Tuesday 28 February 2017

Spring and poetry

It is not yet officially spring, but it is a matter of hours before
 it will be. The subtle smells from the garden, the way the sunrays
 fall on the windows, the world of bright colours taking over the 
greyness, every single nuance of nature feels different, promising
 and impregnated with life. And yet in this new life there is always
 a tint of stillness, a breath of those that were but will not be again.
 It is in this spirit that I post one of my Greek poems – 
dedicated to a sister who never quite grew to be my companion.

Η Χώρα του κάποτε

Τις Κυριακές τα πρωινά
Με τον ήλιο νωχελικά
Σκόρπιο στο πάτωμα
Και τον άνεμο απαλά
Να λικνίζει
Τα κλαδιά
Της δάφνης
Στο μικρό παράθυρο
Σε μακρινά ταξίδια
Αποδύομαι

Χώρα του κάποτε
Τη λένε
Συναντώ τις αχνές μορφές
Αυτών που δεν είναι πια
Και τους δρόμους διασχίζω
Με βήμα αργό
Που ποτέ δεν οδήγησαν κάπου

Που και που
Τις φωνές που
Τρελά παιχνίδια συνόδευαν
Ακούω
Μα τις πιο πολλές φορές
Ευωδιές με πλημμυρίζουν
Γιασεμιού στην αυλή
Και βύσσινου μέσα

Στο κατώφλι
Περνάω  το χρόνο μου
Μην τολμώντας
Τα βήματα να σύρω
Στην κλίνη
Όπου εσύ τ’ ανθηρά σου
Χρόνια έσβησες

Saturday 25 February 2017

Trees and writing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LM0HUXVYipa0Yw6oQsQSOnIbBX8x4EaGgfQGo_2KL1g/edit?usp=sharing
True to my word, I am back to the theme of trees.

Trees, by their very existence, make me feel passionate, philosophical, inspired. As teachers we could bring forth our learners’ perception of trees by asking them to do some free writing. Free writing has enormous value for developing writing skills as it allows learners to pour out thoughts and emotions on a topic without the restraints of form, which often slow down the thinking process and curb creativity.

 After collecting all the different responses to the theme, learners could be asked to sort out the different strands and think of a heading for each one. Learners could then be assigned different forms of writing depending on their strengths and preferences.

For instance, all the descriptive items in their responses could be used to describe a tree that is or has been somehow part of their life or reality. It could be the tree in the garden or on the street in front of their house.

Storytellers could be invited to write a story in which a tree or trees had a central part. Those with an aptitude for sciences would focus on a particular aspect of trees: their roots, their medicinal properties, their importance for supporting life and so on.

If we want to teach language of comparison we could make the task more complex by combining it with one or more different themes: trees and traditions surrounding trees is an idea. Alternatively, we could encourage learners to research different kinds of trees native to different parts of the world. They could supplement their work with a collection of images supporting their discoveries.

Of course, the possibilities are endless and the project fosters an understanding of the natural environment and its diversity and promotes different methods of research which will come in useful later on in their studies without being overly prescriptive.








Wednesday 22 February 2017

Guilt

I sometimes feel the weight of the world on my shoulders
 and come up with word fantasies like the following:

Guilt
One day I’ll see the sky catch fire
One day I’ll watch the waves 
Crash before my feet in a respectful bow
One day I’ll welcome back those who have gone
One day I’ll witness the downtrodden rise
And in one breath whisper “It didn’t matter,
We were always weightier than you”
And I’ll weep then, I’ll weep till my part
Of the collective crime against them all is forgiven
For I was weak of heart and gifted my love one-sidedly
For my arms did not reach far out enough
And I put my dreams to sleep because the sirens
Had it their way with me too

Friday 17 February 2017

The eternal sunshine of a dyslexic's mind or lessons out of nothing

The eternal sunshine of a dyslexic’s mind or lessons out of nothing

There are so many things we take for granted as teachers, so many false assumptions, so many wrong or hasty conclusions we reach. Of course, I speak for myself but I can well imagine that many others might feel the same way.

The reasons vary widely. Exams divide people into those who manage and those who don’t – the qualified and the unqualified. A utilitarian attitude towards knowledge, an adherence to rules, and reluctance to deviate detract from the pleasure of discovery and learning.

I used to think of dyslexic learners as people who need my help. After long years of observation and reflection, I have come to think of them as a source of inspiration. When they are trying to read a word, their mind races through so many possibilities – usually guessing what follows from the first couple of letters – that I, as a teacher, would find it impossible to recall at a time.

There is so much poetry in this anarchy of thought, so much effort and eagerness to get it right after all. I would like to focus on an example of mistake made by one of my dyslexic students.
Among others the class had to learn the word “worship”. I was bowled over when I read my student’s version of it. It was no less than “wondership”.

So class, get ready. We are embarking on an adventure. We must all think of a story that will contain the words “wonder”, “ship” and “worship”.

Once upon a time, in the year of wonders my friends and I decided to travel on a ship. It would be our first acquaintance with the whims of the sea by day and by night. We knew that in the old times there was a god of the sea and he was worshipped by ancient Greeks. And Poseidon, the god of the sea, was the one who created horses. And horses are our favourite animals: they teach us how to be free and independent. …

Or

Once upon a time, there was a wondership. It was called wondership because it would take its passengers to lands of wonders – lands where people worshipped the trees and the flowers and the smell of the soil.


My point, as you will have realised, is that there are beautiful mistakes which can act as springboard for further language development if only we teachers took a few seconds to spot them rather than hasten to correct and prescribe.




Friday 10 February 2017

How practice (mis)informs theory

I feel I have come far enough in my teaching career to be able to raise issues of the interdependence of theory and practice.

When I embarked on teaching, I was fully aware of using a particular methodology and course books based on this same methodology. It gave structure to my teaching and allowed me to feel confident -- safe in the knowledge that the theoretical framework I was using had been tried and tested.

In the course of time I kept up to date with theories of language acquisition and new methodologies. Discoveries in how the mind works perforce involve changes in approach towards language teaching and the development of new methods and materials.

However, what thinking processes come into play while learning defies description, and it is therefore up to the teacher to observe and take note of how the different students respond and which particular strategies they use in order to internalise the rules of the target language.

What I am trying to say is that a teacher may initially come to the classroom armed with method and lesson plans but they will inevitably modify and adjust those to suit their learners’ needs, and in so doing they find themselves  revising or enriching their methods.

I am not sure to what extent teachers can articulate their choices and adaptations so that their contributions can be put to use by researchers and linguists.

My point is that if the person who formulates theories about how people learn is removed from the teaching process and relies on the input of those directly involved in it, there is a deficit in the transfer which cannot be balanced. On the other hand, when a teacher attempts to convey their observations from classroom experience, they are not familiar with the jargon needed to convey them properly though in practice their teaching may have been informed by their experience and adjusted accordingly.

I will cite an example here from my experience. I have been working with several dyslexic students individually or in small groups over long periods of time, which allows me to have a better understanding of some of the difficulties they face and of the multiplicity of factors which interfere with decoding or encoding spoken or written language.

I also have a smattering of various theories about the causes of dyslexia and the ways one can assist dyslexic people. What knowledge I have on this learning difficulty comes from books that I have read and seminars or short courses that I have attended. That doesn’t make me an expert but awareness of the problem goes some way towards helping.

Until recently I had never realised that my “meticulous” way of highlighting information by using italics is totally lost on dyslexic people. I was told so by an adult student to whom I pointed out the highlighted information and I have confirmed it with another two dyslexic students. Perhaps this does not apply to every dyslexic individual but I feel that the information is of relevance when for example creating special fonts designed to help dyslexic people read more easily.

My suggestion – slightly wacky, but not unfounded – is that there should be university “banks” of contributions from teachers if we really want to claim that teaching practice informs theory and new theories are ploughed back into teaching. Brain scans and discoveries about how the brain works by implication (how a damaged area of the brain affects speech or language production, for instance) may simply not be quite enough.

In a nutshell, let’s apply the bottom up approach and see where it takes us. Nothing to lose there.


Friday 3 February 2017

Activating the mind

In our fast-paced world we have found quick ways of accomplishing tasks. Technology has been put at our service but I often feel that we end up serving rather than employing it for our purposes.

 Performing tasks with or without technology requires different thinking processes and in teaching or testing language it may make all the difference. I often see students become more absorbed by the medium used than the contents presented.

I must admit I am a latecomer to technology, but that doesn’t mean to say that I don’t see the enormous benefits that can be drawn from it. I can open different dictionaries at the same time, I can find all kinds of teaching material, I can use different programs to make my presentations more challenging or to create all kinds of exercises and texts.

Universities testing English have standardised their exams and assigned the correction of most tasks – with the notable exception of writing -- to computers. This has cut the cost of correcting exam papers significantly though I am not sure it does provide equal opportunities for everyone.

Multiple-choice questions, one-word answers and closed transformations do not necessarily do justice to a candidate’s ability and knowledge. I have taught many students who can articulate their views and communicate effectively but are stumped by standardised tests. And this brings me to the next even more serious mistake of limiting yourself to the types of exercises that are used in the exams. Most course books starting at level A1 include tasks which students will have to do in exams years later. How can we interpret this? Should teachers confine themselves to or even content themselves with these specific types of tasks? Are students’ minds “wired” to learn with so little variety and such poor stimulation?

As a teacher I try to use materials that will stimulate my students’ interest and will engage different parts of the brain. I often create exercises that are designed to slow down their reading so that they will focus longer on each part of the text. One simple way of doing this is by getting them to fill gaps in the text with words which have been removed and jumbled.

I am providing here an example of tasks that I assigned on a recent scientific article that I found on BBC. It contains an open cloze exercise, a few questions on the text which are intended to provide a deep understanding of the processes described in the article and a sample of two multiple-choice questions. Of course, in a real class you would not want to use all three of them, but I am juxtaposing them so that one can judge for oneself whether multiple-choice questions in fact facilitate understanding.

Needless to say, my stand is that as teachers we have to create our own ways of making sure that the text is treated as a vehicle of meaning and not as a point of reference for working out the right answers to multiple-choice questions, mostly by the method of elimination. The latter is an intellectual exercise but does not promote real learning or understanding; it does not even fulfil the actual aim of reading, which is to inform or entertain oneself depending on whether one reads factual or literary texts.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-JgIA9pNw-KbDhWanVnSnVlRWM/view?usp=sharing