Professional Development - page 10

Seasoned materials writer Sue Kay tells her story of becoming an English teacher and published author, unveils what makes a compelling coursebook and shares some tried and tested writing tips.

Sandra: Hello Sue, it’s lovely to have you here for an interview with ELTABB!
We are curious about your story as an ELT author and your thoughts on materials writing, so I’d say, let’s dive right in…

How did your ELT career start and what prompted you to become a materials writer?

Sue: I’m slightly reluctant to tell the truth of how I started my career in ELT. I want to say that teaching was an ambition that was burning in me from an early age. But like a lot of people I know, I more or less fell into it by chance, with the intention of doing it for a while.

Four decades later, I feel like the luckiest person to have ‘fallen into’ the ELT world and the writing is the icing on the cake. I got the writing bug as soon as I started my CELTA training; making worksheets, flashcards, and dreaming up activities to get people talking felt like the most fun and creative job I could imagine.

My first teaching job was in France. When I came back to Oxford I had the good fortune to find work at the Lake School of English. It was a teachers’ cooperative, a really stimulating and creative atmosphere to work in. It was the mid 80s and Headway had just come out. Of course we were using it – who wasn’t? But I felt there was something missing… a communicative element. So I set about writing activities to go with each unit.

As luck would have it, a local author, Simon Greenall, was preparing to write Reward and wanted to do some class observations. I volunteered to host him in my class and afterwards showed him the communicative activities I’d written. He asked if I’d like to write the Reward Resource Packs. That’s how my ELT writing career started.

What makes a good coursebook?

The million dollar question! When I started teaching there was an unwritten rule that it was a ‘sellout’ to use a coursebook at all, unless you were doing an exam class, in which case it was okay.

I suppose I can thank that anti-coursebook attitude for forcing me to hone my writing craft. But in retrospect, I think it did the students a disservice. Because if the coursebook is useful for one thing, it’s providing a framework for both teachers and students. Moreover, it’s something for students to refer back to after the lesson.

I want my coursebook to treat the students as a valuable resource in the classroom.

But to answer the question, this is what I look for when I’m evaluating a coursebook:

1 – Does it provide space for the students to contribute their own knowledge of the language and experience of the world? I want my coursebook to treat the students as a valuable resource in the classroom, not as empty vessels to fill with coursebook knowledge. I want to see plenty of personalisation in my coursebook.

2 – Is the input material engaging? Are the texts authentic? Are they about real people doing real things in real places? If not, it’s difficult to get students to engage with the material and give genuine responses to it. Is the listening and video material good enough? Are the listening scripts interesting or bland, deja-vu and boring? Video has a way of increasing motivation, but there’s a lot of competition nowadays. Students can watch whatever they like on YouTube, so the coursebook videos need to be a cut above.

3 – Is lexis given centre stage? The lexical syllabus should be at least as important as the grammar syllabus.

How important is the editor-writer relationship?

The editor-author relationship is an important one, and when the chemistry is right, the results are amazing. I’ve been incredibly lucky with the publishers and editors I’ve worked with over the years.

When this relationship works well, it’s usually because it’s based on mutual respect. Authors tend to be a bit precious about what they’ve written (including me). It can be hard to see your carefully crafted material slashed (usually, admittedly, because it doesn’t fit the page). Building up professional trust is essential. There are times when you do have to fight your corner, but it’s important to acknowledge that writers and editors have different skills.

What tips would you give to aspiring and seasoned writers?

No hesitation – I’d point aspiring writers in the direction of ELT Teacher 2 Writer’s ‘How To Write’ titles. Karen Spiller, Karen White and I set up ELT Teacher 2 Writer because there were no training courses for materials writers. We asked experienced ELT authors to share the lessons they’ve learnt and give practical advice that new writers could immediately apply to their own work. We now have a list of 22 titles and two compendiums, with new titles in the pipeline.

You’re never too seasoned to learn new skills!

I’d consider myself to be a seasoned ELT materials writer. But when I started writing an exam-based course for Upper Secondary, I felt very much outside my comfort zone. So I consulted Roy Norris’s How To Write Exam Preparation Materials and Caroline Krantz’s How To Write Reading and Listening Activities. I now consider myself to be something of an expert in writing Multiple Choice activities.

The point I’m making is that you’re never too seasoned to learn new skills!

In the light of the current global situation, how do you adapt your writing to the needs of the digital classroom?

A couple of months ago I wouldn’t have had anything to say about this, but right now it’s the burning question! At the moment, my writing partner (Vaughan Jones) and I are writing materials as if they’re going to be taught online. So far I’d say the most important thing we’ve learnt is that it’s not that different to class teaching really.

Teaching online is mostly about getting to grips with the technology. I’ve become very au fait with Zoom and all its capabilities. You still need to provide students with engaging material. Also make sure you’re exposing them to high frequency language, common expressions and plenty of opportunities to personalise.

Nicola Galloway* talks about the “mismatch between the language presented in current ELT course books and how the language actually functions today as a global lingua franca.” Is this a fair criticism?

Nicola’s right – ideally, we should be preparing students for the context in which they’re most likely to use English: as a lingua franca with other L2 users. As Laura Patsko and Katy Simpson point out in How To Write Pronunciation Activities (published by ELT Teacher 2 Writer), the more you train your students to sound like native speakers, the less intelligible they’ll be to the other NNS.

So the important message for the materials writer is to focus on features of pronunciation that will make learners more intelligible to an international audience.

Students need to be exposed to a range of accents including non-native accents.

Another area for improvement in course books is in the audio element. Students need to be exposed to a range of accents including non-native ones. But most course books have scripted listening tasks. Publishers tend to record these scripts using actors who ‘act out’ accents. They’re often passable accents, but they’re not authentic, and this is usually obvious.

I’m pleased to say that I worked on a video element of a global course book recently, and the main character was a Spanish speaker. Ten years ago, I don’t think that would have been acceptable to publishers. So I consider this as good progress in the right direction.

*(Galloway in Routledge Handbook of ELF, 2018, p. 478).

Last question: Writing can be lonely at times. How do you keep up your motivation, focus and creativity?

I’d find it really hard to write on my own. I strongly recommend finding a writing partner you get on really well with; preferably someone who has skills that complement your own, but who shares the same learning and teaching values as you. That writing partnership is a big factor in keeping up motivation.

Focus comes from the publisher and editors – they set the deadlines, and without them, we may never get started. Then I’d say that creativity comes from being in the classroom. There’s nothing better than having a class of students to prepare a lesson for to get your creative juices flowing.

Thanks a lot Sue, for this fun and insightful Q and Kay!

Sue Kay is an experienced author and has co-written Upper Secondary and Adult courses for Macmillan and Pearson. She’s also co-founder of ELT Teacher 2 Writer, which publishes books and runs training courses for ELT writers. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter or contact her via e-mail.

In his April workshop with ELTABB, Leo Selivan presented new ways for making gap-fill exercises more meaningful in ELT. He also provided many practical and creative examples of how to use gap-fills in online teaching. Jennifer Knaeble recaps the whats, whys and hows.

What are gap-fills, anyway?

As the name suggests, gap-fills are exercises in which learners are asked to fill in blanks with missing words or phrases. They are commonly used to reinforce vocabulary or grammar points and are incorporated in placement tests, C-tests, cloze tests and, in fact, just about every kind of exercise to help learners understand and practice new words or grammar points.

As Leo explained, gap-fills first emerged in ELT in the 1980s, predominantly via game-changing textbooks such as Headway. Often regarded as boring, they are also criticised for being too focused on receptive rather than creative skills.

However, Leo referred to several reputable findings (Otavio Barros, Keith Folse, Philip Kerr). These beg to differ, arguing instead for the effectiveness of gap-fills when used heedfully in ELT.

Gap-fills provide context and meaning

Gap-fills can, for example, be more beneficial to learning than more free or imaginative exercises when teaching new vocabulary. As opposed to presenting the word in isolation, they provide correct context, collocations and what Leo called “co-text”; i.e. words surrounding the target word, thus augmenting context and helping learners grasp meaning.

So, instead of asking learners to use the word  “mortgage” in a sentence of their own making, give them a gap-fill exercise, e.g. “We went to the bank to take out a – – – – – – – – in order to buy our house”, which includes context (bank/buying a house) and highlights co-text (e.g. “take out”).

For tasks such as this one, Leo stressed the importance of first providing learners with relevant word definitions from reputable, learner-orientated dictionaries (such as Longman Learners or Cambridge) and then using meaningful, context-rich gap-fills.

Using digital resources for gap-fill exercises

Leo then showed us different types of gap-fills that he had created with the digital site Quizlet. The first, a “Red Herring” (or “distracter”) gap-fill, consisted of four correct gap-filling words and an incorrect one which we had to detect.

The next variation was “Letter Clues”, a gap-fill that uses partial letters to prompt recall of the target word, e.g. “They’ve taken out a 30-year mor – – – – –  in order to buy their house.”

We then played a “Two Blanks” gap-fill using, not Quizlet, but Zoom’s virtual whiteboard. By enabling the “annotate” function on the whiteboard we could use various options (arrows, pens, brushes, text, hearts, etc.) to complete a series of gap-fill sentences as fast as possible. Slightly more challenging as learners have two, not just one, gaps to fill per sentence, this exercise was fun, colorful and competitive.

More gap-fill types followed, such as a “No Gap-fill” (no joke!) tailored for practicing adjectives. It consisted of two lists (one with adjectives, one with full sentences and no gaps). The task was to select the correct adjective and place it in its proper position in the sentence.

The toolbar made this exercise more competitive as we madly doodled and overwrote each other’s answers in a race to see who could complete the exercises more quickly and imaginatively. It is interesting to know that Zoom’s annotate function is adaptable to gap-fills made in other formats, such as Word’s*.doc or websites formats.

DIY quizzes: trying it out for ourselves

It was then time to try our hand at creating our own gap-fill quizzes. In small groups, we gathered in Zoom breakout rooms. One person from each group was asked to log into Quizlet and share screens with the rest of their group. Following the step-by-step instructions, we started making gap-fill quizzes together.

Quizlet is quite intuitive, but I still appreciated Leo occasionally popping in and out to answer questions. He made sure we were including meaningful context and highlighting co-text.

Once finished, we shared our quizzes with the whole group. Leo pointed out that Quizlet has the great advantage of offering learners multiple modes of practicing the same exercise (flashcards, test, write, spell, gravity, etc.). Content can also be easily adapted to “offline” teaching; he shared with us his own “10 paper-and-pencil activities using Quizlet” accessible here: http://leoxicon.blogspot.com/2019/12/10-paper-activities-quizlet.html.

Finally, we tested how well gap-fills can work well on a discourse level. For this we used the web-based platform Zeetings. Once connected to its virtual board, Leo gave us initial fragments from several conversations, e.g. “Can’t you wait? I won’t be long.” Then he asked us to fill the remaining gaps with our own responses. The host is able to tweak the competitiveness of the exercise by controlling when responses appear on the board. Though this resulted in what was more of an extended gap fill exercise, it was still very enjoyable and effective.

Final thoughts

In sum, I believe this webinar was a great success! It shed new light on traditional uses of gap-fill exercises in ELT and provided us with tips on how to make them more meaningful for learners. It also demonstrated several practical and creative ways for incorporating them – via smart digital tools –  into our online teaching.

I wish to thank Leo for sharing his time and expertise with us and I’d highly recommend checking out his book “Lexical Grammar: Activities for Teaching Chunks and Exploring Patterns” (2018), as well as his website: http://leoxicon.blogspot.com/.

Language coaching is a relatively new arrival to the wide spectrum of language-related fields. As coaching flexes its muscles in the lifestyle, health, career, business and executive arenas, it’s only logical for the methodology and framework to spread into (English) teaching and education. Gabriella Kovács explains what that implies and why traditional language teaching could indeed do with a spring makeover.

Dethroning language teaching assumptions

As more adults than ever are learning languages, assumptions such as these are being challenged:

• “Native speakers are better teachers and should be preferred when taking on new staff.”
• “Language learners must pass CEFR levels or exams to prove their communication skills.”
• “Workplace language programs should concentrate solely on business English, ESP and corporate skills development.”

In practice, we know these ideas partially help reach expected outcomes, but relying on them is a design for disaster. There have been many signs that “what got you here, won’t get you there” (Marshall Goldsmith).

Are your teaching methods letting you down?

Perhaps you’ve come up against a situation in which a learner enters saying:

“I need more vocabulary and grammar, then I will be a better English language communicator.”

After an initial assessment focusing primarily on these two areas, you choose course books, decide what to photocopy, indicate which websites to favour, etc.

In this scenario you have a plan and build your syllabus with this learner (or class) around your ideas. This is how we have been trained to teach. Only after a couple of hours interest drops, home assignments are not done, even the odd “I couldn’t make it to the lesson, sorry” seeps in. Irritation, boredom, a mixed sense of, “Well, you’re the teacher, you should know what to do…” is more and more apparent.

You push harder, you try to make the lessons funny, bring in business bingo, cards, videos, the lot.  The spark has gone out. You feel defeated, your learners are far from ecstatic, and the lessons roll on, kind of petering out over the course of the programme. What is happening?

What’s often missing in traditional ELT

A number of things are wrong in this scenario. I would like to ask you, dear reader, to take a minute, take a pen and paper and try hard at identifying at least five things holding back the teacher and learner here.

Have you taken your notes? Let’s take a look them, and compare with my selection. They are:

• little involvement in what skills need developing, leading to low engagement and motivation
• too much focus on input
• little relevance for learners in terms of course content
• too much push and little pull, i.e. control is fully in teacher’s hands
• learners have little commitment to taking responsibility for own learning
• little focus on true communication
• no form of partnership or equality in the situation between parties
• nobody asked what the learner’s internal motivation or goals were, thus without being identified, none were being addressed (sorry: “I want to reach B2 level” is an external goal, not something a learner can truly develop towards)

There are a few minor ones, but these are the key notions. Of course the scenario above may be extreme (albeit not rare), as is the reaction of the teacher; but I suppose you get the point I am trying to make.

We, as language professionals, want to make our lessons work so hard that we forget one of the most basic of things to keep in mind: we are dealing with adults. What does this imply?

Young learners vs. adults

Adults can think for themselves if given the chance, if asked the right questions; they do not need as much instruction, but rather support, gentle guidance and scaffolding. Discovery and exploration to uncover new language terrain is such an exciting prospect – a challenge they must live up to and take on for themselves; not for the teacher’s sake, not for the company’s sake, nor the sake of an exam.

We must realise that the skillsets and toolkits we possess are no longer supporting our learners the way they did 10-20 years ago. Hard truth, but we need the wake-up call – now, amid the crisis we are experiencing. Control is to become self-control, as responsibility and trust is to be shared, shedding a new light on the whole language teaching/learning process.

Language coaching: a change in direction

But what is language coaching? Not therapy, not consulting, not advice. How does it work? It believes the client (in our case the learner) can come up with their own solutions based on their experience, using their strengths and looking into the future. It is a process based on trust, responsibility and independence. Asking questions and not saying what to do.

The role of a language coach is to support and empower the learner on their self-led learning journey. LC focuses on the learners’ communication outcomes and learning processes in their professional and personal environments, instead of working with pre-defined lesson objectives. 

The objective of every coaching process is to assist the learner in self-reflection and in defining and using the tools they need to progress in their target language. (Source: ILCA* website)

Language coaching addresses a number of the ideas from above. The trend moving towards a rise in one-to-one classes means coaching can infiltrate lessons much more. Thanks to that, you can work on a personalized learning plan, strategies and goals with your learners.

Your learner struggling to present on a call or write a clearly structured email will believe they can do it because you do. Performance often has less to do with “more vocabulary, more grammar” than confidence and communication strategies. Coaching will align goals and processes to fit learner needs. Are you doing that?

Language coaching compared to teaching and training

	Teaching/Training	Coaching
Goals	Focus is on moving upward on CEFR-like scales and developing specific language areas (e.g. vocab building, accent reduction).	Supports learners in understanding where they are on their language learning journey; helps learners discover new ideas of how to reach their goals; goals are internally framed by the learner.
Rapport	Language professional tells, suggests and gives advice when learners are uncertain/do not understand.	Starts from the belief that learners know; coach asks questions that support reflection and help learners come to their own solution. (Yes, this is a skill to be learned.)
Process awareness	Language professional explains how the language learning process works and directs it.	A strong focus on metacognitive dialogue increases awareness, reflection and inquiry regarding personal experience of the language learning process (conversations often left out of lessons for want of time.)
Content	Massive emphasis on external input for language development.	Input is primarily learner-led, allowing ample opportunity for learner self-expression. All information is “co-created,” meaning contributions are from parties. (More often than not, coaching starts with an empty piece of paper and a pen.)

 

Long-term effects of the current crisis on education

How can the current change to remote learning and its long-term impact actually affect education with learners accustomed to low responsibility due to strong control from teachers and institutions?

What is important is that learners understand they need to take more responsibility and control of their learning and decisions related.

Education will no longer be about what it can do for learners, but what learners can do for themselves through education. Gabriella Kovács

Be a coach – support them in unlocking their true language learning potential, in navigating their language learning path, and you will see the motivation and achievement soar. Confidence when using the target language is the one thing all learners wish to work on. Language coaching provides the time and space to find the qualities and strategies to work on this.

Improve learning through asking the right questions

Ask your learners questions that help discovery and self reflection:

• What will you do differently next time?
• Is there one thing you could do differently starting tomorrow?
• What can you do more of that has worked for you in the past?

These are the empowering, strengths-focused questions that can support without instructing thereby opening up a new language learner approach.

Ask yourself:

• Are you collaborating through strengths and resources?
• Are you encouraging solutions-oriented dialogues or problem-focused ones?
• How do you plan to get your learners heading towards autonomous, confident learning?

If you are finding all this the missing piece in your language teaching puzzle – take the first step and visit our website.

Check out our membership and training course offers this spring for language professionals, growing globally and working in collaboration with our team of founding members with monthly free events.

*ILCA is the International Language Coaching Association, co-founded by Gabriella Kovács ACC.

Many teachers, trainers and organizations are finding themselves suddenly remote, and the behaviors that surround online learning are different from in-person training. Within this new opportunity for ELT businesses to pivot and move their work online, there are a few challenges that need to be addressed.

It was exactly halfway through our last Language Coaching Foundation Course when the country-wide ‘shelter in place’ orders started to roll out across the globe. We had ELT professionals from Japan, Ukraine, Germany, Italy, Hungary, the United States, and Chile. This unprecedented global pandemic required that we hold space for our course participants. If just to share their experiences and to discuss how this situation was affecting their work.

Many companies and independent professionals are operating as usual, if not thriving, in the virtual economy. But this hasn’t been the case for everyone. How many times have you heard a language learner or teacher say, “I prefer face-to-face; I need the contact”? However, many are now forced to choose between completely stopping their lessons or giving the online thing a try.

And it turns out that online language instruction has become an immense comfort during this time. In spite of the perceived challenges for those not yet comfortable with it, learners and trainers are still able to connect and support one another.

Online education: ELT at the crossroads

This period in ESL/EFL instruction is a call to action. Things aren’t just going to go back to the way they were before the lockdown. There will undoubtedly be many converts from both professionals and learners who were hesitant about online sessions.

The question then arises: how will language training organizations integrate a long-term digital plan into their institutions and promote the necessary learner autonomy that comes with online education?

One of the major challenges of online education for teachers and organizations is that they are still held accountable for learning outcomes such as test scores and level advancementof their students. Yet in a remote learning situation, the instructor doesn’t control the classroom outside of the computer screen. The institution also no longer controls the presence and engagement of the client.

Teachers are now in a position of having to share the learning responsibility with the student.

Online education has an increased level of learner autonomy built into it, and that is perfectly suited for actually learning a language.

Teachers are now in a position of having to share the learning responsibility with the student; in a way that they may never have been challenged to do before. Online students have all the resources and access they need to continue to progress in their target language if they choose to own the responsibility of learning, and use their resources wisely.

This is the “new normal” and things aren’t going back. So, let’s talk about how to support teachers and trainers in the new normal, shall we?

Seeing yourself as a language coach rather than a traditional teacher

Language coaching is an applied methodology incorporating coaching fundamentals into the language learning context. The role of a language coach is to support and empower the learner on their self-led learning journey.*

One of the fundamental principles in language coaching is that the coach and the learner share responsibility for learning. This is also essential for an effective online learning classroom. If that is not a concept that your learners have adopted, then now would be a great time to introduce it.

This can be done with an informal conversation about what they can do outside of your sessions to continue to advance in their language learning. Or it can be done in a more formal and contractual type of agreement that outlines their level of engagement.

Trainers can promote autonomy through drawing attention to and building awareness of the learning process.

Once the understanding of learner responsibility has been brokered, the language teacher can begin to support the learner. Trainers can promote autonomy through drawing attention to and building awareness of the learning process.

The latter works best through questioning and active listening. Use questions that focus on building the meta-cognition of the language usage process and target language communication. This will boost learner autonomy and ensure that the learner continues to grow and thrive in the language acquisition process.

Online learning as the new standard – final thoughts

The new normal is an opportunity for language professionals and language learners.

If we are willing to recognize the unique challenge of building learner autonomy and choose to address this, then the world of ESL/EFL will come out of this crisis with an enriched understanding of how truly limitless our potential is to empower English language learners from anywhere in the world.

For sample questions and further guidance on how to apply language coaching techniques visit our website at www.internationallanguagecoaching.com

*Definition of language coaching developed by the International Language Coaching Association.

 

Global societal and environmental issues were very much to the fore at the 2019 BESIG Annual Conference held in Berlin. It was a special and thought provoking event for many English teachers. Robert Nisbet took some time to reflect on some of the issues raised.

Back in September I was fortunate to receive an ELTABB scholarship which helped me attend the BESIG Annual Conference at Adlershof. One condition of this was that I write a review afterwards. What follows is my recap of the conference, plus some personal reflections.

The theme of ‘Back to Basics’ was addressed in a whole number of ways. Looking afresh at our day to day work as teachers and our relationships with our clients and learners, the conference considered broader questions about being human and our impact on the wider world. This included a focus on issues such as sustainability, the environment and inclusion.

Here, I’d like to focus on the keynote talk given on the Saturday morning by Steve Brown from the University of the West of Scotland. It was entitled ‘Indoctrination, empowerment or emancipation? The role of ELT in global society’. Of all the talks I heard, this was the one which has kept resonating with me over the past few months.

Global responsibility in ELT: Some challenging questions

Steve’s talk began by reminding us of the many problems faced by people and societies in the world today, including climate change, inequality, racism and prejudice of all sorts.

Are we part of the problem or part of the solution?

Within this context he asked how we as Business English teachers stand in relation to these issues. Simply put, are we part of the problem or part of the solution?

He asked us to consider in what way our teaching impacts the world, for good or bad. By teaching English within the context of business are we helping to promote a societal model which supports the prevailing culture of neo-liberal capitalism?

Through teaching English in order to help people communicate better and progress in their careers, we in turn help companies become more successful and profitable.

However are we merely adding to the troubles created by the dominant capitalist model of business and industry, which creates wealth and comfort for the few at the expense of the environment and of the health and happiness of the many?

Integrity in the classroom – emancipation vs. indoctrination

In response Steve offered an alternative vision of critical pedagogy in the tradition of Paulo Freire and Henry Giroux. He suggested that it’s our duty as teachers to always question and challenge prevailing cultural models.

…focus on the emancipation of our learners rather than on their indoctrination.

We should demonstrate alternatives, bring social justice issues into the classroom and focus on the emancipation of our learners rather than on their indoctrination.

Indoctrination in this case is often rather a subtle thing. It involves the promotion of a lifestyle oriented around economic success and the overall importance of international trade and business. This may include brief forays into content related to the environmental movement, cultural diversity and equal rights.

Steve’s view was that when we stop to look around and consider the scale of the issues threatening our world, such an approach is just not good enough.

He argued that at the moment, empowerment in ELT translates as ‘Learn English in order to be successful within existing structures’.

But this empowerment does little to challenge the deep and systematic inequalities in the world, and can be contrasted with a more emancipatory model summarized as ‘Learn English in order to participate actively in democratic society with a view to creating change’.

Facilitating change through critical pedagogy

Steve offered two useful definitions of the critical pedagogy he was promoting:

Critical Pedagogy…understands language learning as locally situated, personal, socio-historical, and political.

 

Jeyaraj and Harland (2016, p. 589)

as well as:

Critical Pedagogy…in ELT is an attitude to language teaching which relates the classroom context to the wider social context and aims at social transformation through education.

Akbari, ELT Journal, Vol. 62, Issue 3, 2008 (pages 276–283)

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the problems the world faces. If we as teachers accept the critical pedagogy model, that we can and should participate in trying to improve things, then there are a number of ways we can do this, as Steve suggested.

For one thing, these can include using social justice issues as the basis for the content of our lessons. Moreover, using participatory methodologies helps empower students in setting their own learning goals.
In such ways our lessons can be not just a means to develop language skills, but also a way to develop our students’ critical consciousness.

For those who work in-company, he argued that the next step could be to use English lessons to enable companies to look critically at themselves. Through creating internal reports and investigations within the lessons, he suggested that companies can assess how they can make progress towards:

• becoming more ethical
• reducing their environmental footprint and
• becoming actively and positively involved in local communities.

For those working with pre-experience learners it was also clear how lesson content could be re-orientated and space made for critical discussions.

Taking a personal stance

For me personally the talk resonated in many ways. I stopped being an architect and started being a teacher partly because I didn’t want to work for private property developers who I felt were benefitting the few at the expense of the many. I’m very sympathetic with the argument that we’re simply doing too little to address the problems of the world.

Amongst my clients are companies who build offices for global tech companies or who build trade fair stands for manufacturers of consumer products. I’d already asked myself in what way my teaching of their employees was having an impact on the waxing or waning of corporate power in the world.

Sometimes we do have conversations which are critical of aspects of the corporate world. Some of my clients are already working towards improving sustainability in their industry.

However the scope for critical pedagogy in my teaching is very much defined by external factors. That is, the culture of each particular company and the personalities, language-learning goals and interests of individual students.

That was my initial response to the challenging questions posed by Steve’s talk.

Critical pedagogy put into practice

I’ve had time to re-consider this response in the couple of months since the BESIG conference. It’s a question which hasn’t gone away, and which isn’t fully resolved.

In principle I’m completely in favour of bringing an agenda of social change to lessons. I’m sure I can do more in this direction. Some lessons have the scope to consciously look at more varied material, some don’t.

Still, I think it’s also important to recognise how people react to lesson content. My ongoing challenge with many of my lessons is to find content that my students find interesting.

When I’m successful, a topic, a video, some images or a text can spark an engaged conversation which is stimulating in itself; and this is also a good vehicle for improving their language skills. If students are not interested or engaged then language learning is very difficult.

Given the right conditions, the lesson can be an arena in which something can emerge.

I rarely know how the students are going to react to the lesson; and that’s one of the most wonderful things about being a teacher. Indeed, what one group finds very engaging, another may find deeply boring. Yet, this is impossible to predict. Given the right conditions, the lesson can be an arena in which something can emerge.

Final thoughts

I’m comfortable with telling my students what’s right and wrong with respect to the English language. I’m also happy to discuss ethical and controversial issues, and give my own opinion. But I would feel uncomfortable trying to deliver a more didactic ethical message. I generally want to let people make their own minds up, come to their own conclusions.

I accept that other more didactic approaches are possible and may be successful with different groups of students. Over the following months I will continue to question my approach in the light of Steve’s talk.

References

Joanna Joseph Jeyaraj and Tony Harland – ‘Teaching with critical pedagogy in ELT: the problems of indoctrination and risk’. In ‘Pedagogy, Culture and Society’, Routledge, 2016, p.589.

Ramin Akbari – ‘Transforming lives: introducing critical pedagogy into ELT classrooms’. In ‘ELT Journal’, Volume 62, Issue 3, July 2008, Pages 276–283.