Masters of TESOL: Recent Episodes
Andrew Bailey
The biggest brains in TESOL spill the beans on the most effective way of teaching English as a Foreign Language.
In part 2, we look at the next step of a class – beginning, how to create a good atmosphere/rapport and set the theme/schema for the class.
In the first of a series of videos, we look at the most effective way to plan a lesson to ensure you stay on target and make sure all the pieces fit together. These videos will replace the podcast as my primary media, so feel free to subscribe. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKbariMdEytYHdmkpXiILnQ/videos
THIS IS THE LAST PODCAST (for the foreseeable future).
I'm hardly prolific with podcast releases but this will be the last one for the foreseeable future. I've decided to concentrate more on the YouTube side of things.
YouTube Channel - www.youtube.com/channel/UCKbariMdEytYHdmkpXiILnQ
The channel will have materials, concept videos and general useful teaching stuff! Please do all the usual YouTube stuff so I can be more visible on the site and you know when new videos are released (plus, it's a digital pat on the head for me).
With Sam Hellmuth of York University, England, we think about these questions:
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With language acquisition, which comes first - production or perception?
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Why do your students sound angry when they aren't?
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How much does accent affect comprehension?
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Can we learn to 'de-accent'?
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Should we bother teaching English stress patterns?
Sam smoothly mixes theory and practical tips with some excellent real-world examples. Something for everyone.
Sam Hellmuth York University Bio - www.york.ac.uk/language/people/academic-research/sam-hellmuth/
Sam Hellmuth Twitter - twitter.com/samhellmuth?lang=en
Sam Hellmuth Site - samhellmuth.com
{bleep bloop bleep} I booted up cyborg teacher Stafford Lumsden to talk about online learning and the changing perception of what exactly a classroom is. We are more connected than ever and this shift in technology is changing the options that students have and how we teach. We discuss....
- distance learning
- e-learning vs online learning
- Is online education as 'good' as offline?
- Basics of having a repository
- LMS - Learning Management System - create assignments, give feedback, students upload and interact with each other and the instructor
- The pros and cons of a fully online classroom
- No one-size-fits-all with online teaching
Useful resources:
Google - heard of it? add dot com. It's quite good.
Google Sites - make your own web pages
classroom.google.com - education specific 'classrooms'. Students can submit and track assignments. Teachers can receive and give feedback on assignments all within the Google eco-system.
wix.com - make your own web pages
moodle.org - open source LMS. Requires some computer savvy to use
Blackboard.com - pricy. Would require financial support from your department
An easy way to make sure that every student contributes to class. This video shows an easy way to mentally track who has spoken in class. Basic, but useful!
Includes thrilling details on the two different parts of pronunciation, and activities like minimal pairs bingo, the need for volume in pronunciation / mouth vowel map, using textbook dialogues better / changing the mood not the words (my personal favourite), stress and meaning activity, and 2 truths 1 lie with intonation! Recorded at my KOTESOL […]
I am branching out into video.
First Video
Channel
Please watch, subscribe, like and all those things that everyone on YouTube is begging you to do! This is the first step of an expansion of MOT with the aim of eventually making materials for you to use in your own classes.
First Video - https://youtu.be/FWE2JPBf-PI
Channel - http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKbariMdEytYHdmkpXiILnQ/
Keywords: Bloom, Thinking Skills, Bloom's Taxonomy, ESL, EFL, TESOL, TEFL, CELTA, DELTA, pronunciation, pronouncing, TV, linguistics, language, second language, teaching, learning, English, Israeli, , bilingual, multilingual, cognition,
Possibly one of the most misused input/output techniques. The dreaded dictation. How can we move beyond playing a CD or reading and having students just write down what they hear? Oksana Kharley takes us through some useful approaches and techniques for practicing listening and writing that don't include playing audio a couple of times and then handing out a script. Her ideas can help open up some new avenues for activities that the word and a new way of thinking about "dictation" (eg, does it NEED to include writing?)
Some of these activities come from:
Paul Davis & Mario Rinvolucri. (2006). Dictation. New methods, new possibilities. CUP.
I caught up with Roger Fusselman after his KOTESOL conference presentation on using TED talks and videos in general for language teaching. This is a MUST listen for anyone using visual media in the classroom.
We cover the DOs and DON'Ts of choosing videos as well as his principles of using media:
Challenge / Meaningful / Support / Choice / Integration (connecting ideas) / Variety / Application
Video Sites referenced:
http://www.ted.com/talks
http://bigthink.com/
http://www.ideacity.ca/watch-talks/
Specific videos referenced:
How to start a movement
Power poses for confidence
The self-styled 'bad boy' of language teaching, Thomas Farrell, dropped by my office to take about self reflection. What do we do in the classroom and, importantly, WHY do we do it? Who are YOU as a teacher and what do YOU bring into the classroom?
Start adding this reflective practice regularly to your professional life and you'll be surprised at the difference it can make to your personal and professional development.
Also a good lesson about having a safety net. I recorded this with my fancy MICs but the recordings failed for some reason, so this is based on my phone back-up recording. Phew....
Well, discourse markers are kinda a feature of, like, natural speech in, you know, basically every language. Jon Campbell-Larsen takes us through the how and why of teaching Discourse Markers.
Discourse Markers HO2
Here is a link to an example of how to scaffold students practicing these markers (based on Jon's KOTESOL hand out). Feel free to adapt it for your own classes.
Keywords: ESL, EFL, TESOL, TEFL, CELTA, DELTA, discourse markers, discourse, markers, linguistics, language, second language, teaching, learning, English, bilingual, mulitlingual, cognition,
Vowels are the most difficult of the phonemes to teach. Consonants generally don’t differ that much between language and, crucially, consonants have things touch – tongue between the teeth, bottom lip on the teeth etc – which makes it easier to describe to students. Vowels on the other hand have anything in the mouth making […]
How effective is using English language TV in helping students improve their pronunciation? Well, Reichmuth & Hanf actually did some research and the results are in. How I Met Your Mother!
Another quickie from the last KOTESOL conference.
Keywords: ESL, EFL, TESOL, TEFL, CELTA, DELTA, pronunciation, pronouncing, TV, linguistics, language, second language, teaching, learning, English, Israeli, , bilingual, mulitlingual, cognition,
Plurals are easy, right? There's one or there's more than one... pretty straight forward. "All", "every", "All the" "each" - that's pretty simple too, isn't it? Well, hold on to something sturdy as Eytan Zweig gets you to think a little deeper about how we both form and understand language.
The literal meaning (semantics) and the meaning of the use (pragmatics) of the language is a vital part of how we communicate in real life. So, let's a show like this is chomping at the bit to dig down into this topic.
Keywords: ESL, EFL, TESOL, TEFL, CELTA, DELTA, pragmatics, semantics, linguistics, language, second language, teaching, learning, English, Israeli, Hebrew, bilingual, mulitlingual, York, University of York, UK, England, cognition, Eytan Zweig,
In the first of this batch of hit-n-run quickie interviews from the KOTESOL conference in Seoul at the end of 2016, I spoke to Justin McKibben about how we can expand students roles. By giving students certain speaking tasks the traditional classroom would consider a teacher's job, we can vastly increase student talk time and give them a broader sense of control in their own classroom.
Justin takes us through some of the techniques we can use in our classrooms to shift away from the traditional teacher-fronted classroom.
STT, TTT, ESL, EFL, TEFL, TESOL, CELTA, DELTA, teacher-fronted classroom, teaching, English,
In this end-of-year episode, we get the funnier side of teaching English from listeners and future interviewees. Special thanks to Grace, Thomas, Matthew, Jon, Fergal, James, Mierkamil, Oksana, Jacob, Roger, Gordon, and Jake.
We cover accidental phallic drawings, mistranslations, unintended puns, uncontrollable sweating...
If you have a good story, you can be part of a future episode. Record it and send it to mastersoftesol@gmail.com .
IG: mastersoftesol
Twitter: @MOTcast
Send me your stories for the end-of-year funny story compilation episdoe. Listen to these two examples and then send me yours to
mastersoftesol@gmail.com
Don't wait - record and send it now!
Hi y’all I’m making a Christmas episode of the podcast and I need your help. Yes, YOU. The person reading this right now. Don’t look around, I’m talking to you~! As serious, devoted education professionals, we all love hearing about things going wrong or weird in a lesson, so the end-of-year episode is going to be a collection of […]
This episode, we start with a little experiment and get more interactive. Let us know what country you thought the music originated in at @MOTcast with the hashtag #motesol . I'll put up the results on www.mastersoftesol.com
Andrew Ewan MacFarlane is a lecturer at University of York in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science and a sociolinguist. We spent a while flipping back and forth between accents and dialects, reminiscing about Margaret Thatcher, thinking about unobtrusive kiwis and kangaroos, gettin' daaaan wit da yoof o' London innit, and playing "Name That [Country of Origin] Tune".
This was one of my favourite interviews so far and hopefully inspires more than a few listeners to get deeper into the subject.
Footnotes:
Margaret Thatcher's voice - before and after
Multicultural London English
accent, Andrew Ewen MacFarlane, brain, classroom interaction, cognition, dialect, EFL,English, English class, English Instructor, English teaching, episode,ESL, experiement, Glasgow, language, linguistics, Margaret Thatcher,masters of tesol, MLE, MOT, MOTcast, Multicultural London English,New Zealand, perception, podcast, register, research, Science,Scotland, sociolinguist, sociolinguistics, student, teaching English,TEFL, TESOL, thinking, University of York.
Once again, I got lost in the corridors of the University of York, this time to speak to Tamar Keren-Portnoy about how we learn our first language. There's a lot of similarities between how we learn our first language and how we acquire our second language, so it's a useful topic for ESL / EFL / second language teachers.
She gives us insights into how babies develop syntax/grammar norms, why they learn some words earlier than others, how babies are not simply mimicking their caretakers to learn their first language and, through her own research with Rory DePaolis and Marilyn Vihman, how babies learn through listening and the sounds they themselves make.
You may remember Marilyn Vihman from episode 9 of MOT.
Links:
Marilyn Vihman Interview on MOT
"Travel Broadens the Mind" - Campos et al (2000)
Key words: baby, babies, acquisition, teaching, learning, babbling, language, babbling, cooing,
http://traffic.libsyn.com/mastersoftesol/11_-_Too_old_to_learn__The_Critical_Period_-_Heather_Marsden.mp3 This episode, I speak to University of York’s Heather Marsden about the controversial Critical Period hypothesis. This theory suggests that there is a limited age at which we can learn a second language, after which it grows increasingly difficult. Anecdotally, we assume this to be true – kids are sponges for language while older […]
Here’s a fun ice breaker that works for most proficiency levels. I’ve used this for years and it has never failed. You’ll notice there’s some unusual language (for the classroom, at least) in there – “wheelie”, “impression”, “party trick” and so on – that can provoke some interactive problem solving between partners. Also, they are […]
Leaping into 2010! Follow Masters of TESOL on Instagram for visual fun. Not much there at the moment, but it’ll grow soon. Want to know what I look like with a cat on my shoulders? Look no further. https://www.instagram.com/mastersoftesol/
@MOTcast
www.mastersoftesol.com
Subscribe on iTunes
I'm alive! Back with a quickie that (hopefully) gives us a foundation for a deeper look at this topic later this year with a real expert.
We're looking at TESTING & EVALUATION - The main priciples in this episode:
- Practicality
- Reliability
- Validity
- Authenticity
- Washback
Lots of info comes from this excellent book:
Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices - Brown & Abeywickrama
To a monolingual, being bilingual or multilingual seems magical. More than one language in one head - no one can live at that speed! As a result, some unusual misconceptions have grown around linguistic phenomena that, globally, is far more common than speaking a single language.
Marilyin Vihman has significant experience in bilingualism both personally and academically. In this episode, recorded in her office at the University of York, we look at some of the myths about bilingual development and which are outright wrong and which lean closer to the truth than others.
The myths we bust - or, in some cases, bruise - are:
- Bilinguals are two monolinguals in one head
- Bilinguals start to speak later than monolinguals
- Babies soak up languages like sponges
- Some languages are more primitive than others, so are easier to learn
- English is widely spoken (as a second language) because it has less grammar
- Parents pass on mistakes and non-native accents to their children
- There's one right way to raise a bilingual child
(Adapted from Pearson (2008))
Marilyn Vihman at University of York
[This episode follows up on issues first covered in episode 4 with Jennifer Jenkins.]
English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) is a perplexing thing. It's not an approach. It's not a methodology. It's a perspective. So there's nothing for teachers to really get solid a grip on. This can get frustrating for teachers and can leave us more confused than enlightened.
In this episode, Martin Dewey of King's College London towels off this slippery subject with a classroom perspective. Rethink how much attention we give certain language aspects in our classes, moving away from the native speaker norm, focusing on how students adapt their speech for the specific situation.
Due to the time difference, I was up at dawn for this interview so I was a little sleepy and, yes, I do say "curriculums" at one point!
If you like the show, SUBSCRIBE! Questions, comments, requests to...
@MOTcast
www.masterofTESOL.com
Further reading:
V.O.I.C.E - Vienna Oxford International Corpus of English
"Understanding English as a Lingua Franca" on Amazon
"Exploring ELF" on Amazon
Martin Dewey's Research
Jennifer Jenkins on Amazon
In this episode we hear from TESOL methodology trainer Tom Randolph about some of the reasons ESL / EFL lessons don't succeed, and how to avoid it happening. I chip in with my own experience as a teacher trainer based on the classes I have monitored that didn't go well.
There're plenty of solid tips and even activity ideas in this conversation, so there's something for everyone, regardless of experience.
I'd love to hear your ideas too.
@MOTcast
www.mastersofTESOL.com
Different brain systems need to work together in order to learn. So, what is the best approach for teachers to take to give the best chance for students to improve? Stephen van Vlack slices open the brain (metaphorically) to show us how the different brain systems interact.
This is one of the more difficult subjects we've tackled on MOT, but Stephen breaks it down into an understandable view of how information and perception affects language learning.
This is an slimmed down version of the full interview. To hear an extra 8 minutes (I say 15 minutes on the show, but it's not that long!), click here.
@MOTcast
www.masterofTESOL.com
Some terms used in this episode:
L1 / L2 - Language 1 (native / first language), Language 2 (second/additional language)
SLA - Second Language Aquisition
Links:
Stephan van Vlack's page
Teaching with the brain in mind - Jenson - on Amazon
A Users Guide to the Brain - Ratey - on Amazon
Learning: Principles and Applications - Klein - on Amazon
Here's another 8 minutes from Stephen van Vlack on how the brain works when we learn - or perceive - new things, including how learning a second language affects the native language.
One of the most overlooked elements of teaching spoken language is intonation. Yet it's extremely important for conveying meaning. Traditional methods of teaching intonation tended to be simple listen-and-repest drills.
Our guest for this episode, Prof. Dorothy Chun, has researched using visualisation to teach intonation, where students are able to see the contours of a native speaker and compare it to their own production.
I spoke to Dorothy Chun over Skype, defying the 16-hour time difference, to get the expert opinion on the 'how' and 'why' of teaching intonation.
If you never do any intonation practice, this will be a useful guide for how to introduce it to your classes.
@MOTcast
www.mastersofTESOL.com
Dorothy Chun
PRAAT Visualization software (free) (Windows and Mac)
Jazz Chants
The whole “blue/black-white/gold” dress photo that’s been doing the rounds in the last week or so reminded me of a very interesting point about language and perception of color. As the dress debate went global and multilingual, perhaps not all of the disagreement on the colours may be down to how an individual’s brain is […]
English as a Lingua Franca - a shared language between non-native speakers
As English becomes more and more globalised, we question whether the Native Speaker model should be the goal in the classroom. Prof. Jennifer Jenkins first broached this idea back in 2000 and was met with excitement and resistance.
Native Speaker teachers may feel threatened. Non-native teachers may feel empowered.
Further reading:
V.O.I.C.E - Vienna Oxford International Corpus of English
"Understanding English as a Lingua Franca" on Amazon
Jennifer Jenkins on Amazon
"Exploring ELF" on Amazon
Martin Dewey's Research
I’m currently teaching at an intensive winter camp for adults. Each week there is an activity where the groups should break into teams and complete a series of activities, often in different locations on campus. As this requires scores to be consolidated from different locations, I hit on the idea of how to do this […]
http://traffic.libsyn.com/mastersoftesol/03_-_Effective_Feedback_on_Writing_-_Ahmar_Mahboob.mp3 Hands up if you’ve been properly trained on giving feedback on students’ writing… Yep, not many of us. Ahmar Mahboob gives a valuable insight into the most effective approach. Below are some links where you can get a more in depth look at his approaches. Is peer assessment any good? How and when should […]
In the modern classroom, there can’t be many of us who only use the white/blackboard and the textbook for every lesson. To a greater or lesser extent, the convenience and liberating nature of the digital age has become part of our classroom workflow. For more than two years now, I have shunned the board and […]
In class, we point behind us to represent the past. Forward for the future. But, other than Total Physical Response, how else can we use gestures?
Scott Thornbury's current workshop revolves around using gestures beyond the simple physical references, going deeper into how they affect cognition and strengthen recall.
For example, using gestures to represent the present perfect is a weird idea that a lot of teachers - and students - might be hesitant to use at first. However, there is evidence that using gestures to teach this tense, which can be extremely confusing for learners whose first language doesn't have a similar form, has a more profound impact than regular teaching techniques.
Also, what's the strangest question a student has asked you? Record me a short file and let me know - www.mastersoftesol.com - Shy types can tweet me and I'll read it. @MOTcast Let's hear what weird things people wanted to know!
Useful links:
Scott Thornbury's books on Amazon
Louder Than Words - Bergan
Music: Les Juanitos - "Soul Walking"
This podcast is for ESL, EFL, TESOL, TEFL, ELT teaching
Looking online, a lot of people seem to wonder about how to make their own podcast, especially regarding the equipment. So, for anyone interested here’s the equipment I use and the process: Equipment and Process Cardoid Mic (used for the intro/outro) – Audio-Technica ATR2500 USB mic http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QJREXM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Great mic for the money. I got it for […]
Hello, world! This site is the home for the Masters of TESOL podcast. Each episode, I speak to the people attached to the biggest brains in the industry and they give us the juice that’ll improve our teaching. I’ll be giving regular recorded assignments, so if you want to contribute something to the show, that […]