Tales from the Desh

This is the first time I’ve written an entry in my teaching diary in a very long time. To be exact, the last time I wrote an entry in my teacher’s diary was in September of 2009, just over a year ago. I recall that when I did this, I found the reflective process to be much easier. However, last year I decided I was simply too busy to keep it up. I’m writing this today using speech recognition software with the hopes that it will encourage me to begin keeping my diary again.

For several weeks now I’ve been using the Internet as an integral part of my instruction, particularly at Herzen. Because I’m with my students only once a week, and then for only 90 minutes, I decided early on that having an online component to my course would greatly improve the quality of instruction. This is certainly been the case. Because I own my own web space, I find it very easy to download and install the free course content management system called moodle. It is an open source application that can be added to a website and then accessed by different users. It is specifically designed for a learning environment either hybrid or completely online and I have found it to be extremely useful but in assigning homework to students keeping grades and encouraging students to participate more.

This is how I’d do it. On my site, there are several courses, three of which are my Herzen classes. My students are enrolled in their course on my site and have their own login information. The click on the site, enter their password and in gain access to all the content in their course. On the website, the course is divided into weeks, one for each class meeting. There, they can see this week’s assignment and last week’s assignment. After two weeks, an assignment disappears. This means that students have exactly two weeks to complete an assignment, one to complete it on time and a second to turn it in late. Because of this, I get many fewer requests for late homework, because my policy is very clear, not only in what I tell them, but also in how the assignments appear on the web site. But

For each week, I include a set of instructions and the steps which students have to complete. The work may include reading a web site or a document, downloading an assignment sheet, writing a blob post on the site, submitting an essay or participating in a forum. All assignments or submitted online and all assignments are completed on line. Not only does this make it easier for the student to submit assignments, also makes it easier for me to grade them.

I have found that many students adapt very easily to this kind of learning environment. Because so many of the youth in Russia are already very connected their cell phones and computers with very easy access to the Internet, the fact that they have never participated in an online course before does not hinder them. In fact, I have found that they’d take to it right away and quite enjoy spending time on the site. As site administrator I can watch their activity and many students visit the site on a daily basis. This reminds me of something I read which stated that many language learners already have skills for communicating digitally, primarily in writing. Why not try to encourage them to transfer the skills and direct and toward their English learning? This is logical and has certainly played out in my experience.

I conducted a brief interview with three of the students recently and recorded it to video. I used this video at a recent conference to show other teachers how my students feel about using a web site to enhance and complement their learning. In the video, the three students agree in that having such a web site does mean more work for them, because it is like we meet once a week in class but every day on line, however they don’t notice the extra work and treat it as fun. I liked hearing this very much. And I got a very positive reaction from the teachers at the conference.

One thing that surprised me was how interested the students are in keeping track of their grades. At first, I had decided not to include grades on the web site simply because I was new to the system and did not want to overload myself. I’m glad I changed my mind. I have found that this is the most popular section of the web site and is visited most frequently by students. Here, they can see their participation grade and their attendance a long way of their homework grades and the greats they receive for their major assignments. Not only this, moodle automatically averages all the greats so that students can see what their final grade would be if the course were to end today. Discreetly adds to the overall transparency of the course and keeps students involved in keeping track of their grades and planning future assignments.

Probably the most unexpected part abusing moodle, however, is the amount of work it takes to maintain the site. A colleague of mine told me last summer that online teaching can often double the amount of work for the teacher. I see what she meant. Last year, when I saw and communicated with my students primarily at the university, but I found it much easier to ignore my responsibilities in that class at least when I had other things to do. Now, however, it is as if I am always available and students can get in touch with me at any point and can submit assignments or complete tasks at any point. And the call is all of this is online it is very easy for me to spend extra time checking their progress and responding to their work. So it is a double edged sword in that students enjoy it more and work harder, but it also means much more work for me. So far, it has been worth it because I actually enjoy the work. I can see how it can become too much though, and I may have to put the limits on the amount of time and energy I devote to the web site.

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Download abstract PDF here.

Download PowerPoint presentation PDF here.

Format: Workshop
Time: 90 minutes
Title: “Reflective Teaching: Strategies for Self-Improvement and Adaptation”
Target Students: Beginner to advanced, any age group

This is a co-presentation with SPELTA member Alexandra Antipova.

What is a reflective teacher? Generally speaking, a reflective teacher is an educator who is in a continual process of learning, experimenting and adjustment. The reflective teacher devotes time and energy to a variety of activities whose purpose is perpetual self-improvement as an educator and language learning professional. In this workshop, participants will work towards a definition of reflective teaching and explore several strategies and activities which foster it. Such approaches which we will explore include observation, journaling, peer discussions and student feedback.

Then, teachers will begin to analyze and develop their own reflective teaching practices, with the focus being on the understanding that each teacher and each learning environment is unique and that such differences constrain the reflection process. This can also help the educator to develop a set of coping and adaptation strategies which will make the teaching/learning process more enjoyable and effective for all involved.

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This is a little video I prepared for my students, but it is relevant to anyone interested in structuring academic paragraphs.

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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.

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Watch the presentation here:

Download PowerPoint here.

Download handout here.

What is the statement of purpose?

College applications are generally very dry and impersonal representations of a person’s scholastic achievements and abilities. The personal statement is designed to breathe life into an otherwise lifeless and unoriginal college application.

Basically, the statement of purpose is a way for you to put a face on your application, give it personality and allow the admissions officials to better judge your application as a whole based on what kind of person you are, not just what kind of student you are.

How important is it?

College admissions departments typically say that it is extremely rare for a statement of purpose to be the sole reason an applicant is either admitted or denied admittance to their institution. Some estimates claim that fewer than five percent of all statements of purpose play a major role in the final admittance decision.

However, that does not mean the document is unimportant. Rather, a good statement of purpose can add to and enhance an already good application. Likewise, it can make an otherwise unremarkable application a bit more enticing. Poorly done, a statement of purpose can also make a decent application look not so good. It is important to think of this step as only part of the whole. Don’t stress too much about it. But don’t be cavalier about it, either.

What do colleges look for in a statement of purpose?

Most large universities receive thousands of applications every year. And each of these contains a statement of purpose. So think about it, yours will be only one of these thousands upon thousands of statements they will have to read. If you were one of these readers, what would you look for? My guess would be that you want one that is honest, original, concise, interesting and revealing. You want it to be different. You want it to make you laugh (or at least smile). You want it to make you think. You want it to accurately describe the applicant. We are all unique. So should our writing be.

This may be surprising, but most colleges do not look for statements of purpose that list achievement after achievement and show off how smart or academically accomplished the applicant is. This may not be logical. But think about the other applicants. That is what they will be writing about, how their test scores were so high, their teachers loved them so much, their classmates looked up to them as models of achievement. Yours should stand out from these. Do not be afraid to discuss your weaknesses or your shortcomings. Do not be afraid to talk about times you have failed or made mistakes. You are not perfect. If you were, you would not need to go to college. Be honest. You are human. Let your statement of purpose reveal that.

So how do I write it?

My best piece of advice is this: Write a story about yourself. Do not worry about the structure of academic writing. There are no such rules for this kind of text. Try to think of a time in your life that revealed your true personality. Perhaps it was a difficult time with your family, or a problem with a friend. Perhaps it was the time you did very poorly at school and you had to deal with shame from your family and teachers as you tried to become a better student. It can be any difficult situation you faced, and doesn’t even have to be one where you succeeded. Failure can reveal a person’s true character sometimes better than success. Because how we deal with failure is just as important as how we deal with success. Remember this.

When writing, remember that your reader will be evaluating your statement based on how it predicts your future success in and after completion of the program for which you are applying. You may not need to spell this out exactly, but what you write must reveal your personality in a way that proves you are the right candidate.

In addition, do not repeat yourself. Use simple sentences and short words. Be direct and straightforward with your language. English is a simple language, and when someone uses it to make overly complex writing with long and difficult words, it can sometimes come across as pretentious or arrogant.

Make sure you do your own writing! Do not ask a friend to write it. Do not borrow words from samples you find in books or on the Internet. If you do this, it will be obvious to the people reading your application. It is OK, however, for you to ask a friend to read your statement and make comments on it, or to ask a native speaker to check it for grammar and spelling mistakes. But it must be your own work.

If you are having trouble thinking of what to write, I suggest you sit by yourself in a quiet place and write about anything. Just pick up a pencil and begin writing. What you produce here will not be your statement of purpose, but it may help you to generate ideas. Try to write nonstop. Don’t make corrections. Don’t try to be neat. This is a kind of thinking with a pencil. And the results may surprise you. Very often, students of mine who are having trouble thinking of a topic for a writing assignment find that they get their best ideas when they do an exercise like this.

But most important: Relax! This is only one piece of the puzzle. And it’s not as monumental a piece as you think. If you are honest and you write something that is personal, it will be easier than you think. Good luck.

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Download PowerPoint PDF here.

Download PowerPoint Show (with audio) here.

Format: Plenary

Time: 20 minutes

Title: “Technology and Second Language Writing: New Perspectives on Identity and Process”

Target Students: Beginner to advanced, any age group

With the advent of new technology and online resources for second language writers, educators not only must grapple with their own adaptation to the new digital landscape, but also with how best to encourage learners to use it to the fullest potential.

The current popular trend towards a combination of the guiding concepts of process and genre in the L2 writing classroom has revolutionized writing instruction in recent years. The next step may be to formally integrate the use of technology in writing instruction as a step in the writing process.

This can be in the form of requiring students to submit assignments electronically, thereby allowing the teacher to type longer and more detailed comments and return them instantly by email.

Teachers can also help students in the most effective use of the Internet as a source of information for writing assignments, allowing for classroom time in which students explore and evaluate different kinds of online sources from news feeders to Wikipedia.

But assignment requirements can also encourage students to utilize software that provides assistance in such areas as word collocation, grammar and lexical density. Indeed, technology may completely alter the way in which teachers give students feedback on their writing assignments.

This plenary presentation will explore new opportunities for technology-assisted L2 writing development and how teachers can themselves become effective purveyors of technology in the writing classroom.

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Each summarizing workshop is about one hour. See below for details of each session.

Download PowerPoint and handouts here.

Session 1: Reading Strategies for Summarizing
In this workshop, participants will explore various approaches to reading which enhance students’ skills in summarizing. The workshop will focus on basic pre- during- and post-reading strategies that improve overall reading comprehension and enable students to identify the following: 1) organizational patterns, 2) main ideas and 3) the most important details in a text, all of which are invaluable for paraphrasing and constructing summaries. We will also look at the value of extended reading and student-selected texts in enhancing students’ global reading skills.

Session 2: Writing Strategies for Summarizing
In part two of this workshop series, teachers will look at approaches to writing in the English language classroom which promote the development of summarizing skills. We will discuss the currently popular process/genre model of teaching writing and how it applies to paraphrasing and summarizing. Teachers will discuss the value of modeling and scaffolding the skills of effective writing as a means of increasing a student’s overall independence as a learner and his fluency in constructing identity through academic writing. We will also look at the role digital writing plays in the writing classroom and how teachers can take advantage of their students’ already high level of electronic fluency.

Session 3: Building Summarizing Lessons and Tasks
In this final workshop, teachers will use the concepts explored in the previous two sessions to decide how best to put together tasks and lessons which will help improve students’ skills and promote their autonomy. The focus will be on task-based instruction combined with pair and group work to foster a community of learners in the classroom. This community, through the integration of skills, constructs its own meaning and relies on each other and themselves for their continued development and emergence as independent learners. We will look at such summarizing-specific aspects as selecting texts, building and sequencing tasks and developing scoring rubrics for assessment.

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Here is the last of three Philosophies of Teaching Writing I have chosen to share from my distance learning course for teachers of English in Russia. Well worth the read!

After having studied in this on-line course I have changed my mind concerning the teaching EFL writing in the secondary schools of Russia. The instructor of the course John Mark King has done a huge work providing the participants with the essential material and demanding us to follow the schedule. I have known a lot about teaching EFL writing, I have really widen my horizon, gained plenty of material from my colleagues from all-over the Russia, and enriched my pedagogical skills. As I have been thinking through all of my life Writing is the combination of all the language skills, the core and the main body of the tongue. My own Yakut people had no a written language till the middle of the 19-th century though, but instead they had a mighty and powerful oral creation of the Global meaning. It`s a Yakut national epic called Olonkho and which is announced the oral treasure of the Mankind by the UNESCO. But still I am sure that One who can`t write and isn`t able to express his/her inner thoughts and ideas in the written form he/she may not be called a highly-educated, civilized, intelligent and sophisticated human being who can lead a succesful and prosperous life in this incredible 21-st century of the Hightech.

I love the Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer`s statement; who has said that all great writing is deeply personal and heartfelt. I am sure, before writing becomes visible on the paper it goes through our minds and hearts, indeed!

For years I hadn`t been thinking on the importance of teaching Writing in English. Reading, translating, listening and speaking were the basic language skills taught by most of the English teachers at the secondary schools of my region. Writing was ignored because it was not mandatory, the teachers weren`t paid for checking the written assignments and, certainly, it was not that easy to teach writing skills in English. In addition, I didn`t know how to instruct the Writing Class, design it`s syllabus, manage it`s approaches and conduct series of steps needed in the process of teaching writing. Instead, I loved writing myself. I wrote long letters in my own native Yakut language to the female-mates with whom I was in sympathy while being a teenager, I adored corresponding in Russian with my Russian and foreign friends from the Socialist countries: Poland, Hungary, and Romania. But writing well for academic purposes is difficult in a first language and more so in second one. The Yakut students meet more challenges in writing because they need to write in their third language for Russian is their second. I agree with authors who state that writing is often a discovery process that clarifies our ideas for us on the topics we put our minds to as we write and, consequently writing is a continuing process of discovering how to find the most effective language for communicating one’s thoughts and feelings. While participating this course I have perceived finally that we teachers have to do great deal of work trying to help our students to find their own voices in English that almost means the whole World and to develop the ability to communicate effectively in different contexts and with different audiences through teaching them English Writing skills.

I started to meet difficulties just right after the EGE has been established as the Russian State Exam and especially it`s writing assignments in English. To teach and then practice Free Writing which is not necessarily edited or worked on further is easy and moreover, interesting. My students are usually always inspired and intrigued by the authentic letters of their American pen-pals and write their own using the samples put in front of them. Therefore, I have been employing only three kinds of approaches focused on structure, function and creativity that means a product approach in a whole. I have never employed the Process, Content and Genre approaches because my own skills are to be improved a lot and then it is too time-consuming, difficult and painful with our limited hours of teaching English. It is absolutely unproductive if not realizable to teach academic writing in my educational environment unless the school curriculum includes some more hours to teach writing.

My general approach to teaching writing is called if to name it scientifically Product Approach. I have been employing into class the approaches relating to this type of writing activity for ages. While participating this course I have conceived that in Process Approach where the communication of the message is paramount the students can simultaneously develop their literacy skills in speaking, reading, grammar and vocabulary. Consequently, this approach enhances the overall language acquisition. Thus, I am going to implement the method of Process Approach into my English language class.

As I am teacher of the secondary school students I am not going to teach writing on purpose. My learners are of various language levels and I teach them to develop all kinds of language skills. But I wouldn`t like to say that I will continue teaching writing as used to teach it before. I will try to do my best to teach writing using the knowledge gained in the course. It`s true, learning foreign languages is not a quick and easy activity and even for motivated students, learning another language and learning to write in that language are difficult, long-term processes. For my own village students who do huge writing works both in Yakut and Russian languages, writing in English is a point of terrible frustration when I see how long it takes them to write English texts: hours to produce one page, two times as long as it takes urban students. The students living in the towns always have more opportunities to learn languages, they have more learning hours, they are able to hire private tutors and, it`s a copy-book maxim that the urban children are always more alert and active than those of the rural. But I believe in my students who are too diligent and I know when the learners` and the teacher`s goals match they always can succeed in reaching their purposes. If I start now, in 5 years I hope to improve the writing situation at least in my place. Thus, if writing is taught and used appropriately, it becomes a fine tool to help students acquire and deepen their understandings of the language they are learning, the world around them, and even themselves.

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Here is another wonderful Philosophy of Teaching Writing by one of the participants of my distance learning course for teachers of English in Russia.

Nowadays, when different means of communication are becoming more and more available to ever so great number of people, the art of writing is undergoing appreciable changes. On the one hand, trying to save their time and spare their strength, people write short and impersonal messages. So, some have almost forgotten how to write long, meaningful and beautiful texts. On the other hand, thanks to the Internet everybody who wants to express their opinions and thoughts has an opportunity to do it. Not so long ago some of these people who deserved hardly to be “heard out”, now take up their pens with dogged persistence. These scribblers churn out a huge number of insipid and poorly written works. We seem to get used to this situation. Nevertheless, an ability to write properly still remains an essential skill of any educated person.

Every time I start writing I recall vividly the words from Leonid Zorin’s “The Green Note-books” – “A mediocrity falls silent facing a white sheet of paper.” Watching other people and discussing the difficulties they have with writing, I cannot help thinking that it seems truly surprising how impotent even very intelligent and eloquent people can feel facing the necessity to commit their thoughts and ideas to paper. Why do their splendid thoughts fade and where does their ability to express what they think logically and persuasively disappear when they are to perform anything in written form? There may be a great number of reasons for that and one of them is that these people might have never been taught how to write properly and have never had enough practice to become good writers. So it is perfectly clear that writing is a very challenging activity and at the same time it is a very beneficial one. People, who have highly developed writing skills, evidently have better chances to succeed in all spheres of life while those who are unable to write intelligibly, briefly and consistently might be left far behind.

At the moment I cannot point out any serious difficulties in teaching writing as I do not teach my students to write specific texts. I just give them a topic and they are free to choose the form how to fulfill the task. But if I were a teacher at school or university I would face a lot of difficulties for sure – students’ common unwillingness to develop this skill, scarcity of classes, lack of reference books with clear explanations of the differences between Russian and English systems of writing, the choice of approach in writing and lots of others, and lack of my own experience of teaching writing above all. Besides nowadays people tend to read less and this factor influence greatly their writing skills as well.

Speaking about my general approach to teaching writing, I must confess that I am still in two minds about it. I am used to product approach but now I realize that it can be hardly called up-to-date. This writing course gave me a good deal of food for thought. I need some time to think over everything I have learnt here before I can say exactly what approach would be the best for my students. But what I know for sure is that my attitude to errors correction was too serious. Grammar and spelling correctness is still very important for me but now I realize that I always underestimated the importance of content. Undoubtedly, in the first place I should have encouraged my students to create meaningful content. Focusing their attention on the necessity to write correctly, I probably deprive them the chance to think if what they write will be interesting to read.

As for my goals for the next 5 years as a teacher of writing, first of all I would like to have a chance to work with students for whom writing is a compulsory part of studying English. It would be a great opportunity for me to try everything I have learnt here, to understand my weak points and to improve my proficiency in teaching writing. One more thing which needs to be improved is certainly my own writing skills as writing is the best way to make more responsible mind and learn to make myself clear.

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