Decluttering ELT
- This topic has 4 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 2 months ago by
.
- Posts
Have a quick think about the reflective questions below in order to get the most out of the workshop:
1. Do you throw things into a drawer and then wonder why they’re there but keep them anyway?
2. What do you feel is more important in your teaching: Approach, Method or Technique?
3. Do you feel that our profession (ELT) has advanced since you started teaching?Hi Everyone! I’m looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow!
As for the questions…
1. All. Of. The. Time. Both at work and at home. I even keep things with a vague idea that I will re-use/revisit them in the future (especially materials I have made) even though I know, deep down, I will forget they are there when needed, and when they are found they will be promptly binned.
2. I think technique. Mainly because I try to use a range of approaches or methods in my classroom, therefore I don’t think I stick religiously to a certain approach. Technique, however, is a constant and something I can work on and improve, whatever methods/approaches I am utilising in that lesson. I also strongly feel that certain approaches may not work with certain groups, but if you have a solid technique, you will still be able to deliver a successful lesson.
3. I feel the industry has never stopped changing, evolving, advancing, revisiting old practices/techniques since day one. I feel, and I may be wrong here, that there is a constant struggle to reconcile the ideas of the Humanist approaches with more standard methods within the classrooms.
I’m interested to hear your thoughts!
I have a habit of creating ‘junk’ drawers, where I regularly forget what is in them. My computer is more organised and my dropbox gets a clear out often enough that my material for teaching stays fresh.
I use a variety of different techniques in class. These may even be part of approaches and methods from the past. It always depends on who I am teaching at the time.
I really like student-centred lessons where the choice is given to students to determine the outcome. I enjoy TBLT.I feel that we are not going backwards per se, but I have colleagues who don’t seem to make any changes year on year. The idea that we have to adapt the way we teach, so that we can deliver more effective lessons, doesn’t sit well with me. A good needs analysis will help you to find out what the student(s) need and I think the idea of ‘just-in-time’ teaching can be very useful as it delivers up-to-date material. I would like to see the profession become more visible and less susceptible to the ‘backpacking’ teacher.
Some great questions here 🙂
1) In terms of the implied metaphor of what we do with teaching materials, there is I think an important distinction to be made between keeping things we have thrown into a drawer and storing them as the foundation for something we may revisit and repurpose in the future. I keep all my teaching materials for a number of years but I rarely recycle something without asking if it is still fit for purpose for a different learner or group
2) Surely these are so interlinked that we cannot arbitrarily choose one as the most important? I view techniques as the embodiment or the realisation of a method which in turn is informed by a belief system, the approach. As such, it is hard to divide one from another. I guess I could argue for approach(es) as the most important, as this informs the method and therefore the technique. Note the change from approach to approaches: I do believe many teachers, myself included, have moved towards a plurality of approaches, although I do agree with Scott Thornbury that we are probably more method bound than we like to think https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/methods-post-method-m%C3%A9todos
3) Yes, I do think it had advanced since I did my CTEFLA in 1993. At that point the lexical approach was in its infancy, although work on lexical chunks (Nattinger and de Chirico) clearly predated this. There was then within humanistic approaches a lot of interest in VAKOG and multiple intelligences, much of which has now been debunked as neuromythology. Perhaps most exciting are the more recent insights from neuroscience and its role in both learning and SLA, which may not yet have had an impact on coursebooks but which are certainly being felt in ELT practice.1.- I do tend to keep materials for future use. As it happens material need to be revised and updated regularly but some of the things I have kept have been of no use at all.
2.- The three of them are equally important yet, would say that the approach to teaching plays an important part.However, method and technique also play a great significant role.
3.- I have mixed feeling about it and I have to admit that I can’t see many changes apart from having incorporated more technology in our teaching.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.