Is ESL teaching a profession or a hobby?

What makes it a profession (or not)?

‘Why Bother with PD?’ (Ch.1 Bailey, Curtis & Nunan, ‘Pursuing PD’, 2001)

• Can be formal or informal• Acquire knowledge & skills• Upgrade your skills• Change – ‘the world around us changes quickly’• An increase in income or prestige• Knowledge is power - ‘by increasing our knowledge

base, we increase power over our own lives’• It can help us combat negativity in our teaching

contexts

DipTESOL (Trinity College London)

&

DELTA(Cambridge ESOL)

www.trinitycollege.com/diptesol

What is the difference between DELTA and Trinity’s DipTESOL?

• DELTA is a similar teacher training qualification to the Trinity Diploma and is offered by Cambridge ESOL.

• Although similar in its content and level of demand, the two courses differ in terms of more specific components and types of moderation and assessment.

• Both courses are accepted by the British Council as full TESOL qualifications for teachers in its accredited institutions in the UK and in its own teaching operations overseas.

www.oxfordtefl.com/

Also situated in Prague, Kerala & Cadiz

How much does it cost & how long does it take?

• It took me a total of about 8 months from start to finish (including a lot of my free time).

• The first part consisted of online learning from November until May.

• In June, I finished writing up my projects and did some revision for the final exam.

• Then (July-August), there was a one month in-house course that I did in Barcelona (convenient dates).

• It costs about 3000 Euros in total.

Why?• My original certificate was by distance learning many

years earlier (2000).• I was viewing teaching as a long-term career choice.• I knew that it could count as part of an MA course.• The practical component of the course was appealing.• To become a better teacher.

• Useful to get a position with the British Council.• Helpful with some universities in the UAE.• Useful back in the UK.• Increase one’s knowledge of ESL.

DipTESOL courses are designed around 4 units, each unit is comprised of 3 sections.

• Unit 1 culminates in a 3 hour exam

• Section 1 = grammar (answer 4 out of 5 questions)

• Section 2+3 = 2 essays (choose 1 of 3 alternatives)

Potential themes for the essay questions

November 2010 Exam Paper

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

This is what I did

1. Observations of teacher instructions

2. Self-reflections about class interaction patterns

3. A survey on student motivation

• ‘In general researchers have been busy with finding out how L2 learners acquire a second language, while teachers have been busy trying to help them (the learners) do it.’

• ‘Researchers have been wary of making proposals based on their research. Teachers have not had the time (or perhaps the inclination) to find out what the researchers have discovered.’

• Action Research - ‘Often enough, teachers in training, particularly pre-service, complain about the lack of relevance of the foundation courses they have taken to the actual task of teaching. This has led to the suggestion that teachers should become more than consumers of theories and research; they should become researchers and theorists in their own right.’

Rod Ellis (1997)SLA research and language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Why do they want us to do research?

REFLECTION 1 (I had to do 10 of these) Group 1: 23rd JuneTeaching points: Roleplay using a text from the coursebookDevelopmental outcome: Groupings (two circles of 5 students) The pre-communicative task work including re-ordering sentences in pairs from a familiar text, which 3 of the pairs struggled with. I then played the audio so they could complete the task, pointing out some lexical and phonological items. The students were sitting behind rather heavy desks which were not easy to move around, so I decided to split the class into two groups, forming two circles (while standing). This seemed the most convenient way to carry out the activity, and being in circles allowed them to help each other easily. The students enjoyed getting up out of their chairs, but had appeared surprised when this was suggested. This apparently unusual request did refocus their attention, as previously their concentration seemed to be waning. I handed them strips of dialogue for carrying out the roleplay. One group completed the task reasonably quickly, but I had to concentrate on the other group who were progressing very slowly. As some of the students in the weaker group have very poor reading skills, it was a challenge for them just to read the dialogue. Therefore I was unable to focus on pronunciation work as I had intended. On reflection this interaction pattern supported the task, but the task wasn’t particularly successful as it could have been better designed. It appeared too difficult for one of the groups. Next time I would rethink how I could build up towards the communicative task, possibly focusing more on lexis and reading aloud beforehand.

Sometimes teacher-controlled exercises seem to be very effective, but it is also satisfying to walk around the class observing all the students participating in pairs or groups. Even when a task was not as successful as I would have hoped, such as Refection 1, it was still possible to take some positive elements from it. Sometimes the tasks helped to achieve effective speaking practice and sometimes facilitated lexis focused tasks. In future I will continue to experiment with and utilize interaction patterns. I believe this is a very important aspect of becoming an effective teacher and I still perceive that I have a lot to learn in this area. However, I do now feel myself to be more competent and experienced. Therefore, I expect to continue to develop with regard to the use and manipulation of classroom interaction patterns, mostly with regard to student-student interaction but also to some extent in teacher-student.

From the conclusion

The Observation Instrument

My research managed to show some differences between the teachers: • That some teachers may issue more, or less instructions

• That there can be significant differences in the amount of Orders, Explanations, Checking, Demos, Repetition and Attention-Getting

• Differences in the use of Voice (esp. speed of speech)

• Difference in the use of NVC (esp. smiling)

From the conclusion

From the conclusion

• Personally, I have found that both reading about instructions and conducting the research process has been informative as issuing instructions has been a weak point of mine.

• Certainly my awareness levels have been raised, and I now have a much better idea as to what could be considered as effective instruction-giving.

• In future, I will concentrate on making my instructions more concise. I see the value of focusing strongly on the key words (with emphasis and pausing).

• I believe that I have created a useful form that other teachers could also use and find informative. I consider that the form could be used for any level of student and in a variety of settings.

At that time I was teaching ‘conversation classes’ for a private language school called ‘Direct English’ in Khamis Mushayt, Asir province, KSA

“What factors contribute to a lack of motivation among low-level learners in Saudi Arabia?”

About 20 students and 5 teachers completed questionnaires

I divided the students into: Beginners (ie. they can’t really speak much English) and Non-Beginners (pre-intermediate +)

www.academia.edu

1. Beginners appeared to have higher extrinsic motivation, whereas the Non-Beginners have higher intrinsic motivation.

My survey on student motivation

2. The students appeared to like the Conversation lesson more than the Coursebook lesson.

3. The Non-Beginners admitted to making more effort in the lessons (and at school / university) than the Beginners.

4. The teachers thought that the students make less effort than the students perceived themselves to do (could be a cultural-based perception).

5. It seems true that many of the students often get distracted by other occurrences in their lives which they are happy to miss lessons for.

6. A fair percentage of the Beginner group scored significantly regarding the option of simply being given a certificate without having to first become proficient.

My survey on student motivation

The students come to us after many years in education, and attitude is often the hardest thing to change.

“Many students feel that somehow they will pass their tests at the end of a semester without having to make an effort, work hard, and deserve it. They think that if they fail, they will seek the help of influential people they may know who can intervene on their behalf and pass them.” (Mohammad Akhtar, www.englishteacher1.com)

It is likely that poor motivation of Beginners may be attributed to a combination of a lack of stimulating activities, poor test results, and generally low intrinsic motivation which may in part be due to cultural factors.

The students seem to enjoy a less formal teaching environment that places a greater emphasis on speaking.

Conclusion of my survey

WARNING!!!This lesson plan is actually 11 pages long

So what else?

• Skills development (reading, writing, listening)

• Timetable / programme fit

• Materials and aids to be used

• Rationale for choice of content

• Group profile

• Flexibility (possible changes)

• The actual lesson plan

• Individual student profiles

Part of the actual lesson plan

And there’s more….. (another 3 pages)

(24th July, 2013) Alistair Melvin

Evaluation of the 3rd Assessed Lesson The main communicative aim of the lesson was for the learners to be

able to differentiate between some different uses of the present perfect tense and be able to effectivley use this in conversation. The first part of the lesson was strongly focused on the grammatical aspects and the second part of the lesson was more communicative. For pronuciation, the students focused on 'I've' and the connected speech and sentence stress of some of the target language.

Learner's Perspective

Although the students had more or less unaninously stated in their needs analysis that they didn't want to focus on grammar, I believe they said that more as aversion to previous experience of the grammar-translation method at school rather than a genuine dislike of grammar. Perosnally, I belive that learners can be quite happy to study grammar so long as it presented in an interesting enough way and is used as the basis for enjoyable and useful communicative production.

Final Thoughts

• This process does make you a better teacher.

• It helps if you have reasonable academic ability.

• It gives you a better understanding of why and how to approach things in the class.

• It’s not easy. You have to be dedicated.

• It’s a good grounding for doing an MA.

• Would I recommend it? Yes, definitely.