micronarratives

Does Online Learning Work for EFL?

2011-11-14T18:32:00.001Z

Guest post written by Marina Salsbury of http://www.onlineschools.org

The growth of online technology over the last few years has created a new world of possibilities for language learners. Many teachers continue to avoid or ignore online technologies in favor of paper-and-pencil homework, but the growing population of digital natives makes it essential for teachers to examine online technologies and take advantage of their usefulness for language learning, whether supplementing in-class instruction or even working to provide courses entirely online. For ESL and EFL teachers, a variety of online tools appeal to students while focusing attention on improving English proficiency.

The most common types of technology that can be helpful for EFL learners are online quizzes and games. Sites like UsingEnglish.com offer hundreds of free quizzes students can use to practice grammatical concepts, and online games that require focus on English usage and grammar. Many other sites offer similar activities, but teachers should be careful to review them first to make sure that they are level-appropriate, user friendly, and free to use.

While creative use of technology can be used effectively to supplement English language instruction, teachers must be careful not to allow technology use to overshadow the importance of interaction with English speakers. Without face-to-face interaction, language learners may never develop the communicative competence essential for proficient, fluent English. However, with a computer and an internet connection, to some extent even this concern can be addressed through strategic use of technology. Videoconferencing tools such as Skype make it easy and inexpensive to talk face to face with instructors, conversation partners, and native speakers of English all over the world.

The internet offers many excellent options appealing to digital natives in a language learning environment. Even teachers with no great technology experience can begin with the use of ready-made quizzes and games, or explore further options through sources such as the online journal Language Learning and Technology. Ultimately these technologies work best as supplements to the personal interaction between students, teachers, and peers, though already it may be possible to provide that interaction in entirely web-based contexts. At the very least, exploring these options and finding ways to incorporate them into lessons, homework assignments, and everyday language use can enrich the experience of EFL students and help make their language learning more relevant, interesting, and effective.

Technology and Educational Leadership

2011-07-24T19:11:00.005+01:00

Guest post written by Lindsey Wright of http://www.onlineschools.org

Some fear technology in education, while others praise it to the rafters as the saviour of students. However, neither side has quite the right view of things. Just as in any other field, technology in education is only beneficial when properly used. Technology is a resource, just like a book, a DVD, or a board game, that can be used to enhance the educational experience of children or and help them develop the skills they need to succeed in the world. Just as basic literacy is fundamental to student success, so too is computer literacy now an essential component of adult life. In an age where more and more students are opting to get their degrees through non-traditional methods, like at an online school, introducing students to this invaluable resource just makes good sense.

Negative Views

Stories abound of how technology is changing students’ mental abilities. Their attention spans are shortening, their literacy rates seem to be declining, and their desire for entertainment is insatiable. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that talking heads use to support their assertions that technology shouldn't be integrated into the classroom.

One need only look at an account out of one high school English teacher’s one-woman war against the insidious infiltration of technology. An article in the Kennebec Journal details Sarah Schmitt’s daily battle against technology. Get caught texting? She’ll toss your phone in the trash, and you can retrieve it at your own risk.

Smartphones, it appears, have wrought the single greatest change on classrooms since the advent of the chalkboard. Kids are totally connected at all times now, and it shows in how they respond to teachers. Instead of giving instructors their undivided attention, students are distracted. Off-task behavior seems to have become the norm in some classrooms, and educators are constantly battling to reclaim student attention from the digital menace.

Other changes, like worsening penmanship, are also attributed to the pervasive infiltration of technology. Likewise, students' vocabularies seem to be diminishing as texting limits how they express themselves. One student in Schmitt’s class even described Hamlet as a “girly man” who was prone to “freak out.” Hardly the expressions of a brilliant linguistic, but it’s not just the fault of technology.

Positive Views

Although Schmitt is guilty of tossing cell phones, at the same time she has embraced technology as a way to combat its more insidious effects, understanding that technology is a resource that can be used to create new avenues of learning. In Schmitt’s classroom, every student has a laptop that can be used for research and writing, part of a statewide program begun in 2002. In addition, she uses computerized whiteboards to help engage students and maintains a web page for homework and other pertinent class information.

In Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way World Learns, authors Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn, and Curtis Johnson explore why technology matters in education, and how innovation can change how technology is employed in the classroom. Yes, the book uses business models to make its point and treats students as consumers, but in a manner of speaking, they are. Students are consumers of education, and as such, innovation is needed to meet the every changing needs of the learner.

What Disrupting Class proposes is looking beyond the negatives of technology, from its ability to distract to the lack of computers in classrooms, to the positives that can be created by using technology in innovative ways. Rather than tossing out smartphones, teachers should encourage students to use them to do research. Another review of the book, this time published in Education World, discusses the fact that teachers are now facilitators of learning. Rather than standing at the front of the classroom and imparting wisdom to the eager ears of students, teachers now assist students in seeking out information. This doesn’t mean that teachers no longer impart information, it means that teachers have assumed another role in the classroom: that of mentor. In this arrangement, the instruction of teachers provides students with the tools to carry out their own research, and their guidance allows students research in an effective and safe manner.

Technology hasn’t destroyed education. It’s become another tool in the educator’s toolbox for facilitating student inquiry and learning. It allows teachers to target the different learning styles of myriad students. The authors of Disrupting Class argue that the innovations presented by technology are one of the greatest weapons to combat the creation of disaffected learners, and they’re right. These days lecturing and writing on a whiteboard isn’t enough to reach most students. The development of a tool that can be customized and tailored for each individual student, the way student-centered inquiry through technology can, is proof positive that technology should be embraced in the classroom as a resource to help budding minds reach their fullest potential.

Today’s classrooms must be wired to the digital age. Students are expected to be computer literate by middle school and to demonstrate high levels of computer competency when they apply for jobs. They’re already primed for digital communication with smartphones, iPods, and tablets. They keep social media sites up to date and spend their spare time texting friends. Educators should take advantage of this natural propensity to teach not only academic competencies related to technology, but also to reinforce the fact that moderation is an important aspect of technology usage. It’s no longer enough to assign students homework that requires a computer. Now, the computers need to be in the classrooms and in the students’ hands. They need to be instruments of inquiry and facilitators of information in the same manner as other educational resources — even those stalwart information resources of old, books.

Lindsey Wright is fascinated with the potential of emerging educational technologies, particularly the online school, to transform the landscape of learning. She writes about web-based learning, electronic and mobile learning, and the possible future of education.

Staff Performance Reviews (via Dilbert)

2011-03-25T10:48:00.000Z

I have been referenced! Does that make me an academic now? :-)

2010-08-24T23:07:00.002+01:00

I just had to blog this... I have just discovered one of my blog posts has made it into the recommended reading list for a university anthropology course! How cool is that?! The now renowned post is on phatic communication, twitter, and web2.0....

Thanks to Professor David Jacobson's (see left) 'Social Relations in Cyberspace' course, otherwise known as 'Anthropology 138a', at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, USA, my little blog is a little better known! Professor Jacobson has written on a wide range of topics including, interestingly, conducting ethnography in cyberspace.

However, I hope readers are not too disappointed with the slight change in blog direction since April 2009 from ethnography, applied linguistics, and critical approaches to communication to the more practical matters of educational management and how to deliver quality services in English language schools.

See the screenshot below, provided as evidence:

So in thanks to Professor Jacobson, here is a link to one of his publications which I will be checking out as I certainly do have some ethnography to do! And perhaps when I get back into my MA dissertation, the slightly more academic blog posts will return!

Isn't it nice when you get a little bit of recognition?!

:-)

The Continual Improvement Cycle (Quality Management for Schools Part #2)

2010-08-17T23:56:00.013+01:00

So at long last, Part 2 in my Quality Management for Schools series... I want to describe in more detail exactly how a quality management system can generate continual improvement. Probably the most fundamental principle of the ISO9001 is that "continual improvement of the organisation's overall performance should be a permanent objective of the organisation".

Sounds great, but how do you do that? Okay, let’s take a little detour…

Task 1: I want you to think of your school recruitment procedure for either teachers or admin staff. Think of all the steps involved – drafting an advert, interviewing, checking references, inductions, training – and make a list. Go on, write it down. If it helps, draw up a little flow chart so you don’t miss any steps. Honestly, it will be worth it later.

Okay, now I need to introduce the Plan-Do-Check-Cycle formulated by quality guru W. Edwards Deming. It can be applied to any process in your organisation and is the simplest, most straightforward approach to orient any process or procedure towards continual improvement. Basically, any continually improving process follows 4 stages as shown below.

In other words, you have to plan what you're going to do; then you have to do it; then you have to check you actually did what you set out to; and if not, you need to take action to make sure next time you do. If there are negative results, you need to plan how to minimize them next time. If there are positive results, you need to discern exactly where they came from and try and achieve them again next time, but better.

Repeating this cycle again and again – pausing to reflect on each outcome, assessing the reasons for success or failure, and actually acting on that assessment – will lead to the continual improvement of the process and its outcomes. It’s a simple feedback loop, but requires focus and discipline. You may well expect such and such an outcome but actually get a completely different one, sometimes better, sometimes worse. In the hustle and bustle of a busy school, too often these reflections can be overlooked, oversimplified, undervalued, or simply forgotten.

No matter how complex the organization, its activities can be described as smaller interlinking processes and procedures. Whether it is course design, handling enquiries, inspecting accommodation, recording student data, getting student feedback, whatever, there is scope for implementing Deming’s plan-do-check-act cycle. And when applied to each individual process in the organization, it adds up to a global, company-wide schema of improvement.

Task 2: Now go back to your list from Task 1 and reflect a little on each of those steps. What kind of task is it? What is it trying to achieve? For whose benefit? Categorise each step as either planning, doing, checking, or acting activities. Now plot these steps on a PDCA chart as shown below:

*Plan*	Do
*Act*	*Check*

I am guessing you probably found you have more ‘doing’ activities than ‘planning’, ‘checking’ or ‘acting’. The aim is to have a suitable balance between the stages that leads to improvement. I did this task during my presentation at EnglishUK’s ELT Management Conference 2010 and the only member of the audience that had a well balanced chart with activities covering all 4 categories worked at an ISO9001 certified company – quod erat demonstrandum!

The chances are, you probably do check things and act upon feedback, but perhaps not formally. You no doubt talk to new staff members to make sure they are okay, help them out, support them. But perhaps you don’t record these actions. And that’s a shame. It would be good to evidence exactly why what you do is so good, or exactly why what you did was so bad and exactly how you’re going to do it better next time.

If you get feedback from your job applicants, you could improve the content of your job advert next time. If you test your new staff member on what they remember of the induction after a week, you can improve its content and delivery next time. If you get feedback from your new staff member and their co-workers a couple of weeks into the job, you can improve the training or re-write the handbook. If you get more accurate student forecasts, you can better plan when and how many teachers to recruit and for how long to hire them. And if you evidence what action you took and why, everyone else in the company who has to do a similar task can learn from your experience. And so the improvement continues...

Of course, it depends how each process fits together with others. Perhaps there are management or planning meetings where the results from the checking activities in the recruitment procedure are actually digested and decisions made on how to recruit staff differently next time, but the principle is the same. There's nothing stopping you applying some PDCA to whatever procedures you are in charge of - even if it is only ordering the stationery. Suppliers still need to be selected, staff needs have to be determined, the right stationery at the right price has to be identified, deliveries need checked against orders, the users need to be asked if the products are actually fit for purpose, and if not, alternatives need to be found, etc.

And the last thing to remember is that it takes time. It takes a lot of reflection, a lot of attention, a lot of focus. But the results should be worth it.

Next in the series:

Implementing the ISO9001 in a language school
Beginners guide to auditing

Designing Better Services

2010-08-07T11:04:00.004+01:00

I haven't posted for a while but have been waiting for a kick of inspiration and here it is. If you haven't already heard the buzz surrounding "design thinking" and "service design" then check out this very short introduction by LiveWork and for some examples see this fantastic supplement from the Guardian.

The whole sphere of service design has been intriguing me for months now, and I will be posting about it over the coming months. The "businesspeople" in the quote can just as easily be replaced with managers or organisations because design thinking is not about purely commercial interests. Service design has applications in heath care, education, social services, absolutely anywhere there is a service, a user, and a community. And that includes teaching, learning and publishing.

Exactly how is this relevant to EFL schools? Well, more to follow soon!

Some books to get started with service design:

Quality Management for Language Schools #1

2010-04-05T00:28:00.006+01:00

Following my 'Learning from Big Business' theme, I have decided to post a series on Quality Management in EFL schools, specifically the ISO9001 in the EFL school where I am currently school manager and DOS. This post explores a few basic questions:

What is a quality management system?
What is ISO9001?
What is the relevance to EFL schools?

Future posts will look at implementing ISO9001, the 8 principles of quality management, the plan-do-check-act cycle and internal auditing. So let's get started...

To introduce the ISO9001 and what it means for a company and its customers, I have found a little youtube video to help me explain: welcome to Daintee, Sri Lanka's only ISO9001 certified confectioner.

Oh, I forgot to say, the video is in Tamil, so you might not have picked up much. But if you are (or used to be) a TEFL teacher you should have picked up the blatantly obvious visual clues:

Modern, process line production (not Old Granny Amirtha's cramped kitchen)
Quality is checked during production
Quality is worth communicating to your customers
Safe enough to give your kids

So, reading between the lines, we can see a quality management includes quality control, modern processes, quality assurance, and communication.

1. What is a Quality Management System?

A quality management system involves a company-wide commitment to quality and the continual improvement of products and services by monitoring and responding to client feedback. But doesn't that all sound a bit too corporate for EFL managers and Directors of Studies? We'll see...

While specifics vary widely from system to system and industry to industry, almost any quality management system (QMS) will revolve around 6 key elements:

Goals
You won't get anywhere without clear, achievable goals. There must be a commitment to quality from the company's overall vision and mission statement to the actual business objectives and sales targets. This has to cascade down to job descriptions, staff handbooks, meeting agendas, CPD plans, etc.

Processes
Any business activity can be described as a process with inputs and outputs; the output of one process being the input of another. An output can be anything from a report or a single statistic to a trained employee or a new syllabus. Re-framing your work around processes helps you look objectively at what staff do and how they do it, improving flow and efficiency.

Problem Prevention
We all know prevention is better than the cure; a proactive business operated better than a reactive one. Some example activities include due diligence, risk assessments, planning, forecasting student numbers, accommodation supplier inspections, tracking market trends, market research, etc. Problem prevention must be a key step in any process.

Problem Detection
Detecting problems pre-delivery is very tricky in the service industry. However, you can standardize responses to enquiries, implement approval procedures for progress tests, syllabuses, marketing literature, etc. Post-delivery you can more than rely on complaints, customer feedback, teaching observations, audits, spot checks, etc.

Problem Correction
While you can easily replace a product, you cannot replace someone's language learning. A discount or a change of course or class or teacher may go some way to remedying the situation. But quality management requires reflection on the cause of the problem and action to revise working practices to ensure it does not reoccur. You must learn from your mistakes.

Communication
Finally, what I think it the most crucial element in management: communication. Without care and attention to communication (top-down, internal, customers, suppliers, partners, B2B, the public, all stakeholders) quality management is doomed to fail. Employees will not care about it; policies will not be implemented; standards will not be maintained; and even if they are, your customers will not be listening to you. You must remember, communication starts with listening.

2. What is the ISO9001?

The ISO9001 standard (known simply as the 'standard') is a list of interrelated statements about what the company does. It insists the business is oriented around the customer by analysing their needs and requirements, delivering the right products and services, monitoring feedback, responding to feedback, and, importantly, communicating with the customer about all such activities.

The standard has 8 sections, totalling 38 clauses with numerous sub-clauses, with the meaty ones being in sections 4-8 (the first 3 are almost impenetrable jargon). They are:

Scope
Normative References
Terms and Conditions
Quality Management System
Management
Resources
Product Realisation
Measurement, Analysis and Improvement

There are 135 'shall' statements setting the norms of an ISO9001 certified business but as many of the shall-statements are phrased as "the organisation shall a, b, c and d" there are in fact 364 implied shall-statements, each requiring a response from the organisation. That's a lot of standards to maintain!

I'll paraphrase some examples to give you a flavour:

4.2 The QMS shall include a policy, objectives, a manual, processes, and records.

4.1 The organisations shall:

determine the processes needed to operate their business
ensure adequate resources are available to meet the quality required
monitor, measure and analyse the products and processes
continually improve these processes

5.1 Top management shall commit to the QMS.

So there is a great deal of flexibility in deciding how each company, in its industry, and with its particular set of clients, meets the standard. Whether they meet the standard or not is reviewed annually by an external audit with a very wide scope, covering anything from sales to customer feedback, health and safety regulations to marketing literature.

The ISO9001 is a long-term investment, there is no fast buck to be made, and it requires a considerable top-down commitment. It could be a complete overhaul of how a company operates, completely re-framing its daily business operation.

So why bother? Well, the theory goes ISO9001 (or quality managed) companies:

Enjoy higher market share
Charge premium prices
Improve efficiency and cut costs
Achieve higher customer satisfaction
Enhance their reputation
Better train and motivate staff

If it works for a Sri Lankan confectioner, a Canadian military engineering software division and a Japanese fish market, the same results can be expected for an EFL school.

3. Is it Relevant to EFL schools?

For an EFL school in the UK, the 'British Council' marque is the only badge of quality with any currency. The ISO9001 does not work well as a badge to stick on the company letterhead or website. Although it is widely-known in Korea and Japan and perhaps among corporate clients, it is almost unknown to young university-age student from Europe and the Middle East.

UK schools are regulated by the British Council (or ABLS or ASIC) and the UKBA. Many schools also join quality associations like Quality English, EAQUALS and IALC. Some may opt for Investors in People status or become LearnDirect centres. Each organisation sets a mountain of standards and criteria that have to be maintained.

If you are the principal or DOS who has to deliver services and train staff to meet these criteria you might feel like you a competing in one of the world's largest jigsaw competitions! The ISO9001 is one standard that will encompass all others and deliver the key objective: continual improvement.

It is the continual improvement that makes it all worthwhile. You can prove, over and over again, you can meet any external regulations and quality standards. An EFL school will find meeting UKBA regulations much easier. If you want to become a test centre, meeting requirements of test security and administration will be a cinch. Applying for EU funding, a formality (well, maybe not, but you get the point).

A key difference between the ISO and British Council standards, are that the ISO are principle-based rather than task-based, so they are applicable in any industry. That said, you might notice the most recent British Council handbook includes a new standard:

So all accredited schools might be heading a little closer to ISO9001 whether they know it or not.

Next post: The Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle and Implementing ISO9001 in an EFL school

The DELTA Principle (the EFL's Dilbert Principle)

2010-03-24T18:56:00.000Z

This is Dilbert's variation on the Peter Principle which, if you didn't know, claims competent people are promoted until they reach their level of incompetency and are promoted no more. Dilbert suggests promotion into management is nature's way of getting rid of the people who are in fact impeding the delivery of services and products.

I wonder if there is a related 'DELTA Principle' at work in EFL? So many management positions in EFL require a diploma level teaching certificate but few ask for a diploma level qualification in management. Yeah, I know (from personal experience) that a DOS will have to observe teachers, provide academic support and leadership, etc. but to become a DOS in a large school or a principal, surely qualifications such as the EnglishUK Diploma in ELT Management or the Cambridge IDLTM are much more relevant?

But with the number of diploma qualified teachers is dropping every year, is there a danger of promoting the most competent teachers into management roles they receive no training for?

EU to Abolish the Mother Tongue Teaching Directive

2010-02-10T14:05:00.000Z

Sorry for the lack of originality, but I found this newsletter from the BAAL (British Association of Applied Linguistics) mailing list particularly important and thought the best way to share it was here. Please read, comment and act as you see fit. Thanks to Ben Rampton for posting.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear sociolinguistic friends,

Apparently the EU, or a strong force within the EU, is planning to abolish the Mother Tongue Teaching Directive (Council Directive 77/486).

A short repetition fo directive's importance:
Directive 77/486 obliges the member states to provide mother tongue teaching for minority students in the grade schools - with the provision that "minority languages" as a term refers to the national languages of EU citizens, but with the very important, although not binding, addition that this right should be extended to all minorities. The directive has been followed up by a range of decisions, particularly in the European parlament, about integrating minority mother tongue teaching into the mainstream curriculum of grade schools.

New developments:
It seems that a Swedish initiative taken while Sweden was the chair of the EU had the purpose of automatically extending the directive. However, perhaps as a consequence of a government change in Sweden, it may have become an effort to abolish the directive. A hearing has been carried out based on a "green paper" (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0423:FIN:EN:PDF. The themes of the hearing process are on the last pages of this report (point 42). The documents of the hearing and the ensuing conference are at http://ec.europa.eu/education/news/news1875_en.htm - before the conference 101 reactions had arrived with a massive overrepresentation from Germany. In addition a report was presented to the conference http://www.nesse.fr/nesse/activities/reports/activities/reports/education-and-migration.pdf which is by and large a copy of Esser, H. (2006): Migration, language, and integration. AKI Research review 4. Berlin: http://www.wzb.eu/zkd/aki/files/aki_research_review_4.pdf, i.e. a report in a tradition which has been refuted by, inter alii, Jim Cummins (2008): Total Immersion or Bilingual Education? in: J. Ramseger & Matthea Wagner (eds.): Chancenungleicheit in der Grundschule und Wege aus der Krise. VS verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

In the conference program there was nothing about the juridical or language scientific positions on the directive. The only person with qualifications in language was Verena Putzlar from Austria (who is not researchwise active with respect to language).

At the conference attempts to cite the critique by Cummins and François Grin were quelled.

Subsequently, the Danish and Austrian participants with scholarly credentials (i.e. definitely not the civil servants) have agreed to direct the attention of colleagues to this development and to alert them that a cornerstone of language right formulations is being discreetly abandoned without relevant scholars being consulted.

We therefore suggest you take this up with the relevant authorities in the nation state where you reside or work, and that you ask what is being done to ensure that a decision is made which is based on relevant scholarly work, particularly sociolinguistics. You may also address the incoming commissioner of education, culture, and multilingualism, Androulla Vassiliou of Cyprus, and the head of the unit, Adam Podkorny whose e-address is: Adam.Pokorny@ec.europa.eu. Examples of letters of concern which have already been sent to EU authorities are attached, together with the replies, to this letter.

If you find the time to do so, please keep us informed.

Thank you very much

Christian Horst (horst@dpu.dk)
Anne Holmen (anho@dpu.dk)
Normann Jørgensen (normann@hum.ku.dk)

The Burka in the EFL Classroom

2010-01-15T18:19:00.009Z

So Nicolas Sarkozy says Islamic veils are not welcome in France. His attempt to put in place a law making it illegal to wear the full veil in public has triggered a national debate in France. While the a debate on whether the right to sexual equality outweighs the right to wear a religious symbol is a valid one, it all too easily becomes an exercise in otherization and counter-claims of Islamophobia.

Learn more about the different types of veil here

Sarkozy says: "The full veil is not welcome in France because it runs contrary to our values and contrary to the idea we have of a woman's dignity. [...] Let us undertake not to give opponents of democracy, dignity and sexual equality the chance for a victory which would put our society in a very difficult situation." (source The Guardian)

Sarkozy sees the burka ban as a step against extremism - as if taking action against the burka will somehow stop the radicalisation of young disgruntled French Muslims. Of course it is a hell of a lot easier to ban the burka that tackling urban poverty, unemploment, discrimination or US/UK foreign policy. Also if 'dignity' is the reason behind Sarkozy's intended ban, what about the human trafficking that sees women pushed into drug abuse and prostitution in the street corners of Paris (or London)? Surely that is a much more serious crime against the 'dignity' of women.

No one could argue the Middle East is anything but sexually unequal (women can't drive in Saudi Arabia, access to education and public roles is limited, etc) but I when I was in Saudi Arabia, Egypt or the UAE, I was not bombarded with TV images of women as objects of sexual fantasy or billboard posters glorifying size 0 models. So the "dignity" of women can surely be argued from both sides of the burka debate. I have spoken to a few women who wear burkas and they told me they enjoy not being judged by their looks and that it protects them from the male gaze. (And, yes, I understand the feminist argument that it is the men who should be stopped from looking rather than the women that are hidden from view.)

So what of sexual equality? The glass ceiling is still firmly in place but there has been a sea change in the awareness of sexism and sexual discrimination and a steady trend towards equality in the workplace, at home, and in the law. This effort has to be commended, respected, and maintained. But is that progress universal to all women irrespective of their religion or culture? And is that progress threatened if Muslim women wear the burka in France or the UK?

This reminded of a couple of things that happened at work last year. One can wait for an future post. The other was some rather surprising comments on wearing of the burka in the EFL classroom that I read which went something like this:

School Principal #1: A muslim student wants to wear a burka in class if there is a male teacher or if there are male students with her. She speaks very quietly so the teachers think it will be a problem because they can't see her mouth move when she's talking.

School Principal #2: Wearing a veil causes a number of problems... It impedes language learning and cultural integration.

School Principals #3, 4, 5 & 6: We think there is no way you could stop a student wearing a veil in class and see little need to. We think the veil is so thin is hardly causes any problems at all. You need to deal with the student in the same way you would deal with a student who mumbles or a man with an unruly beard.

Me: (going totally over the top) I think you should stop seeing it as a problem and let her wear the burka. It is no different to a student wearing a balaclava or a helmet. Deal with the pronunciation the same way you would with a student who mumbles.

You can talk to your teachers or students about multiculturalism and tolerance if they have a problem. The EFL school only has a responsibility to teach students English. Leave the decision to 'integrate' with other students or mainstream UK culture up to the student.

Okay, so it is very different from a student wearing a balaclava or a helmet. Helmets and balaclavas are already identified as a security risk in banks and shops and they are not worn for religious reasons (at least not by any religions I know). You can ask a student to remove a helmet, and I imagine 99 times out of 100, the student will acquiesce and the 1 in a 100 who will not is a certified weirdo. You'll get a very different reaction if you ask someone to remove a burka in order to join the EFL class because it is worn for very different reasons.

But what about the face mask that East Asian wear when they have colds? You cannot see their mouths move when they talk and it can muffle quiet voices - not exactly an uncommon feature of female students from Japan, for example. Is it problematic to their integration that they prefer not to spead flu germs everywhere they go unlike us Brits who, even in a flu epidemic, feel a bit weird wearing face masks? I think not. But, of course, masks are only worn for short periods.

So is there any valid argument against wearing a burka in an EFL school? I know schools and shops and service providers everywhere have dress codes for their employees, but unless a customer is dressed in a way that causes a security risk, a health and safety issue, or is not dressed at all, then there is no way to insist that your clients dress a certain way. (An second thought, pubs and nightclubs can set dress codes for the customers, so maybe it is not as clear cut as I at first assumed...)

I think the argument that a burka impedes language learning does not stand up. The veil is pretty thin and students can be clearly heard if they speak at a normal volume (mumbling is a bigger problem). I know that being able to see someone speaking aids comprehension but if the student is willing to forfeit the benefits of paralinguistic communication then so be it. You might ask student who mumbles to speak up, or a student who puts their hand over their mouth when they talk to stop, but if they don't, you can hardly ban them from class.

Does it impede the student's integration? Is this the responsibility of the EFL school anyway? Sure we will offer whatever help they need to learn the language. We will help them learn about British culture and customs. We might suggest they join a sports club or do volunteer work or go on school trips to increase their opportunities to practice their English but if they decide not to do so, it ends there. If they want to take up crochet, lawn bowls or binge drinking, that is up to them.

I know there is a lot of debate about the veil in both Islamic and non-Islamic societies. Some Islamic scholars point out there are no verses in the Qur'an that require women to cover their heads. Many Islamic moderates see it as an obstacle to modernization. In Turkey, for example, it is perceived as worth banning in public life in order to symbolically (and viscerally) reinforce the secularity of its polity. Many feel it is act of oppression, but many also feel it is an act of devotion, a symbol of womanhood, and a great protector. It can be seen simultaneously as a prison or a liberation.

Here is some more reading on the Hijab, meaning, identity, otherization and politics
in the context of UK British Muslim women.

Interestingly an earlier Guardian article suggests that Sarkozy can't tell his abstract and concrete freedoms apart and should real more Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right'. He is not the only one. We could learn a lot by examining the reasoning behind the arguments for and against the veil. Is the right to religious expression incompatible with the right to sexual equality? Can a truly multicultural society adhere to any universal truths, rights or freedoms?

Do you see the burka as a problem in your school or classroom? I certainly don't. But I am neither female nor Muslim, so maybe my views are superfluous.

Improving the Student Experience #1

2009-12-17T08:59:00.224Z

What can EFL schools do to improve the 'student experience'? And what can they learn from big businesses that set the standards for customer care?

Well, I learned a very interesting idea from the Ritz-Carlton's book of customer care via Guy Kawasaki's Alltop.com (original article at Forbes magazine). Simon F. Cooper, president of the hotel company, explains how they exceed the expectations of their guests:

"We entrust every single Ritz-Carlton staff member, without approval from their general manager, to spend up to $2,000 on a guest. And that's not per year. It's per incident."

Imagine that! Employees trusted to make decisions and spend money keeping guests happy; and management confident the employees are trained to make the right decision. No wonder they win awards for quality and staff training.

One example of this was when an employee overheard that a disabled guest could not get to the beach. Next day, maintenance had built them a walkway. Now THAT is service!

Although I read the article last month, I was reminded of the 'learning from big business' theme by some recent blog posts and tweets by Johannes Ahrenfelt who was asking what can educators learn from industry in terms of presentation techniques and content design. Customer care is another area where there is much to learn, and one of paramount importance in EFL schools.

While it seems obvious that the quality of the teaching is the most important factor in delivering student satisfaction, most of the (valid) complaints I have heard at the schools where I have worked have focused on accommodation and welfare issues. Students spend the majority of their time outside the school and usually expect the school to help them with all manner of extra-curricular needs - bus routes, child care, golf lessons, bank cards that got chewed up in ATMs, boxes that got stuck in customs, etc. Planning services to meet such unpredictable needs is far from easy and it is very hard to explain something is outside the remit of your service provision when, very often, they don't understand what you are saying!

Enhancing the quality of the overall student experience has become a vogue topic with UK colleges and universities with the mantra popping up everywhere on home pages, policy statements, research articles and conference abstracts. Over the last few years, Will Archer's igraduate reports have provided FE institutions with regular student feedback on their academic and social life which has helped them focus on what the students are really concerned with. The most recent report put the difficulty experienced opening a UK bank account and the lack of decent broadband access at the top of university students' troubles - with little or no mention of academic issues. In my experience, EFL schools have similar issues.

But what can the small EFL school with a small budget do to improve something as vague and all-encompassing as the overall student experience? Well, following the model of the Ritz-Carlton would be a good start: set aside a student welfare fund. I know no EFL school is going to authorise front line staff to spend anything like $2000 per student but the budget available to spend over a year could be based on how much was spent (or should have been spent) fixing all the student welfare problems in the previous year. And not just the obvious student problems but agent problems, host complaints, accommodation provider mixups, taxi driver mishaps, and the like. Then throw in some extra for a few birthday cards, a present for the birth of a student's child, the cost for an emergency lock change if someone loses their keys, etc., and you're nearly there.

All that's left is to train the staff to know how and when to use the money (that can wait for another blog post). A credit card with a limit of £100 would go a long way to solving most problems and it's definitely enough to put a smile on the face of a homesick student who thinks the odds are stacked against them enjoying life in a foreign country.

You're guaranteed to get good feedback and students will spread happy stories back home to their friends and family. I am sure the staff too will feel a lovely warm glow being able to help not just those who complain but those who actually deserve a helping hand or special gift. Trusting them to make the right decisions will make them feel empowered too.

Is that barking mad or does it make perfect sense?

Discourse analysis of social networking sites

2009-05-07T17:43:00.011+01:00

Today's Guardian Technology outlines Professor Mike Thelwall's research into comments on myspace that show "emotion is key when it comes to understanding each other." While this might not be a huge surprise, it is the first analysis of social networking corpora that I have seen. I hope to see more.

When I started getting into web2.0, I knew I was on to something - as I am sure most efl/e-learning/edtech people are. You can just feel new modes or genres of communication opening up before your eyes.

My most recent/decent blog post began to question the relevancy of the concept of 'communicative competence' in web2.0 mediated communciation that is thick with phatic communication. I hope research on web2.0 communication can shift the emphasis in applied linguistics from instrumental models of communication (see objections to the conduit metaphor of language) towards more sociocultural models. Now I can feel somewhat vindicated.

Among Prof Thelwall's finding are strings of stats showing typographic slang (e.g. omg, lol, rofl), pictograms, interjections (e.g. meh!) and an abundance of non-standard vocab, punctuation and grammar. I assume this 'non-standard English' would be even greater when using English as a lingua franca. (More info on Prof Thelwall university dept here. Research paper available too.)

For me, this points towards the much greater importance of sociocultural meaning over instrumental meaning, the figural over the literal. In addition, the culture(s) defining the genre of communciation are becoming more idiosyncratic; you could say the genres are becoming micro-genres.

Unfortunately, as ever, the hard head of science wants to ruin promising ground for theorising on the nature of language and communication. Prof Thelwall hopes his "research will result in the building of useful tools with emotion detection". Why do these guys always want to monitor and measure us? Great, some device will concordance my blog and tell me how unhappy I am? No thanks.

Sticking to the remit of this blog, let's get back to the implications for language. Could it be that web2.0 is hurrying the death of English and ushering in Globish? Or do we require an entirely new superordinate category of languages: dialect, lanaguage, global web language? Of course that would be presenting the new global English as a new 'English' when it is actually a plethora of 'Englishes'. (That should really be 'englishes' with a small 'e' to avoid any kind of nationalistic tendencies - 'english' isn't a proper noun anymore, more of an adjective.)

These 'microlanguages' really encapsulate all that is cultural about communication. Forums, groups, wikis, followers, are all communities that use their own little curious abbreviations, slang and emoticons. Maybe the real future of English is not as an all conquering, overarching, global language afterall (a la David Crystal), but as simply dissolving into fragmented cliques and mutually unintelligible subcultures, leaving behind the 'native speaker' as a historic relic. I think eventually we will stop adding neologisms to the English dictionary and just say, whatever, from now on, anything goes!

English: a postmodern language for the 21st century? Owned by none, created by all, with no absolute definitions of meaning, no rules of grammar, and no universal pragmatics?

I wonder...

Phatic communication, twitter, and web2.0...

2009-04-24T22:51:00.008+01:00

The first blog post I discovered on twitter was, very aptly, about the nature of communication on twitter itself. Even more aptly, it was tweeted by David Gauntlett, Professor of Media and Communications at Westminster University and general busy-body behind theory.org.uk.

In the post, Leisa Reichelt described the incessant exchange of status messages as an 'ambient intimacy' which keeps friends and colleagues just close enough to communicate with, but with the volume turned down - just enough to provide a little background music. Basically, phatic communication via web2.0.

The blog, unfortunately, quotes someone erroneously attributing this 'phatic function' to Mikhail Bakhtin rather than Roman Jakobson (at least they managed to get a Russian linguist). In Jakobson's (1962) six functions of communication, the phatic function establishes and maintains communciation, a kind of metacommunication. In speech, this includes chit chat to you neighbour about the weather to strike up a conversation and the macho grunts sports jocks exchange with each other; and in writing, the opening and closing formalities like 'Yours sincerely'.

A more appropriate attribution would be to Polish anthropologist, Bronisław Malinowski, who coined the phrase. His ethnographic studies of the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea in the 1920s led to his observations that 'ties of union are created by the mere exchange of words' (Malinowski 1923:315 in Wardhaugh 2006).

The idea of web communication as phatic communion was something I had read before, although usually in the pejorative sense. Academics sceptically remark that "students are certainly engaged in communication. But has this communication led to any new understanding?" (Kern 2000:355 in Kramsch & Thorne 2002).

Though similarly sceptical, Kramsch and Thorne (2002) interestingly suggest that as computer-mediated communciation (CmC) tends toward the phatic function, rather than the instrumental, the nature of CmC may be very different to that assumed in Hymes' framework of 'communicative competence' that has underpinned so much of current EFL pedagogy since CLT.

I think that dismissing phatic communion as mere gossip, or idle chatter, misses the most important function of language. Exchanges of this type of communication may be empty of meaning in an instrumental sense, but they are rich in meaning in a social sense. In fact my own unscientific observations of my family or of commuters on trains leads me to think this could even be main function of language.

However, linguists and applied linguists, have tended to overlook this function and concentrate on the rationalized coding and decoding of messages as the main function of communication, and in doing so have adopted Shannon and Weaver's transmission model of communication (yes, I know they didn't call it that, but that it what it is). Anyone who reads the oringinal article will instantly understand my misgivings in uncritically transplanting a model from applied mathematics to something as social and cultural as human communciation.

Maybe the sheer magnitude of people that are communicating through web2.0, usually using English as a lingua franca, will lead to a reassessment of what 'meaningful communication' is in foreign language pedagogy. I am all for promoting 'ambient intimacy' in the EFL classroom2.0.

Am I being overly hopeful? Well, seriously interested at least.

References

Kramsch, C. & Thorne, S. (2002) Foreign language learning as global communicative practice, in Block & D. Cameron (Eds.), Globalization and Language Leaching, London: Routledge.

Jakobson, R. (1962) Selected Writings, The Hague: Mouton.

Wardhaugh, R. (2006) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Oxford: Blackwell.

Reverse Speech - Voices From The Unconscious

2009-04-24T21:24:00.003+01:00

This is very weird, comments follow later: Reverse Speech - Voices From The Unconscious

Posted using ShareThis

Games as assessment (James Paul Gee interview)

2009-04-15T21:51:00.005+01:00

Grading with Games: An Interview with James Paul Gee (from edutopia.org)

An Arizona State University professor sees a bright future for video games in the learning process both in and out of school.

Local Noise: hip hop meets academia

2009-04-14T11:37:00.007+01:00

Local Noise is a project based at UTS (University of Technology, Sydney), funded by the Australian Research Council. Its focus is on Australian hip-hop, and the localisation of hip-hop in different cultural, societal and educational contexts.The website is intended as an archive, accessible to anyone, of the research work that has been produced by the Local Noise project. We want to ensure that these documents, which chronicle important parts of the development of Australian hip-hop, are available, and to assist those who are researching Australian and global hip-hop.

The website contains transcripts of interviews, academic papers, press and media, audio and video, as well as lists of publications by the project leaders Tony Mitchell and Alastair Pennycook.

Critical theory lectures

2009-04-10T14:53:00.008+01:00

Audio/video lectures on critical theory, culture & technology from CTheory Live hosted by PACTAC.

The Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture is a unique interdisciplinary institute for research focussed on the impact of technological change on culture, politics and society. Linking together researchers in the Faculties of Social Science, Engineering, Humanities, Education, Fine Arts, Law, Indigenous Governance, and Human and Social Development, the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture provides a collaborative interdisciplinary site for advanced research on information technology, new media, and digital communication as well as for rethinking issues related to ethics and biotechnology. Supported by a networked computing platform and thematically organized by means of an annual research seminar on a key topic area in technology and culture, PACTAC sponsors research conferences, streamed seminars and new media publications. Simultaneously a global centre of intellectual exchange and an innovative and collaborative interdisciplinary site for researching the future of technology, the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture is situated in the Technology Enterprise Facility (TEF170) at the University of Victoria--Canada's University of the Future.

Technology Enterprise Facility (TEF)
2300 McKenzie Street . Room 170
University of Victoria . Victoria B.C.
Canada . V8W 2Y2
Telephone : (250) 472 - 5285
Email : ctheory@uvic.ca

welcome to my blog

2009-04-08T17:54:00.003+01:00

Well, finally I have entered the blogosphere. And you have entered my blog. Weird.
While not being a technophobe by any stretch of the imagination, I have certainly been a technoslug - taking as long as possible before committing to new technology, fearing it would soon be available in a much simpler version or not available at all.

I waited till EVERYONE else was on Facebook before joining but quickly got bored of sending Japanese drinks or doing movie compatibility questionnaires with distant acquaintances from university I haven’t spoken to in decades. I have only recently converted to Twitter so the buzz has not yet worn off - it provides me with a constant stream of interesting links thus saving me oodles of time.

But I have finally decided it was about time I had one place I could bring together my various online identities and fully participate in Web 2.0, hence the blog.

Here I am. And here I will be.

See you around.