Exploring Creativity in Young Learners: An Analysis Within

Creativity, Miscellaneous, Technology

       *Sagun Shrestha

sagunshrestha4@gmail.com

‘Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.‘ Steve Jobs

Creativity is all about connecting and synthesizing. Maybe the process that takes place needs a little more of innovation. Put simply, it is a way challenging oneself by transforming and unleashing the forces and ideas within. When you do it, you think of going beyond the state of mediocrity. The pleasure comes within you and you feel your presence in pleasure. A ‘wow’ word resounds in your heart and memory.

Creativity in ELT

It is so awkward to see the practice of the same archaic methods being used in English Language Teaching in Nepal. A ‘chalk and talk method’ has been a common cliché to make criticism on present ELT situation in Nepal. The interception of modern technology is challenging our voyage to the academic world. What if we do not mingle technology with our teaching and learning and find a way-out to make them live and interesting? What if we do not change ourselves and our teaching practices to bring change in our academic world? We would be the losers? In this regard, Prof. Bhattarai speaks: ‘Doubt your beliefs and works, stop and question your practices, may be you were wrong so far, may be you can discover new unexplored areas which can open up new vistas in teaching.  Philosophies keep changing and so do teaching principles. You put a question: Is my method of teaching appropriate? Are we following appropriate curriculum, or do we need to stop and rethink over it?  All our socio-political values and norms have changed; they are changing so fast, so should not our system of education follow such changes endlessly?

This is in fact seeking and unleashing creativity within. Unless and until we become creative we cannot get, let alone imagine our students being creative. Again Prof. Bhattarai puts his words“:

‘What happens if a farmer does not know about the new breed of animals or seeds and manures and continues with old practice? He will spoil everything and ruin himself. So we traders of truth should also be aware of the new brands of education on sale in the world market.’

Novelty, a paradigm shift, learner or learning centered instruction, multiplicity in methodologies are all the features that we gain in creative instruction, and needless to say these are the postmodern trends in ELT. By postmodern I mean going beyond what we have now or the modernity has brought, and seeking innovation, creativity and criticality to find the unexplored world is the postmodern trend.

Are we supposed to be stuck with a unitary method or do we need to integrate different methods to yield better instruction? The question is of multiplicity here. Multiplicity in thought, multiplicity in interpretation and multiplicity in methods and techniques. We need to mingle all from Georgi Lozanov idea of suggestopedia to communicative language teaching in all dimensions. Focusing on a single method may mean inviting a failure to a large extent. Similarly, the incorporation of modern technology demands us to bring cyber world in language instruction. Can we ever think that our language instruction can be complete without using the multimedia in our classroom in this flat world? NO! A big No! In fact, I have been learning these days how some young teachers (not in terms of age but as regards ideas) are different from  the teachers with traditional mind-set. They handle their classrooms bringing technology via blogging, virtual classes, webinars and multimedia instruction. Since they comprise audio-visual instruction, the young learners find them gripping and this is how these teachers win the young hearts through their instruction.

A giant shift in our thought or methodology is a paradigm shift: a shift from our traditional way of instruction. In these days our job is not simply to teach the students but to make them largely creative by inspiring and leading them to explore their own world so as to be professionally sound in future.

Different publications like the leading dailies of Nepal inspire our young learners for their write-ups. Once a week, they have allocated the supplements entitled ‘Classroom’ in The Kathmandu Post, ‘The School Times’ in The Himalayan Times, and ‘Kid’s Corner’ in The Republica. It is to explore their written creativity via different publications. Similarly, for other skills, elocution, extempore, a webinar can be the options. Why don’t we practice them? Why have we teachers remained detached from this sphere? How many of us have helped the children to publish their write-ups or just inspired them to write? Probably many of us have been stuck with the fixed and rigid curriculum and killed the creative power of the children. Writing needs reading, and reading can enable the students to unleash something new but we assume we are unaware of it for long. This is high time we analyzed and knew this fact to have a giant shift in our instruction.

Learner or learning-centered instruction

For so long, we advocated for the learner-centered instruction treating learner as its focal point. I personally believe that it is faulty to focus merely on learners. We maintained the teacher as a facilitator, guide, mediator and any more terms added while opting for learner-centered but in the meantime, we did not deal ‘how’ and ‘why’ aspects to a large extent which is subtly dealing with learning-centered instruction. Learning-centered means focusing on process and product both. The process leads to the product; therefore, the process has to be taken on board. How can learning be bettered? Why has it to be bettered? These have to be considered.

The learner is just a shape that gets molded as per the content that is exposed to him. It’s all learning that has a big role in him to get molded. For this the teacher too has to think more seriously with a kind of novelty. Again here comes creativity.

Creativity in instructors

George Bernard Shaw comes with these words: “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not’?” It’s sure the instructor should come the with ‘why-not?’ factor to explore much and bring newness. The ‘why’ factor makes us seek the things that they are in existence and it is simply knowing, and the ‘why-not’ factor makes us explore the things beyond knowing the things in existence. It means walking past knowing to the world of exploration.

In language teaching we can explore the new world and make our students explore much. More practically, it can be assisted with the different cyber means.

a. Online Virtual Classroom

Online virtual classrooms break away from the narrow confinement of formal classroom setting and invite both teacher and students for the discussion of the issues that is raised there. The discussion chain in the virtual classroom demands the learners to be more creative and critical which ultimately makes the learners and their writing adopt reformation.

There are so many online virtual classrooms, out of which to me the best ever I have used is www.nicenet.org. Once the account is opened, we receive a class key which is to be distributed to our students. With a help of class key they enter their class and take part in conferencing. This conferencing is basically used to get a discussion thread on any issue. The instructor posts a question and the learners comment or answer the particular question. They also comment on their friends’ answers along with their feedback which demands their critical voyage. The instructor is always with them, and he comments upon students’ answers if needed. This ultimately teaches students to have a feeling of respect as they are required to make some positive remarks on their friends’ writing in a discussion thread.

Conferencing, link sharing, having a class schedule and a list of students are the features of an online virtual class. It’s effective for all the levels from teen to adult learners.

b. Blogging

A blog is an electronic platform where we can post any document that can be reached out to anyone. It is more a free and mini-website with a fixed template. Depending upon the instructor’s need, you can create either a class blog, project blog, teacher’s blog or student’s blog which are for different purposes. To me, class blog and teacher’s blog are so much useful in the field of ELT as the class blog helps us to post our issues of the entire class and similarly, the teacher’s blog supports the teachers to provide notes, slides and hand-outs to his students.

Project blogs at times, can be useful to engage learners in developing projects on some sites . It will be more like getting discussion threads as done in Nicenet but for a different purpose. We can also appoint students themselves as editors and subeditors to post their friends’ issues and ask other non-editors to make their comments. www.eblogger.com, www.wordpress.com and www.weebly.com are the best blogging sites used so far.

c. Academic Project: A webquest

Academic project can be assigned online using some tools like www.zunal.com and www.questgarden.com which has its fixed format called webquests. They comprises introduction at the very beginning followed by tasks, process, and evaluation. Since webquest is a well-arranged set, it seems a perfect tool for assigning some project works to our  students. The rubric will help them get the right instruction that can be placed on evaluation obtaining from www.rubistar4teachers.com.

d. Academic Search Engines and Social Bookmarking
Search Engines, the generic are Google, Bing, etc. but the more academic that I use for language instruction is www.twurdy.com which shows the readability of each link. We can simply share the link checking the readability level. It is shown with the symbol of color, like the deep orange is a link having a complex text whereas faint orange is a link having a simple text. Moreover, it shows the age-level too.

The social bookmarking site helps us to have a record of each link. It can be termed as our online library since we have a tag to every site, and make a stack. Even other users can have access to our bookmarking if we have made it public. The private sites cannot be browsed by others besides the owner. The best social bookmarking site is www.delcious.com.

These all are the sites that I have been using in my classroom. At times I myself feel that the classroom setting has entirely been changed due to its intervention. Now the classroom’s formal setting has been distorted and everything needs redefining and regeneration, a feature of postmodernism. A Creative voyage indeed!

*Sagun Shrestha is an English Faculty at St. Lawrence College. He is currently working in capacity of Program Assistant in English Access Microscholarship Program, Nepal implemented by NELTA in support of American Embassy.

My Experience of Learning English: A Reflective Account

Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

*Kamlesh Raut

NELTA Birgunj

It has been more than seventeen years when I began learning English. Today when I am ready to step into the higher level of education, i.e. Master Degree in English education, I have mixed experiences of learning of English. Having chosen M. Ed. for my study, my future career of teaching English further makes me think and rethink on teaching situation. I look back and try to recall from my memory how I began learning English, how my teachers oriented me to the journey of learning English, how I went through the ups and downs in my journey of learning English and how I feel at this stage. Familiar with the paradigm shift in English language teaching in the global scenario, I try to compare the ways I was taught English in those days against the backdrop of new global trends in the field.

It is still vivid in my memory when I was admitted to a pre-primary grade popularly known as the sishu class then, now they call it playgroup in private schools. I think my learning of English almost began with learning of my mother tongue. It is because before I was put into a school my father taught me some basic things of English at home. They included English alphabet and some English words. Though formally English started from grade IV, one period per day was allocated for English and we were taught names of some objects then. Today, many government-aided schools are being converted into English medium schools. However, it was not the case then. Being a native speaker of Bajjika, I perceived both Nepali and English as new languages for me and was so curious to learn both of them. My time of learning language was divided into English and Nepali both. Sometimes, Bajjika helped me learn these languages at other times it affected my learning of these two languages badly. At home and in neighborhood, I spoke and heard Bajjika and could hear both Nepali and English only within school premises. The exposure to English and Nepali both was very limited for me. Until grade IV, my teacher taught English, i.e. letters, words, and some simple sentences such as Ram is a boy; Sita is a girl, etc. My teacher spoke each sentence with translation in Nepali but Nepali was also not so familiar to us. So he translated the sentence into Bajjika also. In grade IV, when I could see the textbook I jumped with joy. The book contained some pictures, stories and many more things. It was the first book in English I had ever seen. I had higher regard for English than any other subjects. First day of that course, our class teacher wrote some words with their pronunciation and meaning on the blackboard and we were asked to parrot them. Parroting vocabulary was almost regular. So was the case with most of the subjects. Most teachers would ask us to parrot as homework whatever they taught us. I hardly tried to understand things then. By education, I meant parroting and reproducing before teachers or in exams. The more the students parroted the contents, the more they were rewarded by teachers. Language teaching or let us say English language teaching was also like parroting. I could hardly realize ever that language is a means of communication. My teacher never talked to us in English, my friends never talked to me in English and nor did I. We mugged up English at home and school most of the time because we considered it as a hard subject. Once we were finished with mugging up the vocabulary, the teacher would select the text and would translate it into Nepali and also sometimes into Bajjika, sentence by sentence. This practice of word meaning teaching and translation continued up to grade IX.

When I reached grade X, we got a new teacher to teach English. First time in grade X, I studied basic grammar such as article, voice, narration, preposition, tag question, causative verbs, etc. Our teacher gave priority to those things which were likely to be asked in exams and omitted those which were not important for exams. The teacher would tell us “These are VVI questions for exams, so prepare them well”. “Leave those topics, they will not be asked in exams”. I can still recall those days vividly now. We studied to pass exams. All subjects, including English were taught from the examination perspective. I had to appear for practical exam of English during my SLC exam. First time in eleven years of learning English, I came to know that there are four language skills–listening, reading, speaking and writing. I could understand that all language skills are equally important. Alas! I wasted my ten years in memorizing vocabulary, their spelling, pronunciation, meaning, understanding the text, mugging up the questions and their answers and reproducing them in the exam papers. I wish my teacher had opened my eyes in those early stages of my life. I could hardly speak any good sentence in the speaking exam. Similarly, I heard things from the cassette but could hardly understand more than 30 percent.

I could understand English as a language only when I joined my Proficiency Certificate Level. On completion of school study, I joined Thakur Ram Multiple Campus, Birgunj for my higher study majoring English. I could see and understand that the teaching and learning of the college was quite different from my school. In the campus, I was taught by five university teachers but I could not be very much satisfied with their way of teaching either. Again there, many of the teachers were exam-oriented and more authoritative in nature. We were not allowed to answer the questions according to our wish. According to them, we had to supply the same answer as given in the book –all words and sentences. Even the medium of instruction was either Nepali or Bhojpuri and sometimes English. Some days later I came to know that many of them were using the same notebooks that they had prepared ten years back. Dictation was the pet technique of most teachers. This shows we had two types of teacher.

I do not claim that English language teaching and teachers are the same everywhere. However, I suppose that many of you (especially those who were taught in government aided Nepalese schools) might have faced the situation similar to mine. When I have learnt that English language teaching in the world has seen a lot of changes in theories and practices, I recall those days, the poor state of affairs of teaching English. When I see and read the changes brought in education and ELT by technology, I remember my own poor classrooms with blackboard. When I hear people speak English fluently and eloquently, I recall my teachers’ broken English and its effect upon my own learning of English. When I read others’ beautiful and powerful English, I just curse my own poor English. When I see teachers teaching English involving students in interaction and activities, I recall my own days when teacher hardly allowed us to speak anything in class. I wish I were taught English differently.

*Kamlesh Raut is a budding multilingual poet. He writes in Nepali, Bhojpuri, Maithili and English. 

Feedback and Language Learners

Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

*Khem Raj Joshi

Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur

In this brief blog entry, I have made an attempt to highlight the significance of feedback for language learning. This article presents with the feedback from the theoretical aspects, followed by different types of feedback such as negative feedback, negation and recasts and concludes with awareness for language learning.

Feedback

It is self-evident that language learning is not possible without input or evidence. In the literature on language learning, this evidence is discussed in terms of two categories: positive evidence and negative evidence. Positive evidence refers to “the input and basically comprises the set of well formed sentences to which learners are exposed” (Gass, 2003:225). In other words, well- formed sentences that provide learners with the input are called positive evidence. These sentences are made available to learners from spoken and/or written language. Such sentences provide learners with what is possible in the target language and they are also called models. But positive evidence cannot be a sufficient condition for language learning.

Learners should also be made aware of what is not possible in the target language as well. In other words, they need negative evidence in the form of feedback. Feedback comes as a result of interaction. When the learners come up with L2 output, we can see what sort of feedback they need. This interactional feedback is a very important source of knowledge for learners because it provides them with information about what further rules they need to learn. Feedback could be explicit or implicit.

Now I would like to briefly present some sorts of feedback that play an important role in L2 teaching learning process.

Negative evidence

Negative evidence is some kind of input that lets the learner know that his or her utterance is deviant and is unacceptable in the target language. It refers to “the type of information that is provided to learners concerning the incorrectness of an utterance” (Gass, 2003:225). Negative evidence can be explicit in the form of direct correction (e.g., ‘That’s not right’; No, we say……). It can also be implicit (e.g. ‘What did you say?’) in the form of indirect question. On the basis of when negative evidence is provided to the learners, it is of two types: pre-emptive (that occurs before an actual error) or reactive (that occurs after the error has been committed).

Negotiation

It is also a way of providing learners with feedback. When learners face communicative difficulties, they struggle to overcome them. It is the joint effort made by the interlocutors. It is defined as “those instances in conversation when participants need to interrupt the flow of the conversation in order for both parties to understand what the conversation is about” (Gass and Selinker, 2009:318). Since the teacher and the students negotiate to understand what is not understood, this is also known as conversational adjustment. In other words, learners come across several difficulties due to their limited L2 knowledge. In this case, the teacher provides them with the scaffolded help to make them understand the L2. The teacher provides them with feedback. This feedback obtained through negotiation serves a corrective function. As negotiation specially focuses on incorrect forms, it is said to serve as a catalyst for language learning, which facilitates L2 development.  Negotiation requires both attentiveness and involvement. In other words, for successful language learning, a learner should actively be involved in the negotiation process and s/he should also be attending to the incorrect forms.

Recast

A recast is another form of feedback. Mackey (1999) says that recasts are the responses to non-target non-native speaker utterances that provide a target like way of expressing the original meaning. It is the reformulation of a learner’s incorrect utterance without losing the original meaning. In other words, it is such instance in which an interlocutor rephrases an incorrect utterance with a corrected version, while maintaining the integrity of the original meaning.” (Gass, 2003:239). It is an implicit feedback. Philp (1999:92) gives an example of recast:

Non native speaker: what doctor say?

Native speaker: what is the doctor saying?

In the above example, the native speaker is correcting the non-native speaker implicitly by adding the auxiliary.

There arise some challenges while discussing the types of feedback mentioned above.  For example, if the negative evidence is provided implicitly, the learner may not understand that he or she has committed an error and the feedback is intended as a correction. When the teacher tries to correct the learner’s error implicitly by repeating his or her utterance along with correction, the learner may even think that the teacher really did not hear what was said. As a result, the correction may not be accepted and incorporated in the subsequent utterances. Here I would like to cite an example from a class I recently observed in which the teacher was trying to provide the students with feedback in the form of recast but it was not noticed by the students:

S: I used to play marbles in the past but now I use to play videogame.

T: Now you play videogame.

S: Yes, I use to play videogame.

So, in many contexts, explicit feedback is relatively more helpful to raise learners’ awareness of what they have done. Similarly, many teachers prefer to provide feedback in the form of negative evidence before an actual error is committed by the learner. This is probably due to their wish to prevent the learners from committing the possible errors. But until and unless learners take part in interaction and commit the actual errors, it cannot be a pertinent feedback. Once the learners’ output exhibits some deviant forms, the teacher comes to know what feedback is relevant in such contexts. So, in my opinion, reactive feedback could be more helpful than pre-emptive feedback.

Raising learners’ awareness

Interactional feedback certainly focuses on learners’ attention on those parts of their language that deviate from the target language norms. It helps them notice the mismatches between the correct target language forms and the forms produced by them. Schmidt (1994) argues that attention is essential to learning. He distinguishes the attention into two types: i) Noticing– It refers to the process of bringing some stimulus into focal attention. For example, when one notices the odd spelling of a new vocabulary item and ii) understanding and awareness– It refers to explicit knowledge: awareness of a rule or generalization (p.18).

Through feedback, teachers can help learners be attentive. And through this attention, the learners notice a gap between the target language forms and their own inter-language system. For this reason, language teaching methodologies earlier engaged learners in consciousness raising activities provide direct and explicit means of making learners aware of L2 forms. In other words, feedback makes learners aware of the incorrect forms they have produced. They modify their output on the basis of feedback they receive during interaction. The more learners are made aware of their unacceptable speech, the greater the opportunity  for them to make appropriate modifications. Learners’ awareness on any aspect of language (e.g. phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon) could be raised.

To conclude, I argue that second language is not simply learned from positive evidence alone. Learners should also be provided with negative evidence which provides them with information about what is not possible in the target language system. Raising the learners’ awareness on different aspects of language leads to better language teaching learning process.

*Mr. Joshi teaches at the Department of English Education, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal. He is an executive member of NELTA Central Committee.

References

Gass, S.M. (2003). Input and interaction. In Doughty, C.J. and M. H. Long (eds). The handbook of second language acquisition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Gass, S. M. & L. Selinker. (2009). Second language acquisition: An introductory Course. New York: Routledge.

Joshi, K. R. (2012). English Language Teacher Development. Kathmandu: Intellectual’s Book Palace.

Mackey, A. (1999). Input, interaction and second language development. Studies in second language acquisition. 21:557-581.

Philp, I. (1999). Interaction, noticing and second language acquisition: An examination of learners’ noticing of recasts in task based interaction. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Tasmania.

Schmidt, R. (1994). Implicit learning and the cognitive consciousness: of artificial grammars and SLA. In N. Ellis (ed). Implicit and explicit learning of languages. London: Academic Press.

Resource of the Month

ELT Resource, Miscellaneous

For the November issue of Choutari, we would like to share with you a wonderful resource for teaching English to young learners of pre-primary and primary level –http://www.mes-english.com/.  The shared link, which requires no registration to access, is very useful for the teachers of young learners in under resourceful context like ours. It offers free downloadable as well as printable flash cards, worksheets, handouts to match, phonics worksheets, projects and lesson plans, ESL games and many other English learning activities for young learners. We hope you would find them more useful and more effective for your classroom.

– Eds

Expecting for Some Practical Aspects of ELT?

Editorial, Miscellaneous

Editorial: October Issue

Cool Greetings to All!

It is just over a week since autumnal equinox harbingered the relieving touch of gradually growing coolness to the body baked listless in the heat-wave of scorching summer. Days are getting shorter, and longer nights are getting colder. On the contrary, the political and cultural fervour in our South Asian, land-locked country is getting the visionary minds to get hotter. The approaching Constituent Assembly (CA) election and the one-month festive holidays are no doubt spicing up interesting interactions on predictions and preparations to optimize the opportunities of constitutional and cultural rights. Meanwhile, it may not be an odd-man-out to steer the theoretical practice of English language teaching (ELT) to some practical aspects. We do have a thrilling topic of the CA election besides those of festivals and religious tolerance, moreover geared up by a great time of month-long holidays. It is, of course, worth composing some poems and stories, being accustomed to technologies to take teaching learning up to the mark of technical soundness, strengthening vocabulary to get through tests like IELTS, TOEFL, GRE, etc. And, we may expect all this to come true by pacing ahead with the practical flavors the posts serve here.

The first entry is an activity-based ‘literary recipe’ on creative writing by Prof. Alan Maley from the UK, who has been involved in ELT for over 40 years and has published thirty books and numerous articles. To our gratefulness, he was the key speaker at Asian English Teachers’ Creative Writing Conference (AETCWC), convened in Birgunj. His easy-to-apply, persuasive ideas in the entry gently guide us by the hand to how we can enjoy making our writing creative effortlessly.

The second one is a motivational writing by Dr. Myrtis Mixon from the USA, who has served as a language specialist in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in more than 30 countries, authored 11 English language textbooks (most of them about using stories in teaching language), and enjoyed working with 180 Access Microsholarship students at a winter camp in Pokhara in early 2013. Her writing lucidly depicts how stories act as a fascinating tool to energize students to have a good start of their own reading and writing.

The third one by Gretel Patch, a Technology Integration Specialist from the USA, who has a great passion for supporting education with technology in creative and innovative ways, highlights how technology helps explore and exploit great resources of language with a few ‘clicks’.

The fourth one by William Wolf, an American English teacher, who is currently working in several capacities in Chittagong, Bangladesh and also serving as an ACCESS teacher there, sheds light on how to crack the hard nut of learning vocabulary patiently sharing his own successful experiences.

The last-but-not-the-least one by Indra Bahadur Ter, an executive member of NELTA Kanchanpur and teacher of English at a college in Far Western Development Region, Nepal, reflects the ongoing limited trends in ELT in a major part of the country with clear mental conflicts fluctuating between the harsh reality of teaching English as an end and broader perception of practicing it as a means to an end, and lets it be up to readers how to have a breakthrough.

The links to the entries:

  1. Creative Writing for Students and Teachers: Some Practical Ideas by Alan Maley
  2. Motivation Through Writing by Myrtis (Doucey) Mixon
  3. Technology Resources in English Language Learning by Gretel Patch
  4. Effective Practice for Vocabulary by William Wolf
  5. English Language Teaching and Larger Pursuits of Life by Indra Bahadur Ter

I am sincerely sure you all valued readers would love to relish the great reading ‘feast’ in a single sitting! And, it is possible during inter-festive days off. What you all need to do is crave your caring support to your NELTA CHOUTARI, as well as your self-driven inclination to the defiant faith in professionalism in pluralism!

Now let me express my unfeigned words of gratitude to all the contributors for their invaluable cooperation to accomplish the issue, as well as Bal Ram Adhikari, one of the caring co-editors for his kind support.

Wish you healthy reading and great ideas to share!

Suresh Kumar Shrestha

Editor

NELTA Choutari

Creative Writing for Students and Teachers: Some Practical Ideas

Creative Writing, Creativity, ELT Resource, Miscellaneous, Teacher Training, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Writing

 Alan Maley

UK

 

Writing creatively is a joyful component of learning a language in real life. Creativity, as creative writers have tasted, adds flavor to writing. Many more language teachers might have a rigid mindset because of having had to be bound to the framework provided by syllabi, textbooks, exams, etc. Anyway, they can be hopeful for the change they really wish by introducing at least some elements of creativity in their teaching.

 

There are a number of general points which will help make implementing creative writing activities more likely to succeed:

Try to establish a relaxed, non-judgmental atmosphere, where your students feel confident enough to let go and not to worry that their every move is being scrutinized for errors.

Ensure that the students’ work is ‘published’ in some way. This could be by simply keeping a large notice-board for displaying the students’ work. Other ways would include giving students a project for publishing work in a simple ring binder, or as part of a class magazine. Almost certainly, there will be students able and willing to set up a class website where work can be published. Performances, where students read or perform their work for other classes or even the whole school, are another way of making public what they have done.

Encourage students to discuss their work together in a frank but friendly manner. We get good ideas by bouncing them off other people. Help them establish an atmosphere where criticism is possible without causing offence.

Explain regularly how important accurate observation is, and encourage ‘noticing’ things. They also need to be encouraged to be curious and to follow up with ‘research’ – looking for more information, whether in books, on the Internet or by asking people.

Make it clear that what they do in the classroom is only the tip of the iceberg. To get real benefit from these activities, they need to do a lot of work outside class hours. Most of what we learn, we do not learn in class. You can capitalize on that fact.

Do the activities regularly in order to get the best effects. Maybe once a week is a sensible frequency. If you leave too long between sessions, you have to keep going back to square one. That is a waste of time and energy.

The following are simply a sample of some possible activities:

Hello/Goodbye poems

  1. Tell the class that they are going to write a poem. It will have only two lines, and each line will have just two words. The first line will start with ‘Hello’, the second with ‘Goodbye’.
  2. Give students one or two examples:

 

Hello sunshine,

Goodbye rain.

 

Hello smoking,

Goodbye health.

 

Hello paper,

Goodbye trees.

 

Then, ask if they can think of any new ones. Note them on the board.

  1. Ask students to work in pairs (or alone if they prefer), and try to come up with at least two new poems. Allow 10 minutes for this task.

 

  1. Ask for their examples and put them on the board. Ask students to give feedback on each other’s examples.

 

  1. Collect all the poems. Display them on the class notice-board or upload them onto the class/school website.

The activity is very simple yet it does require students to call on their vocabulary store and to think about words that have a mutual or reciprocal relationship of meanings (smoking/health etc.) If you prefer, this can be used as a short warm-up for other activities.

Stem poems

  1. Explain to students that they will be writing some lines that will fit together into a poem. Then, write up the stem you intend to use. For example: I wish I could…

Elaborate further by eliciting samples of completed sentences, as in these examples:

I wish I could have an ice cream.

 I wish I could speak French.

 I wish I could visit Australia.

 

Then, ask each student to write three sentences following the same pattern.

  1. After about 10 minutes, ask students to work in groups of four and to share their sentences. They should choose six sentences that they think are most interesting and then decide what order to put them in to form a 6-line poem. There is no need for the poems to rhyme but if they do, fine. Lastly, tell them to add one final line, which is: But I can’t.
  2. Ask groups to read their poems aloud to the class. Can they suggest any ways to improve the poems?
  3. Collect all the poems. Display them on the class noticeboard or upload them onto the class/school website.
  4. You can decide on other stems to use in subsequent classes. For example:

 

Loneliness is…

 I used to… but now…

 I love the way…

 Nobody knows…

 Who knows…?

 I don’t know why…

 

It would be a good idea to choose stems that give practice in language points you are working on with the class at that time.

Acrostics

An acrostic poem is based on a word written vertically. The letters then each form the first letter of a word, and all the words are related to the meaning of the original word. For example:

Docile

Obedient

Growling

 

  1. Explain what an acrostic is and write up one or two examples on the board. Then, ask them to write an acrostic based on their own name or the name of someone they know well. The words they choose should somehow describe the person. For example, Vuthy:

 

 V Very

 U Unlikely

 T To

 H Help

 Y You

  1. Collect all the poems. Display them on the class notice-board or upload them onto the class/school website.
  2. Ask students to write at least one more acrostic before the next class. This time, they can choose any word they like (it doesn’t have to be someone’s name). For example:

 

Lying

Everywhere –

Autumn

Falling.

 

Acrostics involve a kind of mental gymnastics that engages students in reactivating their vocabulary in an unusual way. Acrostics do not usually produce great poetry but they certainly exercise the linguistic imagination.

Acknowledgement: Some of the ideas were developed by Tan Bee Tin.

If you were …

  1. First you make copies of this outline:

If I were a fruit, I would be ….

 If I were a vegetable, I would be…

 If I were a tree, I would be…

 If I were a flower, I would be…

 If I were a fish, I would be…

 If I were a bird, I would be…

 If I were a book, I would be…

 If I were a song, I would be…

 If I were the weather, I would be…

 If I were a season, I would be…

 

Then distribute the sheets that you have prepared. Ask students to work individually for about 10 minutes, completing the outline of the poem with words they prefer. For example: If I were a fruit, I would be a grape.

  1. Let students share what they have written in groups of four. Then conduct a class discussion and go through the poems line-by-line, asking for examples of what they have written.

 

  1. Ask students to think of someone they like and to write the person’s name as the title of their poem. They then write a 12-line poem addressed to that person using the following format:

Line 1: describe the person as a kind of food.

Line 2: describe the person as weather

Line 3: describe the person as a tree

Line 4: describe the person as a time of day

Line 5: describe the person as some kind of transport

Line 6: describe the person as an article of clothing

Line 7: describe the person as part of a house

Line 8: describe the person as a flower

Line 9: describe the person as a kind of music/a sound

Line 10: describe the person as something to do with colour

Line 11: describe the person as an animal

The last line should be the same for everyone: ‘You are my friend’.

So, their poem would look something like this:

 

For Sharifa

You are mango ice-cream

You are a cool breeze on a hot day

You are a shady coconut palm

You are dawn

You are a sailing boat crossing the bay

You are my comfortable sandals

You are the sunny verandah

 You are jasmine

 You are a soft gamelan

 You are light blue

 You are a playful kitten

 You are my friend.

 

Metaphor poems

  1. Make copies of this list of words and phrases for use during the class:

Love an egg Hate a tooth brush Disappointment a vacuum cleaner Marriage a spoon Friendship a knife Hope a mirror Life a window Work a cup Time a banana

  1. Check that students know what a metaphor is – a form of direct comparison between two things. Give examples of metaphors in everyday life:

 

  • A blade of grass
  • A sharp frost
  • Spending time
  • Save time
  • Opening up a can of worms
  • She’s a snake in the grass
  • He clammed up
  • He shelled out
  • A wall of silence

In fact, everyday language is so full of metaphorical expressions that we hardly notice them. They have become an accepted way of speaking. Explain that poets make great use of metaphor to make their words more vivid and easier to visualise.

  1. Hand out the sheets. Tell students to write three metaphors by combining one item on the left with another on the right (students will have to join the words using ‘is’). They should not spend time thinking about the combinations. For example:
  • Life is a window.
  • Friendship is a knife.
  • Love is a vacuum cleaner.
  • Marriage is a banana
  • Hate is a mirror.

 

  1. Now, ask them to choose just one of their new metaphors. They should now write two more lines after the metaphor to explain what it means. For example:

Marriage is a banana:

 when you’ve eaten the fruit,

 only the skin is left.

 

 Hate is a mirror:

 it reflects back

 on the one who hates.

 

Tell students not to use ‘because’ as it is unnecessary, and to keep the lines short.

  1. Ask students to share their metaphor poems with the class. Students should then make an illustrated display of their work. Acknowledgement: This idea is adapted from Jane Spiro’s brilliant book, Creative Poetry Writing (OUP)

Now we can have a good start to enjoy learning some ‘real’ language.  Creative writing promotes self-motivation and makes language teaching and learning effortless. You are always curious to find out something and encounter new things and learn them willingly. How interesting this can be! Good luck and happy writing!

Motivation Through Writing

Creative Writing, Creativity, ELT Resource, Teacher Training, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teaching Tips, Writing

Myrtis (Doucey) Mixon, Ed. D.

University of San Francisco

 

How can we motivate our students to be excited about their classes? One way is to tell them stories. Another way is to ask them to write stories.

 

Stories educate, enrich, and entertain everyone.  Find easy stories in English.  But for now, I will whet your appetite by sending you two of the stories that will be published in the forthcoming book of stories called “Untold Tales” written  by English ACCESS Microscholarship Students in Nepal, These are the stories that they wrote at the winter camp in 2013 in Pokhara.

 

These anecdotes and tales of exprience provide an enjoyable opportunity to increase vocabulary, reading comprehension, listening and speaking and, ultimately, writing. The stories and exercises together are a whole-language anthology designed to improve communication skills. These stories include exercises that employ the cooperative/collaborative learning philosophy and address multiple learning styles.

 

Using stories is a magical way to teach, effective at any age.  Here’s a summary of how stories aid language-learning:

  • provide motivation for reading
  • heighten listening skills
  • develop speaking skills
  • use cooperative learning strategies
  • foster creative language growth
  • provide content-based material
  • Serve as model for further writing

All learners, from babies to grandmothers, learn better with stories; they are energizers. Integrating stories as an adjunct to the teacher’s repertoire in the classroom setting is not only simple, but makes perfect sense.  We hope you use these stories to open new worlds of content and learning possibilities.  We also hope they serve as a springboard to motivating your own students to write stories.

 

Enjoy the stories. If you want some more, write to me at “myrtis101@mac.com” and I will send you more. These two are from Kathmandu and Gorkha, but I have many  others, some from Butwal and Birgunj.

 

My Story

 

One early morning, on my way to temple, I saw sparkling eyes in ragged clothes.  I saw their creative hands and bright smiles.  These children are strangers to me but no different from our own children whom we always love and support.

 

Two days later, I visited the prison of Sundhara, Kathmandu, for my class in social work.  I saw many such faces who reside in prisons alongside their incarcerated parents and I became sad.  These children have done nothing wrong.  They are simply caught up in something they don’t understand.

 

I couldn’t forget them so a few months later, along with some friends, we opened up a child daycare centre in a rented house.  My parents were not happy and they told me to leave it.  However, I was determined to take those children out of prison and look after them and educate them for the future.

 

When I started this, I was 21, and nobody believed in me.  People thought I was crazy.  They laughed at me.

 

After two years, in 2005, I established The Butterfly Home for the children.  Then, I travelled to many other places, speaking with jailers, parents and authorities, preparing to bring children out of prison.  My own parents now understood and helped me.  We were so touched by the children’s plight, that they are forced to live with their impoverished, incarcerated parents because there is no one to look after them on the outside.

 

It has been eight years since I began gathering the children from Nepali prisons and bringing them to live in a centre in the capital, Kathmandu, providing them not only with food and shelter, but also education and motherly love.  I am happy to be recognized as their mamu.  Now I have become the second Nepali woman to win the 2012 CNN Hero Award at the star-studded award ceremony held in Los Angeles.  But still 80 children are living in prison and I am going to take them out of the prison soon.

 

My name is Puspa Basnet and children are my hope.  I believe the world is their place where they can carve their future with their own hands.

Prashanna Mahat, 15

Kathmandu

 

Exercises

Understanding the Story

How did Puspa Basnet get involved with helping the children?

 

Vocabulary

sparkling    reside    incarcerated         determined   plight    impoverished  carved

1. The stars were ______________________________________________ in the sky.

2. The children’s parents  are __________________________________ in the prisons.

3. The children have nowhere to ____________________________ out of the prisons.

4. Puspa Basnet was _______________________ to get the children out of the prisons.

5. Many people were affected by the ______________________ of these poor children.

6. To make something out of something can be to ____________________________ it.

7. The parents in the prison have no money; they are __________________________ .

 

Now you Talk

1. What would it be like to be one of those children living in the prison?

2. Where do they go to school?

3. Is there a way you could help these children?

 

Now you Create

1. Write a letter to the mayor of your town asking for help.

2. Draw a cartoon strip about this problem.

 

Role Play

1. Mother in prison, her son: talking about his going to school.

2. That son, another student: talking about where he lives.

3. Two Girls who live with parents in prison: talking about their lives.

4. Two guards in prison: planning to help the children

5. Puspa Basnet, mayor of town: talking about helping more children.

 

 

 

The Kidnappers

 

This is a true story that happened in Dada Gaun village near Laxmi bazaar in 2012.

 

One Saturday, Rina and Rehan, a brother and sister asked their  parents if they could go to the park.  Their parents said, “Please, go safely.  There are so many bad people in the road.”

 

Rina said, “Don’t worry.  We will be careful.”  They crossed one town where many busses went here and there.  They went to the park.  While they were walking on the road, a micro bus stopped just beside them.  The door opened and a man jumped out, grabbed them both and put them in the micro bus.

 

They were taken to the jungle which is near the park.  They were so afraid and they cried a lot.  Many hours went by.  The kidnapper went near Rina and laughed. Rina asked, “Why are you laughing?”

 

The kidnapper said, “You are my one corore rupees.  That is the ransom we will get from your parents.  Give me your phone number.  But Rina didn’t give it to him.  He slapped her and said, “If you don’t give me your father’s phone number, I will kill you right now.”

 

Rina was afraid of him and gave the number.  Meanwhile, the children’s parents were worried when they didn’t come home by evening time.  Then their mobile phone rang.  The kidnapper demanded one corore rupees as a ransom.  The kidnapper said to him, “If you don’t give me the ransom money, you will see your children’s dead bodies.”

Hearing this, the father became more afraid.  Then the father thought of a trick.  “Where are you?”  asked Rina’s father.  The kidnapper said, “I am in the jungle near the park.”

 

While the father kept talking to the kidnapper, the mother called the police station and said,  “Please save my children.  They have been kidnapped.  They are in the jungle near the park.  The kidnapper demands one corore rupees as ransom.  I don’t have even thousands.”

 

The police hurried and drove very quickly.  They stopped the car in the park and walked into the jungle.  They surrounded the microbus and caught the kidnapper.  The children were saved.

 

Their parents gave many thanks to the police.  They told the police not to let the kidnapper free because if he is free he would kidnap other children.  After that he was put into the jail for his whole life.

 

Kasam Ale,  15

Gorkha

 

Exercises

Understanding the Story

What is a moral for this story?

 

Vocabulary

Fill in the blanks of the summary with the words below.

ransom     surrounded      kidnappers     tricked

microbus     worried      careful      grabbed

 

The children wanted to go to the park.  Their parents were __________________ They said, “Be very _________________ .  While the children were walking, a _________________ stopped and a man jumped out and _______________________ them.  The men were __________________________.  They demanded  a _____________________ .  The father ________________  the bad men.  The police ____________ the kidnappers.

 

Now You Talk

1. What would you do if a kidnapper grabbed you?

2. How can you solve a crime with a mobile phone?

 

Now You Create

1. Draw a picture of the kidnappers.

2. Write another ending to this story.

 

Role Play:

1. Mother, girl: warning about bad people.

2. Girl, kidnapper: he asks for her phone number.

3. Sister, brother: planning how to get away from kidnappers

4. Father, police: planning to catch kidnappers.

5. Mother, girl: talking about their capture.

Technology Resources in English Language Learning

ELT Resource, Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Technology

Gretel Patch

USA

 

Introduction

I’ve been kindly asked to contribute a few words for this month’s blog edition. I have had the privilege of meeting many of you, though not all, so let me briefly introduce myself. Online I am known as the EdTech Didi and I blog at www.edtechdidi.com. I have my Masters of Educational Technology and am a Technology Integration Specialist. I have a passion for using technology in creative and innovative ways, especially to support education and learning. I work hard to help parents, students, and teachers use the best resources for their learning adventures.

We recently lived in Kathmandu for two years and I was able to assist in what I call “technology outreach” with several of the English Access Microscholarship centers throughout Nepal. I tried to expose teachers and students to technology basics that could support them in their English studies, and I tried to instill a broad overview of what 21st Century learning is all about. In my limited time with the students, and also within limited classroom connectivity, only so much was possible. Still, I tried to lay a foundation to help them realize that technology is much more than texting, Facebook, and YouTube, and that there are many tools to help  them reach their educational goals.

Language Learning from Native Speakers

We currently reside in Washington, D.C., while my husband studies Kurdish, a language spoken in northern Iraq. In his profession he routinely receives language training before moving to a new country. Before we moved to Kathmandu, he studied Nepali for one year. The facility where he receives his training has 100,000 enrollees annually and offers courses in roughly 70 foreign languages

[source 1=”<a” 2=”2="2="href="http://www.state.gov/m/fsi/">http://www.state.gov/m/fsi/</a>""” language=”:”][/source]

. As you can imagine, this is no small undertaking. If you roamed the halls, you might overhear phrases in Urdu, Thai, Swahili, Croatian, Hungarian, Chinese, Arabic, French, or Armenian. While there are many language learning models and strategies, one requirement for this particular program is that only native speakers are allowed to be instructors.

With larger world languages, there are many qualified candidates to choose from. With small and regional languages, however, sometimes it is difficult to find qualified instructors. With specialized languages or dialects, sometimes there are limited resources to use as course materials and instructors must rely on current newspapers, for example, instead of established textbooks. Sometimes the teacher hasn’t lived in his/her native country for many years and the vocabulary and issues have changed. Nonetheless, this model places significant importance on learning a language from a native speaker.

In Nepal, it is not feasible to utilize a similar methodology, so what can be done to help ensure that students learn English with the proper dialect and vocabulary?

Technology Resources

Fortunately, there are many online resources and software that can help students be exposed to native English speakers. It is of critical importance that students are encouraged to use them and take advantage of such opportunity.

http://prezi.com/axirm4my1qbf/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

I created this Prezi with you in mind. It includes the problem, integration strategy, relative advantage, and the expected outcome for using each type of tool with the students. Various tools and resources are provided as links, such as:

Using the Internet for instruction, e.g. tutorials, eBooks, and videos

Tool software, e.g. word processing and presentations

Instructional software, e.g. vocabulary games and drill-and-practice activities

Productivity software, e.g. concept and word mapping to strengthen writing skills

Some other excellent resources are:

Voice of America: Includes lessons, videos, idioms, audio, and practice activities using current events.

Yale Center for Language Study: Links to various websites students can use to practice grammar, punctuation, spelling, slang, listening, speaking, writing, and reading.

Cultural Resources

There are a variety of other resources that can expose students to cultural awareness, values, and traditions as they explore the world “virtually” in a way they may not ever get to do otherwise. I am a Google Certified Teacher, which basically means I received some great training at Google’s offices and am an ambassador-of-sorts for the power of Google’s products in education. A few of my favorite resources are:

Google World Wonders Project: Virtually explore many of the great wonders of the world.

Google Art Project: Explore and experience many of the world’s great art museums

Here are two other virtual tours that help students “travel” to Washington, D.C., for example:

Interactive White House tour: Go inside the White House through photos and videos

National Museum of Natural History: Students may not be able to visit this Smithsonian, but you can download this interactive tour and learn as though they were there.

Conclusion

It is not possible to try everything, especially with limited computers, Internet access, and connectivity. However, with a little effort and determination, English language teachers can choose a few resources and technology tools that will greatly enhance student experiences and expose them to native English speakers. When used purposefully, technology can be very engaging and exciting for students. Teaching, especially teaching well, is not an easy task, but it is a crucial one if we are going to make a difference and ultimately change the world – one student at a time.

I wish you the best in all of your efforts with the wonderful students entrusted to your care. They truly are the future.

For more resources created with Access students and teachers in mind, please visit: http://www.edtechdidi.com/outreach.html

Effective Practice for Vocabulary

Miscellaneous, Teacher Training, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teaching Tips,

William Wolf

Chittagong, Bangladesh

Students often ask me, “How can I learn English better and faster?” and I have trouble giving them an answer. I have taught English for more than 20 years and I have been a student of languages for more than 30, but I am still not sure how to answer their question. The problem, I think, is that they are looking for the one way to learn a language. But learning a language effectively requires that we use a number of different methods. In this blog, I want to address what I think is the single hardest part about learning a language to a high level—vocabulary—and to suggest a number of ways that learners can improve their knowledge and skills in this area.

Learning vocabulary is a real problem

In my experience as both a teacher and a student, the most time-consuming part of learning a language is usually vocabulary. People often worry about the problems of learning a new alphabet, script or other writing system, but although this is a problem in the beginning, it is really something in which we can make a lot of progress in just hours. There are some exceptions, Chinese being the most famous. But if someone wants to learn Arabic, Greek, Russian, Burmese, or some other script, ten or twenty hours of careful practice spread out over a few weeks will usually be enough. People also often worry about grammar, and it’s true that this will take longer. Here, it’s a matter of many months of practice.

But when it comes to learning vocabulary, it’s a matter of years, not of weeks or months. Many language learners discover that when they’ve reached a high intermediate level, they’re able to discuss, with some difficulty, many topics, but that even books written for ten-year-old native speakers are often too hard for them to understand. Why? When I ask students to take a page from a text and then to use two different colors to mark the grammar and the vocabulary problems they have with this text, they quickly see that they usually have only a small number of grammar problems per page, but they might have 20 or 50 or even more words whose meanings they cannot understand.

Reading even a book for a fifth grader requires a knowledge of thousands of head words. Ordinary conversation probably uses no more than one or two thousand head words. This means that simply relying on conversation will not give us a vocabulary large enough to read even texts that teenage native speakers can understand. If our goal is to be able to read university level materials, our work will be even harder.

Of course, if the language we are studying has a vocabulary that is closely related to a language we already know, then learning vocabulary won’t be so difficult. Spanish and French share a large percentage of their vocabulary. Both are descended from Latin and both have borrowed many technical words from Latin, so a person who knows one will find it quite easy to learn the vocabulary of the other. Similarly, most North Indian languages are closely related. Hindi, Bengali, Nepali, Gujarati, and many other languages are both descended from Sanskrit and have borrowed many of their specialized words from Sanskrit. A knowledge of one of these languages helps immensely in learning any of the others.

But when we are learning a language whose vocabulary has few connections with other languages that we know, we will have to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of hours reading, using dictionaries, memorizing, and practicing if we want to be able to function at a university level.

Learning vocabulary is a real problem. So what to do about it?

1 – Choose the right things to read

The simplest piece of advice for learning any skill is “practice…a lot.” But it’s not enough to simply practice, we must use effective practice, and this is where things start to become more difficult. In addition to the problem mentioned above—the very large number of vocabulary that must be learned—there’s another problem, namely, that to effectively learn vocabulary we need to concentrate on words that are appropriate for our level. The best way to do this is to find texts that are at the right level. If the texts are too easy, we won’t find enough new words to learn, but if the texts are too difficult, there will be too many new words and these words will often be too hard for us to use (that is, to practice) in our own speaking and writing.

The most important thing we can to do make learning vocabulary more effective is to choose texts that have about the right number of new words. Dr. Willy A Renandya is a senior lecturer at Singapore’s National Institute of Education, and he has done a great deal of research on extensive reading. He argues that the best texts to use are ones that are rather easy for the learner. What does “rather easy” mean? In percentage terms, this means that for extensive reading we should be using texts where only about 2% of the words are unknown to us. A paperback novel might have about 250 words per pages, so he suggests the Rule of Five. If the text is the size of a paperback novel, count the number of unknown words on page, and these should be fewer than five. If they are more than five, the learner will probably only be able to read a small number of pages before giving up in frustration.

There are several ways we can find such “rather easy” texts. One way is to use texts written for younger native speakers or language learners. Children’s books and school textbooks are two obvious choices. Poetry and songs will usually be harder than prose, and comic books are often not a good choice since they use so much slang.

Another source is graded readers. Graded readers are books that are written to match different levels (here called “grades”) in terms of both vocabulary and grammar. There are many publishers of graded readers: Oxford, Cambridge, National Geographic, as well as South Asian publishers. Most of them use some form of a 6-level scale to describe the difficulty of a text. They also publish a wide range of titles and genres; there’s fiction (both original and adapted), travel, science, geography, history, and many other topics. I urge my learners to start with a book at level 3 and read a few pages and apply Dr. Renandya’s Rule of Five. If the book is too hard, then they should choose a level 2 book and try it. If the book is too easy, then they should try a level 4 book.

But choosing the right level is only part of the solution. It’s also important that we chose the right kind of book. If we have a very specific purpose in learning a language, we should concentrate on texts connected with that purpose. For example, if our only interest in learning a language is to read biology texts, then we should focus on vocabulary connected with that field. Of course, we need to find levels at the right level of difficulty, so we could use graded readers about science and the environment or books for primary and secondary school students. However, if our goal is to function at the level of an educated person, we should not limit our reading. Instead, we should read texts from a variety of genres and about a variety of topics: science, fiction, travel, politics, religion, movies, food, sport, family, holidays, everything.

2 – Find the definitions

Finding the definitions sounds easy but actually can be the most boring part of learning vocabulary. There are a number of common mistakes people make but also several solutions.

The worst thing to do is to stop everyone time we find an unknown word and to then look it up in a dictionary. This completely breaks our attention. What should we do? I recommend using a highlighter (I happen to use an orange one for this purpose) to mark the unknown words as one reads. After I reach the end of the chapter, I’ll then go back and choose which of the highlighted words to actually look up in a dictionary. If I’ve chosen a book that’s not too difficult, there should be no more than five unknown words per page, which would mean perhaps 20 to 100 words per chapter.

I am a big believer in using flashcards. These are pieces of stiff paper on which we can write things that we want to memorize. I should emphasize three things. First, many language learners think that all they need to do is make flashcards and memorize the words in order to learn a language. That’s not true. We also need to practice how to use these words correctly, an issue I’ll address a bit later. A second problem is that many native speakers of English don’t like using flashcards and urge their students not to use them. In my experience, these native speakers tend to recommend that learners simply use context to guess the meanings or that they just absorb new vocabulary from books, TV, movies or other sources. In my experience, such people very often fail to learn any language to a university level. Although using context to guess meaning is very important, most learners are not able to learn thousands of words simply through methods like these. Third, many monolingual native English speakers insist that their students only use English-English dictionaries. I have little patience with this. Although once we reach an advanced or superior level, we might use such dictionaries, for lower levels the best choice is a bilingual dictionary.

Once I have finished a chapter or some other part of the text, I will choose which of the highlighted words to learn. Often I will try to learn all the words, especially if I’ve chosen a text with not too many unknown words. I use flashcards that are 3 centimeters by 6 centimeters and that are made of stiff paper like that used to make business cards. Some people prefer to use larger cards, but I find that this size, although small, is easy to hold in my hands. I write the unknown words on the cards and then I organize them alphabetically. Next, I use a dictionary to find definitions and I write these on the cards. I know that the next point will sound foolishly simple, but it’s important. When you write the definition on the card, make sure you write it on the back of the card (English on one side, and your own language on the other) and also be sure to turn the card upside down. Having the words on one side written upside down with respect to the other will make it much easier to flip the card for learning and reviewing.

3 – What kind of information to include on the flashcards?

For learners of English, it will often be necessary to write the pronunciation of the word on the flash card. If you are right handed, you will probably be holding the cards in your right hand, so I suggest writing the English word in the center of the card and then writing the pronunciation in the bottom right corner. This way, you can hide the pronunciation with your right thumb and use it to help to guess and study the pronunciation.

It also makes sense to write irregular forms (especially for verbs), and for this I recommend also using the lower right corner. And for the small number of irregular plural nouns (child – children, ox – oxen, woman – women, etc), you can do the same.

Another kind of information to include is derivatives. For example, for the card with the word reason on it, you might also want to write reasonable and rational on the English side and then to give the definition of each on the back.

It can also be useful to include together words that you often confuse. For example, beginners often have trouble with kitchen and chicken. Putting both on the same side of one card can help you practice them and can help you remember that they’re different.

4 – Collocations are important, too

Learners should certainly also include collocations. A collocation is a fancy word for a group of words that often come together. Some of these might be phrasal verbs: get over, get across, break up, break through, come off, drag into, see off. Others can be phrase: have a good time, be on top of the situation, find a solution to the problem. It’s not possible to learn all of these, but when we’re making flashcards, we should probably include some collocations.

5 – Moving beyond the dictionary: finding useful phrases

A dictionary won’t have every phrase that we want to say, but a could source to find this is our extensive reading. When we are reading, many times we’ll see a phrase or a sentence and think, “I didn’t know this before, but I can guess the meaning and I really need to learn how to say this!” When I read, I underline these useful phrases with a green ink pen (green = “go forward” in my mind, so I use green since I want to be able to go forward with these phrases). For example, when I was studying Bengali, I didn’t know how to ask “What does this word mean?” but one day I saw a sentence in a Bengali book and I was able to use context to understand that sentence. I immediately underlined it in green and also made a flashcard so I could practice it.

6 – Going from the discrete to the holistic

So far, most of the things I have emphasized have been discrete skills or discrete pieces of knowledge. “Discrete” means “in small pieces”. Although important, we also have to practice more holistic kinds of language. “Holistic” means “in wholes, not in pieces”.

One way to do this is to make short sentences from the words we see on our flashcards. We shouldn’t always just memorize these words as discrete (isolated) items but should also use them holistically (to make sentences, to have conversations). It’s especially easy to do this with collocations, but we should also try to use individual vocabulary items in sentences.

And what next?

Learners will find that after they get about a thousand or more flashcards, they will have trouble organizing them. It will no longer be possible to review all of these cards each day, nor will it be effective. Many words won’t require daily review to be remembered. In a future blog, I’ll consider the issue of how to organize one’s flashcards. I’ve been using flashcards regularly since the 1980s and for at least half a dozen languages I have more than 5,000 flashcards (for each of these languages). I agree that organizing them and also using them to maintain one’s knowledge of vocabulary is a real challenge, but I think I have some useful ideas. But that will have to wait.

English Language Teaching and Larger Pursuits of Life

Critical Outlook, Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Writing

Indra Bahadur Ter

Far Western Development Region, Nepal

For decades we have been teaching the English language primarily as an end in itself. The question whether English should be taught as an end in itself or as a means to achieving larger pursuits of life has been a matter of constant debate among ELT scholars, language experts and language theorists. Equally mighty question is whether larger pursuits can be achieved only after gaining a proficient command of the English language, or any other language for that matter, or, the desired proficiency comes only after we engage in larger pursuits of life.

By larger pursuits of life I mean all those creative sorts of activities that demand either field-specific professional excellence or that bring happiness to our lives with a sense of well-being or euphoria which I take art and literature for preciseness. The latter sort of pursuits become imminent from the very idea that the chief end of everybody life is the pursuit of happiness. Undeniably, this type of happiness derives from self-actualization, the highest level of need in Maslow’s hierarchy, and art and literature are the best ways towards self-actualization.  In this article I shall attempt to establish a relationship between language command and these larger pursuits of life with special reference to the English language.

Field-specific professional excellence

In the past English was taught solely as a language of communication and was by and large used as a means of communicating with the world community, and its secondary application was for literary activities. However, within the last two decades, the world has undergone a vast transformation with its explosion of knowledge and English has pervaded our life and culture. The world has been anglicized, so to speak, and new types of professional needs have emerged. Now, the scope of the English language has broadened. In this changed context an ESL/ EFL teacher has now not only to deal with English and its grammar, linguistics, ELT but also there are a number of disciplines like philosophy, literature, anthropology, psychology, mass communication, journalism, and above all those registers of English that are used in an indeterminately large number of fields and situations, that most often pass over the heads of a majority of English teachers.  As a side note, English teachers need  to acquaint themselves with all those varieties of English used in different English speaking communities and different professional contexts so they can help their students deal with world realities in relation to English use.

English for Specific Purposes: English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is the English for professional needs of learners and requires field-specific knowledge of English. Why ESP? This question should be clear from the following anecdotes from my own life.

I had just passed Master’s in English when my spouse complained of abdomen pain during her last months of pregnancy and we visited a doctor, who noticing my flaunting of English, replied in English. He used medical register: “She has a minor cervical fissure. Miscarriage might result if we don’t resort to caesarian.” I didn’t have the faintest idea of what he said but I just uttered a faint “Yes”. So deplorably I wished I could have a dictionary handy then.

At another time I was invited to write a bank guarantee for an organization for a loan that would be sanctioned to the organization on their written request along with the collateral. I spent the whole day trying and re-trying and ended up with what looked like an abstract literature. Ah, it was a horrible experience.

As a matter of fact, some of us might aspire to write a proposal for an organization that might bring up ludicrous incomes to us; some of us might aspire to write an influential article for a newspaper, a film script, a dissertation, a legal document, an advert, or a book, for that matter. But our own English comes as a barrier when we proceed. We lack the knowledge and skills of field-specific register of English. In a world where knowledge is a measure of power and where English sells as a commodity, why can’t we sell our knowledge of English? Why in certain vacancy announcements where sound knowledge of English is a must, preference is given to other disciplines rather than English? Rarely have English language graduates got the posts like manager, project coordinator, executive officer, proposal writer, and the likes solely on the basis of their English skills. Why can’t we sell our English skills in larger world markets? It may be perhaps because we don’t study/ teach field-specific professional English that can in technical terms be called ESP. Certainly ESP is a lot different from General English.

So what? Teaching the English language as merely an end in itself is not the demand of time. The demand of the hour is teaching need-based English. For this, whole the programmes and curricula of English right from beginners’ level have to be re-looked and revised.

English for art and literature: a euphoric pursuit

After so much reading of the English language, grammar, linguistics, research articles, critical theories, newspapers, journals and so on and so forth, we should be prepared to create something of worth for the real world audience – a poem, a piece of fiction, an essay, a travelogue, or a book worth reading. Well, yes, we do really well when our audience is our students but our ability starts to answer when our audience is the literati from the world community. Many of us might even fail to interpret and appreciate a piece of art or literature written in the current trend, for we are still reading/writing structured literature of the romantic age and modern age. Facing postmodern literature is a challenge for us. If we cannot read and enjoy art and literature, we have no right to call ourselves connoisseurs of art and literature. Reading, appreciating and creating art and literature to cultivate a sense of well-being or euphoria is what I mean by “euphoric pursuit”. Art and literature are something that make our life meaningful and worth living, and there is no gainsaying the fact that these entities are the stairs that lift us towards self-realization and self-actualization. These pursuits should be at high end of ELT/ ELD.

However, the way we teach literature in English classes is no way better than spoon feeding – mere discussing the gist or summary of the literary text, dictating the summary or a stereotypical summary to them and getting them to learn the end-of-the-text question answers, which WILL only blunt their creative potentialities rather than sharpen them. When shall we encourage our students to read, interact with and appreciate the literary texts, making out their own enquiries into the text to distill their own interpretations of the text, and generate their own critical thinking and creative writing?

Welcome to Nelta Choutari: September 2013

Editorial

Editorial

Lal Bahadur Rana

(with support of Usha Kiran Wagle)

The status of the English language in Nepal to date is that of a language of international communication and medium of instruction in some schools, colleges and universities. Although it is being taught in one way or another over the last century, and although many people consider proficiency in English as a mark of educational excellence, it has not yet become the language of day to day communication.

The importance of English is rising in the society at large even beyond formal schooling. For instance, the civil service commission of Nepal recently updated its syllabuses to require applicants of officer level a test of English which carries a significant number of marks for proficiency in reading, writing, and grammar.

The increase in the value of English in the minds of the general public has to do with the fact that students who want to pursue higher education in science and technology, engineering, medical science, information technology, etc. need to have a sound knowledge of English. Even parents sending their children to government-funded schools want school management and teachers to switch from Nepali to English as a medium of instruction so that their children can pursue academic and professional careers with greater prospects. Even though the government doesn’t have a specific policy about the shift to English medium among public schools, district education offices, regional directorates, and department of education are approving or encouraging principals and head teachers to switch into English medium instruction. Often, these measures  are taken in order to ensure that the public schools have enough students to justify the schools’ existence and funding!

The above rise in the popularity of English medium has not, however, led to any significant updates in the methods of language teaching. English teachers go through the routine of learning about fancy theories, principles, methods, and strategies that appear and disappear in their lives like ripples of water on bulbule lake caused due to the wind in spring. However, somehow the grammar translation method seems to stay alive, like the  dubo grass that comes back even the most dry season. Truly speaking, we teachers have been teaching and teaching English but somehow our students seem to only learn English for show rather than becoming as fluent and capable as they should be after being formally taught for so many years during school and then some in college. This situation has perhaps to do with how teachers in schools and colleges consider their diary dearer than their lives, stand in front of a large number of students, and dictate what they have written in their diary. One often wonders what kind of language teaching this is. Is it the teacher who is practicing English or the students? Embarrassing as they may sound, such questions still remain a matter of concern in Nepalese ELT discourse.

School level syllabuses maintain that the English language should be taught using communicative method and aims to build up communicative competence among students. But to what extent are we teaching by using this method? Do students interact with each other in English when they come out of their classrooms? Even when they use English with other Nepali speakers of English, how authentic and proficient is their English? Learning English outside of real life situations, based almost exclusively on formal teaching in academic settings, doesn’t seem to be very effective.

Addressing both broader issues like the above and seeking to present specific ways to tackle them, the entries in this issue add to Choutari’s ongoing conversations about language teaching and learning critically.  Jagadish Paudel has highlighted the fact that language teachers should take local contexts into their considerations if they wish to be successful in teaching English in Nepal. He further argues that the ideas derived from the West may not necessarily be suitable for us because our contexts are markedly distinct. Secondly, Ashok Raj Khati reflects on Bal Krishna Sharma’s recent talk at Kathmandu University on the ‘critical’ in language teaching arguing that how his talk was beneficial and relevant to the audience in Nepalese context. Blending his reflections on online course and experience of using technology in the classroom, Maheswor Rijal suggests the audience to integrate technology with teaching for effective results through his third entry. Fourthly, Umes Shrestha shares how the Nepali learners create their own kind of English because of the developmental stages of learning language in Nepal illustrating ‘became’ largely. In the fifth article, Dipendra Khatri talks about the teachers’ perception and practices of dealing with homework to young learners in English classroom. Last but not the least; we like in the last issue of this blog-zine have shared a resource link useful for the readers, especially dissertation writers.

Here is the list of blog entries included in this issue, hyperlinked for navigation:

  1. Is There Any Best Approach, Method and Technique for ESL Classes? I Like all; I Like none, by Jagdish Paudel
  2. Reflecting on the Talk on the ‘Critical’ in Language Education, by Ashok Raj Khati
  3. Let’s Integrate Technology with Teaching, by Maheswor Rijal
  4. The Pragmatics ‘Became’, by Umes Shretha
  5. Teachers’ Perception and Practices on Dealing with Homework to Young Learners, by Dipendra Khatri
  6. Resource of the Month, by Choutari Editors

We hope that you will find the entries interesting and useful. But, by the way, we will only know that if you share your comments on what you read and like. Your comment will start new conversations as well as encourage the writers. You can also share these entries on your social networking sites. Beyond that, please also consider joining Choutari by sending  your own blog entry for the next issue. If you are interested in contributing, here is a list of what you might want to write about and here is an illustration of how you could approach the writing of your blog entry.

Thank you.

Happy Reading!

Lal Bahadur Rana

Editor, September Issue, NELTA Choutari

//

Is There Any Best Approach, Method and Technique for ESL Classes? I Like all; I Like none

Critical Outlook, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

                                                                                                                                                 Jagadish Paudel

Nothing is right, nothing is wrong; everything is right, everything is wrong.

Nothing is best, nothing is worst; everything is best, everything is worst.

One day, I asked my B. Ed. students, “Which is the best method for teaching English?” They quickly responded in a single voice that the communicative method (CM) is the best method. I remained silent for a while looking around the class.  All the students had the same answer. Even the students who did not respond seemed to agree in the same matter. Similarly, when I went to Bhajhang, Bajura, Doti, Dadeldhura for examination conduction and research work, I asked the same question to some English teachers there. They also answered that CM is the best method. Like them, I had the same understanding when I was a student, and before familiarizing myself with the concept of postmodernism and post-method pedagogy in ELT.

They do not seem to have postmodern mind. They were guided by the truth; rather than by a truth. They did not strive for potential perspectives and alternatives in ELT. They did not become critical rather became blind supporters. They viewed CM from BANA perspective. Postmodern mind believes that everything considerably varies according to contexts. In this connection, Tarnas (1993) writes, “There is an appreciation of the plasticity and constant change of reality and knowledge, a stress on the priority of concrete experience over fixed abstract principles, and a conviction that no single a priori thought system should govern belief or investigation.”

In this world, nothing is final, nothing is absolute and fixed; everything is relative and fallible. Postmodernism accepts multiples truths and realities in everything. The concept of postmodernism also applies in ELT. Many teachers and students are still unaware of this fact. Like in many spheres of life, innovations are also being explored in the field of ELT. Teachers and students should be familiar with the changing trends of ELT around the world. They should not be guided by the fixed ideas and values. This is the world of postmodernism; it is the world of options, possibilities, and alternatives. There are many options in every sector, for example, in education, media, communication, auto-mobile, mobiles, business, transportation, politics, manpower, politics, and fashion, etc. There is no hegemony of a single thing. The same applied in ELT. Postmodern pedagogy allows ELT to be flexible and contextual. It gives freedom to use teachers and students’ experiences, values, cultures. It also considers socio-economic status, political realities and local circumstances. Hence, we need to teach in local realities in which we find our values, cultures; rather than following others’ practices blindly. Teachers and students should keep abreast of the new trends and best practices of the world emerged in ELT, but act locally and contextually. Pertaining to it, Freeman (2008) has rightly remarked ‘think globally, act locally’.

In the past, ELT was virtually led by methodologists and experts. What they told was followed strictly by the teachers and students. The teaching learning activities which followed certain methods strictly would be counted as the good teaching. In the field of ELT, different methodologists have introduced different approaches, methods, techniques one after another rejecting and criticizing the previous ones and claiming theirs as the best ones. Over the last 100 years, the ELT professionals searched for a single, ideal method, generalizable across widely diverse student bodies around the globe. They vainly searched for the absolute method that would serve as the panacea in language teaching. However, they always failed to do so.  It is because they had wrong the assumption that they could find a universal method. As a matter of fact, searching a universal method is like peeling off an onion and never getting into its core.

During 1990s, the ELT professionals came to realize that no approach/method/technique can be ideal. Actually, all approaches, methods, techniques are context specific. They can be very effective, depending on a particular context, place, students, purpose, etc.  It is the context which determines how teaching and learning should take place. Hence, while teaching we should consider the contextual factors such as the place where teaching learning activities are taking place, the students and teachers, culture, time, available resources, socio-economic condition, purpose, motivation, etc. Teachers need to be able to use approaches, and methods flexibly and creatively based on their own judgments and experiences. They should look for alternatives, question the existing practices if they have doubts and explore their own practices that best befit in their contexts.

Going through the literature of language teaching, we find myriads of methods, approaches and techniques discussed by methodologists. Grammar translation method, direct method, audio-lingual method, communicative method, nativist approach, functional approach, oral structural situational approach, task-based approach, behaviorism, rationalism are to name but too few. All these have own importance in their own places. Most of these have well-established background and theory. Yet, they cannot be regarded as the best methods in all the places, for teaching all language items, and for all teachers and students. There are various views regarding the best way to teach a language. Prabhu (1990) writes:

…no single method is best for everyone, as there are important variations in the teaching context that influence what is best. The variations are of several kinds, relating to social situation (language policy, language environment, linguistic and cultural attitudes, economic and ideological factors, etc.), educational organisation (instructional objectives, constraints of time and resources, administrative efficiency, class-size, classroom ethos, etc.), teacher-related factors (status, training, belief, autonomy, skill, etc.), and learner-related factors (age, aspirations, previous learning experience, attitudes to learning, etc.). (p.162)

Regarding the best method, the prevalent notion is that if a method yields the best results in terms of learning outcomes that is the best method. Different methods are best in different teaching and learning contexts. A method which is regarded best in one context can be far removed from classroom reality, and become impractical in another context. Brown (1994, p. 15) maintains that “the best method is one which you have derived through your very own careful process of formulation, try-out, revision, and refinement.”  Likewise, Tarnas (ibid) writes: “One must try the new, experiment and explore, test against subjective and objective consequences, learn from one’s mistakes, take nothing for granted, treat all as provisional, assume no absolutes.”

Brown (ibid) says that different philosophical theories have appeared and disappeared in history, so have language teaching methods ‘waxed’ and ‘waned’ in popularity. Likewise, Harmer (2008, p. 48) writes: “Both             abstract theory and practical techniques have been debated,    have gone in and out of fashion, and have influenced what was and is included in classrooms and teaching materials.”

The above mentioned discussion implies that no approach or method or technique, etc. can be best or worst in its own right. It is the context which makes it effective or ineffective. None of them is universal.  Brown (ibid) mentions that no method can guarantee success, because every learner is unique, teacher is unique and every learner-teacher relationship is unique.

No single method can suffice to fulfill all the needs and expectations of all the learners at all times. If we talk in the context of Nepal, it is more complex. It is difficult to meet all the widely differing expectations held by individual students and too difficult to ensure that everyone learns by a single method. If we glance at most of the Nepalese ELT classrooms, we will find heterogeneous learners in terms of levels, competence, age, academic background, family background, economic background, mother tongue, personality, sex, language aptitude, learning style, culture, geography, etc. . Hence, it is a big challenge to teach ELT effectively and successfully by a single method. Hence, teacher needs to practice “enlightened” eclecticism. The teachers of English can use different approaches, methods, and techniques that can be suitable for their own classes. Therefore, some professionals started to speak death of the methods and the term ‘post-methods era’.

Richards and Rodgers (2002) have made some criticisms of approaches and methods.

 The top-down criticism

Almost all the methods typically prescribe for teachers what and how to teach; they fail to consider their potential application to practical situations. The role of the teacher is sidelined; his or her role is to understand the method and apply its principles appropriately. There is often little freedom for the teacher’s own personal initiative and teaching style.  Likewise, learners are sometimes viewed as the passive recipients of the method and must follow the prescribed exercises and activities strictly. But, today, it is commonly acknowledged that learners bring different learning styles and preferences to the learning process that they should be considered in the process of developing a teaching program, and that teaching methods must be flexible and adaptive to learners’ needs and interests.

Role of contextual factors

Pedagogical experts often propped up their approaches and methods as all-purpose solutions to teaching problems that can be applied all over the world and under any circumstance. That is to say, they regarded their approaches and methods as universal.   In the application of approaches and methods teachers ignored the context in which teaching and learning takes place, including the cultural context, the political context, the local institutional context, and the context constituted by the teachers and learners in their classroom.

The need for curriculum development processes

Curriculum planners view debates over teaching method as part of a broader set of educational planning decisions.  A careful examination of all available sources of knowledge, objectives, piloting of those methods and materials which are judged most likely to achieve the objectives which teachers agreed upon, the assessment of the work and objectives and feedback of all experience gained are to be taken into account in the process of curriculum development processes (Nicholls and Nicholls, 1972 as cited in Richards and Rodgers, 2002, p.248). Choice of teaching method cannot, therefore, be determined in isolation from other planning and implementation practices.

Lack of research basis

Approaches and methods are often based on the assumptions, claims, and assertions, without research evidence, so as to have the understanding of second language learning process. There is lack of clear evidence to be believed. Assumption cannot always be true in all contexts. Most of the approaches and methods are not empirically tested. Hence, there is the need of research over these approaches and methods.

Similarity of classroom practices

It is very difficult for teachers to apply approaches and methods in the ways that precisely mirror the underlying principles of the method. Theory and practice are not consistent with each other.

For Brown (1994) language teaching and learning should be “a principled approach” that is, having a finite number of general research-based principles on which classroom practice is grounded. He has mentioned the twelve principles, for example, automaticity, meaningful learning, the anticipation of reward, intrinsic motivation, strategic investment, language ego, self-confidence, risk taking, the language-culture connection, the native language effect, inter-language and communicative competence. This principled approach is oriented to diagnose the needs of students, to treat the students with successful pedagogical techniques and to assess the outcome of those treatments. For him, a teacher has to be engaged in diagnosing their learners’ needs, offer treatment as per the needs and assigning the effectiveness of their own practices.

Conclusion

To conclude, we can say that all approaches, methods and techniques cannot work in all contexts. We should not take them for granted. We should raise vital questions if we have some doubts and adapt them as per our contexts instead. Therefore, we should remake, reset, rethink, revisit, and reinvent the teaching learning activities for our lessons ourselves.

Author:

Mr. Paudel is a teaching assistant at Dandeldhura Campus ,Dandeldhura and he has been teaching English for Nepalese learners of English over the last seven years.                     

REFERENCE

Brown, H. D. (1994a). Principles of language learning and teaching. London: Prentice Hall.

                ___(2002). English language teaching in the “Post-method” Era: toward     better diagnosis, treatment, and assessment. In Richards and Renandya

(eds.). Methodology in language teaching. Cambridge: CUP.

Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English language teaching. London: Longman.

                   (2008). How to teach English. London: Longman.

Prabhu, N. S. (1990). There is no best method- why? TESOL Quarterly Journal.

Richards, J. C. and W. A., Renandya (eds.) (2010). Methodology in language teaching. Cambridge: CUP.

Trana, R. (1993). The Passion of the western mind: Understanding the ideas that have shaped our ideas. Random House Publishing Group

Reflecting on the Talk on the ‘Critical’ in Language Education

Critical Outlook, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

Ashok Raj Khati

I attended a guest lecture on The ‘Critical’ in Language Education delivered by Bal Krishna Sharma on the 3rd of July 2013 at the School of Education, Kathmandu University. Bal Krishna is a one of the past editors of the Journal of NELTA and a doctoral candidate in applied linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA. There were 24 students of MPhil in English Language Education. In this brief reflective essay, I am going to share some key points of the lecture and discuss how the ‘critical’ aspect of language education is an important for language teachers and researchers.

I had come across the term ‘critical’ many times during different courses in MPhil and discourses of English language education; however the talk made me broaden my perspective particularly on how we can introduce ‘criticality’ in the classroom in Nepalese ELT settings. Before the class, he had assigned us to read an article on ‘the practicality and relevance of second language critical pedagogy’ by Graham Crookes (2009) so that we could have better perspective on the topic and better participated in the talk session. I found that the article (see appendix)  addresses eight different areas including EFL critical pedagogy and it also highlights the practical relevance of critical pedagogies of second language (L2) in several areas. This write up is very relevant and useful to see the practicality of critical pedagogy in EFL or ESL classroom.

The aim of his talk session was to introduce the ‘critical’ in language pedagogy. Nevertheless, his talk did not only introduce the term ‘critical’ but also illustrated with examples giving practical insights on how it can be integrated into language education. Bal Krishna’s talk mainly focused on four kinds of the ‘critical’ in language pedagogy. They were critical discourse analysis, critical pedagogy, critical language awareness and critical literacy organized together in the talk. He first presented the general overview of such terms and then the examples. Each of them contained an assignment or project work for the audience. Firstly, critical discourse analysis (CDA) takes place through an analysis of how power and inequality constructed through different discourse like naturally occurring interactions (e.g. classroom), photographs, images, media (movies, newspapers and documentaries), websites, textbooks, policy documents, etc. We critically observed the cultural and authenticity aspect in some examples of English textbooks. Finally, we attempted to explore possible critical discourse analysis through a list of assignments given as follows:

  • Collecting naturally occurring interaction data in a language classroom and analyze how the teacher and the fellow classmates treat a stuttering student.
  • Analysing how professional roles are represented in terms of gender in English textbooks of Grade 9 and 10.
  • Analysing how ‘Nepali’ culture is constructed in English textbooks.
  • Critically analyzing how VP Paramanda Jha’s oath in Hindi is constructed by media.

It was an exciting discussion in the sense that the instances taken in the talk were of Nepalese context.

Secondly, Bal Krishna discussed critical pedagogy. He defined, following Freire (1972), Giroux (1981) and Apple (1982), critical pedagogy is primarily concerned with critiquing existing educational institutions and practices, and subsequently transforming both education and society. I came to know that critical pedagogy has several names like radical pedagogy, feminist pedagogy, pedagogy of possibility, pedagogy of empowerment and transformative pedagogy. I understood that Social Responsibility Interest Section in TESOL and Global Issues Specific Interest Group in IATEFL are address the concerns of critical pedagogy. I realized that there are two important aspects of critical pedagogy—Give students voice and Critical analysis skills. At the end of the discussion on ‘critical pedagogy’, he introduced an example of the Tamang Project entitled ‘Privileging Indigenous Knowledges: Empowering Multilingual Education in Nepal’ led by two Nepalese and a foreign researchers. The major focuses of the project are on:

–          herbal medicines and healing practices,

–          traditional and modern knowledge and skills,

–          History, numerical systems, weights and measures,

–          Relations, belief systems and practices and

–          Life rituals, feasts and festivals, songs, lyrics and poems.

Thirdly, in his presentation he defined critical language awareness as it refers to importance of ‘noticing’, applicable to marginalized language speakers and it argues to deconstruct the standard language ideology. It covers dialect awareness, non-standard language awareness, pidgin and creole awareness native/heritage language awareness (think of internal migrants). The following assignment was given at the end.

–          Develop a lesson or activities which ask all of the students to discuss and present on their languages and cultures and how they make use of their languages in their lives, both in and out of school. The students can bring in an artifact from home which represents their home language(s)/culture(s), and they can be encouraged to teach the class some expressions in their home language. The Tharu language in Chitwan, for example. The students should also be encouraged to work with their parents.

I found the discussion on critical literacy was more useful from the perspective of global citizenship. I was highly interested in the issue. We came to know that critical literacy as an educational practice that focuses on the relationship between language, social practices, citizenship, intercultural relations and global/local issues, with several implications for our understanding of language, our pedagogical practices and the role of teachers. I occasionally used issue-based teaching in my class but came to know this time that it was critical literacy. To teach life skills to the learners through critical literacy was quite convincing to me. The inspiring examples for critical literacy like makingsmall scale interventions within the existing institutional constraints (Shin and Crookes, 2005), raising students’ consciousness on matters relevant to their lives (Konoeda and Watanabe, 2008) and connecting ESL pedagogical practices to issues of power, equity, and social justice (Ajayi, 2008) added value to the discussion.

The assignments based on different ‘critical’ in language pedagogy were so useful on the part of the students since they worked as clue to prepare theses, design project work, develop a lesson plan or activity and organize a workshop from critical perspective. Besides, I found his talk very relevant to Nepalese context where there is a need to look into such issues and bring a change in traditional chain of learning. It has really enabled all of us who attended the talk and made us really thoughtful on such issues with reference to multilingual context of Nepal. Following the talk, we some of our friends had larger discussion and interaction realising our concern to work together for this. I will largely incorporate such issues at different professional avenues in the days to come.

Before he concluded his two-hour talk, he shared with the audience his research project and opened the floor for question answer session.  At the end of the session Associate Prof. Laxman Gnawali, Kathmandu University, summarized the talk and appreciated Mr. Bal Krishna Sharma for his contribution to the M.Phil in ELE program of Kathmandu University.

Author:

Mr. Khati is a life member of NELTA and currently pursuing his MPhil in ELE from Kathmandu University, Nepal.

APPENDIX

Here is the pdf version of Mr. Sharma’s presentation slides and the article by Crookes (2009).

1. Critical at KU for Choutari

2. Crookes, critical pedagogy

Let’s Integrate Technology with Teaching

Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teaching Tips

Maheshwor Rijal

Technology has affected all the aspects of our life and pedagogy is not an exception. The use of technology in teaching English as second or foreign language (ESL/EFL) has an immense value. Before I conclude this blog entry with the importance of technology in ESL or EFL classroom suggesting the integration of technology into pedagogy, I will share my reflections on the online teacher training course offered by an American University (I have recently attended) and experience of integrating technology into pedagogy. I believe such sharing based on both the reflection and the experience of learning and using technology in the classroom through this blog entry will be worthwhile motivating the readers especially the teachers to introduce and integrate technology in the classroom for effective teaching learning activities.

Reflection on Online Teacher Training Course

A couple of months ago, I attended an online teacher training course titled Building Teaching Skills through the Interactive Web’ offered by the University of Oregon, USA.

I spent altogether 10 weeks for this course, which gave me lots of inputs to use technology into the classroom. The course was designed so systematic and practical in the sense that I had to do lots of assignments. Creating professional blog, nicenet and wiki classroom were the most useful tasks assigned to me. As a result, this web skill course enhanced me searching for innovative ideas.

First, I have bookmarked useful websites in my delicious bookmarking page. Like the name of the host page, this which encompasses the bookmarks of useful websites, offers really delicious tips for teaching and learning. Then, I created my blog on blogger, where I have shared my ideas, experience, reflections and learning. I found that using blog is an effective means for sharing ideas and professional development. Nik Peachey, freelance learning technology consultant, trainer and writer has developed learning technology blog (click here) which combines video tutorial with pedagogical suggestions to help teachers exploit free web based technologies. Likewise, Peachey (2011) says, this blog and also this are useful blogs for the teachers’ professional development.  I have used them and found very much useful for enhancing my professional career as Yadav (2011) argues that blogging is a helpful technique supporting the professional development of English language teachers largely through collaborative learning. He further adds that the blogging helps in building networks among English language teachers and promoting professional dialogues. Using technology in learning was a great opportunity for me to share experiences, knowledge, thoughts or plans with teachers of the same interest around the globe.

The use of nicenet is equally useful for organizing online English project which helps to run parallel to face to face tutorials.  This is all about virtual English classroom. This web tool is useful for organizing interactions among the participants around the globe, link sharing, uploading information, sending the personal message to tutors and others. Learning technology for teaching and experience of integrating technology into teaching has realised me the fact that I am in novice stage and I need to update myself with the changing need of technologies as per the demand of the time.

My experience of integrating technology with teaching

It was difficult for me to introduce technology in the classroom because there was no internet connection and lack of computer in the school. However, I used my own laptop without internet connection in the class for teaching and learning. I had already figured out how I could incorporate it into my lessons and it was—listening activities. First I connected speakers with my laptop and then played the audio materials related with lesson, which I had already downloaded at home. I found the students really enjoyed my lesson which was different from previous times. When asked them what they had learned, majority of them replied the correct pronunciation. They further added that they felt difficult to listen to the sound but later they easily understood. After I got back from the class, I downloaded more different listening activities, authentic speeches, and sometimes captured radio programs using internet at home. For example, I have used this website, as it consists of different communicative exercises and these were helpful for making the classroom more interactive and recreational.  Moreover, I have downloaded and used different games, riddles with the help of internet to make my teaching more interesting.

After I have used technology into the classroom, I found that students’ motivation and interest has increased in a greater amount, making a difference when compared to the classroom without technology. Now I realised that it is useful for revealing the great potentiality of the students and bringing a variety of changes.

Importance of technology in the classroom

Using technology in the classroom does not only associate with the PowerPoint presentation but also the use of different web tools for teaching and learning four language skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing. The use of technology shows the teaching and learning is not only limited within the periphery of the classroom but the teacher can do many more beyond the classroom using blog, nicenet, and wiki class. As a result, students can have access to learn beyond the class with the use of different web tools and the same set of tools can make the language classroom more interesting and lively. Such activities will certainly make the classroom activities fun and interaction oriented. My experience and learning show that these stuffs in the EFL classroom are also helpful for developing professionalism on the part of teacher. To conclude, the use of technology in the classroom opens the windows to access the free and open treasure of vast and worldwide knowledge.

Bill Gates says, “Technology is just a tool, in terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important”. This is age of networking and this is possible by connecting with virtual world. The teacher development is an ongoing process through networking. For this, the use of nicenet, blogging and creating wiki class will certainly have enormous effect for making classroom interactive and bringing synergic effects. By using this, you can post the course information, different assignments and hyperlinks. Moreover, such kinds of web tools are helpful in establishing stimulating environment.  This also provides access to authentic learning materials and considerable amount of exposure to a wide variety of native sounds.

The following sites will be helpful for the teacher to make teaching and learning more interactive:

We need to start doing something different, new and extra through the use of new web tools before it is too delay. Now, it is the time to believe in technology, which is today’s reality.

However, using web technology in the EFL classroom particularly, in remote public school in Nepal is not feasible due to lack of availability of technologies and facilities like electricity, internet access, computer, and other resources and infrastructure required. And, the places where there is such access and availability have challenges like illiterate teachers in terms of knowledge and skills to use technology and reluctance to adopt and adapt modern teaching techniques. Fullan (1991, as cited in Maggioli, 2004) opines that schools are facing problems and challenges because of the “fragmentation, overload and incoherence resulting from the uncritical acceptance of too many different innovations”.

Conclusion

The above sections of this blog entry suggest that there are both opportunities and challenges ahead while integrating technology with pedagogy. Maggioli (2004) adds that language teaching profession is faced with accountability issues that call for improved teacher development as means of improving student learning.  While integrating technology in the classroom, teachers ask themselves key five questions for professional development and this will be useful for implementing any new ideas in the classroom.

1. What am I doing?

2. Why am I doing it in this way?

3. What impact is it having on learners?

4. How might I do things differently?

5. If I did things differently, what impact might it have on learners? (Nolan and Hoover as cited in Maggioli, 2004)

The journey of thousand miles starts from a single foot. There is a need to change the traditional methods of teaching with integrating with technology. The curriculum developer, subject expert and others concerned need to introduce and integrate technology into the course of study for B. Ed. and M.Ed. degree. And such integration should be included in pre-service, in-service and refresher training modules too.

We can bring avenue of progressive change in Nepalese ELT and this is only possible when we have passion to update ourselves adopting and adapting modern global trends. We are not only the teachers but also change makers in ELT. Let’s integrate technology with teaching!

Author:

Mr. Rijal is pursuing his M. Ed. in ELT at Kathmandu University, Nepal.

REFERENCE:

Maggioli, G.D. (2004) Teacher centered professional development. ASCD: USA

Peachey (2011) A checklist of digital skills for teachers and trainers. The Teacher Trainer, Vol. 25, No. 1: A Pilgrims Publication ISSN:0951-7626

Yadav, P.K. (2011) Blogging as a Means of Professional development for ELT professionals. Journal of NELTA: Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association (NELTA) ISSN: 2091-0487

The Pragmatics ‘Became’

Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

Umes Shrestha

 

This happened in the first few months of my teaching career at a private boarding school in Lalitpur. It was one of the terminal exams in the school. I had finished handing out the answer sheets to the students, and was waiting for the bell to ring so that I could hand out the question papers. But, somehow there was no ring and one of the students from class 10 said, “Time became already”.

“What!!!” I exclaimed.

He said it again in a matter-of-fact-ly way, “Time became”.

It was the first time I’ve heard someone say that. At that time, I thought that it was his idiosyncrasy, this expression was his exclusive error. But I soon realized that the expression “time became” along with late became, right became, wrong became, homework became and countless of other became-expressions were quite common among the students and even the teachers in my school.

And once I was aware of this phenomenon, these became-expressions began to hit my ears from all directions. From the primary classrooms to the secondary ones. From the playground to the library. Became, I realized, was omnipresent in the school.

It was an epidemic. That’s what I initially labeled it as. I shouted out at the students. You can’t say ‘time became’. I corrected them. It’s not ‘late became’, it should be ‘I’m getting late’ or ‘It is getting late’. There was no respite, though. I started correcting their numerous other expressions as well. I made them write down the correct expressions. 20 times each. I made them speak aloud those expressions. 10 times each. I warned them. I threatened them. I preached them. But all in vain.

A week later, the students were back to their original English. Inside the classroom, they tried to be aware of my presence and my frown. Outside the classroom, they were back to their original self. Carefree. Spontaneous. Happy. It was like, they just didn’t give a hoot about the correctness of English language.

So, what’s unique with this “became-epidemic”?

The meaning of become/became usually translates to बन्नु [bannu] or हुनु (भयो) [hunu / bhayo] in Nepali. The first usage of ‘become’ as ‘बन्नु’ is very literal, as in:

Hari became a doctor.
हरी डाक्टर बन्यो।
[Hari doctor banyo]

However, the literal meaning बन्नु oftentimes gets morphed into हुनु (and the past form भयो) with the usages like:

Hari became first in the exam.

हरी जाँचमा फस्ट भयो।
[Hari jaanch ma first bhayo]

Or, here’s a context where भयो translates so smoothly into became. The bell has just gone off signaling the end of the class. The teacher is collecting papers from the students. One of the students has not finished writing it yet. And, the teacher asks, “Became?” (भयो ?) [bhayo?] The student says,

“Not became” (भएको छैन।) [bhayeko chhaina].

Hence because of this interference or influence of become’s Nepali meaning, students find it easier to make expressions like late became, wrong became, problem became and homework became. It’s short. It’s understandable. And, the best thing, it works among their context.

There are several other expressions as well, which have become regular among my students. One is ending a sentence with ‘and’, as in:

Student 1: (He wants to copy the answer.) Give your copy.

Student 2: Haven’t finished and.

This usage of ‘and’ to end a sentence is just as rampant as the usage of ‘became’. ‘Stop pushing and’ or ‘I am not coming and’ or ‘Not became and’.

The usual meaning of ‘and’ as a conjunction is (र) [ra] in Nepali, but students use it as a discourse marker to mean (अनी) [ani]. They translate the Nepali structure, for instance:

सकेकै छैन अनी [sakekai chhaina ani] into ‘Not finished and’.

This interesting phenomenon got me into thinking a lot. I turned the pages of Second Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics books. I discussed about this with my teachers and friends. I googled around if this type of sentence structures were normal in other ESL communities as well. I came to realize that it was a normal phenomenon among the learners of a second or foreign language. It also got me thinking that my initial reaction and judgment was pretty immature and naïve. I was rude. And I was sarcastic to the students.

So this question – why do the students speak English in so Nepali way? – keeps prickling my brain. I have stopped correcting the students. I feel more curious and more confused, but I don’t get angry or frustrated anymore. These days, I just try to make my students aware of these ‘became-expressions’. But I don’t overtly correct them, hoping that one day they will pick up the appropriate expression on their own.

I am thankful to the became-expressions as they have helped me understand a part of second language learning. They have helped me gain insights and amend my teaching philosophy. My mission in my earlier days of teaching English was – not to speak Nepali at all in the classroom. Now, I don’t teach English without throwing in few Nepali expressions whenever I feel it aids the learning of my students.

Author:

Mr. Shrestha is a blogger who blogs at http://latebecame.wordpress.com and podcasts at http://latebecame.podomatic.com

 

Teachers’ Perception and Practices on Dealing with Homework to Young Learners

Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teaching Tips

Dipendra Kumar Khatri

Homework! Oh, homework!

I hate you! You stink!

I wish I could wash you away in the sink,

If only bomb would explode you to bits

 

–By Jack Prelutsky

In the above stanza, the poet Jack Prelutsky speaks of the feelings and attitudes of young learners towards homework. Many a time homework has become a cause of corporal punishment in many schools of Nepal. It has destroyed students’ fun, laughter, games, confidence, etc.  It embittered parents- children relationship, teacher- student relationship, etc. It has appeared as a villain for young learners and does not seem to disappear until a  foreseeable period of time. Teachers, on the other hand, like to assign homework with a hope that learners better learn the things they have taught.  In this connection, I like to share how teachers perceive and practice homework.

I, as the training co-coordinator NELTA Surkhet, facilitated a session on ‘Dealing with Homework in Primary Level’. The main objectives of the presentation was to find out the participants’ perceptions and practices on homework and share how teachers deal with different issues on homework.

In the sharing session, most of the teachers reported that they would always give homework to their students with a view to engaging them in learning at home so that they could consolidate what they had studied at school. They also shared that most of the teachers assign writing or reading or project work as homework. The teachers from the private schools said that they would give a lot of homework, and spend some twenty to thirty minutes to correct it.

The teachers from public schools shared that they were assigning homework ‘sometimes’; not every day; whereas the teachers from private schools shared that they were assigning homework ‘everyday’ and they would give a lot of homework if there is long vacation.

All the teachers shared their bitter experiences of  hearing that voice of students as the responses for not doing homework. Despite their expectations, often teachers have to listen to their students speak out the following utterances:

Sir, my brother tears my notebook.

Sir , yesterday I was absent’

Sir, I had gone to my mamaghar.

Sir, another teacher check it.

There was a lot of homework yesterday.

Sir, I asked father but father did not learn about it.

I only copy it, I do half only.

Sir, it was difficult.’ No idea.

I have lots of work in home.  ‘I have no time to do.’

‘I did not copy the homework.  You rubbed out the questions so fast.’

Sir, I forgot my copy.

‘Sir, I have new copy today.’

I forgot to keep in my bag.

I lost homework copy, sir

Sir, you no give me happy. So I have don’t write.’

Yesterday, I didn’t come to school.

Sir, my mother did not buy copy today.

‘I lost my English book.’

I have not a pen.

Sir, I am sick.

Sir, you check yesterday, I no do today.

‘Sir, you don’t find me very good.’

Some students just stand up still and remain silent; they do not speak but seem to have been terrified. Their face looks gloomy. They do not respond verbally. Those were the common verbal and non-verbal responses to the teachers who check homework. I believe that such responses certainly make both students and teachers feel bad and degrade their zeal for learning and teaching respectively.

Strategies to deal with homework

The teachers shared that they are using many types of strategies to deal with homework effectively.  Some of them are: asking the students for not doing homework, asking parents to come to school, asking learners to do the tasks while the teacher is checking other students’ homework, etc. Some of the teachers even reported that they would get angry when they do not find suitable reasons for not doing homework.

Harmer (2008) advises teachers to ask the students’ interest and try to set homework which are relevant to them; not only in terms of their interests but also in terms of what they are studying. The teachers tend to assign homework related to what the students are studying. They never consider their interests. Similarly, they are willing to contact guardians to conform the reason for not doing homework by their children.

The teachers do not visit the guardians to encourage their children who keep doing homework regularly. They do not telephone the guardians whose children do not have the problem of homework, but they telephone those guardians whose children have the problem of doing homework. Most of such parents also cannot support their children in doing homework. Therefore, not only students but also parents feel embarrassed for being called in the school just to listen to the same thing: Your child does not do homework.

All the teachers shared that they were giving the exercise or lesson of the book as the homework.  To write, read and memorize. They generally do not make it fun i.e. give varied types of work; not only the questions from the book but also some funny tasks. Students want to be involved not only in the routined tasks, but also some serious things or some slightly crazy tasks. The homework can be given in envelops or sent them in e-mails jut to make them feel like doing homework.

The private school teachers said that they would use homework diary to keep record of homework. But it was not used by public school teachers. The teachers in Surkhet valley did not give extra-activities as the homework. They gave homework from books only. They gave tasks orally or in written form face to face; not in envelops and e-mails. The teachers do not give the individual (solo) work, but only one type of task to the whole class.

The teachers form private schools shared that their first duty entering into the class is to check the homework. So they check the students’ homework very often. They do not use pair or student checking strategy. A teacher checked all the students’ homework. They spend as many as thirty minutes for correcting homework. How long do they actually teach!  They did not have sufficient time to check properly with constructive feedbacks. As a result sometimes guardians complain their strategies, sometimes the students themselves question to their teachers. The teachers from the public schools often face the problem while checking the homework because of the large no of students in a class.

Teachers do not forget assigning homework, because they believe that if students do homework, they have learned well. They are overwhelmed by the right responses of their students and keep correcting assignments, no matter how long they are.

The teachers only respect the right answers in the students’ homework, which is also not so good practice, because from the students’ mistakes or errors they can notice how much they have learned and how much they need to help them learn. They can make their further plans in such a way that they can significantly decrease the number of errors to be committed by their students.

Generally, the teachers do not think how they can make post-homework productive. They rarely manage the class where the students correct their mistakes and learn from one another. The teachers  have not  been successful to provide their learners with opportunities to get students to correct each other’s homework in supportive and cooperative way.

It was also shared that the teachers form public as well as private schools took many trainings that helped them to create home wok friendly environment i. e. if the students are not doing homework, the teachers will help them do at school during the class time. They were not using the punishment as the strategy to deal with homework. They also mention  that  they were in favor of finding out reasons why their students do not do homework and act accordingly.

Conclusion

In conclusion,  homework seems to be an integral part of teaching and learning activity from teachers’ perspective. The teachers who teach to young learners should particularly think of some ideas of making homework a fun activity and should not make learners feel any kind of burden, which can have a lot of repercussions on intellectual, emotional, social, etc. aspects of youngsters.

Author:

Mr. Khatri is a life member of NELTA and a Teaching Assistant at Surkhet Campus (Education) and he has been teaching English at the campus over the last four years.

REFERENCE

Harmer, J. (2008). How to teach English. London: Pearson Longman.

Resource of the Month

ELT Resource

Based on the positive feedback and suggestion from our readers to share a useful resource link every month, we have started a regular post titled “Resource of the Month” from August 2013. For the resource of this month, we are sharing with you a good source from the south Asian region: Pakistan. The link below is an open access site where you can find e-copies of dissertations as maintained by Pakistan Research Repository. You can browse the pages based on the year of publication or based on the subject as you like. Using keywords for the search phrase is another option.  We hope those of you who are at the dissertation stage particularly will find this resource helpful. The link is:

http://eprints.hec.gov.pk/view/subjects/b5L.html

Acknowledgements: We’d like to thank Madhav Kafle, one of our Choutari team members for researching the resource and sharing with the readers for this month.

-Eds.

Welcome to NeltaChoutari: August 2013

Editorial

Editorial

Praveen Kumar Yadav
(with kind support from Madhav Kafle)

Welcome again! With the publication of July Issue 2013, the new editorial team of NeltaChoutari is completing its first round of publication. We tried our best, and we know that we can do better–with your participation and encouragement.

Most of the issues in this round leaned toward being special issues. After the old and new team produced a joint issue in January, in February, we focused on seeking a theory-practice interface in Nepalese ELT; March was a conference special; April issue advocated for the integration of creative writing in ELT; May issue mainly focused on teacher’s perspectives on scholarly ideas;  June issue stretched from ELT practitioners’ reflection on their achievement to action research; and July issue featured topics on local pedagogies especially in multilingual settings.

As most readers already know, this is a friendly and unofficial blog started by a group of NELTA scholars and now run by a new group of ELT professionals at home and abroad. Inspired by and willing to work in the same direction of the vision of NELTA to promote professional conversation and build local scholarship, we strive to encourage fellow ELT practitioners from across the country (and often the world) to share their ideas. There may be no clear distinction between local and global, ours and others, even practical and theoretical when it comes to scholarship; but we do want to share thoughts about what we actually do as teachers and scholars in our own contexts, tackling our own challenges, pursuing our own needs. Thus, there is a great need for more pedagogical and scholarly discussions in Nepal. We want fellow teachers/scholars at home and our friends and well-wishers abroad to recognize and join hands in addressing this need. Obviously, we don’t have an agenda, not even a theoretical one. That is why, as we have tried to articulate in some new resources that we’re publishing with this issue, that members of the community can contribute whatever they have expertise or interest in, within a broad framework for what to write about and using a set of general guidelines for how to write for this forum.

As we move forward, we ask you again to contribute to the professional mission by contributing to this forum as a reader, writer, and active participant of the conversations that follow the publication of each issue. You are the secret of the blog’s great success, and together we can continue to make a difference, one comment or blog post at a time.

This issue focuses on teachers’ narratives followed by some very useful resources for our contributors. Chura Bahadur Khadka and Angel Lin highlight the importance of interaction in EFL contexts like Nepal. Suman Laudari shares thoughts about his professional history from being a novice to a better teacher. Dipendra Kanu tells us an unforgettable teaching moment when he was successful in teaching a story very effectively and comprehensively with the use of audio visual aids in the classroom. Sharing her teacher’s style of teaching in a brief entry, Jyoti Tiwari, shows how professional and skilled teachers can teach the students effectively in spite of the lack of resources in our schools. The last piece in this set is an open access source link where you can find sample theses for ELT scholarship in general and research activities in particular.

Then there is something special that we want to share with our readers who would like to contribute their own blog posts for Choutari. We have been trying to gradually implement some general guidelines so that blog entries read like blog entries. So, in addition to the general guidelines that we used to have, we have now added two new pages. The first page, “What to Write,” tries to answer a frequent question that we read from potential contributors. Using/linking examples from past issues, this page describes different kinds of blog entries that you can write for Choutari. The second page, “How to Write,” practically illustrates the general guidelines for writing blog entries by using an example. Based on a legacy from past editors, we want to further develop ways to support writers with how to write effectively; we also want to ask more experienced writers to consider the audience, genre, and context when writing for this blog.

Here is a list of the topics hyperlinked for navigating the blog entries:

  1. Interaction in English language classrooms to enhance students’ language learning, by Chura Bahadur Khadka and Angel Lin
  2. My journey from a Novice to Better Teacher, by Suman Laudari
  3. An Unforgettable Teaching Technique, by Dipendra Kanu
  4. An effective teaching through a student’s eyes, by Jyoti Tiwari
  5. Resources for Researchers, (courtesy of Bal Krishna Sharma)
  6. What to Write for Choutari (Choutari Editors)
  7. How to Write Blog Entries for Choutari (Choutari Editors)

Please share what you read and like. Please leave comments to encourage writers. Please join the conversation by writing new entries for future issues of Choutari.

Thank you.

Praveen

Interaction in English language classrooms to enhance students’ language learning

Creativity, ELT Resource, English as a Global Language, Miscellaneous, Teaching Tips

Chura Bahadur Thapa & Angel M. Y. Lin *

Introduction

EFL contexts like Nepal seldom provide students with opportunities for authentic communication in English. Therefore, deliberate ‘interaction in the classrooms’ is emerging as one of the leading conventions to enhance the students’ linguistic resources as well as equipping them with appropriate skills for communication. The major intent of this entry is to share a teacher’s insider experiences of developing interactions in an ESL classroom in Hong Kong while fully recognizing that the contextual differences between Hong Kong and Nepal will necessitate teachers’ own creative adaptation or re-invention of whatever tips shared from elsewhere. We shall, first of all, present the concept of interaction from sociocultural perspectives and discuss various challenges for the front-line EFL teachers to plan and implement lessons that incorporate interactions in ESL or EFL classrooms. Then, insider experiences of the first author of this entry in overcoming those challenges are shared. Assuming that the textbooks and teaching materials play a vital role to promote and facilitate the interactions in classrooms, a sample activity designed for the Secondary Two (Class 8) ESL students in Hong Kong is also included and discussed.

Interaction in language classrooms

Classroom interaction has been considered one of the most important pedagogical research topics in language classrooms in recent decades, mostly due to the influence of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Vygotskian sociocultural theory (Hall & Walsh, 2002) views the act of language learning as a social activity in which children build their knowledge through the help and scaffolding of more knowledgeable peers or teachers. Interactions in language classrooms are important social activities for students through which they not only construct knowledge, but also build confidence and identity as competent language users (Luk & Lin, 2007). In an in-depth ethnographic study of teacher-student interactions in Hong Kong, Luk and Lin (2007) found out that students develop multiple identities through their classroom interactions with their language teachers. Although the study took place in an ESL classroom where native English language teachers are available, Luk and Lin (2007:188) present a telling story about how students negotiate identity and cultural resources, which are “translated into non-institutionally sanctioned language practices and identities”. Perhaps, the social knowledge students bring into the classrooms might be those “non-institutional language practices”, which schools and teachers are supposed to build on in order to enhance their learning.

Interaction in the classroom refers to the conversation between teachers and students, as well as among the students, in which active participation and learning of the students becomes vital. Conversations are part of the sociocultural activities through which students construct knowledge collaboratively. Conversations between and among various parties in the classroom have been referred to as educational talk (Mercer and Dawes, 2008) or “exploratory talk” and “presentational talk” (Barnes, 2008:5). Presentational talk is the one-way lecture conducted by the teachers in the classroom, mostly featured in Nepalese EFL contexts, which contributes little to encouraging and engaging students in a communicative dialogue. Exploratory talk is a purposeful conversation, often deliberately designed by teachers, which provide opportunities to students to engage in “hesitant, broken, and full of deadend” conversations enabling them to “try out new ideas, to hear how they sound, to see what others make of them, to arrange information and ideas into different patterns” (Barnes, 2008:5). Given the limited linguistic resources the EFL students possess in their school years in EFL contexts like Nepal, these hesitant, broken and deadend conversations could be developed into spontaneous conversational skills. When students engage in interactions, they produce “symmetric dialogic context” (Mercer & Dawes, 2008:66) where everyone can participate, get respected and get the decisions made jointly. Students’ participation in interactions, therefore, can help them enrich their linguistic resources and build their confidence to communicate with others in English.

Designing interaction: challenges and ways ahead

When I started teaching English in a Hong Kong school, I noticed that students in Hong Kong like to talk a lot. These talks are often characterized as responses to the multiple stimuli such as various gadgets and social media. To realize the importance of students’ talks in their knowledge building was a paradigm shift in me, as my high school days in Nepal still remind me of the very quiet classrooms where often only the teachers talked. The process of designing lessons with meaningful interactions in my ESL classroom in Hong Kong posed several challenges such as incorporating various forms of interactions, achieving the lesson goals through such interactions, participation of students in meaningful interactions, and making sure that all the students engage in conversations and learn from the teachers as well as from themselves.

Secondly, of course students’ varying language abilities, topics that generated the conversations among them and matched their abilities presented a micro level challenges in managing interactions. Students in my class came from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and I believed that they brought with them their own unique knowledge base. Their varying English language ability might sound simple to some or unnoticeable to others, but addressing them in the classroom would very much influence how they view themselves and others (Luk & Lin, 2007) and make them feel how their cultural and linguistic knowledge base could be important in furthering their academic journey.

To overcome the underlined challenges, I took a closer look at other teachers’ practices and suggestions by researchers (Jong & Hawley, 1995). I found Jong and Hawley’s (1995) suggestions particularly setting up group roles, teacher monitoring and evaluation, peer evaluation, appropriate group size and configuration quite useful. Assigning group roles and group configurations could be thought during the planning stage. Teacher monitoring should be conducted at the while-teaching stage, and teacher and peer evaluations are elements to be incorporated at the post-teaching stage. I often incorporated three stages of interactions in my lessons.

  1. Interaction of the students with the teacher (Teacher Student Whole-Class Interaction): I often asked students to respond to a certain question related to a emerging topic or a topic that was already taught as part of the whole-class interactions. For the responses, students were randomly selected based on their ability, seating arrangements, gender and cultural groups to make sure that they all get represented in the interaction process.
  2. Pair Interaction (Interaction with their peers sitting together or next to them): This interaction often took place during the pre-teaching stage, for example to activate their schema on a topic. As part of assigning group roles, students were usually asked to interact with their partners on a topic given by the teacher and present it to the whole class.
  3. Group Interaction (Groups of 4-5 students): This form of interaction often took place during the while-teaching stage. After students read a text, for example in a reading lesson, they could pick up a concept for discussion. Their discussion could dwell on expanding the practical meaning of the concept, finding solution to a problem or bring up a creative issue out of the topic. Based on Jong and Hawley’s (1995) suggestions, students’ roles were often divided based on the nature of the topic such as a note taker, a facilitator, a presenter, and so on. Assigning these roles was crucial to prevent the students to digress from discussion their topics or and contribute meaningfully in the whole learning process.

The idea of teacher monitoring took place during the process of pair or group interactions. Teachers could evaluate the extent and forms of interactions students conducted during the process, and at the same time, provide feedback and support to the weaker students. I often walked around the class and monitored the students’ interactions to make sure that they are up to the tasks and are supported when in need.

Timing the interactions was another important aspect handling the students’ conversations purposefully and meaningfully. I often gave the students 5-10 minutes to interact among themselves and prepare a presentation poster or speech. The timing depended on the topic’s extent of difficulty and students’ ability as well.

Students were often asked to present the outcome of their interaction to the whole class in poster or speech forms. In order to ensure every students’ participation, they were trained and assigned with roles to make contributions individually even during group presentations. This was at this stage that the teacher and peer evaluation took place. I often adopted a range of techniques to evaluate students’ performances such as asking students to fill in an evaluation rubric or asking students about their peers’ performances and grade them on the board. Sometimes this process generated heated debates and quarreling, friendly though; among the students because they thought that some of their peers were not evaluating them fairly.

Last, but not the least, I also created teaching materials and worksheets conducive to the diversity of the students particularly in order to scaffold on their linguistic and cultural resources. Textbooks nowadays are found incorporating activities for some forms of interactions, but they often become irrelevant in the classrooms because these textbooks cannot address the range of students’ ability levels, skill levels and their cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Most textbooks in Hong Kong, for example, incorporate elements of Chinese and Christian festivals and ask the students to interact on that. However, students from Nepal, Pakistan, India, or Sri-Lanka in Hong Kong would not be able to use their cultural resources and construct knowledge from the interactions. Although English language textbooks in Hong Kong are considered to be the most advanced resources for ESL students, modifications often needed to suit to my students’ needs. These changes sometimes also needed to address the students’ willingness and skills to spontaneously engage in interactions. For example, some students in my class were very poor in English and found it hard to even properly construct questions to ask their friends, while others were at a native English speaker’ level.

Taking these questions into consideration, we present an activity (Activity 1) that can potentially be used to promote pair interactions in an EFL classroom. This activity is a modified activity from a secondary two (Class 8) English language textbook in Hong Kong, which is believed to suit students with moderate English ability. The moderate language ability in this context is the students’ ability to use connectives and quantifiers in authentic situations. This activity incorporates multicultural elements in the context of Nepal as it contains pictures of various Nepali festivals as well as Western festivals such as Christmas. Students can ask their peers about their likes or dislikes and jot down their answers to present to the class. Phrases given in the boxes are meant to cater for learner diversity. For higher proficiency students, this activity can be presented in a different way to suit their levels.

___________________________________________________________________________

Activity 1:

Worksheet A

1. Study the pictures in the boxes in pairs. Ask questions to your friend about items that he/she prefers or doesn’t prefer more (or less) and why. Write your friend’s responses in the checklist at the bottom.

You may begin like this: Which festivals do you like more/less/most/least? Why?

 Publication1………………………………………………………………………..

Check List

2. Write your friend’s answers below. You may need to present it to the class.

* My friend likes ___________________________ more, because ______________

* My friend likes __________________________less, because _________________

______________________________________________________________________

* He/She likes ___________________________ the most, because _____________

______________________________________________________________________

* My friend likes ___________ the least, because __________________________

Conclusion

This entry presented the concept of interaction from a sociocultural perspective sharing the first author’s teaching experiences in a Hong Kong school. The sharing included the challenges as well as possible strategies a teacher might adopt to devise, implement and evaluate interactions in an EFL classroom. The sharing could present a model for EFL teachers to choose from many other pedagogical options in order to enhance the students’ English language learning. The activity presented in this entry is only one example of hundreds of such possible activities. The original activity might not be suitable to adopt exactly in Nepalese EFL classes, as there are diversities in terms of language, culture, students’ abilities as well as available resources based on geography, developmental level and proximity to urban life. Teachers need to bear in mind that they understand their students the best and they need to know how students can best interact and learn the language in the classroom.

*About the Authors:

1- Mr. Chura Bahadur Thapa is a PhD Student in the Faculty of Education at The University of Hong Kong. He was an English language teacher in a local college in Hong Kong for almost 7 years before joining HKU as a postgraduate student. He is currently researching the language learning and motivation of ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. His other research interests include- education of ethnic minorities, linguistic and cultural identity, intercultural communication and citizenship education. He can be reached at chura@hku.hk

2- Dr. Angel Lin received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, Canada. She is an Associate Professor of English Language Education at the University of Hong Kong.  Well-respected for her versatile interdisciplinary scholarship in language and identity studies, bilingual education and youth cultural studies. she has published six research books and over eighty research articles. She can be reached at angellin@hku.hk.

REFERENCES

Barnes, D. (2008). Exploratory talk for learning. Exploring talk in schools. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi: SAGE, 1-15.

Hall, J.K. & Walsh, M. (2002). Teacher-student interaction and language learning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 22, 186-203.

Jong, C.D. & Hawley, J. (1995). Making cooperative learning groups work. Middle School Journal, 26 (4), 45-48.

Luk, J.C.M. & Lin, A.M.Y. (2007). Classroom interactions as cross-cultural encounters. Native speakers in EFL classrooms. Mahwah, New Jersey, London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Mercer, N. & Dawes, L. (2008). The value of exploratory talk. In Mercer, N. & Hodgkinson, S. (Eds.). Exploring talk in schools. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi: SAGE, 55-72.

My journey from a Novice to Better Teacher

Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

Suman Laudari

Through this blog entry, I would like to share with the ELT community my narrative of professional development. I will first briefly review the notion of teacher development and then, I will share some of the things that I have gained over the past few years to improve my classroom practices followed by my personal attributes. Thus this entry will try to showcase my both personal as well as professional development as a teacher. 

Teacher development

Teacher development is a process of bringing changes in teacher’s behavior, attitude and beliefs in terms of teaching, construction of knowledge and classroom practice. These changes can be brought into two ways; teacher training and teacher development (Richards & Farrell, 2005). The former is related to the activities enhancing the teacher’s existing knowledge, skills and capacities in the subject matter they’re teaching  while the latter refers to general growth that serves a long term goal and is related to understanding the teaching and its different aspects, classroom practices, and themselves as teachers.

            Teacher development in ELT is aimed at understanding second language development process, teaching learning style, changing roles of teachers depending upon learners, classrooms, context and the society and how learners perceive what is taught in the classroom (Richards & Farrell, 2005). Such understanding transforms a novice teacher into an experienced one who then performs things differently as they can anticipate the classroom problems, think of solutions and solve them through different classroom techniques (Berliner, 1987).  This understanding can be gained through different practices such as reflection, action research, collaboration and communication with fellow teachers, training, reading and writing. The following section mentions the activities that I have done to translate the theoretical aspects as mentioned above into practice.

My efforts for teacher development 

The activities and strategies that I was involved in for teacher development can be classified into the following five categories:

1.      Training and workshops: Like as any other teachers, one of the things that I have been doing over the past few years, in fact since I started my teaching career, is attending different trainings and workshops organized by different publication houses, different schools, NELTA (Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association), British Council and later English Access Micro Scholarship Project implemented by NELTA in Nepal in collaboration with US State Department. Most of these trainings were free and the rest of them were paid. I am sure  that all the trainings were not equally useful but I have  certainly learnt  something. I hardly missed any training or workshop opportunities I was offered as I was very enthusiastic to attend them since they either reinforced me with things that I had already learnt at different points of time or taught me something completely new which was largely beneficial to my class.

 2.      Conference and Seminars:  Another source of my learning was conference and seminars basically organized by NELTA. I have not missed any international conference organized by NELTA annually in February since 2007. I have attended the conferences and seminars acting different roles as a volunteer, a rapporteur and a presenter. The different roles I have acted during such occasions enabled me become a matured teacher. Plus, these events provided me with opportunities to meet national and international personalities in ELT and exchange our ideas. Such a gathering encouraged me to be more dedicated to my teaching providing me impetus to keep working to improve my English language competence.

 3.      Reading:  Needless to say, reading holds a great significance to build on one’s professional career. To be honest, I did not know what reading is before I started it myself. The first book that I have read beyond my course book was ‘Robinson Crusoe’ by Daniel Defoe, after I became a teacher. The book made me realize that reading is a fun. I kept on reading a lot of novels both in English and Nepali and now it has not only become one of my hobbies but also a craze. Later, I took to reading ELT books and journals. Reflecting my past, now I can say that there was not a single day when I was not involved in reading a book or an article. It has helped me improve my reading speed and enhance my comprehensive skills. Most importantly, reading provided me with the chances to compare my classroom practices with the prescribed ones in different books and articles I read.

 4.      Sharing sessions with colleagues:  Sharing sessions with fellow teachers and colleagues was another activity that helped me become a better teacher today. . I have always shared my ideas with fellow teachers informally at my schools and formally with and the audience during different training sessions organized by NELTA and other institutions. These sessions comprised of sharing of my good practices from handy classroom tips to English songs. Most importantly, attending these training sessions was a good opportunity for me to reflect on my own practices of teaching and carry out self assessment with the ideas whether they work in different situations.

 5.      Online teacher trainings and webinars:  Attending online courses and webinars entitled ‘Teaching English to Teens (TET)’, ‘Critical Thinking in English Language Teaching’, and ‘Teaching English Webinar’ was the latest practices to add in my list. These courses were offered by Regional English Language Office (RELO) in Nepal in collaboration with some reputed universities in the United States. I found these courses and webinars useful for it provided the participants a global platform to discuss and share personal beliefs and philosophies regarding teaching. And these e-courses provided me with opportunities to reflect on my practices and engaged in professional discussion with teachers from global arena. In addition, such courses provided me some assignments like something to read, write and discuss with others as a teacher, which kept me thinking about my course, lesson plans, curriculum and teaching.

Easier said than done. I could go on writing more about these practices and suggest others they should replicate them than I would like to share some of my personal attributes that helped me become a better teacher in the following section.

Personal attributes from a novice to better teacher

One of the attributes that helped me bring this transformation was my passion to become a better teacher. Next, I was ready to embrace new challenges and never said ‘NO’ to any opportunities, no matter how trivial it was. Thirdly, my curiosity to explore the world of teaching was another X-factor in my career. Likewise, I was always positive about my learning despite all the odds. Like any other teacher, I went through hard times.  My earning was meager and the pressure was always escalating, however I was always positive and I lived with HOPE.

Another thing that I kept me alive in this profession was my hard work. I never let my passion drift away. Hard work probably was the result of positive disposition, passion and the enjoyment I that derived from my teaching. Next, I was generous as I did not confine myself in the things that I learnt. I always had my goals set. Most of these goals were not big. I trusted on little goals such as completing the novel by the weekend, writing a haiku a day and writing a blog entry the next week. They gave me something to look forward to. Lastly, I would like to focus on the efforts to self development, which will only be successful when you are ready for. The readiness brings commitment and commitment gives the encouragement and motivation to accomplish a task, and this attribute has brought all the changes in me.

Conclusion

I would like to conclude that any teacher can transform themselves when they wish to do so. It is obvious that teachers have hard time in Nepal but this does not mean that we ignore our professional growth. I have the opinions that positive changes are possible only when we take responsibility for our growth.

REFERENCE

Berliner, D.C. (1987). Ways of thinking about students and classrooms by more and less experienced teachers. In J. Calderhead (Ed.) Exploring teachers’ thinking (pp. 60-83). London: Cassell.

Richards, J.C. & Farrell, T.S.C. (2005). Professional development for language teachers: Strategies for teacher learning. Cambridge: CUP.

About the Author:

Mr. Laudari is a visiting faculty to Kathmandu University and Ace Institute of Management. He is currently in the UK pursuing his master’s degree at Lancaster University under Hornby Scholarship.