Issue 90

January
2014

The Leading Practical Magazine For English Language Teachers Worldwide

Pronunciation matters
Robin Walker

Take five
Chaz Pugliese

Get on board
Louise Guyett

Seven into one

Olga Makinina

• practical methodology

• fresh ideas & innovations

• classroom resources

• new technology

• teacher development

• tips & techniques

• photocopiable materials

• competitions & reviews

w w w . e t p r o f e s s i o n a l . c o m
 oxford
english
testing
.com

For young learners

aged 7-12 years

an
Americ h
is
and Brit
English Oxford Young Learners
For
Placement Test
students
aged 15+
Oxford Online
Placement Test

Online Placement Testing

Quickly and reliably place your students at the right level

Automatically marked with instant results.

Range of scores to help you make the right
placement decision, or to differentiate
between students in mixed-ability classes:
CEFR level and numerical scores.
Taken and managed online, no special
software needed.
Accurate and reliable results: written by
assessment experts, and pretested and
piloted by thousands of students worldwide.
“ We are very satisfied with the
results of the test, as they
have proven to be trustworthy
and very useful.
Leen Maes,
”
Erasmushogeschool Brussel, Belgium.
Using the Oxford Online Placement Test
since 2010.

Computer adaptive: presents questions

at just the right level of challenge, giving
students a positive assessment experience.

Go to
www.oxfordenglishtesting.com
to find out more
1
Contents MAIN FEATURE EAP

PRONUNCIATION MATTERS 4 REINVENTING THE INVENTIVE 44

Robin Walker emphasises the importance David Heathfield pays homage to Mario Rinvolucri
of intelligibility by adapting his ideas for academic writing

FEATURES TEACHER DEVELOPMENT

BEYOND THE TASK 8 SIGNIFICANT OTHERS 55

James Pengelley reveals why repetition rules
TAKE FIVE 12
Chaz Pugliese interviews Adrian Underhill
PREPARING STUDENTS FOR EXAMS 2 13
Eva Modrá paves the way for the C & G ISESOL
Mark Krzanowski explains what a SIG
can do for you
MOTIVATIONAL MANTRAS 57
Douglas Williams suggests ten strategies
to perk you up

DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT WITH 16 TECHNOLOGY

YOUR COURSEBOOK 3
Rachael Roberts considers comprehension exercises GET ON BOARD 58
Louise Guyett offers three pronunciation activities
STARTING A CRITICAL DIALOGUE 18 for the IWB
Valerie Sartor demonstrates creative use of texts
from different genres FIVE THINGS YOU ALWAYS WANTED 61
TO KNOW ABOUT: IWBs
OVER THE WALL 25 Nicky Hockly weighs up the worth
Alan Maley warns of impending doom of the interactive whiteboard

MAKING THE MOST OF MELODY 29 WEBWATCHER 63

Lesley Lanir mixes music and language Russell Stannard embraces e-portfolios

SEVEN INTO ONE 34

Olga Makinina prompts her students to plan a trip
REGULAR FEATURES
TEXT MESSAGES 2 46 IT WORKS IN PRACTICE 38
Nick Dall points out practical ideas for
teaching texting
LANGUAGE LOG 40
John Potts
DO WE NEED TO KNOW THIS? 51
Emilia Siravo appreciates the authenticity of
REVIEWS 42
corpus language

SCRAPBOOK 48

TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS TALKBACK! 53

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? 22 COMPETITIONS 41, 64

Merve Oflaz delights in the diversity of her students

Includes materials designed to photocopy

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 • 1

 Editorial
I
would like to thank all those readers who took part in in which he asks five questions to people in different areas
our recent survey. Your replies to the questions made of ELT, beginning with Adrian Underhill. James Pengelley
fascinating and instructive reading, and I have compiled believes everything should be done twice; Louise Guyett
quite a long list of the topics that you would like to see has devised three interactive pronunciation activities;
addressed in future issues of ETp. I’m pleased to say that I Douglas Williams has ten mantras to keep teachers
have articles waiting in the wings on many of these topics, motivated; and Olga Makinina develops a series of lessons
and these will appear in the year ahead. Pronunciation to appeal to seven different types of learners.
came high on many people’s wish-lists, so they will no
Finally, Alan Maley thinks our days are numbered and gives
doubt be pleased to see a new series on the subject by
his choice of books to read to help us as we rush headlong
Robin Walker, beginning in this issue with our main feature
towards disaster.
‘Pronunciation matters’.
In our poll of favourite sections of ETp, It Works in Practice Don’t forget that as a subscriber to ETp, you
came out top yet again. I am often short of items to put on have access to the full content of our website
this spread, and it is clear that readers really do appreciate at www.etprofessional.com, where you can find
quick ideas which they can implement immediately – and videos, blogs, a bookshop with discount deals
which they know will work because they have been and a complete archive of articles from previous
submitted by fellow professionals. So why not get in touch issues of the magazine.
with something that has worked for you?
I will also be trying to increase the number of photocopiable
materials that we provide, as the survey revealed that these
are particularly valued. Beginning in this issue, we have a
photocopiable worksheet based on the Scrapbook, and we
have plans for a new series of articles with worksheets to
begin in March. Helena Gomm
Editor
Elsewhere in the magazine, you will find that numbers
helena.gomm@pavpub.com
feature quite prominently. Chaz Pugliese starts a new series

Rayford House, School Road, Hove BN3 5HX, UK

Tel: +44 (0)1273 434943 Email: admin@pavpub.com

Fax: +44 (0)1273 227308 Web: www.etprofessional.com

Editor: Helena Gomm Published by: Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd,
Rayford House, School Road, Hove BN3 5HX
Editorial Consultant: Mike Burghall
© 2014, Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd
Editorial Director: Andrew Chilvers
ISSN 1362-5276
Designer: Christine Cox
Subscriptions: Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd,
Advertising Sales Manager:
Rayford House, School Road, Hove BN3 5HX
Cover photo: © Paul Rich Studio / Shutterstock.com

Carole Blanchett, Mainline Media

Tel: 01536 747333
Fax: 01536 746565
Email: carole.blanchett@mainlinemedia.co.uk Numéro de Commission Paritaire: 1004 U 82181.
Prix à l’unité = EUR14.75; à l’abonnement (6 numéros) = EUR59.
Publisher: Tony Greville Directeur de la Publication: Tony Greville

Pages 21 and 49 – 51 include materials which are designed to photocopy. All other rights are reserved and no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

2 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 From the publisher of
Teaching
English One
to One
By Priscilla Osborne
This practical book
provides an analysis
of the advantages
and disadvantages of
teaching students on a
one-to-one basis and
will enable you to:
• Develop a learner needs analysis
• Produce learner profiles
• Plan effective courses
• Use the learner as a resource.
208 pages ISBN: 1-904549-03-9 £14.95
Teaching
English with IT
By David Gordon
Smith and Eric Baber
This book shows how
to use information
technology when
teaching English and
is packed full of practical
ideas, so you can:
• Use IT in your teaching in the most effective way
• Find IT-related activities that work with your lesson plans
• Understand learning management systems
• Manage IT issues.
Topics covered include: email; websites; web-based activities;
professional training online; text chat and much more.
180 pages ISBN: 1-904549-01-2 £14.95
3
simple
simple ways
ways to
to order:
order:
• EMAIL: info@pavpub.com
• CALL: the orders hotline on +44 (0) 1273 434 943
• GO ONLINE: www.etprofessional.com
Teaching
English with
Drama
By Mark Almond
This book shows you
how to understand the
benefits of acting skills
and improve learning
by using drama, plays
and theatre techniques
in your lessons and
covers a wide range of
subjects for teachers
including how to:
• Plan drama-related class work
• Choose appropriate texts and modify dialogue
for different levels of students
• Work with theatrical techniques
• Make the best of stage management
• Put on a play, with a step-by-step guide.
140 pages ISBN: 1-904549-12-8 £14.95
Lessons in Your
Rucksack
By John Hughes
An exciting practical guide
for newly-qualified teachers
and teachers embarking on
a gap year.
This book is packed with ideas,
tips and advice on how to
construct and manage lessons
with nothing more than the basics
... in your rucksack.
A pack of cards, pens, maps,
string, all play a part.
Includes real-life advice and stories from teachers and student
teachers about their experiences teaching around the world. This
is the perfect book for anyone working towards their first teacher’s
qualification, such as a Cert.TESOL or CELTA.
188 pages ISBN: 1-898789-14-7 £12.95
Pavilion Publishing and Media,
Rayford House, School Road,
Hove, East Sussex, BN3 5HX
 M A I N F E AT U R E
Pronunciation
matters
I
Robin Walker argues f you ask students which areas of
learning English matter most,
for more emphasis on a they’ll inevitably include
pronunciation. If you ask teachers,
neglected area. you get much the same response. But if
you look more carefully at what actually
happens in the classroom, you’ll
discover that all too often pronunciation
is usually done on an ad-hoc basis, that
it is not usually programmed in the way
that grammar or vocabulary are, and
that it is quite often relegated to an
‘add-on’ activity for when there is time
in the class, or dropped altogether when
there isn’t.
This is a sad state of affairs because
pronunciation matters, and it matters a
lot. In fact, rather than being peripheral
to learning English, it is absolutely
central to the learning process. Indeed,
poor pronunciation can have a very
serious effect on everything else we try
to do in the English language classroom,
as we shall now see.
1 The impact
on speaking
The first and most obvious impact of
poor pronunciation is on speaking.
Saying a word or a name, only to be met
by the blank stare of the listener’s
incomprehension is immensely
frustrating for learners.
We know this, of course. We’re
teachers. But it is easy for us to forget
just how serious the impact of poor
pronunciation is on our learners’ fluency
and confidence, which is why we need
something to jog our memories from
time to time. This happened to me
recently when I was travelling in Poland.
My lack of confidence in my
pronunciation left me hopelessly dumb
4 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
on many occasions. And the more I
struggled to get words out of my mouth,
the less willing I was to try to do so.
In general, when learners find a
word difficult to pronounce they avoid
using it. As teachers, we frequently
interpret this as limited vocabulary
rather than poor pronunciation. I spent
over 20 years teaching English for
tourism, and always asked my final-year
students to give a short presentation on
tourism management as part of their
Poor pronunciation
can have a very
serious effect
on everything else
we try to do in the
English language
classroom
oral assessment. At their level, the word
infrastructure is hard to avoid in a
presentation like this, but for Spanish
speakers of English it is also very hard
to pronounce. Some of my students
would go to considerable lengths to
avoid the word in their presentations,
and initially I would complain of their
limited vocabulary. Similarly, the word
usually is hard for many learners
because of the / / sound. The more
adept students wisely avoid usually
altogether, preferring to say normally
instead. But once again, they are
avoiding a word because of
pronunciation problems.
Many learners also avoid grammar
structures that they find hard to
pronounce. A classic example of this is
third conditionals. These are not
conceptually difficult for most learners,
and they don’t cause too many problems
with written practice exercises. But they
are noticeably absent from most
intermediate learners’ spoken English.
This is usually because the contractions,
vowel reductions and consonant clusters
in a sentence like If I’d know about
English consonants, I’d’ve learned
Chinese instead are actually very difficult
to articulate. Faced with the significant
pronunciation difficulties of English
third conditionals, learners either avoid
the structure altogether, or simplify it to
things like If I know, I learn Chinese.
Can we blame them? No. Can we help
them? Yes. Do they need more grammar
exercises? No. Do they need help with
pronunciation? Yes.
2 The impact
on listening
The second obvious problem of poor
pronunciation is its impact on listening.
The most immediately tangible issue
here is that learners either fail to identify
the sounds, words or phrases of English,
or they confuse them with others. At the
level of individual sounds, for example,
poor recognition leads to confusion
between words that differ by only one
sound (minimal pairs). Classic examples
are tree and three, or hat, hut, hot and
heart, but there are countless more.
In the 80s and 90s, of course, we were
told that learners would use context to
solve any ambiguities between minimal
pairs. More recently, however, research
has supported the need for learners to
be able to distinguish clearly between
individual phonemes, either because, as
Jennifer Jenkins asserts, lower-level
learners fail to make appropriate use of
contextual clues, or because, as John
Field points out, automatic recognition
of individual sounds and whole words
Faced with the
significant pronunciation
difficulties of English
third conditionals,
learners either avoid
the structure altogether,
or simplify it
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
frees the brain’s processing power for
other aspects of listening.
At the level of full phrases, poor
pronunciation skills can mean that
listeners do not capture the significance
of specific patterns of sentence stress.
For example, if we asked a group of
students working on an exercise Who’s
finished? (with the stress on finished ) we
would expect the students who had
completed the exercise to raise their
hands. In contrast, if we were to ask
Who hasn’t finished? with the stress on
hasn’t, we would hope that the students
who were still working on the exercise
would raise their hands.
Perhaps the most
significant impact of
poor pronunciation
on listening occurs
at the level of
extended rather than
micro-listening
In my own experience, whenever I
ask that second question, I inevitably see
students raising their hands who have
finished the exercise. This would suggest
that these students don’t perceive the
stress on hasn’t, or that they perceive the
stress but fail to give it any
communicative value. Either way, their
raised hands tell me that they are
wrongly constructing meaning around
the main verb finished. That is to say,
their poor pronunciation skills have
impacted badly on their understanding
of meaning at sentence level.
However, perhaps the most
significant impact of poor pronunciation
on listening occurs at the level of
extended rather than micro-listening.
Faced with a long recording – of one or
even two minutes, say – many learners
seem to switch off. As their teachers, we
become aware of this when we see their
eyes glaze over or their faces go blank.
What is happening here is that because
of poor pronunciation skills, these
learners are having to use too much of
the processing power of their short-term
memories in the recognition of
individual sounds or complete words in
the flow of speech. As a result, their
short-term memories simply ‘overload’,
and this in turn leaves them unable to
process new data that arrives, which
means that they lose the thread of the
text as a whole.
On identifying a student as having
problems with listening, we often
prescribe additional extended listening
work for that student. But unless the
underlying pronunciation problems are
dealt with first, this additional listening
work will only create further failure, and
will confirm the learner’s view that they
don’t understand spoken English.
3 The impact
on writing
If the impact of poor pronunciation on
speaking and listening feels familiar to
most English teachers, the idea that
pronunciation can impact negatively on
writing will probably come as a surprise.
However, one of the major headaches
for learners of English is the absence of
any clear, simple relationship between
how words are spelt in English and how
they sound in speech.
In another of my Polish adventures,
I had to travel to a city that was called
Wooch, or at least that is the way it
seemed to my inexpert ears. Try as I
might, I couldn’t see the name of that
city on the indicator board at the station
in Warsaw. This was hardly surprising in
retrospect, since the name I was looking
for was Łód ź.
My invented spelling (Wooch) was the
product of my poor understanding of the
sound–spelling relationships in Polish.
That is to say, it was a problem of poor
pronunciation skills. The same thing
happens with students learning English,
and apart from the issue of missing
trains, ‘invented’ spellings make it
impossible for learners to check new
words in a dictionary. Try looking up a
word like photograph, for example, if you
think it begins with an f. Find the word
city, if you think it begins with an s.
In addition, invented spellings find
their way into students’ written work
although, as teachers, we seldom see
pronunciation as the origin. Some of
these invented spellings can create real
words that have a totally different
meaning from the intended word. My
Year 2 tourism students regularly
described one of their region’s most
prized fish dishes as ‘Hake in crap
sauce’. The most significant difference
between crab and crap is the longer
vowel in crab. Spanish, however, does
not have the vowel length distinctions of
5
Pronunciation
matters
English and so, although I was saying
crab correctly in class, my students were
perceiving crap, and this was carrying
through into their written work.
Less embarrassing, perhaps, was the
regular appearance of festival at the
beginning of a series of points in the
‘for-and-against’ type essays my Year 3
students were required to produce:
Festival, I want to talk about the
advantages of tourism. Festival, we need
to look at the history of tourism. Try as I
might, I couldn’t work out where they
had got this use of the word from.
Eventually, I asked a group of students
about it, only to be told that it was a
phrase I used constantly at the
beginning of my classes. The light went
on – I was saying first of all, and they
were hearing festival.
4 The impact
on reading
Although we expect poor pronunciation
to impact negatively on speaking and
listening, and we can soon see how it
might impact on writing, many of
teachers I’ve worked with initially find it
hard to see any relationship between
pronunciation and reading. However,
recent research shows that poor
pronunciation has a very serious impact
on reading, especially for learners from
beginner to intermediate level.
When we read a text, we process the
words on the page or screen in our
brain’s short-term memory (sometimes
also called the working memory). This
processing is controlled by the ‘central
executive’ of the short-term memory,
which sends the words around a
‘phonological loop’ in order to prepare
them for their storage in the long-term
memory. As the words go around the
phonological loop, we say them ‘aloud’
inside our heads. This is known as
‘sub-vocalisation’.
As you read this article, you are
actually ‘saying’ the words to yourself
inside your head as part of the process of
storing them. Because you are an expert
user of English, this process is automatic
and completely efficient. However,
research has shown that if we don’t know
the correct pronunciation of a word, the
6 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
‘sound trace’ of that word as it is being
sent around the phonological loop can
suffer decay. Words that are subject to
decay are not sufficiently well-processed
to be dealt with by the central executive
when they get back there (if they get
back there at all), and so they cannot be
sent off to the long-term memory for
permanent storage.
The overall outcome of these events
in the short-term memory is that after a
short while, the reader has no recollection
of what they have just read. Too many
words were lost in the phonological loop
and failed to reach the long-term
memory. Because of this, the reader has
to go back to the beginning of the text
and start again. As with listening, it is all
Recent research
shows that poor
pronunciation has a
very serious impact on
reading, especially for
learners from beginner
to intermediate level
too easy for us, as teachers, to spot ‘poor
readers’ and to try to help them by giving
them additional reading activities. But
these won’t be effective if we don’t get to
the root of the problem, which is poor
pronunciation.
ELT author and Oxford University
applied linguistics researcher, Catherine
Walter, has worked on the problems of
L2 reading for some time now. She
surprised a lot of experienced teachers
with the conclusion to her talk on L2
reading at the 2008 IATEFL conference.
Later, in an article published in Speak
Out! (the newsletter of the IATEFL
Pronunciation Special Interest Group)
she repeated her argument that
everything we currently know about the
way we read in a second language
‘suggests strongly that teaching phonology
will help L2 learners to read better’. In
the same article, she went on to say that
‘the sorts of activities that pronunciation-
conscious teachers have been using for
decades will be useful for developing L2
reading comprehension skills: activities
like minimal pair recognition activities,
activities for recognising stress patterns
and dictations of sentences containing
confusable words’.
Pronunciation: the heart
of the matter
It should be obvious by now that I
firmly believe that pronunciation is not
just another aspect of learning English.
Rather, it lies at the very heart of what
we do, and neglecting it can have very
serious implications for our learners’
chances of making adequate progress in
all other areas. We’ve seen in detail how
this is true for each of the four language
skills, but similar arguments can be
made for the impact of poor
pronunciation on the teaching/learning
of grammar and vocabulary. One recent
grammar book, for example, includes a
CD of pronunciation exercises directly
related to each of the grammar areas
covered in it. Similarly, good
coursebooks and good ELT teaching
materials tie vocabulary work into
pronunciation practise.
In future issues of ETp I will consider a
number of different aspects of teaching
pronunciation, beginning with
pronunciation for young learners, and
going on to pronunciation for teenagers.
I will then discuss what we can do with
the learner’s mother-tongue
pronunciation in the English class, and
finally take a critical look at some of the
technology that is now available to help
learners with their pronunciation.
Hopefully, through these five articles
– but most importantly, through your
application of their contents – we can
put pronunciation back into ELT
classrooms in a principled, meaningful
way.
Field, J Listening in the Language
Classroom CUP 2008
Jenkins, J The Phonology of English as an
International Language OUP 2000
Walter, C ‘Teaching phonology for reading
comprehension’ Speak Out! 40 2009
Robin Walker is a
teacher, trainer and
materials writer. He is
editor of Speak Out! the
newsletter of the IATEFL
Pronunciation SIG, and
is the author of Teaching
the Pronunciation of
English as a Lingua
Franca, an OUP
teacher’s handbook.
robin@englishglobalcom.com
Are you looking to get noticed at

IATEFL?
We will, once again, be giving out the ever popular
ETp teacher resource bag from our stand at IATEFL.

We can include an item for your business or

organisation into this years bag.

As there are a limited number of items allowed in

the bag, please book early to avoid dissapointment.

For more information, or to book one of the

available slots, please call
Helena hughes on 01536 747333
or email Helena.hughes@mainlinemedia.co.uk
Beyond
IN THE CLASSROOM
the task
T
James Pengelley ask-based Learning (TBL) has
become the main player in
explores the benefits of recent methodological
strategies. It has formed the
task repetition. basis of the current trend away from
form-driven approaches to teaching, as
it gives primary importance to the use
of language to achieve the
communicative goals of a task, rather
than merely to the production of a
discrete number of ‘correct forms’.
Since its rise in popularity, there has
been much comment on the importance
of task cycle repetition, in which an
initial task is followed by a ‘noticing’
stage, or perhaps a more explicit
language analysis stage, and then the
students are encouraged to perform an
identical, similar or parallel task –
giving them an opportunity to
implement, improve and practise the
same language. The argument here, as
proposed by Peter Skehan, Scott
Thornbury and Jane Willis, is that
completion of the first task leads to
familiarity with meaning, which means
that when the students move on to the
second, similar or identical task, they
have more cognitive resources available
to devote to form manipulation and
self-monitoring, and a greater long-term
awareness of the linguistic forms needed
to convey appropriate meaning more
precisely.
The fundamental features of this
procedure may be summarised as
follows:
1 An authentic communicative task is
chosen.
2 The teacher takes a back-seat role in
the first attempt at the task, allowing
8 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
the students to negotiate meaning
with their own resources.
3 The language needed to do the task is
analysed, discussed and improved.
4 The task is repeated, to allow an
opportunity for the students to
develop monitoring skills.
Provided the task itself is well-defined,
this is arguably a very good framework,
not just for TBL, but for an array of
teaching approaches that promote
fluency ahead of accuracy and, in fact,
may have significantly wider-reaching
applications in the development of a
more generalised framework that
promotes the development of
communicative competency.
Doing it again
I have been developing a ‘fluency-then-
accuracy’ routine using Community
Language Learning (CLL) with my
current group of students. CLL is a
student-centred approach based on
psychotherapy principles, with the
primary aim of reducing the anxiety
associated with language learning, and
ultimately developing communicative
fluency. A typical CLL lesson follows a
choose–record–reflect cycle.
The students work in small groups
and decide on a topic they would like to
discuss. The conversation is recorded,
utterance by utterance, with the students
putting any questions they have to the
teacher, who immediately reformulates,
models, drills and encourages them
throughout the process. The class then
reflects on the strengths and weaknesses
of their completion of the task; the
conversation is transcribed and
analysed, where appropriate.
This is where the traditional CLL
lesson stops – the transcript and/or
context being the focus for more
production or explicit form practice in
subsequent lessons. However, some
people, including Scott Thornbury, have
suggested that recording the conversation
again after the language analysis stage,
so that the second attempt can be
compared with the first, may have huge
benefits for the students’ confidence and
the development of desirable features of
language production (particularly features
of effective discourse management).
If the essence of the communicative
task is considered to be a stage in which
students are able to negotiate and create
Recording a
conversation again after
the language analysis
stage, so that the
second attempt can be
compared with the first,
may have huge benefits
their own hypotheses about meaning –
whether or not reformulation and input
from the teacher comes immediately and
in the midst of, or following completion
of, the task – it is plausible to
hypothesise that in order to maximise
the benefit of a fluency-then-accuracy
approach, a repetition of the task cycle
is necessary and conducive to improving
both fluency and accuracy.
Catherine Doughty and Elizabeth
Varela note that the use of reformulation
or ‘recasting’ in CLL may only influence
the lesson in as far as providing a shift
of emphasis on the importance of
accuracy. However, I would argue that it
may instil a stronger sense of ownership
of errors in individual learners and
develop monitoring skills if it occurs as
a part of the first task (as opposed to
post-task) – provided it is done in a
supportive and sensitive way.
An experiment
To test the effect of task repetition in a
fluency-first approach and to explore its
potential benefits beyond the realm of
TBL, I designed a CLL lesson, which
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
Feature Task 1 Task 2
Discourse management
Range
Frequency of showing interest 2 6
Accuracy
Inappropriacies of showing interest 7 1
Fluency
Average time per utterance 9.94 seconds 9.17 seconds
Total pauses 16 4
Broken utterances 3 0
Grammar
Range
Present simple 18 18
Future (going to) 1 1
Adverbs of degree 1 1
Subordination 0 0
Coordination 2 7
Accuracy
Ratio of errors to total words 6 : 105 6 : 105
Phonological management
Range
Frequency of effective intonation/stress 7 7
Accuracy
Phonemic errors : total words 16 : 105 6 : 105
Intonation errors : total clauses 6 : 18 3 : 18
Sentence stress errors : total sentences 17 : 8 7 : 10
formed the basis of my experimental the first task as a dictation, and then
practice for my DELTA Module 2 reflected on, with relevant language
assignment. highlighted. This language included use
of coordinating conjunctions and
Method effective intonation across sentences.
The experiment was conducted with a The conversation was then re-recorded,
group of Colombian adult elementary and compared to the first task according
students (in week six of a twelve-week to the grid above.
course) who were joined by the school It was predicted that, due to the
receptionist to make the numbers up to nature of CLL and the use of immediate
six. They were invited to choose a topic reformulation, structural complexity
they wished to discuss, which was then would not be a true reflection of the
recorded utterance by utterance. The benefits of task repetition in CLL, as
dialogue was transcribed at the end of Martin Bygate has shown it to be in TBL.
9
Beyond
the task
Rather, elements of discourse and
phonological management would be
improved in the second task cycle, as
negotiation of meaning had been
effectively dealt with in the first.
Results
The transcripts and recordings of both
tasks were analysed, using raw data and
basic ratios based on Bygate’s
investigation of the benefits of task
repetition in TBL. Because of the nature
of the conversation that the students
produced, it was not possible to
establish the benefits of a full range of
discourse management strategies (asking
follow-up questions, for example) and
these figures are intended only to serve
as indicators of the broader potential
that task repetition may have, and to
encourage further investigation.
Analysis
These results suggest that task repetition
may be a powerful tool for improving
the following elements of performance,
all of which produce a better effect on
the listener:
Effective management of
communication strategies.
Smoother, more continuous delivery,
and developing familiarisation with
natural pace of speech.
Development of an awareness of
sentence complexity.
Greater grammatical accuracy.
Phonological accuracy, especially over
longer phrases and sentence structures.
(Crucially, it is these suprasegmental
features which are considered by
Adrian Underhill to be primary in the
phonological management of spoken
discourse.They are notoriously
difficult for learners of English to
manage and, as Chia Suan Chong
points out, are often neglected by
mainstream materials.)
Improvements in the accuracy of
language use have been demonstrated by
Bygate in TBL task cycle repetition. The
10 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
idea is that in the first task, negotiation
of meaning is the primary focus, and in
the second, the students have more
cognitive resources available to self-
monitor and to attend to and
incorporate highlighted language from a
language analysis stage. Importantly,
This is your magazine.
these benefits actually extend beyond
simple measures of linguistic accuracy We want to hear from you!
and include essential (yet too often
neglected) features of communication
such as communicative and
phonological competency.
The results of this experiment are IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
Do you have ideas you’d like to share
intended only as an exploratory
suggestion to highlight the extent of the with colleagues around the world?
potential benefits of extending the concept Tips, techniques and activities;
of the communicative task and the simple or sophisticated; well-tried
benefits of task repetition beyond those or innovative; something that has
established by proponents of TBL to all worked well for you? All published
fluency-then-accuracy approaches. contributions receive a prize!
Write to us or email:
Bygate, M ‘Effects of task repetition: helena.gomm@pavpub.com
appraising the developing language of
learners’ In Willis, J and Willis, D (Eds)
TALKBACK!
Challenge and Change in Language
Teaching Macmillan Heinemann 1996
Doughty, C and Varela, E ‘Communicative
focus on form’ In Doughty, C and Do you have something to say about
Williams, J (Eds) Focus on Form in an article in the current issue of ETp?
Classroom Second Language Acquisition This is your magazine and we would
CUP 1998
really like to hear from you.
Skehan, P ‘Second language acquisition
Write to us or email:
research and task-based instruction’ In
Willis, J and Willis, D (Eds) Challenge and helena.gomm@pavpub.com
Change in Language Teaching Macmillan
Heinemann 1996
Suan Chong, C ‘Dogme’ Presentation
given at the IATEFL conference, Harrogate
Writing for ETp
2010 Would you like to write for ETp? We are
Thornbury, S ‘Awareness, appropriation always interested in new writers and
and autonomy’ English Teaching fresh ideas. For guidelines and advice,
Professional 40 2005 write to us or email:
Thornbury, S ‘Reformulation and
helena.gomm@pavpub.com
restructuring: tasks that promote noticing’
ELT Journal 51 (4) 1997
Underhill, A Sound Foundations: Learning
and Teaching Pronunciation Macmillan
It really worked
1994 for me!
Willis, J A Framework for Task-Based
Did you get inspired by something
Learning Longman 1996
you read in ETp? Did you do
something similiar with your students?
James Pengelley is
currently a teacher at Did it really work in practice?
the British Council in Do share it with us ...
Hong Kong, having
previously worked in helena.gomm@pavpub.com
Australia, Thailand and
Colombia. He is an avid
swimmer, baker and
consumer of vast English Teaching professional
amounts of dark Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd,
chocolate, and loves
the occasional
Rayford House, School Road,
discussion on dealing Hove BN3 5HX, UK
with phonology in the Fax: +44 (0)1273 227308
classroom.
Email: admin@pavpub.com
thehairychef@gmail.com
 Your MA in
Teaching English
to Speakers of Other
Languages
In the MA in the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
students undertake practical teaching of University of Hertfordshire international students
throughout the course, alongside modules in theoretical and applied topics in TESOL.
With its practical teaching element, this course is ideal for students with little or no
experience of teaching English as a foreign, second or additional language, and who intend
to pursue a career in that field, whether in the UK or abroad. It will also suit those with some
teaching experience, who do not have any accredited qualification in TESOL or wish to
further develop their practical teaching skills alongside Masters level study.
This is a full-time one-year taught course for both international and home/EU students.
Eligible students may also opt to complete the course on a part-time basis over two years.
For more information on this challenging yet exciting MA, please contact: Kerry Bannister
k.bannister1@herts.ac.uk
01707 285651
go.herts.ac.uk/MATESOL
GA_13883/11_13
LSE ETP ad 1-4p 100713_Layout 1 10/07/2013 14:26 Page 1
MA TESOL Advert_v2.indd 1 28/11/2013 17:01

The Lake School of English Oxford

Comenius-Grundtvig-Erasmus+

Summer Courses at Oxford University

• Creative Teaching in the Primary Classroom

Creative Teaching in the Secondary Classroom
Creative Teaching in the Adult Classroom
UK-2012-1401-007
• Learning Curves; Making Use of New Technologies
UK-2009-949-007
• English for Effective Communication UK-2009-950-010
• Language, Life and Culture in the UK Today
UK-2011-1324-002

www.englishinoxford.com
 TAKE
FIVE
1 Adrian, perhaps not many people
know that, in addition to being a
teacher, you’re also an accomplished
jazz guitarist. The first question I’d
like to ask you is: What have you
learnt as a teacher from being a jazz
musician?
I think I have learnt something about
listening to what other people are saying
and doing. There’s a big link between
music and language, and I think that in
listening carefully to music, and to
individual notes inside fast phrases, I’ve
been helped to listen to how people
articulate speech: things like sounds
within a cluster, pitch, rhythm, emphasis.
The second thing is that I think jazz, and
perhaps all music, gives you the skill of
boldness, of confidence to jump in, even
if you’re not quite ready. When playing
jazz, you can’t just lean the ladder and
climb up it when you are ready.
Sometimes you have to climb the ladder
before knowing where to lean it. Part of
this is knowing that you will make
so-called mistakes – and that’s another
thing, mistakes are part of performance
and, in language, they are part of both
creativity and learning. Caleb Gattegno
used to say that mistakes are a gift to the
syllabus. Jazz has taught me to love
mistakes – and to encourage them, not to
be dismayed by them.
2 Jazz great Miles Davis famously
said ‘Music is the silence
between the notes’. Is silence
important in the ELT classroom?
Of course. The trouble with language is
that it’s associated with speaking, filling
the airspace. Yet silence is the most
underused resource in the classroom, so
no one gets respite from the clamour – to
look inside, to reflect for a few seconds,
to touch base with their learning. Lack of
silence is exhausting, and can take the
shape and meaning out of a lesson. With
12 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
In a new series, Chaz Pugliese poses five questions
to people involved in the world of ELT. In this issue,
he talks to Adrian Underhill.
Adrian Underhill is a teacher, trainer and
consultant; he is a past president of IATEFL
and author of Sound Foundations, published
by Macmillan.
music, it’s the space and timing between
the notes that makes melodies what they
are, as much as the notes themselves.
magnificent game! I don’t teach very often
these days, but if I did, I wouldn’t use a
book, I would use games. If I had to use a
book, it would be only as a route map. I
Silence is free, it allows us teachers to
think spontaneity is more meaningful for
wait, reflect, before leaping in, and it
the students. Spontaneity doesn’t mean
allows students to rehearse, reformulate,
‘no structure, anything goes’. It means
listen to their inner voice. Silence offers
allowing the students the right space,
the working structure to the lesson, and
without providing too many rules, knowing
reminds us to search for the least that is
how to adjust the structure. Facilitators
enough in all class interventions. One
have a nice phrase for this, it is called
intervention, plus holding a certain space,
‘holding open the space’.
can be more powerful and effective than
two interventions – and quicker, and less
exhausting.
There’s another type of silence which is
4 Your definition of teacher
development is ‘Being the best
teacher I can be’. Would that also
‘loaded’, not comfortable, impatient, apply to yourself as a musician?
somehow judgemental rather than
Yes, we’re all learning beings; we’re all
watching and waiting. Everyone has
hard-wired for learning. If you put a
experience of that and even brings it to
toddler down in the middle of the room,
class, and we have to rediscover the first
you’ll see how they’ll head for the thing
kind, which is part of creativity.
that offers the right amount of challenge.
They won’t go for something too easy or
3 Could teaching without a
coursebook be compared to
playing jazz, in that jazz musicians
too difficult; they know what they have to
do to get ‘in the zone’. Personally, I love
the act of finding myself a learner,
don’t normally follow sheet music?
experiencing myself as a learner. I think it
They may not follow the sheet music, but is synonymous with living.
there is still the effect of that sheet music
there in the background, providing the key,
tempo, number of bars, feel, etc. And this
provides the structure within which the
5 What are you working on right
now?
I’m interested in the notion of systems
musician improvises. And I think this may
and system thinking, which is a way of
be similar to teaching a lesson, in that you
looking at things to help us to ‘make
have a lesson plan but, hopefully, you do
not follow the plan too closely because,
as the lesson unfolds, it becomes a living/
sense’ of things that seem too messy and
complex to make sense of! It steers us
towards different kinds of solutions,
learning interaction, not a pre-scripted
characteristically involving less control
exchange. Thus the teacher departs from
and more connection. So, yes, I’m
the plan just as a jazz player does from
interested in participatory yet control-free
the sheet music, but both plan and sheet
ways of getting things done. And this is
music are needed to provide a framework
relevant to teaching, staffroom, schools,
to contain the improvisation. This is what
management, and leadership. And jazz
makes games so attractive and creative.
playing, too!
Take football: there are very few rules, just
‘Get the ball down there and don’t touch Chaz Pugliese is an independent trainer and
it with your hands. And try to do this more author, living in Paris, France.
often than the other side’. And what a chazpugliese@gmail.com
 T E S T I N G & E VA L U AT I O N
Preparing
students for
exams 2
Eva Modrá gets her students ready for the City & Guilds ISESOL exam.
C
ity & Guilds (CG) exams
require fewer ‘exam skills’ than
some other language tests.
Students who possess balanced
speaking skills at any level from A1 to C2,
as defined by the Common European
Framework, stand a very good chance of
passing the CG ISESOL (International
Spoken English for Speakers of Other
Languages) exam at that equivalent
level. The main enemies are usually fear
– stemming from a lack of familiarity
with the exam format – and insufficient
practice.
So, how can you prepare students to
feel comfortable in the exam situation?
How can you incorporate exam practice
into a ‘textbook course’? Glossa, a
leading language school in Prague,
Czech Republic, has been a CG-
approved testing centre since 2004.
Hundreds of learners have been
successfully prepared for CG exams
there, and this article aims to share the
Glossa teachers’ know-how with other
teachers who hope to get their students
through the CG exams.
1 Do your homework.
Naturally, you will have to start by
familiarising yourself with the exam. Go
through the website information on the
CG website (http://www.cityandguilds.gr/
en/ESOLqualifications/oraltestsISESOL),
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
including the sample videos of the
spoken exam. Check that you know what
the criteria for your target level are (and
for comparison, also the criteria for one
level above and one below). Find out
what is assessed in each part of the exam.
While some language schools will be
able to offer a lot of know-how in the
form of books, seminars and tutors, in
others you may at least find a colleague or
two with some experience of the exams
who can help you. You should also locate
your nearest City & Guilds centre, who
will be able to answer your questions.
2 Swallow the syllabus.
Study a sample exam (practice paper)
and the level descriptors from the City
& Guilds ISESOL Qualifications
Handbook which are relevant to your
students’ target level. The handbook is
available from the CG website.
Highlighting the interlocutor’s parts and
reading them out loud are strongly
recommended. Imagine you are
performing the exam with one of your
students, pausing to let the imaginary
candidate speak. Make sure to time the
parts. This will help you to get
accustomed to the situation, so that you
can help your students do the same. You
will develop a feel for how long, or
rather how short, each part is. You will
be better able to predict potential
banana skins: areas of language that
your students don’t know yet, possible
misunderstandings, etc. Think about the
expected outcome. What vocabulary,
grammar and phrases do your students
need to learn before they can complete
this part successfully?
3 Study the syllabus with
the students.
Next, introduce the practice papers to
your students. Make sure they have their
own copies to work with. Encourage
them to add notes and to underline or
highlight successfully accomplished
parts, as well as any questions deserving
further attention. A working copy of the
practice papers helps the students to
‘own’ the exam. On the big day, they will
know exactly what words the stranger in
front of them will use to give the task
instructions. Nevertheless, don’t forget
to tell your students that the topics and
questions will be different.
First, give your students a ‘tour’ of
the practice paper, explaining or letting
them find out who says what, and what
each part looks like. Practise the first
two questions (‘Spell your surname’ and
‘Where are you from?’). After that, let
them answer a few further questions in
pairs, and then have them mark all the
questions with smileys and frownies or
points, according to their individual
13
Preparing
students for
exams 2
preference or preparedness. Discuss
which parts they find easiest and
hardest, and why. These first impressions
often reflect your students’ needs very
accurately, both in terms of language
learning and psychological training, so
do listen carefully.
4 Do it in small doses.
Working on exam preparation little by
little, part by part, is definitely better
than trying to cover it all in one or two
lessons. Over time, the students will get
more used to the exam format, and will
actually remember what they are
expected to do in each section.
It is easy to incorporate a bit of
exam preparation into each lesson. You
can do so by assigning part of your
lesson time for ISESOL, using the
practice papers and parts of the
ISESOL Qualifications Handbook.
However, if you are using a regular
coursebook, you will probably find that
there are many speaking activities which
closely resemble the CG exam format.
All you have to do is tell your students,
or later elicit from them, which part of
the exam any given task corresponds to.
Sometimes an activity may require only
a small change (setting a time limit,
creating the first line for a conversation,
etc) in order to make it match the exam
more closely.
Extend the practice
5 Part 3 A frequent mistake is that the candidate dominates the discussion and
opportunities.
Even if there are few ISESOL-like
activities in your coursebook, practically
any topic introduced by any coursebook
offers immense possibilities for exam
practice.
You can create exam-format
questions yourself, and/or involve your
students in creating them. Afterwards,
they can swap their questions between
pairs, answer them and share feedback.
As a small illustration, let’s look at
some possible questions for the topic of
‘animals’ at B1 level.
For a higher level, the topics could
involve conservation, drug testing on
animals, even reincarnation!
14 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Topic: Animals Level: CEF B1 – Achiever
ISESOL part Possible questions/topics
1 * What is your favourite animal? Why?
* Is there an animal which you are afraid of? Why?
* When you were a child, did you have a pet? What? Why not?
* How often do you go to the zoo?
* Do you think you will have a pet in the future? What?
2 * I am a vet. You have brought your pet to me. I start:
‘So, what seems to be the problem?’
* I am your neighbour. I start:
‘Your dog is barking all the time! Could you do something about it?’
* I am your neighbour. You have found a stray cat in front of the
house. You start.
3 We have to choose the best present for our friend’s birthday.
(The options in the pictures involve some of the animals the
students know.)
4 Animals in your town.
6 Proceed part by part.
You will find exam tips in the ISESOL Tell them not to worry about time.
Qualifications Handbook. Below are Keeping track of the duration of the
some of the most important ones. parts is not their problem. Explain that
In each part, the candidate may be while they are speaking, the interlocutor
stopped by the interlocutor once the is probably scribbling down the minutes
time assigned for this part is up. Assure and seconds as part of the role of
your students that this does not reflect timekeeper, not making a record of their
the quality of their performance. mistakes.
Part 1 Candidates should answer the questions in a natural way. They
shouldn’t give a pre-prepared speech. One or two sentences will do.
Part 2 The conversations are not supposed to be longer than two to four
turns. (You may like to draw a simple picture with six bubbles to help
your students realise how short the expected outcome is.)
pushes their own solution to a task. (Teach your students to ask for the
interlocutor’s opinion and to listen and react to it.) The assigned time
may not be enough to reach agreement, but that doesn’t matter, as
long as the candidate has done what they can while demonstrating
rich and appropriate language.
Part 4 Candidates should make the most of the 30 seconds before speaking,
whether they prefer jotting down key words, outlining a rough
mind-map, or playing the beginning of their speech in their head.
Students who fear a lack of ideas need to learn the magic word
‘because’, eg I don’t know what to say about animals in my town,
because animals are not very important for me. Many people have
dogs and cats, but I have never had a pet because my parents don’t
like animals. I often see people walk their dogs in the street, and I don’t
like that because ...
 Teach the students to
7 9
disagree and improvise.
In parts 2 and 3 of the exam, the student
will have to interact with the interlocutor.
The conversations may easily die away if
the two parties agree on everything too
easily. This will lead the candidate to
display insufficient speaking skills. How
can the interlocutor know that the
candidate speaks brilliantly, if all they
hear is Sure, no problem, Yes, I agree, Of
course, go ahead, etc? Promoting
negativity can be facilitating. Here is an
example:
‘Excuse me, could I use your phone for
a moment?’
Version A: ‘Of course, no problem.’
Version B: ‘Actually, I’m not sure about
that. How long are you
planning to speak?’
The second version obviously creates the
necessity to explain, negotiate and
stipulate, which means that the student
has more opportunities to impress.
The most important tip of all is:
Speak! Don’t pause for 20 seconds
trying to remember a word. Say it
simply. Say something different, even if
it is not true. Or just skip it and keep
talking. To put it cynically, what you say
is not important; what matters is the fact
that you say it, and the way you say it.
8 Keep feeding back on
the format.
As with any speaking practice, your
students will profit from your close
monitoring and feedback – both
immediate and delayed, individual as well
as mixed (you write up on the board what
good and bad chunks of language you
have heard, without saying who said
what; then elicit what is correct and how
the incorrect chunks should be corrected).
The key is to use the exam format in
class over and over again, while referring
back constantly to the exam structure:
Which part of the exam is this? How
many questions will they ask you?
Referring your students to the sample
tests helps them absorb the format and
understand the requirements and
possible pitfalls of each part.
Encourage them to start an exam
portfolio and collect additional sample
papers, topics and questions, as well as
useful functional language – marked 1, 2,
etc for the respective parts of the exam.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
Let the students do the
work.
You don’t always have to be the one who
prepares the exam format tasks. After
your students have seen some examples,
you can ask them to prepare questions
on a new topic. They can also work in
pairs and assess each other, guided by
your questions: Did your partner speak
for the whole minute? Did he stop a lot, or
did he keep talking? Did he use the past
tense correctly? This way, the students
will get used to the actual assessment
criteria, all of which should be shared
with them.
In class or at home, the students can
say or write exam-shaped monologues
or dialogues, practise them alone or in
pairs, or even memorise them – as long
as it sounds natural in the end.
10 Raise the tension.
As the exam approaches, the students
get more nervous but also more open to
taking the practice seriously. Now is the
best time to practise the whole exam in
pairs under the teacher’s supervision,
using other sample papers. It is important
at this stage to give your students some
detailed individual feedback. If you
cannot cover the whole exam with every
student, make sure you hear at least one
part from each candidate, giving thorough
feedback, both written and oral.
How do you do that? Simply take a
lot of notes while each student is
speaking. Pay attention to both the
good language (rich, natural-sounding,
elegant, correct) and the relevant errors
(eg pre-intermediate students may not
be able to use the future perfect, but
they need to be able to distinguish
C & G ISESOL: Test Overview
The City & Guilds tests in General
English are made up of International
ESOL (IESOL) and International
Spoken ESOL (ISESOL) tests. IESOL,
the written examination, covers the
three skills of reading, writing and
listening, while ISESOL tests
speaking only. The spoken and
written examinations can be taken
independently of each other and at
different times, which allows for
specific preparation of the different
skills. Both the IESOL and ISESOL
tests can be timed flexibly
between present, past and future).
Afterwards, go through the notes with
each student, praising them,
encouraging them to identify the
mistakes on their own, helping them to
enrich their vocabulary where suitable.
Tell the student whether they would
pass this part or not, and why, and
assign areas for improvement.
Having taken advantage of the tension,
you can always lower it. If time allows,
let your students make fun of the exam
at least a couple of times. This will help
to dissolve fears and boost confidence.
You can achieve this by changing the
framework. The otherwise innocent
conversation starting, ‘I’m your
neighbour. I start. “I’ve run out of coffee.
Could you lend me some, please?”’ can
bring some laughs if you first show
them a picture of the ‘neighbour’ who is
a scary-looking man, a gorilla, the
Prime Minister, or perhaps a little baby.
Assign an absurd topic for Part 4, such
as Transport in Antarctica or The
importance of wearing green.
Hopefully, the smiles your students
wear while preparing will appear again
when they receive their certificates.
Eva Modrá has taught
English in Prague, Czech
Republic, since 1997.
She has introduced
many colleagues to
ESL through seminars
and personal tutition
at Glossa language
school. An experienced
interlocutor, she has
helped over 100
candidates to prepare
for the ISESOL exam.
eva.modra@glossa.cz
throughout the year, with test dates
being decided by the approved
examination centres.
The ISESOL test can be taken at six
levels: A1 to C2 (known as Preliminary,
Access, Achiever, Communicator,
Expert and Mastery). The task types
and number of tasks differ from level to
level, but there are four basic parts:
1 Personal information, 2 Social
situations, 3 Exchange of information,
4 Topic presentation. Candidates are
assessed on accuracy, range,
pronunciation and fluency.
15
 RESOURCES
Do something
different
with your
coursebook 3
Rachael Roberts continues her series on adapting your coursebook to suit your classes.
In this issue, she does something different with comprehension questions.
O
ver the last few years, people
have been starting to ask, as
Catherine Walter did in her
presentation at IATEFL in
2008: Is teaching reading skills mainly a
waste of time? Walter suggested that most
learners already have perfectly adequate
reading skills, which they can quite easily
transfer across to L2. Do we, in fact, need
to teach learners to skim and scan, or is
it patronising and unnecessary?
In my experience, many learners do
not actually have very good reading skills
in their first language and, equally, many
do not seem able to transfer them
automatically. So I would still be in
favour of activities which help learners to
develop, or at least transfer, these skills.
I also believe that learners need to
have a task or a reason to read, and that
comprehension questions can, at least
partially, provide this. And good
comprehension questions can guide the
learner through the text, helping them to
make sense of it.
Having said this, it cannot be denied
that coursebook readings tend to follow
a fairly established formula:
16 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
1 Use a warm-up activity to introduce
the topic.
2 Present a set of comprehension
questions, using true/false, multiple
choice or something else that isn’t too
open-ended.
3 Get the students to read the text and
answer the questions.
4 Conduct a follow-up discussion and/or
do some language work.
Let me say now, I think that this is a
perfectly good formula. It works, and I
use it myself. However, while I
understand why coursebooks want to
present clear, unambiguous activities,
which follow a set pattern, I think we
can enliven our classes and engage
students more by trying to do something
a little bit different from time to time.
Alternatives to
comprehension questions
One of the problems with comprehension
questions is that they obviously only
focus on specific parts of the text, chosen
by the materials writer. Real-life reading,
on the other hand, is highly personalised.
No two people will understand a text in
exactly the same way, because we all bring
our own experience, knowledge, attitudes,
and so on to everything we read.
So, what could we do with a text in
the classroom that might reflect real-life
reading more accurately?
Student-set questions
Let the students set their own questions
before they start reading, based, perhaps,
on the title and/or any illustrations. The
obvious benefit to this is that it should
increase their motivation to read. Of
course, the answers to their questions
may not, in fact, be in the text, but that
actually reflects real-life reading pretty
well, and while they’re looking for the
answer, they’re reading.
Collaborative reading
Another possibility is to get your
students to read collaboratively, in small
groups. I’m not suggesting reading
aloud (though there are some arguments
for this), but reading one paragraph at a
time and then discussing with the rest of
the group what they think they have
understood so far. This is known as a
‘think aloud’ task because we are getting
the students to articulate the reading
process to each other.
Tony Lynch says of this process:
‘My experience is that think aloud tasks
make some learners aware of textual
clues which other learners in the group
have recognised, which would pass
unnoticed in individual reading.’
A slightly more structured way of
doing this is something called ‘reciprocal
teaching’. In this version (taken from
Sara Cotterall), a different person is
chosen to lead the discussion after each
paragraph, using four main points:
Clarifying any problems
Stating the main idea
Summarising the content of the
paragraph
Predicting the likely content of the
next paragraph
The great thing about getting students to
read as a discussion task is that you are
given an insight into the workings of their
minds – how they are approaching
reading tasks. This can then help you
decide where they might need further help
or guidance with developing their skills.
Summarising
Summarising seems to have fallen
somewhat out of fashion, but it is
actually one of the very best ways of
seeing whether students have really
understood the key points of a text.
Students can start to learn to summarise
by carrying out reading tasks where they
match summaries or headings to
paragraphs. This is, in fact, already quite
a popular form of comprehension task.
Once they are familiar with this task,
ask them to write their own heading or
sentence for each paragraph,
summarising the main idea. Finally, they
can select the most important ideas and
use these to write a paragraph
summarising the whole text.
As they become more proficient, the
students could be asked to summarise a
text for different audiences. For example,
to make it suitable for a child, someone
from a very different culture, and so on.
This means that they have to think
about what background knowledge the
reader would need to understand the
text – which is a good way into thinking
about how they themselves use their
background knowledge to build
meaning as they read.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
Using visuals
Depending on the kind of text the
students are reading, you could also ask
them to respond in a more visual way. For
any kind of narrative, a good approach is
to ask the students to highlight the main
events and then work together to produce
a time-line. Generally, they won’t entirely
agree on the time-line – which is even
better, as this means they will be forced
to negotiate their answers, thus thinking
more deeply about what they have read.
For a descriptive text, you could ask
the students to draw a picture or diagram
of what is being described: a scene, for
example, or one of the characters. They
can then explain their pictures to a
partner, revealing how the picture relates
to what they read in the text.
Alternatively, the students could
draw a picture which has a deliberate
mistake, such as making a character tall
when the text describes them as short.
The pictures can then be put on the wall
and the students can go around
identifying the deliberate mistakes.
Students sometimes feel embarrassed
about displaying their drawings, and you
could, of course, use pictures from the
internet or magazines instead. However,
it is nearly always much easier to produce
a picture than to find one, and I find
that, so long as I am relaxed about my
own (very) amateur drawings, my
students usually are too.
Using comprehension
questions differently
As well as swapping the comprehension
questions for a different kind of activity,
you could still use the questions given,
but do something different with them.
Predicting
Comprehension questions should always
follow the order of the text and, as they
are supposed to check comprehension
of the main points, they usually provide
a kind of summary of what the students
are going to read. You can take
advantage of this by asking the students
to read the comprehension questions
first and then use them to predict the
content of the text. You could even ask
them to write their own version of the
text from these questions, before reading
the original to compare with their ideas.
Rewriting
Comprehension questions are often
written as true/false statements. Of course,
this reflects a lot of English language
exam tasks, but I’m pretty sure it’s also
very popular because it doesn’t take up
much space on the page! You could do
something different by asking your
students to rewrite true/false statements as
questions before they read. This will have
the benefit of encouraging them to think
more carefully about the information they
need to find, and the added bonus of
working on question formation, which
many students find tricky. Less confident
students could write closed yes/no
questions; more confident students could
write open-ended wh-questions.
Alternatively, once the students have
finished reading a text and answering a set
of true/false questions, you could get them
to rewrite the text so that the opposite is
true. For example, imagine the true/false
statement is Delilah was very happy about
her present and the text says Delilah was
absolutely delighted with her new car.
The answer would obviously be true.
But as a follow-up, the students
could then change the text so it reads,
for example, Delilah was bitterly
disappointed with her cheap second-hand
car. This activity leaves lots of room for
creativity, and also acts as a further
check on comprehension of the text.
You could limit it to rewriting a few
sentences, or you could get the students
to rewrite the whole text, which should
then tell a very different story.
Whatever coursebook you use, there are
likely to be a lot of comprehension
questions. I don’t think you’re wasting
time with them, but any activity done in
the same way every time can become a
little tired and shabby. Maybe it’s time to
reboot your comprehension activities,
rather than booting them out!
Cotterall, S ‘Developing reading strategies
through small-group interaction’ RELC
Journal 21 (2) 1990
Lynch, T Communication in the Language
Classroom OUP 1996
Rachael Roberts is an
ELT teacher, teacher
trainer and materials
writer, and has published
a number of coursebooks.
She is particularly
interested in ways of
exploiting published
material, and has a blog,
www.elt-resourceful.com,
with more practical ideas
and downloadable
material.
radbod1234@aol.com
17
 IN THE CLASSROOM
Starting
a critical
dialogue
F
Valerie Sartor rom kindergarten to college,
teachers use texts from a range
teaches her students of genres, from classical
literature to hip-hop lyrics, to
more than literacy. instil much more than literacy in their
English language students. English texts
of different genres can encourage
aesthetic appreciation, while at the same
time casting light on the cultural and
aesthetic norms embedded within them.
Moreover, by comparing and contrasting
the way texts from various genres are
constructed, both structurally and
stylistically – and by a critical reading of
the texts – our students can also validate
their own cultural identities, while
gaining an insight into those of others.
This, in turn, encourages both creativity
and a sense of social justice.
In this article, I will discuss a
multi-genre research project used as part
of an ESL reading course as a way to
support and amplify the students’ critical
The learning
environment should
allow the students to
pursue solutions to the
problems that matter
in their daily lives
18 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
engagement with texts from a variety of
cultures. The project helps the students to
interact creatively with texts in different
genres, and contributes significantly to
an appreciation of registers, particularly
the academic register.
Establishing a dialogue
My philosophical framework as a teacher
is underpinned by the work of Paulo
Freire, whose main objective was to
promote a classroom culture
characterised by liberation and authentic
dialogue. As a teacher, I strive to create
a learning environment that allows for
multicultural identity development
amongst culturally and linguistically
diverse students. I believe this learning
environment must not be oppressive, but
should allow the students to pursue
solutions to the problems that matter in
their daily lives, to question the status quo
and to feel empowered to play a role in
social responsibility.
When Freire talks of dialogue, he
does not simply mean talking passively
with others; the word refers to active
engagement. For example, he would
argue that we need to analyse what we
are being told by the media and engage in
a dialogue with it, rather than accepting
uncritically the message that is being
broadcast. He sees such dialogue as key
to positive social change. Teachers, too,
must strive to find ways to promote
authentic dialogue to help their students
to develop their global identities.
Freire argues that dialogue has many
benefits: it allows for true cooperation
between both individuals and groups,
which is helpful for tackling the
problems of society; it can create unity
among both individuals and groups,
which can eventually lead to liberation
from oppression; it allows individuals
and groups to become organised and to
stay organised; and it allows for
differing cultural groups to synthesise
their own unique characteristics into
something new, such as new ideologies
or discourses that make social equality
attainable for more people. Getting
individuals and groups together is only
possible through authentic dialogue, for
dialogue allows people to come together
of their own free will and not through
deceit or force.
The banking
model creates the
misconception that
the teacher has
all the information
and power
By moving away from a ‘banking’
model of education – where the teacher
‘deposits’ information into passive
student recipients – and moving toward a
dialogical style of education, we can help
our students to create and strengthen
their own voices. The banking model
creates the misconception that the
teacher has all the information and
power and that the students are ignorant
and powerless. But with a dialogical style
of education, both teachers and students
learn from one another.
A multi-genre research
project
The multi-genre research project allows
teachers and students to work
interdependently within the concepts of
Freirean critical pedagogy, all the while
engaging in an in-depth study of texts
from a variety of cultures and genres.
The students research a particular topic,
as in a traditional research paper, but
consider multiple perspectives on the
topic by studying texts in different
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
In the course of their
studies, the students
can discover what
is important to them,
as a step towards
understanding
who they are
genres – and ultimately represent those
perspectives in their own writing by the
employment of different genres within a
portfolio of work.
Offering students the chance to
engage with diverse genres, such as
poems, job applications, letters to a
friend, postcards, etc encourages them to
become more culturally aware, as well as
more competent in English. Students are
able to interact with forms of writing that
are found in daily life, which differ greatly
from traditional educational texts, such
as essays or research reports. They draw
upon their own cultural funds of
knowledge to produce a portfolio of work
that demonstrates their ability to produce
writing in differing modes and genres.
The multi-genre research project also
gives students choices. In the course of
their studies, they can discover what is
important to them, as a step towards
understanding who they are. Giving
students choice also has the advantage of
being a powerful motivator. As Camille
Allen and Laurie Swistack point out,
those who have more choice over what
they can write and research tend to
think more deeply about the topic they
have chosen, produce richer writing and
produce more creative final products, all
because they have more motivation.
A final significant benefit is that
the multi-genre research project
demonstrates to the students that
conducting research and presenting the
findings can be highly empowering and
rewarding. Our students are the people
who will make vital decisions about the
future of society, so they need to be
well-informed about global issues. Giving
them the opportunity to do research and
gain knowledge of global issues gives
them a feeling of empowerment and
enhances their sense of cultural identity.
Most students find typical, traditional
research papers uninteresting and
unmotivating. However, a multi-genre
research project creates a change in their
feelings towards research because the
content is immediately relevant to their
lives and interests.
Setting it up
It was important from the beginning to
present texts in a variety of genres to
serve as models for culturally diverse,
socially aware and technically sound
writing. We searched for excerpts from
world literature, international
newspapers, poetry journals, songs and
various online sources. We asked our
students to conduct searches as well. In
class, we read and discussed the texts
together; at times, I would divide the
class into small groups and ask them to
evaluate the texts and then present their
mini-analysis to the class in a series of
short talks. I did not formally test the
students on the texts, but I did create
vocabulary cards, and we played some
matching games to help them learn new
words. We also played with short pieces
of text in the form of scrambled
sentences, and we changed story
endings, rewrote obituaries, and added
or edited songs and poems.
After three weeks, I explained that
they now had to begin to research their
chosen topics and produce a portfolio of
work based on this research. I began
what Donald Graves calls ‘writers’
consultations’: meeting with students
individually regarding their research
It was important to
present texts in a variety
of genres as models for
culturally diverse, socially
aware and technically
sound writing
topics and giving them a checklist of
things they had to include in their
portfolio and details of how it should be
presented (see page 21). I then scheduled
a weekly class session in the library, to
give them time to do their research. In
the middle of the semester, I checked the
students’ progress, offered comments,
and asked each of them to make sure
that a peer had also signed their checklist
and commented on their work. As they
worked on their projects, we also worked
as a class through texts in various genres:
short stories, book reviews, poems
19
Starting
a critical
dialogue
(sonnet, haiku, free verse and couplet),
songs, argument essays, newspaper
articles (editorial, news, features,
complaints and obituaries), cartoon
captions and academic essay abstracts.
Our work on abstracts also included a
brief examination of the structure of a
formal academic essay. During the final
week of class, the students made
individual presentations on their topics:
they could choose to explain their process
and what it meant to them personally,
using any type of media, or they could
present their project in PowerPoint
format, taking a more academic stance.
On the final day, the projects were placed
around the class, and students from
other classes came to view them and
listen to the authors’ presentations. This
last class was a festive event, offering
public validation to the students, as well
as snacks and cold drinks to everyone.
Evaluation
The multi-genre research project was a
great success: my students not only
gained higher levels of English literacy,
but also learnt to take responsibility for
their own learning and to explore a
variety of texts and media. Moreover,
they were actively engaged in helping
and teaching each other and were highly
motivated. I found that I was serving as
a guide rather than as an authority
dispensing information.
I learnt that giving students choices
is crucial to authentic learning. Allowing
the students to choose their topics and
genres motivated them and meant that
their interest was sustained to the end of
the projects. Giving them a choice gave
everyone in class the freedom to reflect
upon what they felt passionate about,
and this freedom helped everyone to feel
that their chosen topic was of value.
Allowing a choice of genres was also
crucial. I was amazed by the creativity
and the scope of the genres used by
several students. One student not only
chose traditional text genres such as
poetry, journalism and narrative, but also
made a video that caught the attention of
his classmates and our school director;
20 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
his project addressed the legality of
euthanasia. Another student with an
artistic background chose to portray her
topic (the life of Frida Kahlo) in images
as well as text. She drew sketches,
imported graphics and PhotoShopped
her images with a keen, artistic eye.
Another student used hip-hop lyrics,
which she modified, together with an
embedded music track, to express the
racism of US Homeland Security toward
Arab visitors after 9/11. Allowing
students the choice to engage with many
genres demonstrated that opinions can
be voiced in many different modes. It
also revealed the keen political and
personal interests of the students.
Using a portfolio format helped
everyone to discipline themselves by
offering a broad structure to frame their
work. One student presented her entire
project digitally, creating in effect an
e-book. Another created a book in
traditional Chinese format, with the
script and imagery running vertically
rather than horizontally. Some students
used digital software to create both an
online as well as a paper project.
If I do this project again, I might
also ask my students to keep a reflective
journal to record their progress. I believe
this would result in higher-quality work
on subsequent projects, as the students
would be able to analyse their past
failures and successes and see how they
could improve next time.
Welcome to the
ETp website!
As a subscriber to ETp, you have full access to our website.
Browse through our archive of
downloadable articles from previous
issues – ideal for inspiration or
research.
Add your opinions to ongoing
discussions, and comment on articles
that you have read.
Visit our bookshop for
recommendations –
and discounts.
Running this project was challenging
and took careful planning. I needed to
find ways to support in-depth research
among the students and to source
example texts in many different genres.
In the end, however, I found the process
extremely rewarding. The project
engaged the students in critical and
reflective thinking; their English
proficiency increased significantly; they
collaborated both in class and outside;
and everyone produced a portfolio that
exceeded my expectations. What more
could a teacher ask for?
Allen, C and Swistak, L ‘Multigenre
research: the power of choice and
interpretation’ Language Arts 81 (3) 2004
Freire, P Pedagogy of the Oppressed The
Continuum Publishing Company 1990
Graves, D Writing: Teachers and Children
at Work Heinemann 2003
Valerie Sartor is an
educational researcher,
currently doing fieldwork
in Inner Mongolia, China.
She has been a US State
Department Fellow and a
Castetter Fellow. Her
interests include the ESL
classroom and policies
concerning international
bilingual education.
vallerina57@gmail.com
Watch videos and read blogs
by award-winning blogger
Chia Suan Chong.
Download our guidelines for
contributors and think about the
article that you could write for the
magazine.
Renew your subscription online
and make sure you don’t miss a
single issue.
 Starting a critical dialigue • Portfolio checklist

Please submit six complete compositions, each in a different genre. Please include a sheet at the front
The genres we have studied include: short stories, book reviews, of the whole portfolio to show the
poems (sonnet, haiku, free verse and couplet), songs, argument essays, date that this portfolio was
newspaper articles (editorial, news, features, complaints and obituaries), presented to a peer for evaluation,
cartoon captions and essay abstracts. You may also expand on these and the dates (minimum of two) that
genres. it was presented to the teacher for
editorial consultation during the
The portfolio must have a table of contents in APA style, generated
semester.
in Word.

Each composition should have a title, with a subhead noting the The peer and the teacher will write
genre. For example: Georgia O’Keefe: A narrative feature from a comments beside the dates,
newspaper about her art show (journalism) concerning the strengths of the
portfolio.
The portfolio must be typed, unless the teacher agrees to an
alternative script. Put your initials next to the following
items before handing in your
The target audience and tone should be varied. For example, one
completed portfolio:
essay may be in the first person addressed to a friend (eg a letter
about the death of your dog); another will be formal (eg an obituary _____ All submissions have been
of a famous person). revised at least once, after
You may experiment with structure and content, but you may not someone has seen them and
use offensive or pornographic text and/or imagery. commented.

One piece should be reflective and should discuss why you chose _____ I have used the Word
this subject, and what you learnt from it. In the reflective essay, spellcheck facility.
answer these questions: What is the big picture concerning the
essays you selected? What was the process of writing and revising? _____ I certify that the writing is my
How do the essays collected in the portfolio demonstrate your own, unless it is cited or
creativity and your writing strengths? What areas of your writing and quoted.
creativity will you continue working on?
_____ I have thought carefully
One composition must be a narrative of 1,000 to 3,000 words.
about this project and tried
One composition may be poetry, lyrics or a form of multi-media that to be creative in organising
is approved by the teacher after a writer’s conference. and compiling it.
One piece should offer a logical and well-supported argument, or it
can be a persuasive piece in which you, as author, take a stand on a _____ The length of my portfolio
topic or issue or propose a solution to a problem. is 12 double-spaced
typewritten/printed pages
You should include one piece of your own choosing; feel free to
(or equivalent, approximately
show us your best, your most experimental, your most impressive,
4,500 words), distributed
your most creative writing.
among the six pieces.
You may incorporate as many images as you wish, as long as they
are placed in the text with aesthetics in mind.

The portfolio should be bound in some way.

The portfolio will be offered at the end of the semester for public
scrutiny and praise.

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 • 21

Howdoesyour
gardengrow?
O
Merve Oflaz exhorts us nce upon a time, in a land of
great gardens, there were
to cherish our flowers. countless numbers of flowers
with different colours and
shapes. Sunflower, Bellflower and
Snapdragon were three of these
beautiful flowers. They used to bloom
and grow under the bright light of their
teacher, Mrs Sun. Every morning, they
used to wash their petals with the drops
of dew and, dancing in the morning
breeze, they headed to school.
22 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Sunflower always enjoyed the beauty
around her while she was walking along,
and Bellflower accompanied her by
murmuring sweet melodies. Snapdragon
was always in a rush and he usually ran
to school. Let’s learn more about these
three little flowers once they got to the
classroom ...
Sunflower
Sunflower always wanted to see what
was going on around her. She turned
her head towards her teacher Mrs Sun
as she moved. When she could see Mrs
Sun, she used to flip her beautiful
blonde hair proudly. Anything that
reflected light was a work of art for her.
She thought that each colour in the
rainbow gave a different meaning to the
objects it painted.
Whenever Mrs Sun wrote
something on the board, Sunflower
wanted to copy it all down, neatly and
legibly. She used to get quite confused
when Mrs Sun asked her to repeat
something after her. If there was a word
card she could read from, repeating was
much easier. If not, she used to try her
best to visualise the words in her mind.
Then she could pronounce them easily.
Sunflower loved reading. Because
she read very fast, she could finish many
stories in a short time. She could
remember every little thing she had
read, even its position on the page.
When her friends asked where an
activity was, she could find it in the
book immediately. There was one thing
she was not happy with. If Mrs Sun
explained something orally, she would
often miss some parts of it and she
would soon completely forget what she
had heard.
Bellflower
Bellflower was Sunflower’s best friend.
They always used to play together in
the schoolyard. Whenever there was a
group game, Sunflower and Bellflower
were always the champions.
Bellflower loved music and often
murmured and hummed. Whenever
Mrs Sun turned to face the class, she
would see Bellflower moving his lips.
She sometimes scolded him for this.
Bellflower loved speaking and he was
very talkative, but he never wanted to
make Mrs Sun unhappy, so he always
listened very carefully to his teacher. He
was all ears when Mrs Sun explained
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
something new. This was his favourite
way of learning. While studying at
home, he would read things aloud and
imitate Mrs Sun.
Bellflower always
took a very active
part in class
discussions, and
he managed to get
good grades for most of his
work. Unfortunately, he did not
like writing and maths lessons at all.
Even a little sound could cause
him to lose concentration.
These classes were not as
exciting for him as music
lessons.
Snapdragon
Snapdragon wriggled all
the time and he couldn’t sit still without
fidgeting. He used to play with his hair
or swing his legs while listening to Mrs Helping our
Sun. When he was reading, he always flowers to grow
followed the lines of the text with his
I hope you enjoyed reading about these
finger. He also kept moving his hands
sweet flowers. Do you think you know
and arms when he was speaking. He
any of them? You may even think that
loved raising his hand to answer Mrs
you or your students share some of
Sun’s questions and he never cared
their features. As you will have realised,
about whether or not he had the
the flowers in the story represent young
correct answer. He knew that
learners with different learning styles.
Mrs Sun would never get angry,
Sunflower is a visual learner,
even if his answer wasn’t right.
Bellflower an auditory learner and
Snapdragon would jump up
Snapdragon a kinaesthetic learner. Just
immediately to volunteer for
like these flowers, our students all have
drama activities and he
different features, likes, dislikes,
found roleplays great fun. He
weaknesses and strengths. What we
also loved the card games Mrs
should do as teachers is to get to know
Sun prepared for them. Once,
the flowers growing in our classrooms
Mrs Sun made them practise
well, so that we can take the best possible
the multiplication table by
care of them. We should strive not to
using some cards, and Snapdragon
let them fade, and give them the chance
loved this activity.
to bloom and grow in their own way.
The only problem he had was with
Here are some ways we can nurture
his writing. His handwriting was very
our own crop of flowers:
untidy: too thick and scratchy. He was
good at learning through the experience Remember that not all flowers
of doing an activity. Although he always are red:
found it difficult to remember small We should always bear in mind that
details, Snapdragon’s instincts were our students have different
strong. personalities, skills and abilities. As
Rebecca Oxford explains: ‘While many
language learners benefit from visual
imagery, others have aural (sound-
oriented), kinaesthetic (motion-oriented)
or tactile (touch-oriented) learning style
23
Howdoesyour
gardengrow?
preferences and therefore benefit from
linking verbal material with sound,
motion or touch.’ This should be taken
into consideration in all stages of
learning, evaluating and assessing.
Allow each type of flower to find
its own path:
Natalie Hess acknowledges that ‘it is
difficult to provide for individual learning
styles’. This is especially true in very
large classes and those where the
students are at different levels. To
ensure that all our students participate
in classroom activities, we need to
encourage and motivate them.
Making them believe in what they can
do will open a new path in front of
them. Instead of forcing them to do
mechanical activities with no purpose,
allowing them to discover their hidden
talents will change the atmosphere of
our classrooms. All this may take
some time, but the results will be great.
Enjoy the beauty of your
flowers:
As teachers, we may sometimes be
tempted to skip activities which are
based on different learning styles.
However, if we can spend some time
on selecting a range of the right
activities to give each and every
student a chance to shine, this will
make our lives easier. The best thing
to do is to let the students express
themselves and share their ideas
with their peers. This will help them
gradually improve their critical
thinking skills. Students can be more
active in language classrooms when
teachers are aware of the impact of
learning styles and design their
lessons accordingly. Not only will the
teacher improve the quality of their
own teaching but, by implementing a
range of activities involving all types
of learners, they will also help the
learners to develop their less-
dominant preferred learning styles.
24 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Don’t be afraid of re-arranging
your flowers:
You cannot learn a language without
communicating. When our students
do not have the chance to use and
practise the target language outside
the school, our job is made more
difficult. To compensate, it is important
that we should provide them with
many pair- and groupwork activities
which focus on communication.
Heather McKay and Abigail Tom state
that the use of different groupings
(eg whole class, small groups, pairs
and individuals) is one of the features
of a properly balanced lesson.
Support your flowers in each
phase of their growth:
Never forget that age matters.
According to Robert DeKeyser:
‘young children are characterized as
haptic and manual. They do better if
they respond to verbal stimuli with body
movements ... As they age, learners
develop a preference for a visual and/or
auditory learning style.’ Gaining an
understanding of the nature and
abilities of different age groups will
definitely have a positive effect on
the lessons we design.
Let your flowers enjoy their
growth:
Learning a language is not possible if
the students feel nervous or anxious.
We should help our students to
cope with their fears and to believe
in themselves. As Griff Griffiths and
Katy Keohane point out: ‘If learners
feel that what they are asked to do is
relevant to their own lives, and that their
feelings, thoughts, opinions and
knowledge are valued, and crucial to the
success of the activities, then they will
be fully engaged in the tasks and more
likely to be motivated to learn the target
language.’ This way, they will be
enjoying their journey.
Love your flowers and treat
them well:
Developing a good rapport with the
students is extremely important. It
affects each step of the lesson and
has an impact on classroom
management as well. According to
Zoltán Dörnyei and Tim Murphey:
© iStockphoto.com / kasiap / _Vilor / tamara_kulikova
‘Teachers who share warm, personal
interactions with their students, who
respond to their concerns in an
empathic manner and who succeed to
establish relationships of mutual trust
and respect with the learners, are more
likely to inspire them in academic
matters than those who have no
personal ties with the learners.’
As Mrs (or Mr) Sun, I’m sure you are
touching the lives of your flowers and
helping them to gain new skills so that
they can improve themselves. With the
encouragement and confidence they
gain in your lessons, finding the path to
follow will be much easier. I hope the
flowers blooming in your gardens will
be as colourful as the rainbow, so that
they will make a difference to other
young lives in the future. I know that
the process of growing is challenging
and stressful – but remember: April
showers bring May flowers!
DeKeyser, R M (Ed) Practice in a Second
Language: Perspectives from Applied Linguistics
and Cognitive Psychology CUP 2007
Dörnyei, Z and Murphey, T Group Dynamics
in the Language Classroom CUP 2003
Griffiths, G and Keohane, K Personalizing
Language Learning CUP 2000
Hess, N Teaching Large Multilevel Classes
CUP 2007
McKay, H and Tom, A Teaching Adult Second
Language Learners CUP 299
Oxford, R L Language Learning Strategies:
What Every Teacher Should Know Heinle &
Heinle 1990
Merve Oflaz has been
involved in teaching
since 1998. She is
currently affiliated with
Oxford University Press,
Turkey, as a teacher
trainer and educational
consultant. She is also a
materials developer and
maintains a blog at
www.merveoflaz.net.
She has an MA in TEFL
and holds the ICELT.
merve.oflaz@oup.com
 Over
the
wall ... Alan Maley
sees the writing
on the wall.
I
t is 50 years since Rachel Carson’s
landmark book Silent Spring appeared
– the first major wake-up call for
environmental action on a global scale.
Since then, awareness of humanity’s
negative effect on the environment has
been regularly raised. There have been 18
international summits, the International
Panel on Climate Change has published
five reports, and the Club of Rome has
generated enough publications to fill a
library, yet no substantial coordinated
action has been taken to rein in the
headlong gallop toward planetary
disaster.
It is also just 50 years since the first
Chinese atomic bomb was detonated,
marking the beginning of nuclear
proliferation. Some progress was made in
1970 when the Nuclear Non-proliferation
Treaty was signed, and the USA and
USSR began to scale back their nuclear
arsenals. However, since then, the
number of states with nuclear weapons
has continued to expand, increasing the
likelihood of nuclear war, whether by
design or accident.
One way or another, then, the
prospects for the future of humankind
look pretty bleak. It seems appropriate,
therefore, to review just a few recent
publications touching on these issues.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
10 Billion
Stephen Emmott takes as the starting
point for his book the fact that by 2050
the Earth will be supporting a population
of about 10 billion, maybe more. He then
explores the implications: ‘As our numbers
continue to grow, we continue to increase
our need for far more water, far more food,
far more land, far more transport and far
more energy.’ He then leads us through the
consequences of this in pressure on land
and water resources, species extinction,
loss of forest, etc, with some interesting
facts: ‘It takes around 3,000 litres of water
to produce a burger.’ He moves on to our
addiction to fossil fuels. Contrary to
popular belief, there is no immediate
danger of our running out of them. The
danger lies in our continuing to use them.
One result is that climate change is
accelerating. The global carbon cycle, on
which the fragile and complex balance of
the world’s eco-systems depend, is being
destroyed, and at an accelerating pace.
Quite apart from the increase in extreme
weather, this will lead to degradation of
soils, depletion of water resources and
widespread famine and disease. Emmott
examines two possible ways out of our
predicament: technology and radical
behavioural change. In his view, none of
the main technical solutions is feasible.
Green energy, nuclear power, desalination,
geo-engineering and a second green
revolution are all either unfeasible or
cures which are worse than the disease.
Radical behavioural change would need
radical government action, yet ‘politicians
are currently part of the problem, not part
of the solution ... despite 20 years of
pledges to tackle carbon emissions, we
just keep on emitting more carbon’. The
book is short and devastatingly simple.
The charts are chilling: almost all show an
exponential increase round about now,
whether of rates of species extinction,
ocean warming, growth of cars, floods in
Asia, fires in America or global carbon
emissions. By the way, Emmott is not
some kind of eccentric: he is a professor
of computational science and heads a
Cambridge research lab.
The Burning Question
The Burning Question by Mike Berners-Lee
and Duncan Clark offers a more detailed
and nuanced take on the same issues. The
foreword, by Bill McKibben, emphasises
that two degrees is the maximum
temperature increase the Earth can
support, which means we can only safely
burn another 565 gigatonnes of carbon.
Yet there are 2,795 gigatonnes left in the
ground! ‘We have five times as much oil
25

Over
the
wall ...
and coal and gas … as climate scientists
think is safe to burn.’ The rest of the book
expands on this uncomfortable fact. In
Part 1, The problem of abundance, it
shows how carbon extraction is increasing
exponentially, with no internationally
agreed limitations in prospect. In Part 2,
Squeezing the balloon, it shows how fuel
economies get absorbed in the upward
curve of consumption. Governments
pursue contradictory policies of minimising
the demand for fossil fuels while
simultaneously maximising the supply.
And this is exacerbated by the growth of
population and of affluence. In Part 3,
What’s stopping us? it examines the
reluctance of those owning carbon assets
to write them off, the failure so far to
implement carbon capture and storage,
and the problem of a continuing belief in
growth at all costs. The great global
slumber, is a key chapter. Awareness of
the magnitude of the problem is still
insufficient. And humans are good at
refusing to think about the unthinkable,
especially when there is massive
sabotage by vested interests. Part 4, Not
just fossil fuels, looks at other major
sources of global warming, especially
agriculture and deforestation. Part 5, What
now? offers six possible strategies to
counteract the crisis. But none of them is
convincing, since all depend on everyone
taking responsibility and acting. Unless
we do, the book’s cautious optimism that
things might somehow turn out well is no
more than whistling in the dark to keep
our spirits up. It ends on a question: ‘…
we could keep on as we are, ignoring or
playing down the risks and putting
responsibility for action elsewhere … that
would mean taking a monumental gamble
with our children’s future, and a species as
intelligent as ours surely wouldn’t do that.
Would it?’
26 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Nuclear War and
Environmental
Catastrophe
The first half of this book consists of Noam
Chomsky’s interviews with Laray Polk on a
range of issues, including the environment
and nuclear weapons. Chomsky has long
been a radical critic of the US government,
so it is not surprising to find some
trenchant views expressed here. Whether
he is discussing the role of the US
Chamber of Commerce in lobbying against
environmental controls, or that of the
President in condoning nuclear weapons
development in some countries while
condemning it in others, or that of the
Pentagon in funding university research,
he is unremittingly damning. In some
ways, this weakens his case, since he
sometimes comes across as carping and
repetitive. This does not lessen the force
of his argument, though.
The second half of the book
comprises a number of documents
relating to the issues in the first half.
These include the top secret transcript of
a telephone conversation between two
ranking US officers in 1945, where a
general is trying to cover up the radiation
effects in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by
ascribing them to thermal burns: ‘they
just got a good thermal burn, that’s all.’
Perhaps the most poignant document is a
letter from a leader of the Marshall
islanders affected by US nuclear testing.
It reads: ‘I realize now that your entire
career is based on our illness. We are far
more valuable to you than you are to us
… For me and the other people on
Rongelap, it is life which matters most.
For you it is facts and figures.’
As a postscript to the nuclear issue,
you could do worse than read When the
Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs. This
cartoon-strip story of a naïve, gormless
old couple attempting to continue their
normal life in the aftermath of a nuclear
strike is both very funny and utterly
terrifying.
As teachers focusing exclusively on
language, we may find ourselves trivially
correcting Bush Junior’s pronunciation of
‘nukelar’. As educators, we are up against
the power of denial, apathy and wilful
distortion of the facts by powerful vested
interests. Reactions range from ‘Oh, not
that again! How many more times do we
have to do pollution?’ to Scarlett O’Hara’s
words in Gone with the Wind: ‘I can’t
think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go
crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow’ and
‘I don’t believe it. You can’t prove it.
Anyway, what can I do about it?’
I believe we should not short-change
our students by pretending that things are
other than the way they are. Remember
the fate of the frog in Charles Handy’s
book The Age of Unreason: ‘If you put a
frog in water and slowly heat it, the frog
will eventually let itself be boiled to death.
We too will not survive if we don’t
respond to the radical way in which the
world is changing.’
Berners-Lee, M and Clark, D The Burning
Question Profile Books 2013
Briggs, R When the Wind Blows Penguin
1983
Carson, R Silent Spring Crest Books/
Houghton Mifflin 1962
Chomsky, N and Polk, L Nuclear War and
Environmental Catastrophe Seven Stories
Press 2013
Club of Rome see www.laetuspraesens.
org/links/clubrome.php
Emmott, S 10 Billion Penguin 2013
Handy, C The Age of Unreason Arrow
Books 1990
Alan Maley has worked in
the area of ELT for over
40 years in Yugoslavia,
Ghana, Italy, France,
China, India, the UK,
Singapore and Thailand.
Since 2003 he has been a
freelance writer and
consultant. He has
published over 30 books
and numerous articles,
and was, until recently,
Series Editor of the
Oxford Resource Books
for Teachers.
yelamoo@yahoo.co.uk
Writing for ETp
Would you like to write for ETp? We are
always interested in new writers and
fresh ideas. For guidelines and advice,
write to us or email:
helena.gomm@pavpub.com
It really worked
for me!
Did you get inspired by something
you read in ETp? Did you do
something similiar with your students?
Did it really work in practice?
Do share it with us ...
helena.gomm@pavpub.com
 Launching
You can get an MA TESOL
January
with no previous teaching experience
2014
and only a Band 6 IELTS score!

BUT NOT WITH US

We offer: :

MA TESOL 

http://www.seed.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/education/

MA TESOL (Intercultural Education)

MA TESOL (Educational Technology)
MA TESOL (Teacher Education)

for experienced professionals

with high competence in English and serious
professional commitment.
Distance and onsite options
Transfer credit offered to Cambridge
and Trinity Diploma holders
Progression to doctoral study is open
for appropriately successful candidates

http://edtechandtesol.info/
http://edtechandtesol.info/phd/
Email: juup.stelma@manchester.ac.uk

Could our English

language professionals
benefit from your
product or service?
Advertise in and get
your message across.
English Teaching professional is the best way to get your
message out to our broad and dynamic international readership.
For more information contact:
Carole Blanchett, Mainline Media.
Tel: +44 (0)1536 747333
Email: carole.blanchett@mainlinemedia.co.uk
 Visit us on stand 31 at IATEFL 2014

IATEFL 48th Annual International IATEFL

conference and exhibition 2014 Harrogate
International Centre, Harrogate

Meet the English Teaching professional team

at IATEFL in Harrogate 2014
Come and see us on stand 31 for your free English
Teaching professional giveaway bag – this year with
extra goodies.

We hope to be announcing a special

“meet the editor” event very soon….

www.etprofessional.com Helena Gomm

Editor.

Follow us
on Twitter

@ETprofessional
 IN THE CLASSROOM
Making the most
of melody
Lesley Lanir is moved by music and believes that students are too.
M
usic plays a significant
part in all our lives, and
research shows we are
attracted to musical
sounds from birth. István Winkler and
his colleagues found that babies as
young as two or three days old can
detect musical beats, and Marcel
Zentner and Tuomas Eerola discovered
that infants are, in fact, more reactive to
the rhythm and tempo of music than
they are to speech. Considering this
innate attraction, perhaps teachers
should view songs as a valuable teaching
resource and incorporate selected pieces
regularly in their lesson planning.
Why is music so
attractive to humans?
Musician and neuroscientist Daniel
Levitin, professor of psychology at
McGill University, Montreal, Canada,
says that group sing-alongs release the
hormone oxytocin, which raises ‘feelings
of trust and social bonding’. His work
demonstrates our ability to recognise
melody, and how music stimulates the
pleasure areas of the brain, producing a
‘feel good’ neurotransmitter called
dopamine. Levitin explains that musicians
instinctively exploit the way our hearing
systems and brains perceive music by
using a variety of ways to produce
surprising, rewarding and pleasurable
sounds. These arrangements are not
necessarily composed, however, with any
conscious consideration of the effects
they may have on our cognitive processes.
How do they do this? Musicians
create interest by using unvarying notes
and unexpected notes, by unpredictably
stopping the rhythm, repeating a melody
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
using a different instrument, mixing
genres, using unconventional phrasing,
changing the pattern of sound and
unfolding chords one note at a time.
This builds tension and forces our brains
to try to predict what will be played
next. Levitin asserts that these musical
modifications surprise and tease us
neurologically, keep us mentally alert
and provide a neural work-out in many
areas of our brain, thereby encouraging
creative, flexible thinking.
Music and language
Several studies demonstrate a link
between music and language. Both are
arranged linearly, using syntactic rules
or definite sequences of notes, arranged
with the purpose of expressing an
intended message. Both are processed
neurologically, component by
component, with specific neural circuits
handling different elements, such as
pitch, duration, loudness and timbre.
With language, the brain first perceives
its ‘notes’: the sounds – phonemes –
which inherently contain a number of
the aforementioned musical elements.
Moreover, findings show that when a
Musicians instinctively
exploit the way our
brains perceive music
by using a variety of
ways to produce
surprising, rewarding
and pleasurable sounds
musical arrangement is interrupted, the
brain areas which process language
structure become activated, confirming
that musical and linguistic operations
take place in similar areas of the brain.
Besides similarities in structure,
elements and brain-processing areas,
both music and language require
complex, higher-order thinking processes,
including attention, organisation and
short- and long-term memory retention.
Music and language
learning
Levitin’s assertion that the human mind
acquires new knowledge more quickly
when it is presented in the form of a song
with a rhythm should alert our attention
as teachers. Modern discoveries about the
parallels between language and music
could explain why early humans realised
that setting words and stories to music
made them easier to remember; the
internal constraints of music, its structure
and metre and the poetic elements of
lyrics, such as alliteration and rhyme, all
encourage memorisation. This is an
important point that Suzanne Medina
demonstrated when she investigated the
use of songs in language acquisition and
memory retention. The idea that learning
a language through music is automatic,
easier and more enjoyable, because
songs are repetitive and consistent, is
also echoed by Elizabeth Gatbonton
and Norman Segalowitz.
So, using music to aid language
learning may not be an original idea, but
what is new these days is the availability of
an enormous musical database provided
by digital recording, technological
advancements and internet accessibility.
29
Making the most
of melody
Teachers and students essentially have a
huge and convenient song archive and
language resource at their fingertips. It
shouldn’t be difficult for teachers to
encourage their students to get into the
habit of using this ready-made teaching
and self-learning tool. Kevin Schoepp,
Director of Educational Effectiveness at
Zayed University, UAE, refers to studies
by Jim Little in 1983 and Liz Domoney
and Simon Harris ten years later, which,
decades before the digital explosion, found
that popular music was a major source
of exposure to English for students
outside the classroom environment.
Songs in the classroom
Improving attitudes towards
learning
In addition to the benefits of using songs
in language learning detailed above,
there is the necessity, often mentioned
by Steven Krashen, of creating a relaxed
classroom atmosphere which will lower
the students’ affective filters. Once their
affective filters are lowered, students can
adopt a positive attitude towards learning
which will increase their information-
processing capabilities.
By using appropriate songs on
suitable topics, teachers can both create
a comfortable classroom atmosphere
and use the songs to teach language
structures and vocabulary.
In addition, music can be used as a
socio-emotional aid to encourage
students to share and discover songs
with their peers. Songs can introduce
students to their classmates’ likes and
preferences and provide a common
ground for discussion. They can also
encourage quieter students to join in a
discussion. Taking time to discover their
students’ musical tastes shows interest in
the students’ needs and, by doing so,
teachers can begin to create a classroom
climate that encourages learning.
Choosing the music to use
Students should be involved in the choice
of songs, but there has to be a modicum
of control. Teachers can post a list of
classic and popular songs, chosen
according to the age, language level and
mind-set of their students, and ask the
students to vote for those they would like
30 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
to have in their lessons. This is preferable
to asking for free suggestions from the
students, which may be rejected, leaving
the students feeling disappointed.
However, they can be given the task of
finding favourite songs which include
examples of a particular structure or
topic that is being studied in class.
The song list does not necessarily have
to be limited to current popular artists.
Many students still listen to The Beatles,
Simon and Garfunkel, Bruce Springsteen
and Michael Jackson, for example.
At all language levels, teachers
should consider providing linguistic and
extralinguistic support. Linguistic help
can include pointing out cognates, familiar
words, how intonation conveys meaning,
and giving native language support in the
form of translations. Extralinguistic help
can be given through gestures, illustrations
and photographs, and by relating lyric
content to the students’ prior knowledge.
Children
English classes for elementary school
children are mostly based on oral work,
so these young students need stimulating
language exercises in order to keep them
focused. Songs should be chosen for
their storyline – in the same way that
stories are chosen.
The melody must be easy, so as not
to tax the children’s memories and to
allow them to focus on the lyrics. The
song should encourage activity but not
be over-energetic; movement, gestures,
dancing or acting are all recommended,
as long as the activities allow the focus
to be on language learning. Illustrations
and photos add interest and help
memory retention.
Research shows that learners
respond differently, depending upon
whether the music they hear is familiar
or unfamiliar. Introducing the melody
first makes pedagogical sense because,
when humans are concurrently exposed
to several new stimuli, they experience
‘secondary task overloading’; such
cognitive overstimulation may prevent
language learners from focusing on the
point of the exercise.
To avoid this, consider preparing the
children beforehand. The song can be
introduced covertly weeks before you
intend to use it in class. For example, it
can be played at the beginning of a lesson
while the children are entering the
classroom and getting ready for the lesson.
In the couple of weeks after a song
has been used as teaching material, it
can be played again several times to
provide reinforcement. To add variety,
the students can be asked to create
illustrations of key vocabulary or scenes,
bring costumes or make masks for
homework, all of which can be used to
playact the story of the song.
Preparation is an important part of
song use. The following techniques will
increase the children’s understanding of
the lyrics and aid vocabulary acquisition:
Familiarise the children with the
content of the lyrics before they hear
the song.
Share experiences on the topic of the
song in order to activate their prior
knowledge.
Explain the main idea without
summarising the lyrics completely.
Read the lyrics while pointing to
relevant pictures.
Use contextual clues and images to
explain new vocabulary.
Teenagers and adults
Older students have wider vocabularies,
better listening abilities, advanced
thinking skills and more life experience,
enabling them to understand a wide
variety of songs. As a result, songs
which cover a range of topics can be
used, not only to review or introduce
vocabulary and grammar points, but
also to provoke discussion on culture,
relationship issues and topics related to
family and society.
In general, songs used in language
classes should be clear and not too fast;
they should be memorable, with subjects
and word choices that take the interests
and backgrounds of the language
learners into consideration.
Activities
Songs provide good material for a wide
variety of language activities, not just
listening. A song can be taught by first
handing out the lyrics, looking at the
grammar and the sentence structure,
noting particular vocabulary items and
going on to analyse the theme and
content. Some of these exercises can be
assigned for homework, so the students
arrive ready for the listening activity.
Once they have listened to the song and
gained an understanding of the meaning,
class or small-group discussions can
take place on the topic of the song,
perhaps focusing on prepared questions.
 Here are some other types of
exercises you can use with songs:
Gap-fill or cloze
True/false questions
Ordering activities, where lines have to
be put in the correct sequence
Dictation
Adding a final verse
Changing pronouns from he/she to
you/them
Finding the antonyms/synonyms of
chosen words
Replacing words with synonyms
Identifying tenses
Finding repetitive words
Circling adjectives, connectors and
other relevant vocabulary
Authentic teaching
Authentic language is dynamic and
ever-evolving. It is composed of many
contractions, and in natural speech, words
are seldom pronounced individually. For
this reason, many students have difficulty
deciphering spoken language. Song
lyrics exemplify contractions in context.
In addition, new words and phrases are
continually being added to the language;
some teachers may not be familiar with
these and may not, therefore, include
them in spoken exercises. Songs can plug
this gap, by allowing the students to
listen to and see many examples of
popular colloquial expressions, which
they may meet outside of the classroom.
Not all popular songs follow
accepted language conventions. Those
whose lyrical structure does not follow
the normal grammatical rules and
language patterns can be compared with
the appropriate structures – or matched
with songs that offer the correct version
of the structure. Language learning can
happen through noticing the differences
and changes taking place in language.
Such comparative exercises are
attention-grabbing and provide anchors
which allow the teacher to point out to
the students the differences in language
registers, correct grammatical structures,
various synonyms and unusual phrasing.
Focused teaching
Songs can be used specifically to build
up phonological skills by drawing
attention to the rhythm and rhyme of
the lyrics, word stress, particular
phonemes and syllables.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
Here are some activity ideas for
improving phonologcial awareness skills:
Substitute some of the rhyming words
with a gap. The students listen and fill
the gaps.
Highlight the rhyme; show how
changing one sound can alter the
meaning.
Add more rhyming words to the
common sound family in the song.
Provide word cards that students have
to match to the correct sound family.
Count word syllables to show how the
rhythm of the song is created.
Produce a list of what rhymes and
what doesn’t, and discover why.
In summary, the use of music in class:
offers a change from routine
classroom activities;
encourages a positive attitude towards
language learning;
allows the discussion of attitudes and
feelings about topics;
promotes creativity and imagination;
generates a relaxed atmosphere;
adds diversity and pleasure to
learning;
increases the students’ interest in
language;
unites student interests by way of
mutual song choices and musical
interests.
In addition, music can add value to
language learning by:
providing authentic, memorable and
rhythmic language;
allowing exposure to informal and
colloquial language;
advancing language appreciation
through exposure to sentence
patterns;
presenting an interesting way to focus
on sounds, specific words and
connected speech;
exemplifying automaticity and
fluency;
supplying a memorable context.
Music is an art form to which many
students can relate. Research shows that
music stimulates many regions of the
brain and especially activates our reward
and pleasure circuits. It is widely known
that our memory for music and our
melody detection skills are strong. Using
music in English teaching entertains and
relaxes.
Songs can motivate students to
practise specific language structures or
learn targeted vocabulary items. If chosen
carefully, they provide a platform for
representing authentic language in context
and make selected grammar points more
accessible and understandable. Teachers
can take advantage of the students’
common interest in music by
incorporating songs of all kinds into
lessons in order to encourage language
learning. If students sense that classroom
material is relevant to their lives and
interests, and that teachers have taken
notice of their specific interests, they will
enjoy their English classes more.
Gatbonton, E and Segalowitz, N ‘Creative
automatization: principles for promoting
fluency within a communicative
framework’ TESOL Quarterly 22 1988
Krashen, S Principles and Practice in
Second Language Acquisition Pergamon
Press 1983
Levitin, D J ‘The music of my mind: a
neuroscientist examines the recipes for
listening ecstasy’ Paste Magazine 2006
Levitin, D J ‘Do you hear what I hear?’
The Wall Street Journal 2008
Levitin, D J ‘Why music moves us’ Nature
464 2010
Medina, S The Effect of Music on Second
Language Vocabulary Acquisition
Longman 1993
Medina, S ‘Acquiring vocabulary through
story-songs’ MEXTESOL Journal 26 (1)
2003
Schoepp, K ‘Reasons for using songs in
the ESL/EFL classroom’ The Internet
TESL Journal 7 (2) 2001
Winkler, I, Haden, G P, Ladinig, O, Sziller, I
and Honing, H ‘Newborn infants detect
the beat in music’ Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 2009
Zentner, M and Eerola, T ‘Rhythmic
engagement with music in infancy’
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 2010
Lesley Lanir is a
freelance writer, lecturer
and teacher trainer who
has been involved in
teaching English for over
20 years. She specialises
in learning disabilities
and foreign language
learning. She has a BA in
English and Education,
the CTEFLA/RSA and an
MA in Learning
Disabilities. Her website
is www.foreignlanguage
learningdifficulties.com.
lesleylanir@gmail.com
31
Subscribe today
English Teaching professional supports your
professional development by giving you:
n Practical tools you can use in your classroom Your subscription includes:
n Links to resources to improve your teaching • 6 issues per year
n Tips, tested lessons and techniques from other Your own printed copy,
six times a year
teachers in our It Works in Practice series
n Ideas on how to create a productive learning • Digital version
environment Full online access to the
English Teaching
n Different approaches to new teaching situations professional website
n Information on how you can progress in the world • FULL online access
of English language teaching Exclusive access to the digital
edition of English Teaching
professional
Delivered direct to your door,
English Teaching professional is packed
full of ideas, tips and techniques.

3 WAYS TO SUBSCRIBE
1. PHONE Call our 2. ONLINE Contact our secure 3. BY EMAIL Email our
subscriptions hotline on website and order online at subscriptions team on
+44 (0)1273 434 943 www.etprofessional.com info@etprofessional.com

www.etprofessional.com
Current Vacancies
To advertise in this section,
please contact Helena Hughes on
+44 (0)1536 747333 or
helena.hughes@mainlinemedia.co.uk

 Senior Team leaders and pastoral staff

 EFL teachers and activity organisers
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CENTRE  work with children, teenagers or adults
EAP & ESP Teachers & Teacher Trainers  residential & non-residential opportunities
Summer 2014  fixed-term temporary summer contracts
Posts available 30 June to 5 September
See ELTC website for summary table of courses and dates, and for course descriptions.
Applicants for temporary posts should:
• have an appropriate first degree and a DELTA or equivalent
qualification
• 3 years’ relevant experience
• be eligible to work in the UK Attractive salaries & terms of employment
In addition, for EAP, teachers must also hold an appropriate Masters degree. For more information and to apply,
Apply with CV, cover letter & names of two referees to: contact Sheila Levy or Yvonne Chapman
Summer Staffing Co-ordinator, eltcinfo@ed.ac.uk
t : +44 (0)1223 277230
www.ed.ac.uk/english-language-teaching e: cae@cambridgeacademy.co.uk
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. w: www.cambridgeacademy.co.uk
 Seven
IN THE CLASSROOM

ınto
T
one
Olga Makinina
incorporates multiple
eachers often complain that it
is difficult to engage students
and keep them active. It seems
that no matter how many
intelligences in one entertaining tasks are incorporated into
the lesson, there will always be some
multiple project. learners who seem distracted and
incapable of acquiring new information.
Some professionals blame school curricula
for being overloaded with complex and
© iStockphoto.com / 13spoon
sometimes irrelevant topics; others argue
that the students are simply not motivated
enough to work. Quite a few instructors
have turned to Howard Gardner’s theory
of multiple intelligences – ie that differing
cognitive abilities form the basis for
differences in student learning styles and
preferences – to explain the reason for
problems in teaching and motivating
learners. Gardner’s theory is widely known
and implemented, so I will omit further
explanation, beyond introducing his
original definition of seven intelligences:
‘We are all able to know the world
through language, logical-mathematical
analysis, spatial representation, musical
thinking, the use of the body to solve
problems or to make things, an
understanding of other individuals, and an
understanding of ourselves.’
In this article, I will address the
problem by showing how you can
incorporate all seven intelligences (plus
the naturalist intelligence which Gardner
added at a later date) into one project.
Many teachers tend to concentrate on
two or three intelligences only, which
excludes students who have a different
predominant type of intelligence, so in
my teaching I try to compensate for this
deficiency by introducing a range of
activities. What follows is an example of
a series of activities spread over several
lessons on the topic of travelling around
the USA, which is suitable for a class of

intermediate-level students. The

intelligences involved are verbal-linguistic,
visual-spatial, logical-mathematical,
bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal,
intrapersonal, musical–rhythmic and
naturalist.

34 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

Day 1
Travel planning
1 Choosing destinations
Intelligences:
Visual-spatial, naturalist, interpersonal
A week prior to the lesson, each student
is asked to choose one state in the
United States that they would like to
visit and which they have to try to
persuade their classmates to visit. Each
student makes an illustrated three-
minute presentation (using online
resources such as www.prezi.com,
www.kizoa.com or www.animoto.com)
which gives the name and location of
the state they have chosen, what it is
famous for, information about the
weather and the natural scenery,
sightseeing places, etc.
In the lesson, the students work in
groups of four to hear each other’s
presentations and discuss their photos.
Each group then chooses one state that
they are going to visit and four places in
this state that they want to see.
2 Working out a budget
Intelligences:
Logical-mathematical, interpersonal
The students are given a certain time
period for their trip, for example ten
days, and a maximum amount they can
spend, for example 4,000 dollars per
person (to include the cost of a return
flight to the USA and all in-country
expenses).
They do an online search to find the
prices of hotels, restaurants, entry
tickets to sightseeing places and travel
tickets. Then they fill in a budget chart
(see the example below) for their group,
adding further rows as needed for the
expenses they envisage.
Expenses Places to visit in California
Los Angeles Stanford Monterey San Francisco
Transport
Food
Hotels
Entertainment
(tours, shopping, etc)
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
3 Deciding on a route and website of the US Department of
choosing transport Homeland Security for guidelines on
allowed and prohibited items (www.tsa.
Intelligences:
Visual-spatial, naturalist, interpersonal
gov/traveler-information). They can then
add other items of their choice to the
The students look at a map of the state list. Each student is asked to limit their
they have chosen and decide on the luggage to one bag to be checked in (up
order in which they will visit their four to 18 kilos) and one carry-on bag
destinations and their mode of transport (according to most US airline websites,
between them (for example: bus, train, this might be a briefcase or shoulder/
taxi, bike or plane). They have to take laptop bag). After completing their list,
into account the time it will take to get the students exchange them with a
from one place to another, the cost of partner and discuss their choices.
travel and the convenience (how many
transfers, what time of day, etc). The
students are encouraged to use List of items
additional web resources to help with sweater air mattress
their choice. For example, websites such jeans roller skates
as www.greyhound.com and coat bottle of juice
www.coachusa.com contain useful
cherry jam book/journal
information about bus routes and
schedules in several US regions toothbrush souvenir knife
(predominantly the East Coast). towel evening dress/suit
toothpaste large bottle of shampoo
Day 2 comb aerosol hair spray
Travel and arrival skin lotion pyjamas/nightgown
1 Choosing things to pack body spray waterproof jacket
Intelligences: camera cans of meat
Logical-mathematical, interpersonal hairdryer nail polish
umbrella manicure scissors
The students are given a list (see
opposite) of things that can be useful computer pillow and blanket
while travelling. Each student selects radio
those things which they consider most
necessary. After choosing the things they
are going to take, they decide what will 2 Orientation at the airport
go in their check-in bag and what in
Intelligence:
their carry-on bag, and they have to pick
Visual-spatial
out those things they will put in
transparent plastic bags to carry The students are given around 20 airport
through security. They are warned that signs to interpret. These are displayed
they must be careful when choosing, on the classroom walls, and the students
because the list contains some things are given a numbered list of their
which are not allowed in hand luggage. meanings, eg 1 telephone, 2 luggage
The students are advised to check the lockers, 3 information, 4 meeting point,
etc. Their task is to match each picture
with the appropriate number.
3 Dealing with problems
Intelligences:
Verbal-linguistic and interpersonal
Each group is given an example
situation that they might encounter.
They discuss the best way to respond
and they create and roleplay three- to
five-minute dialogues for the situations.
Example situations:
When you were boarding the plane to
the US, the flight attendant offered to
check in your carry-on bag free of
charge because of the lack of space
35
Seven
ınto one
inside the aircraft. At the baggage
claim in the US, you find that your
carry-on bag has not arrived. You
have to go to the airline office and tell
them about your problem. What will
you say to get them to find and deliver
your luggage as soon as possible, since
you will need to travel to a different
city soon?
You have arrived at your hotel and
found that they have no record of
your reservation. All the rooms are
currently occupied. You have no
written evidence proving that you have
reserved the room because you made
your booking on the phone. What will
you say to the hotel clerk?
Day 3
Cultural experiences
1 Dancing
Intelligence:
Bodily-kinaesthetic
Prior to the lesson, each group of
students is asked to prepare to teach the
rest of the class three steps of a popular
American dance (for example, country
and western dance, contra dance, whip
dance, West Coast swing, etc). The
preparation includes finding a short
instructional video of a dance (for
example, the shim sham at www.youtube.
com/watch?v=bjfM4Wrj9UI) and
selecting three easy dance steps that can
be taught in approximately ten minutes.
In class, the students watch the video
and teach each other how to dance.
36 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
2 Singing
Intelligences:
Visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic and
musical-rhythmic
The students learn to sing an American
folksong. You will need to find a
recording of one and prepare printouts
of the lyrics. The students first listen to a
recording of the song or watch a video
of it being performed, and take note of
any familiar words. They then listen to
the song for a second time, following
along with the printed text and
identifying any unfamiliar words.
During a third listening, they try singing
along. After practising at home, they
come to the next lesson ready to sing in
chorus without the recording. Videos of
various American folksongs (for
example, The House of the Rising Sun)
are available on YouTube and you can
download the lyrics from the internet.
3 Creative email writing
Intelligences:
Intrapersonal
The students are asked to write an email
to their friends or family, describing
what they have seen and found out
during their imaginary trip around the
US. The email has to include the
following components: a funny,
dramatic or romantic story that could
have happened while travelling, and a
description of the differences and
similarities between their country and
American culture, people, traditions, etc.
Day 4
Sharing cultures
1 Telling one’s own story
Intelligences:
Intrapersonal, interpersonal, verbal-
linguistic (possibly also musical-
rhythmic and visual-spatial)
Before the lesson, the students are told
that if they go to the US, they are likely
to meet people who are interested in
their country’s culture and sightseeing
places. In groups of four or five, the
students put together a five- to seven-
minute presentation describing places of
interest in their country or town, their
traditions and holidays, and giving
interesting information about
themselves and their lives. They have the
option of creating a traditional
presentation (using PowerPoint or Prezi)
or using a website (for example,
www.yola.com, www.weebly.com and
www.wix.com). During the lesson, the
students present their work to their
classmates.
As an extension, you could get the
students to find pen-pals through various
language exchange websites (for example,
www.busuu.com). They may be able to
start corresponding with Americans
who wish to learn their language, and
can share these presentations with them.
2 Cooking
Intelligences:
Verbal-linguistic and bodily-kinaesthetic
Prior to the lesson, each group of
students is asked to find a recipe for a
traditional American dish. They cook it
at home for the rest of the class. They
then bring their dishes to class and
exchange recipes.
This sequence of lessons, which can be
modified for different proficiency levels,
allows you to engage students with
different learning styles in a
collaborative group project, which
encourages productive interaction and
the development of strong interpersonal
communicative skills. I hope that you
will find it useful for motivating your
students to become more involved in
their lessons.
Gardner, H The Unschooled Mind: How
Children Think And How Schools Should
Teach Basic Books 1991
Olga Makinina has
an MA in Teaching
International Languages
from California State
University, Chico, USA.
She is now doing a PhD
in Applied Linguistics
and Discourse Studies
at Carleton University,
Canada. She has
worked as an instructor
of English as a foreign
language and Russian
in the USA and Eastern
Europe.
olgamakinina@cmail.carleton.ca
New look coming soon
 More tested lessons, suggestions, tips and techniques which have all
worked for ETp readers. Try them out for yourself – and then send us your
own contribution. Don’t forget to include your postal address.
All the contributors to It Works in Practice in this issue of ETp will receive a
copy of In Company 3.0 by Simon Clarke, published by Macmillan. Macmillan
have kindly agreed to be sponsors of It Works in Practice for this year.

Self-guided interviews
This is a very motivating activity that
draws upon the students’ interests and
knowledge. It allows them to practise
question formation, interviewing and
organising. It is student-driven and
suitable for learners from pre-intermediate
level upwards.
The students sit in a circle. On a sheet
of paper, they write the name of a famous
person (the person can be alive or dead –
or even fictional) whom they are interested in
and know something about. They then write
two or three sentences about the person, as
if they were explaining who they were to
someone who knows nothing about them.
Each student then writes one question
that they would like to ask their famous
person if they were interviewing them,
before passing their sheet to the student
on the right. They read the sheet they
receive and write a question that they
would like to ask the new famous figure,
before passing the sheet on again. This
continues until the sheets have circled the
class and are back with their owner. To
avoid confusion, the students should
imagine that the famous people are all
alive and being interviewed in the present.
The teacher then tells the students
that they are going to imagine they are
their famous person and that they are
going to be interviewed, using the
questions on their sheet. Aided by the
teacher when appropriate, the students
check that the questions are written
correctly, before numbering them in the
order in which they would like to answer
them. At this point, they can also choose
to omit some questions, if they feel they
can’t answer them, or would not like to.
Finally, in pairs, (possibly in front of
the class, in mock ‘chat show’ format), the
students swap sheets and interview each
other, one person taking the role of the
interviewer, one the celebrity.
This activity can be followed up by
getting the students to write a profile of
‘their person’, using the questions as
prompts, or a piece of writing saying why
they are particularly interested in the
individual, and what they would ask them if
they had the opportunity.
Tim Ashurst
York, UK

Making exam classes challenging and fun

I have developed some downloadable
materials and worksheets to make
Cambridge exam-level classes more fun.
I have grouped the materials under four
headings.
Learner autonomy
SWOT questionnaires – repeat
throughout the year to help students
analyse and work on their own strengths
and weaknesses.
Learning strategies and course
expectations questionnaires – let the
students take responsibility for their
progress and set realistic goals for
themselves during the course.
Do expressions/idioms work in Spanish
and in English? (I teach in Spain)
Noticing similarities and differences
between L1 and L2 in context.
Translating song lyrics.
Back translation from reading texts +
follow-up noticing activity.
Collocation dictionaries
Find a better word for [x] in the
dictionary.
Guess the word from its synonyms and
usage.
Explore a word through student-made
gap-fill exercises.
Write part of a composition in class in
groups – beginning, middle or end – and
compare with the original text.
Composition dictogloss – reconstruct and
compare with the original.
Target reader photos – who are you
writing to?
Composition overview of task-type and
analysis.
Register: moving from formal neutral
informal language equivalents.
If you would like to download these
materials and worksheets, go to this
wiki and have a look –

Use of L1 www.b1toc2materials.pbworks.com.
Writing
Questionnaire on attitudes to the use Draw a story – put pictures in order or It’s all there to share!
of L1 in class. guess which story is represented in the Elspeth Pollock
Student-made vocabulary tests. pictures. Seville, Spain

38 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 Food for talk
Speaking is probably one of the most daunting challenges
language students face. How can we expose them to authentic
audio-visual material that will break communication barriers and
get them speaking English?
I have found TV adverts helpful for a number of reasons. Not only
are they boredom-proof – the average lasting just 30 seconds
– but they are also catchy and certainly entertaining. Here are
some of the benefits TV adverts offer:
They expose learners to authentic language in natural
situations.
They expose learners to a variety of voices, accents, dialects
and cultures.
The topics are familiar and relevant to personal experience.
They provide a situational and visual context to language
interactions.
They provide scaffolding to help students understand
linguistic meaning.
They arouse curiosity.
They encourage critical thinking.
They are motivating.
They provide a break from classroom routine.
There are adverts covering every possible language and
content requirement, and the fact that they are short makes
them easy to select, manipulate and prepare.
Here are some adverts and suggested activities you can do with
them. All the adverts can be used to present and practise topics
and vocabulary, encourage extensive and intensive listening and
stimulate discussion of attitudes and feelings.
Hamlet cigars (the commercial set in a photo booth)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlYMID5qCdE
Activity: Running commentary
The students sit in pairs, with only Student A facing the screen.
Student A describes what is happening in the ad. Student B then
relates what they have understood. The students then switch
roles and repeat the activity. Together, they will produce a more
precise description of the advert.
Activity: Discussion
The slogan of the advert is ‘Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet’.
Here are some discussion topics based on this:
What does ‘happiness’ mean to you?
When you’re feeling down, what do you do to cheer yourself
up?
Should smoking be banned in public places?
Should tobacco advertising be banned?
The next three adverts are useful for CLIL, as they contribute to
information in the content areas common to CLIL courses. They
provide scaffolding to help students understand linguistic
meaning, and encourage the development of critical thinking
skills.
Sprite Camo TV commercial
www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3paXOX2JqE
Content areas: Physical properties of materials: colour, texture,
shape. Animals and camouflage – the hunter or the hunted?
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
Act on CO2
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnaKb7yZAi4
Content areas: Sources of energy: oil, gas, coal. The environment
and global warming. Show in two parts:
Part 1: How we waste electricity
Part 2: How we can adopt energy-saving measures
The Lexus GS Hybrid – 120 Heartbeats
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht-_CxBB-kc
Content areas: Protecting the environment. The effects of
adrenaline on heart rate and blood flow.
The next three adverts are good for focusing on natural language
and giving examples of different voices, accents, dialects and
cultures.
Nespresso – What else?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfyeXrdZZ1o
Language: Adjectives
Discussion topics: Misconceptions; describing people and things
Coca-Cola for everyone
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcCSa77mzWk
Language: Nouns and adjectives for describing people; synonyms
and antonyms
Discussion topics: Describing oneself, family members, friends, etc
Weetabix – Fuel for big days
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x1s60tXJtQ
Language: Everyday activities; family members; have to for
obligation; present simple for habits/routine
Discussion topics: My worst/best day; a day in the life of …
The next two adverts both have adaptations of Gloria Gaynor’s song
‘I will survive’.
Weetabix: Driving Instructor
www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0mq-gdGfg4
Weetabix: Vet
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho9ZrHBdnvo
Activity: Play the version of the song sung by the driving
instructor, then ask the students to write their own version of ‘I will
survive’ for a vet. When they have finished, play the second advert
for them to compare with their versions.
Language: Jobs and related words and expressions; conditionals;
imperatives; various verb tenses
Discussion topics: Risky jobs; my ideal job
In order to ensure there are no hiccups caused by a poor internet
connection in class, I recommend downloading adverts from
YouTube using a simple freeware application called aTube Catcher.
This downloads video and converts it to the format requested for
viewing offline. Get it from http://atube-catcher.softonic.com.
Remember that by bringing variety and fun into learning you will be
creating a relaxed classroom atmosphere which will, in turn,
optimise learning.
Stephanie Williams
Barcelona, Spain
swp@vicensvives.es
39
 LANGUAGE LOG
Homophones, eggcorns
and mondegreens
John Potts shows how the wrong word can upset the apple tart.
W
hile reading online recently about the trial of the
corrupt ex-mayor of Detroit, I came across this
arresting (sorry) account:
‘Federal agents who poured over bank accounts and credit
cards said Kilpatrick spent $840,000 beyond his salary during
his time as mayor. His defence attorneys subsequently
attempted to portray the money as generous gifts from
political supporters.’ (Independent 11 October 2013)
I had two competing thoughts – an image of floods of agents
descending on his financial records, versus an urgent
question: What did they pour over those accounts? – before
the penny dropped and I mentally corrected poured to pored.
Unless, of course, the various agents batted at each other
for possession of those incriminating data, in which case
they pawed over them? On second thoughts, probably not.
The internet is a rich source (sauce?) of such mistakes, and
over the years I’ve collected a few. For example, I came
across the following in the online Telegraph earlier this year;
it seems that if descending from the nobility is what you’re
after, you’d be better off in Geneva:
‘I lived in Basle and found it OK – a bit pricey but wages
were good too. I have to say I found Geneva a bit dull and
boring, but Basle was OK, no heirs and graces and you
could get a good kebab there.’ (Telegraph 13 June 2013)
Two of my favourites are towing the line (not to be confused
with pulling your wait), and giving free reign to one’s
imagination, or even giving free rain to it.
The example words are all homophones: words that sound
the same but are spelled (or spelt) differently. Not to be
confused with homographs – these are spelled the same
but sound different. English has plenty of homographs, as
attested by one of those humorous emails that does the
rounds every now and then, and which I’ve received from
many students over the years. Here’s a shortened version:
1 The bandage was wound around the wound.
2 The farm was used to produce produce.
3 The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4 The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
40 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
5 Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was
time to present the present.
6 When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
7 I did not object to the object.
8 The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
9 There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
10 They were too close to the door to close it.
11 The buck does funny things when the does are present.
12 To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
13 The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
14 After a number of injections, my jaw got number.
15 Upon seeing the tear in the painting, I shed a tear.
16 I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
Some of these examples illustrate the phenomenon of
shifting stress: object (n) and object (v), for example, where
the word stress is placed on the first syllable in the noun and
the second in the verb. English has plenty of those, too. And
number 6 has that interesting past tense form of dive – dove
– that is chiefly found in North American varieties of English.
However, back to my title. The existence of homophones is
well known, but what about eggcorns and mondegreens?
The former is a term coined in September 2003 by the linguist
Geoffrey Pullum, in a blog called (coincidentally) Language
Log (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll). The choice of the
term was in response to an earlier post by another linguist
discussing an American woman who wrote eggcorn for acorn
(probably as a result of her regional pronunciation).
The key to eggcorns is that they seem (to the speaker/
writer) to make acceptable sense in the original context
– which takes us back to towing the line, giving free reign,
etc. What’s more, their user can often come up with a
plausible-sounding explanation for their creation – a sort of
improvised etymology, if you like.
Eggcorns abound. We’ve probably all come across texts that
refer to a nerve-wrecking experience, or waiting with baited
breath for something to occur. There are websites dedicated
to them – I’ve included some web addresses at the end of
 LANGUAGE LOG: Homophones, eggcorns and mondegreens

this article. A disconcerting one (to me) is describing a ‘flop’

as a damp squid. Jeremy Butterfield took that as the title of
his book about English, in which he devotes a few pages to
the topic. His data show that the eggcorn just desserts is
now actually more frequent than the correct version (just
deserts), as are miniscule (properly minuscule) and straight-
laced (strait-laced). Still in the minority (for the moment) are
preying mantis, slight of hand, chaise lounge, beknighted, at
someone’s beckoned call and in one foul swoop. A bizarre
image is conjured by working hammer and thongs to meet a
deadline. I’ll leave you to puzzle that one out at your leisure.
There are entire websites devoted to collecting and listing
examples of mondegreens, some of which are more
evocative than the lines they mishear. Smith quotes what
are claimed to be the most frequently submitted examples:
Gladly, the cross-eyed bear (mishearing of a line from a
hymn: Gladly the cross I’ll bear), There’s a bathroom on the
right (mishearing of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Bad
Moon Rising’: There’s a bad moon on the rise) and ’Scuse
me while I kiss this guy (mishearing of ’Scuse me while I kiss
the sky, from the song ‘Purple Haze’ by Jimi Hendrix).

Butterfield, J Damp Squid OUP 2008

Mondegreens are, if anything, even more beguiling. The
word derives from the mishearing of the lyrics of a song.
According to an article by Geoff Smith in ELT Journal, it was
coined in 1954 by Sylvia Wright, a writer for the Atlantic
Monthly. He continues:
‘Here she confessed to mishearing a line from an old Scottish
ballad called “The Earl of Murray” by Thomas Percy:
Ye highlands, and ye lawlands,
Oh! whair hae ye been?
They hae slaine the earl of Murray,
And hae layd him on the green.
She heard the last two lines as “they have slain the Earl
of Murray and Lady Mondegreen.” Hence the term
“mondegreen”, meaning a specious ... interpretation of
an aural message.’
Geoff Smith’s article is well worth reading in full, and it
focuses on attempts by ‘advanced learners ... to identify
words while transcribing song lyrics’.
Smith, G ‘Music and mondegreens: extracting meaning from
noise’ ELT Journal 57 (2) 2003
If you’re curious to learn more, try these websites:
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net
www.macmillandictionaries.com/MED-Magazine/June2010/
58-Web-Watch-Print.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen
http://grammar.about.com/od/mo/g/mondegreenterm.htm
and this YouTube clip of 30 mondegreens in four minutes –
but, be warned, occasionally the misheard language may be
offensive to some:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p6rV3OKcjw&noredirect=1
John Potts is a teacher and teacher trainer
based in Zürich, Switzerland. He has written
and co-written several adult coursebooks, and
is a CELTA assessor. He is also a presenter for
Cambridge ESOL Examinations.
johnpotts@swissonline.ch

3 23 21 18 9 1 1 17 6 18 25 24 23 12 COMPETITION RESULTS
V O Y A G E E Q U A T I O N

18 23 18 20 13 24 19 21

A O A H X I M Y Congratulations to all Barbara Dumas, Harrogate, UK

26 1 9 18 2 22 5 26 24 19 18 2

R E G A L C P R I M A L
those readers who Rachel Glanville, Cardiff, UK

24 18 2 2 23 22 18 25 1 23 23 successfully completed Laura Gormley, Dublin, Ireland
I A L L O C A T E O O

18 25 15 3 18 22 10 18 2 12
our Prize Crossword 60. Sabine Liberto, Seuzach, Switzerland
A T W V A N D A L N The winners, who will Nicolas Ochsner, Kaiserstuhl, Switzerland

12 22 18 26 18 3 18 22 23 18

N C A R A V A N O A each receive a copy of Kevin Sales, Elfingen, Switzerland

25 26 18 21 25 22 18 25 18 the Macmillan English Moritz Schneider, Bad Zurzach, Switzerland

T R A Y T C A T A
18 269 11 23 12 1 16 12 1 1 2 Dictionary for Advanced William Tice, Oberwil-Lieli, Switzerland
A R S O N E K N E E L Learners, are: Linda Weber, Windisch, Switzerland
14 22 8 11 23 11 2
F C Z S O S L Astrid Wimmer, Birr, Switzerland
1 14 14 24 22 24 1 12 25 1 15 1 6
E F F I C I E N T E W E U 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
2 23 18 2 18 7 18 11 25 1 26 26 E L V J P U B Z G D S N X
L O A L A B A S T E R R
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

4 1 18 12 11 2 25 22 26 18 3 1 F W K Q A M H Y C O I T R

J E A N S L T C R A V E

18 2 24 26 24 22 20 11
16 12 23 15 24 12 9 21 23 6 26 11 1 2 14

A L I R I C H S K N O W I N G Y O U R S E L F

24 23 15 2 23 20 1 18 26
24 11 25 20 1 7 1 9 24 12 12 24 12 9
I O W L O H E A R I S T H E B E G I N N I N G
2 1 18 26 12 1 12 10 1 18 26 1
23 14 18 2 2 15 24 11 10 23 19
L E A R N E N D E A R E O F A L L W I S D O M Aristotle

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 • 41

Reviews
Teacher Development in Action:
Understanding Language
Teachers’ Conceptual Change
by Magdalena Kubanyiova
Palgrave Macmillan 2012
978-0-230-23258-7
This is a courageous book. Rather than
trumpeting a success story, it documents
and analyses the ‘failure’ of a project
designed to radically restructure teachers’
conceptual understanding of their teaching.
The study lasted one year and was
conducted with eight volunteer teachers in
Slovakia. Although all were well-qualified
and initially highly-motivated, the course
did not achieve the transformative effect
hoped for. The book is a frank and
determined attempt to find out why.
The introductory chapter puts the
study in context. It is written for ‘anyone
working with or researching language
teachers’. Chapter 2 reviews the work on
teacher change and reveals that for all the
many studies conducted, the yields have
been disappointing, and that the field
remains confused and poorly organised.
And all too often, words are not matched
by deeds: ‘embracing the language of
change does not always imply embracing
its mindset’. The author argues for a more
rigorously theoretical framework for
teacher cognition research.
In Chapter 3, she examines Theories
of Learning and Change in Psychology.
She looks specifically at Attitude change,
Conceptual change and Possible selves
theory. She outlines two routes to attitude
change: the systematic, which involves
effort and a willingness to engage deeply
with the change, and heuristic, which is a
short-cut based on prior experience,
knowledge and beliefs, mood and
feelings. The impact of the heuristic route
is generally superficial and temporary.
This links with conceptual change, which
can either involve assimilation or
accommodation. Assimilation involves
simply adopting a new idea without it
really impacting on our current state,
whereas accommodation involves a deep
process of self-questioning. Possible
selves theory posits an actual self (who
42 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
we are now), an ideal self
(who we would like to
become) and an ought to
self (who we feel we are
expected to become).
Chapter 4 presents a
model integrating the ideas
so far explored. The
Language Teacher
Conceptual Change Model
is explained in some
detail. Essentially, unless a
teacher has some vision
of who they want to
become, feels they are
implicated personally at
a deep level, can
recognise that there is a
dissonance between
where they are and
where they want to be,
and then systematically
engages with it, there
will be no change in
their beliefs.
The methodology
of the project is
outlined in Chapter 5, along with
information about the Slovak context and
language teacher self’ and simply slid off
detailed biographies of the eight teachers
them like water off a duck’s back. Another
involved. The combination of formal
subject (‘Couldn’t agree more’ ) was
input, classroom observation, field
convinced that she was already doing
observation, formal and informal
what the course was advocating. Hence
interviews, detailed field notes and
there was no sense of emotional
student focus groups yields a ‘thick’
dissonance, no problem to confront, so
description for analysis.
no change resulted. The new was
Having cleared away the theoretical
assimilated into the old on the
undergrowth, we now come to the
assumption that it was the same. Others
nitty-gritty part of the book, which for
(‘Nice but too scary’ ) sensed in the
many non-specialist readers will be the
message of the course a threat to their
most interesting and accessible.
sense of self. They felt threatened by the
Chapters 6 to 9 document in detail the
discrepancy between ‘what I do, and
different reactions of the eight subjects/
what the course says I ought to do’.
teachers to the course. Three metaphors
Chapter 9 explores the development
emerge: ‘Nice but not for me’, ‘Couldn’t
of one teacher in fine detail, and reveals
agree more’ and ‘Nice but too scary’. The
that the process is not linear but cyclical.
main concerns of one group of subjects
This teacher’s trajectory involved a
(‘Nice but not for me’) were ‘centred
number of U-turns and false starts, yet
around their expertise in the subject
ultimately, she did emerge as someone
matter and maintaining a positive
for whom the course had made a change.
self-image’, rather than in engaging with
Her realisation – ‘I’ve got to teach
the new concepts. The programme did
differently’ – offers hope for her future
not, therefore, implicate their ‘ideal
development.
Reviews
The final chapter explores the
metaphor of teacher change related
to ‘complexity theory’. To account for
it, we need to take into consideration
the multiplicity of factors and their
varied inter-relationships. Kubanyiova’s
conclusion is: ‘If you want to walk on
water, you’ve got to get out of the
boat.’ To do this we need to inspire a
vision, rock the boat by provoking
dissonance and spread a safety net.
This book will primarily be of interest
to teacher trainers and researchers, but
teachers will also find much to reflect on,
especially in the sympathetic and detailed
analysis of the human data.
Alan Maley
Fordwich, UK
Subscribers can get a 12.5%
discount on this book. Go to the ETp
website and quote ETPQR0114 at
the checkout.
Key Business Skills
by Barry Tomalin
Collins 2012
978-0-00-748879-7
This book is aimed primarily at students
looking for a self-study business
communication course, but it would also
make a useful resource for any teacher-
led business English course. It has 12
units divided into four key skills areas:
networking, presentations, meetings and
negotiations. Each unit is then subdivided
into two parts, which follow the same
basic structure in all the units.
Part A has: aims (unit objectives), a
quiz to activate prior knowledge, a
briefing section presenting the target
communication skills, a listening section
with the opportunity to interact with a
speaker on the accompanying CD, a
business practice section, which presents
key language and gives speaking and
vocabulary practice, and a business
culture section, with information on how
the target communication skills may differ
in various international situations.
Part B has: a briefing section to
present the target skills in this part, a
listening section giving the opportunity to
hear the skills being used, a business
practice section with the key language
accompanied by speaking and
vocabulary practice, and a business
writing section with tasks associated with
the unit topic. This part ends with a
reflection section to encourage students
to record what they have learnt and to
make plans for how and when they will
implement their new skills.
At the back of the book is an answer
key to the activities, the transcripts of all
the listening material and a business file,
which gives additional reference material
for some sections of the units.
Books with a rigid unit structure,
although very easy to find your way
around, often risk appearing rather dull
and inflexible. However, I think there is
plenty of variety in the tasks and activities
to avoid this accusation. It is also
important for a self-study book to be very
transparent in its structure so it is easy for
students working on their own to navigate
their way through the different sections
and to locate the material that is most
relevant to them quickly and easily.
Students will find the focus
on listening and speaking
quite challenging but
incredibly helpful. The
opportunity to interact with
the speakers on the CD by
means of cunningly-
conceived exercises, where
the speaker’s words are
given and the student is
provided with short clear
instructions about how to
respond, will also be very
welcome to those with
few opportunities for
speaking practice. The
fact that they can repeat
the activity again and
again until they are
happy with their
performance will be a
great confidence
booster, I believe.
There is plenty of helpful
advice and information in this book and I
think that students at B1 to C1 level of
the CEFR will find it extremely useful.
Kelly Davies
Bournemouth, UK
Subscribers can get a 12.5%
discount on this book. Go to the ETp
website and quote ETPQR0114 at
the checkout.
Reviewing
for ETp
Would you like to review books
or other teaching materials for ETp?
We are always looking for
people who are interested in
writing reviews for us.
Please email
helena.gomm@pavpub.com
for advice and a copy of our
guidelines for reviewers.
You will need to give your postal
address and say what areas
of teaching you are
most interested in.

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 • 43

 EAP Reiventing the
inventive When it comes to academic writing, David Heathfield doesn’t think
it’s necessary to reinvent the wheel.
T
eachers of academic writing face
a mountain of unimaginative
published resources of little
relevance and interest to the
particular students they meet in the
classroom. Disengaged students plough
through repetitive assessment-based
exercises, and are obliged to turn out
formulaic pieces of writing which bear
little resemblance to what they will
actually write in their university studies.
In order to find ideas that give their
students the chance to manipulate text in
a meaningful way, teachers of academic
writing simply need to raid more creative
and inventive resource books which do
not have an academic focus. Many ideas
are easy to adapt to the academic
context and can even bring life to those
materials which teachers and students
may be required to use.
The four activities suggested here are
adapted from books written solely or in
part by Mario Rinvolucri, a highly
inventive, influential and prodigious
creator of teaching resources. The
common theme is that each activity is
learner-centred and provides a framework
which makes it possible for the students
to develop as writers of academic
English. Each activity builds up the
students’ awareness of conventional
structures in academic writing at
sentence and paragraph level, through
investigative and playful techniques.
These activities can make up part of
an academic writing class. They are easy
to adapt for use with any level, and work
best if they are repeated at least once
during a course.
1 ‘Remove and replace’
paraphrasing
(Adapted from ‘Rub out and replace’ in
Grammar Games)
Write a sentence on the board, of the
kind your students need to practise in
their academic writing. For example:
44 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Each exercise is proposed for all levels,
ranging from beginner to advanced.
Get the students to say the sentence
aloud, focusing on clear pronunciation,
and tell them that they are going to
change the sentence one word at a time,
without changing its essential meaning.
Rub out one word and tell the students
that a replacement word is needed.
When a student suggests one, write it
in the space. Ask the student to read
the sentence aloud and the class can
either accept or reject the new word. If
they accept it (and you agree), remove
another word from the sentence. The
class should end up with a new
sentence, where most words are
different from the original. It should be
a paraphrase with minimal change in
meaning (see Example 1 below, which
shows one of several ways in which the
sentence could change).
Once the students have got as far as
they can, ask them to dictate the original
sentence to you and write it below their
final sentence so they can compare
them. Tell them they can now paraphrase
the sentence again, but this time they
can remove and replace chunks (see
Example 2 below). Substituting chunks
may seem more challenging at first, but
it soon becomes clear that it is a more
effective approach to paraphrasing.
The beauty of this exercise is that the
students are in charge of the building of
the new sentence, with the teacher
acting as guide.
Example 1
(The underlined words are those that the
teacher erases at each step of the process.)
Each exercise is proposed for all levels,
ranging from beginner to advanced.
Each exercise is suggested for all levels,
ranging from beginner to advanced.
Each activity is suggested for all levels,
ranging from beginner to advanced.
Each activity is suggested at all levels,
ranging from beginner to advanced.
Each activity is suggested at all levels,
ranging from low to advanced.
Each activity is suitable at all levels,
ranging from low to advanced.
Each activity is suitable at all levels,
ranging from low to high.
Each activity is suitable at all stages,
ranging from low to high.
Every activity is suitable at all stages,
ranging from low to high.
Example 2
Each exercise is proposed for all levels,
ranging from beginner to advanced.
Each exercise can be done by all levels,
ranging from beginner to advanced.
Each exercise can be done at any stage
in the learning process, ranging from
beginner to advanced.
Each exercise can be done at any stage
in the learning process, however much
knowledge students have.
All the tasks can be done at any stage in
the learning process, however much
knowledge students have.
2 Sentence
deconstruction and
reconstruction
(Adapted from ‘Silent sentence’ in
Grammar Games)
Write a complex sentence on the
board, of the kind that your students
need to practise in their academic
writing. For example:
According to recent research, the
average foreign language teacher
currently takes up at least 70% of
talking time in the classroom; only 30%
remains for the students, which does
not appear to make sense in a situation
where most learners want to achieve
increased fluency.
 The class have to edit this sentence
until only one word remains. In each
turn, they can remove up to three
words in a row. Words cannot be
added, changed or put in a different
order. The sentence must always make
some kind of sense, even though the
meaning may change.
Here is one way the process could
work, using the example sentence:
Student A: Remove ‘recent’.
Erase recent and replace the word with
an underscore line.
Student A then reads out the sentence
minus recent.
Check that all the other students are
happy with the deletion. In this case it
works.
Student B: Take out ‘language teacher’.
Erase language teacher and replace
with a longer underscore line.
Student B reads out the first part of the
sentence without language teacher and
realises (or other class members
realise) that it is not possible – because
foreign is not a noun and it is not
possible to change it to foreigner within
the rules of the game. If no students
notice this, just write the words back in
yourself (after all, you are the expert)
and invite another deletion.
Once all the text has been removed,
ask the students to copy the underlined
spaces and the punctuation onto a
piece of paper. The fact that the spaces
are of different lengths (according to
the lengths of the words they replaced)
will help many students remember the
sentence in the next stage.
In pairs, the students reconstruct the
sentence on paper, by taking turns to
add up to three words at a time.
Note: It doesn’t matter if the sentence the
students reconstruct is different from the
original, as long as it works in its meaning
and grammar.
Further suggestion: Each time you make
a deletion, mime putting the removed
words somewhere strange as you say
them, eg in a pocket, under a book, into a
particular student’s ear. This will help
visual-spatial and/or kinaesthetic learners
to retrieve the words from their memory.
Extension: Encourage the students to
build up a completely new sentence
following a similar structure to the initial
one.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
3 Reordering chunks in
a sentence
(Adapted from ‘Text reconstruction’ in
Letters)
Write a sentence, suitable for the level of
the class, on the board. This example is
from the introduction to Letters:
EFL has been characterised for much
of its lifespan by a healthy wish for
innovation.
Divide it into chunks:
EFL has been characterised / for much
of its lifespan / by a healthy wish / for
innovation.
Now erase the sentence and write up
the chunks in a jumbled list:
for innovation
for much of its lifespan
by a healthy wish
EFL has been characterised
Ask the students to work in pairs to say
and write the original sentence.
Before opening the coursebook or
handing out a text, choose two
sentences of roughly equal length from
the model text you are going to use.
Give out copies of one complete
sentence to the students on one side of
the classroom and the other sentence to
the students on the other side. Ask the
students to make sure they understand
the meaning of the sentence, and then
to divide it up into chunks, as you did
with the example, and to list the chunks
of their sentence in a jumbled order on
another piece of paper.
Tell the students to exchange their lists
with the students on the other side of
the classroom. Explain that they should
try to reconstruct the original text from
the chunks they have received. Tell
them they need to focus on meaning as
well as grammar. They can work
individually or in pairs, as they prefer.
After a minute, stop everyone and let
them put questions to the students in
the other half of the classroom about
the meaning of the sentence, so that
they can check their answers.
They now finish reconstructing the
sentence before looking at the
coursebook or text to compare what
they have written with the original.
Note: This activity can be repeated during
the course and, instead of individual
sentences, pairs or groups of sentences
or short paragraphs can be used.
4 Reordering and
analysing a paragraph
(Adapted from ‘Analysing a formal letter
structure’ in Letters)
Before opening the coursebook or
handing out a text, choose a paragraph
with about six sentences from the text
you are going to use. Ask the students
to tear or cut a piece of blank paper
into the same number of strips as there
are sentences.
Dictate the sentences in a jumbled
order, one for each strip.
Put the students into pairs or groups of
three and ask them to:
Guess what the relationship is between
the sentences (ie that they are from the
same paragraph).
Guess the type of text the sentences
come from (eg that they come from a
‘compare and contrast’ essay about
education in Japan).
Read each other’s slips and help each
other to correct any errors and fill in
any missing words.
Put the sentences in the correct order (by
looking for logical progression of ideas
and discourse markers/reference words).
Guess the main ideas in the preceding
and following paragraphs (they can be
asked to write their predicted ideas of
the next paragraph and then compare it
with the original).
Choose two or three chunks of language
that they want to record and use in their
own writing.
The students now read and study the
whole text with the paragraph in context.
So, how about taking a fresh look at the
many inventive ideas available, and
reinventing them for your academic
writing class?
Burbidge, N, Gray, P, Levy, S and
Rinvolucri, M Letters OUP 1996
Rinvolucri, M Grammar Games CUP 1985
David Heathfield is an
English teacher,
international storyteller
and teacher trainer. His
latest book, Storytelling
With Our Students, will
be published by DELTA
in April 2014.
www.davidheathfield.co.uk
45
 WRITING
Text messages 2
Nick Dall tells us how texting can be taught.
I
n Issue 89 of ETp, I discussed the
shortcomings of existing ELT
materials on text messaging and,
relying heavily on a corpus study
by Caroline Tagg, I highlighted six key
features of real text messages. This
article describes a selection of tried and
tested activities which help students with
both recognition and production of
more authentic text messages. Teachers
can mix and match the activities,
according to their students’ needs.
1 Formal or informal?
Formal messages usually contain full
forms, ‘standard’ punctuation and
measured greetings and sign-offs.
Informal messages can exclude any or
all of these features. This activity gets
the students thinking about this
distinction, and should result in them
sending more appropriate texts.
The students are asked to categorise
sample text messages as either appropriate
or inappropriate in style. Each message
is printed on a mini-flashcard, and the
students form two piles of messages. This
activity must be done in pairs or small
groups, as it is vital that the students
justify their choices to their peers.
Here are two examples for
comparison, the first appropriate and
the second inappropriate:
Morning John, v sorry but train’s delayed.
Gonna be a few mins late. See you soon.
hiya boss v sorry but train’s delayed
gonna be a few mins late cu. XXX.
In a feedback session, the students and the
teacher discuss which words or expressions
are inappropriate, and together they decide
how they can be improved upon.
2 Re-spellings
The following two activities make use of
a core list of 17 commonly re-spelt
words. This short list unlocks the door
to all but the most esoteric texting
46 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
communities, so it goes without saying
that the students should know all of the
words in it.
a) Pelmanism
This is a simple pelmanism game,
requiring the students to match full
forms with re-spellings. You will need a
set of cards like those below. They are
turned face down. The students then
take turns to try to find pairs. At the end
of the game, the student with the most
pairs is the winner.
you u
to 2
for 4
be b
are r
see c
your ur
yes yeah
tomorrow tomo
what wot
about bout
night nite
you’re ur
though tho
because cos
going to gonna
want to wanna
b) ‘Translation’
Another activity that works well is getting
the students to ‘translate’ text messages
with re-spellings into full sentences. This
appeals to most students, as it is precisely
what they need to do when they receive
English-language text messages in real life.
One word of caution, though: some
published examples of this kind of activity
not only have commonplace expressions
(eg Y don’t u call?) but also include others
which are really only representative of
‘niche’ texting communities, such as
teenagers (eg w8’n 4 U). The danger
here is that the students will think this is
how all English speakers compose text
messages. I believe it’s fine to include a
few unusual examples, as long as you
later have a discussion about how useful
such expressions really are, and when it
might be appropriate to use them.
3 Leaving words out
Ellipsis is extremely common in text
messages. Fortunately, it’s also quite
logical: in my experience, students
understand and learn to use ellipsis
relatively quickly. Once they know which
types of words are commonly omitted,
this three-step activity takes them from
recognition to production:
Put full texts and their shortened
equivalents on different flashcards,
and give each student one flashcard.
They then have to find their partners.
This serves as a brief introduction to
further practice.
Give the students shortened texts to
write out in full. This gives them an
understanding of the mechanics of
ellipsis.
Give the students full texts and ask
them which words can be removed.
This is the final step before authentic
production.
4 Lexical chunks
Caroline Tagg compiled wordform
frequency lists which can be extremely
useful to teachers when composing
sample messages or when getting
students to compose their own texts. I’ve
put together three ‘top ten’ lists, which
can be used for a variety of activities.
 Three-word phrases Four-word phrases Five-word phrases 6 Freer practice
The students should now be ready to
1 have a good do you want to hope you had a good engage in a freer-practice activity where
they send each other text messages in as
2 let me know have a good day just to let you know authentic a manner as possible. They could
actually use their phones, though this
3 see you soon let me know when see you in a bit requires them having each other’s numbers
and enough credit to send messages.
4 a good time hope you had a let me know when you If this seems too much to ask, I use a
paper-based activity where the students
5 do you want let me know if did you have a good send and reply to each other’s messages
on folded slips of paper: Student 1 writes
6 how are you have a good one let me know if you on the top half and Student 2 responds
on the bottom half. I usually provide
7 let you know had a good time looking forward to seeing you
scaffolding for the first couple of
messages, with a template like this:
8 a good day to let you know happy new year to you
Message:
9 happy new year have a good week to let you know that Hi Dave I’m sorry, but _________________.
Please tell the boss ___________________.
10 give me a what you up to hope you have a good
Response:
OK Mark, ____________________________.
a) Complete the chunk chunks they have been working with. By Let me know ______________________.
Use one of the lists above, and white out giving them messages to respond to, you
one word in each chunk. In small create a new but related context, thereby Thereafter, I give the students blank
groups, the students use their knowledge steering them away from the tendency to templates, taking care to ensure that
of texts and texting to try to guess the reuse the chunks in exactly the context they know not to write more than 160
missing word. Over a few lessons, all in which they were initially presented. characters. This means that even the
three lists can be treated this way. weaker students can send two messages
each, while the stronger students can
Feedback is straightforward: just give 5 Response tokens send as many as they want.
the students the completed list, which
can then be used in follow-up activities. Response tokens are a polite way of When the students have finished
acknowledging a previous text before writing a message, they hold it above their
b) Choose the right chunk moving on to a fuller response. They head and I ‘deliver’ it. I really like the fact
Make enough copies of ten gapped typically come at the beginning of a that this simple design automatically pairs
messages (they should fill an A4 page) message: students of similar abilities: fast finishers
so that every student has a set. A: Hiya, thanks for getting the milk. xx end up writing to other fast finishers, while
The students cut their top ten lists B: No problem. When are you getting slower students also write to each other.
up and put the chunks in the gaps. For home? x As homework, I invite the students
example: to send me a text message asking
The students’ attention can be drawn to something about the course. I respond
Hiya. Not sure if I can make tennis. response tokens (followed by fuller to every message I receive.
I’ll let you know tomorrow. turns) in pairs or longer chains of
Conduct feedback with the whole class. authentic text messages. They could
I would like to thank Alex Tilbury for his help
Once everyone agrees on the answers, write appropriate responses to messages, during the process of researching and writing
the students glue the chunks to their A4 making use of response tokens, followed this article.
sheet. This way, they each get a written by fuller turns. A simplified list of
record of the ten chunks in context. response tokens, with explanations, Tagg, C A Corpus Linguistics Study of
should be given to the students as a SMS Text Messaging University of
c) Explore the possibilities language reference, either before or after Birmingham 2009
Once you have put a few examples on the activity. Here are some common
the board, the students can brainstorm response tokens: Nick Dall has taught and
lived in Italy, Argentina,
possible permutations of semi-fixed yes, yeah, ya Bolivia, Vietnam and his
expressions, in small groups. For example: native South Africa. His
ok, okay interests include
Do you want to meet + time + place flyfishing, languages,
no, nah, nope American fiction and
expression (eg tomorrow morning at no problem wine. He currently
school)? divides his time between
oh writing and teaching, but
this is the first time he
d) Using the chunks ha, haha, hahaha has written about
lol teaching.
As a follow-up activity, ask the students
nick@nickdall.co.za
to respond to text messages using the mm, mmm

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 • 47

A recent subject of these pages involved the interpretation of facial expressions. Harder still can
be the interpretation of words, when they hide meanings which are at odds with their face value.
Euphemistically yours ...
Euphemisms are polite words or phrases
used in place of expressions that are, for
some reason, considered unpleasant. In the
world of euphemism, people beat about
bushes, go round the houses and generally
skirt around the subject. There can be
various reasons for this curious behaviour:
To talk about things which are
considered embarrassing, eg death and
bodily functions.
To make things less negative than they
might otherwise sound.
A desire not to give offence to a
particular group of people, eg the old,
the overweight (this is often referred to as
‘political correctness’).
A desire to make things (eg jobs) sound
more important than they are.
In each case, the normal expression which
is replaced by the euphemism is
considered in some way unacceptable,
inferior or vulgar. In the same way that the
Victorians extended their rigid dress code
to inanimate household objects and used
lace frills to cover up the legs of items of
furniture (which they also referred to as
‘limbs’, considering legs too vulgar a word),
so we ‘dress up’ perfectly ordinary and
sensible terms to make them sound a bit
more acceptable to our own delicate
sensibilities – and the assumed sensibilities
of others.
However, there are other euphemisms
which have the opposite intention: they are
an intentionally less pleasant way of
referring to something, used for comic
effect, often to make light of a serious
subject.
48 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Consider the sad tale of Fred, a man
killed by euphemism:
When the delivery company restructured,
there was a flurry of downsizing and they
let most of the more experienced staff
go. They gave as the excuse for putting
Fred out to pasture the fact that he was
chronologically challenged, in both
senses of the term.
Not being a senior citizen, Fred was
too young to get a pension, but he failed
to find another job as a freight
forwarding facilitator or a sanitation
engineer, and so, while he was between
jobs, he turned to a life of crime – a
move which proved to be ill-advised.
First, he tried burglary, but he soon
discovered he was too vertically
challenged and big-boned to climb up
walls and squeeze through people’s
windows easily – and his spell as a
get-away driver for a gang of bank
robbers was short-lived when his
pre-owned vehicle turned out to be a bit
shaky. Within a short time, the police had
identified him as a person of interest and
he was down at the station being
economical with the truth about his
involvement with the gang.
The kitchens at the police station
were not very clean and, after eating a
ham sandwich, he started to feel a bit
under the weather. He asked to use the
facilities, where he lost his lunch. A few
hours later, he was still not doing so well,
so he was admitted to hospital, where,
sadly, he passed away. Poor old Fred is
now pushing up daisies.
Dealing with embarrassment
use the facilities, use the rest room,
powder your nose, go to the bathroom
= use the toilet
lose your breakfast/lunch/dinner
= throw up
pass away, depart this life, fall asleep
= die
Making things sound less negative
downsize, put someone out to pasture,
let someone go = fire someone
not very clean = really dirty
under the weather = sick
not doing so well = very sick
a bit shaky = of really poor quality,
unreliable
pre-owned = used, second-hand
person of interest = crime suspect
ill-advised = a seriously bad idea
being economical with the truth = lying
between jobs = unemployed
Avoiding offence to certain groups
big-boned, curvy, portly = fat
chronologically challenged = late (or old)
vertically challenged = short
senior citizen, experienced = old
Making things sound more important
than they are
freight forwarding facilitator = lorry driver
sanitation engineer = dustman
Making light of serious subjects
push up daisies, croak, kick the bucket
= die
 With the greatest respect ...
We British have a reputation for trying to maintain

© Everett Collection / Shutterstock.com

politeness at all costs. Whether or not this is true,
it sometimes means that we avoid saying what
we really mean. In fact, this art form has become
so highly developed over the years that the
subtleties are now part of ordinary speech and
are assumed to be understood by all. While this
is fine most of the time, it can lead to a certain
amount of confusion when people of other
nationalities or non-native speakers are involved
in the conversation. It must be particularly
frustrating for those attempting to do business
with us! Here are some examples:

What the British say How other nationalities may interpret it What is really meant

‘We have a slight problem.’ They have a small problem. We are in trouble!

‘I hear what you say.’ They accept my point of view. You’re wrong!

‘With the greatest respect ...’ They are listening to me. You are an imbecile.

‘That’s not bad.’ That’s good. That’s bad.

‘That is a very brave proposal.’ They think I have courage. You’re insane.

‘Quite good.’ Quite good. Disappointing.

‘I would suggest ...’ Think about it – it’s your decision. Don’t think about it – just do it!

‘Oh, incidentally ...’ This isn’t very important ... The whole point is ...

‘I was a bit disappointed.’ It doesn’t really matter. I was livid!

‘Very interesting.’ They are interested. Obvious nonsense.

‘I will bear it in mind.’ They will probably do it. There’s no way I am going to do that!

‘I’m sure it was my fault.’ They think it was their fault. It was your fault!

‘You must come for dinner.’ I expect an invitation soon. Goodbye for ever.

‘I only have a few minor comments.’ They have found one or two small errors. This is a load of rubbish.

‘Could we consider other options?’ They haven’t made a decision yet. Your idea stinks.

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 • 49

Benefiting from fine views of the Hampshire countryside ...
Traditional culprits of misleading language are British estate
agents, who over the years have found many ingenious ways
to gloss over the less attractive aspects of their wares.
Estate agent speak Translation
In need of some The property hasn’t been updated since
modernisation the 1970s; the plumbing doesn’t work;
and the place needs completely
disinfecting.
A cosy cottage in a The property is tiny and the nearest
rural location shop is half an hour’s drive away.
An easy-to-maintain There is really nothing big enough to
living space require maintenance.
Reduced The owner is desperate to sell as no
one has even been to see the property
for nine months, let alone put in an
offer.
Within easy reach Gangs of noisy teenagers will gather
of local schools outside your house at lunchtime and
toss litter over the fence into your
garden.
Ideal as a buy-to-let The property is in such an undesirable
investment area that there is no way you would
actually want to live in it yourself.
A three-bedroom A two-bedroom house with a cupboard
house that is just large enough to fit a
mattress on the floor.
Set within a purpose- The property is right in the middle of a
built residential vast housing estate with a notorious
development reputation for drugs and gangs.
Excellent transport There is a motorway or a busy railway
links line within ten metres of the property.
Unexpectedly The previous buyer pulled out at the
re-available last minute when the survey revealed
that the property was about to fall
down.
50 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Here are some examples in a worksheet that you might like
to use in class. Cut out and jumble the cards and see if your
students can match up ‘Estate agent speak’ with the correct
English ‘translations’.
Estate agent speak Translation
Conveniently Set on a busy road, next to a pub and
located above a 24-hour take-away burger bar.
Tremendous scope Demolition would be advisable.
for improvement
A real blank canvas Demolition is imperative.
A garden flat A dark and damp basement flat,
underneath a garden which is owned
by someone else in the building and to
which you have no access.
Low-maintenance The previous owners have concreted
rear garden over the garden.
Full of character On most of which you will bang your
features head.
A stunning southerly The other three sides of the property
outlook ‘benefit’ from views of a sewage works,
a recycling facility and a sheet-metal
factory.
Sea view If you stand on the toilet and hang out
of the window, you can just catch a
glimpse of the sea between the
gasworks and the high-rise flats.
Deceptively A mirror completely covering one wall
spacious makes the living room appear twice the
size it really is.
Located in a vibrant You would be ill-advised to venture out
area at night.
Scrapbook compiled by Ian Waring Green
Do we need
IN THE CLASSROOM
to know this?
I
Emilia Siravo finds that
corpora bring a touch of
reality into language lessons.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
n his 2007 TED talk, Sugata Mitra
quoted the late Arthur C Clarke
stating: ‘A teacher that can be
replaced by a machine should be.’
Although Clarke’s comment is very true,
given we live in the age of information
and technology, we cannot underestimate
the importance of using computers to
embellish (not replace) our teaching
practice.
Corpus data, which is now available
online through various websites, provides
language teachers with essential
information that can refine course
curriculums and can increase relevance
in the classroom. In a talk for The New
School on corpus linguistics in 2012,
Randi Reppen stated that corpus data
can ‘provide insight into language where
intuitions often fail – or, worse, give us the
wrong information’. This article describes
why corpus research is essential in
language classrooms, and highlights
how it can be used to supplement
classroom learning.
Ensuring relevance
Although I have spoken English all my life,
I had never even heard of the grammatical
rules governing the use of will and going
to for making future arrangements until
I went on a CELTA teacher training
course. When I first learnt these rules, I
was mortified, ashamed and frustrated. I
felt grammatically robbed, and I wondered
why I had not learnt these things before.
Embarrassed by my lack of
grammatical knowledge, I briefly became
an English grammar fundamentalist
– reading grammar books became my
favourite hobby, and my students were
exposed to what I failed to know for so
long – the rules of proper (or what I
thought to be proper) English.
Throughout this English grammar
purification phase, I taught and reinforced
grammatical rules prescriptively.
On one cold December morning, my
pedantic choices were questioned. I had
decided to dedicate an entire lesson to
teaching the difference between will,
going to and the present continuous for
future plans. During a grammar exercise
Corpus data provides
teachers with essential
information that can refine
course curriculums and
can increase relevance
in the classroom
on this topic, a bright and eager student
inquired, ‘Emilia, do we really need to
know this?’ ‘Of course, Markus,’ I
retorted. But he continued, ‘Are you
really saying that you would have
difficulty understanding what I meant if
I said “I am visiting” instead of “I am
going to visit”?’ Once again, I was quick
to respond with a Yes and continued
referring to our grammar book, stating
that one was used for a future plan and
the other for a future intention, and that
there was a difference. But he pressed on:
‘But do people really use this when they
speak?’ I lied and convincingly said what
in reality I did not believe: ‘Yes, those
who speak English well certainly do.’
I reflected for days and months on
Markus’s question and on my response
– and I still do so now. Initially, I thought
that listening to native speakers would
51
Do we need
to know this?
offer proof that these rules reflected
reality. However, during a summer visit
to New York City, I listened intently to
random conversations between native
speakers, and heard endless violations
of these prescriptive rules! Appalled, I
turned to the BBC and read news
transcripts from their website, hoping
that the BBC’s English would prove that
these rules are indeed valid. I was
saddened to see the same grammatical
violations. At this point, I felt utterly
confused. I no longer knew what to teach
my students, and questioned whether I
should teach prescriptively (by the
book) or descriptively (as used).
Upon reflection, I realised those
students who questioned my pedantic
rules were absolutely right. They did not
need to know these rules, because the
rules did not reflect their reality. Instead
of using class time to teach relevant,
frequent language items, I had wasted
hours teaching rules that were irrelevant.
Providing insights
While the battle between prescriptive and
descriptive teaching is likely to continue,
corpus data can at least provide some
interesting insights into what we should
be teaching. A corpus is a collection of
language usage in various registers, and
corpus linguistics attempts to capture
how language is actually used in the real
world. Prior to the internet, this data was
assembled manually. With the ability of
computers to manage, collect and analyse
data more efficiently, corpus data and
research has boomed in recent years.
There are various corpus data sets
which can be used for research. These
include the Corpus of Contemporary
American English (COCA), the British
National Corpus (BNC) and the
Longman Corpus of Spoken and
Written English (LSWE). According to
its website, COCA ‘contains more than
450 million words of text and is equally
divided among spoken, fiction, popular
magazines, newspapers, and academic
texts’. Similarly, the BNC has over 100
million samples of written and spoken
language, while the LSWE has about 20
million words from four registers.
Together, these tools can provide
valuable insight for language teachers.
52 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Shaping the curriculum
Theoretical grammatical rules may still
serve a purpose and certainly should not
be completely ignored. However, to avoid
being overly prescriptive, these rules must
be checked with how language is really
used. Corpus data helps provide this
insight. Had I used corpus data to
research the use of will, going to and the
present continuous for talking about the
future, I might have found that the
prescriptive rules I was preaching do not
necessarily apply in either spoken,
written, academic or general discourse.
In fact, corpus studies, such as that by
Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and
Finegan, show that, regardless of the
rules, will is used in most situations that
express the future.
To avoid being overly
prescriptive, theoretical
grammatical rules must
be checked with how
language is really used
Tony McEnery and Andrew Wilson
assert that ‘non-empirically-based teaching
materials can be positively misleading and
… corpus studies should be used to inform
the production of materials, so that the
more common choices of usage are given
more attention than those which are less
common’. While using corpus data as part
of my action research, I realised that I
spent most of my class time focusing on
rather questionable grammatical topics,
while avoiding highly frequent language
usage. For example, I noticed that in all
my lower-intermediate groups, I never
reviewed the 12 most commonly-used
lexical verbs (say, get, go, know, think,
see, make, come, take, want, give and
mean and the irregular usage of most of
them in the past, even though, according
to Douglas Biber and Susan Conrad
(cited by Reppen), these 12 verbs
account for about 45 percent of
occurrences of all lexical verbs. As Biber
and Conrad point out: ‘In many cases,
we simply don’t notice the most typical
grammatical features because they are so
common.’ Using corpus data helps us
avoid these mistakes.
In addition to informing the
curriculum, corpus data can help raise
language awareness. For example, many
coursebooks provide very clear-cut rules
regarding how the four conditionals
work. However, David Maule and, later,
Christian Jones and Daniel Waller show
that these rules are not reflective of reality.
In fact, Maule used his own set of data
to prove to his students that their books’
grammatical rules were limiting. While
some critics, like Penny Ur, questioned
the extremity of Maule’s findings, in her
response to Maule, Ur did recognise the
importance of making our students
aware of the many types and forms of
conditionals (beyond what is prescriptively
presented in coursebooks). Corpora are
invaluable tools for doing this.
Teaching vocabulary
Corpus data can also be an essential
source for teaching vocabulary. For
example, for one of my lessons I used a
corpus to research how the word actually
is used in American English. According
to COCA, actually is ranked as the 396th
most commonly-used word in American
English and has over 124,000 occurrences
in COCA, with the majority of these
being in speech. COCA also shows that
use of the word actually is on the rise.
Corpus data resources also provide
a KWIC (Key Word in Context) facility
that gives teachers and students
additional information regarding how a
word is used in different registers. For
example, using concordance data one
can see the typical patterns, various
meanings and common collocations for
the word actually.
Having vocabulary frequency,
connotation and usage patterns helps
teachers prepare what to teach and also
helps learners become more aware of
vocabulary and its various meanings
and uses in different registers.
While using corpus data may seem
time-consuming and daunting, I believe
teachers should incorporate some
essential elements from it in the
classroom. These may include:
1 Thinking about choosing
corpus-certified coursebooks
Recognising the importance of corpus
data, leading publishers have started
including it in their textbooks. When
selecting a new coursebook, look for a
‘Corpus certified’ symbol on the front
cover. While this should not be the only
criterion for selecting a coursebook,

using one where the author has thought
about language relevance and frequency
is clearly important.
2 Enabling students to use
corpus data themselves
While some teachers may hesitate to
teach their students how to use corpus
databases, learning how to track
vocabulary, to check a word’s usage,
meaning and form and to derive its
connotation by using relevant corpus
data will provide students with a more
complete insight into the target language.
As a minimum, teachers should consider
promoting the use of online databases
(such as Google and, in particular, the
Google Ngram Viewer) to check word
and phrase frequency. Google is not as
refined as either a corpus such as COCA
or the BNC, but it can provide some
additional insight on vocabulary usage.
3 Avoiding prescriptive teaching
At the very least, teachers themselves
should try using corpus data so that they
are reminded that there are no black and
white rules in English. I did a great
disservice to my students when I presented
them with supposedly hard and fast
rules for talking about the future. These
rules do not necessarily reflect reality
and, as English teachers, being aware of
the language’s various shades of grey
helps reinforce the fact that we should
be guides who help foster meaningful
communication, rather than police
officers who enforce language rules.
Welcome to the
ETp website!
As a subscriber to ETp, you have full access to our website.
Browse through our archive of
downloadable articles from previous
issues – ideal for inspiration or
research.
Add your opinions to ongoing
discussions, and comment on articles
that you have read.
Visit our bookshop for
recommendations –
and discounts.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
Biber, D, Johansson, S, Leech, G, Conrad,
S and Finegan, E Longman Grammar of
Spoken and Written English Pearson
Education 1999
Jones, C and Waller, D ‘If only it were true:
the problem with the four conditionals’
ELT Journal 65 (1) 2011
Maule, D ‘Sorry, but if he comes, I go’
ELT Journal 42 (2) 1988
McEnery, T and Wilson, A Corpus
Linguistics: An Introduction Edinburgh
University Press 2001
Ur, P ‘Response to “Sorry, but if he
comes, I go”’ ELT Journal 43 (1) 1989
Online resources
Mitra, S ‘How kids teach themselves’ TED
Audio podcast retrieved from www.ted.
com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_
teach_themselves.html
Reppen, R ‘Corpus linguistics’ Video of
talk given at the New School in February
2012 retrieved from www.youtube.com/
watch?v=Qf46lOnMCfs
Corpus data sources
www.wordandphrase.info/analyzeText.asp
http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/
www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/
Emilia Siravo is a
freelance ESL teacher in
Zurich, Switzerland. She
has CELTA, DELTA I,
DELTA III and SVEB
certifications, and
recently graduated from
The New School’s MA
TESOL Program,
receiving the 2013 Award
for Academic Excellence.
emilia_siravo@yahoo.com
Watch videos and read blogs
by award-winning blogger
Chia Suan Chong.
Download our guidelines for
contributors and think about the
article that you could write for the
magazine.
Renew your subscription online
and make sure you don’t miss a
single issue.
TALKBACK!
I
think it is rather simplistic to
abandon the whole idea of
repetition because it takes time
away from students and reduces
their motivation to speak – as
Nicholas Northall claims in ‘Echo,
echo, echo ...’ (ETp Issue 88).
I can see that it sounds
nonsensical simply to repeat what
a student says, as in his example,
but there are certain advantages
to repetition:
The teacher can correct or
clarify what the student said.
Students hear a native-speaker
level of pronunciation.
Hearing their own words
reflected back gives the
speaker a chance to confirm or
qualify what they said.
Maybe even more useful than
straight repetition is paraphrase,
saying the same thing in a
different way. This can help the
class in various ways:
The students hear different
ways of expressing themselves,
extending their vocabulary or
varying their sentence structure.
The student who is speaking
feels listened to and
encouraged. After all, if the
teacher takes the time to
rephrase what has been said,
this can be gratifying for the
student concerned.
Finally, repetition or paraphrase
can help slower students to
formulate their own contribution
to the conversation or discussion
when the teacher opens it out to
the class.
Let’s not throw the baby out with
the bathwater – echoing has its
advantages, so let’s speak up in
praise of paraphrase!
Sheila Levy
Cambridge, UK
53
 Your subscription
includes:
• 4 issues per year
• Digital version

Modern English Teacher supports Subscribe today for:

your professional development by
showing you:
■ Practical ideas and detailed
methodology to improve your
classroom teaching
■ In-depth teaching theory and how
to use it effectively
■ Different approaches to teaching
using new teaching tools
■ How to use new technology
■ Which books to read, with
Subscribe comprehensive reviews
today for ■ Informative articles allowing you
to look at teaching from a different
■ Your own printed copy, four times
a year
■ Exclusive access to the digital edition
of Modern English Teacher
Sign up today for a
20% discount*
■ Subscribe for one year at our standard
rate £33/€49/$65
■ Subscribe for two years for
£50/€73/$98 – 10% off our usual rate
■ BEST OFFER! Subscribe for 3 years
for 20% off our standard rate – only
£65/€98/$130
Please quote MET101 for discount.
* applies to 3-year subscriptions only

20% off perspective

Delivered direct to your door four

your times a year, Modern English

subscription!*
Teacher is packed full of ideas, tips
and techniques.

3 WAYS TO SUBSCRIBE
1. PHONE Call our subscriptions hotline on +44 (0)1273 434943
2. ONLINE Contact our secure website and order online at www.pavpub.com
3. BY POST Complete payment and address details and return the order form with
payment to: Pavilion Publishing and Media, Rayford House, School Road, Hove, East Sussex
BN3 5HX UNITED KINGDOM
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Significant
others
Mark Krzanowski brings like-minded people together for special purposes.
SIG
stands for ‘special
interest group’, a
community whose
members work together to discuss their
particular field of concern and expertise,
to promote best practice within that field
and to produce solutions to any issues that
arise. Within the IATEFL organisation
there are around 15 SIGs, which bring
together teachers with a particular
interest in, for example, teaching young
learners and teenagers, business English,
pronunciation, ESP, and materials
development. Members of IATEFL are
asked to choose one SIG, which they
can join as part of their membership fee.
Additional SIGs may be joined for a fee.
(Within TESOL, the teaching
association based in the US, there is a
similar system of interest groups, known
as ISs or ‘interest sections’.)
The IATEFL SIGs
ELT professionals enjoy being members
of IATEFL SIGs for a variety of
reasons. Possibly the most important are
that it gives them a chance to
consolidate their specialism within the
wider field of ELT, to network with
fellow professionals who share their
experience in a specific area, to share
expertise and benchmark good practice
and to promote the interests of
colleagues and potential colleagues
across the globe. SIG members find this
last item particularly appealing.
IATEFL is, as its name proclaims, an
international organisation, and the
opportunity to get in contact with and
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
share ideas with teachers working in the
same field but in different countries
around the world is especially valued.
Membership numbers differ
according to the nature of the SIG. The
Business English SIG probably has
around 500 members, whereas the ESP
SIG has approximately 350.
The ESP SIG
The aims of the ESP SIG, of which I am
a member, were set out in 2005. The
main objective was ‘to disseminate good
practice in ESP through its membership
and to promote models of ESP excellence
to ELT professionals in the UK and
abroad’. Its aims include:
to raise better awareness of ESP in
countries where it is not yet fully
developed;
to organise systems of support for
fellow ESP practitioners;
to support individual or
organisational projects which may not
prove feasible without the SIG’s
recommendation;
to provide consultancy and relevant
educational advice;
to organise joint events with
organisations of a similar interest or
profile.
In attempting to meet these aims, the
ESP SIG has been very active. It has
reached out to developing and emerging
countries (the second book published by
the SIG in partnership with Garnet
Education is devoted to ESP and EAP
in developing countries). The SIG’s most
recent success lies in its contribution to
the creation of the Ivorian English
Teachers’ Association (CI-IATEFL),
whose main interest lies in ESP and
which has just been confirmed as an
IATEFL affiliate. Its newly-elected
president is, himself, a member of the
IATEFL ESP SIG. This association is
bound to set new ESP trends in Côte
d’Ivoire and in West Africa.
Over the last eight years or so, the
ESP SIG ‘support’ network has gone
from strength to strength, and it now
unites colleagues across all the
continents. In addition, over the last
three years, close links have been
established with its TESOL counterpart,
the TESOL ESP IS.
The SIG embraces both ESP in its
general sense as well as its special
variations, eg English for Work, English
for Occupational or Professional
Purposes and, last but not least, English
for Academic Purposes (EAP).
Publications
Collaboration with Garnet Education
has seen the publication of three topical
ESP SIG edited books (see page 56). As
former Co-ordinator of the ESP SIG, I
edited all three books, and the new Joint
Co-ordinator, Dr Prithvi Shrestha, is
currently working on a fourth book.
Garnet Education also sponsors the ESP
SIG journal (The Journal of Professional
and Academic English) which is
published bi-annually and replaces an
earlier newsletter. This journal has been
particularly successful in reaching out to
55
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Significant
others
traditionally disadvantaged voices from
emerging and developing countries and
providing a forum in which they can
express their views.
Members of the ESP SIG receive
free copies of the books and the journal.
There is also a website (http://espsig.
iatefl.org) redesigned and maintained by
Dr Semih Irfaner from Bilkent University
(Turkey). Non-members are able to
CALL FOR PAPERS
IATEFL Annual Conference HARROGATE:
2–5 April 2014
English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
Special Interest Group (SIG)
Pre-Conference Event (PCE)
Theme: ESP and learning technologies: What can we learn?
One of the future themes proposed by
the IATEFL ESP SIG members and the
participants who attended the ESP SIG
PCE in Liverpool in 2013 was the use
of technology in ESP.
Responding to this suggestion, the
ESP SIG committee would like to make
this the theme of the ESP SIG PCE to
be held in Harrogate in April 2014.
There have been a number of
conferences and events where
research and good practice in terms
of learning technologies and language
learning have been shared. However,
the use of learning technologies for
English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
is rarely talked about.
In addition, the use of learning
technologies in both professional and
academic English contexts has the
potential to provide administrators,
trainers and teachers with a rich
source of information that can enhance
the teaching and learning of ESP. As
56 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
access some of the information about
the SIG on the website, but full access is
granted only to members of IATEFL
who have selected the ESP SIG as one
of their chosen SIGs.
Members of the SIG can contribute
to its books and journals with articles,
and can propose talks to be delivered at
SIG events.
Events
Every year, the ESP SIG hosts its own
‘day’ during the IATEFL annual
conference. Every effort is made to ensure
that such a day is ‘democratically’ devoted
to ESP and EAP topics – the six or seven
the use of learning technologies is an
emerging field in ESP, it deserves a
platform for ESP practitioners to
discuss it and the ESP Pre-Conference
Event (PCE) would seem an ideal space
for this discussion.
We expect that this theme will bring
together a diverse range of researchers
and practitioners in professional and
academic English to share views and
practices which are applicable to other
ESP contexts.
Proposals for papers should follow the
standard IATEFL conference proposal
format (Title: 10 words, Abstract:
60 words, Summary: 250 words).
Please submit your proposal to
Aysen Guven
(caysen@bilkent.edu.tr)
and Prithvi Shrestha
(pnshrestha@gmail.com).
Our PCE will be held on
1st April 2014.
talks delivered on this day are given by a
range of international ESP and EAP
experts, normally representing tertiary
and further education as well as the
private sector. These talks are selected by
the SIG committee, who pay particular
attention to achieving a balanced
geographical spread. Since 2007, the ESP
SIG has also held regular pre-conference
events (PCEs), each of which is devoted
to a particular theme. Below you will see
an abbreviated ‘Call for Papers’ for our
PCE at the IATEFL conference in
Harrogate in April this year.
Being part of the ESP SIG, and of any
IATEFL SIG, means not being alone,
but knowing that you are part of a very
vibrant and inclusive network of
like-minded experts and practitioners. In
addition to conferences and events, there
are ways of sustaining contact with
fellow members electronically and online,
be it webinars or email discussion groups.
The growth in new technologies and the
rapid expansion of their availability
throughout the world make it certain
that lively ESP activity takes place 24/7
– anywhere and anytime!
Krzanowski, M (Ed) Current Developments
in English for Academic, Specific and
Occupational Purposes Garnet Education
2008
Krzanowski, M (Ed) Current Developments
in English for Academic and Specific
Purposes in Developing, Emerging and
Least-Developed Countries Garnet
Education 2009
Krzanowski, M (Ed) Current Developments
in English for Work and the Workplace:
Approaches, Curricula and Materials
Garnet Education 2012
More information on joining IATEFL SIGs
can be found at www.iatefl.org.
Mark Krzanowski is
Editor-in-Chief of the ESP
SIG’s journal. He was the
ESP SIG Co-ordinator
from 2005 to April 2013.
He is based at the
University of Westminster,
UK, where he is Lecturer
in English Language,
TESOL and Linguistics in
the Department of
English, Linguistics and
Cultural Studies. He is
also Senior Adviser in
ESP and EAP for Garnet
Education.
markkski2@gmail.com
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Motivational mantras
Douglas Williams has ten timely tips for teachers.
W
e’ve all had days when we
question what we do, doubt
ourselves as teachers – perhaps
even consider quitting altogether. Here are
some motivational points to remember
after a bad day in the classroom; their
aim is to guide the disaffected teacher
back to a positive mindset and,
ultimately, more job satisfaction.
1 Value your contribution.
Whoever the student is, you can teach
them something. Even the strongest
advanced student can learn new
vocabulary, work on their pronunciation
and develop their skills. Conversely, an
absolute beginner with seemingly no
language learning aptitude (perhaps the
most challenging kind of student) will
show progress if the correct approach is
chosen by the teacher – and they are
given enough time.
2 Don’t take all the blame for a
bad class.
It may seem obvious, but the success of the
class depends not only on you; it depends
on the students as well. Whilst reflection by
the teacher on what has happened when
things go wrong is essential for improving
rapport with a class and meeting their
needs, for teachers to put responsibility
for the learners’ achievements solely on
themselves is dangerous. The flip side of
this, of course, is that you can’t take all
the credit for a good class!
3 Look for the positive aspects
of the job, not the negatives.
Yes, the pay is low and the students can
drive you mad, but moaning about those
things day in day out in the staffroom is
a real morale-killer. Although I can
sympathise with a heart-felt complaint
from a fellow teacher, it’s important not
to let negative vibes be the norm.
Remind yourself that you are making a
difference and doing a creative,
intellectually stimulating job. Find
positives in the teachers you work with,
bounce ideas off each other and learn
from your colleagues.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
4 Be realistic with your aims.
In many teaching situations, the chances
are you will be teaching one class or
learner for a short time, so setting
achievable objectives is key. To avoid
disappointing yourself and your
students, make it clear what they can
expect to learn (or acquire) in the time
that you have available.
5 Mix it up.
Variety is the spice of the ELT job,
whether it be in materials, correction
techniques or classroom layout. Adding
variety will avoid the common
‘Groundhog class’ syndrome, where you
get into a predictable cycle of doing the
same kinds of activities every lesson, using
the same lesson shape or methodology.
Both you and your students will benefit
from breaking the routine.
6 Be open to humour.
Take every opportunity in class to have
a laugh with your students. Encourage
spontaneous anecdotes. Don’t rush past
funny mistakes students make; often
these are the most memorable parts of
the lesson and can be valuable in terms
of language feedback.
7 Be prepared for criticism.
It’s a difficult balancing act at times, and
it’s often a case of keeping most students
happy for most of the time. If a student
complains about your class, don’t sulk
about it and hold a grudge; respond
positively by talking to them one-to-one
and finding out the root of their
complaint. Be approachable and
attentive, or they will have no choice but
to go over your head to your superiors.
8 Develop, don’t stagnate.
One reason for feeling demotivated as a
teacher is the uncertainty of what can
come next on your CV. There are
numerous avenues for continuing your
professional development, from speaking
at conferences to getting an article
published in a teachers’ magazine or taking
on further responsibilities in your school.
9 Become a student yourself.
By learning another language, you
increase your ability to empathise with
the situation your students face. Take
every opportunity to learn about your
students’ native languages in class, too.
10 And finally ... don’t work too
hard!
Limit the amount of time you spend
preparing classes by using this time
more efficiently. Re-use or adapt existing
materials, and if creating new materials,
set a deadline and stick to it. Some of the
best lessons I’ve taught have used either
no traditional materials or those I’ve
whipped up in a panic with ten minutes
to go! Mark with a correction code or
focus on particular types of mistake,
politely decline students’ requests to
mark work unrelated to your lessons and
think carefully before adding students as
friends on Facebook! Aside from the risks
of appearing unprofessional, if your
students start seeing you as more a
friend than a teacher, unfortunately
there will always be some who will try to
take advantage of that.
So, at the end of a bad day, just remember:
there’s no such thing as the perfect teacher.
The best we can do is to walk into every
class with optimistic assumptions, pay
attention as much as possible to our
students’ needs and regularly evaluate
our own performance.
Douglas Williams is a
freelance trainer for the
London School of English
and, since starting his
first TEFL job in 2006, has
taught in Indonesia, New
Zealand and the UK. He
holds the Cambridge
DELTA and is currently
taking an MA in ELT and
Applied Linguistics at
King’s College London,
UK. His academic
interests include
assessment, learner
autonomy and technology
in the classroom.
douglas12510@hotmail.co.uk
57
Get on
TECHNOLOGY
board
L
Louise Guyett ast year, the college that I work
for had interactive white
suggests three interactive boards (IWBs) installed in all
of the classrooms. All the
ways to practise sounds and teachers were provided with training as
we were now required to use them in
the phonemic script. class. At the time, I was undertaking
action research on how I could integrate
the use of the phonemic chart and script
in my lessons. In the latter stages of the
IWB training, we were encouraged to
share ideas on how we could build
activities for the IWBs to use in class. So
I decided to think about how I could use
the features of the IWB to create
activities for practising pronunciation
and the phonemic script.
I developed the following three
ideas, which are all based on well-known
classroom activities.
Diagram 1
58 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
1 Phonemic ‘Back to
the board’
This is, of course, based on the well-
known activity ‘Back to the board’, but
instead of writing the words on the
board, the teacher can prepare an
interactive version for the IWB, using
the target language written in phonemic
script.
1 Create a table with the same number
of cells as words you want to test.
2 If you are preparing the lesson on the
board itself, you can use the IWB pen
to write the target lexis in phonemic
script in the cells of the table. If you
are using a computer or laptop to
prepare your lesson, then you could
use an online IPA typewriter, such as:
www.e-lang.co.uk/mackichan/call/pron/
type.html.
3 Next, highlight all the cells, right click
and select ‘Add cell shade’. This will
add shading on top of all the words so
that they are no longer visible.
4 Finally, choose a shape from the tool
bar (I like the star best). Once the
shape is created, click on it and select
‘Infinite Cloner’. This means that the
object, in this case the star, can simply
be replicated or ‘cloned’ an infinite
number of times by touching it and
dragging it to the desired location on
the screen. Use this to keep the scores
for the teams. (See Diagram 1.)
5 Divide the class into two teams and
have them sit in two semi-circles
facing the board, with two students
(one from each team) sitting facing
their team with their backs to the
board. Ask any of the students to
choose a cell by calling out the
column letter and the row number, for
example B2. Click on that cell to
remove the shading and the word
underneath will be revealed. The
teams of students then have to explain
the word to their teammate at the
front who can’t see it, without saying
the revealed word. The first person to
guess the word correctly wins a point
for their team. This point can be
marked by moving a star into the
column that represents that team.
This is a great activity for revising
vocabulary at the end of a lesson,
especially if you have included the
pronunciation while introducing the
language earlier in the lesson.
 3 Activity builder
The ‘Activity builder’ feature on the
SMART Notebook 11 is very easy to
use and it allows you to create
interactive activities based on
categorising. For pronunciation, it can
be used for any sounds that your
students are having trouble with, voiced
and unvoiced sounds, and is an excellent
way to practise minimal pairs. You
choose the sounds and words you would
like to focus on, according to your
students’ needs and level.
First, prepare one circle for each of
your chosen target sounds. Next, write
the words on the board; it’s best to
organise them as shown in Diagram 3, as
you can later use this as your answer page
when the activity has been completed.
Next, select the first circle. Select the
‘puzzle’ icon on the left-hand bar, click
on ‘Activity Builder’ and then on ‘Edit’
(see Diagram 4).
Diagram 2

2 ‘Sound maze’
board run
This idea for this activity came to me in the
middle of a lesson while my students were
completing a vowel maze from Mark
Hancock’s Pronunciation Games. The maze
focuses on the long vowel sound / /. The
learners have to find a path through the
maze to the Finish, only moving through
spaces that have words containing the
target sound. Before the lesson, I had
scanned a copy of the maze onto a
SMART Notebook 11 file so that, during
the feedback session, the students would
have a visual to refer to for correction.
While I was monitoring the students, I Diagram 3
had the idea to change the way we would
give feedback. So I cloned the maze and
put one copy on each side of the board
(see Diagram 2). The students were
divided into two teams and formed two
lines in front of the board. The first student
in each team ran to the board and made
the first move on their maze. They then ran
back and passed the pen to the next player,
who ran up and made the next move.
They continued in this relay style until
one team reached the Finish. We then
checked both teams’ answers and drilled
any problems. The learners were highly
engaged and the competitiveness
generated motivation.
Warning: This activity might not work
on older models of IWBs, where it is not
possible to use more than one pen at a time. Diagram 4

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 • 59

Get on
board
Highlight all of the words that
belong to the first circle, in this case / /,
and drag them into the top box in the
Activity Builder that says ‘Accept these
objects’. In the box underneath (‘Reject
these objects’), click ‘Add All Remaining’
(see Diagram 5).
Then click on ‘Settings’, add your
desired animations and click ‘Done’ (see
Diagram 6).
Repeat the same process for the second
circle and the words that belong there. Diagram 5
Finally, scatter the words around the
page at random (see Diagram 7).
Increase participation by nominating
a student to come up to the board. The
student has to choose a word and put it
in the circle they think it belongs to. If it
is correct, the word will disappear or
swirl (depending on the animation you
chose) and if it’s incorrect, the word will
bounce back. As with the two activities
described above, you can make this
competitive by dividing the class in half
or putting the students into pairs. Each
pair has to come to the board and
choose one word to move into the
correct category. If they get it right, they
win a point and choose another word. If
they get it wrong, the next pair comes to
Diagram 6
the board.
Provide a link to the answers so that the target words missing or with one then have to read them to another pair.
when the activity is finished, the learners item from a minimal pair. Read the This is great for receptive and productive
can have the answers confirmed (see sentences out, and the students have to practice.
Diagram 3 on page 59). decide which word it is. Likewise, you
You can follow up this activity by can have them work in pairs to write
giving the students some sentences with sentences with words missing, and they As always, variety is fundamental, and
overusing the IWB can lead to a loss of
novelty. However, supporting your
pronunciation lessons with activities
such as these can motivate and engage
your learners.

Hancock, M Pronunciation Games CUP

1995

Louise Guyett has been

teaching in Kaplan
International Colleges,
Dublin, Ireland, for over
five years. She also
manages the colleges’
self-access centre. She
has recently passed her
Trinity Diploma in TESOL
and has developed a
huge interest in
phonology.

Diagram 7 louise.guyett@kicteachers.com

60 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 TECHNOLOGY
Five things you always wanted
IWB
to know about the
(but were too afraid to ask)
1
What are IWBs?
The term ‘interactive whiteboard’ pretty
much says it all. An IWB is a board which
can usually be found at the front of the
class, either mounted on the wall or
free-standing. It’s white, and it’s connected
to a computer and projector. The
interactive part refers to the fact that IWB
software allows the teacher (or students) to
touch elements projected onto the board,
and to move them around with a special
electronic pen, or even with a finger.
Actually, it’s easier to see an IWB in action
than to describe it. If you’ve never seen or
used one, watch any of the demonstration
videos at www.itilt.eu/advanced-search.
2
Who uses IWBs?
Well, let’s first look at where and when
IWBs started being used in schools. They
first appeared in large numbers in primary
education in the UK in the early 2000s.
Partly as a result of political decisions (the
New Labour government wanted to be
seen to be doing something for education),
and partly owing to pressure from IWB
manufacturers, boards started being
installed in schools all over the country.
Other countries soon followed suit, with
government-funded initiatives putting
IWBs into state schools in many parts of
the developed world.
IWBs started to feature in English
language teaching in the early 2000s, too.
The best-known implementation in ELT was
funded by the British Council, with IWBs
introduced into many of their teaching
centres worldwide. Publishers were
encouraged to produce IWB-compatible
courseware, and they obliged by producing
electronic versions of popular coursebooks
to display on IWBs, and to take advantage
of the interactive features these offered.
These days, many primary and
secondary schools, universities and other
educational institutions (such as private
language schools) have IWBs installed in
some or all classrooms – that is, when the
institution can afford what can be a very
expensive piece of hardware.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
So, to answer our question, people in
all the above situations are using IWBs.
3
Why are IWBs so popular?
This is a good question. IWBs are an
example of an educational technology
that has largely been imposed in a ‘top
down’ way. In other words, they are often
introduced into schools as part of a
management (or government) decision,
rather than because of pressure from
teachers or students. Research into the
actual potential of IWBs to improve
learning remains contentious. Simply put,
there is no conclusive proof that having
an IWB in your classroom results in your
students learning better. However, schools
and publishers were quick to jump on
board (as it were) IWBs, perhaps because
the ‘board’ idea is one that is fairly easy
for teachers to accept and integrate into
classroom practice. Another reason IWBs
continue to be popular with management is
that, by having them, a school appears to
be using the ‘latest’ technology – which, it
is assumed, will somehow automatically
lead to better learning.
4 I have an IWB in my classroom,
but I’m not sure how to use it.
What should I do?
You’re not alone. Many schools (those
with the necessary resources) have IWBs
installed in classrooms, so they are a reality
for many teachers. However, stories abound
of IWBs collecting dust in cupboards and in
corners, while teachers continue to use the
standard non-interactive board. Research
has shown that continuous training and
support is needed if teachers are to use
IWBs effectively. Using them effectively
means not just manipulating pre-packaged
IWB courseware from publishers, but also
learning how to use the IWB as a digital
hub and a space for sharing students’
digital work, which they can produce on
digital devices.
If you are not receiving support in your
institution to learn to use your IWB, you
can suggest holding regular short teacher
development sessions to share ideas and
In this series, Nicky Hockly
explains aspects of technology which
some people may be embarrassed to
confess that they don’t really
understand. In this article, she looks
at IWBs (interactive whiteboards).
exchange tips. This needs to be ongoing,
rather than a few one-off sessions. There
are also some useful IWB resources freely
available on the internet. For example,
take a look at those provided by the
European Union-funded Interactive
Technologies in Language Teaching (iTILT)
project, which includes videos of IWBs
being used effectively, a handbook and
IWB materials: www.itilt.eu.
5 I don’t have an IWB. Should I
have one?
As you’ll have gleaned by now, I’m
personally not convinced they are worth
the investment. IWBs are expensive, and
they also require a significant investment
of time in teacher training if they are to be
used well. With the rise of mobile and
handheld devices, IWBs are starting to
appear redundant. One can easily have
an ‘interactive’ classroom with a teacher
device (smartphone, tablet or laptop)
connected to a standard projector.
Interestingly, publishers are now producing
less IWB course content, and are moving
towards providing courseware online, which
can be accessed by teachers and students,
both in and outside the classroom.
So my advice is: if you have a budget,
rather than spending it on expensive
hardware, invest it in training your teachers
and developing their digital literacies.
That way, they are ready for a wide range
of technologies, and are equipped to deal
with an ever-changing digital landscape.
After all, today’s cutting-edge technology
is tomorrow’s obsolete piece of junk. In
the words of cyberculture expert Howard
Rheingold: ‘If you want to keep up, don’t
try to keep up with the technologies.
Keep up with the literacies that the
technologies make possible.’
Nicky Hockly is Director of Pedagogy
of The Consultants-E, an online
teacher training and development
consultancy. Her most recent book
is Digital Literacies, published by
Pearson. She has published an
e-book, Webinars: A Cookbook for
Educators (the-round.com), and is
currently working on a book on mobile
and handheld learning. She maintains
a blog at www.emoderationskills.com.
nicky.hockly@theconsultants-e.com
61
www.tesolconvention.org
Webwatcher
E
-portfolios is a word you hear quite often these days. It
comes up in much of the literature produced by the
European Union, and I see that several of the British
Council courses for teachers are assessed via an e-portfolio.
Assessment blogs
My interest in e-portfolios really developed out of the work I was
doing with blogging while at the University of Warwick. We were
using blogs as a way of assessing our students on the MA in ELT
course. The students were producing a lot of digital content –
mind-maps, videos, cartoons, chats, audio recordings, etc – and
we got them to embed all the content into a blog and then write
about what they did and how they might apply it in their own
teaching context. Blogs have come a long way since the
text-based blogging tools that people used before the
introduction of Web 2.0. They now have much greater potential
as they allow for all sorts of content to be embedded into them.
I realised that, in essence, these students’ blogs were a form
of e-portfolio. They were a digital record of all their work,
covering a broad range of skills that were developed during the
course, and they offered information about the student’s
progress to a wide range of stakeholders. The student could
show the blog to a future employer as proof of their ICT skills; the
audio recordings could be proof of their speaking skills; the chat
and collaborative content could be used as examples of how
they work in groups; the written commentary in the blog could be
evidence of their written work. It was all online, in one place and
easy to share and even re-purpose.
LiveBinders
However, there are more specific tools on the internet that could
be used for the purpose of creating an e-portfolio. One of these
tools can be found at LiveBinders.com. In its basic form, the tool
is free and allows the students to keep a whole range of digital
content inside an electronic binder, which is organised by tabs
and sub-tabs (rather like menus and sub-menus). The students
could have examples of videos they have produced, articles they
have written, audio they have recorded, texts they have read, etc
– all in one place. What I especially like is the whole range of
layouts that the students can choose from, allowing for really
interesting ways of organising their work.
One example is the ‘divided screen’ layout. The students can
upload a text they have written on the left-hand side of the
screen and their commentary on the text on the right-hand side.
They could do the same with a video, uploading a video on one
side of the screen and then, perhaps, adding an audio
commentary on the other side. They can combine the resources
in all sorts of ways. As a result, over the duration of a course, a
student can build up a digital record of various ‘artefacts’ they
have produced and display them in the portfolio. It can be used
for assessment and as evidence of the skills they have acquired.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 90 January 2014 •
Russell Stannard takes us
from blooging to e-portfolios.
Portfolios produced by LiveBinders can be shared, so a
student can allow the teacher and other students to leave
comments, ask questions, etc. So again, thinking of the layout,
the student can organise their portfolio in such a way as to
display clearly the comments and suggestions from other
students or the teacher. E-portfolios, by their very nature, are
formative assessment tools as their production is a process, and
the students can re-write, edit, change or adapt them as they
develop. Here, I am concentrating on a situation where each
student produces their own e-portfolio but, of course, an
e-portfolio could also be a group-based project.
‘Live binders’
One of the best features is the LiveBinders button. You can add it
to your browser (you simply drag it from the LiveBinders website
when you sign up) and then when you want to add any content
from the web into the one of your e-portfolios, you simply click
on the button and add it into any of the binders you have
created. It really is a one-click process.
Of course, e-portfolios don’t have to be just for students. I
could produce an e-portfolio of all the work I have done in ICT. It
could include links to my presentations on YouTube, links to my
blog, to my training videos, pictures from talks, uploads of articles
I have written and even the podcasts I have made. It can be
updated whenever and wherever, and could be a useful way of
bringing all my work in ICT together in one place. It would be very
useful for potential employers, especially as I have recently gone
freelance! An excellent example of an e-portfolio of that type is
the one produced by Shelly Terrell (www.livebinders.com/play/
play/202342?present=true) which includes a mass of pages and
tabs relating to all her work in the domain of ICT and education.
LiveBinders is not that hard to use. It doesn’t have an especially
modern look and feel, and it could do with a bit of an update.
However, it really is a quick and easy way to bring together a
huge range of digital content in one place. I have provided some
free help videos (see below) to take you through everything you
need to know.
Help videos for using LiveBinders:
http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/binder/index.html
Russell Stannard is the founder of
www.teachertrainingvideos.com,
which won a British Council
ELTons award for technology. He
is a freelance teacher and writer
and also a NILE Associate Trainer.
Keep sending your favourite sites to Russell:
russellstannard@btinternet.com
63
 Prize crossword 63 VERY FREQUENT WORDS
*** To protect someone from
ETp presents the sixty-third in our series of prize attack
*** A member of an army
crosswords. Once you have done it successfully, let
*** Owned by someone else
your students have a go. Send your entry (completed
before you
crossword grid and quotation), not forgetting to
*** Frightened
include your full name, postal address, email address
*** To move quickly on foot
and telephone number, to Prize crossword 63, English *** To try to find something
Teaching professional, Pavilion Publishing and Media by looking carefully
Ltd, Rayford House, School Road, Hove, BN3 5JR, *** Important or serious
UK. Ten correct entries will be drawn from a hat on *** The Heart ___ a Lonely
10 April 2014 and the winners can choose one of Hunter (novel by Carson
these titles: Macmillan Collocations Dictionary or McCullers)
Macmillan Phrasal Verbs *** The whole physical
Plus. Please indicate your structure of a person or
choice on your entry. animal
*** A table you sit at to write
12 4 10 10 4 8 20 7 4 9 26 9 8 26
or work
M *** A thought you have about
8 4 26 25 4 25 24 19 how to do something
22 8 10 25 4 26 9 26 3 15
FREQUENT WORDS
** Something that looks or
7 3 13 10 15 7 20 16 7 1 4 seems different from what it is
4 10 15 20 17 26 8 20
** A curve in a road
** Your hand when your
1 14 8 9 15 22 4 3 10 7 17 15 26 fingers are closed tightly
19 7 22 26 7 9 1 14 9
** The reason you do
something
7 6 9 7 4 25 13 26 24 8 13 4 1 ** To use your teeth to bite
15 1 8 1 14 26 23 12 1 7
food into small pieces
** An ancient story about
25 26 6 26 20 25 24 12 7 2 8 9 gods, heroes and magic
4 7 26 20 12 4 13 11 20 26
** The meat from a cow
N FAIRLY FREQUENT WORDS
21 26 20 25 21 8 13 13 21 13 * Someone who has more
10 6 4 22 13 13 3 14 8 21 4 7
than a million pounds or
dollars
26 10 7 22 13 4 1 4 13 11 25 26 22 18 * Very suitable
A
9 1 5 9 11 26 26
* Soft hair on the body of
some animals
17 9 26 26 20 18 26 26 3 26 9 6 15 9 * Interesting or exciting
because of being unusual
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 * Part of a song that is
A M repeated several times
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
N
23 14 26 20 26 5 26 9 11 8 20 26 4 22 13 14 4
To solve the puzzle, find which letter each number represents.
20 18 4 20 17 7 10 4 18 26 13 14 26 20 22 8 12
You can keep a record in the boxes above. The definitions of
26 21 8 25 11 4 22 20 ’ 13 13 14 4 20 18 4 20 17
the words in the puzzle are given, but not in the right order.
When you have finished, you will be able to read the quotation.
* One of two organs that fill
with air when you breathe
* The quiet noise made by
a clock every second
* A door that leads out of
a public building
* The son of your brother
or sister
* A small picture on a
computer screen that you
click on to open a program
LESS FREQUENT WORDS
– A pile of wood for burning
a dead body at a funeral
– Abbreviation for company
– Loud enough for people to
hear
– Abbreviation for north-east
– Relating to horses
– A long stick with a flat end
for rowing a boat
– A prefix that gives a word
the opposite meaning
– Any serious disease that
spreads quickly and usually
ends in death
– A former wife or husband
– A poem about a particular
event or person
– The ability of a substance
to stretch and then return to
its original shape
– A pattern made of many
small coloured pieces of
stone or glass
– Abbreviation used when
you are explaining exactly
what you mean by
something
– A piece of electronic
equipment that produces
light, used especially in
computer screens
– A wheel in a machine that
makes something turn
– A document with your
name, address, etc and
sometimes a photo
– A strong fear of something
– A strong but pleasant smell
– An old word meaning you
– A serious infection of the
lungs
– A soldier from the
Australian and New Zealand
Army Corps
– Someone who looks after a
large building, such as a
school or office
– Someone who looks after a
golf course
– Used for saying you should
pay attention to what follows
– A short piece of trumpet
music to announce a special
person or event
– To treat someone without
respect (informal)
– The distance round
something thick and round
– Abbreviation used before a
date that is not exact
– Fish eggs eaten as food
– For each year (abbreviation)
– A feeling of strong dislike
between people
– A playing card with only
one symbol
– A pleasant rising and falling
pattern in music or speech
– An informal word for a
military or medical operation
– Abbreviation for street
– Computer technology to
make computers think like
humans
– A computer program that
works automatically,
especially one that finds
information on the internet
George S Patton

64 • Issue 90 January 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 “IELTS develops
the skills that
students need
at university”
IELTS puts
people first
• The face-to-face interaction in speaking tests
prompts the most realistic performance from
the candidate.
• IELTS recognises the skill our stakeholders
are looking for: the ability to communicate
in real-life situations.
• Over 2 million IELTS tests were taken in the
last year in over 130 countries around the world;
each test centre offers unparalleled customer
service and support.

For further information

visit www.ielts.org
 Help your students develop…

Find out how at www.macmillanenglish.com/life-skills