Personalising YL classroom management

Personalisation is often discussed in the context of motivational theories. The received wisdom is that learners will perceive greater usefulness of lesson practice if they can use language relevant to their real-life needs.

The usual way

My default position, which is influenced by my British upbringing, is to refrain from imposing blanket classroom rules on my students. I have instead explored various ways of implementing classroom management:

• Teens - I usually ask my students to discuss what kind of classroom environment they would enjoy, so that they can learn effectively and achieve their end-of-year goals.
  

• YLs - I usually ask my students what is good and what is not so good for their classroom.

The result is more or less similar across all classes - my students almost always come up with generic rules, such as 'listen to the teacher' or 'be nice'.

Personalising rules

Every class has a different set of characters.

For quieter Young Learners or Teens groups, any explicit classroom management would be an unnecessary step for the teacher. In fact, I didn't have to use any when I taught a KEY for Schools class of five young teens last year.

For energetic and lively groups, I find it works more effectively when I respond to specific challenging situations by adding new rules. This is what I mean by personalising them.

• With a Teens PET for Schools class, we negotiated a deal of using more games in exchange for less disruptive chattering in the students' first language. Those students who earned themselves a bad name last year have become more willing to participate in lesson activities. Chattering is tolerated so long as it does not impede task achievement or make the whole class feel cliquey. (I also focus on the positives and ignore the petty negatives with a disapproving stare.)
  
  
• With YLs, rules have to be devised on the spot as we encounter any new challenging situation. Such new rules include 'going to the washroom once', 'leaving the classroom for water breaks once', and 'English only for five minutes' among others. 'One person speaks at a time' is also helpful - except in pair or group work. Those YLs who keep talking randomly are now better at understanding when they are supposed to listen.
  

Both the teacher and the students are happier now.

Tribute to Her late Majesty

Queen Elizabeth II was a great role model for our country. Her dedication to service, as well as stoicism in times of uncertainty, sustained modern Britain throughout the large part of the twentieth century, carrying the nation into the twenty-first. She witnessed the transition from Empire to Commonwealth, suffered losses of some of her closest family members, and saw the transformation of the United Kingdom from the analogue to the digital age.

I have come to this world as Her late Majesty's subject, in a hospital named after her, and in a land that was her realm. Thank you and rest in peace. God save the King.

(It was some time in 2012 when I was on a Virgin West Coast train from Manchester to London. As the train was travelling south of Milton Keynes, a Deutsche Bahn locomotive suddenly caught up with us. Then one of the passengers remarked loudly, 'that's the Royal Train!')

When first-language English speakers aren't understood abroad

It was a mild late August morning, a welcoming break from the heatwave earlier in the week which saw temperatures going up to 32 in Berlin. I decided to stop by the main railway station, Berlin Hbf, on my way to catch a flight from Brandenburg Airport. For those of you who aren't familiar with this station, it's essentially a shopping mall with perpendicular sets of platforms at both the lowest and the highest levels. There are plenty of eateries to choose from too, which is a stark contrast with monotonous train stations in Italy.

Now came the embarrassing part: instead of saying ich hätte gern Falafel Wrap und eine Tasse Tee (German: I'd like falafel wrap and a cup of tea), I ordered my lunch in English. The poor German-speaking lady at the till heard 'cuppa tea', which is the way people usually say it in the UK. Little did I know she actually got confused and made me a cappucino!

I double checked with her, but she responded in English: 'sorry, we don't have "cuppa tea" here.' I instantly regretted it - why didn't I just speak in German and, what's more, I should have said 'tea' or 'cup - of - tea'!

Communication is all about understanding what others say and getting yourself understood by others. Some of my students (and I suspect many more to-be learners out there) say they want to speak with a 'British' or 'American' accent. Firstly, which British accent would they really like to learn? There are some 50 different British-type accents on top of the non-geographical RP. Secondly, if students mostly use English in a lingua franca environment, and they rarely need to communicate with first-language speakers, what's the point of winding up your interlocutors with a traditional but incomprehensible accent? I'm not suggesting that teachers should deny language learners of the opportunity of adopting a traditional English accent, but the realistic goal should be intelligibility regardless of which accent students choose to be their model.

Teaching YLs: ideas for spoken and written practice

A huge thanks to Teachers E and S - I've been able to add a couple of practice activities by teaching their lesson plans! 

As the Summer Camp weeks go along, I should be able to add more to the following lists.

Spoken practice (YLs)

• capture the flag - with flashcards in two rows (each YL should stand next to a flashcard)
  
• Who am I - holding flashcards on one's forehead (without being able to see them)
  

Written practice, or practice with form (YLs)

• treasure hunt - given visuals (write the word) 

Other 'less extended' practice activities I've used:

Spoken practice (YLs)

• back to the board - Italian speakers call this game 'taboo'
• pictionary
• musical chairs
• run and tag
• whispers
• pass the flashcards round - and say the word aloud
• find the missing flashcards 
• run and tag
  
• Simon says
• chain story
  

Written practice, or spoken practice with form (YLs)

• pelmanism - I call it 'memory tiles' (if there are tiles containing the target vocabulary)
• word bingo
• board race
• battleship
• chain story
  

Pronunciation - Form or Form - Pronunciation? / Written - Spoken or Spoken - Written?

Reflections: MPF or MFP?

Why do CELTA tutors tell trainee teachers that they should follow MPF (meaning - pronunciation - form) in that order when clarifying language?

In terms of learning, does it matter whether the EFL teacher chooses an MPF procedure over MFP as in Guided Discovery tasks?

After teaching vocabulary to a group of YLs aged 8 and 9 this morning, I noticed some evident differences between the two clarification procedures.

I was teaching the word Poseidon, which is pronounced /pəsaɪdən/ in RP English. Despite drilling it several times and breaking it down into individual syllables, once my students saw the written form (i.e. spelling / orthography) of the word, some of them  came up with all sorts of pronunciations. I heard pole-say-dawn, pole-see-dawn or pole-side-dawn in the subsequent practice activities. No matter how many times I corrected certain students, there was still a tendency for some of them to creep back to their L1 habits.

What does this say about decoding and encoding a word? The MPF procedure ensures that language learners keep to the spoken form of a word until its pronunciation is more or less firmly lodged in their short-term memory. In an ideal world, it is at this point that they can move on to the written form of the word.

(There are exceptions to the MPF procedure for clarifying language, but this renders another blog post.)

Reflections: Written - Spoken or Spoken - Written?

What does this say about the order of language practice activities then?

In the context of teaching VYLs and YLs, the order is thus spoken practice before written practice. Note that this is different to what trainee teachers are taught on the CELTA, which is written (controlled) practice followed by spoken (controlled - freer) practice.

If we apply the Spoken - Written concept to staging practice activities, there should be plenty of spoken practice before the learners start writing a word or grammatical structures. More importantly, VYLs and YLs don't learn a language by reading and writing it; listening and speaking always happen first in real life.

(In a related blog post, I'm going to mention some extended practice activities in the context of teaching YLs.)