Back to school

Back to school! The summer holiday is over. Teachers are preparing their bags, lesson plans, notebooks and worksheets. But the thing that marks every teacher’s feelings every new school year is the endless feeling of repeating the same endeavors to enlighten their students minds.

Sisyphean task

In fact the situation of  teachers back to school is very much like the situation of Sisyphus’s eternal toil. Sisyphus was compelled by the gods to roll a huge rock up a hill only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity.

After saying goodbye to the students of the previous year,  we are bound to provide a warm welcome to the new students of this year. Some of them are ready and willing to learn while others will certainly make our lives difficult which will necessitate a huge effort on the teachers part. Setting the rules, providing an appropriate environment for the learning (and the teaching), spotting the difficult students, the low achievers, providing support, inventing new tricks to manage the classroom, evaluating, grading, getting feedback, carrying remedial work… and the list is still long, very long,  a Sisyphean task…

Hope

What undoubtedly gives us hope is that the struggle towards the heights, helping our students, enlightening their minds and sowing the seeds of knowledge is enough to fill a teacher’s heart. We should not regard our task as a punishment. It is in fact a mission. A noble mission. The NOBLEST.

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Who’s behind My English Pages

I’m an EFL teacher, currently working in a Moroccan high school.  You can read more about me in the About Page. You’ll catch me here in this blog writing about teachers and teaching. I will share my experience as a teacher and  will cover in my articles topics ranging from teaching methods to lesson plans and class management. There will also be room for some general topics that might be related to teaching. You may also come across some tips about blogging and how teachers can implement this web tool in teaching.

Where to begin?

First bookmark the blog and enjoy reading about

• some of my teaching articles,
• methodologies (English language teaching methods),
• lesson plans,
• links,
• general topics,
• blogging.

English Website

Please visit my English website. There you can find a lot of interesting English teaching resources:

• grammar and vocabulary lessons,
• interactive exercies,
• listening materials,
• reading materials,
• English language forums,
• and much more…

I hope you enjoy your visit.

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This week I wanted to edit a post. When I clicked on the update button, …. A problem: all the posts and pages and comments were gone.  Just like that. I went into the PHPmyadmin section of the control panel to look at the database and here’s the error I found:

“wp_posts” is marked as crashed and should be repaired.

I can’t tell you how frightened I was. All my posts gone. To make the matter wores the only backup I had was 3 months old!

Fortunately, a search on the internet helped me fix the problem. Here is how I fixed it:

• Go to in PHPmyadmin,
• click the checkbox next to the corrupted table (for example, wp_posts).
• The table will probably say “in use”.
• Use the dropdown menu at the bottom to select “repair table”.
• That’s it.

Of course, the ideal thing is to have backups now and then. This will help you reinstall your tables when a problem occurs.

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This article is about instilling discipline and disciplinary action in the classroom. For a definition of descipline and the causes of indiscipline visit the link below:

Definition of descipline and the causes of indiscipline

Classroom Rules

In a previous article I defined discipline as a code of conduct that both teachers and students agree upon and cooperate in its enforcement. As I said I insist on cooperation and agrreement in classroom management because when  the rules are set by all learning and teaching participants, it will be hard for them to deny or refuse disciplinary action in case of any tansgression of the rules.

How to instill discipline in classrooms?

• Agree on the rules
  You and your students should agree on the rules that everybody should abide by. No student would consider coming late for school as a proper conduct. So, start a list of proper classroom conduct.
• Clear rules and regulations:
  Once the rules and regulations are set, state them clearly. They should stipulates what is expected from students and what is not-  The dos and the donts.
• Updating and reviewing.
  Novel instances of indiscipline may occur. That is why the rules and regulations may undergo updates or reviews from time to time.
• Discrimination
  There should be no discrimination in enforcing rules and regulations. Disciplinary action in a classroom should be applicable to every defaulter. Whatever applies to one student when he defaults should also be applicable to another.
• Appropriate atmosphere
  Things that will prevent students from getting involved in discipline should be discouraged and prevented.
• Communication
  There should be proper communication of the rules concerning discipline in the classroom.
• Disciplinary action
  Disciplinary actions should be in such a way that defaulters will not want to be disciplined a second time after defaulting for a first time.

Disciplinary action

What are the consequences for breaking the rules?

• Oral warning;
  When an offense is not that serious or when an offender is a first offender, he can be given oral warning. This should be done in a quiet area in the classroom or just outside the door as to not embarass the child.
• Actions:
  When the offense persist, one of the folowing actions follow: time out, detention, notice to parent.
• Informing parents:
  If the same offender persist again with his disruptive behavior, parents are informed of previous inappropriate behaviors and the student is warned that if the indiscipline continues, a behavior plan will be in place.
• Suspension:
  If an offense is strong,  the student may be suspended for a day or two and more action should follow. The offender should be refered to a board specialist, a behavior specialist and parent conference is called.

Disciplinary action is always carried out in sequence. It should also be favorable that disciplinary actions be undertaken in such a way that offenders are discouraged to repeat or commit another disruptive behavior.

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Importance of discipline

Discipline is paramount for every learning . It is very essential for any teaching. It is also very important for peace and harmony in any learning environment: peace between students, teachers and administration. That’s why it is always necessary for discipline to be instilled in students to get the best out of your students.

In this article I will present a definition of descipline and the causes of indiscipline. In the next article I will suggest ways to instill discipline and how disciplinary action should be undertaken to ensure a smooth classroom management.

What is discipline?

Discipline can be defined

In its most general sense, discipline refers to systematic instruction given to a disciple. To discipline thus means to instruct a person to follow a particular code of conduct “order.”

Wikipedia

In the classroom discipline is regarded as a code of conduct that both teachers and students agree upon and cooperate in its enforcement. I insist on cooperation and agrreement in classroom management. Once the rules are set by all learning and teaching participants, it will be hard for them to deny or refuse disciplinary action in case of any tansgression of the rules.

Causes of indiscipline

There are many causes of indiscipline. Here are a few:

• Favoritism:
  Indiscipline may be caused by teachers who  favor some students in their teaching and calssroom management.  The other students may see this as a sign that everything is allowed in spite of the rules. Other students may also see this favoritism as an offense aginst them which leads to rebelion.
• The rules are not enforced
  When a student is not punished for an offense , s/he goes on to commit more offense.
• Lack of Communication:
  The rules are not clearly communicated
• Teacher-student relationship
  The teacher and students relationship is essential for any learning process. If there is a breakdown in this relationship, indiscipline emerges.
• Lack of leadership:
  When the teacher doesn’t fulfil his role as a leader, there will certainly be  students or students who will be glad to take this role. Thus indiscipline appears.
• Lack of motivation:
  When students are not motivated, they tend to work in an indisciplined manner.
• Bad Habit:
  Some students may have acquired bad habits  from previous teaching experiences. Once a student, for instance ,  has formed the habit of coming to school late, it will be hard for him or her to change this behavior.

In the next article I will suggest some ways to instill discipline and enforce disciplinary action in the classroom.

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Building a Better Teacher

Good teaching:

good teaching must be purely instinctive, a kind of magic performed by born superstars

This is a New YorK Times magazine article about how to build good teachers.  When actual teaching, the daily task of getting students to learn, flounders, what should be done? Fire bad teachers?  Train them? Read the article. Here is the link:

Better teachers

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Shaping the Way We Teach English

Learning Strategies

What is the goal of learning strategies?

what are the different learning strategies?

How can we understand and facilitate learning for students of all ages?

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Difficulties to develop communicative tests

If teaching is carried out according to the communicative approach, then tests must be designed accordingly. However a lot of teachers believe that communicative tests are hard to prepare. In fact various challenging difficulties emerge when teachers develop communicative tests.

1. One crucial concern is the problem of developing useful assessment instruments which can be employed accurately and efficiently in a range of typical classroom situations.
2. Another challenge is to develop a  framework  which is based on attending to the theoretical requirements of both communicative teaching goals and test design principles.
3. There are also dificulties associated with the English as a Foreign Language  context. While communicative theory emphasizes the importance of using authentic materials and of practicing meaningful communication in realistic social situations , these goals are almost impossible to achieve in EFL  settings.
4. The EFL settings make impossible for learners to consolidate and practice what is learned in the classroom in real world situations which makes it very difficult to develop communicative tests.
5. the extent to which it is possible to achieve the goal of meaningful communication remains entirely unclear, given the contextual requirement for simulating foreign interactions in EFL classrooms.
6. communicative tests must also reflect contemporary theory concerning test design principles – validity, reliability, and practicality. I there is a lack of direct correlation between theory and practice, some specific discrepancies between test-design principles and efficiency requirements may occur.
7. Some teachers contend that it is inevitable that rating communicative tests may be subjective as it is difficult to distinguish right from wrong responses in real life situations.

Tests requirements

Before developing any test, it is important to bear in mind the test requirements . These requirements include validity, reliability, and practicality.

• Validity is concerned with how well a test measures what it is intended to measure. It englobes:
  • content validity (how well performances demonstrate the specified learning domain),
  • construct validity (whether theoretical principles are reflected in the test design),
  • and face validity (the extent to which a test appears to measure what is intended).
• Reliability is concerned with the dependability of results, or the extent to which performance is consistently measured. There are three aspects of reliability:
  • Test reliability mean that if we assign the same test to the same subjects or matched subjects on two different occasions it would yield the same result.
  • Inter-rater reliability (agreement between different rater of the same performance),
  • Intra-rater reliability (the same rater assessing the same performance on different occasions).
• Practicality means that a test must be practical in terms of financial limitation, time constraints, ease of administration, scoring and interpretation

Tips to develop communicative tests

The bottom line of communicative tests is that they should test appropriateness rather than mere production of (inappropriate) grammatical sentences.  In addition tests have to be pragmatically relevant. They should revolve around three main areas, namely grammar, discourse, sociolinguistics and illocutionary competence.

Merill swain (1984) listed four primary criteria for the constuction of communicative tests:

• Starting from somewhere (knowledge, principles theoretical faramework whic is the foundation for devising any communicative tests.)
• Concentrating on content (interesting and motivating content that may include situations that use context and that are integrative and interactive.)
• Biasing for the best. That is tTests need to do everything possible to elicit the very best performance. (stress free environment, enough time to complete the task…)
• Working for washback. (Tests as feedback for further improvement.)

The following are tips for developing communicative tests:

• Communicative tests may be context specific. That is a test for a group of business learners may differ from a test designed for university students
• Testees must respond to real life situations.
• Some criteria for communicative tests may be related to the degree of politeness , formality, …
• Performance in communicative tests reflects an underlying comptence that is linguistic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic, strategic…
• Any communicative testing should consider this multi-dimensional nature of language.

Examples of communicative tests

Examples of communicative tests may include:

1. Information gap.
   This involves two (or more) learners. Each testee has part of the information. They have to negotiate in order to get the missing information. A clear context must be specified for the test.
2. Letter writing.
   Leraners may be asked to write, for example, a buisiness letter to ask for information or to respond to a complaint by a customer
3. Note taking.
   Testees are involved in a listening activity in which they have to take notes and, for example, write a report

These are just some examples of course. If you have any idea for a communicative test please feel free to share.

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Blogginig

What are blogs? What does blogging mean? What are the advantages of blogging?

WordPress.com define blogs as follows:

“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog features diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites, usually presented as a list of entries in reverse chronological order. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.

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Social Media

Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as:

“a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”

Social media are distinct from industrial or traditional media, such as newspapers, television, and film. They are relatively inexpensive and accessible to enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish or access information, compared to industrial media, which generally require significant resources to publish information.

Source: Wikipedia

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