Jeremy Harmer’s wonderful “How to Teach Writing” has some great ideas on writing activities.  One of my favorites is using instrumental music as the basis for a creative writing project.  Jeremy says to play a song for the students.  While they listen, they should write down any vocabulary that they associate with the music.  Pool the vocabulary together as a class and then have the students write a story based on it or, better yet, imagine the music to be the introductory scene of a movie.  Students then write out how the movie begins.  This could easily be built into an extended drama activity.

I love this idea and it has always worked very well in my classes.  Some pieces of music are just so evocative and immediately bring stories to life.  They can be a real spur to get the creative juices flowing.

The song I like to use is War of the Last Wolves from the Rurouni Kenshin soundtrack.  There is an excellent video on YouTube set to the music titled  “rurouni kenshin OVA the war of the last wolves.”  Unfortunately, the government attempts to ban access to YouTube have gotten stronger recently and previous access avenues are being blocked.  There is a shorter version via DailyMotion here.

You can then use the video to offer as a comparison to your students’ stories.  Maybe even have the class vote on favorites and explain why.

Other good songs are anything by Yoko Kanno.  Most will also have videos done for them as well.

Related Posts:

Music in the Background

Song Stories

Simple but sweet.  Music in the background has a lot of uses.  Here are a few:

-  In general, music in the background is just a good signal once students become accustomed to it.  When you turn off the music, the students know that it’s time to transition, look up at you, etc.

-  Especially with kids, but also with adults the mood and tempo of the music can change the mood of the class. You can play fast songs for games and slow songs for thoughtful preparation or writing.

-  Playing music in the background makes your students talk louder.  This is a good trick for those classes that like to whisper when doing pair or group work.  I highly recommend it.

-  Music can also be used to block out the voices of other students.  This is especially useful if students are preparing for a debate or some kind of game where they don’t want anyone else to overhear what they are saying.  It’s also nice because students can ask you questions and not be so worried about embarrassing themselves by asking “a stupid question” in front of their peers.

-  Setting the mood for role-plays.  Dance music at a party, muzak during shopping, even speeches at a historical event can all be good for setting the scene and making things a bit more realistic.

Generally when picking songs it’s useful to play instrumentals as I’ve found that students sometimes stop doing whatever they should be doing in order to try and understand the song lyrics.

Volume is also important.  It should be just loud enough to have an effect.

Do you have any other ways you use music in the background for a class?

Related Posts:

Song Stories

Pictures Painted in Sound

After sickness, a major workload, and a much needed holiday, we’re back

Often in the classroom I see music only used for the odd gapfill, but there are lots of other ways to use music and I’d like to showcase a few in this series.

One thing I really like to do is use stories in the classroom – stories about my life, interesting stories, collaborative stories, ghost stories, stories from the students, etc.  There are a lot of songs out there that tell stories as well. The music really adds depth to the story and allows for a lot of extensions.

One that I really like to use in class is “Long Black Veil” sung by Dave Matthews Band (but which is originally a Johnny Cash song).

Note: You can always use Grooveshark for free streaming music if you have an Internet connection.

Long Black Veil

Level: Int & Up

Objective: 3rd conditional
I wish/If only for regrets
Extended speaking in monologue form

Song: Long Black Veil by Johnny Cash or Dave Matthews Band.  Cash’s version is easier to
understand but Dave’s version is sadder and gives the idea of a love story better.

Plan: Tell the students that they are going to listen to a story.  Do auxiliary vocabulary (Auxiliary Vocabulary – a slayer, a scene, a grave, a scaffold, eternity, a veil, an alibi, to wail, to moan). Ask students to guess the content of the story using the words.  The words are quite evocative and students often come up with some good murder stories.

Play the song once.  Ask the students to identify the mood.  Then, ask the students to compare their
original ideas about the content to the mood and what they understood from the song.

Give the students the lyrics and let them read and follow along with the song.

Do the comprehension questions quick with the class to make sure everyone is on the same page.  I’ve found that generally about half the class won’t realize the condemned man wasn’t the killer or how you know this unless the questions are done.  Afterwards, ask them what they think about the story.  In Turkey, students will often bring up Ask-i Memnu and make comparisons, so you might want to add that into your lesson plan somehow.

Ask the students to think about how the man felt before his execution and the woman afterwards (try to elicit “regretful”).  Tell them to choose the man or the woman.  If possible show them a clip of the famous scene from Hamlet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsrOXAY1arg&feature=fvst.  If not possible, explain the concept of a monologue and demonstrate.  Tell the students that they will need to write a monologue and perform it in small groups or for the class from the perspective of one of the lovers.  Review “S+wish+past perfect”, “If only+ S + past perfect”, “S + regret + v-ing” if necessary.

Alternative:

Ask them to explain to their partner what they would have done if they had been in that person’s position.  Their partner then needs to relate their partner’s opinion to the class.

Hand out the cut up of other famous lovers.  Have the students prepare and perform a monologue for the class based on these new situations.

Long Black Veil

Ten years ago on a cold dark night,
someone was killed ‘neath the town hall lights.
There were few at the scene, but they all agreed,
that the slayer who ran looked a lot like me.

Chorus ~ She walks these hills, in a long black veil.
She visits my grave, when the night winds wail.
Nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows, but me

The judge said, “son, what is your alibi,
if you were somewhere else, then you won’t have to die.”
Well, I said not a word, though it meant my life,
for I’d been in the arms of my best friend’s wife.

Chorus*

Now the scaffold is high, and eternity is near.
She stood in the crowd, and shed not a tear.
Oh sometimes at night, when the cold wind moans
In a long black veil, she cries over my bones

Chorus ~ She walks these hills, in a long black veil.
When the cold winds blow, and the night winds wail.
Nobody knows, nobody sees.
Nobody knows, but me.

Comprehension Questions:

1)      Where and when does the song take place?

2)     Why is the singer on trial?

3)     Was the singer actually the killer?

4)     Why didn’t he say he was innocent?

5)      Who is the woman in the long black veil?

Famous Lovers

Romeo and Juliet – Madly in love, but their families are feuding and hate each other, so they are forbidden to be together.

Antony and Cleopatra – Powerful rulers of countries.  They are in love, but Rome is scandalized by Antony’s marriage to Cleopatra.  Rome does not trust Egypt and does not want them to be united.

Scarlett O’Hara & Rhett Butler – Scarlett realizes she loves Rhett, but it is too late.  Rhett no longer loves her.

Lancelot & Guinevere – Guinevere is King Arthur’s wife, but falls deeply in love with his best friend, Lancelot.

Bonnie & Clyde – Two bank robbers and murderers that were constantly running from the law.

Sheherezade & King Shahryar – King Shahryar married a women and then killed her the morning after the wedding, but Sheherezade told the king a story every night, but would not finish it until the next night.  The king always wanted to hear the end, so he let her live.

Samson & Delilah – Samson loved Delilah, but he was attacking her land.  Her people wanted her to find the secret of his power, so they could kill him.

Here is the downloadable lesson plan.

Here is a list of other songs that tell a story.  There are tons more out there, but I tend to like something with a bit of a bite .

Related Posts:

Music in the Background

Pictures Painted in Sound

I read a really good article tweeted by the English Blog the other day discussing not the usefulness, but the need for translation within the language classroom.

I would agree that this is indeed the case, especially when looking at some of the strange sentences my students produce and the issues those signify.

One of my favorite lessons from Jamie Keddie’s TEFL Clips is Lesson 9 – Teaching Get. It’s from a great series of videos made by Lev Yilmaz (which sounds like a Turkish last name). The one Jamie uses is Procrastination (my personal favorite is the one on mothers).

In this lesson the students are asked to translate some sentences into their L1 and then back into English. This activity is extremely useful because:

1) It helps students notice gaps between the languages and gaps in their understanding.

2) It brings an attention to focus on chunks of meaning.

3) It helps establish connections between the languages.

4) It gives students the often welcome chance to use their L1.

5) It challenges the teacher.

Here are three of the sentences Jamie asks students to translate.

1) When I got home, I didn’t feel like cereal anymore.

2) When I got back, it was getting late.

3) I just need to make sure to get to bed early.

Here is how a large percentage of upper level and TOEFL students from my classes consistently (mis)translate them into Turkish:

1)  Eve geldigimde kendimi daha fazla misir gevregi gibi hissetmedim.

2)  Geri dondugum zaman gec oluyordu.

3)  Ben sadece erken yataga girmekten emin olmak zorundayim.

The problem with the first example is that, among other things, students have translated “feel like” literally and produced nonsense in Turkish.

In the second example they literally translated a grammar structure that no one would ever use.

In the third one they are attempting to translate the sentence word for word. In the end, the sentence can be said to be grammatically correct in Turkish, but no one would ever say such a strange thing.

Here’s a much better translation for all 3:

1)  Eve geldigimde artik misir gevregi yemek icimden gelmedi.

2)  Geri dondugum zaman gec olmustu.

3)  Erkenden yatmaliyim.

Notice the differences?

In each case high level students have made the false assumption that languages are translated literally word by word. As my students tell me, a major reason for this is that this is what they were taught to do in school. This has major repercussions on how students are understanding English in the classes and points to a lack of awareness of a need to focus on meaning.  It also reflects on how a purely L2 classroom can lead to possible misunderstandings.

It’s also quite fascinating to me that students would translate something into nonsense in their own L1 and shows the depth to which misperceptions can go.

I use to run into this problem all the time when I’d ask people to help me learn Turkish. They would constantly give me the English translations for things as word and grammar crossovers rather than what people actually said or what the phrase actually meant.

This is just one of many examples I have of translation issues that crop up in my classes. I have found it incredibly fruitful to do such activities and get students to start being aware of differences, similarities, and the complexities of translation.

After all, most students will have to do large amounts of translation at some point. Many job interviews in Turkey ask candidates to translate documents rather than speak English at the interview because the manager probably can’t. Additionally, many companies often use their English speaking employees as cheap translation services.

While there are many good reasons to limit the use of L1 in the classroom, translation remains a very necessary part of the English classroom both as an aid to understanding and as a skill most students will need.

What are your thoughts on translation? Have you used similar types of activities? How valuable are they? How much doubt does this cast on the usefulness of monolingual English teachers in monolingual classrooms?

Related Posts:

Against Translation

Using Turkish in the Classroom

Turkish-English Dictionaries

“Do unto your fellow bloggers

what you would have them

do unto you.”

Follow this dogma on their blogs, within the blogosphere and right across the twitterverse and eventually – you must be patient – the Great Google God will bless your life with love and you shall be gloriously showered with many, many visitations.

Once you have proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are most selfless and diligent then you shall also be rewarded with the keywords to Google’s first page and forever more, be known as blogian.

image credit:

Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, Queen Mariana of Austria, blogging

(c) KarenneJoySylvester, 2010

This article is part of a new series: Thoughts on Edu-blogging. Karenne is an ELT edu-blogger, a ESP:IT teacher, EdTech teacher-trainer and materials writer, originally from Grenada in the Caribbean. She currently lives in Stuttgart, Germany and writes Kalinago English and BusinessEnglish~5mins.

This video appeared on the news in Turkey and around the world on Tuesday evening.  It’s a short clip of a troupe of Israeli soldiers performing a dance while on duty in the West Bank.

Israel has been a major focal point of much discussion recently in Turkey due to the attack on the primarily Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, during the Gaza Flotilla incident a couple weeks ago.  This is on top of the major outcry that went up in Turkey a while back when Israel made some extremely violent and heavy-handed incursions into Gaza.

The comical nature of soldiers dancing on duty contrasts sharply with the context of the Occupation and recent events in which it was done.

Needless to say, it provides a great basis for a lesson.

I brought the video into both my upper-intermediate classes on Wednesday although it could easily be done with Intermediates as well.

Step 1 – Start the lesson by showing the clip.  Before showing the clip, make sure to ask any students that have seen it already to remain silent about it.

Step 2 – After the clip is shown ask the students to write a reaction response to it about how they felt while watching it.

Step 3 - Now invite students to share their reactions to the video. Let the conversation run.  The initial conversation took about an hour in both classes that I did it with and could have gone on longer.

At least one person will have seen the clip already and it will come out that it was performed by Israeli soldiers.  If the conversation doesn’t move in this direction, you might want to open up a debate on how their opinions changed once they knew where the video came from and why that might be.

Step 4 - During the last five minutes of the lesson, have the students write at least three questions they would like answered about the video.  Most of my students came up with pretty much the same questions, which were:

Were the soldiers real soldiers or actors?

Who made the video (i.e. was it actors, the soldiers, the military, an outside group)?

Who uploaded the video?

What was the message that’s trying to be sent?

Why was the call to prayer played in the beginning?

Step 5 - The second hour I ask the students to try to answer their own questions.  To do this they are given access a short newspaper article from the Herald Sun and YNet.

The students do a good job of then debating the article amongst themselves and calling on you for help with any unknown words or questions they have about the texts.

Step 6 - Finally I play the clip made by American soldiers in April (Soldiers remaking music videos is a meme going back to at least 2006).

I also make them aware of a number of other videos that I let them watch on break if interested. (Note that almost all these videos can be found in better quality on YouTube, but, since Turkey doesn’t have access to it, I didn’t link them unless I couldn’t find it elsewhere.)

American Soldiers in Iraq – Electric Avenue (This one is the most well made, but it has a short seen of blind-folded Iraqis taken prisoner, which might not be something you want to show as it’s a bit sensitive).

American Navy – Pump It (One of the earliest from 2006) & Move Along (Incredibly well made)

American Soldiers – This is Why I’m Hot (YouTube, This one is %100 original as far as I can tell.  Very well made in the UAE)

American Soldiers – Ridin Dirty (YouTube)

American Soldier – Vanilla Ice (YouTube)

Russian Soldier – Techno

Israeli Soldiers – Girlfriend

Swiss Soldier – Michael Jackson (YouTube)

Australian Navy – I’m on a Boat (YouTube, very funny)

British SAS – This is the Way to Amarillo

There are a ton more on YouTube as well if you have a look.

Step 7 - After having read the material and seen some previous videos, I next have the class write up a report on the video that attempts to answer all the questions they came up with in the first hour.  This could also be done as homework if you only have 2-hour classes.

Step 8+ - Finally I do some peer-editing, correction work, and final reflection.

All in all, this lesson turned out incredibly well and I was extremely pleased with the result.  The debates were varied, lively, and thoughtful.  Coming up with questions to be answered, finding the answers to those questions, and then reporting on the information was also a great way to collaborate, research and analyze information, and then synthesize said information from a variety of sources.

Finally, a note of caution, a lot of sensitive issues are raised with this topic relating to Israel and Palestine and, as I’m American, conversation also often spilled over into America’s relationship with Israel and the war in Iraq.  Be prepared to discuss these issues.

Related Posts:

Keepin It Real – A Today’s Zaman commercial

It’s holiday season here in Turkey.  As a result, a large number of students and teachers take off for a month or more to various places. The vacation area of choice for most students is the Southwest coasts of Turkey on the Aegean or the Mediterranean. As a teacher here you quickly become familiar with places like Bodrum, Antalya, and Fethiye.

I just returned from my own holiday on the beach last night. It was my first holiday done in true Turkish fashion, which means a lot of R & R.

As teachers, we often get excited when our students come back from holiday because we think they’ll have some interesting stories to tell. In Turkey, you quickly find out that, by and large, this isn’t the case. When students are asked what they did on holiday, more often than not the reply is either “nothing” or “I slept.” When I first started teaching here, I thought that this was just a case of students not wanting to speak about their holidays in English. I later learned that they actually meant it.

Compared to many places in the US or Europe, Turkish people have to work really hard. They work longer hours and for between 2 to 10 times less what the person in the same job would make in another country. There are also a lot more stressors in general living here. So, for many, the ideal holiday is going somewhere where you can relax, forget about the hardships of life, and do as little as possible.

So what’s a poor teacher to do during the summer slump when everyone would rather be outside and there doesn’t seem to be much to talk about? Here is a nice task-based project on vacations (what’s a task you say? Check out this fabulous guest post by Marcos Benevides over at Six Things).

Level: Pre-Intermediate and Up

Objective:  Presentation Skills
                     Research Skills
                     Unreal structures with ”would”
                     Holiday Vocabulary                   

Materials: Some big, poster-sized paper, scissors, colored markers, access to a computer lab with Internet connection or travel magazines.

Procedure: This lesson can easily be modified to last over several class periods or cut down to just one.  For instance, you can do large skills focus lessons on researching or presenting.  It can also be adapted as a short presentation follow up to the Create a Country lesson.

Step 1)  Write “Dream Vacation” up on the board.  Give a student the board marker and have the class brainstorm words associated with that topic.

Step 2)  Looking at the board, ask if everyone seems to have the same idea about what a dream vacation is like.  Now tell the students that they are going to plan a dream vacation, but that they need to go on this vacation with a partner. Have them prepare some questions to ask people to determine if they have the same ideas about what a perfect vacation entails. (For example, Do you like adventurous vacations or quite ones? Would you prefer the beach or the mountains? Would you like to go abroad or stay in Turkey? Etc.)

Step 3)  Do a mingle where the class needs to discuss their ideas of a perfect vacation and decide who would be the best person in the class for them to go with.

Step 4)  Once they’ve found someone they think they’d like to travel with, have them sit down as a pair. Once everyone is finished, students need to explain who they chose for a partner and why. This is a good place to review agreement language as Turkish students tend to have trouble remembering this language point, especially in the negative. Encourage sentences like “Seda likes relaxing on the beach and so do I“, “Burak doesn’t like swimming and neither do I.” Correlative conjunctions also work (both…and, neither….nor, either…or).

Step 5)  Now write “Money is no object” on the board. Explain the meaning of the phrase if necessary. Tell students that they are going to imagine that money was no object and that they are going to plan an ideal vacation with their partner ( If the class has access to a computer lab with Internet, then they can choose anywhere. If not, they’ll be limited to destinations in the travel magazines). The catch is that the holiday has to be abroad and it can‘t be somewhere they‘ve already been. Making it outside the students’ own country facilitates the need for more research and makes it more likely that web sites will be in English.

With the class, brainstorm what they’ll have to plan.

-Where to go
-What to bring
-How long to stay
-Where to stay
-What sights to see
-What to do there
-How to travel
-What money to use
-Visa requirements
-Language issues
-Safety and health
-Etc.

Step 6)  Show students the poster paper. Explain that they will need to plan their ideal vacation and find out all the details by researching it. After researching it, they will have to draw out a map of their travel plan and include any relevant images. Students can cut out images from magazines, print them out, or draw them.  I usually give one to one and a half class periods to research and then prepare the poster.

Step 7)  The pairs then present the imaginary holiday to the class. Make sure to emphasize that this is not a real holiday and of course money is always a factor, so they will need to use a lot of 2nd conditional type structures. This is good practice for students as they often have trouble with this. They’ll often use unreal would for the first sentence and then revert back to present simple or something. This is also a good presentation project because students will have to switch back and forth between present simple for facts about things like visas and historical sights and unreal sentences for their plans.

I usually give the students 15-30 minutes to divide up who will talk about what, prepare the presentation, and practice it before they do it for real.  Also make it clear that each person in the pair will have to speak for half the time.  Before starting the presentations, it’s a good idea to collect the posters and split groups members up as they often will chat about the upcoming presentation rather than listen to the presenters.

During the presentation, listeners need to pay attention to fill out an focus form.  Also encourage them to ask questions at the end of the presentation.  The listening focus questions are here (FYI:  I’m having some problems with MS Office at the moment, so these are rtf files for now).  Note that the listening focus forms should be anonymous and then handed to the group who presented them.

Step 8 )  The final stage of the project involves reflection. The reflection form is here. Students should fill it out and then discuss it with a partner.  I usually tell the students to keep the reflection forms anonymous as well.

Step 9)  Take the forms home and go over them for the next day.  Discuss the feedback as a class, possibly presenting a selection of it on the board and go over any major language issues that came up.

Please check out the video before reading the post.  It’s about a program started at Bernard College.

I happened to come across this video through On War and Words blog.  For me, this project is the embodiment of good teaching.  This is the type of teaching I strive for.

There is certainly a lot to like about this style of teaching, but by far the most important for me is the creation of a critical classroom.  Students were deliberately challenged to seek out new worldviews, question preconceived notions, and identify with the Other.  I truly feel that good teaching always does those things.

Seeking out new worldviews, especially ones that challenge our current beliefs is so important to be able to critically engage with the world around us, each other, and even ourselves.  These students had to delve into a very complex and difficult topic and really look at it.

More importantly, they are doing more than  just acquiring and then passing on that information.  They are living it.  They are not just reporting what someone else says.  They are being asked to truly understand that person and become them within the classroom.  This ability to get inside the head of an other is an invaluable skill and can teach so much, especially when you are asked to do it with the side you don’t agree with.

We as teachers have very powerful opportunities to bring these critical elements into our students lives and I feel that it is something many teachers either rarely consider or shy away from.

We should ask ourselves if our teaching is truly transformative or if it simply aids the accumulation of knowledge and skills.  Personally, I feel we should do both rather than one or the other.

This project also rests on some very sound pedagogical principles.  The students are given a lot of free-reign, most of the work is done by them, and the knowledge and skills are lived rather than passively received.

I don’t know 100% of how this classroom was run, but I bet I can make some pretty good guesses.  Students were given roles, but how they developed those roles, how they acquired the information, and how they presented it was probably largely left up to them.  I’m sure the teacher merely acted as a guide, someone who could point them in the right direction or make sure they were staying on track.  It’s a class where the students were mostly teaching each other.

Students were given specific goals and an excellent framework to work within, but after this, it seems that the achievement of those goals was their responsibility.  They were provided access to materials rather than spoon-fed answsers.

The most important point here is that the lesson was lived.  It was actively experienced.  I guarantee that the students will remember most of what they learned throughout this project.  How could they not?  This is the true benefit of drama in the classroom.

Your ability to implement this kind of teaching depends on a lot of things and not everyone will be able to do it to the same degree, but I think we should all try to do our best.  Simple things like access to materials for this kind of project may be hard to come by, but I imagine there is more than enough material available on the Internet, especially for an English class.

Another problem often faced in Turkey is inconsistent students.  Extended projects are quite hard to do with students that pop in and out of classes fairly frequently and can’t be counted on to come on time.  I’ve found it’s beneficial to initiate projects that can be done regardless of who shows up.  If you have to depend on key people, a big problem arises when they don’t come that day or come 2 hours late.

There is also the matter of school policies regarding controversial issues and the students’ own reactions to them.  We can simply work within our limits and I’d say we should push them as much as we can as well.  I did a number of posts a while back on different ways of introducing controversy into the classroom:  Juxtaposition, Displacement, Pushing.

What about you?  Do you consider your teaching to be critical or transformative in the lives of your students?  How do you accomplish this?  What hurdles do you have to overcome when doing so?  How feasible is it within the English classroom?

The other day Scott Thornbury brought up the notoriously difficult grammar point of gerunds.  It became clear from Scott’s post that there isn’t even a consensus on what they are or if they actually exist.   This brought me back to my posts about how I feel grammar is extremely overrated in the ELT classroom.

In the course of the discussion that ensued, Scott asked if grammar was perhaps at the very least an expedient means to an end for learners with little actual time in the class.   A very good question and one I decided to answer here rather than in the comments, as I’d like to give a lengthy response.

While I think simple grammar has its place in the classroom, I would answer “no” to Scott’s question if we’re talking about complicated distinctions like gerunds vs. infinitives.

Here’s my argument:

I think far and away the biggest mistake we adult learners and teachers of adults make is that analytical understanding of grammar aids acquisition.  This is probably the biggest complication when looking at adult vs. young learners. Adults constantly want to understand why something is the way it is instead of just accepting it and using it.  This need to understand actually acts as an obstacle to acquisition.   As language learners, we need to accept language as it is and use it.

I can’t remember exactly who, but someone once made a comment that helping students to analytically understand grammar makes them comfortable in the classroom and therefore raises the affective filter, aiding learning.  I would agree.  That, I think, is the main positive effect it has.

If analytical understanding truly aided language acquisition, then lecturing and grammar translation would be wild successes.   It’s quite clear they are not.  So why do we persist in trying to teach language this way?

Now, I do think that knowledge of grammar rules can help, but only if the rule is simple to apply and mirrors the students’ L1.  For instance, adding –ed to make the past tense in English or not using the verb “be” with he/she/it in Turkish.  These are very simple rules that can be clearly understood by students with nearly no explanation.

Actually, there should be a distinction made between application of simple rules and analytical understanding.   The former is useful while the latter is not.

An example of a simple rule is adding “s” to present simple verbs when he/she/it is the subject.   We don’t have to understand why that is and it wouldn’t be helpful to do so, we merely apply the rule.   To go back to Scott’s discussion, telling students that the infinitive is more common after verbs than gerunds is useful.   Telling them that one is more nouny and one more verby is not.

Trying to explain something complicated like gerunds vs. infinitives, articles, or the myriad rules surrounding relative clauses is not useful in my opinion.   In fact, most students pick up these “rules” and use the language correctly without explicit instruction the majority of the time.   I never teach explicit rules for articles yet even my beginner and elementary students start to use them correctly as the course progresses if encouraged to do so.   In the same way, I have as yet to have a student that could tell me the difference between an subject & object relative clause, but most of them, if given a choice between sentences on the board, can tell me in which ones we can omit the relative pronoun.

How is this possible?  Well, they are simply taking the language they know and repeating it to themselves.   They go with whatever sounds right.

Think about it.   How many times have you taught a finer grammar point to a class until every one in the room was very confident with it.  They could even give example sentences and do basic substitution drills.   Yet, the students fail to use the new grammar afterwards no matter what context you provide.   In fact, they don’t use it again until you actually direct them to do so. If analytical understanding aided production, wouldn’t the opposite be the case?

When is explicit rule teaching helpful?   There are a couple cases:

1) There is a similar structure in the L1 and they transfer over the grammatical chunk.

2) Simple rules that don’t require in-depth understanding of grammatical concepts.

3) To aid error correction, especially in writing when dealing with really complicated language.  Students can be more confident of their work if there is a rule supporting their language choices although, again, I’d consider ear and sight correction a more important goal.

4) To aid in guessing about how to create unfamiliar sentences based on the rules they know (although really the same can be done by making logical guesses based off of the language they are familiar with rather than some sort of rule and I would say it’s preferable).

Grammar concepts are ultimately quite murky and, let’s face it, in real-time conversation there is absolutely no time think about conceptually complex rules before formulating a sentence.   The same applies for most test situations where writing and speaking are required.   I can think he with verb+s pretty quickly, but I can’t determine whether what I’m about to say is something connected to both past and present vs. something definitely finished in the past vs. my L1 that would use a present construction.

I remember my first month of teaching; I was ecstatic when I realized the difference between the use of “be” & “do” in present simple was one of verbs vs. other parts of speech.   With a grin, I walked into my elementary classes and happily explained this distinction.   Yet, my students still consistently failed to grasp this difference.

Then I thought about it.   As a native speaker of the language it took me over a month of looking at it and trying to teach it and the difference only clicked with me because my grammatical knowledge had been growing and growing.   I analytically understood a grammatical point, but this didn’t really aid my students in terms of meaning and use or really help them at all as they still couldn’t figure out an adjective from a verb unless they really stopped to think about it.  We were back to square one.

The same went for me in Turkish.   There is a clear grammatical distinction between subject and object relative clauses in Turkish and looking at them really helped me figure out the English equivalents.   Yet, despite this knowledge, I still could not use them.   I simply couldn’t figure out how to make sentences with them or when to use which form.

Then I started going to the café with co-workers and students after class and the majority of the conversations were in Turkish.  One day I joined the conversations and was using relative clauses.   Sure, it was a bit haltingly, but it quickly improved.  Something had just clicked.   I looked at myself and realized my understanding was no different, but intuitively I had started to figure out when to use what.   The same went for all the Turkish structures and concepts that differed from ones in English.  There was so much stuff that simply never made any sense to me and then I would just find myself using it one day.

If we really look at our learners and our own language learning experiences, this is almost always what happens.   There is a point where it just clicks.   When we first start to learn language, things go quite slow and we’re always formulating sentences in our heads.   With use and exposure, these phrases and transformations become internalized and automatic.   Quite quickly we move from checking our utterances against grammar rules to checking our utterances against what sounds or looks right.

This is really the goal.   I think much explicit grammar teaching of complex concepts literally slows down the process of actual acquisition as students break language into pieces, obsess about rules before producing, and spend more time translating.

Think about moving to a new country.  You always pick up some useful phrases and apply them immediately.   You make no grammar mistakes because you have the necessary language as a chunk.  Why then do so many beginning students say things like “Where you live?” or “I 18.”?   Instead of taking what they’ve heard or seen, they are either translating in their heads or trying to construct sentences based on barely remembered rules.   Other students, especially ones that picked up English at younger ages I’ve noticed, never make these kinds of mistakes.   They’ve learned things in whole pieces, not bite-sized chunks.

What does all this mean?

1) Students need lots of exposure to the language.

2) Students need to use that language so often that it becomes automatic and comfortable.

3) Getting students to understand the finer points of grammar may make them feel comfortable, but ultimately doesn’t aid their inter-language and production abilities.

4) Spending lots of time on conceptually complex grammar rules is time not well spent.

In the end, my strategy is to give an explanation and then just move on.   Turkish students can never figure out why we say “Have you read any of the Harry Potter books?” rather than “Did you read any of them?”   Often the murky answer to this question is that it’s the past connected to the future or life experience or something else that the students simply never conceptualize.  I provide the appropriate rule, which makes them feel like they know it and therefore comfortable, we move on, and then I encourage use of the structure in that vein through error correction in the class and getting them to notice examples of it in material we use.   Sometimes rather quickly, the students just start using it right although I guarantee they aren’t thinking about the rules we worked out previously when they make these sentences.

Over to you.  Is the distinction between simple application rules and conceptual distinctions valid?   What’s the importance of this adult need to analytically understand things rather than just accepting it as “In English, we use this language in this situation”, especially as it regards motivation?  What are your experiences as language learners?

Related Posts:

Why Grammar is Overrated Part 1

Why Grammar is Overrated Part 2

G is for Gerund

First off, I’ve updated a lot of my lessons and added quite a few new ones.  I’ve forgotten to mention that for the last umpteen blogposts.  Check ‘em out and feel free to give me feedback on them if you use them .

This is a bittersweet post.  I got some bad news a couple weeks ago – the owner of my school is going through some major financial difficulties and can’t afford to keep my branch open through the summer.  For this reason, my students, my teachers, and myself have been transferred over to the main branch.  At best, it’ll be a year before the branch is able to reopen.

My responsibilities have been much reduced and my travel time to work has doubled, leaving me with a lot of time to reflect.  Lots of successes and of course a few failures, with many lessons learned along the way.

I really miss my school already.  I was DoS of it for under a year, but we sure accomplished a lot in that time.  My team and I were able to take it from less than 40 students with a 10% renewal rate to almost 90 students and an over 90% renewal rate.  No small feat in such a short time, especially with practically no support from the main branch.

I can quite honestly say that our little branch was fantastic.  It was far and away the best private language school on the Asian side of Istanbul.  Students learned English, they learned it well, and they learned it surprisingly quickly.  A majority of students went from Beginner to Intermediate in an average of between 180-240 hours.

Lessons learned along the way:

-         Teachers get really nervous about observations regardless of how they are done.  While I think they are still useful, I’m still searching for some better ways to accomplish the same goals.

-         Never fire a teacher over Christmas break when half your staff is away on holiday and you are running two schools with over 500 students and 30 staff .

-         Unfortunately, students are still not convinced of the value of non-native teachers.  For the most part, our students came around on this eventually, but there was many a struggle with it.

-         As a DoS, keep a set schedule and try not to deviate from it too much regardless of what the owner wants.  A constantly changing schedule makes it almost impossible to organize things or set up a routine for any number of programs.

-         Always have a few teachers on the backbench as possible hires in case something comes up.

-         If one of your teachers literally goes crazy, it’s best to get them outside help as soon as possible.

-         Create more long-term projects where something concrete and meaningful is produced in classes, especially for upper levels.

-         Always talk about any issues with staff or students in private.

+  Exams do more harm than good.  Formative assessment is the way to go.

+  If you trust your teachers, they can do some amazing things.

+  Intrinsic motivation is much more powerful than extrinsic.

+  Students respond very well to being challenged.

+  So does your staff.

+  Emergent curriculums and a dogme approach definitely can work for an entire school and get incredible results.

+  Get students and teachers outside the classroom.

+  Hold workshops and share sessions.

+  Don’t hold a meeting if the same information can be relayed by email.

+  A school is a community and should always be treated as such.

I really got a lot out of working at my branch and have a lot of good memories:

Students coming up to me or other teachers and personally thanking me/them for helping them to learn English (and actually seeing that that was, in fact, the case)

Having a teacher get hired by another good school precisely because of the methodology at ours and the things they’d learned.

My first process drama retelling “Little Red Riding Hood” with students coming up with the most hilarious stories.

Getting pumped up before lessons even though some of my teachers thought I was more than a little strange

Students transferring to the other branch and raising hell when other teachers used the book.  The main complaint was that “we can do it at home!” (I’m quite proud of that one although I can’t say the teachers in question were very happy about it).

There was a lot more that happened at the school, but these are the things that came to mind while writing this post.

What does the future hold now?  I’m not quite sure.  Almost at the same time that my branch closed, I’ve had a number of rather interesting new opportunities fall into my lap. I was first thinking about moving on early and going somewhere else, but at least two of the opportunities would keep me in Turkey and seem too good to pass up.  The wife and I will definitely have to make some big decisions.

To all my staff and students, a big thank you for the wonderful experiences.