Jamie Keddie and Videotelling - a treetop rescue review

         In my classes, I find myself wondering how I can structure my lessons to be more engaging - both mentally and emotionally. Oftentimes, I see my students sighing into their watches in the middle of a written gap-fill exercise (working in pairs or not) and I can't help but feel that clock-gazing is equivalent to boredom. After some reflection, I come to the logical conclusion that mental exercise, just like physical exercise, can be strenuous and it is completely normal for a person to reach a saturation point. But, there is a part of me that believes that it's possible for every class to be so engaging that despite the level of difficulty or challenge, time seems to fly by and so, I'd like to talk about one of the methods I've found to be effectively engaging for students and something that I think is worth a closer look.

   "Videotelling" is a teaching method developed by Jamie Keddie, in which lessons are centered around videos or pictures and the material (and target language) is controlled by the teacher. This means that the teacher becomes a sort of "primary source" in the classroom - students work harder to decipher new sounds and meanings without the aid of written material, a dynamic that mimics situations in 'the real world' (i.e. going through customs, making a doctor's appointment by telephone, etc.). In his words:

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Video + storytelling = Videotelling. In this technique, the teacher is the deliverer of the material. The delivery process is a whole class communicative event. The secret to videotelling is to decide what you are going to say and how you are going to say it. This will force you to consider ways to encourage learners  to interact (e.g. what questions are you going to ask?)

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       I saw Jamie speak at a conference last spring and I was impressed. Without showing the audience any pictures or videos, he evoked a very particular image - men holding a hammerhead shark above their heads on a street in Somalia. He evoked this image through eliciting information from the audience and delivering his prepared speech, while simultaneously highlighting target vocabulary, grammar points and language chunks. What was telling here, is that by virtue of withholding the visual information, every single person had a different and unique image in their mind, a visual image that had been activated through aural stimulation before seeing any 'real' image at all. This withholding created a suspense that made the 'revealing moment' (the punch line, the twist ending, what have you) that much more powerful and therefore, emotionally engaging. 

      I've done quite a few of Mr. Keddie's lessons, (found here), the most successful being "Mr. W" (a commercial for alternative energy personifying the wind), "Speechless" (a woman rejects a marriage proposal at a halftime basketball game), and "If the earth had rings..." (a video demonstration of the earth with rings like Saturn). But today I did "Treetop Rescue" for my B1 level students to review transport lexis and I'd like to reflect on that here. 

     In this lesson, the teacher elicits a hobby (Radio Controlled Model Aircraft flying) through a teacher-led game of closed questions. Then, the students work in pairs to define relevant words (e.g. 'runway', 'take off', 'aircraft', etc.). The teacher reads the story of a man named Ben who went with his friend one day to fly his RC model aircraft in the countryside. But what happens? The plane gets stuck at the top of a tall tree. The students are told that Ben gets his plane back in five minutes and they can figure out how by reading a dialogue between two people who witnessed the whole thing go down. The dialogue reveals that there were two men in a helicopter who saw the plane get stuck, they fly down to retrieve the plane, and then land to give the model plane back to lucky Ben. 

    In my class, I immediately noted a change of energy when I began the activity - guessing the hobby together brought up intrigue and suspense. However, when I asked the students to define the terms I'd written on the board, I sensed the familiar tone of drudgery. The students enjoyed reading the dialogue aloud for the class (in manners of elicited adverbs, "cheerily", "angrily", "lazily") but the "reveal moment" didn't have the effect I was expecting. I couldn't tell if they actually enjoyed the lesson or not and found myself questioning how effective the lesson was in terms of the language aim. It's true that the students reviewed some transport lexis, but beyond that, there was little activation. I could have continued with some discussion questions, or asked follow-up questions as a group, but time was up and they had already started packing.

     In some of the lessons I've used, there has been a low level of language activation in the students. It's true that students activate target structures through mimicking and urging on my part, but I've found it effective to supplement the materials with activities which encourage the students to create/produce their own relevant language.

      Another factor is the strong aspect of storytelling that is essential for his lessons to work. The teacher must be comfortable telling stories and must learn to draw out silences in order to allow students to explore further possibilities (for example during the stage of eliciting possible explanations for the aircraft's prompt return.) Personally, I have never been the kind of person to mesmerize others with stories or jokes, but I welcome the opportunity to develop this side of myself.

     So, in sum, I highly recommend his website and method, especially for teachers looking to incorporate video, current events, and creative ways of teaching 'tired' themes, but I would also recommend incorporating other materials and methods to address other learners' styles.

Learned Helplessness

        In a demonstration of learned helplessness by Charisse Nixon, PHD Developmental Psychologist at Penn State Erie, students receive slips of paper with three anagrams to solve. Unbeknownst to the students, one group receives a slip with easy anagrams like "bat" (tab) and "lemon" (melon) while the other group receives the words "whirl" and "slapstick"; unsolvable anagrams. The last word, "cinerama" is the same for both groups. During the activity, the students are told that the activity is "really simple" and it "shouldn't take too long". They are told to raise their hands once they are finished. Unsurprisingly, half the class raises their hands within seconds while the other half struggles to solve the anagrams, bemused. Because the group with the unsolvable words are faced with a challenge they were told was "easy", their plummeting confidence inhibits them from solving the last word, which is in fact the same for both groups.

      What this activity demonstrates is that learned helplessness can be induced in the EFL classroom through lack of sensitivity to learner's levels or capabilities, and setting unrealistic expectations by saying "this is really easy" or, "you should have no problems with this", etc. Furthermore, through subconscious habits such as 'echoing' (repeating words back to students say even if they pronounce or use them correctly), or reacting positively to opinions only shared with the teacher, it becomes clear that the unbalanced power dynamics within a classroom can be detrimental to students' self-esteem and ultimately, their long-term relationship with language-learning.

  

       As a teacher, I have struggled with these unconscious habits and this 'default' classroom environment in which the teacher is the "holder-of-knowledge" or authority figure. I have found myself wishing my students would start talking spontaneously in the silence, tell me what they want to discuss for the day, or be more active in using their smart-phones/dictionaries to look up words or check information. On the other hand, I realize that the role I play in their passitivity is significant: I am guilty of echoing, sending tacit messages that confirm my personal opinions or beliefs, and essentially controlling the the topic of dialogue and the participators in class discussions. 

    In an article by Chia Suan Chong in ELT Professional, she cites Jim Scrivener's 21 steps towards a proposed 'solution' to learned helplessness:

1. Start small

2. Offer binary choices
3. Allow divided outcomes
4. If you offer a choice, make it genuine
5. Make any constraints absolutely clear (then discuss where we can go from there)
6. Don't make a big deal about choices
7. Get students to notice that not everyone has the same viewpoint
8. Avoid wordings that imply that the teachers is someone who needs to be pleased
9. Get students discussing some decisions
10. Demonstrate that you are listening, but also have an opinion
11. Don't always go with the majority
12. Ask different people to make each decision
13. Don't let the decision making get boring
14. Restrain yourself from being the power, the authority, the decider.
 15. Don't 'save' them
16. Offer more decisions as time goes on
17. Offer more important decisions
18. Train your learners in listening and negotiating skills
19. Trains students to evaluate themselves
20. Hand over a big decision and a strategy for deciding
21. Ask very big questions

        Numbers 8, 15, and 19 resonate with me most strongly, as these issues are ones of which I am recently becoming more aware. I find it incredibly difficult to control my gestures of affirmation (e.g. nodding, smiling, frowning, etc.) and not feel like I'm doing something pernicious when I give negative feedback if a definition is not up-to-par with what I was expecting. I also find it almost painful to have to bite my tongue when a student struggles to express an idea and they look at me with a vulnerable, desperate look that cries, "Please, please, PLEASE help me! I know you know how to say what I'm trying to say.". However, I do believe it's crucial to implement some sort of quality-control and set a standard in the classroom - what would happen if I accepted every possible definition, even the ones that weren't entirely accurate? What other methods could I use to avoid binary, black-and-white, 'yes-or-no' feedback? How can I lead a student closer to a generally-accepted version of a 'correct answer' without negatively affecting their self-esteem or confidence?

     I believe the difficulty in being a dynamic, supportive, and effective teacher who encourages learner-autonomy lies in the conflict of demands between the materials, the students, and the institution of learning. If the language school requires certain materials to be used or is inflexible with their teachers going 'off-book', the student autonomy will be severely restricted. On the other hand, if a language center allows so much freedom that there are no systems of maintenance of the quality of teaching or no way to assess students' progress, there can be no sure way to confirm if language learning is actually happening. 

      But at the root of it, I think that we as teachers are working within a system in which we ourselves were taught - a system which begets passive learners, demands that we obey authority, teaches us to respond to positive/negative stimulation and to realize that our value to society lies in our ability to take tests well and learn within an academic framework. So, I think the challenge first lies in acknowledging that before we can assume the role of a discussion mediator, guide, or facilitator, we must first gain awareness of the myriad of ways in which we ourselves are inculcated in the system. Then, I believe, we can begin to step back when necessary, know when to keep our mouths shut (or not), or have the foresight to ask a question instead of spoon-feeding information without a moment's hesitation.

   Here is another article by Chia Suan Chong that eloquently addresses the issue of the "teacher-as-facilitor" vs. "teacher-as-knowledge-owner" that's worth a read if this post was interesting.

     (On a related note, the other day I saw a documentary called "Schooling the World" that broke my heart a little. If you're a teacher/person living in an industrialized society and can readily engage in a discussion about the relation of happiness to wealth, then you should probably watch this film.)

Tired of the Jabberwock and the slithy toves

I have nothing against Lewis Carroll, but I have to say that I am getting a bit tired of seeing "Jabberwocky" used as an example of nonsensical language to teach the parts of speech, vocabulary etc. So, here I propose some alternative texts, just to spice things up a bit.

1. Newspeak: 1984 - George Orwell

Orwell's invented language had the main intention of making English more economical, minimizing the redundancies of meaning and excess of words.

"The aim of Newspeak is to remove all shades of meaning from language, leaving simple concepts (pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, goodthink and crimethink) that reinforce the total dominance of the State. Newspeak root words serve as both nouns and verbs, further reducing the total number of words; for example, "think" is both noun and verb, so the word thought is not required and can be abolished. The party also intends that Newspeak be spoken in staccato rhythms with syllables that are easy to pronounce. This will make speech more automatic and unconscious and reduce the likelihood of thought." Newspeak, Wikipedia

2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (Sloosha's Crossin' an' ev'rythin' after)

"I planted my first babbit up Jayjo from Cutter Foot Dwellin' under a lemon tree one a'sunny day. Leastways hers was the first what I knowed. Girls get so slywise 'bout who'n'when'n'all. I was twelve, Jayjo'd got a firm'n'eager body an' laughed, twirly an' crazy with love we both was, yay, jus' like you two sittin' here, so when Jayjo plummed up ripe we was talki' 'bout marryin' so she'd come'n'live at Bailey's Dwellin'. " Sloosha's Crossin' an' ev'rythin' after 

3. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

"'It's a book,' I said. 'It's a book what you are writing.' I made the old goloss very coarse. 'I have always had the strongest admiration for them as can write books.' Then I looked at its top sheet, and there was the name - A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - and I said. 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?' Then I read a malenky bit out loud in a sort of very high type preaching goloss: '-- The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen--' Dim made the old lip-music at that and I had to smeck myself. Then I started to tear up the sheets and scatter the bits over the floor, and this writer moodge went sort of bezoomny and made for me with his zoobies clenched and showing yellow and his nails ready for me like claws. So that was old Dim's cue and he went grinning and going er er and a a a for this veck's dithering rot, crack crack, first left fistie then right, so that our dear old droog the red - red vino on tap and the same in all places, like it's put out by the same big firm - started pour and spot the nice clean carpet and the bits of this book that I was still ripping away at, razrez razrez.'"

How to utilize the extracts

All three examples would be intended for upper-intermediate to advanced levels. I would first ask the students to identify unknown words, rate them in pairs in terms of importance to textual comprehension, then identify the parts of speech (noun, verb, etc.). At this stage, detailed identification would be welcome, depending on how prominent grammar awareness is in any particular class (e.g. "abstract noun", "stative verb", "comparative adjective", etc.), as well as a discussion for how this information is able to be discerned from the seeming nonsensicality of the words ("Is there an "English" influence in the spelling or consonant/vowel patterns? How does word order affect our assumptions? etc.") This could also segue into a discussion on how words are chosen for elimination in the Use of English section of the FCE/CAE exam and on what basis...

The students could then create imaginary definitions for the selected words, and/or using a thesaurus, smartphone, etc., find synonyms. Depending on the lesson aims, the found words could be used in a speaking activity, assigned as a writing for homework, or whatever best fits the curriculum. The aim of the lesson would be to raise awareness of the parts of speech and engage in a discussion on how exam-creators decide which words to eliminate from a text (in the Use of English section, for example).

( Postscript - Somewhat related but not entirely applicable are pig-latin, the song "Mairzy Doats", and perhaps sign language.)