All posts by admin

Welcome to NeltaChoutari: April, 2014

April 1, 2014Editorialadmin

choutari-april-issue

EDITORIAL

Laxmi Prasad Ojha

(With Umes and Praveen)

Dear valued readers,

Along with my fellow editors, I am honoured and delighted to present you the April issue of Choutari. Choutari has always been a true source of inspiration for many teachers ever since it was published in 2009. It has been catering the needs of thousands of teachers in many countries now. We are really inspired and encouraged to see support and appreciation of our valued readers.

Choutari was one of the first initiatives of its kind started by our senior editors. When blogging was not something many people knew, they gave a pleasant gift to the ELT community. It has seen tremendous growth in the past and the team will always try its best to bring you the most useful resources available. The government of Nepal has continuously been trying to improve the quality of education and teachers are the main agents to bring much needed changes. Teachers need to develop their professional skills if they really want to move in that direction. There are numerous ways to develop our professional skills and one of them is discussing, writing, and sharing ideas with fellow teachers. In this edition of Choutari, we have included essays on diverse issues ranging from beginning teacher’s reflection to in-service teacher training, from using portfolio in ELT classes to explaining research as hegemony, and from probing SLC exam to reflection on Interactive Language Fair of NELTA Conference. We have also reblogged an entry on Twitter summit which, we believe, will be of new of its kind to many of our enthusiastic readers. Here is the full list of ELT khuraks for the month of April:

This Year’s SLC Exams: Melodrama Continues, by Praveen Kumar Yadav
Exploring Challenges in In-Service Teacher Training in Nepal, by Rajan Poudel
Research as Hegemony, by Krishna Khatiwada
Need of Induction for Beginning Teachers, by Ramesh Chandra Bhandari
Reflections on Presenting in Interactive Language Fair (ILF), by Jeevan, Dipesh and Praveen
Twitter summit #Write4Pro by Shyam Sharma
Using a Portfolio for ELL/ELT, by Adesh Bhetwal

We invite you to join the conversation again by sharing your responses as comments under any posts, by liking and sharing them with your network, by contributing your own posts for future issues, and by encouraging other colleagues to do the same. Please join the conversation by reading, and sharing your reflections as comments. This will help many readers get new ideas and help you develop skills to look at things critically and present yourself professionally. We also request you to let other people know about NeltaChoutari.

Happy reading !

Laxmi Prashad Ojha
Editor, April issue
Email: laxmiojha99@gmail.com

—- Please note: Choutari Mentoring Program is ongoing. We would like to extend our utmost honor to two participating mentors and cordial thanks to three mentees currently engaged in the program. If you are interested in providing mentorship to emerging scholars or seek a mentor to grow, please click here.

This Year’s SLC Exams: Melodrama Continues

April 1, 2014Education in Generaladmin

Praveen Kumar Yadav

The Office of the Controller of Examination (OCE) declared another “successful” SLC this year, despite multiple incidents of violating exam code of conduct. SLC was held across the country this year from March 20 to 28, 2014. Over half million students appeared in the SLC exams, which many of them still perceive as the Iron Gate, which is cruelly known to have slammed on more young individuals than it has opened up life opportunities for.

According to OCE, 1,836 exam centers were set up across the country in order to conduct the SLC exams for 566,085 students, including 419,352 regular and 146,733 exempted this year. However, some students were disqualified to appear in the exams this year since their attendance in grade 10 was below 75 per cent. Only students with 75 per cent attendance in grade 10 are eligible to take the SLC examinations, as per the Education Act. For instance, 162 students, including 88 boys and 74 girls in Khotang, and 644 in Rupandehi district were not eligible to sit in the exams, according to District Education Offices. Compared to private schools, the number of those disqualified for the examinations is higher in community schools.

This year’s SLC exams witnessed few changes in previous practice such as restriction of the provision for home centers in the schools. The government had allowed home centers for the SLC exams during the Maoist insurgency, with an aim to prevent unpleasant happenings. But, at many home centers a large number of incidents of violence were reported and consequently, the OCE had amended the Examination Management Regulations 2011 a few months ago, before the exams began.

Some days earlier than the exams began, the OCE had circulated that the exams would be conducted in a disciplined and a sober manner this year. Conversely, the irregularities during the exams, though lesser in comparison to the previous ones, were witnessed in different places as the trend of breaching the exams code continued.

The cheating trend and irregularities in the exams continued this year too in eight districts of the Tarai (Parsa, Bara, Rautahat, Sarlahi, Mahattari, Dhanusha, Siraha and Saptari), which are mostly eyed on for various reasons and also termed as sensitive ones. Many students and invigilators were expelled for their misconduct. In Dhanusha, one of those sensitive districts, police had to open several rounds of bullets in the air to disperse the mob of agitating examinees and guardians, following a scuffle between the students and police personnel on March 24, 2014. In the incident, two examinees and a policewoman had sustained serious injuries. As a result, the test of social studies paper was cancelled at three exam centers on the fifth day of this year’s SLC exams.

The Terai is not the only region where irregularities in the SLC exams were reported from, there were reports from the Hills as well. 11 exam invigilators were expelled in Humla district after they were found involving in violating the exam regulations, i.e., helping students to answer the question papers.

But this year, unlike previously, the OCE has declared the provision of conducting no re-exams for the students in those centers where locals, guardians, teachers or the students themselves disrupted the exams for whatsoever reason.

The students heavily rely on textbooks or guess papers for the exams and most portion of the evaluation system except in few weightage in practical test of compulsory subjects like English, population studies and optional subjects like computer is written. Again, the practical test in those subjects is seen to have been ineffectiveness and raise a question mark due to lack of proper conduct and effective monitoring mechanism.

Now let us give a glance over the results of the SLC Exams. Last year the country witnessed the dismal results of the Iron Gate for higher studies (41.57 per cent), which is five per cent lower when compared to 2012. This is the lowest percentage results in the last five years. The statistics shows that 90% out of those who fail their SLC exams, fail in core subjects such as Mathematics, English and Science. In this gloomy situation in the backdrop, the Ministry of Education (MoE) had argued that the teachers are to blame for the decline in the public education sector. However, the issue of teacher accountability is not that straightforward. Based on need assessment, the teachers needs to be trained and supervised properly before they are made accountable.

To conclude, conducting fair exams is still a challenging job in Nepal, which is yet to adopt other alternative modes of evaluation system than written exam in secondary schooling system. Although our SLC doesn’t seem to be serving any different purpose than the Chinese “gao kao” or American “SAT”, it is high time we started conversation on how we can make it unique, more acceptable, and more respectable. Until and unless teachers, students, test makers, policy makers, and guardians and other counterparts do not opt for the easiest and the most reliable way to conduct exams with creative techniques, keeping in mind the students enjoy while appearing in the tests, the exams will always remain to be the IRON GATE for the examinees. It is high time the government of Nepal and concerning stakeholders pay due attention to rectify the exam system, which is an integral part of the education system.

—

praveen

Praveen Kumar Yadav
Editor
Nelta Choutari

Exploring Challenges in In-Service Teacher Training in Nepal

April 1, 2014Reflectionsadmin

Rajan Poudel

Globalization of English language demands competent users of English language in the world today. And to producing competent or skilled language users, there is the need of qualified educators and technical manpower. The Ministry of Education (MoE) has been implementing in-service teacher training for a long time to improve the quality of English language teachers. But there are numerous issues related to in-service teacher training, regarding its effectiveness and transformation. Therefore, this article seeks to scrutinize issues and challenges of in-service teacher training in Nepal.

In-service teacher training in Nepal is usually seen ineffective because English language teachers are not adequately trained to teach at school (Shrestha, 2008). There are questions to be addressed in relation to the quality, transformation of knowledge, effectiveness, methodology and approaches of in-service teacher training. School administrators, the major stakeholder, often complain that training is provided only when there is a revision or changes in core curriculum. But there is a lack of training and continuous support to equip teachers to face challenges while teaching.

In theory, in-service teacher training is training taken by a teacher after he/she has begun to teach. The training aims at enhancing the skills, knowledge and performance of the working teachers. In-service teacher training is important for a teacher because the working conditions and the demands from the society are always changing for professionals like teachers (Gnawali, 2001). Thus, in-service training is necessary to meet the demand of time and demands of the society.

Some of the key objectives of teacher training, as Bhan (2006) mentions, are – to upgrade the qualification of a teacher, to upgrade the professional competence of serving teachers, to prepare teachers for new roles, to provide knowledge and skills relating to emerging curricular change, to make teachers aware of critical areas and issues, and to overcome gaps and deficiencies of pre-service education. These objectives of in-service teacher trainings are equally relevant to the context of Nepali education system. In this light, Bista (2011) mentions that untrained teacher may not be as innovative as their trained counterparts. Therefore, training is important for teachers to upgrade, enhance professional competence and raise awareness in the critical issues and areas.

Role of National Center for Educational Development (NCED)

In-service teacher training programs are primarily run by the National Center for Educational Development (NCED) and Secondary Educational Development Center (SEDC) in Nepal. Established in 1992, NCED is the government run institution that conducts teacher training. The center has nine well facilitated primary teacher training centers spread throughout the country. NCED has also a policy to allow the private agencies to run teacher training programs. NCED has been offering the long-term 10 month in-service training to the working teachers but a lot of permanent teachers are still untrained.

Issues and challenges

Not only is it important to prepare updated teachers, it is crucially important to produce quality learning outcomes through in-service training. For this, one of the ways is that teachers be willing to work collaboratively with other teachers. Neuman (2010) states that many teachers who are interested in exploring processes of teaching and learning in their own context are either unable, for practical reasons, or unwilling, for personal reasons, to do collaborative work (p.18). However, in our context, teachers are hardly willing to collaborate with each other.

On the basis of my own interaction with major stakeholders, besides collaboration, these are some major issues and challenges of in-service teacher training.

Copycat mentality

Copycat mentality is one of the major issues that strives on imitation of what happens in the western countries. Our curricula, pedagogical approaches, assessment methods continue to be derived from the West. For instance, Vygotsky, Piaget, Bruner and Maslow continue to be perceived as gift for the scholars in Nepal.

Similarly, practicum or teaching practice models are imported from another context. These concepts need to be contextualized rather than adapted. Teacher training institutions and schools have not valued indigenous epistemologies or the culture and value systems of Nepali children. This has led in significant ways to schools being perceived as an alien and unfriendly place, with seemingly irrelevant content and practices that marginalize students and lead to underachievement. Therefore, the need for a culture sensitive pedagogy in teacher training program is crucial.

Shortage of trained trainers and trained teachers

The government of Nepal claims that 92.9% teachers in primary, 79.4% in lower secondary and 90.3% in secondary are trained teachers (Flash Report 2012/13). But in reality, there is a dearth of well-experienced, appropriately-trained teachers. Teachers have become training-proof, mostly in primary level because they don’t feel differences in many types of training conducted for them. The effectiveness of teacher training has not reached inside the classroom. The achievement of students in different examinations is the evidence of this low training delivery. Similarly, there are also challenges of finding quality teacher trainers who can facilitate teachers to transfer their new knowledge in the classroom.

Teaching conditions

One cannot talk about teacher training or education without adequately looking at their teaching conditions. An inescapable fact in Nepali context is that teachers are underpaid but overworked. Unreasonable demands and pressures are laid at their shoulders, more so when they get transferred to rural communities where the living standard is generally lower than in urban centers. Policy makers need to ensure that teachers are treated equally so that they could contribute the best in term of effort and outcome in the classroom and communities. Therefore, their teaching conditions need careful re-evaluation.

Ongoing professional development

It is not unusual in Nepal for teachers to continue working without further upgrading of their knowledge or skills for the rest of their teaching careers. For example, it is common for lower-secondary or secondary teachers in either rural or urban schools to fail to undergo any refresher courses for a very long time. They require attending short in-service training courses only when there are changes made to curricula. This has serious implications for the quality of their teaching. It is imperative that Ministry of Education devises strategies whereby their teachers would be continually upgraded on curriculum, pedagogical and assessment area in their respective fields.

Shifting from knowledge to practice

Teacher trainings require a shift of focus from what teachers know and believe to what teachers do in the classroom. In this regard Freeman (2001) states that as there are many problems with this knowledge-transmission view, it depends on the transfer of knowledge and skills from the teacher education to the classroom in order to improve teaching (p.73). This does not mean that knowledge and beliefs do not matter but, rather, the knowledge counts for practicing entailed by the work. A practical knowledge generates tasks and involves teachers in practice. But, practice-focused curriculum for learning teaching needs to include significant attention not just to the knowledge demands of teaching but to the actual tasks and activities involved in the work.

The concern on focusing to the practical tasks is that if the teachers become aware of the practical tasks, they can develop different tasks and apply in the classroom. Getting knowledge means being aware and applying in the daily behavior. For instance in a classroom, the novice teacher needs to know how to conduct a short warm-up language activity at the beginning of the day, it is easy to shift into a discussion of the uses of warm-ups, an analysis of possible language activities, or a reflection on how well a particular activity worked. Thus, teacher training needs to offer deliberate opportunities for teachers to practice the interactive work of instruction. Shifting of training must be observed in classroom context rather than documentation

Besides the above mentioned challenges, teacher trainings are mostly based on aid dependency where concerned authorities conduct training to get aid form the foreign agencies. Thus, teacher trainings are just in name, not in work. Without blaming anyone, training should be conducted for knowledge transferring into classroom, improving teacher skills, attitudes – but not for imposing latest development theories.

Another area of concern is the lack of induction program to new-inexperienced teachers after joining schools. Even national curriculum doesn’t talk about new teacher induction, this situation needs rectifying. A teacher goes to school and the head-teacher or principal asks him/her to start immediately, and even sometimes the teacher is assigned to teach Social Studies or Population. What needs to be remembered is that ultimately, it is the students who will suffer the consequences of inadequate support for teachers starting out on their teaching careers.

Conclusion

To conclude, EFL in-service teacher training in Nepal is crawling with lots of hindrances for trifling achievements. Efforts are being made but they are insufficient. The concerned authorities are required to work hard to address the dire needs. One sole organization NCED alone cannot cope up with all the challenges and thus other organizations of similar interests must collaborate. For this government must diversify and ease their monopolistic policy.

References

Awasthi, J.R. (2009). Teacher education with special references to English language teaching in Nepal. In S. Mansoor, A. Sikandar, N. Hussain and N.M. Ahsan (Eds.). Emerging issues in TEFL: Challenges for Asia. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.

Barker, I. (2010). Cambridge international diploma for teachers and trainers. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.

Bhan, S.P. (2006). Teacher training. New Delhi: Lotus Press.

Bista, K. (2011). Teaching English as a foreign/ second language in Nepal: Past and present. English for specific world, Vol. 11, No. 32. Arkansas State University, USA.

Farmer, F. (2006). Teacher training and development in ELT: A professional approach. Indonesian journal of English language teaching, vol. 2. No.2. (pp. 149-158).

Freeman, D. (2001). Second language teacher education. In R. Carter and D. Nunan (Eds.). The Cambridge guide to teaching English to speakers of other languages (pp. 72-79). UK: Cambridge University Press.

Formative Study Report 36 (2009). Exploring the opportunities for professional development of primary school teachers in Nepal. Kathmandu: Tribhuvan University Research Centre for Educational Innovation and Development (CERID).

Gnawali, L.(2001). Investing classroom practices: A proposal for teacher development for the secondary school teachers of English language in Nepal. An unpublished dissertation of Masters: The college of St Mark and St John, London.

Government of Nepal, Ministry of Education. (2066). Teacher Professional Development (TPD) Handbook. Sanothimi: National Center of Educational Development.

Government of Nepal, Ministry of Education .(2012). Flash Report 2012/13. Sanothimi: Department of Education.

Mohan, R. (2011). Teacher education. New Delhi: PHI Learning Private Limited.

Neuman, D. (2010). Research methods in language learning. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.

Shrestha, K.N. (2008). Teacher development and management at secondary education in Nepal. Journal of education and research. Vol. 1. No. 1. (pp. 41-50).

—

rajan

Rajan Paudel
M. Phil. ELE
Kathmandu University
School of Education

Research as Hegemony

April 1, 2014Critical Outlookadmin

Krishna Khatiwada

In this reflective article, I will be sharing my personal belief about why I think research as a subject and practice is hegemonic in nature. I will also talk about the issue of several students dropping out from universities because of the pressures of research work.

For a long time, I had planned to join M.Phil. in English Language Education program at Kathmandu University School of Education (KUSOED). Some of my fellow friends had already completed the program and were working as faculties in KU. Some of my friends were still struggling to complete their dissertations. They in a way inspired me to join KU for the program. However, the same friends, those who graduated and those who are still under the surveillance of dissertation committee, shared this bitter reality to me – “doing RESEARCH is pain in the neck”.

Due to unrelenting pressure to complete the research work on time, I have seen and heard many of my friends dropping out from the program. But I was determined to face this situation. I was committed to doing my best in all aspects of my M. Phil. course. Initially, things were quite manageable at KU, the classes and assignments went smoothly. I also learned about a few terminologies – the buzz words of research like dominance, emancipation, positivism, post-positivism, interpretive, critical, integralism and HEGEMONY.

In the class, we learnt that research means to search or re-search for new knowledge, to establish the new norms, values and meaning. From positivism (a rigid perspective) to post-positivism, from interpretivism to criticalism, we advocated multiple perspectives, realities, meanings, values and methodologies in the classroom. Meanwhile, the discussions I had with my friends (who graduated from KU’s M.Ed.) on ‘Research Methodologies in Social Sciences and Education’ were quite terrifying. Their experiences about the pressures of writing and defending the research proposal, working tirelessly for many months, reading literature, drafting the document, re-writing these and so on, were intimidating for me. These realities and terminologies got engraved in my mind and heart as a giant ghost, against which I found myself as a tiny dust, a novice learner, a crawler, a breast feeding child, a tyro.

On the first day of my research class, I was expecting the hope and aspirations of a new sun and a warm morning. A professor started his lecture and, to my surprise, wrapped it up within two sessions. To make the matter worse, his concept on research left my highly expectant mind with mixed feelings. We were trying to see the world through the lens of multiple realities, multiple perspectives, multiple meanings, multiple knowledge, multiple values and post-modern paradigm. We were triangulating the (data) realities, (methodologies) way to search the new knowledge and (theory) previously set up value to come to the real sense of qualitative strategies of inquiry. However, these two sessions of my professor turned back my expectations towards the 19th century’s positivist approach in real classroom praxis. The deep rooted concept of extreme positivism in the manner, delivery, discipline, and the way of commenting to novice learners like me, left a hideous mark on my mind, which I felt as the mark of HEGEMONY of research as a subject and praxis.

Hegemony, as stated by Fairclough (2010), is the power over society as a whole of one of the fundamental economically defined classes in alliance (as a bloc) with other social forces but it is never achieved more than partially and temporarily, as an ‘unstable equilibrium’ (p.61). Research in KU, with the references to above experiences of my friends and my own perception, positions itself defiantly and powerfully among other subjects creating an artificial identity. And hence I feel that research is hegemonic in nature. To put in other words, the group of research scholars, committee members, and as a whole, research as a subject in a real sense has more power, control or importance, which I think is overtly imposed over other subjects and to the students.

Due to this hegemonic nature of research as a subject to be studied and a praxis to be done in a controlled way, I hardly attempted to do my class presentation well, I hardly completed my proposal and other assignments and I hardly took part in classroom discussion as I did not want to make any mistakes in front the professors. I never made any comments and thus lost my confidence, and I accepted everything from my teachers and colleagues. The deep rooted terrifying picture of the giant known as research work scared me so much that I did not touch or turn the pages of Creswell, Cohen, Manion & Marrison and Denzin & Lincoln. That hegemonic stereotyping script made so worried till the day of examination.

We focus on qualitative strategies of inquiry (Creswell, 2011) to establish multiple realities and search for the multiple perspectives. But, why do we still go back to quantitative inquiry and positivists approach to deal in the classroom, establishing an overall dominance over all subjects? Are we still narrow-minded or do universities still prefer traditional approach? If it is not hegemony, why is research a problem for many students and why many students feel the brunt and drop out?

My reflection on the subject, I hope, will be an emollient to sooth and pacify my feelings.

REFERENCE
Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical discourse analysis: the critical study of language (2nd ed.). London: Longman.

—

krishna

Krishna Prasad Khatiwada
M. Phil. (ELE)
Kathmandu University
School of Education

Need of Induction for Beginning Teachers: My Refection

April 1, 2014Miscellaneousadmin

Ramesh Chandra Bhandari

Thousands of graduates begin their career as teachers every year in Nepal. As they do not have any experience in dealing with various aspects of the profession, they face many problems. Everyone who starts his/her career in a field expects to receive some kind of orientation of briefing (known as induction) from the senior staff and administrators. But most of the schools donot provide induction to their newly appointed teachers in our context. Due to lack of induction, they face various problems in their career. In this reflective paper, I have tried to discuss the problems faced by beginning teachers due to lack of induction and the benefits of the same.

Induction: A Brief Introduction

The term ‘induction’ means to guide, to introduce or to initiate especially into something demanding, secrete or special knowledge (Cole & Mcnay in Dube, 2008). It is the process or ceremony of introducing someone to new job, organization, or way of life. It is oriented towards adjusting somebody in new a context. Every organization or institution needs to carry induction to help its staff function properly in the beginning of their job.

The beginning teachers or newly qualified teachers (NQTs) should be provided with initial training before they enter into full-fledged teaching.

Teacher induction refers to the assistance, guidance, orientation and support provided to the novice teachers in order to make them familiar with new teaching environment. Through induction, the new teachers can develop knowledge of professional practice, capacity to assess the needs, awareness of future responsibilities, dedication to the profession and ability to maximize the use of the resources available around. Teachers should also be trained to adopt the new innovations that occur in their professional areas. In this regard, Wong (2004) states that induction is a “Comprehensive, coherent, and sustained professional development process – that is organized by a school to train, support, and retain new teachers and seamlessly progress them into a lifelong learning program.”

There is no formal provision of teacher induction in the field of teaching in Nepal, though there are some informal modalities of induction launched by private institutions. There are many challenges for teachers in Nepal and they continue to face them due to lack of proper induction from the schools in the beginning of their career.

My experience of ‘being’ a teacher

When I joined the teaching profession, I expected assistance from the seniors, colleagues, and head teachers but I did not get such help. I felt lost and disoriented when I stepped into the class for the first time. I couldn’t utilize the theoretical knowledge into practice. I had theoretical idea about different teaching methods like grammar translation method, direct method, audio-lingual method, etc. and different techniques like pair work, group work, dramatization, role play, different language games and so on but I forgot everything. I felt very uneasy to express even the things which I was well familiar. I lost my confidence and even if the students laughed in their own matter, I used to think that I had made some mistakes.

Similarly, I also faced different problems regarding classroom management, students’ response and behaviour, handling subject matter, instructional techniques, administrative and co-worker relationship, adjustment to overall school environment, curriculum, evaluation system, etc.The number of students in my class was very large and the environment was completely new to mewhich created difficult situation to manage the classes. It wasdifficult to motivate and make the students ready to study, lead the class in the proper direction, and check class work and homework in the class. At the same time, it was also hard to maintain proper classroom conduct among the students. There used to be several queries of the students regarding my teaching items, but I was unable to manage the answers to all of them.

When I graduated in ELT, I thought I knew a lot of things about English language teaching but I realized that I just knew the theories. I didn’t feel very comfortable with my co-teachers. I received few support from administration but no help from the other teachers. I expected a huge support from everyone but they were only busy in taking his/her own class and no one cared for what a new teacher was doing. Only few of them shared their ideas, experiences, information and techniques with me.

I found it hard to understand the overall school environment as it was my first experience as a teacher. I was in a state of confusion and had no guideline from the seniors on a regular basis. I felt problems to adjust myself with the rules and regulations of the school, understanding students’ psychology, their nature and it took me some time to recognize all those. Likewise, I didn’t have sufficient knowledge of curriculum as the course was new and I had very few ideas about the proper ways to handle the tasks that were given in the prescribed course. I had to study and practice a lot hard to handle the subject matter.

I had many problems related to evaluation of the performance of the students. I had no idea about evaluation system of my school at that time. I faced many problems regarding class tests, unit tests, responding to students’ immediate problems, interval between different examinations.

How did I overcome these problems?

If I had been introduced to these systems properly in the beginning, I would have been able to feel comfortable and perform better. Though all the teachers are in favour of teacher induction, it is not practiced in teaching properly. In the beginning, I had no idea how to face the problems I encountered. Later, I thought I should do something to help myself overcome them. I started adopting different techniques. I tried to take the help from my colleagues, head teachers, administrators and even with the students. I got positive responses from some of them but not all. I tried my best. But in some cases it was not possible to overcome those difficulties myself. My seniors and the principal also helped me to make teaching and learning activities effective. I also consulted with teachers from other schools.

My Observation and Suggestions

Over the months, I have realized that teacher induction is essential for the professional development of the beginning teachers. I faced various challenges and problems due to the lack of proper induction. As a treacher who has completed a graduate course to be a teacher, I had enough theories in my mind but I severely lacked the practical skills and understanding of the context I had started working. From my own experience, theories and discussion with other teachers, I have come to realize that, induction helps new teachers solve the problems they encounter in their early stage of teaching career. Here are my suggestions for the effective implementation of induction program:

All the novice teachers should be provided with teacher induction program while they enter into the profession. Lack of induction might give them bitter experience which results in negativity towards the profession.
Novice teachers should be provided with the idea of dealing with the subject matter, maintaining relationship with administration, co-worker and students, maintaining discipline in the classroom, addressing students’ problems and so on.
There should be regular provision of collaboration and interaction between novice and veteran teachers at the regular basis. Workshops, seminar, and group should be conducted for the professional and personal development of the teachers.
Teacher induction should be made flexible, decentralized, regular and accessible to all. So, the policy should be formulated accordingly. Government should provide sufficient numbers of teacher mentors, supervisors, resources to implement induction program properly.
Teacher training program organizers and teacher educators like Ministry of Education (MoE), NELTA, NCED should include and focus on the role of teacher induction program as one of the most effective means for teachers’ professional development (TPD).

References

Dube, W. S. (2008). The induction of novice teachers in community junior secondary schools in Gaborone, Botswana. An M.Ed. thesis, University of South Africa.

Griffin, C. C. et al. (2003). New Teacher Induction in Special Education. COPSSE Documents No. RS-5.

Wong, H. K. (2004). Induction programs that keep new teachers teaching and improving. NASSP Bulletin, Vol. 88, No. 638.

—

Ramesh Chandra Bhandari
M.Ed. ELT
Tribhuvan University
Teacher at Neelbarahi Higher Secondary School, Kalimati, Kathmandu

Reflections on Presenting in Interactive Language Fair (ILF)

April 1, 2014Reflectionsadmin

Reflections on Presenting in Interactive Language Fair (ILF)

Jeevan, Dipesh and Praveen

The Interactive Language Fair (ILF) during the 19^th International Conference of NELTA in February 2014 was the first of its kind coordinated by Laxman Gnawali, Associate Professor (ELT)
School of Education Kathmandu University. The coordinator of the ILF has introduced this special event to the conference, replicating the ideas of similar event of the IATEFL. The idea was that each presenter was provided with one table, which was visited by groups of delegates interested to know more about the theme of their presentation. The separate tables were arranged just like stalls in a fair. Sixteen presenters, including us (Jeevan, Dipesh and Praveen), had interactions with the audience, by providing them information, answering questions, and inviting responses. The participants walked from one table to another, learning the presenters’ efforts to different ELT issues through discussion. In this post, we have shared our reflections on presenting in the ILF.

Now, let the world see our students’ creativity’: Jeevan Karki

Unlike other sessions, the ILF was a truly participants-focused event, where presenters explained their researches and other successful ELT ventures to the visitors, based on their queries. On the contrary to other sessions, the ILF presenters had to share the aspects of the presentation that the participants opted for learning. In addition, they could discover a wide range of issues dealt by different presenters at a single slot. Similarly, they enjoyed freedom to visit the presenter’s stall as per their choices.

The title of my presentation was ‘now, let the world see our students’ creativity’. I focused on publication of creative writings of our students, which I believe is the greatest award for encouraging them. I chose the area of my presentation after I generally found very few of them focused on publishing the creative writings of students. As a whole, I shared my opinions with the audience on the significance of publication when they want the students continue with creative writings.

In order to encourage language learners and develop their competencies in creative writings, we, a group of young scholars involved in creative writing have started a webzine called www.merocreation.com. I introduced the webzine and shared my ideas of encouraging students in creative writings and the procedures of how we publish the students’ writing on the online venue. As similar to my last article in Choutari, I discussed on techniques to accommodate creative writings in language class. Many participants visited my stall and we had a very exciting interaction. Besides the interaction, I showed them a video clip on creative writings. I took it for a splendid opportunity to share with them my ideas and initiatives on MyCreation. One among those visitors was a young participant from Bhaktapur, who I find was looking for some ways of giving platform for his students’ creative writings. He was so excited to learn our venture that he continued the talk during our lunch time, even after the conclusion of the event.

Let’s get the ball rolling 24/7 with Critical Thinking: Dipesh Sah

As the ILF was completely new for ours, I had submitted my proposal soon after the call for presentation was solicited by the coordinator Gnawali Sir. As luck would have it, I got an opportunity to present the research paper, where I made an attempt to show the value of critical thinking strategies for better learning in the ELT classroom.

Critical thinking underlies the three layers, which are mental, critical dialogue, and control based on reliability. It is a process by which the thinker improves the quality of their thinking. It is also an energizing force in education and a powerful resource in one’s personal and civic life. In my research, I have analyzed the data in order to find out the quantitative level of critical thinking in the students. My research was based on primary data collected from one public campus and two constituent campuses of Tribhuvan University viz; Sanothimi Campus, Sanothimi, Mahendra Ratna Campus, Tahachal and Nilkantha Campus, Dhading. Finally, I have suggested some the specific techniques used for testing the learners’ thinking capacity and also the ways to develop their individual critical thinking skill.

No doubt, I have experienced a good interaction with the audience in the ILF. Unlike plenary and concurrent sessions, it was not only interactive but it was participatory too since there was an exchange of conversation between me and them.

Professional Development in Nepalese ELT through Blogging: Praveen Kumar Yadav

I was thrilled to participate in the special event during the conference of NELTA in February. Taking the case of NeltaChoutari from my M. Ed. research, I have shared with the audience how it has helped ELT practioners in Nepal build on their scholarship and enhance them professionally and also the ways they have translated their learning from the blog into practice.

Starting with a glimpse of background and rationale of the research study, followed by the methodology I have adopted, I have highlighted on the blog ‘NeltaChoutari’ has helped to develop ELT practioners in Nepal professionally and also the ways they have translated their learning from the blog into practice. For instance, the informants have used the materials from the blog to facilitate trainings, carry out activity in the classroom, reference into their theses and organize discussions on ELT issues. Based on the findings, I have concluded with some substantial suggestions to increase its readership and circulation and also pedagogical implications.

Wrapping up

Before we attended the ILF in the conference, the event coordinator Gnawali Sir had solicited us one PowerPoint slide, which included our name, institutional affiliation and the title of our presentation. He had suggested us to include a relevant image on the slide as per our wish and also insert some text on our presentation to help us in our talk. While the slide was projected, we had our two-minute thumbnail presentation in the beginning.

As we were asked to bring slide show, video, poster, any other materials that we wanted to display/present and interact with the audience, a table was provided to us for the materials including the summaries of our presentation for distribution. However, had the presenters experienced about the language fair, they could have brought many materials as expected and display them for the purpose.

Indeed, our presentation in the ILF was rejoicing experience for us. As we learnt that this special is going to take place again in the next year, we anticipate our participation as well. But, we are confident that this will be one of the most popular events during the conference 2015.

Twitter Summit #Write4Pro

April 1, 2014Technologyadmin

Choutari Editors

Many of us use Twitter, and we know about the general benefits of it as a tool for enhancing our professional learning network. Recently, one of our Choutari founders, Dr. Shyam Sharma, used Twitter for an entirely different purpose than PLN: organizing an international “summit” of like-minded scholars and students!

Dedicated for his students in an undergraduate course titled “Writing For Your Profession” at Stony Brook University, this classroom event not only enriched classroom experience for his students, but also attracted and engaged participants from Australia, New Zealand, Guyana, Egypt, Nepal, UK, and across the US. Conferences and other professional events add the Twitter Summit for engaging virtual participants, but making that happen right from the classroom is quite an inspiring feat.

Here’s a blog entry that Shyam Sharma wrote about the event and okayed that we reblog it on Choutari, so our readers will know a little about the use of social media in teaching: http://shyamsharma.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/from-a-classroom-to-the-world/

Using a Portfolio for ELL/ELT

March 31, 2014Teaching Tipsadmin

Aadesh Bhetwal

Portfolios are collections of learners’ work that demonstrates the learner’s progress and achievement in a program or course of study. A portfolio used for assessment purposes can include examples of learner’s work, assignments, projects, improvements, self-evaluations, reflections, journals and case studies, among others. Paulson, Paulson, and Meyer (1991) say that portfolio is ‘a purposeful collection of student’s work that exhibits the student’s effort, progress in one or more areas.’ They also stress that a portfolio provides a complex and comprehensive view of students’ participation in selecting contents, the criteria for selection, the criteria for judging merit, and evidence of students’ self-reflection.

There are different types of portfolios, such as assessment portfolios, showcase portfolios, and collections portfolios. And these portfolios are very useful teaching and learning tool in language learning classrooms. For instance, ‘assessment portfolios’ consist of items students choose to include according to certain assessment criteria. ‘Showcase portfolios’ contain students’ best pieces of work – their assignments, articles, journals, etc. Collections portfolios, often called working folders, are collections of all the pieces of work during a certain period of time.

Benefits of Using Portfolio

I have been managing portfolios of some subjects at my university for some years and my experience shows that having the portfolios has helped me understand the use of various language learning strategies. It has kept me motivated for further independent learning and has also encouraged me for collaborative learning. It has been very useful for me as it not only shows my learning process and progress, but also shows me the results of learning.

Here are some more benefits of using portfolios according to Shimo and Apple (2005):

Learners can reflect over their learning processes.
Portfolios make it possible to make a continuous assessment over a long time period.
Learners can make their original products and they can feel a sense of achievement more compared to traditional tests.
Learners can take control over their learning and feel more responsibility for it.
Learners can assess weaknesses and strengths, and progress in their ability, and (re-) set goals more effectively by looking over their work.

One of the main features of a portfolio is self-reflection, to which Schulman (1985) echoes that portfolio serves it the most significant purpose as scaffolding for reflective teacher learning. Similarly, Winzer (2002) asserts that portfolios create a context that contains multiple and diverse sources of information and perspectives in which students can examine, explore and construct meaning. He adds:
“One student chose the assignment in order to learn about the social and cultural biases that society may have toward people with disabilities. It was an opportunity to broaden my perspectives, and a chance to explore and gain a better understanding of disability. Finally, I believe that I will not be able to sincerely help any special needs children in my classroom without taking the time to study, research, and interview and open my awareness to the disabilities in society today.” (p. 4)

These findings show that portfolio is beneficial for the learning of students. It can cover all the aspects of languages such as the four language skills. For instance, one can collect and arrange written assignments in a chronological way, then self-evaluate and reflect on his/her improvement on writing skill. Similarly, a student can maintain a portfolio about different strategies he/she used over the time to develop speaking skills, and feel motivated seeing the progress made or understand the obstacles faced.
Few Challenges
When my teachers asked me to maintain portfolios for each subjects, initially I was very confused about what to keep in them and faced a lot of difficulties because I didn’t arrange and update my portfolios regularly. Hence, I want to share a few important questions which come with the use of portfolios – such as: What should be placed in the portfolio? How often should items be added to the portfolio? Who decides what goes into the portfolio? Who should be given responsibility for its safekeeping? What should be done with the portfolio at the end of the school year? In addition, a teacher has to decide if the assessment of portfolio will be graded as a part of the final examination and evaluation.

These are just a few of the “nuts and bolts” issues which surface while deciding to implement portfolio assessment in the classroom.

Students might take portfolios as an extra burden, and teachers might also feel the same way. Teachers have to teach and complete the course on time, check assignments, prepare and administer examinations, check and mark exam answer sheets – and portfolio might look like adding more to the work, demanding more time and effort. However, by implementing portfolio as a tool for continuous assessment and also a part of the final assessment, teachers practically reduce their work pressure and save time.

Portfolios do not have to be bulky, heavy and they certainly don’t have to be costly. For instance, a teacher can ask the students to write a short classroom reflection everyday and maintain a portfolio on a simple file. This can be done in pairs or groups as well which will lessen the ‘burden’ for both. The teacher can then check the portfolio every week or every month, and evaluate the students’ improvement in writing and give appropriate feedback.

For Further Reading

California Foreign Language Project http://www.stanford.edu/group/CFLP/research/portfolio/portfolio1.html
Kenji Nakamaya, www.paaljapan.org/resources/proceedings/PAAL9/pdf/Nakayam.pdf
Etsuko Shimo, Matthew Apple www.tht-japan.org/proceedings/2006/shimo77-80.pdf
Winzer, M. (2002). Portfolio Use in Undergraduate Special Education Introductory Offerings. International Journal of Special Education .
HYPERLINK “http://www.internationalsped.com/documents/171winzer.doc” t “_blank” http://www.internationalsped.com/documents/171winzer.doc

—
Aadesh Bhetwal
M.Ed. English Language Teaching
Kathmandu University, School of Education.

Welcome to Nelta Choutari March Issue 2014

March 8, 2014Editorialadmin

EDITORIAL

Umes Shrestha
(with Usha and Jeevan)

Dear Readers of Nelta Choutari Blog Magazine,
We took an extra week to publish this issue, but the time has been worth it!

As we present the ‘NELTA Conference special issue’, including an amazing set of blog posts based on the 19th International Conference, we are excited by many things. We have continued our tradition of the special issue after this important event for Nepal’s ELT community. We are also proud to see the emergence of new venues of professional conversation, most significantly the “official” blog started by NELTA (www.neltaeltforum.weebly.com). We see such development as the community’s dream coming true, because there should be more venues of professional conversation, some run by individual scholars, others by groups, some less structured and formal than others, and so on. We remain an independent community of bloggers who strive to publish the voice of other colleagues on top of ours, in the spirit of the Nepali way, building scholarship from the ground up.

We remain inspired by the passion for promoting critical pedagogy, promoting local scholarship, incorporating the voices of local teachers, writing ourselves to value the voices of teachers on the ground across the country, and fostering creativity and innovation in the teaching of English… drawing on global scholarship for promoting local professional practice. We continue to explore new landscape, ask new questions, and try new ideas. Our strength lies in our ability to engage almost 3,000 visits to the site every month from more than 80 countries around the world, and in the achievements reflected in almost four hundred blog entries, a thousand comments, 1.53 lakh total views. Former and present editors and also the ELT community have put in a lot of hard work and dedication over the years. And we are driven to take Choutari to new heights every year, building on our strength in quantity and quality.

Now to focus on the theme of this special issue — The conference was held in two phases, first in Kathmandu and then in Hetauda, under the theme, ‘Authentic Assessment: A Paradigm Shift from Traditional to Alternative Assessment’ and it was attended by over 600 presenters and participants in Kathmandu, and by over 300 in Hetauda. It has become a tradition in this blog to dedicate an issue to the conference and to show our solidarity and respect to NELTA as an organization that we belong to, and to all English language teachers and professionals all over Nepal.

Let me start by sharing my personal reflection. Initially, the theme of the conference didn’t really create any interest in my mind. However, after attending the plenary sessions by Professor Stephen Stoynoff (US), Professor Keith Morrow (UK), and Professor Z.N. Patil (India), and pondering over what they presented and shared, I realized the gravity of the issues related with testing and assessment in our context.

For far too long, and for the worst, we have snubbed our learners and students based on the results of one-off examinations. We, both teachers and parents, have robbed them of their true potential and pushed them into the dark ‘You’re a failure’ zone. I have always thought that our assessment system had holes all over it, but now it seems to me that it is a total disaster. For years, the primary objective of our traditional assessment system has been about how to make students pass the tests (or how to make them fail the tests), instead of how to make them literate, proficient, and talented.

Our teachers may have changed with time, our students too – but the curriculum and assessment system has not changed at all. It is still ‘old’ and terribly traditional, and it constantly victimizes numerous learners and students. Out of fear and pressure, students study only to pass the test, unfortunately, not to be educated. And, as one of our writers has said on this blog, this is the tragedy!

So, this is what I’ve decided. The next time I enter the classroom, I will not judge any student based on their performance on the exams. This is one idea that I’m going to take from the conference into my classroom. And specifically, I will never hold any biased or indifferent attitude toward ‘low-scorers’ or ‘under-achievers’ because now I can understand and empathize with their struggles, motivation (or lack of it) and various external reasons which are somehow the spiraling repercussion of a very ‘poor’ assessment system.

I might have painted a very bleak picture of assessment and its objectives but it’s time to get real and it’s time to act. We must act, individually and collaboratively, and raise enough strength to wipe out the damaging consequences of one-off assessments, like the SLC exam. Prof. Stoynoff quoted Bob Dylan and said, “Times, They Are a-Changing” and indeed, the concept of assessment and its purpose is changing. The change, however, must be towards viewing assessment through sociocultural perspective and the change must be towards teachers and authorities taking more responsibility.

Having said that, here I present the blog entries of this special issue.

Besides the conference related posts, we have also included Gopal Prashad Bashyal’s experience of attending a BELTA Conference held in Dhaka of Bangladesh. Also adding some variety, former and current Choutari editors, Shyam Sharma and Uttam Gaulee, have collaboratively written a reflection on a recent Choutari meeting. And, finally, to go along with the reports, reflections, and essays, we have also included a photo-highlight of both phases of Nelta conference.

Table of Contents

Professor Stephen Stoynoff’s Keynote Speech: Ganga Ram Gautam
Nelta Conference – Hetauda Phase: A Short Report: Narayan Prasad Tiwari
Interactive Language Fair with Photo Feature: Laxman Gnawali
What Does ‘Authentic’ Assessment Mean?: Mabindra Regmi
A Presenter’s Reflection on Nelta Conference: Prema Bhusal
A Report on plenary “Do We Still Need Dictionaries?” led by Dr. Elaine Higgleton: Suman Laudari
Learning from the self and others: Gopal Prashad Bashyal
What Are You Taking Into the Classroom? Conference Experience: Santona Neupane
A Workshop on Language Testing and Assessment – A Reflection : Ganesh Datt Bhatta
Before the Sun Rises – A Reflection on a Recent Choutari Meeting: Shyam Sharma & Uttam Gaulee
Photo Highlights – 19th Nelta International Conference: Umes Shrestha

After going through the blog entries, please post your comments and feedback, and help us experience an enriched professional communication.

And, please don’t forget to join our new initiative – Choutari Mentorship Project. Some of our colleagues have already started benefiting from this project. We sincerely thank all participating mentors and mentees. You can also watch a short video by Uttam Gaulee explaining the purpose of this project here. This video was part of a presentation in the 19th International Conference of NELTA in Kathmandu.

As usual, please like us on our Facebook page, encourage writers by liking their posts, leave comments, share what you like on your network, and contribute your own blog posts for future issues.

—

Umes Shrestha
Editor for March Issue
Email: umes.shrestha@gmail.com

Professor Stephen Stoynoff’s Keynote Speech: Classroom Assessment

March 8, 2014Global thought, Miscellaneous, Scholarly Articleadmin

Ganga Ram Gautam

Prof. Stoynoff in his keynote address during 19th NELTA International Conference held in Kathmandu on Feb 27, discussed his professional journey in the field of language assessment using a “trekking” metaphor as part of an anecdote from his Nepal visit long time ago.

The highlights of the message that he conveyed through the metaphor were:

a) a beginning is always exciting but not easy

b) we need to understand the challenges and put every effort to face them in order to get to the next level

c) we must understand the significance of our endeavor in the work that we do

d) we should not give up but try various alternatives so that we might find a better way for addressing the challenges and issues

Describing the various landscapes of language assessment in the last few decades, Prof. Stoynoff shared about two key orientations, namely, the psychometric perspectives and socio-cultural perspectives, which have influenced language assessment. Highlighting the key features of these perspectives, he also talked about the shifts that have taken place in the area of assessment along with the changes in the curriculum and materials in English language teaching and learning.

Drawing on the principles and practices of the socio-cultural perspective in language assessment, he elaborated alternative approaches to language assessment and how these approaches address the issue of ‘authenticity’ in language assessment. The key message that Prof. Stoynoff delivered during his presentation was that it is the teacher who is chiefly responsible for selecting the appropriate assessment and in many cases developing them, administering them properly, interpreting the results correctly and using results responsibly. He advised the teachers to be more attentive to the purposes and practices associated with assessment and their impact on students’ learning and their teaching. Thus, he highlighted the term “Assessment Literate” as the key that every teacher should be aware of.

As concluding remarks, Prof. Stoynoff said:

a) Set ambitious goals

b) Persist in important endeavors

c) Periodically gauge your progress and recognize changes in the professional landscape

d) Prepare for the challenges that are ahead

The presentation was both academic and practical and participants enjoyed it thoroughly. The uptake of the presentation was that the best way to keep abreast with the new trends and development in the professional field that one is engaged is through continuous professional development.

—

Ganga Ram Gautam
Reader in English Education,
Mahendra Ratna Campus, Tahachal, Tribhuvan University
Executive Member (Immediate Past President), Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association (NELTA)

Nelta Conference Hetauda Phase – A short report

March 8, 2014Nelta branch and members, Nelta Networking, Teacher Trainingadmin

Narayan Prasad Tiwari

The 19^th International Conference of NELTA (Phase II) began on March 3, 2014 in Hetauda.

One of the key speakers, Prof Stephen Stoynoff (US) presented on the theme: Language Assessment and the path to Crystal Mountain. Using the metaphor of a trek through the Himalayan Mountains, the speaker considered the paradigm shift that has occurred in language assessment over the past few decades and its implications for EFL teachers. He emphasized psychometric and socio-cultural perspectives on assessment. Prof. Stoynoff further presented “Classroom based Language Assessment: Improving the Design and Use of Teacher Developed Assessments” during plenary session. He reviewed key trends in language assessment and their complications for teacher constructed assessments of second language ability.

Prof. Keith Morrow (UK) presented on “What does ‘authentic’ assessment mean? How do we do it?” His talked about genuineness and authenticity while focusing on assessment, testing observation, self assessment and individual growth over time. His plenary session proceeded with awareness and activity in ELT. The primary focus was on learners and teachers who need to strengthen awareness and what they could learn from it.

Prof. Z.N. Patil (India) mainly focused on assessment as an integral part of ELT through story telling techniques. He stressed on day to day assessment in teaching by citing some relevant examples of poems and dramas. In the presentation “Enriching Linguistic, Communicative and Pragmatic Competence through Literature”, he presented audio- visual text and interacted with the participants and gave specific procedures to be adopted in classroom activities.

Mr. Brenden Mcsharry (British Council) presented on “21^stCentury Learning Skills and Assessment: the Implication for Nepal” stressing on thinking skills, working skills, working tools and living skills. Besides, he focused on 21^stcentury themes like global citizenship, human rights, intercultural awareness, equality and diverse, healthy living and peace studies.

Laxman Gnawali and his team of Kathmandu University presented “Pechha Kuchha Fun Show” to all the participants that ultimately focused on insightful learning with innovative ideas.

Apart from the key presenters, there were around thirty presentations from different ELT practitioners from nation and abroad as well for two days. Around 450 English teachers actively took participation in different concurrent session according to their field of interest.

—

Narayan Prasad Tiwari
NELTA
Hetauda branch

Interactive Language Fair at NELTA 2014 with Photo Feature

March 8, 2014ELT Resource, Photos, Teaching Tipsadmin

Laxman Gnawali

NELTA added a special event to its 19th International Conference 2014: Interactive Language Fair (ILF) designed after the IATEFL’s ILF. In this event, 16 presenters showcased their research, innovations and experiments. As I coordinated this event, I would like to briefly describe the process of preparing and organizing the event.

Once the NELTA Conference Organizing Committee approved the proposal for the Interactive Language Fair and entrusted me with the responsibility to coordinate it, the call for proposals was made via emails, Yahoogroups, Facebook and the NELTA website. I received queries from potentials presenters asking me what it was and how they could participate in it and I did my best to explain the nature and the process of the Fair. The proposals were submitted from home and abroad. Once the proposals were accepted, I asked the presenters to get ready with their slides and other the materials for the Fair.

ilf-1

The Fair was scheduled for Day 3 of the conference, i.e. 1st March. Sixteen presenters came ready for the presentation. The hall opened for setting the show one hour before the Fair actually started. The presenters arranged their tables along the walls of the hall and displayed their materials on the laptops, tables and the walls.

When we opened the door for the participants, the hall was filled with very inquisitive ELT professionals and enthusiasts. The presenters made two-minute thumbnail presentations introducing themselves and highlighting the innovations they had made and invited the participants to visit their tables. Once the thumbnail presenters were over, the participants visited the presenters of their choice and asked questions, listened to the explanations, played games, tried the materials, clicked through the slides and also exchanged the information. What follows is the brief description of each of the presentations.

Babita Sharma Chapagain from Nepal shared samples of the reading materials developed by trainee teachers based on the local/rural context. She shared photos and sample books that were developed by the trainees and interacted with the visitors. Manju Bajracharya from Nepal shared the report of an action research she carried out with aim attempt to improve English spellings. She engaged visitors with some interesting spelling tasks and games. Dipesh Kumar Shah from Nepal shared his ideas on critical thinking that he tried out in his EFL classroom. Md Mahmudul Hasan from Bangladesh showcased his innovation called Smart Gamification. Illustrating what a flipped classroom is, he engaged visitors in games and exercises based on the concept.

Naheed Haq from Pakistan shared her research on formative assessment as a systematic part of teaching. Claire Bradin Siskin from India described and demonstrated the ESL Writing Online Workshop (ESL-WOW), an online multimedia program designed to guide non-native speakers of English through each stage of the writing process. Jeevan Karki from Nepal shared introduced a webzine and shared the ideas of encouraging students for creative writing by publishing their writing instantly in the webzine. Prof. James Crocker from Japan showcased The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, a publication which focuses on language teachers and learners’ writing about their experiences as language educators abroad and at home. Dinesh Kumar Thapa from Nepal shared the art of making learners engaged with reading texts at a deeper level with the aid of graphic organizers. Kshitiz Upadhyay-Dhungel from Nepal shared an experience of a Principal of ECD pre-school in learning/teaching English language in a more lucid way in the Nepalese context.

Durga Prasad Pandey from Nepal highlighted self-management as a way to self-leading professional development. The visitors discussed ‘Doing’ (Physical), ‘Thinking’ (Mental), ‘Feeling’(Social), ‘Being’(The self). Shyam Kumar Shrestha from Nepal got the visitors to share their experiences of teaching children who are uninterested in reading authentic materials. Praveen Kumar Yadab from Nepal shared the experience of professional development in ELT through blogging on NeltaChoutari. Dhani Ram Yogi and Bir Singh Nayak from Nepal showed the link between the content from social studies and EFL teaching and learning based on project based learning concept. Sagun Shrestha from Nepal argued that technology brings amicable language learning environment in the ELT classrooms and demonstrated the use of some online resources such as nicenet, delicious and others. Teachers of English Access Micro-Scholarship Program Mandira Adhikari, Radha Krishna Humagain, Gokul Sharma and Kalpana Poudel and some of their students showcased a non-traditional classroom through a ‘poster presentation’ for a ‘gallery walk’.

During and after the Fair, I reflected and made two conclusions. First, when we visit other countries and participate in ELT events, we can and we should return with ideas to add new activities and try them out here in Nepal. I initiated this ILF event because I had attended a similar event in the IATEFL Liverpool Conference in 2013. I feel this is a way to enrich our practices. Two, the ELT professionals in Nepal are comparable at the international level which was demonstrated by the quality of the presenters in the Fair. The visitors/participants said that the Fair was a good learning opportunity for them.

The Interactive Language Fair will continue at the NELTA 2015 Conference.

—

Laxman Gnawali
Associate Professor (ELT)
School of EducationKathmanduUniversity

—

Some of the photos of the ILF:

—

Photos: Umes Shrestha

A Presenter’s Reflection on Nelta Conference

March 8, 2014Reflectionsadmin

Prema Bhusal

I was very excited from the very beginning when I heard that 19^th International conference was going to be held. We had a discussion in our classroom as well with our Associate Professor, Laxman sir. Then, out of curiosity, I decided to write a presentation proposal for the conference. Then, without making any delay, I sent my proposal to the representatives and received prompt response of acceptation. From that day, I had different kinds of curiosities in my mind about what and how it would go in the conference.

On the first day of the conference, I saw an overwhelming number of participants from home and abroad. Then, I entered in the plenary hall and attended the sessions of key speakers Prof. Stephen Stoynoff, Prof. Keith Morrow and Prof. Z, N. Patil. Along with them, I saw other apex personalities from different parts of the country.

I was really mesmerized by the thoughts about assessment and different issues shared by the key speakers. All the key speakers were exploring assessment in different ways. Some were talking about authenticity, genuineness and some from socio-cultural perspectives and some talking assessment as love and arrange marriage. Although, all the key speakers have equally contributed assessment taken from different perspectives, I felt very blissful when I heard this line from Prof. Z.N Patil, from India that “Formative assessment is like a love marriage and summative assessment is like an arranged marriage”. It made a great impact to me as this was really relevant to what I was doing. I’m doing an online course on ‘assessment’ sponsored by OregonUniversity, U.S and U.S Embassy. When I shared Prof. Patil’s analogy of formative assessment as a love marriage and summative assessment as an arranged marriage, my professor, Sandra Clark mentioned that the analogy made her and her staffs laugh as she had never heard that before. Now, it is a matter of discussion in our online discussion board.

Now, let me share my feelings about concurrent sessions. When I started to join in concurrent sessions, I found different kinds of people from different parts of the world and I had different kinds of feelings in this session. It is because, some mentioned very good ideas about their teaching experiences and some were not very confident in their subject matter in spite of being a professor. Sometimes, I felt sad when some presenters were wondering and moving here and there, because none of the participants were in their session. Then, I compared myself with them – what will I do if I face the same situation? I had a kind of terrible feeling and without any delay, the turn of my presentation came on the final day, immediately after the lunch. Before presenting the topic “Developing Speaking Skills of Students”, my feelings was the same and wondering what will I do if there is no participant in my classroom? But apart from that, I had a kind of feelings to soothe myself that I will at least get a certificate if nobody is with me, but the God was with me and my wishes came true. I saw a number of participants in my session from the different parts of the world. When I saw their active participation and curiosity in the subject matter I have presented, a great relief came into my mind which gave me encouragement and I felt more confident. So, my presentation went on well than I had expected.

All in all, the 19th international conference of Nelta made a great impact on me. I just don’t know how to express it in these few words. I have realized that I have built up my confidence on the subject matter and I’ve also made both personal and professional progress. This conference has helped me know better about global practices, the role of presenter, participants and the relationship between the two. It has helped me present more effectively and confidently in the days to come. All the reflection of the conference and attempts, I have done to gain knowledge undoubtedly has enriched my knowledge and skills. I got a chance to share my feelings to the open-minded people from different parts of the world.

—-

Prema Bhusal
M.Ed. ELT, Fourth semester
KathmanduUniversity

What does ‘authentic’ assessment mean?

March 8, 2014Critical Outlook, Reflectionsadmin

Mabindra Regmi

“What does ‘authentic’ assessment mean? How do we do it?” A Critique on 19^th NELTA Conference Plenary by Professor Keith Morrow, UK

Authenticity in Context

Man: Mary, am I a man?
Woman: Yes, John. You are a man, and I am a woman.

Dr. Keith Morrow started the plenary session at Hetauda on 3^rd March, 2014 with this excerpt from an English textbook used in England over four decades ago. It is interesting to note that the textbook writers and language policy makers bordered absurdity in the name of imparting the right content to the students. Dr. Morrow shared the same line of thought and discussed with the audience regarding how the text in English textbooks have steadily gravitated towards authenticity. And how all this has resulted in a testing system that is more authentic in nature.

But what is authenticity? Dr. Morrow was of the notion that a text that mirrored the context of a society as exactly as possible could be considered more authentic. This resulted in an inextricable correlation between the text and the context of the learner while defining authenticity. Probably that was the reason why the speaker delivered the whole session on authenticity along the thread of context of the learner. He exemplified his belief by giving an example of how an authentic piece of language text like his personal tax return paper, might prove to be far from authentic in a different context, say Nepal. This spatial, and most likely temporal, property of language discourse necessitated context of the learner to be addressed while designing both textbooks and assessments for language learners.

Dr. Morrow thus added the aspect of context while designing a test in addition to the two important traditional criteria: validity and reliability. He was of the opinion that there was a very direct and strong link between validity of a test and the context. However, the relationship between reliability of a test and the context could be rocky at the best. By making the test authentic in accordance to the context of the learner, the validity is confirmed as the test measures exactly what it intends to measure. But if you consider the reliability of the test, the same learner taking the same test at two different times might not result in the same performance level. Now this creates a dilemma – should we contextualise the testing material so it is more valid to the learner, or should we refrain from doing so, and confirm to the reliability criterion that is so essential in testing?

Although the session did not offer a viable solution for the ensuing dilemma, it did focus on the necessity of the testing material to be more authentic in nature. Authenticity in testing not only brings the learner closer to the language, but also creates a more meaningful learning. However, since it is the learner who is indulged in the language pedagogy, it is imperative to integrate the context of the learner to make the testing more authentic.

—

Mabindra Regmi
M.Phil. English Language Education
Kathmandu University
Email: mabindra@gmail.com

A Report on plenary “Do We Still Need Dictionaries?” by Dr. Elaine Higgleton

March 8, 2014ELT Resource, Miscellaneous, Teacher Trainingadmin

Suman Laudari

Do English teachers still need dictionaries, especially printed dictionaries? Because internet gives access to the online form of most of the monolingual and some bilingual dictionaries, do English teachers need to buy and ask students to buy dictionaries? Dictionaries are usually bulky and voluminous, so should we ask students not to buy them, but rather suggest them to use mobile or web dictionaries? This write-up will attempt to answer these questions in relation to the talk given by Dr. Elaine Higgleton, in the 19th International Conference, L.A. School, Hattiban, Lalitpur.

Dr. Higgleton, who is one of the chief editors of Collins Advanced Learners’ Dictionary, focused on the importance of dictionary and significance of their use in this age of digital media. She started her talk presenting an account of how the buying of printed dictionaries has declined over the decade from around 250,000 to 35,000 copies annually. She attributes the reason to the easy availability of large free online dictionaries. Having talked about the history of dictionaries, in which she concluded that the notion of dictionary is always changing based on the perceived needs of the users and the intention of the compiler, she went on to say that the online dictionaries complement the print versions of them. Most of the online dictionaries, according to Dr. Higgleton, are traditional in form and are not user friendly. Hence, learners of English as a foreign language might find it very hard to use online dictionaries and make a sense out of them. Yet, on the other hand, millions of hits have been recorded by different online dictionaries web pages, and it is reported that people seem to be contented with what they get from those online dictionaries.

Moreover, learner’s dictionaries also provide free access to their online dictionaries. Most of these dictionaries do serve purpose as they can aid learners in their effort to learn spelling, hear spelling or check grammar. Nonetheless, Dr. Higgleton claimed we should encourage learners to buy dictionaries because most printed dictionaries offer “more bespoke and tailored content” for users having special needs. Secondly, printed dictionaries are user friendly given that we do not need to depend upon lights of internet connectivity to use them. Thirdly, they can be carried to the classroom and used as per the requirement. Also, she stressed that the lexis chain that the dictionaries provide can be useful in creating other vocabulary related activities. Next, the printed dictionaries can be used in creating grammar exercise to simple writing exercise. And, they also aid learners if they would like to score higher in English examination. Lastly, she added that bespoke and tailored designed traditional dictionaries address the specific content needs of learner most of which are driven by their context and L1.

In line with the arguments of Dr. Higgleton, I as a teacher and learner of English feel that dictionaries have a high significance in the successful learning of English. Reflecting back to my language learning experience, I can vividly remember that I used to have oxford dictionary placed near to my bed while I sat on my bed to read. I can recall noting down words, in class while teaching or while attending university classes, to find their meaning and the usage in the dictionary. I have used dictionaries for multiple purposes. I have used them to decide whether I should use one word over another; whether I should use a particular preposition or conjunction after the given words; to find out how a particular word is used in sentence.

One of my fond memories related to the use of dictionary goes back to the first year of my teaching career, when I bought a dictionary and a self-help grammar book to brush my English language with the first salary that I received. Obviously, dictionary alone does not help, but having one may aid language learning task. I used that dictionary for reasons mentioned above. Since then, I have bought multiple copies of dictionaries. I feel that buying dictionaries is an investment, which worth it.

Hence, I conclude that yes we still need dictionaries, and we should encourage our learners to buy printed dictionaries. We can do multiple, language related activities in class if all our learners bring their dictionaries. Further, we can also request the school/college administration to buy newer version of dictionaries. Because, language is dynamic and so are the needs of learners, the newer versions can address those needs.

—-

Suman Laudari
Adjunct Faculty at Kathmandu University, School of Education
Lecturer at Ace Institute of Management, Baneshwor.

Learning from Self and Others

March 8, 2014ReflectionsBELTAadmin

Gopal Prasad Bashyal

I attended the 6th International Conference of Bangladesh English Language Teachers’ Association (BELTA), held in Dhaka, Bangladesh in January 2013. On this post, I am going to highlight the experience of attending the conference as one of the NELTA members.

Dhaka became unexpectedly warmer after a week’s unusual cold. The airhostess in Biman Bangladesh welcomed the passengers immediately after they stepped into its cozy comfortable cabin and made everyone laugh. She said, “Welcome to the cold winter in Bangladesh.” Thanks to the BELTA people who had already informed us individually and through their website www.belta-bd.org. The plane flew high. It flew higher and much higher. It could scale the sky over the cloud; it made its way breaking the cloud; and I was sensing the thrill of its ascent. It made me think about the height of my destination. The plane landed on ShajahInternationalAirport. For me it was a beginning since I had not scaled any professional height so far. For me it was a move in the runway. For me this was the first attempt to offer myself as a competent learner in the crowd of such a mega ELT event outside Nepal.

It was January 16. The sun was slowly hiding into the horizon. George Pickering, the trainer for Peer Support Review (PSR), chased us to the Conference Hall on the sixth floor of Royal Park Hotel, Banani, where we were introduced with the BELTA Chapter representatives. The PSR training was enthusiastically entertained as the milestone for the strong foundation and active functioning of Teacher Associations (TAs) like NELTA, BELTA and SLELTA. The PSR was mainly about BELTA and NELTA. We began a diagnosis of TAs’ leadership, management, their functioning and performance, documentation and future directions. The PSR members were divided into three groups and assigned tasks: Group A mission and strategy, leadership and communication, Group B the International Conference, newsletter and website, and Group C Marketing and membership, training and development, finance, and innovation and networking.

The reviewers were oriented about questioning skill, investigating information, conducting focus group discussion (FGD), and reporting. The reviewers interviewed and organized FGD with the participants, members, executive members and office bearers. They also studied the publications and records. The reviewers obtained the necessary information during the Conference. The participants and executives were happy to talk to the reviewers since it was a kind of learning process through mutual interaction.

BELTA has earned prestigious position as a volunteer institution working for enhancing ELT in Bangladesh. The presentations and representations in different forums at home and abroad by its leaders, regular events like trainings, workshops. Emerging Chapters, partners in Bangladesh and outside, professionally competent leadership and growing interest of teachers in BELTA and its activities are some evidences that BELTA lives forever. Though there are only 10 Chapters and only about 200 life members, the participation of more than 500 in its 6th International Conference was a great success and a sign of bright future.

The Conference was well managed regarding time, communication and range of presentations. The Conference featured 104 presentations – 6 plenary presentations by invited speakers, 27 workshops, 67 papers, one debate, two panel discussions, pecha kucha, cultural show, and book fair. The theme of the Conference was “Multiple Realities of English: ELT and Beyond.” During the conference, invited speaker George Pickering focused on the urgent necessity of teachers to change themselves due to the changing role of teachers, new teaching methodologies, educational reforms, new learning techniques and globalization. He observed growing Englishes in different regions.

Discussing on the ELT in South Asia, Adrian Tenant observed the lack of integration – while implementing one part of educational process the others are neglected. His workshop focused on teachers’ beliefs and reflective teaching. Likewise, Prof. Fauzia Shamim from Taibah UniversitySaudi Arabia, specified the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary for effective teaching as benchmarks of the standards for teacher education. She shared about ‘teacher evaluation for development’ in her plenary and in her workshop focused on large class as an opportunity.

Dr Eric Dwyer from the US argued for incorporating local contributions in the curricula and also focused on developing classroom libraries of student generated compositions – using minimal resources. Another invited speaker Prof. Rubina Khan’s speech focused on teacher leadership. In addition to these plenary speeches, other presentations range from topics on young learners to adult education, from tertiary and secondary education to curriculum and materials design, from community-based learning to the use of technology, from examinations and its impact on society to the concept of developing innovative practices. They were research based and thought provoking.

The Conference was a gallery of highly professional scholars from Bangladesh, SAARC region, the US, the UK and Saudi Arabia. It was a galaxy of novice young and worldwide popular experienced teachers working at various contexts. The rooms were well-equipped and the volunteers were ready for maintaining necessary arrangements.

As an ELT practitioner, it’s a great opportunity to enjoy abroad journey for professional development. Women leadership, time management, range of presentations, professional as well as managerial leadership, coordination among partners and sponsors, growing competent human resource at local level are some major lessons on the part of association.

The Conference also gave a message for empowering the learners using locally available sources and engaging students for varieties of learning processes. Despite problems to implement communicative language teaching, teachers can identify and select the appropriate techniques applicable in their own context. The Conference gave the message that teachers need not run after the experts or ‘heavy weights’; they are innovators of appropriate techniques for their classroom. For this, teachers need to gain and update knowledge and skills of current techniques and technologies through continuous professional development and enjoy teaching.

—

Gopal Prasad Bashyal
Chair, NELTA Palpa Branch,
Presenter and Reviewer,
Sixth BELTA International Conference, Dhaka, 2013
Email:gopalbashyal@gmail.com

What are you taking into the classroom?

March 8, 2014Reflectionsadmin

Santona Neupane

During the conference, we asked a few of the first time conference attendees about their experience and what will they be taking to the classroom from the conference. Here are their views.

Sudip Neupane, M.Ed (ELT) KUSoEd

My reason for attending the conference: I attended it to learn new things about language and learn the recent techniques, methods and strategies in ELT.

The session I liked: I liked the Key Speech delivered by Prof. Stoynoff and Keith Morrow as they both shed some light on alternative assessment as a way to promote connection with teaching/learning and assessment. It was quite relevant.

My reflection: As it was the first NELTA conference I attend, I learnt many things about English language teachings.

What I will be taking from conference to classroom: the notion on how learners need to be aware and motivated to learn.

—

Raju Shrestha, M.Ed (ELT) KUSoEd

My reason for attending the conference: I attended the conference so that it would help me gain confidence, gain exposure in English and to get involved in interaction.

The session I liked: The concurrent sessions on various issues were more effective for me.

My reflection: As it was the first NELTA conference I had attended, It was a great opportunity for me to get exposure in English as there were native speakers. It helped me realize that everyone has capability within them but it has to be recognized and activated through exposure, participation, motivation and interaction.

What I will be taking from conference to classroom: There are many things that I have learnt in this conference which can be applicable in my classroom. After attending the conference I have started to focus on making my classroom more interactive.

—

Saroj Kumar Mandal, M.Ed (ELT) KUSoEd

My reason for attending the conference: To acquire ideas on assessment and other teaching learning activities.

The session I liked: Plenary by Prof. Z.N. Patil and the Pecha Kucha Show.

My reflection: I acquired new ideas on various teaching learning activities as well as assessment. I came to realise the existence of various types of assessment systems and their effectiveness. I even sharpened my communicative skills by interacting with the participants and presenters both from home and abroad. It was useful in the sense that the methods, techniques and ideas from key speech and presentations can be easily implemented in our classroom.

What I will be taking from conference to classroom: I will not limit my student assessments on written performance only, as had been done traditionally. Rather, I would assess student performance based on other skills they demonstrate as well, e.g. listening, speaking, and reading.

—-

Santona Neupane
M.Ed. ELT, Second Semester
Kathmandu University

Language Testing and Assessment Workshop: A reflection

March 8, 2014ELT Resource, Reflections, Teacher TrainingAssessment, language testing, second language acquisition, SLA, testingadmin

Ganesh Datt Bhatta

On February 23, 2014, I attended a one-day workshop on ‘Language Testing and Assessment’ conducted by NELTA in association with the American Embassy at Kathmandu University, School of Education. The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Stephen J. Stoynoff from Minnesota State University Mankato USA, one of the key note speakers for the 19th International Conference for NELTA.

stoynoff-1

It was a very lively session by Dr. Stoynoff as he presented on how learners who learn English as the second or third language struggle in learning the language in the classroom. He shared an example of his own friend, Mr. Carlos who had immigrated to America from Nicaragua in 1950s. He belonged to a Spanish speaking community and was already 14 when he joined a school in Texas, US. It was difficult for him to learn and adjust in the classroom with his peers who were much younger by age and he did not know English either. As a result, he could not succeed in his sixth grade and he had to repeat the same grade. As English was not his first language, it was obviously difficult for him to understand what the teachers taught in English medium that followed “sink-or-swim” model.

Dr. Stoynoff asked all the trainees to find out the factors that influenced language development and reasons for Carlos’s failure in grade six. The discussion ended with findings of the factors like home environment, societal environment and individual factors of language learners influence the language development. A learner learns language if the educational level of the family is higher. The families which give priority to learn different languages helps a child to values towards education is also important for the development in a learner. It was amazing to find that Carlos earned a PhD later, though he had tough time in school in the early years of migration. The turning point in his life was at his school where a teacher appreciated his work in Spanish. Those inspiring words from the teacher guided him to choose Spanish for his further education and he earned a PhD in the same area. Now he is regarded one of the important experts in the field of Second Language Learning and Teaching.

It can be inferred from the story of Carlos that a teacher can inspire students to pursue their career in proper field of education and the motivating environment of the family also contributes in effective learning of languages. The interaction of the factors like home environment, societal environment and individual factors of age, proficiency of the first language, attitudes towards the second language and access to the Second Language and culture affects the rate of second language development of the learners. The first session ended with one open topic to debate on the pros and cons of teaching other languages than first language at early age of learning.

The second session of the workshop focused on the current trends in the field of Language Testing and Assessment. Assessment is a process based activity to ensure that a learner is developing his/her learning that continues throughout the daily classroom activities. The trainees were divided in groups to make a student profile having some questions to check the background of students in academics performance and to design the learning environment on the bases of it to expect possible development in the pursuit of the course.

Dr. Stoynoff shared the current practices of Language Testing and Assessment in the USA and some other countries. The trainees were asked to make comparisons between the classroom tests and the standard tests (high stakes tests). The discussion gave us idea about the types of testing in classrooms and beyond classrooms in terms of their procedure of conduction.

Nepal has been following the decade-long practiced assessments and tests in all levels of education from nursery to university level for different purposes whereas the other countries have updated their testing mechanism to enhance the ability and strength of the learners. But there is no such standard test for Nepal to check the ability of Nepalese students. We came to realize that there is enough space for ELT practitioners and language experts for research in Nepal to design a standard test to check the ability of our students in Nepal vis-à-vis the students of other countries.

The one-day workshop was an eye opening program for the participants where we got to know the recent trends of language testing and assessment. I, on the behalf of all trainees would like to thank NELTA President Mr. Hemanta Raj Dahal and Ms. Sara Denne-Bolton, Regional English Language Officer (RELO) from Embassy of the USA for providing such an opportunity to discover our strengths as teachers of English language and find our students’ potentialities in learning second language comfortably.

Photos: Umes Shrestha

—

Ganesh Datt Bhatt
Life Member-NELTA Kanchanpur
HimalayanWhiteHouseInternationalCollege, Kathmandu
Email: yrsgdbhatt@gmail.com

Before the Sun Rises: A Reflection on a Recent Choutari Meeting

March 8, 2014Critical Outlook, ELT Resource, Reflections, Technologyadmin

Shyam Sharma and Uttam Gaulee

Outside, the pile of snow was thicker than vehicles parked on the street. From frozen New York joined Shyam Sharma.

Uttam Gaulee was in warm Florida (as far away from Shyam’s place as Colombo is from Kathmandu), at 10.30pm, still in my University of Florida office.

In Kathmandu’s King’s College in Babarmahal had gathered some of Nepal’s brightest ELT scholars– which we are not exaggerating. It was early morning there, seemingly cold, and some colleagues were slightly late from trying to juggle personal and professional responsibilities (as well as beat Kathmandu’s traffic).

Present in the virtual shade of the Choutari tree were Praveen Yadav, Umes Shrestha, UshakiranWagle, Santona Neupane, Suman Laudari, and Jeevan Karki from Nepal; Uttam and Shyam joined from the US.

Technological Demo

This was a meeting among Choutari editors, originally supposed to be a “training” where Shyam was going to walk us through the kinks of technology before discussing how to translate technological affordances into professional purposes. The plan was to ensure that editors are proficient in the use of WordPress blog platform and functionalities: how to add new posts, save drafts, schedule for certain dates, order by time stamps, create table of content, hyperlink using part of preview link, integrate images and other media, learn how to tag and categorize posts, and so on. Shyam did start by emphasizing that the technology is largely a tool that we need to learn how to use with command (meaning everyone must learn how to post/schedule, edit, link, organize, and manage posts and pages on the blog) but the focus must be on how to achieve the professional objectives that the tools are used for achieving. We used the metaphor of hasiya, kodalo, and bancharo and how we keep them sharp and ready but don’t look at them as the focus of our harvest seasons.

However, within a few minutes of trying to walk the rest of the group through the dashboard of the WordPress blog, using Google Hangout’s Screen Share functionality, he realized that the participants already knew the basic applications and functions–or at least they could teach each other basic features and more quickly and easily. In fact, more people than we knew prior to the meeting turned out to have their own blogs and have mastered fairly advanced functions. Going into details of advanced functions like managing widgets, plugins, theme and customization, exporting content, and managing pages could make the meeting more boring than productive; and more advanced functions should also come from gradual development of expertise. Some roles such as approving comments can be assigned to certain editors because they need some attention and understanding (such as spotting and excluding spams; Uttam and Praveen seem to be doing this now, and that looks like a good plan).

So, the conversation naturally and quickly moved on to the agenda of maintaining quality, promoting collaboration and efficiency, and modeling for as well as engaging the community.

Maintaining Quality: Making Review Process Effective and Efficient

We started this segment by summarizing the notes that were shared with the group prior to the meeting. It is worth highlighting that editors fully familiarize themselves with the rules provided to writers; these rules are outlined and even demonstrated under the section “Join the Conversation.” We also later discussed the overarching objectives of the forum spelled out at the top of the Team Charter. The specific best practices and general mission statements are worth viewing as giving us a sense of direction with regard to quality of the publication and engagement of the community. Below is a rundown of what we discussed in terms of making the objective of maintaining quality/standard efficient from a collaborative perspective. Please don’t read these as instructions; they were discussed as suggestions for effectiveness and efficiency. Everyone agreed that a more efficient process for collaboration is needed.

Submission: All submissions must be made to the official email, neltachoutari@gmail.com in order to avoid various types of possible confusions and inefficiencies. First, promote the “Join the Conversation” section; when any authors submit their drafts to individual editors, they should request the writer to resubmit it to the official email address (create a template email if necessary); or just forward the email to the official email, copying the author. Even this much will make a huge difference in terms of streamlining the review process.

Reception & Assignment: The lead editor of the next month should respond to all submissions made between, say, 16th of the previous month to the 15th of the current month. Lead editors can choose to respond from the official email if they prefer; otherwise, lead editors can respond to writers of each submission during the time window and copy one reviewer (and if necessary one mentor), asking everyone to complete the review process and submit the article by, say, the 24th of the month before publication. If a lead editor can distribute the burden of review among different editors/reviewers, starting with his/her subeditor(s), this will allow the lead editor to be more creative, to try to cover more base, to run the conversation, and to better maintain the overall quality. To avoid confusion, editor/reviewers not assigned to work on any draft should leave it to the assigned editors/reviewers. We also discussed the driving principle that “collaboration” and “taking turns” are two very different things, and what we need is the first!

Collaborative Review: Using Google Doc as a general rule can make a positive difference, though it may be necessary to give individual writers the choice of opting out and using email with his/her reviewer (and mentor if any). Lead editor can create a new Google Doc each within the official account, giving edit access to the writer (as well as editor/reviewer and any mentor). Again, while some writers may not be able to use Google Doc (due to technological limitations of skill, tools, internet, anxiety, etc), even those who are able to do so will significantly eliminate the need for email- or phone- based updates among the writer, reviewer, and coordinating editor. Just the lead editor being able to see where the review process for some of the submissions can save a lot of time and hassle. Finally, some writers may not want the review process to be open to all editors, but the solution to this is to make the review process more professional (and respectful of authors) rather than relapsing into privacy–because the idea of privacy among editors doesn’t make sense anyway. A standardized folder and file naming convention should be developed through a Facebook Group conversation.

Assessment of Quality: Lead editors should sort submissions into three or four groups, such as: 1) ready for publication with minor edits, 2) worth reviewing and publishing next month, 3) worth assigning a mentor as well as reviewer, and 4) impossible to improve. While the general principle of a community like this should be “reform not reject,” there may be some cases of #4, such as plagiarized or already published content, not at all related to ELT, etc. Drafts in category #1 can be managed by lead editors themselves (no need to assign a reviewer); drafts in category #2 would be the majority; drafts in category #3 should be directed to the coordinator of of the Choutari Mentoring Project, Uttam Gaulee, or at least copied/coordinated. The idea here is that even though a blog should not be about rejecting or accepting articles like conventional journals, shifting the focus from personal to collaborative/communitarian is in everyone’s benefit. We also briefly touched upon the following issues as a yardstick for assessing how to approach different types of drafts/submissions:

Relevance and Significance: The draft is not relevant to ELT, doesn’t situate or even relate the main idea to ELT or to education at large in a significant way. Or, the draft doesn’t have a significant, interesting, or engaging point from the perspective of our readers–because the subject is outdated, the topic too broad/vague, the argument diluted, etc.
Organization and Connection: The draft doesn’t start with an engaging and clear introduction that provides a sense of direction, a sense of scope, and a sense of organization to the readers–and there doesn’t seem to be an easy fix, such as moving the key idea to the beginning and adding transition sentences for better flow between sections that are in themselves focused on the main idea.
Focus and Strength of Main Idea: The draft has long a long background and/or includes barely relevant paragraphs/sections that can’t just be deleted (because the rest of the draft would be insufficient or affected by the removal of parts), or the overall writing doesn’t develop a main idea with a focus and a perspective.
Originality and Use of Sources: The author uses external sources without proper/effective citations, seems to use external sources without citation but it is hard to determine by simply Googling chunks of text, or cites correctly but the citations are not integrated and used effectively alongside his/her own ideas–for instance, there are large chunks of citations that are not yet framed within the writer’s own ideas.
Language and Style: The writing is highly formal, academic, or abstract and therefore in need of “translation” to make it more accessible to the blog’s readers–or it is extreme on any other end, such as too informal, too gimmicky, etc.

Fast Tracking Review: Taking drastic but intellectually sensitive approach as editors: especially when there is little time and not enough material, blog coordinator and/or editors/reviewers may have to take a drastic approach. But the authors must always be given the opportunity to review and approve any and all changes/edits made to their work. Here are some time-tested strategies that may be handy.

Do/Show: cut/paste the main idea if it comes late in the draft to the beginning, add a sentence or two in the beginning (esp. within the first two paragraphs) in order to provide context and/or overview of the post, foreground or add topic sentences within the body paragraphs;
Tell Directly: highlight and directly tell the author to delete any sections that are irrelevant or go too far in one direction, ask the author to condense an elaborate section into a certain proportion such as two-third or one-fourth, etc, and
Ask Bold Questions: ask the author if any section can be deleted, condensed, or elaborated as necessary.

Team Spirit: Team spirit is very important. Both facilitators highly emphasized that Choutari is a forum with tremendous value and impact in the world of ELT and that it also has huge potentials for the editors’ professional growth; but both the impact on the profession and the person heavily depends on maintaining a team spirit, keeping one another inspired and energized, cultivating a positive attitude, going for the positive, inspiring the community, giving the best back. And, for a community that depends on virtual communication, all the above heavily depend on regular communication among the team as well as strong, positive messaging from the team to the community.

Reflective Editorship: We also touched upon the idea of “reflective editorship,” which means that if lead editors start, carry out, and end their coordination by engaging the rest of the team in an ongoing conversation, assessment, and reflection, there will be continued learning and inspiration for all involved. No one comes to Choutari already knowing what exactly to do; if we do, we would still be quickly outdated! The community continues to develop new ideas, columns, strategies, etc; and this starts by building one set of guidelines and trying to achieve the shared objectives, then gradually updating and improving the strategies through ongoing conversation and reflection. The Team Charter is a starting point, not a stone tablet with rules.

As we were engrossed in the conversation, paratha arrived. Amid the rustle of unwrapping packages and as our colleagues back home served themselves the mouth-watering breakfast, and with our mouths watering from two ends of a country on the other side of the world, we wrapped up the conversation. Very deep intellectual discussions branching out from technological topics, laughter and giggles, multi-tasking, using alternative channels when the lights went out, bantering about the men in Kathmandu forgetting to turn the camera to the chelis . . . made the meeting both inspiring and memorable.

The Choutari brings people together, people who are on their way to their own professional destinations (or rather journeys), people who care enough to stop by, to share their ideas– in spite of the crazy busy lives they live, in spite of the seven seas separating them. The virtual Choutari has a lot in common with the physical. This too is on the way to somewhere, as the physical choutaris usually are. This too gets its meaning when people stop and talk, rest and energize themselves. The burdens we carry may have become abstract–for as teachers, scholars, we transport ideas on our backs–the journey we make may be to places around the world, and the travelers we meet may be citizens of the whole world. But we still share the same concern to keep our community informed, our bonds strengthened.

It was 2.30am by the time we finally left the Google Hangout. The snow was still piling up in New York, Uttam had to go home by the last university escort at 3 am, and colleagues in Kathmandu had half the day left and work to be done.

—

Photos (above): Jeevan Karki

Dr. Shyam Sharma is an assistant professor of Writing and Rhetoric at State University of New York, Stony Brook University. His professional interests include composition (writing and rhetoric) pedagogy and theory, writing in the academic disciplines and professions, multilingual and multimodal writing and scholarship, rhetorical traditions, and research and program development for professional development of university students.

Uttam Gaulee is a doctoral student in Higher Education Administration and Policy program at the Department of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education at the University of Florida. After working as an English language teacher at Tribhuvan University colleges in Nepal, he joined the University of Pittsburgh as a Fulbright scholar, before joining UF. He is Associate Director of Community College Futures Assembly at the Institute of Higher Education and also serves as Graduate Affairs Chair of Graduate Students Council at UF. Uttam is leading the new Choutari Mentorship Program.

Nelta International Conference 2014 – Photo Highlight

March 8, 2014Miscellaneous, Photosinternational language fair, nelta conference, photo feature, photos of neltaadmin

Here’s a look-back into the 19th NELTA International Conference through the photos !

Inaugural Session

Continue reading Nelta International Conference 2014 – Photo Highlight →

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: