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Issue 123
July
www.etprofessional.com 2019

Seven facets Effective classroom

of meaning management
James Porcaro Reham Mohsen and Nick Baguley

Look at it this way Time shock

Jade Blue Jessica D’Ambrosio

The practical resource for English language teachers worldwide

 Te a c h i n g E n g l i s h

Understanding
TITLE Teenagers in the
SUB TITLE
ELT Classroom
Practical ideas and advice for teaching teenage
students in the English language classroom

Full of lesson ideas, exercises and tips for Chris Roland

teaching English to teenage students, this book
goes much further than simply telling you what to
do and how to do it. It looks at the why. It explains
the deeper rationale for decisions we might make
as well as exploring the underlying principles and
factors that can make or break a lesson.
Each chapter includes:
„ a Discussion of a certain facet of teaching teens
which identifies key issues and uncovers conflicting
factors that may get us into a difficult situation in
the classroom
„ Practical applications where the discussion takes
a more practical turn and outlines some classroom
applications and techniques
„ three summary sections: The Questions for reflection,
The Things to try and Things to share
Contents include:
„ Planning lessons with teenagers
„ Classroom micromechanics
„ Task design and instructions
„ Differentiation This book is an invaluable resource for anyone
„ Awareness and reasoning with our teenagers and everyone who has the job of teaching English
„ Classroom management strategies to teenagers as well as for teacher trainers.

Order now: www.pavpub.com/understanding-teenagers-in-the-elt-classroom

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Contents Issue 123
July 2019

MAIN FEATURE TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS

4 Seven facets of meaning 20 From reading to writing

James Porcaro imparts some insights from his Melanie Oh Hye Min uses storybooks as models
professional career for writing

FEATURES TEACHER DEVELOPMENT

IN THE CLASSROOM 8 45 Effective classroom management

8 Writing with a smiley Reham Mohsen and Nick Baguley share
solutions to five common challenges
Jonathan Lee and Benjamin Moorhouse
embrace instant expression
TECHNOLOGY
GRAMMAR
11 Look at it this way 47 A walk through art and technology
Jade Blue teaches grammar with graphics Tien Minh Mai makes his classroom a museum

GRAMMAR 13 50 High five!

13 Time shock Frederick Gay sees the pedagogical possibilities
of HTML5
Jessica D’Ambrosio takes her students
time travelling 54 Five things you always wanted to
IN THE CLASSROOM
know about: using technology with
your learners in class
17 The motivation factor
Nicky Hockly tells how technology can be
Paul Bress believes enthusiasm is key introduced in lessons
24
IN THE CLASSROOM 55 Webwatcher
18 Cast away! Russell Stannard goes on a world tour
Sandi Ferdiansyah finds inspiration in film

IN THE CLASSROOM
REGULAR FEATURES
24 Students’ stories 13 30 IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
David Heathfield celebrates collaborative 32 REVIEWS
storytelling 26 34 SCRAPBOOK
IN THE CLASSROOM
56 NOT ONLY, BUT ALSO ...
26 Freeze frame Chia Suan Chong engages with empathy
Alan Keenan turns his students into bank robbers

VOCABULARY
37 Breadth versus depth
Miao Li approaches lexis from two different
directions

SKILLS
39 Are you listening?
Jamie Clayton advocates extensive listening

IN THE CLASSROOM
43 Making ‘halfalogues’ whole
Hall Houston encourages eavesdropping
Includes materials designed to photocopy,
some of which can now be downloaded from
the ETp website (see page 3)

www.etprofessional.com Issue 123 • July 2019 1

Editorial
Pictures play an important role in our lives – and our
teaching of English. Some of the first books we
encounter as children are largely made up of pictures,
and we retain our love of the visual as we grow older.
When we reach James Porcaro’s age, we may have the
ability to look back at the bigger picture of our
professional lives to see those aspects that have given our
teaching the most meaning. In our main feature, James
reflects on his 50-year career in education, and identifies
seven facets that have had the most resonance for him.
Jonathan Lee and Benjamin Moorhouse exploit the use
of pictorial depictions of emotion in their article on the
potential of emojis to help students with their writing.
Jade Blue finds that graphic representations of grammar
are a vital aid in teaching certain items and patterns,
when explanation alone cannot reach the students’
understanding. Jessica D’Ambrosio also starts with
pictures – pictures of people from the past – when she
helps her students differentiate between the various
forms of (be) used to and would.
It is moving pictures that work best in class for
Sandi Ferdiansyah as he uses his love of film to motivate
his students and show them how people interact and
communicate in English in different real-life contexts.
Melanie Oh Hye Min works with young children whose
love of pictures is innate. She uses simple pictorial
storybooks as a springboard for her students to create
and illustrate their own stories.
Inspired by information supplied via a QR code at a Thai
temple, Tien Minh Mai has turned his classroom into a
virtual museum, with pictures of famous artworks on
display, accompanied by information supplied by the
students. Visitors to this classroom museum can also
access the students’ writing via QR codes.
Lumana Tamrakar’s Newari story, retold in this issue by
David Heathfield, is accompanied by a picture Lumana
drew herself of the monstrous Rakshas. He appears to
be a terrifying forest demon, yet he turns out to have some
compassion for suffering humans. So, it seems that we
don’t always get the whole picture, and this is also
demonstrated by Hall Houston’s ‘halfalogue’ technique,
which exploits the common phenomenon of only hearing
half the conversation when we are in the company of
someone who is talking on a mobile phone. Hall’s students
are invited to supply the other half of the dialogue,
completing the picture in any way they like – in English.
Helena Gomm
Editor
Email: helena.gomm@pavpub.com
Connect with us!
@ETprofessional linkedin.com/ facebook.com/
etprofessional etprofessional

ENGLISH TEACHING PROFESSIONAL

Published by: Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd,
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© 2019, Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd
ISSN 1362-5276
Editor: Helena Gomm
Email: helena.gomm@pavpub.com
Editorial Consultant: Mike Burghall
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unless otherwise stated Directeur de la Publication: Christine Hicks
Pages 25 and 34–36 include materials which are designed to photocopy. All other rights are reserved
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2 Issue 123 • July 2019 www.etprofessional.com

 ONLINE RESOURCES

Resources online
Go to etprofessional.com/resources for your extra printable resources, ready for use in class.

ONLINE RESOURCES ONLINE RESOURCES

Time shock Decisions, decisions

1 Look at the ten ‘Would you rather ...?’ questions below. Choose two or
Your person: three of them and discuss them with a partner. Note down your reasons
Time period/place: for your decisions.

2 Share your thoughts and decisions with another pair of students.

1 What would your character’s daily life have been like?
3 With your original partner, think of three more ‘Would you rather ...?’
questions. Exchange your questions with another pair of students.

1 Would you rather be able to talk to land animals, sea creatures or birds?

2 Would you rather find true love, or ten million dollars?

2 It is now 2019, and your character has just time-travelled from the past.
3 Would you rather travel back in time and meet your ancestors, or travel
What did your person do in their time, which they can’t or won’t want to do now?
forward in time and meet your descendants?

4 Would you rather be able to fly, or read minds?

5 Would you rather be famous, or be the best friend of someone famous?

6 Would you rather win the lottery, or live twice as long?

7 Would you rather be able to talk to animals, or speak all human languages?
What will be strange for them in our When will these things become normal
time? for them? 8 Would you rather always get away with telling lies, or always know when
someone else is lying?

9 Would you rather be the opposite gender for a day, or be a small child again for
a day?

10 Would you rather be stuck on a desert island with three people you hate, or
be stuck on a desert island alone?

‘Time shock’ by Jessica D’Ambrosio www.etprofessional.com ‘Scrapbook: Decisions, decisions’ by Ian Waring Green www.etprofessional.com

Time shock Decisions, decisions ...

Accompanies ‘Time shock’ by Jessica Accompanies ‘Scrapbook: indecision’
D’Ambrosio, page 13 by Ian Waring Green, page 34

Your subscription to English

Teaching professional gives you
full access to etprofessional.com,
which includes: Online
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MAIN FEATURE
Seven facets
of meaning
E
James ven at the start of my career, as a young
teacher of mathematics at a secondary
Porcaro
school in a remote rural part of Uganda
takes a more than 50 years ago, I realised to some
narrative extent the meaning of what I was doing.
turn round Certainly now, at age 73, having taught English in
Japan for the past 34 years and, prior to that, for ten
a long years in the USA, I can affirm much more fully and
teaching deeply the collective meanings that my classroom
career. teaching holds for me. I am now a high school
teacher again, after compulsory retirement from my
university professorship some years ago, and I also
teach at a junior college. With that understanding of
the meanings of my teaching practice I am
strengthened, and I am happy at the chalkface, with
the desire to continue for more years.
Narrative reflection has been an essential element
in my arriving at this understanding of the meanings
that are inherent in my teaching practice. Taking the
‘narrative turn’ to investigate the experiences of one’s
professional life leads us to an understanding of what
we do in our classroom teaching practice. This critical
enquiry enables us to comprehend why we teach as
4 Issue 123 • July 2019
we do and to construct our professional identity as
we continue to pursue ever more growth and
development in our professional craft. Ultimately, we
are able to derive and assert the varied meanings of
our teaching practice which become deeply
significant for our lives.
In this article, I will relate the seven facets of
meaning I draw from my teaching. Perhaps these
reflections on my professional life experiences will
resonate with readers and their own personal
experiences, and thus lend some suggestion and
encouragement as they take their own ‘narrative
turn’ and venture to make sense of their own work,
and derive the particular meanings that their
teaching practice holds for them.
1 Responsibility
The path to meaning is responsibility, emphasises
eminent clinical psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson.
In our work as teachers, meaning lies within the
particular time, place and socio-cultural
circumstances of our practice. For me, in Uganda,
my responsibility to the newly independent nation
www.etprofessional.com

was to contribute to its widely expanded secondary education
system and, of course, to help the students achieve their goal to
move on from a subsistence farming life and fulfil the hopes of
their parents and extended family who sacrificed much to pay for
that education. In Los Angeles, California, my responsibility was
to immigrants, to facilitate their successful assimilation into
American society, and to contribute to their capacity to have a
better life for themselves and provide for their children.
In his essay ‘Language and the human spirit’, Jim Cummins
observes that ‘there is an inseparable linkage between the
conceptions of language and human identity that we infuse in our
classroom instruction’. In the context of the instructional
choices we make, he notes that we must examine ‘the extent to
which the classroom interactions we orchestrate build on and
affirm the cultural, linguistic, intellectual and personal identities
that students bring to our classrooms’. In the varied instructional
settings in which I have taught in Japan over several decades,
my aim has been to meet the responsibility of achieving this
humanistic educational endeavour.
At the same time, the meaning of my teaching in Japan has
rested in meeting particular responsibilities to certain groups of
students, such as the university science and engineering
students in my English for science and technology (EST)
courses who would need greater English language proficiency
for academic research and professional work, and high school
students whose success in university entrance exams would
depend on the level of their English language skills. As well,
their growth and development as mature young adults would be
built on their capacity to relate well with others and for critical
thinking which, hopefully, would be raised through my lessons,
and which they would employ for a lifetime.
2 Reality
I draw meaning from the existential reality of engaging with my
students in every class. Make no mistake, the English language
classroom is as authentic an environment, as much a part of the
real world, as any other venue in society. The human relations that
are the essence of the culture of the classroom and the
communication that takes place in that context are as genuine as
any outside its walls. Indeed, the relations between teacher and
students and among the students themselves are often more
intimate than those many people experience outside the classroom.
As Betty Azar remarks about communicative language practice, it
takes account of the reality that students are in a classroom trying
to learn English and it ‘means that real people are communicating
in real time about real things in a real place for a real purpose’.
3 Ownership
I infuse meaning into my teaching by owning everything I do in
the classroom. I determine all of my syllabuses. I make all of the
instructional materials for the students in my classes. I decide all
that I do in my lessons and how I do it. I am perhaps extremely
fortunate to have always worked in circumstances wherein I have
never had to use a textbook and follow any other person’s
prescription for my lessons. I establish the expectations for my
students’ performance and take full responsibility for the degree
of their achievement of those standards.
www.etprofessional.com
MAIN FEATURE
While most teachers may work in structured programmes
without the degree of independence I have had, I believe that
by exploiting at every possible turn the opportunity to add their
own flair to their lessons, they can take a greater ownership
stake in them and find enhanced meaning and satisfaction in
their instruction. The rewards are well worth the effort.
4 Ability
I find meaning in my teaching because I know I am good at it;
in fact, very good at it. I know that from the demonstrable
academic achievements of my students and on the authority
of their consistently positive responses on anonymous course
questionnaires. From that, I can aver that I teach English not
only with effectiveness but also still now with as much or
more passion as I ever have. I do useful work and I do it well.
I think it is important for all teachers, particularly younger
ones at the start of their careers, to believe in themselves and
have confidence in their own ability. This is most important at
the chalkface, where our demeanour sets the atmosphere for
the classroom. Our positive, measured assertion of confidence
and our fervour are essential for classroom management, and
for our students to be motivated and to achieve successful
outcomes in our lessons.
5 Development
I find meaning in my teaching from continuous learning and
improving my craftsmanship as a teacher. I strive to
formulate, shape and conduct my lessons so that in each class,
more than ever before, I can enhance the students’
understanding and learning, and their opportunity to do more
with the language. Thus, too, I experience for myself a more
fulfilling sense of my work. I have always welcomed
opportunities to take on new teaching roles that challenge me
and call forth the courage to search within myself for ever
more to give to those roles, and thus advance and deepen their
meaning for me. For example, over the years I have taken on
teaching university courses as varied as Japanese-to-English
literary translation, African Area Studies as CLIL and EST
for earth science and electrical and mechanical engineering.
Indeed, every lesson presentation to a different class at a
different time and in a different space makes it a unique lesson
which we can deliver with new meaning in each and every
classroom, and from which we can discover and experience
more and perhaps greater things than before. Following that
way is the means by which we become better teachers.
6 Opportunity
I find meaning for my teaching in the opportunities I have had
to offer guidance to other teachers – drawn from my
experiences and whatever skills, talents and knowledge I have
acquired during more than a half century of classroom
instruction. When I returned to teaching high school some
years ago, it brought me full circle back to my first teaching
work many years before in Uganda. At the high school in
Japan where I still teach, I have had the opportunity to be a
member of the advisory committee for a special teacher
development programme initiated by the Ministry of
Issue 123 • July 2019 5
MAIN FEATURE
Education. My participation involved, over the
period of the six years of the programme, many
classroom observations of the Japanese teachers of
English (JTEs) at the school, along with follow-up
discussions and advisement both within the
committee and individually. The JTEs also observed
my lessons there from time to time. I appreciated
very much the chance to give back something as a
mentor to my colleagues within a ‘community of
practice’. As described by Jack Richards, a
community of practice ‘involves a group of people
who have common interests and who relate and
interact to achieve shared goals [and] focuses on
exploring and resolving issues related to the
workplace practices that members of the community
take part in’. Especially as I had lacked any such
mentor in my own early years of teaching, being a
member of this ongoing community of practice at
the high school, learning and sharing among very
dedicated teachers, has been a very gratifying and
meaningful experience. In addition, writing for
publication, as here for English Teaching
professional, is a privilege that enables me to share
my experiences, knowledge, ideas and feelings with a
much wider international community of practice.
7 Legacy
In the 1942 film classic Casablanca, in the near-final
scene, Rick Blaine (played by Humphrey Bogart) tells
Ilsa Lund (played by Ingrid Bergman): ‘We’ll always
have Paris.’ They had been lovers there just before the
outbreak of World War II, but ‘in this crazy world’, as
Rick puts it, other forces take command of our lives.
Though in the scene they separate again and forever, at
least he and she will always treasure in their hearts the
memory of Paris. Perhaps most teachers, like me, feel
they never really know if they leave a legacy of any
kind from their work with students. It may be nice to
think that my teaching has had some valued impact
with some students and benefited them in the long
run. But, frankly, there is no certainty of that.
Yet I have always loved my classroom work, and
my relations with the students in my classes will always
have a place in my heart and be a part of my
6 Issue 123 • July 2019
professional and personal identity. Over the past
several years, narrative reflection on my teaching
career has been very important for me as I enter the
final years of my active classroom teaching, sorting
out my experiences, feelings and the meaning of it all
for me. I feel secure and fulfilled, understanding what I
did, why I did it, and why I did it that way. I am
grateful for it all. Indeed, I have been in it for myself as
much as for anyone or anything else. Paradoxically,
what might seem to be selfishness (or self-centredness)
drives selflessness for the good of others. That
satisfaction and fulfilment is derived from and is
dependent on my doing my job the best I can for the
benefit of my students. But as that benefit, or at least
any appreciation of it, is vague and obscure, I must
rely on the meaning that I make for myself, and that
comes from my teaching itself and from the existential
yet necessarily ephemeral encounter with the students
in the classroom. I had a good day; I will make
tomorrow one too; and when there are no more
tomorrows to be in the classroom: ‘I’ll always have
Moyo (Uganda), Los Angeles (USA), Osaka and
Toyama (Japan).’
t t t
Meaning for me as a teacher has always been drawn
from and defined by the daily classroom experience
itself and its context. It is an existential process in
which we make choices based on our experiences,
knowledge, beliefs and outlook, and take full
responsibility for the teachers we are.
I hope that younger teachers, in particular, have
benefited in some way from reading this account,
and will undertake a critical narrative inquiry into
their own teaching lives, to seek definition and
meaning for their work and their identity as the
teachers they are and want to become. n
Azar, B ‘Grammar-based teaching: a practitioner’s
perspective’ TESL-EJ 11 (2) 2007
Cummins, J ‘Language and the human spirit’ TESOL
Matters 13 (1) 2003
Peterson, J 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Random House Canada 2018
Richards, J ‘Exploring teacher competence in language
teaching’ The Language Teacher 35 (4) 2011
James W Porcaro is a retired
university professor in Japan,
where he has worked since
1985. He teaches now as a
part-timer at a high school and
a junior college.
porcaro@pa.ctt.ne.jp
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teacher with something to say, we would like to hear from you.

Why write for ETp? Reader friendly

There are many benefits of writing for publication.
It encourages reflection, which is good for your own
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Starting point
You may wish to submit shorter pieces to begin with.
We are very pleased to receive letters and suggestions for
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WORKS IN PRACTICE sections of the magazine. Good,
innovative photocopiable materials are particularly welcome.
We are looking for articles that are of direct relevance and
immediate interest to teachers in the classroom – as you
probably already know, we publish a wide range of features
and articles dealing with practical classroom issues,
professional and personal development, methodology,
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resources – and a lot more besides. Our aim is to be fresh and
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IN THE CLASSROOM
Jonathan Lee and Benjamin Moorhouse exploit the potential of emojis.
I
n 2015, there was news that shocked the world:
the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year was
not a word at all; it was the ‘Face with Tears of
Joy’ emoji. This was chosen as it was the most
used emoji of the year, making up 20 percent
of all the emojis used in 2015.
While emoji use has become increasingly
common in the last few years, emojis have
actually been around since the early 1990s. They
originated in Japan, where people used them as an
easy way to share facial expressions, objects and
other ideas through text messaging. Now, with
recognition from the prestigious Oxford
Dictionaries – an authoritative source better
known for upholding traditional literacies than
for embracing new literacies – emojis can now be
considered ‘words’ and make up part of our and
our learners’ communicative repertoire. We are
sure we can all agree that it is rare to receive a
Whatsapp message or read a tweet that does not
include an emoji of some kind.
8 Issue 123 • July 2019
Writing
with a
smiley
The popularity of emojis comes from their ease
of use (a couple of taps on the button and you’ve
got them ready) and their versatility: they can easily
show a range of emotions and ideas that can be
hard to express, using words alone.
Despite their wide use outside the classroom,
it seems that teachers have been slow to bring
them into the classroom. However, they can be a
great tool in helping learners express meaning,
develop communicative competence and develop
creativity. They can be particularly useful for
young learners who are still developing their
literacy skills.
In this article, we will explore some of the
possible ways in which you can make use of
emojis in your English language classroom.
Summarising with emojis
Getting students to summarise stories or texts they
have read is not always an easy task, but it can be a
www.etprofessional.com
 IN THE CLASSROOM

great way to find out if they understand Here is an example of a rebus:

the story or text they have been reading.
Motivation, spelling and vocabulary
range are all factors that have an impact
on whether students can successfully
summarise or not. They may
understand the text but lack the
knowledge and skills to summarise it!
With the use of emojis, students have
the opportunity to express visually what
they want to say, without having to
write much. They can replace keywords,
summarise key moments, put titles or
write the whole story using emojis.
When students are given different
modes and tools to express their ideas,
they can focus more on expressing
meaning and will be less worried about
accuracy and form.
Here is our take on the title of the movie
Back to the Future:
Here’s our summary of the novel
Moby Dick:
Writing with emotions
Emojis are often used in instant messages and
social media posts to express feelings: sometimes
words just can’t show what we want to say! This
can also be the case with writing. When we want
our students to focus on the emotions expressed
in a story or to add emotions to their texts, emojis
almost seem like a perfect match. Students can
be tasked with identifying and explaining the
feelings of a character from a story or movie
through emojis.
In the following activity, based on the classic
story ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, the students are
required to map the emotions of Little Red Riding
Hood as she makes her way through the story,
showing how plot changes and events have an
impact on how she feels. The students can
highlight the emoji emotion from the chart that
represents the writing in the left-hand column.
They can also be asked to change the emotions and
think about how this might change the story.
Doing this can lead to creative and interesting
modifications of the original text.

Writing a rebus
with emojis
While emojis can help students
summarise a story or text they have
read, they can also aid the writing
process, either by helping the students
generate ideas or by enabling them to
create a text that combines traditional
words and emojis. This is known as a
‘rebus’: a text where some words are
missing and are replaced by images.
Creating a rebus reduces the language
demands, particularly spelling and
vocabulary, and allows all the students
to create a full and engaging text.

www.etprofessional.com Issue 123 • July 2019 9

IN THE CLASSROOM
Stimulating creativity with the
use of emojis
As writers ourselves, we sometimes come across
writers’ block: a time when we just can’t think what
to write next, and we need a kick start to get the ball
rolling. For students, starting to write can be tricky.
The activity described below makes use of the
different possible emojis to stimulate the thinking
process. This is similar to the way in which story
cubes (pictorial dice) can be used to help students
with that first step towards choosing a context for
their writing.
Emojis can be one way we can
bring our students’ literacy
experiences from outside the
classroom into the classroom
We came across a great online resource online
at http://byrdseed.com/emoji. It is a random emoji
generator. Students can be asked to visit the site,
randomly generate one emoji and then keep on
adding more, to help them formulate ideas and
structure for a creative story. We have yet to find a
limit on the number of emojis this resource can
generate, but we would recommend giving the
students a fixed range, so that they do not go
overboard on the number of emojis they use.
An important consideration
Different platforms and operating systems (eg
Apple, Microsoft and Android) can have a variety
of different emojis. Most emojis are generic, such as
10 Issue 123 • July 2019
the yellow emoticons. However, some specific object
icons can look different on different platforms.
For example:
‘Pray’ emojis from Apple and Microsoft
‘Dance’ emojis from Apple and Microsoft
These examples show the different platform
alternatives, but there are a small number of icons
that do not have a version on some platforms, and
these sometimes show up as a blank square box.
t t t
As our ideas of literacy and language are
broadening, it is important that this is recognised in
our English language classrooms. Emojis can be one
way we can bring our students’ literacy experiences
from outside the classroom into the classroom,
while, at the same time, providing them with a fun
way to express their ideas and giving them support
for the language demands of our literacy tasks.
Hopefully, this article has given you inspiration
for some ideas you can try with your students. n
Jonathan Lee is a literacy
consultant in Hong Kong and is
currently a doctoral student at
the University of Dundee, UK. He
has extensive experience of
teaching young EFL learners. His
research interests include
enquiry-based learning,
curriculum literacy development
and e-learning.
jtflee@dundee.ac.uk
Benjamin Luke Moorhouse is a
lecturer in the Division of English
Language Education, Faculty of
Education, at the University of
Hong Kong, where he teaches
on initial teacher education
programmes. His research
interests include initial English
language teacher education and
young learner English language
education.
benmoorh@hku.hk
www.etprofessional.com
 GRAMMAR

Look at it
way grammar is presented in coursebooks and the way the
brain processes information, suggesting that learners could
benefit from more extensive use of graphic representations
of grammar items and patterns.

this way Graphic representation

Jade Blue thinks it’s time to picture grammar.
! Look at Figure 1. Which one of the shapes do you think
is Kiki and which one is Bouba?
Figure 1
As Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada point out, research
indicates that no single method or book suits the needs of
all learners, implying that a variety of approaches should be
taken in the presentation of materials. And yet in ELT
materials, grammar is frequently presented in a linear
fashion, with rules taking the form of written text and any
visual support most commonly being pictures to illustrate
examples of usage. But if we take an individual grammatical
item and consider its underlying concept, we can begin to
unearth the essence of such an item. What exactly is the
passive construction, for example? What makes it uniquely
different? What is the true nature of the perfect aspect?
When describing time and place, what is it that differentiates
at from in and on? Exploring these concepts can enable us to
distil them into simple graphic representations to aid learner
comprehension. Information is then stored not only in
linguistic form, but also in visual form. As Rudolf Arnheim
puts it, ‘unless the stuff of the senses remains present, the
mind has nothing to think with’.
Using the future perfect as an example, Figure 2
demonstrates how a grammar reference page might include

I
more graphic representations of the retrospective quality
n 1929, the psychologist Wolfgang Köhler conducted a series
underlying the perfect aspect.
of experiments in which he showed the participants two
distinct shapes, and asked them to identify which one was
named Takete and which one was Baluba. The experiment
was repeated in 2001 by scholars V S Ramachandran and
E M Hubbard, this time with the names Kiki and Bouba.
In both cases, the overwhelming majority identified the jagged,
spiky shape as being named Kiki (or Takete in Köhler’s original
experiment), and the smooth, rounded shape being named
Bouba (or Baluba).
What the Kiki and Bouba test reveals is synaesthesia-like
mappings in the brain: our senses are inter-connected. Word
and image are intrinsically linked, and instinctively we find – or
create – patterns between shape and sound. It is surmised that
the participants were more inclined to ascribe the name Bouba
to the rounded figure because the mouth assumes a rounded
shape to articulate that name and the k sound in Kiki is harder
and more jagged. The results of the test have been taken to
suggest that the naming of objects is not entirely arbitrary. The
educator James Britton refers to the ‘non‐verbal background of
language’, suggesting that much effort is required in order for
words to do justice to the speaker’s concept: a picture paints a
thousand words.
The world of ELT is not short of imagery, but didactic
imagery that facilitates learning is often neglected in
grammar teaching materials. Very rarely, in day‐to‐day life,
do we read anything that isn’t broken up graphically. If this
is how we’re used to processing information, it follows that
this is how we should be presenting information in the
classroom. But there is frequently a disparity between the Figure 2 The future perfect

www.etprofessional.com Issue 123 • July 2019 11

GRAMMAR
Some more graphic examples
Active and passive constructions can be represented as in
Figure 3. The agent, or ‘doer’ of the action, is identified in the
arrow-like box, whilst the person or thing affected by the action
is represented in the box with an indent to suggest that it is
‘done to’. The squiggly line in the second row highlights the
change in verb form in the passive construction.
Figure 3 Active and passive constructions
In Figure 4, countable nouns are represented as individual,
separable items (Two coffees to go, please), whereas mass nouns
are represented as a whole ‘mass’ (I try not to drink too much
coffee). In the classroom, the graphic is accompanied by
examples to support comprehension of the concept.
Figure 4 Countable and mass nouns
Figure 5 shows that the core differences between this, that,
these and those can be represented by the quantity of items and
the degree of proximity to the speaker.
Figure 5 This, that, these, those
12 Issue 123 • July 2019
Figure 6 helps to explain frequent differences in the use of
prepositions for time and place: at refers to more specific times
and places and so is placed at the top, or the point, of the
triangle, whereas in is placed at the wider base of the triangle,
as it covers a broader scope of time or place.
Figure 6 Prepositions of time and place
t t t
There is enormous value in encouraging learners to consider
how they themselves conceptualise individual grammar
points. Visualisation can help to facilitate positive
engagement with language, and discussion and reflection
lead to critical thinking as the learners share their ideas. But
graphic representations of grammar, such as those illustrated
above, are intended to support teachers’ verbal explanations
of the true nature of individual grammar points. When I
first started teaching, I found myself providing countless
examples to help my learners comprehend the difference
between countable and mass nouns. Then I stumbled across
the graphic above and found that integrating this into my
explanation by drawing it on the board assisted enormously:
a picture does, indeed, paint a thousand words. n
Arnheim, R Visual Thinking University of California Press 1969
Britton, J ‘Shaping at the point of utterance’ In Pradl, G (Ed)
Prospect and Retrospect Heinemann Educational Books 1982
Lightbown, P and Spada, N How Languages are Learned OUP 2013
Jade Blue is an English language teacher and
trainer at The English Language Centre in
Brighton, UK. She delivers training workshops
and seminars in Europe and Japan, works as
a research consultant and editor for CUP and
writes a reflective ELT blog (jadeblueefl.
wordpress.com). Her primary research
interests focus on learner-generated visuals in
ELT and learner autonomy.
www.etprofessional.com
 GRAMMAR

Time shock

Jessica D’Ambrosio recommends an alternative approach to teaching used to/would and get/be used to.

Proposed solutions difficulties differentiating between the meanings of

O
ne of the first significant problems
I ran up against as a relatively
inexperienced teacher was in the
teaching of would/used to (to talk about
past events which are in some way no
longer true) and be/get used to (to talk about uneasy
feelings as a result of something unfamiliar and the
subsequent process of becoming accustomed to this
thing). These structures are often presented together
at upper-intermediate level in texts that frequently
utilise noticing and guided discovery to clarify the
meaning, form and use of the target language.
Although these texts are often very clear and
engaging, I found that the students frequently had
the structures, and thereafter tended to muddle the
forms. Inspired by the idea of generative situations,
task-based learning and naturally emerging language,
this article will outline an alternative approach to the
problem, and how this idea could be applied to other
areas of grammar.
The problem and proposed
solutions
I hypothesised that the difficulties the students were
having arose for three main reasons, and therefore I
designed solutions to take advantage of a few
different factors.

Problem Possible reason Proposed solutions

Interference of As the students had usually met at least
preconceptions used to as a structure before, I wondered
whether their established associations of
used to might be interfering with their
developing associations of be/get used to.
Different I felt that the confusion the students were
meaning, similar experiencing in assigning very different
form meanings to very similar-looking forms
was worsened by just how similar those
forms are.
High processing Presenting so many structures together
load often seemed to result in overloading the
students and leading to their obfuscating
not only the broader differences between
used to/would and be/get used to, but
very often the subtler differences between
get (used to) and be (used to) as well.
I sought to delay the introduction of the
structures themselves: using, instead,
reformulated sentences to block the students’
preconceptions and allow for a focus first on
the underlying meaning.
These are structures I’ve often successfully
taught as emerging language. I sought to
replicate this by deliberately exposing a gap
in the students’ developing interlanguage,
rather than waiting for it to arise naturally.
I sought to feed the forms in gradually, to
prevent overloading; utilising the students’
own imaginations to create meaningful,
personalised examples also helped to make
the context more memorable.

www.etprofessional.com Issue 123 • July 2019 13

GRAMMAR
Example lesson
Here is an outline of a lesson I devised to address
the problems described above. It is designed for a
90-minute lesson with students at B2 level.
Aim
To teach and clarify the differences between the
structures used to/would and be/get used to + -ing by
using the students’ own ideas to provide a context,
using this to focus on clarification of meaning,
before progressing towards exposure to the target
language itself.
Materials
■■ Pictures of people from different historical
periods. (Pictures I have used include a gladiator
from Ancient Rome, a couple in the Great Smog
of the 1950s in London, a geisha from the 1600s
in Japan, a couple from the 1920s in New York, a
chimney sweep from the 1840s in London, and a
French aristocrat from the 16th century.)
■■ A picture of a time machine.
■■ A worksheet for each pair of students (see Figure 1
on the next page). A copy of this can be
downloaded from the ETp website at
www.etprofessional.com/media/33205/etp123_
timeshock_jessicadambrosio.pdf.
Procedure
1 Lead in. Lay out the pictures of historical people at
the front of the classroom. Put the students in
pairs and ask them to come up to the front, have a
look at them and briefly talk about where and from
what time period they think the people come.
14 Issue 123 • July 2019
2 Establish the context/situation. Ask each pair of
students to choose one picture together, before
sitting back down. Give each pair a copy of the
worksheet (see Figure 1). Take one of the unused
pictures yourself and ask the students to give this
person a name. (In my example, this model
character was dubbed Alfred the chimney sweep,
and he was from 1840s London.) Draw a version
of the top section of the worksheet on the board
and fill in the character’s name, time period and
place. Having done this, ask the students what this
person’s everyday life might have been like,
writing down their ideas in bullet points on the
board as you go (see Figure 2). After having seen
the activity modelled, the pairs of students should
give their character a name and brainstorm ideas
on what they think their historical person’s
everyday life might have been like, writing these
on their worksheet.
3 Expose the gap. Put up on the board a picture of
a time machine, eliciting from the students what
it might be. Explain to them that their historical
figures have found this contraption and have
suddenly found themselves in the present day.
(They are still in the same country as before,
however.) Draw the students’ attention to the
next section of the worksheet, and ask them to
consider the following questions:
It is now 2019, and your character has just
time-travelled from the past.
1 What did your character do in their time,
which they can’t or won’t want to do anymore
in 2019?
2 What will feel especially strange for them in
our time? How long will it take for this to
become normal for them?
4 Elicit learner-generated text. In their pairs, the
students should write their answers to the above
questions in bullet points on their worksheet,
putting as many ideas as they can. Encourage
them to expand on and justify their ideas, making
notes on any extra information as appropriate.
See Figure 3 for a completed example. (I always
do an example with ‘Alfred’ before asking the
students to think about their own character, to
help them generate ideas.)
5 Focus on target language. Ask the students what
other ways we could express the first set of ideas:
ie something their person did in the past which
they can’t or won’t want to do in 2019. Having
done this activity many times, I find that, the vast
majority of the time, a student will provide me
with used to for the first question at this point.
Introduce would at the same time. Using your
model character, expand a couple of the ideas
into sentences, before using the sentences as
www.etprofessional.com
 GRAMMAR

models to elicit form and pronunciation.

6 Reformulation. Ask the students to write a couple ONLINE RESOURCES
of full sentences about their characters, using some
of the ideas they noted down earlier. Monitor and Time shock
provide feedback as necessary. Repeat steps 5 and 6
to elicit be/get used to for the second set of ideas: Your person:
things which will feel strange for them and how Time period/place:
long it will take for these things to become normal.
1 What would your character’s daily life have been like?
7 Controlled practice. Put the students into new pairs.
They should use their notes to discuss with their
partner what their person used to do in their time,
what they aren’t used to doing in this one and how
long it will take them to get used to it. Reiterate
that they should have a discussion about what they
2 It is now 2019, and your character has just time-travelled from the past.
think the effects of ‘time shock’ will be on their
respective characters: encourage them to justify, What did your person do in their time, which they can’t or won’t want to do now?
qualify and comment on their partner’s opinions.
8 Follow-up. With the students working in larger
groups, you could also get them to decide which
person’s life will change the most, who will have
the hardest time adjusting, and why. Possible
follow-up tasks include:
Interview: Write a TV lifestyle show interview for
other time travellers, asking them about their
What will be strange for them in our When will these things become normal
experiences and unique perspectives. time? for them?
Magazine article: Use the context to write a
magazine article, eg ‘The curious case of the
time traveller’.
How-to guide: Write a ‘how-to’ guide on how to
deal with time or culture shock – either in their
country, or the country in which the classes are
taking place.
Report: Write a report based on the findings from
the class discussion, commenting on the ‘Time shock’ by Jessica D’Ambrosio www.etprofessional.com
differences and similarities about the time shock
people will probably experience.
Figure 1 Worksheet
Prompt cards: Give the students two sets of
prompt cards: one with different historical
periods and one with topics, such as food, Time shock
fashion, body language, etc. The students should
take one card from each set and imagine they Your person: Alfred the chimney sweep
have just time-travelled to this period, and Time period/place: 1840, London
discuss the topic: what they used to do, are used
to doing and how long it will take to get used to What would your character’s daily life have been like?
their new way of life. (You could also use
■■ Very poor.
countries instead of time periods; it can also be a
good idea for the students to choose the time ■■ No unions/rights at work.
period, so that they can talk about something ■■ Health problems because of his job.
they are more familiar with.)
■■ Perhaps couldn’t read or write.
Potential weaknesses and Figure 2 Example of first part of the worksheet completed for ‘Alfred’
solutions
1 Artificially constructing a situation robs students
of access to a meaningful, authentic context.
Although using a student-generated context is
certainly memorable, exposure to language in

www.etprofessional.com Issue 123 • July 2019 15

GRAMMAR
context is an important part of learning the
language. For exposure to contexts, you could
promote learner autonomy by using the
presentation as a precursor to noticing, and
instructing the students to gather their own
examples outside of the classroom – either
through extensive reading/listening or using
corpora – and then use these at the beginning
of a subsequent lesson to create a ‘swap shop’.
By doing this, you can expose the students to
as many examples in context as possible;
textbook readings could also be used in this way.
2 The simplicity of the presentation could
obfuscate the nuances of the structure.
For example, used to is not necessarily always
used to talk about something that is no longer
the case, so much as the indication of a change;
used to is often used as a general statement, and
would subsequently used for details. The
students could, therefore, use the examples they
have collected to edit their own compositions
later, with a focus on whether they still agree
with their use of the structures and on whether
they want to add any additional uses. (A good
extension can also be on uses of would.)
3 The context and task are not relevant to the
students’ lives.
Although I think imaginative speculation is
usually a valid and motivating use of class time
– especially for teenagers – you could easily
redesign all parts of the activity for a modern-
day person moving countries, as opposed to a
time traveller.
Applicability to other situations
I have often used this framework for other kinds of
grammar teaching – especially for groups of
structures – by reimagining the situation and
keeping the same basic stages. You could do this by:
Situation: Think of an engaging situation where
the target language would naturally arise as
emerging language.
Reformulated questions: Reformulate questions for
which you would usually use the target language.
Context: Use the questions as prompts to get the
students to create their own context.
Reformulating sentences: With the students,
gradually reformulate sentences into the target
language.
Practice: Get the students to practise using the
target language, using their earlier ideas as prompts.
Task: Do a follow-up task, using the situation as
a basis.
Noticing: Encourage the students to collect their own
examples for further noticing – either from authentic
sources or even from their own textbooks. n
16 Issue 123 • July 2019
2 It is now 2019, and your character has just time-travelled from
the past.
What did your person do in their time, which they can’t or won’t want to
do now?
■■ H is job – he doesn’t know how to do his job with modern
methods.
■■ Bathe infrequently – not too acceptable now!
■■ Live in central London/Covent Garden – now it’s an
expensive area.
Reformulated sentence examples:
Alfred used to live in Covent Garden, but can’t now because it’s
too expensive. He used to work as a chimney sweep and would
bathe about once a week.
What will be strange for them in our When will these things become
time? normal for them?
1 The Tube. (He usually walks.) 1 Two weeks – trains won’t be too
unfamiliar to him.
2 Advanced medicine.
3 Aeroplanes. 2 One year – it’ll feel strange, but the
effects are so good that he’ll become
comfortable with it.
3 Never – he’ll never feel comfortable
with air travel, as it’s too much of an
adjustment.
Reformulated sentence examples: Reformulated sentence examples:
The Tube will definitely be It will probably only take two
strange for him, because he’s weeks for him to get used to
used to walking everywhere. taking the Tube: the idea of
trains won’t be too unfamiliar
to him.
Figure 3 Completed second part of the worksheet for ‘Alfred’
Jessica D’Ambrosio is a
Delta-qualified teacher and
materials designer, working at a
private language school in
London. Her interests include
learner autonomy, technology for
language learning, incorporating
creativity in the classroom and
training students to deal with
authentic material.
jad.english.teacher@gmail.com
www.etprofessional.com

The motivation
factor
Paul Bress encourages you to keep your students encouraged and enthusiastic.
A
number of terms are used to
describe different types of
motivation. Some of the key
ones are intrinsic, extrinsic
and integrational. When
related to study:
■■ Intrinsic motivation means that the
students enjoy learning something for
its own sake; their motivation comes
from within and is not dependent on
exterior factors.
■■ Extrinsic motivation means that the
students want to learn something
because they will get (or are getting)
something additional as a result of the
learning process. This might be anything
from parental praise to a qualification
leading to a job, or a promotion.
■■ Integrational motivation means that the
students want to learn something in
order to be able to become part of a
particular community. In language
study, this might be a desire to live in
and become a member of a community
of speakers of the target language.
It is worth noting that these various kinds
of motivation aren’t mutually exclusive.
In fact, all three could occur
simultaneously. Let’s take the example of
a Bangladeshi man who is learning
English in San Francisco. It is quite
possible that he both needs to improve his
English in order to get a job and wants to
integrate into the local community; at the
same time, he may also be enjoying the
process of learning English itself.
And yet, it’s still possible for this same
student to go to class one day and feel
very unmotivated. This may, of course, be
due to temporary factors in his personal
life, but it may also be due to the teacher
and the kinds of lessons they are giving.
I would like to offer a six-point plan
for increasing motivation, regardless of a
student’s background and the factors
behind their motivation.
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1 Show that you care.
If students look at their teacher and see
someone who would clearly much prefer
to be elsewhere, then their own
motivation is likely to slide. Teaching is a
caring profession, so if you think your
heart really isn’t in it, perhaps you’re in
the wrong job. However, some teachers
do care about their students, but find it
difficult to communicate that fact. So try
to monitor your facial expressions, your
gestures, your body language and your
tone of voice, and decide whether you’re
giving off caring signals or not.
2G
 ive your students the chance to
participate in communicative
activities.
Some people might say that all
communication in the classroom is
artificial, but I would argue that students
are generally much more motivated when
they’re asked to take part in life-like
roleplays (as opposed to, say, doing gap-fill
exercises). I’m not saying that these latter
types of exercises don’t have any role to
play in learning, but they are no substitute
for the simulated authenticity of roleplays.
3A
 sk the students to do tasks that
are relevant to their needs.
Roleplays are a good tool, but if you ask
your students to assume roles that they
will never adopt in real life (and that they
have no interest in), then it’s hardly
surprising if their motivation begins to
flag. The way to avoid this is to do a
thorough needs analysis at the beginning
of each course, to find out how your
students are planning to use their English.
4S
 et the students tasks that are
achievable.
If a teacher sets a task that’s too easy, this
isn’t the end of the world: the students can
adapt and experiment to bring it nearer
their level of competence and increase the
challenge (especially in roleplays). But if
the task is too difficult, then the morale of
IN THE CLASSROOM
even the most motivated students will
drop. This, I think, is just common sense.
How are students going to feel good about
themselves if they’re being asked to do
something wholly unreasonable?
5E
 ncourage and praise your
students.
Praising and encouraging students isn’t
patronising if you target genuine effort
and achievement. I believe that students
like working with a teacher who
demonstrably cares for them. A ‘positive
stroke’ can reverberate in a student’s
heart, and can be an important
motivating factor.
6T
 reat each student as a unique
individual.
If a student feels that they aren’t being
treated as an individual and their own
particular needs are not being considered,
this can lead to resentment (and a lack of
motivation). In fact, everyone is a special
case and needs to be treated accordingly.
When teachers acknowledge this (and
modify their behaviour accordingly), each
student is much more likely to work
cooperatively and enthusiastically.
t t t
No matter whether students like or dislike
learning foreign languages, or whether or
not they have some additional motivation
to spur them on, with a little effort a
teacher can make any lesson motivating. n
Paul Bress lives in
Herne Bay, UK,
where he teaches
English to overseas
students, writes
novels and paints.
His novel The Crisp
Packet is published
by The Conrad
Press, and you can
see his paintings at
artfinder.com.
paulbress@talktalk.net
Issue 123 • July 2019 17
IN THE CLASSROOM
Sandi Ferdiansyah shares his love of film with his students.
I
love watching movies of all genres – action, science fiction,
horror, comedy and drama. Occasionally, I take movies to class,
and I see my students start to smile as soon as they see I have
brought one. Not only are movies relaxing and fun, but they are
an authentic source of learning materials. Through them, the
students can learn how the language sounds, and they can learn
about the cultures portrayed in them. I teach English to students
aged 16 to 17 who have 90-minute English lessons twice a week.
Of course, I try to match the movies that I choose with the
ages of my students. I also make sure that the plot is easy to
follow, the dialogue is relatively easy to understand, and the
story has a good moral message. In class, we learn how to
review a movie, re-tell the plot and learn about the message.
Movies are generally quite long – some nearly two hours.
Because of the amount of class time it would take to watch a
whole one, I have two teaching approaches, one bottom-up
and the other top-down:
■■ The bottom-up approach involves the students working on
tasks which enable them to understand the movie piece by
piece, before they watch the whole thing. In other words, they
may only see the complete movie on another day, watching it
either in or out of class.
■■ The top-down approach, on the other hand, means that the
students watch the whole film while completing a series of
learning tasks which I set them. These tasks are designed to
help the students to understand elements of the movie, such as
the plot, the characters and the overall message.
In this article, I would like to share the way in which I have used
the movie Cast Away with my English classes, designing a series of
tasks to engage the students in communicative language learning.
18 Issue 123 • July 2019
Cast
away!
Cast Away, which stars Tom Hanks, is one of my favourite movies.
It tells the story of a man named Chuck’s struggle to survive when
he is stranded on a remote island after a plane crash. He spends
nearly four years on the island before he finally plucks up the
courage to build a raft and try to leave. Whilst on the island,
Chuck uses things washed up from the plane, such as boxes of
paper, cloth and a volleyball. Missing human companionship, he
draws a face on this volleyball and calls it Wilson.
The bottom-up approach
My lessons last for 90 minutes. To save time, I use the trailer
for the movie instead of the whole thing. This can be seen at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfXpFgyAY_U and it lasts for just
under three minutes.
1 I begin by playing the trailer three times. The first time, I ask the
students just to watch and enjoy it. The second time, I give the
students the following table and ask them to consider the tasks
as they watch, making notes if they wish. When they watch it for
the third time, I ask them to complete the sentences. They then
discuss their ideas in groups.
Movie Tasks
elements
Orientation In three sentences, say how the story begins.
Complication In three sentences, describe the problems that
the main character encounters.
Climax In three sentences, explain the crisis you think
the main character experiences.
Resolution In three sentences, say how the main character
might be able to resolve his problems.
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2 Next, I ask the students to imagine
being in Chuck’s situation. This activity
is aimed at developing their critical-
thinking and decision-making skills.
In groups of three, they are asked to
imagine that they are stranded on an
island and that they can choose three
of the items in the following list to help
them survive: tent, knife, lighter, rope,
life jacket, food and drink, radio, mobile
phone, books, television, clothes,
volleyball, shoes, bag, clock. They are
asked to give their reasons for their
choices. They then have to compare
their answers with two other groups,
noting down their choices and reasons.
When they have finished, they have a
chance to amend their original choices,
if they wish, before presenting their
results to the class.
3 Bringing them back to the movie,
I then explain that Chuck found a
volleyball washed up on the beach.
Missing human company, he drew a
face on it and named it Wilson – the
volleyball became his only friend on
the island. I ask each student to
choose a friend that they would like
to join them on the island. They then
have to write down their reason for
choosing this person and three
activities that they would do with
their friend to help them survive.
They then share their ideas with
the class.
4 In a final activity, the students are
asked to reflect on the trailer they have
watched, answering the following
questions:
■■ What have you learnt about the
movie or about life from this trailer?
■■ Do you find Chuck inspiring?
■■ How would you cope in a similar
situation?
They are then invited to watch the
whole movie, either at home or in a
subsequent lesson.
The top-down approach
In my top-down approach, the students
are invited to watch the movie and
analyse the elements of the story while
watching it, doing pre-watching,
while-watching and post-watching tasks.
The pre-watching tasks focus on
building the students’ knowledge of the
movie. The while-watching task is
www.etprofessional.com
IN THE CLASSROOM
Text organisation Content Your draft
Orientation This consists of an introduction to what
you are going to review, eg the title of
the movie, the year it was made, the
director, and the actors.
Brief outline of the This describes the main character(s),
story and tells how the story begins and ends.
Evaluation Here, you can write about either the
strengths or the weaknesses of the
movie – or a combination of the two.
Recommendation This consists of the reasons why you
would recommend this movie – or not.
designed to allow them to do an ■■ What can you learn from the movie?
analysis of the plot and characters. In (Write three sentences.)
the post-watching activity, the students
are required to review the movie. Post-watching task
As a follow-up activity, I get the
Pre-watching tasks students to write a review of the movie.
I invite the students to use their I use the guidelines in the box on this
imagination with the following page to help them, and encourage them
prompt: Imagine that you are the only to write between 25 and 50 words in
person who survives a plane crash. You each category.
find yourself alone on an uninhabited
island. You can see some items from the
t t t
plane that have washed up on the sand
and there are trees behind the beach,
including coconut trees. You can also If we enjoy movies ourselves, there is no
see fish in the sea near to the shore. reason for us not to share our enjoyment
5 I then put the students into groups with our students. Well-designed
of three and ask them to discuss the activities, using either a bottom-up or
following questions for ten minutes: top-down approach, can make watching a
movie a meaningful learning experience.
■■  hat items can you see washed up
W
on the beach? Students can learn language from
movies and see how people interact and
■■  here do you think is the safest
W communicate in different contexts.
place for you to stay? Movies also act as a springboard for
■■  hat will you do to survive? How
W discussion of experiences and dilemmas;
will you do it? they almost always have a message to
interpret and discuss. Moreover, as they
While-watching task are fun to watch, they can inspire and
We then watch the movie, and I ask the foster in the students an interest in
students to think about their answers to learning language. n
the following questions while they
Sandi Ferdiansyah is
watch it:
a faculty member at
■■ What is the movie about? the English Education
(Write three sentences.) Department of Institut
Agama Islam Negeri
■■ Who is the main character in the movie? (IAIN) Jember,
What sort of person is he? Indonesia. His
academic interests are
■■ What do you think are the main ELT methodology,
problems the main character has? technology-enhanced
(Write three sentences.) language learning,
and teachers’ professional development.
■■ How did he resolve his problems?
sanjazzyn@yahoo.com
(Write three sentences.)
Issue 123 • July 2019 19
TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS

From reading
to writing
Melanie Oh Hye Min implements a successful storybook approach with her young students.

U
sing literature in English language
classrooms is an effective way to expose
the students to authentic language input.
Stories provide interesting contexts for a
variety of language learning activities and
promote creative self-expression, regardless of the
students’ age and background.
With my primary school students, I like to use
illustrated storybooks, because they provoke
curiosity, imagination and creativity that are far
beyond my expectations. I enjoy listening to the
children’s insights – which always amaze me and
allow me to look at the world from a child’s
perspective.
In my school, as with most primary schools in
mainland China, the amount of exposure to English
that the students get is very limited. English is learnt
as a school subject, but not as a tool with which to
communicate. In this kind of environment, my
students lack the opportunity to read authentic
English texts in everyday life, and this includes
storybooks. Hence, the challenge for me is to
maximise the use of English in terms of both input
and output. Within this context, I have adopted the
reading-to-writing approach in my lessons. In this
article, I will describe this approach and provide an
example of a unit implemented in my class of seven
to eight year olds with great success.

20 Issue 123 • July 2019 www.etprofessional.com

 TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS

The reading-to-writing
approach
The strong interdependent relationship between
reading and writing is of great importance in early
language acquisition, since both are built on a
shared set of interactive skills and knowledge, such
as phonological awareness, letter–sound
correspondence and word decoding skills. The
reading-to-writing approach acknowledges this
relationship, with a reading text acting as a
language model and support for the students to
create their own texts with a similar structure. The
model text gives them the confidence to write
autonomously and exhibit what they have learnt for
others to enjoy. I have found the approach
particularly effective when used with stories with
repetitive structures such as Are You My Mother?
by P D Eastman, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do
You See? by Eric Carle and There Was an Old Lady
Who Swallowed a Fly by Pam Adams.

An example unit
I developed one of my reading-to-writing units around
the storybook If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura
Numeroff, in which a boy gives a cookie to a mouse,
which then asks for a whole host of other things as a
result, ending up with a glass of milk – which, of
course, means that the mouse then needs another
cookie to go with it.
I dedicated one lesson to each stage – pre-reading,
while-reading and post-reading. By the final lesson, the
students were able to create their own versions of the
story with ideas which they generated on their own,
and which they wrote and illustrated all by themselves.
This gave them something to be proud of and showed
them that English is more than just an exam subject.
There are several examples of their work on these
pages. Here, I will describe the example unit in detail
and say what my students and I did in each lesson.

www.etprofessional.com Issue 123 • July 2019 21

TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS
Lesson 1: Pre-reading
In order to motivate the students to read the text and
help them engage with it, I started the unit with a
simple drama. I pretended to hold a cookie and
walked around the classroom, asking the students
what they would do if I gave them the cookie. Most
students mimed eating the cookie, some said thank
you, and a few pretended to find a glass of milk.
Then I showed them the book cover, and they
became engaged in a small-group discussion about
22 Issue 123 • July 2019
what happens if you give a mouse a cookie. We did not
need to rush into reading the book right away in the first
lesson. It is a good idea to give the students some space
to imagine and predict what may happen in the story.
Next, I showed the students a picture of the
house where the boy gives the mouse the cookie,
and flashcards of the objects mentioned in the book,
including milk, straw, napkin, etc. The students
guessed the sequence of the objects that the mouse
would ask for, and presented their answer by placing
the cards in the house, one by one. You would be
amazed by the details they added enthusiastically to
the sequence, creating their own versions of the story.
This is a good activity to pre-teach the vocabulary in
the book, as it gets the students to use the words in
a context that helps them remember the meanings.
We often think of sequencing as a post-reading
activity for the students to demonstrate their
understanding of the plot, but I think it also makes a
great pre-reading activity since it promotes creativity,
develops predicting skills and arouses curiosity about
the book they will be reading. It is also important to
make it clear that there is no correct answer for the
sequence; differences are celebrated.
Lesson 2: While-reading
The second lesson involved a shared reading of the
book. The nature of this book makes it very good for
getting the students to predict what request the
mouse is going to make next. Since the burden of
new language had been removed by the pre-reading
activities, we could focus on the content of the book,
including predicting upcoming events and
discussing the characters’ feelings. The students
were excited when they discovered that they made
correct guesses and when they read the unexpected
storylines, especially the ending, where they
discover that the story comes full circle with the
request for another cookie.
www.etprofessional.com
 TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS

Lesson 3: Post-reading
We spent the last lesson writing stories.
After generating ideas of possible ‘If
you give a ... a ...’ stories in pairs, the
students moved on to the most exciting
bit – writing and drawing pictures. They
were able to develop comic strip stories
with minimal language support,
because they had already read the
original text and were familiar with the
repetitive sentence pattern: ‘If you give
a … a …, it will want …’. Some of these
are shown here. The more proficient
students added more to their stories,
explaining the characters’ requests or
describing their emotions.
The unit was rounded off with a
sharing session. I felt that the students’
sense of achievement was at a peak
when they showed off their stories to
their classmates. My role was simply to
make sure that the entire writing lesson
was student-centred, and to encourage
the students to put their most creative
ideas into their writing.

t t t

In this article, I have introduced a

reading-to-writing approach, which I
have found effective for enhancing L2
literacy. It focuses on developing a
student-centred classroom, where the
students can use what they have learnt
from reading a story to construct further
stories that are fun and unique. I hope
you can try this approach when you
read storybooks with a repetitive
element with your young learners. n
Melanie Oh Hye Min is a recent
graduate from the University of
Hong Kong, and she is currently
an English teacher in mainland
China. Her interests are using
literature in language learning and
teaching young learners.
hyeminoh@connect.hku.hk

www.etprofessional.com Issue 123 • July 2019 23

IN THE CLASSROOM
Students’
stories
David Heathfield invites his students to finish a tale about
faithful goats, evil stepmothers and forest demons.
L
umana Tamrakar is a 14-year-
old Newari student in
Kathmandu, Nepal. Lumana
sent me an audio recording of
herself telling the story of
‘Punthaku Maicha’, after she had told
it as part of a school storytelling
festival organised by her English
teacher Sikha Gurung.
‘Punthaku Maicha’ is a
Newari story which
Lumana’s grandmother
has often told her.
‘Punthaku Maicha’
Storytelling tip:
Collaborative storymaking
When you have established the main
characters and the direction of the plot,
you can stop in the middle of a story
and, within the framework provided by
your questioning, your students can
collaboratively create their own second
half of the story.
Before telling
Prepare your students by telling them that
they are going to create the second half of
a Newari folk tale from Nepal together, so
they need to listen closely to the first half.
While telling
Tell the story up to the climactic point
where the Rakshas, the monstrous
demon of the forest, finds Punthaku
Maicha crying over her goat’s grave.
Freeze and be silent for a few moments
to raise anticipation before the
collaborative storymaking begins. At
this point, you could start playing an
extended and atmospheric piece of
background music. This can guide and
inspire the students, and fill pauses with
anticipation. A suitable piece for this
24 Issue 123 • July 2019
13
story might be ‘Tarang – a traditional
music from Nepal’; you can find it on
YouTube.
Now gently begin inviting answers to
a series of questions, so that the students
collaboratively create their own second
half of the story. A good first question
might be: What did Punthaku Maicha
say to the Rakshas?
For each question, nominate one
student who has signalled that they
would like to answer. Ask mostly open
questions, such as:
■■ Questions about the plot that move
the story on, eg What did she do next?
■■ Sensory questions that stimulate
mental imagery, eg What did she see ...
hear ... smell ... feel?
These kinds of questions inspire creativity
and will help the students to remember
the story when they retell it later.
It is essential that every answer any
student gives is included. Simply repeat
or, where necessary, rephrase the students’
contributions. Often students will want to
contribute an idea which they don’t yet
know how to express in English. Let them
use their mother tongue when they need
to if it is a language you also speak –
powerful learning happens when you put
into English what they want to say. Then
decide which question to ask next.
Be careful not to input ideas
yourself but, as facilitator, you can help
the storymaking by reminding the
students of narrative strands that have
not been resolved.
When you sense that it is time to start
bringing the story to a close, you can ask:
Are we coming to the end of the story? And
when the story has reached its conclusion:
So, is that the end of the story?
After telling
When the story reaches the end, invite the
students to sit face to face in pairs, and to
retell the second half of the story together
as they remember it. Your reformulating
of the students’ contributions into
suitable English during the storymaking
will make this easier for them to achieve.
If necessary, you might retell the story
first with their help.
Make it clear that they were the ones
who created the story, so they are free to
amend it and add their own ideas if they
choose to.
You could ask the students, either
individually or in pairs, to write their
endings and then to compare them – you
can be sure that each one will be
wonderfully unique.
When the students tell you that they
are ready, tell them the traditional ending
of the story and ask them to compare it
with their own versions, taking note of any
similarities and differences. Invite them to
compare their ideas in pairs before sharing
them with the rest of the class.
Retelling
Your students are now ready to retell
the whole story, either with the
traditional ending or their own ending,
or a combination of the two. Ask them
to rehearse and tell the story to students
in other classes and people outside your
place of learning.
t t t
You can watch a YouTube recording
of a group of Dutch thirteen year
olds creating their own second half
of ‘Punthaku Maicha’ with me at
https://youtu.be/gBtisWpHeIk. n
David Heathfield is
a freelance
storyteller, teacher
and teacher trainer.
He is the author of
Storytelling With
Our Students:
Techniques for
Telling Tales from
Around the World
and Spontaneous
Speaking: Drama Activities for Confidence
and Fluency, both published by DELTA
Publishing. He is a member of The
Creativity Group.
www.davidheathfield.co.uk
www.etprofessional.com

T
here was once a girl called
Punthaku Maicha who lived
with her mother and her father
and her goat. She treated her
goat like a sister. The family were
poor, and they lived in a small house
far away in the forest. Punthaku
Maicha often went with her father into
the forest to find food, such as berries
and roots, and they collected some
wood for the fire. The goat always
went with her and helped her.
They all looked after each other,
but her father often had to travel far
away to work for long periods of
time to provide for his family.
‘Be careful, my daughter, of the
Rakshas, the monstrous demon of
the forest. The Rakshas eats the
flesh of children.’
While her father was away,
Punthaku Maicha still had to go into
the forest alone to find food and
wood. The goat always went with
her to protect her. And the goat
always gave Punthaku Maicha and
her mother plenty of her milk.
One day, her mother became sick.
Punthaku Maicha looked after her the
best she could, but her mother died.
Now Punthaku Maicha had no one
but the goat to protect her. When her
father came home, he was so sad.
‘How will you manage alone
when I am away working?’
He went away again and, when
he returned, he had a new wife. At
first, his new wife looked after her
stepdaughter like she was her
own, but, after a short time, the
new wife had her own child, a boy.
Now her stepmother loved the boy
more than she loved Punthaku
Maicha. She made Punthaku
Maicha do all the work.
‘Go into the forest and bring me
food.’
But her stepmother would never
share any of the food with the girl.
As time passed, Punthaku Maicha
www.etprofessional.com
IN THE CLASSROOM
Punthaku Maicha
became sadder and sadder, but the
goat always gave her milk. The goat
even went into the house and stole
food for the girl. Her stepmother
wondered why Punthaku Maicha
wasn’t getting thinner.
Now the little boy was getting
older and his mother told him to
follow his half-sister into the forest.
He saw the goat giving her food that
it had taken from the house, and the
boy told his mother.
‘My half-sister is a thief. My
half-sister is a liar. The goat is taking
our food and feeding it to Punthaku
Maicha!’
The stepmother was so angry that
she caught the goat. She killed it and
she cooked it and she ate it. Punthaku Illustration of the Rakshas by Lumana
Maicha cried and cried and cried. She
to his half-sister and started eating
took the bones of the goat to a tree in
as well. Then he hurried home with
the forest. Under the tree she buried
food stuck in his fingernails.
the bones of her only friend.
‘Mother, I heard Punthaku
Punthaku Maicha did not see the
Maicha crying over the goat’s bones
Rakshas, the monstrous demon of
and then the Rakshas of the forest
the forest. The Rakshas was coming
brought her delicious food.’
closer through the trees. He was
covered in thick hair, his mouth wide ‘Then you must bring food for me.
open showing long, sharp teeth, Go to the forest and pretend to cry.’
ready to eat her. When the Rakshas The boy left his mother, went to
reached Punthaku Maicha, she the tree in the forest and pretended
looked at him through her tears. He to cry. But his tears were false tears.
saw that she was not afraid. The Rakshas came closer, with his
‘Why are you crying?’ mouth wide open showing long
sharp teeth. The Rakshas knew the
Punthaku Maicha told the
tears were false and ate the boy.
Rakshas everything. The Rakshas
took pity on the girl and brought her When the little boy didn’t come
delicious magical food from the home, his mother and his half-sister
forest. Punthaku Maicha ate hungrily went into the forest together to look
and then returned home with bits of for him, and there, under the tree,
food stuck in her fingernails. they found his bones.
‘My daughter, I have wronged
Her stepmother saw the food in
you. Because of my jealousy, here
her fingernails. She was suspicious
lie the bones of your goat and here
and hit Punthaku Maicha. The next
lie the bones of my son. Please,
day she sent her own son to follow
his half-sister. daughter, forgive me.’
From then on, she looked after
By the tree where the goat’s
bones were buried, the boy saw the Punthaku Maicha as her own
terrible Rakshas giving Punthaku daughter, and they lived together in
Maicha the delicious food. He went peace and happiness for eternity.
Issue 123 • July 2019 25
IN THE CLASSROOM
Freeze
frame
A
Alan Keenan re you tired of preparing lots of
offers a drama handouts and cut-ups? Tired of having
to be the one who generates the context
lesson plan to for your lesson? Tired of speaking
get students lessons that seem to involve far too
much writing? Interested in acting? Hold on, you
speaking.
lost me at ‘acting’. I’m not interested in acting, but I
designed the drama-based lesson outlined below
with my pre-intermediate (A2+) students, and they
loved it. They spent two hours speaking only
English, and came away having learnt and practised
a range of language skills and structures.
It’s a ‘materials-lite’, task-based, student-
generated lesson. Although it worked well with my
pre-intermediate students, it would be easily
adaptable to any level, elementary or higher.
The lesson
Aim
By the end of the lesson, the students will have
developed their interactional speaking skills for
dialogue creation and group discussion in the
context of drama scenes.
Possible language examples (including some
specific to the bank robbery scenario described here):
26 Issue 123 • July 2019
I think …; We should …; Why don’t we …;
Yes, good idea; No, I don’t think so; OK, so we’ll …;
So, we’ve decided to…; Put your hands up! Get over
here! Come here! Go over there!
Materials and room layout
You will need:
■■ recording devices – most mobile phones have
recording applications;
■■ some paper and a pen for each group of students;
■■ a whiteboard.
You will need tables for the students to work at,
but arrange them with an open space in the middle
for acting.
Pre-speaking
1 Set the context by writing some examples of
action scenes common in movies on the board, eg
bank robbery, argument, murder, prison break.
Elicit other ideas from the class, and ask the
students to choose one to focus on today.
2 Put the students into small groups and get them
to discuss what usually happens in the chosen
scene. If there are four groups, divide the event
into four mini-scenes. Write what happens in
these mini-scenes clearly on the board. (For
www.etprofessional.com

example, with a bank robbery: 1 The robbers
prepare by putting on masks; 2 They run into
the bank and shout ‘Put your hands up!’; 3 They
put the money in bags; 4 They drive away in a
get-away car.)
Speaking 1
1 Explain that each group will act out one of the
mini-scenes from the board, freezing at the end as
if the pause button has been pressed on a DVD.
Secretly assign a different mini-scene to each
group. They now have to decide what exactly
happens, what is said, who says it and any props
they might need. Tell the groups to discuss, plan
and then practise a ten-second mini-scene.
2 During this, monitor the groups and take note of
any useful group-discussion language for making
suggestions, accepting/rejecting ideas and
deciding on ideas which the students are using
well (eg I think …; Good idea; Yeah, but …; OK,
let’s do that). For lower-level students, you could
write some useful group-discussion language on
the board, to help them as they do the task.
3 Get each group in turn to mime their mini-scene
(no speaking), but make sure they are not in the
order that the events actually happen, so that
after all the mini-scenes have been mimed, you
can ask the groups to decide on the correct order.
4 Now ask the groups to act out their mini-scenes
again, this time in the correct order and with
dialogue. While they are doing this, note down
any topic-related emergent language to be looked
at and perhaps improved later – make sure to
include connected speech issues.
Language focus 1
(group-discussion language)
1 Write on the board any emergent language you
noted related to making suggestions, accepting/
rejecting ideas and deciding on ideas, and ask the
groups to sort them for meaning and write them
in lists in their notebooks. Then, if there are any
accuracy issues, ask the groups to correct them
(eg What we should do?  What should we do?).
2 Next, add some new phrases for the students to
add to their lists.
3 Finally, do some short drilling of these phrases
using full sentences (eg Let’s make the robber
fall down).
Speaking 2
1 Make new groups that include a representative
from each original group. Ask these new groups
to combine their mini-scenes, and to create a
dialogue of the whole scene from start to finish,
lasting one or two minutes. Get them to record
their script using a voice-recording device or
smartphone recording app. The point here is
www.etprofessional.com
IN THE CLASSROOM
not to write a script, as students often try to do,
but to discuss and record the final speaking
product. So, they record a line, press pause,
discuss and then record the next line. They
continue until they have finished the scene and
then save the file.
2 Get the groups to swap recordings and listen,
to note what is similar to or different from their
version.
Language focus 2
(topic-related language)
1 Write the topic-related emergent language you
noted down on the board, and elicit from the
students which items are good examples. Then ask
the groups for ways to correct any inaccuracies.
Examine aspects related to connected speech (eg
Give me the money in connected speech sounds
more like /ˈgɪmɪðə ˈmʌni/) and do some choral and
individual drilling.
2 For controlled practice, ask the groups to draw
simple pictures to represent each mini-scene. (For
example, if there are four mini-scenes, they will
need to draw four pictures.) Then ask them to
create one gap-fill sentence per picture to test the
other groups.
3 The groups swap their pictures, look at them, and
then try to complete each other’s sentences.
Speaking 3
1 Put the students into new groups and ask them to
decide what happens next. Use the same
technique as before, ie they discuss, plan and
practise a scene lasting roughly one minute.
2 Invite the groups to act out their scenes for each
other.
3 At the end, let the class vote on the best scene.
Follow-up
Put the students in pairs and ask them to tell their
partner:
■■ three things they learnt today (eg words, phrases
or skills);
■■ two things that were a helpful review;
■■ one thing they still don’t understand fully.
Then have a class feedback session and clarify
anything they still do not understand. n
Alan Keenan is from Northern
Ireland. He has taught English in
the Middle East since 2007. He is
currently teaching at the British
Council Jordan. He has an MSc
TESOL from Queen’s University
Belfast and is now completing
his DELTA through ITI Istanbul.
alankeenanenglishteacher@
gmail.com
Issue 123 • July 2019 27
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 IT WORKS
IN PRACTICE
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. The contributors to this issue will each receive a digital subscription
to Modern English Teacher.
DIFFERENTIATED WRITING
Mayuri Sooriyampola, Kandy, Sri Lanka
The students in my classes are at different levels when it
comes to writing. I find it useful to divide them into three
groups – intermediate, pre-intermediate and elementary –
and to prepare a different activity to suit each level.
One of the tasks I set was to write a paragraph about
their favourite author. The previous day, I asked the
students briefly about their favourite authors and the whole
class agreed on five authors that they would like to write
about. For homework, I gave them the task of finding out
information about one of these writers to bring to class.
I explained that they could find the information in their
mother tongue if they wished. I made it clear that they
needed to find certain pieces of information: their chosen
author’s name, birthday, birthplace, how the author spent
their childhood, their education, their most popular work,
their working life, their family and, if they were no longer
alive, their death.
The next day, before the lesson, I collected their
homework, translated it into English, if necessary, and
prepared all the information to be displayed on the board.
We started the writing lesson with a brief whole-class
discussion of the information they had discovered. I then
gave them an opportunity to look at the display on the board,
seated them in their ability groups, and assigned a different
task to each group.
30 Issue 123 • July 2019
The students in the intermediate group were asked to use
the information in the display if they wished, together with any
other information they had, and to write an article for the school
magazine about their favourite writer.
The students in the pre-intermediate group were given a
series of questions, for which they had to provide answers,
written in complete sentences. For example:
1 Who is your favourite writer?
2 Where was this person born? In which year?
3 Did this person go to school? If so, where?
4 Was he/she married? Did he/she have any children?
etc.
Later, I helped them to organise these sentences into a logical
order to form a paragraph about their chosen writer, providing
them with suitable linking words.
I gave the elementary group a model paragraph about an
author. I then asked them to substitute the information in the
model with information about their favourite author and then
write out a new paragraph.
The aim of this lesson was to get the students to write a
paragraph of their own. By using different activities for the different
ability levels, I ensured that all the students in the class were able
to write a paragraph about their favourite author. This technique
also enabled the students with more writing ability to express
themselves freely, whilst those who found writing challenging were
able to gain more confidence by engaging with a writing task that
matched their language level. n
www.etprofessional.com

SIX OF THE BEST
Bojana Urbanc, Loke pri Mozirju, Slovenia
Though it is not my Slovenian students’ native language, they
feel really close to English, being surrounded by it daily via
the internet, movies, songs, TV shows, etc. In fact, many of
them are convinced that there is nothing more to be done to
improve their knowledge of the language. As a result, it can
be quite a challenge to get their attention in English classes.
However, teaching new skills such as communication,
teamwork, flexibility and cooperation alongside the language
can make English lessons more versatile, and result in the
students being more attentive and motivated. Here are six
activities I have used in my classes, which have proved
popular and successful with my students
1 Memories
At the beginning of a new school year, the students are asked
to bring one of their mementos (or a photo) to class. This
memento or photo should be related in some way to a story
that they are prepared to share with the rest of the class. The
students sit in a circle, so that everyone can see each other. It
is advisable for the teacher to start by showing a memento or
a photo of their own, explaining its background and meaning.
The students can ask questions, but no more than three. A
volunteer then talks about their own memento or photo,
before choosing the next person who will do so.
2 Songs
Students love music and feel highly motivated when it is used
in class. One of my all-time favourite songs is The River by
Bruce Springsteen. I begin by asking the students to write on
a sticky note a word or a sentence that comes to their minds
when they think of the word river. When everybody has
finished, I display their notes on the board, reading them
aloud and categorising them as either positive or negative
thoughts. Then, I introduce the Springsteen song, sometimes
with a gap-fill of the lyrics. The students are asked to discuss
the message of the song and, later on, compare it to the
ideas they wrote at the beginning. There are many possible
follow-up activities, including discussing the future of the
characters in the song, getting the students to write a song or
story of their own, discussing the differences between living
in the city and living in the countryside, etc.
3 Advertising
I give the students five minutes to draw a picture, expressing
themselves in any way they wish. After the five minutes are up,
I ask them to ‘sell’ their picture by making a commercial for it.
They have to think of different ways to present their work of art
in a way that will be attractive for possible buyers. I ask them
to use the passive voice in their commercials. Each student
presents their commercial to the class in turn, and when
everybody has finished, they vote on the best three.
4 Last man standing
The students work in groups, and I explain that they have
survived a shipwreck (or a plane crash) and are now on a
www.etprofessional.com
IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
deserted island. Their only hope is a message in a bottle, in
which they describe for any would-be rescuers their location,
their everyday routine and their emotions, hopes and plans.
Students love making up stories: some of them will want to
stay on the island, the rest will want to get away as soon as
they can. The students vote on the best message.
5 Fake news
The students are asked to write down three facts about
themselves, two of which are true and one of which is a lie.
Then they are asked to pretend to be news reporters, walking
around the class and interviewing as many people as possible.
They should talk about their facts, trying not to reveal which
is the fake information. They are allowed to talk about other
people whom they have already interviewed, but they aren’t
allowed to lie about anyone but themselves. They have
about 20 minutes to obtain as much information as possible.
The whole class then discusses the information and decides
which information was false.
6 Alibi
This is a good game for teaching past tenses. Using a picture of
a crime (this could be from a newspaper), I tell the class about a
robbery (or any other crime) that was committed by a group of
criminals. I try to make the story as interesting as possible. I then
choose four or five students to be the suspects. They have to go
outside the classroom to prepare for a police interrogation, while
the rest of the class form groups (one for each suspect) to be
detectives who will prepare questions for the interrogation. The
suspects and the detectives have a basic outline of the crime
(they know the time and the location). The suspects prepare a
perfect alibi, making sure they all understand and agree on their
story, while the detectives work on their questions.
When the suspects return to the classroom, each one
sits with a group of detectives and the interrogation begins.
After five minutes, the suspects switch groups, until every
group has had a chance to talk to them all. The suspects try
to maintain their alibi, while the detectives attempt to pick
holes in it by asking questions to which they don’t have an
agreed answer. At the end, the detectives decide if the
suspects are guilty or innocent. n
Issue 123 • July 2019 31
Reviews
Teaching English as a Lingua
Franca – the journey from
EFL to ELF
by Marek Kiczkowiak
and Robert J Lowe
Delta Publishing 2019
978-3-12-501735-1
As the English language solidifies its
position as the lingua franca of business,
trade, education, tourism and the
sciences, the priorities of the English
learner have started to shift. Learners of
English are now learning the language
not only to communicate with native
speakers and assimilate into English and
American cultures, but also to use it as a
tool for international communication.
When the VOICE corpus, and
subsequently the Asian Corpus of
English, was established, researchers
were able to analyse the ways in which
‘non-native’ speakers of English were
using the language to interact with each
other and achieve their communicative
goals. Upon examination, it was found
that certain phonological features and
certain lexico-grammatical norms that
are often taught in English language
classrooms were, in fact, absent or
morphed in ELF (English as a lingua
franca) interactions, and that this
so-called ‘non-standard’ usage of
English did not make the speakers less
intelligible or less able to communicate.
32 Issue 123 • July 2019
For several years, ELF debates tended
to focus on questions about whether ELF
was a variety of English and whether
teachers should be actively teaching these
‘non-standard’ forms. At the early ELF
conferences, there were many
presentations and talks about the
importance of making teachers aware of
this phenomenon, but many academics
were still unable to pinpoint how teachers
could put ELF into practice. No one
seemed to have a concrete answer as to
how we could bridge the many discoveries
in ELF research and what actually
happens in the language classroom.
In 2010, OUP published Robin
Walker’s Teaching the Pronunciation of
English as a Lingua Franca, in which he
argued that pronunciation was the
biggest cause of communication
breakdown in ELF interactions. The
book questioned the validity of adopting
a native-speaker role model and, instead,
urged teachers to focus on the lingua
franca core pronunciation features that
have been found to impact on
intelligibility in ELF communication.
While the pedagogical implications of
ELF continued to be discussed and
debated among both academics and
practitioners, there was no publication or
manual that provided a step-by-step
breakdown as to what teachers were meant
to do with this information. Until now.
Marek Kiczkowiak and Robert J
Lowe’s timely publication offers teachers
and trainers a clearer understanding of
their role in the ELF classroom, teaching
English to a class of students who might
never meet a native speaker of English,
but might need English to communicate
with the hundreds of millions of
non-native speakers around the world.
The book is divided into three
parts. Part A provides the reader with a
useful summary of ELF research and a
sound theoretical basis, in order for
them to be able to understand the
differences between teaching English as
a foreign language (EFL) and English
as a lingua franca (ELF).
Kiczkowiak’s background as the
founder of the website TEFL Equity
and the creator of the ELTons-
nominated course The Ultimate Guide
to Teaching English as a Lingua Franca
for ELT professionals puts him in a
good position to be explaining concepts
like native-speakerism, the ownership of
English and the identity of the English
language user to readers who might
need a bit of convincing as to the
benefits of an ELF mindset.
The theories and issues discussed in
Part A of the book are then translated
into classroom-based practice in Part
B, where the teacher is treated to lesson
plans that help students to develop an
ELF mindset and an ELF skill set.
While lesson plans focusing on the
ELF mindset get students exploring
topics like ‘The world of Englishes’
and ‘Do the English own English?’,
lesson plans on the ELF skill set look
at how we can help our students
understand a variety of accents,
embrace idiomatic expressions across
languages, hone their intercultural
www.etprofessional.com

competence and improve on how they
negotiate meaning and other essential
communication strategies.
Each lesson plan comes with
suggestions of listening or reading texts,
useful discussion questions, tasks for
pairwork and groupwork, and reflection
questions that might help students come
to their own conclusions about the topic.
Part C of the book takes the reader
into specific teaching circumstances,
exploring how ELF is represented in
EAP (English for Academic Purposes),
business English teaching, ELT course
materials, and teacher education. The
experience of both Kiczkowiak and his
co-writer Robert J Lowe – a lecturer in
the department of English
Communication at Tokyo Kasei
University in Japan and co-host of the
famous TEFLology podcast – seems to
shine through in this part of the book,
and their expertise in ELFA (English as
a lingua franca in academic settings),
BELF (business English as a lingua
franca), materials writing and teacher
training really comes to the forefront.
The reader is given a well-researched
and well-referenced overview of how
ELF plays a part in these specialist
areas of the ELT industry, the
significant issues, and the changing
perspectives. But what makes Part C
exceptionally useful for the teacher are
the ‘Reflection for professional
development’ sections that occur at least
once, if not twice, on nearly every page.
These reflection sections contain
valuable questions for teachers that are
aimed at raising awareness and getting
us to question our beliefs, our attitudes
and, most of all, our practice, so that
we are judiciously making classroom
decisions which will benefit our learners
who are using English for international
communication.
Undoubtedly, there are still some
cynics who struggle to see the application
of ELF theories to ELT pedagogy, and to
them I say this: you can’t argue against
what you’re not fully informed about …
and you’re not fully informed about
teaching English as a lingua franca until
you’ve read this book.
Chia Suan Chong
York, UK
www.etprofessional.com
Out of Your Seats
by James Thomas and Anette Igel
Versatile Teacher Resources 2018
978-80-907060-2-6
One of the things I love about Out of
Your Seats is the simplicity of its
design and structure and its no-
nonsense, user-friendly style. Starting
with the title, teachers know
immediately that this is a resource
book for those who want to get their
learners moving. The book is for
teachers of all levels and all ages. It
aims to get the learners out of their
seats, using music, poetry, drama and
TPR as vehicles for practising
grammar, vocabulary, phonology,
functions and the four skills. If you
have reservations about using these
kinds of activities, read the ‘The
reluctant teacher’ in the introduction,
which provides some good reasons why
you should give it a try and assurance
that might convince you to give it a go.
The book reminds me of other dip-into
resource books that have appeared on
staffroom shelves over the years, and
especially those which end up needing
to be replaced through repeated use.
Another aspect of the book which I
like is that the activities and lessons have
been tried and tested again and again, by
the authors or by colleagues who have
been cited throughout. This might seem
obvious, but I’m sure we’ve all come
REVIEWS
across so-called practical classroom ideas
in resource books which are, at the very,
least impractical.
The book is divided into two main
sections: The activities and The lesson
plans, with a third section of
photocopiable Resources necessary for
some of the activities at the back of the
book. A comprehensive introduction
explains how to get the most of the
book, with a special note about
‘inclusion’ – something the authors have
kept at the core of the materials. When
choosing an activity or lesson, teachers
can refer to a brief overview of each
entry at the front of the book or they
can browse the pages, focusing on
specific aims or skills.
The first section has 24 activity ideas;
each one with a brief description of the
language aims, timing and material
needed. Then there is a step-by-step
guide to what to do, followed by
suggestions for variations, and notes
about things like safety or tips for
practising extra language. The lesson
plans section takes 20 of these activities
and uses them as a core for more
complete units of teaching, with
warmers, pre-teaching ideas and
sequenced stages to make up a lesson of
around an hour. Here, too, the
instructions are easy to follow, and there
are plenty of tips on how to set up the
activities, organise and manage the
learners, add extra stages or change
things to make them more appropriate
for a particular context.
Technology isn’t an integral part of
the activities in Out of Your Seats, but
for those teachers who’d like to enhance
the experience through technology,
there are ideas for how to use free
online tools such as SKELL and
Pinterest. There is also a supporting
website for the book, with links to
artwork and video, pdfs and text files
that can be adapted for teachers’ own
contexts, plus links to related websites.
If I had to sum up this resource book
in one sentence, I’d say it was a little gem
that could potentially transform your
teaching spaces into something much
more than simple classrooms.
Katherine Bilsborough
Burgos, Spain
Issue 123 • July 2019 33
 SCRAPBOOK Gems, titbits, puzzles, foibles, quirks, bits & pieces, quotations,
snippets, odds & ends, what you will
‘I used to be indecisive, but now I’m not so sure …’
An old joke but superbly subtle, nonetheless. When I sat down to write the Scrapbook for this issue, I found
myself with a blank page and absolutely no idea what to put on it. So, I thought that perhaps I should write
about indecision.
I can – as can most people, I suspect – sometimes find taking decisions hard.
Fortunately, this doesn’t usually stray into the everyday aspects of life – it tends to
raise its head only when a major decision has to be made. The major aspect can
either involve spending a substantial sum of money, or when the decision itself will
affect important aspects of life. Not only can the decision itself be difficult to make,
but sometimes I spend far too much time and energy worrying about it after the
event: Was it the right decision? Should I have waited? Should I have taken
advice? … Should I be writing about this? (The editor will doubtless tell me.)

The indecisive lion

and the decisive dog
A lost dog strays into a jungle. A lion sees this from a distance
and, never having seen a dog before, is undecided on what to
do. He eventually decides that it looks edible, and starts to
advance menacingly.
The dog starts to panic, but as he’s about to run away, he
notices a pile of bones next to him and says loudly: ‘Mmm ...
that was really good lion meat!’
Good jokes or bad?
The lion stops abruptly and decides that the dog is tougher than You decide
he looks and that he had better escape while he can. I spent hours trying to find what the opposite
In a nearby treetop, a monkey witnesses of ‘night’ was. But, in the end, I just had to call
everything, and decides that he might be able it a day.
to benefit from this situation. So the monkey
Q What shoes does an indecisive person wear?
goes to the lion and tells him what really
A Flip-flops.
happened, whereupon the lion says angrily:
‘Get on my back; we’ll get him together.’ Q How can you tell an indecisive rower?
So they start rushing back to the dog. The A He can’t choose either oar.
dog sees them, realises what has happened My friends keep telling me I’m too indecisive.
and starts to panic again, before getting I’m not sure how I feel about that.
another bright idea. He shouts: ‘Where is
that monkey? I told him to bring me I was really hesitant about this new haircut at
another lion an hour ago!’ first ... but it’s really growing on me. 

I couldn’t decide which mattress I should buy,

and the salesman told me to sleep on it.
A decisive answer Apparently there was a misunderstanding.

After his students had taken an examination, a professor required
them to sign a statement to indicate that they had received no
outside assistance in answering the questions. One student admitted
to the professor that he was undecided as to whether he should sign
or not, adding that he had prayed for God’s help. The professor
carefully studied his answer paper and then said: ‘You can sign with a
clear conscience. God did not help you.’
Q There were once three frogs on a log, and
one of them made a decision to jump into
the pond. How many were left?
A Three. The frog only made a decision, he
took no action!

34 Issue 123 • July 2019 www.etprofessional.com


Indecision quotes
‘Indecision may or may not be my problem.’
Jimmy Buffet
‘The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the
terror of indecision.’ Maimonides
‘Comfort for me: Once Dwight Eisenhower makes
up his mind, he’s full of indecision.’ Oscar Levant
‘Be decisive! Right or wrong, make a decision.
The road of life is paved with flat squirrels who
couldn’t make a decision.’ Anonymous
A test of decisiveness
A trainee police officer was presented with the following scenario:
Out on patrol, you hear a loud bang nearby. On investigation, you come across
two vehicles that have collided in the middle of the road. In one vehicle, you
recognise the wife of a superior officer with a man whom you know is not her
husband – there is a very strong smell of alcohol. You realise that the driver of the
other car is a man who is wanted for a violent armed robbery. Trapped behind
these cars is an ambulance desperately trying to get someone to hospital. On top
of this, there is a cyclist who was knocked over in the crash and can’t get up.
What would you do?
The trainee thought for a moment, then wrote: ‘I would remove my uniform and
mingle with the crowd!’

Treacherous turtles
Three turtles decided to go on a picnic
together.
One turtle packed sandwiches, another
provided the drinks, and the third one
simply came along for company. As
the turtles headed off into the woods,
about halfway to their destination it started to rain, so they
took shelter under a large rock and began talking among themselves.
The first two turtles turned to the third and said: ‘Look, we made the
sandwiches, we made the drinks, you brought nothing, so you should be
the one to go home and get the umbrellas. Get some umbrellas, come
back here, we’ll go on into the woods and we’ll have our picnic.’
The third turtle said: ‘You must be joking. As soon as I’m around the
corner, you’re going to eat the food, you’re going to drink the drinks, and
when I come back with the umbrellas there will be nothing left.’
The first two turtles said: ‘We will do no such thing.’
The third turtle said: ‘You absolutely will. There’s no way I’m doing
that.’ Eventually, the first two turtles swore on their shells that they
would not eat the sandwiches or drink the drinks until the third turtle
came back with the umbrellas.
So the third turtle left. Minutes went by. Minutes became hours, hours
became days. The turtles couldn’t decide what to do. On the tenth day, the
first turtle said to the second turtle, ‘OK, how about it, why don’t we just eat
the sandwiches and drink the drinks?’ As soon as the first turtle said this, a
voice from behind a rock said, ‘If you do, I won’t get the umbrellas!’
Decisions, decisions
Here are some tests on your decision-making, which you might
like to discuss with your students:
Would you rather lose the ability to read or lose the ability to speak?
Would you rather be covered in fur or covered in scales?
Would you rather be in jail for a year or lose a year off your life?
Would you rather always be ten minutes late or always be twenty
minutes early?
You can download a worksheet with more questions on decisions
from the ETp website at www.etprofessional.com/
media/33204/etp123_decisiondecision_ianwaringgreen.pdf.
Why we make better
decisions in the morning
Apparently, the time of day affects our brain’s decision-making
process. According to Baba Shiv, an expert in neuroeconomics,
we should make more of our decisions in the morning, which is
when the amount of the chemical serotonin in our brains is at a
natural high. Shiv says this is a good thing because high
serotonin levels calm the brain and cause us to feel less
risk-averse, so we can take risks and make harder choices.
Later in the day, our serotonin levels start to decline, and we fall
into a state where we don’t want to make decisions at all. During
the afternoon, Shiv says it’s common to postpone decisions.
I would vouch for that, with one exception – the decision to
have a refreshing period of peace and quiet, in order to do some
serious procrastination, sometimes accompanied by a short
siesta, is an easy one!

A bad decision
Over 1,000 years ago, Louis III ruled West Francia
for three short years – a brief reign marked by
considerable military success. In matters of war,
his decision-making was excellent; in matters of
love, it was somewhat less so:
One day, the king caught sight of a beautiful
woman, and he decided to pursue her. He
chased after her on horseback, but in his
enthusiasm he failed to look where he was going.
As a result, he omitted to notice that a gateway
through which she had gone was shorter than the
combined height of himself and his horse. The
resulting collision between the lintel and the royal
skull ended in his untimely death!
Left or right?
Did you know that we store numbers in different parts of our brains,
depending on how big the numbers are? We actually store bigger
numbers on the right and smaller numbers on the left. The strange
thing is, leaning our body towards one side or the other can
influence our decisions when we’re trying to estimate numbers.
An experiment conducted at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University in the Netherlands to test this
idea involved getting the participants to stand on a Wii board while answering questions
involving estimating numbers. Although the Wii screen indicated to them that their posture
was straight the whole time, some of the participants were made to lean slightly to one side
by the board they were standing on. The researchers didn’t notice any significant
differences in their powers of estimation when the participants leaned right or stood up
straight, but when they leaned left, they more often chose smaller estimates than otherwise.
That makes the expression ‘leaning towards a particular answer’ have a different ring …

Scrapbook compiled by Ian Waring Green

www.etprofessional.com Issue 123 • July 2019 35
Here is a photocopiable worksheet with a story involving the unexpected and unpredictable consequences of
a decision. Make a copy for each pair of students in the class and ask them to do the first activity.
For the second activity, give them the answer to the question:
If the couple had remained on the bus instead of deciding to get off, the resulting time delay could have been
avoided and the rock would have fallen after the bus had passed.
Encourage discussion of any decisions your students have made that have had bigger consequences, but allow
them to keep to trivial matters if they feel more comfortable discussing these.

The bus stop

1 Working in pairs, read the following story and discuss the question at the end. Make a note of your
answers and then join another pair and compare your thoughts.
 nce, there was a young couple
O
who were very much in love. They
were on their honeymoon and
travelling on a bus in a beautiful
mountainous area. They decided
to get off the bus at a particular
stop, in order to admire the view
and take some photographs. So
they pressed the button for the
bus to stop. After the couple had
got off, the bus started to move
away from the bus stop, but at
that moment, a huge rock rolled
down the side of the mountain,
landed on top of the bus and
crushed it. Everybody on board
was killed.
 he couple, upon seeing what had
T
happened, said,
‘We wish we were on that bus.’
Why did they say that?

2 Your teacher will tell you the answer to the question at the end of the story. Discuss your reactions
with a partner and say how you think the young couple felt. Were they right to feel like this?

3 Can you think of a time when you made a small decision that had much bigger consequences?
Tell a partner about it. Think about these points:
■■ Are we always responsible for the consequences of our decisions?
■■ How much do we consider the consequences of each decision we make?
■■ Is it reasonable to feel guilty about something bad that we couldn’t predict would happen?

36 Issue 123 • July 2019 www.etprofessional.com


Breadth
versus
depth
T
Miao Li hose who haven’t yet joined the race to
learn English face being left behind.
believes a Research from the British Council suggests
two-pronged that the number of people learning English
attack on worldwide has exceeded one billion.
learning lexis Among them, there is definitely a large population
learning English as a foreign language in Asia.
is best. According to David Crystal, between 200 and 500
million people study English in China alone; thus, it
is crucial to understand English teaching and learning
in the context of Chinese schools, because the findings
could have important implications for EFL
instructional and assessment practices in general.
Two decades ago, a new English immersion
programme appeared in public schools in China from
kindergarten up to Grade 8 (around the age of 14).
The programme was modelled on the French
immersion programme in Canada, and the
underlying concept was to ensure that schools taught
non-language subjects in the target foreign language
– similar to content-based language teaching (CBLT)
and content and language integrated teaching
(CLIL). Between 30 and 40 percent of the curriculum
is taught in English, including English language,
www.etprofessional.com
VOCABULARY
social studies and science. The other 60 to 70 percent
is taught in Chinese, including key subjects such as
mathematics and, of course, Chinese itself. Other
subjects, like physical education, art and music, are
taught in either Chinese or English, depending on
teacher availability. All English teachers are native
Chinese speakers and have a certificate or diploma in
teaching English.
Research results
Recently, the China-Canada-USA English
Immersion Collaborative Project (CCUEI)
evaluated the English-immersion programme in
China, specifically concentrating on Grade 8. I
served on their evaluation committee. We assessed
around 250 students’ academic achievement and
cognitive skills in both English and Chinese.
In this article, I want to focus on the relationship I
observed between English vocabulary and reading,
and discuss how this might inform classroom teaching.
The findings from the evaluation project
demonstrate the importance of vocabulary in
reading comprehension for Chinese English-
Issue 123 • July 2019 37
VOCABULARY
immersion students. However, different aspects of vocabulary
are associated with varying elements of reading
comprehension. Vocabulary breadth, ie how many words
a student knows, is closely related to their general
understanding when reading. In contrast, vocabulary depth,
ie how well a student knows a word, taps into inferential
and deep cognitive processing. Therefore, different levels of
reading comprehension are reliant on these two different
dimensions of vocabulary knowledge.
Teaching vocabulary in an EFL context
The research raises a question: how can we teach vocabulary
effectively to English-immersion students in China? EFL
learners clearly need to begin with relatively superficial
knowledge about new words (breadth), but the sooner depth
can be added, the better. Developing depth may appear more
challenging in EFL learners because of their lack of exposure
to the foreign language in daily life. Educators in the classroom
need to accept and address this challenge.
Keep in mind: there are many voices promoting solutions.
In a monolingual English reading class, Andrew Biemiller and
his colleagues Catherine Boote and Naomi Slonim suggested
a wide but shallow approach to vocabulary instruction that
favours direct teaching of many words without targeting
deeper knowledge. In contrast, Isabel Beck and her colleagues
Margaret McKeown and Linda Kucan indicated the need for
a deep but narrow approach to vocabulary instruction that
goes beyond establishing a definition for a word, developing
complex, in-depth knowledge about the words being taught.
Furthermore, Peter Bowers and John Kirby proposed a deep
and wide approach by advocating the teaching of morphology,
arguing that once roots/bases are known, vocabulary
knowledge can grow productively around these kernels by the
addition of affixes.
In English-immersion classes in China, where English is
rarely encountered outside school, vocabulary instruction
should be paid even more attention. The students’ access to
environments where English is used is, naturally, more
limited than that of students in English-speaking countries.
Basic terms, phrases and high-frequency words, which may
not need to be taught to students exposed to native English-
speaking environments, may have to be taught in class to
EFL students in China, given that their chance of
encountering even these words outside English classes
is low. Deliberate teaching of vocabulary may be the most
effective way to enlarge their vocabulary and raise their
awareness of particular words.
Teaching morphology
Although this may seem like common sense, my observations
of English-immersion classes in one middle school in China
revealed that most teachers favour spoken English and group
discussion, rather than systematic and explicit vocabulary
teaching. Such an approach has also been observed in North
American reading classes. When I discussed this with the
English-immersion teachers, they indicated that it was the
student’s responsibility to learn vocabulary on their own before
38 Issue 123 • July 2019
class. Perhaps there is a misconception among teachers that
teaching vocabulary is an outdated method and that they
should, instead, focus on subject content and conversational
English. However, if the students do not accumulate adequate
vocabulary knowledge, how can they build up the foundations
necessary to learn other skills?
Our research suggests that Chinese EFL students need
explicit vocabulary instruction as part of the classroom
curriculum to prevent some of their reading comprehension
difficulties, and that this vocabulary instruction must address
both breadth and depth.
Students clearly need to begin with relatively superficial
knowledge about large numbers of new words (breadth).
Depth can then be introduced through morphology
instruction. Once the students acquire the roots/bases, adding
different affixes enlarges their vocabulary. Depth subsequently
complements breadth. When the students know more words,
they develop a matrix of word relationships, which builds
semantic links to other words. As a result, they gain rich
understanding from these dimensions. Furthermore, depth is
developed by teaching multiple meanings and various usages.
Studies that provide rich and deep vocabulary instruction
show increases in both accuracy of word knowledge and
comprehension of texts containing the target words.
t t t
The bottom line is this: both breadth and depth of vocabulary
contribute to reading comprehension. Deeper processing of text
may require vocabulary depth, whereas general understanding of
text may rely more on vocabulary breadth. Ideally, EFL teachers
should target both in their reading classes. n
Crystal, D The Future of Language Routledge 2009
Beck, I L and McKeown, M G ‘Learning words well – a program to
enhance vocabulary and comprehension’ The Reading Teacher 36 1983
Beck, I L, McKeown, M G and Kucan, L Bringing Words to Life:
Robust Vocabulary Instruction Guilford Press 2002
Biemiller, A and Boote, C ‘An effective method for building vocabulary
in primary grades’ Journal of Educational Psychology 98 2006
Biemiller, A and Slonim, N ‘Estimating root word vocabulary growth in
normative and advantaged populations: evidence for a common
sequence of vocabulary acquisition’ Journal of Educational
Psychology 93 2001
Bowers, P N and Kirby, J R ‘Effects of morphological instruction on
vocabulary acquisition’ Reading and Writing 23 2010
Miao Li is an Assistant Professor in the
Bilingual Education Program at the College
of Education, University of Houston, USA.
Her research interests include learning to
read, language and literacy skills in
bilingual children, and reading intervention
for struggling readers.
mli33@Central.UH.EDU
www.etprofessional.com

Are you
listening?
Jamie Clayton launches an extensive listening project with his students.
F
or students who struggle with reading, teachers can
recommend graded readers and the practice of
Extensive Reading (ER) to help develop their skills
outside the classroom. For students who struggle
with listening (so basically all students), teachers can
recommend websites and YouTube channels. However, it
seems to me that it is difficult to actually get students to build
a listening habit outside the classroom by listening
consistently and extensively to English.
While ER may be about getting the students to read easily
comprehensible and enjoyable material in order to build their
reading fluency and their implicit knowledge of English, Extensive
Listening (EL) differs mainly for a practical reason: there are
fewer graded listening resources out there for students to use.
However, the fact that graded listening texts are harder to
come by should not put teachers off getting their students to
listen extensively.
Students doing what we call EL should be aware that the
purpose is not to understand every word, but simply, as John
Field asserts, to get a general understanding of what is being
said and gain exposure to large amounts of spoken English.
Why is EL important?
Willy Renandya and Thomas Farrell tell us that there is too
much emphasis on teaching listening strategies, when what
students really need is to listen – a lot – and EL is the best way
to achieve this.
EL can:
■■ improve listening processing speed and accuracy;
■■ build confidence in listening, by convincing the students that
understanding every word is not always essential;
■■ foster a listening habit and increase learner autonomy;
■■ give the students exposure to a range of accents, native and
non-native;
■■ provide interesting content and ideas to build the students’
general knowledge;
■■ help the students learn new vocabulary;
■■ provide a platform for classroom speaking activities.
Research
There is not a lot written about EL in the ‘go-to’ ELT
methodology books. When it does appear, it tends to have a
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SKILLS
small section dedicated to it, briefly outlining what it is and how
you might implement it.
EL is also sparsely written about in academic journals.
Interestingly, all the articles I could find related to it in the ELT
Journal are from 2011 and later. Clearly, EL is a relatively
recent and under-researched phenomenon.
Despite the paucity of information about EL, I was able to
find some useful teaching tips that I took forward into a project
in which I aimed to increase my students’ use of EL:
1 Meredith Stephens and Anna C-S Chang and Sonia Millett
suggest that students who read and listen simultaneously to
graded readers and then finish the cycle by listening again
without reading make significant progress in listening.
Practical implication: First, the students listen to their
chosen video or audio with subtitles. Then the second
listening is without subtitles. This insight affects the EL
procedure I was proposing to suggest to my students, as
well as the selection of listening resources I shared with
them, to the effect that all of them needed to have the
option of subtitles.
2 Nicola Galloway and Heath Rose set up listening journals
with Japanese students, with a focus on listening to global
Englishes and ELF.
Practical implication: I decided to consider having EL links
for students that contain ELF/global Englishes (Reuters
Video and the Speech Accent Archive are recommended
resources).
3 Anthony Schmidt outlines an experiment he undertook with his
students, using listening journals.
Practical implication: This proved helpful when planning my
own EL trial, particularly when designing the EL table that
I used with my students.
4 Nathan Hall has a blog post in which he has curated listening
websites for students.
Practical implication: The listening material that I provided
for my students was adapted from his compilation.
An EL project
Day 1
I set up the EL project in the first week of term with a pre-
intermediate class of 16 university students who studied four
hours a day, Monday to Friday.
Issue 123 • July 2019 39
SKILLS

I took my students to a computer room and:
■■ explained what EL is;
■■ provided a rationale for doing it;
■■ shared listening links for doing EL;
■■ explained what I wanted them to do.
What I wanted them to do was to listen to or watch
one audio/video recording every night, complete an
EL table (see below), and bring this table to class
every day. I told them that at the start of each lesson
there would be five minutes set aside for group
discussion in which they would share and discuss
what they had listened to the previous night.
Getting the students to complete an EL table
would provide evidence of the work that they did
each night. I showed them an example of a
completed table done by me, so that they had an
idea of what to include and in how much detail.
You can see this in Figure 1.
I told the students that every night they would
draw and complete a new EL table in their class
notebooks. Drawing the tables is easy enough, and I
told them they did not need to use a ruler. Having
their EL table drawn in their class notebooks helped
avoid students coming to class and claiming they
had left their EL table at home.
The EL table
The first parts of the table are self-explanatory – the
students write the video title and a short summary
of the content.

My response
This is the part of the EL table where the students
react personally to what they have listened to. In
this section, I suggested they could write about any
of the following:
■■ Their opinion of the video.
■■ Question(s) about the video.
■■ Questions for someone in the video.
■■ Difficult things about this listening.
■■ What they thought about the speaker’s accent.
■■ Connections to another video, article or text they
have read or watched.
If they wanted, they could draw a picture to
Figure 1 Example of a completed EL table represent the video.

Vocabulary
Depending on the level of your students, your
expectations and the amount of help they will need
in recording vocabulary will differ. I told my
pre-intermediate class that simply writing an
unknown English word – and nothing else – in this
section of the table was not helpful, and then I gave
them some suggestions for other lexical information
they could include:
■■ word family
■■ translation
■■ pronunciation
■■ collocations
■■ a personal example sentence

Listening links
I then shared a document (see Figure 2) containing
a selection of links, arranged by topic:
■■ Educational
■■ Academic

■■ News

■■ Opinion

Figure 2 Part of the Listening links table ■■ Cinema

40 Issue 123 • July 2019 www.etprofessional.com

 SKILLS

Each listening resource had a small text, explaining

what kind of listening the students would find
there. For each link, information about the accent
type (UK, US, international, mixed), as well as
typical video length (< 2 minutes; < 5 minutes;
< 15 minutes; >15 minutes) was included.
I then clicked on a couple of the links in class
to give the students a taste of what they could
find there. It is important to choose links that
have interesting-looking titles and/or images on
the website home page, as this helps to increase
student buy-in.

Ready to go
The final stage of the set-up was to remind the
students of the procedure for how EL was going to
work during the term:
1 Every night, pick a video to watch.
2 Make sure you can generally understand most of
the listening. If you can’t, pick another one. Figure 3 Student’s EL table for a video about citrus fruit
3 Listen once WITH SUBTITLES.
4 Listen again WITHOUT SUBTITLES.
5 Don’t worry if you can’t understand everything.
6 Complete an EL table in your notebook.
7 Bring your EL table to class.
8 Share and discuss your videos in small groups.
I shared the procedure with everyone in the class via
email, and then asked them to spend the rest of the
class time finding a video to watch and completing
their first EL in their notebooks.

Days 2 to 5
Roughly 60 percent of the students had done their
EL homework and completed an EL table on the
day after the set-up. These students discussed their
EL together in groups of three or four at the start of
the lesson. Those who had not done anything
listened and looked around awkwardly.
I decided I needed to keep track of who was
doing their EL. Not only would this be helpful for
my own records, but I had a suspicion that if the
students knew their EL work was being tracked, it
would encourage more of them to take it seriously
and do it. This hunch was correct.
I created a simple spreadsheet, writing a figure 1
next to the name of each student who came to class
with a completed EL table, and a 0 next to those that
had done nothing. The results were instant. I
projected the EL tracker on the screen in class on
Day 3 of the project. It caught the students’ attention
and concerned glances shot around the room.
Days 4 and 5 saw 100 percent of the students
coming to class with a complete EL table. Although
this level of participation was not sustained for the
duration of the course, I was satisfied with the results.
Figure 4 Student’s EL table for a video about retirement
I then let the project run for the rest of the
course, setting EL as homework (along with the
other out-of-class work and assessment) every day,
and running a discussion session every morning.
Results
My class of 16 students produced 334 EL tables
over a six-week period.
On average, the students completed just under 21
EL tables each, out of a maximum possible of 30.
Informal feedback I collected from the students
at the end of the project was very positive, with
most saying they enjoyed doing EL and that it
helped to improve their listening ability, and with
some also claiming they would continue to do EL
in the future. These subjective comments should,
of course, be taken with a pinch of salt.
Figures 3 and 4 show examples of the kind of
work the students produced each day.

www.etprofessional.com Issue 123 • July 2019 41

SKILLS
Tweaks and tips for a
successful EL project
Throughout the project, I made various changes
and picked up some useful techniques for helping to
make it successful:
1 Monitor and show interest
While the students are discussing their previous
night’s EL, it is good to walk around and listen to
their conversations, even asking questions
occasionally. This not only shows them that you are
interested in what they listened to, it also lets
individuals know that you could ask them a
question about their video at any point, so they
need to be prepared to answer.
2 Be enthusiastic and don’t let the
project die
As a teacher, you need to create the initial EL
buy-in. So be enthusiastic in the set-up, and make
the discussion a prominent and consistent part of
each class. You can point out particularly good
examples of EL tables. This shows the students that
you value the work they are doing. I like to put
music on in the background during the EL
discussions. This became something of a ritual, so
my students knew that when the music came on, it
was EL discussion time. Be sure to run the EL
discussions every day, without fail.
3 Sometimes have a warmer before
EL sharing
The EL classroom discussions are important, but
they do not have to be the first thing you do in
class. I found that an EL discussion was not
always the best way to begin a lesson. My advice
is to have an energising warmer before you have
EL sharing.
4 Beware of deception
I noticed that one week during the class
discussions, one particular student was just getting
out the same EL table every day. He was not doing
a new one every day. It took me a few days to
realise what was going on. So be vigilant, and call
students out on it if you see it. A word in their ear
usually puts a stop to this kind of behaviour.
Again, if the students see that you care, they will
adjust their behaviour.
5 Beware of low-quality responses
As the project progressed, some of my students were
writing very limited responses in the ‘My response’
section of their EL tables. Some would simply write,
‘I like this video’ or ‘I agree with the video’. To
counter this, I arranged a short follow-up session in
the computer lab in Week 3, in which I ran through
the kinds of things I was expecting the students to
write for their response.
42 Issue 123 • July 2019
6 Tweak your activity
EL homework and in-class discussions have the
potential to get a bit repetitive and uninspiring.
There are few simple changes you can make to the
procedure to counter this:
■■ Set a particular video for everyone to watch from
time to time. That way, the class discussions may
have a more interesting dimension, as the students
can discuss their opinions about the same video,
rather than each person giving their own opinion
about a different video.
■■ Tell the students to pick a topic of interest one week,
and to only watch videos related to that topic during
the week. This is a form of ‘narrow listening’, an
activity that Renandya and Farrell suggest.
■■ Tell the students to re-watch a video that they
have already seen one evening. This is an example
of ‘repeat listening’, another technique
recommended by Renandya and Farrell.
t t t
EL proved to be a good element to add into my
course. It provided the students with more listening
practice than they would usually get, the majority
of which was from authentic sources. They learnt
some extra vocabulary and discovered interesting
facts and topics that they would otherwise not have
encountered. EL also provided an in-class speaking
activity in every lesson.
Whether or not EL is a key factor in improving
student listening ability is another issue that requires
further and more stringent research. n
Chang, C-S and Millett, S ‘The effect of extensive
listening on developing L2 listening fluency: some hard
evidence’ ELTJ 68 (1) 2014
Field, J Listening in the Language Classroom CUP 2009
Galloway, N and Rose, H ‘Using listening journals to raise
awareness of Global Englishes in ELT’ ELTJ 68 (4) 2014
Hall, N https://nathanghall.wordpress.com/elt-listening-
material/
Renandya, W A and Farrell, T S C ‘“Teacher, the tape is
too fast!” Extensive listening in ELT’ ELTJ 65 (1) 2011
Schmidt, A ‘Listening journals for extensive and intensive
listening practice’ americanenglish.state.gov/english-
teaching-forum 2016
Stephens, M ‘The primacy of extensive listening’ ELTJ 65
(3) 2011
Jamie Clayton works in
Saigon at RMIT Vietnam,
where he plans, teaches,
examines, marks, reads, writes
... and tries to help his
students improve their English
and enjoy the language.
Jamie.clayton@rmit.edu.vn
www.etprofessional.com

I
n this article, I’m going to introduce ‘halfalogues’, explaining
what they are and showing how they’re perfect for use in the
English language classroom.
What is a ‘halfalogue’?
A ‘halfalogue’, simply defined, is half of a dialogue. If
you’ve ever been in an airport or on a bus and heard only half
of a conversation, you have experienced a halfalogue.
An article by Ferris Jabr in Scientific American magazine
titled ‘Cell bound: why it is hard to ignore public mobile phone
conversations’ describes how halfalogues capture and maintain
our attention. The fact that we can’t hear the other speaker
raises our interest in the ongoing conversation. We start to
speculate and theorise about what the other person might be
saying. As Jabr puts it: ‘The less information we glean from a
conversation, the harder our brains work to make sense of what
we hear, and the more difficult it is to stop listening.’
One intriguing term used in the research on halfalogues, as
reported by Jonah Lehrer, is information gap, which refers to
the incomplete information that compels us to try to piece
together what the person on the other end is saying. If the
person we’re listening to is somewhat taciturn, the information
gap becomes greater, and the eavesdropper must work harder to
close the gap. Although this information gap is not exactly
what ELT practitioners mean by ‘information gap’, both types
of gaps can increase student involvement and engagement.
As you are about to learn, halfalogue activities hook the
students with an incomplete listening text that engages their
curiosity. The students then have to transform what they hear
into a dialogue, through writing and, ultimately, speaking.
In the next section of this article, I want to share with you
some different ways of using halfalogues with your class.
A basic halfalogue
One of the best ways to present a halfalogue is to stand in front
of the class with your phone and act out a conversation yourself:
www.etprofessional.com
IN THE CLASSROOM
Making
‘halfalogues’
whole
Hall Houston gets his students to eavesdrop.
1 Before class, you must prepare what you are going to say in
your half of the conversation. Ideally, you should use a
broad range of utterances (questions, answers, short phrases,
etc), so that it sounds natural. Be sure to include an
assortment of useful expressions and functions such as:
■■ greeting an old friend (Hey, Margaret! I haven’t seen you
for ages!)
■■ changing the subject (Well, anyway …, Moving on …)
■■ asking for clarification (Sorry, I’m not sure I understand.)
■■ disagreeing politely (That’s a good point, but I’m not sure
I see it that way.)
■■ responding appropriately to good news (Congratulations!)
and bad news (I’m so sorry to hear that.)
■■ making an invitation (Would you like to meet for coffee
on Friday?)
In addition, I strongly recommend that you look over the
dialogues in your coursebook, and find some expressions that
the students might need more practice with.
2 Create a worksheet with a transcript for your class, leaving
lots of blank space between the utterances for them to write
out the other side of the conversation.
3 Practise your lines a few times, so that you are not reading
directly from your script. Think about how you can use your
voice to make the halfalogue more dramatic.
4 In class, tell your students that you are going to have a short
conversation on the phone, and ask them to imagine what the
other person might be saying. After the first performance,
write these questions on the board:
■■ What is the topic of the conversation?
■■ What is the relationship between the two people?
How would you describe the conversation (an argument,
■■
complaining about work, making a reservation)?
■■ What else can you say about the conversation?
Issue 123 • July 2019 43
IN THE CLASSROOM
5 Act out the halfalogue again, and then call on the students to
answer the questions on the board.
6 Then, put them into pairs and give each pair a copy of the
worksheet. Tell them to complete the dialogue with their own
ideas. Once everyone has finished writing, tell them to
practise the dialogue.
7 Bring things to an end by asking a few pairs to read out their
dialogue to the class.
Variations on a theme
I’d also like to suggest several variations on the halfalogue
theme. The following activities follow the same format as above,
with a few slight changes:
Chunks review
Prepare a list of language chunks taught in previous lessons.
Tell the students that they need to incorporate at least five
chunks from this list as they write out their half of the
halfalogue.
Bare bones halfalogue
Give each student a worksheet with only the first and last
utterances of the halfalogue. They must complete the dialogue,
but adding both speakers’ contributions.
Good listener halfalogue
Prepare a halfalogue for your students where the person they
hear speaking does a lot to support the other speaker, using
backchannel, follow-up questions, paraphrases and other
indications that they are listening carefully.
Translated halfalogue
Perform a halfalogue for the class in the students’ L1. Ask them
to translate it, and then transform it into a dialogue.
Spontaneous halfalogue
Bring in a photo of someone talking on a phone, and show it to
the class. Work together with the students to brainstorm a
situation for a halfalogue. Ask them these questions:
■■ Who is this person?
■■ Who is this person talking to?
■■ What is their relationship?
■■ What’s the mood of the person on the phone?
■■ What adjectives might describe the conversation (flirtatious,
bored, angry, etc)?
Once these questions are answered, ask for a volunteer to create
the first line uttered by the person in the picture. Draw a blank
beneath it, and ask another student to give you the next line.
Continue until the board has five or six turns for each person.
Next, you (or another volunteer) can perform the halfalogue
for the class. The next step is to put the students into pairs to
create the entire dialogue.
Variations on variations
The following are a number of suggestions that involve slightly
more preparation, but are definitely worth the effort:
44 Issue 123 • July 2019
Student-generated halfalogue
Before class, prepare a number of small pictures of different
people. You should have at least two pictures for each student in
the class. In class, give each student a picture, and tell them to
write half of a phone conversation on their paper, leaving blanks
for the other person’s response. (You might need to show them
an example on the board.) When everyone has finished writing,
instruct them to swap pages with another student. Give each
student another picture, and tell them to write this person’s
response to the first person’s words. Finally, you can put the
students into pairs to perform one or both dialogues.
Celebrity interview
Before class, find a celebrity interview (either print or video), where
a famous person answers a series of questions. In class, display a
picture of the famous person. Ask the class what they know about
him or her. Next, dictate a few questions from the interview, and
ask the students to copy them on their own paper. Tell them to
guess how the famous person would answer these questions, and
write their answers down. After that, have the students share their
answers in pairs. Invite two students to roleplay the interview in
front of the class. (Recommended sources for interviews on
YouTube – Time Magazine’s series ‘10 Questions’, Seventeen’s
series ‘17 Questions’, or Vogue’s ‘73 Questions’.)
Video halfalogue
Before class, find a short scene from a movie, sitcom or soap
opera, containing a dialogue that you think the class will find
engaging. Edit the video so that only one person’s lines are
audible. Ask the students to write down what they hear, and
also what they think the other person might say in response.
Get them to compare their answers in pairs. Finally, show them
the complete, unedited dialogue.
t t t
A final tip for the end of this article: get your students
involved. Ask one of your more enthusiastic students to
prepare a halfalogue for the class. They can perform it live
for the class, or even make a video of the halfalogue on their
smartphone. However, the student may need to borrow a
friend’s phone as a prop for the video. n
Jabr, F ‘Cell bound: why it is hard to ignore public mobile phone
conversations’ Scientific American (www.scientificamerican.com/
article/cell-phone-annoying) 2010
Lehrer, J ‘The science of eavesdropping’ Wired (www.wired.
com/2010/09/the-science-of-eavesdropping) 2010
Hall Houston teaches undergraduate students
at National Taipei University of Nursing and
Health Sciences in Taiwan. He is also a teacher
trainer for Cambridge English. His books include
Provoking Thought, Brainstorming and Creative
Output.
hallhouston@yahoo.com
www.etprofessional.com

Effective
classroom
management
Reham Mohsen and Nick Baguley consider the challenges faced on pre-service teacher
training courses and ideas for overcoming them.
D
uring the first couple of assessed lessons on many
pre-service training courses, such as the Certificate in
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
(CELTA) and the Trinity TESOL, participants often
experience similar kinds of classroom management
issues, related to managing whole-class feedback, giving clear
instructions and teacher talk. Outlined in this article are five such
challenges, with practical suggestions for how to overcome them.
1 Echoing the students’ answers
Teachers often repeat what their students say to them when
managing whole-class feedback. The answers given are usually
loud enough and linguistically accurate. However, teachers
simply ‘echo’ what has been said, which has no real value for the
speaker. Moreover, if a teacher is known to ‘echo’, some students
may lose interest in listening to their classmates, knowing that
the teacher will automatically repeat what they have said anyway.
Solutions
Firstly, consider why you ‘echo’ the students. For example, some
teachers repeat the students’ answers as a way of expressing
interest. However, to avoid simply ‘echoing’, prepare a list of short
responses to use in class which react to meaning. For example,
That’s an interesting idea, What makes you think that? or Could you
give us an example? As you are listening to a student’s answer,
choose a response and repeat it three times in your mind (see
below). When the student finishes, give your response.
Alternatively, as the student is speaking, gently place the
forefinger of your right hand over your lips. This will remind
you not to respond immediately and will provide some
valuable thinking time.
Why it works
‘Echoing’ is a spontaneous way of reacting to what students
say. However, simply repeating a student’s answer does not
focus on meaning. Short responses, like the ones mentioned
above, provide a more natural and engaging way of responding
to students’ answers. When you repeat them in your head before
using them, you mentally rehearse your reactions to the
students’ ideas. You also prepare your mind to focus on the
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TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
exact words you want to respond with. Therefore, when the
time comes for you to react, you will have the words on the tip
of your tongue. Alternatively, simply placing the forefinger of
your right hand over your lips as a student is speaking provides
a sensory reminder to avoid echoing.
2M
 oving around during whole-class
feedback
When managing whole-class feedback, teachers often find it
difficult to remain in a central position. To show interest and be
sure about what will be said, they naturally move towards the
speaker. This can lead to several issues. For example, if a
teacher walks up to the student nominated to speak, it is highly
likely that this student’s voice will not be loud enough for the
rest of the class to hear. In addition, if a teacher is standing
directly in front of a student during whole-class feedback, it is
quite possible that they will have their back to most of the
other students.
Solutions
Consider putting something on the floor, and use this as your
‘mark’ or an imaginary barrier. The mark might be a drawing
pin or a board marker laid out horizontally on the floor.
Alternatively, simply sit down in a position visible to all the
students whilst leading whole-class feedback.
Another option is to stand behind a centrally-located chair
with your hands resting on its back. This forms a real obstacle
to movement, ensuring that you remain anchored.
Why it works
The idea of a mark on the floor is very similar to what
presenters do on TV. It helps them to remain anchored to a
central spot, which is especially important when in front of a
camera. Having something more concrete on the floor, such as
a board marker, enables a teacher to visualise a barrier which
should not be crossed. A chair is a much more physical kind of
barrier, and standing behind it makes it very difficult to move
towards a student. Finally, sitting down is a very natural way of
leading whole-class feedback and it reduces the temptation to
move around during this stage of a lesson.
Issue 123 • July 2019 45
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
3 Pointing at students
When managing whole-class feedback, some teachers
nominate students by pointing at them with their index
finger. Whilst we appreciate that, culturally, this may not be
a big issue in some countries, it can be perceived as
inappropriate in other contexts. It is generally recognised
that nominating a student to speak by using their name and
an open palm is preferable.
Solution
Place a rubber band around your fingers near the knuckles
but excluding the thumb.
Why it works
The rubber band is both a visual and sensory reminder to
avoid pointing at students with your index finger, and
prompts nominating with an open palm. Do not worry
about looking awkward in class with a rubber band around
your fingers. A thin, flesh-coloured elastic band will be too
subtle for anyone to notice.
4 Forgetting key instructions
Despite hours of lesson planning and preparation, teachers
often forget to recall all the instructions needed to set up an
activity. Even if they remember most of the details, a key
element can be missed, which has a serious impact on the
usefulness of the task.
Solution
Prior to any lesson, do not focus exclusively on simply
reading your instructions. Instead, practise recalling them
and repeating them to yourself with a specific focus on the
key elements. For example, when setting up a gist reading
task, it is important to provide a time limit for the students,
which will help develop their skimming skills. However, this
detail can be forgotten. Therefore, before the lesson, spend a
few moments repeating the key part of this instruction in
your mind as follows: ‘Two minutes, two minutes, two
minutes. You have two minutes.’
Another example might be when setting up an information-
gap activity in which each student has a picture of a street
scene. Working in pairs, the students have to ask and answer
questions to find ten differences between their pictures.
However, the task depends on the students not looking at their
partner’s picture. So, it might be useful to repeat the following
in your mind just before class: ‘Your picture, your picture, your
picture. Don’t show your picture.’
Why it works
According to Gabriel Wyner, author of Fluent Forever,
reading anything repeatedly will make you efficient only at
reading it. In order to remember an instruction, you need to
practise recalling it from memory, while focusing on the most
crucial element. By recalling and repeating the most
important part of any instruction, you consolidate it in your
mind. Remember that instructions should be short and simple
for this method to work.
46 Issue 123 • July 2019
5S
 peaking at inappropriate speed or
volume
It is common for those starting a pre-service teacher training
course to speak too quickly, too loudly or too quietly during
their initial lessons. This can stem, in part, from nerves. It may
also be the result of having previously worked with large classes
of noisy children!
Solution
One popular option is to stick a personalised visual reminder
on the classroom door or wall, within easy view. Pictures of a
remote control or a megaphone can be useful. An alternative
visual might be that of a character (from a film, a TV series,
etc) who represents, from the teacher’s perspective, the concept
of speaking slower, louder or more quietly.
Another solution might be to simply write the words
Speak up! on a piece of A4 paper which you put on the
classroom door or wall.
Why it works
If the visual is clear and unambiguous, personally selected by
the teacher and easily seen throughout the lesson, it acts as a
constant reminder of the area being addressed. Indeed, when
the chosen picture works, it often becomes a constant
companion for that teacher throughout the course.
t t t
The classroom management challenges outlined above are
evident in many early lessons delivered by participants on
pre-service training courses. The suggested solutions are some
practical tips which the authors of this article have used,
observed or discussed. Undoubtedly, there are many other
effective ways to address these issues. However, it is hoped that
the ideas presented will provide some useful options which
teachers, especially those who are about to start a CELTA or
Trinity TESOL course, can apply in their initial classes. n
Wyner, G Fluent Forever Harmony Books 2014
Reham Mohsen is a CELTA-certified
teacher. She holds two Bachelor’s degrees in
Applied Languages from the New Sorbonne
University in France and the French
University in Egypt. She has also worked as
a technical writer, translator and copy editor.
Reham.mohsen7@yahoo.fr
Nick Baguley is an Educational Consultant at
the British Council in Egypt. Since 1992, he
has worked as an EFL teacher, academic
manager and teacher trainer in several
countries. He is a CELTA Joint Chief Assessor.
nick.training@yahoo.co.uk
www.etprofessional.com

A walk
through
art and
technology
I
Tien Minh f you scan the QR code on this page, you will be
Mai creates able to watch a short YouTube clip which shows
how I transformed my classroom into a digital
a class-based museum, with copies of works of art, such as
museum. Salvador Dalí’s painting The Persistence of
Memory, Nick Ut’s photograph Napalm Girl and
Kristen Visbal’s sculpture Fearless Girl, displayed on
the walls, and information about each one made
available through QR codes.
I was inspired to carry out this transformation
after visiting Wat Umong, a jungle temple with a
complex series of tunnels, in Chang Mai, Thailand.
Not only was I impressed by the serenity of the
place at sunset, but also by how information about
the temple was effectively presented by means of a
QR code printed on a board, which linked to a
YouTube clip. This greatly enhanced the experience
for my family and me, as we were travelling without
a local guide. Picture 1 shows the QR code at Wat
Umong and the video to which it links.
I have been using a coursebook with a unit on
popular art, which requires the students to roleplay
a conversation about the beauty of art. Following
Picture 1: QR Code at Wat Umong and the linked YouTube video
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TECHNOLOGY
my experience at Wat Umong, and inspired by
Nicky Hockly’s description of a ‘QR gallery walk’
activity, I decided to transform our classroom into
a low-cost, digital museum.
The process
This article will walk you through the technical
process of transforming a classroom into a museum,
using QR creation and scanning tools. The
construction process for us took two days (four
lessons), with the learners taking on various roles
and tasks. The activity has several benefits:
■■ It promotes an appreciation of art, and
encourages the students to understand the artistic
value of influential works of art and the hidden
stories behind them, going beyond merely
marvelling at their price tags. I also hope that the
lesson will do what Peter Grundy, Hania Bociek
and Kevin Parker call ‘waking the sleeping giant’:
encouraging the students to express themselves
through art interpretation.
■■ It shows the students that museums can be
interactive, and encourages them to visit museum
exhibitions.
■■ It also helps with exam preparation, as describing
works of art is a common task in exams, such as
IELTS Speaking Part II.
Day 1, Session 1
At the very beginning of the activity, the students
take part in a fun ‘Describe and draw’ activity
involving famous works of art, before watching clips
of explanatory videos on YouTube.
I put the students in pairs: Student A and
Student B, and get all the Student As to sit with
their backs to the board. Next, I display one or two
Issue 123 • July 2019 47
TECHNOLOGY
famous pictures on the board for the Student Bs to
see, and tell them to describe them to their partners.
I instruct the Student As to sketch what their
partners are describing. Picture 2 shows sketches
done by my students of Michelangelo’s David and
Lunch Atop a Skyscraper by Charles Clyde Ebbets.
This playful lead-in activity creates a supportive,
non-threatening atmosphere which should remove
any negative connotations the students may have
regarding the difficulty of art appreciation.
Picture 2: Students’ sketches of David and Lunch Atop A Skyscraper
Picture 3: A poster for The Persistence of Memory
48 Issue 123 • July 2019
The next step is to familiarise the students with
the idea of having an audio/video presentation of
information about a work of art by getting them to
watch examples of explanatory videos.
Using QRstuff.com, I create QR codes that link to
YouTube videos which explain the stories behind the
works of art the students have been looking at. For
example, information about Michelangelo’s David
can be found at tinyurl.com/davidstatuepresentation,
and there is a video about Lunch Atop A Skyscraper
at tinyurl.com/lunchatop. I ask the students to use
a QR scanner to access the videos, and tell them
to write down five interesting facts. This step is
important, as it will teach students who are new
to QR codes about their usefulness.
Day 1, Session 2
Before class, I find and print out in colour a number
of reproductions or photos of famous works of art,
the number depending on the size of the class. It is
important to have a variety of works from different
ages and which are representative of different art
movements and art forms. I like to include anything
from pre-historic cave paintings to surrealist art.
I then send all the students outside the
classroom and scatter the pictures on the desks.
I invite the students to come back in and, working in
pairs, to select one picture that they like and for
which they will be responsible, finding information
about it to produce an explanatory video. I tell them
that they must get their information from at least
three sources apart from Wikipedia, and that they
should look for interesting stories which are
connected to the work of art they have selected.
I also remind the students that their video
explanations should not be longer than three minutes
and can include background music if they wish.
I assign the recording/filming, editing and
uploading of the videos to YouTube as homework.
I instruct the students to set their video guides to
‘Unlisted’ (this ensures that only people who have
a link to the video can view it) before creating a
QR code which will link to their video. I then tell
them to make and bring to class a poster which
consists of the QR code, a label with the title of
the work of art, a photo sticker of the presenter
and a picture of the artwork itself.
Picture 3 shows an example of a poster for Dalí’s
The Persistence of Memory.
I tell them when the exhibition day will be, and
remind them to bring earphones on that day.
Day 2, Session 1
Before the museum is opened and the students
become visitors to the exhibition, the works of art
need to be hung. I display the students’ posters in
order (either chronological order or by art
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 TECHNOLOGY

movement) on the walls of the classroom. I then ask

a volunteer to be the museum’s ticket officer. This
person collects a very small fee from the other
students (to encourage responsible viewing). The
fees can be used later to reward the best presenters.
I then send everybody outside and invite them
to buy a ticket at the door and then come back in.
I play appropriate background music to set the
mood. Each visitor to the museum is given a set of
sticky notes on which they can write their reactions
to what they see and their feedback on the audio/
video guides. Picture 4 shows a poster with feedback
on sticky notes attached.
Day 2, Session 2
In this session, the students go beyond simply
being visitors to the museum and become critics.
They are invited to reflect on their experience of
visiting the museum and to share it with the rest of
the class. I tell them that they can comment on
both the aesthetic and linguistic aspects of the
works of art and the audio guides. Questions I ask
to help them include:
■■ What works are ‘good’ art?
■■ Which is the most informative presentation?
■■ Which presentation has the most interesting stories?
■■ Which has the most useful commentary?
■■ Which presentation has the most beautiful
background music?
I keep the discussion open, as different students
have different perceptions of what constitutes
‘good’ art and ‘effective’ guides. Picture 4: Students’ feedback on Fearless Girl

t t t
The class exhibition can be extended to the whole
school by creating posters promoting the event.
Pictures and QR codes could be posted in different
areas of the school – for example, in the playground,
on the stairs, in the main hall, etc.
The confidence gained from creating an
exhibition for the whole school might even be the
starting point for the students to collaborate with a
local museum to create QR codes linking to English
videos, to enhance the experience for international
visitors. This is project-based learning at its best! n
 ien Minh Mai is a lecturer of
T ■■ Rubrics for art presentation and critics can be
English at Ho Chi Minh City
Open University, Vietnam,
where he is also a teacher
trainer in regional projects. His
professional interests include
digital literacy, online
professional development and
creative pedagogies.
tienmaielt@gmail.com
Resources
■■ QR codes can be generated in four easy steps at
www.qrstuff.com. In step 1, choose YouTube as the
data type. Skip step 3 (changing QR code colour) as
it requires a subscription.
■■ A good vocabulary list for describing works of art,
eg tone, texture, shape, contrast, movement, scale
and colour, can be found at tinyurl.com/describeart.
■■ There is a useful student worksheet (designed by
Sally Trowbridge – British Council) at tinyurl.com/
paintingsworksheet.
■■ My students’ video guides can be accessed at
tinyurl.com/openmuseumplaylist. They used different
free apps on their smartphones, including iMovie (iOS
devices) and VivaVideo (Android).
created at http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php.
■■ Promotional posters can be made at www.canva.com.
Grundy, P, Bociek, H and Parker, K English Through Art:
100 Activities to Develop Language Skills Helbling 2011
Hockly, N ETpedia Technology: 500 Ideas for Using
Technology in the English Language Classroom
Pavilion 2017

www.etprofessional.com Issue 123 • July 2019 49

TECHNOLOGY
High
five!
Frederick Gay looks at HTML5 players and recorders.
I
n today’s digital age, audio players and voice
and video recorders are highly accessible tools
for both learners and teachers. Their quality,
adaptability and usability have been drastically
improved by recent advances in technology.
This has also increased their pedagogical potential.
Recent advances
Internet audio players owe their improvement to the
development of HTML5. This is the most recent
version of the coding language that is used to
display web content, and it has facilitated the
creation and customisation of high-quality online
audio players, as well as voice and video recorders.
The main goal of HTML5 has been to standardise
website display across browsers and devices, and
hence the functionality of web content. Interactive
content is simple to create using HTML5 language.
This has reduced reliance on plugins such as Flash
and Java, which require high levels of computer
usage and need to be frequently updated.
The benefits of HTML5 have also extended to
social messaging apps that allow users to record
their voice or upload video messages. Thanks to
HTML5 improvements, these apps allow instant
transfer of audio and video multimedia, and this is
a development that can support interactive speaking
practice between second language learners and,
50 Issue 123 • July 2019
therefore, provides rich opportunities for enhancing
language teaching pedagogy.
The aim of this article is to consider a range of
such players and recorders and how learners and
teachers of English may exploit them to enhance the
learning of listening and speaking. Most of the
players, recorders and apps mentioned can be tried
out on the following web page: https://britishcl.tk/.
Speed control audio player
Being able to control the playback pace of audio
has several advantages for teachers and learners.
Teacher-controlled playback
When a teacher has control of the speed, they can
set the pace according to listening task type. For
example, a gist listening could be played at a high
speed to ensure that the learners focus on general
understanding (much like encouraging fast reading
when skim reading). The teacher may provide
support for answering comprehension questions by
slowing down the audio on parts of a passage which
give the answer to a particular question. Not only
does this allow the learners to focus attention on the
correct parts of the passage for answering the
questions, it also gives extra processing time to help
them decide upon their answers. Answering
comprehension questions often involves meaning-
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building skills such as paraphrasing and inferencing,
which learners can find challenging, so both the
focus on the correct part of the text as well as the
extra language processing time may provide them
with useful support.
Slowing down the pace of the audio could also
be helpful in post-listening tasks focusing on
vocabulary. The teacher could play back any
difficult words and phrases that the learners
identify in the text at various speeds, eg moving
from a slow to a fast pace, in order to help the
learners get to grips with the form. The teacher
could also play back the whole sentence in which a
difficult word occurs at a slow speed, and ask the
learners to consider the co-text to help them work
out the meaning of the word – the idea again being
that the learners will benefit from the extra time to
process the language and meaning of the sentence,
as well as the word or phrase whose meaning they
are trying to understand.
Student-controlled playback
A further advantage of HTML5 audio players is
that they can easily be shared over the internet.
This means that the teacher can pass over control
of the playback speed of a listening passage to
the learners themselves. This involves a little
technical know-how from the teacher, as they
would need to learn how to embed the audio
player and the listening passage in MP3 format
within a web page. Once this is done, social
messaging apps can easily disseminate a link to
the page to the phones of all the learners in a
class. Each learner will then have the audio player
in front of them on their phones and, while they
listen, be able to decide the speed of the playback
they desire. This both encourages learner
autonomy and accounts for differentiation in
listening ability within the classroom.
In addition to listening comprehension,
the speed control player can aid the learners
in developing their bottom-up processing skills.
Psycholinguistic research has evidenced the
importance of the bottom-up aspect of listening
in developing listening proficiency. A host of
connected speech features can make decoding
English a serious challenge for second language
learners, and it has been suggested by John Field
that, as a result, regular dictation activities using
extracts of natural speech be used to improve
decoding ability. Speaking slowly and unnaturally
in order to support comprehension leads to many
connected speech features being omitted, and this
may impede a learner’s progress, as it fails to give
them a handle on the many natural features of
speech used in authentic communication. Being
able to slow down natural speech and play it back
as many times as desired means learners receive
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TECHNOLOGY
support for decoding, whilst still being exposed to
natural features of English connected speech.
The pedagogical value of this chimes with research
into phonology, as reported by Paola Escudero, which
shows that L2 learners approach more accurate
perception of the target language implicitly in response
to frequent input which enhances the speech signal’s
typical phonetic properties.
Recorders on social messaging
apps
The ease of recording videos and audio on
smartphones has greatly improved recently.
Smartphones are invariably accompanied by audio
and video recording apps. Furthermore, most social
messaging apps have built-in voice recorders and
allow easy upload of video recordings. This can
facilitate practice and development of social and
turn-taking aspects of speaking between second
language learners.
Controlled dialogue practice
Using voice recorders in social media apps to
facilitate contextualised speaking practice in
transactional contexts, roleplays and telephone
conversations can provide useful controlled
practice. The teacher can introduce useful
language for these situations, and the learners can
practise this language before they apply it in the
real world by having a conversation with a
partner via a social messaging app. The fact that
the learners get to listen back to each turn before
they submit their recordings to the chat can help
them to self-evaluate their speech, and they may
record it again if they feel it is not accurate or
appropriate, perhaps after seeking feedback from
the teacher or a partner. This can then be
followed up by freer practice, where the learners
carry out the dialogue with their partner face-to-
face, without the use of voice recorders.
Freer dialogue practice
A less-controlled activity that can be done using
social messaging voice recorders is an adaptation of
an activity called ‘Paper conversations’. In this
activity, the learners have an informal conversation
with each other, passing back and forth a piece of
paper and writing down their messages. Unlike the
controlled activities mentioned above, in this
activity, the learners are not given any language
input beforehand. When this activity is done on
paper, it promotes practice of important skills
related to the skill of speaking, such as using an
appropriate informal register, turn-taking, planning
and responding, as well as topic management.
However, the speech production element is missing.
The voice recorders on social messaging apps add
this dimension to the activity, so that the learners
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TECHNOLOGY
also produce speech, and therefore pronunciation
elements can be practised and assessed too. In this
version, the conversation happens over a social
messaging app, with pairs or small groups recording
messages into the chat and responding. After
completing a conversation, the learners can be
encouraged to listen back and reflect on their
speaking. The teacher can also monitor and provide
feedback and correction, either while the learners
are completing their conversations or as whole-class
feedback after the activity.
Visual clues
The fact that learners and teachers can record
videos of their faces while they speak on social
messaging apps is another positive development.
There is significant evidence, as reported by Debra
Hardison, that accurate speech perception is
facilitated by visual facial cues, and that training
learners to recognise lip movements and facial
expressions associated with particular sounds can
improve language perception ability. Teachers can
identify sounds which have a fairly clear visual
contrast, and record a video silently articulating the
sounds. These can be sent to the learners over a
group chat, and they have to decide what the
phoneme being made is. An advantage of doing this
on video rather than in front of the class is that the
learners will be able to focus more clearly on the
speaker’s face. They will also be able to play the
video multiple times if desired. The activity can be
easily extended from sounds to minimal-pair words.
Videoed ‘live listening’
A video recording can also offer an alternative to a
live listening. The teacher records the listening before
the class and, again, uses a social messaging chat
group to share it with the learners. The learners may
well be able to follow the listening better by having a
close-up view of the speaker’s face as they talk.
It may also be a good idea for the learners to
record and upload video recordings rather than
using audio recorders when rehearsing the
interactional situations discussed earlier, and which
typically entail face-to-face communication. This
can make these interactions more authentic, and
visual cues may aid the learners’ comprehension.
Collaborative homework
Finally, communicating through voice and video on
social messaging apps provides a great opportunity
for the learners to interact and practise speaking
during collaborative homework tasks. In the past, it
was difficult to incorporate interactive speaking
tasks for homework. One idea is to give the learners
web quests to do in pairs or small groups. Web
quests require the learners to go online, in order to
find information that they need to complete the task
that is given. They therefore encourage negotiation
52 Issue 123 • July 2019
of meaning amongst the participants. In order to
complete a web quest together, the learners have to
send voice or video recordings to each other. Such
tasks fit nicely within a task-based learning
framework. The web quest represents the task stage,
which is completed for homework. The later
reporting and language-focus stages could then be
done in the classroom.
The learners may add the teacher to the group
chat before they complete the task, in order for
them to monitor and evaluate, or, after the task has
been completed, the learners can select the
recordings they would like the teacher to hear from
their conversation and forward them in a message.
The output the teacher receives can then form the
basis of the language-focus stage. The teacher
would then have more time to prepare this stage
than when the task and language focus are
completed in the same class.
Shadow voice recorder
It is important that, in addition to interactional
exchanges, the learners also develop the ability to
produce extended spoken discourse, for example
presentations or extended descriptions of personal
experiences or objects (the latter task is an inherent
part of the IELTS test called ‘the long turn’).
Planning and rehearsal are crucial in being able to
deliver a coherent long turn. An enhanced method
for rehearsal is offered by a new kind of HTML5
player called a shadow player.
This player allows the teacher to upload an
extract of speech they wish the learners to practise.
Firstly, the learners play and listen to the extract.
They can then record themselves whilst the listening
extract plays at the same time. This creates a
recording that they can listen back to, and provides
an opportunity to compare how accurately their
production matches the recording. Pronunciation
features such as syllable stress, sentence stress,
chunking and intonation become particularly
salient to compare. The learners can record the
extract as many times as they wish, until they are
satisfied with their pronunciation.
A shadow player may also be used to give
opportunities for the learners to rehearse words and
phrases they would like to use in a speaking activity.
This could fit in with an emerging-needs approach,
where the learners record themselves completing a
speaking task. The teacher listens and notes down
language that could be expressed more accurately or
with greater complexity, and reformulates this
language using the shadow player. The learners can
access the recordings and practise shadowing the
new language. The teacher may optionally have the
learners repeat the task again after they have
rehearsed the reformulated language.
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One current issue with the shadow player is that
the language model must be recorded by the teacher.
An advance in this area would be brought about if
learners could input the language they want to
practise themselves, which would then be corrected (if
necessary) and modelled naturally for them to practice.
Speechace pronunciation
feedback app
Recent technological advances have vastly improved
artificial speech recognition. Over a decade ago,
Dorothy Chun reviewed a number of software
programs and concluded that, while many showed
potential, there was a pressing need for them to give
‘more useful feedback to learners about where and
how segmental and prosodic aspects of speech can be
modified and improved’.
Machine learning algorithms have been used in
order to develop apps that use speech recognition to
compare a learner’s speaking output with a
native-speaker model and provide both a rating and
feedback. Such apps can be useful for learners
wanting to practise speaking outside the classroom
and receive feedback without recourse to a teacher.
Speechace is one such app. It is a commercial
product, capable of scoring a learner’s production
of any English word, sentence or even longer
stretches of discourse, such as short stories. On its
Moodle plugin version, the teacher must input the
language that will be assessed. The model provided
to the learner can be written or spoken. If it is
spoken, the teacher writes the text and then an
audio model is automatically generated (the model
sounds reasonably natural, if slightly synthesised).
Another option is that the teacher records the audio
model themselves. The teacher can choose whether
the text is presented alongside the spoken model or
not, or they may just choose a written model for the
learners to practise reading aloud, without reference
to audio. Both the orthography and audio are
displayed after the learner records the sample,
alongside feedback on the production.
Feedback only takes a few seconds to be given
to the user, and consists of a score and an
indication of which phonemes were produced
accurately. Learners are able to play back their
production as they read the feedback. Feedback
highlights inaccurate production by comparison
with another phoneme, eg a target /r/ which was
not produced accurately may return feedback that
says ‘sounds like /l/’; or a target /i:/ ‘sounds like /ɪ/’,
if the learner were to make this sound too short. It
is also able to give feedback on lexical stress,
indicating that a phoneme should be stressed more
strongly. Some areas of connected speech are
handled well by the program, eg the use of schwa
in weak forms, assimilation and elision.
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TECHNOLOGY
Pronunciation features that are not recognised
include intonation, sentence stress, chunking,
intrusion of sounds and catenation.
Recent versions of Speechace have shown
significant improvement, indicating that machine
learning algorithms are becoming more accurate and,
with that, their pedagogical potential is becoming
stronger. Nonetheless, there are still further
improvements that Speechace could make. In addition
to being able to give feedback on the areas of
pronunciation that it does not account for, it would be
helpful if the feedback of inaccurate phonemes was
accompanied by visuals, eg showing the position of
the lips and tongue for the target phoneme, which, as
Dorothy Chun points out, has been shown to enhance
the quality of pronunciation feedback. Phoneme
recognition is not always accurate, and this sometimes
results in incorrect feedback. Furthermore, the app
uses Standard English as a model and feedback is,
therefore, based only on American or British Standard
varieties. This may make some learners overly
concerned with aspects of pronunciation which do not
affect overall intelligibility.
t t t
Technology is becoming increasingly accessible and
easy to use. The opportunities for integrating ICT
into ELT classes and syllabuses are therefore
considerable. The players, recorders and apps I have
considered in this article all offer pedagogical value
for developing listening and speaking skills. I have
outlined a number of important areas that can be
addressed through the use of these players, recorders
and apps, focusing on developing listening and
speaking skills and promoting learner autonomy. n
Chun, D ‘Technological advances in researching and
teaching phonology’ In Pennington, M (Ed) Phonology in
Context Palgrave MacMillan 2007
Escudero, P ‘Second language phonology: the role of
perception’ In Pennington, M (Ed) Phonology in Context
Palgrave MacMillan 2007
Field, J ‘Promoting perception: lexical segmentation in
L2 listening’ ELT Journal 57 (4) 2003
Hardison, D ‘The visual element in phonological
perception and learning’ In Pennington, M (Ed)
Phonology in Context Palgrave MacMillan 2007
Frederick Gay has been a
teacher, teacher trainer and
examiner for more than ten
years, and currently works as
consultant trainer at the British
Council in China. Previously,
he worked in a number of
countries in Asia and Latin
America.
Frederick.Gay@britishcouncil.
org.cn
Issue 123 • July 2019 53
TECHNOLOGY
Five things you always wanted to know about
using technology with
your learners in class
(but were too afraid to ask)
1 What technologies and tools should I use in class?
When you start using technology in class with your English
language learners, it’s useful to first get some background
information about their technology use in general and to find out
what technologies they use out of class. This can help you decide
what technologies and tools to use in class, and how to use them.
Find out how confident your learners feel about using technology.
For example, if they are less confident or less experienced with
technology, you may want to avoid launching straight into complex
video recording activities that require editing and postproduction
voice narration! Don’t assume that because your learners are
young, they are effective users of technologies and tools. They
may be confident users of social networks like Instagram or
Snapchat, but they will be less effective users of tools like email,
which is most associated with adult work practices.
2 Should I let my students use their mobile phones?
Unless you work with younger students, your learners probably
own mobile phones, even in low-resource contexts, and you
should consider letting them use these in class. The mobile
device is one of the easiest tools to integrate into classwork, as
long as it is done in a principled and pragmatic way. Your learners
don’t need to have the latest smartphones: simple ‘feature
phones’ are perfectly acceptable. Feature phones usually include
photo-taking and audio-recording facilities, for example, and
these can be used to complete classroom tasks. You could give
your learners a simple photo ‘treasure hunt’ task, where they
need to find and take photos of objects from a lexical set, to
practise vocabulary. Or encourage them to audio-record a
speaking pairwork activity, and then to review and analyse their
own use of language by listening to the recording.
3 Isn’t using mobile devices in class potentially
distracting?
One of the main challenges with integrating mobile devices into
the classroom is, indeed, the potential for distraction. A judicious
use of phones for short tasks with clear and specific aims and
outcomes, combined with effective classroom management
strategies, will ensure that the learners keep on-task, and that the
devices are used to support language learning. Some schools
invest in ‘class sets’ of mobile devices: phones or tablets that are
owned and managed by the school, and which can be loaded
with only the content and apps needed for classroom tasks. With
class sets of devices, and without access to their own mobile
devices (and their potentially distracting social networks!), the
learners can be kept on-track during classroom tasks.
54 Issue 123 • July 2019
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 shares tips
for the effective introduction
of technology
in class.
4 What technologies will my learners enjoy using?
Ask your learners about their technology likes. For example,
ask them if they have any favourite tools, apps or websites,
not just for learning English, but in their lives generally. This
will enable you to take their preferences into account when
choosing what technologies to use in class and how to use
them. For example, do they enjoy using social networks? If it
turns out that all your learners use WhatsApp or Facebook,
you could start integrating classroom activities that have them
sharing photos or links via a social network group set up just
for the class. This will have the added advantage of your being
able to plan short out-of-class activities that also use the
chosen social network. Research reported by Geraldine
Blattner and Melissa Fiori has shown that learners who use a
class group social network for short, fun, out-of-class
language tasks are more motivated about learning English, and
also have stronger bonds as a group.
5 What about technologies they don’t enjoy using?
Technology dislikes are just as important as likes, so it is a good
idea to find out what your learners don’t enjoy using. For
example, imagine they are adults who work with technology all
day long. They may want no technology at all in English lessons,
but prefer to spend more time on speaking activities with
classmates. Or some of your learners may not like using social
networks, in which case it’s obviously not a good idea to set up
a class social network group. Finding out what your learners
think about using technology and tools in class is one of the
most important things you can do! n
Blattner, G and Fiori, M ‘Facebook in the language classroom:
promises and possibilities’ International Journal of Instructional
Technology and Distance Learning 6 2009
Nicky Hockly has been involved in EFL
teaching and teacher training since 1987. She
is Director of Pedagogy of The Consultants-E,
an online teacher training and development
consultancy, and she is the prize-winning
author of many books about language
teaching and technology. Her company The
Consultants-E (www.theconsultants-e.com)
offers online educational technology training
courses for English language teachers.
nicky.hockly@theconsultants-e.com
www.etprofessional.com

Webwatcher
G
oogle Earth (https://earth.google.com/web/) is a
wonderful browser-based tool that allows you to
‘travel’ around the world and visit countries, places
and even specific monuments. In most cases, it
provides both a two-dimensional and a three-
dimensional view of the place you are interested in, and in some
cases you can even drop down and take a street view. What’s more,
it also offers additional information about the places you search for,
which you can easily exploit with your students. Some of the 3D
graphics are very impressive. Google Earth can bring a lesson to life,
and offers a range of possibilities for teaching and learning.
Searching
The basic tool is the search facility. Key in the name of a country or
place (village, town or city) and Google Earth will zoom off to it and
show you a 2D or 3D map. Key in the name of a specific monument,
and it will immediately zoom off there and bring you directly into a
3D view of it and begin to pan around it. This doesn’t work with
every place in the world, but Google Earth is continually improving.
You can save your locations, and in this way you can prepare
a tour of places you want to show your students. There is also an
excellent ‘Voyager’ section where Google have pre-prepared
tours, with additional reading and video content (see below).
These tours are often superb.
Using Google Earth
Google Earth is a free tool. You can either open it up on the internet
by a simple search or, if you have a Gmail account, you will find that
it is one of your apps. So it is easy for your students to access it too.
Bring your book to life
One quite simple way of using Google Earth is to link it to your
coursebook. If a text in yours is introducing the students to a
specific place or just a general area, it is great to open up Google
Earth and project it onto a screen, so that all the students can see it.
Let’s say you have read an article about Luxor and the Valley of
the Kings. You can open up Google Earth, go to Luxor, and show the
students where the Valley of the Kings is situated. You can highlight
other buildings of interest in the area, such as Luxor Temple.
In a recent test lesson, I ‘took’ my students to Rome via
Google Earth and the 3D images were magnificent. We were able
to find and see all the places described in an article we had read;
it made the whole thing much more meaningful.
Go on a tour
Students can work in groups and plan tours using Google Earth.
For example, if you have an international mix of students, they could
work in same-country groups and prepare a tour of three or four
places in their country worth visiting for the rest of the class. Recently,
working with a group of boys in Italy, I prepared a tour of English
football stadiums. Firstly, I projected Google Earth onto a screen for
the whole class to see, and took them to the stadiums, talking a little
about each one. I then gave the students a questionnaire, told them
www.etprofessional.com
Russell Stannard TECHNOLOGY
travels the
world from
his chair.
to go onto Google Earth themselves and find the answers. Here are
some examples of the questions they had to answer:
■■ What monument is next to the Emirates Stadium in London?
■■ What is the capacity of Anfield in Liverpool?
■■ What river is Craven Cottage next to?
■■ How far is Anfield from the River Mersey?
■■ In what year did Wembley Stadium open?
One of the interesting features that Google Earth offers is the ability
to measure distances. So, for example, you can open the ‘distance’
tool, click on Big Ben and then click on Buckingham Palace and you
will be given the distance between the two places. As mentioned
above, in my football stadium activity, the students had to use the
tool to work out the distance from Anfield to the River Mersey.
The students can create questionnaires too. They could
choose a theme, decide on four or five locations to visit and then
produce a questionnaire for another group of students to complete.
This works really well, as the students can ask questions based
around the map, the extra information provided or distances.
Voyager
What I like most about Google Earth, though, is the Voyager
section, with its range of specially planned tours. Each includes
maps, videos, pictures and extra information. You can make a
questionnaire that encourages the students to engage with the
content. Here is an example, based on the tour about Ibn Battuta
exploring the Islamic world:
1 Go to page 1 of the tour and watch the video. Where was
Ibn Battuta born? In what year? What did his father do?
2 Go to page 2. What was the first place he visited? How long
did he stay there?
The level of the content is often not that difficult. It might even be
possible to get your students to create their own Voyager
questionnaires based on one of the tours.
t t t
Google Earth is free and easy to use, with a browser and a good
internet connection. It really can add value to your lessons, and
can be a very engaging tool for students.
I have made a video showing you all the key features in
Google Earth and talking about ways of using it. You can watch
this at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALiALb30b-w&t=1052s. n
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
Issue 123 • July 2019 55
 Not only, but also • • •
Chia Suan Chong looks at what English teachers teach apart from language.
In this issue, she considers empathy.
A recent management study from a global consulting firm stated
that successful leadership is defined by successful interaction,
which is, in turn, driven by empathy. Empathy, the study asserted,
is the most critical driver of overall performance, and the key
ingredient for successful conversations.
Whether it is empathy for employees who need re-motivating,
or empathy for customers, with the aim of boosting customer
satisfaction, empathy is undoubtedly an emotional intelligence
essential in the workplace.
And it is as important in the classroom, too. According to
Stephanie Jones and her colleagues, empathy can increase
engagement and result in better academic performance. Nancy
Eisenberg et al further assert that it can reduce aggression and
bullying behaviour.
Defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of
another, empathy is often thought of as an inborn characteristic or
something one learns only during the formative years (0–8 years of
age). Studies have, however, shown that empathy can be
developed in adults in formal training environments.
• • •
So how can we help increase empathy in our students? Here are
five ideas:
■■ Encourage meaningful interaction in class
While it might be useful to drill verb forms or give controlled
vocabulary practice, interactions are usually only meaningful if
the students have the freedom to listen and respond to what
is being said. Task-based approaches and collaborative
projects can give the students opportunities to understand
other people’s emotions and needs, and to consider what
responses are appropriate.
■■ Consider other perspectives
It is easy to see things from the perspective of our own
standards and values. However, we can offer our students the
chance to experience things from a different point of view and,
with practice, curiosity about other perspectives can become
the norm rather than the exception.
56 Issue 123 • July 2019
T
■■ Focus on active listening
Many of us claim to listen, but are really deliberating our own
opinions and formulating our responses in our heads while our
conversation partners are talking. Empathy is not possible without
active listening skills. It is only by talking to our students about the
importance of active listening and offering support in helping them S
listen with full attention and without bias that we can help build the
foundations of effective interaction and improved empathy skills.
■■ Model empathy
It is important for students to see empathy modelled by real
people around them. By showing empathy towards something
a student has done, visibly trying to put ourselves in their
position, and demonstrating an empathetic response, we can
provide a tangible model for our students to follow.
■■ 
Give positive feedback on empathetic behaviour
We often praise our learners when they’ve used a complex
sentence correctly or given the right answer to a question.
Consider also praising those who demonstrate a curiosity to
understand a classmate’s point of view or when they express
empathy for someone else’s situation.
Developing empathy in our students means promoting positive
social behaviour and better communication skills. The benefits of
this go beyond the classroom and the workplace and can serve to
prepare them to be better-adjusted and constructive members of
what could otherwise be a self-serving and individualistic society.
Eisenberg, N, Eggum, N D and Di Giunta, L ‘Empathy-related responding:
associations with prosocial behavior, aggression, and intergroup relations’
Social Issues and Policy Review 4 (1) 2010
Jones, S M, Weissbourd, R, Bouffard, S, Kahn, J and Ross, T How to
Build Empathy and Strengthen your School Community Harvard Graduate
School of Education 2014
Chia Suan Chong is a teacher trainer and communication skills trainer,
based in York, UK. She has been ETp’s resident blogger since 2012,
and is the author of Successful International Communication, published
by Pavilion. You can find out more about teaching empathy on her blog
at etprofessional.co.uk. chiasuan@live.co.uk
www.etprofessional.com
 Te a c h i n g E n g l i s h

TITLE
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SUB TITLE

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