One thing I encounter with greater and greater frequency is the ever-growing technology gap between teachers and students. Our learners tend to be digital natives, that is, they feel quite at home already in the digital and online world of communication. Teachers, on the other hand, are often (at best) digital immigrants.

I am working on something larger, perhaps a piece of writing with this aim, but I want to share with you some of my ideas on how teachers can themselves become digital natives. here is a list I compiled:

1. Buy your own web space
2. Start and keep more than one blog
a. include photos and videos
3. Create profiles on facebook and Twitter
4. Start your own wiki
5. Create a home page for RSS feeds which interest you
a. www.makeuseof.com
b. www.lifehacker.com
6. Download and install Skype
7. Experiment with CMS
8. Subscribe to podcasts and start your own
9. use Prezi instead of PowerPoint
10. Require students to contact you electronically
11. Familiarize yourself with various file formats and conversion tools
12. Make videos and post them to YouTube
a. start small with screenr.com

At a recent workshop I conducted at the American Corner here in St. Petersburg, I talked with a group of teachers about tides of change and innovation in education, specifically in Russia. I shared an experience of my own: ten years ago, when I was in graduate school at the American University in Washington, DC, Communicative Language Teacing (CLT) was still all the rage. We were taught to hep students learn English by providing them with a series of examples from real-world communicative situations such as asking for directions, ordering a pizza, etc., and ask them to practice and create their own similar dialogs and/or texts.

In recent years, however, CLT has been gradually replaced by Task-based Instruction (TBI), in which students are given problems to solve and/or projects to complete during which they are expected to develop real-world skills of conversation and text-creation independently. This is a very brief explanation, but you get the point.

In essence, what I told my participants was that all this hullabaloo about CLT was basically out of style and considered ineffective. I was, fortunately, able to change my approach, do some reading and experimenting in the classroom and have thus bought into TBI in recent years.

My point is that change is inevitable. Without it, our profession stagnates. So, I asked my participants to share with me some of the most drastic changes in education in Russia in last 20 years or so, I expected to hear mostly stories of upheaval related to the dissolution of the USSR, but instead got an earful of disdain for the new Unified Government Exam, a new single college entrance exam which now must be taken by every Russian student who wants to attend a university.

This new exam, in a traditional top-down fashion, has altered the very way English is taught in the classroom. Teachers have told me that they tend to go in one of two directions (you can guess which one is more common): 1) They can teach their students English as best they can and assume that their proficiency will serve them well on the exam or 2) they can teach to the test.

In addition to change from the outside (like the new exam), we talked about change from within and the usefulness of having dynamic schools in which teachers work together to decide on the direction they will take when faced with possibilities for innovation and change. As such as participants liked this idea, they admitted mostly that it is not very common. Teachers generally do not feel like they have enough power over the cirriculum in the school to effect much change on the local level.

But we also talked about the usefulness of joining a teachers’ association such as the St. Petersburg English Language Teachers’ Association, if only as a measure towards lessening the feeling of utter isolation that many teachers in this city experience. It is all to easy to feel like one is teaching on an island in their classroom, but if we are members of an association and are encouraged to share ideas and stand on each other’s shoulders, than our profession is improved and we are reminded of the reasons why we became teachers in the first place: to help others.

Finally, we worked together to write a list of ways that we can either 1) better cope with change in education and 2) effect the kind of change that we feel is beneficial to our profession. Here are some of the best answers:

1. More public teacher-training workshops in the city

2. More frequent continuing education opportunities within the schools.

3. Greater acceptance and encouragement of ideas from new teachers.

4. Joining a teachers’ association.

5. Familiarizing one’s self with the needs of L2 speakers of English in the modern world.

6. More travel opportunities for teachers.

7. More academic partnerships between Russian and foreign universities.

8. Frequent workshops on using technology in the classroom.

9. Better equipment in the classroom (basic and new technology).

10. Better access to online research databases for learners.

Download this text as an MS Word document

The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching

What is an approach?

Your approach as a language teacher is a set of principles about learning and teaching on which you depend to form the way you operate as a teacher. It is not a permanent state, indeed, the good teacher knows that there is no perfect set of principles and that one’s approach can change drastically over the course of a career.

Do you already have your own approach? To find out, consider these options, using your own assumptions about teaching:

1. Language classes should focus on:

a)    meaning

b)    grammar

1. Students learn best by using plenty of:

a)    analysis

b)    intuition

1. It is better for a student to:

a)    think directly in the L2

b)    use translation from the L1

1. Language learners need:

a)    immediate rewards

b)    long-term awards

1. With new language learners, teachers need to be:

a)    tough and demanding

b)    gentle and empathetic

1. A teacher’s feedback to the student should be given:

a)    frequently

b)    infrequently (to develop student autonomy)

1. A communicative class should give special attention to:

a)    accuracy

b)    fluency

Your choices above constitute an approach. Can you say that you have always felt this way about these options?

The communicative approach

Language teaching is hundreds of years old, and the communicative approach is a very recent phenomenon. In fact, the communicative approach did not emerge as the most widely accepted form of language instruction until the late 1980s and early 1990s.

So, what is the Communicative Approach? Here are a set of defining characteristics:

1. Classroom goals combine the organizational aspects of language with the pragmatic.
2. Classroom techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic, authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purposes. Teaching grammar enables only the learner to accomplish those purposes.
3. Fluency and accuracy work together and are seen as equal in value.
4. Students are expected to have to use the language fully in unrehearsed situations outside the classroom.
5. Students are encouraged to explore and exploit their own learning styles.
6. The teacher is a guide, not a sage.

Question: Do you think some of these principles make it more difficult for the teacher who is not a native speaker? Why or why not?

Activity

How is this approach different from the more “traditional” approaches used in Turkmenistan? Work with a partner to draw up a list of differences between them. Think about the way you were taught English and the way you teach English now.

Things to keep in mind before adopting this approach as your own

1. Beware of claiming to love the approach without actually examining your methods to make sure they fit. It is of supreme importance to make your classroom techniques are in harmony with your intellectual principles.
2. Avoid overdoing it by excising completely from your lessons any helpful inauthentic tasks such as drills and grammar exercises. These can be worthwhile, especially for adult learners who come to our classes with pre-established academic learning skills.
3. Remember that it is a big term. Most people who claim to believe in it have very different approaches than one another. There are many different ways to interpret the approach.

A summary of different aspects of the communicative approach:

1. Learner-centered instruction: As opposed to teacher centered, it assumes the student is the most importance person in the class. Thus it assumes:

a)    learner needs, styles and goals must be considered

b)    students need some control over the lesson (group- or pair-work)

c)    course design is not pre-set, but takes the learners into consideration

Question: How do you feel about giving your students so much power in the classroom?

1. Cooperative and collaborative learning: This is opposed to a competitive classroom, where students work against each other to achieve a goal.

a)    To cooperate, students work together to share their ideas and experiences in order to further each other’s and their own language skills

b)    With collaboration, students work with a more capable assistant (the teacher, for example) to achieve a goal.

Question: How are cooperative and collaborative learning used differently in the classroom? Can you think of specific examples of each?

1. Interactive learning: Because communication is interactive, so then must be language instruction. This means that we both listen and speak when we communicate, and that both affect each other. Thus, we should prepare our students to be able to engage in negotiation of meaning with another person in a series of gives and takes in the real world. In interactive lessons:

a)    There is a good deal of pair- and group-work

b)    Language input is in a real-world context

c)    Language production is intended to have genuine meaning

d)    Classroom tasks are intended to prepare the student for communication in the real world

e)    Activities encourage spontaneous give-and-take situations

f)    Writing is designed for a specific audience

Question: What do you think will happen in a classroom that is not used to interactive learning when their teacher decides to use an interactive approach? After one day? After one week? After one year?

1. Whole language education: An overused term, this basically assumes that language instruction should focus on all aspects of language use in the real word, from reading and writing to listening and speaking, with a unifying theme that language is social. Important to remember about this is:

a)    Research has shown that learners acquire sentences, intonation patterns and emotions in a language before they learn the individual parts. Thus, a language cannot be the sum of its individual parts. Teachers must approach it from the top down, not only from the bottom up.

b)    Because we use language to construct meaning and to define reality, language as a whole is a tool to help people to understand the society in which they live. With this, they have more power over their place in society and can better control their destiny.

Question: Which came first in human history, meaning or language? Can one exist without the other? If so, which one?

1. Content-based instruction: This is the study of content at the same time as the study of language. For example, students can learn about a topic that is important to them while they develop their language skills. This is beneficial because:

a)    It allows the students intrinsic motivation to learn something meaningful in the L2.

b)    It removes the traditional wall that has been built between the learning of a language and the learning of useful information.

c)    Students can look beyond grades and tests and focus their language learning on the acquisition of knowledge.

Question: Can you provide examples of content-based instruction that you can apply in your own classroom? How would we go about choosing content for our students?

1. Task-based instruction: This is a method of instruction that provides for students to problem-solve, write and perform role-plays or come to an agreed conclusion alone, in groups or pairs with the goal always being meaningful communication. They are:

a)    based on real-world problems and issues

b)    contribute to overall communicative goals

c)    designed to meet specific pre-set goals by the teacher

Question: Can you think of a communicative task that is used in a reading or writing lesson? Another way or describing task is as an activity with a meaningful problem to solve or an important question to answer.

**Many of the activities and definitions from this week’s workshop came from or were inspired by sections of the following texts:

Brown, H.D. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. White Plains, NY: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.

Attached below is a sample lesson plan I designed for teaching the present perfect tense. Of note is that the lesson focuses on a particular communicative task, not the target structure specifically. it is very important to provide students with a real communicative purpose for the structures they learn so that they will know when and how to apply the lessons of the classroom in the real world.

It is also very important that classroom activities closely mirror contextualized language that is both useful and interesting to the students.

This lesson is comprised of dialogs and a variety of activities that will help students to discover, practice and use the target structure within real communicative context.

Download Materials

Below is a copy of the lesson plan cover page, included in the materials:

Grammar Lesson Plan: The Present Perfect Tense

Text Source: Three teacher-prepared conversation dialogs

1)      Class Demographics

• Topic: The Present Perfect Tense as used in two sample conversation dialogs to talk about things they have done already and haven’t done yet.
• Primary skills: listening, reading, writing
• Age Range of Students: Any literate adult over 18
• Type of Institution: Prepared with a private language school in mind
• Number of Students: 4-18
• Proficiency Level: low intermediate
• Length of Class: about two hours
• First Language Background: usually varied, but more likely Spanish

2)      Objectives

A. Language Skills

• Terminal Objectives: to use the Present Perfect Tense orally in a simulated and informal discussion role play dialog with a classmate to report and inquire about activities they have or have not done following the presented dialog format
• Enabling Objectives

1. Language Presentation

1. Demonstrate comprehension of three dialogs by forming hypotheses about who/what/where from them
   1. Read as they listen to dialogs, focusing on intonation aspects
   2. Demonstrate knowledge of the dialogs by responding to more detailed comprehension and vocabulary questions
      1. Practice dialogs with partners

2. Highlighting

1. Answer questions related to the target structure
2. Underline Present Perfect forms in the dialogs
3. Transfer Present Perfect forms from the sentences in the dialogs to a visual grid
4. Students formulate the rule for the construction of Present Perfect Tense
5. Students formulate the rule for when the structure is needed and its usefulness in a specific context (telling people about tasks/assignments/duties you have done already or have not done yet)

3. Controlled Activity

1. Complete dialogs by using Present Perfect and selecting from two alternatives
2. Practice dialogs orally

4. Semi-Controlled Activity

1. complete dialogs with Present Perfect Tense forms by selecting from a variety of possible activities
2. practice dialogs orally

5. Communicative Activity

1. generate a list of activities
2. terminal objective activity

B. Learning Strategies

• Cognitive

1. Gathering general information quickly by listening to a dialog
2. Deduce the meaning of the Present Perfect Tense by context

• Compensation

1. Use context to deduce dialog meanings and the usage of Present Perfect Tense
2. Communicate in small groups and in the class as a whole as a means to overcome limitations and gather meaning from a dialog

• Metacognitive

1. Use tactics that help to independently discover the Present Perfect Tense in a dialog.
2. Practice the use of intonation and context to piece together meaning from a dialog that contains new grammatical structures.
3. Using class discussion to evaluate personal inferences made in each activity

• Socio-Affective

1. Working with others in groups of varying sizes
2. Asking questions related to the material
3. Use of creativity to process information and lower anxiety

C. Learning Styles

• Visual

1. Students use photos, worksheets, an overhead projector and writing on the blackboard/whiteboard to help them understand two dialogs
2. Students listen to two dialog recordings
3. Students listen to their classmates practice several dialogs
4. Students listen to instructions from the teacher
5. Students complete worksheets
6. Students engage in small group work
7. Teacher encourages students to ask questions in case of confusion (related to receiving directions)
8. Students listen to dialogs by themselves
9. Students fill out worksheets by themselves
10. Students are encouraged to speak casually within their groups
11. Students are encouraged to reproduce the casual speech in their dialogs
12. Students discover grammar items in dialogs and infer from them its rule
13. Students are given individual listening/reading/worksheet tasks
14. Students are encouraged to come up with their own dialogs with varying levels of selective freedom
15. Students understand the dialogs through semi-controlled and free activities
16. Students work in groups
17. Students listen to dialogs about things people have done already or have not done yet

• Auditory

• Tactile

• Participatory

• Independent Learning

• Informal Communication

• Field Independent

• Field Dependent

• Topic-Centered

3)      Relevant Structural/Organizational Patterns

• Organization of a casual conversation. For example: I have already gone to the library and I haven’t cleaned the bathroom yet.

4)      Relevant Vocabulary Items (Past Participle verb forms)

studied

taken out

gone

found

started

eaten

loaded

mopped

finished

dusted

taken

5)  Materials

• All lesson plan worksheets
• Overhead transparencies of dialogs and highlighting grid
• An overhead projector marker
• Cassettes of the two dialogs
• One cassette player
• Chalk and blackboard
• Extra pens and pencils for students

I just got back from my first real trip outside of St. Petersburg: The annual National Association of English Teachers Umbrella conference in Kalinigrad, a unique city that is geographically separated from the rest of Russia between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea.

Ann odd photo taken by a stranger, but the only one with me in it

I flew there on Sunday, just after presenting at the Saint Petersburg English Language Teachers Association (SPELTA) on Saturday and Sunday. Before that, I had had one of my busiest weeks yet since arriving last September. So, needless to say, I am happy to be home now and getting some relaxation.

These past few days have been very important for me. I feel like I have definitely grown as a teacher. Before last week, I had never given a plenary presentation at a conference. Now, I have given two. It had also been over two years since I presented at my last conference. Now I have four workshops under my belt just in the last several days.

I also met another teacher who gave me some invaluable advice. Her name is Gail Weinstein, and she was the visiting English Language Specialist from San Francisco State University. She looked over my plenary with me and told me that it had some really great, useful information and that it was well-organized and -presented. But she also showed me how I could make it even better and possibly connect it with a workshop that gives teachers hands-on experience actually using the concepts I discuss. It was great to talk with her, not just to get ideas, but also to find out that I am on the right track. It was a real confidence boost.

The teachers at my workshops were great. I find it so easy to help teachers relax and enjoy themselves during my workshops. My plenary was about giving written corrective feedback on writing assignments (check my website for more info), but my workshops were a bit more fun, since they focused on teaching (or not teaching) culture in the language classroom (more info on them is also available on the website). All in all, it was a very successful trip.

In addition, I got to practice my Russian a bit and I also went on several tours around the city. It is an interesting place with a few German buildings still standing. It definitely has a different feel than St. Petersburg and Moscow. I also made a trip to the Baltic, where I stood on the pier and smelled the fresh salt air. I also bought some great gifts for Jennifer and Jacob. Kaliningrad is famous for its amber, so I got Jacob a piece of amber with two prehistoric dead mosquitoes inside (cool!). Jennifer’s will remain a secret, since it is a Christmas present and I don’t want her to read about it here.

The Baltic coast at night

I returned to St. Petersburg with renewed confidence and more than a few new ideas for my own workshops. I must say that I really look forward to my next trip in December (Yaroslavl, Shuya and Ivanovo), which I probably couldn’t have said two weeks ago.

This week in my two intercultural communication classes at my university, I taught students about prosody, or intonation and timing, in spoken discourse. I have found that many of the skills of intonation and timing are similar between Russians and Americans, with only a few exceptions. This would make adjustment for non-native speakers not as difficult as it might be, for example, for someone from India or Bangladesh who is learning Russian or English. So this is good.

Still, this is something all teachers of English need to be aware of, since it is a very important, but not-so-salient, part of the way we communicate. We use pauses in different ways to show that we are think (cognitive), to show that we want someone else to speak (interactive) and to show that we want brief feedback from our listener(s) (backchannel). In our native languages, we can identify these without even thinking. Indeed, we often are completely unaware that we even have this skill.

In addition, there are several ways for listeners to show that they are interested in the what the speaker has to say, and they are all culture-specific. For example, many westerners would say that maintaining eye contact is very important for showing interest. But this is not true for everyone. In fact, eye contact can be seen by some as a sign of rudeness.

I taught two classes on this same topic this past Monday. For the first, there were fewer students. I had prepared several situations in which students were asked to act out a hypothetical conversation and act in a certain way. For example, one student was given a sheet of paper that asked him to describe something that happened to him that day. They other student was given instructions on how to respond and show interest. The students did not know what was written on each other’s papers. I thought that the activity went OK, but it did not elicit much natural speech, and students tended not to talk very much at all.

So, for the next group, I changed the lesson a bit. Instead of asking students to speak in created dialogs, I asked them to create a new culture with totally new ways to show pauses and also new ways to show your listener that you are interested. This went much better, since the students, in their groups, used more English as they prepared their ideas, and also enjoyed demonstrating their new forms.

In addition to getting students to practice their English, this lesson also exposed students to the concept of pauses and timing with the hope that they will pay closer attention to the ways in which they themselves use such skills of discourse to communicate with others. Since these are all future teachers, such awareness will be invaluable to them.

Download materials here.

For one hour during a technical training session for a group of 26 Peace Corps trainees, the ELF discussed practical approaches to designing an English language course at a secondary school in Turkmenistan. Because of his own experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in the region (Uzbekistan) and his understanding of the severe constraints that the average volunteer’s lack of experience and training places on the success of such an endeavor, the discussion focused on a simple step-by-step approach to course design for the average Central Asian classroom. Despite the approach’s foundation in established and proven methodology, its design pre-supposes that the average volunteer is less likely to put into practice a plan that gives the impression of being too complicated or “academic,” but that volunteers (in general) are also granted enormous freedom at their schools to conduct classes as they best see fit. As a result, the plan is simplified and reasonably free of academic rationalization, but also takes advantage of the volunteer’s relative autonomy.

First, the ELF laid out a plan for a detailed (but informal) needs analysis during which the volunteer observes classes, talks with teachers and students and examines course materials, all to be done with the help and guidance of his counterpart. This analysis concludes with the compiling of a list of useful communicative situations and grammatical structures to be taught to his students over the next 2½ months (the average length of one academic term in Turkmenistan).

Next, the trainees were instructed how to organize these situations/structures on a calendar in a way that both allows enough time for each to be taught and practiced and which also provides flexibility for adjustment to unexpected or difficult-to-plan-for issues such as truancy, poor motivation and institutional/professional constraints. For example, the communicative situation “asking for permission to use the restroom (MAY + SUBJECT + VERB + COMPLEMENT)” might be planned for a three-hour lesson. Because the average class week in Turkmenistan is 45 minutes per day for six days, the trainees were encouraged to allot six or seven days for a lesson such as this so as to allow breathing room for on-the-go adjustment. But they were also reminded that they will know their students and their schools best, and that they should be trusted to make such decisions on their own.

Finally, the ELF encouraged the trainees to both informally monitor the progress of their students during the term and provide formal assessment at regular intervals throughout. Again, the approach is simplified, and the trainees were told to monitor their students by simply paying close attention to their reactions to the lessons. The volunteer can ask himself: Are my students enjoying themselves in class? Are the lessons moving at a reasonable rate? Do the students appear to be acquiring what they have been taught? If problems arise, the volunteer can easily make changes to his course plan during the semester with regard to speed, sequencing or lesson planning. As for formal assessment, the ELF was aware that teachers in Turkmenistan are often allowed (or required) to write their own tests, which again offers the volunteer a great deal of freedom, this time to create his own authentic forms of assessments. Little time was available to discuss formal assessment during this discussion, but the ELF encouraged the trainees to create assessments that closely mirrored communicative uses of the target structures/situations and to use personal judgment and the advice of their counterparts and other volunteers to make final determinations. Assessment results should be used to help write the course plan for the next term.

At the end of the session, the ELF gave to each trainee a set of detailed instructions for course design along with a sample schedule and lesson plan. The handouts contained the ELF’s contact information in case any of the trainees had questions or concerns about what had been discussed.

Most importantly, however, the trainees were reminded that they are not expected to perform teaching miracles. Problems will arise. Mistakes will be made. They will more often feel overwhelmed by their situation than in control of it. The ELF encouraged them to take advantage of the experience of their counterparts, their fellow volunteers and also the Peace Corps office and the ELF himself in Ashgabat as they planned and implemented their course design.

Download materials here.

Every Monday for six weeks, English Language Fellow John Mark King hosted a 90-minute workshop for English teachers on teaching effective reading strategies to non-native speakers of English.

The workshop first introduced participants to the nature of reading and the importance of helping their students to develop their own effective reading strategies in English. In subsequent weeks, the workshop focused on ways to teach several pre- during- and post-reading strategies including: 1) activating background knowledge, 2) making and confirming predictions about a text, 3) making inferential judgments about a text and 4) evaluating the motives of the author and the overall value of a text.

In addition, teachers were shown ways to encourage student-driven vocabulary development strategies that can be used at all stages of the reading process.

The workshop also introduced teachers to many forms of alternative reading assessment such as portfolios, peer assessment and self assessment as well as reviewing the many types of traditional assessment such as multiple-choice and cloze tests and their place in the reading classroom.

When the teachers’ workshop finished, the ELF compiled in electronic format all of the materials developed and used in each lesson and has made them available to all interested teachers. The materials include outlines of each workshop, ready-made worksheets for students, sample student assessment sheets and several relevant English Teaching Forum articles. Hard copies of the workshop materials will also be published and made available for sale at cost at the POET office.

Download workshop materials here.

Every Monday and Friday for six weeks, English Language Fellow John Mark King hosted a two hour workshop for English teachers on teaching process writing and the American-style academic essay. To meet the schedule demands of busy teachers, the same workshop was held both days each week.

The workshop focused on the following process writing skills for students: 1) generating ideas, 2) analyzing sample essays, 3) outlining, 4) writing a first draft, 5) reviewing a peer’s first draft, 6) writing a second draft, 7) using teacher comments to write a final draft, 8) conducting research and using outside sources and 9) curriculum design. In addition, teachers were exposed to new theories of error-correction, proper feedback and relevancy of assignments as a way to further develop their students’ skills and interest in writing.

Concurrently with the workshop, the ELF also taught a six week Academic Writing course to 15 students at the Ashgabat office of American Councils. The students were screened before the course with an in-class timed essay and a short interview to determine that they had all of the following: 1) an interest in and need for learning the American style academic essay, 2) very good listening comprehension skills and 3) decent sentence-level writing fluency. Participants in the teachers’ workshop were encouraged to observe and contribute to the writing course, where the ELF employed the same skills taught to the teachers in the workshop. At least four teachers observed the course, but none felt comfortable contributing themselves.

When the teachers’ workshop finished, the ELF compiled in electronic format all of the materials developed and used in each lesson and has made them available to all interested teachers. The materials include outlines of each workshop, ready-made worksheets for students and several relevant English Teaching Forum articles. Hard copies of the workshop materials will also be published and made available for sale at cost at the POET office.

Some participants have employed many of the skills taught in the workshop in their own lessons, but as of November, 2006, it is too soon to tell if a lasting impact has been made. Because of heavy workload and fear of association with an American-supported institution such as POET, full-time teachers rarely attended the workshops. Most of the teachers who did attend were either student teachers or private tutors. Plus, attendance fluctuated from week to week and only a few teachers attended every workshop, despite the twice-a-week availability. However, the ELF’s current 5-week workshop on Teaching Reading is averaging almost three times as many participants as Teaching Writing did.