Oxford Blogs!

I've had the pleasure of teaching at the Lake School of English for just one very intensive week. I taught 2 lovely groups of students.

I spent some time helping my students to create their very first blog. First they created a google account and then went to blogger to register their blog name and address. You can see the fantastic results above and below. I feel very proud of their achievement.

Well done to Maria Anna, Maria Eugenia and Fenisia, seen above in an Oxford college.

Teaching Unplugged
In the morning classes I actually made a big effort to teach "Dogme" style, and I found that a lot of vocabulary soon filled the board as you can see in the second image. It was all language and questions that cropped up from this picture of the Abruzzo countryside where I live.

If you look more closely at my board work below, you can see some of my drawings! Can you spot the picture I drew of a dog? I am certainly no Picasso! As usual, chickens, cats and dogs played a major part in some of the questions and answers....

Getting Down To Phrasals!
I also enjoyed teaching my group of Primary school teachers in the afternoon. I taught my favourite sessions on Using Images, Phrasal Verbs and Britain Today. We discussed topical social issues and then went on to do some vocabulary work on a grand British tradition, the pub.

To bring up the topic of pubs I hid a bar mat in an envelope and played the 20 questions guessing game. I told my class that the envelope contained an object which was very common in Britain. It took only 5 guesses for beer mat to come up. I was very impressed! We then did some vocabulary related to pubs and reordered a dialogue.

I've enjoyed both classes and this week has flown by!

Below a photo of myself and Gosia, a lovely teacher from Poland. More photos to follow..

The Dogme Way

I did it! A lesson the "Dogme" way. No props, just me and a few ideas in my head. Did it work? Yes, absolutely! It was difficult to stop my students chatting. I had to interrupt the flow in order to try another activity out. In hindsight, maybe I should have let the conversation continue until the buzz had died down naturally. So, I'm not actually sure if I followed the "Dogme" rules. The night before I had read an article written by William Gomez in the English Teaching Professional magazine. called "Dog Days". The following are two activities that inspired me.

My WorldI wrote the countries from where the students were from on the board:
Kazhakstan, Switzerland, Portugal, Angola, Iraq, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Poland and France. In different nationality groups, I asked the students to find out a few things about each others' countries. After about 10 minutes, I asked them to change groups in order to find out about the other students' countries. The room was buzzing with the sound of students all talking animatedly and enthusiastically. They really wanted to find out about each other and when I asked them to stop, they continued speaking.

Me to Them
I wrote up 5 things to do with me in a circle on the board . Eg phrasal verbs, Dogme, dogs, motorbikes, perfume bottles.

I quickly asked the students to guess the connection to me and my life.

• I love teaching phrasal verbs.
• I was teaching the Dogme way as an experiment
  
• I don't really like dogs but I have 3
• I don't really like motorbikes and yet I have ridden about 7,000 kilometres on the back of them
• I like collecting perfume bottles

I then asked the students to connect the topics to themselves. Again, the non-stop chatter was amazing and when the bell went, there wasn't an immediate rush to go and have lunch. I briefly asked them if they had enjoyed the "Dogme" way and the response was very positive.

Student Feedback and Involvement
For homework I asked the students to write for 5 minutes about how they felt about this particular lesson. Did they enjoy it? Did they feel bored? etc. I was delighted to find out that all of them wrote positively about the experience. So what was it that was different from a normal lesson? The only difference was not going to class with anything. The 2 simple ideas I had were in my head. The rest came straight from the students themselves. The vocabulary they wanted to know were written up on the board. as it cropped up. Nothing was pre-planned. The language all came up spontaneously. It related to a real-time need-to-know basis. As far as I could see, everyone in the class was engaged in the activity. There was a genuine interest in finding out more information about the different countries.

What did I learn?
Well, I realised that I have in fact been teaching the Dogme way without ever having called it by this particular name. The lesson was a series of opportunities to communicate without any pieces of paper or a coursebook. The main flow came from the students themselves. I was just a floating facilitator. I could easily have left the classroom and the flow would have continued. I am sure. Would it have been the same if I had left the class to get on with some grammar exercises?? I am not so sure!

The Future
Yes, I will most certainly do this again. The amount of vocabulary that came out spontaneously was a lot. New words were written up on the board and recycled. My students liked talking about each others countries, about each others thoughts on various topics. Each student was given the chance to explain open class some of the ideas which had come up. A lot of noise,but something positive came out of it. Luckily, I am not constrained by a coursebook, so I could literally throw them away if I wanted to, and use my own materials. This is a great feeling of freedom. Maybe not all teachers have this luxury.

Please refer to this previous posting here for more on Dogme.

Back to the Chalkface

I really enjoyed interviewing 16 Swiss German students last Wednesday for an FCE mock interview exam. It was a very gentle introduction back to the chalkface after a few weeks' absence. I repeated the opening instructions for Part 2 of the FCE exam 16 times. Below is one I have made up using my own photos.

You have one minute to compare and contrast these two places and say which of the two you would prefer to live in and why

Well, both pictures are similar because they show a road of some sort. However, they differ because the roads are set in completely contrasting environments. The road in the top picture is in the middle of the countryside and the photo was taken during the day, whereas in the second picture the scene is a very busy one and it is night time.
I like the fact that the place in the top picture is in a quiet and unspoilt location, far from the madding crowd. I would be able to feel free and relaxed in such a place. The view of the city at night time doesn't appeal to me because I don't really like busy places. It looks as if this road runs through a historical city and I can make out a tower in the distance. Probably a lot of visitors would come here and this city would generally be very crowded.
I personally would prefer to live in the countryside such as shown in the top photo, as the pace of life there is much slower, less frenetic and more healthy.

Click to see a full Interview for Part Two of the Cambridge First Certificate in English exam from UK Student Life.
Click on the link to hear Part Two of the Interview exam from The British Council.

Teaching Unplugged

I have slotted in 45 minutes on Wednesday 7th October to try out teaching the "Dogme" way as an experiment. As suggested in this article on Teaching unplugged by Scott Thornbury written in "It's for Teachers" in 2001, I will walk into class with nothing but myself. No photocopies, no props, no realia and I will just see what happens. I am going to study this post here by Scott Thornbury , this interesting article from Tech ELT Blog on Dogme and Technology, and also read Karenne Sylvester's postings "The Dogma of Dogme"and "Any Given Dogme". I am just so curious about this form of teaching, which is all about flexibility, creativity, spontaneity and empathy with the learner. The teacher and students learn and develop from each other. I usually hope my lessons involve all of these factors. However, deliberately armed with mental props only, I am intrigued as to how the lesson will pan out. I need to mention at this point that I am usually very well prepared for my lessons and I like to have a "plan" of action. So not having a plan goes completely against my very essence of being the teacher I am. "In bocca al lupo" = Into the mouth of the wolf!