Chrisjw133's Blog

A few thoughts on learning words whilst living abroad and in the classroom

chrisjw133 — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:28:00 +0000

So I want to share my experience of learning another language from living in another country and then talk about what can be taken from this to the TEFL environment.

Firstly a brief introduction, I am currently living in Dnipopetrovsk in the Ukraine where the main spoken language is Russian rather than Ukrainian. I have been living here for 3 months now and had some basic knowledge of the language via a audio book but nothing more. My level is probably the equivilant of an elementary student in the TEFL world.

Many people say that living in another country is the best/quickest way to learn another language. I am certain this is true, but only if you take that opportunity. If you want then you can in affect have a lesson every day in the language and due to the large need to acquire the language to communicate. However If you happen to have people who speak some English around you then you only need acquire the most basic of language for shopping or other such functions.

So with my basic knowledge of Russian the ability to listen for gist [get a vague understanding of what people are saying] wasn’t to hard pick up and advance. As such it is usually easy to get an idea roughly what someone is talking about. In fact sometimes it is surprising just what I can understand and how few words I need to know to be able to do this. Obviously being in real situations it is sometimes easier than others to pick up what someone is telling you.

An example, I went to the supermarket, the tills weren’t working and I was told to go to a different isle. The only words I managed to pick up from what the checkout girl said were “not working, go and I’m sorry.” everything else was from context, body language and seeing that the isle hadn’t moved for a long time!

This skill is so useful for starting to enlarge my vocabulary that it can’t be understated. If you know the context that you are talking then picking up what a word means is possible. If not then you need someone to translate.

I can Identify three different ways that I have learn’t words out here and how they occurred. I believe all three can impact the way we teach to help people learn new words.

The first is the traditional model, I wanted to learn the words for Cutlery, having been told them once I had forgotten what they were so when the opportunity to learn them arose with a bi-lingual speaker [who happend to have a cup with him] arose I decided to find out the words. This time I made myself use them in a sentence when speaking to him. [I like a big cup of coffee, do you like a big cup of coffee etc] (interestingly I was actually trying to work out how adjective endings work and then ended up learning cutlery as a spin of) and I reinforced this by using an action for each one [raising a cup, stirring my cup, cutting some food, lifting a fork with food on] I can recall these words easily now and managed to remember them straight away. This is similar to how vocab may be presented in a course book during a lesson where students are drilled, then made to produce the language through various stages. It works well and is a great way to personalise language use when done right.

The second actually arose from hearing a word in many different circumstances and wondering what the word was. The actual word was “Davi” which means give/lets depending on context. In actually fact I’m starting to think that there isn’t an English inequivalent but those are the words we use instead. After hearing it many times I knew it well enough to ask a teacher what the word meant. She explained its meaning and from that point on I knew it. I had already remembered the word I just needed to clarify it’s meaning. Straight away it went into my usage and language.

What can we take out of this for teaching? Well firstly hearing something in different context can be hard to gain a proper understanding of it’s meaning. Secondly words don’t always translate exactly and this is why simply providing a translation of a word isn’t great. Finally it is possible to expose students to certain words can prepare them to learn them. Hence the benefits of not grading texts in receptive skills.

Finally there was the word “to watch” [smatreets] which again I had encountered many times at my salsa class but in this case I hadn’t actually acknowledged what the word was and certainly wasn’t concious of it at all on these occasions. I then subsequently encountered it during a conversation with one of the Russian speaking teachers but didn’t put too much effort into remembering it. However when I next went to the salsa class I couldn’t help but hear it! The instructor was saying it all the time and I recognized the word and meaning. This is how I know he was using it before as he said it all the time! Because of this subsequent encounter I remembered the word very well.

What I take from this is that words need to be presented repeatedly, it is no use to have a word come up in a lesson, a student hear it, try and remember it and then not present the language again. Instead if a word arises through natural conversation it is much better to make sure we bring it up again. This is particularly relevant for Dogme approach which focuses on meeting the students perceived language need and equipping them with the vocab they want. With such words coming up it may be along time before a second encounter of the language would arise. As such it is worth making a note of these new words and bringing them up again in the next lesson to help people remember these new words.

Right that’s the start of that. Please comment and I will edit and then republish with amendments.

Deeply moved

chrisjw133 — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Today I came across a short Youtube video that was shared by Ray William Johnson of =3 fame. I don’t want to spoil it so watch it first.

http://www.youtube.com/v/ZiRHyzjb5SI?fs=1&hl=en_GB

Part of the reasons that this video affected me so much is from my own experience of my Grandma suffering from dementia. It was so painful to watch her decline and reach a point where she didn’t recognise her daughter or husband.

I didn’t fight the law….it still won.

chrisjw133 — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 08:54:00 +0000

Whilst lying facedown on the floor I did wonder how I managed up in this position. This was not a philosophical reflection but rather amazement due to my limited knowledge of Russian and in particular the phrase “lie facefirst down on the floor”. I knew at the time that of course everything would eventually get resolved and that it was only a matter of time before one of the local Russian speakers came and sorted the whole thing out and yet at the same time the whole thing still left me rather uncomfortable (you try lying on your stomach after having a gun pointed at your face.)

I had popped into the school earlier that night so that I could print of the material I needed for my lesson the next morning. I had tried to arrange this visit for earlier in the evening. However after several unsuccessful phone calls to a fellow teacher, I defaulted to another teacher and managed to acquire a key and a pass code to type in. After punching in the code for the first time the buzzing noise continued with the occasional flashing of one the lights. I knew I had been unsuccessful with my first attempt, yet unretired I typed in the code again and the noise stopped. “Success! I’m in!” were two such foolish thoughts that crossed my mind whilst I choose to ignore the continuing flashing lights on the panel.

After a little while I heard the alarm box [from the next room] reinitiate its buzzing noise and my stomach instantly sunk! I obviously hadn’t entered the code correctly in the first instant, hadn’t completed the process or some other silly mistake. I once again proceeded to type on the keypad the same code I had been given before and yet this time it just would not accept what I was pressing.

I started to experiment and ended up pressing the * key as well which resulted in the buzzing stopping and this time no lights being on the display….Surely this meant that I had dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s necessary to avoid a visit from the local security force.

As it turned out I hadn’t. I would love to tell you what I did wrong but it appears that actually the pass code I was given just didn’t work. As little as 10 minutes later (barely enough time for me to get the television to the doorway) I heard the soft jingle of the door as it swung open. As I came round the corner to see who had entered at this time (suspecting the strong possibility of private security forces being there) I saw a gun held aloft and pointed towards me.

I can honestly say I have never had such a terrifying experience as seeing a man wearing camouflage clothing, speaking in Russian, pointing a gun at me and barking instructions that I just didn’t understand.

As such I put my hands against the wall [well that’s what they all have to do in America] and then the security person assisted my understanding of his instructions by helping me to comply with positioning myself on the floor. Of course not one to be deprived of an opportunity to speak Russian I preceded to try and explain that I worked there, has planning a lesson, that I had the code [which wasn’t the correct one, but I didn’t know that] and tried to understand what words came my way. [not knowing the word for typed in/entered/other such word for inputting an alarm code] I wasn’t very successful in my attempts. And so waited on the floor until the ever helpful Oleg arrived and I was released to carry on my ~~mischief~~ lesson planning.

The dangers of Blogging

chrisjw133 — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:39:00 +0000

The internet is always a dangerous place to debate or even to express yourself. You are instantly open to any tom DICK or harry who comes along (pun intended, accusations at anyone not) who happened to stumble across you and decided that you are worthy of being targeted. There have been occasions when I have been the victim to this sort of person [who usually has a small following of people who think their "witty comments" [that usually involve and argument swiftly followed by swear words] are cleaver. Some of these people are actually very clever and make some very good points and yet still want to actually offend the reader of their comments.
Quite frankly if this is how they get their kicks, I really don’t care. If they so wished to populate my blog with mindless comments then it may provide me with some great bed time sleeping and entertainment. If they wish to attack my character then really I don’t care, they have never met me and don’t know me at all.

However something else tends to occur on line, miss communication.

The old saying that we convey so much via our body language and tone has a lot of truth in it and on line we of course don’t get this. However there are ways that we convey this via text. quotation marks, commas and other methods can help show whether we are trying to make a serious point, being sarcastic or reflecting someone’s point back at them.

Of course what can also happen is that we write something in haste or without thinking how it might be read [which also happens when we speak] and then the other person reads something into it more than we intend. Why? because words and sentences mean very different things to different people. If someone says I think your view is wrong it can be taken as “I think you are wrong”. How do I know this? Well I’ve reacted in that way. I saw a response to something I wrote and took it as a personal insult when it wasn’t.
I assumed they were saying I was naive and silly for not researching enough and then complained they weren’t listening to me. In fact they were, they knew my arguments already and had researched more than I had. When I calmed down I realised I was wrong, they were my friends [in real life not just online contact] and they loved me and they wanted the best for me.

I learn a big lesson about miss reading people and the need to be careful with what you say.

Sadly sometimes this doesn’t happen, maybe the pain of past experience has tainted our perspective too much, maybe the other person over reacts back as well or maybe you never knew them in the first place. In any case sometimes people on the internet insult and belittle other people and sometimes we perceive it as them belittling others.

The obvious response is to be careful with what we write, read what other people write carefully, attack the ideas and not the person and to sometimes step away from everything. Sometimes it will mean we don’t get the last word, but that’s often better.

Winnie the Pooh as you’ve never seen him before

chrisjw133 — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 12:23:00 +0000

I have to thank the receptionist Natasha for showing us Soviet Winnie Pooh. Pure brilliance.

http://www.youtube.com/v/sqdiEUp6s4E?fs=1&hl=en_GB

L1 articles

chrisjw133 — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 08:33:00 +0000

This is a selection of different discussion posts on L1 in the classroom

Better Language Teaching

Tefl certificate courses

From the British Council website

Round up of some academic books

Iatefl British council

A quiet week

chrisjw133 — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 08:32:00 +0000

[Interestingly if I had changed two letters in that sentence (Quite a week) then the Blog post would have a completely different meaning to the one that it actually does. Isn't the English language fun!]

As you may have noticed there has been a distinct lack of blogging this past week. This was due to a variety of reason. The start of the month hails the start of lesson observations again and all the joy that brings. Don’t get me wrong I am extremely grateful for the observations and I am certain they are a great help to grow as a teacher and improve on the areas that I am struggling with.

As per usual instructions came up as a major point of discussion, although it was noted that I am improving a lot here and picking up when students haven’t understood a lot quicker. In addition it was pointed out that I need to make sure my tone is actually one that is telling people off when I am telling them off! And finally it isn’t always best to tell people off for using L1, sometimes we have to encourage them to try and use English as they are embarrassed/unconfident.

All in all some good things to work on and I hope to take them on board very quickly.

Other than this the week has been pretty quiet, the only real events of note are the non stop salsa party last night (where if you danced with the most people you got free entry to the next one, I came second somehow!) and the ice skatting today…speaking of which I must go.

Hopefully I will blog a bit more in the coming week but until then I am about to post a link to some articles on L1 in the class room… the good and bad.

Visitors from Donestk

chrisjw133 — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 10:02:00 +0000

During the last weekend we were lucky enough to have some of the teachers from IH Donestk come to visit us in Dnipro [unfortunately one teacher wasn't well enough to come]. It had been a few weeks since we had trekked across Donestk for the Ukraine Workshop and with the impending departure of one of the secretaries that some of the teachers at Donestk knew they decided to visit say their goodbyes and take part in the Pub Quiz that the Dnipro team was organising.

The Quiz in the end turned out to be made up of more teacher than students. However the addition of English Club TV and several of the locals turned the quiz into an exciting event for all involved. The eventual winners of the quiz were the “Human Penguin hunters”…an interesting choice of team name which gained it’s meaning from the costume that our American teacher decided to wear that day.

Hopefully we will host another Quiz soon with more students attending this time.

We of course indulged in other activities but I think that this information should stay between the different teachers.

Lets talk about SKEPtiks baby…

chrisjw133 — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:52:00 +0000

Yesterday I came across this rather interesting article in the Guardian citiquing the Skeptic movement. For those who don’t know essential the skeptic movement is a group of “skeptics” who are sceptical of many things (mainly religion, homoeopathy, and conspiracy theories).

The main criticism this article brings up is the similarities with religious gatherings, all be it in a pub, the lack of ethnic representation in the Skeptic groups and the fact that much of their time is spent with other Skeptics who share the same views (and so can lead to an effect of creating a superiority complex within some).

Interestingly enough many of these criticisms are the same that are directed at the church by many within it. Although the first point is not usually seen as a negative thing by mainly within the church.

What I did find somewhat Ironic about the article was that this is an article aimed at Skeptics…telling them to not spend so much effort directed at skeptics…

However he truly interesting point is that he encourages Skeptics to not spend so much time engaged with those who will never change their mind but actually to target those who’s opinions are not yet entrenched…Children. Of course for many years religious groups have been criticised for what has been perceived as brainwashing children into holding views and the practice of allowing religious assemblies in schools has come under criticism. As such it is interesting to see that there is now a potential movement to hold atheist assemblies in schools rather than just not having religious assemblies.

To be honest I am actually all in favour of this, having a persons views challenged by people from different back grounds is great and if these Skeptics wish to do so to young people then it should help both those who choose to carry on believing in God to really own their beliefs (although it is pretty rare for a child to not have their views challenged at some point and eventual owning their beliefs for themselves). However if this is true then the reverse must also occur, religious people must be allowed to challenge other religious views and those who don’t hold a faith otherwise it is impossible to say that those who didn’t grow up in a religious family /one of a different faith, have own their beliefs/lack of beliefs.

This is not to say that we should TEACH views like creationism in schools on a equal or higher footing than evolution, that I do not support (though I do believe there is a case for their presence in RE). But to allow one group in for school assemblies and not another is to make a subjective decision about religion and banning it would be no better than the reverse being true.

chrisjw133 — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 16:54:00 +0000

I had put of posting about my first experience of Church in The Ukraine partially because of lack of time and partially because I forgot. However, having seen Andrew Brims’ latest post I am convinced this was divinely inspired.

Last Sunday I went to A Baptist church in Dnipropetrovsk, I have to say I wasn’t certain what to expect and on my way over I did suddenly start to worry about the potential social fax pa that could result if “Sunday best” was still the norm here. Luckily for me it wasn’t as I discovered to my relief when I met my guide and translator for the day, a fellow teacher here named Claire. Claire Is a Canadian who has lived here for 4 years now, having moved here during her university degree to complete her minor in Russian. Needless to say her assistance was very useful and I have to say I would have been very lost had she not come along.

There were many other English speakers at the church (of varying levels) but having a friend who speaks your language as a native is certainly advisable.

After working my way over Via Marshootka and being introduced to several people Claire and I took our seats and the service began. Surprise number one soon followed!

About 12 people went to the stage, about 5 singers various musicians (including acoustic and electric guitars) whilst someone gave a welcoming speech in Russian to the assembled…er…assembly. The influence of Hillsong had clearly been felt in this part of the world!

My suspicions were confirmed when Later I heard the riff for “everyone needs compassion” and I started to quickly try and guess as much of the lyrics in Russian as I could. I was quite proud at managing to translate the who first line of the song before it appeared on the small laptop screen to my right [the projector was down, which didn't help the experience of singing in a different language.]

What did make this service different from most others I have been to was the mini first sermon followed by a longer sermon later on. The theme was harvest and the preachers looked at being thankful for God’s provision, Giving him out first and our last (because everything actually comes from God), not boasting in our own efforts before finally looking at being thankful for not just food but for our salvation that is completely God’s act [and by extension how the harvest festival and saying grace were intentionality reminders to be thankful to God for our Salvation daily].

It is probably at this point you can see why having a fluent speaker was very useful! Despite slow and steady progress in my Russian, my progress has been…SLOW and steady.

After the service I was taken through to another room and low and behold there was coffee! [which was received with thanks giving!] as well as various fruit and perozina [a blanket term for sweet cake type things].

I couldn’t stay for too long afterwards (as I was joining a friend for Salsa Classes (yes I am having lessons now!)) However I was invited to go to the Alpha and Omega students group to meet some young people from other churches. As I said I couldn’t attend but I shall be going to their English event they are having next friday.

During the whole Time I was bearing in mind my friend Andrew Brims, experience in Malaga where he compared the church service to one that he would have back home and there were obvious similarities. I could recognise some of the songs (and a few more sounded strangely familiar), there was a standard sermon, there was a large contemporary band, they had notices [the sign of a church service] and there was coffee afterward.

However I did notice differences (other than the obvious language element) I was welcomed by many people, people kept coming back to me and speaking to me (even those with very poor English) there was a lot of life in the church, I couldn’t tell you who the Pastor was until he started to preach and the sermon made great reference to Ukrainian culture and events in their history and we shared some food afterwards.

It was a Harvest sermon as well so I won’t take it as a completely standard service, However I am looking forward to going along to the next one and seeing how this experience is similar or different.