'A rewarding and touching experience in Konya' by Juan Alberto Lopez Uribe

"Students learn when their teacher also learns" Alicia Fernandez 

                                  Juan

I had the unique privilege of living and learning with a group of carefully selected Algerian teachers during the two last weeks of August 2014. During these two very intensive weeks I was their instructor at intensive CTS course they took as part of their initial training to teach English in the Turkish school system.

When these teachers arrived, many had teaching experience, others none.  But one thing these young teachers all shared was their dedication, willingness to learn, and to work together. Wait, the lively and contagious Algerian energy was always present!

Being together with this lively group of Algerian teachers was both a very rewarding and touching experience for me. I say it was rewarding because the group went from

a quite traditional teaching-centered approach in which most of the talking was done by the teacher to a more dynamic learning-centered approach in which students shared their experiences through the foreign language. I felt touched as I learned about their stories, hopes, and dreams. I was touched to see that our work together brought them close to living their full potential.

Small group discussions maximized and modeled student engagement.

By the end of our course, I could see them not only living a more communicative methodology, but also discussing it with each other using all the terms I had presented them. What a joy it was to see them having a-ha moments when the right question was posed.

I would like to share special three moments among the many memorable ones that we lived together:

1. Before every session students were always received with involving music and with an inspiring quote on the board (like the one at the top of this post) to set the mood for our time together. We listened to bossa nova, tango, samba, and to songs in Arabic they also chose. These moments were great because we could appreciate our own different cultures and exchange experiences about our likes before sessions started. I got very happy that when during microteaching some trainees also wrote inspiring quotes on the board. 

2. On the third day our course coordinator told me that my desk and my materials were messy and that was not good modeling at all for the group. I couldn’t agree more! On the next day, as you can imagine, my desk was pristine when students arrived. I asked if they could see any difference in the room and we discussed about the importance of being good models for our students. I apologized and modeled how it is through our vulnerability that we build rapport with the group. I loved that during microteaching one trainee was super organized and tidy with her materials. All of us learned. Yes!

3. In one of the last sessions I used the pictures I had taken of them during their microteaching as the material they used in the maximizing student interaction session. I could see their eyes shining when they talked about what they learned that far in the course. In one activity trainees experienced personalization, reflection, and different interaction patterns. Needless to say, I facilitated discussing of what we had lived.

Students used pictures of what they had experienced during their microteaching to live the power of personalized material

I am grateful for having lived this important moment in our lives in which we all evolved collectively. They are better language teachers and I am a better teacher educator. Oh, I forgot to say that I learned lots of Algerian Arabic during the time we were together. I was invited to go to Algeria and I am definitely going. This is the beauty that only genuine learning encounters bring. And now it is ours to enjoy!

I would like to thank and congratulate Chahira, Maya, Mariam, Imene, Kahina, Leila, Mohamed, Mohammed, Mostapha, Mouhssin, Karim, and the two Amines for their progress and wish them a bright teaching future. I would also like to say that I learned and enjoyed working together with Anette, Kylie, Magdi, Ben, and Rene. Special thanks to Kristina who invited me to be part of the SeltAcademy team this year.

Hugs and hugs,

Juan 

Celebrating the joy of living and learning together in the CTS course.

Getting a group photo after one session we had in the lovely garden 

What is the Turkish school system like? 2014

For trainers coming to Turkey for the first time, let me give you a short explanation of the Turkish educational system. It's forever changing and quite hard to keep up with. 

Recent changes 

Until 1997 children were required to attend school for 5 years. From 1997 to 2012 this increased to 8 years. Now it is 12 years. Pre-primary education is optional.  Children get a Primary diploma after 8 years. The first 4 years of primary is definitely held in school. After that there is the option of continuing at another school or at home, which has been widely criticised. 

I'm not sure exactly how the 'at home' option works because homeschooling is not a popular issue (and has been illegal) unlike in some other countries. Homeschooling is quite popular in the US, for instance.  Other options after 4 years of compulsory schooling are attending a religious school or vocational school. 

The new ruling has been widely criticized because parents have to make choices about their children's educational futures a younger age now, actually at age 9 or 10, before their real abilities are clear. Also many people think it is a not-very-secret way to take girls out of mixed education and put them in religious schools with single sex education.  

There is an interesting article about the Turkish reforms in the New York Times and another in the Financial Times. 

One of the criticisms of the new 4+4+4 system is that the government is trying to increase the number of religious schools, called Imam Hatip schools. For more information about this issues look here. These schools are being opened in other countries and international students come to Turkey to attend them, too. An interesting book review also provides some more information. 

One result of the new system is that children start primary school one year younger, at 5 instead of 6 or even 7, however teachers did not receive training in how to teach to younger pupils. Many parents (myself included) chose to keep their children out for that extra year in spite of the threat of fines. 

What do they learn at Primary? 

General information can be found on the Internet. What concerns us is language education so I'll restrict myself to information relevant to literacy in the mother tongue and foreign languages. 

Turkish children now learn to write Turkish script first, not printed letters. The first books they read are written in a handwriting font. You can download the fonts from this website. 

Turkish is very phonetic. Children learn letters, syllables and then put the syllables together to form words. If they can read syllables correctly, they can read (at least this is the attitude I see in many Turkish primary school teachers.) Children are timed regularly in Grade 1 to see how many words they can read out loud in 60 seconds. Did they understand what they read? That's not entirely clear to me! I suspect it depends on the teacher whether comprehension is checked. There is little or no awareness of pre-reading or post-reading activities in Turkish language classes, which affects some of our teachers who teach a foreign language. They often replicate the methodology and ask children to read English texts out loud without relevant pre-reading and often with no post-reading activity. 

Parents are explicitly told not to teach their children to read in Turkish before they start school because 'they will be bored'. There is no differentiated learning and I have never seen stations being used by a class teacher. Children sit in rows from Grade 1 and are expected to adjust to 'normal' didactic instruction. I cannot see evidence of teachers being aware of multimodal literacy or even telling stories in class. In Turkish or in English. (Of course there must be exceptions.) 

Children have the same teacher for all 4 years of primary school. Most grown-ups remember their primary school teacher and may continue to pay regular visits to him/her even as adults.  

The children may have another teacher come in for music or English in a state school if parents have paid extra for this.  

Children are graded from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest mark. Lessons are 40 minutes long. 

English teachers

Roles:

They should try to get on well with the class teacher, who in effect controls the classroom space and the relationship with parents.  Some English teachers complain that when they visit the classes to teach, there is no empty space on the desk for their stuff. There may not be room on the walls for hanging up the children's English work. Other teachers have told me that if the class teacher complains that the children are hard to manage after the English classes, they can get into trouble. These issues put stress on English teachers.  

There is rarely a dedicated English room except in wealthier, roomier schools. 


Literacy: 

English teachers are usually asked not to introduce any reading or writing in Grade 1 (or to wait until the second half of the school year) because the children are learning to read and write in Turkish. Because pre-school is not compulsory, most Turkish children do not learn to read until they are 6. It was 6 or 7 under the previous system.  

Then the English teachers are not sure what their role is in teaching writing/penmanship because the handwriting conventions are different (and Turkish English teachers are not trained to teach penmanship in English, either.) Turkish doesn't have the letter Q, for instance. Should the English teachers 'teach' it?  Should the teacher use script or printed letters in second grade? These issues have not been resolved yet and each school does it differently. 

When I visit primary and also pre-school programs I try to encourage the teachers to start telling stories from pre-school onwards so the children get into the habit of listening to a story. This would make the process of learning to read easier. English teachers often complain that they can't tell a story in English easily because the children won't pay attention, won't sit still, etc. because they don't have this habit in L1. Many parents do not read to their children at home in their mother tongue so children are not used to listening to stories or looking at picture books. Many English teachers are unsure how to read to children - should they read the words on the page? Should they tell the story in their own words? Should they encourage children to interact while listening? How should the teacher respond to what children say/And afterwards should they use the story for the next activity (game, arts and crafts etc.) and if so, how? 

Most YL teachers enjoy having sessions where they can discuss and practice these skills.

The 'discipline' issue 

The word 'discipline' in Turkish basically means punishment. The Ministry of Education apparently (?) stipulates that teachers/schools cannot discipline children. Whenever I talk to principals about classroom management and the need for school-wide policies that all the teachers follow consistently, I am told that they are not allowed to discipline the children. Then I try to explain that I am not talking about punishment, but rather having expectations that children will not run in the corridors or in the canteen because it's dangerous, that no one hits or kicks anyone else, that everyone is responsible for creating a positive environment where all the pupils can learn. This doesn't seem to make much sense to some school administrators ..... Let's try to talk about these issues on courses if it comes up, OK?   

For example, I once saw high school children hitting each other hard in middle of the back during an English lesson I was observing with a native speaker teacher. It was clearly painful (and actually it's dangerous.) When I brought this to the attention of the school authorities a few minutes later, they did nothing. I was told that this particular class was the 'sin bin'. Needless to say, that school has a very high turn over of native speaker teachers since they are not backed up. 

Once when I presented some report findings in one school that basically many children can't learn because there are too many disruptions, and offered some possible solutions like including a behaviour management element such as Kelso in their teaching, the administration just gave me blank looks. This didn't make any sense to them. How can you teach little children non-violent problem solving strategies? 

The number one complaint that I hear from foreign teachers is that there is no proper control and the kids can do whatever they like. For example, a 7th grader is running down the corridor and bumps into an American teacher who is carrying hot tea. She burns her hand and the student doesn't stop, doesn't apologise even when another teacher tells him to. These kinds of incidents tend to demoralise native speaker teachers. 

I was reminded recently of the TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey) findings. Unfortunately Turkish teachers were not involved in this research. It would be interesting to replicate this research here.    

"In about half of the TALIS-participating countries/economies, one in four teachers reports spending at least 30% of lesson time handling classroom disruptions and administrative tasks.. One in two teachers in Brazil, Malaysia and Singapore reports spending 15% or more of lesson time on keeping order in the classroom." - in some other countries one in four teachers reports spending at least 40% of lesson time on these tasks. 
http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/TALIS-Teachers-Guide.pdf

Also take a look at this article. 

Based on my and other trainers' and teachers' experiences, we created a sample behaviour management document and another document offering practical advice to teachers. Feel free to use them if you need them or share copies with any teacher who is interested. 

If you have any other comments, please let me know and I will make changes to this post accordingly. 

The walls start out bare

I have seen many useful visual displays on the classroom walls and want to share a few with everyone. 

It is really helpful to make a display of the main areas to concentrate on while doing the practice lessons/microteaching. Here is the wall display Agi prepared in Bishkek. Of course teachers aren't concentrating on all of these areas at once  - just 2-3 points each for the next round. But the posters also help them with giving feedback to each other and self-reflection. 

Below you can see what the classrooms in Almaty were like. We ran our courses at the Suleyman Demirel University because of various logistical factors. In fact we prefer to be in a school so that the classrooms look like the ones the teachers usually use.  But whatever the classroom, we have to make the best of it! And soon the bare walls were full of posters created by the trainer or the participants.  

Before: 

The white paper on the chalkboard is the home-made screen Krzysztof improvised because the .ppt slides weren't visible on the dark green and the screen was too heavy to move around easily. He also wanted to use the board, you see. Our trainers are resourceful :). 

After: 

Here are Krzysztof's posters with the microteaching program. 

And the grammar topics that each group was to present are also on the walls. 

It can be hard at first for the participants to make their 10 minute microteaching segments fit together. They should plan together and help each other. Sometimes it takes a couple of rounds before they can do that properly. 

David Dodgson also shared some classroom displays in his post. 

Finally, it always feels good to have your work appreciated. If you are working on one of our courses, please take a lot of photos and ask permission to share any with the participants themselves. 

These two teachers made prizes - a T-shirt and a trophy - for their 'students' to win in a competition during microteaching. 

What a lovely idea, right? 

And now we're looking forward to seeing your happy teachers and their work soon....   

Learn to Train, Train to Learn by Dave Dodgson

There was a time many years ago when I was a complete novice in the world of ELT, about to start work at a dershane in Turkey with nothing more than a Trinity Cert TESOL in my hand. I was very much aware (with the point having been reiterated many times during the training course) that I still had a lot to learn. I had been told that this would come with experience of being in the classroom, shadowing senior teachers, attending workshops, and so on.

So, I was aware that I needed to learn how to be a good teacher and I was keen to do so. However, looking back now with the benefit of hindsight, I can see a major flaw in that early eagerness – I assumed that after a certain period of time, maybe a couple of years, maybe more, I would become an expert. After that, everything would be easy, I would know all I needed to know, and I would be officially good at my job. 

Luckily with time I realised that this was not the case. Far from it, I started to realise that teaching is a profession in which I would always be learning, developing, and becoming better at what I do. I understood that there would be no end to this cycle and that would be a good thing. Becoming a better teacher is truly a case of valuing the journey over the destination. 

And so, fast forward to the very recent past, with me finding myself in Almaty, Kazakhstan about to lead a teacher training course for the first time. I had led many workshops before as well as some one-day training sessions but this would be my first ever extended training programme. Once again, I was a novice with plenty to learn. However, this time I was also aware that this learning process is one that will continue as long as I work as a teacher trainer. I was also aware that my ‘critical learning moments’ could come at the most unexpected times from the most unexpected sources. Of course, I benefitted greatly from working with two such experienced trainers as Krzysztof Strzemeski and Kristina Smith but I also found I learned a lot from my group of trainees, despite the fact that the vast majority of them were novice teachers with nothing more than a few months of working experience to draw upon, and I would like to share some of the things I (re)learned from them in this post. 

posters with feedback from microteaching 

Be prepared

One area where my trainees struggled initially was lesson planning. Some of them didn’t see the point, others struggled to express their aims succinctly or identify stages of their lessons. Now, I’ll be honest with you – I haven’t written formal, detailed lesson plan in years. I try to enter the class with a general outline of what I want to do, an open, and a willingness to be flexible. And so, at first, I struggled too to help them plan lessons efficiently and effectively. And so, I decided on day two that I needed to plan my training sessions in a similar way – I sat down in my hotel room with a piece of paper and defined my aims, planned out the stages of the session, what my role would be in each stage and what the trainees roles would be, how I would organise groups and so on. This really helped me help them as I reminded myself of the process and what it is like to write a plan when you don’t have a lot of experience of being the teacher (or in my case, trainer).

Getting off to a strong start

Observing my trainees in their teaching practice, it really struck me just how important it is to get off to a strong start when teaching a lesson. The trainees who got everyone’s attention at the start of their micro-teaching sessions, and/or got everyone involved in a task quickly generally had more successful sessions than those who gave a long or hesitant introduction. By the second round of micro-teaching, I had my trainees start their sessions from outside the room so they had to make an entrance rather than just get up from their desks. This helped them focus on giving off positive body language signals, getting their students’ attention, and starting the lesson with a routine and/or student-based activity. It also forced me to think about how I start off my lessons and whether or not I follow my own advice! 

Demonstrate-repeat-review-repeat-review...

The ‘classroom context’ in Almaty was, of course, very much different to what I am used to. I have worked with young learners in Turkey for many years and have trained in-service (mainly private) school teachers as well. But now, my group of ‘learners’ were student teachers who had either just graduated or were soon to graduate. However, some things stay the same despite the differing contexts. Just as my students in Turkey need time to practice and use simple language structures, my trainees in Kazakhstan needed some time to get used to implementing basic classroom ideas like T-P-S (Think-Pair-Share). We did this through a cycle of demonstration as I modelled the idea, repetition as they tried to reproduce what I had done, and review as we focused on what was done well and what needed improving. We then repeated this cycle, each time getting closer to the goal of my trainees doing it without input or support. It struck me that this is the same cycle my primary school students go through with new language and the same cycle I go through with self-reflection – some learning practices are universal whatever the age group and context. 

Some ideas I’d like to try out in the classroom

And then, of course, there were some ideas I saw when my trainees were micro-teaching and thought ‘hmm, nice idea – why didn’t I think of that?’ and they are as follows:

·    Emailing resources – with only an input session at the end of the day and perhaps the evening to plan, it was difficult for my trainees to prepare hand-outs and photocopies for use in micro-teaching. One group hit on the idea of emailing the images they wanted to use in their lesson to the other participants ahead of the lesson. As they all had smartphones and tablets, that meant they all had easy access to the materials. I started to do this too as I emailed the hand-outs and notes to go with each day’s sessions to the trainees in advance – a great way to preview, be organised and save paper!  

·      Poster paper – I came to the sessions armed with poster paper. We made rules and stuck them on the wall, we kept track of what had been done well and what needed to be worked on in teaching practice day-by-day, and we displayed the results of group work. But then one day I came to the room ahead of micro-teaching to see some poster paper on the board – it turned out that day’s first group had prepared the board in advance and covered up information they wanted to save for later. The next day, another group stuck up four blank pieces of paper around the class thus giving each group their own personal ‘board’ for a group discussion activity. They then brought the papers up to the board for easy comparison of ideas. Simple but effective.

·      Making a learning moment out of making pairs – I showed various ways to make pairs and groups, stressing the need to mix things up and get different students working together instead of just having the same partner all the time. Most of the methods I showed were random but one teaching pair surprised me by combining making pairs with pre-teaching vocabulary! They handed out 6 words from a text they had chosen and 6 definitions on strips of paper and asked everyone to get up and match the words and meanings together, thus finding partners for the next activity at the same time. 

I made sure I told all my trainees these things at the end of the course. This was not just to encourage them by saying I liked their ideas but also to help them realise that we are always learning and we can learn from those with more experience than us or from those with a fresh outlook. Most importantly, we can also learn from our students (and trainees) and we should always be open to doing so.

How did the past influence you?

When I was in Bishkek, I saw this classroom display and it brought back many memories....

"I can read and speak Russian." 

With pictures of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Aleksandr Blok and Sergey Esenin.

We language teachers are all influenced by our previous experience of being students in a foreign language class. We consciously or unconsciously bring elements of that experience to our classrooms. 

When I look back at my experiences as a language learner I can identify where particular teachers or methods influenced the teacher and trainer I have become now. I’d like to reminisce a bit because I ask teachers to reflect on what they bring to the classroom so it’s only fair that I am willing to do the same.

My first experience learning a foreign language was…..

French - Silent Way

I remember taking French lessons when I was 11 or 12 in America. The teacher used Cuisenaire rods and only spoke French. I was a complete beginner. The other kids had been taking lessons for a while and they understood what they were expected to do. I was lost and scared from the first lesson. That was not a positive experience. Looking back on it, she was asking me to do simple things like “Take a blue rod” and “Which rod is longer, the green rod or the orange rod.” “Put the blue rod on top of the orange rod.” But every time she spoke to me I froze.

From this I learned that the affective filter is very, very powerful. If I put someone in the spotlight, and see the ‘Help, I’m drowning look’, I try to end it as fast as possible. That happened in Almaty when I asked a teacher to stand up (in Dave’s class) and help me organise the group work. But the teacher had such weak English that she didn’t understand. My mistake for calling on her…. But we muddled through with help from the other participants. The affective filter pops up when we analyse the micro level (this activity, that learner) but also….

...when we choose a method or approach for a series of lessons. I know that I should be ready to explain what I am doing to the learners and not just throw them in at the deep end. They might not understand the methods I am using. Why do I want them to hear and say the sentences before I write them on the board? Why don’t I teach opposites (tall, short, cheap, expensive) in the same lesson? etc I usually start in a very traditional way so the students feel comfortable and gradually lead them to different or unusual methods like my box of wooden Cuisenaire rods. I love rods now that I understand why they are so powerful! 

If you're new to using them, teachingenglish.org has a good introduction and here is an article describing a grammar lesson. Busyteacher.org has a list of 15 ways to use them.  

Personally I think it is important that the teacher should develop some rapport with learners in their mother tongue if the he/she speaks or understands it. Especially with little kids. They benefit from knowing that when they speak L1, the teacher can understand them. I speak English 98% of the time in class, but I won’t sacrifice rapport for the sake of creating a 100% English language environment. This means that if students need to tell me something in Turkish, I listen and show that I understand them. I don’t necessarily answer in Turkish though! I have seen teachers pretend not to understand the children when they speak Turkish. I just think that produces a lot of potential classroom management problems.   

I don’t remember that French teacher’s name but I send a big ‘thank you’ for teaching me the importance of affective factors in foreign language learning.

French – with a traditional, strict class teacher

When I was 13 we spent a year in Geneva, where I attended a Swiss school. We had the magnificent Madame Steck all day except for German lessons with another teacher. Madame Steck was supposed to teach us enough French across one year that we could be integrated into the Geneva education system the following year. She had complete control over the class. No one talked out of turn. She did dictation, made us copy grammar rules off the board and …gosh…I remember having to memorize French poems and recite them each week. That was scary but I can still remember parts of them.

From her I learned that to be an effective teacher you don’t need to be smiley and super-friendly. You can be the ‘master of your classroom space’ and an expert in what you do. You have legitimate power as a state-certified teacher. And kids, even immigrant kids from poor countries whose parents are not very literate (as was the case for some of the other children in the class) can learn well in an orderly environment where there are clear rules set by an authoritative teacher.

If the combination of 'teacher' and  'power' seems new or shocking, check out this comprehensive website. 

I learned not to be afraid of being the boss in my own class. Thank you, Madame Steck!

Russian - Audio-lingual Method

At the end of high school I had the chance to take Russian lessons at the local state university. The teacher followed the course book/teachers book pretty exactly as far as I can understand now with hindsight. At the beginning of every unit, we had to listen to her and repeat dialogues until we had memorised them. She built the dialogues up line by line using only Russian and hand gestures, mime and little pictures on the board so we could understand.  We didn’t see the written forms (keep those books closed!) until we could say them perfectly. Then she switched to English, we opened our books and she explained the grammar rules.

Afterwards we had to go back to the dialogues and make changes to practise the grammar. These were ‘substitution drills’ as I learned in CTEFLA (the previous version of CELTA). We didn’t read much and I can’t remember writing anything.

The advantage to learning basic Russian by listening, repeating and substituting words was that using correct grammatical forms became automatic. From this language teacher and method I took into my practice the idea that the method should match the complexities of the target language. Russian has 6 cases, singular and plural forms plus masculine, feminine and neuter nouns - and adjectives agree with nouns so there are a lot of endings to learn! The audio-lingual method really helped with that. (It might not have been useful to continue learning in this way but as I didn’t take the second year I am not sure if the same method was used.)

The biggest disadvantages were that I could only say sentences that we had memorised ("I don't have any brown eggs") and I didn't know how to continue learning on my own without a teacher. 

I can’t say I have ever had to teach a wholly audio-lingual English course book but I can build up dialogues on the board, line by line and work with the oral form before showing the written form. This made sense when we were taught it on the CTEFLA many years ago since I had experienced something similar in the Russian lessons. I don’t see many teachers doing that these days so perhaps this has become ‘old-fashioned’;). But it’s a useful technique with beginners, who often make pronunciation mistakes when they see the written form straight away. Sound-spelling correlations are one area of difficulty for learners whose languages are read more or less phonetically, like Turkish students.

Thanks to that Russian teacher, when I teach English I think about the structure and difficulties the learners have coming from the mother tongue and borrow from different methods that will help them, i.e. principled eclecticism. I also learned not to make learners dependent on me. 

German – a grammar book and immersion

My father always says that the first foreign language is the hardest, the second is a bit easier and after that you can just teach yourself in a couple of weeks or months. After learning good French, a tiny bit of colloquial German and pretty solid elementary Russian, I decided to learn to speak German.

So at age 18 I set off to spend my summer holidays with my Swiss German relatives outside Berne to learn German. I bought a ‘Learn German in 3 Months’ book and worked my way through it in my free time while listening carefully to my relatives talking. They tried to speak High German to me but of course used a lot of their particular Swiss German dialect amongst themselves.

This was my first time as an adult learner immersed in the community where the target language was being spoken. By the end of 6 weeks I could explain myself fairly clearly in German and understand a lot of what was being said. (I also picked up the odd Swiss German phrase like Merci vilmal - Thanks a lot.) From this experience I learned the value of listening carefully to infer what people must be saying, the value of rehearsal and the need to create language-learning opportunities. And that what they teach in the grammar book isn't actually what people say. 

I learned to repeat words I didn’t understand when people were talking at meal times. My aunt would explain what as being said to me again. I learned to listen carefully for standard question/response patterns that were repeated at different times and fillers people used to buy thinking time. I tried to use them myself. 

A couple of weeks into my stay, I started planning. While I was in my room I decided what I wanted to talk about, imagined the conversation in my head and looked up the words and grammar I thought I would need. Later I tried to use the language at the lunch or dinner table conversations. It didn’t always work and sometimes I was too tongue-tied to follow through. There is a big difference between practising with yourself and practising with another person! But it taught me the value of rehearsal and preparation time long before I read that these two factors are important when designing speaking activities.

Repeating the same tasks meant I got a lot of chances to hear or say certain language. My aunt taught me how to bake the Sunday loaf of bread. She showed me and explained in German. Every week she gave me feedback on how well it turned out – not kneaded enough (45 minutes minimum!), too little salt, too much salt etc.  By the end of the holiday I had great ‘baking bread in German’ vocabulary plus a new skill. I love baking bread to this day. Thank you, Aunt Elspeth!

I learned that immersion and self-study is hard work and there are days when you seem to be going backwards. And it needs great persistence, which is the positive aspect of being stubborn. I’m a Capricorn and have enough ‘stubborn’ for several normal people.  

Arabic - Grammar Translation

At 17 I decided I really wanted to learn Arabic. At university we had a couple of mad professor teachers, one of whom threw chalk at you if you made a silly mistake. He would get it to explode on your desk so the dust went all over your face and clothes. After the initial three-week ‘add-drop’ period anyone who wasn’t a serious student had dropped out. (That professor then metamorphosed into an absolute darling.)

The program was solid grammar translation and actually pretty boring. We translated fun sentences like ‘The boy entered the house’ ‘The girl entered the house’ and you can imagine the mess we made when we got the words confused…. We learned to talk about 2 yellow submarines vs 3 green submarines vs 1 white submarine, etc. 

Anyway, after memorising all the language patterns and translating various pre-Islamic poems I still couldn’t say ‘Hello, how are you?’  

We were assured that being able to recite classical poetry would really help us in Egypt. Actually it did ward off a few over-eager men, who left me an my travelling companion alone on a train when we recited the opening lines of the one in the link above. They either thought were mad or we were serious students of Arabic literature. Your guess is as good as mine. A hard-bound Arabic dictionary tried up in a shirt also proved a useful weapon. So classical grammar translation is probably good for something.

But the turning point was IH Cairo. 

Arabic – the Communicative Approach

Armed with our dictionaries we set off to our first day at the intensive Arabic course at IH Cairo. The teacher, who was from England, spoke only Arabic. The first activity we had to do was listen to the opening part of a dialogue and work out what the context was. It was a customer and waiter. We listened a few times, each time for a different purpose. We worked out that the man asked what there was, ordered soup, then wanted tea. Finally he paid for his lunch. Later that week we read a newspaper article about Pepsi and Coca Cola consumption in the world. We scanned and circled all the numbers. We worked out what they must refer to. The teacher gradually led us into the text. We realised that we didn’t need to understand everything to get a lot out of an authentic text.

Some of those lessons really stuck in my memory. 

By the end of a month we were reading fairly academic texts and I could understand the Egyptian soap operas in Ramadan well enough to follow the plot.

Wow.

Three years of grammar translation vs four weeks of communicative method. The communicative method won hands down. 

When I had a chance to become an English teacher I jumped at it. I had realised there were many ways to teach language according to the students' different personalities and expectations, their backgrounds and their future needs. 

So thank you! To that Arabic teacher in Cairo, whose name I have also forgotten, but who started me on this life-time journey…..   

And I hope I have made you think back over your experiences in learning foreign languages. Whether you are a teacher, a trainer or a program administrator, you will benefit a lot from spending some time reflecting. I look forward to reading your comments as well. 

Kristina