Is Communicative methodology a failure?

Some days ago I had an interesting exchange of points of view with a couple of friends/colleagues on the pertinence and effectiveness of CLT (on Facebook). It was not surprising to see that opinions are divided. I see CLT as a failure. Any methodology that has all possible resources to work and does not deliver fails; and that is happening to CLT. We now have technology our teachers and trainers never even dreamed of in their good old days. My language student classmates and I never had a PC or a DVD or CD ROM or Internet or speech recognition software or video or smart boards or whatever they have invented, and still we mastered the language and were ready for a Michigan in one third of the time students are now (starting from scratch, mind you). Today, completing a language course at any of the most respected institutes takes three times longer; mastering the language at an acceptable FCE/ Michigan level takes longer, not just longer, way longer. Why is that? Aren´t new methods supposed to ease our way towards success? Why do our students have to devote more time to trying to speak a foreign language when there are technologies that should make it faster and more effective? In a society where speaking a foreign language is a must, how come methods do not help people to do so? Why are students still saying "I have 20 years old" and the like after two years of studies (deja vu?)?
Scott Thurnbury has an answer (however, I don´t see eye to eye with his preference towards a fluency=>accuracy scheme, that is exactly the reason why CLT fails, fluency and accurancy live together, not apart). It is the word of a respected scholar and researcher, and it derves to be heard (or read). The article where he explains his point of view is HERE. Have a look and make comments if you feel like it.

Cesar Klauer

What do you take with you to every class?

We have talked about technology in the classroom and how to apply it in different situations, but sometimes, we find ourselves limited by the availability of modern technologies. For example, in our previous post, I suggested an article about using cell phones in class. One of the tips was to use the camera feature on the cell phone to get students to make a short video of themselves so that they can show it to their classmates and have a little fun while practicing the language. I decided (as many of you may have, too) to try the activity in my class. It was a complete failure. Why?, you are wondering. Well, simply because technology is not democratic. That is, not all students have a cell phone with a camera and not all cell phones with a camera record video. An important number of students, 9 or 10 out of 20, could not produce their video due to one of the reasons above.


The experience got me thinking but then I got my hands onto something different (life is so fast nowadays) and I kind of left it behind. However, today I found an interesting article in the English Teaching Forum where the author lists his ten low-cost teaching tools. He says he takes them to every class he has and uses them whenever they are needed. What do I take with me to every class (apart from my textbook)? Let´s see: board markers in black, blue, red and green; a laser pointer that doesn´t work sometimes, water, my USB flash drive (but I kind of use my ppt presentations less now… we have smartboard software!) and that´s it. I used to know colleagues who carried big dictionaries (no need now, you can use the Cambridge Dictionary online for free), a grammar reference (online too), blue tack (no need either, you can project pictures), and even candy to reward good answers!

What do you take to every class in your bag? While you are thinking, take a look at Ten Low – cost Teaching Tools by Kevin McCoughey.
Comments are welcome!
Cesar Klauer

More about technology: using cell phones in class

We have talked about the use of technology in the classroom before. However, as you may imagine, the topic is virtually never-ending.
The topic today is cell phones. Do you use cell phones to teach? I don´t. In fact, I ask my students to turn theirs off. Why? Well, this may have happened to you: the phone rings in the middle of a listening activity and distracts everybody, students are more aware of the girl-friend´s call than the class, they say their boss (or a potential customer) is calling them about work, a friend of theirs rings them to say hi, and so many other situations. The best thing is to turm them off. However, the world is wider than what we can see from where we are standing, and maybe we can put those cell phones to work for us instead of against us.
Below, I am posting a link to the British Council´s e-magazine Teach English (every new issue is always announced on ELTeCS PERU) where there is video of a teacher who gives his ideas on how to use this gadget. I must confess, they are interesting and will try them out in my class, see what happens.
Take five minutes to watch this colleague. How do you like his ideas? You may well change your mind about cell phones.
I hope you like it.
Cesar Klauer
WATCH VIDEO

Happy Anniversary ELTeCS PERU

It was 18th May, 2000. I was sitting in front of my PC and I didn´t know what to write, even though the recipients of my message were only a bunch of friends and colleagues. In theory, writing to friends should have been easy, but it wasn’t. In the end, I posted a message that summarized some rules for posting messages to the new group we had just formed: ELTeCS PERU.


The questions started to pop up, bounced around my head, flew like bees or hornets with a buzzing that yelled doubt: Was it worth it? Will it work? Will teachers use it, like it, make it grow? The previous week we had been gathered by Anne Weisman, ELO of the British Council at the time, to present the new network that had been created for Latin America in a meeting in Cuba, which Norma Bustamante attended. The idea sounded great: a network that connected teachers to disseminate best practices and maintain the contact with each other. Somebody, was it Arturo Field or Norma Bustamante? I can´t remember now, but one of us enthusiasts and already devoted ELTeCS-converts gave the idea: Why don´t we form an ELTeCS PERU? That is, a list for teachers in our country, we will still disseminate and create contacts, only with the “ceviche” touch in it. It was a bomb. We all agreed and the Latin American group was history, we wanted a list of our own. Now the problem was how to organize it, maintain it, and all the rest. And this I do remember clearly, as if it were now, I´m seeing Norma Bustamante raise her hand and point at me: Cesar can do it!, she said, almost ordered. The twenty or so pairs of eyes smiled and I was appointed moderator of ELTeCS PERU.

Today, 11 years later, I don´t regret having accepted the task. Since that day, I have been congratulated, thanked, recognized, insulted and accused of the most incredible things. Yes, the oldest members might remember the occasion when somebody sent out messages telling a pile of lies about me and the group. I remember that this person accused me of making money out of ELTeCS PERU… well, I wish! The identity of this saboteur was never discovered, but nobody cares really, at least not me.

We started with that small group of about 20 and now we are exactly 1044, according to the statistics on YahooGroups. How have we grown? The only way we could: by word of mouth. Every event I attended, gave a talk at, every teacher I met, I collected emails. It was hard work introducing the emails and names manually one by one, but somebody had to do it. Little by little the numbers grew. Of course, there have been many who dropped out. There are as many bouncing emails as there are active ones, but that, we can´t do anything about, can we?

New groups have been formed, I hope they have been influenced by ELTeCS PERU. One is on Facebook: Peruvian Teachers of English (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/peruvianteachersofenglish). It was founded by Manuel Salas, next April it will be one year old. It has 566 members. The other group is newer. Peruvian English Teachers Network (http://peruvianenglishteachersnet.ning.com/) was founded by Victor Hugo Rojas, a colleague from San Marcos university and is very active. At the moment it has 104 members. Are they the competition? A threat? Of course not! If they were I wouldn´t be mentioning them here, would I? They are an expansion of the enthusiasm, good intentions and wishes to serve a community that needs a lot of support and development. Are we networks the solution to the need for improvement and professionalisation of our field? I don´t think so, but we are an important arrowhead in the search for excellence, and of course, we are part of the solution.

Happy birthday ELTeCS PERU; I hope we grow more. I hope we have more active participation. I hope we become better teachers. I hope all we can hope for the good of our wonderful profession, the one that touches people and changes lives. However, I am aware that the fate of ELTeCS PERU doesn´t depend on me, simply because the group does not belong to me or the British Council any more, it belongs to its members. ELTeCS PERU will become what we want it to become.

Something to say about: Teaching vocabulary

A language is made up many elements; one of them is, obviously, vocabulary. What can our poor students do with a grammar rule and/ or pattern if the they do not have the words to fill it in? How can we ask them to do pair and group work if they do not have the words to express their ideas? I found a really interesting article about this important area of ELT in the English Teaching Forum, that excellent magazine published by the US Department of the State.
The author, Keith S. Folse, reviews the types of words we teach, from the point of view of a second/ foreign language teacher. He talks about: (1) single words, (2) set phrases, (3) variable phrases, (4) phrasal verbs, and (5) idioms. You may already have recognised most or all of them. Mr Folse continues his article explaining other aspects of vocabulary teaching, then he tells us how to select vocabulary for teaching, and ends with six activities that can prove useful in our classes.
Good article. I am sure you´ll like it.
Cesar Klauer
READ ARTICLE HERE

Something to say about: cooperative and collaborative work

The courses I teach used to require that students do some kind of small scale bibliographic research. The results were varied. Most of the times students understood that each member of the group had to do “his/ her part.” They then got together for a quick coordination of order of appearance in front of the class on the day or one day before the actual presentation. They even pasted together the written work, with the obvious mismatches in style and contents, not to mention the shameful copy/paste cases.

Was this method acceptable? In the eyes of the students, it was. They knew no other way of doing it: distribute sections, work independently and then put it all together. We teachers fought very hard against that kind of work, we wanted them to share their findings in the group and come to a final group conclusion. What we were doing was trying to make a distinction between cooperative and collaborative work.

I have found an interesting article that tells both methods apart. It appeared in the English Teaching Forum magazine. To begin with, the two approaches are set clearly: “The key difference between these approaches to group work is that cooperation is more focused on working together to create an end product, while successful collaboration requires participants to share in the process of knowledge creation.”

The rest of the piece discusses the two methods and gives some practical suggestions that we teachers will find extremely useful. Find the article clicking this link. I am sure you´ll like it.

Something to say about: NNESTs

What does NNESTs stand for? Well, if you didn´t know, here it is: Non-native English Speaking Teachers. I am one, for that matter, and proud of it, too. Come to think of it, most teachers I know are NNESTs! What´s more, the majority of English teachers are! Uff, what a relief! I had started to think we were kind of intruders in a world full of "gringos" who are the non plus ultra of the language. But wait a minute! We also have things to chip in here, don´t we? Of course we do. For starters, we have learned the language and gone through all (or almost all) the troubles associated with understanding, assimilating and producing messages in a foreign language. Sadly enough, many (too many, in my opinion) native speaking teachers I have met in my teaching carreer do not want to even learn Spanish. A pitty, really, not only because they are showing disrespect for the local culture but also because they are not developing. Trying a different language is a very good way to put yourself into the other person´s shoes, experience the frustration and / or satisfaction of being able to tackle communication in another tongue; and that´s an invaluable resource for any language teacher: understanding the student´s position first-hand does not come in any one-hour workshop. I am not going to talk about the "mochileros" (those native speakers who come to "teach" whithout any prepartion at all) who are so well-considered by some, it´s not worth the effort.
All this talk comes up because a very good friend of ours, Carmen Caceda, just sent me a link to a TESOL Essential Teacher article on precisely this topic. A NNEST teacher who is given the task of teaching German. A challenge.
Read the article HERE.