Masterclass Series
Decluttering ELT
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Introduction
Since the 80s and more so the 90s, we have been encouraged to add to our load through associating topics and approaches alongside an already very difficult and burdensome job – teaching language efficiently. Even some very well-known publishers have contributed to this mass of extra weight.
I will try to show during this workshop that teachers already have enough to do without thinking about all of those secondary issues and that they actually get in the way of efficient and effective teaching and learning, simultaneously causing some teachers mistakenly to feel inadequate because of the complexity and disconnected nature of these add-ons.
I will also offer an explanation for this movement towards ever more esoteric and obscure embellishments.
These additions to established practice have appeared over the last 30-40 years and have served to conceal the fact that the mainstream teaching of language has not really progressed very much in that period other than a very few innovations such as Task Based Learning and the Lexical Approach.
In a recent video meeting, Stephen Krashen and Noam Chomsky both demonstrated that they have not moved very far at all from their initial positions in terms of, for example, the LAD, Learning vs Acquisition, similarities between SLA and FLA, the Interface Hypothesis and so on. No quick fixes have been created!
Teaching and learning (I use the term in a general way) language is difficult and time consuming – that is not to say it can’t be fun, engaging and rewarding. You’ll notice that I am emphasising ‘mainstream’, so I am not commenting on the several niche or designer approaches such as Suggestopedia and Silent Way, both of which I have been quite heavily involved with over the years.
Presented by Steve Hirschhorn – Award-Winning Teacher Trainer & Former School Principal & Director of TESOL.
This Workshop is included with PRO Membership.
Preparing for the Workshop
Our Masterclass workshops are typically delivered in 90 mins.
At Gallery Teachers, we endorse the philosophy of building on your previous knowledge and experience as opposed to just imparting knowledge on you.
Therefore, in order to prepare you for the webinar and help you activate what you already know about the topic, we will suggest two to four reflective questions for you to consider before you join the event.
You will also be given the opportunity to post your reflections, along with any questions you may already have at the pre-watching stage, to the discussion forum.
The reflective questions, as well as ideas and shared experiences posted to the forum by attendees, will be used in the real-time Q&A session in order to generate an engaging and meaningful discussion, involving the presenter and teachers from around the world.
After the event, the forum discussion will take on a life of its own and teachers will be encouraged to continue posting their experiences, reflections and questions related to the topic of the webinar. So, if you feel strongly about the topic, we will make it possible for you to take the discussion beyond the scheduled workshop and continue sharing your ideas with like-minded teachers and teacher trainers from other countries
Presenters
Sessions
This workshop has the following session(s). When all Sessions are completed, you will be presented with a PDF certificate. Click on the link below to access the session content.
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Reviews
Back to Basics
I love all the ideas presented by the great teachers in Master Classes and especially this one.
thought provoking
Thought provoking – which I think was the aim of the exercise. Do I have to agree with everything he says? No. Does that detract from the opportunity to have a think? No.
I like sessions where I can be pushed to the point of indignancy and that allows me to question myself and, in my mind, to question what I have heard.
As with all decluttering exercises in life, we can throw out as much or as little as we like….
Challenging 30 years of accumulated clutter. A timely stir of the pot.
Thank you for an excellent, thought provoking and controversial webinar. These issues need addressing and Steve enabled us to do so. After a Covid enforced period of reflection, before returning to teaching and teacher development, he raised pertinent but thorny issues that I wrestle with. Arriving in EFL from the training world through conferences and workshops in the late 80s/and 90s, full of Steve Krashen, Mario Rinvolucri, Barbara Meister-Vitale amongst others, I explored many of the ideas which inspired me. They may be now rightly questioned and I have always mistrusted the more cult-like aspects and guru-like proponents. However, I was reassured, for example, by the evidence based research undertaken by the Finnish government and the response of my students to what I was doing in the classroom. I had always thought there had to be other ways of learning that didn’t label and dismiss students like myself, as bad at languages and maths. Each exploration of conventional, innovative or gloriously ‘whacky’ approaches and methodologies has informed my teaching and enabled me to help students improve the effectiveness of their learning. But I couldn’t have done this without looking at the old as well as the new. Thank you Steve for emphasising this and encouraging us to look at the century of SLA research . Finally, moving forward, I think our industry needs closer cooperation between academia and teachers of non-university students. Undergraduate language students are a small minority of language learners but seem to me to be the main participants in research. Non-university teachers are responsible for a majority of language learning so I echo the points made about their involvement in action-based research and the greater effort needed to communicate research results to them. Perhaps closer cooperation between schools and universities might result in fewer fads and less clutter.
Decluttering
What a fantastic and enriching Masterclass. Great discussions and plenty of ideas and concepts to revise . I loved the controversy. Thank you very much for this excellent class.