APAC Editorials

2009-11-01T00:15:00.003+01:00

EDITORIAL. November 2009

PREMI APAC – JOHN MCDOWELL 2010

On 25th February 2010, the APAC – John McDowell Award ceremony is going to take place during the Opening Session of the APAC – ELT Convention 2010, Skills for Life: ELT and Education. Once again a series of prizes are going to be awarded to teachers and students who send us their work by 31st December 2009. The jury, made up of five members of our board, will especially take into consideration those entries which are creative, innovative and which concern research into the field of language teaching, as well as ideas and activities carried out by English teachers with their students in class.

Some of last year's winners:

Let us take a broader look at the different categories and their corresponding prizes.

Category A. Projects by teachers or future teachers. These projects can be anything ranging from units developed for the classroom to research on different aspects of the English language teaching. The first prize consists of a two-week course in the UK sponsored by the British Council, with transportation to be paid for by the winner. You can visit http://cambridgejuly2009.bogspot.com to find out more about the experience that Maria Rosa Ena Vidal, winner of this category in 2009, had in Cambridge last July. The second prize consists of a voucher worth 100€ and a CASIO translator.

Category B. Research projects by students. These are usually treballs de recerca that students write in Batxillerat and which are linked to any aspect of the English language but not just written in English. There are also two prizes: the first one consisting of a netbook and the second one consisting of a voucher worth 100€.

Category C. Projects developed in class. Teachers present ideas and activities in which students take an active part. The first prize is a voucher worth 500€ and the second one is a voucher worth 100€.

Those of you who have attended the Opening Session at the APAC – ELT Convention on other occasions may have realised that the awards last year were different from those in previous editions. We hope you find them appealing. If you still haven’t plucked up the courage to share your research or projects with us, get cracking as you still have a couple of months left until the deadline.

Send them:
by post: to APAC, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 606, 4t 2a, despatx F-G, 08007 Barcelona
or
by e-mail: .

For further information

2009-09-01T21:46:00.000+02:00

Update on APAC’s Websites

On opening www.apac.es the first novelty you notice is the layout. The double line of icons has been transformed into a slideshow displaying the featured websites. As each slide has a four-second timer you can either wait for the next featured site to appear or use the small forward and back buttons beneath the show to navigate through the slides. Clicking on each image will bring up its link.

A new vertical line to the right of the slideshow now holds the highlights. The first is a link to the mobile-friendly version of the APAC website.

The top-right icon links to a completely new section on BritLit. The leading page gives a general introduction to the aims of BritLit. It also offers links to the APAC activities connected with this new initiative plus some British Council teacher kits on the subject and a useful contact for more information.

Notice the link on the portal to the upcoming APAC meeting in September. This is when the present board is due for renewal. Read the website link for more details.

http://apacelt.ning.com, the social network, is gradually increasing in numbers with a total of 173 members as we go to press. There have been a couple of new blog postings since June: one on a Peace Campaign run by the Olivar Gran secondary school and the other the monthly newsletter by Nuria de Salvador. Two new videos are also on show, both on the use of technology in classrooms. The Digital Textbooks forum, too, invites comment from those using computers coupled with textbooks as learning tools. In addition you can see a new flash presentation of the featured websites which brings a point of animation to the site. If you have a 3G phone you’ll also find a link to a mobile-friendly version of the network.

As you know this social site is bottom-up in that it relies on your cooperation for content. This is called crowdsourcing, a neologism meaning that it is we, the crowd, who provide the resources. This is quite a departure from the usual top-down approach we are used to in traditional education and it is a taste of what may well be the future trend in all learning activities. Your resources are welcome!

Students Take Over

2009-05-01T17:26:00.005+02:00

Do they? What about the teacher? What sort of chaos are teachers going to deal with? I agree that the title might easily lead readers to these types of questions. I am not going to give a miraculously recipe because they do not exist, but I would like to write a few lines about the possibility of doing something different in our classes and introducing autonomy into the class successfully.

If our main aim is to help students become more autonomous in their learning process, our attitude towards classroom activities should involve other strategies than teaching linguistic skills. We will have to rely on a more holistic approach to teaching taking into account all those areas that will contribute to our pupils’ development.

We do not want to be kids’ entertainer, but we want them to enjoy the English class, don’t we? We want students to improve in all four skills, but above all we want to encourage communication. We need to emphasize cooperation and group work, to give every single student a sense of fulfilment in the English class, to offer students topics much more related to life outside the classroom, to share their knowledge with other students, to give them the opportunity of working towards an end-product that will make them feel proud of themselves.

The experience can be done with short-term projects, carried out in groups organized by the teacher, towards a controlled output like dossiers or posters. But it can take a step further, or several, and let them have complete freedom to choose the topic they like best and the friends they would like to work with. They will have to decide how deeply they will go into the subject, sort out different work assignments, and come to an agreement about the possible ways of presenting their final product to the class, not to the teacher. The teacher will be there to help, but they will work on his or her own, and the rest of the class will evaluate them.

The teacher will give them complete autonomy but their presentations should include three steps:

- oral presentation

- written work ( dossier, posters, leaflets, etc. )

- activities to engage the rest of the class

Although work can be done outside the class there must be some time devoted to solving problems, revising their oral skills, putting things together and so on during school time. At the same time it will provide an opportunity for teachers to individualize teaching going from one group to another and to assess students’ interest, contribution and collaboration, which I consider of great value when working with projects.

When the time comes for presentations every group will take over during a certain period of time. The teacher will sit among the rest of the class, and therefore the group will have to organize the class, give instructions about what their friends are supposed to do while watching them, present their work in an attractive way, collect the activity sheets their friends will have completed and correct them to give them back on the following day.

There is some work for the “audience” as well:

1. Behave as students and do as they are told.

2. Evaluate their friends’ presentation completing an assessment sheet given by the teacher, following some parameters: interest of the subject, presentation, organization, and level of English

After having been through an experience like this, teachers will realize their students’ capabilities of ”taking over”. It will mean hard work for the teacher, but it will be tremendously rewarding as well. Students will learn to listen to their friends and enjoy watching what their friends have prepared. They will certainly work harder if they know that the rest of the class is going to evaluate them. On the other hand, teachers will have more time to cater for individuals, learn a lot from their pupils’ work, and feel very pleased watching students moving forward and assuming more responsibilities

Interpersonal Intelligence

2009-04-01T21:28:00.004+02:00

"They ignored me. They were busy promoting the fight that would kill time and divert from any lesson I might be planning. I moved toward Petey and made my first teacher statement, “Stop throwing sandwiches.” Petey and the class looked startled. This teacher, new teacher, just stopped a good fight. New teachers are supposed to mind their own business or send for the principal or a dean and everyone knows it's years before they come. Besides, what are you gonna do with a teacher who tells you to stop throwing sandwiches when you already threw the sandwich?

Benny called out from the back of the room, “Hey, teach, he awredy frew the sangwidge. No use tellin' him now don't throw the sangdwidge. They's sangwidge there on the floor.”

The class laughed. There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it. One boy covered his mouth and said, “Stoopid”, and I knew he was referring to me. I wanted to knock him out of his seat, but that would have been the end of my teaching career. Besides, the hand that covered his mouth was huge, and his desk was too small for his body." (1)

How did we teachers handle our first day in front of a class? Did we succeed or fail in the attempt of having the whole group of pupils under control? What went wrong and why? What would we have done if pupils had started throwing their sandwiches at each other? Or if they did ... how would we have responded to the attack?

It was in 1983 when Dr Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University, published his theory of multiple intelligences. This theory suggested that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on I.Q. testing, was far too limited. In a nutshell, what Dr Gardner proposed was eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults: linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence, bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, naturalist intelligence and last but not least, interpersonal intelligence.

No doubt, interpersonal intelligence plays a substantial role in success because it allows us to affect others by understanding others; without it, we lose the ability to exist socially.

It is this kind of intelligence that makes a person an excellent politician, a leader and, why not, a teacher capable of being adored and respected at the same time and succeeding when it comes to mediating in a conflict.

However, the main problem with intelligence, never mind which type it may be, could be that it is not acquired, that is to say you either have it or you don’t. Any teacher can learn how to cope with certain situations, no matter how difficult they may be, as long as they are predictable and follow certain behavioural patterns. The acid test comes when something unpredictable, something you've never remotely thought might happen, really takes place.

Why do certain people make excellent leaders, politicians and... teachers, while others fail. And when I say teachers I don’t mean the person who stands with his/her back to a blackboard (never mind if it’s the latest digital version on the market) and in front of a group of wild teenagers to try to teach them Maths ,Social Sciences or English! When I say teacher I mean the person who is expected to and should be looking forward to helping all those teenagers grow up while making the most of their schooldays.

According to Gardner, Armstrong and Coleman, among others, it is this interpersonal intelligence, this ability to interact well with others, that helps us to act and respond satisfactorily in front of a class.

I suppose the question is whether this intelligence is somehow intuitive, or if it can be learned. We all know that you can give sound advice to someone failing in a teaching situation, but if they don’t have that innate awareness of what is going on, both within themselves and with their pupils, there’s not much result.

Maybe it is a thing not learned from books and theory, but by trail and error, through experience. Even the very best teachers often begin as hopeless rookies. The question is whether one learns from mistakes, no matter how disastrous, or one gives oneself up to failure. When I look back on my own teaching in secondary schools, the beginning was almost all failure, and the successes seemed to come with age and the years of trial and error… as if by some magic gradually seeping in. Suddenly there came a day when I walked into a class and they all looked up, attentively with expectation (enthusiasm even), as if it was the most natural thing in the world that they should give up their natural individuality to the common good. There’s something also about simply expecting them to pay attention, and because your expectation is so convincing, they seem to have no option. Certainly children and adolescents behave in some ways like animals, and know in their bones whether you expect to be obeyed or not, and on any sign of weakness go in for the kill. Not that it’s much consolation to a fragile beginner teacher flailing about, trying to apply what he/she learned on the best-known training course.

By the way, let me tell you how the sandwich story ended: the teacher picked up the sandwich from the floor, he unwrapped it and ate it. It was his first act of classroom management.

Smart of him, wasn’t it?

(1) Frank McCourt, Teacher Man, Harper Perennial, 2006

APAC Convention: Feedback

2009-03-01T10:44:00.006+01:00

Hello,

To all participants in the 2009 APAC Congress we thank you for coming and getting involved in the event.

This is your opportunity to give us all some feedback on your experiences there, what you found positive and what you would improve.

Click on comments below...

Don't miss it. Not this Time!

2009-02-01T08:00:00.008+01:00

Internet and the like have changed our societies and they are likely to change our schools. That is why we want to focus in our Convention, this February, on how “To teach the ne(x)t generation”. We have put this central issue at the core of our conference. My first question is: What do we talk about when we talk about technology? We often feel overwhelmed when we hear those technology fetishists discussing how amazing their resources are. What about us, then? We’ve been teaching generations of students alright and we’ve done without the new beast. When we hear talk about technology –at least, at APAC- we want to make sure they don’t forget to remember that it’s teaching that we should be talking about. We want to hear how the wonderful new ICT resources fit into the educational goals we are here to serve. Bearing this in mind we have asked two outstanding lecturers to state their case at the very start of the convention. In the opening session Jeremy Harmer, the author of the now classic “The Practice of English Language Teaching”, will discuss that very archaic sort of technology: candles. Are they really obsolete? Or do they still shed the right kind of light to, well, to spark off the sort of conversations that really matter? You know what I mean. But then, our keynote speaker, Gavin Dudeney, the author of “The Internet and the Language Classroom”, will shed pedagogical light on the world of computer games and what they teach “us” about today’s learners. Quite frankly, having the likes of Harmer and Dudeney to set things in motion sounds like a privilege to me. I’m sure you all agree. It’s hard to imagine a more adequate follow-up to the last APAC monograph: “Technology in English Teaching: Looking Forward”. And don’t forget that our roundtable this time will be a discussion on the pros and cons of ICT with primary and secondary schoolteachers and chaired by our webweaver, Tom Maguire.

And, as usual, more specific areas will be covered: from the role of grammar (Michael Swan) to CLIL experiences in our schools. And there are presentations to cater for educational levels from primary school to university and a great variety of special approaches, like story-telling or drama in the classroom. All in all an exciting prospect that will feature a special presentation of BritLit, the British Council project that involves contemporary writers of English interacting with our students, including very young learners. In collaboration with the British Council, APAC will present a special monograph issue devoted to the great pedagogical potential of the BritLit project to which a number of schools in Catalonia have already been attracted. And last but not least we’ll have the usual display of publishers, examiners’ bodies, educational services, language schools, etc. In the hall at the UPF you’ll find 26 stands with the latest on pedagogical materials and resources.

I do feel we’ll have three days packed with interesting and relevant things for all of us. So here is my advice: Don’t miss it. Not this time!

APAC Convention 2009

2009-01-01T00:01:00.001+01:00

Few of us would have believed - 20 years ago - when the use of internet and web-related applications started to enter our lives, that our profession would be so affected by this new development. The spread of internet has been very influential in the consolidation of communicative language teaching and in the introduction of humanistic approaches which require shared responsibilities between teachers and students and imply a shift in power relationships in the classroom.

But some teachers think that things have gone too far, that the tables have been turned on us. Internet has changed our students radically and we find it difficult to adapt to our new context. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. Specialist literature describes us teachers as digital immigrant educators and refers to our students as digital natives, which clearly states our disadvantageous situation. Things have changed, and we need to change in terms of approach and in terms of content. There is no going back.

Past APAC conventions have already addressed a variety of ICT related topics and uses. Our 2009 Convention plans to have The NET as the centre of the debates and sessions. Gavin Dudeney and Jeremy Harmer have already confirmed their participation, and we look forward to learning about the expansion of Second Life and how it may impact our already complicated real life. Other equally experienced EFL speakers have already shown interest in coming.

Finally, we extend a big invitation to attend the Convention sessions at the Pompeu, 26th., 27th., 28th. February next.
See you there!

Grow with the Field, But Don’t Lose Sight of the Basics

2008-12-01T12:04:00.004+01:00

The English-language teaching field is burgeoning with new developments. We English teachers can boast of being among the most well-informed, pedagogically innovative instructors in any school or university. But, we’re also faced with logistical limitations that crimp our abilities to be as effective as we can be, such as large classes, hyper-heterogeneous groups, rigid seating arrangements, time constraints, and compulsively talkative students. So, it’s good to frequently step back, take a look at what we are doing from a wider perspective, and make sure we’re at least covering the basics.

Are we overcoming problems in the classroom, or are they overcoming us? Nothing can get done if there are discipline problems. So, in that case, we have to temporarily set aside concern for “affective filters” and lay down the law. A good source of ideas is the book Dealing with Difficulties by Lindsay Clandfield and Luke Podromou.

Once the classroom routine is established and order reigns, we are often daunted at the prospect of doing pair and small-group work with thirty or more students. In theory, it’s possible, and, in fact, it’s quite necessary. So, we have to establish clear routines for getting the students into tasks and bringing them back out again, and we have to circulate among them to make sure they’re on task. Here, bravery, eyes and ears all over our body, and a firm hand at the helm will usually steer us successfully through these dire straits.

Interaction in the target language is crucial for students. But so are other aspects of our lessons. We have to monitor ourselves at least a few times a month and make sure we’re maintaining balance: meaning vs. form; fluency vs. accuracy; development of all the communicative competences, not just grammatical competence; improvement of all of the four skills; stimulation of critical thinking; and consolidation of students’ affective selves and respect for the feelings and views of others.

Of course, we all know this; like we said above, we know quite a bit about pedagogy. But, sometimes we can get distracted by computer technology, project work, exam preparation, games, Halloween and Christmas parties and other activities and materials we incorporate into our classes. So, we have to remember that these are means to an end: language learning. And, as Christopher Brumfit (1991: 140)¹, says, the keys to successful language learning are:

(i) exposure (possibly systematic) to the target language;

(ii) opportunities to use the language (either actively or passively);

(iii) motivation to respond to the two previous requirements.

We’ve got to keep pushing our students along these lines, making sure they’re progressing in their English and in their whole persons, and that they’re not foundering on the shoals of modern-day distraction, adolescent apathy or downright disruptiveness!

¹Brumfit, C. 1991. “Problems in Defining Instructional Methodologies.” In K. De Bot, R. B. Ginsber, C. Kramsch (Eds.), Foreign Language Research in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 133-144.

JOHN MCDOWELL AWARD

2008-11-01T09:44:00.000+01:00

You may be one of those teachers who attend the Opening Session at the APAC-ELT Convention every year and therefore watch the Premi APAC – John McDowell award ceremony. Have you ever dreamt of being one of the winners and receiving one of the prizes? After reading this editorial, we hope you make up your mind and take part in this year’s edition.

Premi APAC-John McDowell started as two separate awards: Premi APAC on the one hand and Premi John McDowell on the other hand. The former was annual and sponsored by the association and the latter was biennial and sponsored by different institutions and organisations such as Direcció General de Política Lingüística, British Council, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Universitat de Barcelona, Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística, as well as APAC, in honour of John McDowell. John McDowell was a teacher, head of studies at the Barcelona British Council and an excellent teacher trainer who encouraged a lot of teachers into new ways of presenting materials to their pupils. However, the new board, which was elected in June 2001, decided to unify both awards into what is now the annual Premi APAC-John McDowell, since both of them pursued similar objectives.

So, why is there a reason for Premi APAC-John McDowell to exist nowadays? Because APAC is an association which advances and stimulates research and innovation in ELT. It also provides professionals in this field with the opportunity to get together at the convention and share ideas, which is further promoted by means of the web, the quarterly magazine and, of course, this award.

We are sure you identify with the principles of our association and you are willing to tell the world about the research you are carrying out, your treball de recerca, or projects developed in class. There is no excuse preventing you from sending us your piece of work, as there are three categories and you have the chance of winning the prize for one of them. For more information visit the 2008 Awards page.

You know what they say: ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’.

The Teaching of English

2008-10-01T00:00:00.003+02:00

The editorial of La Vanguardia ‘El inglés básico´ caught my attention this summer with its analysis of the low level of English among 4th. ESO pupils. Proposals to improve the situation were not included, though.

The Department of Education has a programme running called CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). It is based on the theory that languages are learnt through social use. This appears to be a sensible idea since experience tells us that we learned our native tongue by using it to communicate with others who spoke the same language. This is not quite the setting in CLIL but it will undoubtedly boost the number of hours that English is heard in school and is a beneficial option where the appropriate staff resources are available. Equally positive steps would be the promotion of English outside the classroom through subtitling foreign language films instead of dubbing them or creating English summer camps.

One of the reasons put forward by proponents of this new methodology is echoed by the Vanguardia leading article : until now, they say, pupils only learned grammar in English classes. It is certainly true that solid knowledge of grammar is necessary to gain autonomy in a foreign language when learning it in a classroom. On the other hand it is an exaggeration to reduce English classes to grammar exercises. The four skills are included in any English language textbook and complementary material such as graded readers, videos and software are common in English language teaching. Ask any schoolchild which lessons are the most interactive in school. It is more than likely they’ll reply it is the foreign language class.

Pupils leave secondary school knowing how to read, write and understand spoken English in familiar contexts. This has been achieved with only three hours of class a week. Most still lack high fluency. With classes of 30 or more full competence is a pipedream. There is talk of including an oral exam in the foreign language selectivitat in the near future. Perhaps more effort and money could be ploughed into at least one hour of class per week with groups of 15 pupils, at batxillerat level, so that speaking can be properly practised.

Networking

2008-09-01T13:19:00.000+02:00

Every teacher knows how demanding teaching is in a global world where uncertainty, entertainment, interactivity, distraction, high tech, image and sound, loss of adult authority, increasing specialization of services and tasks, marketing and, basically, abundance are the rule. Every pupil knows that education, the way their grandparents understood it, is no key to success. We all know success is often related nowadays to being popular and likeable to many others, and if this is the result of education and effort or lack of it, who cares?

Whether we like this state of affairs or not, whether this picture is too simplistic and we sense there are kids who would still prefer to read Shakespeare’s sonnets rather than be rich and famous, this is utterly irrelevant. What matters is that any responsible adult knows that education is the key: our knowledge society cannot afford not to educate our youths and make sure core competencies are attained by all. The problem is what to teach and how.

We must first recognize in which ways our pupils are different: we are teaching people who were born in a more individualistic, smaller and faster consumer world; they are much more stimulated than we ever dreamt we could be and much more used to getting immediate answers and pleasure out of the things they do. To them meaning is basically related to networking and to building their own self in relation to an immediate environment that makes sense to them: being connected to their friends, the sports they like, the songs they sing, the games they play, the TV soaps they watch…

Networking has many facets and allows people to pursue their interests with renewed energy, based on an unrivaled capacity to interact with what they do and have their say. Technology allows us to find, share, trade and exchange in a cheap, efficient and simple way which was unthinkable only 10 years ago, when the internet was something that only a few could afford. Our pupils are prosumers from the cradle, who both consume and produce collaboratively, and their networking is often social, virtual, multitask, interactive, superficial or disruptive. It is also quite creative, if we think of it.

As to what we must teach, we are extremely lucky to be teachers of English. On the one hand, whatever our pupils need to know in the future, English will certainly make their life easier, even if Chinese became an increasingly present lingua franca. Pupils know it, too. On the other, networking and English often go hand in hand; English is everywhere, and it can make their life more fun.

If what we teach has a clear social recognition, then how we teach it must concern us. How can these spoiled global prosumers be taught when they know their future is uncertain and they despise effort without meaning?

It would be wise to listen and tune in to pupils before deciding on the content of our classes and on what their contributions to them must be, allowing them an active role in pursuing their own interests. It is not a matter of embracing what is fashionable and new, but of taking them seriously and trying to adjust our classroom planning to what can be seen by all as sensible production.

Using common sense and our experience as teachers we can channel their interests and take advantage of what can be useful to our class, investigate, discuss, expose and share. Observation and open dialogue might keep our frontal lobes awake and help us adjust to change and reflect about it.

But we are still the adults, and must keep control. We must survey and guide, give advice and warn, connect, coordinate, question, challenge, evaluate and provide the rules for the learning game. We are the teachers. The moment we accept that we are not experts in many of the things they love and expect them to explain them to us, while we give them the tools to do so, listen to them and foster debate, we are creating dialogue and respect for difference. But we had better watch out, the moment we feel overwhelmed, overworked, out of control, deceived, the spell will be lost and burnout will appear. If we assume we can do more than we are actually capable of we will be at risk. We should be careful and advance one step at a time, each of us at her own pace.

Sharing the classroom universe with pupils means asking them what they expect from our classes and telling them what we expect from them. From here we can reach agreements. They will know we care, and that is the only thing that matters. From this starting point we should try to go forward together and make sure our classes include as many activities as we can cope with: drills, games and exercises, real communication activities, simulations, treasure hunts, role plays, portfolios, oral presentations, posters, collages, webquests and web searches, mind maps, pictures and games, listening activities, oral presentations, newspapers and comics, books and magazines, group work, individual and pair work, on-line collaboration, field trips… Whatever gives our class dynamism, reflection and choice while making sure what we do is integrated in the curriculum, follows clear learning objectives and fosters their autonomy as learners.

Most of this can include ICT, which would allow them to search, process, communicate, create and share and come up with products they can be proud of and show to the world in a really easy and cheap way. We must not be blinded by technology, though, and must use as much of it as we feel comfortable with, now that it is becoming increasingly easier to use. What is important is what has always been: That our objectives are clear, our planning, careful and flexible, our guidance viable, our capacity to allow them to surprise us, sincere and that they are the ones who search for information, negotiate in groups, plan, write, speak, listen, read, design products, show them, draw conclusions and share, with our guidance.

Happy new school year!