Some thoughts on giving feedback
teflgeek
by David Petrie
2y ago
This is a somewhat off the cuff post, having been asked by a UK based non-ELT teacher as to how ELT teachers tend to give feedback.  Obviously I can’t answer for the whole profession, but this is what I think probably happens…. Context is important There are many teaching contexts where the focus of instruction is primarily form-focused and in these contexts, I suspect the feedback is essentially aimed at error correction.  The problem with this is that it takes the perspective that the learner is essentially deficient from a “perfect” model, and it is those deficiencies that are hig ..read more
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“All pedagogical art is bad art, but all good art is pedagogical.”
teflgeek
by David Petrie
3y ago
“All pedagogical art is bad art, but all good art is pedagogical.” Discuss. It does sound like the prompt for an essay topic, possibly one of those nice balanced argument topics we ask our IELTS students to do, but it is in fact another “found quote” from one of my old notebooks. This one I recognise as one of my own thoughts, which I think is about four years old, but I thought it would be fun to revisit it now. Let’s start with a case study.  Un-named coursebook has a first unit on family / domestic life and present tenses, which I guess is fairly standard.  There are 22 distinct ..read more
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Alphalists – promoting speaking
teflgeek
by David Petrie
3y ago
I was working with one of my exam classes last week and we were focused on Part 4 of the speaking when one of my students said that she always worried that she wouldn’t have anything to say on the topic. This was somethng they all agreed did worry them. Apart from the general advice that in part 4 of the speaking two useful strategies are to either zoom out and discuss the general, or to zoom in and discuss the specific, I used the following activity to try and promote a more spur of the moment approach, or perhaps to develop the skill of thinking on your feet (both expressions I taught them t ..read more
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Because it’s there! Coursebook Grammar.
teflgeek
by David Petrie
3y ago
Here are two quotes I found while looking through an old notebook: “I do it because I feel like if they’ve made a big deal of it, it must be important.” “You never find mixed conditionals in First Certificate. It’s just not there. So I just ignore it.” Now I’m afraid that I have no idea where those came from, but these aren’t things I personally wrote or believe, they’re quotes that I heard someone say, or that I read somewhere, possibly on Twitter, or as part of a research paper, or even heard in a training session somewhere. Apologies to those who said them (let me know if you want attribu ..read more
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Passive to Active Students
teflgeek
by David Petrie
3y ago
NOT a grammar post – this one’s about online participation! The one thing I am struggling with at the moment, in the middle of all the online learning, is classroom management and student participation. I realise that we are now over a year into the world of Zoom teaching, and in truth this is something I have noticed before now, but it feels like things are getting worse. My students have all slipped into “The Passive Zone”…. Which is to say that they now all wait to be asked direct questions and nobody volunteers anything. This makes discussions somewhat stilted and they don’t tend to go any ..read more
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Work it Out Business Idioms – Book Review
teflgeek
by David Petrie
3y ago
Do you know your arm and a leg from your elbow?  Do your students?  Having been teaching Business English and corporate clients for nearly 20 years now, one of the things I have often thought missing from BE coursebooks is some exploration of idiom and vernacular, because it really is everywhere in business.  I do think that many coursebooks (and obviously some more than others) are much better than at being lexical and functional in their approach these days, but idiom is still a poor cousin to more functional and less colourful phrases.  Which is a shame, because while a ..read more
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A Typical Day at the Homeschool
teflgeek
by David Petrie
3y ago
“Teacher.” Pause. “Teacher.” Pause. “Teacher.” Pause.  It is clear to me that the teacher is not listening or at least can’t hear my youngest, who is clearly desperate to communicate something. “Teacher.” Pause.”Teacher.”  And at last there must be some kind of answer, because the next thing is “Can I go to the bathroom?”  Permission is received and off goes youngest.  As the bathroom is next to the living room where we are all working and youngest is a door-optional user, I caution oldest child and middlest child to mute their microphones. “Teacher.” Pause. “Teacher.” Paus ..read more
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Rediscovering PechaFlickr – Exam Speaking
teflgeek
by David Petrie
3y ago
PechFlickr is something I actually wrote about five years ago as a useful classroom tool for students who have to deal with pictures / imagery in their speaking exams.  I’m thinking here more about the Cambridge English: First & Advanced exams, where the students have a selection of images and a question to discuss. One of the things that I am constantly emphasising to my students is that they really, really, really need to get away from the idea that they are being asked to say what they can see in the pictures.  They are not.  They’re being asked to answer a question about ..read more
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Foodimals – A warmer
teflgeek
by David Petrie
3y ago
I can’t completely claim the credit for this one, my daughter came up with the idea but I am shamelessly stealing it….  It’s a game that we’ve been playing in the car – one person thinks of a food and thinks of an animal / creature and combines the two into a portmanteau in some way.  For example:  Cat and apple become “Capple”.  Everyone else then has to guess what the two constituents are – whoever guesses right gets the next turn. Here are some more that we came up with: Hippotato (Hippo & Potato) Mouster (Mouse & Butter) Froast (Frog & Toast) Hamkey (Ham ..read more
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Speaking Exams in Masks
teflgeek
by David Petrie
4y ago
It is the time of year when many students are doing their Cambridge exams – many have probably already done theirs but I know there are some doing theirs in July (such as my Advanced group) and it’s still not clear how long some of the restrictions and constraints brought as a result of Covid-19 are going to last for, so this may yet apply to people doing their exams for some time to come! What should speaking exam candidates expect?  How might it be different from normal?  The answer is obviously going to change from context to context, with differing restrictions in place in differ ..read more
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