Contents MAIN FEATURE BUSINESS ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL

IS READING ALOUD ALLOWED? 4 NOT ‘THEM’ BUT ‘US’ 29

Jeremy Harmer rehabilitates round-the-class reading Monica Hoogstad uses humour to break down cultural
barriers

FEATURES
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
CLASS-CENTRED TEACHING 8
Rose Senior finds group dynamics are key to establishing ALONE TOGETHER 51
a good classroom climate Deniz Kurtoglu Eken feels personal development is a
fundamental factor in professional development
WALKING STICKS 12
Ji Lingzhu arms her students with supportive listening
strategies TECHNOLOGY

ACTIVITIES UNDER ANALYSIS 16 CHOOSING ONLINE MATERIALS 56

Myrian Casamassima explains why we need to make Rafael Sabio puts forward some suggestions for
a close assessment of the tasks we assign selecting texts and videos

REVISING NEW WORDS 17 FIVE THINGS YOU ALWAYS WANTED 60

Angela Noble demonstrates that a vocabulary column TO KNOW ABOUT: MOODLE
on the board has many benefits Nicky Hockly looks at a virtual learning environment

LANGUAGE LEARNING IS LIKE ... 18 WEBWATCHER 61

Dede Wilson’s wall posters provide insights for students Russell Stannard has all his questions answered
and teachers alike

PHRASAL VERBS? THEY’RE EASY! 4 21 REGULAR FEATURES

John Ryan finishes up his look at up
ACTIVITY CORNER: 37
OVER THE WALL 27 PHONICS FUN
Jon Marks
Alan Maley recommends books that inspire creative writing

ELUSIVE ESSAY WRITING SKILLS 34 PREPARING TO TEACH ... 40

Cheryl Morris finds innovative ways to teach academic
Colourful language 2
John Potts
writing

A VOYAGE OF ADVENTURE 35 LET’S GET ENGAGED 63

Rose Senior
James Porcaro sets goals and objectives for students
and teachers
IT WORKS IN PRACTICE 42
WHAT DO FOREIGNERS NEED TO SAY? 46
Peter Wells believes in teaching language that students REVIEWS 44
actually need to use
SCRAPBOOK 54
LITERACY IN TWO LANGUAGES 49
Lois Spitzer sees success in skills transference between
L1 and L2
COMPETITIONS 41, 64

TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS INTERNATIONAL SUBSCRIPTION FORM 32

READY TO READ 23 Includes materials designed to photocopy
Ana Lado examines criteria for choosing books for children

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 • 1

 M A I N F E AT U R E
Is reading
aloud
allowed?
A
Jeremy Harmer t a recent teacher-training
workshop in Bucharest, I
recommends reading, handed out a text (see the
box below) and asked the
repeating and rehearsing. teachers to read it out, one by one,
sentence by sentence. I wanted this first
activity to start a discussion of what it
felt like to read aloud.
History, Karen Bailey used to tell
her students before the whistle at
Siete Vientos changed everything,
is the random concatenation of
states and events, nothing more.
The job of the historian is to check
that each of these happenings,
each of the realities under
investigation, is as unambiguous,
as verifiable as possible, so that
when describing the past, one
could have confidence that one
was telling truths, not weaving
fantasies. This was the kind of way
she talked, and she was thought of
as very academic, very precise. But
the stories of Siete Vientos and
what happened there banished that
style from her repertoire completely
because it suddenly seemed to her
that history, people’s histories, the
history of a place breathed in the
air and sticking to the rocks, is
more than dusty accretions of
sources and references.1
4 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Despite the fact that all of the
readers spoke impeccable English, some
of them stumbled over the words. One
couldn’t pronounce a name, one got
mixed up with concatenation and
another found the last sentence of the
extract almost impossible to read
intelligibly, at sight.
Afterwards, we discussed what they
felt like, and it wasn’t good! Amongst
other things, they were nervous, they
didn’t understand what they were
reading or why, and they hated the
experience of not being able to
pronounce things correctly in front of
their peers, or of fighting to make sense
of long, complicated sentences.
And yet all they were doing was
what has been happening in language
classrooms all over the world for ages
I have never really
worried about reading
aloud before, but for
various reasons it has
suddenly become more
interesting for me
and ages – though, of course, I had
specially chosen a text that would
challenge even the most competent
English speakers. The question that
arises, therefore, is whether it has always
been that bad for students, even with
less challenging texts. And if it has, does
it have to be?
I have never really worried about
reading aloud before, beyond feeling
faintly negative about it, but for various
reasons it has suddenly become more
interesting for me. In the first place, I
have recently observed it taking place
when watching lessons – something
which I haven’t seen for some time,
despite many years of observation.
Secondly, its value – or lack of it –
became a point of discussion in a
writing project where I am one member
of a team. And finally, in the last few
months I have read three articles on this
topic, which is all the more remarkable
since for many years hardly anyone
talked about it at all.
Sally Gibson, for example, explains
the reasons why people have been
against reading aloud, but argues for its
many virtues. Costas Gabrielatos says
 IN THE CLASSROOM
Class-centred
teaching
Rose Senior ponders the principles of group development.
A
ccepting that classes function
as groups is central to all
effective teaching. Whether
we like it or not, powerful
group forces are at work in all
classrooms. Classes of learners are not
simply collections of individuals who
happen to be studying the same learning
materials in the same room under the
direction of a teacher: they are groups
of students whose individual or
collective behaviour both influences and
is influenced by the individual or
collective behaviour of others in the
room. Teachers, too, participate in class
group processes – with their teaching
and class management practices closely
related to the social evolution of their
class groups.
Language teachers who keep in mind
that their classes function as groups
have a class-centred focus and teach in
class-centred ways. Through their own
behaviour and the ways that they relate
to their students, class-centred teachers
encourage their classes to evolve into
learning communities in which the
overall atmosphere of the class
influences the behaviour of individuals.
The crucial moment when a critical
mass of the students in a class starts to
behave in ways that promote the
development of class cohesion has been
Phillip Burrows
defined by Malcolm Gladwell (quoted
by Tollefson and Osborn) as the
‘tipping point’.
The tipping point
8 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
Teachers can readily discern – often
through a spontaneous collective
response by the class to an unforeseen
occurrence – when the tipping point has
been reached. From this point on, their
confidence grows and they feel more at
ease with their class.
If teachers do not behave in class-
centred ways, their classes can quickly
tip in the opposite direction, with their
students either becoming a fragmented
learning community or, worse still,
uniting against their common enemy:
the teacher.
Class-centred teachers have a higher
proportion of classes that function in a
cohesive manner than do other teachers.
With their intuitive understanding of
group behaviour, class-centred teachers
sense when to go with the flow and
allow social processes to occur naturally,
and when to pull back and adopt their
more traditional teacher roles.
Confidence, combined with consistency
in personal behaviour and a willingness
to be flexible, are the hallmarks of
effective class-centred teachers.
Research principles
The relevance of group dynamics to
education is well known. In their classic
book, Schmuck and Schmuck relate
insights from research into how groups
develop and function in classroom
situations. Dörnyei and Murphey
provide an invaluable introduction to
group dynamics for language teachers,
while Hadfield presents an extensive
collection of classroom activities for
encouraging classes to develop and
maintain a positive group feeling. In my
own work I describe how teachers deal
in class-centred ways with the myriad
occurrences that are part of everyday
classroom life.
The box on page 9 contains a
selection of concepts from general
research into group dynamics upon
which the ten principles of class group
development which I will describe in
this article are based.
Group development
principles
The following principles were developed
by examining a wide range of social
processes occurring during intensive
English language classes containing
adult learners from a range of cultural
and linguistic backgrounds.
1 Creating the climate
As with any new skill, learning to speak
a new language involves trial and error.
Nobody wants to appear foolish in
public and yet, especially in
communicative classrooms where
students are expected to interact with
their peers in English, errors are
inevitable. Students become easily upset
when they mispronounce or misuse a
word, or fail to understand something
that somebody says – particularly when
those around them are amused.
Class-centred teachers make an effort
to create classroom climates in which it
is clear that making errors is a natural
part of the learning process and nothing
to be ashamed of. Such teachers
regularly model desirable behaviour,
including behaving confidently and
openly when they themselves make
mistakes. By smilingly admitting their
error (and thanking the person who

Group dynamics concepts
● A variety of social processes occur as
small groups develop into cohesive
groups, capable of maximum
productivity.
● Group development processes are
often categorised into discrete stages
such as ‘forming’, ‘storming’, ‘norming’,
‘performing’ and ‘adjourning’ (Tuckman
and Jensen).
● Distinct stages of small-group
development, such as those listed
above, must be treated with caution:
they may not be readily identifiable, may
not be sequential and often overlap.
● Challenging behaviour is a natural part
of the group development process.
● Groups have a powerful normative
influence over the behaviour of group
members, encouraging individuals to
conform to the behavioural norms of
the overall group.
pointed it out) class-centred teachers
unconsciously create climates that
encourage students to use English in
less inhibited ways.
2 Making connections
Most teachers are aware of the value of
organising ‘ice-breakers’ for the first
lesson of any new class. These give
students the opportunity not only to
learn each other’s names but also to
learn something about the backgrounds,
personalities, likes and dislikes and
skills of their classmates. Making
connections at an interpersonal level,
even with limited levels of English,
paves the way for students to regard
fellow class members – including those
from cultural and linguistic
backgrounds that differ from their own
– as ‘one of us’ rather than ‘them’. This
makes it less likely that nationality or
friendship groups within the class will
solidify into cliques.
Class-centred teachers recognise the
importance, not only of encouraging
students to make connections between
themselves, but also of connecting
personally with their classes. Developing
rapport involves teachers trusting their
students to behave appropriately,
treating all members of the class fairly,
refraining from admonishing or
punishing harshly, keeping their
emotions under control, going with the
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
● The assigned group leader plays a
key role in developing and
maintaining the unique culture of
each group.
● Leadership is not the sole prerogative
of the group leader: many group
members play roles that assist the
functioning of the overall group.
● Leadership roles are of two types:
those that help the group progress
towards its goals and those that help
the group to maintain its sense of
togetherness. Both kinds of roles are
important.
● Groups do not remain cohesive
unless progress is made towards the
achievement of clearly-articulated
goals.
● Each group develops a unique culture
that is shared and understood by all
the group members.
flow from time to time, and so on. Once
they have established a connection with
their class, teachers find themselves
included in a range of positive group
processes.
3 Establishing expectations
For classroom teaching to be effective, it
is essential that the students know the
behavioural expectations of their
teachers: which behaviours will be
condoned and which will not, what the
boundaries are, and what the
consequences of uncalled-for behaviour
will be. Some teachers lay down the law
with sets of rules, others discuss (and
sometimes negotiate) with their classes
appropriate codes of behaviour and the
reasons behind them, while other
teachers are neither clear nor consistent
about their behavioural expectations.
Class-centred teachers expect student
behaviour that encourages classes to
evolve into mutually-supportive
classroom communities in which the
students feel comfortable, safe and
protected. These teachers expect their
students to behave in generous-minded
ways towards their peers, helping and
supporting them wherever possible and
never behaving offensively. Typical
behavioural expectations of class-
centred teachers include respecting
others at all times, laughing with but
never at fellow students, and never
whispering with friends or using
mother-tongue talk in ways that make
others feel excluded.
4 Convincing the customers
In any new group of learners one
question is always foremost in the
students’ minds: is the teacher going to
treat me respectfully and fairly, and
teach me useful things in an effective
and engaging way? This question is
particularly important to students
whose whole future may depend on
being able to learn as much English as
possible in as short a time as possible.
If the teacher lacks an aura of
professionalism because of their
appearance, manner of speaking or
level of preparedness for the lesson, the
students are likely to feel put out.
Class-centred teachers are aware of
the need to gain the confidence of the
students by demonstrating high levels of
professionalism. Often answering the
question of a single student in a
satisfactory way not only puts that
student’s mind at rest, but reassures
others, too. Even if a teacher cannot
answer a tricky question, all is not lost:
they can simply say they will check and
provide the answer in the following lesson
(and, of course, remember to do so).
5 Defining directions
The key feature that unites classroom
communities is an overall sense of
purpose: the idea that the students are
going with their teacher on a collective
learning journey. In their desire to have
their students engage in small-group
interactive activities and tasks – or in
their rush to complete a planned unit of
work – language teachers sometimes
forget the importance of making clear
the learning goals for each particular
lesson.
Class-centred teachers ensure that
their students understand from the start
the broad learning goals for the course
and the rationale behind their teaching
approach. They also give their students
the opportunity to express personal
learning needs and aspirations,
explaining how these will be met. When
students appear doubtful or
unconvinced, class-centred teachers
negotiate learning goals with the class.
Clear in their minds about the selection,
sequencing and purpose of each
segment of the lesson, they maintain a
feeling of direction and collective
progress towards achievable goals. 
9

Class-centred
teaching
 6 Harnessing the headstrong
All teachers are readily able to identify
high-profile students who have the
potential to become troublemakers and
upset the social equilibrium of their
classes. A natural instinct is to repress the
behaviour of troublesome individuals by
admonishing or punishing them harshly.
However, this is at best a temporary
solution and one that commonly leads
to an increase in undesirable behaviour.
Class-centred teachers recognise that
a preferable approach is to get tricky
students on-side by harnessing their
energies for the good of the class.
Ironically, this is often best achieved by
giving individuals the benefit of the
doubt: praising them for initiatives that
can be construed positively, paying
them additional attention in the early
days of the class, identifying specific
roles for them, and so on. The
classroom behaviour of ‘difficult’
students can change radically when they
perceive that their teacher no longer
regards them as a threat.
7 Recognising roles
The majority of students in most classes
behave in relatively low-key ways, going
with the flow and rarely causing trouble.
Although they may not make their
presence felt in obvious ways, these
students are just as vital to the ongoing
development and maintenance of class
cohesion as their more high-profile
classmates – and they need to have their
classroom presence recognised and valued.
Class-centred teachers make an effort
to be inclusive, remembering something
distinctive about individual class
members and, where appropriate,
singling them out for special attention.
They recognise that all students need to
feel that they are contributing
(individually or collectively) to the lives
of their classes. The kinds of roles that
students can play include those that
they assume for themselves and those
that gradually emerge as the course
progresses. Many of these roles facilitate
the development of unique shared
classroom cultures.
8 Sustaining solidarity
Any class that has been together for any
length of time develops a shared
10 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
history. Apart from knowledge about
how individuals (including the teacher)
routinely behave, and what the
particular idiosyncrasies of individual
class members are, classes develop
collective memories of key events and
shared learning experiences in the life of
the class: the day the electricity failed,
the day when the class won an inter-
class competition, and so on.
Class-centred teachers make a
conscious effort to develop and
maintain the collective memories of
their classes, sensing that by so doing
they sustain a feeling of solidarity.
Their actions may include smiling and
making brief appreciative responses
when individuals bring up shared class
knowledge, or encouraging their classes
to remember previous lessons: who did
what, what was learnt, what was
amusing or memorable, and so on.
9 Maintaining momentum
Just as a spinning top gradually slows
down to the point where it eventually
topples over, so any group of people
working together can lose their
collective energy and enthusiasm. The
situation is no different in language
classes, particularly where lessons follow
a well-trodden path and feelings of
inevitability and lethargy set in.
Class-centred teachers sense the
importance of revitalising their class
groups – and are able to do so even
when using textbooks containing
routine texts and exercises. Such
teachers engage the interests of their
students by creating a feeling of
suspense or mystery at the start of
lessons, by behaving spontaneously in
ways that lift the mood of the class, or
by having students complete learning
activities in novel ways. They are also
able to change the pace of lessons by
adjusting planned activities so that
students remain active and involved. By
injecting a feeling of freshness and
vitality into their lessons, class-centred
teachers are able to renew the sense of
forward momentum that is vital to the
ongoing maintenance of a spirit of
cohesion within their classes.
10 Formalising farewells
When any group experience comes to an
end, it is usual to mark it in a memorable
way, with a ceremony, a party or an
outing – which often involves the sharing
of food. When students from a range of
cultural and linguistic backgrounds
have been together in the same class for
up to 20 hours a week, emotions often
run high, with students exchanging
email addresses, posing for group
photos and pledging undying friendship.
Feelings are particularly strong if the
class has functioned cohesively.
Class-centred teachers know that it is
important to mark the end of a course
by organising a special activity such as a
quiz or a special sing-along session.
Without this symbolic closure at the
end of the course, term or school year,
it can take students longer to sever ties
with their present teacher and adjust to
the teaching practices of their new one.

I hope teachers will find these ten
principles of class group development
useful to remember as they go about
their daily teaching. Guided by these
principles, they will be in a better
position to encourage their classes to
evolve into the kinds of groups that are
not only rewarding to teach, but that
also provide optimal environments for
language learning. ETp
Dörnyei, Z and Murphey, T Group
Dynamics in the Language Classroom
CUP 2003
Hadfield, J Classroom Dynamics OUP
1992
Schmuck, R A and Schmuck, P A Group
Processes in the Classroom (8th ed)
McGraw Hill 2001
Senior, R ‘The good language class:
teacher perceptions’ Edith Cowan
University http://adt.ecu.edu.au/adt-
public/adt-ECU2006.0002.html 1999
Senior, R The Experience of Language
Teaching CUP 2006
Tollefson, K and Osborn, M K Cultivating
the Learner-centred Classroom Corwin
Press 2008
Tuckman, B W and Jensen, M A ‘Stages
of group development’
www.chimaeraconsulting.com/tuckman.
htm 1977
Rose Senior is a
language teacher
educator who runs
workshops and
presents at
conferences
around the world.
rsenior@iinet.net.au
 L I S T E N I N G
Walking
sticks
W
Ji Lingzhu offers her hen you listen to someone
talking in your mother
students support strategies tongue, you don’t always
have to pay close
for improvement. attention. By simply listening out for
the important words, you can usually
get the whole message. In many
situations, you may find yourself one
step ahead of the speaker: you can
predict what they are going to say –
perhaps not always the exact words, but
at least the main idea. You can also get
the implied message almost at the same
time as the speaker finishes the literal
sentence. My students tell me that they
lose all these abilities when they listen in
English.
Beginner-level English learners rely
very much on ‘bottom-up’ processing
when they listen; they listen word by
word or even sound by sound. Many
concentrate on the first few sentences
and start translating them into their
native language. While they are doing
this mental translating, the speaker has
moved far ahead. They often listen very
attentively at the beginning, and then fall
asleep later. When they listen to long
sentences, they can generally only
remember the first half of the sentence
and are at a loss when asked to transfer
information from a listening passage in
order to complete post-listening exercises.
According to Gillian Brown, the
goal of teaching listening
comprehension is to enable learners to
listen like native speakers. To do this,
students need to be able to recognise
and use the signals that are provided in
the target language to predict, guess and
infer. As David Mendelsohn points out,
they then have to be taught to link these
signals to their world knowledge in
12 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
order to achieve final understanding. To
achieve this goal is no easy task.
Learners not only need the necessary
linguistic competence, but also
appropriate listening strategies.
Listening strategies
Listening is a receptive linguistic skill,
but it is not a passive one. When you
listen, you have to connect what you
receive from the speaker with what is
already in your mind. In order to
process linguistic messages efficiently,
learners have to employ listening
strategies, including predicting,
inferring, responding and clarifying.
These are all advanced ‘top-down’
processing strategies. However, our
students often have problems with
distinguishing sounds, identifying words
and understanding the relationships
between agents and objects in spoken
Students
need to be able to
recognise and use
the signals that are
provided in the target
language to predict,
guess and infer
English. This means that they still need
help in bottom-up strategies. Research
suggests that linguistic signals are
processed through several levels:
auditory phonetic, phonemic, syllabic,
lexical, syntactic, prepositional,
pragmatic and interpretive.
Comprehension breakdown can occur
at any of these levels. If learners still
have problems in segmenting the word
boundaries in connected speech, they
will certainly not be able to use
advanced top-down processing.
What is needed is strategy training,
and this should be integrated within the
accepted pedagogical sequence of pre-
listening, while-listening and post-
iStockphoto.com / © Andrzej Tokarski
listening.
1 Pre-listening
During the pre-listening phase, teachers
need to recognise that all students bring
different beliefs, attitudes and prejudices
to the listening experience, which will
affect their understanding of the
message. In addition to being aware of
this themselves, teachers need to make
their students aware of it. Before they
listen, the students need assistance in
activating what they already know
about the things they are going to hear.
Simply being told the topic is not
enough. Pre-listening activities are
needed, which will establish what is
already known about the subject, build
up the necessary background, and set a
purpose for listening. The most
important strategy to cultivate at this
stage is prediction.
Predicting is very easy for native-
speaker listeners because their previous
experiences of how the language is used
in everyday life enable them to bring
top-down processing to bear on any
obscure phonetic signal. They will be
able to use their expectations to narrow
it down to what is likely to be said, and
to predict what the speaker will say
next. However, it is not so easy for non-
native listeners, who have to build up
knowledge from scratch. There are
several strategies that students can be
taught and teachers can use to help
them predict what they will hear.
Activate existing knowledge to
predict the unknown
When students know the topic of a
listening text, we can help them to
predict what content words might be
used, since the topic largely decides the
vocabulary. Students may also be
encouraged to ask themselves what they
already know about a given topic, and
can use this to determine what
information they will need in order to
get the most from the message. They
can brainstorm ideas, discuss, read,
view films or photos, and write and
share journal entries. Their predictions
can then be assessed during the while-
listening stage.
Effective listeners
make and confirm
predictions and try
to determine what
will be said next by
‘listening between
the lines’
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
Build up prior knowledge as a
warm-up activity
You are likely to be fairly familiar with
what your students know and don’t
know. When you suspect that they won’t
know anything about a listening text,
you can provide appropriate
background information: about the
speaker, the topic, the purpose of the
listening text and the concepts and
vocabulary that are likely to be
embedded in it. When using listening
texts from coursebooks, teachers should
read the transcript in advance, if it is
available, and they can also glean
information about the content of the
listening from the exercises which are
provided for the while-listening and
post-listening stages.
In most coursebooks for teaching
English, there are exercises designed to
check the learners’ listening
comprehension. We can make use of all
these exercises to help our students to
predict the coming passage. The
students can be trained to look at them
in order to find the topic, the key
content words and even the speaker’s
opinions.
Here are some true/false questions
for a listening passage:
1 The schools in this area are not good,
but the teachers are very good.
2 The children at these schools don’t
like learning.
3 Few children at these schools can
read.
4 The children at these schools often
fight and some even smoke and drink.
Of course, we don’t know whether these
statements are true or false before we
listen, but from them we can predict the
topic of the passage (the schools in the
speaker’s area), several key words which
will appear (school, children, teachers,
read, fight, smoke) and something
about the speaker’s opinion (they are
complaining about the schools).
If there are no pre-designed
coursebook exercises for a particular
listening task, giving the students a
‘listening guide’ is a good idea. There
are many forms that a listening guide
might take. It could provide an overview
of the listening text, giving its main
ideas and suggesting questions for the
students to think about while they are
listening. It might provide a summary
or outline of the talk for the students to
complete. Here is an example:
1 Situation ...........................................
Speaker’s name ...............................
Date ..................................................
Occasion ..........................................
2 What is the general topic of this
talk?
..........................................................
3 What is the main point or message?
..........................................................
4 How has the speaker organised the
talk?
..........................................................
5 What transitional expressions (eg
firstly, secondly, in contrast, in
conclusion, etc) does the speaker
use?
..........................................................
6 Does the speaker digress from the
main point?
..........................................................
7 What is your personal reaction to
the talk?
..........................................................
2 While-listening
People can listen and think at four times
the normal conversation rate. Students
have to be encouraged to use this ‘rate
gap’ to process actively what they hear.
In order to use this extra time wisely,
there are several things students can be
encouraged to do: they can think about
what they are hearing; they can
question it; they can repeat it in their
heads in order to remember it; they can
jot down key words or key phrases.
They can also wonder about whether it
is true or if the speaker is revealing
personal feelings rather than making an
objective assessment.
Effective listeners often make
connections with people, places,
situations and ideas they already know,
determining what the speaker is saying
about them and paying special attention
to any words and ideas that are unclear.
They make and confirm predictions and
try to determine what will be said next
by ‘listening between the lines’ – inferring
meaning that the speaker does not
actually make explicit. They also reflect
and evaluate by responding to what
they have heard and passing judgement. 
13
B: Yes. I asked them to feed it for ten
days. (They are going to be away for
ten days; nobody will be at home to
feed their parrot, so they have asked
their neighbours to help.)
2 literature.
Man: I am worried about those classes I
missed when I was sick. (The man is a
student. He has been sick. He is
concerned about the work he has
missed.)
Woman: I will try to bring you up-to-
date on what we’ve done. (The woman
is either a fellow student or the man’s
teacher. She was present at the classes
the man missed. She is willing to help
him catch up.)
Organisational patterns and
transitional devices
Comprehension can be improved
enormously if the speaker’s
organisational pattern is perceived by
the listener. We can teach our students
about the various genres they may
encounter (eg short story, essay, poetry,
play), the organisational patterns that
may be used (eg logical, chronological,
spatial), and about transitional devices,
key signal expressions which structure a
text and give clues as to the direction it
is taking. These transitional devices
include example words (such as, for
example, for instance, thus, etc), time
words (first, second, third, meanwhile,
next, etc), addition words (in addition,
also, furthermore, moreover, another
example, etc), result words (as a result,
so, accordingly, therefore, thus, etc) and
contrast words (however, but, in
contrast, on the other hand, nevertheless,
etc). Effective listeners can follow
spoken discourse when they recognise
these transitional devices.
3 After-listening
After listening, the students need to act
upon what they have heard in order to
clarify meaning and extend their
thinking. Well-planned post-listening
activities are just as important as those
employed before and during listening.
Strategies such as clarification,
summarisation, elaboration and
personalisation should be cultivated
during this stage.
Students can ask themselves
questions to clarify their understanding,
confirm their assumptions and evaluate
their own use of listening strategies.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
Conducting a ‘post-mortem’ is
another very useful technique. Ask the
students to talk about what the speaker ENGLISH
said, question any statements of
opinion, amplify certain remarks and
identify parallel incidents from life and
Tprofessional
EACHING
Get the students to review any notes This is your magazine.
they have made and to add any We want to hear from you!
information that they did not have an
opportunity to note down while they
were listening. They can also summarise 
what was said orally, in writing or by
producing an outline. In addition to the IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
traditional outline format, students Do you have ideas you’d like to share
could use timelines, flow charts, ladders, with colleagues around the world?
circles, diagrams, webs or maps. Tips, techniques and activities;
Students can be given opportunities simple or sophisticated; well-tried
to engage in activities that build on and or innovative; something that has
develop concepts acquired during an
worked well for you? All published
oral presentation. These may include
contributions receive a prize!
writing (eg a response journal, learning
Write to us or email:
log or composition), reading (eg further
research on a topic or a contradictory iwip@etprofessional.com
viewpoint), art or drama (eg designing a
cover after a talk on a book or
roleplaying a mock trial based on the
topic).
TALKBACK!
Do you have something to say about
 an article in the current issue of ETp?
This is your magazine and we would
My experience suggests that listening really like to hear from you.
strategies, especially top-down Write to us or email:
strategies, are like walking sticks for
talkback@etprofessional.com
language learners. In the early stages,
students often forget to rely on these
sticks and, as a result, they fall down a
lot. Teachers can raise their students’
Writing for ETp
Would you like to write for ETp? We are
awareness of the strategies they can use,
and can help them transfer the natural always interested in new writers and
listening strategies they employ in their fresh ideas. For guidelines and advice,
native language to English. By doing write to us or email:
this, they will help their students
editor@etprofessional.com
become more effective listeners in
English. ETp
Brown, G Listening to Spoken English
Visit the
(2nd ed) Longman 1990 ETp website!
Mendelsohn, D and Rubin, J (Eds) A The ETp website is packed with practical
Guide for the Teaching of Second tips, advice, resources, information and
Language Listening Dominie Press 1995
selected articles. You can submit tips
or articles, renew your subscription
Ji Lingzhu is an
associate professor in or simply browse the features.
the English Department
at Taiyuan Normal www.etprofessional.com
University, P R China.
She is currently doing
research in applied
linguistics. ENGLISH TEACHING professional
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Fax: +44 (0)1243 576456
Email: info@etprofessional.com
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15
 IN THE CLASSROOM
Activities
under analysis
Myrian Casamassima advocates adjusting our attitudes
to classroom activities.
H
ave you ever stepped out of the
classroom after having tried
out a new activity saying to
yourself ‘It didn’t work as I had
expected’ ? This has often happened to
me and I have heard the same complaint
from teacher trainees many times.
Picture the situation. You have put a
lot of time and energy into choosing an
exercise and producing the materials that
are necessary for its implementation.
Contrary to your expectations, however,
the students do not feel motivated by it
and the general tone of the class drops.
As a result, you feel frustrated. What
could have gone wrong?
The activity may have failed because
the students habitually take little
interest in the class. Or it may have
failed because you did something wrong
during the procedure. One way or the
other, you are beginning to play the
blaming game, which really takes us
nowhere. The answer to the question
does not really lie in whose fault it is,
but in the analysis of the activity itself.
Assigning activities
When we assign an activity in class, we
are asking our students to do something
with the language. For example, if we
ask them to write a biography of their
favourite singer, they will have to write
several paragraphs, probably using the
past simple tense and, if the singer is
still alive, the present and future tenses,
too. This, then, is one aspect of the
activity, its linguistic side.
There is also another aspect, a
cognitive one, that has to do with the
mental processing that is required to do
the activity. This means that the
students will be expected to interact
with the input, select the relevant
information, rank it, organise it, choose
16 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
the right tenses and vocabulary, write
the sentences, connect them into
paragraphs, edit their work, and so on.
The list of required actions may turn
out to be quite long and complex,
especially if the students are not
familiar with the activity or if we add
elements such as a time limit or group
interaction. It is worth noting that
working in groups is not necessarily
easier if the students do not actually
have the skills required to work in
groups. Likewise, a time limit does not
necessarily help the students get
themselves organised more quickly, and
it may well exert additional pressure.
However, there is something else to
consider in the nature of activities,
besides the two aspects described above.
We often tend to think that activities
stand on their own, but in reality, any
activity – especially a communicative one
– is generally part of a string of tasks.
This means that there will be something
that has to be done before and after it.
We naturally want to assign
activities which are challenging for our
students. These are the kinds of
activities that will help them develop,
and they are the types of activities that
students find most motivating.
However, it is not enough simply to
choose activities that are challenging.
We must remember that the more
challenging the activity, the more
complex it may be in terms of both
language and cognition, and we need to
look at the context of that activity in
terms of the things the students are
required to do before and after it.
Analysing activities
Our first step in deciding whether or not
an activity is suitable should be to look
at it more closely. Let us not be dazzled
by its glamour! What are we asking the
students to do with the language? What
cognitive processes are involved?
Once we have answered these two
questions, we can move on to the next
step. Do the students have the tools to
enjoy the challenge? Notice the verb
enjoy. We do not want situations that
can be frustrating for both the students
and the teacher. If the answer is no, we
need to plan a sequence of activities
that will pave the way towards what we
want the students to do, giving them the
tools to perform it. If the answer is yes,
we still need to plan a sequence for
revision purposes; it is important not to
take the students’ ability for granted. If
we have a closer look at these sequences,
we will see that they comprise activities
of a smaller scale in comparison with
our main activity, which may be placed
right at the end of the string or half-
way through it so that later on we can
have additional activities that derive
logically from it. The result will be a
plan: a series of actions leading us
towards our goal.

I propose that challenging activities
should mean ‘challenging the activities
we give our students’ rather than
‘activities that are challenging’.
Teachers’ intuition is generally reliable
when it comes to deciding what is likely
to be a challenging activity for their
students. My suggestion is to challenge
each activity by analysing it at its two
levels and by questioning its
independence from other activities in a
sequence. If we do this, we will be more
likely to produce lessons that progress
smoothly and are well sequenced,
enabling us to make the most of the
activity that triggered the process. ETp
For a full discussion of task analysis,
see:
Skehan, P A Cognitive Approach to
Language Learning OUP 1998
Myrian Casamassima
is an English teacher
from Lenguas Vivas
‘J R Fernández’, Buenos
Aires, Argentina, where
she has been a teacher
trainer for ten years. She
holds a Trinity College
Diploma in TESOL and
an MA in Cognitive
Psychology from the
Universidad Autónoma
de Madrid, Spain.
myhcasa@gmail.com
 V O C A B U L A R Y
Revising
new words
Angela Noble does more than just write lexis on the board.
T
he other day, I looked at my
whiteboard half-way through the
lesson. In the vocabulary column
were these words: bagpipes, haunting,
kilts, saliva. Hmm – eclectic, to say the
least! The first had arisen from an
IELTS practice listening which involved
labelling the parts of a bagpipe. At the
planning stage, this had seemed most
unpromising. I had wondered whether
my class would really find this
interesting. Nevertheless, I decided to
persevere and see what came out of it.
As it turned out, they have a very similar
traditional instrument in Libya with a
beautiful, haunting sound. As a result,
the word haunting was added to the list.
A couple of well-travelled students
had recently been to Scotland, and told
me they liked the ‘skirts’ worn by the
men. ‘Is it true they don’t wear
underwear?’ asked another. After eight
years of teaching, my students still
manage to surprise me every day. I
taught them the word kilts while trying
not to blush, and put that up on the
board, too.
The second stage of the activity
involved listening to an account of the
history and workings of the trumpet.
We’d warmed to our subject now, and
had a lively discussion about the sounds
of different musical instruments (the
saxophone was the overall favourite). In
the listening text there was a description
of the ‘water key’, which trumpeters use
to drain saliva out of their instruments.
As a result, saliva went up on the board.
Whiteboard words
The point of this account is that
designating a column on your
whiteboard for vocabulary, which you
then use to add words that come up in
each lesson, can be very useful and
provides you with a surprisingly
versatile teaching tool. It’s something
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
I’ve done from my very early days of
teaching, and I’ve found that it has
various benefits:
● You can use the list for wind-down
activities if you have five minutes
spare at the end of a lesson. For
example, students can be asked to
make example sentences using the
words, or play ‘Back to the board’
(see Step 5 opposite).
● You can use the lists of words for a
focus on pronunciation. Get the
students to mark the word stresses or
practise saying weak forms.
● You can have a competition to see
how many of the words the students
can use in a dialogue.
● As a collaborative effort, students can
add any other new words they have
come across to share with their
classmates.
On Fridays I have revision lessons and in
these I focus on all the words that have
gone up in the column throughout the
week. To do this, I make sure that I have
made a note of the words that I have
written up over the week so that I can
elicit them from the students for revision,
and to see what they have remembered!
This can lead to very productive, free
writing and speaking classes where
students get the opportunity to revise
new vocabulary and use it in context.
The revision lesson in the box takes an
hour to an hour and a half. ETp
Angela Noble has
worked for eight years
as a teacher and teacher
trainer in Prague, Czech
Republic, and the UK.
She is currently head of
EFL at a small language
school in Leeds, UK,
where she is developing
her interest in ways to
teach vocabulary
effectively.
ange_n76@hotmail.com
A revision lesson
Step 1: Ask the students to look
through their notes and find between
three and five items of vocabulary that
were new to them this week. Stress that
these do not have to be single words
but can include collocations, phrases
and idioms.
Step 2: Once the students have done
this, distribute board pens and ask them
to come up and write the words on the
board. You may want to limit the
number of words here to save time.
Step 3: Hand out one sticky note per
student and ask them to fold it in half. In
the top half, they should draw a happy
face and in the bottom half a question
mark. Explain that the top half is for
words they remember, understand and
are comfortable with, while the bottom
half is for words they don’t know or can’t
remember. They should write three words
from the board on each half.
Step 4: When they are ready, the
students stick their notes somewhere
on themselves and mingle. They look at
each other’s notes, and if there is an
item of vocabulary that a classmate
understands but they don’t, they can
ask for an explanation and an example
sentence. Monitor at this point to make
sure that their descriptions are not
misleading.
Step 5: When the students are sure they
understand all the words on their notes,
split them into two teams and play ‘Back
to the board’. One student from each
team sits facing the class and you circle
one word on the board behind their
back. The other members of the team
must help the chosen student to guess
the word by describing it. The first of
the two students at the front to say the
word wins a point for their team. Rub
the word off the board, choose two
more students and circle another word.
Step 6: When all the words have been
guessed and rubbed off the board, put
the students into pairs or groups of
three. Between them, they should have
between 12 and 18 words on their
sticky notes. Explain that they now have
15 minutes to write a dialogue using as
many of the words as possible correctly,
and in a suitable context.
Step 7 (optional): Get the students to
perform and listen to the dialogues, and
then vote on the best.
17
 IN THE CLASSROOM
Learning
language
is like ...
Dede Wilson explores the perceptions
and expectations of her students.
A
s teachers, one of the first
things we do early in a course
is to find out more about
who we are teaching – not
just what our students’ English is like,
but also their interests and how they feel
about learning a language. To do this, I
use a fun student-centred activity, which
gives me an insight into their learning
strategies and attitudes and also helps
them to gel as a class. This activity is
adapted from one described by Jill
Hadfield and it compares learning a
language to other life events.
Colourful posters are displayed
around the room making various
comparisons such as, Learning a
language is like learning to fly a kite or
Learning a language is like climbing a
mountain. Once the students’ curiosity is
aroused, they begin relating the
different images to themselves and their
beliefs about learning.
With classes of up to 25 students, I
put the posters on the walls and get the
students to walk around the room. They
decide which poster best describes their
learning experiences and then stand
underneath it. Others come and join
them as they decide between different
posters, weighing up the differences
between being in a dark room and the
army, or learning to ride a bicycle rather
than drive a car.
The beauty of this is that when the
18 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
students are in a small group, they
naturally want to compare and discuss
their choices and talk about their reasons
and experiences. The groups provide a
sense of security. Many students expect
their perceptions to be similar and are
surprised at how different they really are.
This creates a real buzz around the room.
The students’ expectations of
language learning and their perceptions
of their own ability become apparent as
they speak. It also becomes clear what
their attitudes to learning are –
informed by what has worked for them
and what hasn’t. I never cease to be
surprised when the quietest students
suddenly and effortlessly become fluent
articulate speakers!
To be fully inclusive, students face
each other from different parts of the
room and speak openly to the class with
everyone from the same group
contributing and the teacher guiding the
proceedings from the centre. This
arrangement creates a focal point and
generates interest in each other as a
class. The real bonus is that everyone
can hear what is said and comment on
it. However, not all classroom layouts
allow for this, so I have included
alternative procedures below.
You can also adapt the posters for
different skills, eg Writing is like ...
Listening in English is like … . You will
probably find that the students’
attitudes are very different for each skill.
Posters
First, make six or seven Learning a
language is like .... posters using things
from the box below or your own ideas.
Make sure they are relevant to the
culture and likely experience of your
students, eg making sushi in Japan. (Try
to include being in a dark room and
being in the army, as these always
provoke a good discussion.) Make the
posters large enough that they can be
seen and read from all around the
room. This is particularly important if
your classroom layout does not permit
the students to get up and move
around. Laminate them if possible so
they can be used again.
Learning a language is like ...
making friends
climbing a mountain
being in a dark room
training to be an athlete
making bread/noodles
learning to ride a bicycle
being in the army
learning to drive
learning to fly a kite
learning to play the piano
working on a farm
learning to swim
Possibilities
1 Mobile groupwork
● Put the posters around the room where
they can be seen by the whole class.
● Tell the students to read each poster
and then decide which best describes
what learning a language is like for
them.
● Ask them to go and stand under the
poster that best describes their feelings.
Instruct them to discuss with the other
students who are standing under the
same poster why they think learning a
language is like this. (If there is only
one student under a particular poster,
 ask them to join one of the smaller
groups and take turns to describe the
reasons for their choices.)
● Allow the students to talk for a few
minutes and monitor their discussion
by walking around and listening.
Make a note of any ideas that you
would like to draw out in an open
discussion, such as comparisons
between their choices of bicycle rather
than car.
● When the initial discussion is over
(you might like to set a time limit),
stand in the middle of the room and
invite the students to speak. Start with
one group and ask different students
within the group to explain their
reasons to the class. Encourage the
rest of the class to listen carefully by
asking what they agree and disagree
with. Change the focus by moving on
to groups on other sides of the room.
● As options are discussed, ask about
similarities or differences, eg how
climbing a mountain might be similar
to learning to fly a kite. To give added
incentive for listening to each other,
tell the students they are going to
write about some of the definitions
they liked the best or disagreed with,
giving their reasons.
● Ask the students to work in groups to
write about the definitions they have
chosen. They can do this in the form
of another poster to stick on the wall.
Remind them to give reasons for their
choices, whether positive or negative.
2
Seated groupwork
● Put the students in groups of 4–6.
(With fixed seats, get the odd-number
rows to turn around to face the even
numbers.) Ask the students to look at
the posters and choose the one that
best describes their feelings.
● Encourage the students within each
group to do a survey of the different
opinions, finding out which poster
each student in the group has chosen
and why.
● With mixed-ability groups, one student
could take on the role of monitor,
pointing to a poster and asking who
thought language learning was like, for
example, learning to ride a bicycle.
The students raise their hands. Other
students can become monitors as they
can change positions after they have
spoken, and call on each other.
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
● Walk around the groups as they work
and make notes for delayed feedback
on language accuracy.
3 or play the piano.
Using an interview grid
● Put the posters on the walls as before,
and have the students form groups
according to which poster they feel
most applies to them.
● Give each group a grid (see below) and
ask them to work together to interview
other students in the class about their
choices and their reasons, and complete
the grid. The groups then work
together to produce a new poster or
write about each other for homework.
Name Learning is Reasons
like ...
Potential
Each of the procedures outlined above
has its own benefits. I feel much is to be
gained from the first procedure because
it involves the whole class working
together, but this may not be possible
with very large classes.
Students
For the students, this activity is
motivating because it is personal and
linked to their own experience. It
provides a chance to use the language
they have learnt, and an opportunity to
be imaginative and express their
opinions. It promotes active listening
for recognition and interaction. Fluency
and accuracy become an unconscious
focus as they try to express themselves
clearly. There is even some semi-
controlled language practice of gerunds,
language of comparison and contrast
and metaphor.
Teachers
The activity not only enables teachers to
evaluate their students’ linguistic ability
for fluency and accuracy, but gives them
a chance to see how well the students
are able to put language together, make
comparisons, express reasons and use
language learnt. Additionally, it gives
insights into different learning styles,
anxieties and overall feelings about
learning English and therefore assists in
learner training. For example, it is an
opportunity to encourage the idea that
iStockphoto.com / © ElementalImaging
making mistakes when speaking is not
losing face, but a natural part of
learning, like learning to ride a bicycle
Teacher trainers
For teacher trainers, it may come as a
surprise to see so many in the army with
incomprehensible rules or never finding
their way out of the dark room!
It provides an insight into what may
affect the trainees’ approach to teaching.

I have done this activity with every class
I have taught, whether they were
students from elementary levels to
proficiency or trainee teachers. No two
classes have ever been the same. I have
found that you cannot make
assumptions about what the students
will say or whether something will be
regarded as positive or negative. You
might expect making friends to be always
a good experience, but for some it’s
hard, you have to work at it, overcome
shyness, take risks and even fight. Being
in a dark room can be a positively
enlightening experience: it may be worth
the effort to find the light switch. For
one Chinese girl I taught, being in the
army had always been her dream, it
provided structure and a future.
Finding out so much
about your students in
one activity is often a
revelation for everyone.
As we don’t often talk
about our language
learning experiences,
it can also bring an
element of self-
discovery. Most
importantly, it is
genuine. ETp
Hadfield, J Classroom Dynamics
OUP 1982
Dede Wilson trains
native- and non-native-
speaker language
teachers around the
world. With a background
in teaching young
learners and adults, she
has taught international
development courses
since 1990. She has a
BA in Psychology and
a Masters in ELT and
Applied Linguistics.
dedewilsonuk@yahoo.co.uk
19
 G R A M M A R
Phrasal verbs?
They’re easy! 4
John Ryan ties up his exploration of verbs that take up.
I
n Issue 64 of ETp, I looked at verbs
which take up and concentrated on
two possible meanings.
1 The direction 
(primarily with verbs
of movement)
2 Creation or death (signifying the
beginning or the end of something)
Now I would like to look at more verbs
with up, but this time covered by the
third category I mentioned in my last
article: the road to perfection.
What is perfection? Have you ever seen
it? Have you ever smelt or tasted it? No?
I think it is fair to say that outside a
religious context, nothing is perfect.
Even the most ‘perfect’ circle you can
draw with the most advanced computer
won’t look perfect when viewed under a
powerful microscope. However, we all
have an idea of perfection. For example,
I can imagine my perfect holiday, my
perfect partner or my perfect meal.
When you put up beside some verbs,
it moves the action closer to this idea of
perfection. Imagine an empty glass.
What is its job? To hold liquid. So when
the glass is absolutely full, can I say it’s
perfect? I believe so because it is doing
its job 100%, or completely. That 100%
means it’s fulfilling all of its potential.
We cannot ask the glass to do more
than this. Therefore the road, the
journey to perfection is the verb to fill
up. Now, you may say that in this case,

up means . But we also fill up a tyre
with air, and this is in every direction!
Growing up
Here’s another example. When we give
our children food and education, we are
bringing them up. We are developing
them towards perfection. (Of course,
unfortunately, they never arrive!)
Children grow up. Animals and plants
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
don’t grow up, they just grow. They get
bigger. Growing up is not just about
getting bigger and fatter; it’s about
developing. Plants don’t grow up, cities
don’t grow up. Only humans do. When
we grow up, we develop, we come closer
to an idea of perfection.
Look at that man. He’s wearing
better clothes than normal. He’s not
just dressed. He’s dressed up for a
special occasion. He looks perfect!
Turn up the TV! In this case, the
volume is too low. Turn it up. Perfect!
Thank you.
Speak up! Speak louder. Louder!
Perfect! Thank you.
Why do women wear make up? Do
they see it as a development towards
perfection? In this case, maybe it’s
perfect femininity.
He’s always trying to butter me up.
I’m his boss, and he’s always saying nice
things to me. Why? Because he wants a
favour, a raise or extra holidays! He
wants to develop our relationship to a
perfect level.
Cleaning up
Very often, verbs associated with
cleaning are verbs with up. After all,
when you clean up something, you are
developing it towards perfection! Here
are some examples:
● I mopped up the floor.
● I tidied up my bedroom.
● I cleaned up the house.
● I wiped up the spilt milk.
● I swept up the leaves.
● I smartened up the room with some
cushions.
● I jazzed up the living room with some
flowers.
● Last week I did up my house.
(I decorated it – now it’s perfect.)
● I brushed up on my French last year
on holiday.
● I need to brush up on my computer
skills.
Up to you
We saw earlier that there is a big
difference between being dressed and
being dressed up. With the next group of
verbs, however, up is optional. You
don’t have to say it. If you do say it, the
image is the same, just more complete.
For example, the shop is closed and the
shop is closed up are more or less the
same. The only difference is that with
closed up, the shop is more closed (if
you can imagine that). If I say the shop
is closed, it could be for lunch, whereas
the shop is closed up is likely to be for
the night or much longer.
Here are more verbs which behave
like this. Notice that all of them mean
closing in some way, but with some
there really isn’t much difference
whether you use up or not.
● You can board the windows or you
can board up the windows.
● You can tie your shoelaces or tie up
your shoelaces.
● You can lock the house or lock up
the house. (However, you lock, not
lock up, the door.)
● You can button your shirt or button
up your shirt.
● You can tape or tape up a box.
● You can block or block up a gap or
hole.
● The drains can be clogged or
clogged up.
● You can parcel or parcel up
something to be sent.
● You can seal or seal up a building or
a room.
● Some string can become tangled or
tangled up.
● You can zip or zip up your jacket.
In the next issue, I will look at verbs
with across and through. ETp
John Ryan is the Director
of Studies at Delfin
School of English, Dublin,
Ireland, and believes that
the English language is
accessible to all learners
as there is an underlying
logic, which exists even
in the most idiomatic of
phrases. Bringing this
logic to the learner is his
goal in training.
lifethroughenglish@gmail.com
21
 TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS
Ready to read
Ana Lado considers some criteria for selecting
books for beginners.
C
hildren’s picture books are
an invaluable resource for
teachers wanting to provide
students with experiences of
authentic English. A problem arises,
however, when a book is above the
students’ comprehension level. In this
case, teachers must spend time
developing complementary activities to
bridge the gap between the level of the
students and that of the text. However,
we can avoid some of this work by
carefully selecting books of appropriate
length, simplicity and accessibility.
Carefully selected books can
introduce new English without
overwhelming beginners and thus
sacrificing enjoyment. When books
match student abilities, the students are
able to use them for independent
practice and this reduces the amount of
time the teacher must spend in preparing
developmental activities. Essentially,
when books match students and the
teaching strategy, they are ready-to-use.
Finding a useful picture book for a
beginner-level student at first seems easy.
It is a matter of selecting among those
with little text, interesting visuals and
repetition. This type of information can be
found in annotated book lists. However,
a difficulty arises when a teacher is
searching for an ideal book for a
particular English proficiency level. This
is not easy because it involves knowing
more information than is readily available
on annotated book lists. These lists usually
only provide enough information about a
book to enable the teacher to match it to
a broad-brush level of English proficiency.
Teachers wishing to select books for
particular students need descriptions
with information related to narrower
definitions of English proficiency levels,
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •

and the stages within these levels. Finding
the right book for beginners, whose
needs vary depending on the different
stages they are at, entails knowing such
things as the amount of vocabulary,
grammatical difficulty, topic complexity
and other information. It is also difficult
to find books with beginner-level English
that are also appropriate for school-aged
beginners. Many books which contain the
simplest English are, in fact, unappealing
to school-age early beginners because
of their babyish topics and illustrations.
Criteria for choice
In general, the criteria used to select
books for teaching English language
learners need to take into account
many characteristics of both books and
students. Once I have taken these into
account and selected a set of books for
beginners, I additionally consider
whether a particular book addresses a
balance of opportunities for language
learning. I search for books with
embedded features that clarify meaning,
build expressive skills, develop language
knowledge and facilitate fluency. Books
with these features are compatible with
a communicative language teaching
programme. When I find books which
contain these four features, I match
each book with a teaching strategy.
These include using realia (real objects
brought to the classroom), Total Physical
Response (TPR), guessing games,
substitution, dictation and jazz chanting.
Clarifying meaning
Books with closely corresponding visuals
and text help to clarify meaning. I look
for ones I can use in conjunction with
realia, and ones which contain action
verbs to use with TPR (a strategy in
which the teacher says and demonstrates
verbs, and students imitate them until
the gestures are no longer needed).
Building expressive skills
I examine books in order to check that
new language is introduced
incrementally and to ensure that they
will engage students in beginner-type
interactions. Books with five or more
questions embedded in the text can be
used with guessing games.
Developing language knowledge
I look for books with predictable
sentence patterns to highlight grammar.
These can be used with substitution
exercises and dictation.
Facilitating fluency
Books with repetition are extremely
useful. If they have five or more
repetitions of a sentence, they can be
used for developing fluency through
jazz chanting.
Three stages for
selection
In class, teachers accommodate their
language to the different stages of
beginner-level language learners, from
the earliest beginner students who are
reticent to speak, to intermediate
beginners who can use formulaic
phrases and predictable short phrases,
to productive beginners who have a
much larger range of abilities.
Rote and structured interactions are
interim communicative exchanges for
teaching English. Teachers should
balance their activities, giving equal time
to comprehension activities which
clarify meaning, communication
activities which allow personal interests
to be expressed, direct language
learning through elaboration, and
fluency activities with repetition.
Teachers can examine books to
match their use of language with the
students’ capabilities. For the earliest
beginners, books should be introduced
with activities involving rote interaction.
Once the students have acquired some
skills, they can participate in structured
interactions. Successful participation in
these eventually leads to more complex
and open-ended communication. 
23
 Over
the
wall ... Alan Maley
investigates the
urge to write.
y last article (in ETp Issue 64)
M ended when the fictional
Queen of England in Alan
Bennett’s novel The
Uncommon Reader, having discovered
the joys of reading, decides to take up
writing as the next step. Like the Queen,
many if not most of us, at one time or
another, have felt the itch to write. This is
often expressed in soulful sighs, ‘I wish I
could write…’. Unlike the Queen, we
rarely act upon our wish, although, as Dr
Johnson bluntly asserts, ‘Any man may
write at any time, if he will set himself
doggedly to it’. No one gets to write
unless they start to write. It is as easy –
and as difficult – as that.
For language teachers, there are few
more effective ways of re-activating and
extending their grasp of the language,
and of restoring their taste for linguistic
risk-taking and playfulness, than creative
writing (and that goes for non-native
speakers as well as for native speakers).
It opens the gates to the figurative and
lyrical aspects of language. It pushes
them to, and over, the edge of their
comfortable plateau.
In this article I will be examining five
books which address this urge to write
creatively. Of course, reading a book about
creative writing does not teach us to write.
As I have said, to learn to write, we need
to write. There is no other way. Yet such
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
books can help in several important
ways. They can inspire us, stimulate our
ideas, offer encouragement and support,
and validate our belief that we can write.
They can point out directions and even
sometimes show us the nuts and bolts,
the techniques we may need, and offer
us practice. In varying degrees, all these
books do some of these things.
Writing Down the Bones
Nathalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the
Bones is essentially an inspirational book,
somewhat in the Beat Generation style,
with a goodly dose of self-exposure. It is
sometimes overly effusive and
distractingly discursive, but it rides on the
author’s genuine enthusiasm for and long
experience of writing creatively. It is a
sprawling, almost random, collection of
short chapters, most of which could
stand alone: a mix of personal anecdote,
memoir, reflections on most aspects of
writing, some sound advice, and even a
few practical ideas for generating writing.
I find myself returning to it once or twice
a year and always with profit.
Bird by Bird
A more organised, though still inspirational,
version of the writing process for fiction
is offered by Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird.
The book is in four parts. Part I, Writing,
focuses on getting started, character, plot,
dialogue and setting. There are some eye-
catching metaphors: ‘Writing a first draft
is … like watching a Polaroid develop’ or,
quoting E L Doctorow, ‘… writing a novel
is like driving a car at night. You can see
only as far as your headlights, but you can
make the whole trip that way’. In Part II,
she offers more personal advice on the
need to develop close observation, to be
true to yourself, to trust intuitions, and to
still the voice of the negative internal
critic (and the uncritical voice of the self-
regarding admirer!). Part III offers advice
on where to get help: by using index cards
for taking notes, using other people’s
specialist knowledge, writing in groups for
mutual support, finding a reliable critical
reader for your work, writing a letter
when you get stuck, and general advice
on dealing with writer’s block. In Part IV,
she discusses some of our motivations to
write, apart from publication.
Rose, Where Did You
Get That Red?
In Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?
Kenneth Koch brings us closer to teaching,
though in the context of teaching the
mother tongue in a New York City public
school (from grades 3 to 9). His book is
based on the idea that children and
adolescents can, and should, be exposed 
27
 Over
the
wall ...
 to ‘real’ poems by great poets from all
periods, and that they can then use these
poems to spark poems of their own. The
ten sample lessons he offers are based
on poems by Blake, Herrick, Donne,
Shakespeare, Whitman, Wallace Stevens,
Carlos Williams, Lorca, Ashbery and
Rimbaud – not readings for the faint-
hearted. He makes it clear in his
introduction, however, that we should never
surrender to ‘difficulty’ before it has been
experienced. ‘In deciding on poems, I
wasn’t put off by some of the difficulties
teachers are often bothered by. Unfamiliar
words and difficult syntax, for example, and
allusions to unfamiliar things. ... To reject
every poem the children would not
understand in all its detail would mean
eliminating too many good things.’ And
later, ‘What matters for the present is not
that the children admire Blake and his
achievement, but that each child be able
to find a tyger of his own’. This refusal to
condescend to children and his trust that
We don’t learn to write
from books about writing: we learn by doing it
they will make their own understandings of
the poems seem to have paid off amply
in the quality of the examples of
children’s work provided in the sample
lessons. The final section is a stimulating
anthology of poems, with suggestions on
how they might be used. This is certainly
an inspirational book, too, but it primarily
offers insights into teaching creative writing,
iStockphoto.com / © Steven Robertson
and is a great source of original poems.
Sing Me the Creation
Paul Matthews’ take on poetry in Sing Me
the Creation is somewhat different. He is
very much part of the anthroposophical
movement founded by Rudolph Steiner.
28 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
The first chapter, A Personal Introduction,
may therefore sound some unfamiliar
notes to the uninitiated. He makes it clear
that this is not simply an exploration of
the word, but of the world and the self in
the world. He links the four basic
sentence types: Command, Exclamation,
Question and Statement with the four
temperaments: Choleric, Sanguine,
Melancholic and Phlegmatic, and the four
elements: Earth, Water, Air and Fire, and
with three characteristics of language:
Image, Sound and Movement (rhythm).
This may all sound a bit esoteric, but the
ideas for developing writing are in fact
highly practical and imaginatively
stimulating. He groups them, all 307 of
them, in five chapters: one each for The
Command, The Exclamation, The Question
and The Statement, plus one called The
Hearth, which explores stories. The book
is a fantastic quarry of original ideas for
writing (mainly poetry), a cornucopia of
source material for anyone wishing to
explore their own writing or to incorporate
it into their teaching. But these are not
pre-cooked formulae – they require
individual effort for their full realisation.
The Ode Less Travelled
Stephen Fry is better known to most
people as a writer, actor and broadcaster,
so it comes as something of a surprise to
learn that he is totally enthused by poetry.
The pun in the title of his book, The Ode
Less Travelled, gives us a clue to the witty
treatment of the subject to come, but it
does not prepare us for the passion of it.
He makes a number of points in his
foreword: everyone is capable of writing
poetry, there is a need to learn how to do
it better (‘talent is inborn but technique is
learned’), poetry is language, not a special
kind of language but a special way of
deploying it, and writing poetry makes us
better appreciate the poems of others.
There are three main chapters – on metre,
rhyme and form, with a coda about poetic
diction and the state of poetry today. The
style is light-hearted and delightfully
disrespectful (he refers graphically to
some poetry as ‘arse drizzle’…) but the wit
conceals an encyclopaedic knowledge of
the subject. I know of no other book
which makes metre so fascinating. He
addresses his readers directly throughout,
in a tone of gentle banter, and expects
them to complete the exercises which
conclude each chapter (something I found
well worth working through). He illustrates
points with his own tailor-made verse, and
with subtly-chosen work from a wide
range of poets. This is an irresistible book
– the best I have come across in years.
Coincidentally, but highly relevant to the
message of this series of articles, I came
upon it in a second-hand bookshop in
distant Vientiane, Laos. What better
example of the serendipity of the
worldwide confederacy of readers?

There are, of course, many other books on
creative writing, and I have included a few
of them in the further reading references
below. But we should not forget the
obvious truth that we don’t learn to write
from books about writing. We learn to
write by doing it. Happy writing! ETp
Books reviewed
Fry, S The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking
the Poet Within Arrow Books 2005
Goldberg, N Writing Down the Bones
Shambhala 1986
Koch, K Rose, Where Did You Get That
Red? Vintage Books 1990
Lamott, A Bird by Bird Pantheon
Books/Random House 1994
Matthews, P Sing Me the Creation
Hawthorn Press 1994
Further reading
Angwin, R Writing the Bright Moment:
Inspiration and Guidance for Writers Fire
in the Head 2005
Bell, J and Magrs, P (Eds) The Creative
Writing Coursebook Macmillan 2001
Drury, J Creating Poetry Writer’s Digest
Books 1991
Clark, T (Ed) The Writer’s Digest
Handbook of Novel Writing Writer’s
Digest Books 1998
Novakovich, J Fiction Writer’s Workshop
Story Press 1995
Whitworth, J Writing Poetry A and C
Black 2001
Alan Maley has worked in
the area of ELT for over
40 years in Yugoslavia,
Ghana, Italy, France,
China, India, the UK,
Singapore and Thailand.
Since 2003 he has been
a freelance writer and
consultant. He has
published over 30 books
and numerous articles,
and was, until recently,
Series Editor of the
Oxford Resource Books
for Teachers.
yelamoo@yahoo.co.uk
B USINESS E NGLISH professional 
Not‘them’
but‘us’
Monica Hoogstad tackles division in the classroom
by advocating the right kind of laughter.
T
he global village has become a
melting pot of cultures, the
European Union regularly
opens its doors to new
members, societies are increasingly
heterogeneous, yet individuals remain
staunchly conservative in their
monoculturalism. Ignorance, lack of
information, an obstinate sense of
superiority, xenophobia, racism and
prejudice inevitably widen the cultural
gap between nations and lead to
miscommunication and clashes.
A few years ago, I conducted a
business English training programme for
an insurance company in a European
Union country, and the groups were
comprised of European and Japanese
advisers. From the outset, I found myself
facing a pedagogical and moral dilemma,
as the soft-spoken and overly courteous
Japanese were a constant target of teasing
and banter. Japanese habits and traits
were ridiculed (‘giving and receiving’
rituals, pronunciation of English words),
dismissed a priori (bowing) or ignored
completely (non-tactility). Another
typical reaction in the Western corner
was perplexity and anger at certain
‘unacceptable’ behaviours, such as falling
asleep during presentations, showing
reluctance to ask questions at meetings,
taking moments of introspective silence,
reaching decisions by consensus and
putting emphasis on seniority.
In hindsight, I realise that this tension
wasn’t an isolated case, and that it
actually reflected two recent Western
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
trends: the upsurge of nationalist
tendencies and the movement against
political correctness. Nationalism
manifests itself through identifying and
pillorying out-groups, ie any group that
embodies ‘otherness’ – a fluid concept,
influenced by specific circumstances in
the Western nations themselves.
According to Morris Narrelle, whenever
confidence crises related to national
identity arise, frustrations, anxieties and
resentment are directed towards
scapegoat groups. The second trend –
evident in programmes involving public
humiliation on prime-time TV – was born
in shows like The Weakest Link and Pop
Idol, which have rapidly spread across
Europe, becoming the norm for evening
entertainment. Bootcamp-mannered
presenters are hailed as national heroes
for breaking social taboos and launching
verbally abusive attacks against
unassuming guests, while the fans can’t
get enough of their vitriolic, ad-lib jibes.
Emotions
While many organisations aspiring to
become global players have recognised
the importance of upgrading their
moral standards, very few are aware of
their responsibility in creating
emotionally and socially proficient
employees. Sitting on the fence is not an
option for business English teachers,
since we play a major part not only in
raising students’ ethical awareness, but
also in developing competent global
citizens. This can be achieved only
through a paradigm shift, as a result of
which the global corporate sector would
have to redefine their goals. As Evelin
Lindner asserts, meaningful ought to
bear the same weight as successful when
describing communication in the
workplace. Non-measurable and non-
standardised factors, such as kindness,
consideration, helpfulness, compassion,
unselfishness, conciliatory attitudes and
Very few organisations
are aware of their
responsibility in
creating emotionally
and socially proficient
employees
sense of humour, have been downplayed
systematically. As soon as employers
acknowledge that employees’ emotions
and the way they are managed have a
huge impact on job performance, job
satisfaction, decision making, creativity,
productivity, turnover, teamwork,
negotiations and leadership, they will
no doubt strive to delve into their staff’s
emotional intelligence. By increasing
their Emotional Quotient (EQ),
employees would learn to regard
emotions as valuable data when dealing
with situations – a skill which would be
advantageous in any area of business. 
29
 B USINESS E NGLISH professional 
Not‘them’

but‘us’
Laughter
How should we tackle this issue? First
and foremost, with great care, ensuring
that we don’t impose our views on our
students, which would be inappropriate,
patronising and unethical. The language
classroom ought to be a negotiated
space, in which mutual respect is the
starting point of all activities and
discussions. What we can do is
encourage our students to bury the
hatchet and engage in a series of peace-
pipe-smoking rituals. What we need is
an emergency kit to be able to take
immediate action against put-downs,
non-inclusive teasing and banter,
mockery, ridicule and stereotyping. The
medicine I’d prescribe is laughter, whose
therapeutic, cognitive, care-giving and
humanising effects are widely acclaimed
by physicians, psychologists, sociologists
and anthropologists alike. Laughter
increases the release of endorphins, the
body’s natural painkillers and
antidepressants. It’s a discovery tool
that boosts creativity and causes
information to stick in our memory. It
also has an undeniable impact on our
emotional response to stress, anger and
anxiety. It contributes to improving the
sense of wellbeing and reducing
burnout. Laughter helps us cope with
and better adjust to negative situations.
It has a bonding effect, as it builds trust
through a gradual discovery process. It
consolidates rapport and it has the
ability to transcend social class, ethnic
and racial background, gender and age.
Community
I believe that it is high time humour
became a recognised asset in the
workplace. This doesn’t necessarily mean
that business English teachers should
metamorphose into stand-up comedians;
the role of ‘humour brokers’ seems more
appropriate to me. One cannot ignore
the fact that humour is the venom of
communication: it has healing attributes,
but it can also be deadly. Verbal humour
operates at multiple levels: partly
creating intimacy (shared laughter,
30 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
inclusive teasing), but also carrying
aggressive undertones (sarcasm, irony,
cynicism). In order to use humour as an
effective and affective instruction tool,
we have to make sure that both we and
our students are aware of the power
that words have and, therefore, use them
wisely and responsibly. Humour,
laughter and verbal play require a
minimal social distance, characterised
by solidarity and familiarity among the
participants. To steer the group dynamics
towards such levels of intimacy, we have
to initiate a negotiating process, aiming
at creating a risk-free zone and a strong
cooperative atmosphere. By using the
subjects we teach – language and
culture – as a means of bringing people
together, we can change the aggressive
image that English still has in certain
Laughing at a
mutual problem
makes crises more
manageable and gives
a sense of reassuring
companionship in
difficulty
parts of the globe, and turn it from a
conqueror and divider into a
peacemaker and unifier. Every time we
start teaching a group, we build a new
English-speaking community, whose
cultural background isn’t English but a
mixture. We don’t start with a blank
cultural slate, but we have the
opportunity to develop an emotionally
intelligent community that embraces all
the useful and functional aspects of its
members’ commonalities and
differences, without stifling their unique
identities. The rules of this community
should emerge as a result of a
collaborative process and should include
peace-promoting language, globally-
inclusive attitudes and positive humour.
Growth
Humour is conceptualised differently,
and thus expressed differently, in
various cultures, ranging from low-brow
slapstick to subtle wordplay, so it
requires adjusting and adapting to the
students’ background, level and
expectations. Laughing at oneself shows
a strong sense of identity, it’s a non-
threatening, easy-to-share type of
humour, it helps us accept our mistakes
and it enforces equality. Laughing at a
mutual problem relieves tension and
appeases emotional turmoil, as it
provides perspective, makes crises more
manageable, and gives a sense of
reassuring companionship in difficulty.
According to Paul McGhee, when used
appropriately, humour creates trust and
cooperation, encourages communication
on sensitive matters, is a source of
insight into conflict, helps overcome
formality, stiffness and standoffishness,
and facilitates the acting out of
impulses in a safe way. Humour can be
a useful tool to teach tolerance, alleviate
conflicts, eradicate humiliation and
enforce dignity in the classroom. This
can be achieved by approaching
language teaching as a system that helps
learners grow intrapersonally and
interpersonally, intraculturally and
interculturally.
Rapport
Language shouldn’t be regarded only as
a socio-economic currency in today’s
corporate world, but also as a
peacemaker and a peacekeeper. We have
to work on enhancing our students’
ability to adapt to all intercultural
contexts from a cognitive, affective and
behavioural point of view. With that
purpose in mind, we must drop the
‘teacherese’ and have a real conversation
for a change. The purpose of asking
questions mustn’t be of a solely
cognitive nature, but should aim at
finding out what students’ thoughts and
beliefs are.
‘What did you do at the weekend?’
‘Go to park for walking.’
‘Good!’
‘No, not good. Raining.’
‘Excellent!’
‘No. Me no have umbrella.’
‘Great! Now let’s move on to the present
perfect.’
Warm-up conversations of this kind
may be initiated with good intentions,
but they certainly don’t contribute to
developing rapport, nor do they test or
improve the students’ fluency.
B USINESS E NGLISH professional 
Identity
In order to make the learning process
more meaningful, and to contribute to
bolstering the students’ sense of self-
esteem, mutual respect, empathy,
multiperspectivity, openness, flexibility,
conflict management skills, out-of-the-
box thinking and critical thinking, I
have developed a series of humanising,
peace-promoting and globally-inclusive
activities. Taking a leaf out of
Francesco Gomes de Matos’ book, I
urge my students to monitor and
analyse their communication for its
ethical, moral and social values. I
encourage them in their daily discourse
to convey acceptance and validation of
the ‘other’, and – at the same time – to
honour their own cultural heritage. This
contributes to reinforcing their own
identity, putting their own culture into
perspective and – eventually – making a
shift from a culturally-exclusive attitude
to a culturally-relative one, by
incorporating ‘otherness’ into an all-
embracing ‘us’.
Activities
1 Celebrating uniqueness
Don’t consider differences as
communication barriers; they reinforce
the uniqueness of identities and
underscore positive contributions to the
community. The bonding and blending
process begins with mutual recognition.
Cultural mandala
To highlight each student’s distinct
talents, invite them to present
themselves in the context of their
culture. Their hitherto hidden strengths
will emerge as beneficial assets the
group can rely on.
Distribute large sheets of paper and
ask the students to draw a self-portrait
in the centre. Reassure them that they’re
not expected to compete with
Rembrandt or Modigliani; anything
meaningful to them will do. Around it,
tell them to represent a few aspects of
their culture they value the most
(history, fine arts, science and
technology, penchant for commerce,
emphasis on traditional values,
multilingualism, sense of humour, etc).
Continuing from the centre, they should
then illustrate their own particular
talents and, around the edges, write
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
some of their hopes and dreams. When
they have finished, get them to discuss
their mandala with their classmates.
Favourite jokes
To underline the fact that despite being
culturally-specific, humour is a
universally understood and appreciated
form of communication, organise a
joke-telling contest. Shared laughter is a
verified bonding technique, contributing
to a laid-back atmosphere and
generating intimacy and trust. Jokes told
in an intercultural setting might require
explanations to make the punch lines
understandable. This won’t diminish the
fun; it’ll only add to an increased feeling
of recognition and goodwill.
2 Building common ground
Use powerful metaphors to strengthen
the sense of belonging to the
community. Shared experience and
positive laughter based on verbal and
non-verbal patterns of communication
enhance group dynamics.
Bridge-building
Ask the students to work in small teams
and to build a bridge from straws and
paperclips (or draw one) that symbolises
their team. Then tell them to write a
‘user’s manual’ meant to facilitate
communication between their team and
the outside world. Examples of rules
might be:
● Sarcasm is strictly forbidden.
● No personal attacks or offensive
language are tolerated
● At least ten minutes of daily laughter
is compulsory.
● If you want to cross this bridge, you
must tell a joke first.
The teams vote for the most popular
rules, which then become the guidelines
the whole group have to follow for the
duration of the course.
‘Pot and kettle’ dialogues
To avoid finger-pointing and laughing
at instead of laughing with, you can
present your students with a collection
of errors illustrating typical difficulties
certain groups encounter when learning
English. While Japanese learners tend to
mix up sounds like /r/ and /l/, European
learners seem to find it difficult to
distinguish between long and short
vowels or /e/ and /æ/ sounds.
Consequently, you may hear your Asian
students say things like:
● We hope you enjoyed your fright and
will fry with us again.
● We’re interested in the American
presidential erection.
● Our bus offers a dairy service.
But how can this compete with what
your Western students come up with?
● Have you paid your Texas?
● He emerged as a weener.
● Let’s stimulate the piss process.
After everyone has had a good laugh,
correct the mistakes through a non-
threatening game, during which you
create a risk-free environment where
learners aren’t afraid of making
mistakes. Prepare a sheet containing
examples of your students’ mistakes.
Get the class to split into small teams,
which then compete against each other
in correcting them. Each team makes a
bid, awarding between 1 and 10 points
to each of their error corrections,
according to how certain they are that
they are right. If they’re right, they win
the number of points they’ve bid. If
not, they lose them. ETp
Gomes de Matos, F ‘Using peaceful
language: from principles to practices’
Global Alliance for Ministries and
Departments of Peace
www.peoplesinitiativefordepartmentsof
peace.org 2006
Lindner, E ‘Avoiding humiliation’ Journal
of Intercultural Communication, SIETAR
Japan 10 2007
McGhee, P Humor: Its Origin and
Development W H Freeman 1979
Narrelle, M ‘Destructive discourse:
“Japan-bashing” in the USA in the 1980s
and 1990s’
http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au 2006
Monica Hoogstad is
a business English
teacher and a teacher
trainer with 20 years’
experience in ELT.
She runs The English
Channel, a language
institute specialising
in organising and
conducting bespoke
in-company business
communications training
programmes and teacher
development courses.
monicahoogstad@yahoo.co.uk
31
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 ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
Elusive essay writing skills
Cheryl Morris believes that improving students’ academic writing can be done creatively.
I
n a recent article in The Economist,
it was revealed that several UK
universities, including Cambridge,
have pointed out that significant
numbers of students are not well
prepared for the academic burden that
awaits them. Furthermore, with
increasing budget cuts, many universities
are relying on non-native-English-
speaking students to fill their coffers. For
these reasons, foundation programmes
are more essential than ever to ensure
that students’ academic abilities meet
university requirements. Perhaps one of
the most essential skills, academic
writing, may also be one of the more
difficult to master, as it demands a new
approach to register and structure.
Many teachers approach academic
writing in a purely traditional way,
involving instruction, the reading of
examples, and writing practice. While
this can be useful, there is no reason not
to incorporate activities that have a
lighter, more creative touch. Some such
activities are suggested below.
1 more than the communication of their
An introductions game
In my personal experience, the creation
of a solid introduction, complete with a
clearly-stated thesis, tends to elude
students, especially those from non-
English-speaking backgrounds. This
activity allows the students to learn the
generic construction of a typical
introduction (based on Oshima and
Hogue’s ‘inverted triangle’ model,
involving general statements, counter-
arguments and/or more specific
statements, and the thesis statement),
and forces them to formulate their
introductions quickly – an essential skill
for essay-based examinations.
Preparation
Select five or six short essay questions and
write them on slips of paper. These can be
provided by the students’ subject lecturers
or created by their writing teachers.
Procedure
● Have a student select a slip of paper.
That student then reads the question
34 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
aloud, and selects a second student.
● Student 2 must generate a few general,
introductory sentences on the topic,
and then choose a third student.
● Student 3 then presents either possible
counter-arguments for the topic or
statements that are more specifically
related to the thesis. A fourth student
is then chosen.
● Student 4 makes a thesis statement
for the topic.
● The procedure is repeated for each
slip of paper.
While the activity is taking place, the
teacher’s role could be variously to
encourage, correct or assist students, as
well as to record their output. The final
completed introductions could then be
presented to the class, and the best three
chosen as the beginnings of essays to be
finished for homework.
Comment
I find this activity useful in that it focuses
on ideas and structuring arguments,
rather than grammar and spelling,
which students tend to worry about
thoughts. Students are forced to think
spontaneously, utilising the scaffolding
provided by the introductions model
and fellow students, in real time.
Variation
With large classes, three essay questions
could be given to each group of three
students. Students could designate one
classmate to provide a line or two for
each third of the ‘introduction triangle’,
rotating roles with each question. Groups
could then compare their introductions
for each question, and the best three
could be chosen as the foundation for
further writing homework.
2 Formal flashcards
As Butt and colleagues point out, the
employment of a more formal register is
one of the defining features of
academic essays. The students’ own
work is often a rich hunting ground for
examples of informal language that
needs to be formalised.
Procedure
● Select 20 or so informal phrases and/or
words that students frequently use in
essays. For example: a lot of research,
terrorism is a terrible problem, no one
knows the reason. Write these in large
letters on pieces of cardboard. On the
back, write possible formalisations
(eg much research, terrorism is a
serious issue, the reason is unknown).
● Either ‘drill’ one student with five or so
cards, or drill the whole class, allowing
them to shout out their answers.
Comment
My own experience has shown me that
although students may know the
differences between formal and informal
register, old habits die hard and they
often fail to spot their own inappropriate
use of register. Drills such as this may
help them embed formal language more
deeply in their brains.

Even though students may have a solid
grasp of English, academic register and
genre demand a new use of the
language that may elude them. Dry,
traditional writing classes based on
modelling and practice alone may not
be enough to motivate learners to alter
deeply entrenched language patterns;
adding a bit of active fun to classes
might change that, however. ETp
Butt, D, Fahey, R, Feez, S, Spinks, S and
Yallop, C Using Functional Grammar: An
Explorer’s Guide (2nd Ed) MacQuarie
University Press 2000
Oshima, A and Hogue, A Academic
Writing: An Introduction Longman 2005
The Economist ‘Making it Pay’
September 20th 2008
Cheryl Morris teaches in
the IFCELS department
at the School for
Oriental and African
Studies in London, UK.
cherylemorris@yahoo.com
 IN THE CLASSROOM
A voyage of adventure
James W Porcaro’s students sail the seven Cs on the crests of the five Ms.
A
t the start of a course of
instruction, and throughout, it
is important that teachers
inform their students in a simple, clear
and comprehensible manner of the
goals and objectives of the course. For
their part, the students need to
acknowledge, accept and work towards
those goals and objectives in some
recognised and accountable way.
The seven Cs
In teaching oral communication courses
in English at both high school and
university levels, I try to achieve this by
telling my students that as they strive to
use English as a medium for meaningful,
interpersonal communication, they will
set out on a voyage of adventure and
discovery, sailing the seven Cs on their
way towards the goal of increasing their
fluency in English. I tell them that, as
the weeks pass, the broad objectives of
the coursework are as follows:
They will feel more and more
comfortable in using English in oral
communication. They will develop a
more and more natural feeling when
using the language. They will feel more
and more confident expressing
themselves in English, knowing that,
more and more, they can say what they
want to say. This will demonstrate their
increasing control of the use of the
language. They will be able to speak
more and more continuously in English
as their discourse skills become more
and more practised and proficient. They
will be able to express themselves more
and more clearly, making their points
with greater and greater precision. At
the same time, they will be speaking
more and more correctly, using lexis and
syntax more and more appropriately.
These objectives will be achieved
through communicative use of English
within their classroom lessons, and these
will incorporate meaningful content that
suits their current level of proficiency.
Finally, I tell the students that there
are always new horizons, and beyond
the seven Cs lies yet another challenging
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
vista they will sail toward, an eighth C –
that of critical thinking: the capacity to
understand, analyse and evaluate
information and ideas, and to express
them with optimum effectiveness and
efficiency.
Language learning certainly does
not follow a linear pattern. However, if
the students believe and trust in their
teachers, they will follow them over the
rough waters that naturally rise and fall
during the language learning experience,
and they will sail successfully through the
Cs to the attainment of those objectives.
The five Ms
At the same time, particularly in my
role as a mentor and teacher trainer of
Japanese high school English teachers, I
advise teacher trainees that for students to
sail the seven Cs successfully, they need to
be buoyed on the crests of the requisite
five Ms which come from their teachers.
Teachers, first of all, must have a
clear concept of their mission. They
need to know and understand with
crystal clarity and concreteness what
they want their students to achieve.
Instructional goals and objectives must
be formulated, understood and accepted
by both teachers and students.
Teachers need to establish a good
working classroom methodology. For
almost all practising classroom teachers
this is an eclectic style that incorporates
a variety of elements fashioned to fit
the individual teacher and particular
classes of students.
From this foundation, the teacher
must be adept at constructing suitable
lesson materials which fit and serve that
methodology. It is not enough simply to
use even a good textbook. In teaching
English as a foreign language, especially,
it is very important that lesson topics be
meaningful in the students’ lives.
Teachers must provide opportunities for
students to formulate and express their
thoughts, opinions and feelings, and to
relate experiences and knowledge drawn
from their personal lives and the society
in which they live. Using such content
greatly facilitates and encourages the
iStockphoto.com / © Alex Dudoladov
students’ use of the language and their
self-expression, thereby promoting
language acquisition and proficiency.
Moreover, engagement with meaningful
topics genuinely contributes to the
students’ sense of ownership of English
as an international language.
In addition, classroom management
is vital for teachers to be able to achieve
their instructional goals and objectives.
Classroom management refers to
instructional planning and the entire
instructional process. It takes in not only
matters of discipline that may need to be
addressed with students but also, much
more essentially, the relationship between
teacher and students and, indeed,
everything that happens in the classroom.
While teachers may be capable of
establishing their mission, employing
good instructional methods and
materials, and handling classroom
management, attending to all these Ms
day after day and week after week is hard
work. Furthermore, teaching is loaded
with frustrations, disappointments and
failings, especially for teachers just
starting out, and even for those non-
native-speaking veterans entering new
instructional territories, for example, with
communicative language teaching. Thus,
the fifth M needed to maintain both
teacher and students through this process
is motivation, the ‘fire in the belly’ that
is the driving will and acceptance of
responsibility to fulfil the objectives and
goals of one’s instruction.
Thus, on the crests of the five Ms students
can sail the seven Cs and navigate their
way to brilliant horizons. ETp
James W Porcaro is a
professor of English as
a Foreign Language at
Toyama University of
International Studies in
Japan. He also teaches
a class of students from
the university’s
associated high school
and advises the English
teachers there.
porcaro@po1.ctt.ne.jp
35
Activity
corner
Many popular approaches for teaching
children to read are based on phonics. In
essence, this means focusing on how
patterns of letters represent particular
sounds (although of course there’s more to
it than that). Going to www.wikipedia.org
and searching for phonics will give an
overview of the subject, plus links to more
detailed material. As the Wikipedia article
puts it, phonics ‘is not without
controversy’. If you disagree with phonics-
based approaches, you may not want to
use the game activities which follow, as
they are broadly consistent with such
methodologies. They are aimed at young
learners aged 7 to 11, especially those
whose L1 does not use the Roman
alphabet.
I haven’t seen these particular formats
elsewhere, but phonics bingo and phonics
dice in the general sense are not new
ideas. If you search on the internet you will
find other formats, although many of these
are aimed at native-speaker learners.
1 Phonics bingo
Preparation
Use Grid 1 for low-level classes and Grid 2
(or both 1 and 2) for high-level classes.
Make sufficient copies of the grid for each
student to have one, or write it up on the
board for the students to copy into their
notebooks. Alternatively, devise your own
grid based on the phonics focus of your
course so far.
Method
1 Tell each student to choose six letter
pairs/threes from the grid, and circle
them lightly in pencil. Go round the
class checking that everybody has
done this correctly.
2 Say a word from your lessons so far
which includes one of the phonic items.
Anybody who chose that item can cross
it off. (It doesn’t matter if some of the
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
Jon Marks offers two photocopiable
thematically-linked communication
Phonics fun
items on the grid haven’t featured in your
lessons, although, of course, students
who have chosen those will not win.) The
first student to cross off (correctly) all
six wins the round. Then tell everybody
to rub out the pencil markings on the
page, and repeat as required.
3 Note that th appears in both grids. You
could use the first with words using the
voiced version of the sound (the, this,
mother ) and the second with the
unvoiced version (path, thanks, birthday).
2 Phonics dice
Preparation
This activity requires more preparation than
I usually like to propose, but once you’ve
made the dice, they should be durable
enough to be reused several times.
Decide how many dice you will need
(one per group of three to five students),
and make sufficient copies on card. Most
photocopiers will copy onto card as long
as it’s not too thick, but rather than buying
a pack of suitable card, it may be quicker
and cheaper to get a local photocopy
shop to make the copies.
Cut out and assemble the dice, scoring
lightly along the edges to be folded, and
sticking them together with glue and/or
transparent sticky tape.
Each group of three to five students will
need 20 to 30 counters. These could be
roughly-cut squares of the card left over
from making the dice.
Method
Very low-level groups
1 Brainstorm 20 to 30 words the students
have learnt recently and write these on
the board. Try to include words
covering all five vowels. Then put the
students into groups of three to five,
and hand out the counters and one
dice per group.
activities with an element of
innovation.
2 Tell the students to take turns to throw
the dice and say a word from the list on
the board which includes the vowel on
the uppermost side. The side with all
five vowels is ‘wild’: it can represent
any vowel. Words cannot be repeated.
If the student can say a word, they win
a counter, and then the next student
has a turn.
3 As the game progresses, possible
matches between the vowel on the dice
and the unused words on the board will
become less frequent. The game ends
when all the words in the list have been
used. At this point, the student with the
most counters is the winner.
4 Repeat as required, perhaps with new
words for more confident classes but
the same words for weaker classes.
Higher-level groups
Do the preparation as above, but each
group will need up to 50 counters and two
dice.
1 Brainstorm up to around 50 words.
Every word should contain at least two
vowels, preferably with plenty of vowel
pairings such as ai, ea, ee, oo, ou, etc.
2 Play the game as described above, but
tell the students they must match a
word from the list with the two vowels
displayed on the upper faces of the
dice in any order. So, for example, if a
and e are shown, matches could be
eat, game and umbrella.
Jon Marks is an ELT writer and
editor, based in the UK. Recent
publications include the Puzzle
Time series and IELTS
Resource Pack (both DELTA
Publishing) and three titles
in A & C Black’s Check Your
English Vocabulary series.
He is currently developing
teenager courses for China,
and also draws the Langwich
Scool cartoon in ETp.
j_g_marks@hotmail.com

37
 Phonics bingo

Grid 1

at en og ed

an sh ot eg

all ig th it

ick ar ock un

Grid 2

ee ea ir ong

ai ame oa ow

ing pl or ch

ay st oo th

br ng ake bl

38 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 Phonics dice

a
e i o
u
a e
u i
o

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 • 39

 D E S I G N E D T O P H O T O C O P Y

PREPARING TO TEACH ...

Colourful language 2
John Potts adds more range to his language rainbow.
Colours feature in many Ai She’s always been interested in green
collocations, idioms and issues such as conservation, and is a
expressions, and also have member of the Green Party.
symbolic meanings that may Aii The local council gave the green light to
differ according to culture. the new library, and building work starts
Sometimes the idiomatic and next month.
colloquial uses translate exactly
into another language, and Bi I hardly ever hear from my brother – I get a
sometimes they don’t. In this postcard from him once in a blue moon.
issue, we will look at green, blue Bii The news of his wedding came out of the
and a mixed palette of colours. blue – I didn’t even know he was engaged.
Ci The rules about whether to spell some
words with a hyphen or not are rather
a grey area – even dictionaries don’t
always agree.
Cii One golden rule when sending emails
is to read them again, carefully, before
you click on the ‘send’ button!
Ciii Last Friday, Sylvia got the pink slip
from her company and she’s really
upset.

FORM SOME COLLOCATIONS AND IDIOMS

Spelling can be a problem: Green: examples
sometimes collocations with
be green have green fingers go/turn green green shoots
colours form one word (greenfield ),
sometimes a hyphenated word be green with envy give the green light green issues a greenfield site or
(blue-blooded ), and sometimes two to something development
separate words (green light ). There
Green: key
may also be some variation in the
verbs used with some expressions be untrained or be good at making turn pale as if about the first signs of
inexperienced plants grow to vomit economic recovery
(eg to go/turn green).
be very envious or give permission for topics related to the a piece of land not
jealous of something something to go protection of the yet built on or

USE or somebody ahead environment developed

Generally speaking, the colour
idioms are spoken and informal. Blue: examples
Some of the colour collocations be or feel blue / once in a blue moon out of the blue blue-blooded
may be rather informal, while others have the blues
are neutral. Some tend to be found a blue-collar worker be somebody’s a blue film/movie/joke argue till you’re blue
in special registers, such as blue-eyed boy in the face
financial or business English
(eg green shoots, a brownfield/ Blue: key
greenfield site, brown/white goods). feel sad, low or not very often happen completely from an aristocratic
depressed unexpectedly or noble family

PRONUNCIATION a manual worker be somebody’s a pornographic waste your time

(not an office worker) favourite (and be film/movie/joke arguing at length and
Some of the collocations may be
beyond criticism) unsuccessfully
stressed equally in both elements
(eg ı green ı shoots) or with a Mixed palette: examples
secondary and primary stress
be yellow brown goods a golden opportunity be born with a silver
(eg ı green ı shoots).
spoon in your mouth
grey matter a brownfield site or a golden handshake have a silver tongue

VARIETY development
There may be occasional differences a grey area be in the pink a golden parachute a silver wedding
between various varieties of English: anniversary
in the UK, talented gardeners have
a pink slip a pink-collar job or a golden rule a golden wedding
green fingers, while in the USA they
(US English) profession (US) anniversary
may also have a green thumb.

40 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 D E S I G N E D T O P H O T O C O P Y

PREPARING TO TEACH ... Colourful language 2

Mixed palette: key

lack bravery, act like
a coward
intelligence and brain
power
an unclear or ambiguous
area
a letter telling somebody
that they have lost
their job
TV sets, audio a very good or special be born into a rich or
equipment, etc opportunity privileged family
a piece of land previously a large payment when speak in a very
built on that can be somebody retires or persuasive or charming
re-developed leaves a job way
John Potts is a teacher
be in good health a large payment when a celebration of being and teacher trainer based
somebody is forced to married for 25 years in Zürich, Switzerland.
retire or leave a job He has written and
co-written several adult
a job that was once a very important rule a celebration of being coursebooks, and is a
CELTA assessor. He is also
traditionally done by or principle married for 50 years a presenter for Cambridge
women ESOL Examinations.
johnpotts@swissonline.ch

 SITUATIONS
Colourful stories Give each student a slip of paper with a colour
collocation or idiom. They work as a class, and you start off a
story, perhaps based on a picture, the coursebook or a well-
known person or place. Each student has to contribute to the
story and include the expression from their slip of paper.
Translation time This works with both monolingual and
multilingual classes. Make a worksheet of colour collocations
and idioms with explanations. If possible, include some that are
the same or very similar in the students’ first language (this is
clearly a variable!) and others that are very different. The
students’ first task is to decide whether the explanation provided
is true or false. Then, they check in a dictionary. Finally, they
provide a mother-tongue equivalent, where possible.
Colour focus Write a colour in the centre of the board, and give the
class five minutes to think of as many words or expressions as they
can that include this colour (eg have blue eyes, blue jeans, rhythm and
blues, etc), and of things that can be this colour. Then pool them on
the board. Next, you can introduce three or four idioms or figurative
expressions that use this colour (eg be somebody’s blue-eyed boy).
Variation: Write the names of 10–12 everyday objects on the board
(eg cup and saucer, raincoat, car, sofa, towel, mp3 player, suitcase,
etc) plus three colours. Ask the students to discuss (in pairs or
groups) how important the colour is for each. Then have a class
discussion of their findings – who would drive a pink car? wear
yellow shoes? buy a blue sofa? etc. Then, as above, you can
introduce three or four idioms or figurative expressions that use
these colours.

COMPETITION RESULTS
Congratulations to all those readers who successfully completed our Prize Crossword 35.
11 21 11 10 3 22 3
D F D B P S P The winners, who will each receive a copy of the Macmillan English Dictionary for
21 19 7 15 17 7 7 13 25 18 20 19 5 9 Advanced Learners, are:
F I E R C E E Q U A T I O N
9 19 6 9 10 19 20
N I L N B I T Simón Martín Barrado, Salamanca, Spain Evangelos Kritsinis, Hermoupolis, Greece
12 5 23 7 19 9 11 25 22 20 15 19 18 6
J O K E I N D U S T R I A L Celine Benoiste, Choue, France Mutsumi Okada, Dagnall, UK
22 9 10 20
S N B T Aileen Cotter, Dublin, Ireland Gerard Salle, Bergerac, France
10 18 9 11 7 2 3 15 7 22 22 19 5 9
B A N D E X P R E S S I O N Nicola Feyen, Lenzburg, Switzerland Walter Zeller, Vienna, Austria
25 22 15 15 16 23
U S R R V K Judy Hsu, Guildford, UK
18 15 17 24 18 6 19 16 7 14 18 15 11
A R C H A L I V E Y A R D Laurence Koster, York, UK
19 20 8 15 22 7
I T Z R S E
17 5 4 3 6 7 20 7 6 14 17 18 22 24 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
C O M P L E T E L Y C A S H G X P M O L E Z N B D J Q
26 20 15 7 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
W T R E Y R V C A I T F S K H U W
25 9 11 7 15 9 7 18 20 24 18 15 4 14
U N D E R N E A T H A R M Y 24 7 24 18 11 25 22 7 11 20 24 7
7 9 7 1 19 3 10
H E H A D U S E D T H E
E N E G I P B 26 5 15 11 19 9 19 20 22 3 19
1 15 18 11 25 18 20 7 9 7 7 11 6 7
W O R D I N I T S P I
G R A D U A T E N E E D L E 17 23 26 19 17 23 19 18 9 22 7 9 22 7
22 22 20 22 1 15 7
C K W I C K I A N S E N S E
S S T S G R E Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 • 41

  IT WORKS IN PRACTICE More tested lessons, suggestions, tips and
techniques which have all worked for ETp readers.  Pay up!
Try them out for yourself – and then send us your In activities where the students
own contribution. have to find out information by
asking each other questions,
All the contributors to It Works in Practice in this using coins can make everything
issue of ETp are teachers from Seven Vila Mariana, more interesting. Give a small
São Paulo, Brazil. They will receive a set of the number of coins (or beans) to
Macmillan Topics series, each student and make them pay
for information. If, for example,
by Susan Holden.
Student A has to guess the name
Macmillan have of a country which Student B is
kindly agreed to thinking of, Student A asks one
be sponsors of question about the country and
It Works in pays Student B one coin for the
answer. Student B answers.
Practice for
Student A can then either try to
this year. guess the country or pay another
coin to get more information. By
doing this, the students who have
 A letter to my students to discover the information will
try to be more specific in their
Developing students’ autonomy is something we take very seriously at our school. For this questions, while the other
reason, we are constantly looking for ways to help them continue to study English during students will try to be more
their vacations. My most recent idea was to send my students a letter by email, giving them general in their answers in order
some suggestions on what to do. These suggestions could easily be adapted for any class. to make their partners ask more
questions and, consequently, pay
Dear students,
more coins.
You can also use coins (or
It’s vacation time! But you’re not going to forget your studies, right? :-) beans) to promote learner
Here are some ways you can keep studying English during our break.
responsibility. At the beginning of
● Read a book in English. If you’re not an avid reader, read comics! the lesson, distribute five coins to
Try www.comics.com. each student and tell them that
● Watch a film (one you have watched before) without subtitles. The objective every time they use their mother
is just to ‘train your ears’! So don’t worry about understanding every word. tongue during that lesson, they
● Sing in English! Go to www.karaokeparty.com. You can even record your have to pay one coin. Once they
song and do a self-evaluation (of your English, not your abilities as a singer!). have used all their coins, they are
not allowed to speak in L1 any
● Listen to the radio in English! Go to www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice and listen
more during that lesson. Repeat
to the BBC’s service of news for the world. If you prefer music, go to
this procedure every lesson, each
www.live365.com.
day giving a different number of
● Add your classmates to your MSN or Skype contacts list and talk to them in coins and encouraging the
English! Talk about the weather, your favourite celebrities, gossip ... students to use them only when
● If you travel during your vacation, write a journal of your trip. If you don’t they really need to. This activity
travel, write about a film you saw or a party you went to. will make them think twice before
● Also if you travel, send me a postcard in English! You’re practising your using L1 unnecessarily. It will also
English and helping add to my postcard collection! Here’s the address: make them stop more often to
[include the school’s address] think about how to say something
in English. By giving the students
● Practise vocabulary and grammar by searching the internet for exercises. For
example, write practise adjectives of personality in the Google search engine
the coins, you are actually passing
and you’ll find lots of options. them the responsibility of
managing the use of English and
You don’t need to do everything, but the more you do the better, of course.
L1 in the classroom, making them
Enjoy your vacation and I’ll see you next term!
more independent and
responsible for their learning.
Carina Guiname Vitor Tambelli

42 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 It’s hip to be square!
This activity makes use of one of the
many Google services and products:
Google Squared, a great tool for
practising comparatives and
superlatives. It provides information on
items in a given category, sorting the
information into different columns for
easy comparison. You can even add your
own columns and it will find the
information to fill them!
● Take your students to the computer lab
(or use an interactive whiteboard with
an internet connection). Log on to
www.google.com/squared.
● Type in a category, eg celebrities
(actors, actresses, athletes, singers,
bands), cities, animals, movies or food
items (chocolate bars, sodas, etc) and
click on ‘Square it’. A search for
‘celebrities’ will return six ‘fact-
columns’ in categories such as ‘name’,
‘image’, ‘description’, ‘date of birth’,
‘full name’ and ‘age’.
● Ask your students to work in pairs with
one student (A) facing the computer
and the other (B) looking the other
way. They take turns to read out facts
about two items. The other student
each time has to make a comparative
sentence using that information. For
example:
Student A: Jennifer Lopez is 39.
Christina Aguilera is 28.
Student B: Jennifer Lopez is older
than Christina Aguilera.
Student A: Yes.
● You can add other columns, or
additional categories, such as ‘years
active’, ‘awards’, ‘children’, etc. Google
Squared will automatically update the
new column for all the celebrities.
As a variation to this activity, you could
do some research and write statements,
such as:
Gwen Stefani is 13 years older than Kelly
Clarkson.
Beagles are, on average, taller than cocker
spaniels.
Hand these statements to the students,
who have to confirm or correct them
based on the results they get from Google
Squared. (You can save your Squares, as
long as you have a Gmail account.)
Mauricio Shiroma
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
 Key pals
I devised a ‘key-pal’ project with another
teacher to help our pre-intermediate
classes to practise reading and writing in
a real-life situation.
My colleague and I agreed that we would
get our students to share emails. As the
students did not know each other, we
decided that a suitable target topic
would be personal information.
In the first lesson, I introduced the
subject of the language used in emails.
The students discussed this, shared
information and opinions about
‘netiquette’ and then worked on a
handout extracted from Macmillan’s
Inside Out e-lesson about text and email
language (www.macmillanenglish.com/
insideout/Resources/elesssons/protected/
New_elessons_archive.htm).
I then explained the project, asking my
students to write emails to the other
 Becoming better listeners
This activity is part of a project aimed at
developing the students’ listening skills
and providing authentic listening, thus
preparing them for real-life situations.
Its main objectives are:
● to destroy the myth that listening to
authentic material is extremely
difficult and you need to understand
every single word to be a competent
listener;
● to help students overcome their fear of
listening by using contextual clues as
compensation strategies.
The first step is to ask questions to elicit
the learners’ feelings towards authentic
listening:
Do you usually listen to authentic English?
If so, when do you listen and what do you
listen to?
How often do you listen and what for?
How do you feel while you are listening?
Why?
If you don’t listen to authentic English,
why not?
What do you think is necessary to
understand what is said?
After discussing their answers, show the
students an extract of a video with the
sound off. It is important to choose a
teacher’s students, introducing
themselves and asking for information
about the other group. I allowed 20
minutes for them to go to the computer
lab and write their emails. I gave them
complete freedom to do this and just
monitored the proceedings. As they
didn’t know the other students’ email
addresses, they sent all their messages
to me and I forwarded them to my
colleague. They wrote about job
experiences, families, hobbies and
personal style.
In subsequent classes, the students read
and replied to messages from the other
class. I monitored and helped with any
writing problems.
Each student ended up exchanging
emails with two or three other students
and the feedback was very positive.
Priscila Jovazino
scene in which body language, facial
expressions and other contextual clues
will help them create a hypothesis of
what is happening. For beginners or
students who are not aware of learning
strategies, I suggest working with
cartoons, in which the role of verbal
language is generally ancillary. 
Get the students to say what they think
is happening/being said. Write their
ideas on the board and elicit what clues
they used to reach these conclusions.
Play the scene again with the sound on
and discuss the differences/similarities
between the actual video and the
students’ interpretations. At this point,
emphasise that variations in the
students’ predictions reflect the
dynamism of language and that although
contextual clues help predict what is said
or done in specific contexts, there is
always room for unpredictability. 
Finally, have a class discussion about
what is necessary to be a competent
listener and get the students to organise
their conclusions in a chart. You can then
display this chart in the classroom and
use it as a reference whenever they need
strategies for listening exercises.
Bete Santiago
43
Reviews
Advanced Learners
by Alan Maley
OUP 2009
978-0-19-442194-2
Supplementary materials for advanced
learners are thin on the ground, so
Advanced Learners is a welcome addition
to OUP’s well-known Resource Books for
Teachers series. That there is a gap in
this market is surprising, given that the
burgeoning ELT scene is now producing
learners who have studied English for
increasingly longer periods of time, often
having focused on specific applications
of the language such as English for
Academic Purposes and business
English. Because the label advanced
covers so many different learning
scenarios, perhaps publishers have found
it hard to pin down exactly what students
at higher levels need.
Advanced Learners shares the same
format as the other titles in the series.
First, there is a short introduction to show
the relevance, scope and organisation of
the book. Then, in the bulk of the book,
there is a collection of practical teaching
ideas, often with photocopiable
worksheets. The end matter gives text
references, background reading, useful
websites and a comprehensive index.
This book can be read straight through (it
is a convenient size), but busy teachers
could also pick and mix. Generally, it is
the more experienced teachers who take
on advanced groups, but this title would
be equally accessible to newer teachers.
The activities themselves are divided
logically into nine sections: ‘Getting
started’, with awareness-raising tasks
such as revision techniques; ‘Tools of the
trade’, which covers how to use reference
materials such as a thesaurus; then ‘Focus
on vocabulary/grammar/reading/writing/
listening/speaking’ – six separate
sections with activities to practise these
various skills and aspects of the language.
The last section is ‘Focus on culture’,
which is prompted by a recognition that
English is a world language and a force for
intercultural communication. The Whose
fault was it? activity, a deconstruction of
amusing yet instructive cultural blunders,
typifies the appeal of this section.
These nine sections contain
something like 100 different activities
44 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
between them and, to use an old cliché,
there really is something for everyone.
Traditionalists will like the linguistic
challenge of activities such as Greek and
Latin roots. Creative types will love the
suggestions for using literature in class,
for example mini-sagas. Technophiles will
appreciate the concordancing tasks, for
instance the corpus investigation which
informs the discussion of What is
culture? No one could ever come away
from this book uninspired or uninformed.
The only problem you will face with
Advanced Learners is that it may
disappear from your school bookshelves
a little too often …
Wayne Rimmer
Moscow, Russia
Lessons from Good Language
Learners
by Carol Griffiths (Ed)
CUP 2008
978-0-521-71814-1
Why aren’t all language learners equally
successful? What characteristics typify
good learners? What strategies do
successful learners use, and can these
strategies be acquired and used by less
successful learners? It seems obvious
nowadays that these are important
questions, but when Joan Rubin posed
them in her article ‘What the “good
language learner” can teach us’, they
were so unfamiliar that it took four years
to find a publisher for it. The article finally
appeared in 1975 and is now routinely
described as ‘seminal’. This book, to
which a total of 26 authors have
contributed, commemorates the
publication of that article and presents an
overview of the achievements in the
study of language learners and language
learning since then, acknowledging the
work of major contributors to the field.
The 11 chapters in Part I, ‘Learner
variables’, cover motivation, age, learning
style, personality, gender, strategies,
metacognition, autonomy, beliefs, culture
and aptitude, while the 12 chapters in
Part II, ‘Learning variables’, deal with
vocabulary, grammar, functions,
pronunciation, listening, speaking,
reading, writing, teaching/learning
methods, strategy instruction, error
correction and tasks. There is a mixture
of state-of-the-art and research-based
chapters; I felt, on the whole, that the
former approach was more appropriate,
given the overall aim of the book. As you
would expect, there are plenty of
references for the keen reader to follow
up. Each chapter includes a section called
‘Implications for the teaching/learning
situation’ which gives a useful summary
of key practical reminders for teachers.
Between them, the chapters give
some idea of the considerable breadth
and depth of work that has been done in
the investigation of good language
Reviews
learning, and how this work has fed
into now-familiar notions such as
learner independence, autonomy and
self-direction. At the same time, many
of the authors give the impression that
the work has, in fact, hardly started:
‘After more than 30 years of
research, no consensus has been
reached about the most effective
instrument for measuring learning styles
and no agreement about the most
appropriate pedagogical interventions.’
‘The optimism of 30 years ago, which
predicted that if we could only find out
what good language learners did, we
could help all learners to learn
successfully has given way to the
realization that the task is larger and more
complicated than was thought ...’
And, perhaps most strikingly of all:
‘The question of how good language
learners develop functional competence
(that is, how they learn to use the
language) ... remains largely unaddressed
and presents a fertile ground for further
research.’
Jonathan Marks
Leba, Poland
Drama and Improvisation
by Ken Wilson
OUP 2008
978-0-19-442580-3
They say that you shouldn’t judge a book
by its cover and here’s a very good
example of one that shouldn’t be so
judged. Clad in a maroon and turquoise
jacket redolent of the Scunthorpe United
football kit, and with a poor quality photo
of some out-of-focus students in what
looks like a 1970s drama group engaged
in who knows what on the front, this one
wouldn’t have made it off the staffroom
shelf and into my bag if it hadn’t been
recommended by a friend.
It would certainly be a great shame if
the unappealing exterior put people off,
because this is actually a very good book.
It is packed full of activities designed to
bring English classes to life through
drama and improvisation and to stimulate
the students’ imagination and creativity.
The activities are well laid-out and easy to
follow, giving important information (such
as level, the time needed to complete
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
them, any preparation required and the
aims) at the top so that a quick flick
through is enough to enable teachers
hunting for something to do with their
classes to identify likely candidates. After
the main instructions, there are
suggestions for follow-up activities or
ways in which they can be varied,
together with comments and hints on
getting things to run smoothly.
A brief but comprehensive ‘How to
use this book’ section at the beginning
will answer many questions that teachers
have about doing activities such as
these, and goes a long way towards
tackling the ‘Yes, but what if ...’ mentality
that puts many of them off attempting
drama in the classroom.
The activities themselves are chosen
so that they cater for those who just want
to add a little drama and improvisation to
their classes as well as those who are
ready to run a drama club or get their
students working with full-length scripts.
The last chapter has a number of scripts
for humorous sketches that teachers can
photocopy and use with their classes.
Full instructions for activities using these
sketches are provided and some have
additional worksheets.
A book full of entertaining but
productive activities that will make
learning enjoyable for students. What
more could anyone want – apart from a
more attractive cover?
Bill Johnson
Weston-super-Mare, UK
ENGLISH
Tprofessional
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45
 SPEAKING
What do
foreigners
need to say?
Peter Wells speaks up ‘Oh, man,’ said the foreign student to
his homestay hostess, ‘this hot water
for Standard English. bottle’s really cool!’
T
here has been much discussion
recently about the relevance of
corpora, mainly to the effect
that teachers should utilise the
findings of spoken English corpora in
their speaking courses. A typical example
is the discovery (found in, among other
sources, the Longman Grammar of
Spoken and Written English) that native
speakers do not actually say Yes
(pronounced /jes/) when answering a
yes/no question in the affirmative, but
more commonly something like Yeah or
Mmm. Accordingly, it has been suggested
that we should teach our students to use
these forms, and that teaching them to
say /jes/ is ‘wrong’. It is even apparently
proposed (Nation and Newton, quoting
Stenstrom) that we ought to teach our
students the f-word, just because it’s in
the London-Lund Corpus!
These ideas have already been
incorporated into textbooks. For
example, in NorthStar Speaking and
Listening (Intermediate), an American
textbook first published in 1998, classes
are instructed to chant, rhythmically,
sentences such as:
Do you wanna get a prize?
First you hafta send the money.
I’m gonna call the cops.
To take a more recent example, in
Touchstone 4, a book which boasts its
connection with the Cambridge
International Corpus, the current
46 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
colloquial uses of the word like are
analysed, including ‘to highlight
something’ (They were like totally
blocking the doors) and ‘to report what
someone said’ (They were like, ‘What’s
your problem?’ ). The students are then
asked to replace the underlined phrases
in the following passage with
expressions with like:
I have this friend, Justin, who’s very
emotional. For example, one minute he’s
laughing and the next minute he’s – can
you believe this – totally depressed. Some
little thing happens and he says, “I’m so
upset.” I guess he’s – how can I say this –
too sensitive. Actually, he’s the same as
me. Maybe that’s why we get along.
We’ve been friends for about 10 years.
The clear implication is that our
students should try to use like in these
senses when talking to native speakers.
(How, incidentally, would you react to
someone, native or foreign, who used
the word like every three seconds?)
My feeling about this type of
teaching, based on experience of teaching
English abroad, is that it needs to be
handled with extreme caution. I want to
look at the issue from three perspectives:
1 the nature of slang, 2 the difference
between reception and production, and
3 the inherent difficulties involved in
teaching these items effectively.
The slang of
young people is
forbidden to the old,
just as the slang of
prisoners is restricted
to convicts
1 Slang
Slang is variously defined according to
the type of dictionary used, but
pragmatically speaking it may best be
described as a variety of language, the
use of which is restricted by
sociolinguistic rules. To give specific
examples, the slang of young people is
forbidden to the old, just as the slang of
prisoners is restricted to convicts and
that of drug-users to drug-users. If
people use an item from a code
forbidden to them, they will soon be
made aware of their error by means of
anything from subtle non-verbal signals

to outright derision. When my sons were
teenagers, they were allowed to say that
difficult things were mint and that
injuries wrecked ; I wasn’t. A man would
cause at least raised eyebrows if he
came out with Gosh, that’s awfully sweet
of you. Slang exists only secondarily to
facilitate communication within a group;
primarily its function is to heighten a
group’s sense of identity and solidarity.
Slang is not confined to speech
communities within a nation; a nation
as a whole also has its slang. The
community denied access to its use is,
quite simply, all foreigners. This was
brought home to me some years ago
when a German friend was describing to
me and some other British people the
antics of a drunk he had seen. His exact
words were: ‘He was “half-cut” … as you
say’. In these few words (including the
pause) this intelligent and sensitive
young man, whose English was excellent,
was saying a number of things:
– This man was really drunk.
– I have heard people in your country
use the expression half-cut to describe
people in that state.
– However, I realise that I, as a
foreigner, am not allowed to use that
expression.
– But he really was very drunk!
When I paid my first visit to France I
quickly learnt that French people did
not say Quelle heure est-il? when they
wanted to know the time (as I had been
taught), but Quelle heure il est? Not
being as sensitive as my German friend,
I immediately tried it, only to be made
aware that, as a foreigner, I was supposed
to carry on saying Quelle heure est-il?
One reason why we should not teach
slang to our students is that it varies
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
extravagantly from time to time and
from region to region. Look at the
examples I have already used. Does
anyone use half-cut today? Or mint,
wrecked or Gosh? I once met an elderly
volunteer emerging from her classroom
in an African school. ‘I’ve just been
doing “spick and span”,’ she gushed.
‘Have you done “spick and span” yet?’
However, the main reason for not
teaching slang is that even if our
students use the expressions in the same
context as native speakers, with the
same meaning, they will still be
perceived to have used language
inappropriately. They will have assumed
membership of a group to which they
do not belong. This will not ingratiate
them with their interlocutors.
2 Reception and
production
We do not have to say every word we
know. Dictionaries, when dealing with
taboo expressions, explain the meanings,
and then tell us not to use them. It may
be that in teaching language we should
practise the same principle.
We do a disservice to learners of
English if we try to oblige them to use
forms which are seen by natives as part
of their national ‘slang’. Like, meaning
‘this is what someone said or did or
looked like’, is a case in point. It’s
currently very popular among young
people, so a young student who goes to
an English-speaking country today is
going to encounter much conversation
peppered with this expression. It’s
reasonable enough to expose our
students to it in their listening classes,
assuming they are young people whose
main purpose is travel, tourism and
study abroad. But we must not ask them
Phillip Burrows
to use it in production, because:
● it might easily have died out by the
time they travel;
● it may not be used among the
English-speaking people they actually
meet;
● they will sound as if they are
mimicking, or even mocking, their
hosts;
● they will probably use the word
wrongly.
I would put certain reduced forms into
the category of slang, and therefore
restrict the teaching of them to
listening. Obviously I do not teach my
students to speak standard written
English. I teach them what I think is
standard spoken English. Clearly, they
must use the normal contractions, such
as it’s, I’ll, won’t, etc. Not to use these
would be wrong; they are enshrined in
grammar books and literature. But what
about gonna, hafta and wanna? If our
students say, on arrival at their
destination, that they are / ÷gPŸâÑ tP/ (or
even / ÷gPŸâÑ tu*/) study economics,
their listeners will understand them
perfectly. If they say gonna instead of
going to, their English will not be any
clearer, just slightly irritating.
We do a disservice
to learners if we try to
oblige them to use
forms which are seen
by natives as part of
their national ‘slang’
Penny Ur believes that sometimes it
is effective to have students repeat
phrases with reduced forms in order to
help them recognise them when they hear
them. It is true that a class can have a lot
of fun with items such as /ju* ÷ÜŸdnPv/
(You shouldn’t have) or / ÷wItÜP÷mi*n/
(What do you mean?). However, such
practice, in my view, must come with a
huge health warning: NOT FOR ORAL
USE. The humour surrounding the
exercise should be enough to reinforce
the point that the students are not
meant to talk like this until, at the very
least, their English is a good deal more
confident, accurate and fluent. 
47

What do
foreigners
need to say?
 Also, I would suggest that the aim
of good teaching of listening skills
should not be to focus obsessively on
specific colloquial items the teacher
thinks the students might encounter.
After all, not all English-speakers say
You hafta send the money. Sometimes
they say You gotta send the money. So
students should rather be trained in the
skill of guessing intelligently the
meaning of odd items they fail to catch,
so that when they hear You (inaudible)
send the money, they understand that
money has to be sent.
3 Teachability
Teaching slang or very colloquial
expressions is extremely difficult, as the
rules governing their use are extremely
subtle and complex.
Let’s look in detail at the expression
gonna, which has already been
mentioned. I have heard in both Japan
and the Middle East errors such as the
following, which seem to be a direct
result of failed teaching:
*I’m gonna to (study economics)
*I gonna (study economics)
*I’m gonna (London)
I’ve had emails written thus: Dear Peter,
I’m gonna be late for your lesson on
Tuesday. I’ve heard officials at public
functions, wishing to show off their
idiomatic English, say things like: The
Chairman is now gonna address the
meeting, with, in the middle of their
carefully formed sentence, a noise like
John Wayne used to make.
The expression gonna must have
arisen naturally due to the stress-timed
nature of the English language. In
British English it presumably developed
from /÷gPŸâÑ tu*/ into / ÷gPŸâÑ tP/,
/÷gPŸâÑP/, and finally /÷gPnP/ or / ÷gInP/.
We can see this development
recapitulated, in reverse order, when
English speakers feel the need to speak
more formally. The forms /÷gPŸâÑ tP/,
and even / ÷gPŸâÑ tu*/, are still available
to them, but not to the hapless foreigner
who has been taught that going to must
48 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
always be reduced. There is also the
case of the end-of-sentence use of these
phrases, for example
– A: I don’t wanna do it! B: I’m sorry,
but you have to.
– You can go if you want to.
– I oughta sell my car, but I’m not going
to.
In these examples, the underlined
phrases would not normally be reduced,
in my view.
Our students, if and when they
begin to use their target language in real
situations over extended periods, may
begin to make the typical English
reductions, in the same way and for the
same reasons that English speakers do.
We should not force the pace. Gonna
and similar reductions are features of
connected speech, and the speech of
many learners is just not ‘connected’.
Teaching slang
or very colloquial
expressions is
extremely difficult, as
the rules governing
their use are extremely
subtle and complex

The purpose of corpora is that they tell
us what people who use a language
actually say or write. One purpose of
compiling them is to enable us to teach
foreign students effectively the things
they’ll actually need to use. They are
not so very new, after all – the General
Service Word List goes back to 1953 –
but with the advent of computers
suddenly we can compile and analyse
monstrous lists of items, which we then
feel obliged to make use of. However,
there is no point in taking the whole of
the Cambridge International Corpus
and dropping it on the head of some
unsuspecting student, whether an
Indonesian doctor about to study
gynaecology in the States, or a Japanese
teenager hoping to backpack around
Australia. Our students may not even be
planning to use their English in an
English-speaking country at all.
According to David Graddol, fewer
than half the interactions that take
place in English today involve a native
English speaker.
Corpora are interesting and
valuable, but we need to give attention
to the ‘corpora’ of foreigners, which
may differ from the corpora of natives.
This may be a promising avenue for
research. What do foreigners say? I
think that an objective study would
produce findings about the frequency of
grammatical items (such as questions),
functions (such as apologies) and topics
(such as directions). It would find that
on the whole foreigners do not use
slang. They don’t say Yeah; they say
/jes/. On the other hand, foreigners,
unlike native speakers, frequently need
and use expressions to describe and
control language: Could you repeat/write
that, please? I’m afraid my English isn’t
very good, and so on. It is items like
these that should take priority in our
teaching, not gonna, innit or f***.
Our aim should be to provide our
students with a knowledge of Standard
English which will be equally serviceable
no matter which country they go to,
when they go or what sort of people
they will deal with. We do not want our
students to send emails like this:
Dear Felicity,
It would be wicked to have sherry with you
and your mother next Sunday evening.
They could be disastrously
misunderstood! ETp
Biber, D, Johansson, S, Leech, G,
Conrad, S and Finegan, E Longman
Grammar of Spoken and Written English
Longman 1999
McCarthy, M, McCarten, J and Sandiford,
H Touchstone Level 4: Student’s Book
CUP 2006
Nation, I S P and Newton, J Teaching
ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking
Routledge 2009
Solórzano, H S and Schmidt, J P L
NorthStar Listening and Speaking
(Intermediate) Routledge 2004 (2nd ed)
Ur, P Teaching Listening Comprehension
CUP 1984
Peter Wells has taught
English for over 40 years
in Africa, Asia, England
and the Middle East.
He and his wife are
currently Assistant
Professors at Kansai
Gaidai University, Japan.
Peter’s interests include
assessment, extensive
reading, discourse
analysis and EAP.
pandmwells@hotmail.com

Literacy
in two
languages
 Spanish phonological awareness and
word recognition significantly predicted
their English phonological awareness
and English word recognition, indicating
cross-linguistic transfer. Children who
had Spanish phonological awareness
and Spanish word recognition skills
performed better on the transfer tasks
than those who could read some
Spanish words but who demonstrated
low Spanish phonological awareness.
Research done by Jiménez, García
and Pearson with successful and less
successful bilingual English–Spanish
readers revealed that successful readers
had a unitary view of reading across the
two languages. They knew that
knowledge and strategies acquired in
one language could be used while
reading in the other language. They also
made occasional use of strategies
unique to bilinguals, such as the use of
cognates, code-switching and translating,
to enhance their reading comprehension.
We really know very little about the
types of instruction that promote
bilingual students’ literacy development.
What we do know, however, is that
reading fluency in one language helps
develop reading fluency in an additional
language. Last year, when I was teaching
in a school district with a significant
Brazilian population, I realised that my
Portuguese-speaking students did not
seem to like reading and never read in
their free time. When I asked them why,
many of them said that they didn’t like
reading in English. It was too difficult! I
asked why they didn’t read in
Portuguese, their first language. They
replied that they had no books.
The translation of readers
The majority of these students were not
experiencing academic success in school.
Many complained that they were having
trouble comprehending the materials
they were being asked to read in English.
As their ESL teacher, I provided high
interest/lower than grade level readers
for them in English. They still read with
50 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
great reluctance. Then I got the idea to
apply for a grant from New Jersey
TESOL to provide reading material for
them in Portuguese, which I was
delighted to receive. How hard can it be
to get Portuguese language books for
readers between the ages of 10 and 15?
Well, it was much easier said than done!
I asked their English teachers for the
names of the books they were reading
in class and told them I would try to get
Portuguese translations of them. I also
knew it would be helpful to get content
area books in Portuguese if I could.
Not all of the teachers were enthusiastic
about providing books in the students’
native language. Even though I have
shared research with them about the
benefits of reading in the first language,
many of them see this as a hindrance to
the acquisition of reading skills in
English. Some are simply not interested
in knowing what research tells us about
Successful
readers knew that
knowledge and
strategies acquired in
one language could
be used while reading
in the other language
the transfer of literacy skills between
languages. Others continue to let their
prejudice guide their opinions and are
opposed to any services being provided
in the students’ native language. We
ESL teachers have dealt with this issue
for a long time and, unfortunately, these
kinds of attitudes will challenge us for
many years to come.
Amid both some encouragement
and some grumbling, I began my search
for books. Unbelievably, I could find
nothing in Portuguese in the US except
children’s books! Fortunately, I have
some friends living in Brazil and
contacted them to ask for their help.
My Brazilian students also contributed
their requests and we browsed
catalogues we found on the internet. My
friends were more than happy to help
me and visited their local bookstore.
The bookstore manager also agreed to
assist and, together, they selected a
variety of books of middle- to high-
school-level interest and reading level
(plus a few elementary books). $1,000
doesn’t go far when you are buying
books and paying for shipping: I was
able to get 55 books for my students.
The joy of reading
The books arrived after school ended so
the students didn’t have a chance to see
them until the new school year began.
However, they were ecstatic when they
came back to school and saw the new
books on the bookshelf. They
immediately began to borrow the books
for themselves and their families. I
know that the ones who are making use
of the books have found or rediscovered
the joy of reading in their first language.
I look forward with confidence to
seeing this having an impact on their
reading in English.
Could you be the teacher who helps
your students find or rediscover this joy?
Where there’s a will there’s a way, and
finding books in any language is
probably not impossible. You just have
to be creative and resourceful! ETp
Collier, V P and Thomas, W P ‘How
quickly can immigrants become proficient
in school English?’ Journal of Educational
Issues of Language Minority Students 16
1989
Durgunoglu, A, Nagy, W E and Hancin-
Bhatt, B J ‘Cross-language transfer of
phonological awareness’ Journal of
Educational Psychology 5 1993
Jiménez, R T, García, G E and Pearson,
P D ‘Three children, two languages, and
strategic reading: case studies in
bilingual/monolingual reading’ American
Educational Research Journal 32 1995
Jiménez, R T, García, G E and Pearson,
P D ‘The reading strategies of
bilingual/Latino/a students who are
successful English readers: opportunities
and obstacles’ Reading Research Journal
27 1996
Lois Spitzer has been
an ESL educator for 28
years. Her experience
includes teaching in
colleges, adult
education institutions
and public schools. She
is currently an assistant
professor of education
and in charge of TESOL
program development
at the Richard Stockton
College of New Jersey,
USA. Her current
research focuses on
finding ways to improve
teacher training for pre-
service ESL teachers.
lnsonline@comcast.net
 TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Alone
together
Deniz Kurtoglu Eken explores personal
and professional growth.
‘It is the freedom of the self that
really is important – the one that
since birth has wanted to learn in
everything it did. It is very easy to
lose touch with our inherent selves
in the face of external demands …
It’s clear that the only way to
remedy this situation is to begin to
be our own close friends.’
(Timothy Gallwey)
W
e experience togetherness
in many aspects of our
lives, both at a personal
and professional level,
and we certainly are not alone in a lot
of things we do. Yet to be what
Timothy Gallwey calls ‘our own close
friends’, we need to look both inward
and outward to see the beauty in being
‘alone together’.
Professional development cannot
take place without personal
development. Yet, as Timothy Wilson
asserts, ‘much of what we want to know
about ourselves resides outside of
conscious awareness’. For effective
development at any level, we need to
look at our ‘selves’ first and explore our
‘Self 2’ and ‘Self 1’. The former refers
to the vast reservoir of potential within
each one of us: our natural talents and
abilities, an unlimited resource we can
tap into and develop; and the latter
refers to our own interference in our
development: our concepts about how
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
things should be, our judgements and
associations, often seeing things in
terms of what ‘could have been’. In
order to grow as people and
professionals, we need to reflect
systematically on and become aware of
our qualities, received and experiential
knowledge, skills and abilities, all as
part of our unlimited potential. We also
need to explore possible areas of
interference by thinking critically about
what may be getting in the way of our
vast potential. For example:
● the self (eg not treasuring what we
already have/do, concern about how
others may perceive us if we do/don’t
do something, say/don’t say
something, etc)
● quantity (eg of work, extent of
involvement in a task, amount of
knowledge in the related area, etc)
● quality (eg same points as exemplified
for quantity but from a quality
perspective, the desire and need to do
better and better, getting to a point
where it actually interferes with
potential, etc)
The awareness I am referring to here is
a rich, critical and ongoing self-
exploration of all aspects of our
potential and the possible areas of
interference that can get in the way of
our potential. With the huge potential
we each possess, almost everything is
actually within our control for our
personal development as professionals. I
would argue, however, that little is being
done and promoted in the way of
personal development either in the
classroom or in the workplace.
The idea of re-search
My own experience of life and work has
taught me that a lot of what I would
like to find out about myself raises
questions that probably have no clear-
cut answers but are, rather, ongoing and
exploratory in nature. The moment I
start exploring my self, what Tolle calls
my ‘thinker’ – a higher level of
consciousness – becomes activated and I
notice myself becoming a witness to my
own life. In my own work as well as my
work with colleagues and students, I
realise more and more that we do in fact
search both inwardly and outwardly,
but at an unconscious level and hence
the idea of ‘re-search’. This is where my
own explorations come from. How can
we as human beings exist and think but
not re-search, ie bring to the conscious
what lies hidden?
Some of my recent explorations and
re-search have included the following:
● What are my expectations of myself ?
What are the expectations of others?
● What choices do I give myself ? What
choices do I give others?
● Do I only see and observe what I
believe is possible? What are the
waves of possibility and potential that
I am unable to see in myself and
others?
● How can I look at myself more
through the eyes of others?
These are not questions to which I
expect definitive answers. In fact, I am
not even sure I expect any answers at
all. My desire and need to explore
overrides any other motive. I know that
this is what will help me to grow.
In search of re-search
Inspired by new and alternative ways of
thinking, I always try to explore different
paths for re-search with myself and
others. Here I should like to describe
two re-search processes which we can
use to learn from and about ourselves
and others as learners and professionals.
These are 1 learner re-search diaries and
2 role-reversal interviews. 
51
 TEACHER DEVELOPMENT

‘aloneness together’, I find myself in a

Role-reversal interviews constant search and re-search for new
tools and paths to accomplish this as, I
A Sample questions from students too, strongly believe that, as Stanley
Gryskiewicz puts it, ‘growth, personal and
● What were your expectations when you were young? Do your expectations professional, will most likely take place
then match your expectations now? when new worlds are being explored’.
● How important for you are other people’s opinions about you? At present, I am re-searching where
● Can you associate/relate your life or life in general with any philosophical I am in my work and approach as the
meaning? director of a school and rethinking data
from my colleagues in previously-
● How many lives (kinds of life) do you have?
administered surveys where I had
B Sample questions from teachers sought feedback on my own work and
practices in the school. For example, I
● How can one foster greater receptivity to oneself and others, questioning
am asking colleagues themselves to
oneself, always looking back at oneself, the things you often mention?
suggest questions for a new survey and I
● Putting yourself in the shoes of students, how would you like them to view am using a concordance program to
you? What kind of image do you want to create? analyse the language I use in my emails
● To what extent do you trust instinct when you make professional decisions? to staff. I strongly believe that it is
through processes such as these that we
● What inspires you most at a personal and professional level?
will grow as a witnessing presence to
our own personal and professional
development and learn to become our
interviewers) and analyse my responses In fact, in several cases, although I was
own close friends. ETp
at a later stage. the one being interviewed, the
As the use of role-reversal interviews interviewer happily and readily provided
was initially completely unplanned, I their own responses to the question they If you would be interested in learning
about my replies to the interview questions
naturally started by reflecting on why I were asking me. quoted, please contact me at the email
had asked to be interviewed by students Most interviewers requested a address given below.
and teachers. The main reasons I came recording of the interview and quite a
up with were as follows: few were interested in finding out about Gallwey, W T The Inner Game of Work
Inviting others to interview me: what questions I was being asked by Thomson Texere 2002
others. Although the invitation had Green, B and Gallwey, T The Inner Game
● felt like an experience where someone initially come from me, I was pleased of Music Pan Books 1986
was holding up a mirror to me and that all the interviewers commented that Gryskiewicz, S S Positive Turbulence:
supporting me in my self-explorations; it was a useful learning experience for Developing Climates for Creativity,
● gave me an interesting and alternative them, too, particularly because they Innovation, and Renewal Jossey-Bass &
could choose to ask any question and Center for Creative Leadership 1999
way to explore my ‘Self 2’ and ‘Self 1’
further; also because of the conversational Humphreys, T The Power of ‘Negative’
nature of the interviews which allowed Thinking Newleaf 1996
● gave me an invaluable opportunity to Humphreys, T The Mature Manager:
them to share some of their own ideas
be ‘alone together’, ‘watching my Managing from Inside Out Newleaf 2006
as well.
thinker’, being there as a ‘witnessing Wilson, T D Strangers to Ourselves:
There are some sample questions
presence’ and re-searching with my Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious
asked by language students and by
self; Belknap Harvard 2002
teachers in the box above.
● allowed me to look both inward and Tolle, E The Power of Now: A Guide to
outward in terms of how individuals  Spiritual Enlightenment Hodder &
Stoughton 1999
respond to my thoughts, feelings and
behaviour; As Tony Humphreys asserts, ‘the most Deniz Kurtoglu Eken is
● created an interesting opportunity to important journey in life is the journey the Director of Sabanci
University School of
find out about students and teachers into oneself’, but ‘knowing self is not Languages, Istanbul,
and what seems to be important to easy because it tends to be the road less Turkey. She is also
involved in language
them; travelled [due to the] lack of safety that teacher and trainer
surrounds the discovery and celebration of training and
● seemed also to stem from my own self’. What seems to make a difference is development, and
need to be listened to. learner-based research.
the process by which individuals choose Her richest source of
to examine themselves, including the inspiration comes from
I also realised that people rarely seemed explorations in personal
to ask questions that they themselves equally useful and rewarding process of and professional
would not want to answer or on issues looking outward at their own behaviour development.

that they wouldn’t want to talk about. and how others react to them. In my kurtoglueken@sabanciuniv.edu

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 • 53

SCRAPBOOK Gems, titbits, puzzles, foibles, quirks, bits & pieces,
quotations, snippets, odds & ends,
what you will

Snowed under e Eskimo languag

e has Witty weather
a po pu lar ur ban myth that th
It is snow. In reality,
ua lly lar ge nu m ber of words for What happens when it rains cats and dogs?
an unus your definition of
rds depends on You have to be careful not to step in a poodle.
the number of wo ages spoken in th
e
o (th er e are m any different langu ed
Eskim sometimes desc
rib What did one tornado say to the other?
e inhabitants are
area whose nativ have diffe re nt wo rds ‘Let’s twist again like we did last summer.’
os an d, of course, they all
as Es kim u include snow-
), yo ur de fin itio n of snow (Do yo What did one hurricane say to the other?
for snow fer specifically to
the
only those that re ‘I have my eye on you!’
related words or hod of counting
, and on the met
white stuff itself?) at have quite diffe
rent What did Santa Claus’s wife say during a thunderstorm?
s in languages th
numbers of word . People als o fo rget ‘Come and look at the rain, dear!’
ica l st ru ct ures from English
gram m at glish. Some
ow -re lat ed wo rds there are in En What doesn’t get any wetter no matter how much it rains?
how many sn d
flake, snowball an The ocean.
po un ds wi th snow, like snow r
are co m spring snow fe re
; so m e, lik e slu sh, powder and If an orchestra plays during a thunderstorm, who is most
snowdrift , like blizzard, sn
owfall
the snow; others likely to get hit by lightning?
to the quality of in which it falls.
describe the way The conductor.
and snow flurry s could add
s, m ou nt ain climbers and skier
Meteorologist What is the technical term for a sunny, warm day which
s to the list!
even more word follows two rainy days?
mber of English
en , wh en yo u consider the nu Monday.
And th languages are
de sc rib e ra in, you realise that all
words to in
btle differences
bu lar y to describe su
ric h in vo ca
nd itio ns . Ho w many of these
do you know?
That snow ex
weathe

cascad
r

e
co

clo ud bu rst deluge downpour

The wrong ki
cuse!
nd of snow is
drizzle droplet a phrase coin
drench drips British newsp ed by the
hail flood apers in 1991
inundation caused disru after severe
drops raindrop ption to train w eather
monsoon rain se rvices
mizzle the rail comp . A spokesman
trickle shower any explained for
ulet to rre nt problems with that they wer
riv squall e having
soak spatter the type of sn
sluice was unusually ow that had
soft and pow fallen. It
into the electr d er y an d found its w
ical systems ay
causing shor of th e ra il network,
t circuits. Th
e snow also
packed in th became
e sliding doo
rs of the trains
them from op , preventing
iStockphoto.com / © Jong kiam Soon

ening and clos

did not realis in g p ro p er ly. People who
e that there ar
saw the expla e different ki
nds of snow
nation as nons
became a byw en sica l and the phr
ord for lame ase
excuses.

54 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 iStockphoto.com / © Alan Smithee, Martin Fischer
Meteorological
mastery
the surface
sunlight reaching
The amount of ount of
000 times the am
of the Earth is 6, worldwide.
gy us ed by all human beings
ener
used by people
e tota l am ou nt of fossil fuel
Th uivalent to
civilisation is eq
since the start of
ys of sunshine.
less than 30 da
man’s
called the poor
Tree crickets are re directly
cause temperatu
thermometer be e number
s th eir rate of activity. Count th
affect conds, then
t makes in 15 se
of ch irp s a
add 37. The tota
cr icke
l will be very clos
e to the Lightning never
outside tempera
ture!
t how many
strikes twice ....
you can find ou
During a storm, unting the
According to the Guinn
ess Book of World Re
lightning is by co cords, Roy
miles away the Sullivan holds the rec
e flash of ord for surviving the mo
nds between th st lightning
number of seco strikes. Between 1942
der, then and his death in 1983
e sound of thun , Sullivan was
lightning and th UK often do
struck by lightning se
ven times. The first ligh
Children in the tning strike went
dividing by two. to mark the
through his leg and ble
w off his big toenail. In
e word crocodile 1969, a second
this by using th odile, three
strike burned off his ey
ebrows and knocked
co nd s: on e cr ocodile, two croc Another strike just a ye
him unconscious.
se ar later, left him with a
burnt shoulder. In
crocodile, etc. 1972, his hair was set
on fire and he had to
per hour pour a bucket of
ops fa ll betw een 7 and 18 miles water over his head to
put it out. In 1973, an
Raindr other bolt ripped
ill air. The through his hat and hit
an d 8 m etre s per second) in st him on the head, settin
g his hair on fire
(3
ze of the again, throwing him ou
pends on the si t of his truck and knoc
actual speed de indrops off. A sixth strike in 19
king his left shoe
ion breaks up ra 76 left him with an inju
raindrop. Air frict lightning bolt to hit Ro
red ankle. The last
hour.
ed 18 miles per y Sullivan sent him to
when they exce chest and stomach bu
the hospital with
rns in 1977. In 1983, he
shot himself.

Climate change
Although he was a qualified meteorologist, TV
weatherman Peter Jenkins had a terrible record
Happy landing ptionally high
plan e en co untered exce
An aero t into Heathro
w
of forecasting. He became something of a joke ade its descen
winds as it m ildly from side to side
when a local newspaper began keeping a record
t. Th e pl ane swung w d off
Ai rp or n as it bo ce
un
of his predictions and showed that he’d been en sw oo pe d up and dow
and th tually, the pilo
t
wrong almost 300 times in a single year. The TV rbulence. Even
pockets of tu bu m pily – and
la nd his plane – albeit
company didn’t see the funny side of this and managed to ed, he came
out of
e pa ss en ge rs disembark
fired him. He moved to another part of the as th t
well. The mos
bid them fare
country and applied for a similar job. One the cockpit to ceived was fr
om a
mment he re
section of the job application form asked for his memorable co politely w th
he er he
old lady w ho asked him on e
little ty on just
reason for leaving his previous position. Jenkins
ea se sa tis fy her curiosi ’
would pl shot down?
wrote, ‘The climate didn’t agree with me.’ w e la nd , or were we
point: ‘Did

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 • 55

 T E C H N O L O G Y
Choosing
online
materials
Rafael Sabio considers the things
that need to be considered.
T
oday’s society is dynamic, with
people all over the world able
to communicate readily with
each other. In order to do so,
however, they need to be aware of
various factors, such as culture and
socio-economic positioning, that
influence language. As a result, teaching
methodology has become more
complex: there is no longer only one
way of doing things. N S Prabhu
contends that there are numerous
variables, such as social situation (eg
language policy and environment),
objectives and class size to consider
when teaching in the classroom. As a
result, employing one single method will
not yield the best results and teachers
find themselves using an eclectic
mixture of methods in order to best
accommodate the needs of their
students. One of these methods is the
use of authentic materials obtained
from the internet.
Criteria for choice
Authentic online materials are things
taken from the internet which illustrate
the English language being used in a
practical form and which can be used in
the classroom in order to promote
English language acquisition. Examples
of such materials are online videos and
articles. Given the vast amount of
56 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
authentic material which can be found
online, a problem arises when trying to
use such materials: which ones do
teachers choose, and how?
There are certain important criteria
that need to be taken into account by
teachers when they choose online
materials. These are affective filter,
systematic development, relevance and
appropriateness.
1 Affective filter
First proposed by Stephen Krashen and
Tracy Terrell, the affective filter is a
control mechanism within a person that
affects learning and language
acquisition. Negative emotions such as
boredom, nervous anxiety and doubt
increase a student’s affective filter,
making it more difficult for them to
learn. In contrast, positive emotions
such as curiosity, eagerness and
anticipation help to lower a student’s
affective filter, increase information
retention and, therefore, ultimately aid
language learning. Teachers can
contribute to lowering their students’
affective filters by choosing content
with the students’ cultural background
in mind. For instance, most students are
proud of their native country. They are
learning English because it is the
language of trade and international
communication. Conducting a class
where the focus is ‘imperialistic’ will
negatively affect the students.
Additionally, students’ preferences
should be taken into account when
choosing online materials. Students who
study in an interesting and exciting
environment tend to learn more than
those who are subjected to monotonous
lectures. Although this is common
knowledge, the classroom environment
is often overlooked and the teacher’s
preferences are often considered to
constitute ‘interesting’ topics for
discussion.
The copious amounts of videos and
articles that can be found online mean
that teachers should never have a
problem finding something that is
appealing to their students. Materials
with content that will increase the
students’ interest while simultaneously
decreasing their affective filter are easily
found using the various internet search
engines such as Google and Yahoo and
on popular video sites such as YouTube
and MSN Video.
2 Systematic development
When choosing online authentic
materials, it is also important to consider
the students’ current stage of linguistic
development. Whether you use a video
or an article from an online news
source, the language development that it
promotes should always be systematic.
Students should not be introduced to
archaic words they will never use again,
nor should they have to deal with
vocabulary pertaining to quantum
mechanics, unless, of course, that is
what they are studying. Teachers should
ensure that the language presented is of
immediate use to the students. Much
like infants, language learners have to
crawl before they can walk. They need
to acquire the basics before moving on
to more advanced forms of language.
Because, as Dulay, Burt and Krashen
point out, language acquisition at
Negative emotions
such as boredom
increase a student’s
affective filter, making
it more difficult for
them to learn
different ages is predictable, teachers can
gear the material they use to steering
their students towards the next natural
level of language acquisition.
3
Relevance
The relevance of the chosen material is
extremely important as it has a direct
effect on the students’ affective filters.
There are four distinct components of
relevance that need to be considered
when choosing authentic materials from
the internet for the language classroom:
culture, current trends, wants and needs,
and presentation.
a) Culture
Culture is the most important
component. Material which violates
societal norms and beliefs can bring
about a negative response from the
students. Furthermore, the students may
feel that the teacher does not care about
them, ultimately creating a negative
environment and an ‘us versus them’
mentality.
b) Current trends
Current trends are also important when
choosing authentic materials to use in
the classroom because they are usually
what the students are most interested in.
Topics that are receiving a lot of
attention in the news, such as politics,
fashion, or even the latest video game or
cartoon, may prove useful when deciding
what kind of information to collect.
Authentic materials relevant to the
students’ interests are sure-fire resources
that will ensure attentiveness and spark
curiosity.
c) Wants and needs
This idea of choosing authentic
materials which relate to current trends
overlaps with the third component of
relevancy: needs. Students’ wants and
needs are extremely important and they
like to feel that these needs are being
met. Particularly, they need to feel that
what they are learning is relevant to
their situation. For example, if a group
of biomedical engineering students are
learning English and their teacher
introduces vocabulary commonly found
in history textbooks, the students may
feel that the lesson is of no use to them.
In addition, their attention may wander
because of the negative emotions they
are experiencing and, as a result, they
may not learn much. Students’
expectations can often run high; some
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
Students’ wants
and needs are
extremely important
and they like to feel
that these needs
are being met
may come with a ‘one-stop-shop’
mentality, thinking that the one course
they are taking will somehow
miraculously make them fluent English
speakers. This poses a challenge to
teachers. Should the students’ needs not
be met, the teacher may be perceived as
ineffective and the students may
experience a feeling of hopelessness.
Wants and needs should be reviewed
and analysed prior to starting a class in
order to help maximise the students’
satisfaction and ensure the effectiveness
of the selected materials. Conducting a
needs analysis is useful in this situation
as it can reveal what is expected by the
students, the institution and the teacher,
therefore providing a foundation on
which the teacher can build an effective
lesson or curriculum.
d) Presentation
A perfect method of presentation can
be difficult to achieve as all students
have their own ideas as to how materials
should be presented. In order to
maximise student learning, a variety of
information delivery methods should be
used. For example, if Monday’s English
class has an extreme sports theme,
videos relating to the theme (eg skating,
kite skiing and free-running) can be
shown to the students. Vocabulary
relating to the theme and videos can
then be taught so that the students
understand what they have seen and can
discuss it in class. Finally, the lesson can
Conducting a
needs analysis can
reveal what is expected
by the students, the
institution and the
teacher
end with a worksheet that reinforces
what has been learnt. On Tuesday,
perhaps, the teacher can introduce a
current events theme. Articles relating
to current events that directly affect the
students can be introduced. Vocabulary
is then reviewed and the articles read
and discussed.
4 Appropriateness
Authentic online materials often come
with ‘surprises’ – videos that are labelled
one thing may show something else;
there may be flashes of explicit
pornographic material embedded in a
single frame; there may be images or
topics that are considered inappropriate
in specific cultures, or other content
that is unsuitable for the English
language classroom. It is imperative,
therefore, that the materials be checked
to ensure that they suit the classroom.
There are several things to consider
when determining the appropriateness
of a piece of authentic online material,
five of which are discussed here.
a) Age
Online materials that illustrate graphic
depictions of real-life situations should
not be used with younger students.
Additionally, content that is too
difficult for young learners will only
hinder the language acquisition process.
Teachers should assess each class in
order to determine what level of
difficulty the materials should be at.
b) Culture
Considering the culture from which
students come is another criterion for
determining the appropriateness of
authentic online material. Culturally
sensitive topics should be avoided so as
not to cause offence. If the teacher is
unaware of how the students will react,
then the material should not be used at
all. As previously mentioned, material
that arouses negative emotions such as
nervousness and discomfort will only
increase the students’ affective filters.
c) Length
The length of an online article or video
is an extremely important consideration.
Materials that are too long will cause
students to lose interest in the lesson.
They can also cause negative emotions
such as boredom and stress because
students may find that the length
contributes to the difficulty of
understanding. Conversely, materials 
57

Choosing
online
materials
 which are too short may not have
enough substance to create a meaningful
lesson. In my experience the following
lengths are advisable:
Online articles:
Advanced learners – 700 to 800 words
Intermediate learners– 400 to 600 words
Beginning learners – 100 to 200 words
Online videos (all levels):
Maximum – 5 minutes
Minimum – 3 minutes
d) Difficulty
Difficulty is one of the hardest factors
to define and even more tricky to
determine. Students in one class often
have different abilities and bring with
them a wide variety of capabilities,
providing problems for teachers on a
daily basis. Here are some suggestions
of questions teachers should ask
themselves when trying to assess the
level of difficulty of online materials:
● Is the material beyond the students’
comprehension level (eg are you using
material that discusses chaos theory
with elementary school students)?
● Does the material contain sentence
structures which are too difficult for
the students to follow?
● Does the vocabulary content parallel
the students’ current level of English
or does it far surpass it (will they be
completely lost)?
e) New word to old word ratio
Inundating the students with too many
new words may cause language
regression rather than language
progression. As previously stated,
students’ affective filters are a hindrance
to the language acquisition process and
an overload of new vocabulary may
cause stress and anxiety. One way to
overcome this problem is to introduce
new vocabulary alongside words that
the students already know. The students
see the familiar words and perceive the
lesson to be easy. Moreover, they learn
to associate the new words with the old
words, that is, they see the new words as
58 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
being easy to learn. Choosing a ratio of
new words to old can be difficult. The
following is a suggestion.
New words:old words
Advanced learners of English – 2:3
Intermediate learners of English – 1:3
Beginning learners of English – 1:4
These recommended ratios will differ
depending on several variables, such as
the number of students in the class,
their overall ability and aptitude, etc.
A common misconception is that if
students are given words and their
definitions to memorise, they will learn
the words. However, memorisation only
helps students retain a word in their
short-term memories. In rare situations,
they may retain a newly-learnt word in
their long-term memories, but this is
likely to be only its meaning rather than
how it is used in context.
Pre-screening
Material on the internet, especially
videos, can include inappropriate content,
and can contain things (such as graphic
depictions of war) which are unsuitable
for the English classroom. Teachers need
to pre-screen thoroughly all content that
is to be used in the classroom. Here are
some general guidelines:
Pre-screening authentic articles
from the internet
– Read the entire article in order to
determine the appropriateness of the
content.
– If you find offensive material or
expletives, the article (if it is still to be
used because of its compelling
nature or appeal to students) should
be edited before being given to the
students (one benefit of using online
articles over printed articles).
– Identify the new vocabulary that
needs to be learnt by the students.
Pre-screening videos
from the internet
– Check that the sound is clear and
any speech easy to hear.
– Make sure the video and dialogue are
reasonably slow in pace (ie not so
quick as to lose the audience).
– Ensure that the content is likely to be
appealing to the audience.
– Check that the content is appropriate
for the age and maturity level of the
students.

Using authentic online materials
provides students with an introduction to
real-life English language use. Moreover,
it gives the students a chance to see how
English is used in an international
context. The criteria outlined above are
not mutually exclusive; they often
overlap, as you will have noticed, and
may be used in conjunction when
decisions are made regarding what is to
be used in the classroom. I hope that this
article has highlighted several ideas that
should be considered when choosing
authentic online materials to use in the
language classroom and will help
teachers to take full advantage of the
wealth of teaching materials available
on the internet that offer the news,
events and topics which students often
find most interesting. ETp
Dulay, H, Burt, M and Krashen, S
Language Two OUP 1982
Krashen, S and Terrell, T The Natural
Approach Alemany Press 1983
Prabhu, N S ‘There is no best method –
Why?’ TESOL Quarterly 24(2) 1990
Rafael Sabio is an
assistant professor and
university supervisor at
Yonsei University in
South Korea. He has
been teaching English in
South Korea for more
than five years and has
published articles in
several academic
journals and national
newspapers. His main
interests lie in online
education and creating
practical lesson plans.
ralphsesljunction@hotmail.com
Writing for ETp
Would you like to write for ETp?
We are always interested in new writers
and fresh ideas. For guidelines and
advice, write to us or email:
editor@etprofessional.com
Visit the
ETp website!
The ETp website is packed with practical
tips, advice, resources, information and
selected articles. You can submit tips
or articles, renew your subscription
or simply browse the features.
www.etprofessional.com
 T E C H N O L O G Y
Five things you always wanted to know about
Moodle
(but were afraid to ask)
1 Moodle? Is that noodle before
running the spell check?
Moodle is a virtual learning environment, or
VLE. This is just a fancy-sounding name
for an online platform which keeps a
number of tools and resources in the same
place. Think of one space online, where
you can have communication tools such
as forums, blogs, wikis and chat rooms, as
well as a place to store documents, video
and audio. That’s Moodle. Basically you
log onto a web page, and there it all is.
Moodle, which stands for Modular
Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning
Environment, was created by Martin
Dougiamas, who was teaching at a
university in Australia with another VLE. A
lot of the things that he wanted to do
with this VLE were simply not possible,
so he decided to create one which would
be more flexible. That was the start of
Moodle, and he invited fellow
programmers and friends to contribute to
its development. For a short engaging
interview with Martin Dougiamas, in
which he explains the origins of Moodle,
go to www.usq.edu.au/learnteach/
learnres/vsarchive/mdougiamas.
2 Why is Moodle
so popular?
There are many other VLEs, but one of
the main reasons for Moodle’s popularity
is that it is ‘open source’. This means
that it is continually being developed by
programmers from all over the world,
who contribute their time and work for
free. It also means that it is free to use.
Moodle is not the only open source VLE;
another popular one is Sakai. There are
also licensed VLEs, which can be very
expensive.
Moodle gained rapidly in popularity
when large educational institutions, such
as the Open University in the UK, adopted
it. A graphic on the Moodle.org site shows
the exponential growth of Moodle from
just a few users in 2003 and 2004, to over
40,000 registered sites by mid-2009.
60 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
3 What has Moodle got to do
with me?
Moodle is an excellent platform through
which to offer fully online learning.
However, it is also used by classroom
teachers as support for face-to-face
courses. So, for example, you can use it as
a place to store extra resources for a class,
such as documents, audio or video. You
can post homework assignments, extra
language practice activities and links to
websites of interest. You can even get your
students to use the blog or wiki functions
to collaborate on projects out of class time.
Classroom teachers can also use
Moodle to offer blended learning (part
face-to-face and part online). It makes
sense to take advantage of face-to-face
class time for speaking activities (among
others), as speaking is the hardest skill to
practise effectively online. However, free
video conferencing platforms such as
Dimdim (www.dimdim.com) and WizIQ
(www.wiziq.com) allow teachers to offer
students opportunities for speaking
practice at a distance. You can easily
integrate these with Moodle.
4 How can I use
Moodle?
Although Moodle is web-based, it is not
simply a website that you just go along to
and log in. You first need to download it
from the internet and install it. You can do
this on your own computer, but then only
you will have access. This is fine if you
want to play around and learn how it
works on your own (although note that
installing Moodle is not for the fainthearted
– you do need some basic technical
knowledge). For your students to be able
to access your Moodle site, it first needs
to be installed on a server, so that it can
be accessed from other computers.
5 So where do I
start then?
Most teachers start using Moodle via their
institutions. The technical team downloads
In this series, Nicky Hockly
explains aspects of technology
which some people may be
embarrassed to confess that
they don’t really understand. In
this article, she explores Moodle.
and installs it on the institution’s server,
and teachers can then access and use it.
Remember that as with any new tool, and
especially if you are new to online and
blended learning, you will need some
training in how to use Moodle from a
technical standpoint (this is not that
difficult), but, more importantly, you will
need to know how to design effective
online materials with a range of interesting
and varied task types (this is the part
many teachers find more challenging).
So, first get your institution to have
Moodle installed on their server. Then
persuade them to provide some training,
not only in how to use Moodle
technically, but in online materials, course
and task design. You could do this via an
online training course, or you could get
somebody to run face-to-face workshops
for you and your colleagues.
One of the great things about Moodle
being open source is that there is a large
international community of users
providing informal support and feedback
for each other. This community can be
found at http://moodle.org. Whenever
you have a Moodle-related question,
search the forums there to see if anyone
has already posed this query. With such
a large community of users, it’s almost
guaranteed that somebody will already
have asked the same question, and
someone else will have answered it, so
you can draw on their experience. We
ourselves have solved many of our own
Moodle issues this way. Happy moodling!
Nicky Hockly has been
involved in EFL teaching and
teacher training since 1987.
She is Director of Pedagogy
of The Consultants-E, an
online training and
development consultancy.
Nicky is co-author of How
to Teach English with
Technology, published by
Pearson Longman, which won
the 2007 Ben Warren Prize.
Contact Nicky at nicky.hockly@theconsultants-e.com
and let her know of any other ICT areas you’d like her to
explore in this series.
Webwatcher
Web
keep hearing the term Web 3.0 and finally I have begun to
I understand it. If all the information that was on the internet
was properly tagged so that it could be easily found, then
research programs would be a lot more powerful because they
could grab information from the net more easily. The Wolfram
alpha website (www.wolframalpha.com ) is an amazing example
of the potential. You can type in all sorts of questions and it will
give you an answer. The answers are often quite detailed, too.
The possibilities for language teaching are enormous.
Trying Wolfram alpha out
Wolfram alpha works best with statistical and geographical
information. It doesn’t provide biographies, etc, but it does
provide loads of facts at the touch of a button. Try entering
some of the following questions:
● What is the population of London?
● What is the population of London and Paris?
● What is the GDP of Iceland?
● When was Barack Obama born?
● What was the weather like on 27/1/2000?
● What is the life expectancy of a 44-year-old male in the UK?
● How many internet users are there in Europe?
But your questions don’t have to be about things like this. You
can also ask questions about the English language. (Sometimes
it is better to simply formulate an instruction rather than a
question.) Try entering some of the items below. What you will
get is in brackets after each one.
● Words starting with IC (a list of words with IC at the beginning)
● Words ending with ION (a list of words with ION at the end)
● Word: Dangerous (a detailed definition)
● W-t-h (a list of words that fit this pattern)
You can do all sorts of things. Try simply writing in a word or
some numbers, and you will get all kinds of information:
● Russell (information about the popularity of the name)
● 27/01/65 (information about this date)
● Manchester (all sorts of information about the city)
● Running 4 km/h male 1.83m 90kg (information about the
number of calories burnt)
● Chicken sandwich (information about fat, calories, etc)
Using Wolfram alpha in class
Here are some activities for using this website in class. You can
increase the level by getting the students to interpret more of the
information. It is a good idea to play around with the tool first so
that you get a good idea of just what information it can provide.
A helpful way to start is to watch this video:
www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/
introducingwolframalpha.html
Activity 1
Put the students into groups. Give them lists of cities. Tell them
to input the names into Wolfram alpha and find out the
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 •
Russell Stannard finds
questions galore are answered at
Wolfram alpha.
population of each city and the names of two cities that are
nearby. To do this, they will need to skim through the answers to
find the correct information.
Activity 2
Get the students to key in their birthdates and find out what day
of the year it was, how many days they have been alive and the
names of two famous people who were born on that day. To do
this, again they will need to read and skim to find the correct
information.
Activity 3
Give the students a list of cities around the world. Get them to
find out what the weather is like today in those places.
Activity 4
Give the students a list of foods. Tell them to guess how many
calories there are in each one and to put them in order of most
to least calories. Then tell them to key them into Wolfram alpha
and check their answers. How many did they get right? Which
ones came out top and bottom? Were there any surprises?
Activity 5
Tell the students to write their own questions. Suggest a
maximum of ten. Now see how many of them they can find the
answer to in Wolfram alpha. Afterwards, the students can report
back to the rest of the class on the things they found out.
Activity 6
Give the students a grid that includes the names of six
countries, with space to write the inflation, GDP and growth
rates in those countries. Put the students into groups and tell
them to complete the grid as quickly as possible. Afterwards,
the groups can compare their answers.
Activity 7
Give out a list of companies and ask the students to find out two
(or more) major pieces of information about them. Again you can
vary the information or you could give different lists to different
groups who then share the information with each other. You
could do the same with celebrities, too.

I could go on and on. This site really has a lot of potential for
both creating questions and interpreting information. I have put
together a video to help you use the site and show you some of
the possibilities. You can watch it at:
www.teachertrainingvideos.com/wolfram/index.html.
Russell Stannard is a principal lecturer at the University
of Westminster, UK. He won the Times Higher
Education Award for Outstanding Initiatives in
Information and Communications Technology (ICT). He
runs the website www.teachertrainingvideos.com and
writes regular tweets at http://twitter.com/russell1955.
Keep sending your favourite sites to Russell:
russellstannard@btinternet.com
61
 In this column Rose Senior explains why certain teaching techniques and
class management strategies are effective, and identifies specific issues that can assist
all language teachers in improving the quality of their teaching.

Let’s get engaged

he terms TTT (teacher talking time) occurring – and that responsibility for this

T
but they are not teaching in the true sense
and STT (student talking time) are of the word.
familiar to many language It is, of course, both appropriate and
teachers. TTT describes times necessary for us to be the focal point of
during lessons when the teacher does class attention and to engage in TTT at
most of the talking, while STT describes appropriate points during all lessons. After
times when students engage in interactive all, we are the only person in the room with
tasks in pairs or small groups and therefore expertise in the target language. We should
do most of the talking themselves. Since a expect the full attention of the class when
major goal of most teachers is we do any the following:
to help students improve their One obvious 1 model new language forms,
speaking skills, there is an indicator of student showing how new words,
assumption that STT is good phrases and expressions are
and that TTT is bad – and that engagement is pronounced and used;
the more lesson time taken up classroom interaction 2 introduce new structures
by student talk, the better. I (or revise ones with which
would challenge this assumption, believing the students are already familiar) in such a
that what is needed in all lessons is an way that understanding of language
appropriate balance between TTT and STT, patterns is consolidated; 3 elicit responses
and that the term SET (student from individuals or the class as a whole;
engagement time) may also be useful to and 4 give instructions for the completion
keep in mind. of tasks. If we do not command full
Obviously it is unwise to spend too attention and require
much lesson time standing at the front of silence when we address Students can be
the room droning on at our students, telling our classes, we are not
them things but not providing them with fulfilling our teaching role
highly engaged in
opportunities to engage with the language as effectively as we might. the learning process combination of TTT and STT: it
in meaningful ways. When this happens we Students also need to
can sense a feeling of heaviness in the engage with the learning
when they are not
room; that feeling of vibrancy, which is a process, rather than simply saying anything at all occurring at the same time.
key element in the interactive process of sitting back and listening to
teaching and learning, is absent. From time our words. One obvious indicator of
to time, we all talk too much during student engagement is classroom
lessons – often because we haven’t interaction: students behaving in animated
prepared our lesson carefully enough and ways as they practise speaking English
it’s easier to tell students things rather than with their friends. However, interacting with
find engaging ways of helping them to others is not the only (or the most reliable)
understand and absorb what indicator of student engagement.
we are teaching. If we’re not In our classrooms Students can be highly engaged
sure what we’re doing, we in the learning process when they
we need to
may even become side- are not saying anything at all.
tracked and spend valuable alternate between They may be trying hard to
lesson time telling our TTT and STT remember things, thinking deeply
students (a captive but not about something, working out
necessarily a willing audience) about how to solve a problem, struggling to
ourselves and our interests. Some teachers understand a complex grammar rule or
use strict syllabus guidelines and lack of seeking creative ways of expressing their
time as an excuse to talk non-stop ideas in writing. When we observe our
throughout their lessons. When they do students fully absorbed in challenging
this, they may be dispensing information, tasks, we can sense that learning is
vital process has shifted from us to them.
It is clear, then, that in our classrooms
we need to alternate between TTT and
STT. We need to pull our classes together
and address everyone collectively at
certain points during lessons, and give the
students controlled freedom to engage in
interactive tasks at other times. There is no
golden rule about how much lesson time
we should devote to TTT, and how much
time we should allocate to STT. This will
depend on a number of factors, including
the general focus of our course, our
specific lesson objectives, the level of
linguistic ability and maturity of our
students, the size of the class, the
educational context in which we are
teaching, and so on. It is up to us to
exercise our professional judgement about
how much TTT and how much STT is
appropriate for each lesson. And, of
course, we must not forget that
many lesson segments (such
as question and answer
sequences) involve a
is not a question of either the
one or the other, but of both
In sum, TTT and STT are
useful terms for reminding us of the
importance of balancing different types of
interaction patterns in our lessons.
However, we should not forget that student
engagement is our ultimate goal, and that
this can occur whoever in the classroom is
doing most of the speaking. Student
engagement time, or SET, may be a useful
additional term to help us become more
effective language teachers. ETp
Rose Senior is a conference presenter
and teacher educator. She is the author
of The Experience of Language Teaching,
published by CUP.
rsenior@iinet.net.au

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 65 November 2009 • 63

 Prize crossword 38
ETp presents the thirty-eighth in our series of prize
crosswords. Try it … and maybe win a prize! Once you
have done it successfully, let your students have a go.
Send your entry (not forgetting to include your full
name, postal address and telephone number) to Prize
crossword 38, ENGLISH TEACHING professional, Keyways
Publishing, PO Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex, PO18 8HD, UK.
Ten correct entries will be drawn from a hat on 10 January 2010
and the senders will each receive a copy of the second edition
of the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners,
applauded for its unique red star system showing the frequency
of the 7,500 most common words in English.

15 11 25 5 19 17 25 23 3 18 26 15 26 5 12 1 3 18
B
25 1 26 26 3 25 2 13 12 9 3 23 11 1 12 16

2 13 17 15 7 12 20 14 25 12 25 22 25 11 8

8 13 8 13 15 14 1 25 7 9 17 25 18 7 1 3 18

1 5 1 17 25 18 7 17 13 20 25 11
Albert Camus
7 18 17 17 5 11 26 12 18 20 18 8
F
25 15 VERY FREQUENT WORDS ** Someone who steals something
*** A thick dark smooth liquid from ** To shake slightly
11 25 15 26 11 12 15 23 under the ground, used for making ** Very keen to do something or
petrol and other fuels enthusiastic about something
25 18 9 18 12 16 25 11 13 26 3 *** A unit for measuring distance, FAIRLY FREQUENT WORDS
equal to 1.609 kilometres * A large area of high land covered
17 18 9 8 15 11 17 26 *** An adult male human with grass, bushes and heather
*** The present time at the present * To make a sound
1 15 25 17 13 23 25 time * Someone who travels regularly to
*** To advise someone that they and from work
18 26 15 26 5 12 18 17 26 25 should do something * To make air, water or land dirty and
U *** A violent attempt to harm a dangerous
12 13 2 13 5 5 26 15 25 11 person, animal or place
*** The first day of the week in the LESS FREQUENT WORDS
2 13 21 18 25 US and the last in the UK – Someone who has left their home
*** To move quickly downwards or escaped from somewhere
25 18 16 25 11 12 13 20 from a higher position, usually by – Typical of or relating to autumn
accident – A toy consisting of a round object
*** A woman who behaves politely on the end of a string that you can
and in a way traditionally make rise and fall
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
considered suitable for a woman – The action of breathing in smoke
X J F Q from a cigarette, pipe, etc
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 *** Likely to harm or kill someone
or to damage or destroy something – A young male horse
B V Z U – To go away secretly to get married
*** To go back to a place where
you were earlier – An old word used to tell someone
To solve the puzzle, find which letter each number represents. to look at something or to pay
You can keep a record in the boxes above. The definitions of the FREQUENT WORDS attention to it
words in the puzzle are given, but not in the right order. When ** A strong sharp taste that is not – A little bit
sweet – The state of depending on a
you have finished, you will be able to read the quotation.
** Very good, nice or enjoyable particular person or thing

64 • Issue 65 November 2009 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •