar is a better pedagogic option to go for over explicit grammar in most cases.  In fact, I might go even further and say that this analogy perhaps helps us to understand many of our learners who are obsessed with grammar rules (just as much as some of us might be with teaching them) but at the end of the day are very poor producers of the language.  This is especially in the case of the spoken medium but sometimes in the written one as well: they are training to become car mechanics when they should be focusing on becoming drivers!

However, later in the talk it became very apparent that the audience was quite a mix of professions and academic interests and that lead me to consider how much this analogy could really be applied to ELT.

So I asked myself the question, ‘How does ELT work in this car analogy of Professor Crystal’s?’

What assumptions are we making here?  Are we saying that native speakers are given a car whereas non-native learners have to build their own car first?  Surely a non-native learner’s L1 is a car as well… doesn’t that count for something?  Obviously, learners have to learn how to ‘drive’ their new ‘car’ in a different country and clearly language learning is a completely different monster to adapting your driving to the rules of the road of a different country.  The question really becomes, where does the car come from?  In what state is the car presented to the learner; in parts, half assembled, fully assembled?  How necessary is it for a learner to know what is ‘under the hood’?

I suppose in a way, these questions have different answers for each and every learner but where we run into a problem is when we have students who come to us wanting to know how to drive and then insist that we teach them how to become car mechanics.

I’ve already heard disagreement from one of my colleagues about how applicable this analogy is and, as one of my other colleagues in attendance pointed out, the analogy isn’t perfect and perhaps I’ve exhausted this one far beyond its usefulness.

Thoughts?

* I say “my current view” as, having just started a Masters, I’m sure that my opinions and views are going to be thrown this way and that, turned upside down and many of them simply thrown out the window… just as it should be. 🙂

ADDITIONAL: I’ve just come upon Professor Crystal’s blog and now I know I’m going to get less sleep because he’s been blogging regularly since 2006!

 

How do my learning experiences colour my teaching?

I’ve just started an MA in Applied Linguistics and TESOL.  I’m doing it part-time and I’ve got to say my decision to get on this course (late) was a rather hasty one but nevertheless one that feels right.  I had my first lecture on Friday (a bit weird being on the student side of the classroom again) and the following questions were asked,

1.  How were you taught?

2.  How has this affected your own teaching?

3.  Is there anything you do that you feel you ought not?  Basically, do you have any guilty secrets?

What astounded me was how difficult I found it to answer the first question and, by extension, the second.

I suppose I had probably repressed it in some cases and had been oblivious in others.  I had to turn to my partner and say, “I have no idea how I was taught at secondary school.”  This is not due to it being so very long ago – 12 years in all honesty – but I guess it comes from distinctly negative experiences.  I took French and German at school and continued them up to Standard Grade (the Scottish equivalent of GCSEs).  I passed relatively well but I couldn’t put a sentence of French or German together now if my life depended on it.*  I do remember one thing though – I remember not liking my classes one little bit.

What was also fascinating during these groups discussion on Friday was the shared experience that many of us on the course had of absolutely dreadful French classes in Britain growing up.

It was only after talking with my classmates for a little while that I started to remember a little more about classes.  I came to a few conclusions.

Image from comedy_nose on Flickr

Audio Resources

I don’t use tapes/CDs/mp3s of conversations that much.  This is due to all those awful tapes of poor quality that I had to listen to in French and German classes.  I think it demotivated me more than anything else, listening and listening and listening and not having a clue what was being said, not really even getting the gist and just generally feeling hopeless about the whole thing.   Even on my worst days, I don’t really want to inflict that on my students so I tend to shy away from using audio resources in the class.  I do recognize their usefulness and I am making myself use them more but I’m still not hugely comfortable with CDs or mp3s and I know that I’m not using them particularly effectively yet.

Photo from florriebassingbourn on Flickr

Dictionaries

I don’t do a lot of dictionary work in class.  Another memory that resurfaced was the supremely boring task of translating a text word by word using a dictionary.  I never asked for help because I always felt that my need to use the dictionary all the time was based on that fact that I was a lazy student and that, had I gone home and properly learned my vocabulary, I wouldn’t have needed the dictionary even half as much.  Of course, my completed translation usually ended up making absolutely NO sense whatsoever and this was for a couple of reasons.

1. Nobody ever really made it known to me that language doesn’t work in words, it works in chunks.  In trying to translate word by word, I completely missed the important chunks of language which, had I been more aware of them, I wouldn’t have completely obliterated them by dissecting and translating them word by word.  This lack of understanding made my dictionary work slow, inefficient and most of all, absolutely fruitless.
2. I don’t think enough work was done to show us how a dictionary should be used, how the phrases or phrasal verbs might be listed and where to find what you really wanted.  This basically connects with my lack of awareness with regard to set phrases and expressions (or what Michael Lewis would call polywords) – I didn’t know where the phrases began and ended therefore I didn’t know what to look up.

So at this point I feel the need to admit a guilty pleasure of mine, or not so guilty if you’ve read some of my previous posts.  As a teacher, I like translation (yes, the teacher and student inside of me are in a little bit of conflict here).  I think shying away from translation or saying that we should be trying to get students to think in L2 is just a bit ridiculous.  We all use our L1 to give us hooks to hang our L2 knowledge on.  I tend to feel there is a certain conceptual framework established when we learn our first language that, for most of our L2 learning, we are far better using and adapting that framework instead of throwing it away and starting again.  Apart from this, I think trying to get learners not to translate is an impossible task anyway.

Therefore, I think there is a lot of benefit for learners to translate in both directions.  L1 to L2 is much easier to manage when you are working in a TEFL environment, abroad and with monolingual classes; bringing a local newspaper into your classroom in Spain, for example.  However, L2 to L1, if you have a multi-lingual class is quite possible as well.  If you have a few different language groups; some Arabic speakers, Mandarin, Portuguese, etc, then this is the opportunity to band them together and get some meaningful analytical discussion (in both L1 and L2) that might just enhance some learners’ understanding of a few grammar points.

Well, now that I’m starting a Masters I’m wondering if I should change the name of my blog.  I mean “So Where Did It Go Wrong?” seems a bit defeatist now, almost pessimistic in the face of all this research and assessed essays.  Need to give that some thought.  Wish me luck!

* Actually, I do have one sentence in French which I still remember – a testament to the drilling method I suppose – “J’habite a Dumbarton en Ecosse.”

 

Questions for a potential employer and why you should ask them, pt 2 (The ‘Social’ Questions)

Moving to another country is a big decision, even if it is only for a six-month or one-year contract.  We hear about culture shock all the time and in my experience it always hits you when and where you don’t expect it.  The first time I worked abroad was in Mexico but I was so mentally prepared to be lost at sea and confused by everything and anything that it never really happened (I also must credit a great group of teachers I worked with who became dear, dear friends).

No, I got the culture shock when I returned to Britain.  I thought I’d be able to fit back in and suddenly I saw a lot of aspects of the culture that I didn’t like and that depressed me for a little while.  I overcame that, adjusted and had a great couple of years down in Portsmouth on the south coast.

And then I moved again and it was with the job I just finished that I really had problems and this is what prompted this post.  I feel I was unprepared both intellectually and emotionally for this job and I’ll explain why with this list of questions I should have asked with answers I should have based my decision on.

It’s difficult to know what to ask but here are a few suggestions and, as I said in my previous post (Part 1: The ‘Professional’ Questions) my best advice is to get solid answers.  You aren’t stupid if you don’t understand the answers you get and don’t expect them to be any clearer when you arrive.  If your potential employer can’t explain something clearly on the phone, Skype or an email, then you’re unlikely to get a better explanation in person.  Also, if the answer really is that complicated then it probably isn’t the answer you are looking for.

Anyway, following on from the ‘professional’ questions…

Part 2: The ‘Social’ Questions

8.  What is there to do where I will be living?

You’ve got to make sure you get specifics here and if the answers are not particularly forthcoming or seem a little bit thin, trust your instincts and your gut and realize that you are probably looking at a job which is in a really boring part of the world.

This is a difficult one to write about because sometimes there doesn’t need to be much happening in a town for it to be a great place to work and live, but things like cinemas, bars, restaurants, etc. all make things easier (at least they do for me).  Sure, everywhere has got bars and restaurants, but would your employer recommend them?  Does your employer have a favourite one?  If not, then you can’t know if these places will be fun or even safe.  (Obviously in Islamic countries this situation is a little different and I should make clear that I’m not writing with any experience of that area of the world.)

9.  What do people do and where do they do it?

This is a very specific question and perhaps similar to my previous question but there are some differences and they are important.  When you ask the first question, “What is there to do where I will be living?” the person you are asking is thinking about what you, the foreigner, can do.  If you follow up with this question, you are forcing an answer which talks more about the natives of that town/city.

If you are told about some big event they have every year, that’s great… but what do people do for the other, 3 seasons, 11 months or even 364 days a year?  If you are told about all these great places that people travel to at the weekend then you have to read between the lines: people don’t stay in that town/city at the weekends because there probably isn’t anything to do there!  So you will need to accept that recreation and fun may need a little bit of travelling and English language teachers usually don’t have the luxury of cars in foreign countries.

10.  How friendly are the people?

This might sound a little direct and maybe even a stupid question but it might be the most important question you ask.  For me and probably for most people, a place is made up of its people.  If you are going to be working somewhere for six months or a year you’ve got to have an idea of the people you’ll be living amongst.

If you have access to a car or a boat or whatever then there might be lots of things to do, but you aren’t going to have a car or boat so you must remember that you’ll likely be far more dependent on invitations from others to join them.  If you are going to be travelling somewhere where the people aren’t so open and friendly then a lot of things which “you” can do won’t really be available to you.

This is a difficult question to get a real answer from but a few questions you might was to ask that are less direct are:

1. How often do you all (the school staff) meet up for drinks, dinner or a picnic?  (In other words, how sociable is the working environment going to be.)
2. What bars/restaurants are close to the school that you’d recommend?  What do they serve and how often do you go there?
3. What clubs/organizations are there for me to join?

If the answers to these questions are not forthcoming, that should be a warning sign that there’s not much to do, or at the very least that your first contacts in this country, your work colleagues, will be unable to help you in this respect.

11.  Take a look on Google Maps and, if available, take a look at Street View.

This is an obvious step to take but here the key is to look at what you are seeing.

12.  How much English can I expect to encounter on the streets?

If you don’t have any of the language (or, like I was, you are a dodgy intermediate) then this is actually a very important question.  Just how isolating is the lack of your native language going to be?  In a lot of countries, the bigger cities are a haven for English-speaking while further out from the conurbations you might find it difficult to meet English speakers.  You don’t want to have to teach every person you encounter when you are living abroad.  Your classes are for teaching English, you then need to have one of the following things:

1. A similar group of foreign teachers who you can relax with in English.
2. A group of native friends who are proficient in English and you don’t need to worry about grading your language.
3. An inexhaustible energy to wear your ‘English teacher’ hat 24/7 making every conversation a mini-English class.
4. Fluency in the local L1.
5. A determination to spend every waking moment improving your relevant L2 language skills.
6. The ability to happily spend your off hours by yourself.

13.  Where can I join language classes?  How often and how much?

This shouldn’t be an optional extra which ‘would be nice’.  See the above interview excerpt from Scott Thornbury to understand what I mean.  I did ask about this before arriving but I accepted a very vague answer which really came to very little.  If you want to learn the language then you should be stubborn about this and get some solid answers.

Are there language classes available at a local college or at the institute I will be working in?  Quite possibly not.  That’s okay, but then you need to ask to be put in contact with someone who will agree to teach you when you arrive.

How many people have they taught before?  What level?  What material do they use?  What qualifications do they have?  Qualifications aren’t a necessity and might be quite difficult to come by, but they can be a useful indicator.

Negotiate a price after you arrive and you have a better idea about the local money but everything else should be as clear as possible before you get on the plane.

And there it is, finishing on 13, unlucky for some.  I hope you see that I’m not warning against travelling or working in other countries – nothing could be further from the truth.  This post is about awareness, mostly my own awareness so that next time I look at a job abroad I’ll refer back to this list and hopefully make more informed decisions.

 

Questions for a potential employer and why you should ask them, pt 1 (The ‘Professional’ Questions)

The first person who should want to read any blog post is the author.  With that in mind, this is probably the best blog post I have ever done because what I have written here was specifically for me.  A way that I could get my thoughts down on paper (well, in Microsoft Word at least) about my professional experiences so far and what I should have learned from them… what I hope I have learned from them.

So what this has ended up becoming is a personal guideline of sorts for me about things to consider and questions to ask before making the final decision to go and teach abroad.  I’ll preface this by saying two things.

1. I’m a NEST (Native English Speaking Teacher) so I’m writing from that perspective.
2. This post is not reflective of any one job experience I have had and in some cases I’m drawing on tips and stories I’ve heard from colleagues during their travels.

Now from what you are about to read, my only piece of strong advice here is get solid answers.  You are not stupid if you don’t understand the answer you are given, and if the answer is vague, don’t expect it to be any clearer when you arrive.  If your potential employer can’t explain something clearly to you on the phone or Skype or in an email, they probably won’t be any better at explaining it in person.  Also, if the answer really is that complicated then it probably isn’t the answer you are looking for.

Part 1: The ‘Professional’ Questions

1.  How many different classes will I be teaching?

I asked “How many hours…?” and very quickly I saw my mistake.  I am used to teaching 25 hours a week but there is a big, big, BIG difference between teaching two or three class in those 25 hours and teaching 9 different student groups.

2.  How much homework/How many tests do you expect of your students?

Maybe this isn’t true for everyone but I hate giving homework, especially in large volumes and frequently.  It never gets done by everyone and keeping track of what is given, on what day, for what day, and to which classes becomes a really, really complicated endeavour unless you start off with a very organized plan-of-action.  The more homework is expected, the more work it is for you wearing your hat as the ‘enforcer’ and ‘punisher’ when it doesn’t get done.  If you have 9 different classes (like I did) then it can almost become a full time job in itself and not a very fun one at that.

If you are an organized person or at least have time before you start to get organized and sort out a record system that works for you, then you should be alright.  But please, make sure you know what you are getting into long before you start.

3.  Do you have other foreign teachers?  Have you had?  Why?  Why not?

Culture shock goes both ways.  Has the school dealt with foreigners on staff before?  The question is not whether they want foreign teachers; the question is whether they know how to deal with foreign teachers.

If the answer is no, they’ve never had any foreign teachers, then you will be a culture shock to them.  The school and the staff might have a specific way of doing things that they instinctively understand based on culture – they probably won’t appreciate all the things that need to be explained to an ‘outsider’.  For this reason, an institute’s way of doing things; of interacting, of managing classes, their teaching methodologies, their attitudes towards professional development, just about everything could be very different.  What it is to be an English teacher can mean very different things in different countries.  With regard to professional development, even if your new colleagues are eager to learn from you (as you should be from them), bear in mind that change doesn’t come easily, even if people say they want it.

My warning here is to be aware of the energy needed to meet this day-to-day challenge of potential professional culture shock.

If the school has had foreign teachers, when was that?  Recently, a couple of years ago, several years ago?  The biggest questions here are “How long did they stay?” and “Why did they leave?”  These are obvious questions to ask but, again, listen to the answers, especially for the latter question.  If you get a few too many ‘it didn’t work out’ or ‘he was an alcoholic’ or ‘she was missing a lot of classes’ then all that might be true, but consider the common denominator here.  If the management keeps mentioning the faults of lots of the people that don’t work there any more, that should be a big red flag.

If the school has foreign teachers right now, then you should definitely get their contact details and ask a few of these questions to them.  I tend to believe you’ll get the truth.  If all you get from any of your emails are positive reports, then be cautious though.  Even the best schools have some things that could be better or some necessary evils or what-have-you – nowhere is perfect, but if someone is trying to make a place out to be perfect then be weary.  If you don’t get a reply, email them again (politely, of course) and if that doesn’t bear fruit, get back in contact with the school and tell them.  You might have been given a misspelled email address, it does happen.

3a.  Can I get former teachers’ contact details?

This might just be me, but I have generally stayed in contact with the places I’ve worked that I got along with.  If a school says they don’t have the contact details of any former teachers, you might want to consider that a red flag.  As I said before, you’ve got to go with your instinct here and go with whether something feels right.

4.  Don’t make assumptions regarding the wording of the contact.  Question everything.

This again goes back to the point about cultural differences and culture shock.  A written contract may make unnoticed assumptions based on the local or regional work/business culture.  Also bear in mind that some cultures don’t work with contracts as much as others, so you might be getting a contract that has been written up for the sake of having a contract instead of as a document which clearly defines and delineates your role and responsibility in the organisation as well as that organisation’s responsibility to its employee.

I’ll digress here and say that I think contracts are wonderful things.  Sure, I’ve heard lots of people say “Sorry, not part of my job description.”  However, these comments reveal an attitude that would exist regardless of whether that person had no contract, a 10-word contract or a 100-page contract.  What contracts do is reduce stress related to grey areas of responsibility.  More than that, I’m one of those people who like to go the extra mile and don’t mind doing additional work from time to time.  It’s nice to have recognition for a job well done or going above and beyond the call of duty… but if you don’t have a well-written contract defining your ‘call of duty’ then how can anybody, including yourself, recognize when you went above and beyond it!  A weak contract or no contract is ultimately demotivating.

5.  What age group will I be teaching?

Ability group and age group mean two completely different things for classroom management.

6.  What variety of age groups will I be teaching?

‘Kids’ covers a wide range of ages and so does ‘adolescents’.  From my recent experience I think you’ve got to get this answer down to a 2-3 year age bracket because the enormous difference between 12-14 and 15-17 almost demands a completely different skill set!

7.  Will I be co-teaching?  If so, is this something that is done often at the school?

I love co-teaching… when it is done well, when the school’s infrastructure is set up to support it, when my co-teachers know how to co-teach, when the strengths of this sharing are understood and exploited by educators to benefit themselves, their colleagues and their students.  However, like everything else, it is a skill that sometimes needs some work and definitely needs support.  This issue of support, in particular, is why it is important to ask about what the current set up at the school is.  “We can try this when you arrive.” might sound good and certainly sends a positive message that management will listen to your suggestions and opinions, but the flip side of that coin is, once again “We haven’t done it before, we don’t have experience and you’ll be the guinea pig.”

To be continued…

 

May I present Richard Brown (another PLN interview with the other half of IELTS Advantage: Writing Skills)

Richard Brown, me and Keith Barrs before a gruelling 10-mile race through gale-force winds and hailstones.

Richard Brown is another valuable member of my PLN that I would like to introduce to you all.  But more than that, he’s a good friend and a great guy.  So that’s disclosure out of the way. 🙂  While living and working in Spain he co-authored the new release, IELTS Advantage: Writing Skills, with Lewis Richards (whose interview can be read here).  I know Richard to be a great supporter of his fellow teachers with lots of great ideas and patience for his colleagues as well as his students.

I won’t bore you any further with introductions; over to Richard!

The Standard 5 Questions

1.  If your students were to describe you with 3 adjectives, what would they be?

I would like to think they would say passionate, patient and supportive. Maybe optimistic too?

2.  What would we find in your refrigerator right now?

Half a giant watermelon. I’ve been helping my friend down at his allotment here in Spain. It’s great because I learn about growing vegetables, a bit of Spanish culture and it saves me money at the same time!

3.  If you weren’t a teacher what might your profession be?

I originally trained and worked as a news journalist for 4 years and have always carried a passion for creative writing. Like many people, I think there is novel in me – I just haven’t been able to extract it quite yet.

4.  What do you find most difficult about the teaching profession?

This is a nice problem to have but I think as the teacher, you never stop learning new things. The challenge then is to find room for and assimilate all that knowledge as you go along, hopefully fine-tuning your craft as you go.

5.  What was the last book/movie you read/saw, and what have you seen/read way too many times?

The last book I read was The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. The book which I love to read again and again is What Should I Do With My Life by Po Bronson. It documents the real life accounts of 50 people from all walks of life and what they did when they faced this question at some stage in their lives. For me, it is a true work of art.

Extra Questions

6.  You and Lewis just finished writing a book together.  Why did you write it?

First and foremost we wrote IELTS Advantage: Writing Skills because as teachers of IELTS for many years we knew that there was a clear need for a step-by-step guide to the writing module. To our knowledge, this type of one-stop book simply does not exist. And I think another big reason was that Lewis and I share a lot of the same ideas about teaching and we felt it would be a good experience to work on a project such as this.

7.  Who is it for?

It’s for students wanting to develop their proficiency in writing in preparation for the IELTS exam, or for the teachers who are guiding them. We wanted to create a book which could be used as a self-study guide but also something which makes the difficult job of teaching IELTS writing more accessible for both novice teachers and those with more experience.

8.  Why are neither of you imparting your knowledge through twitter or a blog yet?

We’ve been too busy writing this book!!!   Actually, Lewis and I are ‘guest-blogging’ on Delta Publishing’s development blog from September until November so please have a look and tell us what you think. You can find the blog by following this link.

9.  What do you like to do to unwind?

Now that I’m living in Spain and pretty much fully immersed in the Spanish language and culture, I actually like nothing more than actually speaking English every once and a while because I don’t have to think about what verb ending to use or whether I should be using the subjunctive form. Joking aside, this experience is really helping me to gain a greater insight and respect for my learners and the challenges they face.

New York City (Picture from kylemccluer on Flickr)

10.  What’s your favourite place in the world?

New York City.  Unbelievable.

11.  What do you want to do in the next year and how can I help?

Live more in the moment. You can try it too and can compare notes.

Final Question

12.  Next time we see each other, whose round is it, what’s everyone having and where will we have it?

It’s definitely your round if I remember correctly, how about a glass of bubbly to celebrate the good times and as it’s your shout let’s go somewhere upmarket.  (Gordon – How about a picture of some champagne instead?)

Glasses of Bubbly (Picture from waldoj on Flickr)

Thanks to Richard for the interview and I look forward to seeing more of him and his work online (fingers crossed).  If you want to get IELTS Advantage: Writing Skills you can get it on Amazon or from The Book Depository with free worldwide delivery.

For more information from Lewis and Richard about the book, watch these videos:

 

Grammar & IELTS Writing (Blog Recommendation)

In the introduction to my PLN interview with Lewis Richards a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that Lewis hadn’t started blogging yet.  I was very pleased to see last week that this was no longer the case.  May this be the first of many from him!

Grammar & IELTS Writing by Lewis Richards on the Delta Publishing Blog.  A look at tailoring and improving English grammar for written assignments.

 

12 Angry Men: A Dramatic Activity Plan

The drama that can happen between a group of people in one room has always been of great interest to me; Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, Jerome Bixby’s The Man from Earth and Reginald Rose’s 12 Angry Men to name but a few.* This last one, 12 Angry Men, was a movie with Henry Fonda in 1957.  In 1997 the film was remade, this time with Jack Lemmon in Fonda’s role.  Lemmon’s turn as Juror #8 was so well received that Ving Rhames, upon winning the Golden Globe that year, immediately invited Lemmon on stage and instead passed the award on to him!

The basic story of 12 Angry Men is simple: 12 members of a jury sit down to decide the verdict of a murder case, an 18-year-old accused of murdering his father.  So within the next 90 minutes (or 110 minutes depending on which version you watch) you witness the discussion, debate, arguments and reasoning of twelve men as they try to come to a unanimous decision: guilty or not guilty.

Drawing upon Alan Tait’s idea for bringing some drama into the classroom, I was quickly drawn to this story for a number of reasons.  Having 12 characters, it is easy to give out roles.  The topic of crime and punishment is often in the syllabus somewhere and acting out roles and rehearsing dialogue is a great, creative way to work on pronunciation and intonation.  Nonetheless, what I’m laying out here is for B2/C1 students or above.  I doubt that any lower level students would have the necessary vocabulary or listening abilities for such an activity to flourish and thus remain fun.

So this is how I would start…

The end and the beginning.  No, I’m not being cryptic, but I fully agree with Pablo Ponce de Leon’s point about stories and storytelling being a good activity to complete a unit, chapter, coursebook, topic, etc (see previous post).  The topic wouldn’t necessarily need to be about crime and punishment although that is one option.  If you take a look at the transcript dialogue (here’s the handout) there are a lot of phrases, question tags, etc, that would all be useful for a “small talk” activity.  So I would definitely use this activity with a high level class at the end of a unit.

As for where in the movie?  I’d start at the beginning: the first two scenes.  These are the courtroom scene and what I would call the ‘character introduction’ scene.

The Courtroom Scene

This scene sets the context, explains what is at stake and visually introduces the characters as well as the focus of the whole story, the accused.

Activity 1

Go over vocabulary the students will need to understand the first scene.  The list will probably go something like this:

murder in the first degree

case

pre-meditated

serious charge

tried in the court

testimony

at stake

verdict

unanimous

the bench

mandatory

Best to put these, jumbled up, on the board before the activity starts.  In pairs or small groups, get the students to write a list putting each of these into one of three columns: understand/might understand/don’t know.  Leave enough space on your board to write these three columns as well.

After a couple of minutes, get the students to tell you what they put where.  The key is to put as many of these phrases into the first column as possible and if this does not reflect the lists of all the students then they can get the explanations from each other.  To accomplish this, it’s best to ask something like “What do you have in the understand column?” and exhaust that before you move on.  See where the students take you.

Activity 2

Watch the courtroom scene.  Give the students the following watching activity before you start.

Put all of the words and phrases from Activity 1 into order as you hear them in the dialogue.

Again, let them collaborate with partners and watch it a couple of times.  This does a number of things.  It gets the students ears ‘warmed up’ for the next activity.  It also gets the students familiar with the characters they will be working with in the following scene.

After having reviewed the dialogue with each other and as a class, give them the handout to check against.  However, before watching the scene one more time with the students now having the transcript to follow, give them a new watching task.

Thoughtful, bored, sleepy, impatient, distracted, indifferent, angry, worried, scared.  Which of these words would you use to describe the jurors?

There are a few red herrings in that list (remember this is supposed to be a B2/C1 class) as I wouldn’t say that any of the jurors looked sleepy or scared; all the others are up for debate.  After watching one more time, get the students’ ideas about what they think about the characters.  This leads nicely on to the next scene.

The Character Introduction Scene

This scene is a series of short conversations as the characters first get into jury room.  This is an opportunity for the students to see if their initial assumptions about the jurors were right or wrong.

Activity 3

The students can follow the scene reading the dialogue (on the same handout already given out).  In fact it is probably a good idea to give the students 30 seconds or a minute to skim through the transcript and get familiar with it before watching.

Give the students this question just before they start watching.

Judging from the dialogue as well as attitude and intonation, do you think this jury believes the accused is guilty or not guilty?

It might seem like an obvious question, but it gets the students actively watching during the scene for pieces of dialogue as well as intonation.

The transcript falls about 2 minutes short of the first vote amongst the jurors but the students will probably be anxious to see that part, or at least they should be.  An obvious thing to do is to let the film run for an extra two minutes while getting the students to predict who will vote in what way.  I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that not everyone agrees 15 minutes into the movie. 😉

Activity 4

After watching through once, you can start to give out roles and get the students to start practising the mini-conversations in groups.  The teacher in the role of ‘bailiff’ keeps you in the activity but away from the important roles.  There are actually 12 speaking parts including the bailiff as Juror #9 spends this scene in the bathroom.

From this, you are on your own.  Switching up roles is a good idea to keep things fresh.  Moving around the groups and drilling short, important phrases to improve intonation and general fluency is also a good idea.  Phrases such as ‘give me a hand’, ‘what gets me is…’, ‘you know something…’ and ‘but if you ask me…’ are all short phrases that learners should acquire to improve their spoken English.  There are plenty of other phrases but it’s a good idea to know beforehand some specific phrases you want to draw their attention to.

Enjoy!

Notes

Where possible, I will usually put the English subtitles on in a movie or at least give my students that option, unless I have a specific reason not to.

For my activity plan, I’ve gone with the 1957 version.  There are a few benefits to this choice and one drawback.  Firstly, the drawback is that the 1957 movie is in black and white and unfortunately more and more people, especially young people, immediately disconnect when they see black and white.  This is an enormous shame as they miss out on amazing masterpieces like Ninotchka, Stalag 17, Arsenic and Old Lace, Some Like It Hot and a movie that will always make it into my Top 5, Beau Geste.  If you haven’t heard of or seen any of these movies then watch them and thank me later. 😉

However, I digress.  The benefits of working with Henry Fonda’s earlier version are as follows:

1. In the 1997 version, the opening scene in the courtroom does not show close ups of each of the jurors.  Hence, my first prediction activity would go out of the window.
2. The second scene in the 1957 version is slower (5m40s as opposed to 4m50s for the same scene in 1997).  The speaking itself isn’t much slower but there are more pauses, which your students will be grateful for.  The dialogue is also a little bit more precise with less elision and fewer contractions.  I’m not saying this last part is a good thing, but it leads me nicely to a follow-up activity.

Following up with the 1997 version

Having watched both versions of both of these scenes more than a couple of times now, I’d say that a brilliant way to follow up the activity, perhaps to finish off a long class or perhaps for another day, would be to show the 1997 scenes directly after showing the 1957 scenes (thus if done on another day you should show the 1957 scenes again first).  With this you could get the students to do a number of things:

1. What differences in dialogue do you notice?
2. What differences in character do you notice?
3. Is it easy for the students to identify the characters again?
4. Which version do you prefer?  Why?

You might even want to start off the whole thing, before Activity 1, by showing the 1997 courtroom scene first.  A newer, in-colour version might make the story more accessible and it would give your students a sense of achievement to recognize their improvement of comprehension between the beginning and the end of the activities (again, I recommend reading Alan Tait’s ‘zombie’ article).  Here is the handout for the 1997 transcript.

* A couple of other ‘one room’ dramas that are worth mentioning are Loring Mandel’s chilling Conspiracy and Frank Cottrell Boyce’s compelling God on Trial.  Both of these deal with the less-than-pleasant topic of the Nazi concentration camps during World War 2.  I’m not advocating using such heavy material with an English language class, but I think they are certainly worth watching.

AND

In doing a YouTube search for 12 Angry Men I managed to find the full movies.  I’m not sure how long they may stay on the site but here are the links.

12 Angry Men (1957)

12 Angry Men (1997)