Learning Twigs

A quick review of "Global" - a new coursebook series for adults from Macmillan

   

If you teach English to adults and you're looking for the "next big thing" in the way of coursebook materials, I suggest you check out Global - the new series from Macmillan.

It's a beautifully done series, with some exciting stuff in the way of multimedia and social media applications, and some excellent features that really emphasize English as a global language.

I've put together a very brief review of some of the things I like about the coursebook unit format in the screencast below:

   

 

My wife, who is now studying English as a migrant in Australia, loves the look and feel of this book. I'll be tracking down its availability here Down Under and hope we can use it together to help her enhance her English (and study) skills!

Congratulations to Lindsay Clandfield (lead author of the series) and Macmillan for putting together a fine and quite exciting piece of work. Nice going!

   

:-)

   

It's Worth Taking A Look At This Blog

  

 

This is a new and really positive initiative sweeping the ELT blogosphere at the moment. Basically, if someone tags you in their list of 10 recommend teaching blogs, you then come up with your own list of 10 other blogs YOU'D be willing to recommend, paste the logo above into your post, link back to the person/blog that initially tagged you.

I was very kindly tagged by the wonderful Sue Lyon-Jones on her blog The PLN Staff Lounge. Sue is also the lady behind one of the really great free resource sites out there: Esolcourses.com. I've been a big fan of Sue's work ever since I first got onto Twitter, and she's a great person to network with. So thanks Sue!

Okay, so I've done my list of 10 "highly recommended blogs" a little differently - by introducing them to you in a screencast!

   

Here are the direct links to those 10 blogs in order:

1. Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day

2. Six Things

3. Marisa Constantinides - TEFL Matters

4. Ken Wilson's Blog

5. Critical Mass ELT 

6. The Lives of Teachers

7. Doing some thinking - General thoughts on EFL

8. Sheetal Makhan

9. An A-Z of ELT with Scott Thornbury

10. EFL Classroom 2.0 - Teacher Talk

  

Apologies the description for David Deubelbeiss' EFL Classroom 2.0 Teacher Talk blog in the screencast got cut short, but I hope you'll visit and contribute to David's blog. It is a fantastic read by one of the ELT blogosphere's most outstanding and thoughtful educators, and quite frankly - it doesn't get the attention or recognition it deserves (nor anywhere near the attention David himself pays to other people's blogs!).

   

Apologies also to some really good blogs out there that didn't make my final list of 10. Omissions were often the product of (a) noticing that they've been mentioned several times already in other people's lists, or (b) my intention to make a list with some variety and some newer and up-and-coming bloggers who may not have the ELT superstar status, but are ELT superstars of the highest calibre in my eyes!

If you are tagged by somebody as part of the project, here's what you should do next:

1) Insert the picture above into your blog with a link back to the blog that nominated you;

2) Compile a list of ten blogs you feel are worth reading and;

3) Tell the bloggers you have nominated that you have tagged them.

   

:-)

How do we "grade" creative writing?

Creativity is such a precious and personal part of student writing. In systems that demand such writing get grades, how do we approach this tricky dilemma? Is it possible to actually grade creativity?

 

This post is dedicated to a very good friend of mine (actually a friend since childhood!) who is a teacher of English in Australia's public school system. He actually reads this blog from time to time, which flatters me beyond belief.

This teacher friend of mine contacted me this morning looking for ideas about how to effectively grade the creative writing efforts of his students. His main dilemma (and one I and I'm sure many other teachers have faced) is how to effectively and fairly grade creative writing.

It really got me thinking.

My quick response was to send him the following file, which is the general evaluation notes and rubrics I recommend to users of my Boost! Writing series, published with Pearson Longman:

Download Boost Writing Evaluation options[1] 

 

The benefits of that general approach are that the topic development and skill application sections of the rubric can be adapted and applied by teachers to cater to almost any style of writing and/or particular skills taught or sought as part of that style, while the other sections of the rubric still cater to the general need for writing mechanics, good language use, etc. There is also a specific part of the rubric which focuses on students' overall efforts and preparation, which I think are essential aspects for young writers.

However, I still feel this evaluation guide falls short of the most effective way to respond to and grade students' creative writing efforts.

For one, I really believe (and this should be self-evident, I'm sure many readers of this would say) that any sort of writing is best evaluated in terms of "affect on reader." We write to be read, after all, and it is how people "feel" and respond to creative writing that really matters the most.

Based on that, I would probably look to divide my grading rubric into two sections:

1. (Completed by teacher) - General grade out of 10 for things like mechanics, language use, cohesion, etc.

2. (Completed by readers) - An average of all readers' responses to the writing converted into a score out of 10. By this I mean I would have several other students in the class read the writing and give it a score out of 10 based on how effective they felt it was and how much they enjoyed reading it. I would then calculate an average of all those scores.

   

It's not perfect, but it does bring peers and real "readers" into the picture, and emphasizes the need for writers to consider a potential audience for their writing. It may well have as many risks as bonuses, especially considering how sensitive teenage students are to their peers (and how cruel some teens can be to each other!). There is also the risk that writing for an audience - especially an audience of peers in the very same room - could very well inhibit natural and free-flowing creative writing efforts.

   

So personally I'm a little stumped.

Anyone out there got any ideas about how to effectively evaluate creative writing efforts?

My teacher friend and I would love to hear from you!

 

:-)

  

Image at top of post used with permission:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/virtue_fern/3080845433/

The biggest problem with ELT conferences is us

   

Often part of the reason we feel left out in the cold as teachers is because we allow ourselves to be, and/or because we end up chasing the bright lights of the big ELT conferences at the expense of local action. 

   

I've actually been meaning to blog on this issue for a very long time, as it is something I have felt very strongly about for many years. Since 2002, in fact, when I was president of a provincial Korea TESOL chapter in Busan.

Some recent shenanigans in the ELT blogosphere (in which I am probably not blameless) have brought the issue home to me more poignantly. On this blog and some others, the redoubtable Gavin Dudeney is 100% right when he points out that instead of knocking ELT conferences and the people who run or present at them, people perhaps ought to put up (and have a genuine go at organising their own conferences or professional gatherings) or shut up.

Having a nice old dig at international and 'prestigious' ELT conferences, and the 'VIPs' who present at them, and the publishers who support them, is relatively easy sport. It's because these people and entities make easy targets, and the shooting becomes very rapidly rather unsportsmanlike. I've been pulled up on this recently, partly due to being misunderstood and partly for allowing myself to be misunderstood.

The real problem with ELT conferences, who presents at them, who benefits most from them, and who actually gets to attend them does not in fact lie with the organisations, VIPs and publishers. The blame lies squarely with us - and by "us" I do mean we teachers.

When I was president of Korea TESOL's Busan-Gyeongnam chapter in 2002, we had monthly chapter meetings in Busan. Everyone and anyone associated with English language teaching at any level was welcome to attend. We regularly got attendances of between 20-50 teachers. We successfully adapted the standard Korea TESOL emphasis on university/academic priorities to cater equally to teachers of younger learners and provided seminars with much more emphasis on practical teaching ideas. We usually all went out for a meal or a drink after the meetings on a Saturday afternoon.

It was a blast, and deeply enriching as a teacher. So many wonderful ideas. So many great friendships.

We even managed, through some hard work and wonderful communication, a speaker exchange with the JALT Kitakyushu chapter. They sent a wonderful Japanese lady over to speak at our chapter meeting about gender studies and language learning, and one of our members put her up for the weekend. Following that, we sent our own chapter Vice President over the Kitakyushu to present and be hosted by them.

We had what I considered to be a really successful teacher association happening. It cost virtually nothing to run.

Not everyone saw it that way of course. Both in Busan and at Korea TESOL's national level, some people expressed dismay and criticism that in a city with almost 4 million people, we were only attracting 20-50 people to our monthly meetings. Our whole paid up membership as a chapter (covering Busan and the whole Gyeongsangnam-do province) rarely went over 150.

A little later, when I was national coordinator for KOTESOL's Young Learners and Teenagers SIG, we had two national symposiums focussing specifically on issues relevant to teaching children and teenagers. We attracted around 100-150 people to each of these. Publisher support was rather lukewarm, but the events were marvelous successes for those that presented and attended. No big VIPs, but a super-thick resource book containing all the extended handouts and teaching ideas from the people who presented. I got my school to sponsor the printing and production of these books (took some pretty persistent persuasion, but I got there!). I still hear positive comments about those events and the resource books we generated from them, and I get a genuine glow when they flow through to me.

But again, based on the numbers in such a populous country with so many thousands of English teachers, the external verdict was that our events were not all that successful.

Why?

KOTESOL's annual international conference gets close to 1,000 attendees and gets very liberal financial support from publishers. That was the measuring stick both our chapter meetings and YLT symposiums were being held up against - to some degree. The annual conferences attracted hundreds of people from Busan (who never came near our humble chapter meetings), and hundreds of teachers of children and teenagers who never came anywhere near our national YLT symposium.

This brings me to my main point...

In my very small and very biased opinion, the chapter meetings we put on in Busan and the YLT national symposiums we held were 10 times more successful than the most grandiose annual KOTESOL conference ever was, or ever will be. They were incredibly egalitarian and pretty much free of any commercialism at all. They were easy to get to and cost virtually nothing to attend except the commitment to a few hours of a teacher's time on a Saturday afternoon.

Problems with advertising and connecting with teachers aside, one of the reasons international conferences appear to be the only realistic avenue to professional development is because so many teachers elect to do it that way. One of the reasons VIPs are considered so important to ELT conferences is because so many teachers choose to make them so, often at the expense of their own talent and that of their colleagues living in the same town or region.

It must indeed come across as rather rich or at least very frustrating to hear teachers poke criticism at international conference events, when the same teachers won't get involved in professional development and sharing at their own local level. It's hard to take criticism of the costs involved with international conferences when teachers could be doing something even more enriching in their own area for virtually (and often very much literally) no cost at all.

In short, a variety of problems and inequalities associated with big sponsored conferences and their bright lights are because teachers themselves are drawn to such bright lights, and do very little to light their own bulbs or gather the ready-to-be-lit talents around them in their local contexts. As long as we prefer ELT concerts over genuine get-togethers, that's what we'll get.

  

So I do feel that the biggest problem with ELT conferences is us - the teachers - and the solution to more and better opportunities to network and share ideas with other teachers lies squarely with us as well.

   

:-)

 

Image at top used with permission:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/motleypixel/2729494918/in/photostream/

What's good for the goslings can be good for a gander

  

As teachers, we often love to analyze the way our students learn. Some of that same analysis can be fruitfully applied to ourselves as well.

One of my favourite ELTers, David Deubelbeiss, has as his general slogan "When one teaches, two learn." I couldn't agree more.

I'm sure we can all recall (at least to some extent) what it felt like to start out as teachers. One of the strongest impressions is that we are journey(wo)men, and we have so much to learn. In my opinion, the very best teachers out there don't really lose that sensation, irrespective of how much experience or sets of qualifications they earn. If anything, the sensation grows, becoming one of excitement and fascination rather than trepidation.

It has always intrigued me to some extent how much we tend to segregate learning development (for students) from our own teacher development issues. By this I mean that, as teachers, we tend to do a lot of reading and chatting at training sessions about all sorts of things related to learning processes, to better understand our learners, but it can be really interesting to apply (adapting where appropriate) some of these theories to ourselves as "learner" teachers.

Hence the title of this post, which implies that it can be a good idea to take a "gander" at what we imagine to be good or descriptive about our learners (the "goslings"), and then see if it can also teach us something about ourselves (the "gander" also being a parent of goslings!) and what we do as teachers.

 

Here are just a couple of ideas for you. I've framed them as questions, because I think they're something to explore and think about.

If affective filter (ala Krashen) accurately describes what can prevent uptake of language and effective learning for students, what about us as teachers? Is there a corresponding affective filter for teachers that creates a sort of grill or catchment area and hence prevents smooth flowing teaching ability? If so, what can we do about it?

 

Continuing with Krashen, what about the monitor? You know, the process whereby language learners use what they have learned to "monitor" their ongoing production of "acquired" language? According to Krashen, there can be over-users of the monitor (those who analyze too much and end up with very hesitant production), under-users of the monitor (those risk-takers gabbling away off to the side of your class without worrying at all whether it is correct or even comprehensible!), and - somewhere between the two - the optimal user who monitors in small doses only when it is really necessary and doesn't often compromise one's ongoing fluency.

Okay, well is there something like this monitor for teachers as well? Do we use our bookish and CELTA-ish or MATESOL-ish gleanings to monitor what we are doing naturally in our teaching (the ability and processes we have already "acquired")? Do teachers themselves have the potential to become over-users, under-users and optimal users of a sort of teaching monitor?

 

And my final theft from Krashen's chest of goodies (I promise), how about this i+1 theory? You know, "input plus one." If you subscribe to the i+1 theory, you figure that effective language development takes place when we give the learners input they can handle, with just a tad more that is guaranteed to stretch them a little, grope ahead, learn something new within a broader context of comfortable comprehension.

What if we adapted this to become t+1? "Teaching plus one." As in, if we generally stick to teaching processes that we already know and feel comfortable with, but always add a little dash of something that stretches us a little into unknown teaching territory of some sort, could this be an effective recipe for ongoing teaching development?

  

Krashen's stuff is fun to apply in this way, because I'm of the general opinion that almost all of what Krashen proposes can be generalised and applied to any sort of learning. It's easy. Which is probably why his theories have always been so popular with newer teachers, and why Krashen-bashing has become a favourite pastime of so many professors looking for an easy article to write for a journal and justify another year of tenure. :-)

Let's look at some slightly more challenging concepts then, shall we?

   

How about this notion of interlanguage?  From memory, this was first proposed by some ridiculously insightful bloke named Selinger (I think it was - if I'm wrong then I'm sure someone in one of Rod Ellis' MA programs will be ready to pounce on me with a correction). Basically, interlanguage describes the learner's ongoing "approximation" of the target language they are attempting to learn. It floats somewhere between their awareness of their first language and the perfected form of the target language. Technically, an interlanguage is a language unto itself and in its own right, and there are never two that are exactly the same (just as no two students can ever be exactly the same person). My visual interpretation of it is like a gelatinous bubble, constantly shifting and re-shaping itself as the learner makes new discoveries about the language.

So, do teachers have this as well - a sort of interteaching? A teacher's ongoing approximation of ideal or perfected teaching methodology? The "target form" here is obviously difficult to apply, because of course we haven't yet found a perfect way of teaching with consistently optimal results, and we probably never will! However, perhaps optimal teaching exists somewhere at the periphery of each individual teacher's awareness, or as a golden archway built out of their highest hopes and expectations. Do our teaching approaches and collections of techniques comprise a similar gelatinous, ever metamorphosing bubble that basically approximates what we eventually hope our teaching will become (or in more ominous situations, the teaching approach we have been led to believe is "the" correct or best one)?

Or have those cookies I picked up at that market stall today got additional ingredients in them that nobody bothered to warn me about?

   

If you would bear with me on this interlanguage and interteaching thread for a moment, we can go from there to the concept of variability. Naturally, students' language production varies in its forms and errors, and this can be described in terms of free variation (apparently more common in beginner learners who haven't acquired many of the target language rules yet) and systematic variation (which is influenced more by changes in the linguistic, psychological or social context).

So do us teachers exhibit variability in our teaching as well? Do we flail around a lot at the beginning, feeling our way and demonstrating a lot of free variation in our teaching techniques? Likewise, can localised changes to our linguistic, pyschological or social context bring on systematic variation in our teaching performance?

Related to these notions of interlanguage and variability, do we as teachers have the potential to plateau (hit a certain level or capacity and get stuck there without further progression for long periods of time - if not permanently) in our teaching approaches and ability - the same way learners do with the language they are learning?

And for that matter, just as learners often exhibit backsliding (appearing to actually regress in their ability with the language), can this happen to teachers as well (with respect to their teaching, I mean)?

  

I could go on, and the list is actually quite long. You might like to add some of your own feelings or theories about language learning which also become very fruitful grounds for examining teaching ability and development. Comments welcome!

   

In any case, I personally find it fascinating just how many Second Language Acquisition principles and theories have potential application to our ability and progress as teachers as well. Perhaps this is because learning and teaching are basically two sides of the same coin. Or, perhaps teaching, being a communicative process that depends on language, is naturally susceptible to and influenced by the same factors that naturally govern language acquisition.

If that is true, it might be time to stop examining language learning and language teaching as very separate fields or issues... don't you think?

  

Or perhaps we should just stick to David Deubelbeiss' original and beautifully accurate message:

When one teaches, two learn. 

   

:-)

   

Picture at top of post used with permission:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deanaia/2608875497/

How one country could save 100 million dollars on English education - in one year

  

 

I've never been particularly renowned for my mathematics ability, but I hope you'll forgive some generalisations here about education costs and look beyond it to a bigger picture.

Korea has, by most estimates, 20,000 native English speakers teaching English across its combined public school, private institute, and university sectors.

On average (and I'm attempting to be very conservative here), these teachers do about 1,000 teaching hours per year, and cost about USD 30,000 per year (each) to the Korean education industry. Or, USD 30 per hour of English instruction.

So, at a very rough estimate, the equation for access to native speakers comprises about 20 million teaching hours at an overall cost of USD 600 million. Per year.

What if we kept certain numbers constant but changed the delivery of English language instruction to an online format?

Let's say, instead of having 20,000 native speakers in Korea, we had the instruction happen online, and paid teachers (comfortably set in their home countries) USD 25 per hour of "beamed in" instruction to whole classes.

Most Korean classrooms are already wired up with Internet access. There is also ready access to things like IWBs. With some initial outlay, getting Korean classrooms prepared for webcam and audio connected lessons would not be a major problem.

 

Anyway, we're looking at an instant saving of USD 100 million. Per year.

I won't even attempt to estimate what the saving would be in terms of time, especially for those poor Korean teachers who have to run about finding accommodation for the imports, helping them to buy toilet paper when they arrive, and somehow trying to explain the unique Korean work culture to them (often on a daily basis over an entire year).

  

Let's say, instead of seeing that 100 million dollars as a saving, we look to re-invest it more effectively into the English education framework in Korea...

50 million dollars would probably fund the hiring of another 1,500 local English teachers per year, which would absolutely have an impact on the generally appalling teacher to student ratios in Korean schools.

The other 50 million dollars would allow (through scholarships) up to about 3,000 local teachers to spend 6-12 months abroad in English speaking settings to improve their English skills and quite possibly their teaching qualifications. 

That's per year, mind you.

 

There are definitely some holes here and there in the maths, but to me it is still a bit of a no-brainer.

Countries like Korea seriously need to consider the potential and the benefits of having their native speaker teachers on a screen, freeing up more time for the local teachers but also more funds. Funds which would facilitate employment of more local teachers and help to develop their English ability so that they can actually look ahead to a more self-sustainable English education framework.

 

 

Image at top of post used with permission:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ari/3730940027/

   

Sometimes the pen is still mightier than the keyboard - for me, anyway!

Going digital with writing in language/literacy classes has all sorts of benefits, but at what cost? Personally, I still - on occasion - miss the power of the pen...

   

Rifling my way through my weekly dose of around 100 TOEFL essays to read, check, score and respond to, I paused today to reflect on how much I miss the good old pen.

Being an online teacher with students scattered all over the globe, I do of course collect and respond to my students' essays in a fully digital format. Besides the access and delivery advantages, there are of course a lot of benefits to handling writing via Internet and keyboard, and it certainly does reflect the way most writing is now being applied in the real world anyway.

However, despite all the advances and super-dooper programs (and perhaps at the risk of coming across as a bit of a luddite!), I personally think there are aspects of "pen and paper" based writing that represent real advantages from a teaching perspective.

Here are just two of them...

 

1. Hand-written essays tend to tell me more about my learners' difficulties, thought processes and "interlanguage"

When I used to teach English in Korea, I often provoked something akin to ire when I requested that students put away their pencils and use a pen to write their essays. The trepidation for students came with the fact that they were no longer able to repeatedly stop and erase their work before stumbling along for a few more words and then repeating the self-flaggelating process of butchering and re-writing their thoughts.

This represented students' obsession with writing as being all about the final product, and all about a demonstration of their sentence level grammar and spelling abilities. The process, in their minds, was a nasty and pitiful affair that was best concealed behind sealed doors.

And, of course, going digital with student writing means this process also stays behind sealed doors - even more so than with pencil and eraser based writing. Oh, I know, with things like Google Docs and Microsoft Word you can look at the history/changes in a piece of writing, but it's not the easiest snapshot to capture quickly and conveniently, and often doesn't tell enough of the particular "story" I'm interested in when it comes to viewing and learning from my students' actual writing processes.

Using a pen, and allowing for correction simply by drawing single lines through the parts the students want to discard or adapt, the drafting process shows me some amazing things about my learners' language capability, self-correction instincts and thought processes. It IS only a draft after all, and they can re-write it later in whatever idealised way they like. But the pen written first draft is mine (at least in terms of taking a real good gander), and a real treasure any language teacher ought to want to clasp to their chest protectively.

You see, a piece of writing produced with a pen, warts and all with nothing erased that can't still be clearly glimpsed, is like a guided tour through a learners' interlanguage. It's also a fascinating recording of how the student thinks, not just in terms of language use but also idea generation and realisation. A hand-written essay can even show you when parts were rushed or really worked over in ways a digital version often can't.

Perhaps the tech IS out there that can show this when it comes to digital writing and I just haven't seen it yet. But for me, using a pen and paper in writing classes can be a really fascinating and useful window into my students' minds, writing processes, and appropriation of language. 

   

2. A pen is more effective when it comes to correcting and responding to written work

For me personally, this is perhaps related to stylistic issues as much as being a practical consideration.

On the practical side, I find it really easy to correct minor mistakes with a pen while I'm actually reading it. Pauses of 0.25 to 2 seconds here and there to cross out an "e" or insert an "s" don't really impact on my ability to read the essay in a relatively flowing fashion. When you get enough experience, you actually find that you're able to correct a lot of mistakes pretty much without thinking all that much about them - which of course allows you to focus the main part of your attention on what the student is saying to you in the writing and how.

Perhaps it's just me, but I really can't do this in the same way when I'm reading and responding to digital essays. It takes more time and finger fumbling to get "into" the text and correct things. Besides the fact this inhibits my ability to read the writing in a fluent way, for me, when pauses start to amount to serious time, it becomes a wasteful process (especially when I have 100+ essays to check that day!).

I actually compared the "quick corrections" processes with a pen and a keyboard recently in terms of time, and it was a bit horrifying. It took me almost five times as long to insert or make corrections in a digital essay as it did to do the same with a pen on a printed version of the essay. So much for technology speeding things up!

Again, I concede, this could just be me - and could also no doubt have something to do with the fact that I started to teach and mark writing a good decade before it became more fashionable or common to do writing on a computer. I'm not an "eagle typer", but while certainly being no slouch with a keyboard, perhaps I'm not as quick or fluent with it as I ought to be (by today's digital standards!).

But then there's also the stylistic issue. Making corrections and suggestions with pen allows you to work with the space on the page not only efficiently, but sensitively. Some things can hover above or poke into sentences, while other things can drift towards the margin, or hang at the bottom of a graceful arcing hand-drawn arrow. There are some computer-based programs that allow similar sorts of meddling and responding to writing, but they just can't allow the freedom of space and selective positioning that I find pen and paper allows.

There is also real evidence on the paper (for the learner) that a human being has read, touched and personally responded to their work. Yet again, this could just be the fuddy-duddy in me emerging, and perhaps today's mobile and "digitised" youth would find this sort of thing either irrelevant or just plain archaic - I don't know.

 

So there you have it, I do miss the good old pen, for both practical and stylistic reasons!

   

Where do you stand?

  

  

Image at start of post used with persmission:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucastheexperience/3469305764/

Iceland? Volcanoes? Ash clouds? Air travel chaos? Have I got a TEFL lesson for you!

 

One of the cool things about using "natural disasters" as a theme in your coursebook is that, sooner or later, "what goes around" is somehow likely to "come around" again - relieving some of the stress writers and publishers experience in terms of ensuring textbook content stays fresh and relevant in an ever fast-forwarding world.

However, I don't think I could have planned this one better no matter how hard I'd tried!

Considering the recent volcanic eruptions in Iceland and the ash-clouds causing air travel havoc across western Europe this week, take a look at this Boost! Reading lesson I wrote in early 2006...

  

 
 

  

Ha! Take that, Sean Banville from Breaking News English! I got this story out way before you did!

You can download the full lesson in PDF format from the Boost! website at this direct link here (it's Unit 2 on that site page - also help yourself to Unit 1 on Earthquakes if you like - or feel some tremors coming on in your neighbourhood sometime soon...).

:-)

 

Fast-food English arrives in Korea: Welcome to Weguki's!

  

 

Welcome to the new business venture that is taking South Korea by storm: Weguki's - a provider of fast-food style English practice to Korea's English-starved masses.

Weguki's (an adaptation from the Korean term for "foreigner" or "westerner") consists of a chain of restaurant style shops where you can "eat English in or take out." Using a pre-set menu, customers choose from a variety of English "meals" and then approach the counter where they can practice this targeted English with a native speaker.

"Most of our English meals consist of about 1 minute's practice," says Yoo Bum-suk, in charge of corporate marketing for the Weguki's group. "This fits our customers needs and expectations, and means we can cater to all those Korean people who have very little time to work on their English. They can drop in to one of our family-friendly restaurants, chew on some English, and then get back to their busy schedules."

The pre-set menu at Weguki's consists of items like the Calgary Convo Pack, the Toronto Talkfest, the Washington Chinwag, and London Lip-syncher, and the Vancouver Voca Pack. They all consist of leveled conversational dialogues, which are printed out and given to a customer, who can then practice it at the counter on the spot with a native speaker, or go away to a table to memorise and prepare for it before heading back to the counter. The take-out option also means customers can take the material home or to work to practice on their own.

At an average price of 3,500 Korean Won, Mr. Yoo claims that these English conversational meals represent outstanding value for Korea's busy population, which is over-burdened with excessive fees for private English education.

However, Weguki's also offers specialised menu options at different times of the day.

"We have a special range of products specially made for children," said Song Gi-mi, Weguki's marketing manager for Children's Dietary English. "Examples include the Philly Phonics Flap and the Charlie Chant Chap. They are available on our menu in the mornings and afternoons, making them ideal for Korean kids to gobble down on their way to or from school and between sessions at private institutes."

Likewise, Weguki's offers special products for late-night adult customers, including the Boston Biz Boaster, which provides dialogues showcasing how to best extol Korea's unique characteristics in informal business settings - for example pointing out politely how Korea is the only country in the world that enjoys four seasons.

   

 

Major publishers are already flocking to Weguki's to secure rights to have their materials featured in the Weguki's menu.

However, despite enormous sales in its first few months of operation, Weguki's is also in the firing line for a lot of local criticism and concern.

The groups decision to offer English practice 24 hours a day has the private institute sector in particular well and truly up in arms. Private institute owners point out that the Weguki's opening hours policy is in direct violation of Korea's strict and universally adhered-to laws about permitted opening hours for private language institutes - which normally call for a 10 p.m. closing time.

"This law does not in fact apply to us, so we are not concerned about it," assures Mr. Yoo smoothly. "Our staff are clearly not teachers, and there is certainly no teaching happening on our premises. It's all 100% naturally contrived conversation. Hence, the opening hour regulations referred to here clearly don't apply."

Noh Su-mi, owner and director of a prominent franchised private institute in the competitive Daechi-Dong district of Seoul, begs to differ.

"It's completely unfair," she claims, somewhat hysterically and with wild gesticulation."The native speakers in my school are clearly not teachers either, and there is certainly no teaching going on in my institute.

"And we completely, 100% obey the law about closing before 10 p.m." she added heatedly, outside her institute at 1 a.m. as a group of exhausted-looking teenagers filed out of the school behind her heading for an unmarked bus without registration plates. "It's ridiculous that this Weguki's outfit can so blatantly break the law and not suffer any consequences!"

But that's not all. Weguki's proposed home delivery service is also coming in for some serious criticism as well.

"The dangers are potentially catastropic," warned Yie Eun-woong of Anti English Spectrum fame. "We already have a serious problem in Korea with potentially over 90% of foreign language teachers being drug addicts, spreaders of AIDs, rapists or child molesters. How could we possibly let foreigners ride all by themselves directly to people's apartments to deliver English practice? I already have enough trouble organising enough troops - erm, I mean, concerned citizens - to stalk - erm, I mean, monitor all the non-Korean scumbags' - erm, I mean, foreign teachers' after hours activities.

"Mark my words," he says fervently, "if Koreans thought that 13 confirmed criminals in a population of over 20,000 foreign teachers was scary, wait until Weguki's starts offering home delivery services..."

  

   

Again, Mr. Yoo does not seem unduly alarmed by such critisms.

"We are only going to allow female foreigners to do all the late night home deliveries to dark and dubious areas around the major cities," he says confidently. "This is a clear demonstration of our commitment to safety issues in our society."

   

 

 
 

   

Some problems with a "super-scaffold me!" approach in English language learning

  

Scaffolding is such a common term in English language learning these days, but personally I have some problems with it as a useful and relevant concept for optimal language learning, and think it has become over-done. I've expressed some views on this idea of "scaffolding" in the video below... see what you think!

What is scaffolding in language learning? Is it really a relevant or useful concept, and, has ELT developed into a field and process whereby scaffolding is over done to the detriment of longer-term independent learning?

  

So what are your thoughts about this whole scaffolding thing? Very interested to read your reactions and views!

 

:-)

Introducing my new (kind of) coursebook series...

Welcome to my new (kind of) coursebook series, this one with particular emphasis on test preparation for TOEFL speaking and writing.

Okay, best I 'fess up here and qualify what I meant by the "kind of" in the title for this post!

This is only "kind of" a coursebook. It's more or less a new kind of course format, platform, medium - call it what you will. It's what I believe language coursebooks could become, and how they could be so much more effective. I would go so far as to (humbly, mind) assert that this form of "course" potentially represents (one of many manifestations of) the next stage in coursework evolution. 

It's also only "kind of" new. I've been applying this sort of online coursework for around 3-4 years now, both as part of blended coursework options attached to traditional private institute operations and also as my own private project work.

  

Here's a quick overview of what you are looking at in the image above:

There are three 'windows' in the interface.

One contains actual test materials, accessible through an itemised menu. All sound files for test items are embedded directly into the screens. 

Next to that is another window with a menu to access a variety of tutorial materials, consisting of blended text, audio samples, video lectures and screencasts. This equates generally to the core 'content' you might expect to find in a coursebook, only it is delivered through the much richer media of audio and video.

 
Below the test material and tutorial content windows is an interface for students to record their own responses to the test questions and also listen to hundreds of other recordings from other students from around the world participating in the same coursework. The underlying technology for this part of the platform was provided via an arrangement with the excellent Dean Worth from Voxopop (and coming soon: the exciting Engo.net!).

  

There are a variety of factors that make this sort of coursework quite interesting, and also really exciting:

- The capacity to build skills, apply actual tasks and record and share speaking efforts with other students is all provided within the one portal.

- The textual element of lesson content is reduced to main points and then delivered in detail through a rich combination of text, video and audio.

- Actual interacting teaching can be facilitated through the platform.

- Test items and skills/strategies content are regularly updated (on a monthly basis, in fact) to keep up with changes in official test content and the needs (and requests) of learners. Entirely new content is added monthly as well, ensuring the course is in a state of constant and ongoing growth.

- Students have options to sign up and pay for only those elements of the coursework they feel they need or which matches their budgets and timeframes. For example, they can access the content and tutorials only for a fraction of the cost involved in buying a coursebook with similar coverage (and nowhere as rich delivery), or they can buy access to the whole package - including the opportunity to record and get feedback on responses - for about the same price of an existing coursebook (which of course does not provide practice or feedback opportunities).

- All of this coursework was developed by a single teacher with content writing experience and moderate web skills. There is no need for a publisher, nor for complicated processes of marketing and distribution. The teacher is the writer and the designer, but can also teach students worldwide through this material. Once enrollment hits a certain critical mass, the system is perfectly set up to bring in a whole teaching team (or even series of teams).

- The example given here is for a course targeting TOEFL speaking skills. There is an accompanying (and very similar) platform for TOEFL writing (including the chance to submit, read and get scores and feedback on essays), and while these are easy to design and present based on the very controlled parameters of a formal test application, it would be very easy to apply a similar format for both more general language learning coursework or highly specific and targeted coursework that is not test-preparation in nature or purpose.

 

The content and practice represented here in this sample is about the equivalent of what my students might get to cover in a three month TOEFL course in the institutes I used to teach at. Major differences (other than the f2f factor) are that students can re-play and re-apply as much or as little of the content and tasks as they like, they can schedule it and be selective with what they pay more attention to according to their own needs, and they can listen to hundreds of other students (not the dozen they happened to be seated with in a regular classroom).

Of potentially equal importance, my old classroom students would pay about $300-$400 per month to access this sort of test-prep coursework ($900-$1200 over the three month term). Taking the full packages for speaking and writing in this online format would cost about $60 per month - or around $200 over the three months. Coming to an institute, my students would spend about 10 hours per month getting to and from the school (30 hours over a three month term), whereas with the online course it is available to them 24/7 according to their own schedule, and takes as much time to access as it does to turn on one's computer. 

Even with these dramatic differences in price and time demands, I actually think the online version of the course is genuinely more effective for individual students than the classroom-based equivalent (for a rich variety of reasons that I don't quite have time to explore in this particular post).

 

Of interest to me is the fact that, following the publication of my first coursebook series, I seriously thought about approaching publishers to put all my experience and specialisation in TOEFL to work in some sort of exciting new coursebook series. Not long after beginning the design of the online materials you can see above, I realised that a print-based coursebook series was going to be slower to produce and overall of inferior effectiveness as a learning tool for students (not to mention risky: once a test makes a couple of small changes, whole test-prep books become useless and just cannot be updated, amended or added to the way online materials can).

Actually, some discussions with one major publisher did eventuate in terms of having me design speaking and writing sections for a test prep tool they were developing. I had to wait almost 2 years for them to get their act together with the reading and listening sections first, and frankly, I got tired of waiting for them (as did, no doubt, a couple of hundred thousand students worldwide)!

 

Another interesting aspect of this for me is that I had this sort of design and application ready to go just after my own series was published. I went and met the powers that be at my publishing company and presented this sort of format as an idea for my own or some sort of follow up series. I was told nicely, but somewhat imperiously, that this publishing company - being as mighty and well-resourced as it was - already had its own engines and, well, I just didn't have the technical nouse for this sort of complicated online stuff (but thank you so much for the offer!). In fact, the launch of something very similar to what I was suggesting was right around the corner...

And of course, at the time I thoroughly believed they were right. My web pages and applications are really quite simple. There aren't a lot of bells and whistles and glittering cascading style sheets. Just text, audio, video, and a simple (but reliable) audio recording facility.

But that was in 2007. I'm still waiting to see what was meant to be around that particular publishing centre's corner.

Okay - sorry, actually I'm not waiting.

  

And, dear ELT publishers, I'm not the only one who isn't waiting. If your horse hasn't bolted yet, it's pretty darned close to doing so.

   

   

:-)