Teaching English - Blog Posts

What is your favorite English word?

Sometimes when teaching English, it is great to engage the students in exploring language purely. No I don't mean drilling them on grammar rules, they will mutiny and steer the ship to free talk in no time. I mean the words and the peculiarities that exist within the realm of the language.

I started doing an activity I called Think Fast, in which I would ask them a question and they would then have to say the first answer that come to their mind (no repeats, no thinking time). Completely wrong answers are okay too, the point is to see their comprehension capabilities. One of my favorite questions in that series was, "What is your favorite English Word?" Naturally I have asked this in other contexts as well. Here are a few of my favorite answers and some thoughts on them when appropriate;

I love you (hmm not a single word)

Gotcha

Sleep/holiday (same idea so I lumped them)

bargain

difficult

easy (they were in different classes, I swear)

Of course I often offer an answer but I never standardized but sometimes my answer are quite random such as;

onomatopoeia

luscious

modest

perpendicular

How about you? Do you have a favorite English word?

*note- I am Canadian and the actual spelling should be 'favourite' as British English dictates. However, I have been studying in an online American university so have taken to American spelling, apologies to my Canadian brethren.

Dragon Stew Teaching

When I was younger I really thought the story of Dragon Stew was quite clever, and the solution to the problem was so simple that it was genius!

If you don't know the story (and I may get a fact or two wrong as it has been years), the basic idea is that a King declared that he wanted to eat Dragon Stew and he tasked his people with catching a dragon. The dragon was caught and was getting prepped to be cooked in the stew. When it came down to the crucial moment, the dragon was desperate for his life and he talked the king into allowing him to cook a meal for him. He asked the king what he liked and he listened carefully and he used the information he had learned to make an absolutely delicious meal. The dragon managed to secure the job as the king's personal chef and he did so by listening every day and making exactly what the king wanted. Win/win. The dragon lived and the king got his 'dragon stew', though in the end that meant it was a stew made by a dragon. Apologies if I have mixed up some details of the story (let me know in the comments!).

Subconsciously, this has bled through into my philosophy as a teacher. There are, of course, non-negotiable staples that need to be in the classes I teach but beyond that, we need to know how we are going to please our students. How are we going to make our lesson time productive and useful for them? The answer is in their words, in their mannerisms in their consistent mistakes. Pay attention, take note and adapt your curriculum to those needs. Put aside your ego or the sense of entitlement your years of teaching affords you. We should always be developing and growing as teachers, this is how we keep our job and our lessons fresh.

On top of that, you can avoid being eaten. :-)

What is the best rate of study?

I had an epiphany while I was standing in the rain watching my son's team practice for soccer. My son was in junior high school at the time and he has been doing soccer since he was in kindergarten. I had been a teacher and language coach for around 16 years at the time but I never could settle on how much was the best amount of time to study to really achieve results. So, there I was standing in the rain watching my breath dissipate in the air in front of me wondering why the heck they had to practice every day. My mind flashed to Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers and his theory about needing 10,000 hours to become proficient at something. That was it, not only the amount of time but the total immersion of the mind and commitment to a regular rhythm were a key to reaching the next level.

Doubtlessly the more time you dedicate to something, the more you can see improvement, but the rhythm of soccer practices suggested to me that constant and frequent repetition is also important. I thought this was the way to get the students at the company I was teaching at to remember some words for their TOEIC goals. I set up a practice sheet where every three days they had to focus on a single word. The first day, they look up the word in English (afterwards Japanese was permitted) then on the second day they had to come up with a practice sentence. If they followed this program, they would think about the word on successive days and interact, making a better chance to remember. On the third day they would get another chance and they would find some synonyms for the word. The following day was a new word and the cycle began again. The problem is that the students didn't follow the theoretical path and only studied everything on one day, before their class. The most serious students did follow it and I thought it was a good program. The beauty of it was that the students should be thinking about English everyday. They established a rhythm, even if just for 10-15 minutes. If I were stricter about it, I think we would have seen more results.

Looking through the Internet at ideas about how much to study, theories range between 20 minutes and 3 hours per day. An interesting post by Ouino (We know, get it?) language says 30 minutes of active studying and 1 hour of exposure is good. Of course they are promoting their business so it's merely a theory. If you don't subscribe to Medium, you will be trapped by the pay wall, but this post says 1-2 hours is best for rapid language acquisition.

I will say it again though, I believe that the true key lies in the daily rhythm more than the amount of study, though logically more time spent should yield more results.

Broadening experiences

On a personal note, I really feel that I enjoyed a large growth as a language facilitator over the last 5 years. By taking on new experiences and prodding the English language from different angles and opening up to new experiences, we can grow our awareness and become better teachers, coaches and vessels that help to transport our charges through language acquisition.

The 4 and half years I spent as an instructor working from within a Japanese company helped to give me a more practical experience of how English is experienced in an international company. I could find some areas that English training could be useful that I hadn't considered before and how to prepare my students better for international communication or travel. COVID 19 really shifted that whole scene, which I have touched on before, but business travel is still needed.

One of the most unique experiences I took on in that time frame was developing a curriculum for an English Communication School that wanted to operate in a VR environment using Microsoft's ALT Space. Sadly as my contract finished, Microsoft shuttered their venture into the metaverse and when I offered to adapt my plan to a different platform, the company did not seem interested.

We used the MEXT website as a reference and found the target vocabulary and grammar points and developed a fun program for grade 3 students. One idea was using mini stories to illustrate the targets to kids in a fun way. I was able to record the voices for the characters and it was really fun to develop.

The best experience helped me to finally collaborate with my sister on something.

For the program we wanted to use songs, but the staff said that due to copyright issues, it was difficult, could you make songs? Sure! I thought up lyrics in each unit as I made the course plan and after that was done, I set out to think up a tune. With my iPhone, I recorded some sketches that fit the rhythm and the lady in the staff actually had some musical skills so helped fix them so they were more technically sound. They wanted to use an AI singer but I suggested using my sister as the singer as she has some experience with singing. I was quite proud of the results. Unfortunately only about half of my songs were recorded.

The first two songs had a few hits in the first few weeks, but seemed to stop getting interest soon.

Every program needs a hello song. We used a traditional tune but it still came out alright.

Sadly, I thought this last song was the best one but it had only 230 hits. I learned a lot about naming. If I named the song Colour and fruit song, it would have 1000 times more hits.

That was a great, fun experience and I learned a lot about thinking about an entire language training program, even if it was just for 3rd graders.

Idioms, a key part of language

I noticed a lot of textbooks don't have enough idioms. Particularly on a junior level. It's kind of crazy when you consider how common they are in our daily conversation in the realm of natural English.

So, here are a few that might be of interest to students;

When it rains it pours -> This can be used in both negative and positive situations. We use this to describe that when one thing happens, another or a few events seem to follow. For instance a student came down with COVID 19 and her air conditioning broke down a day later. When it rains, it pours, eh?

Kill two birds with one stone -> This idiom meaning to accomplish two things in one action is easy to imagine. In fact there is a similar idiom in Japanese, as there is for the previous one, so when your students study this, they will say, 'oh, I get it!'

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. -> This is more of a proverb than an idiom but it is a good way to encourage positive thinking. The basic idea is when you are met with trouble (lemons), you should do you best to turn it into a positive situation (refreshing lemonade).

Take it on the chin -> When you are down or something bad happens to you, accept the situation and don't complain or turn it into a big problem. Be positive even in adversity.

I like to focus on positive expressions and situation as sometimes learning a language can feel like a very negative situation, especially for some beginners.

Teachers can teach idioms by making a guessing game (can you guess the meaning of this idiom), or finding ways to draw these out in the course of discussion in class. Make sure the students make a note and try to quiz them later or provide them with an opportunity to use them in a class.

Put the test mentality behind you

I was aware of the big problem in Japan before seeing my own children battling through it. It hinders language students from the beginning. It remains, wrongly, the criteria that companies use to gauge success.

Japan's education system is anchored around a focus on tests. Every course, every textbook is centered around the students taking and passing exams. It is very common that the children will go to cram schools called juku, where they essentially are trained the ins and outs of how to pass the tests to get to the next tier of education. And this stands in the way of their ability to actually speak the language that they speak, because schools don't set a curriculum based on activating the language they use.

This continues on to the adult level. TOEIC, the Test of English for International Communication is the standard that companies and some institutions measure people's ability to communicate. Which means that company workers are bound by a similar constraint of a system focused on the wrong thing, the ability to actually speak. I have taught students with strong TOEIC scores in the 700's (990 is best) but are unable to string together a few sentences. Similarly I have taught students in the 400's who manage to communicate consistently. It is just not the right focus.

English training, or any language for that matter, needs to be centered around a focus on actually speaking and relaying information. Classrooms need to be loud with students using the target language in structured, productive, activities. And it needs to be the students' voice you hear the most, not the teachers'. Activating and getting practical experience can help push Japan towards a stronger average level of proficiency. Japan is ranked at #87 in the world in the global English proficiency rating (LINK), which is labeled as 'Low Proficiency'. It would help to see this over-reliance on tests change from the Elementary level, but as trainers of Adult Speakers we can make a difference by giving our students every chance to speak, but ensuring that the lessons are productive and there is always a takeaway.

I should qualify that tests are not all bad. They do provide a motivation to study and some people really grow their vocabulary trying to do well in their tests. Also companies do need some way to measure people's progress, especially if they are spending money on English training programs. But the current test systems are insufficient and there needs to be a way to measure people based on their ability to communicate. I don't have the easy answer to this, but my eyes are open to how we can achieve this. Either way, for now, I am focused on improving the opportunity to speak while ensuring the students have multiple takeaways from each class.

Story #61 "What is a good teacher?"

Originally written as a CELTA admission essay.

What is a good teacher? What qualities one should possess to be considered a poster child for teaching? And who is to tell a good teacher from the bad one, and make the final decision? They say “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Perhaps, to an extent, it’s fair for a good vs. bad teacher as well.

When I did my TESOL course a year ago, I was asked to write an essay on my teaching philosophy, and at some point, I started contemplating what a good teacher was in my opinion, and whether I, myself, met those standards. I might repeat myself here with what I wrote in the past, but thinking back now, I stand by my words. 

I’m firmly convinced that a good teacher is a teacher who knows how to convey the information they prepared for the lesson and is able to present the material in a practicable and entertaining way, as well as be capable of engaging students in different communicative activities to provide them with vocabulary and grammar sufficient for successful communication. That kind of teacher knows the ultimate goal of any exercise they give and sets short-term and long-term aims for themselves and their students.

A good teacher knows how to encourage a student to use actively the learning strategies such as asking questions, making notes, and not being afraid of making mistakes. They can explain that experimenting with the language is impossible without mistakes, and get sure students feel confident enough in a classroom. As a rule, a good teacher sticks to the 80/20 strategy and knows how to reduce teacher talking time and increase student talking time.

They want to pass on not only their knowledge but their passion for languages and sow the seeds of the idea that any learning indeed is an exciting process a student can benefit from. A good teacher strives to show their students that there is no extrinsic motivation they need to study as they can find it within themselves. As a teacher, I try to be that source of motivation and enthusiasm for my students.