Extending Conversations
September 20, 2011 34 Comments
Lately I have found some really enlightening accounts of unplugged teaching, teachers opening the doors of their classrooms to give us all an insight into to what goes on in a Dogme lesson. In sunny Spain, Adam Beale is taking a leap of faith with his learners, giving us some colourful accounts and reflections of his lessons. In Japan, Oli Beddall is diving deep into post lesson reflection on his blog, providing an equally fascinating read for all those interested, with a sprinkling of second language acquisition theory thrown into the bargain. In Costa Rica, Chris Ożóg gives us some food for thought with post-lesson reflections. To add to that, Chiew Pang’s collection of reflections is an absolute must for any experiences, curious of aspiring Dogme teacher. All fantastic blogs I have learned a lot from in the past few weeks, so thanks for blogging.
Continuing along the lines of unplugged ideas, I would like to share a few ideas for extending conversation. Adam Beale wrote in a recent post, “now is time for the leap of faith”, which I think sums up very nicely the part of the lesson when an engaging conversation is coming to an end and it is up to the teacher to mould the language into the next part of the lesson. It is at this point that having a few activity skeletons up your sleeve comes in handy, which can be called upon for a variety of different topics. Hopefully at least one might be of use:
1. Conversation reviews
You have a board full of new lexis from a conversation. Now ask learners to write a review of their conversations using it.
2. Articles
Instead of a review a newspaper article provides an opportunity to reuse emerging language. A student comes late because of bad traffic, why not an article on the traffic problems in the city? Talking about how improve your English? Different languages? This can make up the focus of the final part of the lesson. Collect them in at the end of the lesson and use them for a language focus at the start of the next lesson.
3. Headlines
I used headlines in this lesson and lots of interesting and quite entertaining use of language emerged from it. Headlines can also be useful at the start of the lesson as an alternative to “what did you do at the weekend”. Include one of your own as a stimulus.
4. Telling lies, telling the truth
I came across this activity when one of my students started talking about how she had become obsessed with ‘Skins’, the British TV series about a group of dysfunctional teenagers in Bristol. When the chat had died down, I asked each learner to write three phrases about teenagers in their country, including at least one lie. We then read our facts or false-truths and used them as a springboard for discussion.
5. Do you agree?
All you need is a piece of paper and a pen. Ask groups to write a set of opinions on a topic recently discussed (some examples include changes to the school, homework policy, rubbish collection system, eating habits, how to best bring up your children). Make sure a gap is left underneath for other groups to discuss and write their opinion. Ask groups to swap, discuss and respond. At the end of the activity discuss some of the responses as a class.
6. Interviews
The school accommodation service, the price of a bus ticket, the best way to make a coffee, why do you use facebook? These sorts of topics emerge a lot in my classroom. Ask groups to make interview questions concerning a topic that emerged in class, note down answers in a sort of information-gap activity. After a few interviews, each learner writes up a short summary of the classroom opinion. In an IELTS class there is the possibility of introducing some language to describe trends, or drawing charts/graphs for habits/opinions and explaining them to the class.
7. Roleplays
Little explanation required. I normally try and make a role-play include lots of functional language for the real world and involve real-life situations. Presenting to the International Monetary fund a new plan to cure world poverty to me seems a bit much if the learners are never going to need to use English for this purpose.
I taught a business course once with a focus on writing. What I found hardest was finding materials that would appeal to a bunch of thirty-something business types in London. I found that asking them to conduct meetings about issues in their workplaces provided a good springboard for teaching note taking, writing reports, minutes and emails. Ask learners to write an agenda for a meeting, select a boss to manage the meeting and let things role.
8. Dictation
Even traditional dictation is useful to focus on specific language points. I usually use it to focus on connected speech, selecting some phrasal verbs in context or some functional language like “you really should think about…” and dictating them at normal speech rate, asking students first to count the number of words, then try as hard as they can to write every single word. Discuss the areas that were difficult for learners to hear (consonant-vowel linking with many phrasal verbs, elision, weak forms etc) and highlight them on the board.
Grammar up dictation: dictate a review of a conversation but leave out pre-selected grammar words which learners then fill in. Be careful not to make it too difficult or ambiguous. Keep it simple by selecting one language point, perhaps one that learners have particular difficulty with before.
Dictogloss: mentioned also on Oli Beddall’s blog, used at the start of the lesson to facilitate discussion or after to capture discussion. After a conversation, it is a useful tool to introduce new language already in context i.e. the conversation before. Let learners hear the text once. Ask them to discuss what they understood. Let them hear it again and take notes. From their notes they construct a final version of the text to compare with the original.
9. Sentence anagrams
Write a couple of sentences about what learners are talking about. This is a good chance to introduce some new phrasal verbs in context or highlight some collocations.
E.g.
X is really getting behind with his studies
The weather is really getting Y down
Z finds getting around town really difficult when there’s a tube strike
Jumble them up into three anagrams, e.g.
studies getting X is really behind with
Ask learners to unscramble the anagrams, accepting grammatically correct alternatives but pushing students to come as close to the original as possible. Reveal the examples after and clarify context, meaning, form and pron.
10. Poems
For this activity a slightly more creative and confident class is required but it can produce some interesting results. Take a subject being discussed and tell learners they are going to write a poem. Ask each learner to write two lines. Form two groups and ask each group to construct a poem using their contributions and write it on the white board. There should be two poems at the end of the activity. Discuss topics in the poems and language used to extend the activity further, normally lots of interesting lexis arises.
Topics do not necessarily have to be poetic, great topics I have used are:
If I were a man/If I were a woman
What can I see sitting by the window in Starbucks
In London we stand on the right, walk on the left
What I didn’t do last weekend
11. Rephrasing cards
This activity works on learners’ ability to paraphrase and can be adapted for lexis or grammar, quite handy for FCE classes. Take some language that emerged from a conversation and clarify meaning and context, keep this language on the board. Distribute the language on cards to pairs and ask them to rephrase each chunk on he other side of the card, (again, this could be a different collocation or a rearranging the structure of the sentence, playing with modality or grammar). Give each group two or three then ask them to swap and guess which chunk is being rearranged from the examples on the board.
An alternative involves writing a paraphrase of the original phrase on the back of the card and swapping with other groups. This worked well after a conversation about first impressions, using adjectives and idioms to describe personality.
12. Ranking
Ask learners to make a top-five list, or a list of causes, effects, influences based on a recent topic of conversation. Form groups and ask learners to justify their choices to each other and discuss interesting points that come up. For example, after a discussion on how to get by on a shoe-string budget in London, we made lists of the top ways to pass a weekend in London without spending anything, which was then made into an article.
There, a couple of my favourites tried and tested with groups of adults. I hope these might be at least of some use.
How do you extend a conversation?
Thanks for this wealth of ideas Dale.
One thing I love about these kind of activities is that the lack of a specific ‘grammar point’ means they are easily adpatable to all kinds of levels and age groups.
For example, I’ve used ‘telling lies, telling the truth’ as a nice way to get kids in new classes to know each other. Sentence anagrams, role-plays, poems and dictations all work well with kids too and they especially like it when they see the activity has drawn on the language they have produced themselves.
Ownership and personalisation and two powerful factors in engaging learners of all ages and levels.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting Dave. “Ownership and personalisation” – that should be one of the pillars of lesson planning, a hallmark of a good activity.
I often take inspiration from your blog. Your latest post really left a mark on me. I really agree about the A and B information gap. I remember doing one in a DELTA input session in Italian and thinking how boring it was. In fact, my Italian was noticeably worse because of it. It was one of the few times I can say I’ve been able to test EFL methods/activities etc on myself. I would love to find a Dogme Italian teacher, out of sheer curiosity of what it’s like the other side of the table.
That monster-drawing activity is also going in my book of ideas for the coming academic year by the way. I’ll have to do it as well though, can’t turn down an opportunity to draw monsters or aliens. I wonder if it could be done with zombies?
My aim was to provide lots of free-from-grammar skeletons, moldable into any shape, so I’m glad it was noticed. It’s also good to know from someone who’s used these with kids that they work. I’m going to be teaching children and feel thoroughly unprepared.
Thanks for the kind comments and I’m glad to hear my rambling posts have left a mark somewhere!
Another drawing activity that I came across through the ELT blogging community was this one – http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/present-simple-present-continuous/ – by Sandy Millin. It’s more focused on writing than continuing a conversation but it’s a nother simple activity that can be exploited in any number of ways.
I’m looking forward to hearing about your experiences of working with kids and how/if you need to modify your dogme approach with them! What age group and level will you be working with?
Brilliant! Blog of the year I think.
Milk it, stretch it, move it inch by inch into a new area. Here are a couple of things that seem to work for me:
1)Have 2 conversation circles. At the natural end of the conversations match up students from both circles to sit and summarise, explain etc the conversations but from their own perspective.
2)Ask 1 student from each group to describe 3 memorable quotes form the discussions and then get students to make their own 1 sentence ones and present/discuss them.
3)Ask each student to think of which person said something interesting which they’d like to hear more about. Then do open Q&As.
4)Elicit the main points to the board and look/elicit gaps/areas and then discuss them
5)Just sit down and join in. First comment on an issue or disagree.
6)Play the devil’s advocate by completely disagreeing with the main thrust of the conversation.
7)Handout statements and get students to discuss them but also why someone who say that and who the person may be.
8)Change the dynamics of the group(s) by moving a student, asking the loud one to make notes or control the conversation or to move to a separate area.
One very good tip I think is stopping conversations before they start dieing out, this keeps the momentum. Then you redirect the conversation, add power it up again. If the class ends on a high note then you’re going well. The best things students can say is “oh, has class finished, I didn’t realise”.
Hi Phil, thanks for your thoughts and contributions. They are much appreciated, as always.
“oh, has class finished, I didn’t realise” is music to your eyes, right? I like as well “what, it’s break time, do we HAVE to take a break?”
You’ve definitely got a point with stopping the conversation before it dies out, it’s like leaving them with the fire inside, only to be reignited by an extension.
Cheers Dale,
“do we HAVE to take a break?” I usually reply “well, I have to as I need a cup of tea”. In every country I’ve worked students find this amusing. In fact, we’ve had hours of conversation just starting from my cup of tea, moving into stereotypes, habits and even addiction. I then turn up with an umbrella and a newspaper to see if anyone says anything.
The 1 thing that really stuck with me from the CELTA was when the tutor drew a chart for my last class and it plotted the levels of student interest. The aim was for it to keep going up. Of course, you can cheat by starting really badly but I remember that all the interesting bits were when trainees diverged from the book. Probably because students perceived the book as hard work but anything conversational not work.
Back to “leaving them with the fire…”. I think t if you observed a good unplugged teacher that the level of student interest would actually be directly tied to the lesson and the choice of activities. This would require a lot of thinking on feet, a good eye and understanding of the students and the ability to construct and mould activities to the students while continually creating more interest.
Hope all is going well in Rome.
Phil
“This would require a lot of thinking on feet, a good eye and understanding of the students and the ability to construct and mould activities to the students while continually creating more interest.” – wouldn’t it just be easy to open the book at page 34 and just forget about all this undue interest nonsense. I’d definitely have more energy at the end of the day…
I used interest graphs in my journal a few times when I could feel students were not so engaged by lessons. They can be very useful but I think there’s a need to collect subjective data that’s not soley influenced by the teacher. The influence can also be a negative one, especially if one has a tendency towards self-deprivation after a bad lesson.
Yep. A couple of pointless games and some jokes would quickly boost interest. A colleague used the term ‘edutain’ them which he used to mean to teach in an interesting way with of course, the odd joke.
Hi Dale,
I was just rereading your ideas for inspiration for my new class when I came across your mentioned of the difficulty finding BE writing materials. When I first started teaching BE in about 2000 there weren’t many books and ESP didn’t really exist. Apart from Market Leader, Business Class and the odd vocab much teachers didn’t have much. The effect was that teachers adapted a lot of real materials and also came up with their own stuff. 11 years on and you can for ESP English for….EVERYTHING.
Do you think this is a good thing?
Is having so much available good for beginning teachers or long in the tooth ones?
Can we use the very specific materials/texts/audios and specific student needs better with a Dogme approach?
Look forward to your or anybody’s comments.
Phil
Hi Phil,
I think a similar thing has happened in the young learner sector. I meet teachers who started their careers back in the 70s or 80s who tell me how they would use regular children’s story books, traditional songs and ryhmes and classic playground games as their ‘materials’ in class. However, nowadays the market is awash with all manner of coursebooks many of which try to present a ‘complete package’. The problem is that all the language for the stories and songs is graded (some might say dumbed down) and lacking in authenticity.
The problem is teachers (new and old) fall into the comfortable trap of relying on the coursebook package for all their materials, stuffing each class full of controlled activities with no real purpose (see this recent post of mine that Dale referred to earlier in the comments for more of my thoughts on this – http://www.davedodgson.com/2011/09/dont-just-fill-gaps-try-leaving-some.html ). Would you believe one year group uses THREE different coursebooks in a year saying there is no other way to fill 12 hours of English a week? I firmly believe this hinders more than it helps. 1 coursebook and lots of authentic stories, songs, games, open speaking activities and personalised projects would be of much more use in my opinion.
Sounds like some schools I know. There is the whole National Curriculum debate still going on I suppose and some still pine for the creative years when kids like me learned cooking, sewing and spent about a month just preparing for a play. But with all the targets and objectives of the enormous NC you can’t blame teachers for using coursebooks and worksheets. I’ve seen some just use them for the whole year as they are guaranteed to cover what’s needed and are simple to prepare and use.
For language schools I hold my hand up and admit to having used a different coursebook every team of 10ish weeks but that’s what the DOS said to do and was the school’s approach, as with many. Yes, it became a rush and we had to skip stuff but I did fall into the trap and spent hours copying work books, test files, grammar books, teacher’s book extra exercises, video books, extra online resources, DVD books and god knows what else. All with the desire to look good, teach them more or to just not miss anything. Students would often say “we don’t just want to do the book”. Now I wouldn’t touch any of the stuff except some readings, the odd listening and stuff for out-of-class.
Sounds familiar Dave. Most of my classes go through FOUR coursebooks a year and they only have four 50 minutes classes each week. Insane amount of material. Even within those four classes I also have to cover a vocabulary book, so the main coursebook is essentially used for 25 minutes. No time for conversation.
The saddest part of my day is telling students who are trying to talk to me in English, that they need to be quiet as we need to move as we have to finish the material. Goes against every fiber of my being. I think I will need to remove myself from Korean hagwons before i lose my love of teaching.
Phil, you raise an interesting point there, does the abundance of materials in EFL have a positive or negative effect on a teacher’s creativity? The more experienced Dogme teachers I have spoken with tell me that they started teaching in that way because they very little in the way of materials, so used the learners instead. I’m not sure whether for me it was a lack of materials or an interest in the people in the room that steered me towards unplugged teaching, I think the latter. Either way, I had no choice but to think creatively.
What seems to be apparent with teachers who use a Dogme approach is a heightened awareness of what the interests, learning preferences and needs students have. Although I’d be hasty to add that this is by no means unique to unplugged teachers. A Dogme approach lends itself well to materials adaptation also because the underlying rationale is to facilitate conversation and develop interest from which language can emerge.
Nice Dale. I started a thread in a forum yesterday about “repetition” or “recycling” in class. Here are perfect ideas that can work well with different groups, are student-centered and keep the flow moving. Will share this post there.
I used the “3 lies” idea for an entire class one day. 3 students in front of a group, 2 tell the truth, one lie and the rest of the class (in groups of 3) have to decide who’s the liar… talk about a competitive liars ! That was always a fun class. Cheers, b
Hi Brad (funny that this post has kicked off a number of extended conversations already!),
Something I’m looking to do more this year is recycling – both enviromentally at home and with activities in class. That’s why I love these kind of activities that are not tied to any particular language point – they can be re-used in different contexts without the students getting bored.
As for the ’3 lies’ activity, one great extension is to encourage questioning before speculating on the lie. So, if a student says, for example, “I play violin in an orchestra”, I encourage the others to grill them for details like “Which orchestra?”, “When do you practise? How often?”, “What was the last public concert you played in?” etc. Some get found out straight away, others improvise very well and those who are telling the truth get to talk at length about themselves.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall in your classroom during a liars activity, I imagine it’d be something like the Spanish Inquisition. On a serious note, it encourages people to be involved in conversations by asking questions, being inquisitive and grilling people on what they do. I took a look at Sandy Millin’s post too and that’s going into my book of ideas for YLs this year.
Thanks for the comments. I’ll make sure I blog about my young learners and how I modify my approach to fit the demands of classroom management and the learning styles of the little tykes : ) How much of a difference is there between your adult classes and your YL classes just out of curiosity?
I like the questioning idea, Dave… hindsight !!!!
Thanks for the comment Brad. Could you send me the link to the forum you posted on? I’d be interested to see some of the ideas bouncing around on recycling and repetition, two topics that interest me greatly.
I wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSe38dzJYkY
I haven’t taught adults for a few years now. The main difference I find is that you can’t always rely on the kids to generate that moment that the lesson pivots on as you can with adults. I guess thier more limited conversation skills and world view prevents that. However, I find if there is something concrete to go on like a kid showing his/her sticker collection or bringing family photos into class, you can build on that and get all the kids involved.
Kids also need more variation as they tend to get bored more quickly. On the flipside, they are less likely to question what you decide to do and have fewer inhibitions about things like singing and role-play!
It’s actually a linked-in group and the group is closed so you have to request to join the group (no one is really denied). ESL international.
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=131430&trk=anet_ug_hm&goback=%2Egmp_131430
For what it’s worth I enjoy the dialogue that happens there and in a number of other ESL groups on linked-in. Cheers, brad
Thanks very much Brad, I’ll sign up for the group immediately.
Well Dave, there’s the new Dogme YL cycle: Improvised singing, emergent lyrics analysis, more singing and top it off with writing up the lyrics. I actually did something like that at a summer camp with students making sentences to build up a song as the others banged things. I think it was We Will Rock You as they could bang and clap the rhythm. In one school we did Twist and Shout in a music class (the first they’d ever had in 6/7 years of schooling) and after a week they started making up their own verses which became a regular activity to start the day off or to end on. Even the assistants used to join in. Parents loved it but then asked the head teacher “why have they never been creative before?”.
I’ve been trying some unplugged ideas in my classroom lately (a group of advanced pre-intermediates) and the main problem I’ve come up against is an over-reliance on writing. The activities suggested sound good but most of them involve a lot of writing and most of my students are more interested in listening/speaking. I think it’s a lot harder to come up with interesting speaking activities that come directly out of discussions. Can anyone recommend some good ways to focus on listening/speaking in a dogme lesson?
Hi David, thanks for dropping by.
You make a good point, a lot of these activities do in fact rely on pen and paper. I’ve mostly used these to extend a discussion into another activity which provides a springboard for more discussion, but if your learners are of the opinion that they do not need to write anything then some on-the-spot flexibility is needed. In this case, I pitch my idea of the next activity and ask the learners if they can modify it at all to make it work better for them. A teacher can’t be expected to intuitively know EXACTLY the format, layout, content and timing of an activity that works with a particular group.
As for ideas for speaking after speaking. I use an idea I found on Chia Suan’s blog which involves taking some threads of the conversation, looking at some emerging language then asking students to talk about it for practice, e.g. Conversation turns to school days — look at some adverbs, past tenses, phrasal verbs (mess around, wind up etc etc) — ask partners to talk about their school when they were 15. http://chiasuanchong.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/making-student-centred-dogme-student-friendly/
You could also write up a load of questions on the board that pick at emerging topics. There should be about five or six and swap groups and ask them to answer the questions. Make sure they dig a little deeper into the topics discussed, taking a new angle on it but still keeping the same theme. As Phil mentioned earlier, keeping the momentum going is vital, otherwise things die out.
Another favourite of mine is to take some emerging topics, stick them around the wall and ask groups find a topic and start a conversation. I then take a student from each group and give them a formulaic expression to interrupt “sorry, could I just butt in a minute…” and ask them to go and interrupt and then take part in the conversation. I like it because it’s adaptable to different turn-taking moves and comes in a ‘skeleton’ format; emerging language provides the flesh.
As for listening. I use various forms of dictation in class but other than that I have to say I use authentic materials. Being dogmatic about Dogme doesn’t make sense to me. If there’s a group of students who want to improve their listening then listening materials are needed. I’d say it’s too much hard work trying to conjure them up out of nothing when there’s such a rich resource of authentic listening texts online.
Throwing it out to the floor: good ways to focus on speaking and listening in a Dogme lesson?
I am a very lazy teacher and my students often don’t like TEFLy things like games and post-its so I’ve always done speaking, in fact, 90% of my classes are student speaking. The hurdle is going from teacher dominance or writing to speaking-based. Try bit by bit. Try a news short discussion or jump on anything that comes up to have a talk. I used to teach debate almost full-time but students didn’t want to speak as they didn’t know what to say and didn’t know of any topics so I helped with both but after a couple of weeks they loved researched new topics at home and then came to class full of ideas.
Find out what the problem is. It could be your approach, their language of language, ideas, culture etc.
Do you think a focus on talking improves students’ speaking abilities though Phil? The fact that there’s a big focus on discussion and conversation i.e. expressing meaning sometimes leads me to ask whether I’m shortchanging my learners on speaking ‘skills’ as it were. Maybe I’ve still not managed to take off my DELTA hat. I see potential problems when students come in contact with native speakers or speakers of a higher level; learners can’t find a way into the conversation and don’t know how realise a turn, relinquish a turn, interrupt, back-channel, give feedback etc. On the other hand, contrived practice of these skills in classroom conditions may be any more conducive to the acquisition of the tools of conversation as just sitting in a conversation, tuned in and ready to notice what the others are doing and copy them. Currently I’m having a modest amount of success with the latter in my immersion experience here in Rome.
Good point. I think you’ve shown here that Dogme isn’t just speak, speak, speak and sudddenly all the areas of your interlanguage problems will be fixed. doing fluency and fluency all the time is not ideal. Yes, some higher levels may love it but they have to also get some input/help/correction. Otherwise, they’re just repeating and cementing errors. With fossilized errors they need bringing to the surface, reworking and then learning/using. But jumping on everything and making it a grammar lesson is not the best.
I also like conversation/discourse analysis of native speakers for high levels but in reality do we want our students to speak like some lower class bloke from Yorkshire (me) or their host family’s son who lives in East London and says ‘betterer’?
The higher level issue is difficult. I think Scott has said that Dogme should not differentiate between levels. I’ve done groups business simulations in the past with mixed levels and for int/up int it was fine but when it was larger than 1 level there were complaints. The notion of these higher levels accommodating the lowers, scaffolding them and one theory (can’t remember who) that most people automatically help others to achieve success in the conversation may really depend on what type of students you have.
‘Contrived practice’ of turn-taking, interrupting etc is painful. I’ve tried it in the past and it’s too unnatural saying “interrupt X 10 times” but setting up an interesting talk or even funny one prompts the need for interruption. The best is if you run over into break and make them interrupt you as this is a real need. For me, this is a big area to work on but in an artificial classroom where students and teacher are playing roles and not themselves what can we do??
No of course not, I mean, imagine a learner walking into class saying “what is you dowin bruv?”, I’d fall off my chair! That said, raising awareness of discourse features, that they exist, they are important and their function sets learners up to be able to use them and use them correctly. Motivated students might then go on to notice these outside the classroom, on television, on the radio and start using them.
I think it’s our responsibility to provide at least some practice in the classroom, however contrived it may be. I have to say that practicing these sorts of routines in a classroom would certainly help me in Italian, even though I’d know it’s not a perfect real-life situation, I’d feel a bit short-changed without it. A couple of funny discussions and the desire to know what is going on the other side of the classroom creates good classroom conditions for practice.
At the end of the day, it will always be a classroom.
You make an important point about not differentiating levels. Linguistic theory doesn’t stand up against student preferences and there will always be students who are against speaking to lower level learners. “I’ve already done that book”… ; )
“I dont speak to anyone below CAE level” or “I can’t understand him, he’s only intermediate.
2 quotes from high level students.
I do remember CAE levels being a bit superior at times but the CPEs were even more so. It’s pretty tough to keep learning for some of them as they realise they are good and can survive abroad at pre-adv level but we teachers keep trying to push them. Do students really need CPE though? Most unis take IELTS 6 and some don’t advertise that they accept CAE/CPE and as they are only run a few times a year what’s the point? Is it just a way to sell more English classes?
How about these new ESP tests like Legal English? If they continuing developing all these specific courses an exams will general English/Business English die out?
Sorry Dale, may have sidetracked a bit. Your blog raises so many good issues it’s hard not to grasp them all.
Sidetracking, us? Never…
For me, studying a certificate like CPE in Italian would more be a demonstration to myself that I could do it. Like self-gratification… but maybe that’s just how I am. I think more and more frequently people come to general English classes with intentions of learning specialised English. With the rise of “giving students what they need”, it’s made GE into a much less homogenous beast of English language teaching.
I am happy to speak to both lower and higher level speakers of Italian, they always teach me things!
Sounds like Confucius.
I think you may be right. Just to prove it to yourself. I pushed a colleague into doing CPE and when he passed it he said that he could finally feel confident about his level and that it really pushed him.
This is why I love exam classes because they push students, cover all 4 skills and students are generally motivated. A long time ago when I used to teach FCE/CAE students would come after 2/3 terms of GE and just needed some exam training really. No students learn TOEIC for a whole term or just IELTS and no GE. Some schools even have intensive general IELTS where students learn ‘IELTS ENGLISH’ or ‘ TOEIC ENGLISH’ no wonder they don’t enjoy it.
I never got on with the idea of GE as coursebooks always had dull topics which nobody liked or lots of generally dull ones in an attempt to catch as many students as poss. But the same with BE. Most of my students did not like accounting or finance sections while others and me found int culture just too general. Yes, if you’re a pre-MBA student you may need to know 12 different areas of Business but the average BA student just covers 1 or 2.
So much stuff between your post & the comments…I’ll have to remember where to look when I’m actually looking for ideas…! Thanks for sharing, Dale. I suppose I’m not alone in thinking that there just isn’t enough time (& memory capacity) to read, view, digest & store so much free information among our PLN… made worse if one’s running one’s own blog as well!
One of the drawbacks of a good PLN – so much amazing material to read that even when you don’t work it’s difficult to even know where to start! I enjoy your interviews, they don’t require so much squinting at the screen trying to read a blog post and you can watch it over your lunch without getting your keyboard dirty.
Haha…I think I’m gonna rename iasku to MultiTaskU, what with eating & cooking at the same time as watching the interviews…
Next thing I know you’ll all be teaching while watching them at the same time!