ELT News Think Tank

The "Think Tank Live" Panel

Stephen Krashen	Michael McCarthy	Susan Barduhn	Peter Viney	Marc Helgesen
(Susan Barduhn was the moderator for this event, held at the JALT National Conference in Nara, November 2004)

Panelists: Stephen | Michael | Marc | Peter
Date: November 2004

Topic: "What are 5 things you wish you'd known when you started teaching?"

Marc Helgesen

1. To wait a minute (Think Time/ language planning)

"You gotta wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute."
- The Marvelettes

Sure we want the students to speak. But when we expect “instant production” (Teacher: Pairwork. You’re A. You’re B. TALK. NOW!”) we are actually locking them into whatever they can come up with easily (“What do you like music?”). We don’t give the opportunity to go deeper than their most superficial ideas and language.

Just giving the learners a minute or two of think time to consider (a) “What do I want to say?” and (b) “How am I going to say it?” can make a big difference. This “language planning” leads to an increase in fluency (no surprise there ­ they’ve been through it once mentally so it comes out more easily), complexity (again, the mental planning lets the say way they want with more precision), accuracy (they say it better), and vocabulary improves (they have time to “reach into that basket of words they are just learning.” Although Think time/ language planning is something natural that good learners have always made use of, most textbooks don’t yet incorporate the ideas. However, there are lots of easy ways to add them. To read an article I wrote for ETJ Journal on the topic, click this link.

2. To teach across the senses.
Every bit on information we take in we do so through the five senses: Vision, Auditory, Kinesthetic (also called haptic, this includes touch, movement and feelings), Olfactory (smell) and Gustatory (taste). The first three (V-A-K) are the most flexible. Although, barring a handicap*, we all have all five senses, we each have a “primary sensory modality” (or main learning channel) that we use the most. As teachers, it is easy to “teach the way we learn”. So if we are visual, we use lots of pictures, put things on the board, etc. If we are more auditory, we present information that way (Do you ever catch yourself closing your eyes so you can concentrate? You’re blocking out unnecessary visual input).

Kinesthetic teachers like the students to be moving, using lots of realia, etc. That’s great for the learners who have the same primary modality as our own, but what about the others? For some, we may be teaching to the learning channel they find the most difficult to process. Last year in a Think Tank column, I suggested ways to add different sensory aspects to various classroom activities. That column is here.

Part of my interest in this, by the way, grew out of a problem faced by one of my grad. students. She had several students with learning disabilities (LD). We started looking around for ESL/EFL/LD resources. I came across an article by Harvard’s Christine Root called >A Guide to Learning Disabilities for the ESL Classroom Practitioner. It struck me that it was not just good special education, it was just good ELT.

*Ray Charles, it is interesting to note, did charity work for deaf people. His reasoning was that being blind wasn’t so bad. After all, he had done OK. But, he said, can you imaging being deaf ­ a world with no music?

3. It’s more important to engage students than to entertain them.
For those of you who instantly thought about your boyfriend/girlfiend, that’s not what I mean.

And I am certainly not suggesting that it is OK to bore the students. They get enough of that without our help.

I really believe that the “teacher as entertainer” is an insidious, if less noticed version of “the teacher-centered classroom.” It makes the teacher the center of attention. In a truly communicate classroom, the real content ­ experiences, opinion, ideas and dreams ­ come from the learners. Keep your ego in check.

Note: I’ve made this point with my students in Columbia University Teacher’s College MA TESOL program for years. The first time I saw the engagement/ entertainment dichotomy in print was in a posting by Maurice Jamal on the elt listserv. I thought it was a great way to explain it and want to credit him with the wording.

4. Reading is the “magic skill.”
Many of us, especially foreigners, are expected to teach listening and speaking. Fair enough. They are important skills. But we often take that to mean we shouldn’t teach reading. This is a mistake. Reading is about a close to a “magic skill” as we have. It improves not only the learners reading ability (no surprise there) but also abilities with vocabulary (especially), grammar and even listening and speaking (largely because of the vocabulary increase).

Look for ways to add reading to your class. Homework, whether required or optional (with extra credit) is one way. Purists sometimes argue about intensive vs. extensive listening. I think both are useful but would suggest that if you have to commit to one side or the other, go with extensive reading. Our learners have years of translation. That isn’t actually reading (it’s translation ­ a very different, production-oriented skill. Not that it is bad, just very different than receptive-oriented reading). But it means they have a lot of “bottom-up” skills (i.e., they have the “parts” ­ vocabulary, knowledge of grammar, etc.) but not much experience looking at the whole meaning. Extensive reading builds meaning-oriented fluency. Also, reading in English can actually be pleasurable. With reading, easy is good. Check out the ideas at extensivereading.net, a Japan-based site with a lot of practical ideas.

5. We’re not missionaries. We aren’t going to “save every soul.”
Actually, the way “five things I wish I had known when I started teaching” became the topic for Think Tank LIVE at JALT2004 was that we (Peter, Michael, Stephen and I) were given about 48 hours to come up with a topic. The session had been conceived of and accepted late. We did a quick few rounds of emails. I added the “five things” topics simply because I had asked it on the etj list a couple months earlier for no special reason. I just thought it would be interesting to see what people said. It was fascinating.

One response that really made me think was from someone named Renee. She said, “Don't assume that everyone is there to learn. People really do take lessons for a wide variety of reasons. This realization freed me of a lot of frustration with some groups.”

This is so true. And so important. My own way of framing it is “We’re not missionaries. We aren’t going to ‘save every soul.’ ” (My daddy was a preacher. I guess it shows. And my apologies to any readers who happen to be missionaries as well as English teachers. But I think you know what I’m talking about.)

We do our best. We try really hard. We have a lot of successes. And, yes, we have some failures. But more successes. Do your best. Celebrate success.

Panelists: Stephen | Michael | Marc | Peter

Discuss this topic on our Message Board

Marc Helgesen, Miyagi Gakuin Women's College

Co-author of English Firsthand and Active Listening

<<Back Number | Top | Recent Issue>>