Tales from the Desh

This was written by a participant of mine in an online distance course, Teaching EFL Writing. It is one of three examples I will choose to share with the public as examples of quality teacher development and professional reflection.

Irina Lebedeva is a teacher at Moscow State University and was relatively new to teaching writing at the beginning of this course. Her Philosophy of Teaching Writing is below:

If you look through a program book of any recent conference devoted to implementing teaching methods, you’ll be amazed at how many presentations are actually devoted to teaching and learning writing. Moreover, most of the presentations or workshops given by English Language Specialists (judging by my own experience) are devoted to mastering this language skill. This fuss over teaching writing has always surprised me, a vocabulary teacher. I, to tell the truth, used to consider teaching writing to be a piece of cake. I used to think that writing was a sort of inane talent which can be developed but not taught. I used to consider teaching writing unimportant. Due to this, my way of teaching writing mainly consisted of giving students the tasks to write a personal letter, an autobiography or a composition on some topic as a means of checking the vocabulary they’ve acquired rather than actually teaching writing itself.

My philosophy of writing has changed dramatically since I started practicing teaching the subject and even more so after this very course and all the blog posts from its participants. First of all, I do not underestimate teaching writing any more. On the contrary, I believe it to be even more challenging than teaching speaking. On the one hand, writing is speaking, only with text. On the other hand, writing has conventions quite unlike those in speaking. Therefore, this subject requires a very knowledgeable facilitator who should be aware of all aspects of writing at different levels starting with how collocations work on a sentence level, then topic sentences and arguments on a paragraph level and thesis statement on essay level. The instructor must be at home with such writing knowledge as content, system, process, genre and context; must always self-reflect on types of tasks (pedagogical vs. real-world) and activities s/he uses; must possess critical thinking and good analytical skills; must be creative and encouraging, and open-minded, and courageous to move on by trial and error. Yes, one must be all this in order to be a competent teacher of writing.

Second of all, I no longer consider that one doesn’t necessarily have to be gifted to write well. After all, my aim as a teacher is not only to “create” Nabokovs or McEwans (though in the long run that would not be that bad), but to “produce” confident, coherent users of written English who will be able to get grants and score high on international tests, and enter universities abroad because of their essays; who will secure a good job by writing a proper cover letter and a CV; will get promoted due to their business plans and get recognized owing to proper written scientific reports, papers and articles, and after that will be respected in their field of knowledge for their reviews of other people’s works. I believe now that kind of writing can be learnt.
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Third of all, I’m sure now that teaching must be taught as an independent course for a year at least and it should go hand in hand with reading. The fact that writing is the last skill that people acquire in their mother tongue proves it to be the hardest to master. Learning how to write in a second or foreign language becomes an even harder task and should be allotted a proper amount of curriculum time. Also, writing is mostly acquired via reading because written texts serve as a perfect example of genres, styles and so on, and for that reason, good readers traditionally turn into confident writers.

I have not taught writing as a separate course for quite a period of time. I have never taught writing using genre approach; I was supposed to teach it this year (I got scared and applied for the course), but I will be assigned to do it next term (thanks to the course. I am not scared anymore). The number of problems that I face concerning teaching writing has increased after taking the course. Many of them deal with the fact that there are so many things that I do not know about teaching writing and writing itself (but now I know where to look for the answers and how to get about teaching genre writing). Some of them deal with lack of time for proper preparation. Also, I am very strict with myself and expect too much too soon; I often feel that I’m not knowledgeable enough, or not creative enough, or haven’t given the proper consideration while creating tasks, though this is not necessarily the case.

My approach to teaching writing is changing at the moment. I’ve started using Ning.com as a means for teaching writing and peer review. By the way, thanks to this course I put into practice a peer review first time and I did that through Ning, and quite successfully. I’m using more authentic material in the classroom, especially more videos which I upload on the Ning. I’m using new strategy of commenting on students’ works and I’m being more creative as a teacher.

My 5-year goals are to implement everything that I’ve learned in the ‘Teaching EFL Writing’ course in the classroom, thus finding my own way of teaching writing and creating my own syllabus of ‘Reading and Writing’ course in the long run. I’m going to make several presentations on what I’ve learnt during the course and how I am using this knowledge. I hope to continue cooperation with John Mark King in the next course to ‘cement’ what I’ve learnt and to give me a boost towards further self-development as a writing teacher as well as a teacher in general.

John Mark King, thank you for the course. What’s more, thank you for a wonderful and rare opportunity to be a writer. I’ve truly enjoyed creating ‘My Philosophy of Writing’. We teachers seldom have a chance to write about ourselves apart from scientific papers.

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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 luc

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In this activity, students are divided into small groups and told that they are members of the governing legislature in a hypothetical American state. They want to reduce their population of prisoners while also not adding to the state’s budget. Students must work together to devise a plan using the information provided below.

To generate students’ background knowledge, students may also read the article, “Behind Bars,” an editorial from the March 2008 issue of Arkansas Business, attached below.

Download worksheet and pre-reading article.

The Activity

Your state has one of the largest populations of prisoners per capita in the United States. You spend 10% of your $3 billion yearly budget just to maintain your growing prison system. One prisoner costs you $30,000 per year to keep. Your task is to devise ways to reduce the prison population while doing each of the following:

1)      Not endangering the public by releasing prisoners who should stay locked up

2)      Not adding to your overall budget

3)      Keeping the public happy

How will you do it? Remember that you are elected officials. Much of what you do will be judged on the next election day (two years from now). Prepare a plan of action and share it with the class.

Here is a list of alternative programs and their cost. You may choose from this list.

1. Allowing early parole for non-violent offenders. This means releasing people from prison early for good behavior, but continuing to monitor them and restrict their travel. This can save the state up to $20 million, but it is unpopular and has shown that recidivism amongst these inmates in much higher than the average population (75% vs. 50%).
2. Investing more in schools which are located in poor areas where much of the state’s violent crime is committed. This includes hiring new teachers, building new schools and creating new after-school programs for at-risk youths. It will add about 12% to your budget, but has the potential for much greater (but unknown) future benefit.
3. Investing in more rehabilitation programs in the prisons. This includes educational opportunities, psychological counseling and job skills development for current inmates. This will add 3% to your budget, but will not show any decrease in the prison population for several years (after the next election).
4. Creating work release programs. Such a program utilizes prisoners as manual labor for government construction projects. It will add less that 1% to the budget and could save up to 5%. Labor unions in the state are opposed to this idea, however, and they will have to be convinced it is a good idea.
5. Legalizing marijuana. This will drastically reduce the number of prisoners (by up to 10%) and can also add to the state budget at least $20 million in taxes. But this is very unpopular with voters. A recent poll showed that only 15% of the population would support such a measure.
6. Building new rehabilitation facilities exclusively for non-violent offenders. Places like this are more boarding schools than prisons and isolates prisoners so that violent prisoners cannot influence non-violent ones. This will add 5% to your budget, but can show a decrease of up to 10% within 10 years.
7. Eliminating the death penalty. This will save the state up to 2% of its budget because it is vastly more expensive to keep inmates on death row than it is to incarcerate them for life. However, a recent poll showed that such a measure has the support of only 40% of the population. Young voters, however, support the measure by a factor of 85% to 15%.
8. Providing tax breaks to businesses which hire ex-cons. This would make it more attractive for state businesses to hire former prisoners. Such a measure could potentially reduce recidivism by up to 20%, but would also result in the loss of several million dollars in taxes. The long-term benefits are greater, though, as fewer and fewer ex-cons go back to prison. The tax breaks would mean that other services would have to be cut, however. Most vulnerable would be medical services for the poor and new road construction.

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Attached below is a PDF version of a PowerPoint presentation I wrote to give English teachers an overview of the current guiding principles and approaches to teaching writing in the language classroom. I also touch on benefits of teaching writing and some of the difficulties faced by non-native English speaking teachers who teach writing.

Download PDF here.

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This is a workshop designed for teachers of English on the music of American singer-songwriter Tom Waits. The activities included are for the songs, “Hold On,” “San Diego Serenade” and “Clap Hands” and they encourage students to develop their listening and speaking skills by exploring the uniquely American themes and landscapes of Waits’ music using a combination of individual and small group work.

Download handouts here in PDF.

The Music of Tom Waits

Tom Waits was born in 1949 in California to parents who were both schoolteachers. He grew up in the 1960s, but did not identify popular American music of the day. Instead, he listened to more traditional blues, beat and jazz music. He was particularly fond of music that told stories and spoken word poetry performed in smoky night clubs after midnight.

This unique background set the stage for his very long and rebellious career. His first album, Closing Time was released in 1973. His early music is a mixture of traditional jazz and folk which, throughout the 1970s, became more and more cynical as he succumbed to the lifestyle of living on the road that had him staying in hotels, eating bad food and drinking heavily. Songs of this period include, “The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me),” “(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night” and “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart.”

n the 1980s, not only did his musical style begin to change, but also his career as an actor took shape. His music began to employ less common instruments like bassoon, bagpipes, marimba and violin. His music moved more towards the blues and even including tinges of spoken word and European folk music. As an actor, he appeared in several offbeat films and plays, even doing some writing for the stage.

In the 1990s, his acting career continued to flourish and his music now included elements of gospel music and even electronic music. His most successful album to date, Mule Variations, was released in 1999. His most recent collection of songs is the live recording, Glitter and Doom Live, from 2009.

Still relatively unknown in the United States, Waits has recorded more than 20 albums and is best known from the songs he wrote but are performed by other artists. Still, he has yet to gain the popularity at home which he has achieved in Europe and other parts of the world.

His music can be both horrifying and beautiful and is often about sad or lonely people who are between stages of their lives or wandering through the world with no direction. The characters in his songs lament about love gained and lost and opportunities never taken, about dreams unfulfilled and promises never kept. He sings about America as seen through the backseat window of a ’55 Chevy.

For more information, please see the following websites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Waits

http://www.allmusic.com

http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com

http://www.anti.com/artists/view/1

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The attached lesson is designed for intermediate to high level learners at least 14 years of age. In a group of at least 10, it should take about 90 minutes.

The focus of the lesson is a short holiday story about a young man and woman who have an argument about a Christmas gift. But the lesson integrates all four skills and encourages creative language use throughout. It includes pre- in- and post-reading activities and offers a suggestion for a homework assignment.

Download lesson plan PDF

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On December 16^th, Senior English Language Fellow John Mark King visited a middle school and met with English teachers from more than seven area schools in the city founded as the summer home of the tsars and where national poet Alexander Pushkin once studied.

25 working elementary and middle school teachers came for the Fellow’s two workshops, “Managing Large Classes” and the Christmas-themed reading workshop, “Using Stories to Build a Community of Learners.”

Russian teachers in and around Pushkin often have groups of 25 or more students when smaller groups are temporarily combined into one. The teachers shared many of their own ideas when managing large groups of students who may not be their own and also enthusiastically explored the benefits of approaches which the Fellow suggested.

In addition, teachers in Pushkin admitted that there is a need for innovation in their approach to the teaching of reading in English. This second workshop encouraged teachers to allow students to construct meaning on their own as they read and discover texts as a community of learners.

Many teachers exclaimed that much of what they explored in these workshops could be modified and used in their own classes right away.

These workshops were part of a series of additional workshops the Fellow conducts regularly for the Academy of Pedagogical Mastery in St. Petersburg.

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The end of the year is a special time. In the United States, most Americans celebrate Christmas, both as a secular and religious holiday on December 25. In Russia, as I am learning, the big holiday is the New Year, and it is basically celebrated like a secular American Christmas. This means that, so far, I am feeling right at home at the end of December in St. Petersburg. When I am walking home, the city streets are lined with festive lights and the ground is covered with snow. This is truly a beautiful city at this time of year.

I will be staying in St. Petersburg during the holiday and look forward to celebrating and relaxing with my wife and son. The short days and the ever-increasing cold are certainly an adjustment, but I am finding it quite an opportunity for exploration and discovery. Where I lived as a boy, we had snow only once every 10 years. I can remember a Christmas when I could wear shorts outside. Here, the rivers are already freezing and it is dark until 10 a.m. Quite a change!

This is also a time for English teachers to take the opportunity to teach American values in the classroom. Looking at the way many American families spend their time in December is a wonderful time for our students to explore the rich variety of backgrounds and cultural heritage that exist in the United States. Of course, not all Americans celebrate Christmas. Indeed, there are very large populations of American Muslims, Jews and non-believers. In addition, not all of those who celebrate Christmas do it in the same way. it can be said that each family has its own approach to the holidays.

My advice for teaching about Christmas in America is to remind your students that it is indeed a special time, but that everyone has their own way of celebrating (and some don’t celebrate it at all!). And even though we can look at the traditional Christmas celebrations, it is very important to show out students that the most important and valuable aspect of American culture is that it is both rich and diverse.

When I was a child, this is how we celebrated Christmas in my home. The holiday season starts on the Friday after Thanksgiving. This is when most Americans start doing their shopping, decorating their homes, listening to holiday music and watching their favorite holiday movies.

In addition to buying and decorating a tree, we often string lights on the outsides of our homes and decorate our lawns with mini statues of Santa Claus or little snowmen. The traditional Christmas colors are red and green and they can be seen on people’s houses, city streets and even in the clothes people wear at this time of year.

Gift-giving is of course a big part of the season. While it is important to present gifts to your loved ones, it is not so important to do so with all of your friends and co-workers. In addition, there is not as important a need for the gift to be of a personal nature or specifically designed for the receiver as it is here in Russia. Sometimes, something as simple as a card or a gift card to a book store is enough.

In most families, gifts are not opened until Christmas morning, and children tend to sleep very little the night before. Traditionally, parents tell their children that most of their gifts will be delivered by Santa Claus at midnight, and that he will not come unless all children are in bed. It i said that Santa Claus flies around the world on a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and that he lands on each family’s roof and enters through the chimney. Children often leave him milk and cookies so that he can keep his strength up for his long journey around the world. Parents keep their energy up by drinking egg nog and stay up late to leave out and assemble the toys brought by Santa Claus

Holiday music is a big part of the season, and many of the same songs are listened to each year. Such tunes as White Christmas, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, The First Noel, Silent Night and We Wish You a Merry Christmas are recorded anew every year by different artists. Starting at noon on Christmas Eve, most American radio stations begin playing these tunes nonstop for 24 hours, until noon the following day.

As for films, probably the most famous one is Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, starring James Stewart. Most Americans watch this film on Christmas Eve with their families. Other holiday classics include White Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and A Christmas Story.

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Attached to this post is a copy of the article I co-wrote with English Language Fellow Anna Grigoryan for English Teaching Forum magazine. It was published in 2008.

Forum website

Link to issue containing article

Link to download article in PDF

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