Category Archives: Teacher’s Experience/anecdotes

Confession of an English Teacher

December 1, 2014Teacher's Experience/anecdotesadmin

“I’ll miss you,” I told my colleague on her last day at work.

“Why would you leave such a good job?,” I further inquired.

Little did I know, that question would produce such a response that would also force me to leave my comfort zone and follow my calling. “Yes, the job is good but it’s not what I want to do. I took this job because I want to teach but if I can’t then what is the use hanging on.” That evening when she walked out of the door I couldn’t help but notice the radiant smile on her face and the bounce on her step. Seeing her like that, I vowed to myself that one day I will have that smile on my face and bounce on my step. Not long after that, I resigned from my administrative duty and resolved to follow my dream: to teach.

With bubbles around my head, I set out to follow my dream. Do I love teaching? Yes I do. And did I have what it takes to be a teacher? I thought I had. I got my first teaching job on grounds of my passion for teaching, not on grounds of my experience. I was all set and ready to show the world I could be the best teacher ever. But little did I know, I had a long way to go.

The first mistake I made was to assume that I would make a good English teacher just because I loved English. Confidently I walked in to the class adorning all the English I have ever learnt: Ready to bombard my students with every possible missile of English. The first class ever in my career and I start off talking about myself. My students were just sitting there silently as I told them about their new teacher, the ways they will be taught and the teacher’s expectations. Unknowing to me, by then my new students had already labelled me a boring teacher; one they might never relate to. I talked and talked without ever giving them chance to have their say. I just forgot to create rapport with them. I might have created an impression of someone with good English but at what cost? I was already put in a box labelled teacher not a facilitator. I assailed them with English without realizing their fluency and proficiency level. I was making them bored instead of making things interesting. Instead of teaching them, I was showing off and they recognized me for what I was – a phony show-off.

My school year was dominated by teacher centred teaching. My teachers showed off their English, they made an impression on us and made us feel like a criminal if our English was not as good as theirs. I made it a point in my study to polish my English and people started complimenting me on my English. I never even stopped for a moment to think if my English was as good as they said it was. And I just assumed I would make a good English teacher because people said I had good English. And then I also assumed that teaching English means talking in English. Without even realizing I became what I did not like- My teachers – and did what they used to do. English, English, English, Blah Blah, Blah.

As an English Teacher we have every authority and necessity to use English. Without English our class will not function but with English also if we are not careful about how we use and with what attitude, there will definitely be teaching but I doubt if there will be adequate learning.

My first class went off without a hitch but even on the first day of my career I was quick to spot how little difference I had made in their learning. My class lacked enthusiasm and most of the students were elsewhere. Had there been a technology to illustrate their thoughts in a balloon like they have in cartoon strip, I would have seen one of my student eating lunch, another one fighting a WWE match, the boy in the corner would be facebooking, some would be rapping and some snoring where as others would be dreaming about their crush and others might be lost in their own world.

I might have been good with my language but my language will not singlehandedly deal with my classroom. My language will not help them learn. My language will only be a tool in facilitating learning. I was boxed and labelled a ‘Teacher’ and to get out of that box, I realized I have to be armed with more than good English.

I made lots of mistakes and in course of teaching I learnt from my mistakes. There are lots of mistakes I have committed. An important lesson I learnt was that good language may be effective tool in teaching but if it is not accompanied by other teaching tools it will be useless. As much as language matters in an English class, I also learnt that how certain things are taught matters most. I made a mistake in assuming good English will automatically make us a good English teacher but I learnt that continuous, contextual learning makes one a good teacher.

 The author is one of the editors with ELT Choutari.

World Teachers’ Day 2014: Investing in Teachers

November 1, 2014Education in General, Global thought, Teacher's Experience/anecdotespraveenkumaryadava

On October 5, we celebrated World Teachers’ Day with the theme “Invest in the future, invest in teachers!” Since long, it has been observed in the academia that teachers and education policymakers are at loggerheads. But it is high time for both to come together and start a discourse in order to confront the issues they are currently dealing with. Teaching has undergone drastic change over the last few years, as the old procedures and methods used in teaching are no more applicable in the new contexts.

This is the digital era of technology. Today the challenge facing the teachers is to bring latest technologies to the classroom. If the teachers, who claim themselves educated, are not able to use technologies and fail to integrate them for pedagogical purpose, they are to be taken as illiterates. Lots of technological tools can be used for educational purpose but lack of competence and knowhow about those tools can make teachers outdated. As children of our times are exposed to latest technologies, teachers must go a step ahead.

29318 — Photo: Republica, (I originally published the article in Republica National Daily.

Today’s children and adults have diverse learning needs driven by new contexts. Hence, in facilitating their learning needs teachers require skills, knowledge and support. Therefore, investment in teachers is a must as it will have direct bearing on future of children they teach.

Needless to say, deficiency in teachers undermines quality education of a country. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 1.4 million teachers are missing in classrooms and they are needed to achieve universal primary education (UPE) by 2015. The UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) and the Education for All Global Monitoring Report (EFA GMR) on October 6 jointly released a paper stating that countries will need to recruit more than 4 million more teachers to achieve UPE by the deadline. To replace teachers leaving the profession, 2.6 million would be needed while filling new positions. The remaining 1.6 million is a must as well. There should be no more than 40 pupils per teacher. The paper also claims that at least 27 million teachers should be recruited even if the deadline is extended to 2030.

Another challenge facing us is the lack of qualified and trained teachers. Thus achieving quality education has been a far-fetched dream for many countries.

As the 2015 deadline of Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is nearing it is high time to shape new development agenda for which investment in teachers should be a priority. World Teachers’ Day this year was themed with the same notion.

Realizing the urgency for investing in educators, heads of different UN agencies have issued a joint statement this year. The agency chiefs say that an education system is only as good as its teachers, calling for more rigorous training, better conditions for employment, quality-based teacher recruitment, thoughtful deployment and attracting new teachers and talents, especially young people and women from under-represented communities. “Innovative, inclusive and results-focused teaching is crucial for 2015 and beyond,” the statement reads.

Likewise, Global Thematic Consultation on Education in the Post-2015 Development Agenda states good conditions of employment including appropriate contracts and salaries, prospects for career progression and promotion, good work environment based on creating school contexts that are conducive to teaching, high-quality pre-and in-service training for teachers based on respect for human rights and the principles of inclusive education, and effective management, including teacher recruitment and deployment as essential conditions for supporting teachers’ effectiveness.

Teachers require support in enabling themselves to become professionals through their involvement in various trainings, workshops and conferences, journal writing and research publications. They can also develop professionalism by getting associated with professional forums of teachers, which often organize professional enhancement programs for their members.

Such associations not only help strengthen their professional capacity but also influence policymakers to reform policies for teachers’ welfare. Policymakers need to engage with both teachers and the teachers’ unions to devise policies in their favor for ensuring future of children and learners.

The author, one of Choutari editors, is communication coordinator at college, & also with Republica

How mentoring helped me become an effective teacher today

November 1, 2014mentoring, Teacher's Experience/anecdotesadmin

Camila Lucchesi , English Teacher/Teacher-in-charge at Minds English School, São Paulo, Brazil

My first mentor was my mom. She taught me things ranging from the letters of the alphabet to how to look at complex issues in the world. She taught me that even with a simple action, you can open the skies to a person, if you know how. Inspired by my mother, when I was six, I decided to be a teacher. I told everybody that I would be that girl, like my mom, who would open people’s mind to new worlds and make them achieve their dreams.

My first teaching in a real class was when I was 17. I had no idea about what I was doing or how it was supposed to be done. I just knew that it was my dream coming true.

My mentor, amazing teacher with all the background of big teachers, sat in front of me. After the class he had watched in silence, he looked into my eyes and said:

“You know, you are the worst teacher I´ve ever met. You are terrible. You can´t teach this way, because to be a teacher, you have to be the best. Nothing more, but nothing less than the best.”

I remember the taste of the tears coming down my face while he pointed all my mistakes and when he stopped, I did not know what I was doing there.

“Do you really want to be a teacher?” he asked me, and I just nodded.

“So I will teach you. Call me your mentor for now, but don’t expect me to be your daddy or anything like that.” And then he stood up, went to the board and taught me the class, the same that I didn’t know how to teach.

First thing I learned that day: being a mentor is speaking the reality no matter how hard it is. Because you are just going to learn if someone tells you how to do it right or show you how to start that. If you don´t tell the truth, you are just creating a little monster who will never be able to listen and improve.

Second thing I learned that day: there is nothing more important than a feedback, especially when it is given by a person who is interested in your improvement. Only when you can get better people are going to share their time and experiences with you; otherwise, what´s the point? And, when you give feedback, always come up with solutions to the problems you see. If you don´t know how to solve it, take notes, search for the solutions and just then tell the person. Trust me, it´s much better if you do this way.

Third, it doesn´t matter who you are, but if you mentor someone well, you could be like a God to them. They are going to look at you waiting to learn more. You are the example. They watch your classes, don´t accept less than the best from you. And that´s a good thing. I used to not care about myself before being a mentor, but now I see that there is more to be shared than just feedback. You have to be hardworking, committed to the person you mentor, giving your best support.

With my mentees, I learnt stories of improvement, challenges and successes. I could share with them stories of people who came from nowhere and became the best in their areas. I could see people struggling to be better, fighting for a better future. Sometimes, I became a absorbed their excitement and strength to improve and cheer myself up.

It doesn´t matter who you mentor, you learn more than you share. I remember once when I mentored a teacher who didn´t have had any experience before, and he made so many questions that I got dizzy. Just few days later, he asked to watch his class just to show me how he improved. And actually, I got surprised with how far he had got.

I remember how many times mentees come to me sharing their lives´ stories, or their problems, or just to talk about their future plans and dreams. They always become mentors´ inspiration to succeed and get better every time.

I think being a mentor is sharing whatever you have, but it´s also improving yourself. As for me, I became the mentor I would like to have, plus the person people expected me to be. As a mentee, I could learn how to listen to people. I learnt that a person interested on you is going to help you no matter what. I learnt that being the person people expect you to be is not so easy, and teaching is a complicated science that you are going to spend your whole life to master it.

As a mentor, I learnt that it does not matter how good you are, there is always a challenge expecting you somewhere. I learnt that people are different, but you are just yourself, and there are many ways of helping others. And I learnt that there is nothing more beautiful, exciting and rewarding than the sparkle in someone’s eyes when they are under your mentoring, getting the opportunity and support for them to continue to improve.

Too many knowers?

November 1, 2014Education in General, Teacher's Experience/anecdotessharmashyam

SHYAM SHARMA

I came home from school one day to find my father and uncle Padam sitting beside the beautifully decorated Tulasi platform in the front yard that my mother, sister, and I had built the day before.

Uncle Padam [speaking to my dad]: Brother, you have such great artistic skills, you know. Look how beautiful that muth is!

Daddy: [smiles and continues to smoke]

Me: No, uncle, dad didn’t build that. Mom did, and sister and I helped her decorate it.

Uncle: Hey, phuchche [little kid], don’t be a janne [knower]. Go to play.

The social condition where some people are expected to be “knowers” and others are not—which I call socio-epistemic structure—has drastically changed in our society today. Thanks to democratic revolutions, increased education, and most recently and perhaps most significantly, the rise of alternative social spaces where (seemingly) anyone can say what they like, Uncle Padams aren’t likely to be able to shut down twelve year olds (or others with less power/privilege in society for that matter) that easily anymore.

Unfortunately, as I argue in this piece, the disruption of the traditional socio-epistemic structure has not always translated into general productivity of knowledge, benefit to social institutions such as education, and the enhancement of social justice in areas such as gender equity and intercultural harmony.

In the traditional society, the priest was literally called the knower (janne, who knew the scriptures, rituals, and higher learning). The shaman was another janne (who had direct knowledge about the cause of people’s sickness, as well as their past and future) from the gods. Older people were supposed to be jannes in front of the youth; men were jannes in the presence of women; rich men in relation to the poor; and upper caste in relation to the lower. More recently, the teacher in formal/modern education systems (even if the person is not an older, upper-case, richer) has been added to the list of jannes (though the word is no longer explicitly applied now).

By contrast, in our time, traditional jannes have lost their exclusive privilege over knowledge. Some of them (such as members of the upper caste) now acknowledge the knowledge of others as legitimate, and yet others (such as men, relative to women) don’t seem to have visible advantage in certain domains and contexts. Disruption is in the air today. The new democratic environment, the alternative virtual spaces, the communities of discourse that cross national and cultural borders, and newly visible groups (such as the LGBT community) have all contributed to the disruption of the socio-epistemic structure of Nepali society. Children learn from many more sources than school, college students can create their own purpose-driven communities, and people involved in political and social action can reach out to many more people and make far greater impact with what they know. In a society that leapfrogs from word of mouth to microblogging in a matter of a few years, the bypassing of socio-epistemic order is fast becoming the new norm. While the affordances information technologies provide are also new in developed societies, their impact on the socio-epistemic structure is much more striking in less developed societies like Nepal.

The most obvious scenario where we can see the uncertainty of benefit from the disruption of socio-epistemic structure is social media. As research on social media use has shown in other societies, increased access to alternative avenues of knowledge and knowledge-making does not in itself translate into social consequences. For example, Facebook hasn’t made people “connect to the world” as many assume or claim. Instead of crossing national and cultural borders to learn about other societies and cultures, and increase empathy and understanding, most Facebook users “deepen” rather than “broaden” their network and may become more entrenched in their worldviews. Indeed, the company has rolled out features that increasingly emphasize family connections, like-mindedness, and a monocultural worldview through design and content selection.

In the field of education, increasing irreverence toward figures of authority could and should have translated into more and more productive generations of scholars and professionals. But we haven’t seen such a difference. The problem here lies not just with younger people’s inability to be productive but the society’s failure to tap their energy to transform educational institutions. Schools continue to teach for exams even when they don’t have to, universities don’t allow younger scholars to lead the charge, and older men continue to dominate almost all fields of knowledge. Whatever boost in epistemological agency (or the ability to create new knowledge) that we see among younger generations, we see it unable to translate into change in the system. Instead, increased knowledge seems to lead many people into increased negativity and nonchalance.

The social and cultural spheres seem to be no exception. In place of a society based on objectionable hierarchy, discrimination, and prejudice—a society where the upper caste the aristocrats, and newly rich blatantly dominated the rest of the people—we now have a nation where those structures of power are replaced with ethnic disharmony and multifaceted conflict among different social and cultural groups. Instead of a society dominated by speakers of one language, followers of one religion, and a socio-economic minority dominating most of the social institutions, we now have a society where linguistic, religious, and social/cultural groups clash for power (rather than work together toward common national/social goals).

Often, groups that are just becoming visible (such as individuals who want to pursue their “personal freedom” of walking around with piercings and tattoos all over their bodies—and therefore evoke responses ranging from confusion to fear among the general public) reject the very notion of tolerance toward others. More alarmingly, in place of “traditional” value systems (which certainly needed updating), many groups just try to impose values from what they believe are more “advanced” societies, never considering if they could draw on the best from both sides. Their knowledge about the outside world, their irreverence for the local society and culture, and their ability to challenge tradition doesn’t seem to make them contribute anything positive to society: they just reject the local and never question the “global” (which is often local somewhere else).

Just a few years ago, when social media was gaining traction (and access to tools and networks was rapidly spreading) across Nepal, I presented a paper at a national convention of literary scholars in the US, describing the disruption of the traditional socio-epistemic structure in Nepal as a possibly ideal model of social change in the twenty-first century—one that may be worth studying. I am not so sure anymore.

The author, one of founders of ELT Choutari, is an assistant professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Stony Brook University (State University of New York)

Hiding the Gold Coins: A Reflection on Choutari Writing Workshop by Hem Raj Kafle

November 1, 2014Reflections, Teacher's Experience/anecdotesfeaturedUmes Shrestha

He is tall. Very tall compared to my height. He looks into the world through a pair of slightly shaded glasses. Those glasses probably let him filter all the negativity around him and help him see a vision – a vision of a teacher, a writer and a mentor. He speaks gently and seldom smiles. He stands in the middle of the class and with his words; paints an exciting picture of characters, themes and conflicts; and walks us through the colorful fields full of metaphors, similes and hyperboles.

He is one of those rare teachers who writes a lot. His blog is a testimony of his prolific writing habit. Even his facebook statuses, usually very short poems, reflect his creativity. Then, it makes me wonder. May be creativity is a verb, not a noun. One has to constantly work at it. It’s just my perception. His creativity could be as natural as breathing.

I had met him back in 2012. He taught me Fiction in my M.Ed. ELT first semester and since then I have had a renewed interest in reading, interpreting and analyzing literature. I started becoming passionate but critical of the texts I came across. In addition to that, he has inspired me to write down my own fictional works.

Naturally, I was pretty excited about the workshop. I had always wanted to be in his classes one more time and the workshop was it. Even though the focus of the workshop was “Academic Writing”, I knew he would have his own twist on it, with a few pinch of strange concepts sprinkled around here and there.

So he started the workshop by asserting that writing is not an isolated activity, but it is an activity integrated with reading, listening and speaking. “The key word is perform. Writing is a performance, it is an action of hands as well as an action of minds,” he added. And most importantly, he continued, “Performance doesn’t mean a writer’s activity alone… it is about a reader’s action also”. This made so much sense that it immediately struck a chord with me. A writer has to let readers perform too. Otherwise, what’s the point in writing at the first place? An effective writer thus leaves enough clues here and there in the text for the readers to come up with their own knowledge.

Writing is a performance because the writer has to make sure that his/her ‘authorial presence’ and credibility are visible in every word and every sentence of the text. Moreover, a writer has to make sure there are implicit and explicit moments of communication with the reader. He/she has to constantly facilitate the reader towards understanding and creating new perceptions. Similarly, a writer has to represent his/her community and contribute towards adding new knowledge and scholarship. Therefore, writing is not merely scribbling texts on a sheet of paper, it is a performance that involves both the writer and the reader.

Next, he talked about some of the common attributes every writer exhibit in some ways. For instance, the ‘writer’s block’ which he also labeled as the ‘blinking cursor syndrome’ for those who keep staring at the computer screen searching for words to start with. Similarly, every writer has the irresistible urge to tell the background or the whole story. Next, most of the writers can’t decide on the choice of diction – whether to use big or small stock of words, or on the choice of sentence – short sentences or longer sentences.

And to come to the main focus of the workshop, he talked about the process of creating an argument in academic writing and substantiating one’s stance. He gave an instance of Stephen Toulmin’s elements of a proper argument: claim, ground, warrant, backing, rebuttal, qualifier and final claim. A good paragraph is a combination of all or some of the above elements. The concept of ‘rebuttal’ is quite interesting. Apparently, acknowledging opposing views and giving them a small space in one’s argument adds more strength to one’s argument.

At the end, he gave us eleven tips on how to improve one’s writing. I am reflecting on these points from my perspective.

Write aloud.
It helps shape the quality of writing.
Speak – record – transcribe – Edit
This is very useful when one is facing the imminent ‘writer’s block’.
Toulmin uncle really works!
Three is enough.
Three examples, three explanations, three stories.
Keep the big below you.
This is quite interesting. Start a paragraph with your own sentence and end it with your own. Keep the citations and ‘big’ personalities underneath your first statement. Don’t ever start your paragraph with a citation because this just weakens your stance.
Kill the subordinates.
If your main info goes to the subordinate clause, rewrite the sentence. Bring your info to the front.
Passive is lousy.
I also hate sentences in passive voice. I always try to write everything in active voice.
Let the verb stand high.
Let the verb ‘speak’, rather than ‘be’.
Do not repeat a word if there’s a replacement.
Hear me between the lines
Make your presence felt. Don’t let the reader forget about the writer.
Dump me if I let you go!
Challenge: I will not bore my reader. I will not break my reader’s heart, effort, money, etc.

After attending this workshop, I now feel the urge to go back to all my writings and scrutinize them strand by strand – to find my ‘authorial presence’ in them. I had never thought about this aspect of writing – that the author has to be present in the text. Similarly, I am going to try speak-record-transcribe method whenever I feel stuck in the rot. I will also make sure none of my paragraphs start with a citation but with my own sentence. In addition, I will use these techniques in presentations and in writing scripts for speaking as well.

Writing has always been an elusive grape for me. I feel like I am always getting ‘there’ but never near enough. I always go back to my texts, interact with them and revise them. That singer from Rolling Stones is probably right. I can’t get no satisfaction out of my writing. But just like Hem sir once said during his class, “A text is always in the making”. May be it’s not about getting ‘there’ and being satisfied after all. It is a process… a continuum… a journey. And our job as a writer is just to enjoy the ride.

The author, one of editors with Choutari, is a teacher, writer, & blogger.

Welcome to September Issue of ELT Choutari

September 1, 2014Editorial, mentoringUttam Gaulee

Mentoring Special

Editorial:

The Choutari Team is delighted to greet you with the September issue of ELT Choutari! This issue is focused on mentoring, which has remained one of the core values of Choutari since its inception. We began the Choutari Mentoring Project (CMP) as a new initiative to enhance a collaborative learning environment among our readers seven months ago. We are excited to receive love and feedback from the students, teachers, and professionals in Nepal. The continual academic support from both the international and local community of ELT/Applied Linguistic scholars has further encouraged us to develop other news projects in future. We are glad that many of our colleagues are enjoying the benefits of the mentoring project. We would like to thank you all who signed up and participated in this project. In the meantime, we have also received much feedback from those engaged currently in the mentoring relations. We are encouraged by your feedback and do look forward to making this project even more accessible and productive in the days to come.

The September issue of ELT Choutari was originally planned to be a forum to celebrate the mentoring relations and to formally recognize our mentors and mentees contributing to the project. However, based on the feedback we received, and with due respect to the contextual ramifications, we have decided to maintain confidentiality of the participating mentors and mentees. This has been an important learning experience from the critical mass of participants, and we are determined to move ahead with a giving spirit to our field.

This issue of ELT Choutari, however, has come out to be a special one for a special reason. We have posts from Choutari’s key personalities including founding members and past editors. We have an interview with two successful Nepali ELT mentors Ganga Ram Gautam, Reader at Tribhuvan University, and Laxman Gnawali, PhD, Associate Professor at Kathmandu University, focused on mentoring. Their mentoring stories not only unveil mentoring culture in Nepal, but also present existing perception and attitude toward this in our context.

In the second reflective blog entitled “This is How Mentoring Worked for Me,” Bal Krishna Sharma shares his personal learning experiences from the mentoring activities — both as a mentee and as a mentor. Bal has included the names of his mentor (Elaina) and mentee (Tankia) in his story to give a real story that gives insight into how those relations are developed and sustained. Moreover, this sets a great example of how one individual can benefit from both roles.

Sajan Kumar’s take on mentoring is highly philosophical in third blog entry-“You are, therefore I am: Reciprocity, Metamorphosis, Mentorship and Beyond.” Here Sajan shares a model of mentoring that describes the mentoring process as a cyclical developmental and growth involving contemplation, meditation, mediation, and action — all converging into a transformative process. Sajan describes his mentoring journey stemming out of his intimate collaboration with his guru and the quality time he had with him during his stay at Kirtipur but then goes on to add a theoretical dimension arguing that the whole biosphere may act as the mentor for an explorer of self, such as Sajan himself. His conclusion is powerful: “One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil”

Prem Phyak in the fourth blog post “Not a fix-it shop: Making mentoring productive” is full of practical insights. Prem has offered some strategies that can be helpful to make mentoring more productive and goal-oriented. Drawing on his own experience working as a writing consultant/tutor for the Writing Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for two years, Prem’s post focuses on how to make mentoring more interactive, grounded/bottom-up, and collaborative rather than top-down and authoritative.

The fifth blog entry ‘Bal Ram Adhikari’s Sharing, Caring and Daring in Mentoring’ is a remarkable story of transformation whereby the writer finds himself as a deliverer of something that he had been longed for in the beginning of his teaching career. Adhikari’s experience paints a not-so-good-picture of mentoring in the context of Nepal, but is an eye opener. Having witnessed and been trampled by the “lopsided” practice of power, dominance, and authority, Adhikari’s writing is a call for an action toward a truer mentoring regime in Nepal’s ELT sector.

Finally, we have a photo blog that covers the news from Choutari’s monthly writing workshop facilitated by Hem Raj Kafle, one of founding editors of Choutari.

Here is the list of articles we have included for September Issue, especially focused on mentoring in ELT:

ELT Chat with Nepali Mentors on Mentoring, by Praveen K Yadav
This is How Mentoring Worked for Me, by Bal Krishna Sharma
You are, therefore I am, by Sajan Kumar
Not a fix-it shop: Making mentoring productive, by Prem Phyak
Sharing, Caring and Daring in Mentoring, by Bal Ram Adhikari
Choutari Writing Workshop #3: Photoblog, by Choutari Team

Together, these stories, coming straight out of the experiences of successful people in the field, serve as models to be built on. As can be seen, these stories reveal that mentoring is not about following prescriptive norms and rules — it is largely shaped by what goal, passion, philosophy and background that mentors and mentees share with each other. I believe that these stories are my stories, your stories, and everyone’s stories.

P.S.: I would like to urge all our valued readers and contributors to please share these stories among your social network and leave comments.

Enjoy the readings!

ELT Chat with Nepali Mentors on Mentoring

September 1, 2014Interview, mentoringfeatured, mentoringadmin

Praveen Kumar Yadav, team coordinator for ELT Choutari, had a chit-chat with successful Nepali ELT mentors, Ganga Ram Gautam, Reader in English Education at Tribhuvan University and Dr Laxman Gnawali, Associate Professor at Kathmandu University School of Education, who are not only involved in English Language Teaching, but they has also been mentoring ELT practitioners over one and a half decade. This chat with the ELT mentors and experts delves into the tradition, practice cultural variations, and existing perception and attitude toward mentoring with reference to their own mentoring experience. Please enjoy this insightful conversation with these experts.

Choutari: Could you please briefly talk about mentorship culture in Nepalese context? How do students and teachers in Nepal perceive mentoring?

Gautam:

Mentorship is not a new concept in Nepal. Mentorship was an excellent way of building capacity of a person in the Gurukul education system and it continued for a long time in the tradition. Similarly, helping the young ones by the senior was in-built in our cultural system and the metaphor that we often used for mentorship is पन्थेदाउने which means training the novice person by engaging them in the work under the supervision of the seniors.

Currently, the western education system gave it a new name and it is being discussed in the education discourse. Informally, mentoring is there but at the formal level, it is not very widely used.
Gnawali:

Laxman Gnawali, PhD Associate Professor (ELT) Kathmandu University School of Education — Laxman Gnawali, PhD, Associate Professor (ELT) Kathmandu University School of Education

Nepalese society had a tradition of mentoring model of education and training until the modern schooling system started for the public in the 1950s. Whether it was about the skills of family occupation and family crafts or the art of war, the experienced ones used to pass down the skills to the young generation by way of mentoring. Take for example a daughter learning to weave paddy straw mat or a tailor’s a children learning to stitch clothes or a priest’s son learning to perform rituals or a young prince learning the tactics of rule. In all cases, the knowledge transfer took place in the mentoring model. Later, the modern schooling system introduced mass education and the mentoring was no longer practicable for most trades. The teaching and learning now embraced cascade model.

From my interactions with the teachers and students, I have gathered that mentoring is not a common practice in the formal education. Though the traditional skills transfer still continues in the mentoring model, stakeholders of the mainstream education are happy to see the cascade model of knowledge transfer function. Ironically, teacher education in which mentoring model would make a difference follows a straight cascade model except in a very few cases.

Choutari: Kindly share with Choutari readers any of your mentoring experience (as a mentee) that you think has added values to your life.

Continue reading ELT Chat with Nepali Mentors on Mentoring →

This is how mentoring worked for me

September 1, 2014mentoring, Teacher's Experience/anecdoteselt, English Language Teaching, mentoring, Nepal, teacher anecdoteBalkrishna Sharma

135615_1766463684896_7952262_o (1) — Bal Krishna Sharma, PhD Scholar University of Hawaii, Manoa, USA

I went to pursue my graduate studies at the University of Hawaii in 2008. Since I was in a new academic environment, any academic help extended to me would be tremendously helpful. I first had little idea on how the US academic system would work, for example, choosing academic advisers, completing assignments, presenting at conferences, finding and using scholarly resources and connecting to the local ELT professional venues. Thanks to the East-West Center, my scholarship sponsor organization, that connected me to an experienced and very helpful mentor, Elaina. Also thanks to the Second Language Studies Students’ Association that provided me an opportunity to work as a mentor for a BA student. In the following sections, I will briefly describe my experience and learning opportunities from these mentoring programs.

Being a Mentee

The East-West Center Alumni Association asked me to fill out a mentoring form providing details of my academic and professional background, academic interest and my expectations from my mentor. However, I had little idea regarding how this would work and help with my graduate studies at the university. I thought at least I would have an opportunity to connect to an ‘American’ professor. The alumni association also asked the potential mentors to fill out similar forms. By matching common interests between the two parties, I was assigned to a mentor at a local community college. I was excited. I wrote my mentor an introductory email and told her that I was her mentee and wanted to know who she was. Elaina took me to an Indian restaurant for dinner for our first meeting. We chatted about our personal and academic interests, family background and future goals. Continue reading This is how mentoring worked for me →

You are, therefore I am

September 1, 2014mentoringfeaturedSajan Kumar

Reciprocity, metamorphosis, mentorship and beyond

Sajan Kumar

‘I think, therefore I am’, declared Descartes. And I thought the same; I taught the same. You thought, therefore you were. They thought, therefore they were. Nevertheless I have been very inconsistent and unpredictable a man throughout. As time grew, I began to feel entrapped and suffocated; I could not continue to dwell in the same box and I flew away. Afterwards, I disassociated myself from Descartes and many more like him. I had been solid all along; I was liquid now. Snow must melt someday.

joint pic — Sajan Kumar Dr Govinda Raj Bhattarai

The story goes like this in brief. With Descartes and his ‘cogito, ergo sum’, it was thinking that ensured my existence in the world I dwelled and played my part in. I existed only because I thought. Anybody existed because they thought. Thinking was the basis for any relationship that I was in, that I wanted to be in. Everything else felt petty; everybody else felt mediocre. I had been a body all along and I was a mind now. Of the three metamorphoses that Nietzsche in his magnum opus ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra, designate of the spirit, hopefully it was one: the camel had turned into a lion. Naturally, the lion felt euphoric about the accomplishment after struggles. However, the lion still lived in an enclosure for his world was private and compartmentalized. Like a chariot horse; he could neither see left nor right but merely straight. Descartes solipsism had led him into such a cage where he saw, heard, felt, touched and smelt with mind alone. Not only that he contemplated with mind but he meditated and mediated with mind/s alone. Perhaps, he had unknowingly obliterated that he possessed a beautiful body too and the body housed a self too. His disillusionment came to an end only when he was stuck on the middle floor and out of blue regained memory of where he came from and also visualized where he was destined for.

Continue reading You are, therefore I am →

Not a fix-it shop: Making mentoring productive

September 1, 2014mentoringpphyak

Prem Phyak, PhD Scholar in Second Lang. Studies, University of Hawaii, USA

In this blog post I discuss some strategies that can be helpful to make mentoring more productive and goal-oriented. Drawing on my own experience working as a writing consultant/tutor for the Writing Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for two years, this post focuses on how to make mentoring more interactive, grounded/bottom-up, and collaborative rather than top-down and authoritative.

Starting the conversation

One undergraduate student came to the Writing Center and asked whether I could help him. “Yes, I am available now”, I said. After we introduced to each other, I asked what his problem was. He said, “I want to write a research paper for my political science class. But I am struggling to identify a topic. I am worried because the assignment is due next week.” His face was telling me that he was procrastinating and finding no way to move forward.”

First, I was perplexed how I could help him as he was not sure what he was going to write about. Second, I was not sure what the student was expected to write in his research paper. I began our mentoring session by telling him that every student faces the same problem. I gave my own example; I quite often do not know what I am going to write in the early stage of my writing projects. Continue reading Not a fix-it shop: Making mentoring productive →

Sharing, Caring and Daring in Mentoring

September 1, 2014mentoringbalramadhikari

I am a teacher educator and a literary translator by profession. My teaching profession took its roots two decades ago when I was first appointed as a primary teacher in the government-aided school in a remote part of Gorkha. I joined this profession before I was ‘professional’. I was qualified to teach simply becauseI had an academic certificate of Intermediate Proficiency Level in English Education and I could teach or say ‘tell’ my students what was written in the English textbook. I have not strayed from this profession ever since my first appointment. However, my changing of institutions has been rather unpredictable and whimsical.

During this professional life I ever wished to be intimately closer to ‘someone’ more experienced, more supportive, more understanding under whose guidance I could learn the science of teaching, feel its art in the actual classroom, and who I could turn to whenever I needed counseling on my profession. However, that ‘someone’ never turned up in my teaching career save the university teachers who observed and supervised my lessons during peer teaching, school teaching and campus teaching during the practicum. That was Okay, I call it ‘just Okay’, since the purpose was to fulfill the requirement of examinations; the process was too mechanical; the feedback for further improvement was too ritualistic. I could have grown differently in the field had I got ‘that someone’[1]. I sense that many of the pre-service teachers who I have been teaching are also longing for ‘that someone’.

‘That someone’ who I have missed in my professional life is dubbed a mentor.The me-like person who wishes to learn under ‘that more experienced one’ in the field is dubbed a mentee. The process whereby the mentor supports the mentee to grow in the field is mentoring. I come up with certain reasons when I ponder over why I longed for mentoring and why I mentor my students these days. In my observation, this is a widespread longing in Nepal.

Why mentoring? Continue reading Sharing, Caring and Daring in Mentoring →

Diversity and Broader Goals of ELT

August 1, 2014Global thought, Teacher's Experience/anecdotessharmashyam

Shyam Sharma

Sitting down to write this post on diversity and ELT, I remember a story that scholar David Foster Wallace tells in a famous college graduation speech. Two younger fish ask an older one: “What the hell is water?” The point of the story is that “…the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”

The point I want to make in this post is that while we are a nation of very diverse peoples, cultures, languages, and so on, we have to pinch ourselves to remember that we are diverse. I argue that as educators, it is worth pinching ourselves and our students—intellectually, that is—into realizing the value of diversity as a broader goal of education, especially in a country like ours and an interconnected world like today’s.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKYJVV7HuZw]
[This YouTube video is an animated version of parts of Wallace’s speech]

We’ve been told that Nepal has been a garden of “four castes and thirty-six shades” of people; indeed, within an area of 850 by 200 kilometers, we speak more than a hundred languages and are extremely diverse in a variety of ways. However, the garden metaphor was meant to drive home the value of unity more than diversity. The emphasis on nationhood and unity is usually a goodie goodie way to deny that there are deep divisions, structural injustices, and discrimination woven into the sociopolitical fabric of our society. So, it is absolutely time that we situate (even) the teaching of English within the context of seeking to promote respect for diverse peoples, cultures, languages, and epistemologies (even) in a small but complex country like ours.

Continue reading Diversity and Broader Goals of ELT →

Teacher Training: One of the Best Ways of Self-development

August 1, 2014Reflections, Teacher Training, Teacher's Experience/anecdotesadmin

-Parista Rai

Since the day I joined M.Ed. ELT program, it was my dream to be an ELT trainer and fortunately for me, it came true recently. As a part of Teacher’s Development course, I conducted training sessions in Janakpur and Tanahun in July and although it was my first experience of delivering training, I gained tremendous knowledge and experience. I experienced that conducting a teacher training session is a very challenging job where a trainer has to manage everything for the sake of in-service teachers’ satisfaction. In this article, I am very glad to share my experience.

I had heard about ELT teachers’ training before getting enrolled in Kathmandu University but when I got an opportunity to be a part of the ELT program here, I learnt many things related to English language teaching, learning and training. I neither had experience of a trainer nor a trainee but once when I got a chance to attend an in-service teacher training delivered by our seniors, I got many ideas about the teacher training and started dreaming to be a trainer. And at the same time, I became more interested in teaching and learning English as a foreign language.

Continue reading Teacher Training: One of the Best Ways of Self-development →

The Write Way

July 1, 2014Reflections, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Writingadmin

Mabindra Regmi

When I graduated from my high school, I thought I was a great writer. I had written for countless assignments and examinations. I had written poems and stories. I had scored relatively high marks in English during my high school final examination. How could I not be a writer? It was a bitter shock when reality crashed in and I had to redefine my so called ‘expertise’ in writing when I faced the challenge of writing a proposal for an educational endeavor. I spent many a night poring over the proposal and scribbling on a piece of paper in that pre-ubiquitous-computer era to keep my inflated writing ego alive.

When I look back in retrospect after what seems like eons, and teaching writing to students for over a decade, a few questions arise. Why did I feel that I was ‘good’ at writing when I apparently wasn’t? What were the factors that I had missed altogether to write well? What were the strategies that I had to adopt in order to enhance my writing skills? And what it takes to create your niche in the world of writing- specifically academic writing? Continue reading The Write Way →

Reflections on TSC written test

July 1, 2014Education in General, Interview, Teacher's Experience/anecdotesadmin

Praveen Kumar Yadav

After a gap of nearly 17 years, recently Teacher Service Commission (TSC), the government body to appoint teachers for community schools, has recruited teachers for Secondary, Lower Secondary and Primary levels across the country. The process consisted of both written and oral examinations. For written examinations, a total of a total of 413,000 examinees across the country had appeared. Based on results of the written examinations, those successful candidates were called for the interview.

NeltaChoutari would like to congratulate all those who succeeded in TSC exams and have recently become teachers in government owned community schools.

Out of those successful teachers, the three have shared their experience and reflections through this blog entry. They have been appointed by the government to teach English in secondary levels. Specifically, they have presented their reflections under three different sections included in the written test. Continue reading Reflections on TSC written test →

Reflection on ‘Behind Academic Publishing-Why, How & What’

July 1, 2014Reflections, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Writingadmin

Krishna Prasad Khatiwada

‘Get your name registered!’… I excitedly followed the post on the timeline of NeltaChoutari, after I came to learn that Mr. Bal Krishna Sharma was the facilitator of the workshop titled Behind Academic Publishing: Why, How and What. I find the workshop as a crucial step forward for an aspiring writer like me to know more about how to write academic journal articles and get them published. Upon signing up for the registration, I made a call to Umes, one of NeltaChoutari editors, prior to the scheduled workshop to confirm my participation. Finally, I participated in the three-hour workshop which I believe paved a way toward academic writing and publishing with the knowledge and styles that the facilitator shared with us during the session. Continue reading Reflection on ‘Behind Academic Publishing-Why, How & What’ →

Giving a Benefit of Doubt During Assessment

May 30, 2014Reflections, Teacher's Experience/anecdotesAssessment, examination, formative testing, language assessment, summative testing, testingadmin

Umes Shrestha

I am a teacher who likes being very liberal while checking answer papers and in this article I am going to talk about why I detest our testing system; why I give a benefit of doubt to the students; and why doing so, I believe, helps foster their confidence and reinforce their learning. I’d like to start by talking about how difficult it is for me to fare with tests and exams, and suggest that we stop doing to our students what many of us as teachers can’t bear ourselves.

Besides teaching, I am also pursuing a Master’s degree in Education. It is a semester system, which means there’s a final examination every six months. And I find it really stressful; in fact I have always found examinations very stressful throughout my life. I may not know my strengths but I know one of my weaknesses for sure – I cannot read books or notes to memorize answers. I do understand the overall concepts but I can’t memorize them in order to spill them all over the answer sheet. I can’t do it even if my life depended on rote memorization. Far worse, my attention span is shorter than an ant’s tail. I cannot remain calm for more than 10 minutes. I am always drowning in a sea of distractions. Family. Friends. Facebook. Music. Home. Job. Deadlines. I can’t quite keep up the concentration. I get itchy and I have to take a short break every 10 minutes or so. My mind operates that way.

While taking exam, I can’t think fast enough to frame and organize my answers. I need time to generate ideas, plan a structure and write essays. I make a lot of spelling errors because I heavily rely on spell checkers. My handwriting and presentation look impeccable in the first two pages but they soon start deteriorating as the clock in the exam hall ticks away in a flurry.

That’s my story. I don’t like being tested in such constrained time and in such ominous hall. I feel it is completely unfair to be judged on what I write in three hours. And to add to my frustration, I am always haunted by the usual mentality of language teachers who are very strict while checking answer papers. And I’m pretty sure there are many out there, both teachers and students, who can perfectly relate to me. Therefore I believe this extreme emphasis that our educational system puts on summative testing as the only mode of assessment could be very damaging to our students and, as a consequence, to our society at large.

So let me ask you to do this: imagine yourself being a teenager, surrounded by technology and media, having access to unlimited knowledge and resources, having friends who are hyperactive on the internet and social networking sites, having too many options at hand. Imagine yourself sitting in the class for hours and hours, sitting on the same desk and ‘listening’ to the teachers who use the same deadbeat methods day in and day out. Imagine yourself not knowing (or doubting) the relevance of the traditional education, getting certificates, getting degrees, joining the workforce and doing the same old jobs.
exam-makes-no-sense

(Pic: a screenshot of one of my student’s facebook status. This student is perfectly clueless.)

And we ask them to sit for exams. We ask them to write an essay on festivals of Nepal. Or we tell them to compose a speech on Nepal’s historical figures. We tell them to write a complaint letter with date, salutations, body and closings in a precise format. We tell them to write coherently and cohesively. And we want them to write without any spelling errors.

Worst of all, we don’t try to find alternatives to the discouraging test-driven system. Instead, we make the overall process and environment of learning frightening for students by using the fear of exam to work like slaves throughout the year, by focusing on what they lack all the time, and by being strict when assessing their work. And at the end, even when we could have done otherwise, could have at least made a better combination, we just tell them to sit for three hour exams and expect them to compose perfect essays with their perfect handwritings. We stress on neatness and cleanliness; we write comments, underline wrong answers, we circle misspellings and with red ink we cross out answers that don’t match our expectation. That’s what we usually do, don’t we? There could be different ways to assess our students but at the end of the day, we (have to) judge students based on written examinations.

It would seem as if in the present context, there is absolutely no way out of this final written examination module but dear teachers, here are some of the things I do, and as a teacher, this is what I propose you to try out these and similar things as well.

I give my students a benefit of doubt while checking their answer papers. I understand, they don’t take exams because they like it. I have never come across any student who loves taking exams. On top of it, they have to take exams of seven or more subjects every term. I can perfectly relate to the maddening pressure to perform. They have no option, and neither do we. So while I check their answer papers, I gently remind them of their spelling mistakes but don’t deduct any marks for it. I overlook minor errors and slips like she don’t have friends. If they write any brilliant essays with a logical framework, I get super joyous about it. And I give it 10 out of 10. Why not! (This one student glared me back with disbelief and said: Sir, you gave me 10 out of 10? And I said: Yes, you deserved it.) If their essays look messy and are riddled with terrible structures, I don’t butcher their effort thoughtlessly. They would have done it better if they didn’t have any time constraints or if they had time to draft and re-draft the essays. I try to be sensible about their handwriting too, because writing for three hours straight is a real pain in the ass and the wrist. I go through the same pain every time I take an exam. One reason, many of us are used to typing on computer rather than writing with a pen. And I am never picky about grammatical errors. I have seen my professors at the university make grammar errors. I have seen me making horrible grammatical errors. We all do.

I try to keep track of the students, their progress, their assignments, classroom participation, portfolios – but I don’t judge them based on one written examination. I am definitely not seeking an easy way out. I communicate with the students who are lagging behind and make them feel safe. I do demand high, push their limits but I want to be realistic, and set realistic goals and realistic expectation. At the end of the day, I feel like I have done my part and go to bed without any resentment or bitterness.

Our testing system is full of holes, and it desperately needs a facelift. However, we can’t change the entire system right away, let’s be realistic. But what we can do is empathize with the students. Therefore, dear teachers, give your students a benefit of doubt, because sometimes we too need it.

I’m going to wrap up my ‘rant’ with one more facebook status that I came across – just to add to my argument.

—

umes

Umes Shrestha

M.Ed. ELT

Teaches Business Communication and Literature to undergraduate students

YouTube: My Best Friend Forever

May 1, 2014Reflections, Teacher's Experience/anecdotesadmin

Chandra Pd. Acharya

Before I started pursuing my master’s degree in English education at Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, I didn’t have any inkling that YouTube, a video sharing website, was there. On my birthday, one of my girlfriends gifted me a laptop and she suggested me to spend some of my study hours on YouTube surfing educational videos. For the first time, I learnt about the video sharing website. No sooner had I came to know about this than I befriended with it since it turned to be like a friend in need is a friend indeed. In this blog entry, I have shared my experience of using YouTube for enhancing my English language competency.

In the initial days, I did not exactly know how to use YouTube. I did some researches on web and however, some odd months later, I got the idea as a result of learning by doing, and kept on using it to the fullest. The English pronunciation that I have commanded over today is the outcome of watching English videos uploaded on YouTube. My current English is gratifying me, even some of my friends find it awesome. But, I love to opt for ‘good’ rating for the good has a chance to learn it for the better as learning begins from cradle and lasts to grave. So my English learning through YouTube surfing could by no means be an exception provided that I had in one way or the other fallen in love with it. Once in love, forever in love, I think I internalized this adage. To be honest, surfing YouTube videos time and again became my forte and I am damn sure it will continue till my last breath. Maybe this is because of my forever longing. Now I feel I should immensely grateful to three former PayPal employees Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim who fathered YouTube in February 2005.

The point I want to make is YouTube for me was the best way to learn English however there are a lot of means available these days. So choose whichever you think the best. Truly speaking, my passion for YouTube surfing was and is to expand the storage of vocabulary and to polish the fluency in speaking English. Hence my penchant for YouTube surfing gives birth to this article.

As I believe fluency in English is the key important factor for people around the world for communication in English. It is one of the important language components to be developed. Fluency is a speech language pathology which means the smoothness or flow with which sounds, syllables, words and phrases are joined together when speaking quickly. Hence, fluency in English can be termed as ease and smoothness of speaking. Stressing much on this feature of language, Brumfit (1984, p. 56) opines fluency as natural language use.

Generally, we need to make our fluency a comfortable one so that the communication moves ahead between the parties (encoder and decoder). It gets matured through simple day-to-day tea talk to public speaking. Likewise we have to know the organization, pronunciation, word use, body language etc. Here, I am pinpointing some of the important guidelines required to become those who want to develop their fluency in English through YouTube.

1. Technical Qualities

Here ‘technical qualities’ refers to overall qualities of videos available in YouTube. This includes clarity, video resolution, sound effect, etc. As suggested by Mullen & Wedwick (2008) and Trier (2007), quick access to vast quantity of video database provides a great deal of opportunities in enhancing learning. The video clips downloaded from YouTube or other similar websites are very educational and practical to use. For instance, in the technical dimension, many users claim that online videos clips are high in quality. According to Hubbard (2009), attributes like fine audio and visual are very important in aiding learning and sustaining the interest of learners. Thus, the quality of freely available YouTube videos is good, and learners can be benefitted from them without difficulties.

2. Content Focused

The contents of selected video clips do not only meet individual learners’ need, but also help them learn how to present the information attractively and effectively. Muniandy & Veloo (2011, p. 177) conclude that “the claim of many users and researchers on content of video clips uploaded online are indeed presented in a dynamic way that can enhance mastering of English language among students.” This is highly concerned with the language used is appropriate or not, the language used is conversational in nature or not, the videos scaffold constructive learning or not etc.

3. Engaging

The next important this that a learners should consider while surfing YouTube is whether the videos can engage learners or not. Mostly the content of online video clips are indeed engaging and could help learners to be more focused. At the same time one should consider the following things in his/her mind i.e. whether the contents of videos are attractive or not, either they are well organized or not, whether the duration of the videos are appropriate or not, is the content easily understandable or quite difficult.

4. Optimistic Attitude

‘Optimistic attitude’ refers to the positive expectancy that one gets after surfing the videos in YouTube channels. Frankly speaking the learners themselves should be very optimistic about the outcome of surfing the video clips. To this one should be sure that they learn something and the reforms will take place. Thus optimistic attitude and keenness is also a strong indication so that the learning goes at pleasant manner and becomes strong one near natural future. To this, the criteria to be considered are; whether the video more interesting or not, whether the videos can capture and retain ones’ attention or not, can the videos generate new ideas or not.

As similar to the saying, ‘the better learners today are the better teachers tomorrow; a learner should keep the above mentioned things in one’s mind in order to strengthen fluency in speaking English. There is a belief based on research findings that the more one use video clips either from YouTube or any other online sites the better the fluency s/he develops. And the ability they earn woks as a mechanism in their future teaching. This can be their public image among the learners they deal with.

Likewise, I think it would be better if I mention some of the links of YouTube videos I went through and visit these days too in timed conditions for developing fluency in English. One of the effective video clips I went through in the beginning days was ‘Learn How to Speak English Fluently and Confidently’ [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va8ESm0tQCI]. This was a tutorial like video clips that added some skills of speaking fluently on my side. The clip suggests that the more one listens the better he speaks.

Similarly, a video clips entitled ‘Fluency in English’[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_uTu3dGI84] talks about the suprasegmental features such as stress, length, rhythm, tone etc. in a practical basis. The video further suggests that practice and practice until one gets what he wanted to get is the key thing in developing fluency in English.

The other effective video clips that taught me a new kind of lesson was ; ‘How Do You Speak English? Speaking Exercises To Improve Your Fluency in English’ [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKuu3Wwr_3g] What I learnt through this video is that I have developed fluency one need to speak as s/she sings a song in his/her native tongue. Regarding this ideas, here I would like to connect suggestion from one of my Gurus that if one needs to be a good speaker in English, s/he needs to speak it as similar to his/her native language.

However, one of major problems in teaching students I have noticed is how to make the teachers’ talk comprehensible to the learners. Traditionally, the input, the subject matter in general, had been directly translated into the students’ mother-tongue. Teacher used to be like a bilingual dictionary having meaning of one word into two languages. The job of students was not to exercise mentally to extract the teachers talk but to memorize and repeat spelling and meaning time and again to form habits. But, at present this approach has become obsolete. Now, the main objective of teaching speaking skills is to make students able to make teacher talk as comprehensible as possible so that the learners can themselves be familiar with the content delivered in different contexts. So, a teacher needs to use numerous ways to make input comprehensible so that the pattern of rote learning gets avoided.

Another significant problem with developing fluency in speaking English is that what has been learnt today is often forgotten tomorrow. Hence, to speak smoothly, smart usage of vocabulary is also important which can also be possible through English videos. For this, one should surf the videos in an appropriate time interval. Besides, to boost up fluency in speaking, it is advisable not only to revise the video clips periodically, but also start each day with a new clip and practise, and imitate it throughout the day. In addition, it is necessary to develop the habit of making casual talks with the friends.

Frankly speaking, for me, to develop my fluency in speaking I didn’t felt hesitation to make talks in English with a tourist from core English speaking countries to varsity teachers from home and abroad either through online video calls or the face-to-face context-specific conversation.

To draw a conclusion from my experience shared here, I feel myself proud of developing an adage that the enormous number of video clips available online or offline can be a gateway to success in developing fluency in speaking English. However, one needs to be careful to select appropriate clips based on his knowledge and understandings in English so that the pace of his/her making fluency in speaking English gets matured in a natural way. This will help the users capable for earning bread and butter in their career.

Now I would like to retrospect to reiterate if she was the best friend, who gifted the laptop with internet access, or the laptop with internet access. But I feel the latter is the best of the best for me because YouTube has been a great companion to develop my fluency skills.

References:

Brumfit, C. (1984). Communicative methodology in language teaching: The roles of fluency and accuracy. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity.

Hubbard, P. (2009). A general introduction to computer-assisted language learning. In Japan. Retrieved on 11^th Feb, 2011 from http://www.robon.org/gary/captioning

Mullen, R. & Wedwick. (2008). Avoiding the Digital Abbys: Getting Started in the Classroom with YouTube, Digital Stories and Blogs, Vol.82 (2), 66-69.

Muniandy, B. & Veloo, S. (2011). Managing and Utilizing Online Video Clips for Teaching English Language: Views of TESOL Pre Service Teachers. 2nd International Conference on Education and Management Technology. IPEDR vol.13 (2011) © (2011) IACSIT Press, Singapore.

Trier, J. (2007).“Cool” engagements with YouTube: Part 1. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 50:408–12.

—

aacharya

Chandra Prasad Acharya

Masters in English Education, TU

Five Books That ‘Changed’ My Life

February 1, 2014Creativity, Teacher's Experience/anecdotesadmin

Hem Raj Kafle

‘Change’ is not my word in the title above, but I agree to use it. Do books change our lives? Someone said it is the reader who has the potential to change; the book only triggers that potential. And one who does not have that potential does not respond to the trigger. I agree to this, too.

But I am not here to present a thorough appreciation of ‘five classics’. Not that I avoid reading classics, but I am willing to write about those books that have told me their actual worth. Each of the five books came to me almost ‘out of nowhere’ and left a lasting message. Not that any of them should ever satisfy your intellectual need if you someday decide to read. I write here simply because I have deemed them contributory to my own growth as a teacher. An English teacher.

I was delighted when the Choutari Team asked me to write on five books that ‘changed’ my life. I decided to speak up: I have already read a book with the same title and loved it so much. It is The Book That Changed My Life (2006) by Roxanne J Coady and Joy Johannessen. A book about books, and about how books change one’s life – I had loved this idea long ago. The Book indeed was a reward, such as Coady herself would like to regard as a gift “from heaven”.

I bought it in the summer of 2008 at Books and Books, Coral Gables, Florida, only as a memento of my US visit. And, because it was a casual pick, my interest in it turned into epiphany as I read through the short essays inside. This was an opportunity to peek into seventy one writers’ celebration of “the books that matter most to them.” These seventy one people gave credit to certain books and their writers as their life’s important change agents. So, the writers’ appreciation of their favourites helped confirm that none of my previous and recent cravings for ‘good books’ were without meaning. Anyone, even you, will subscribe to Coady’s prefatory justification for publishing this book, so will I.

Reading is a way to live more lives, to experience more worlds, to meet people we care about and want to know more about, to understand others and develop a compassion for what they confront and endure. It is a way to learn how to knit or build a house or solve an equation, a way to be moved to laughter and wonder and to learn how to live.

One book that has made great sense to me as a teacher of English is The Elements of Style, the tiny work of William Strunk Jr. and E. B White. You may wonder why such commonplace as ‘elements of style’ would strike anyone who boasts of degrees in English and years of teaching in a reputed University’s central department. But I realized, after having gone through the authors’ terse admonitions against verbosity and carelessness, that degrees and years of teaching do not make one a writer and a teacher of effective communication. The actual prerequisite of being a writer is not only the mastery in grammar and vocabulary, but craftsmanship in stylistic and rhetorical choices.

The Elements offers an extremely concise treatment on style. I have nurtured the following assertion more than anything in life and, of course, for writing in Nepali as well:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Strunk and White made me aware of the beauty of brevity in writing. Then Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark, a writing instructor at Poynter Institute, Florida, helped polish this awareness. The “50 essential strategies,” more as rich illustrations of good and bad samples from various established sources than commonplace imperatives, have best corresponded with my zeal for learning rhetorical styles. Clark taught me writing as an artful yet serious activity and knowledge of grammar a means to shape the artistry of expression.

Assuming the role of highly active, playful teacher along the “strategies,” Clark encourages every aspiring and established writer to become an entertainer, a performer. He likes to take writing for carpentry, and then has this to say: “You can borrow a writing tool at any time. And here’s a secret: Unlike hammers, chisels, and rakes, writing tools never have to be returned. They can be cleaned, sharpened, and passed on.”

Clark’s metaphors of gold coins, ladder of abstraction, internal cliffhangers, X-ray reading etc. will surely tickle one’s sense of sufficiency as a writer and editor. Initially, he makes you skeptic about every sentence you write yourself and read from others. As you move on, because Clark will not allow you to drop midway, you become a better writer, better reader, better editor. Clark follows you directly into your profession. He is with me – in lectures, in instructions, in formal presentations – and now as I write these lines.

I got Wayne Booth’s famous book The Rhetoric of Rhetoric at a time I was trying to get clear knack on rhetoric in scholarly, philosophical and practical terms. Booth proved a rescuer, and a guide to the fact that rhetoric is a vastly developed academic discipline way beyond its everyday currency as a signifier of a cheap lie or a political bombast.

Booth observes rhetoric’s relevance as much in persuasive communication and study of such communication as in the resolution of conflicts, teaching of science and general upbringing of people. Of special value to me has been his idea of “rhetorology” defined as a “deepest form of listening rhetoric: the systematic probing for ‘common ground’”, which in other words involves a practice of paying attention to opponent views during a conflict situation.

Booth emphasizes that rhetoric is simply the way we think and communicate in the process of creating a better life, and eliminating slippery situations. So, I believe, after Booth, that “the quality of our lives, moment by moment, depends on the quality of our rhetoric.” Isn’t it then even more appropriate to say that the kind of political system and social structure we see/experience “depends on the rhetoric of our leaders and our responses to them”? Booth is equally true in his belief that “our children’s future depends on how they are taught rhetoric.” That is, by us.

Literature, Science and a New Humanities by Jonathan Gottschall is one of my recent readings. It has made much sense in my decision to work across humanities and other disciplines in Kathmandu University. It has reshaped my understanding of the common tension of where humanities needed proper overhaul.

Gottschall makes readers aware of three main fault lines of the current humanities scholarship. The first includes the excessive use of jargons and “theories of human nature that are defunct.” The second is a methodological problem involving the impossibility of getting tangible evidences unlike in science because the “theory-generated hypotheses” in humanities are not “closer to truth.” The third problem involves attitudinal dilemmas where the dismissal of the “possibility of generating reliable knowledge” is critical among humanities scholars.

Reading Gottschall coincides with two very important contexts of my academic life. The first involves a larger concern of the humanities ‘fraternity’, to which I belong. This is the concern for the visible decline of interest and intake in certain traditional university programmes like geography, history, political science, psychology and philosophy. That some people still desired to study English literature or journalism is nothing of a solace to a career-ambitious young man in that it is gradually subjected to preparing ‘service’ writers or higher-secondary teachers. Personally, working in an institution heavily focused to profession-specific academic programmes in science and engineering, I have always felt the need of reconfiguring my disciplinary orientation to more goal- or job-centric terrains. The second context has to with the recent shift in my disciplinary priorities. I moved from where I liked to work (social sciences) to where I loved to belong and contribute (humanities and sciences). The move has also added a challenge of helping to interface the mutually complementary facets of communication, teaching, management, entrepreneurship, and economics in the promotion of engineering and science education.

I feel now that Gottschall’s book endorses my decision to work across these terrains. It lends adequate confidence in the goal “to establish a new humanities on surer foundations.” The foundations would then take more conciliatory yet “diverse and sophisticated methodological toolkit, and the pursuit of disinterested inquiry.” I have subscribed to Gottschall’s “call to move closer to the sciences in theory, method, and ethos.” I have accepted this mandatory, though difficult, challenge to “participate more fully in revealing the ultimate subject of the humanities: humans.” To this my life is directed with tenacity. To reiterate, I have set conciliatory, empathetic performance in scholarship to be the main motto of my further scholarly priorities.

Finally, books do not respond to the extent of leading to change unless you approach them with love and passion. Love for books comes with birth. This love becomes passion when books become a part of your upbringing. Books shape our thoughts which shape our actions. Thoughtful actions are change agents. A book’s contribution to change lies here. With this belief I seek to read good books, more and more.

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Hem Raj Kafle is one of the senior editors of NELTA Choutari. He is an Assistant Professor of English at the Humanities and Management Unit, School of Engineering, Kathmandu University. For more of his literary writings and works at his personal blog: http://kaflehem.wordpress.com/

An Access Teacher’s Reflection on ELT Training

February 1, 2014ELT Resource, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teaching Tipsadmin

Mandira Adhikari

I have attended a number of training sessions on English language teaching facilitated by both national and international trainers. And I have conducted some training sessions myself. Whenever I attend or conduct such sessions, I ask this question about their significance: Will I be able to translate (transfer) the ideas into my classroom? If such session doesn’t seem relevant to my classroom setting, I return with a sad face, thinking that the time, money and resources invested in that session went in vain. However, I returned home with a happy face from a recent training organized by NELTA in Kathmandu on 20th and 21st December, 2013. Access teachers from the different parts of Nepal participated in the two-day English teachers’ training. I found it very effective for my classroom and I learned several new ideas and concepts to implement in my classroom. In this blog entry, I am going to reflect on my experiences.

FIRST DAY

Following the introduction of the participants, the first day of the training began with ‘Gallery Walk’ and concluded with two different sessions ‘Songs in Access Classroom’ and ‘Co-Teaching’.

Gallery Walk

Through a gallery walk, we reflected on our success stories from Access Program being implemented at different district branches of NELTA. I found the activities of the Access Centers unique, fascinating and different from one another.

Let me begin with GorakhaCenter. The teachers had their students engage into convening an educational fair and they learnt that the students could learn different things when they are engaged in organizing such programs. Similarly, they had organized a literacy campaign targeting the illiterate people of their community with a view to raise awareness, motivate, and encourage them to be literate by joining literacy classes.

Kathmandu Centers had done something remarkable. They had taken the Access Students to the US Embassy, Kathmandu, where the participant students observed various equipments operated with the help of solar power. And the painting titled ‘Wall of Hopes’ highlighted violence against women. On the International Human Rights Day, they showed a movie related to human rights. They also made their students participate in ‘English by Radio‘ program, which is aired through radio stations in partnership of NELTA and the US Embassy.

Unlike Gorkha and KathmanduCenters, PokharaCenter had facilitated their students to prepare and perform a ‘Drama’ on the occasion of ‘Thanks Giving Day’. I like the concept of students’ engagement in the drama as it helps them to be confident, creative and to improve their speaking skills.

BirgunjCenter had their own uniqueness, in celebrating ‘Raksha Bandhan’—a popular Hindu festival of the love between brothers and sisters celebrated in Terai, southern part of Nepal and also in many parts of India and Mauritius. In this festival, sisters tie the thread and attractive rakhi (simple, woven and colorful thread or may be intricate with amulets and decoration on top of it) on wrist of their brothers for their long life, welfare and protection. Other remarkable activities in Birgunj —Traffic Week and Ocean Day—impressed me. Students’ engagement in traffic management over a week has not only helped traffic police but also they have learnt traffic rules. Considering busy traffic in Kathmandu and need of traffic knowledge in our students, I wish I could replicate such activity for LalitpurCenter where I am an Access teacher. I think that the celebration of Ocean Day could be adapted in the context of our Access Centers too.

I was fascinated by the special idea of developing reading skills among our students from KanchanpurCenter. They have formed a readers’ group and a book reviewers’ group. We had conducted classes on ‘Book Review’, students, however, have not been confident enough to write the book reviews. I think the idea of forming of groups of readers and reviewers would help me further building on their confidence.

Songs in Access Classroom

Following Gallery Walk Session, Suman Laudari, former Access teacher facilitated a session on ‘Songs in Access Classroom’. Based on his own experience as an Access teacher, he highlighted on the effectiveness of the use of songs for language learning. Songs are the great exposure to our students and using songs is one of the best ways to teach pronunciation with a fun. We can also develop classroom test activities such as gap filling, match the words with their meaning, and put the shuffled stanzas of the song in order. Through this way, language learning can be a fun making for them. On the other side, while using songs in the classroom, some possible challenges such as offensive words and deviated forms were explored in our discussions. However, the learners should be pre informed not to use offensive words and consider deviated forms because they are more often used in songs.

Co-teaching

Access Program has a salient feature of co-teaching at its Centers. As an assessment for such a feature, Ganga Ram Gautam and Miriam Corneli jointly facilitated co-teaching. During the facilitation, they introduced ‘Tree Metaphor’, as a tool for effectively analysing our co-teaching. Using tree metaphor, the assessment and analysis of co-teaching was carried out by participants from different Centers in terms of fruits, shoots, seeds and roots. We found our analysis of co-teaching almost similar. For instance, when I and my co-teacher analyzed our co-teaching classes, the fruits of our co–teaching –making classroom a fun zone, our shoots –utilizing our experience to make our classes effective by discussing with each other, the seeds—about five hours’ discussion to prepare a lesson plan and though we haven’t been successful in executing it yet to and the roots—we both are from education background and quite familiar with different methodologies. We both are co-operative and flexible. As a result, our co-teaching has always been successful.

The co-teachers at Access Centers are co-operative and they have been successful in making their classes effective, applying a variety of teaching methods. Before both the facilitators concluded the session, they provided us the effective model of co-teaching, which further helped us to improve our co-teaching further. Our co-teaching would have been more successful and we would not have faced challenges in managing the roles while implying this concept if the training on ‘co-teaching’ was provided before the Access classes started.

SECOND DAY

The second day of training consisted of four different sessions; ABCD model of lesson planning, public speaking, group discussions and American culture.

ABCD Model of Lesson Planning

Upon the presentations of the lesson plans made by respective Centers, Hemant Raj Dahal, president of NELTA made comments on them. Based on his observation and experience, he shared that most of the teachers usually miss the important parts ‘context’ and ‘expectation’ of our learners while planning their lessons. The discussion became livelier when Access teachers shared their challenges for preparing an effective lesson plan. To address those challenges, facilitator Dahal concluded the session with the introduction and use ABCD model of lesson planning for preparing effective lesson plans.

Public Speaking

The second session ‘Public Speaking’ facilitated by Motikala Subba Dewan was worth effective as it provided us the ideas of public speaking in various contexts. During the session, we were divided into different groups and each group was assigned a topic to prepare a speech. After the group leaders delivered their respective speeches, they were analyzed in terms of both strong areas and the areas to improve. I found the session constructive for not only for speaking in public but also for facilitating students to present their ideas in our regular classroom instruction.

Group Discussions

In the third session, Sara Denne Boltan facilitated us how to conduct group works effectively in our classrooms. She presented to the idea of evaluating the involvement of group members with the help of questionnaire. It can be an effective tool to actively involve all our students in a group work. The handouts and materials provided by her were helpful for our Access classes while organizing group discussions. She also facilitated us with how to play ‘Dice Game’, which can act as an important catalyst to energize our students for developing speaking skills.

U.S. Values and Culture

Besides improving English language skills, Access Program aims to impart the knowledge of the U.S. values and culture to the participant students and sensitize them about cultural differences. The session facilitated by Sara helped us better understand the American culture that students are expected to learn. Her presentation included contextual conversational patterns, different meaning of facial expressions, and notion of leadership, concept of ‘self’ and other different American cultures. She further clarified that Access students are expected to learn visible parts of American culture such as the food Americans eat in different festivals, their language and music.

Acknowledgements:

As an Access teacher, I got this wonderful opportunity to attend the training I have reflected above. For this, I am grateful to ‘English Access Microscholarship Program (Access Program)’ implemented by Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association (NELTA) with sponsorship and support of the U.S. Embassy Kathmandu/the US Department of State.

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Mandira Adhikari is currently working as a teacher for the Access Program in Lalitpur. She has completed her M.Ed in ELT from Kathmandu University. She is also a life member of NELTA.

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