Pavlov didn´t give out candy but he should have

Just like any other concerned teacher (but also because something happened to me that made me want to break the routine), I am always looking for new ways of engaging my students and get their attention out of their damn cell phones. I have been using the usual pair/ group work recipe with variations and add-ons, but even though the students are different, the teacher is still the same! So I thought, "Why not?" I was thinking, I don´t really know why..., about Pavlov and conditioning. So I said it out loud, just to make real (it is a kind of spell...try it, it makes things have a sound and look real). Of course, the lady walking past me thought I was crazy, but what the heck, "Why not?"
I went to the Plaza Vea at the corner and got a bag of lemon candy, 60 pieces, and headed to my classroom.
I gave out a piece of candy to students who got answers right, and it was like opening a jar of butterflies. Hands began to flash up even before I asked for answers, I saw smiles on their faces, and, what´s more satisfactory, I am under the impression (I hope it´s not because the sugar in the candy has afected me too!) that their participation acquired a new quality, the correct answers were more often than the wrong ones. Funny. I said to them towards the end of the class period (4 hours in a row!) that they looked like children for struggling for candy...and they laughed in agreement. One even asked for "chicha" flavor instead of lemon.
When they left (without one word of protest for the homework I gave them) I counted the left over candy and came up with an astonishing number: 14, which means I gave out 46 pieces! Now I think I am going to be broke pretty soon.

The teacher´s command of language and other assorted but related topics

In the introduction to this Language Debate session at IATEFL 2015 in Manchester this week (follow link below to watch it online), Michael Carrier said, “One of the issues we haven´t quite solved is teachers´ language proficiency.” The sentence reminded me of the results of a recent test given to teachers of English in Peru by Euroidiomas on behalf of the MINEDU and in preparation for a training scheme carried out last and this year: about 70% of testees landed on the A1-A2 level, that is, they were diagnosed as fit to pass KET and PET (data presented at last week´s Foro Internacional Educación y Bilingüismo en el Perú). Is this an acceptable, or at the very least satisfactory, level to teach English? The answers will vary depending from what standpoint you look at the issue, and that is shown in the said debate. What surprised me was the data Michael Carrier brought about levels of teachers in other countries in the world. While working for Cambridge University giving consultancy to governments and ministries of education, he has come to learn that that there about 12 to 15 million teachers of English in the world. 90-95%, roughly, are non-native speakers of the English language: only 5-10% are native speakers! He also mentioned that when testing teachers´ levels, the majority were in the A2 level, much the same as what the Euroidiomas testing exercise found out. The conclusion here is that the problem of language command is not exclusive to our country; however, that should not make us happy, but, on the contrary, force us to work harder to find solutions.

The debate also tackled other topics, such as the concept of the teacher-learner; one that I have heard many times to justify the fact that some teachers who can´t thread two sentences (correctly) together are still in front of a group of learners. The teacher-learner may be looked at from two points of view: first, as a teacher who is learning his subject, English, while on the job (because s/he can´t speak it reasonably well yet –what is reasonable is also under debate); and second, the teacher-learner who is learning professionally, that is, s/he is developing skills to improve his/her teaching.

The debate is highly interesting and I invite you to watch it by visiting the link below.

Cesar Klauer

  

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2015/session/cambridge-english-signature-event?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=bc-teachingenglish

KENO adptations for language learning

KENO is a kind of lottery game in which numbers are drawn from a blower and announced aloud for players to cross them out on their cards. It looks a lot like BINGO, only without the letters on top. You may have seen the games of KENO played at casinos all over the world or sold in toy and game shops. In this article, we are going to use the concept: drawn out numbers (language items in our case) that have to be crossed out on cards until one player has a full card.

The game can be used for any language item we want to tackle, be it the presentation new language, the revision of vocabulary and/ or grammar structures or any other aim the teacher may have in mind.

For this specific example, we are going to prepare a KENO game to review past tenses of irregular verbs.

Preparation of materials

Decide how many verbs you are going to review this time.

Prepare cards or pieces of paper with 15 slots; 3 columns and 5 lines. In each slot write past tenses from the list of verbs at random. Make as many as students you have in your class.

Prepare 15 pieces of paper with the base forms of the verbs on your list and fold them so as to be drawn from a box or bag.

Procedure

Distribute one KENO card per student and ask them to have a pen or pencil at hand.

Explain that you will draw verbs from the box or bag and that they have to find the past tense on their cards. If they have it, they should write the base form next to the past. If they don´t have it, they do nothing. After drawing the verbs from the box/ bag, the teacher must stick them on the board in the order they appear for the students to refer to them and for the revision of winning cards at the end.

The winner of the game is the student who completes the full card correctly. At that moment, the student must shout out “KENO!” and all the other students stop the game until the winning card has been checked.

Revision

Using the verbs stuck on the board, the teacher calls the verbs and the winner must answer by giving the past tense. If there is no mistake, then you got a winner.

Advantages of the game

The KENO game looks simple but it has more to it than the naked eye can see. To begin with, students will be exposed to the pronunciation of verbs which they will have to identify and turn into their past form in order to find the match on their cards. Not only that, but they will have to write it correctly on their cards to have a winning entry. Even those students who do not have a match for the verb in turn, will review the verb because it will be stuck on the board and checked at the end of the game.

Variations

The verb game given above is a very easy and straightforward application of KENO but you can use the concept to review other language forms: to review collocations, draw one part of the combination and let students find the other part and write it either before or after the word they have on their card. In order to study questions and answers, draw questions and have students find the correct answers on their cards, and write them; or vice versa, draw answers and have students find the questions on their cards.

In any case, the students will be exposed to specific language items in a ludic form which will attract them and help them learn while having fun.

Learning to use prepositions of time with a fun actitivity

Have you noticed your students have a hard time using prepositions of time correctly? Here is an activity idea that can be used as both an introduction to a lesson on prepositions of time and as a revision. What´s more, the very procedure of the activity can be easily adapted to other topics such as prepositions of place or regular verbs past form pronunciation.

The first thing you do is make a list of time expressions that use the most common prepositions: in, on and at. I usually include a list of expressions that do not use any preposition. You will end up with lists like these:

IN : the morning, the afternoon, the evening; 1977, March, etc.

ON: 28^th July, weekends (US usage), Monday, Monday 22^nd December, etc.

AT: the weekend (UK usage), night, the turn of the century, 6.00 o´clock, etc.

No Prep.: yesterday, yesterday morning, this morning, today, tomorrow, etc.

My lists usually have about 15 expressions in each category. Obviously, you will repeat some “similar” expressions, like “on Monday” but also “on Friday.” This is good practice because it will provide examples of “on + day of the week.”

Once you have your lists, cut out pieces of paper or card of ¼ A4 page. I use paper of different colours to bring a little bit of fun and “life” to the activity, but be careful not to use the same colour for one category so students are not given hints. Then, write the expressions on the cards, one at a time, without the prepositions, like this:

	the morning		Monday		6.00 o´clock

 

Make a deck of cards and shuffle them. Now you will need some “blutack” or similar and you are ready.

In class, divide the board into four spaces and write on top: IN, ON, AT, NO PREP. When I have a large class, say about 24, I also use the walls but instead of writing on the wall, I stick up a card. Next, distribute the cards, more than one each hopefully, to the students together with a piece of “blutack”. Ask them to stand up and stick the time expressions they got under the corresponding preposition. These will bring about some minutes of noisy activity while the students decide where to put their cards. Since they had gotten cards with expressions that belong in different prepositions they will cross paths with each other and laugh and smile and have a good time, they may even correct each other on the way and/ or ask their classmates for help when in doubt. All this is great, let it happen and encourage it if possible.

When they have finished and are sitting back in their places, go through the cards and put a cross next to the ones that are wrong. Then, ask for volunteers to change the marked cards to their correct place. Encourage students to come up even if the marked cards are not theirs. If there are still some incorrectly placed cards, repeat the cross marking until all the cards are in the correct area.

Now you may ask your students to look at the expressions on the board and come up with rules. They must deduce that IN goes with months, etc. provided you have given enough examples for them to notice. Afterwards you may want to do another type of exercise to reinforce/ use the expressions.

You may also adapt the same procedure for expressions of place, do vs make, pronunciation of regular past tenses, and any other grammar or vocabulary topic you want.

The advantages of this activity include the fact that it gives kinesthetic/ tactile students a chance to move about. It also provides an opportunity for visual learners to pick up concepts, they will see the rules “appear” in front of them on the board –you may use colours as suggested but also forms for the cards, etc.  The rules are not given straightforward to the students but they will deduce them as the activity evolves. This makes it more memorable.

The activity provides variety and a moment of apparent relaxation as the students walk about and maybe joke with each other. When the teacher marks the incorrect cards, they are asked to rethink their grammar/ vocabulary and try their hand at another possible solution to the language problem. This is an example of the trial and error process present in language acquisition and one skill that every good language learner must develop.

In short, the activity lends itself useful and fun, easy to set up and valuable. Why not try it out and see what happens?

"Hot slips", a non-invasive correction technique

Whenever our students are working in pairs or groups, we always notice their mistakes. Then we are faced with the dilemma: Should I correct now or not? The advice is to delay the correction, it is best not to interrupt because we shouldn´t cut a student´s stream of language. And it makes sense. Imagine yourself interrupting with a correction every time the student has made a mistake, it may be too often and may become boring, annoying, and demotivating.
Procedure:

Some years ago, I read an article that suggested a simple technique called “Hot slips”. It consists in noting down mistakes on pieces of paper that the teacher would give to the students after they have finished their activity. In this way, the corrections are personalized and non-intrusive. I tried the technique and it worked fine; however, I found it could be improved. For example, what kind of mistakes should the teacher note down? When exactly should the slips be given: right after the student´s intervention, at the end of the class, while other students are talking? I then modified it a little bit and this is what came up.

1.       Prepare slips of paper to note down mistakes. I am now using a notepad that lets me rip off pages easily.

2.       Decide what kind of mistakes you are going to concentrate on: Grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, or more than one category. In any case, define an area in the piece of paper to note down the type of mistake. Also, and I suggest this is done too, try and note down good sentences, uses of grammar and/ or vocabulary that exemplify advancement in the student´s performance.

3.       Keep another normal sized piece of paper. This is not to be given to the students. You will note down the most common mistakes here so that you can show them to your students at the end of the activity and/ or plan remedial work based on this information.

4.       Stay with one group/ pair for as long as necessary to get information.

5.       When the activity is finished, pick some mistakes from your own notes and do some remedial work. It is important not to mention who made the mistakes but treat them in general.

6.       Alternatively or additionally, plan remedial work based on the information you collected during the activity.

The advantages of the modified Hot Slips technique add to the two mentioned before, personalization and non-intrusiveness, the element of closure. The activity has an output when the teacher shows the students their mistakes.  The fact that good examples of language use are included in the teacher´s notes, gives the activity a motivating edge: Not everything is criticism.

When giving corrections on the board, I usually prefer an inductive method. I write an example sentence or more with the identified mistakes in them and ask the students to point out what is wrong and why. I also write pairs of sentences which are different only because one has the mistake I am concentrating on and the other doesn´t.

For example:

I have 20 years old. VS I am 20 years old.

The students didn´t went to class.  VS  The students didn´t go to class.

The modified version of Hot Slips has proved to be really effective in error correction and, what is more important, extremely useful for me as a teacher. The best is to try it out and see how it works for you, and even think of some modifications to suit your needs and situation.

Yet another post-it notes activity

A cloze text is an activity where several words have been deleted from a reading text. The hard-core cloze requires the deletion of every nth word, regardless of what part of speech it is. That is, you delete every 8^th word in the text, or every 10^th, etc. A variation, very useful for directing the focus of the lesson, is to delete only verbs, or nouns or adjectives, etc. Also, the teacher may decide to delete any words s/he thinks relevant. The students then have to provide the missing word(s) according to context and grammar.

A challenging way to tackle a reading text is to copy it and create a cloze exercise. You may, if the text is too long, choose to create a cloze for the first paragraph(s) of the reading as an introduction.

In any case, the suggestion in this article has to do with a creative way to get students to do the cloze exercise using post-it notes.

Preparation: Apart from the cloze-text, prepare post-it notes with one answer in each. Produce two or three sets of answers and include three to five “distractors”, that is, words that do not belong in the text, for each set.

Procedure: Once your students have worked out the missing words in the text, get them to form pairs or groups of three to check each other´s answers. While they are at it, stick the post-it notes on the walls. When the students have finished checking their answers, ask them to stand up and look for the missing words in their texts among the post-it notes on the walls. They must work as teams in order to collect the right answers. They must not have their texts at hand while searching for the answers, but they can go back to their seats to consult their texts. You may want to give a time limit for this activity so as to make it more competitive and fun or just let them work at their own pace. This will depend on your class style and other factors you know better than anybody.

Check answers: Once the answers collection has finished, check answers with the whole class, and if you like, assign points to the teams for correct answers. Remember to ask for reasons why they gave such and such answer.

The activity may be adapted by copying the text on a large piece of paper, such as a flipchart or series of flipcharts that you will stick on the board. In this variation, the students will work individually: they fetch post-it notes from the walls and go to the enlarged text and place words in their corresponding space.

Reflection: As a final stage, it is advisable for this type of exercise to get students to work in their teams and reflect on how they arrived at the answers they had and why they were right or wrong. This stage will promote metacognition, which means, they will analyse how they know what they know and understand the process of producing language.

How to use post-it notes in a reading lesson

We are all familiar with those yellow pieces of paper with the sticky back used to remind us of important information. They are really useful in everyday tasks but they can also come in handy when trying to introduce variety and fun to our reading lesson.

This activity can be adapted to any text, weather it has true/ false questions already incorporated or not.

Materials: some two or three post-it notes per student and a reading text.

Preparation: Copy from the textbook and/ or write your own TRUE/ FALSE sentences for the reading text you are using in class. Write one sentence in each post-it note. Depending on the length of the text and the number of students in your class, you will have to repeat some sentences, or write two similar sentences but with a slight difference to get students thinking. Then, stick them on the walls around the class.

Procedure: After the students have worked with the texts, form pairs and tell them to stand up and collect as many post-it notes as they can. One student must collect TRUE statements and the other FALSE ones.  As soon as each student has decided if the statement in his post-it note is true or false he must mark it T or F. When all the post-it notes have been collected, they should get together and confirm if they have collected the statements in the post-it notes correctly. They should re-read the passage. During the collection of the post-it notes, the students cannot have their books and/ or texts with them, they must use their memory. However, they can go back to their seats to consult the text. They may not talk to other people to get help. If you want to make it competitive, you can assign points for good answers and declare a winner at the end of the task. When checking answers all together, ask for support to their true/ false answers.

The same procedure may be adapted for other types of reading tasks. For example, instead of true/ false statements, the post-it notes may carry questions to which the students must find an answer to in the text. Alternatively, the post-it notes may form a “chain” of events as described in the text. The students must collect them and put them in order.

The activity is basically a true/ false task; however, the fact that the students have to stand up and walk and remember information make the activity fun and a bit more demanding than just circling Ts or Fs in the course book. The element of competitiveness will also add more fun to the activity. If by any chance you are unable to use post-it notes, cards and even pieces of paper may be used and stuck on the walls using blu-tack or cello tape.

Literaure in the EFL classroom

In the photo: The author of this post and the participants in the workshop "Teaching English Using Literature" with their copies of "American Themes" and "My Town".

Last Saturday 26^th October, I was invited to give a short talk about the use of Literature in the teaching of English. This happened at the Universidad del Pacífico Teachers´ Congress. During the talk we discussed some possible ways in which Literature, specially literary writing techniques, can help students develop a better sense of the way language works. We also had the great opportunity of introducing the new Department of State publication “American Themes”, which we gave out to the participants together with “My Town”, a selection of texts by writers on American cities, thanks to the Regional English Language Office led by David Fay in Lima.

Using literature to teach/ learn English is an attractive alternative. In the first place, Literature is independent from any methodology. Teachers can insert literary works at any time in their curriculum and they can make the piece fit their teaching topics, vocabulary and grammar. Secondly, Literature becomes a tool for students to develop their language skills further from the textbook. What is more, Literature provides authentic, valuable and rich contexts for personal enrichment and growth thanks to its suggestive power and universality, variety and interest.

Apart from the obvious and natural place of Literature as a source of reading material, we teachers can use it as a springboard for other connected activities such as debates on the different “readings” a text may have for diverse readers. Also, we can adapt some innovative literary techniques to help our students develop their writing skills. Although the objective will not be to produce literary works, our students will have the opportunity to explore the language and have fun with it.

One such technique is called “Erasure”. The writer uses a published text, such a newspaper article, and a felt tip pen. Then, s/he erases parts of the text and keeps others s/he likes. The resulting piece is a new text which, even though it is using words from an existing one, has a message that the author has given to it. The technique is used by writers belonging to the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Movement, a group of poets who experiment with Chance Operations, techniques that try to give randomness a place in the production of literary works.

Another technique we presented was giving the text a limit in the number of words. We introduced the participants to Drabbles, a short narrative form of producing flash fiction, where the text has to have exactly one hundred words. The advantage for us teachers is that the fact that there is a limit in the number of words, will force students to edit and rethink about new and creative ways to say what they want to say in order to enforce the 100-word rule.

More information and examples of the techniques in use can be found on the following websites:

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poets: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5661

Erasure: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/video/239

Drabbles: http://rms.squidoo.com/drabble

The Kentucky Fried Chronicles part 1

 The Study of the United States Institute –SUSI for short – on Contemporary American Literature is hosted by the University of Louisville, Kentucky, which happens to be hometown of KFC and of one of the most amazing athletes of all time: Muhamad Ali.

***

I was lucky to have been chosen to be part of the group of sixteen scholars from all over the world who will be based in Louisville for the following six weeks. Upon arrival, I learned that Peru was one of the three countries that were participating in the institute for the first time, Namibia and Burma are also first timers. The other countries represented here are Boznia-Herzegovina, Cameroon, Indonesia, India, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, China, Romania, Russia, Syria, Tunisia and Zambia.

***

On Friday, we were gathered for the first time at the international Center; but things did not take off so quickly, it might have been the KFC we were served (for the first and only time, we were told) or it may have been the long trip. The thing is, right now we all feel as if we had known each other for ages: the jokes go in and out but, most importantly, the respect for each other as individuals and for our cultures is always the first consideration and the bond that has made us a solid group.

***

Tom Bryers, the director of the institute and famous in Spain as the Tomate Vengador, has been so far giving us introductory sessions on the concepts we need to be able to deal with to begin to try interpretations of the literary works we have to read and to connect those works to the culture of the United States expressed in its way of life, architecture, society, etc.

***

One of the most surprising things that has happened so far is the proclamation of the sixteen scholars in the SUSI Scholarship as Honorary Citizens of Louisville. We had the opening dinner on Monday night and during the speeches that are typically given on these occasions, Tom Bryers announced that the representative of the Mayor of the City had come to present us with a diploma. We were called, one by one, and got it from the Mayor´s representative. A complete surprise and an honor we all expect to be up to.

***

The days go by as we get on track with the works of poetry and narrative we will study, “deconstruct” some may say, in a city that is a nice place to be, hot at times, rainy at others, but with a quiet air that makes it a perfect place to study and develop a view of the American society through its literature.

***

Something to say about: collocations

A very important area of learning a language is the correct use of vocabulary in the right contexts, specially the combinations that form fixed phrases, that is: collocations. To a native of Spanish, some word combinations sound right but for the native English folk they don´t. And literal translations don´t help much!!! Take for example the Spanish phrase “tomar el pelo”. We know the corresponding phrase is “pull someone ´s leg”, but if you want to translate it word by word, the result is at least confusing if not really bluffing.

The point is, vocabulary is a hard cookie, and we teachers need to inform ourselves before we “teach” something misleading like “take vacations”. Happily, and conveniently enough for us, the Internet has very good resources we could call “virtual donkey killers” (just kidding, the phrase is an invention). Among them, we can find dictionaries and thesaurus. However, the tool I have found extremely useful to clear any doubts (like the one on “take vacations”) is the Collocations Dictionary. Here you can enter a word and in return the dictionary will give you the possible word combinations, or collocations.

Have a field trip using the dictionary…and learning more.

Free online resources for teachers

This summer I decided to give a touch of technology to my class, but without spending money. I knew and have used Moodle , probably the most popular educational platform, so I performed a simple search that tipped me to the site freemoodle.org where you can host a class for free, provided it is open to everybody. I requested and was granted permission to create a course.

So far, the experience has had its ups and downs. On the lighter side, I can tell you Moodle is a great tool. You can upload any kind of material: text, video, audio, photo, pdf, word, excel, ppt, Hot Potatoes, links, YouTube, you name it! Then, the functionalities it offers are improving all the time. Right now, you can create online quizzes where you can determine the timing of the test, the kind of feedback you give, and then the score goes directly to the Grade Book so your students (and you, with the downloadable grade book facility) can have the record of grades at hand. There are other tools available for the curious teacher who wants to spend some time exploring the platform.

On the other hand, the time you spend on creating a course might be a problem. Specially if you are not familiar with the tool: you have to learn the ropes first! Then, you have to really become a pain in the neck with your students to get them to use the tool. Happily I have achieved this, but there still some who are waiting to the last moment to come an say: Sorry, teacher, I didn´t know. You know what I mean!

Another tool I am using (again really) is Markin4. This free programme lets you mark written texts by inserting notes and commentaries into it. Then you save the corrected work in a browser compatible file and send it to your student so s/he can see the feedback. You can ask your students to write a composition, send it to you on the email and when you got it, you copy/ paste it onto the Markin4window and viola! You are marking the text online.

I hope you find these tools as useful and exciting as I have. I assure you will be fascinated!

Comics in my class? You bet!

Last Friday 20, we attended the interesting workshop “Making the most of comics in the ELT class” by Peter David and organized by the Regional English Language Office of the United States Embassy in Lima. The talk by Mr David was followed by an interesting hands-on session led by David Fay, RELO Andes, and Patricio Rivas, a teacher at ICPNA Cuzco.

To be honest, I attended the event for quite selfish reasons: I am on vacation (which means I have the time), my son likes comics (especially “The Walking Dead,” of which he is such a great fan that he made me buy the Compendium, a one-thousand-page collection of the comic series, on Amazon), and a writer´s curiosity about the creative process involved in the writing of the plots of comics (most of you might know that I am a writer myself so this kind of input is attractive for me, specially if the presenter is such a personality).  Peter is not a teacher, he made it clear at the beginning of his talk, so he aimed at the creative side of the comics writing process: the script writing conventions and problems (he told us really funny anecdotes), the different types of speech balloons used in comics, etc. For me, the 90 minutes I spent listening to him were worth the time.

In the second part, David Fay gave us ideas on how to use comics in class: Ordering panels, filling in speech balloons with both pre-written dialogue and new dialogue, adding speech balloons. He used actual student-made comics from around the world. Patricio continued on this path and had us actually draw a comic starting from the simple and traditional short story theory that says a story starts with a problem and ends with the solution of the problem.

The  material given to us had really good pointers for those of us who want to experiment with comics. The theory behind using them, how the create our own comics (if we are not the artistic type) and ready-made comics we can use in class. Below, you will find a selection of some of the web sites you can explore further.

Finally, we were re-introduced to the new online English learning game Trace Effects –still a beta version but soon to be officially launched. Learn all about it at: http://reloandes.com/2012/06/24/english-through-states-new-computer-game/

In short, the event was inspiring and gave us a new area to experiment with. If you do experiment with comics in your class, we would love to hear about it.

Theory:

http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives/docs/06-44-1-f.pdf

http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives/docs/07-45-3-b.pdf (By David Fay!)

Making your cartoons:

http://www.toondoo.com

http://stripgenerator.com/

http://www.writecomics.com/

Where to find comics.

http://www.gocomics.com/

http://www.onlinecomics.net/pages/

Trace Effects: The State Department’s new instructional computer game

The US State Department has launched a new PC Game to study English.
The Regional English Language Office informs about it: HERE.

Cambridge Exams -Cambridge English TV

As you may know already, Cambridge University, through Cambridge ESOL, delivers a range of language exams. Among them, the most popular are those in the so-called Main Suite: Key English Test (KET), Preliminary English Test (PET), Fisrt Certificate in English (FCE); Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) and the Cambridge Proficiency Exam (CPE). Besides these, there are a couple of rather new developments: Young Learners (YLE) and Teaching Knowledge Test (TKT). There are also the regognised teaching qualifications CELTA and DELTA. Which of these do you already have?
The link below will take you to Cambridge English TV, where you can watch very interesting videos about the exams above. I specially like the one called "Behind the Scenes of Cambridge Exams," where you will see all the preparations and hard work that people back in Cambridge do in order to deliver.
Have a look, you´ll love it!
Cesar Klauer

How I met Miss Silva

Today, the news of Miss Maria Silva´s  death caught us by surprise. She was our boss and example at the ACPB for years. This goes to her.

I had finished my training (now called “induction”) with Ita Valcárcel and was waiting for “the call.” It never came. So I got kind of angry, why had they made me go to training for one whole week? I couldn´t resist the temptation and went to the ACPB on Avenida Arequipa and asked to talk to Miss Silva. I had seen her only once and didn´t know what she was like, but I didn´t care, I wanted to know why they had made me waste my time.


Miss Silva is not available, said María, the secretary. I thought that maybe she didn´t want to see a Mr Nobody who wanted to talk to her for God knows what reasons. So she´s not in? I stared at her. Well, can I leave a message? She was silent, waiting. I said: Please, tell Miss Silva that I want to know if I am going to be assigned classes or not. She looked at me as if I was some kind of madman. Surely she was thinking that classes had already started! I continued: Tell her I won´t get angry if I don´t get anything but I want to know, that´s all. She pressed her lips and wrote it down.

The next day, I was summoned to her office: a little partition in a big room where she sat at a tiny desk full of papers and books and many other things: a coffee mug with pens and pencils sticking out, a table calendar with curled corners, a cup and saucer (empty), post-it tags; on the wall behind her a cork board announced the opening for teacher courses at Bell College (two years later, what a coincidence, I was sent to that same place!). The “office” was really minuscule, that´s probably why I though she was larger than she really was; or perhaps, her desk was too small. She looked at me, motioned me to sit down, put on her glasses and read a piece of paper: You asked to be assigned here in San Isidro, didn´t you? She moved her mouth in a peculiar way, as if she was about to spit something. I said I preferred San Isidro, yes, Ma´am. She Looked at me and offered me a couple of classes in Lima. The centre of the city? I thought, and almost rejected the offer but then a light that nobody saw enlightened me and my mouth, without my permission, said: OK, Lima is fine. She sent me to see the supervisor there, Miss Vicky.

Three weeks later, she called me in again. Do you still want to work here in San Isidro? She looked at me knowing in advance what I was going to say. Since then, I taught at the San Isidro branch for almost 7 years, and took to going to see her with ideas and suggestions (that she listened to attentively). Sometimes, she just sat there with her eyes closed, I would stop my talk thinking she was falling asleep, but she wasn´t. It´s the migraine, she said to me once, and you´re wearing a yellow shirt. Yellow made her headaches wake up, and they never left easily.

Miss Silva was loved, respected, feared and even hated, all at the same time. And I understood the different feelings. She wasn´t easy to content. She wasn´t there to make anybody happy either. Her presence, even in the other two branches –Miraflores and Lima– was felt: she didn´t need to be there in person to really be there. That´s the type of woman she was, and will always be in the memory of those of us who remember her. So long Miss Maruja, now you´ll be keeping Ita company, and waiting for us to join you one day.

Two common words

According to the Merriam Webster´s Dictionary, the origin of the word “clock” can be traced back to the Middle English word “clok”, Middle Dutch “clocke”, Old French “cloque”, Medieval Latin “clocca” and Middle Irish “clocc”, all of which mean “bell.” When the clock we know was invented in around the 14th century, it told the time using bells that went off on the hour and on quarters and half hours. People say five o´clock, etc., as an abbreviation of “of the clock”, or, in other words, “of the bell.”


Have ever “gotten the sack”? I hope not. The expression was born before the industrial era when a worker carried his tools in a sack. When he was dismissed, the employer gave him his tools and literally “got the sack.”

Cesar Klauer


Sources:


The Little Books of Answers, Doug Lennox, MJF Books, New York, 2003


Merriam Webster´s Dictionary

Ten years ago

Federico Salazar´s nose shrugged a little bit and his eyes shone a doubtful spark. Not even him, a seasoned newscaster, accustomed to the terrible events of life, could believe what he was about to tell the millions of viewers who were getting ready for a day´s work. Many of us, cup of coffee in hand, the towel drying our hair, or kissing our children good morning, witnessed, without fathoming for sure, through the immediacy of live television the strange but certain crash of a passenger jet plane into a silvery scrycraper in New York City.

I called my wife, still trying to figure out what was happening, and pointed at the screen. Was it an accident?, she narrowed her eyes in awe. I didn´t know, the pilot must have gotten lost, but none of us really swallowed the explanation.

I left for work thinking about Sharon, the American lady who worked with me. Was she from New York? No, she was from Miami, or so I thought. In the office, her desk was empty and I was sure she had stayed home, unable to move or talk about the tragedy. But she got in as if nothing had happened. Have you seen the news?, I stood up. She smiled, what news? Then I broke it down to her in as careful a way I could possibly find. The rest of the morning we spent watching the news, zapping from CNN to BBC to Chanel N and backwards.

This Sunday, it will be 10 years of the insanity that hit America hard. Some of us Peruvians thought, ha! Tell us about crazy terrorists! And deep inside us we knew how it felt in the heart.



This is a great chance to teach your students some history, and practice English of course. Voice of America has a special feature with MP3 downloadable audio and language activities for free. Visit:THIS LINK

Helicopters, boomerangs, cougars and bromances

I don´t think I am a helicopter parent, at least I try not to be one, as I tried, when younger and beautiful, not to become a boomerang child. But that one was hard, because in our society here in Peru, children don´t leave home until they get married. Forget the boomerang, then.


I really hope my friends (the females) don´t become cougars. I have never met one in person –though stories have always been around –, but they are out there hunting…bad (or good…) thing is they will not be looking for men like me anymore, their radar is pointing at another direction.

Are you involved in a bromance now (males only, huh)? You might be but don´t know yet, think about it while you listen some Americana.



The words used here are real and have made their way to the 2011 Merriam-Webster´s Collegiate Dictionary. The tip came from our friend and colleague Carmen Caceda. She sent this link to an article where they talk about the new words that the dictionary people have included this year: 150 in all!

Have a closer look at some of those HERE.

Time to update your vocabulary books!

"Cool" teachers

Back in February this year I published a short entry titled: Something to say about NNESTs. The acronym stands for Non Native English Speakers. In the post, I speak about English speakers who are hired to teach English only because they are native speakers, forgetting or simply disregarding (the hiring institution, I mean) the need for appropriate qualifications to do this important job. This is not the case with all native speakers, of course!, but there are far too many to just pass under the radar without detection.


This all comes up now because of a publication of El Comercio on Friday 19th, just last week, called “Institutos y Centros de idiomas.” The twelve-page supplement offers interesting articles, they even interviewed recognized specialists in the TEFL field like Marita de la Lama from U. del Pacífico, Claudia Marín from UPC and Cesar Saldaña from U. Ricardo Palma. But the item that connects this comment today with the February post is the advertisement on page 5, whose image is posted here too, but with the name of the institution covered, just to avoid problems.

The ad opens with the line “Pagaré mis estudios dando clases de ingles,” that is “I´ll pay my studies teaching English.” I suppose the phrase is an invention from the “creative team” (the quotes are mine) that produced the ad. I can only speculate and/ or speak of my own personal reaction to the message that the ad implies.

The line tells me that the people who wrote it (I am not so sure if the institution supports this view) think that teaching English is a temporary activity that university students can do just to pass the time and get some easy bucks out of it while they pursue a more “serious” career. Once this “cool” teacher finishes university, what? No problem, mate, there are more “teachers” waiting in line.

The implications are easy to list but I´ll mention only two. The first one is that training can´t be too demanding. Logic tells me that it is not efficient to spend resources on a person who will not last long in the institution. The second is the rate per hour. Why pay high if the “teacher” is actually NOT a teacher. This affects directly those who are (and there are many professional teachers in that institute, I know). Then, a question appears: Is this happening at other institutes as well?

Another line that called my attention is the one that says: “Profesores certificados por la University of Michigan y TESOL, USA.” As far as I know, the certificates given by Michigan (and Cambridge) are not professional qualifications but language certificates. I don´t know about TESOL USA (is it a qualifying body? Beats me.) Are they trying to substitute (in their scarcity) native speakers by “near-native” speakers?

Between non-teacher native speakers who are hired to teach and university students who take up the job as a sport, how much space is left for the real teaching professionals? My intention with the two posts, last February´s and today´s, is not to attack these people (who are ultimately looking for a job) or institutions (who may hire whoever they want) but to raise awareness among us, the teachers who do this for a living, who try and get the appropriate qualifications, who try and look for opportunities to improve (and, in passing, among the authorities at the institutions). We are the ones who must point the finger and demand professionalism, who must demonstrate that our job is not a form of moonlighting. And to do this, there are so many ways.

Learning English similes

A new semester has just begun. The first class is always a good chance to try and convince our students that effort is a necessary component of any learning experience. I say this because I have noticed that lately the young tend to think that things come easily, they just hold up their hands and violá, things happen –as if in a virtual reality game or a Harry Potter movie. So I begin my class with two similes I have invented.


When I tell my students that “Learning English is like losing weight,” they look at each other and smile before turning their stare at me with a skeptical air floating in front of their faces. I smile back and throw a seemingly tricky question: If you want to lose weight, what do you have to do? They frown, they scratch their heads. There is always one who attempts an answer –I guess they feel I am pulling their legs and don´t want to lose face – and raises his hand: You have to go on a diet? He doubts, and I go yes! A diet! Excellent method. So if I wanted to lose some kilograms (I do!, really), I could diet on Sundays. They smile again and shake their heads. Why not? I ask again. A girl, who is apparently an expert in keeping the line, clarifies everything: No, T-shirt, The diet is everyday! There you are! I point at the girl: Learning English is like losing weight: You have to go on a diet every day! Students who expect to command the language attending classes twice a week or on marathonic 5-hour Saturday lessons and do nothing in between will not achieve the goal. Period.

Then I tell them that learning English is like learning to swim (or to ride a bike if you prefer). Can you swim? Hands up, please. The majority can swim (except for myself, I have never learned… shame!). Then, I point at a boy and ask: Where did you learn to swim? He hesitates, looks at his classmates who are staring at him waiting for the enlightenment of his wisdom and experience in the topic. He stutters but manages to say: In a swimming pool, Tea – chair, and blushes inevitably. But I am not ready to let him go yet, so I wait for the laughs to stop and attack him again: Was there water in the pool? He is redder than a blooming rose. Of course, tea – chair, he wants to disappear from the face of earth. I smile in triumph, take a step back to the centre of the class: You see? Learning English is like learning to swim, you learn in the water; English is learned in English!

Everybody seems to have grabbed the heart and soul of the two similes. They shake their heads, some look at the ceiling deep in philosophical abstraction, maybe thinking that everything they have always thought about learning English has been wrong all along. Signing up for a two session a week class or a Saturday only course might be a problem in the end because in actual fact you will have to study in between classes! Why do they offer that type of course then? Beats me!