My culture and your culture by Eva Szabo

Role-playing family matters in Baku

A truly memorable session which I love to think back to (since I enjoyed it so much and I learnt so much from it) was the one about effective speaking activities. The idea came from Krzysztof when one evening we were discussing news from home, and a Skype chat with my daughter seemed to be a good starting point for next day’s speaking activity.

At the beginning of the session I told my group about Skyping with my family the night before, and explained how difficult it was to see my teenage children going out more and more and coming home late at night, to pick them up after parties, to organize lifts among families to make sure that our children are safe after dark, and to accept that after a while they simply refuse to be picked up by parents and want to return home on their own. I could see that my story engaged the teachers some of whom were also parents or were planning to have a family. Another thing which I already noticed at the very beginning of the course and which made all my stories interesting was their curiosity towards anything related to my country, my culture, and my life in general. 

Slide 2 

And then it was over to them: I asked them how teenagers in Azerbaijan would behave in a similar situation and what sort of decisions they can make as they are growing up. To make it even more specific I used a situation of a 15-year old boy who starts coming home late, and I asked the teachers how conflicts like this are handled in the families (slide 2, above). The question and the situation triggered a really heated discussion – the teachers were eager to tell me about how their culture is different from mine, sometimes all speaking at the same time, disagreeing with each other over some details and trying to convince the others about their point. I was just sitting there listening to them, asking back or trying to clarify issues, and I have to say that it was one of the best cultural learning situations I have ever been part of.

I would have liked to continue it much longer, but we needed to come back to our point, so we stepped out from the discussion and looked at it from a methodological perspective. We identified some important features that made it a good activity, such as there was a real information gap and a desire to exchange information thanks to the genuine interest in the topic on both sides, and that the situation was realistic, and everyone spoke a lot.

Slide 3

The next task was to turn the topic of our discussion into a role-play activity. I showed the teachers a role card of a similar situation (slide 3, above), 

Slide 4

they listed some useful phrases to use in the role-play and compared with the ones on slide 4, and they acted out the situation. It was so much fun to listen to them! Finally, they designed their own role-play, prepared the role-cards and displayed them on a poster (slides 5 and 6). 

                                                                                                                             Slide 5

Slide 6

I would say that the whole session went really well, but the most rewarding for me was to experience the teachers’ interest in my story and their enthusiasm for sharing theirs with me. I felt like someone who is given a warm welcome in a new world, is shown around by really friendly hosts and makes plenty of new discoveries.  Many thanks again for the experience! I look forward to having more of these in the future.


[Here are some photos of the work that participants created.]  

Tired? Let’s do some drawing! by Eva Szabo

For me one of the most enjoyable activities of this summer’s CTS 2 course in Baku was the drawing activity I did with a group of teachers when we discussed grammar presentations, time lines and CCQs.  

I was not new to CTS – last summer I had group of wonderful ladies in Bursa who were eager to do anything a trainer (or their students) might dream about – drawing, colouring, sticking post-its, decorating posters, and it goes without saying that their portfolios were visually very attractive. This year in Baku I had a completely new challenge: I was working with a group of male teachers, all ‘old’ course participants, arriving well-prepared on the first day with the usual equipment - paper, pens and folders – and with good memories from CTS 1 which they had all taken the year before.  When I first met them it quickly turned out that many of them had been using lots of the teaching ideas from CTS 1 in their own classrooms and were looking forward to learning new ones.  Drawing, however, did not seem to be their cup of tea.

I was working together with Krzysztof and we planned some of the activities together.  Mr Stick Figure and Mr Bellman was an activity we used for clarifying the use of timelines and CCQs which seemed to be unclear to many of the participants even after CTS 1. Our point was to show that anyone is good at drawing timelines and that it is fun to do.

When I asked the teachers if they were good at drawing because they would need their drawing skills in the next activity, the answer was unanimous ‘NO’ (at the same time I could see immediate curiosity in their eyes!) Then I drew Mr Stick Figure and Mr Bellman on the board, introduced the two men to them and explained that they would have to choose one and draw him doing one of the actions listed on the slide. 

The very first reaction of a teacher was:

‘Two men? Mr Bellman is wearing a skirt, isn’t she a woman?’

 Fortunately, another teacher came up with the idea that Mr Bellman must be a Scotsman and is probably wearing a kilt (which he later included in his drawing of two men fighting, just to avoid any misunderstandings...)

After we got over the initial confusion over ‘man or woman’, the teachers made their drawings and we all had a look around and guessed who drew which action. The results were remarkable and much fun: everyone could recognize what the others had drawn and the point that anyone can draw well when it comes to Mr Stick Figure or Mr Bellman was proved.

The teachers’ drawing skills were put to use in the next exercise when we modelled a pre-intermediate grammar lesson. We looked at George W. Bush’s photo and the teachers came up with statements about him (e.g.: he was a US president, he lived in the White House, he now lives in Texas on a ranch, he is the son of a former US president, etc.) and I also added some. (I have to admit that the teachers were very well informed about Bush, just like about any other topics that came up, let it be politics, geography, sports or any other world-affairs.  I found it really impressive!) In the next step I introduced ‘used to’ by giving examples such as

‘He used to live in the White House, but now he lives on a ranch’,

and many others based on what the teachers collected before. And then came the drawing part, when the ‘pre-intermediate students’ transformed back into teachers and they all attempted to explain ‘used to’ with the help of a timeline. I was happy to see that the they were imaginative and skilful at time-line drawing: ‘living on a ranch’ was usually represented by Mr Bush riding a horse, the White House looked like the White House, and Mr Bush’s early years when he was not always completely sober (‘like many students’, as one teacher added) were illustrated with his eyes both looking towards his nose (again a source of much fun). And the point was again proved: they were all able to draw really well.

To end the session, the teachers invented and compared CCQs for ‘used to’ (which was slightly less fun than timeline drawing).  

And a last word about the teachers’ drawing and decorating abilities: by the end of the second week they prepared a poster presentation based on an article from Modern English Teacher. Some of the presentations went extremely well and some of the final products were really impressive: not only were the main points highlighted in the clearest way possible, but they were also presented in a most attractive, colourful, and to-the-point manner. I took some photos, but unfortunately some of the posters were displayed on windows and they cannot be seen well in my photos (my camera has a problem handling background light). I felt that all the participants should take away a copy of each poster (which they did by taking pictures and I can only hope that theirs are better than mine) and have it on display somewhere to look at and to think about later, too.  

                 

Notes:

Kristina and Krzysztof were talking about CCQs and timelines and stick figures some time earlier in the year. We'd seen the links embedded in the post above. They inspired Krzysztof to add rounded figures to his demo's of contextualising grammar. These are now a part of the CTS course so thank you to the 'Recipes for the EFL Classroom' blog writer. 

We find that teachers really want to EXPLAIN the grammar, which leads to a lot of unnecessary metalanguage as well as long explanations that students don't understand and then in the end to a translation into L1. Teachers feel justified in translating because they say that the students clearly didn't understand. Well, of course they didn't! There are ways of clarifying meaning and checking understanding without L1, and we show them on the CTS course. 

Part of that is is showing participants how to create a little situation and example sentence with the target language, draw stick figures to illustrate the target language and then if it is helpful, add a timeline. 

More links: Chia's blog post on CCQs and an article on checking meaning/understanding from the British Council's Teaching English website.  

And finally, Kristina's favorite list of 'how to draw' tutorials from The Guardian. 

Thanks, Eva, for writing about this and providing illustrations of what teachers produced!