Technology was the first of the 6 questions which Jeremy wanted us to respond to: Should a competent teacher be tech savy?

Well, not a very easy question to answer, is it? A competent teacher who doesn’t use any technology VS. a teacher who knows all about the new ‘tools’ but not so aware of the purpose of the activities he/she is implementing with no proper classroom management. When I put the scene like that, I am sure you think the former is a more appealing scenario for the learner. But will it be possible to deny the uses of technology within the course of, say, ten years? Will the most competent teachers of ELT be able to engage learners without using any technology in class in the ever-growing digitalised publishing? Well, my answer to this question was YES but the audience didn’t reach to a consensus. It seemed to me it was 50/50 actually.

The second important question raised by Jeremy was to do with Error Correction. Correction is not as simple as it sounds as we all know. Should it be on the spot or postponed? Should errors be reformulated? Should they be asked the learners to correct them via elicitation, gesturing, tone of voice indicating the mistake? What about correction in the written work? Should we correct them all or ignore them all if the message is clear? Should we give feedback on them? Accuracy focus? Fluency focus? Pronunciation mistakes? Communicative aspect of the task? So much to think about . Here is Jeremy’s question: Is correction a waste of time? My answer is NO, what about yours? Again there was not an agreement of the given answers by the audience showing that it is a very good question actually. If as teachers we are not sure of the use of correction, god knows how various is our approach to implementation of it in our classrooms .

The next question was about Testing. We have had a love and hate relationship with it, haven’t we? The most scary aspect of our profession for most of us, let’s admit it. How many of us can say that the tests we prepare are completely valid? Do we always, if ever, come up with the exam specifications before preparing a test? Do we analyse items afterwards? God knows how many students have become dis/advantaged thanks to the tests we have administered. Jeremy asked: Is testing necessary? My answer to this question was YES. Surprisingly or not so surprisingly, the audience thought more in favour of the necessity of tests, however there wasn’t a 100% consensus again. What do you think I wonder?

The fourth question addressed by Jeremy to the audience was about the CLIL in the sense that David Marsh claims i.e. instead of grammar we should teach content, English should be at the service of this content. Is this the way language teaching should follow? was Jeremy’s question to be reflected on. And the audience once again could not agree. Jeremy refered to the fact that if CLIL is the future, at least 80% of the presentations at IATEFL this year would have been considered as irrelevant. My answer to this question is a NO. I understand where the idea comes from and appreciate the value of it but I also believe that without deliberate focus on the language, learning can be delayed especially for adults and young adults. At least in my current context, CLIL may lead to a total disaster and frustration. After all, we have just 7-8 months of intensive language instruction to bring our learners to a level that would allow them to study in their departments. They start their EFL as either false or zero beginners. Himm, giving them a first year text from their departmental studies when they do not know how to say “what is your name?” is not actually a good idea in my humble opinion for the moment. What do you think? is CLIL more applicable in your contexts?

Jeremy’s next question was in a way the most important one to me. Is our concept of good teaching the same as our learners’? Especially in the contexts where western understanding of rapport is establishing friendly, fun and entertaining classroom environments. Is this a huge assumption? What if, the learners are interested in the knowledge and respect the teacher depending on the knowledge he/she possesses suggested Jeremy. My answer to this question is probably NO.

Finally, Jeremy acted out the drilling that occurs in a lot of classes and asked: Is this simplified, teacher generated and drilled language useful? Again, not surprisingly, the audience was in two minds. As for me, The answer is NO although I think drilling may be to an extent useful when used carefully and in moderation. I wonder what you think about it.

There are many more questions to be reflected on obviously. These six were introduced by Jeremy Harmer and I found it useful to think about them. I look forward to hearing about the comments of TESOL practitioners.

Well, we thought that probably we were not the only group who have had the same concerns. Then we looked for some courses specifically designed for language testing. But there were not any . As in the case of famous teacher training cerificate programs, degree and masters programs, testing has been thought the last if ever. Such an important area needs a lot more focus.
Personally speaking, there should be degree programs in ELT Testing, Assesment and Evaluation.

Anyway, since it was not possible to change the curricula of the certificate programs, degree or masters programs, we came up with the idea of a 40-hour intensive course. Lovely IATEFL TEA SIG committee embraced the idea, and a week long course for 53 participants took place last week in Istanbul called TEA in ISTANBUL. The course tutors were Prof. Barry O’Sullivan, Sue Hackett, the IATEFL TEA SIG coordinator, Zeynep Urkun from Sabanci University and the IATEFL TEA SIG events coordinator and member of the IATEFL executive board member.

As an EFL teacher, I have had to test student performance all my professional life, sometimes by using ready made tests, sometimes by the tests I
prepared or a test of which preparation I was heavily part of it. Most of the English teachers do that as well. However, there are incredible details a tester has to consider while planning, preparing, administrating, marking and analysing the results if they want to do it as appropriately as they can. and even then, we learned that there isn’t such a thing called a perfect test.

I came to the conclusion that, while teaching is an art, testing must surely be science.

I kept the blog of the event with the help of my friends Burcu Akyol and Wayne Jones. If you want to know more about the specific details about assessing reading, speaking, writing, etc, there are useful notes, tips and great website addresses for checking the level of difficulty of the tests you create, please visit http://teainistanbul.wordpress.com

The link to the Lightbulb moments show comments and what the participants’ insights gained from the course.

Enjoy

1. Not considering/not empathizing with learner difficulties

Even if the learner is a highly intelligent, skillful professional with a degree, s/he is vulnerable and anxious while learning a foreign language. A foreign language teacher’s initial job is making the learners feel that they are in a safe learning atmosphere. It is not utterly easy to learn a language especially when you are an adult or a teenager. There are millions of other things on your mind, and learning a language require concentration and a strong will as well as great determination. It is our job to consider the levels of difficulty of the tasks, possible problems that can occur while learning a certain aspect of that day’s target language.

2. Spoon-feeding while presenting the language

Not letting learners discover the target language by themselves and for themselves, not trusting the learners’ skills and/ or intelligence also kill autonomy. Inductive language teaching by means of contextualised input  works wonders, but some of us love to be the ‘giver’ of the knowledge:) or controlling everything.  Or some of us use documents like this one, of which aim I have not been able to figure out since I found it next to the photocopy machine in the institution I work for. Puzzled?? Yes, me too.

Guess what? Some of the learners learn despite us.

3. Crushing confidence by constantly correcting errors and focusing on mistakes rather than meaningful and timely praising

Mistakes mean that the learner is trying to learn. So long as the focus is not just accuracy, we need to learn how to postpone our feedback on mistakes. In written work, who likes it when it is full of red ink correction! I remember once, I had given a composition to my Italian teacher with all my enthusiasm and belief in the best work I could have come up with. I will never forget how my heart had sunk whe nI saw all the mistakes on the paper:(. Did I ever look at that paper again? Did I try to learn from these mistakes? No! Even though I am an eager language learner in general who was willing to learn Italian at the time. How about giving focused error correction instead of correcting every single mistake?

4. Using Worksheets with Azar type exercises as class materials:

Fill in the blanks with the correct form of the verbs given in the brackets.

Remember that instruction? Exactly All of us have given them; some of us have given them sometimes, some of us have given them when we are too lazy, a few of us have given them when it was absolutely necessary, for whatever the reason is. Those of us who wanted to make learners autonomous have taken them with a pinch of salt. Why? How can one learn how to retain the required language in real life by answering these type of decontextualised, mechanical and non- personalized exercises? See the sample on the left; who can tell me the learning objective of this material? Who can tell me the learning outcome or the communicative value of it? Please let me know if you do. I certainly cannot.

5. Not teaching strategies while teaching skills and subskills

Scan the text below and answer the questions. OR listen to the tape recorder and answer the questions below. OR OK, you two, you are working in pairs. Here are the role cards, OK. A: You have a headache and you are complaining about it to your friend. B: You give suggestions to your friend. Now go. OR OK, everybody, I’d like you to write about the most important day in your life in 10 minutes. Well, you know past tense, you can do it, no complaints, come on!

How about sparing a few minutes before showing a few different strategies/models to do the task and sparing a few minutes more after the activity for double- checking how it is achieved instead of just checking the answers with the strongest in the front seats.

6. Not teaching different ways of recording vocabulary

Different people learn lexis differently. It is our job to show them as many techniques as we can for them to choose from. Research says that students learn only 20% of their vocabulary thanks to us. Teaching them ways of recording them will help them retrieve the words when they need it. It will help them reach autonomy. After all, we will not be able to teach them 7000-8000 word families that allow them to become completely independent and fluent users of English (Schmitt, 2008)!

Awareness is an essential aspect of language teaching and teacher education, as it is, or should be, part of one’s everyday life.  Without awareness of a certain aspect in question, monitoring one’s (own) actions and/or behaviour in that area would simply be impossible.

One incident from everyday life made me aware of the unquestionable relationship and interconnection between knowledge, skill, awareness and attitude suggested by Freeman 1989).

One evening in March 2009, there was a knock on the door. I was surprised to see a man who said that he was my downstairs neighbour. He said that he had been living in that apartment since the previous July (for about 9 months), and then started to complain about the noise of my footsteps which, he called unbearable. He said he had never come upstairs to complain so far but that evening he had had enough. I was truly shocked to hear this , and could not believe that I had been the source of such trouble. I immediately apologised for disturbing him, thanked him for warning me as I wasn’t aware of this at all and promised to be more careful.

Since that day I have been attentive while walking in the corridors. Naturally, I do not always remember the warning; however, I have developed a kind of internal awareness which makes me monitor my steps and even my husband’s steps as well. At this point, it would be important to acknowledge my attitude as I could be a person who wouldn’t care for the warning. As an adult, I had the knowledge and the skill of walking in an apartment but I needed a warning which raised my awareness to correct or repair my behaviour. I responded to the warning by monitoring my attention to it since my attitude is responsive to this warning.

Without the direct intervention by a supervisor or evaluations on self or peer observations or any other reflective practices which would trigger one’s attention to a certain aspect of teaching behaviour, it is unlikely to change that certain behaviour even though the teacher in question is a fully prepared responsible person.

 I will continue to write about awareness and how important it is in teaching. There are aspects in our teaching that needs to be improved. Most of us are unaware of some of these. We keep going in our blissful unawareness. Until one day, we are made aware of tha,t and let to take a deliberate action  to repair it. Like my neighbour’s warning on my footsteps. The good news is, he has never come back so I can safely say that my deliberate action repared my behaviour that I was unaware of thanks to the fact that I was made aware of it.

Reference

Freeman, Donald (1989). Teacher Training, Development and Decision Making; A model Teaching and Related Strategies for Language Teacher Education TESOL Quarterly, Vol.23, No. 1, March 1989

1. Gather real-world resources

Real objects and resources can be used in a variety of ways, from vocabulary building to reading to descriptive writing, and practically everything in between. Before leaving for your destination, collect free and lightweight English resources that could be used in a classroom. These might include restaurant menus, sales ads from local stores, maps of real cities, and magazines. Using such English materials provides EFL students with access to authentic English usage they are unlikely to get outside of the classroom.

 2. Learn about educational norms and expectations

 Education in your home country may be fairly informal. Teachers may often dress casually, have students use their first names, and drink coffee in class. In other countries, however, educational settings may be more formal, and students could balk at such informality. Students in other countries may also be accustomed to lecture classrooms rather than conference-style discussions or interactive classroom tasks. EFL teachers may need to gradually introduce discussion and other participatory activities to help students adjust to new methods.

3. Learn the Language

Efforts to learn the local language can be quite beneficial to EFL teachers. Experiencing the difficulties of language learning helps make teachers more empathetic to the struggles of their own students. These classes may also provide information about similarities and differences between the local language and English, which can be capitalized on in the EFL classroom.

4. Make use of the Internet

Online resources to aid English language learning are seemingly limitless. Students can learn vocabulary, review grammar, take quizzes, and even listen to examples of real English speakers. Teachers can find grammatical explanations and examples, and many sites have downloadable handouts and print-ready assignments. Such resources can be invaluable to EFL teachers whose classroom resources and ready access to English language realia may be limited.

5. Provide lots of English input

Input is a necessity for language learning. During class, EFL teachers should speak only in English, especially since it may be the only time students hear English all day. Rather than doing written work in class, have students complete it as homework, and reserve classtime for active spoken English usage. The more students hear and understand English, the easier it will be for them to produce it, so plenty of classroom use of English is essential. Homework assignments that utilize online resources will also provide students with additional input outside class.

6. Know your students

Successful teachers identify and build relationships with their students. One crucial first step in establishing relationships is learning the names of everyone in each class. Teachers should also learn more about the students’ goals for their English and their motivation for studying the language. Teachers who know their students are better able to choose topics and communicative tasks that will be appealing to a particular class.

These six tips provide both potential and current TEFL professionals with hints for success in teaching EFL. Outside the classroom, teachers should consider resources, educational norms, and the local language. Inside the classroom, teachers should creatively use resources, spoken English, and knowledge of their students. By doing these things, teachers are sure to create a more successful learning experience for all involved.

Elaine Hirsch is a kind of a jack-of-all interestes from education to history to medicine and videogames. This makes it difficult to choose just one life path, so she is currently working  as a writer for various education-related sites and writing about all these things instead.

Speech errors have long been a source of fascination to both linguists and language teachers. Despite their interest to linguists, speech errors can create many problems for English language learners in conventional classes, online schools, or any other language learning environments. To avoid confusion and embarrassment from such problems, four common types of speech errors are explained, with helpful resources included to aid ESL teachers in making their students more aware of such mistakes.

Spoonerisms, a mixing up of the sounds within a word or phrase, are arguably the most common kind of speech error. Named for the Rev. William Archibald Spooner of Oxford University, these slips of the tongue often result in hilarious results. While many examples of original spoonerisms exist, the most famous arose when Spooner was giving a tribute to the “Dear old Queen” in which he referred to her as the “Queer old Dean.” Such slips of the tongue may be problematic for English language learners, who may need practice in recognition of these errors and deciphering the original message.

Next is malapropism, or a substitution of one word by a similar word, resulting in a ridiculous or nonsensical phrase. A derivation of mal á propos, meaning “ill-suited” in French, malapropisms are commonly used in verse and drama to add humorous effect. The term malapropism became common with the production of Richard Sheridan’s play Rivals, in which the character Mrs. Malaprop mixes up her words with hilarious effect. Like spoonerisms, malapropisms can be problematic for English language learners, whose incorrect word choices can lead to great misunderstandings. However, becoming aware of commonly confused words can aid ESL students by making them more aware of their word choices. This malapropism quiz is a good place to start to help students recognize common word choice errors.

While spoonerisms and malapropisms are generally errors in production, or slips of the tongue, mondegreens are perceptual errors, or what might be called slips of the ear. The term mondegreen was coined by Sylvia Wright, who misheard the last line of a ballad as “And Lady Mondegreen” rather than “And laid him on the green.” Mondegreens are most commonly associated with songs or recitations, making them fun and fascinating for ESL students interested in learning English song lyrics, but who may have problems hearing the words correctly. Dave’s ESL Cafe offers an interesting idea for teaching mondegreens with Christmas songs.

Another interesting speech error is the eggcorn, an idiosyncratic substitution of one word for another, such as “elk” for “ilk.” Eggcorns have garnered so much attention that an eggcorn database has been created and is continually updated with real life examples. Teachers interested in helping their students avoid using eggcorns can browse the database with their students, discuss the correct forms and their eggcorn counterparts, and then practice the correct usage.

For language learners, overcoming the difficulties of speech errors in English can be an overwhelming task. The first step is simply being aware of the possible errors and problems that may arise. Teachers can help students make better, more correct word choices by focusing on these speech errors and how to decipher and repair them. Ultimately, this will improve automaticity and aid students as they progress on the path to becoming proficient and fluent English speakers.

Michael McCharty, Anne O’Keefe and Geraldine Mark who gave a session entitled “What should learners’ grammar for B1/B2 learners include? Brighton, IATEFL 2011.

Actually, the Cambridge Learner Corpus has great and relieving answers to these questions. It helps us to gradually become more tolerant to inaccurate usages while our learners are trying to use the language points that have been recently introduced to. ‘Mistakes are good, they are normal, and they show the trial and developmental process’  suggested by Michael McCharty, Anne O’Keefe and Geraldine Mark who gave a session entitled “What should learners’ grammar for B1/B2 learners include? in Brighton,  at IATEFL 2011.

What is the Cambridge Learner Corpus?

The Cambridge Learner Corpus (CLC) is a large collection of exam scripts written by students taking Cambridge ESOL English exams around the world. It currently contains over 135,000 scripts and it is growing all the time. It forms part of the Cambridge International Corpus (CIC). It has been built by Cambridge University Press and Cambridge ESOL (part of UCLES, the University of Cambridge Local Examination Syndicate).

This slide shows the most common errors which occur with past simple across CEFR Levels.

If you do not have time to watch the video, here are a few highlights and some slides from the session which shows the trial of the simple past tense of the learners at different levels: Notice how the language level increases yet the mistakes occur.

Here is another slide which shows what tenses learners confuse the past tense with form A1-B2.

 The McCharty, O’Keefe and Mark say that these are positive errors and they are indicative of learning. In other words, while the students are trying to use a higher level of language these mistakes occur.

The session holders look at the usage of countable and uncountable nouns as well.

Actually, we teach this concept at a quite early level and almost forget about it at higher levels. However, mistakes occur at higher levels.

Course books and uncountable nouns

In short, it is not enough to teach anything once for our learners to use it competently. The higher the level gets, the rate of mistakes increase. Lots of repetition and recycling are essential. The Cambridge Learner Corpus helps us to prioritize what we should recycle. For example, past simple should be recycled at B Levels. It is a great resource.

Because learning English can be so frustrating, many teachers have devised a multitude of methods through which they hope to make the process just a little easier. Games can enhance the experience and make it more fun. Immersion programs expose learners to a multitude of concepts all at once. Online classes enable students to complete courses with greater flexibility. Such methods are tried and true, but with the growing role of technology in everyday life it only seems natural that ESL teachers should incorporate some form of technology in their methods.

 Many social networking technologies are excellent tools for reinforcing the concepts introduced during class. ESL students should be encouraged to use Twitter to communicate with their teachers and peers. They are limited to only 140 characters and so must carefully craft a message for meaning and readability. Though the first tries are likely to be rough, ESL learners will quickly grow more adept as they continue to practice.

Another popular way to use technology for ESL lessons is by creating a class Wiki. A Wiki is essentially a collaborative website built by all of the members of the class, including the teacher. It doesn’t really matter what subject matter the Wiki covers; what’s important is that everyone participates. Students would be encouraged to write, proofread, and edit the content they contribute. The teacher can post questions for discussion to keep the Wiki active and on target. It’s also a fun way to experiment with web design, making this a class project with multiple utilities.

 Other ESL teachers have reported great success from using the Flickr website. Using Flickr teachers and students can upload and share photos with text. The use of a visual element brings the lesson to life and gives students real world examples. Teachers might post a photograph and ask students to describe the action in the scene, and then query them about whether they’ve ever done something similar and also ask them to describe the experience. Students can also use Flickr in small groups or pairs in exercises where they are asked to describe an assigned image and then compare it to the image assigned to their partners. The diversity of projects made possible with Flickr is immense and students typically enjoy these experiences.

 Some experts have gone farther than simply integrating some technology into a traditional ESL classroom environment. There are those, in fact, who maintain that ESL classes can be conducted entirely online. The web-based environment would of course allow students learning English to interact through text, but would also contain an audio component through which students could actually hear the correct pronunciation of words and complete sentences. The convenience of such online courses for students encountering English for the first time is undeniable. Students could log on to the course website from anywhere with internet access at any time. They would complete assignments and gain proficiency more or less at their own pace within the broad structure of the course schedule.

However, not everyone agrees that it’s advisable to learn a foreign language in a fully online environment. Similarly, while using technology to learn languages is generally accepted as a good idea, some teachers are apprehensive that technology is used in class simply for it’s own sake rather than for any actual value it adds to the course.

The right technology has the power to engage ESL learners and enhance their ability to acquire and retain the English language so that they can useit fluently and consistently. When the technology utilized supports the stated curricular goals of the ESL classroom then it is a worthwhile accompaniment to more traditional teaching methods.

 Not all technology is necessarily useful or relevant to ESL learning. The main benefit of technology in the ESL classroom is its ability to help students make connections. Perhaps students will be able to participate in a Skype-enabled conference with their classmates and teacher. Maybe they will make connections with other ESL students and be able to share experiences. It is these kinds of innovations that make technology in the classroom so incredibly valuable.

 That said, there is no need to rush toward incorporating each new piece of technology into ESL teaching. Cutting-edge technologies that have just been introduced to the marketplace may have a number of kinks that need to be worked out before they can truly benefit ESL students, if they prove to be relevant and useful at all. It can be better to wait to bring new technologies into teaching until they’ve had opportunity to mature a bit and be tested by early adopters. A second version of a software program or new device often follows closely on the heels of the first and may include many useful improvements that make it superior to the original offering.

 Technology has the power to transform the learning experience of ESL students everywhere, but it should be incorporated judiciously and with forethought. Not everything in ESL study needs to revolve around the inclusion of technology. Great learning success can still be achieved using a pen and a piece of paper or from engaging in a lively classroom conversation and discussion. ESL teachers must reflect on what methods will best engage their students. Sometimes these can include technology, other times they need not. Mixing the use of technology with more traditional teaching methods encourages flexibility and adaptability, something that can benefit students even after the end of their formal ESL education.

Have you ever thought how much assumption is going on in our daily lives? Well, recently I have been.. Here are a few things I came out with;

I assume my husband would read my mind and magically know what I really want, for example. When he doesn’t, I am shocked and disappointed .

 What about the stakeholders in the educational institutions?

The higher education councils assume that everyone who graduates from the university to become a teacher is a great teacher already. They assume that the system works greatly. They assume that it is easy to teach and learn languages. They assume that the policies they made years ago have been working well for years.

Managers assume that the decisions they give are clearly understood and welcome by all the employees. They assume that all the mails they send are read thoroughly. They assume that their messages are not interpreted very very differently and speculated about. They assume that systems the establish work fairly. They assume everyone believes that they are doing their best. Sometimes they assume that long meetings are productive. They sometime assume that their promises which have not been kept are forgotten in time. They assume that when the syllabus is given to the teachers they will go and teach it as suggested in the best way. They assume that the rubrics are understood and used by everyone perfectly.

Teachers assume that the students can understand what they have been teaching in class all through the lesson, or the opposite of it. I mean, they assume that students cannot discover the language points from the contextual clues and the guiding questions. They assume that they should spoon-feed the students to make sure that the language point has been understood. Sometimes they assume that a student who comes late to their lesson is actually disrespectful and rude. Sometimes they assume that students who are bored in class are bored because of their teaching styles. Teachers sometimes believe that the managers don’t understand them at all.

Publishers assume that the books they produce are great and institutions can use them efficiently all the time. They assume that one size fits all. They assume that teachers read the preface, the teaching manuals and know the methodology behind the course books while picking the books.

Parents assume that their kids always go to school to learn and benefit from the lessons. They assume that their children ask meaningful questions to learn more and improve themselves. They assume that their children never skip lessons. They assume that when they pay more the get better education.

Students assume that teachers and the management know what they are doing very well. Or the opposite, they assume that nobody knows anything. They assume that collating enough points just to pass means they have learned everything necessary. They assume that finishing the course means they are competent. They assume that just being in class will be enough.

On the otherhand, should we never assume? Well, look at this quote and decide. Like everything, a good balance will bethe answer.. I assume:)

“If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.”

Wright, Orville

Yes, I planned my lesson considering all the crucial aspects  that I mentioned in the first stage of this series, and I managed to execute my lesson plan in class. What is next? Has the lesson really ended here?
Actually, it is time to sit down and think about it. Even ten minutes would be enough to reflect on it. The wonderful word ‘reflection’ . What do I reflect on though? Here are a few questions to guide me:

Were my lesson aims achieved? Were they approriate to the age group and the needs of the learners. Were they too easy or too difficult? Were they too ambitious or not challanging enough for my learners? What about the activities I have chosen to achive my goals? Did the students actually enjoy them and benefit from them? How do I know that? How did I get the feedback? Is the feedback based on something tangible or is it intutive? How do I know that the activities were really suitable? Were all of them absolutely effective? Do I need to make modifications? If I had the chance to do this lesson again what would I change? Would I do it exactly the same way? Why? Why not?
How about the timing of the stages? Were they just fine, too long or too short? Were there students who finished earlier than the others? What did I do to occupy them? Did it create a problem? Did they do what I wanted them to do extra or did they refuse to do so and make noise? What would be a better solution? Can I make use of the faster learners in another way? Can they be the observers of the small groups, for example? Can they be my assistants? Should I prepare different worksheets for these students in order to create enough challange for them? Would it be fair or unfair? Would the slower learners feel offended or relieved?

What about the physical aspects: did I make use of the room and the seats efficiently? Could I have done anything differently to make the lesson more effective? Did this seating allow learners to interact well? Did the grouping work well? Did all the pairs do the assigned tasks properly? Did the students participate well? If not, what could have I done to increase their participation? Should I have  included more technology? Would the task have worked better if it had been assigned electronically? Would it have generated more interaction if I had set up a wiki before the lesson?
Were my instructions clear? Were there any ambiguities when the activity started? Did I have enough number of worksheets? How much did I talk? How much did the students talk? How did I correct errors or did I ignore them intentionlly? Was it efficient to do that? How do I feel about this lesson? 

Millions of questions? The answers I give to some of them and the actions I take to improve them will hopefully make my next lesson a better one. And probably many more questions will follow that one.

This is an ongoing journey. In a way, it is really hard to say when a lesson starts and ends…

SO LET’S MAKE THE MOST OF IT AND ENJOY THE JOURNEY.