I’m hoping that you’ll all be hearing from Tom the Traveller soon as he writes us a description of his latest audio product. In the meantime, though, I would like to tell you about something very interesting he said the other day (well, interesting if you’re a TEFL nerd like me).

Tom and I have frequent clashes over various pedagogical issues (and many other issues, God bless him). In particular, though, we have vastly different views over the usefullness of our friends incredibly succsesful website – notes from Spain. My argument is that while the transcripts of ‘real’ conversations are all well and good they are a far lower priority than a well designed program of study. Tom,for his part, would like to elevate them above all else and insists that these podcasts and transcripts are what really helped him learn Spanish.

The thing that Tom always mentions though is that he listened to them ‘while travelling around South America’. This for me represents a classic example of ESL student perception about what works and what doesn’t. You see, if we examine this from a scientific perspective we have to understand that for Tom the two events are linked – he was listening to the podcasts… and his Spanish improved.

For me, however, it’s the other event that is linked to the improvement in Spanish; the rather obvious one: travelling around South America. His listening to the podcasts and improving is what we call in the philosophy business – an illusory co-relation.

Now, Tom, will say that this isn’t the case and will tell me that he was at a school in Guatemala and he didn’t improve as much as he did when listening to the podcasts (in other words he’d already been in South America and wasn’t improving.) However, we all know that a badly run school can hinder your progress and I’d like to say to Tom it was when he was out in the field that it all came together.

Like all arguments, this could go on forever, and at the end of the day maybe Tom’s right, maybe I am, or maybe we’re both a bit right. The point is, though, that sweeping statements about what works best for the language student must always be subjected to scrutiny. What you are making is an assertion and like all assertions they must be verified. This is important to me because I’m geting bloody sick of students and teachers who base all their ideas about the best way to learn a language on their own experience. As well as the obvious pitfalls of subjectivity it’s annoying because half the time they’ve never questioned or reflected on their own assertions.

Tom is the producer of this - soon to be released - series.

Anyway, this isn’t just a rant. It has serious implications for the ESL environment because we constantly have to deal with student’s perceptions of what really works and how that affects the way they judge your class. It’s a key part of ESL learner psycology and it affects you because so much of their feeling about you and your classes – the student feedback – (which could lead to promotion or a sacking) is based on that.

What’s the soloution? Tell your students about this example and tell them that life – and learning a language – is complicated, and they should not make black and white comments.

Este articulo se trata del tema ‘cómo aprender inglés con la música’. Recomendamos a cualquier estudiante leyendo este articulo Aprender inglés a través de la música.

This article is about helping students to consume media (songs, movies and series) in English. This is something we know about because we’ve been researching it for the past few months. Which should answer your question –

Where the hell have we been the last few months?

You can help the whole population of your city understand movies and songs in English by being the I-Ling representative in your area and delivering our 2 hour multimedia lecture... it's sexy, incisive and entertaining (oh, yeah, educational too) contact cool@i-ling.org

Well, we are exacly that, but the inclusion of music in a language training system is anything but Mickey Mousing around. You see, we haven’t been working on a bunch of lyrics – blanking them out and allowing students to fill in the gap – we’ve been working on a detailed, linguistic analysis of film and music, trying to understand why the hell advanced students – despite being advanced – can’t watch movies in original version.

Clearly, we didn’t come up with a magic pill or even a magic method, but we have put together a very helpful book, lecture, and podcast series, on the topic (If you want to deliver our lecture on “English in Popular Culture” in your city, then get in touch.) Below, you’ll find a link to the main site. Amigos, es un sitio super ‘cool’ y ¿Adivina que? ahora camos a dedicarnos a investigar como se puede usar la música para aprender inglés.

We have had some really positive feedback from this product so we urge you to get on board. It’s running in Barcelona, London and Bogta… that leave one hell of a lot of cities.

Ciao.

Lynch deals with student’s flaggin enthusiasm for the vocab strategy in his ESL classroom…

As an English teacher you have to deal with a lot of nonsense. The funniest thing I’ve ever heard, though, was a student who said he was giving up the course because there was too much vocabulary. To give up a language course because there’s too much vocab is like giving up a Maths course because there’s too many numbers.

Language consists of words, and if you don’t know those words then you don’t know the language. Despite this, however, students simply don’t realise that their problem with English is intimately related with their limited vocabulary. This lack of realisation is because contemporary education has over complicated the learning process and become obsessed with the experience learners have while they’re learning. This erroneous trend means that everyone believes they must following method x or y, or playing, or being interactive or whatever. No one wants to believe that it is simply a question of lack of data – in this case, vocabulary – and that all they need to do is to memorise words to input that data.

• Listening exercises are good – but the biggest problem caused with listening is that you simply don’t know a percentage of the words you’re listening to.

• Speaking exercises are good – but if you simply don’t know the words for what you want to say then you will never speak well.

• Telephoning in another language is always difficult but no amount of telephone classes will help you if you don’t understand a certain percentage of the words you hear or know the words for what you want to say.

There are many important aspects to learning a language – fluency, reading, listening etc… but you will find again and again that these seemingly complex problems are simply caused by a lack of vocabulary.

When arriving at a new company or school, we make vocabulary our absolute top priority. It is both an academic issue and a matter of conscience. I am passionate about the career and future of my students and that’s why I can not let them (students who need English for their career) lead their professional lives without the minimum vocabulary requirement for operational efficiency in English. That minimum is 2000 words, and if I know you don’t have that vocabulary level but I start introducing games and random activities into the classes to make them ‘fun’, then I am not doing my job properly. My job is to advance your career and assist you in functioning more efficiently in linguistic situations. If you want fun – then go to the fuc*ing zoo! Work hard – play hard: fun is a privilege for those that reach the required level.

I’m not obsessed with vocab and I’m not a ball breaker. And that is the irony. I love fun. Once I know my students have reached the 2000 word level (and have mastered the tenses) then the nature of the classes fundamentally changes. We can do multi-media classes, we can do role-play, we can do anything the students want. Therefore, I humbly ask you – if you are bored or frustrated – to stick with the program, reach the required level and then you can direct the course.

Big hug,

Most of my blog posts these days are inspired by my battles with my difficult (but much loved) pupils in my day job. This week, the ongoing debate has been about translation as I’ve been making them translate sheets of sentences.

Their objections to these exercises vary, but the fundamental academic objection derives from one of those many EDIs (erroneous disruptive ideas) floating around the world’s ESL classrooms and study programs. In this case, the idea that you should never get into the whole translation thing because when you can truly speak a language you don’t need to translate, and therefore anything to do with translating means you can’t truly speak the lamguage and any attempt to translate will hamper with that speaking etc etc

In my first post on this issue I want to deal with one fundamental truth. That it is entirely unrealistic to expect students not to translate if they are following a classic ESL program. A classic ESL program means that they only study three or four hours a week (or less.)

If a student is in some kind of mega intensive, hardcore immersion program then we could begin to think of drowning them in English and endlessly prompting them in English, and never giving them a chance to translate. However, if they’re studying in regular classes, a couple of hours a week, then you can just forget about them ‘not’ translating. They’ll be translating – therefore it’s better they learn to do it properly and deal with all the false friends and peculiarities of their own language which cause problems when translated into English.

Like I said, we’ll return to this topic. However, take on board my fundamental – in programs with minmum amounts of contact time you’re students will continue with translating. Therefore, help them to do it correctly instead of living in a fantasy world where you think you can get them to stop it.

Hi, guys, I just wanted to share this incredible ESL insight I had in my last class.

As you know, I refuse to have students sitting around doing grammar exercises from Murphy because it’s so booooooooring! That means everything we do is oral – with long lists of cool conversation questions that force them to use specific constructions. I’ve always had the illusion that this was a very useful exercise until one class I couldn’t make copies and I had to read the questions out – drill style.

Get rid of the crutches - ditch the paper, dude!!!!!!!!

This is when i realised, that the tense that seemed so rock solid was actually pebble loose. Both their ability to listen to and reproduce the tense was severely impaired.

What does this mean in ESL terms? it means that they had been heavily dependent on the sheet: reading it instead of listening, and using what they saw in the sheet to base their answer on (their visual skills rather than their linguistic skills.)

What was clear, though – when we did it without the sheet – was that it was amuch more stimulating and rewarding exercise as it forced them to use the above mentioned skills. Therefore, given that it increases the value of the exercise and the students find it stimulating, I’d like to recommend to all I-Ling teachers that they do part of such drills without letting students see the questions.

okay, thanks guys…love ya.

This is a post from my day job blog – just in case anyone recognises it. This incident was of vital importance to the ILing Research network because it is the first – of what will be many – suggestions we have to deal with in our quest to introduce an ESL system for learning vocab as opposed to a random method.

In this case, we found the student’s objection to be psycological. At I-Ling we are very serious when it comes to dealing with different learning styles and we have encountered in a small group of students (1%) a learner who has a serious problem with lists of words. They simply don’t like such a regimented approach; it seems to their style… a death to spontaniety and a form of robotic learning.

We're not trying to turn you into a robot, we're trying to turn you into an advanced English speaker.

My response…

It is already a gargantuan task to get students to study and make progress because TIME IS LIMITED. The fact that time is limited means that we must think about every minute of class time and its relation to making clear, quantifiable progress on the road to the class target: moving from fluent to advanced.

As you know, vocabulary is the most important aspect in this path. Therefore, we must have a strategy for achieving vocabulary acquisition and in this case we believe the i-ling system is the best strategy. Why? Because if everytime we want to learn new vocab we have to read an article we introduce gross ineffeciencies into the system which will severely slow us down. Ineficiencies such as…

1. Words which are clearly not adaquate for the level…

If we do an article on volcanoes, for example, students will start jotting down words of a geological nature. The memory only has so much space and we want to prioritise the memorisation of useful words not obscure ones. All students are missing vitaly important words and it is these words that are our priority.

2. No clear strategy to memorise and assimilate the word…

The I-Ling system allows us to see the word, its translation, see it in context, put it in an English to English context, use it in conversation, listen to it and check it. This significantly raises the probability of deep assimlation. Jotting down the meaning of a word next to its occurence in an article is an example of superficial assimilation and an example of everything that our organisation is against.

3. Errors in translation and explanation…

With the vocab book we have a clear translation. With an article we have to hope the teacher knows the translation or can explain it clearly. If he can not, valuable classtime can be wasted on explaining words which may not be relevant to level.

4. No clear structure or progress…

With articles the vocabulary strategy is completely random and it is dificult to gauge progress. The current system offers a clear, quantifiable line of progress. We started the course at point x and now we are at point y. this motivates students, allows everyone to see where we’re going and creates a measurable system for the efficiency of the course.

Conclusion…

While we sympathise with your position that lists seem quite mechanical we hope that you now see that it is the best way of achieving our goal. It is quite simply – much more effecient. Also, bearing in mind that we then have a class conversation with each word, we believe this to be far more fun and less robotic than reading an article and jotting down words.

Furthermore, upon conversation it seems to me that the real problem is that you have a stronger vocabulary than the rest of the class and therefore you feel you are getting less out of the book than the rest. Perhaps we should consider putting you in a different class.

Thank-you

At my school’s office they’re having a big laugh coining lame management speak for our various ESL objectives (personally, I think they should get out more!) One of them is… “execute with personality”. What this means is that they’re trying to make our teachers lives easier and the classes more effecient by designing classes.Therefore, all a teacher has to do is ‘execute’ but in his own personal and personable style. Anyway, the first of those Business english classes is freely available at the very very beta version of the school’s ESL blog. Bloody great – free business english materials – just what the slacker ordered!

http://skyrecursos.com/ingles-empresas-readings-y-conversacion-semana-una

You'll see why this picture is relevant when you visit the school's blog.

KEY QUESTIONS…

Is teaching English a waste of time? Is teaching ESL a low status, downwardly mobile job with a rubbish salary?

Before we start you’re going to have to ask yourself the above questions, because many teacher’s bad position and bad salary in the world of ESL are the result of a negative attitude. The problem is that only a fraction of ESL teachers want the job, while the majority are either looking on it as a ticket to travel, or find themselves abroad and it’s the only job they can get.

Because of this, they never commit themselves fully and are always thinking about the great project or job they’d rather be doing. This means the job is a question of getting by… and their work reflects that. This is a critical error, and as we shall see, the first stage in becoming a TEFL chimp.

Don't be a TEFL chimp... take control of your situation

I know many of you never wanted to be an English teacher and that really, if just a few things had been different, you would have been the Secretary general of the UN… but you’re not the secretary general of the UN. You’re an English teacher. You now have to make the choice of whether you become brilliant at it… or an ESL gimp. A TEFL chimp… or a TEFL gorilla. Decide now, because the irony is that if you want to improve your salary or even get out of teaching, then you better start becoming bloody good at it. (Impress your pupils, freinds and bosses and then all sorts of opportunities will open up. But we will explore this soon.)

So that’s my first tip: If you want more money – then be good at what you do. Teaching english is not rocket science; simply by hanging out on these pages or reading a book on language teaching (obviously, I’d recommend our forthcoming TEFL Insurgent) you can position yourself far ahead of the game. Once you become a fantastic teacher and people buzz about your classes you can approach your school and say that you’re considering leaving for a better paid job. Unless they’re bloody stupid (a possibility in the world of language schools) they’ll offer you more money. (see my future post on becoming a brilliant teacher From ESL gimp to ESL Tiger in three months. Also, more students and companies will start offering you private classes.

If you want more bucks you better buck up your ideas!

What distinguishes brilliant people is that whatever they do – wether it’s serving burgers or solving international conflicts – they do it to to the best of their ability. I suggest you do the same with teaching… your salry, oportunities and options will increase. I promise you.

As any of you know who read my last post, I was raring to go and give my first class speech on Monday and begin a new world order (in ESL terms). Unfortunately, the speech will have to be shelved on account of an unexpected e-mail from the office. It went something like this…

- Group 1: Headway intermediate
- Group 2: Market Leader Intermediate (new)
- Group 3: Proficiency gold

etc.. etc…

Well, it turns out that they’re already following the books given to them by the previous school… and I just have to continue were they left off.

Help - ESL existential panic!

For me, this represents a lot of what I don’t understand in the world of language teaching and learning. I was there thinking that I was being called in because the previous teacher’s classes weren’t up to scratch, and now I just have to carry on what the previous teacher was doing. Which brings me to my problem with text books and it’s resultant existential panic.

If a class is following a book then I don’t really see what my role is. The answers are in the back so they don’t need me to correct them, the exercises are in front of them so they don’t need me to bring materials, and the book is already a course so they don’t need me to create a programme. What then am I? I’m tempted to use Markus’s term – “A TEFL muppet.”

Obviously, I can see the answers to many of my questions… I’ll be a bit like the conductor of an orchestra – guiding them through the book. I’ll bring in supplementary activities. I’ll do all the stuff teachers do – counsel, motivate, advise. But there in lies the problem…

Fundamentally I don’t like text books such as Headway, Murphy etc… because they simply don’t reinforce what they’re trying to teach enough times. They don’t work. Therefore, if a course is going to be centred around a book which I don’t believe will work, then I find myself a little lost.

Has anybody got some advice on the issue?

I’ll be giving this little speech for a first class on monday – new corporate client…

“Hi, welcome to XX language school. Before we start I want everyone to have something clear: these classes do not exist so that you can learn English. To frame the motive of these classes in those terms is to frame the class as some kind of complete language soloution – a path that takes you from zero… and leads you to fluency. This is not the case. Why? Because that’s impossible.

Let’s take a simple example: past simple irregular verbs. A recent study has shown just how long it takes to assimilate one – little known, forgotten, or new – past simple irregular. (And remember, the key word here is ‘assimilate’, not listen to, use a couple of times, but never able to incorporate it fluidly and without thinking into your speech.) Well, it turns out that for deep assimilation of a past simple form, you need to hear it, speak it and work with it for at least – at least – 12 minutes (in some cases more in some cases less, but on average 12 minutes).

So, the rest is simple mathematics… there are 90 irregular verbs which means 90 * 12 = 1080 minutes. Which is 18 hours just to get the past simple irregulars memorized. That’s 6 weeks of classes just to get one tiny aspect of a very big language.

Now anyone who doubts this can read similar figures in our research with respect to the entire route to fluency. The fact is that if all you have are these company classes, you will be here until 2020 before you’ve done enough hours to reach fluency – and even then, the sieve factor – the fact that you soon begin to forget what you learnt weeks, months and years previously – means you’ll never reach fluency.

So, I hope we all have this clear: It is impossible to learn English by attending these classes. Which all leads to the question… what are these classes for?”

And that’s where we’ll have to leave it folks. A pretty tight confidentiality agreement on the part of I-Ling forbids me from getting to the juicy part…

bye for now.

L