But over the past month or so I’ve been blogging up a storm at my China blog, http://serenityinchina.wordpress.com/

Some of my favorite posts are,

English in China – Painting and “Very, Sweet, Sexy” Chinglish on Side of a Car

Nighttime in Martyr’s Park, Changsha – Whipping a humming spinning top (no idea what actual name is) IV

Nighttime in China 15 – Mom and Daughter Doing Homework

Nighttime in China 4 – Massage Parlor

Because almost stepping on a dead rat barefoot first thing in the morning is fun–NOT

Overloaded bike in China

Chinese Food – Giant Steel Heating Tank for Food Dishes – II

Chinese Food – Intestines in oil with some veggies (yes, that’s what I said, lol)

But a Chinese man singing “Can Belto” . . . in the key of “O” is beyond my tolerance abilities

Chinese Food – “I’d like to order the duck.”

2011 Hunan Botanical Gardens, China – Cherry Blossom Posing Time!

Drying Fish and Laundry on a Line in Changsha, China

My blogging style over the past six months has been more photoblogging with much shorter stories.  Some readers of my Korean blog have ‘suggested’ in the past that I could do with uploading a ‘few’ less photos–and due to abysmally slow Net speeds where I am they’ve gotten their wish, lol.

Anyways, if you’re bored and need to kills some time while you’re not busy teaching, doing shots of soju and eating sangyapsal, etc, check out the pics and stories on my China blog.

J

Shooting  “a 30-minute film about a surreal encounter between a fisherman and a female shaman” is just plain cool, and I love Park Chan Wook‘s films–my favorite being Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.

Click this link to see the story, Director shoots first major movie solely with iPhone.

As usual, Korea loves pointing out any and all ‘firsts’ that it accomplishes: “PROne, the agency representing Park Chan-Wook, claimed the iPhone movie would be the first ever to be shown in cinemas.”  I don’t know if this is true or not, but if it is I think this is one occasion for which congratulations are in order.

I seriously am curious about the creativity behind this kind of a project, and am intrigued by how Wook “describ[ed]the process as more democratic since everyone with a smartphone took part.”

I wonder if the film will go international with a major distributor. For now, the movie will be “shown in 10 cinemas nationwide from January 27 for four days.”

Almost makes me want to go back to Korea–almost.

J

I used to post a lot on http://kimchi-icecream.blogspot.com/ and then I decided to move over to http://kimchiicecream.wordpress.com/ as I like wordpress better for blogging.  You can read a lot of older posts at the blogspot site, and for most recent posts check out the wordpress site.  I will try and make a ‘best of’ or ‘most useful’ blog post here of my older material at some point as I get this blog up and going.

From now on please read the http://eflteacherlearner.wordpress.com blog for posts about teaching and other related topics.  Julianne and I may live and teach in a few more different countries, and I will not be starting new teaching blogs for each move we make as it’s too much work.

EFL Teacher Learner will be my blog home for writing about teaching for the remainder of the time I do this career.  I hope  readers continue to find my writing interesting and useful.

Below is an excerpt of the first blog post I have published on http://eflteacherlearner.wordpress.com

Enjoy,

J

EFL/ESL University Listening Test Design, Writing, Editing, and Recording – Do’s and Don’ts

I went today to do my first listening test recording in China for my university. I think I’ve probably done 50+ listening test recordings over the past six years I’ve been teaching, and I’d like to think I’ve accumulated a bit of useful experience and ideas about how things should be done.

As a native English speaking instructor I always struggle to find ways to integrate myself into the L2 educational environment–and in China it’s no different than in South Korea in terms of trying to remind teachers to give me the information I NEED TO KNOW, and to keep me in the communication loop with all the parties that are involved in the process of designing, writing, editing, recording, and then editing and checking the final product.

If you’re new to EFL/ESL teaching, I strongly recommend you purchase a good book on test design.  There are three titles that I’ve come across that are really good.

Assessing Speaking by Sari Luoma. Cambridge Language Assessment Series, 2004

Testing Second Language Speaking by Glenn Fulcher. General Editor: C. N. Candlin. Applied Linguistics and Language Study. Pearson Education Limited, 2003

Testing for Language Teachers, Second Edition by Arthur Hughes. Cambridge Language Teaching Library Cambridge, 2002

Of the three books, I’d recommend the 3rd title, Testing for Language Teachers, Second Edition, as the most useful book for any type of test you might have to make for the four language skills. For new EFL/ESL teachers who are beginning a career this book is an invaluable resource.

Yet at the same time the EFL/ESL training, experience, and methodology books we have can cause us unnecessary stress when it comes to designing tests, writing them, and then (in the case of listening tests) doing the recordings.  Knowing how something should be done, or can be done, and then seeing first hand how untrained, inexperienced, incompetent, or working under poor conditions teachers ACTUALLY produce tests can be . . . ahem, unsettling.

Depending on your personality this may result in anything from a shrug, and saying “Okay, let’s get on with it,” to banging your head into a brick wall as you intermittently do shots of the cheap local libations (not, of course, that I’ve ever done that, lol).

Before I (finally) get to some Do’s and Don’ts, let me say one final thing: ‘professionalism’ is a huge cultural difference.

Let me say that one more time: PROFESSIONALISM is a cultural difference.

I’ll write about this topic in depth some other time, but for now suffice it to say that during today’s recording session I kept hearing other university instructors say to me, “You’re so professional.”  And it made me want to ‘scream’ a wee bit because I was biting my tongue from pointing out all the small issues I kept seeing crop up in the process for the listening test recording we were doing, and the bigger issues I wanted to say something about but didn’t because there was no time to do anything about them, nor did the general education culture and setting allow for the proper rehearsing and language pronunciation issues that kept appearing during the recording session I had with my Chinese English teacher partner.

It’s definitely a blessing and a curse to be seen by other teachers, and your supervisors, as being a ‘professional teacher’–especially when the behaviors or actions they’re commenting on are, in my mind anyways, things that EFL/ESL professional career teachers should do WITHOUT THINKING . . . anyways, back to the topic at hand.

Do’s . . .

1. Ask your university contact person for their cell phone and email, and then ask who the other people are that are involved in the test recording process and production line. (Oh yeah, and ask them if they have YOUR cell phone and email info–ask them to READ IT TO YOU, lol.  Sometimes ‘loss of face’ will prevent a teacher from admitting to you that they lost your info, or forgot it, or whatever is going on–and then later when they need to tell you something they can’t because they don’t have your contact info.)

2.  Ask your university contact person the following explicit questions.

a) Who will approve the listening script and questions?

b) Who will be my partner for the listening recording?

c) Who is available to edit the written script and questions for the listening test?

NOTE: Then ask again for the contact information for these people to keep everyone involved in the communication loop.

3. Do use the ‘spell and grammar’ check in MS WORD.

4. Do SPEAK OUT LOUD anything and everything that will be recorded.  My senior year high school English teacher taught me perhaps the most valuable editing trick is to read out loud the text because unnatural sounding language is easier to detect and revise, and errors that you missed while only reading also sometimes get caught by the ear when the eye misses it.

5. Do PRACTICE and REHEARSE the text to be recorded before you get into the recording studio (IF POSSIBLE–it’s not always possible).

6. Do PRACTICE and REHEARSE with your partner, and any other speakers involved, before you get into the recording studio if possible.  Often, if your partner is a L2 (non native English speaker) there are words they do not know  how to pronounce, sentences with difficult stress patterns, and vocabulary or cultural items that they do not know.  You can help them practice whatever they need to BEFORE getting into the recording studio where it’s not a good time to have to stop and start, stop and start, because they are making errors that cannot be used on a recording for testing purposes.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Please click on this link to read the rest of this post.

J

Ah, before I continue, here are some links to other posts of mine that new teachers, and for that matter veteran teachers, might want to read if they haven’t seen them before.

English Camps in South Korea – A Guideline for Foreign English Teachers

The Kimchi Icecream Guide for New EFL/ESL Foreign English Teachers/Instructors in South Korea, 2010 Edition – Public Schools, Hogwans, Universities, and Training Center/Institutes

ESL/EFL English Camp Guide for Native Teachers in South Korea – Getting ready for summer English camp (aka more classes, more studying) and final exam period at my school

While surfing Korean English native teacher blogs today I noticed this post Yet again, I’m annoyed! by a blogger I enjoy reading, strangelands. The sad thing is that as more and more time passes I see yet another expat teacher getting more and more frustrated by the ridiculous unprofessionalism of the education culture in Korea . . . but there’s nothing we, as expat EFL/ESL teachers can do because the education culture is so utterly lost and chaotic that even the Koreans who can actually see the problems don’t know how to manage them.

Anyways, on a more productive and proactive note I am posting a list of books that EFL/ESL native English teachers can use for their regular semester teaching, after school program classes, and for summer and winter camps.

This blog post stems from the comment I posted for Yet again, I’m annoyed!

Go buy “Projects for Young Learners” Resource Books for Teachers by Oxford, and do the Fantasy Island project with the kids. Unless you’re given kids who are beginners/false beginners you can do the projects with them in the fantasy island unit (about 10, I think), and just make lesson notes for yourself as you go through the camp each day. Actually, considering the fact that you’ve been given such little prep time you might consider doing the task-based project anyways. If you have a co-teacher who can translate, the kids can learn a little vocab, a few useful short expressions/questions-answers, or whatever you choose, and then do the project and while interacting with you they get some experience doing a project and having to try and use their English to communicate….after all, that’s all the Koreans want, right? For the students to learn English by osmosis and proximity to the foreign teacher; this is the embodiment of the general teaching culture in Korea that thinks it’s okay to give a teacher these kinds of teaching and learning conditions….

Also, try picking up “Games for Children” Resource Books for Teachers by Oxford. It’s full of different games with different levels, amounts of time, degree of difficulties in game concepts and cognitive levels, etc.

The cheapest book you can get is this one,
Oxford Basics: Simple Speaking Activities.
Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 1999.
W5, 800

You can pretty much modify the vocab and language goals for each of the 20 or so lessons found in the book on the fly.

Get some books and then stress will disappear (well, it’ll be less anyways), and your prep is done in terms of before the camp. Photocopy the pages from the book, make some insanely small lesson notes for each thing you’ll use, and hand them to the idiots that ask you to do a camp with no info about location, classroom conditions, resources available, language learner levels, etc.

Other titles you might want to check out.

Five-Minute Activities for Young Learners
Penny McKay and Jenni Guse
Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers
W30,000

Lessons from Nothing
Activities for language teaching with limited time and resources
Bruce Marsland
Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers
W25,000

Games for Language Learning, Third Edition.
Andrew Wright, David Betteridge, and Michael Buckby. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers. Series Editor, Scott Thornbury.
W28 000

Oxford Basics: Simple Speaking Activities.
Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 1999.
W5, 800

Oxford Basics: Presenting New Language.
Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 1999.
W5, 800

Oxford Basics: Vocabulary Activities.
Slattery, Mary. Oxford, 2004.
W5, 800

Oxford Basics: Cross-curricular Activities.
Svecova, Hana. Oxford, 2003.
W5, 800

Storytelling With Children.
Wright, Andrew. Oxford, 1995.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley.
W26 000

Very Young Learners.
Vanessa Reilly & Sheila M. Ward. Oxford, 1997.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley.
W26 000

Games For Children.
Gordon Lewis and Gunther Bedson. Oxford, 1999.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley.
W26 000

Drama With Children.
Phillips, Sarah. Oxford, 1999.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley
W26 000

Art and Crafts With Children.
Wright, Andrew. Oxford, 2001.
W26 000

Projects With Young Learners.
Diane Phillips, Sarah Burwood & Helen Dunford. Oxford, 1999.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley
W26 000

Art and Crafts with Children
Andrew Wright
Oxford University Press
W26,000

Creating Chants and Songs
Carolyn Graham
Oxford University Press
W26,000

Writing with Children
Jackie Reilly and Vanessa Reilly
Oxford University Press
W26,000

Drama with Children
Sarah Phillips
Oxford University Press
W26,000

Oxford Basics: Simple Listening Activities.

Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 1999.

W5, 800

Do As I Say: Operations, Procedures, and Rituals for Language Acquisition.

Gayle Nelson, Thomas Winters, and Raymond C. Clark. Pro Lingua Associates, Publishers, 2004.

W19 000

Oxford Basics: Simple Reading Activities.

Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 2000.

W5, 800

Sentences At A Glance, Third Edition.

Brandon, Lee. Houghton Mifflin Company 2006.

W10 000

Paragraphs At A Glance, Third Edition.

Brandon, Lee. Houghton Mifflin Company 2006

W10 000

Share Your Paragraph: An Interactive Approach to Writing, 2^nd Edition.

George M. Rooks.

Longman, 1999.

W13 000

Oxford Basics: Simple Writing Activities.

Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 2000.

W5, 800

Julianne and I also picked up these titles recently, and have found them to be VERY useful to have in our teaching library.

Reading Extra: A Resource Book of Multi-Level Skills Activities (Cambridge Copy Collection) by Liz Driscoll (Spiral-bound – Apr 26, 2004)

Pronunciation Games (Cambridge Copy Collection) by Mark Hancock (Spiral-bound – Feb 23, 1996)

Primary Activity Box: Games and Activities for Younger Learners (Cambridge Copy Collection) by Caroline Nixon and Michael Tomlinson (Spiral-bound – Mar 5, 2001)

Jason

At the time of this posting it was at <span><strong>9,032,488 <span style=”font-weight: normal;”>hits and climbing . . . here’s the video.</span></strong></span>

<object width=”420″ height=”385″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/SXh7JR9oKVE?fs=1&amp;hl=en_GB”><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></object>

Whoever the brain was behind this promotional use of a viral flash mob they are a genius!  You can read more about the video and singers in <a href=”http://www.vancouversun.com/news/canada/Food+court+Hallelujah+Chorus+goes+viral/3918451/story.html”>this article</a>.

I’d LOVE to see this done at COEX Mall in South Korea–seriously, can you imagine the reactions?!

I normally tend to just post videos I see online on facebook, but decided that this one was worth reopening my Korea blog cause it’s so awesome.

PLUS, it’s fun to scoop <a href=”http://roboseyo.blogspot.com/”>Roboseyo</a> with the whole finding cool and fun videos and posting them on my blog first!!!

Hope everybody back in Korisneyland is well, and that nobody decides to get all anti-Merry Ho Ho and start a war–even Scrooge would say that’s bad for business.

Stay safe, and happy.

J

We’ve been teaching at a military university’s English program, and it’s been good in many ways, and extremely challenging in others.

Over the course of the first two months of teaching at the university I met many Chinese English instructors of various ranks, and had several conversations. These conversations led to me being invited to give a presentation on my teaching methodology and philosophy of teaching. I should explain the larger context of the conversations involves a massive teaching reform project at my university that has been going on now for just over a year. The university powers that be want to update the teaching methodology that the instructors use, and I think also the English program’s textbooks, testing, and overall curricula design. It’s a massive project.

I decided that since I put about 3 weeks of work, and dozens of hours of reading and prepping a power point and handout, to post a story about the presentation, and my handouts, because I think other EFL/ESL teachers will find it interesting, and hopefully useful too.

You can see my handouts below, and also the list of my “Must Have Books” For EFL/ESL University Instructors.

Please feel free to comment and ask questions.

J

Last Friday morning I packed up a suitcase full of about half the books in my teaching library, and headed out to do a presentation on my teaching methodology. I was excited about doing this presentation because I’d spent the last 3 weeks reading, and re-reading parts of my methodology books to clarify in my own mind what my current teaching methodology is since it’s gone through quite an evolution during the time I spent teaching in Korea, and now over the last two months in China.

I was also happy that I was being given a forum in which I could explain how I see teaching through the framework of EFL (English Foreign Language) teaching (as opposed to the fractured and confused perspectives I’d been hearing from EVERY Chinese teacher I spoke to–I realized that there was an English program “identity crisis” as far as what kind of program we were all operating within, and I REALLY wanted to address that FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM!). One of the major issues I wanted to foreground during my presentation was the fact that I thought my university’s English program was trying to function within three different types of English programs: ESP (English for Specific Purposes), EAP (English for Academic Purposes), and EST (English for Science and Technology). I got quite a reaction from my audience of teachers, and high ranking colonels and PhD professors when I talked about that, and later in the post-presentation discussion period I was really happy to hear others thought the same thing as I did!

I presented to 30 Chinese English teachers, some of who were the top ranking officers/administrators in the English program of the military university where I teach. Before I presented, two other presenters gave their content, and it was quite telling to see that they were essentially trying to introduce what native English speaking teachers take for granted about what a ‘good teacher’ is–for example, treating students equally. They were also touching on some aspects of CLT and TBL (Communicative Language Teaching Methodology, and Task-based Learning Methodology) but didn’t really do anything other than scratch the surface in a manner that I would think should be used for student-teachers, or teachers who have never taught before and are just starting their careers–not a room full of teachers with years of experience.

Over the past ten days or so I have been fighting a head cold and cough, and also dealing with my regular teaching duities and the problems I’ve been trying to address with course objectives being unclear, and invalid testing and lack of info I needed to know about the final grading and exams . . . this unfortunately made me tired, and I actually needed two or three more days to nail my presentation materials; I finished my prep and first draft of my power point with 177 power point slides of pictures of my students DOING the things I wanted to talk about, and my 10 methodology approaches and principles . . . I then smacked myself up the side of my head and said, “JASON! You ONLY have 50 minutes to present this material–you can’t present 177 slides no matter how good the material is in that time!”

Thursday night, the night before my presentation, I invited a Chinese English teacher over to the apartment so I could do a practice run through of my material, and try to get a clearer sense of what I needed to cut. I think I already knew what needed to be cut but by the time I was done my power point design it was Thursday at 6pm, and I didn’t have the 2 or 3 days I needed to mull over what I could cut, condense, and revise in order to cull it down to a manageable amount of presentation material.

I even went and re-read Jeremy Harmer’s “10 Things I Hate About Powerpoint” because I knew I was putting too much, lol …. but I was out of time, and too tired.

My Chinese teacher friend had a good response to my presentation, and good suggestions too. I cut as much of the material after she left as I could, but I could still see it was too much material. I forced myself, though, to go to bed and not kill myself for a presentation I was only giving once, and for a presentation I was not being paid a large fee for!

I printed off a two-page double-sided handout with some primary points from the power point, and a list of books I’d be referring to during my presentation (see below), and went to bed.

Back to Friday morning . . . I do my presentation and only make it to point 5 of my 10 points I’d used to organize my teaching methodology. With only 10 minutes left in my 50 minute presentation I skipped past several slides in each section, and got out the key ideas for my last five points, and was done. I was somewhat satisfied with my presentation, but knew that if I’d just had a few more days to prep I could have done something I think might have even impressed Jeremy Harmer a little–him being, in my mind, one of the best presenters I’ve ever heard and seen give a power point presentation (KOTESOL 2007, South Korea).

I’d been given 90 minutes to work with for my presentation, and I’d told the colonel and vice-dean of post-graduate studies at the university that I’d use 50 for my talk, then we’d take a short break during which the teachers could look at the 100 books displayed on a table at the front of the conference room. The break time was a rapid fire blitz of questions from THIRTY teachers all looking like kids on Christmas morning as they grabbed different books I had on the table, and began asking me questions about the books and different teaching needs they all had–holy cow!

I was really happy to see one of the high ranking teachers (not sure about the actual rank) ask me a lot about “A Framework for Task-based Learning” by Jane Willis. I referred to it as the ‘bible of TBL’ during my presentation, and THAT got her attention as she’s one of the teachers assigned to the current massive teaching reform project that my university is currently doing. From what I’ve been able to piece together, she has to ‘teach’ and ‘train’ all the Chinese English teachers on how to teach using TBL, and how to test students too. But based on the fact that the winter and summer breaks don’t seem to be used for in-service training, and that teacher training only seems to be done on Friday mornings each week of the semester with teachers giving lectures with no real training taking place in terms of trainees doing exercises and activities to apply what they’ve been learning about….well, I don’t see how the Chinese English teachers are going to be able to get a solid grasp on what TBL is, and how they can use it in their courses.

A major point that I stressed during the discussion period after the short break and book gazing frenzy was that the current curricula at the university, and specific textbooks I’d seen, were not suitable for use with TBL methodology and testing. This got quite a stir from the teachers, and the colonel tried to diminish my comment/criticism of the curriculum not being compatible with TBL–to which I said, “Sir, you teach post-graduate courses, right? Have you seen the undegradate textbooks? No? I’d suggest you take a look at them and then we can discuss this again. But until then I strongly believe there are major problems that need to be addressed.” I said this with as much respect, sincerity, and neutral tone of voice as I could, and he seemed to realize that he couldn’t back up his opinion cause he had NOT looked at the undergrad textbooks, nor did he seem to be familiar with their testing either.

Anyways, I think some of the big things I walked away from this experience with were quite valuable. Assessing and articulating what my current EFL/ESL methodology and philosophy of teaching was a good experience. It showed me what I need to learn more about, and what I need to read more. It reaffirmed teaching principles and approaches that I strongly believe and practice. And it allowed me to establish more credibility with the powers that be at my university so that when I say something, or criticize something, they know it’s not just a complaining foreigner who ‘doesn’t understand Chinese culture or the university’s English program and teaching culture’–the comments and criticisms are based on knowledgea and experience gained from hard work, and a lot of experience.

The conclusion I came to after a lot of reading and re-reading, and reflection on my teaching, was that I was doing what Harmer refers to in his fourth edition of “The Practice of English Language Teaching,” 2007: “We need to be able to say, as Kumaravadivelu attempted, what is important in methodological terms, especially if we concede one method alone may not be right in many situations” (page 78, my emphasis, Harmer).

Basically, I use a combination of CLT (Communicative Language Teaching methodology) and TBL (Task-based Learning methodology) with some of my own personal approaches to teaching all mixed up into one hybrid form of the two major methods. But in terms of how I practice and apply my methodology there is no fixed formula. How I teach depends on the needs and wants of the specific teaching situation, language learning situation and needs and wants, and the overall teaching and learning environment within which I’m operating. I think that I knew this before I began my prep for this presentation, but doing the work helped me to clarify and confirm what I do, and why I do it. I highly recommend other EFL/ESL teachers try something like this if they have the time and inclination.

Oh, a really bizarre moment occurred after the end of the discussion period. The colonel stood up, and walked to the front of the conference room. He then proceeded to say that he thought I had a lot of great ideas and opinions about teaching methodology, and EFL, and that he wanted to hear more about my ideas. He then said that “after learning more about Jason’s opinions and ideas we may adopt them here as policy and practice at the university”–HOLY SHIT!

Sometimes I really don’t realize how other teachers perceive what I say and do. Sometimes I really don’t give myself enough credit that the hard work I put into my teaching craft, and continually trying to improve myself as a teacher, comes across to such a point as that I’d actually have my methodology used as a part of the basis for an entire English program’s teaching methdology reform . . .

It’s humbling, scary, and thrilling all at the same time.

I just have to hope that some degree of success can be achieved in their reform project because based on this article, The Impact of CurriculumInnovation on the Cultures of Teaching (http://www.chinese-efl-journal.com/Vol%20%201%20January%202008.pdf), I don’t know if they can achieve their wishes.

But I’ll help–if they ask (and hopefully pay more too!).

J

A teacher of a bad man.

What is a bad man?

A good man’s charge.

If the teacher is not respected,

And the student is not cared for,

Confusion will arise, however clever one is.

This is the crux of the mystery.

Lao Tsu 1997, ch 27

From “Experiential Learning in Foreign Language Education, General Editor C. N. Candlin

Applied Linguistics and Language Study, Pearson 2001

Different types of foreign language learning . . .

• ESP – English for Specific Purposes

• EAP – English for Academic Purposes

• EST – English for Science and Technology

• EFL – English as a Foreign Language

• ELF – English as a Lingua Franca

• ESOL – English Speaking of Other Languages

• CLIL – Content and Language Integrated Learning

EFL/ESL influences on my teaching methodology . . .

Jeremy Harmer

Scott Thornbury

Michael Rost

Sari Luoma

Penny Ur

Jane Willis

Michael J Wallace

Teaching methodologies . . . Which one? More than one? Or . . . Something new?

• Grammar-Translation

• Direct Method

• Audiolingualism

• Behaviorism

• PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production)

• ESA (Engage, Study, Activate); Boomerang Procedure, Patchwork Procedure

• Four Methods: CLT (Community Language Learning), Suggestopaedia, TPR (Total Physical Response), and the Silent Way

• CLT (Communicative Language Learning)

• TBL (Task-based Learning)

• The Lexical Approach

• Teachers-Students Dialog Method

• Post Method ???

My 10 EFL Methodology Principles and Approaches to ELT

• 1. Fun and Interesting. The “Magic X” factor.

• 2. Balance of accuracy and fluency language goals and content in lessons/course design.

• 3. Communicative and interactive style of TTT and STT.

• 4. Task-based learning.

• 5. Transparency in testing/evaluation, rubrics, and process.

• 6. Recode EFL language classroom with communicative power dynamics.

• 7. Games and Activities are a vital learning tool for learning, practicing, and mastering language goals and skills.

• 8. The 7 P’s: Proper planning and preparation prevent piss poor performance. Lesson planning/course design are critical in achieving teaching success, and language learner success.

• 9. “Variety is the spice of life.” Using a wide range of learning goals, language goals, skills, strategies, tasks, games, activities, and topics.

• 10. Empowering language learners to develop meta-cognitive learning skills (or ‘learner autonomy), and EFL language learning skills.

CLT – Communicative Language Teaching, and interactive style.

NOTE: There was a diagram on my handout that I cannot copy paste into blogger.

Post-Method: 10 Macrostrategies?

• “What is needed, Kumaravadivelu suggests, is not alternative methods, but ‘an alternative to method’ (2006: 67). Instead of one method, he suggests ten ‘macrostrategies, such as “maximise learning opportunities, facilitate negotiation, foster language awareness, promote learner autonomy” etc.’ (Kumaravadivelu 2001, 2006)”

From, The Practice of English Language Teaching, Fourth Edition. Jeremy Harmer

Post-Method is my ‘one’ method . . .

• “We need to be able to say, as Kumaravadivelu attempted, what is important in methodological terms, especially if we concede one method alone may not be right in many situations” (page 78, my emphasis, Harmer).

• “We have to be able to extract key components of the various methods we have been describing” (page 78, my emphasis, Harmer).

“Must Have Books” For EFL/ESL University Instructors

Well, I finally got around to resolving that issue, and I’ve got several new blog posts up.

Check out “Chinese Remote Control Baby” and several others.

Hope you like’em.

J

Anyways, here’s an excerpt from a blog about our first trip to a hospital.

Click on the link below to read the rest of the story–if you dare.

J

A few days ago Julianne and I were on our way home from picking up groceries at a department store called “Metro.”  It’s similar to COSTCO and carries a lot of foreign foods and other things that we can’t get at the other department stores in Changsha.

While getting into a taxi to head home Julianne’s foot slipped on the floor mat and went flying at high speed under the driver’s seat to collide with something metal and unrelenting–she let out a cry and immediately began sobbing.  Needless to say I was freaked out and tried to calm her down thinking that she just pinched her foot or toe or something minor . . .

It was NOT a minor injury.

PROVISO: If you are at all squeamish you should probably stop reading now.

Since it was impossible for either of us to see her foot, and in particular her big toe, because of the bags piled on our laps Julianne said she’d just wait the 3 minute drive till we got  home to look at the injury closer.  She told me she thought her big toe nail had been bent back, but she couldn’t tell how bad her injury was at the time.

Outside the taxi we looked down at her big toe to see a huge white crease running diagonally down her toe nail.  The toe was already swollen to twice its original size, and blood was oozing out the running edge of the nail.  We couldn’t tell if whatever had done a Godzilla on her toe had pierced the flesh underneath or if it had ‘just’ done a number on the nail . . .

Julianne hobbled up the four flights of stairs (no elevator in our apartment building, sigh) and after I got her sitting down I grabbed a lamp and we gave it a closer inspection.  Julianne had been saying she would just clean it up in our apartment and let it heal itself without a trip to the hospital, but after each of us took a closer look at it, and I pointed out we had no clue what had stuck her or how severely, we decided it was “first trip to a hospital in China time.”

I picked up my cell phone and called our university liaison.  I explained that we needed help to get Julianne to the hospital, and help transalting with a doctor.  Her reply was, “I have to go to a meeting.”

Now this probably where my blood pressure rose severely, and I began chanting to myself “don’t start yelling, don’t start yelling, be nice, be nice, be polite, be polite” .  . .

I tried explaining what had happened, and that the injury was such that it shouldn’t wait several hours until it was convenient for her schedule . . . and got the “I have a meeting in an hour” reply again.

Alright, when my lover is in agony, needs medical care, and might have an injury with infection setting in in a place out of sight . . . well, that’s where my cross-cultural diplomacy goes out the f’ng window.

I reply, “Okay. I’ll call ‘high ranking person X’ and ask him to help us.”

Suddenly everything is copacetic (don’t get to use that word every day) and Miss I-have-a-meeting transforms into Miss I’ll-be-there-in-two-minutes.  I hang up after telling her to let me know when she’s arrived with someone to drive us to the hospital.

One minute later, I’m not exaggerating, I get a call saying they’re waiting for us outside the apartment compound.  Julianne hobbles down the four fligths of stairs, and out of the compound to the car.  It’s then I find out we’re going to the campus military hospital.  It never occurred to me to be alarmed because in my mind I was doing the newbie-in-a-foreign-culture-thing and I assumed a military hospital would be similar to ones in Canada . . . yeah.

We drive about 200 meters to the clinic (hospital implies a large building in my mind, and this was not a large building).  Arriving at the driveway we have to circle around a portion of concrete that is falling to bits and cannot support the car’s weight . . . this should have been my first warning of what was to come.

Walking inside there are no lights, and no people.  My heart sinks and it’s then that I realize how all pervasive siesta time is in Changsha.  From lunch time till about 3pm everyone is napping or taking a rest from work–and this includes doctors and nurses.

Our liaison walks around knocking on doors and calling out for someone . . . and after a minute or two a doctor comes out of room dressed in a collared shirt and cotton pants with bare feet in sandles . . . nice.  He pulls on his white doctor’s coat (good thing, cause later on I would have been asking if he actually had a medical liscence based on how often I had to ask for him to do certain things) and we get Julianne into an ‘examination room’ . . .

Inside the room the doctor pulls out a package of q-tips and asks Julianne to sit down on a bed.  I look at him and wonder when he’s going to wash his hands . . . but after searching the room for a sink and soap the one I see in the corner makes me cringe like it’s crawling with vipers–it was filthy, and the bar of soap looked like a biohazard.

I wait one more minute, and then ask him if he’s going to put gloves on.  I think he understood some English because that’s when he reaches into a cupboard and pulls out a package of gloves.  By this point a nurse has arrived, and the room is getting crowded.  The doctor, nurse, liaison, and Julianne and I . . .

This is when Julianne and I begin asking questions.

1. What does he want to do?
2. Does he want to cut off the toe nail?
3. How will he do that?

4. Will he use sterile instruments?

The first three questions get translated and answered pretty easily.  The doctor wants to cut off the nail to see if there are any open wounds or punctures underneath it.

But ‘sterile’ was a word our liaison didn’t know and we had to try and explain it . . . and even after I tried several different ways of explaining and defining the term she didn’t have that glint of “I get it” in her eye.  Julianne and I give up temporarily and gesture for the doctor to get on with it.  Both of us watching like hawks to see what he will do, and where the instruments will come from.

The nurse reaches into a steel and glass cabinet that looks circa 1920′s and pulls out a stainless steel tray with a lid.  Inside it are surgical scissors and other tools . . . all of which are HUGE in dimensions.  I’m sure my eyes must have bugged out as much as Julianne’s were at that point because the doctor picks up scissors that looked like the kind you’d use to open up someone’s chest–not delicately cut off pieces of toe nail!

Julianne then asks “Do you not have anything SMALLER?” . .  . . .

Click on the link to read the rest of the story.

First hospital trip in Changsha, Hunan, China — “You wanna do WHAT with that?! Uh-UH! We’re outa here!”

I’ve been having issues with trying to figure out how to continue blogging in the style that I enjoy.  I usually write my stories with pictures sprinkled liberally throughout the text.  But I’ve been unable to do that here because of the upload speed, servers disconnecting and reconnecting in the middle of uploading pictures (just one picture seems to be impossible), and some other issues.  I’ve been trying to figure a solution so that I can keep blogging in the way I enjoy . . .

But it’s not working.  Time to reinvent my blog style.

I think what I’m going to have to do is write my stories here, and upload my pictures to my flickr account.  I’ll try to write short comments, and in some cases short stories, under pictures that warrant them.  I think if readers of my blog finish a post and then go to flickr to look at the pictures that that will work for now.

Anyways . . . here’s a post I’ve been sitting on for a while.

First day of teaching Advanced Listening ESL/EFL to sophomore university students in China . . . wow, these guys are GOOD!

Enjoy,

J

Oh, and one last thing.  The title of my blog is “Serenity in China”–and that’s what I’m looking for.  The little troll that’s been posting comments lately, on my old blog and new, can go elsewhere and prove that he’s right, and I’m wrong, somewhere else.

Disagreeing with me is one thing–but it’s how one goes about it that determines whether or not it stays on the comments section, and if I reply or not.

Until I figure out how to speed up the uploading of a single picture from taking five minutes or more I’ll just be writing stories about the stuff going on as Julianne and I experience things in China.

I can upload some things to my flickr page but even that is slow too.  There are some pictures there of new foods we’ve tried, but not much else yet.

Anyways, I hope everyone enjoys the new blog.

J