Professional Development - page 3

As hosts of the Easy English YouTube channel, Mitch and Isi are always eager to scratch that learning-language itch – and as fans of their work we were itching to find out more about their story. Kit Flemons reached out for an interview with the team taking spoken English off the streets…

Check out their channel here!

What is – and who are – Easy English?

So, first, could you tell us a bit about the Easy Languages project?

Easy Languages is a network that aims to help people learn languages through authentic street interviews and conversations. Since its beginning over 15 years ago, it’s become a huge franchise spanning over 40 languages, it aims to make videos and podcast episodes freely accessible for everyone, creating a mutual learning experience.

And yourselves, Mitch and Isi – could you introduce yourselves to our readers?

Mitch is one of the hosts and the editor of Easy English. Mitch has a degree in sound technology and worked as a lighting designer and theatre technician for 10 years before moving into film, where he started as a video editor. He is a self-proclaimed film nerd and comedy fan and was introduced to Easy Languages by Isi who planted the seed to start Easy English together.

Isi, an events manager at the time, volunteered with Easy German early on and was later brought in full-time to join her sister Cari and Janusz, who started Easy Languages. With a passion for British culture, music and nature, Isi eventually moved to England where she met Mitch and they opened the Easy English YouTube channel. For German, she’s a regular host of the ‘Super Easy German’ episodes and manages the Publishing Community team.

How to Make Videos and Influence People

What is the foundation that you build upon when making new videos?

The main foundations for our videos may seem self-indulgent, but they are always ideas or topics that we, ourselves, find funny, curious, challenging or interesting. And we hope that by doing that, our content is more engaging and our audience is able to see that we enjoy and relish the opportunity to make that type of episode or ask that kind of question.

For the home-style videos, it’s always a narrative idea that comes first and then comes figuring out how to work in a grammatical/cultural aspect to it. And lastly, for the interviews, we’re always interested in current affairs and cultural norms.

A YouTube channel is obviously a pretty new medium, but technology is still evolving rapidly. Which direction do you see language learning going in?

Well right now, Easy Languages is taking on the podcast universe, including Easy English; we intend to start our own podcast by the end of the summer, with interactive learning material for our members. But it’s hard to tell where things are going. Mitch owns some VR goggles and the technology is still relatively basic when you compare it to modern gaming consoles and the latest visual effects.

But perhaps digital learning will become possible through VR; you could join us on a filming day along the seafront perhaps, or in a virtual Easy Languages classroom. Or alternatively, we could come to you! How would you like an Easy English hologram in your living room?!

Lights, Camera, Learning!

Your videos are very professional! What equipment do you need to start a YouTube channel?

There are requirements for becoming an Easy Languages co-producer. However, unlike most YouTube channels, where the focus is mostly on the visuals, we’d say a good microphone is the most important part of creating language learning content. Easy English owns a DSLR camera, two microphones (host and interviewee), some LED panel lights and a laptop with editing software – all of which are relatively affordable.

What We Don’t See…

What is the behind-the-scenes work like?

Well, Easy English’s team consists of us, Mitch and Isi – but we are supported by the Easy Languages team and the entire network of other Easy Languages channels. We discuss episode titles, thumbnails, technical issues and share personal experiences and tips and tricks of the trade. Internally, we have a long list of ideas/questions we’ve thought of or that viewers have suggested. So, after a quick team meeting/dog walk, we head out onto the streets and start filming.

An Easy English episode can take between 2 and 4 hours to film, depending on how many people are around us, and then Mitch will edit and transcribe the video. Using the final episode we publish on YouTube, we create not only our social media content, but also the learning perks for our official Easy English members.

How many people must you interview per video? How many do you edit out?

To be honest, we’re a bit spoilt at Easy English. We are located in Brighton, on the south coast, and it’s an amazing city, filled with interesting, welcoming, creative and often eccentric individuals. Most people here tend to have a creative side hustle, so are always more than happy to help out with other creative projects. If you can only visit one place in Britain, it has to be Brighton – we couldn’t recommend it enough!

Keeping with the Times

What is your most popular video… and why? 

As English is a common language, it means we have the advantage of being able to work with all the other teams across the Easy Languages multiverse. So, we’ve made a few collaborations with the teams. Most notably, our English pronunciation videos. We all put a lot of effort into making this video and it also meant Mitch got to create his own 80’s-inspired montage scene, including all the essential elements – corny acting, unnecessary workout scene, freeze frame introductions, helicopter chase and guitar solo!

From www to ABC

ELTABB is a community of English teachers in Berlin/Brandenburg. Do you have any tips for using your videos in the classroom? (Or as the basis for homework?)

Well… now that you mention it, Easy English has a platform for our official Easy English members! You can go to easyenglish.video/membership each week to find learning extras for each and every episode that we’ve produced. So for example, if your students are beginners or intermediate learners, you can watch the episode and read along using the transcript and the vocabulary helper sheet – it gives you definitions for the complicated words, phrases and slang used.

Or, if they’re advanced learners and want to test their listening skills, we offer the video without subtitles and an MP3 audio file of the episode as a download. And then once they feel confident, they can test their skills using our worksheet, which has you filling in the blanks and finding the odd-ones-out from multiple-choice questions.

We additionally sell licenses of our content if you want to use the episodes for your own learning purposes. If you’re interested in licenses or have questions about our learning material, please contact us at mitch@easyenglish.video
We’d also just love to hear from any teacher or school that watches and supports our channel.

And finally… do you have any big plans for the future?

Well, as we mentioned, we have a podcast out soon, which also comes with its own specific learning extras, including an interactive transcript that translates the text into a huge variety of different languages. We also intend to do a tour of Britain and the British Isles to pick up on the expansive diversity of accents, dialects and cultural norms that exist on our island.

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IATEFL associate members are groups who are affiliated to the organisation and agree to act as ambassadors. In return, they get certain benefits, including one free place at the IATEFL conference – on condition that the delegate attends the Associates’ Day. This year I was lucky enough to be the ELTAU representative.

It was my first time at an IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language) conference and the first time I really began to understand what the Associates’ community looks like.

It soon became apparent that Germany is somewhat of an anomaly: most other attendees seemed to be representing a country group. A few examples:

• English Teachers’ Association of Bangladesh
• Croatian Association of Teachers of English
• Nile TESOL Egypt
• IATEFL Hungary
• Association of English Teachers in Iceland
• the Japan Association for Language Teaching
• TEFL Kuwait
• IATEFL Peru

Meanwhile, I was there representing the regional association ELTAU – alongside board members of ELTAS, ELTAF, HELTA and ELTA Rhine. A definite German presence!

Another factor that seemed to set us apart from the majority of the other attendees was that their Associations work primarily with school teachers. Moreover, many have co-operations with government ministries or receive grants from state bodies. German regional ELTAs on the other hand are mostly self-funding and have a large proportion of self-employed members, I would say.

We were led through the day by Jean Theuma, the Associate Representative on the IATEFL board. The programme had several elements:

• Get-to-know-you activities in small groups
• Brainstorming and collating answers to a set of questions about the needs of more and less experienced teachers and how our organisations can attract, retain and nurture them
• A poster presentation from three of the Associations in attendance
• Spoken presentations from some of the Associations. They introduced
  themselves and particular aspects of their work or highlights from the year
• News from the IATEFL board and a look ahead to changes afoot

The spoken presentations highlighted the variety of contexts, scale and creative ideas that the different Associations embody. It was quite amazing to hear about activities from national conferences, to summer camps focussed on Irish culture, to a members’ hall of fame, to round tables and peer-reviewed writing.

Some IATEFL News

At the end of the day, Jean gave a presentation to fill us in on the current activities of the organisation.

IATEFL:

• has 40 associate members
• intends to collaborate more closely with the British Council over the
  coming months
• plans to offer more opportunities to Associates for funding and networking
  and would like to encourage more activity from Associate Members in the IATEFL Voices newsletter

She also informed us of something which affects Associate organisations directly:

IATEFL has revised its guidelines on branding, and will no longer allow local associations to include the acronym ‘IATEFL’ in their title. She outlined the reasons and assured everyone that there was a two-year transition phase and support from IATEFL would be available. For some associations, however, the news came as somewhat of a bombshell as it will require them to change their names.

I am so pleased that I had the opportunity to participate in this day, and indeed the whole conference. As it was still relatively small compared to previous years, I bumped into several of the Associate members over the course of the next four days and they felt like familiar faces. One contact made at the Associates’ Day has led to a workshop in collaboration with ELTA Rhine in the autumn.

Personal contact really is worth a great deal!

***

If you’d like to find out more about how the organisation works, check out the IATEFL website.
Follow this link for upcoming IATEFL events.

What is neurodiversity and how does it affect language learning? How can we identify learners who may have specific learning differences and what should we do then? And perhaps most importantly: How do we deal with differences in a neurodiverse classroom?

Neurodiversity is a convenient term for the whole range of cognitive differences that we might find in our classroom. As a species, we humans are neurodiverse. That is, we all have slightly different cognitive profiles, so that some of us find some things more difficult than others do.

There are some individuals who seem noticeably different from their peers, and these people may have a specific learning difference (SpLD), such as dyslexia or dyspraxia. SpLDs are best thought of as different ways of perceiving the world, processing information and interpreting sensory input. They are not illnesses, or disorders – just differences.

The most commonly identified SpLDs are:

• dyslexia
• dyspraxia
• dyscalculia
• AD(H)D
• autism

They affect language learning in different ways, but there is a lot of overlap and common ground between them, too. Here is a list of key characteristics and common features of these SpLDs:

How can we identify learners with specific learning differences and what should we do then?

If we notice that a learner is  displaying some of the characteristics laid out in the table above, it might be a clue that we might need to keep a closer eye on them, and perhaps start to do some further exploration to identify their barriers to learning.

Observation is the key to recognising which learners may be experiencing difficulties. It’s something that all teachers do – even subconsciously – so that we can manage the classroom: knowing who is likely to start tasks first, who will want to ask a lot of questions before they begin, who will finish first, and who will be easily distracted.

It is helpful to make a note of any unexpected behaviours that we notice so that we can see if they are just a one-off or if they are patterns that may indicate a long-term issue. We can ask other members of staff to share their perspectives and see if the same issues arise in other contexts, outside of our classroom.

If, after a short period of observation, an SpLD is suspected, an informal conversation with the student would be helpful to find out how they see the situation and reassure them that we are going to do whatever we can to support them.

We could ask about their home life, how they are enjoying their English course (and other subjects) and whether they or anybody else in their family has ever experienced these kinds of difficulties before. This may be a way to open the conversation about possible screening, or further assessment.

Doing some detective work

In order to determine if it is an SpLD or just a temporary situation brought about by physical or mental ill health (e.g. stress, anxiety) there are certain things we need to consider. We should try to find out as much as possible about:

• the student’s background
• their literacy development
• their memory
• their speed of processing
• their phonological processing

We can start to gather information about the student and their background through observation and conversation. A questionnaire, where they answer questions about previous educational and life experiences, could help make this more concrete. This could cover elements of cognitive function such as memory, speed of processing and phonological processing, which might tie in with the information gathered through observation in the classroom setting.

There may be a person in your school or college who is responsible for supporting learners with SpLDs, and it would be helpful to work with them to decide the best way forward. Using the screening tool ‘Cognitive Assessments for Multilingual Learners’ (available from the ELT well website) can be a useful means of gathering all of this information, and also of making sense of what the data is indicating.

Formal assessment is not always necessary if the teacher is able to adapt to the learners’ different ways of working.

How do we deal with differences in a neurodiverse classroom?

This is the question that many teachers find most challenging, as there are so many ways that learners can be different. As noted at the beginning of this article, we are a neurodiverse species!

The key is to try to implement inclusive teaching practices in as many ways as possible, thinking about the learning environment, the materials you are using and the tasks you set, and most importantly, the relationships that are encouraged in the class.

Classroom environment

Remembering that some learners may be very sensitive to the physical environment, it is good practice to check that everyone is happy with the temperature in the room, as well as the lighting, noise levels, the equipment available and the layout of the furniture.

There may not be much that teachers can do about some of these things, but at least indicating that you are aware of these barriers can make learners feel more included, and cope better with some discomfort. Bringing their issues to the attention of the school management may result in changes that would benefit everybody.

Materials and tasks

Not all teachers are able to choose which materials are used on a course, but where possible, it is helpful to choose handouts or books that have a very clear layout. Images over text make it hard to read, and too much information on a page can be daunting. If the characters broadly represent the members of the group, that can be very motivating.

But the key with any materials is the way in which they are used.

Teachers may want to supplement coursebooks with additional resources or pick out key activities to focus on. Ideally, learners would be led through a section of new material in small steps, securing each bit with lots of recapping and revising before moving on. Incorporating multisensory activities that engage multiple senses at once is useful for this.

Explicit instructions and feedback are crucial, and getting learners to reflect on their learning is a valuable tool in developing self-awareness of their own learning processes.

Relationships

Good relationships between the teacher and the students, as well as between the students, are fundamental to any inclusive classroom. Creating opportunities for everyone to get to know and understand each other (and themselves) leads to greater levels of respect, acceptance and a sense of group belonging. It allows teachers to make better choices when putting students into pairs or groups so that students can bring out the best in each other.

It is the teacher’s job to create a nurturing environment for all learners, and to model the kind of supportive behaviours that we would want the whole class to adopt. This could mean looking for the positives and drawing attention to them (“Great idea!” “You really listened to your partner in that activity”,“I’m really pleased you came in time for the start of today’s lesson”) so that learners who are normally on the back foot (or always in trouble) can feel good about themselves, and about learning.

Stay positive, and have faith in your learners’ abilities to find their own strategies to cope with your class. Most importantly, show that you believe in them so that they can believe in themselves.

***

Suggested resources

Evens, M. & Smith, A.M. (2019) Language Learning and Musical Activities Morecambe: ELT well [available from www.matthewevensmusic.com or www.ELTwell.com]

Kormos, J. and Smith, A.M. (2012) Teaching Languages to Students with Specific Learning Differences. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Smith, A.M (2015) Cognitive Assessments for Multilingual Learners. Lancaster: ELT well. [Available from www.ELTwell.com]

Smith, A.M. (2017) Including Dyslexic Language Learners. Lancaster: ELT well [available from www.ELTwell.com]

Smith, A.M. (Ed.) (2020) Activities for Inclusive Language Teaching: valuing diversity in the ELT classroom. London; Delta Publishing

With language teaching and coaching increasingly overlapping, being able to help your clients grow professionally is a valuable skill to have. At his recent Inter-ELTA workshop, Jeff Aristy spilled the tea on how to advance your own career and that of your clients using the C(O)RE model.

Quite the New Yorker, Jeff Aristy sure doesn’t waste time: this fast-paced workshop was just the right mix of information, activities and vibrant discussion. Only fair: the model he was presenting (originally created by Bo Graesborg in his book “C(O)RE or The Boaching Guide to Career Success”) is for people who are ready for new insights and growth in their personal and professional lives.

What’s your C(O)RE, and why is the O in brackets?

The acronym C(O)RE stands for four different key areas related to professional life, namely:

• Competence
• Opportunity
• Relationships
• Enterprise

While all of these are career-related, they are not always balanced:

We discussed that within corporate culture, there generally appears to be an over-reliance on competency/being good at what you do (C), at the expense of the other dimensions.

For example, building close relationships (R) can be met with a certain suspicion: it may seem effortless, at times inauthentic, and overrated (when in reality, it’s a soft skill worth cultivating). The result is a strong “C” and a weak “R”. On the other hand, in some cultures, it is possible to make up for a weak C with a strong R, because those place a higher value on relationships.

Opportunity (O) involves luck and external factors that are not fully within your control (hence the brackets). However, developing the O means preparing the ground for these to happen (through serendipity, networking, relationships, etc.), and learning to recognize and seize the right opportunities.

Finally, Enterprise (E) is about your most personal interests and passions. It helps you lead yourself and others, and can inspire you to make big career changes. Unlike R and C, E comes with self-knowledge and is to be discovered rather than actively developed.

So why does the C(O)RE model matter, and why is it advisable to strengthen all of the four aspects, and not just be a master of your chosen craft?

What got you here won’t get you there

The importance of the C(O)RE model lies in the fact that the skills that got you started won’t necessarily help you advance your career. Jeff gave us a video game analogy: what you need in order to succeed changes with each level.

Over the course of the game, you may need:

• special boots to climb a mountain
• a person who helps you
• an energy drink
• a sword

Likewise, you need different kinds of tools to get ahead in your professional life. Jeff had us discuss the question “What got you here?” in a breakout session. We came to find that what got us where we are today was a mixture of factors, including opportunity, relationships and curiosity.

Too much of a good thing can get in the way

To further illustrate the importance of using different tools, we discussed an example:

Daniel, a very competent corporate employee, sees an interesting job opening at his company. In theory, he’s the perfect match, and he thinks that his boss should notice and offer him the job. However, he ends up losing the opportunity to a less qualified colleague with better people skills.

Daniel’s mistake was relying too much on his competence (C), while ignoring relationships (R) and ways of seizing the opportunity at hand (O): He waited to get noticed instead of making his intentions known, so nobody knew he was interested in the job. If he had reached out to his superior, he might have stood a chance.

It is clear from this that developing your C(O)RE also means developing corporate intelligence and asking yourself these questions:

“Who makes decisions?”
“Who should I get in touch/build relationships with?”

Another factor was that Daniel was very good at what he was doing, so his company was happy for him to stay where he was. Thus, being a specialist can potentially make it harder for you to make a career change (conversely, being a generalist that is happy to wear many hats can be a real advantage).

Finding your E, finding your Why

Standing for Enterprise, the last letter in the C(O)RE model is about your motivation, interests and vision. As Jeff pointed out, it is something to be discovered rather than developed. It’s all about getting to know yourself better. Finding your biggest motivator and focusing your energy is an ongoing process, and you are the hero(ine) of your own journey when it comes to your E.

Jeff asked us:

“What gets you out of bed in the morning?”

If you have trouble answering the question, you can try to start observing yourself and what you enjoy (yes, the little things count as well). Being curious about yourself is the key to moving closer towards your E.

On the other hand, if your answer includes lots of responsibilities that make your head spin and bills to pay, there is much energy and motivation there (and likely a sense of being overwhelmed), but maybe not enough focus and emotional support. Finding someone who has your back and provides a sense of safety (such as a coach) can make a huge difference in terms of outlook and direction.

Jeff also made the point that goal-setting can have its pitfalls (the goals might be too big, poorly defined, difficult to obtain or not measurable). So one tip he gave us was to focus on change instead of fixed goals.

Example:

• Goal: “I want to lose ten kilos, so I’ll start doing everything I can to achieve that goal… running, gym, whatever.”
• Change: “I want to be more active –  if I lose ten kilos, great, but the key here is to adopt changes in my life irrespective of the goal.”

The advantage of the latter approach is that the changes don’t have to be huge, and that the outcome is more flexible and progress-oriented than achieving a precise goal that becomes meaningless once you’ve achieved it. So, it is more of an open-ended journey of discovery that helps you get to know yourself better (and thus develop your E).

Takeaways from the workshop

We found out that with the help of the C(O)RE model, you can assist your clients through:

• Finding out what areas of their C(O)RE would benefit from being developed
• Helping your clients strengthen those areas

For example, someone with a strong C may have trouble finding clients or a new position. You could help them develop their R by helping to improve their people skills, such as becoming a great listener and really understanding their clients’ needs. You could also help them develop corporate intelligence – knowing how to identify the right people and build relationships with them. (A bonus tip for introverts was creating comfortable networking situations by giving oneself a task, or showing other people something.)

Likewise, when your client is looking for a new job, R will help them get to know their future boss and peers, whom they’ll have to work and make decisions with. Interpersonal skills are a way of finding out who and what is compatible with them and their values, and what isn’t. They also open doors when you least expect it.

You could also work with clients on recognizing and seizing opportunities (O), cheer them on when they need it and help them build leadership skills (E). And finally, keep in mind that making gains in one area will have a positive impact on the other areas as well, as they are all interconnected.

This was an unusual, interactive workshop with multiple perspectives on professional development. We left happy and energized, with new insights and things to try out.

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Jeff is the founder and Managing Director of GrowWerk GmbH, a training, coaching and consulting company based in Munich, Germany. He has made interpersonal and intrapersonal skills a cornerstone of his training work. You can find Jeff on growwerk.com.

Recommended reading

Bo Graesborg: “C(O)RE or The Boaching Guide to Career Success”

Susan Cain: “Quiet” (a book about career development for introverts)

Susan Scott: “Fierce Conversations” (a book about trustbuilding and authentic conversations leading to high levels of engagement)

How do we express trust or distrust, engagement or empathy when we are speaking with someone sitting across from us? By smiling (or not), leaning in or away, physically opening up or crossing our arms, breathing in a calm way, or nodding. How about all this in a digital environment?

Guided by Sabrina Lucidi, 20 ELTA members who participated in this workshop on 26 March, started thinking about this. At the beginning, she wished us as much fun in the workshop as she had had preparing it. This sounded promising!

To begin with, we found ourselves equating ‘digital environment’ with ‘video calls’, and focussing on those. When we can see each other, similar principles apply in terms of body language (although we may need to be more explicit about nodding, using ‘reaction’ buttons and referring to people by name.

However, as Sabrina gently guided us to understand, much of our communication in the digital realm is in writing.

Communicating across time boundaries, geographically dispersed, communicating asynchronously, we rely heavily on instant messaging, chat, and email to communicate with one another. The absence of visual or auditory clues means that we have to create trust, empathy and emotion through different means.

Writing is the new speaking

Whether we realise it or not, the body language signals present in spoken conversation are replaced by other factors when communication is done in writing – the ‘invisible body language’ of the workshop title.

These factors include: emojis, spelling errors, choice of medium, response time, the time at which you write, amount of background information, and how and how often you thank people. Believe it or not, even punctuation plays a big role in expressing emotion, as Sabrina demonstrated with these three example WhatsApp responses:

How downbeat do you find a full stop? How aggressive is this for you: … ?

Exactly how these different responses are interpreted comes down to individuals, and our use of exclamation marks and other punctuation is affected by age, gender and personal preference. We realised this when Sabrina asked us to share what our ‘pet peeves’ are.

One person’s succinct may be another person’s caginess. One person’s speedy reply may include omissions and errors which their co-worker finds disrespectful. A short ‘thx’ may leave someone with the feeling that their hard work is not appreciated. So we all need to be considerate.

As Erica Dharwan states in her book Digital Body Language:

Reading carefully is the new listening, writing clearly is the new empathy.

It pays to become more aware of what messages we are sending and how we can make these more intentional, in order to reduce the risk of misinterpretation and increase the feeling of inclusion.

Tips for successful digital communication

Sabrina rounded off the workshop by suggesting some good practice guidelines when communicating digitally:

• have an agreement on expected response times – maybe even include this information in the subject line (e.g. ‘2h’ means ‘please respond within 2 hours’ or ‘3d’ means ‘please action within 3 days’.)
• as a sender, indicate clearly what is expected of the reader
• as a responder, answer all the points in the sender’s original message
• respond relatively quickly even if it is to say ‘I will get back to you on this’

We had fun looking at body language from a new perspective. Who knew that capital letters could equate to an excited grin?

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If you enjoyed this article, you might also like Gabriel Clark’s take on teaching with images.