There are two moments that stand out to me in my experience teaching during my first year. Both of them resulted in me becoming incredibly frustrated and making internal sweepingly discriminatory statements about how people in Andalucía are lacking in imagination, which of course I later rescinded. Now hear me out...
The first moment happened in my elementary-level adult class. The unit in the book introduced the past simple in the form of texts about famous statues all around the world. These statues were, by demand of the language aim, depictions of people once in existence (i.e. now dead). After the students read the texts and did the grammar points/activities, the book instructed me to elicit statues of people in their city who were once alive but now no longer existed.
This particular class of four women stared blankly at me with a look of dumbfoundedness, and then said with some embarrassment, "Oh, we don't know anything about history!". Frustrated, I said, "Well, ok, let's extend that to all of Spain. Do you know any Spanish people who aren't alive?".
No response.
"Let me write some categories on the board: History. Cinema. Science. Actors/Actresses. Writers."
Still no response.
At this point, I had reached my peak of frustration and thought, "How can they not name a SINGLE dead Spanish person???" Then I started shouting out, "Cervantes! Picasso! Dali! Goya! All the kings and queens EVER!"
Now, the reason for this lack of response could have been due to any number of things: misunderstanding of my instructions, the fact that I failed to give an example, lack of interest in local statues or monuments, peer pressure from the other students, or they simply could have been having a bad day.
Suffice it to say, the lesson took a turning point and the speaking opportunity for that grammar point was lost.
The second moment that comes to mind happened with a level A2 class. The lesson centered around studying the difference in usage and meaning between past simple and present perfect with two famous film directors, one dead and one alive. These two directors were: Alfred Hitchcock and Quentin Tarantino. While planning the lesson, I thought about how interesting it would be, how excited my students would feel by combining English learning with something as interesting as the modern cinema of the great filmmakers, how much fun they would have and how they would look at me in wonder, thinking about how brilliant learning English could really be. You can imagine the result.
Both situations serve to teach me a few platitudes:
1. Never assume interest on the part of the student. We are all so eclectic that our tastes and interests differ in every imaginable way. In much the same way that sports, macroeconomics, or rocket science have never really sparked my passion, there are and forever will be topics that only serve to bore.
2. "Lack of imagination" = failure on the part of the teacher to nurture curiosity or interest. Every single topic has the potential to invite curiosity, it must simply be managed prudently and creatively.
3. There is an underlying fault in published materials: ...for assuming that interest can be stimulated on command, or assuming that there is a "general" or "common" range of relevant topics. Whether averaged by culture or by inhabitants of a city, the nature of interest is that it is not induced through force. No, it is organic in nature, combusting spontaneously, and shares a key link with sympathy when situated in the petri dish of a classroom.
4. If the goal of a language class is to study, practice and acquire language, the most effective means of doing so is by invoking an emotional reaction somehow related to the material. This means that endless grammar exercises, dictations, fill-in-the-gaps, or even "what's your opinion of...?" type of questions are in the long-term a waste of time, money and energy for all involved parties if there is no emotional response stimulated in the students.
I lied when I said there were only two of these moments. In fact, there have been and continue to be moments like these, moments in which I hit the wall of learning and am confronted by the border of interest and apathy, the place where curiosity dies. Because learning is a two-way street, I cannot accept that these shortcomings are only my own. Yet I also cannot accept that the students are at fault for "lacking imagination" or for failing to exercise their minds to the extent that the books (or myself) require.
Recently, I attended an English-teaching conference where I saw a speaker named Jamie Keddie speak, a man who has developed a methodology he calls "video-telling", in which he emphasizes the withholding of information, the implementation of mental mapping, and the use of narratives in an entirely mutual (teacher <---> student) process. As a result of this workshop, I happened across the name "Chia Suan Chong", a strong advocate of the Dogme teaching methodology, a woman who speaks five languages fluently, has degrees in Business English, Linguistics (to name a couple), and most inspirationally for me, is a woman who has enjoyed the success usually reserved for men in this field. I am fascinated with both of these people and have so much to say about both of their methods (which interestingly have stark contrasts to each other) that I have to save all of that for the next post.....
The first moment happened in my elementary-level adult class. The unit in the book introduced the past simple in the form of texts about famous statues all around the world. These statues were, by demand of the language aim, depictions of people once in existence (i.e. now dead). After the students read the texts and did the grammar points/activities, the book instructed me to elicit statues of people in their city who were once alive but now no longer existed.
This particular class of four women stared blankly at me with a look of dumbfoundedness, and then said with some embarrassment, "Oh, we don't know anything about history!". Frustrated, I said, "Well, ok, let's extend that to all of Spain. Do you know any Spanish people who aren't alive?".
No response.
"Let me write some categories on the board: History. Cinema. Science. Actors/Actresses. Writers."
Still no response.
At this point, I had reached my peak of frustration and thought, "How can they not name a SINGLE dead Spanish person???" Then I started shouting out, "Cervantes! Picasso! Dali! Goya! All the kings and queens EVER!"
Now, the reason for this lack of response could have been due to any number of things: misunderstanding of my instructions, the fact that I failed to give an example, lack of interest in local statues or monuments, peer pressure from the other students, or they simply could have been having a bad day.
Suffice it to say, the lesson took a turning point and the speaking opportunity for that grammar point was lost.
The second moment that comes to mind happened with a level A2 class. The lesson centered around studying the difference in usage and meaning between past simple and present perfect with two famous film directors, one dead and one alive. These two directors were: Alfred Hitchcock and Quentin Tarantino. While planning the lesson, I thought about how interesting it would be, how excited my students would feel by combining English learning with something as interesting as the modern cinema of the great filmmakers, how much fun they would have and how they would look at me in wonder, thinking about how brilliant learning English could really be. You can imagine the result.
Both situations serve to teach me a few platitudes:
1. Never assume interest on the part of the student. We are all so eclectic that our tastes and interests differ in every imaginable way. In much the same way that sports, macroeconomics, or rocket science have never really sparked my passion, there are and forever will be topics that only serve to bore.
2. "Lack of imagination" = failure on the part of the teacher to nurture curiosity or interest. Every single topic has the potential to invite curiosity, it must simply be managed prudently and creatively.
3. There is an underlying fault in published materials: ...for assuming that interest can be stimulated on command, or assuming that there is a "general" or "common" range of relevant topics. Whether averaged by culture or by inhabitants of a city, the nature of interest is that it is not induced through force. No, it is organic in nature, combusting spontaneously, and shares a key link with sympathy when situated in the petri dish of a classroom.
4. If the goal of a language class is to study, practice and acquire language, the most effective means of doing so is by invoking an emotional reaction somehow related to the material. This means that endless grammar exercises, dictations, fill-in-the-gaps, or even "what's your opinion of...?" type of questions are in the long-term a waste of time, money and energy for all involved parties if there is no emotional response stimulated in the students.
I lied when I said there were only two of these moments. In fact, there have been and continue to be moments like these, moments in which I hit the wall of learning and am confronted by the border of interest and apathy, the place where curiosity dies. Because learning is a two-way street, I cannot accept that these shortcomings are only my own. Yet I also cannot accept that the students are at fault for "lacking imagination" or for failing to exercise their minds to the extent that the books (or myself) require.
Recently, I attended an English-teaching conference where I saw a speaker named Jamie Keddie speak, a man who has developed a methodology he calls "video-telling", in which he emphasizes the withholding of information, the implementation of mental mapping, and the use of narratives in an entirely mutual (teacher <---> student) process. As a result of this workshop, I happened across the name "Chia Suan Chong", a strong advocate of the Dogme teaching methodology, a woman who speaks five languages fluently, has degrees in Business English, Linguistics (to name a couple), and most inspirationally for me, is a woman who has enjoyed the success usually reserved for men in this field. I am fascinated with both of these people and have so much to say about both of their methods (which interestingly have stark contrasts to each other) that I have to save all of that for the next post.....
